For most people for most journeys yes.

One important change will be if multi mode transport becomes easier, transfering from cars to train or bus or bike or autonomous taxis for part of the journey. One of the issues at the moment with current park and rides etc is the speed of transfer between one mode and the next.  The other is overly centralised and congested hubs of carparks. Some autonomous vehicles makes this easier.

I agree with trailrat in that electric bikes for utility purposes have massive potential shame all the hype seems to be on them as enduro machines. With good inforstructure e bikes could be massive

phiiiiil
Our Zoe ZE40  is awesome. I haven’t been to a petrol station since we got it, which is ace. On off peak electricity it’s almost a tenth of the cost per mile than our other car that does 45mpg averaged throughout the year. It’s lovely to drive, accelerating rapidly, smoothly and quietly. We’ve not done many long trips, but we did a ~300 mile round trip at Christmas without problem; in fact quite the opposite, a free public charger meant it cost £4, we also got the best parking space at an otherwise completely full Oxford services

My wife nearly ran out of fuel in the other car today, we’re so used to the car just being fully fueled every morning.

go try one, you’ll love it

In a few years time, reverse your situation.  When everyone is driving electric cars.

You pull into the services and all the charge points are in use and for who knows how long.

Electric cars are a ridiculous idea, but the industry won’t shy away from selling us all electric cars now and bio-fuelled cars in 20 years time.

MTB Wheel size, anyone?

Her arguments against amounted to

I don’t want to have to “plan” my journeys

This is the issue with petrol /diesel – its just easy. If we’d never discovered a way of making oil-fueled engines and had to use little coal-fired, steam powered cars instead they’d be so much more ‘green’ than our current cars because you’d generally think twice about whether you were going to get up at 4am to light the boiler before you set off at 8 in the morning and you’d think twice about driving to the shops if it meant having to rake out all the ash afterwards.

Its a measure of just how easy petrol /diesel is that even though we have to technology to make extremely economical cars, for reasons of fashion we make and sell/buy really big, mechanically inefficient ones instead.

It means that by comparison plugging in a car for the 8 hours you’re asleep or the 8 hours your car is in the works carpark is ‘hassle’

“I agree with trailrat in that electric bikes for utility purposes have massive potential shame all the hype seems to be on them as enduro machines. With good inforstructure e bikes could be massive”

its not just infrastructure its how bikes as a whole are viewed , they are viewed as a toy not a tool in this country – hence why all we see is the gnarduro marketing of them. Look in holland for how powerful a tool the bicycle can be.

cargo bike never fails to strike up a conversation as i load my weeks shopping onto it – and mines not even a very good one – its just a hash of some old parts and a basic bolt on electric kit , id love a bakfiets or a douze but your approaching the cost of a cheap car there by the time you have electrically assisted it. But ultimately its the same tired excuses of “i like the idea but its not very safe is it ? ” or “but ill get wet ? ”

so now as well as buying a new car i need to buy a new phone as well ? cant it just take card for payment?

The EU have mandated that all new public charge points will take contactless payments in the near future, so it’s being worked on. By those more forward thinking than us, admittedly…

You pull into the services and all the charge points are in use and for who knows how long.

The number of charge points will obviously go up as the number of cars goes up. So will the distance cars will go between charges, and the speed they charge at – current chargers are 50kw, planned ones are 350kw –  so more cars can use one charger in a given time. These are not insurmountable problems.

The speed of charging is really the game changer; even if you don’t have somewhere to charge at home, for most people you will just fully charge your car once a week in fifteen minutes while you’re in a shop or something. A smattering of fast chargers in places like shops where people spend a bit of time anyway and most of the problems go away.

The real world can change though. All the ‘range anxiety’ argument about electric cars reveals is a lot of people chose to live in the wrong place relative to the places where they work or the resources that they need.  People who live in the right place might find the future quite convenient and their example might encourage people who live in the wrong place to change their arrangements.

