Real environmental impact of electric car?

tbourner

londonTiger wrote: »

The other concern is electric cars make driving boring. In a petrol/diesel car you can floor it, your mpg does not change that much. If I drive aggressive i get around 29mpg, if i drive conservatively i get 32mpg.

Now drive aggressive on an electric car and i don't know how far you'd get. Didn't TG do laps on the tesla and manage just 4 or 5 laps on it before the battery died?

Are you talking 'fun' cars or normal cars? Fast cars will go from 25mpg to about 2mpg when ragged and that's the same for cars like the Tesla and Merc SLS. There's no way you can say THOSE are boring!
And Top Gear is fake, it's a fictional comedy show not a serious motoring journalism program.

dannny wrote: »

Hydrogen fuel cell cars are the future, not electric cars.

Main 3 UK production methods of electricity are coal, gas and nuclear.

Very environmentally friendly, NOT.

I disagree about hydrogen, it's much harder to 'fix' the problems associated with getting it, processing it and storing it than the problems of electric production.
I agree though that we need more nuclear power in place, particularly fusion.

dannny_2

tbourner wrote: »

I agree though that we need more nuclear power in place, particularly fusion.

I never said I agreed with nuclear power. I worked as part of the JET (joint european torus) project in the 80s, and that was on a 25 year plan. Slightly surpassed that end date.

(and I'm STILL waiting for the free electricity that was promised with nuclear power).

vaio

tbourner wrote: »

........I like the way electric cars have a single gear and flat torque curve (like an ultimate diesel!).......

A mate has just got an Audi with the CVT gearbox and he describes it just like you although obviously he has an infinitely variable gearbox where as you have an infinitely variable prime mover.

He describes accelerating hard and the engine just sits there at 2000 rpm (max torque point?) whilst the gearbox seemingly seamlessly varies the ratio to keep the car accelerating

tbourner

dannny wrote: »

I never said I agreed with nuclear power. I worked as part of the JET (joint european torus) project in the 80s, and that was on a 25 year plan. Slightly surpassed that end date.

(and I'm STILL waiting for the free electricity that was promised with nuclear power).

It's down to funding, if there was more funding, or even the amount originally planned, we'd be closer than we are. People are just wrongly scared of fusion power, and fission come to that.

Guinness-Cat

londonTiger wrote: »

You can probably make it work, but for most people an electric car is strictly a second car, very limited to the odd city runs. As mentioned by others when driving in aqdverse conditions, long trips or carrying a lot of load you're not going to get far on electric and need a backup petrol car.

Maybe you can get back on an electric as your sole car. But most people who have a family (kids) will need something bigger to do their weekly shopping and drive out to. A very high amount of people actually drive in for work in London. A 60 mile cap will mean you're scraping the capacity of your batteries on your daily commute.

I probably wouldn't have considered electric if it was going to be the only car in the household. We use the leaf for all trips within range and the wife's car for anything else (mainly just holidays). We need 2 cars anyway as we both work in different places.

It's a standard size small hatchback - we easily fit the weekly shopping in the boot along with a double buggy.

I work in uxbridge and commute from Aylesbury - a 55 mile trip. At the moment, only charging to 80% and it gets me home with about 15 miles range left - although I suspect there may be more. Obviously this will be a little worse in the winter - I'll need to fully charge, but the range would double if I could charge in work.

tbourner

Another point to note on the Zoe specifically is that they give you preferential rates on hire cars (no idea how preferential they are), so you could own one as your only car and hire a 'proper' car when required.
It still only works if it happens to fit your lifestyle though obviously. Would be no good as a taxi.

Handsome90

londonTiger wrote: »

The other concern is electric cars make driving boring. In a petrol/diesel car you can floor it, your mpg does not change that much. If I drive aggressive i get around 29mpg, if i drive conservatively i get 32mpg.

Now drive aggressive on an electric car and i don't know how far you'd get. Didn't TG do laps on the tesla and manage just 4 or 5 laps on it before the battery died?

I think electric cars will take out the joy of driving entirely, and it's take up will coincide with the development of self driving cars because nobody wants to drive any more. My guess is we'll just all use pool cars to get around you subscribe to a scheme which will allow you to hail a self driving electric car to drive you around.

Tesla wanted to sue Top Gear because of that as it was staged but I guess the court case got dismissed as Top Gear is an entertainment show.

Tesla actually make one of the best electric cars (even though it's very expensive at the moment but Elon Musk is planning to release a $35k car in 2016 I think).

I don't think electric cars will take out the joy of driving. In fact the opposite as electric cars give instant torque which cannot be matched by any combustion engine.

Also, self-driving cars may make our roads a lot safer. Most, if not all, of the crashes are caused by driver error.

Guinness-Cat

tbourner wrote: »

It still only works if it happens to fit your lifestyle though obviously. Would be no good as a taxi.

It's been done

tbourner

Maybe when we get induction loop technology installed on all our roads it will work

londonTiger

Handsome90 wrote: »

Tesla wanted to sue Top Gear because of that as it was staged but I guess the court case got dismissed as Top Gear is an entertainment show.

Tesla actually make one of the best electric cars (even though it's very expensive at the moment but Elon Musk is planning to release a $35k car in 2016 I think).

I don't think electric cars will take out the joy of driving. In fact the opposite as electric cars give instant torque which cannot be matched by any combustion engine.

Also, self-driving cars may make our roads a lot safer. Most, if not all, of the crashes are caused by driver error.

Re: top gear, they did not fudge up the charges, I think tesla just had a problem with the fact that it was used in a circuit and driving in a race track burns the batteries for more than driving at a moderate pace. The mercedes electric sports car has the same issue.

I don't see TG doing anything wrong, if it's made as a sports car and marketed as a sports car then I think it's fair game to burn it through the race tracks and see how long the battery lasts.

Tesla and the mercedes are an exception and not the norm, having such high torques on an electric really thrashes the batteries and most commuter electrics will have their torques limited and make the acceleration very gradual to get the distance on them.

I am not against electrics per se. But the infrastructure at the moment hampers take up of electric vehicles and you really have to plan your journeys at the moment.

In the next 5 years it will improve as more and more parking bays have charging points.