Electric cars - how 'green' are they?

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  • exocetexocet Frets: 1948
    Nitefly said:
    exocet said:
    @exocet that was very interesting, and I can see how it would benefit grid supplies.  Is there any info as to how it could be applied to power for vehicles?

    That article goes beyond the "simple" generation of Hydrogen via Electrolysis but the reality is that there is a lot of research going on now into increasing the efficiency of the process to make electrolysis comparable with the cost of using natural gas for the Hydrogen creation process (making hydrogen on an industrial scale now generally starts with natural gas as base product). So hydrogen creation from renewables is happening now. The challenge for using it in vehicles is more one of storage and distribution.
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  • FretwiredFretwired Frets: 24601
    edited July 2017
    Gove the joke that keeps giving .... car manufacturers are saying they will have to move manufacturing overseas as they will still be making cars powered by petrol for overseas markets after 2040. Gove's ban means they won't be able to drive and test new models on the road. When asked Gove admitted that this is the case. Goodbye Rolls, Aston Martin and Jaguar .... nice one Gove.

    He opens his mouth and makes promises he can't keep and now our major car companies will need factories overseas. Jaguar were already looking at a factory in Poland.

    Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
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  • EvilmagsEvilmags Frets: 5158
    Fretwired said:
    Gove the joke that keeps giving .... car manufacturers are saying they will have to move manufacturing overseas as they will still be making cars powered by petrol for overseas markets after 2040. Gove's ban means they won't be able to drive and test new models on the road. When asked Gove admitted that this is the case. Goodbye Rolls, Aston Martin and Jaguar .... nice one Gove.

    He opens his mouth and makes promises he can't keep and now our major car companies will need factories overseas. Jaguar were already looking at a factory in Poland.
    The heavy handed stupidity and utter lack of reality in this latest move is ridiculous and endemic in the era of professional politics. All parties are stuffed with economically illiterate authoritarian fuckwits with no idea how to take the central themes of economy,  Brexit, NHS, education and employment. Instead we get the stupid virtue signal combined with 100bn bill to the public. Thatcher will be spinning in her grave at the inept, wet and dumb government her old party is providing. 
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  • boogiemanboogieman Frets: 12314
    edited July 2017
    nickb_boy said:
    It's probably been touched on in articles above but on a side note, what other tax initiatives are we likely to be hit with in order to regain the 60-80p per litre the government are currently taking from fuel sales?  Surely that's a fair chunk of change they need to recover.
    The BBC were interviewing a few experts on the news this morning about that. The govt currently make £33billion a year out of fuel duty. £8bn goes on road infrastructure and maintenance, the rest gets ploughed into supporting the NHS (and bribing the DUP) etc. Where's the extra income coming from when cars are all electric? Expect either a pay-per-mile surcharge to use the roads or a massive hike in electricity prices. 
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  • FretwiredFretwired Frets: 24601
    boogieman said:
    nickb_boy said:
    It's probably been touched on in articles above but on a side note, what other tax initiatives are we likely to be hit with in order to regain the 60-80p per litre the government are currently taking from fuel sales?  Surely that's a fair chunk of change they need to recover.
    The BBC were interviewing a few experts on the news this morning about that. The govt currently make £33billion a year out of fuel duty. £8bn goes on road infrastructure and maintenance, the rest gets ploughed into supporting the NHS (and bribing the DUP) etc. Where's the extra income coming from when cars are all electric? Expect either a pay-per-mile surcharge to use the roads or a massive hike in electricity prices. 
    It won't come from a hike in electricity prices - that will be needed to provide the cash to build the extra power stations and cable infrastructure for charging points. I suspect there will be a hike in the cost of road tax and a tax on the sale of new cars and probably a toll to use main roads.

    Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
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  • Axe_meisterAxe_meister Frets: 4612
    I recon we will no longer be able to charge cars using our regular domestic supply and we will be forced to have two electricity meters with extra duty applied to a car charging point in the home. 
    Or all cars will be fitted with a GPS location box and we'll get a distance bill in the post.
    Maybe we should get rid of personal transport all together and just call up a self driving electric pod that returns to a charging station and/or out of town park and ride where we then pick up a long distance pod (Which could run on existing rail network or overhead electrified motorway). The only time you'd pick up a car is for rural transport
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  • gubblegubble Frets: 1737
    Fretwired said:
    Gove the joke that keeps giving ....
    The Govester does entertain me
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  • crunchmancrunchman Frets: 11414
    boogieman said:
    nickb_boy said:
    It's probably been touched on in articles above but on a side note, what other tax initiatives are we likely to be hit with in order to regain the 60-80p per litre the government are currently taking from fuel sales?  Surely that's a fair chunk of change they need to recover.
    The BBC were interviewing a few experts on the news this morning about that. The govt currently make £33billion a year out of fuel duty. £8bn goes on road infrastructure and maintenance, the rest gets ploughed into supporting the NHS (and bribing the DUP) etc. Where's the extra income coming from when cars are all electric? Expect either a pay-per-mile surcharge to use the roads or a massive hike in electricity prices. 
    I'm trying to find the article, but I'm pretty sure that one of the articles I read on this story yesterday gave a figure of £27.5 billion in costs caused by air pollution - that's partly costs to the NHS, but also due costs due to lost productivity.  If that's right then there will be a shortfall but it won't be as bad as the headline $33 billion suggests.

