New goverment car tax rules from April 2017. Your thoughts?

Gloomendoom

dannyrst wrote: »

You've fallen into the terrible capacity argument that just doesn't make sense. You're assuming everyone needs to charge their car all the time at the same time.

The average length of journey in the UK in 2013 (if someone can find more up to date figures, please update) is 7.1 miles. Let's be conservative and say the range of electric cars will be 300 miles by the time they are adopted by a majority of consumers. That gives you 42 trips between full and empty. 42 trips is likely to be well over a weeks worth of driving. So on average, people only need to charge once a week.

However, you're also assuming everyone is charging at the same time. Workplaces, supermarkets, public places are all installing electric car charging points so people charge through the day, not just when they get home from work.

So that street full of people charging their cars at the same time actually doesn't happen at all.

It doesn't matter how much the range is increased, the power consumption will be the same per mile and that will need to be replaced at some point. Delaying it until the end of the week doesn't reduce the overall load on the grid. Plus, although many public charging points are now free of heavily subsidised, that is unlikely to last (as is the zero rated road tax). When charging away from home gets more expensive than charging at home, users will tend to charge at home whenever possible. In fact increasing the range of he cars makes this more likely as people won't panic charge whenever they see an available charging point.

With current technology and infrastructure, the estimated maximum number of private electric cars that can be sustained is around 1 million.

Herzlos

No, the load will largely be the same, but it can potentially be spread more evenly and across quieter times. Cars that need charged once a week are going to be more evenly spread than cars that need charged every night.

You'll probably get a lot more people charging them over the weekends, but that shouldn't be an issue as most offices and factories (the big power consumers) are closed.

As the electric cars become more common, infrastructure will need to improve to keep up. But lets be realistic, we're not going to get 1 million EV's overnight.

dannyrst

Car_54 wrote: »

And which century do you predict that will happen?

Which bit, range or adoption?

SPOILER - Tesla and Jaguar are already claiming 310 and 315 mile ranges.

Gloomendoom

Herzlos wrote: »

No, the load will largely be the same, but it can potentially be spread more evenly and across quieter times. Cars that need charged once a week are going to be more evenly spread than cars that need charged every night.

You'll probably get a lot more people charging them over the weekends, but that shouldn't be an issue as most offices and factories (the big power consumers) are closed.

As the electric cars become more common, infrastructure will need to improve to keep up. But lets be realistic, we're not going to get 1 million EV's overnight.

I was suggesting that we will, just pointing out there are limits.

Another issue is that the local infrastructure is already overloaded during the day and relies on the current light load period overnight to cool down ready for the next day.

One way the problem could be reduced is by introducing yet to be developed smart charging where vehicles interact with centrally controlled smart meters.

Car_54

Herzlos wrote: »

No, the load will largely be the same, but it can potentially be spread more evenly and across quieter times. Cars that need charged once a week are going to be more evenly spread than cars that need charged every night.

You'll probably get a lot more people charging them over the weekends, but that shouldn't be an issue as most offices and factories (the big power consumers) are closed.

Not so. The latest stats for conumption by sector show:

Transportation 40%
Domestic 29%
Industry 17%
Service 14%

Nick_C

Surely the best way to improve the range and viability of electric cars would be to have fuel stations where you can simply swap a near empty cell for a full one.

Although hydrogen powered cars would probably be more practical, using clean electricity to generate hydrogen from water. You could also be sure that the hydrogen had been produced without using fossil fuels.

dannyrst

Gloomendoom wrote: »

It doesn't matter how much the range is increased, the power consumption will be the same per mile and that will need to be replaced at some point. Delaying it until the end of the week doesn't reduce the overall load on the grid. Plus, although many public charging points are now free of heavily subsidised, that is unlikely to last (as is the zero rated road tax). When charging away from home gets more expensive than charging at home, users will tend to charge at home whenever possible. In fact increasing the range of he cars makes this more likely as people won't panic charge whenever they see an available charging point.

With current technology and infrastructure, the estimated maximum number of private electric cars that can be sustained is around 1 million.

Would be interested to see where this 1 million cars thing comes from?

I'll just leave this article here:
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/11/will-electric-cars-break-grid/

dannyrst

Nick_C wrote: »

Surely the best way to improve the range and viability of electric cars would be to have fuel stations where you can simply swap a near empty cell for a full one.

Although hydrogen powered cars would probably be more practical, using clean electricity to generate hydrogen from water. You could also be sure that the hydrogen had been produced without using fossil fuels.

I don't think an easily removable battery of that size would be safe to be travelling around on the road, do you? Make it more secure and you're increasing the time required to change it.

You can charge a Tesla from a supercharger to 50% in 20 minutes.

Herzlos

You can charge most electric cars to somewhere about 80% in under 20 minutes via fast chargers (those green spaces at the front of motorway services), so I don't think swappable batteries makes any sense now, as it'll probably take 5 minutes to do the swap anyway.

Car_54 wrote: »

Not so. The latest stats for conumption by sector show:

Transportation 40%
Domestic 29%
Industry 17%
Service 14%

Thanks for the figures. I Assume the 40% from transportation is mostly trains? In which case, there's a lot less of them running at the weekend.

Gloomendoom

dannyrst wrote: »

Would be interested to see where this 1 million cars thing comes from?

I'll just leave this article here:
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/11/will-electric-cars-break-grid/

From this man.

https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/wmg/people/profile/?wmgid=1080