[Closed] Electric car - would you...?

(And the irony was, that in the 20mins while waiting for person I was meeting, I managed to run my battery down and needed a jump start...)

It depends on whether it was a pure electric of a range extender. Pure electric - 300mile range Tesla please!

me and the wife do no more than 2k a year......so yes.

Hired one once at the airport, got to where we were going for a meeting and had the embarrassment of getting them to charge it for me or I'd never have made it back to the airport.

Was going to buy a van, Renault kangoo, took it for a test drive last winter, it was really cold, the range halves in low temperature.

Binned the idea.

A lot of people have a car only for local driving. A leccy car would be ideal for them, except that the small local car also needs to be cheap, not £25k...

why is no-one making electric cars with a generator on board capable of charging it? my understanding is that this would be much more efficient

like this- http://www.gizmag.com/go/6104/
but [i]actually[/i] in production.

300mile range Tesla please!

Real life range of......?

jonah tonto - Member
why is no-one making electric cars with a generator on board capable of charging it? my understanding is that this would be much more efficient

They are, see Vauxhall Ampera for example

i saw an Ampera on the motorway today. nice looking car (off to google)

I guess my point is surprise that two charging points have been installed at Pitlochry...That is not gearing up for local driving, surely it is 'serving' the A9 route?

The Ampera/Volt are genuinely impressive from the short ride I had in them.

The pick up from stationary round town really impressed as its electrically driven there is no drive train lag like in a conventional engine.

What puts me off is the upfront cost and wondering how long the batteries will last long term and whether they can be recycled at end of life. If these types of cars turn out well over the next few years I would look seriously at them.

We have an electric car club at work which I'm guessing a car share scheme for the electric cars we have. No idea how it works though, as I never drive to work.

Test drove a Mitsubishi i-Miev for a day. Fun around town but 70 on a motorway kills the range in jig time. Granted they aren't designed for that but alarming to see the red LoBatt light on so quickly after charging. Awfy quiet around pedestrians too.

The Tesla looks like it could be 300mile range

http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/tesla/s/first-drives/tesla-model-s-first-drive-review

I followed a Tesla roadster for about 30 miles on the M25 a couple of years back...looked like a seriously quick and nimble car and it was entertaining watching all the repmobile 3series BMW drivers having a go at outrunning it and failing 🙂

Model S with the high capacity battery really can do 300miles on a charge, if you are not being careful it'll do about 250-260 and can outrun pretty much anything this side of top end Sports cars : one just did a drag race with a new Corvette Stingray in the US, the result was a 1:1 draw and you can't carry 7 people in a Corvette!

I see a few Nissan Leafs around here, range is sub 100miles but they seem to be ok on motorways and can keep up with the rest of the traffic.

'S future innit? At the moment the real work is using electric vehicles as performance cars as opposed to runabouts , all the upcoming ferraris, BMWs, Porsches and McLarens are hybrids with the electric systems used as performance boosters running alongside a a normal engine but also with full EV modes for city or heavy traffic use too.

Normal electric cars for the rest of us with decent range at a reasonable price will be about 5-10years down the line.

Price and range aren't the big concerns to me, 16 hour charging cycles very much are

Price and range aren't the big concerns to me, 16 hour charging cycles very much are

that ampera has a charging time of 4 hrs on a 16a socket. and only 6 on a normal household supply

You will see loads of second hand ones in a few years with dead batts.

its a good job only half our power comes from coal power stations!

The rental on the batteries for the leaf is £80/month alone!

Would you take an electric car up the A9 and over Drumochter in the cold?

No

HTH.

We had the Ampera on extended test drive at work. Range of only 30 miles or so doesn't bring much benefit to us, but ideal for local journeys so long as you don't have to put fuel in (which seems to defeat the point of it.)

The boss opted for the Leaf instead as the 100 mile range makes it a bit more useful. Until he drove to Ikea last weekend after being told 'yes we do have fast charging points here' to find them not installed and a long day getting towed home. 😳 Hopefully more places will install the fast 1.5hr charging points.

We got the Leaf on lease, so if the batteries pack in after a couple of years it's not our problem. Lease is £200/month, and taking out the fuel costs and tax it's equivalent to less than £100/month. Seems a good deal.

