Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

JKenH

GreatApe wrote: »

Why is so much time and discussion energy spent on BEVs when personal cars produce so little CO2?

Presumably to prove that one has bought an EV for environmental reasons rather than admit, like PV, it is because it saves you money. Now with V2G an EV will even earn you money. On one tariff the last couple of nights you were being paid to fill up the battery.

Some BEVs like the Leaf aren’t that much more expensive than the ICE equivalent. They are so much cheaper to run - no road tax, very low ‘fuel’ costs, reasonable lease costs and incredibly tax efficient. They are infinitely more pleasure able to drive. I am replacing my very fuel efficient, zero road tax Golf with another BEV as I simply don’t want to drive it anymore. It is just so crude.

Forget all the green stuff, just get yourself in an EV and you’ll realise why BEV owners are so smug.

GreatApe

JKenH wrote: »

Presumably to prove that one has bought an EV for environmental reasons rather than admit, like PV, it is because it saves you money. Now with V2G an EV will even earn you money. On one tariff the last couple of nights you were being paid to fill up the battery.

Some BEVs like the Leaf aren’t that much more expensive than the ICE equivalent. They are so much cheaper to run - no road tax, very low ‘fuel’ costs, reasonable lease costs and incredibly tax efficient. They are infinitely more pleasure able to drive. I am replacing my very fuel efficient, zero road tax Golf with another BEV as I simply don’t want to drive it anymore. It is just so crude.

Forget all the green stuff, just get yourself in an EV and you’ll realise why BEV owners are so smug.

I accept that BEVs are a way to save tax in the UK if they fit a person's needs
So no disagreement there

My general point is they don't do much to save any fuel (my estimate for a model 3 or efficient hybrid is that they both use the same amount of primary energy roughly speaking 5,300 units of gas/petrol) and also that either is small in comparison to ones total annual CO2 contribution

Re the performance of BEVs Have you tried a hybrid?
My guess is hybrids will go the way of the RAV4 whereby the hybrid tech is used to boost performance rather than just economy

Re just get a BEV. I am not really a car person I've always tried to just live close enough to work to walk and in my adult life about half of it I've not had a car at all. However I am in the market for a car perhaps a brand new one for February so have been looking into it.

So far I like the corolla hybrid
I was thinking e golf but winter motorway miles are so limited wouldn't work
Both about the same price and if the e golf had another 50 miles I'd go for that
Model 3 is nice but the added insurance pays for most the corolla annual mileage so there isn't a ongoing saving and it costs nearly twice as much and would probably cost more to fix when it does go wrong
Will also be looking at some SUVs before making any decisions

buglawton

GreatApe wrote: »

Why is so much time and discussion energy spent on BEVs when personal cars produce so little CO2?

Average UK household 2.35 persons @ 22T/Yr = 51.7T

Average cars per household 1.1 @ 7,200 miles a year @ 100g/km = 1.3 T from an efficient ICE

So even if you decided you'd just give up cars and walk/cycle everywhere the best you would achieve is a 2.5% reduction in your household fossil fuel burn. Even that's an over estimate because if you walked or cycled 7,200 miles a year you would have to eat more and it takes energy to produce and transport food

So just not using cars is about 2.5% saving (realistically less)
And switching to a model 3 would save this household 0.6% of their annual emmissions

The UK nukes going offline in 3-4 years save more CO2 than converting the entire fleet of UK cars to BEVs. If you want lower CO2 lobby your MP and representatives to encourage EDF to extend UK nuke lives by 10 years.

The result of that would be more than twice the emmissions savings as can be achieved by converting all UK cars to BEVs which in a timeframe of 3 years (or even 15 years) is impossible

I read somewhere that the energy cost of manufacturing a new car of any type apparently is close to or exceeds the entire additional fossil fuel consumption in its lifecycle. So once again we're all grasping the wrong end of the stick.

silverwhistle

almillar wrote: »

Agreed. /SNIP/


For me personally, I ordered my Zoe in May 2015, and the lease was just bundled in with the car monthly cost. Owning the battery would have cost far more and the lease was a no-brainer.
Hoping Renault will do something good, soon, for existing battery lessees (my sister has my car now), now that they've abandoned the idea for the new Zoe.

Just an addendum really, but Renault must realise how many of us buy second hand, and transferring a lease is an additional issue. How did you find it?


As the EV market matures and second hand car numbers increase nobody is going to want the faff of a lease to transfer and then pay for, into old age. As Zeupater mentioned, Renault could be left with lots of returned Zoes on their forecourts..



Plus for single car households the slower charging models make our occasional longer trips so much more difficult.

GreatApe

buglawton wrote: »

I read somewhere that the energy cost of manufacturing a new car of any type apparently is close to or exceeds the entire additional fossil fuel consumption in its lifecycle. So once again we're all grasping the wrong end of the stick.

