Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

JKenH

What is best for the country is that we have a strong economy and a resilient secure grid. It matters not a jot what we do in terms of emissions on the world stage so we need to look after our own interests. Shackling our economy with high fuel prices and carbon taxes only drives manufacturing elsewhere. 

China and India are still developing coal fired power stations because that is what is best for their economies. China has invested in renewables because it lacks fossil fuel resources, not for any altruistic reasons.

Totalitarian states pursue policies that keep the leaders securely in power protecting them against both internal and external threats and pressures. China, dependent on foreign sourced fossil fuels, is desperate to see the world rotate to renewable energy where its vast resources of minerals required to drive the next energy revolution will increase its economic and political power.

Democratic governments in stable countries pursue policies that they think will get them elected again, all the while trying to steal their opponents ground. Long term planning is meaningless. Germany has ditched nuclear for political reasons, not to give itself energy security or save the environment. The politicians that make such decisions know that they will no longer be in power when the seeds they threw down are harvested. No need for them to worry by then, as with a generous pension and a few directorships they have a comfortably feathered nest. (Think EU bureaucrats here not just our own MPs).

The Tories have flip-flopped on energy policy from David Cameron exhorting the government to “Vote Blue, Go Green” and promising to lead the “greenest government ever” to “let’s get rid of this green stuff that’s driving up energy bills”. We then have Boris switching from climate denier in 2015 to announcing “Britain will become the Qatar of hydrogen” and the “Saudi Arabia of wind power”. 

When energy bills, that have doubled in the space of a year, start landing on voters’ doormats and the government is faced with another political crisis, what will the response be? Those hoping that Partygate will be the end of Boris might want to think again as a new leader might mean another switch of direction with energy policy if that is what is seen as being likely to appease the public. 

On the other point, government sponsored research is very different from supporting manufacturing which is what you were suggesting. The Chinese can do manufacturing so much cheaper, what is the point? Well, to support UK industry you might say; if so, then why cripple it with high energy costs and carbon taxes? Governments (in the widest sense) love to take with one hand then give back with another. It simply adds another layer or two of bureaucracy and costs for the taxpayer to pick up. 

Increased dependence on the state tends to be good for those who control it. Compare how popular Kim Jong-Un is to, say, Joe Biden

Martyn1981

NigeWick said:

Grumpy_chap said:

We could simply not have EVs and life will go on.  Likewise we could simply not have ICEVs and life will go on.  

We could simply not have a Covid vaccine and life would go on. The decisions to be made are "what is best for the country?" 

I believe the country investing in renewables & storage, BEVs, Lithium extraction and etc is the way to go. You obviously do not. Many profitable products come from government sponsored research and development. 

Yep. Normally you can leave things to the market, but since it doesn't reflect the true cost (externalities), and we are time limited to do something, we need the Gov (and all Gov's) to lean on the scales and correct the imbalance. We've all acted far too late, but at least we now have action, and it's steadily growing. Plus the disruptive technologies, such as RE, BEV's etc are actually superior in so many ways, so win, win.

JKenH

michaels said:

ABrass said:

JKenH said:

EVandPV said:

BP: Fast Chargers Become Almost As Profitable As Fuel Pumps

It's outstanding news that fast chargers become almost as profitable as fuel pumps. It's an expected result of a few major factors, including higher power chargers, multiple stalls per station, and a higher number of cars that also can accept higher power and have bigger batteries.

https://insideevs.com/news/560953/bp-fast-chargers-profitability/amp/

I find it difficult to reconcile this this claim by BP with the comment from Chris Goodall which Mart kindly posted on his G&E news thread.

Conversion of petrol stations to EV charging. Will all petrol/gasoline stations eventually shift to charging electric cars? Shell set an example in London last week when it opened a site with 9 rapid and ultra-rapid chargers, replacing all existing petrol pumps at the site. The financial returns from EV charging might disappoint the company. A petrol pump can pour about 500 kWh of energy into a vehicle in a minute. At current prices this might generate a financial margin of about £5/$6.50 in that period. This is approximately thirty times the likely margin from EV charging of most electric cars, which can only absorb a maximum charge rate of less than 1 kilowatt hour a minute. Old petrol stations are terrible places for car charging. 

Less than 1kWh a minute? That's a 50kW charger, not the 175kW chargers they installed.

And it all depends on the price you charge for the electricity. I'm guessing BP won't be selling at cost.

It's the same old thing, play with the numbers enough and you can make anything look true.