Or, alternatively, they have a skewed vision of what they actually use their car for. The number of people who *couldn’t* get to work and back/shops and back/gym and back/an entire days driving on one charge (home charging point to home charging point) in a “typical” electric car is extremely small.

When you add in the rapidly increasing infrastructure, that small number gets even smaller.

“Planning journeys?”

This is an every day occurrence Shirley ?

Get in car, turn on ignition, spot fuel gauge, decide if it needs filling up or a tenner chucked in, decision made, engage gear, drive to location..

He only difference in that scenario is with an electric car your decision making process starts the previous evening, which once you think around what’s been now ingrained in your transport solution you’ll just have to separate out the “spot fuel gauge” and replace it with “will I get back because I forgot to plug it in last night”

Hydrogens still the only solution, BMW were pioneering this at least 10yrs ago but the general public were constantly put off by the scare stories of driving around with a bomb under thier bum… which as we know in current petrol driven vehicles is exactly what they are..

cargo bike never fails to strike up a conversation as i load my weeks shopping onto it – and mines not even a very good one – its just a hash of some old parts and a basic bolt on electric kit , id love a bakfiets or a douze but your approaching the cost of a cheap car there by the time you have electrically assisted it. But ultimately its the same tired excuses of “i like the idea but its not very safe is it ? ” or “but ill get wet ? ”

I’d love an Cargo e-bike, could do all my local running around on it for 8 months of the year.

I think better range extender EVs would be a great start.  We already know how to make great efficient generators.  So why do we have repurposed car or motorbike engines in EVs now?

It means that by comparison plugging in a car for the 8 hours you’re asleep or the 8 hours your car is in the works carpark is ‘hassle’

This is one of the things we didn’t expect but have found really handy… we go to work each morning and take our daughter to nursery, then on getting home we’ve got about 1/2 – 3/4 of an hour before her bedtime. We don’t want to waste the time we have with her going out of our way to get petrol – there aren’t any on our route, so at peak times it can take over 15 minutes all in – so one of us would have to waste a lunchtime a week going to refuel then instead.

Now though, while one of us gets our daughter in or out of the car, the other takes a few seconds to plug in or unplug the car. No going out of our way, no queuing for a pump or to pay.  As I mentioned earlier, we’ve got so used to not thinking about it we have to be quite careful when we use the other car now…

phiiil – I see the base model Zoe costs around £14.5k, but what are the actual costs to purchase after the hidden fees, battery hire etc? Say, over an ‘average’ ownership term of 3 or 5 years?

The cynic in me is unwilling to believe that ‘the man’ would let you own a cheaper form of transport without paying for it in another form of tax. But im willing and happy to be proven wrong!

Just had a quick google.  Seems the BMW i3 is reasonably efficient at about 20kWh/100 miles.  The best portable generator seems to do about 6kWh per gallon of petrol (assuming US gallon = 3.7l from the author of the article).

That gives only about 30mpg US or 36mpg UK.  So maybe the BMW’s generator isn’t that inefficient after all…

EDIT that 6kWh/gal figure is running at rated load though 10% below max.

Hydrogens still the only solution

Hydrogen is hugely inefficient for cars. If you’re going to use loads of electricity to produce the hydrogen you might as well store it in a battery and use it directly, it will take you a lot further.

Plus I have electricity in my house already, I don’t have hydrogen.

I actually think that PHEV, and the new petrol powered generator, vehicles are going to be a big winner until we find better battery technology.  Reason being:

Only 6% of journeys are over 25 miles.

Once you take into account that a lot of those 6% would actually be repeat offenders, so to speak, ie someone who commutes 26 miles each way to work is going to take up a far bigger proportion than someone who does 25+ miles once per year…

For most people a car that can do short journeys on electric, but has unlimited range extending potential on petrol for when is needed, seems a great solution.  No massive battery packs for 300 miles needed, just a (realistic) 50 mile battery and small petrol range extender for when is needed.