I guess my point is surprise that two charging points have been installed at Pitlochry...That is not gearing up for local driving, surely it is 'serving' the A9 route

But the government is spending hundreds of millions of £ on encouraging electric vehicles* (not ebikes, naturally). So the council probably got free money and didn't really think what they were doing with it.

*because an electric car doesn't cause congestion like a 'normal' one, for some reason.

As a form of motive power electric cars are brill and I'd have one. The big problem is how to power them of course, and it's a problem I think we're not working on the correct solution to. What we need is for the cars not to have on-board batteries. They're heavy, inefficient, ineffective, impractical and environmentally a disaster and completely goes against one of the principal reasons to go electric in the first place. Also battery technology hasn't really come on that much in recent decades and probably won't come on much in the decades to come, sure batteries have got smaller through the use of more precious and harder to find metals, but fundamentally the problems we currently face with batteries are unlikely to be solved any time soon. What we need is some form of dodgem style electric pick-up. There could be a non-contact system that works from electromagnetic induction (like your electric toothbrush charger) just under the road surface so pedestrians didn't get electrocuted as they cross the road.

If we insist on using batteries then I think Vauxhall came up with the best solution. A cartridge battery system so when your car runs out of juice you pull into a petrol station style garage, drive over a station, and automatically from under the car your cartridge battery is replaced and you have another couple of hundred or so miles of range in the same time it would take to fill your car up with petrol. The removed battery can then be charged and used in another car in 12hrs time or so.

Hopefully more places will install the fast 1.5hr charging points.

Am I not right in thinking that the fast chargers shag the batteries much faster than normal?

Slogo - Member
You will see loads of second hand ones in a few years with dead batts.

POSTED 8 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

Because he has jumped on a bandwagon

Toyota hybrids are now 10 years old and the battery in the one I drove was still working

If I only lived in London then yes but I don't, so no.
I had a Prius for 3 years until last year and only bought it because of the lack of CG in London. Yeah it was a nice place to be when driving and really did fit in the Bouy household rather well, but I got bored with it and it started to look like a Taxi, so it's gawn. I am looking at the Lexus i200 "Kylie Car" which I think will be a nicer option. It I'm not doing that for another 6/7mths.
Back to petrol for us for the short term.

Autonomous driving will work really well with electric cars IMO, even without better batteries. The computer would drive it off to charge whenever necessary and it'd know more accurately how long the charge will last because it'll know how its going to drive itself.

On top of the high cost of purchasing an electric car even after government grants, you still have the monthly battery hire that the majority of manufacturers levy on you. These hire charges can be more than you would pay in fuel on similar size car with a much greater range. For it to be cost effective you would need to be doing high mileage which can't be done due to the charging times.
Hybrids with the engine creating the charge for the batteries that drive the electric motors are the cost effective way forward at the moment.

'S future innit?

Nah, I don't think so. I don't think batteries will ever be good enough and charging will always be an issue. Flow batteries might work though. Otherwise, it'll have to be hydrogen.

Range of only 30 miles or so doesn't bring much benefit to us, but ideal for local journeys so long as you don't have to put fuel in (which seems to defeat the point of it.)

Well, not exactly, not in theory at least. It's a hybrid, after all, not an electric car - but it's a series hybrid rather than parallel like other hybrids. So when you use the engine it drives a generator which charges the battery and/or powers the wheels. In a normal car the engine is generally not operating at peak efficiency, especially if you are in town, and the engine has to be tuned to give 'thrilling' performance at all revs and still be efficient. The one in the Ampera can be just a generator, so it can be tuned to run super efficiently at one speed. Any energy you don't need to drive the wheels goes into the battery.

The downside of that though is that putting energy into the battery and taking it out is not very efficient, which will cancel out some of the gains. I would love to know how efficient these things are on the motorway after you've used up the initial charge from being plugged in.

battery technology hasn't really come on that much in recent decades and probably won't come on much in the decades to come, sure batteries have got smaller through the use of more precious and harder to find metals, but fundamentally the problems we currently face with batteries are unlikely to be solved any time soon.

Not really true. Lots of cool stuff in the pipline using everything from graphene (ie: carbon, abundant) to molten sugars(also plentiful). The biggest issue with a new battery is proving it's safe - considering some of the energy densities this is kind of a Good Thing.

