[Closed] Energy / fossil fuel / Tesla article

There will be more electric than oil powered cars for sale within ten years. They will also be connected to the web so how there used can be monitored.

This will reduce pollution, improve safety and I hope also take some heat of a major cause of global conflict.

I have just binned all the oil companies out of my investments

Unfortunately there isn't going to be enough power stations to charge all of these electric cars.

However hybrids will have the main market share

The Tesla power wall might be an indication that in the not too distant future electric cars would be charged via domestic energy generation and storage.

The Tesla power wall might be an indication that in the not too distant future electric cars would be charged via domestic energy generation and storage.

This, for my car use this and a sub 1000kg car with a 250mile range would work perfectly.

I'd have an electric car if they weren't so expensive. I looked at Nissan leafs recently. 10k car with a 20k electric premium on top.

paulwf
Unfortunately there isn't going to be enough power stations to charge all of these electric cars.

Not at peak time no. But you won't be charging all the cars at peak time!

The UK Generating capacity is, roughly 80GW (the difficult to schedule renewable part is still only 15%)
Peak demand (occurs at around 6pm daily) is approx 50GW
Average overnight demand (11PM to 5PM)is approx 25GW.

That means, for 6 hrs each night, there is 25GW of power availible, each and every night, that is currently not used (Powerstations are turned off, which is actually less efficient!)

25GW x 6hs is 150GWHrs of energy.

A typical EV has a battery of around 30kWHrs (including charging losses). 150GWHrs could therefore [b]fully[/b] charge 5 MILLION EVS overnight with little or no change to our generation infrastructure!

In reality, all those 5M cars won't be fully discharged every day, and so estimates are that in fact 20M EVs could currently be supported.

What will need improvements will be the local domestic substations and power distribution networks, because our streets and houses are not set up for this increase in domestic electricity consumption.

Finally, when you have a known and significant domestic load, such as an EV that needs to be charged to allow you to commute to work in the morning, small scale Solar generation becomes viable, and can be installed at commercial premises to charge employees cars during the day.

Electric cars that charge off the mains is not the answer, it's a stop-gap. Charging electric cars from the mains still requires power station energy production which, at the moment, will perpetuate the use of standard coal-fired power stations. This is something we should be eliminating, not encouraging.

The only way electric cars should be allowed to completely take over is when they can be charged from renewable external sources (which the UK seems to be getting further away from by the year) or when they become self-charging, via a mixture of kinetic transfer and solar power (from bodywork that is covered with solar panels), or other such technology.

There has always been one key, and huge, problem with the concept of electric car charging. In most cities (and I'd imagine plenty of towns) there are many, many predominantly residential streets with no off street parking where few if any residents are able to park directly outside their dwellings. As an example, where I live in London there are approximately 500-1000 vehicles parked on the street within a 0.5 mile radius at all times. Short of installing 1000 charging points on the street how would these vehicles ever be charged? Also, even if everyone was able to park directly outside, surely every pavement would need to be crisscrossed with power cables all the time.

Charging electric cars from the mains still requires power station energy production which, at the moment, will perpetuate the use of standard coal-fired power stations.

However, it's more efficient to generate electricity centrally and remove pollution fro city centres, so still a good step in the right direction. It also scales well for if / when we increase renewables.

Short of installing 1000 charging points on the street how would these vehicles ever be charged? Also, even if everyone was able to park directly outside, surely every pavement would need to be crisscrossed with power cables all the time.

Pretty easy to solve, there are power cables running under the street, so just need to add in some terminals. Scandinavian streets have these for sump heaters, you just plug in to the socket next to your car.

I have been looking at buying a new Nissan Leaf.

Solar panels on my roof are an added bonus to have extremely cheap running costs.
My main worry is low long the batteries will last in terms of replacement due to the drop inefficiency over say 5 years.

Lithium battery technology is improving all the time at the moment, so I'd expect better battery longevity will be available in a few years or so.

I can't wait. I was very tempted to blow a good chunk of my savings on a tesla but it would be a bit foolish at the moment. Electric car charge point is going on the plans for the new house build 🙂

Pretty easy to solve, there are power cables running under the street, so just need to add in some terminals. Scandinavian streets have these for sump heaters, you just plug in to the socket next to your car.