I’d get one of those.

Well, if I lived in the UK anyway.  Currently have a 4 litre SUV on Middle Eastern petrol prices….

phiiil – I see the base model Zoe costs around £14.5k, but what are the actual costs to purchase after the hidden fees, battery hire etc? Say, over an ‘average’ ownership term of 3 or 5 years?

Purchasing I’ve no idea as ours is leased; I don’t think I’d buy a new one outright now as the technology is moving on so quickly it’ll be out of date quite rapidly. The Zoe for example only uses AC charging, which in a few years I suspect will be the betamax of charging standards compared to CCS. It’ll be fine for home or workplace charging, but no good for rapid charging or long distances. A 2019 update to the Zoe is expected to add CCS.

Ours is £250/mo for 13,000 miles including the battery (curiously we can take the battery further than the car…). We expected to pay a bit of a premium for an EV, but with the limited service requirements, very cheap fuel and compared against a “normal” car with equivalent features such as remote preheating I think the TCO for us will actually end up lower.

hugo – I think you’re right -right now-; PHEVs are a much better use of a limited battery supply as a lot of small batteries would mean a lot of people being able to drive 95% EV rather than a few people lugging round big batteries they don’t need most of the time.

However the rate of increase of battery production and rapid charging development is so quick that I think the window where PHEVs will rule will be so short I don’t really think it’s worth the investment in them given their increased complexity. Car manufacturers will anyway, as they’ve got so much invested in IC engines they’re going to keep going for as long as they can, but I think the change to pure EV will come quicker than people think.

@ghostlymachine

Check out these guys!

http://www.fullycharged.com/e-bikes/bike-brand/Urban-Arrow

As for EV cost – I bought a 2yr old Leaf 24 outright 18 months ago. 5k on the clock and 3 yrs HV warranty left. Car was 11k on 0% main dealer finance with 2x ‘service’ included which gives me roadside assist and maintains warranty.

I do 12k a year and my nightime rate is 4.99p KWH The Leaf does an average of about 70 miles to 20kwh or 3.5 miles per KWh so 12k costs me £175. A similar size/quality petrol car would be an A3, Golf or a BMW 1 series. They do around 50 mpg on the mixed cycle and therefore would cost me £1300. In addition my Leaf has no road tax.

When I pay for servicing after 2 years it will be £100 not the £300 or so for an Audi.

So on cost you cannot beat an EV when its under warranty. Out of warranty, hmmmm we’ll see. Whilst the Leaf has an enviable reliability record there is always the risk of a big bill after the 5 year HV warranty has expired and the Zoe seems to be very fragile with many many warranty claims.

I would love an electric car, but its a big upfront cost, the thing about electric cars is it doesn’t solve the problem with cars that there is just way to many and driving and parking has become a horrible experience in cities.

I think ebikes make a great alternative to a second car for all the little trips under 8 miles picking up shopping running errands ect. I bought one last year and use it constantly commuting, shopping ect.

No need to change clothes or wear funny shoes just jump on and off you go.

Get them to 300+ miles and charge to 80% in say 30 minutes (and the cost down) and it’s probably game over for most ICE cars.

It terms of battery technology, you’re probably right, but the biggest barrier is delivering sufficient generation capacity to facilitate mass conversion from ICE. As others have said, demand-side reduction and management is the only viable solution, probably in the form of smart-charged autonomous  share-vehicles, which would work very well in urban areas.

Electric cars are inevitable.  Cleaner is better as long as the power generation and storage is cleaner.  But that doesnt mean better in every way.  Car dependency/obsession probably set to increase not lessen.  More cars. More roads.  I see cycling (for transport and utility) as set to dwindle in the UK below it’s already comparitively negligible levels.  No infra, bad weather, mushrooming out of town estates serviced by fast roads to retail parks, people driving everywhere even on short journeys.

