I see that a chap from the BBC is trying to drive from London to Edinburgh in an electric Mini, using only public charging points.
He’s planned on four days – four whole days!
It seems like the world of motoring fifty years ago when you went out to go somewhere without any idea of whether you would actually reach your destination! Laudable, I reckon; still early days though.
Having said that, I’m not convinced electric cars are the way to go

they’re getting there… (intentional pun, i think?)

the mini wasn’t designed as an electric car from the start, so it’s off to a bad start design wise.

things like the new nissan leaf are a lot betterer, it’s got a ‘full’ range of about 140 motorway miles, and supposedly you can get 80% of that with a 30min ‘quick charge’.

I wonder if they will ‘cheat’ like they did for their last record attempt at Nurbergring. They stored the mini in a freezer for the day before to stop the batteries overheating.

They need the STW hamsters…

Are we at the stage of electric cars being motorway munchers?

I like the idea of the article and will be keeping an eye on how he does, but the current draw (erm, no pun intended) of an electric car for me would be short urban journeys. If I lived in a large city and most of my journeys were <30 miles I’d look at an electric car.

He was saying this morning that the Mini can do a max of 110 miles, but in the current cold weather it comes down to 70-80 miles, and 10% can be knocked off that if he wants to use the heaters.
I think the last charging point before Edinburgh is 87 miles away so that last stretch will require a miracle!!

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsJAlrYjGz8[/video]

Surely the best option is to do what GM/Vauxhall have done with their Isignia-equivalent electric car, and just go for a fixed rev engine to charge the batteries when they start getting low.

You still get zero emissions if driving round town, but if you need to go for a long journey, you can, just with a quiet engine doing a bit of work behind the scenes.

Besides, I thought that the electric Mini was being aimed at city commuting (small, nippy car etc), not a sales rep type market where lots of mile were a given.

My mate has one of the electric minis on trial. When he runs out of charge on a journey he just calls up the helpline and someone comes and collects his electric mini and gives him a proper petrol one to finish his journey, then takes his electric one home.

On that basis London to Edinburgh should be a doddle.

it’s going to take half the time of a stagecoach so i guess it’s progress.

Autocar did it last year. And 1. Yes 2. Four days is about right.

They’ll be fine as long as they carry a can of spare electricity in the boot!

Or some of Smudge’s batteries perhaps?

wonder if they’ll make an electric one of these?

Why are they still tring to justify Electric cars as the future? In the process of this experiment he will probably use more energy to charge the car than a small Cul-De-Sac use daily and produce more CO2 than one of the new VW bluemotion Passats which will do 1500 miles or so on a full tank :/

At the moment electric cars are a niche solution – great for a day of running around town, but barely better than a coach and horses for long distance travel. The technology will improve leaps and bounds, but the early adopters are going to pay way over the odds for a car that will be hopelessly outdated in 5 years time and doesn’t have some of the basic functions ( range/ease of refuelling/quick refueling ) that even the cheapest petrol car currently has.

new VW bluemotion Passats which will do 1500 miles or so on a full tank

You know, seeing as Autocar tested one 12 months ago and got an everage of 62mpg I really don’t believe that the new one can almost double that unless they’re pulling one of these:

Ferdinand Porsche in 1900 developed the Lohner-Porsche Mixte Hybrid, the first gasoline-electric hybrid automobile in the world.[2] The hybrid-electric vehicle did not become widely available until the release of the Toyota Prius in Japan in 1997,

Quite a long development time, eh.

electric cars, now are almost pointless, the problem is batteries. Until you sort how you generate and (maybe) store electricity you have a problem.

If you look at the grand scheme, cars should not be used for the short journeys most people make like driving to work, this is where bikes and public transport fit in. Electric cars do not reduce congestion, they are not more efficient, you just shift polution from towns and need more power stations to be built.

As a further minor point the rare earth metals needed to make batteries come from china, which has decided to reduce exports, ie prices will ramp up. Good isn’t it.

VW bluemotion Passats which will do 1500 miles or so on a full tank

That’s what VW claim, but reckon you’d struggle to get it.
How big is the tank on the Passat?!

They can’t consider Lithium for their batteries in the long term due to the fact that there isn’t enough Lithium on the Planet Earth to support the number of cars they would need to produce.