If we insist on using batteries then I think Vauxhall came up with the best solution. A cartridge battery system so when your car runs out of juice you pull into a petrol station style garage, drive over a station, and automatically from under the car your cartridge battery is replaced

Yes! (In principle, but doesn't necessarily require the thunderbirds style automatic battery grabber 🙂 )

Also, some of the electric motocrossers look great but range/runtime on a charge is rarely mentioned, unfortunately. And the line between those and electric MTBs is geting pretty blurred. Electric motopedcrossers (will) rool.

engineeringcowboy - Member
Because he has jumped on a bandwagon

Toyota hybrids are now 10 years old and the battery in the one I drove was still working

POSTED 2 HOURS AGO # REPORT-POST

A hybrid is different to an electric Car. A Prius battery delivers power in short bursts as it helps the engine along. An Electric car depletes their batteries nearly all the way — a process called "deep discharge" — which is significantly more taxing on the cells

A cell lasts as long as the life of the Car apparently. I dont think you will be replacing the battery on a car out of warranty. Lithium-ion batteries lose storage capacity over time; how long does your 5-year-old laptop battery hold a charge? This means your Electric car range will decrease as it ages — and the more aggressively you drive, the faster that happens.

So its 50 miles round trip to work car can do 100. You need to charge your car almost everyday. and in maybe 3 years time the batteries are only storing 60-80% of the charge (who knows). I need to go to work 1.5 hours early so i can charge on the way to work.

I so look forward to the future where I cycle to work past 100s of obese diabetic smokers stuck inside their electric cars all grid-locked in the morning rush hour.

The future has so much to offer.....

Had a closer look at the BMW i8 after being reminded of it on Top Gear, but besides the £100K starting price it seems very 'concept car' still. Gullwing style doors would mean you cant park it in a garage (or you can but cant get out). Surely they are better aiming at family sized and shaped cars? I presume the majority of journeys are in 4 door saloon style cars by families, rather than people razzing round in their exec-sports car at the weekend.

Lithium-ion batteries lose storage capacity over time; how long does your 5-year-old laptop battery hold a charge?

Do they use deep discharge though? The reason the Prius battery lasts so long is that it's managed between 40% and 80% charge constantly. If I were an electric car designer I'd do something similar for my batteries - so comparing it to a cheap laptop battery isn't necessarily fair.

And the cells can randomly fail like anything else - Prius cells do fail from time to time but of course the battery is modular so you don' thave to replace the whole thing.

Surely they are better aiming at family sized and shaped cars?

Well it's an interesting point. Electric sports cars actually make far more sense currently than family cars. A family car needs to be dependable and usable for anything - holidays, impromptu trips and whatever you throw at it, so it can't be unusable because there's only 10 miles of charge left. A car that you take out just for fun can be planned for, you can make sure it's ready and make sure you don't drive any more than 100 miles or whatever it is.

So these BMW are of questionable value really, but if it gets the technology moving and gets the infrastructure going it could be a good thing.

Saw the BMW i3 in Munich the other week. Fantastic car as someone at BMW has basically put their foot down and said "we are making an electric car and it will be made from carbon fibre"

The interior is also a lovely place to be with natural fabrics and untreated wood. It really shifts too from a standstill. The tyres do remind me of a 2CV or black cab though (if the latter they might be really cheap!) but maybe with the carbon fibre chassis and aluminium suspension that is all the width you need.

As for the Tesla S - I would love one. It is amazing how well they have got on with the Supercharge points in America. Basically 1hr charge gives 100 miles range (ie they charge at 100mph).

I see a lot more reliance on motorway services with electric cars but forcing people to take a decent break is not a bad thing. Yes it is going to make peoples trips longer so you have to plan more time which could be problematic for business users going up and down the country in a day but if I can get 300 miles range and maybe have to take an hours break mid way to top up the battery which adds an hour while I get some food and a drink etc then I don't have a problem with it.

The other thing Tesla have is rapid battery change which takes about 1 minute or something silly. ie a lot quicker than standing at the pump putting 40-50L of diesel in your tank.

The i3 is about £30-35k which is not cheap and the Tesla S is even more but for some people in some situations the i3 can save £200+ per month based on a new combustion engine car. But for most private buyers who don't buy new electric is not currently cost effective. Shame as i would love one.

