The latest chargers that have been developed are apparently 150 kiloWatt.
Call me old-fashioned, but I don't really think it will ever be safe to pump the energy equivalent of 150 one-bar electric fires faultlessly into cars without quite a lot of them getting rather too warm for comfort.
The trouble with any hybrids is that you have to have to have two heavy motive power units, an engine and a battery, and you're inefficiently carting both around all the time when only using one.
I think all Telsa models S and X are built to allow a rapid battery swap, but after an on-stage demo and a trial of a few swap-stations in America, they decided not to introduce it as a service, and the cheaper model 3 is not built to allow swapping.
Flow batteries where the "flat" electrolytes are drained and replaced with "charged" electrolytes were also discussed.
I thought the boris-buses had been 'outed' are hardly ever running in hybrid mode?
A petrol pump does something similar, and we've had those for decades ... (-:
Seriously, you have a good point - there is potential for overheated connectors. But, the electricity supply industry has been switching a lot more energy than that for a long time, so it is certainly possible. (And in surprisingly small devices; I did work briefly in switchgear.) The main thing is to connect and disconnect with the power off: I don't know how these 150 kW chargers work, but I presume the power is switched electronically, not mechanically, and also has detection of any poor connection, and either throttles back or just cuts off.
Yes, the only way round that is the Scalextric method, which doesn't scale very well (-:
[Actually, it does: the railways use it. And I could just about see it being technically viable on long motorway stretches (which, actually, are the one main place where EVs struggle currently); however, the safety considerations almost certainly would kill it off, and the cost, and possibly even the billing mechanism, though I think that last could be worked out. I think the safety nightmare is the main killer.]
No, it can be done, but its a bit complex and you probably need fan cooling.
The one area where technical advances are being made in leaps and bounds is low cell internal resistance, leading to massive peak power capabilities and high charge rates.
The one area there is very little progress is how much per unit weight you can cram in. I.e. range. Technology is pretty close to as good as it gets there
No. It's actually better than that. In the same way as turbocharging allows a small efficient cruise engine to crank out the overtaking or hill climbing power, so does a battery allow a small cruise engine the ability to overtake/climb hills as well.
And regenerative braking adds a lot - especially in town - allowing smaller 'real' brakes.
In grid terms, the petrol engine runs efficiently as 'baseload' whilst the peak following is handled by the battery
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How is it going to improve? Calculate the energy transfer rate happening when you fill your tank, and then calculate what that means in electrical terms. Then tell us the sort of cable needed for that.
Biggest resistance source is in the battery itself.
Everything else is soluble by upping the voltages. To keep resistance heating and currents lower
Trams also use it, and they share roadspace with other users.
It might be possible, rather than moving to full-electric motorways, to put OHL on the inside lane only for designated HGV and PCV. They're longer and higher, so a pantograph is less problematic, and already have trained drivers and tachographs.
Possibly a transporter shuttle service could be introduced for electric domestic vehicles. Drive your electric car onto a transporter at motorway J6 and have a rest from driving whilst the transporter takes you up to J7 on OHL power *and* recharges your own battery.
The transporter then drives round at J7 services and takes another dozen cars back to J6.
Owain
That's potential energy rather than actual energy though.
Switching is one thing, but even with perfect connectors the energy has to be pumped into the battery itself to cause a chemical reaction.
150kW is a hell of a lot. It must create a lot of heat too, surely?
You've still got to lug the battery and the engine up the hill.
That's an advantage of all electric cars in town too.
My objection is the green credentials claimed for hybrids.
But the weight of the total power train is no higher than a conventional one.
IF the battery and engine are small. Thats teh point. You use the engine at its most efficeint [oint, uyou use the batteryt for peak power which it does brilliantly, nd for braking, .
Oh sure. Greentalk is always bollocks anyway. CO2 is not what causes climate to change.
Å Prius isnt any better than a good turbo diesel on fuel economy. Or I suspect, emissions
The particulates are trapped in the particulate filter in the exhaust. The heat from the exhaust on a decently long run oxidises the carbon component (diesels usually run with an excess amount of air for the fuel being burned so there is spare oxygen available provided the heat is sufficient), but I have no idea what happens to the ash.
Perhaps that remains in the filter and determines the life of the filter before it needs replacing. The old one should be able to be professionally cleaned and then reused, but whether anybody bothers in today's "disposable" society I don't know.
Jim
So has France and Italy with agriculture and close particularly.
This is true, but you also have to factor in the long life of a diesel engine, and the old ones don't have the anti-pollution characteristics developed since.
If you have an old and fully serviceable diesel which will see another quarter of a million miles if driven sensibly, the only way you are going to scrap it early is a psychological one - to avoid being a pariah in the eyes of the public.
Jim
Indy Jess John snipped-for-privacy@OMITblueyonder.co.uk> posted
No - you will scrap it early if the authorities impose heavy financial penalties on you for running it. *That* is what everyone is afraid of, and that is what has caused the number of diesel car purchases to fall so catastrophically in the last couple of years.
Top Gear (the original one with Jeremy Clarkson) did a track comparison between a Prius and a BMW M3. At best lap time speeds, the Prius fuel consumption exceeded the BMW's by quite a margin.
The thing that puzzles me is why hybrids always seem to have the fuelled engine coupled up for traction. A little air-cooled engine[1] driving a generator to charge the battery would run at a constant speed so that there isn't the peaks and troughs of exhaust emissions, and provided the maximum output from the generator was sufficient to replace what is taken out of the battery at motorway cruising speed, you would get a very long range for a relatively small amount of fuel. Uphill the battery would gradually run down, but downhill (or stationary) the generator would replace the charge lost. Without all the transmission system needed for traction or the water needed for cooling, the engine itself wouldn't weigh much.
[1] The Volkswagen Beetle has proved that air cooling is perfectly viable for road passenger transport, and the engine heat in the air passing over the engine would be available for heating the passenger compartment in the winter, saving the power drain on the batteries currently experienced in purely EV transport. A diesel engine is ideally suited to steady speed running (the engines in cargo ships typically run at a constant speed for days on end) and because this type of hybrid doesn't have to be designed for a reasonable rate of acceleration, its fuel demands would be low.Jim
The hybrid buses which run between Slough and Maidenhead only run on electricity for a few metres from stop before the engine kicks in. Hardly worth it I would have thought. (The hybridisation appears to be retrofitted and I think they are giving up on it.) I don't know whether there's any regenerative braking.
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