Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

JKenH

GreatApe wrote: »

Marginal supply is 380g/KWh

The breakdown of 2019 emissions from electricity generation is as follows

Coal 1.97%
Gas 39.48%
Solar 3.93%
Wind 19.87%
Hydro 1.22%
Pumped Storage 0.58%
Imports & Exports 8.58% (approx 48% France, 25% Netherlands, 20% Belgium, 5% Ireland, 2% N.Ireland)
Biomass 6.18%
Nuclear 18.18%

Martyn1981

First the boring bit, blah, blah, blah (Marty has a rant) about the somewhat unlevel playing field due to oil subsidies (please note these are subsidies, not the full externality costs of FF burning, estimated at around $5tn):

Taxpayers Give $400 Billion To Oil Companies Each Year, Enough For 91 Tesla Gigafactories

The entire world gives $400 billion in subsidies to oil companies. An article by The Atlantic asks this question: Is that bad? The answer, to me, is obvious — yes.

The article, noting that we spend $400 billion on oil subsidies globally, indicates that taxpayers want their governments to stop subsidizing this rich, over-mature industry, yet politicians keep the money funneling toward them. It is estimated that Tesla Gigafactory 4 in Germany will cost approximately $4.4 billion. That means you could build ~91 gigafactories for the cost of one year of global oil subsidies.

They sign treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol, which called for the governments to stop subsidizing these greenhouse gas emitting sectors, or they make agreements as they did at the G20 summit to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. But they don’t do it. President Obama declared that “a century of subsidies to the oil companies is long enough.” Despite all of this, our global governments are still giving taxpayer money to the oil companies.

We are talking the talk but not walking the walk. Each government is going around saying, “stop this,” while also doing the very thing it’s asking other governments to stop.

Martyn1981

And on to the fun bit, a good ole ponder about the type of BEV many of us would love to see, possibly from 'Telsa'!

Loads of interesting ideas and thoughts. My main 'concern' regarding a smaller BEV, like the Leaf perhaps, is that as you go smaller the offerings (in the ICE World) multiply, which reduce total sales numbers, and since smaller cars have lower profit margins, that's a double hit to trying to make a profitable small car. Nissan and Renault are yet to make them profitable, and Tesla is only just on the right side of the knife edge with larger luxury models.

Anyways, on to the thoughts and ponders:

Telsa Model 2, What The World Wants — Help Us Design It & Cut Costs!

NigeWick

Martyn1981 wrote: »

My main 'concern' regarding a smaller BEV, like the Leaf perhaps, is that as you go smaller the offerings (in the ICE World) multiply, which reduce total sales numbers, and since smaller cars have lower profit margins, that's a double hit to trying to make a profitable small car. Nissan and Renault are yet to make them profitable, and Tesla is only just on the right side of the knife edge with larger luxury models.

But, it IS the cheaper end of the market that needs BEVs. Hopefully young Master Musk & Co can come up with a winner soon. I specify Tesla as legacy makers are only interested in higher profit margins and Musk is more concerned with preventing climate breakdown.

silverwhistle

I've just got my appointment to install smart meters to enable me to use Octopus Agile and hope that my next car will be an EV, assuming second hand prices come down a bit. Thanks to EV&PV for the heads up about the Ohme.



With time of day tariffs such as Agile you are very much incentivised not to use peak power when more inefficient plant has been brought in to play. The other day there were even a couple of nights when the pricing went negative - minus 5p at one stage! Presumably they must have been in danger of curtailing wind and there would have been little or any coal in the mix.



Not sure where this leaves the arguments about marginal costs, although I'll leave almillar (thanks!) to respond to any of the usual obfuscation..

JKenH

silverwhistle wrote: »

With time of day tariffs such as Agile you are very much incentivised not to use peak power when more inefficient plant has been brought in to play. The other day there were even a couple of nights when the pricing went negative - minus 5p at one stage! Presumably they must have been in danger of curtailing wind and there would have been little or any coal in the mix.

Unfortunately you will not be able to see this as you have me on ignore but, in case any one else is interested, at 3.29 am on 9th December when Agile went almost 5p negative emissions were still surprisingly 100g/kWh. Coal was contributing 3.39%.

