Electric cars - how 'green' are they?

hotpot

I was also reading about Renault successfully charging an EV traveling at 60 mph through wireless dynamic charging built into a test track.

https://group.renault.com/en/news/blog-renault/electric-vehicles-towards-dynamic-wireless-charging/

Now that would be a very cool way to charge your EV.

chillidoggy

That's spooky - this morning the UK government announces no more petrol or diesel cars from 2040.

Chalky

not_the_dj said:

Danny1969 said:

The Tesla Model 3 is out soon which is hopefully the game changer, it's priced at around $35, 000, does 0 to 60 mph in 5.6 seconds and has a range of 215 miles.    .... It will do that 215 miles on less than a tenner of electric and won't burn any oil, or wear on the clutch. You can see that being a hit with taxi drivers

Impressive specs, but it's the recharge time that'd be crucial as well. 

And according to Tesla owners that I know, if you use the car's full acceleration much then the 215 mile range drops rapidly.

hotpot

chillidoggy said:

That's spooky - this morning the UK government announces no more petrol or diesel cars from 2040.

Ah! Thats why BMW have announced that they're electrifying all their models then. http://insideevs.com/mini-confirms-battery-electric-three-door-hatch/

siremoon

Range, charging time, battery life and battery replacement cost have all got to improve substantially for electric vehicles to be a viable proposition imo.  I can drive the 200 miles to Devon and back on 2/3 tank of petrol.  I only have to stop en-route for comfort/coffee breaks as I see fit.  Getting part way and then having to stop for hours to charge the battery isn't going to cut it.

ThePrettyDamned

Chalky said:

not_the_dj said:

Danny1969 said:

The Tesla Model 3 is out soon which is hopefully the game changer, it's priced at around $35, 000, does 0 to 60 mph in 5.6 seconds and has a range of 215 miles.    .... It will do that 215 miles on less than a tenner of electric and won't burn any oil, or wear on the clutch. You can see that being a hit with taxi drivers

Impressive specs, but it's the recharge time that'd be crucial as well. 

And according to Tesla owners that I know, if you use the car's full acceleration much then the 215 mile range drops rapidly.

It's the same as any car. It's just got a smaller tank to begin with. 

I think simply changing the cars isn't enough (though it would be a big step). There needs to be a new attitude towards transport - a big push for cycling (including more cycle paths connecting villages to towns and cities) and walking, incentives to use small motorbikes (125cc bikes can do longer journeys and get 90mpg+) and reserving cars for when necessary - it's frightening how many people I know who drive 3-5 miles to get to work, through Cambridge. Cycling would be cheaper, usually quicker and reduce pollution far more than substituting for an electric car. 

Fretwired

I can see electric cars catching on quickly for people who just poodle around their neighbourhood - school, shops etc and have their own driveway making charging easier.

There are two charging points in the town where I live and they are regularly used. They are quite big though which is why I think charging points on a suburban  street are a non-starter. You'd also have to cut down hundreds of trees where I live as well as dig up miles and miles of roads to lay the infrastructure. It would costs trillions (factoring in new electricity generating capacity).

The real answer would be banning car ownership. When you need to go somewhere you book a car (like a taxi) which turns up and being driverless takes you to where you want to go. There cars could be stored on industrial estates where charging points could be consolidated. Another benefit would be no cars parked on our overcrowded roads.

crunchman

The big problem at the moment is emissions in cities.  I think the official figures are something close to 30,000 premature deaths per year in cities across the UK, with around 10,000 of those in London.

While the type of car will make a big difference, as @ThePrettyDamned said we need to get people onto 2 wheels.

A very large proportion of car journeys in cities are short and could easily be cycled.  The problem does come with the journeys that are 5 to 10 miles.  Even though cycling is probably the quickest way to make those journeys in a place like London, it's a bit far for a lot of people to cycle.

One thing that would be a big game changer would be to change the rules on electric bikes.  Currently they are limited to 15mph and then the motor cuts out.  In Canada and a lot of US states they can go to 20mph.  If we changed the rules to allow 20mph, it would cut the journey time significantly and I think you would see a big uptake of electric bikes.

On the car front, I don't think Li-ion batteries are the way forwards.  Apart from all the charging infrastructure, the number of incidents I hear about them catching on fire (in cars or phones) makes me wary.  I saw a report yesterday that Toyota are planning to have a car with solid state batteries on the market in 2022.  That might help.  They won't have the same risks, and they have a higher energy density so a car using them will be lighter which will also help.