The question isn't "How do we give everyone in a town a car charging point" it's "How do we prevent people living in towns buying cars"...........

"How do we prevent people living in towns buying cars"...........

Pretty easy to legislate against it. Two problems, 1. (most) people will never give up owning a car, 2 our whole economy is based on consumer debt based consumption, of which cars is a huge chunk.

That would be an extraordinarily vast, disruptive, and no doubt extremely expensive project to embark on though.... Scandinavia has a total of around 9 million private cars on the road.

It's no harder for a larger country to do it than a smaller country - we'd have better economies of scale, so it would be cheaper per point.

lucky7500
That would be an extraordinarily vast, disruptive, and no doubt extremely expensive project to embark on though. According to numbers from a Tfl report published in 2000 just covering London, approximately four million spaces would need terminals! Scandinavia has a total of around 9 million private cars on the road.

Pretty much everywhere I went in BC and Alberta had these too. It might be problematic in London but not insurmountable. Just look at how often the roads are cut up for (insert reason).

I think small engined hybrids will be the way to go in the near future. The technology is still in it's infancy. We're already at the point where we can easily get 150bhp from a 1.0ltr engine weighing 90kg. Couple that to an electric motor, regenerative braking, regenerative suspension and sub 1000kg , you'd have a great car.

I quite fancied a hybrid next, but after speaking to a couple of people who already have them they're not reporting much better MPG than decent diesel car. makes sense really - it takes a set amount of energy to get a car from A to B and even in a hybrid the overwhelming majority of the electric power is generated from fuel so over time you're going to be using the same amount of fuel as you would anyway.. Also until they sort out batteries they're not any better for the environment - all that mining of precious metals from obscure places around the world, complicated and toxic chemical processing, ferrying it all around the world several times all for a battery that needs replacing every 6 years or so, then you;re into the spent battery recycling issue. The best option is to remove the battery from the car altogether and have network of vehicles that draw power as they go - like dogems.

Doable in large cities where people live and work within the city boundaries, but for us country bumpkins I can't see them being feasible. Depends why you're doing it - to improve air quality in towns and cities thy make sense, but for overall cradle to grave/total lifecycle impact on the environment I think the jury's still out.

Your not going to start with the iphone6 of leccy cars, we have the one with seperate battery only used by dealers and bankers and the 3210 to get through first.

From the benchmarking I have done so far on electric cars they are truly awful from a quality perspective, we had a Tesla in that was £106k on the road and the VW Up is a mush better quality car than that. I am not convinced electric is the way forward as yet and the costs involved with the powertrains are leading to very poor quality with the fit and finish, touch and feel quality and also the material quality.

[quote="wilburt"]I have just binned all the oil companies out of my investments
That's a bit daft, most (not all) are heavily (billions of dollars) into alternative energy.

Unless you're waiting for everyone else to dump, then buy up shares at pennies each......

We are starting with iPhone 6 levels of tech regarding the batteries in terms of the type of batteries used in car are the same Lithium Ion battery technology matured in the development and use in iPhone 6's and other devices. In computers and smart devices we've been able to extend battery life mainly through better and more efficient use of how the devices consume power. Opportunity to do that with a car will be more limited. Not much you can do with an electric motor, or an electric heater or A/C compressor.

One of my customers has just taken delivery of a new Tesla S. Its highly specked out with rear facing seats that just clip into the boot space. Under the bonnet is just another boot space. Pop out door handles, power plug in is part of rear light. A4 sized display for sat nav etc.
He uses it for his 120 mile trip to work and back. Price around 50K although he recons the government give him some tax relief.
I have my name down on it when its only worth 10K 😯

Nissan leaf owner here.. We've got one on a PCP, works out at £4240 for 2 years. With a fuel saving of 80% and no maintanence it costs the same to run a brand new car as it did to keep my 10 year old Multipla maintained, fueled and taxed..

We've solar panels too and that's without this in the equation.. I have to say that it's a fab car!

My main worry is low long the batteries will last in terms of replacement

Which is why Renault sell you the car, but only lease the battery. When it fades you get another. Great for the owner, not sure about how that dents the green credentials.

