Electric cars

AnotherJoe

Martyn1981 wrote: »

BTW, if your EV has a big enough battery, then you may only need to charge once a week. Average car driving in the UK 7,900 miles pa, or approx 152 miles per week, that's about 38kWh, so cars with 40kWh+ storage will only have an issue occasionally, taking us back to charge locations on a street or car park for one day, whilst in work, or even one hour at a fast(er) charge location 40kW+

Indeed, I’m charging between once and twice a week. The last time I charged my car was Thursday of last week. Now I’m not doing many miles but then again people who do a lot of miles will tend to have cars with bigger batteries.

The naysayers seem to assume everyone will be charging for 12 hours every night but that sort of thing will only be the case for the tiny minority of very high mileage drivers. Who will in any case be the last holdouts to move to electric.

. Where we are likely going longer term is that your car battery can actually be used to supply power to flatten out grid demands, so instead of being part of a problem, it’s part of solution. This is likely at least 5 and more likely 10 years off though because it needs a lot smarter local infrastructure.

AnotherJoe

AdrianC wrote: »

The transformer for our little throng of 8-9 houses and a small farm lives up a pole behind my garage, fed by three 11kV lines strung across fields. They go nowhere after us.

When the garage was built, three years ago, Western Power took a precautionary look at the transformer, and decided to replace it while they could do so easily. They took the old 200A-fused single-phase transformer down, with its poles - untouched since it was put up when AC first came here in the 1960s - and replaced it... with a 200A-fused single-phase transformer.

"Why nothing bigger? Why not three-phase, since all three come across?"
Ah, that's because the local infrastructure is really, really pushed and clinging on by the skin of its teeth. They don't want to risk upgrading any one bit, no matter how minor, for fear of the knock-ons...

Well sooner or later they will have to bite the bullet and upgrade and short sighted thinking like that will cost them (and us ) more in the long term. It may be that places like yours are also the last ones to upgrade and that more suburban areas will get the upgrades first, , More bang for the buck(not literally hopefully ) same as some friends I have in rural Devon are still on 2Mb broadband and only this year getting abig upgrade.

I don’t think anyone now would disagree we are moving to all electric cars, the only discussion point is how quickly. And the electricity companies will be dragged there like it or not. Would you be happy if they said no you can’t have fast broadband, electric street lights because we’ve decided to freeze our infrastructure as in was fifty years ago because that was good enough for your mum and dad”. That’s almost what the attitude is. Sure there’s a cost to it but at the moment we are all bearing the costs of the do nothing brigade, by breathing in stinking carcinogens which are literally suffocating and killing us.

Stageshoot

AnotherJoe wrote: »

The naysayers seem to assume everyone will be charging for 12 hours every night but that sort of thing will only be the case for the tiny minority of very high mileage drivers. Who will in any case be the last holdouts to move to electric.

Not if they get value out of the swap they wont be.

I average over 40k miles a year, and it made financial sense to swap to an EV very quickly,

Any high mileage motorist who sees an annual saving of over £5k in fuel burnt and servicing time lost, (plus gains in company fuel payments parking and congestion charge), quickly sees the benefits to pocket.

AnotherJoe

Joe_Horner wrote: »

Are you for real?

It's "no problem" increasing the UK'so electricity supply by nearly 1/3? Remember, it needs to be generated and distributed and to avoid problems that has to be based on peak demand.

EV charging is likely to (broadly) follow current peaks as people get home and plug their cars in but can probably be spread a little off peak by enforced timing (nothe much good if you need your discharged car before your allotted charging slot...), or hefty premium billing for on-peak charging to encourage people to self-regulate. So let's say that the 30% increase in total demand only gives a 20% increase in peak.

In 2005 / 6 (the most recent figures I can find) the peak demand on the national grid (ie: distribution capacity) was about 81%. Add 20% to that and you're running the grid at over 97% of it'so maximum capacity. And that assumes that the demand is perfectly spread according to local capacities, which it will never be.

So we need more generating AND more pylons - and, regardless of need, people don't like pylons unless they're on someone else's skyline!

I’m not as pessimistic as you because I don’t think peak needs to or will rise that much. As said in other posts, everyone is not plugging in every day at 7pm for 12 hours, and those that need to charge every day (a very small minority) will also tend to charge at destinations and enroute, which spreads the load. And if you have a big battery and want to fill it there’s quite an incentive to charge it on off peak rate eg middle of the night. And again, that is not every night.

There’s also a lot more capacity overnight than we currently use, so much so that we actually pay operators to turn wind turbines off at night, so by using that there’s a lot than can be soaked up without needing to increase any generating capacity at all.

What I do agree with is pylons, we do need to shift power down from where it’s windy to where it’s used. And the cost if that isn’t too bad, it’s far less than the ludicrous HS2 scheme for example, and would benefit one heck of a lot more people than a few business people getting London 20 minutes earlier than otherwise. It would probably also inconvenience fewer people than HS2.

