Re: New BBC soap: Bert Coules?

-massive gearbox. -possibly differential. -starter battery...

I am not siure if you are simply trolling, but why would a motor that need only deliver 50bhp be as heavy as one that delivers 200bhp?

I'm not really in favour of them - especially subsidised.

Sunsidising technology concelas its (lack of) value

Absent of other fcatirs CO2 would the planet about 1C for every doubling. Whicg is truly insifnicicant.,

In orfer to make it scary, they multiplied it by 'positive feedback;' that mystriously does not apply to anything else except CO2. Even though teh proposed mecahnism (water vapour ) must apply to any temepreture changes at all.

That the levels of feed back they propose

- would make volacnic erupttins like pinatubuo throw us into an ice age

- make the planet so historically unstable that life would never have started

- create effects that have never been found

is ignored

As is te fact taht teh stqwement that the vast majority of modern waqrning is down to CO2 incerase' cannot be true, simncet shape of the grohs of te tow paremetsr show no correltaion if the span from saty

Intridicing some other factor than CO2 top ecplain it begs the question of why the origibal assumption is true. Clearly CO2 is NOT the major friver of climate, then

Prius probaly better at urban driving, buy not on serious journeys. A friend has one., He gets about 50mpg - I darent tell him that skoda diesels beat that.

Grid effiency varies with load. Generally 85%-95%. Similar efficency applies to electric motors. Battery turnround effuciency probably around

Combine those with a CCGT power staion at 60% efficiency and you have gas to shaft efficiency of 43%, before regen braking is added.

If you are chargong them from a coal power station at 37%, they are more polluting

Anbd of course any (exhaust) pollutin is shifted to the power station out of the city.

leaving only carbon particulates from the tyres and brakes

Turbo diesels is around similar peak efficiencies though 30% is more likley.

What thi shopws is that the real gains from BEVS are in manufacturers profits and on street pollution.

Unless you are charging them from Nuclear power, there is almost no emissions gains - just emissions transfer to te power staion.

(I odntcount windmills and solar panels as in anyway relevant to anythig)

Neither of those two statements are universally true.

In all cases the situation is far more complex. You dint mention load . There will be a particular load and RPM at which all engines are their most efficient. Whether you choose to operate them beyond that range for other reasons, is moot. Pterol engines and diesles both can show bets power in a fairly ineffeicient regine where you ae throwing fuel at them but they can't breathe enough to fulllyy utilise it. Turbocharging helps in that.

That is however more nearly correct: See my previous post.

Thts because you sold it at 80,0000 with a s*it engine, and didnt operate it in S Africa where daytime temps reach 40C on a regular basis.

Why do you think no car manufacturer today runs an aircooled engine?

yes, but I wouold probably design it with a mechanical clunker - a contactor - that closes first, under conditions of no power to prevent arcing and wear, and then use a solid state SMPS to detect when voltage is applied and then do the job of transforming that into the correct voltage and current for the car. with soft start probably.

No way would you except in an emergency switch poweer with a mechanical switch. Solid state is the way to go.

A matter of inches in a CRT colour TV - also 25kV - unless you use a remote control, of course!

Tear downs of some external chargers I've seen just use latching relays, presumably the onboard charger has its own relays/contactors too.

the handshake between external and internal chargers is done by a square wave, that tells the car how much current is available, and the onboard charger controls the external charger via resistors/diodes.

All electric when you neverstary more tahna few miles froma depot with charging is probably very good - its a niche market that BEVS can fil.

Charge them all up to the hilt overnight on cheap rate for the morning rush ohour after that take 20% out of service each hour and charge them

- an hour to rechargee is reasonable - and try and have nearly all charged for the evening rush hour.

Insofar as buses are useful transoport rather than virtue signalling they probably can be made to work quite well.

I think we will start seeing more and more delivery vans and postal vans being BEV - the return of the milk float with better batteries

how unbeleivably inefficient and crude

I had forgotten how much EHT a color tube used.