It depends what the aim is. I doubt cars can be sold on a purely emmissions standard or people would be buying tiny i10s rather than SUVs or simply not driving

People don't care much at all about emmissions
They care about flex and money
People want to save money but they also want to flex
Everything else is either a distant second or is actually one of the two above in another form

Tesla is successful as it's the social media flex car
Arguments about it being affordable or saving money is ridiculous it's neither it's a flex pure and simple.

If we accept this as mostly true and try to figure out the future I think we can say at least 1/4th if cars will become performance BEVs/Hybrids which is good and the other 3/4ths will stay ICE or economy hybrids until the price difference is much smaller


SUVs are also a flex people buy them to show off more than anything else
And it works maybe we don't like it but the billion dollar advertising industry in one way or another advertises for flex. Tesla has this part of the market in its bag and they have a story behind them so the rich can flex while pretending it's not a flex

Overall for environmental reasons BEVs are ridiculous side show for the rich to show off
As I keep saying if the UK extends its old nukes lives by just 10 years that would save more emmissions than converting the WHOLE UK fleet of cars to BEVs (not just nre sales the whole 31 million cars) in fact about 2-3x over. It might take as little as £2 billion bung (in the form of a £50/MWh CFD for 10 years) to do a huge huge quantity of emmissions savings approximately 165 million tons. A BEV saves perhaps 3 tons in its life even a million BEVs only archives around 2% of what keeping the nukes for another 10 years would achieve and a million BEVs would cost the government £7-10 billion in subsidies for only 2% of the result

Hexane

buglawton wrote: »

I read somewhere that the energy cost of manufacturing a new car of any type apparently is close to or exceeds the entire additional fossil fuel consumption in its lifecycle. So once again we're all grasping the wrong end of the stick.

I read somewhere that the energy cost of designing, manufacturing, providing documentation, providing all regulatory and environmental requirements, transporting, installing, servicing, guarding against carbon monoxide deaths, removing, recycling, replacing, and so on, of an ordinary gas boiler, is close to or exceeeds the entire fossil fuel consumption in its lifetime. Or I might have just made that up, but I do see a great many dirty diesel vans driving around doing all of the above. And still no-one is giving up their gas boilers just yet...

GreatApe

Hexane wrote: »

I read somewhere that the energy cost of designing, manufacturing, providing documentation, providing all regulatory and environmental requirements, transporting, installing, servicing, guarding against carbon monoxide deaths, removing, recycling, replacing, and so on, of an ordinary gas boiler, is close to or exceeeds the entire fossil fuel consumption in its lifetime. Or I might have just made that up, but I do see a great many dirty diesel vans driving around doing all of the above. And still no-one is giving up their gas boilers just yet...

This is definitely false
Gas boilers also use significantly more energy than a car and the savings are real savings while BEVs by in large just shift fuel burn from oil to gas or coal with little to no savings (depending on the local grid)
Gas boiler upgrades are a net energy saver for sure

However they might not be a £££ saving exercise simply because old boilers were so simple they never really break. My old house had a boiler installed 1974 and it was still going when I vacated so about 46 years old. Never had it inspected or maintained either and I don't recall when it was last inspected but it was more than a decade before I moved in as the old tag was still on the thing

If a new boiler needs annual maintenance and has a 15 year life and costs £2-3k to install you might be better off financially not bothering. But fuel wise it definite a net energy saver

ABrass

I'm pretty sure that's !!!!!!!!, at least for ICEs. In the past it was about 25% of the carbon cost to produce, 75% to run.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1093657_buying-a-new-car-is-greener-than-driving-an-old-one-really

Now the ratio should be moving the other way as the cars are getting more efficient, especially electric cars. However that's a long long way to go.

With BEVs in France, or anywhere with lots of Hydro or nukes, then since the electricity is virtually carbon free then of course the cars construction makes up the majority.

Hexane

GreatApe wrote: »

Gas boilers also use significantly more energy than a car

You sure? My current ICE car is rated at just under 200kW.

JKenH

GreatApe wrote: »

This is definitely false
Gas boilers also use significantly more energy than a car and the savings are real savings while BEVs by in large just shift fuel burn from oil to gas or coal with little to no savings (depending on the local grid)

For those of us lucky enough to have solar panels and be at home in the daytime there are probably 6 months in the year when a BEV can be run from solar PV. (I imagine there is a high correlation between domestic PV and EV ownership.) As BEVs become more mainstream and wind power develops further the grid will be structured to accommodate overnight charging. Workplace charging might well also lead to roll out of more solar PV specifically for that purpose.particularly in sunnier climes. The argument that all the energy they consume is marginal generation powered by !!!!!! will then apply to a much more limited extent.