That doesn't solve the fundamental problem with battery cars which is how to charge them.  Where I live, we have to park on the street.  If I run a cable across the pavement then it's a tripping hazard.  The council has put charging points in some lamp posts but even if they put it on all the lamp posts there wouldn't be enough for all the residents.

I don't think they could put it on all the lamp posts.  The amount of current required is too high.  We had new LED lights put in a few years ago.  They can't be more than 200W per lamp post.  Even a relatively basic charging point is 7kW - delivering 32A.  I'm pretty sure that the infrastructure wouldn't take multiple cars charging at the same time from all the lamp posts.

Even at 7kW the best electric cars on the market now would take around 9 hours to charge - capacity around 60kWh.  If you do get better batteries, then you could be looking at ridiculous charging times.  You can get 22kW from a 3 phase supply but you are still looking at 3 hours.  The fastest "rapid" charging points are 50kW.  You would need to get battery capacities of 100kWh to give the kind of range that is needed.  That's a 2 hour charge time even with the fastest chargers currently around.  It would be a day an half on a 13A socket. If nothing else, wholesale uptake of electric cars would require massive upgrades to the grid.

I still think that hydrogen fuel cells are the best option.  You can use intermittent renewables like solar and wind to electrolyse sea water when there is a surplus to get the hydrogen.  By doing that you are storing the intermittent renewable energy, and creating a network of hydrogen filling stations would probably also be cheaper than all the upgrades to the power network that would be needed for electric cars.

hywelg

monofin said:

Interesting that power stations are consuming more coal than ever to meet demand

Are you 10 years old?. Because you are exhibiting zero historical perspective.  

In simple terms your statement is complete bollocks. And it centres on the word 'ever'. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fossil_fuel_consumption_in_the_United_Kingdom.svg

And that only starts on 1980, after the start of the decline of the coal industry in the UK 

Fretwired

hywelg said:

monofin said:

Interesting that power stations are consuming more coal than ever to meet demand

Are you 10 years old?. Because you are exhibiting zero historical perspective.  

In simple terms your statement is complete bollocks. And it centres on the word 'ever'. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fossil_fuel_consumption_in_the_United_Kingdom.svg

And that only starts on 1980, after the start of the decline of the coal industry in the UK 

I think he means worldwide - Germany and China are building new coal fired power plants.

darthed1981

Fretwired said:

I can see electric cars catching on quickly for people who just poodle around their neighbourhood - school, shops etc and have their own driveway making charging easier.

Very good point - they should target the market at the "second" car as soon as the price drops to allow it.

The issue to date has been there is a sort-of minimum size for electric cars as the batteries take up so much space.  As this issue goes away (and it will, the technology is advancing rapidly) a proper electric supermini for reasonable money (they need to become as cheap as regular cars) will hit the market and hoover up sales.

The big cars everyone uses to zoom over the whole country can then become plug-in hybrids, the details of the 2040 ban are relatively sparse but I suspect a small petrol engine of, for example, up to 750cc for backup charging, will be totally fine.

JayGee

siremoon said:

Range, charging time, battery life and battery replacement cost have all got to improve substantially for electric vehicles to be a viable proposition imo.  I can drive the 200 miles to Devon and back on 2/3 tank of petrol.  I only have to stop en-route for comfort/coffee breaks as I see fit.  Getting part way and then having to stop for hours to charge the battery isn't going to cut it.

Assuming availabilty of rapid charge points in the right location that would be a single 30-40 minute recharging stop in my current car (30kW-h Nissan Leaf) or two in the previous one (24kW-h Leaf), which for me comes under the heading of mild inconvenience rather than total show-stopper. I quite regularly did the 220 mile trip up to my Mum's place in Yorkshire and a couple of times made the full 440 mile round trip in a day with the 24kW-h car...

I'm not seeing battery replacement cost as being a big deal these days, my last one showed no measurable degradation at all in 26K miles and commercial operators report that they continue to hold up way, way, way beyond that, eg.

http://evfleetworld.co.uk/taxi-company-hits-100000-mile-landmark-with-leaf/

Danny1969

Obviously if you park on the street then charging isn't feasible and that's a huge problem. In Portsmouth City almost no one has a drive, it would be impossible to walk down the street if there were cables everywhere, this side of things does need a rethink.
As I said earlier, super capacitors built into the car might be the solution in as much as you can charge a capacitor very very quickly using a very large current  low voltage supply. You could then use that quickly stored power to charge the LION batteries without the use of cables. This isn't possible at the moment (without towing a trailer full of them) but advances in super capacitor material have led to ever greater surface area and thus we now have 3000 Farad capacitors the size of a beer can