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2019-12-09&&_k=ylmq95

GreatApe

JKenH wrote: »

Unfortunately you will not be able to see this as you have me on ignore but, in case any one else is interested, at 3.29 am on 9th December when Agile went almost 5p negative emissions were still surprisingly 100g/kWh. Coal was contributing 3.39%.

https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/dashboard?start=2019-12-09&&_k=ylmq95

This is because those coal and gas plants were required for ancillary services
National grid is hoping to put in place technologies by 2025 that can provide those ancillary services outside of NG/Coal plants

As such sometimes in 2025 might be zero fossil fuels for some small periods of time.
Assuming what they put in place works

But the grid is going to change so much from now to 2025 it's hard to tell what it will look like come 2025. Half the reactors closed. Perhaps 6+ new interconntors finished. A gas boiler ban on new builds. More offshore wind. And how will demand development via Electrified transport and heating.

Overall it's positive (apart from the old nukes closing)
But just like the last decade more will be achieved via efficiency improvements in cars and buildings and electrical items than will be achieved by greening the grid.

GreatApe

JKenH wrote: »

2019 190g/kWh

X 335,000,000,000 = 63.65 million tons
Out of emmissions this year of around 350 million tons
Therefore electricity is only 18% of emmissions

Even if wind farms produced all UK electricity the reduction in co2 emmissions from this point on would be just 18% and the UK isn't targeting 100% clean grid for 2030 because well it's not technically possible without huge quantities of storage

What this shows is the UK should be putting more effort into the other 82% of emmissions
Heating is both easy and hard but that should be the aim for the 2020s
A mix of heat pumps and resistance heaters with perhaps the government deciding to install for 'free' a heat pump on every suitable social property. Perhaps 4 of the 5 Million social homes would be suitable. This would create an industry and the skills needed to fit heat pumps for the 25 million non social homes

Maybe also require private landlords to install air to air heat pumps and hot water immersion heater tanks. That covers 10 million homes about 1 million a year in the 2020s. Also bring forward the 2025 boiler ban on new builds to 2021

Transport can be regulated so emmissions are no more than 105g/km which would be like taking 1/3rd of cars off the road. And in 2030 all cars can be required to be hybrid with some plug in capabilities perhaps just 3KWh = 15 miles urban. Doesn't sound a lot but the average UK trip is 8 miles so if there were slow chargers everywhere then this 15 mile hybrid would cover the bulk of miles actually driven.

Max out economic insulation
And regulate for efficiency on all electrical appliances


Pay attention to the 82% especially as that is less politically controversial and hopefully economic to do.

Martyn1981

NigeWick wrote: »

But, it IS the cheaper end of the market that needs BEVs. Hopefully young Master Musk & Co can come up with a winner soon. I specify Tesla as legacy makers are only interested in higher profit margins and Musk is more concerned with preventing climate breakdown.

Only pondering out loud, but I reckon they could do it, almost easily, but to be profitable they will need to sell (like the TM3) 250,000+ pa..

I'm guessing here, obviously, so just for fun, but if the TM3 SR+ is ~£42k before incentives, then if they cut the battery size/range down from 250 miles to 150 miles (in size), but got perhaps 200 miles in a smaller/lighter car, plus the cost savings of a smaller car, plus savings from lessons learned producing the TM3 and TM3 production lines, plus perhaps a small drop in technology/luxury, then they'd probably be hitting £30k and competing against Leaf's, Kona's etc..

I wonder if they could do that and be profitable?

Next ponder would be to go a bit smaller again, and perhaps 150 mile range, and aim for mid to low £20k's?

[Tesla aside, I do hope that Nissan and Renault can go profitable too, as they've certainly done a lot of the heavy lifting for BEV's in Europe and deserve some rewards now. M.]

ABrass

In the past Musk has said that he doesn't see the point in building a smaller car than the model 3 as autonomous driving will allow lower transport costs and make it pointless.

He might change his mind, but a supermini Tesla is going to be a good few years away (the model Y is heavily based on the 3 and that is taking about three years from first hints to hitting production) and I don't think they're interested in competing at the budget end or in the short range market.