Ch-ch-ch-changes

princeofpounds

I suspect you will end up with on-street charging facilities you can hire. There's quite a few posts around inside the congestion charge zone already, but they are easy to miss if you aren't looking for them.

Possibly one for Cells, but going back to London being the logical place for electric cars, how do you get over the infrastructural problem that people often have to street park in congested cities and sometimes a couple of streets away, so how do you do the over night charging bit?

I've always felt that the anti-car planning policies of the last 20 years will turn out to have been a gigantic mistake when EVs make transport much cleaner (at least at the point of delivery). So many estates and flat have been intentionally built without sensible garages or parking spaces.


Obviously the constraints in our cities are much more ancient than that, but it's a perfect example of how planners' social engineering can backfire within a generation, and a reminder that they should have some humility and not try to play god.


Hopefully autonomous cars will help to resolve such issues again in the future.

michaels

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/renault-zoe-dynamique-nav-again-8130-00-battery-hire-drivethedeal-pcp-deal-104-total-2221715

104 a month all in for a fiesta equivalent electric car for 2 years - can you get a fiesta for thar?

cells wrote: »

Google suggests the basic model is under £8k new

Electric cars would do well in cities where they are a good deal more efficient than petrol and diesel and air quality problems are important. On longer trips on motorways they are likely going to be worse or equal at best.

Personally I don't see how battery cars can take the low price segment of the market the £6k-£10k sort of range vehicles any time soon

kabayiri

Another angle.

A legal friend reckons that by 2020-2025 the issue of 'Black Carbon' will provide a lunch ticket for many in the legal claims industry.

He might be wrong on timescales, but the medical issues seem difficult to argue with.

Diesel cars in our major cities are a very bad idea in the long run. This might worry some, given the growth of diesel sales over the last couple of decades, aided by government CO2 focus.

The EV changes all this dynamic. Suddenly the problem of burning some kind of fossil fuel to produce the required energy is moved to somewhere where poor people live (I doubt rich people want to live next to Drax power station).

michaels

kabayiri wrote: »

Another angle.

A legal friend reckons that by 2020-2025 the issue of 'Black Carbon' will provide a lunch ticket for many in the legal claims industry.

He might be wrong on timescales, but the medical issues seem difficult to argue with.

Diesel cars in our major cities are a very bad idea in the long run. This might worry some, given the growth of diesel sales over the last couple of decades, aided by government CO2 focus.

The EV changes all this dynamic. Suddenly the problem of burning some kind of fossil fuel to produce the required energy is moved to somewhere where poor people live (I doubt rich people want to live next to Drax power station).

But who to sue? How to determine which individual group is responsible, especially as the manufacturers all adhered to the regulations im force at the time.

kabayiri

michaels wrote: »

But who to sue? How to determine which individual group is responsible, especially as the manufacturers all adhered to the regulations im force at the time.

That's a good question. Making the problem stick to the 'state' in some way or other would be a solid foundation for the claim income.

There might be some public health precedents they could look towards.

kabayiri

michaels wrote: »

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/renault-zoe-dynamique-nav-again-8130-00-battery-hire-drivethedeal-pcp-deal-104-total-2221715

104 a month all in for a fiesta equivalent electric car for 2 years - can you get a fiesta for thar?

I just get the feeling that a company like Google would look at the EV in a completely different light, with a lot more innovation.

I'm with Gen on this one. Why do we assume that the power source has to remain in the car to be charged?

Swapping over power units, rather like the BBQ gas cannisters, would seem a much quicker and easier affair.

This would allow for slower charge cycles.

In the past Dodgems had the power source sussed!! An electrified mesh overhead!

cells

Swapping batteries probably wont be practical and will just add needless costs and complexity, charging slow or fast will be sufficient.

Self drive vehicles will get over the majority of the chicken and egg problems. They can just drive to a local charging point and smart algos can allocate the fleet to the transport needs. They can also do bulk deals with the electricity companies to charge at the cheapest points at night at a cost of maybe only 5p/kWh

As I said before I think they will work well in cities especially considering that diesel and to a lesser extent petrols might be illegal in places like inner London (or much more heavily taxed vs electrics)

If the price of battery packs can get towards $100/kWh or less then its going to be a bright future for battery vehicles.

kabayiri

cells wrote: »

...
Self drive vehicles will get over the majority of the chicken and egg problems. They can just drive to a local charging point and smart algos can allocate the fleet to the transport needs. They can also do bulk deals with the electricity companies to charge at the cheapest points at night at a cost of maybe only 5p/kWh
...

I'd completely missed this benefit of a self-drive car. You are right. Why would everyone need a charging point outside their London home, when cars could form an orderly queue at recharging stations overnight.

cells

kabayiri wrote: »

Another angle.

A legal friend reckons that by 2020-2025 the issue of 'Black Carbon' will provide a lunch ticket for many in the legal claims industry.

engine and fuel regulations make diesel and petrol much cleaner

Between Euro I and Euro VI, particulate matter (PM) levels have fallen 97%, and NOx has fallen 95%

so its largely a problem that has been solved. Over the next ten years pretty much all the old diesels and petrol will be scrapped and replaced by the euro 6 standard versions

cells

kabayiri wrote: »

I'd completely missed this benefit of a self-drive car. You are right. Why would everyone need a charging point outside their London home, when cars could form an orderly queue at recharging stations overnight.

or in car parks. For example shopping centers have car parks with thousands of spaces that are deserted for 12 hours a day. They could go park themselves and juice up ready for the next day. Even if it took 2 hours to slow charge and the car park had 2 thousand spaces its enough to charge 12,000 cars a day at just one car park. Actually probably double that if all cars were electric the car park could operate 24/hours a day charging away both human cars and self drive cars

It also allows higher efficiency charging. A car park could pull in a dedicated high voltage line with 3% loss rater than home low voltage at closer to 10% loss

electricity is everywhere there are people so I don't think charging will be a huge problem