Electric cars

Martyn1981

Just a bit more on batteries, for any folk following such trends. these comments are from the weekly Carbon Commentary newsletter from Chris Goodall, and give (I think) some interesting perspectives on the direction of travel.

2, Battery costs. Elon Musk said Tesla was ‘closing in’ on a battery cost of $100/kWh, expecting to achieve this figure by the end of 2018, provided metal prices don’t rise. That means that a mid-size car with 300 km range will have a battery costing about $5,000. Earlier this year BP said that this cost level would not be reached until about 2029. Separately, Musk offered an important new metric: he said that Tesla would offer a charging/driving ratio of 10 to 1. (100 minutes driving at typical speed requires 10 minutes at a charger). (Thanks to Gage Williams)

3, More on battery costs. As Musk hinted, the prices of metals are an increasingly important determinant of battery costs. Sources offer differing numbers but today’s EV batteries use approximately 0.9 kg of lithium (expressed as lithium carbonate) and 0.2 kg of cobalt per kWh of capacity. At today’s prices that is about $12 for lithium and $16 for cobalt. (One of the reasons for Tesla’s low battery prices is that it uses far less cobalt in its batteries than most other manufacturers). The price of cobalt has tripled in the past year, and lithium has increased by 50%, although both have fallen in the last weeks. Long term projections tend to see lithium prices falling sharply because of increased availability; there is no shortage of underlying supply. Cobalt will remain scarcer but battery suppliers are working to reduce their use of the metal, partly because of cost and partly because of concerns about Congo. My wild guess is that in the long run lithium ion batteries will need metal inputs costing perhaps $25 a kWh.

Martyn1981

CATL Eyes Germany For New €1 Billion Factory

Chinese battery heavyweight CATL is reportedly looking to invest up to €1 billion into a new battery factory in Germany, according to a Bloomberg report on the matter. The move would put one of the largest plug-in vehicle battery manufacturers right in the backyard of Germany’s lucrative luxury automotive manufacturers, including Daimler, Volkswagen, Porsche, and BMW.

foxy-stoat

Must be a record, new user starts a thread 18 months ago and doesn't come back to post again.

Well done

Martyn1981

No idea if this is a good deal or not, but thought it worth mentioning simply to show that times are a changing.

‘First ever’ time of use tariff launches for EV users

Stageshoot

Martyn1981 wrote: »

No idea if this is a good deal or not, but thought it worth mentioning simply to show that times are a changing.

‘First ever’ time of use tariff launches for EV users

Think Octopus are being a bit tight, only 4 hours at the cheapest 5p Kwh tarriff... Might just get a full charge in a 24Kw Leaf in that time, 40 Kwh batteries no chance need 7 on average.

GreenEnergy UK are still 5P Kwh for exisitng customers for the entire 7 hours on Eco7 locked in till March 2019 new customers I think its about 6.5p.

Prices are starting to creep up. Personally am going to stick with GreenEnergyUk till the 5p Kwh Eco7 deal runs out in March 19, but its looking like it might be a fairly big % jump to the next best option by then..

AdrianC

Stageshoot wrote: »

Think Octopus are being a bit tight, only 4 hours at the cheapest 5p Kwh tarriff...

Greenwash marketing. If they hit a headline rate that offered a real benefit, then they'd make a thumping loss on every new account - which is not what they want.


End of the day, the only difference between the various electricity suppliers is the bottom line price, and their customer service. The electricity that's supplied is all the same stuff from the same grid.

almillar

Think Octopus are being a bit tight, only 4 hours at the cheapest 5p Kwh tarriff..

Greenwash marketing.

Not greenwash marketing, looks genuinely useful to me - yes, they're operating within the national wholesale constraints.


4 hours every night on a car, set a timer to charge it, at 7kWh, at 5p, would be £1.40 for for 28kWh of electric. That's roughly the cost of a litre of petrol, to go roughly 100 miles. That would be almost a full charge of my car every night. Much more than I would need. My home charger is 7kW, and my current car takes 6.6kW AC, and there are efficiency losses, but the above is a good guide.


At a more normal 15p per KWh, that same 28 kWh would cost £4.20. Add it up...

Martyn1981

Bit of a shocker as another domino falls. Euro 1-3 diesels to be banned from Milan by January 2019, and Euro 4's by October 2019, and Euro 5's by 2025.

Milan’s New Diesel Ban To Cause Ripple Effect

Herzlos

On walking into a merc/bmw/Audi dealership; I assume it's like everyone else and you're not buying from stock you're going to be waiting 6+ months?

AdrianC

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Bit of a shocker as another domino falls. Euro 1-3 diesels to be banned from Milan by January 2019, and Euro 4's by October 2019, and Euro 5's by 2025.

Milan’s New Diesel Ban To Cause Ripple Effect

By 2025, the newest Euro 5 cars will be 11 years old.

By 2019, the newest Euro 4 will be 11 years old, and the newest Euro 3 will be 14 years old.