AnotherJoe

Stageshoot wrote: »

Not if they get value out of the swap they wont be.

I average over 40k miles a year, and it made financial sense to swap to an EV very quickly,

Any high mileage motorist who sees an annual saving of over £5k in fuel burnt and servicing time lost, (plus gains in company fuel payments parking and congestion charge), quickly sees the benefits to pocket.

That’s a good point, but at the moment most “road warriors” seem to be holdouts, maybe you are in a small minority and setting the trend? I have to be fair seen a few posts from people whose mileage actually means they run their car at positive cost because their employers mileage allowance (based on petrol costs) is more than the electricty, maintenance and lease costs of the car !

But sadly most people doing that sort of mileage (you must live in your car?) seem to have patterns of driving that make it impractical to use an EV - perhaps no destination charging, or the time needed enroute means they can’t fit as many appointments in or they insist that they need to drive for 6 hours at 70mph and can’t afford the time for anything other than a 5 minute pee break (on one forum I was on there was someone literally making that last argument except they didn’t even have the five minute stop according to them !)

And the people who make that type of argument then tend to move from “therefore EVs won’t work for me” to “therefore EVs won’t work for anyone”.

NigeWick

Martyn1981 wrote: »

it'll probably be 10yrs (or more) before car sales are 50%+ EV, and even then they will still make up a minority of cars on the road for another decade or so..

I have to disagree. EVs are already cheaper to run and service. Once batteries are below about £100 per kWh very few people will want to buy a fossil burner as EVs will be cheaper to buy up front too.

It seems that the difference in price between Tesla's shorter and longer range lorries shows that the company is already at or close to US$100 per kWh.

AdrianC

Stageshoot wrote: »

I average over 40k miles a year, and it made financial sense to swap to an EV very quickly

40k/year is 200 miles per working day on average.

Without destination charging, that's Tesla-only territory right now - and even then only if that's a very consistent pattern, such as a regular home-office commute with little in the way of site-visit mileage. A 100 mile each way car commute is very, very rare.

95%+ of the time, my use would be just fine for an EV. BUT... the other 5% of the time, it'd be a showstopper. I've spent much of the last six months doing semi-regular 350 mile, 15hr days with no possibility of destination charging, and that's going to continue for the foreseeable. Short of adding substantially to the length of the day with en-route charging, that's a no-go - so I'd be taking a big chunk out of the days either side to go and collect an IC hire car to make the trip possible.

When the form of transport stops acting as an enabling technology, and starts dictating your actions, something's wrong.

You can instantly spot exactly what the problem to mainstream EV usage is - simply by looking at what metric is quoted. It's not efficiency - the distance per unit fuel/charge - like normal vehicles. It's range. Range is easy to add - simply add more fuel/charge. Efficiency is hard. Until range stops being the primary metric quoted, and efficiency is quoted instead, EVs will remain of marginal usefulness to most people, unless as a second vehicle. And efficiency won't improve, because it's easier to add bigger batteries to increase range.

Stageshoot

AnotherJoe wrote: »

That’s a good point, but at the moment most “road warriors” seem to be holdouts, maybe you are in a small minority and setting the trend? I have to be fair seen a few posts from people whose mileage actually means they run their car at positive cost because their employers mileage allowance (based on petrol costs) is more than the electricty, maintenance and lease costs of the car !

But sadly most people doing that sort of mileage (you must live in your car?) seem to have patterns of driving that make it impractical to use an EV - perhaps no destination charging, or the time needed enroute means they can’t fit as many appointments in or they insist that they need to drive for 6 hours at 70mph and can’t afford the time for anything other than a 5 minute pee break (on one forum I was on there was someone literally making that last argument except they didn’t even have the five minute stop according to them !)

And the people who make that type of argument then tend to move from “therefore EVs won’t work for me” to “therefore EVs won’t work for anyone”.

I do North Notts to Central London and back 3 days a week (145 Miles each way) and out on the road the rest of the week

I used to do the trip in a BMW i3 with a 19kwh battery so had to stop in Milton Keynes on way down ans way back to rapid charge, which became a pain, so got a second EV (Renault Zoe 41kwh) that makes the run without stopping and I can normally get a full charge while parked (For free) in London, if not a quick rapid on way back while having a coffee.

While out on the road, I normally time my breaks to make emails/calls coffee around rapid charge stops and it really does not interfere with my day at all.

And any of these road warriors who claim not to have a 1/2 hour break during the day, I would say they are a danger on the road, and when do they catch up with emails and paperwork.

Its surprising how easily an EV works with life on the road.

AdrianC

NigeWick wrote: »

It seems that the difference in price between Tesla's shorter and longer range lorries shows that the company is already at or close to US$100 per kWh.

Umm, you do know they haven't actually built a single real truck yet? They ANNOUNCED the concept just over a month ago...

AdrianC

Stageshoot wrote: »

I do North Notts to Central London and back 3 days a week

That's what the sodding train's for, !!!!!!...