At the moment electric cars are a niche solution – great for a day of running around town,

Since that’s exactly what most people use them for most of the time, I’m not sure how it’s a niche solution?

I have just had a genius idea for electric cars.

Fit them all with petrol engines. the engines will remove the need for batteries and electric charging points and we already have a petrol distribution system in place.

IMO this is the first step, I really don’t think electric cars are the future but we need to start thinking about an alternative to petrol/diesel.

These things will be very good test beds for refining how to build an electric “powered” vehicle.

The future in my eyes is hydrogen fuel cells, we already have a pretty damn good distribution network set up for transporting explosive liquid around and all it will really take for BP etc to start stocking it at foreclourts is a small push from vehicle manufacturers and lack of profit in petrol/diesel. Can anyone see a lack of profit in petrol/diesel occurring anytime soon? I honestly can!

MrSalmon,

probably good enough most of the time will not convince many people. When someone invests in a car they will need to know that it will start when they want it to and take them wherever they want to go. People want certainty. Electric cars are close to matching the everyday needs of a large number of people, but if an electric car is all you have you will still have occasions when you will be overly constrained on where you can go/when you can set off compared to a conventional car. People don’t want to say “we could come and drive up to see you at the weekend, but we can’t because the car is only electric and we will need to recharge it on Friday evening”, “we might be able to come over to see you this evening, but only if it isn’t cold and we need to use the heater – if so, we’ll stop 20 miles short and see you tomorrow”.

Given time the technology will get there, but for now I still think that it only meets niche needs.

monkeyfudger – Member
The future in my eyes is hydrogen fuel cells, we already have a pretty damn good distribution network set up for transporting explosive liquid around and all it will really take for BP etc to start stocking it at foreclourts is a small push from vehicle manufacturers and lack of profit in petrol/diesel.

Errmmm – hydrogen cannot be transported in the petrol distribution network. Teh ol’ hydrogen molecule is a slippery beast and escapes thru most things.

It also has to be made from electrolysis of water which takes energy – more than you get from the hydrogen.

Hydrogen might well be useful for smoothing out peaks and troughs in generation and demand but the practicalities of using it in cars are seriously difficult

So far there is no obvious solution for personal transport on the horizon – everything has serious drawbacks

Mercedes claim 85mpg for my Smart CDi but the best I’ve ever managed is 74mpg (and believe me I’ve tried). As soon as you get into the real world and have to contend with hills and traffic (which prevents you from travelling at your optimum speed) any chance of getting near the claimed mpg goes right out the window.

Would someone on a bike get to Edinburgh from London faster than an electric mini?

400 miles in less than 4 days? could be done by someone fit enough

I didn’t mean in the actual equipment that already exists, clearly.

The network for refueling already exists, all it would take is a change in equipment. Electric cars fall down because they cannot be charged fast enough for people to accept them.

With refinements and improvements of the technology it is the only clear alternative, especially when you’re a dreamer like myself and hope the electricity for electrolysis will come from renewables!

Why are they even doing this? If you want to get from London to Edinburgh, take the train.

Walk and bike for everyday journeys. Train for longer distances. Hire a car or car club for when you absolutely have to.

Would someone on a bike get to Edinburgh from London faster than an electric mini?

The record for LeJog is less than 2 days so yes. Not many people could do it though….

I don’t believe electric cars are useful for anything outside of short trips and commuting.
What will probably last is the development of energy efficient systems such as lighting and heating sized to fit smaller lighter cars.
Powerful LED lights and lightweight batteries? Who could possibly have a use for those?

I don’t believe electric cars are useful for anything outside of short trips and commuting.

Isn’t that 99% of what 99% of people use their cars for?

They can’t consider Lithium for their batteries in the long term due to the fact that there isn’t enough Lithium on the Planet Earth to support the number of cars they would need to produce.

Really? There’s lithium in seawater…

2 days on a bike is doable done 190 in 10 hours and did a pityfull amount of training for it. Got a bit emotional going over brecon mind.