I know one guy with a Tesla, one with the BMW i8. The BMW is a better solution to th electric issue. Now if you could replace the engine/generator with something efficient, you would be onto a winner.

Like Jaguar and the C-X75. Electric power, and 2 jets to charge the battery. Why not?

I was thinking about the whole battery recharging issue and think I've come up with a good solution. You buy the car but lease a battery from a company like for example Esso and when your battery is getting low you just nip into a garage and they replace it with a fully charged one.
That way the infrastructure stays pretty much the same except for how you pay for fuel as that could be more like a mobile phone with price plans according to usage. You could even have a pay as you go for those who use their cars infrequently.

Double post. Sorry.

[i]2 our whole economy is based on consumer debt based consumption, of which cars is a huge chunk.[/i]
Yeap, [i]they[/i] want Joe P to pay with as much finance as possible. Bankers aint doing the work they like to, unless they've leveraged each one of us to the hilt!

[i]Which is why Renault sell you the car, but only lease the battery.[/i]
At which point the owner of the car becomes an endless income stream for the vendor of the batteries, on a monthly lease basis. Nice (for someone)! Extrapolate that scenario and you see customers being told they can't have a replacement battery until performance has dropped below 50% of original, so for some time the owner of the car won't be "[i]enjoying[/i]" the full range capability of their car with a new battery.

Electric cars are a red herring, which, judging by this thread, the public are swallowing hook, line and socket.

The developed world already has sufficient infrastructure in/on the ground to transport, store and distribute liquid fuels. Liquid fuels are the technology to which future, private vehicular transport should look for it's fuel.
imo.

I have just binned all the oil companies out of my investments

I was just thinking it must be a good time to buy, sentiment at an all time low, plus we're not transitioning to an oil free world economy any time soon. Oil prices will be back above $100 a barrel within a few years.

Electric cars can make use of all fuel types- fossil, nuclear or renewable. And we have a nationwide network for distributing it called the national grid.

Hybrid cars are a folly. In the real world, none achieve better MPG than the best diesels. Tesla is the only company producing desirable and realistically priced electric cars (£50k luxury saloon is much more platable than a £30k Supermini) but others will catch up eventually.

[i] busta - Member
And we have a nationwide network for distributing it called the national grid[/i]

As has already been mentioned. The current configuration of the national grid does not support wide spread EV ownership. Hence part of the debate is to address "roll out" of hundreds of thousands of charge points. I've watched the installation of charge points at University of Warwick. It was slow and expensive and so in my opinion, impractical on a nationwide / pan European level. Even before one considers maintenance of a charge point network.

The current configuration of the national grid does not support wide spread EV ownership.

In what way? To me it seems perfectly adequate.

I've watched the installation of charge points at University of Warwick. It was slow and expensive and so in my opinion, impractical on a nationwide / pan European level. Even before one considers maintenance of a charge point network.

And yet many countries manage it fine for sump heaters. This suggests it's just an issue with the current design of charging station and not a fundamental issue.

In reality, all those 5M cars won't be fully discharged every day, and so estimates are that in fact 20M EVs could currently be supported.

Unless you drive as fast as your qualifications allow, then you'll discharge your EV in no time 🙂

makes sense really - it takes a set amount of energy to get a car from A to B and even in a hybrid the overwhelming majority of the electric power is generated from fuel so over time you're going to be using the same amount of fuel as you would anyway

Not at all.

It takes a set amount of work (i.e. number of Joules) to move a car (with the same drag coefficient) from A to B, yes. But how much actual input fuel that requires depends on the efficiency of the engine, and that varies a lot.

Diesels are generally more efficient than petrol in pure mechanical terms because they have a higher compression ratio which gives a higher expansion ratio in the power stroke. Toyota hybrids however have a cleverly designed engine with a longer expansion stroke than compression stroke - so they can recover more of the energy from the burning fuel than other petrols, and it approaches the efficieny of a diesel.

Also, due to how petrol engines are throttled at low speed, they are much less efficient at slow speeds. A hybrid slows the engine down by attaching it to a generator, to recover the spare energy, instead of simply throttling it back which wastes energy. And if you go slow enoguh it cuts out altogether and just drives on battery.