    There is also 5% VAT on electricity, so if we do use more electricity to charge battery powered cars they will get a little bit of it back there.

    @Fretwired raised a good point about the effect on manufacturing.  The blanket ban is not a good idea.  They should probably go back to the increasing duty idea that Labour had while they were in power.  At the time, it wasn't a good idea because there weren't viable alternatives, but now the alternative technology is maturing then that would be a better approach.

    Announce that there will be a 1p a litre rise in diesel duty every year for the next 23 years until 2040, and a 1p rise in petrol duty every other year, and you achieve the emissions reductions without needing the blanket bans, and all the idiot regulation.  Apart from those who need them for towing, sales of new diesel cars would basically stop which would start to make air in cities slightly less bad within months, and it the effect would get better over time.  Jaguar, or any other manufacturer, could still test new cars after 2040 and enthusiasts could still build kit cars in their garages but all the normal traffic on the roads would be clean in terms of tail pipe emissions.

    While petrol is less bad than diesel it's still not good.  In the short term, petrol hybrids are probably the way forwards for people who do a lot of city driving.  The engine cuts out when stationary, and they will run on electric in slow speed traffic jams.
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  • chillidoggychillidoggy Frets: 17136
    I recon we will no longer be able to charge cars using our regular domestic supply and we will be forced to have two electricity meters with extra duty applied to a car charging point in the home. 
    Or all cars will be fitted with a GPS location box and we'll get a distance bill in the post.
    Maybe we should get rid of personal transport all together and just call up a self driving electric pod that returns to a charging station and/or out of town park and ride where we then pick up a long distance pod (Which could run on existing rail network or overhead electrified motorway). The only time you'd pick up a car is for rural transport


    Fear not - they've got a cunning plan!


    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/24/household-batteries-will-be-key-to-uks-new-energy-strategy


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  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10357
    crunchman said:
    Danny1969 said:
    The first electric cars had a range of 20 miles, the best one's today have a range of around 300 miles. In another 10 years I would expect that range to increase to 450, maybe 500 miles. There's not many people want to do more miles than that in one day except maybe lorry drivers. 
    With any new tech it's the people who push the hardest and earliest who win out, Tesla will win purely because they have built the car factory, he has built the battery factory and the third generation car is about to be released. Tesla have the Supercharger infrastructure in place, as a car firm they are already bigger than Mitsubishi motors. Hydrogen cells might be better but Toyota have had little luck as there's no existing infrastructure to fuel the cars and fire regs hamper building them. 

    That doesn't solve the problem of the renewable energy to charge them being available at the wrong times.  Hydrogen does solve that - look at the example @exocet gave.

    As far as infrastructure to fuel hydrogen cars, building hydrogen fuel stations (or converting existing petrol ones) would probably work out a lot cheaper than all the upgrades to the grid, and the generation infrastructure.  There would need to be a ridiculous over capacity 80% of the time to allow for charging electric cars at the wrong time of day when people get home from work.
    I'm not saying Hydrogen fuel stations aren't the best way forward, they probably are but just as VHS won over the superior Betamax standard Tesla is most likely to succeed with electric purely because they took technology that was readily available and ran with it.  They have built a huge network of charging stations, they are building thousands of cars a week, They are building a 129MWhr battery in Australia to cope with energy shortfalls.

    America has the capability to produce massive amounts of electricity via solar, a State like Texas will be as solar rich as it is oil rich. Once electric cars have well and truly took off with a population of 370 million I would expect the same to happen over here but we might well have to buy our electric from solar rich continents like South America.