Take a look at the Audi A3 e-tron

Seriously impressive bit of kit. 180mpg and 0-60 in 7.6s

It has a 1.4 DI petrol turbo paired with a 70kW electric motor.
The battery capacity is fairly small, it will only do around 30 miles on the battery alone, but using the low down torque of the motor to drag it up to speed makes it really economical

The downside is it costs £32k.

Still, you can imagine this type of tech creeping into virtually all cars in 5 years time. Instead of picking from petrol or diesel (and different performance / economy versions of the two) you will pick from petrol, diesel and hybrid as a matter of course

if we could afford a second car, i'd be happy with a leccy one - even with current levels of range/recharge-ability.

But only if we had a garage to charge it in.

(Street-side plug-in points are just a terrible idea)

So no.

I quite like the Volvo V60 plug in hybrid too. Very quick when using both diesel and electric and 30+ miles range on only electric so more then enough for town, shopping, a lot of peoples commutes (may have to plug in at the other end).

I'd have a Hybrid.. Even if it was only 1/10th of this... When run on pure electric it is still as quick as a normal car.

180mpg

Take that with a pinch of salt. If you run the standard tests with a full battery you might get that figure, but if you drive London to Edinburgh I suspect it would be less. I'd love to be wrong though!

Instead of picking from petrol or diesel (and different performance / economy versions of the two) you will pick from petrol, diesel and hybrid as a matter of course

You can do that now. Plenty of hybrids on the market, new and used.

There was an interesting article on Norway the other day:

Norway has fallen in love with electric cars – but the affair is coming to an end
Free parking, incentives and driving in bus lanes push Tesla Model S and Nissan Leaf to top of best-seller lists

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/29/norway-electric-cars-sale

Norway is a prime candidate for electric car as they sell all their gas to countries like us and run everything on electric they get from hydro.

It even works out cost effective for them to heat houses with electricity. Gits!

Take that with a pinch of salt. If you run the standard tests with a full battery you might get that figure, but if you drive London to Edinburgh I suspect it would be less. I'd love to be wrong though!

I don't doubt you are right. But for short journeys of around 10 miles (eg most journeys for most people) this sort of small battery capacity hybrid makes a lot of sense

I'd like a full breakdown of the relative environmental impact of an electric car: certainly, they could go some way to cleaning urban air, however, is it just a matter of relocating the pollution to the power station?

Anyone have a rough idea of the relative efficiencies from manufacture, thru the cars usable life, to disposal in comparison to a conventional combustion engined beastie?

BMW have quite a nice idea - on one of their electric schemes you get some points that allow you to borrow a different BMW short term in return for some of your points (bigger car, more points).

So for that romantic weekend away to the wilds of Scotland you can get a fancy petrol or diesel instead.

That might tip the balance for some people. Obviously, those with £25k spare for a car....

For the average motorist, pure EV's are not yet quite financially viable in most cases (the execption being people who would pay "congestion charges" in their exisiting ICE car). However, it's really close to break even now, and yet 3 years ago it was miles away. In another 3 years i could see EVs actually being financially the better option. Just in time for the Gov to lay on the taxation.......... 😉

(it's worth remembering that when people say "it only cost me £7.50 to charge my EV" they are not including any taxation. It only costs you about £20 to fill your car with petrol if you take off the tax!

jivehoneyjive
I'd like a full breakdown of the relative environmental impact of an electric car: certainly, they could go some way to cleaning urban air, however, is it just a matter of relocating the pollution to the power station?

Basically, in the UK, with our current generation mix, a pure EV uses approximately, on average 2.6x less energy than an ICE vehicle making the same journey.

"2.6x less"?

Is that 38% of the energy of a 'normal' car?

yes

A few years back I was lucky enough to go around the test track at Lotus in a production Tesla Roadster. It was a fair bit quicker than the new Toyota powered Exige that was sharing the track at the time. Flat out driving from the test pilot drained the battery faster than normal driving would have, but only enough to bring the range down from 220 to just under 80 miles. With 0-60 in under 4 seconds, there's very little in the way of production cars that can live with it on the road or track.
As noted above, most journeys are a lot less than a car's maximum range. this means that the battery isn't drained at the start of each charge cycle and need not be 100% full before you set off again. So long as you get a full catch up overnight charge from time to time, it'll work fine for day to day use.