I can't afford a Tesla but if I could then charging wouldn't be an issue as I would plug it in on the drive and charge it over night. The 260 miles of range would last me a week but I would probably let it get down to 100 miles and then charge overnight again. I would probable consider plugging it in on the drive less hassle than driving to a petrol station

If you think of how we use electric nowdays, 10 watt LED bulbs instead of 100 watt ..... 90 watt TV's instead of 280 watt CRT TV's ... Halogen 1.2KW ovens instead of 3KW ones's ...although our population is growing we are using less electric to a certain degree .... although 3 teenagers in a house all with a 90 watt flat screen is as much electric as one old CRT family TV in the front room 

ESBlonde

I listened to some local radio this morning on my diesel drive to work. Some chap has a BMW i3 ? Done 64,000 miles in two years, plugs in the car when he gets home and the remaining battery powers the house during the peak  time (up to 11pm) or until economy 7 is available when it recharges the car. He claims a cost of £1 for 200 miles and lower home energy costs.

Now I don't know how much of that is true and I also don't know the premium paid for a new car and intelligent power point. But the idea seems logical if solar/tide/wind/hydro power makes up a large measure of grid power. Maybe there is a bright future and we can all stop buying oil and making the middle east a well armed war zone one day.

crunchman

Until they can get batteries than can consistently last 150,000 miles, or the batteries get a lot cheaper, then battery replacement cost will always be an issue.  If I buy a 3 year old car, and I want some resale at the end of it, the new owner will need to know that he won't be saddled with a £4k bill for replacement batteries.

Danny1969

crunchman said:

Until they can get batteries than can consistently last 150,000 miles, or the batteries get a lot cheaper, then battery replacement cost will always be an issue.  If I buy a 3 year old car, and I want some resale at the end of it, the new owner will need to know that he won't be saddled with a £4k bill for replacement batteries.

You get an 8 year warranty on a Tesla battery, try getting an 8 year warranty on a car engine. 

Up to now Tesla have been building their battery packs out of the same 18650 cells we have all been using in out laptop batteries, drill batteries etc. The giant Giga factory however produces their own slightly larger design at an unprecedented scale .... that one huge factory when up and running will produce more batteries than every other battery manufacturing plant combined  ..... the sheer size and scale of the thing is amazing. This is the 4th stage of the Musk masterplan .... build batteries cheap than ever before to power electric cars and do away with the cost of expensive battery packs

crunchman

A large part of the the environmental cost of a car is the cost of building it in the first place.  If you want cars that have low environmental costs then you need them to be lasting 15 years plus.  A battery that lasts 8 years is not enough.

Someone buying an 8 year old car second hand won't want the threat of an expensive battery replacement on the horizon.  If you do end up scrapping these things after 8 to 10 years then overall you would still be better off with a petrol that can last a lot longer.  That wouldn't solve the pollution problem in our cities, but that's more caused by diesel than petrol.

chillidoggy

I heard of one idea that involves 'battery stations'. Basically, you drive your lecky car to one, and get the discharged battery slid out, and a recharged one slid back in. Of course, they'd have to be the same type or it wouldn't work. I can see we'd could end up with 'VHS and Betamax' syndrome cars, before one becomes the dominant battery pack.

Danny1969

crunchman said:

A large part of the the environmental cost of a car is the cost of building it in the first place.  If you want cars that have low environmental costs then you need them to be lasting 15 years plus.  A battery that lasts 8 years is not enough.

Someone buying an 8 year old car second hand won't want the threat of an expensive battery replacement on the horizon.  If you do end up scrapping these things after 8 to 10 years then overall you would still be better off with a petrol that can last a lot longer.  That wouldn't solve the pollution problem in our cities, but that's more caused by diesel than petrol.

I agree but the environmental cost  building an electric car is lower than a fossil fuel car, an electric car doesn't need precious metals for a Cat converter, it doesn't need literally a third of the components a normal car requires ... no gearbox, no clutch, no belts, no timing chain, no crank, conrods,

A Tesla is made from Alloy so technically won't rust ... it's too early to say how long it will last as a car though.

@chillidoggy Tesla already do the slide in battery pack already charged at USA dealers. Then when you return from your trip they slide yours back in fully charged. The Tesla infrastructure is quite advanced over there with over 4000 supercharger stations by the end of 2017 ... currently around 2800. At a moment a Tesla owner can drive to NY to LA and back for fuck all as Supercharging is free. As long as you don't mind stopping for an hour every 200 miles 
  

hotpot

Another thing, who is going to buy a fossil fuel car within ten years of the deadline! they will become worthless, no dealer will want to part ex one unless there is a clunker bill.

Also will petrol stations still be open in the numbers we have today running up to the deadline!