Electric Cars Good for planet or just bad?

DrEskimo

Aylesbury_Duck wrote: »

Isn’t it a bit rich to point at China and India and criticise their contribution to pollution, when a lot of their manufacturing- and transportation-based consumption of resources and production of pollution results from the unnecessary plastic and electrical crap we are continually buying from them and asking them to ship and fly around the world to us? We can hardly claim total innocence of any blame in their contribution to the problem.

Indeed...

It's also not true that India and China are one of the top polluters when expressed per Capita. As of 2014, China was similar to the UK, and India is very low:

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC

DrEskimo

motorguy wrote: »

You dont need to keep an EV topped up all the time. Just charge it when you need to.

As has been subsequently said, charge it up later or the next day.

The problem is you're thinking like an Internal Combustion Engine user and not grasping that we will have to adapt our lifestyles slightly to suit EVs.

Its not going to work if everyone says - "oh well i'm not going to accept an electric car unless it has a range of 600 miles and i can charge it in two minutes like i can get a fill of petrol".

Just to add, IMHO, it is adaptation for the better. I find it more convenient than visiting a petrol station, I find it less onerous, and of course the biggest advantage, it is substantially cheaper!

motorguy

DrEskimo wrote: »

Just to add, IMHO, it is adaptation for the better. I find it more convenient than visiting a petrol station, I find it less onerous, and of course the biggest advantage, it is substantially cheaper!

Yes, and for many people it would be charge at home anyway.

I think the next few years will see a big change in the EV offerings.

Up to now there have been either cheap(ish) but utilitarian / odd looking EVs or very expensive but cool / high tech stuff. Theres now more civil looking mainstream cars coming.

• VW have the e-Golf, which looks like a normal car.
• MINI have the MINI E. Could be fun to drive and seems to have moved the game on in terms of pricing, which could force others to drop prices.
• Some of the Hyundai / KIA offerings look promising.

I do think by the time we are due a change of car a full EV will be viable that meets not just our "needs" of a car, but also our "wants" - fun to drive and decent performance.

Jonesya

Supersonos wrote: »

But what happens when you need to charge and the only available spaces are non-charging ones?

All the points you make are perfectly sensible, until you imagine a time when all cars are EVs. That just won't work. To keep 40 million cars "topped-up" requires an awful lot of charging points. And a lot of cables draped across parking spaces, pavements etc.

And you would have said exactly the same thing about fueling petrol vehicles when they were first introduced.

Fuel was sold in containers from chemists and hardware stores, how would these stores manage to supply all the cars, think of the containers, the manual handling, the hazards from spills and leaks. No, it simply isn't possible to supply all these petrol vehicles with fuel!

But the world isn't fixed and people and companies work over decades to solve problems and improve things. We found a way to safely deliver a hazardous, volatile, explosive fuel to millions of petrol vehicles, finding ways to charge large numbers of EVs is equally possible.

Aylesbury_Duck

This is a really interesting thread. It’s nice to read some informed and intelligent insight into the challenges and opportunities presented by electric vehicles without it descending into the usual slanging match and people calling one another dinosaurs or tree-huggers. I’ve learned a lot over two pages so far.

Joe_Horner

Jonesya wrote: »

We found a way to safely deliver a hazardous, volatile, explosive fuel to millions of petrol vehicles, finding ways to charge large numbers of EVs is equally possible.

But we didn't do that overnight, or with an installed user base of 10s of millions of people already reliant on cars for their daily lives. There was also the small fact that then (as of now), if you were going somewhere in your new automobile where fuel may not be available then you just put some extra bottle of it in your boot at the start.

That's partly because of the extreme energy density of liquid fuels - of the order of 45MJ per kg compared to current battery technologies at around 0.7MJ per kg, meaning that you'd need to carry a spare battery weighing around 100kg just to get the "emergency" range of a gallon can of petrol (assuming typical 30% efficiency from the petrol and 100% efficiency from the electric)! Of course, carrying that extra 100kg is going to dent your energy use pretty significantly in itself!

That's not to say it can't, or won't, be done but it really isn't the simple matter of political will that some suggest.

Jonesya

We have an electricity network which covers the whole country, so the EV "fuel" is potentially accessible almost everywhere but the barrier is the lack of dispensing facilities, the charge points.

For people with offroad parking, they can provide their own charging for daily use, but remote and on road is an issue.

Then there's a chicken and egg, which comes first type problem; private investors won't roll out a mass charging network until they know there's the demand and they will earn a decent return, and people are reluctant to buy EVs, or the more affordable ones with smaller batteries until they are confident of charger provision.

Politics can help, it can stimulate uptake of EVs which then helps make the charging networks viable, or offer support to building out networks. It also has a vital role to play in clarifying the regulation arrangements and rights to develop on-street charging infrastructure, which is currently hampered by uncertainty and council's role in the process.

motorguy

Jonesya wrote: »

We have an electricity network which covers the whole country, so the EV "fuel" is potentially accessible almost everywhere but the barrier is the lack of dispensing facilities, the charge points.

For people with offroad parking, they can provide their own charging for daily use, but remote and on road is an issue.

Then there's a chicken and egg, which comes first type problem; private investors won't roll out a mass charging network until they know there's the demand and they will earn a decent return, and people are reluctant to buy EVs, or the more affordable ones with smaller batteries until they are confident of charger provision.

Politics can help, it can stimulate uptake of EVs which then helps make the charging networks viable, or offer support to building out networks. It also has a vital role to play in clarifying the regulation arrangements and rights to develop on-street charging infrastructure, which is currently hampered by uncertainty and council's role in the process.

Agreed. Theres nothing there that isnt surmountable.

silverwhistle

Jonesya wrote: »

We have an electricity network which covers the whole country, so the EV "fuel" is potentially accessible almost everywhere but the barrier is the lack of dispensing facilities, the charge points.

I read an account from a US perspective of somebody touring out in the desert west. He pointed out that petrol stations were few and far between, with many of the smaller ones closing, but that you could at least granny charge in far more locations if push came to shove.


Having let my fuel get a bit low on a long distance trip in France once and then finding the next service station closed I've suffered range anxiety in an ICE as well!

Sea_Shell

As it is, the national grid have to carefully monitor output to produce enough juice for everyone at half time of major football matches or at the end of EastEnders.

What are their plans from everyone getting home from work, at say, 6pm and plugging the car in.

Got any candles!!???;)