Every time someone argues othewise I remind them that over the last 12 years every time I cycle to a supermarket (3-5 times a week) there is only one other bicycle parked there amidst a sea of parked cars.  Nine times out often that other bicycle is the same one presumedly owned by a store-employee.  In the 12 years the car-park has been expanded once and still fills to capacity on busy days.  But the bicycle facilities (enough racks to lock six bicycles) stay the same.  Unsurprisingly, I’m spoiled for space to lock up a bike.

Imagine a world where everyone used a horse and cart, and petrol power was the new thing. A few people had a petrol car but they weren’t sure where they could fill it up and they were no use if you went somewhere that was far away from a filling station – you’d have to carry all the fuel for the return with you and that would be dangerous and smelly. Then if everyone on the street got a petrol car there wouldn’t be enough filling stations to service everyone so what use would they be? You’d turn up and there would be no petrol left or you’d have to wait ages to use the pump. And if you lived in the countryside there might not be a filling station for miles so you’d have to think about having enough petrol for the next day or two which is too much planning.

They’d never catch on would they, after all you can get hay everywhere and it’s just easier

Agreed, electric cars are inevitable.

How the power is generated for them and stored on board is the big issue.

There’s a definite ceiling to current battery technology.  I’ve got a feeling the first manufacturer to totally nail a tiny petrol generator/range extender and put it in a PHEV is going to win.

Out of interest, does anyone know how an on board range extender compares to, let’s say, a gas fired power station in terms of thermodynamic efficiency?

Those i3’s are a very nice car. I looked at one when I p/xd my Xc60 in. I was looking at the range extender one, more money obvz.. (staggeringly upwards of £30k) and was told it would do about 30mpg in the real world. I was about to try one when I decided I need more space, and more range (which I knew anyway, but I had to have a look at it)

Now driving a hybrid and will never look back. I have owned (in the past) a 1st Gen Prius, which for a first attempt at hybrids was sadly woeful. Gutless and complicated beyond it’s remit.. it was Conjcharge free in Town and it was the only reason to buy it.. glad to see the back of it TBH. Yet now I’m back in a bigger brother and higher marque and the difference is vast. The tech has moved on so many stages that it’s a revelation, simple and effective, luxurious and oh so damn quiet.

Before anyone buys a fully electric vehicle I’d suggest hopping on one leg to Toyota or Lexus, spend an hour in the shiny showroom and convince yourself you don’t want/need a hybrid.

I’ve probably got one of the longer commutes of the people on here at 47 miles each way and even I would have no problem running a 80-90 kWh electric car like a Tesla or the new iPace, which the way I drive would probably have a real world range of 200 miles. My longest regular journey is 250 miles to my sister in law in Scotland but as we normally stop half way for a snack at Gretna a quick charge for 20 mins or so would be no problem. So range is already there that just leaves price and charging infrastructure. Once the price of a 90kWh car comes down from the current 60k to 30-40k that will give realistic leasing or PCP payments. I reckon that’s 2-3 years away. Charging infrasturcture will probably take the longest but if you have a drive then you’ll be charging mostly at home anyway. I think electirc cars will take of faster than most people imagine. When solid state batteries are finally commercialised it will be game over for the ICE

these guys got pretty close…..

One question that I have about EV is the s/h market in a few years. I’ll likely never buy a new car and I’m unlikely to lease either. Considering the way in which batteries degrade are these cars going to have s/h value? Presumably they must otherwise you’re just making cars with a pretty limited lifespan unless changing batteries becomes cheap.

With good inforstructure e bikes could be massive

Some silly billies ******* grubbed up and sold off most of our Beeching-axed railway lines.   Yes ours.   The potential infra was there. For a fleeting moment.  Mostly flat too.  Could have had their own speed regulations to allow for busy commute sections with faster hybrid electric/HPV transit.  I used to have visions/romantic dreams of us leading the  way and doing just that, with the extra benefit of turning the UK into a world-class cycle-touring destination!