Oh aye, and people do actually live in small towns like Pitlochry, so that charging point isn't just for those passing by. Like Dundee, I suspect that Perth & Kinross Council probably already has a few electric runabouts and will have installed these charging points for themselves, for locals and for passing trade.

I would... especially if it sounded like this 🙂

I don't doubt you are right. But for short journeys of around 10 miles (eg most journeys for most people) this sort of small battery capacity hybrid makes a lot of sense

Oh absoultely, they are great - I'd love one. They are just too expensive though, sadly.

My point was that simply doing the standard test and quoting that is disingenuous. Although I suspect they have to do the test and quote the result by law. In the US the EPA have come up with a different test for this kind of car.

I think electric cars excel in extreme stop-start driving, so things like London taxis or delivery vehicles ought to be the first in line. The groundsmen in Hyde Park have an all-electric flat-bed Transit, which makes perfect sense.

If the circumstances were right I'd consider one, but living in London it'd be pointless for me. I've got my gas guzzling Merc down here but use it so infrequently that I suspect an electric car would be more expensive to run in practice, with depreciation etc. When I do use the car (weekend trips etc.) it's for stuff an electric wouldn't be good for.

@maxtorque: that just doesn't sound right. A typical power station is about 30% efficient at best. You then loose a load more through transmission and transformer losses. I thought even the worst ICE's were at least 35% efficient and you're still lugging around the same, if not greater mass of vehicle.

Petrol ICE is about 25% efficient, diesel 35%, last thing I read. Where'd you get that 30% from for power stations?

Anyway, that's max efficiency when running at ideal revs and load. You also need to take the duty cycle into account - the ICE is hardly ever running at peak efficiency, and when it's in town the efficieny goes through the floor. An electric engine will be affeted far less by these variations (I suspect the slower the better will be the rule, due to less resistive heat loss due to lower current...?) and it can also regenerate some power when braking.

My Prius tells me how much it's regenerated, and on a typical A road I might get 50-150 Wh back every 5 mins. It's not going to save the world, but it's better than a poke in the eye.

Its a figure I had in my mind palace from various trips to stations over the years. 😕 Seems I'm not too [url= http://www.brighthubengineering.com/power-plants/19182-how-efficient-is-energy-conversion-in-a-thermal-power-plant/ ]far off[/url]. I'm just astonished at the scale of the difference.

edit: the US EPA claim their stations without CHP are about 51% efficient or 75% with so perhaps it's correct.

hot fiat,

don't forget you've also got the drilling for oil, transporting it across the sea, refining it into petrol/diesel, manufacturing additives, transport to petrol stations, electricity used to pump it to your car, any detours you make to get to a petrol station (compared to plugging in at home).

Obviously an oil or coal fired station needs fuel but they can be delivered by pipeline or train. At least with electric you have the option to use other sources of your electricity.

surely all the current incentives for EVs will have to be faded out as they become more popular.

congestion charge will be re-introduced for all vehicles.
companies will start charging you for charging your car.
bus lanes will once again only be for buses.

i live in the middle of town and very rarely have the need to drive anywhere (not having a motor helps). if i did have a motor it would be for long (probably fully loaded) trips to the UK, Italy or Portugal and day excursions to the Alps. an EV wouldn't be capable of doing this.

and the idea of being able to swap batteries at "fuel" stations... imagine how big the under ground storeage space would have to be if batteries need 6-12 hours to fully charge.

and what about the production costs.... is the Prius not more damaging to the environment during production than similar oil driven cars?

why underground? It would just need some sort of building/barn with racking and a nice automated moving system (rails or automatic fork lift etc) to move the batteries. If a Tesla S has a 300 mile range and the batteries can be charged at 100 miles per hour then that is 3 hours to charge.

You program a trip into your car and it knows the range. It is linked into traffic monitoring systems so knows what is ahead. It contacts the most appropriate battery station and books you a replacement battery. The navigation system then lets them know as you approach so the battery can be made ready. If there are no available batteries there it routes you to the next most convenient which may require stopping slightly sooner or later if there is sufficient margin. You then get charged for the electricity required to charge that battery up to full. As they will be using 3ph electricity on industrial rates they will be paying a lot less so there is probably no reason why it should cost any more than your slow charge at home.