For the electric car to be workable it needs pedals for when the battery runs out 🙂

Mate of mine cycled from London to Edinburgh and back again in 4 days last year.
So, he’s twice as fast as a Mini !!!

mokeyfudger – its not that easy – its very difficult to store and transport hydrogen cos its such a slippy customer, Its one of the major obstacles in using hydrogen in cars. it escapes from anything just about

Why are they still tring to justify Electric cars as the future? In the process of this experiment he will probably use more energy to charge the car than a small Cul-De-Sac use daily and produce more CO2 than one of the new VW bluemotion Passats which will do 1500 miles or so on a full tank :/

Who’s ‘they’? Electric cars are a solution to a certain kind of motoring. No-one’s saying they are ‘the answer’, anyone with half a brain can see that.

And electric cars fuelled with leccy from coal power stations produce about 88g/km CO2 I think and only 28 from gas (what we have in the UK). If I remember correctly.

The future in my eyes is hydrogen fuel cells, we already have a pretty damn good distribution network set up for transporting explosive liquid around

It’s much more complicated than this. We don’t have a distribution network that would suit Hydrogen as fuel.

I have just had a genius idea for electric cars.

Fit them all with petrol engines

GM are way ahead of you. Chevy Volt, and there’s a Vauxhall version coming out soon.

Do some googling before starting threads like this ffs.

You know, seeing as Autocar tested one 12 months ago and got an everage of 62mpg I really don’t believe that the new one can almost double that unless they’re pulling one of these:

bluemotion enters guiness book of records

I too believe Hydrogen is the way forward, what holds it back isn’t the transporting and the infrastructure but the fact it doesn’t exist naturally. Through something like electrolisis of water you have to extract it. That itself using more energy than the hydrogen contains.

Perhaps a combination of nuclear fission and a hydrogen fuel cell is where it’s at.

This was quite interesting linky

Who’s ‘they’? Electric cars are a solution to a certain kind of motoring. No-one’s saying they are ‘the answer’, anyone with half a brain can see that.

Did I say they aren’t the answer? Not really. But I don’t agree they are the solution to a certain kind of motoring. Want to go green? Get a horse, use a bus or buy a new bike.

Simple maths of how much it takes to ‘fuel’ a house for a day, compared to that of charging a car and it’s evident. An average uk house uses about 10kWh of energy. The mini uses 28kWh for full charge. That’s an additional 2.8 houses of electricity you are using to charge your brand new electric car each night just so you can pop to the shops and back because that’s all you are able to do.

Based on the figures I could find, the Passat produced about 206kgCO2 on it’s 1500+ journey. The mini on the same distance would use produce about 192kgCO2. Okay, so it won’t produce more CO2 but is this it’s a difference enough to worth investing more money and energy creating in infrastructure for such little gain? Needless to say the numerous new power stations that will need to be built due to the the increase load on the grid and no-one want nuclear do they? :/

‘They’, by-the-way, are the local councils, governments, corporate stake holders and other ill advised bodies who try to convince us with incentives, leaflet drops and advertising that any electric car is ‘green’ car but anyone with half a brain would know that!

What we have here is the potential for a shift in how we view transport. For certain tasks, cars are the most convenient way to make the journey in hand. And whilst electric cars have limited range at the moment, it is possibly that limitation that has the greater potential to reduce over all car usage. True the materials they are made of are expensive and in many cases rare, but you have zero pollution (at point of use) which is good in a city environment, they creat less noise, so that’s better for deliveries etc. Regarding recharging, sooner or later it has to be acknowledged that a) we will run out of fossil fuels, b) the release over a period of around 200 years of CO2 that took millions of years to store will have an effect on how our atmosphere functions. So we need to change our way of producing electricity.

Current technology and political instability does not favour nuclear. Get your hads on some spent nuclear fuel and you have potential at least for a bomb that can contaminate a sizable area of a city centre, probably more. get your self a decommissioned wind turbine and possibly you can create really expensive crisps. An old water preheater might give you a nasty burn on a hot sunny day and composting might make you unpopular with your neighbours, particularly if you live in a flat, but will not contaminate or impact on the environment as much as digging up the black stuff or using nuclear fission.

hydrogen is a great answer, you can use solar and wind and wave power to split water to get oxygen and Hydrogen. but it’s a gas, a really explosive gas that would need to be pressurised. If someone cocks up at the pump with hydrogen, you’ll need more than a bucket of sand.

The future’s bright, the future’s orange. that big shiney thing up there. Of course, I’m in Scotland. we only have anecdotal evidence of its existence.