What about microwave magnetrons? Ogh a paltry 5KV!

air is about 3KV per mm in terms of sparkong so as long as you have 11mm you are safe from 33kv (DC)

After you then ...

I can tell you that fast chargers are DC so all this talk about using AC is BS.

If you think about it you would put all the expensive complicated stuff in the charge point and as little as possible in the car.

There are going to be a lot more cars than charge points, especially the rapid chargers.

So what you want is a DC source with suitable control using sensors built into the battery.

The only things built into the car are the little mains chargers that work at about 32A AC and not all cars had those even as some were restricted to 13A.

Then there is control circuitry to ensure the charge point only has SLEV on it until it has verified its plugged into a car and can supply the correct charging current.

The DC ones have even more control which is why they are sometimes an optional extra that they charge a few thousand for the £20 worth of sensors you get (or maybe just enabled).

That makes sense if you consider overall expense; if you consider it as "what can we get someone else to pay for", though, ...

I'm a bit confused here - who charges whom for what? Do you mean the "home charging points" you can pay to have installed? (I imagine most, or at least a lot, of the cost of those is the labour, not the parts.)

As a (very) rough rule of thumb, about a kV per tube inch, I think.

Hmm. Not if it's damp! I think I'd want (and I think safety standards specify) a LOT more distance than that. (I don't think 11mm would be safe for anything, not least because a stray hair or something could bridge it.)

It wasn't clear whether he meant "compared to a diesel hybrid", or "compared to a diesel-only". I assumed he meant the latter.

I was talking of car. For a car that is used _entirely_ for urban, then yes, probably electric-only is better; if we're talking of a family that has two cars, or _never_ makes long trips other than by train, that would apply. (I just don't like the idea of the possibility of being stranded.)

I think the ones my previous employer were involved with - Diesel top-up

- were Alexander Dennis, too (Model Envirosomething 400E, where the E was significant [the Envirosomething 400 being the plain Diesel version, where the Enviro part just represented a claim of being better than its predecessors in that respect]).

They can be genuinely useful in city environments where _parking_ the alternative is problematical.

Yes.

LCC trams used a conduit system but it was very expensive to install. There would also be the problem of attaching the pick-up 'plough' to the vehicle and, of course, there would be no lane changing.

Lovely. I remember those at the local fair!

Assuming you're in a vehicle that needs 200 bhp anyway, then the question still is: 200 bhp engine (electric) + 50 bhp engine (fuel) + battery, versus 200 bhp engine (fuel). But if you like, I'm trolling - though I prefer to see it as "playing devil's advocate", by which I mean "trying to see what the other chap is getting at/suggesting", rather than just doing it for the sake of an argument.

(I've forgotten what point - and in which direction - we were going here anyway.)

It _can_ kick-start development, where either entrepreneurs are timid, or the investment required is more than any available entrepreneur can afford (or, where the development is likely to happen in ways that others can steal [not patentable], so the initial investment can never be recouped). But I agree, it often does distort; and there's no denying that _some_ subsidised technologies _have_ never got going.

One thing that has puzzled me about a vaguely related technology: why have I so far never seen a photovoltaic solar panel _built into_ a roof, rather than bolted on top of it? (Maybe they exist and I just haven't seen them.) []

I think there are some low island countries who might disagree with you there (-:. (And not just island - I think Bangladesh, for example, is mostly low.) But certainly the effect is arguably over-reported. (Or under-. The best description would be "we just don't know", though I tend towards there being some effect/truth-in-the-claims.) []

Sorry, SNR ratio too low (-:

For some people, the majority of their driving _is_ urban. (OK, all-electric for them - but maybe they want the _ability_ to do the odd long journey - and don't have the money/space for two cars [if they live urban, the space consideration is quite likely].)

Yes, I just got 56.2 from the last tankful in my Octavia. (The last tankful in my Felicia before I had to scrap it due to rust gave 62 - best ever; I was sad to lose that one!)

I don't really object to the Prius though: it _is_ both (a) _helping_ development of the technology, (b) making the point - it _is_ a nice car to use, from what I've heard - that electric doesn't have to mean hair shirt.