There are loads of other energy saving features in these cars. In my experience, on the motorway mpg is similar to a diesel (but emissions are much better of course) however in town hybrids are much better than diesel.

Re charging infrastructure - I'd imagine a network of sump heater plugs is much easier to install because it'd be much lower current than charging EVs.

In the real world, none achieve better MPG than the best diesels

See above - in town, I bet they do, but even if not they are cleaner.

Driverless cars. You won't have to bother buying, parking and charging a car, just tap your phone when you need one to turn up at the door, charged, serviced and ready to go. If you need to drive to work, order a wee car, or share a ride in an automated taxi service. If you want to go to the trail centre at the weekend, just order a driverless van, or automatically share a ride with other people heading to the same place.
Fewer cars on the road, used more efficiently, and a much safer cycling environment.

big issue, is the scarcity of rare earth metals, the fact they are non-renewable and the energy input in the initial extraction and processing, the signifiacnt envioenmental imapct of the mining in places like china and the very poor recycling and recovery rates not even taking into account the cost of the technology to extract and re-process. the answer can not be batteries in the long term as it unsustainable, but it can be a gateway to other technologies such as hydrogen cells

Diesels are generally more efficient than petrol in pure mechanical terms because they have a higher compression ratio which gives a higher expansion ratio in the power stroke

Diesel also has 10% more joules per litre than Petrol.

TBH I don't see it happening until ranges can get up to the same as a petrol ~400 miles.

Cold weather performance needs sorting also, this had me laughing:-

"However, if your EV is stored in a warm garage, that can mitigate the range loss, especially if you preheat the cabin while still attached to the mains."

Won't the car be obsolete once personal transportation drones take off? No more cars on roads means we can get rid of the roads. No more roads means we can get rid of the roadies.

Mountain biking wins!

Some interesting debate. I hadn't considered on street parking and the infrastrucutre necessary in such situations.. As noted above the cold weather performance needs sorting too - probably not going to fare well in the North during Winter!

Diesel also has 10% more joules per litre than Petrol.

Yes, but it also can take a lot more energy to produce, depending on a few things.

the answer can not be batteries in the long term

Current batteries, no. Flow batteries, maybe.. you just empty a tank of reacted solution and fill two more tanks of reagents, off you go.

Driverless cars. You won't have to bother buying, parking and charging a car, just tap your phone when you need one to turn up at the door, charged, serviced and ready to go. If you need to drive to work, order a wee car, or share a ride in an automated taxi service. If you want to go to the trail centre at the weekend, just order a driverless van, or automatically share a ride with other people heading to the same place.
Fewer cars on the road, used more efficiently, and a much safer cycling environment.

This. I'm optimistic that the next generation will see paying a lot of money for something that spends 95% of its time sat taking up space as bonkers, when you can just treat it as a service instead.

Yes, but it also can take a lot more energy to produce,

TBH I don't see it happening until ranges can get up to the same as a petrol ~400 miles.

I'm amazed that people still fixate on range like this as if it's a huge issue, it really really isn't

average journey distance is a lot smaller for most vehicles (in fact the majority) and these can easily be handled with much lower ranges, even <100 miles in a lot of cases.

And yes I know that some people need longer range, and that's fine too, it doesn't have to be an either/or scenario, those that need longer range can still use conventional vehicles, or future longer range models with bigger capacity batteries, or can be catered for with quick-swap batteries or re-fillable batteries, but that doens't mean that the vast majority of cars that are used for (often single occupant) personal transportation over short distances around urban areas can't be replaced with cleaner, lighter more efficient EVs or hybrids.

FWIW, 400 miles is over a months usage for our household, and for a lot of city dwellers their cars only ever do 10-50 miles a day, if that, and cities are arguably where we should be looking to replace the dirty inefficient smog causing vehicles, even if you ignore ALL the other arguments on air quality grounds alone it makes sense.

Flow batteries, maybe.. you just empty a tank of reacted solution and fill two more tanks of reagents, off you go.

Pah I'll believe it when I see it.

Pah I'll believe it when I see it.

said people since forever, about everything new 🙂