We have had a Nissan Leaf for over a year now.

Only drive short distances ( less than 50 miles) for 95% of our driving.

So much cheaper, cleaner for the environment, quieter, and generally better driving experience.

Saved around £800 on diesel, servicing is dirt cheap.

A few taxi firms are using them where congestion charges and emissions charges are in force. They are rapid charging them a few times a day and the batteries are holding up very well.

Won’t be buying another ICE car again.

Hydrogens still the only solution, BMW were pioneering this at least 10yrs ago but the general public were constantly put off by the scare stories of driving around with a bomb under thier bum… which as we know in current petrol driven vehicles is exactly what they are..

the problems with hydrogen are manyfold.
1) It’s incredibly expensive because it’s incredibly useful. Oxidixing it in a fuel cell is a spectacular waste of a resource.
2) It’s not particularly ‘natural’, a small amount comes out the ground, the rest either has to be made from a fossil fuel in a refinery or by electrolysis which isn’t that dissimilar a process to charging a battery.
3) There’s no infrastructure. Most houses have a 150-250kW supply which goes unused overnight. I’ve seen 2 hydrogen filling stations in the UK, one on a university open day, and the demonstration one in Sheffield.
4) Range. Hydrogen is really hard to store and therefore is hard to put in a tank safely*. The closest to being compercialy viable fuel cel cars have a range of about 250miles, a bit over half a Tesla.

*it can’t be liquified under practical conditions, it becomes a supercritical fluid, which means unlike propane tanks which when they leak they get cold and stop vaporizing, or petrol which would just flow as a liquid (or not at all if the leak was in the top of the tank) hydrogen would escape the tank at the speed of sound. The only upside is it’s light and would therefore disperese upwards quickly if it didn’t ignite.

Thanks for that, see I never knew that.

Good info.👍

BMW ‘confident’ it can win solid state battery race

BMW’s Ian Robertson says that firms are searching for next-generation battery and electric systems that can provide a competitive advantage

Car makers are in a race against time to develop next-generation battery and electrical systems that can deliver a competitive advantage, according to BMW’s outgoing head of marketing Ian Robertson.

<div>Robertson believes some car makers are on the cusp of making breakthroughs that could shift the capabilities and earn them the edge over rivals. </div>

BMW were doing hydrogen combustion engines, which is even worse than using it in a fuel cell. Which, as above, isn’t particularly clever.

Which is why they gave up.

Ford had a hydrgen engine program as well. Which died on it’s arse about 15 years ago.

In countries without extreme heat batteries seem to be holding up much better than initial fears; various companies set up initiatives to reuse dead EV batteries but there haven’t been enough of them yet to do very much with. I would imagine advances in range and charging will mean that used EVs will be a pretty good bargain if shorter journeys and slower charge times are all you need.

It wouldn’t surprise me if battery refurbishment becomes common as well, which could keep old EVs going for longer. I think a few specialists already do this as it’s often only a few cells from an entire pack that have gone bad that can be swapped for either new ones or good cells from batteries from write-offs.

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not without a quantum leap forward in battery design.  ~Energy density is just too low by an order of magnitutde

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Being worked on TJ, I’ve a friend in the industry who says they have test bench batteries with 400 mile + range, they just need “Squaddy proofing” to fit into cars.

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Capacity is one thing, it’s just a matter of mass. 400+ miles is easy.

The energy density thing is a nightmare though. The batteries being used now have a fairly wide working temperature (where performance could be called “normal”) then a wider range where they still work, but power is down. The higher the energy density the worse it seems to be getting. So a battery that’ll typically work at 90% or better between 10 and 35 degrees and will survive between -20 and +50 with no lasting damage is replaced with one that has twice the energy in the same volume, but now needs to be kept between 20 and 30 degrees, and if you get it too cold or too hot it’ll be permanently damaged. So you end up being unable to package the cooling system in the car, and the cooling pump has almost the same power drain as the traction motor (not really, but you get the idea). And you end up gaining weight and you loose range. And the car spends loads more energy on cooling/heating. All the time.

