Electric cars

custardy

Martyn1981 wrote: »

That's cool, and they are rolling out 1% of the bus fleet in EV's every 12 weeks or so, so even if production doesn't ramp up, in 20yrs they'll be fully EV. Very impressive.

Worldwide the oil (and other FF) industry is sensitive to market fluctuations as they are a small margin business. Some entire industries could falter if demand (and then price) falls just a bit, as they have narrow profit margins - such as Canadian tar sand oil and US shale oil.

In the US, the leccy generators that use FF's are campaigning for the current EV rule that tax credits begin to reduce/remove when a company sells 200,000 EV cars (in the states), to be removed, as they want more EV's to make up for the loss of demand they are seeing from the roll out of RE.

Tis a funny ole world.

Hasnt quite gone that way in Edinburgh

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/lothian-buses-ditch-eco-friendly-fleet-after-battery-issues-1-4797812

Basically batteries have lost performance and its cheaper to convert to diesel

AdrianC

TBF, that's talking about hybrids, rather than pure EVs - and "battery issues" isn't quite accurate if they're struggling to climb hills. They're simply under-powered.


Have they sorted the hybrids in London?

buglawton

Martyn1981 wrote: »

I'd suggest that that is the next step. Tesla have plans (eventually?) to develop the $25k EV. And as per previous discussions we can see that Renault (and I suspect Nissan) are closing in, so their next car, or next major revision of current cars might do just what you want if production is large enough.

Regarding affordability of EV's over ICE's to run, that seems to have been reached already with TOC's showing EV's cheaper than ICE's, with PHEV's a little higher than ICE's, though that might change if PHEV's get larger batts as standard.

I think it's all happening, and hopefully coming to a head now(ish), as each price segment from top down, steadily falls to EV's.

To me the clue will be the all-in cost of leasing a non hybrid EV. Leasing companies will factor in the cost of purchase, depreciation/resaleability, battery age etc vs ICE. That'll be the acid test.

Martyn1981

AdrianC wrote: »

TBF, that's talking about hybrids, rather than pure EVs - and "battery issues" isn't quite accurate if they're struggling to climb hills. They're simply under-powered.

That's a good point. I wonder if the hybrids have less torque than the ICE bus from the engine, so require the torque boost from the motor for hills.

That might be why batts are getting blamed if they are faulty or aren't charging up enough to help with all the hills.

All sounds a bit odd, and of course sad, since the EV part of the hybrids should be a benefit to hills (torque for the ups, and re-gen braking for the downs.)

AdrianC

Thinking about it, and doing a little digging, perhaps the batteries are the cause.


Those Alexander Enviro 400h City hybrid buses are more akin to diesel-electric trains than hybrid cars - you have a generator/motor/battery, but you don't have any direct diesel-to-axle drive. They use a BAe HybriDrive transmission:



So if you've got a laden bus dragging up a long hill, it's not hard to see how it could be struggling before the top, even with the diesel chucking out as much charge as it can. The diesel engines are smaller and less powerful (4.5 litre, 160kW) in the hybrids than in the diesel-only versions (6.7 litre, 190kW), so long drags are going to be sucking fairly hard on the charge. They were only 12kWh battery packs - now replaced in new production by ultra-capacitors - yet they've been reduced to <1kWh capacity "for the same performance" - which suggests that the problem might be how quickly the batteries could release that charge.



https://www.busandcoachbuyer.com/enviro400h-now-ultra-capacitors/

custardy

They were in service for 7 years. So if power was an issue,it would have been from day 1.
I saw a post on FB from one of the Lothian buses talking about it.
Unfortunatly nearly every bus route in Edinburgh encounters hills. A flat city we are not.

Car_54

custardy wrote: »

I saw a post on FB from one of the Lothian buses talking about it.

First autonomous cars, then talking buses. Where will it all end?

AdrianC

custardy wrote: »

They were in service for 7 years. So if power was an issue,it would have been from day 1.

Battery life issue?

custardy

custardy wrote: »

Hasnt quite gone that way in Edinburgh

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/lothian-buses-ditch-eco-friendly-fleet-after-battery-issues-1-4797812

Basically batteries have lost performance and its cheaper to convert to diesel

AdrianC wrote: »

Battery life issue?

Thats what I said

Car_54 wrote: »

First autonomous cars, then talking buses. Where will it all end?

Honestly,I think whats left of my marbles are slowly rolling away.
I have been missing out whole words in posts/messages.

Martyn1981

AdrianC wrote: »

Thinking about it, and doing a little digging, perhaps the batteries are the cause.


Those Alexander Enviro 400h City hybrid buses are more akin to diesel-electric trains than hybrid cars - you have a generator/motor/battery, but you don't have any direct diesel-to-axle drive. They use a BAe HybriDrive transmission:



So if you've got a laden bus dragging up a long hill, it's not hard to see how it could be struggling before the top, even with the diesel chucking out as much charge as it can. The diesel engines are smaller and less powerful (4.5 litre, 160kW) in the hybrids than in the diesel-only versions (6.7 litre, 190kW), so long drags are going to be sucking fairly hard on the charge. They were only 12kWh battery packs - now replaced in new production by ultra-capacitors - yet they've been reduced to <1kWh capacity "for the same performance" - which suggests that the problem might be how quickly the batteries could release that charge.



https://www.busandcoachbuyer.com/enviro400h-now-ultra-capacitors/

Yep, that could then suggest that the package they ordered wasn't up to the job, so as soon as the batteries lost a bit of capacity they could no longer do the job well.

Perhaps rude to suggest it, but this may have been a mistake in the procurement process, failing to take into account all the issues, or build in enough overcapacity at the start to allow for expected (unexpected(?)) losses.

If nothing else, hopefully this will work as a lessons learned exercise.