    The implications are enormous as although we still need oil for other things the new currency will be solar \ electricity production. Exciting times ahead with cleaner cities, better quality air to breath. Not getting covered in oil when fixing the car :)
    www.2020studios.co.uk 
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  • FX_MunkeeFX_Munkee Frets: 2477
    Evilmags said:
    Elon Musk os a con man and confidence trickster. Analyse how much tax payers money he has swallowed in his post pay pal career. Vast subsidies on practically every pie his finger is in. He is a classic rent seeker of the highest order and people unable to see through that need to read a bit more widely. He's just getting rich and powerful at the expense of normal people by getting the state to steal on their behalf. 
    As much as I hate to agree with @Evilmags he does have a point. I wouldn't use the hyperbole Mags has either but Musk has only concentrated on sectors that will get him the largest subsidies from the US government.
    Simple explanation here https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/03/worstall_on_wednesday_elon_musk_spacex/
    So remember, he's not the Messiah.
    Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame, you give love a bad name. Not to mention archery tuition.
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  • chillidoggychillidoggy Frets: 17136
    FX_Munkee said:
    Evilmags said:
    Elon Musk os a con man and confidence trickster. Analyse how much tax payers money he has swallowed in his post pay pal career. Vast subsidies on practically every pie his finger is in. He is a classic rent seeker of the highest order and people unable to see through that need to read a bit more widely. He's just getting rich and powerful at the expense of normal people by getting the state to steal on their behalf. 
    As much as I hate to agree with @Evilmags he does have a point. I wouldn't use the hyperbole Mags has either but Musk has only concentrated on sectors that will get him the largest subsidies from the US government.
    Simple explanation here https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/03/worstall_on_wednesday_elon_musk_spacex/
    So remember, he's not the Messiah.


    ....he's a naughty boy?


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  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10357
    FX_Munkee said:
    Evilmags said:
    Elon Musk os a con man and confidence trickster. Analyse how much tax payers money he has swallowed in his post pay pal career. Vast subsidies on practically every pie his finger is in. He is a classic rent seeker of the highest order and people unable to see through that need to read a bit more widely. He's just getting rich and powerful at the expense of normal people by getting the state to steal on their behalf. 
    As much as I hate to agree with @Evilmags he does have a point. I wouldn't use the hyperbole Mags has either but Musk has only concentrated on sectors that will get him the largest subsidies from the US government.
    Simple explanation here https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/03/worstall_on_wednesday_elon_musk_spacex/
    So remember, he's not the Messiah.
    He's probably the nearest thing we have to a James Bond baddie but he hasn't revealed his evil masterplan yet.... as he owns Space X maybe he's gonna steal the Space Station ;)

    He's sitting on 375,000 x $1000 deposits for the Model 3 Tesla at the moment 
    www.2020studios.co.uk 
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  • HAL9000HAL9000 Frets: 9551
    edited July 2017
    Chalky 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.
    Also, the range of fully electric cars approximately halves in cold weather. Batteries generally don't like the cold. Any moderate journey could have you experiencing 'range anxiety'  as you're nearing your destination.

    With the current state of the technology an electric car is very much a second car for local(ish) journeys. 
    I play guitar because I enjoy it rather than because I’m any good at it
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  • FretwiredFretwired Frets: 24601
    Danny1969 said:

    I'm not saying Hydrogen fuel stations aren't the best way forward, they probably are but just as VHS won over the superior Betamax standard Tesla is most likely to succeed with electric purely because they took technology that was readily available and ran with it.  They have built a huge network of charging stations, they are building thousands of cars a week, They are building a 129MWhr battery in Australia to cope with energy shortfalls.

    America has the capability to produce massive amounts of electricity via solar, a State like Texas will be as solar rich as it is oil rich. Once electric cars have well and truly took off with a population of 370 million I would expect the same to happen over here but we might well have to buy our electric from solar rich continents like South America.

    The implications are enormous as although we still need oil for other things the new currency will be solar \ electricity production. Exciting times ahead with cleaner cities, better quality air to breath. Not getting covered in oil when fixing the car :)
    Electric will work in sunny California (cars will be able to charge using solar energy as they drive or are stationery) but wait until you get to New York. Overcrowded streets and if you think our power is bad its only one up from the third world out there. This will only work if people give up car ownership in big cities and rent a car when they need one (self driving cars can be a solution).

    https://www.ft.com/content/db4f4c4e-fd9b-11e5-b3f6-11d5706b613b


    Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
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  • crunchmancrunchman Frets: 11414
    Fretwired said:
    Electric will work in sunny California (cars will be able to charge using solar energy as they drive or are stationery)
    No.