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Then the charging profile is far more fussy than a stock battery as well. Which means unless you hit a fairly narrow band you’ll be damaging the battery (either through heating or oxidation). Home chargers might not have the grunt to hit and sustain the target power.

It’s being looked at, but it’s got a way to go yet. (and i’m not looking at it, i just sit in the meetings where people look all depressed about physics)

Tesla have already come unstuck with similar, too much supercharging (or ludicrous mode) **** your battery.

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Battery life seems to vary by battery technology. Tesla Model S uses lots of very small cells with liquid cooling and data shows that capacity remains between 90 and 95 percent, on average, even at 150,000 km (93,000 miles).

However owners of early Nissan Leafs with larger cell air cooled batteries have experienced 50% drop in capacity

Apparently there’s a Chevy Volt out there with no loss in capacity after 300,000 miles

I would imagine advances in range and charging will mean that used EVs will be a pretty good bargain if shorter journeys and slower charge times are all you need.

Quite a few companies are looking at smart charging. i.e. only charging to the level you need plus a margin. So someone who typically drives 80 km a day will never need to charge to 100%/300km they’ll bounce around between 20 and 50% wich means they can charge at a slower/less damaging rate overnight (rather than rushing to get it full), and also not use the full capacity of the battery (which they don’t much like either).

Tesla have already come unstuck with similar, too much supercharging (or ludicrous mode) **** your battery.

Equally, I heard of one Tesla hire car in California which has reached 300,000miles on its original battery.

And I’ve spent the last 3 months working in ambulance stations, they seem to regularly blow engines up in the car’s at almost 30,000mile intervals! So trashing engines because you can’t wait another 15minutes for it to warm up before flooring it isn’t a uniquely electrical problem!

Apparently there’s a Chevy Volt out there with no loss in capacity after 300,000 miles.

Is that reported capacity, or actual capacity 😉

It’s usually measurable on a test bench within the first 15-20000 km (on electric power) and you’d start to see it reported on CAN (but not necessarily on the dash) at about 3 times that. (with quite a lot of variation).

So trashing engines because you can’t wait another 15minutes for it to warm up before flooring it isn’t a uniquely electrical problem!

The tesla issue isn’t a warming up (or cooling down) issue. It’s simply a feature of the battery chemistry. Pull too much current out (or put too much in) and you start to permanently degrade the cells. Then next time, your current limit is reduced, either by software protection, or physics.

One question that I have about EV is the s/h market in a few years. I’ll likely never buy a new car and I’m unlikely to lease either. Considering the way in which batteries degrade are these cars going to have s/h value? Presumably they must otherwise you’re just making cars with a pretty limited lifespan unless changing batteries becomes cheap.

You don’t see battery-owned Leafs going for much less than £5k and the early ones are well over 5 years old now. Even with battery degradation they’ll do a reliable 50 miles (more on slower journeys, or in summer without heat/lights) which is plenty for most people’s commutes, school/nursery runs and trips to the supermarket.

EVs do have an odd depreciation curve, with better new models all the time the initial hit can be large (although most places that quote depreciation don’t take government grants and typical dealer offers into account) but it does seem to flatten out after a couple of years.There’s still a big potential market of people that they’re a good fit for, so I wouldn’t expect values to fall off a cliff.

Repair/refurb of batteries will be a growing market, it’s not one big battery cell but hundreds of them made up into packs/modules so straightforward for someone that knows what they’re doing to dismantle, test and replace failing ones – even to build up refurbished units that someone can do a simple exchange for. The number of old Prius minicabs on the roads (doing huge mileages) means there’s already a market in refurbishing battery packs for those, no-one is going off to Toyota and spending more than the car is worth on a brand new one.