An added advantage is they can manage their charging during times when domestic and industrial demand is lowest thus evening out the national supply and demand.

Or you just hire a diesel car for those 3 times a year trips.......

BTW, the 2.6x energy figure i quote above was the result of a pretty exhaustive study i chaired for the TSB (the Technology Strategy Board, not the bank!). It takes into account a lot of parameters, and is a good average figure for the UK and how we actually use our cars. Of course, some car users won't see this sort of improvement because of the circumstances of their useage, but conversely, a lot of people will better than that value. That is why it is an "average" figure. (it also happens to co-incide nicely with the fact that most EV's have ~30kWHr batteries and do around 100miles, compared to ICE with ~50L fuel tanks doing 400miles) (please don't write in to say "i get more than 400miles from my x,y,or Z car" etc, these are AVERAGE figures!)

It's also worth noting that although "efficiency" is the current buzz word, what actually matters is absolute energy consumption. Ie you could have a car that is only 50% efficient, but is "better" for the environment that an a 100% efficient one if it's total road load is less than half that of the "high efficiency" vehicle! (this is where EVs score highly for a number of reasons)

is the Prius not more damaging to the environment during production than similar oil driven cars?

That's a myth really, based on loads of hot air.

http://www.thetorquereport.com/2007/03/toyotas_prius_is_less_efficien.html

we (humans) need to drastically reduce our total energy consumption.
this wont be done by getting rid of the s class merc and buying a prius.
(im not picking on toyota here btw, the prius is only one example)
quick, cheap and easy ways to do this are:
1: drive less (cycle or walk where practical)
2: make cars lighter (at manufacture and in use, dont carry 200kg of crap in em)
3: keep the cars longer. (takes a lot of energy to make/recycle a car.
4:make an effort to reduce your speed (good savings to be had here)

martymac
> http://www.thetorquereport.com/2007/03/toyotas_prius_is_less_efficien.html
/p>

That "prius is less green than a hummer" stuff was de-bunked years ago btw!
For example, that article state "the Prius does not get the MPG claimed by the official tests" with no mention of the fact that the hummer also fails to get it's claimed MPG (this is because the official tests are at a lower load and do not include things like cold starts etc. In fact, the hummer, without any electrical assist or capability to regenerate KE into useable tractive energy, misses it's EPA test rating by a larger margin than the prius>
Secondarily, where do you think the steel and plastics that make a hummer come from? As a hummer weighs more than a prius, it has a larger "Build" footprint as it uses more materials.

Of course, no "new" car can be green, compared to either buying an already existing one, (or cycling of course!) but if you HAVE to buy a new car, then you are many times more environmentally friendly to buy a Prius and not a Hummer!

Took the words out of my mouth. I actually read the original report, it was laughable. It claimed that the average total lifetime mileage of a Prius would be 100,000 miles and a Hummer 300,000 miles (based on assumption, they had only been out for a year at that point), so it then divided manufacturing energy cost by those numbers to get cost per mile, so that the Prius got a worse figure per mile. Which is rather flawed, if you think about it!

It claimed the Prius total energy cost was something like $436,000. Um, so why are Toyota selling them for $30,000 then?

this wont be done by getting rid of the s class merc and buying a prius.

Of course. But that doesn't mean efficient cars aren't a good idea. If you are going to get a new car, then you're better off getting an efficient one.

When I got mine the number of people who said 'yeah but if you buy a new Prius every three years you're using far more energy than if you keep a guzzler car for 15'. Well yes, obviously, but what if I keep my Prius for 15 years?

There's a whole pile of those American articles about the Prius. All seem written by a combination of the Daily Mail's science correspondent and the press office of Exxon.

If we can get electric cars with a 300 mile range, some method of rapid charging / battery exchange and the maths really does work out then it'd be awesome. I think we have quite a few power stations to build in the meantime though.

They are all based on the same report which was commissioned by an oil company I think and done by a previously reputable research company. The mags then simply reported the report. Fortunately, it didn't harm the sales of efficient cars all that much it seems.