    Good sunlight is about 1000W (1kW) per square meter.  Let's say you have 2m x 2m on top of the car where you can mount panels that's 4m2 so 4kW of sunlight.  Even if we allow for really good solar panels with an efficiency of 25% (better than anything on the market now) you would only generate 1kW of electricity.  I think the current Tesla has a battery of 60kWh.  At one kW you would need 60 hours to recharge.  Allowing 12 hours of decent sunlight per day, that would be 5 days.  Doesn't work when you can discharge it in 3 hours.
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  • boogiemanboogieman Frets: 12314
    crunchman said:
    boogieman said:
    nickb_boy said:
    It's probably been touched on in articles above but on a side note, what other tax initiatives are we likely to be hit with in order to regain the 60-80p per litre the government are currently taking from fuel sales?  Surely that's a fair chunk of change they need to recover.
    The BBC were interviewing a few experts on the news this morning about that. The govt currently make £33billion a year out of fuel duty. £8bn goes on road infrastructure and maintenance, the rest gets ploughed into supporting the NHS (and bribing the DUP) etc. Where's the extra income coming from when cars are all electric? Expect either a pay-per-mile surcharge to use the roads or a massive hike in electricity prices. 
    I'm trying to find the article, but I'm pretty sure that one of the articles I read on this story yesterday gave a figure of £27.5 billion in costs caused by air pollution - that's partly costs to the NHS, but also due costs due to lost productivity.  If that's right then there will be a shortfall but it won't be as bad as the headline $33 billion suggests.

    Are they saying that £27.5bn cost is indirectly due to sickness or disability caused by air pollution? If so, that's a long term issue that will take decades to resolve itself. In the meantime the govt will have to make up the shortfall from lost fuel duty somehow. 
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  • FretwiredFretwired Frets: 24601
    crunchman said:
    Fretwired said:
    Electric will work in sunny California (cars will be able to charge using solar energy as they drive or are stationery)
    No.

    Good sunlight is about 1000W (1kW) per square meter.  Let's say you have 2m x 2m on top of the car where you can mount panels that's 4m2 so 4kW of sunlight.  Even if we allow for really good solar panels with an efficiency of 25% (better than anything on the market now) you would only generate 1kW of electricity.  I think the current Tesla has a battery of 60kWh.  At one kW you would need 60 hours to recharge.  Allowing 12 hours of decent sunlight per day, that would be 5 days.  Doesn't work when you can discharge it in 3 hours.
    Yes ...

    The solar manufacturer Hanergy recently revealed four models of electric cars that incorporate the company's thin-film solar modules into the bodies of the vehicles, allowing them to be "zero charge" cars, at least for short and medium length journeys. Hanergy Holding Group, which is a leading thin-film solar company, unveiled its solar-powered concept cars in Beijing on July 2nd, and said that these vehicles could be commercialized as soon as three years from now.

    Hanergy's thin-film solar achievements are already at the bleeding edge of solar efficiency, with the company's gallium arsenide (GaAs) dual-junction solar cells recently hitting a record conversion rate of 31.6%, and by covering the bodies of these concept electric cars with its thin-film solar modules, the company hopes to bypass "the bottleneck of poor practicality of previous solar-powered vehicles."

    According to Hanergy, the thin-film solar cells on the electric cars are able to generate 8 to 10 kWh of electricity daily from exposure to "five to six hours of sunlight," which can power the vehicles about 80 kilometers (~50 miles) per day, without needing to plug in to a charger at all. The solar cells cover between 3.5 and 7.5 square meters of the vehicles, depending on the model, and the vehicles incorporate "ultrasonic cleaning technology for maintenance of the solar cells."


    https://www.treehugger.com/cars/hanergys-solar-powered-electric-cars-can-charge-themselves.html



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  • exocetexocet Frets: 1948
    crunchman said:
    Fretwired said:
    Electric will work in sunny California (cars will be able to charge using solar energy as they drive or are stationery)
    No.

    Good sunlight is about 1000W (1kW) per square meter.  Let's say you have 2m x 2m on top of the car where you can mount panels that's 4m2 so 4kW of sunlight.  Even if we allow for really good solar panels with an efficiency of 25% (better than anything on the market now) you would only generate 1kW of electricity.  I think the current Tesla has a battery of 60kWh.  At one kW you would need 60 hours to recharge.  Allowing 12 hours of decent sunlight per day, that would be 5 days.  Doesn't work when you can discharge it in 3 hours.
    1KW / sq m?

    I thought that it was in the region of 200 watts and that with current efficiency we get 120 - 150 watts max?
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  • Axe_meisterAxe_meister Frets: 4612
    The biggest problem with solar is the rare earth metals required, likewise with batteries.

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