Plus the big margin is not in commodity petrol retail but in the coffee shops and convenience retail, and as people put their cars to charge and then wait remotely rather than pump, pay and go there is a huge opportunity to increase these sales with EV charging.

JKenH said:

ABrass said:

JKenH said:

EVandPV said:

BP: Fast Chargers Become Almost As Profitable As Fuel Pumps

It's outstanding news that fast chargers become almost as profitable as fuel pumps. It's an expected result of a few major factors, including higher power chargers, multiple stalls per station, and a higher number of cars that also can accept higher power and have bigger batteries.

https://insideevs.com/news/560953/bp-fast-chargers-profitability/amp/

I find it difficult to reconcile this this claim by BP with the comment from Chris Goodall which Mart kindly posted on his G&E news thread.

Conversion of petrol stations to EV charging. Will all petrol/gasoline stations eventually shift to charging electric cars? Shell set an example in London last week when it opened a site with 9 rapid and ultra-rapid chargers, replacing all existing petrol pumps at the site. The financial returns from EV charging might disappoint the company. A petrol pump can pour about 500 kWh of energy into a vehicle in a minute. At current prices this might generate a financial margin of about £5/$6.50 in that period. This is approximately thirty times the likely margin from EV charging of most electric cars, which can only absorb a maximum charge rate of less than 1 kilowatt hour a minute. Old petrol stations are terrible places for car charging. 

Less than 1kWh a minute? That's a 50kW charger, not the 175kW chargers they installed.

And it all depends on the price you charge for the electricity. I'm guessing BP won't be selling at cost.

It's the same old thing, play with the numbers enough and you can make anything look true.

If this forum is anything to go by, hardly anyone does much (paid for) rapid charging except at Tesla chargers. 

This is I think a bigger issue, I suspect at least 50% of EV charging will happen at home/work (most of the time for those with off street parking or workplace chargers) so a smaller market than for fossil fuel (plus the increased efficiencies) so perhaps only 11/6th (3 x as efficient, 50% home/work charging) as many kwh to be sold at fuelling stations compared to ICE - plus a more lumpy demand, the 50% (?) without charger access will still fill up weekly but for the remainder they will only need to fill up in fuel station about 5% of the time when they make long trips - we already see this with Tesla in the states where their chargers see huge 'peaks' on the holiday driving weekends.

Currently I think home/work charging accounts for around two thirds of EV charging. I don’t know what proportion top up on free destination chargers but I would be surprised if rapids account for more than 20% of charging. As EV ownership trickles down to the less well off members of society there will be fewer who can charge at home but on the other hand they will probably undertake fewer long journeys so will have less need to rapid charge. Batteries are getting bigger and that will significantly reduce the need for rapids. I have probably used a rapid charger on half a dozen trips in the last 6 months usually charging once but on a couple of trips twice and three times on one trip. Had I had a Tesla M3LR none of those charging stops would have been necessary.

I take your point about coffee shop and convenience shop sales. However, my experience of petrol station shop sales is that customers just pop in for say a sandwich and drink or takeaway coffee and perhaps to use the toilets as well as paying for fuel. The amount of time they spend in the shops is perhaps 5 minutes which might give a total time of the pump being occupied of, say, 10 minutes. If EV customers are going to spend 30 minutes total time (allowing for plugging in and starting the charge) then unless the number of chargers is increased compared to pumps then the throughput (potential shop customers) will reduce by two thirds. 

Martyn1981

Updated Cybertruck is still as stunning / !!!!!! (delete as appropriate) as ever. Assuming they are getting closer to production, then the general design is remaining largely unchanged.

Love the honesty at the end of the article.


Leaked photos show new Tesla Cybertruck design with no door handles, removable wheel covers

I still do respect the idea of doing something different, and perhaps the manufacturing cost savings from a simpler design will turn out to be beneficial, but I’d still never want to be seen driving one myself. Luckily there are many other electric truck options available now or soon for prospective buyers depending on how radical your aesthetic tastes tend to skew – the F-150 Lightning, Silverado EV, Rivian and Hummer EV, roughly in that order.

orrery

Grumpy_chap said:

I'm not sure that we can expect the UK Government or the Devolved Assemblies (of any political hue) to make significant investments in something that, ultimately, must be able to survive as a private enterprise.

On the face of it, I agree with those sentiments. There is a big 'but' though, or several in this case...

You can't sell EVs unless there are chargers. Chicken and Egg.

Private enterprise can't make money from charging unless there are lots of EVs. C&E again.

Making 'charging' pay will be difficult: you need high utilisation to keep costs down.

High utilisation is impossible with few chargers (EVs won't queue for hours on end)

The system can only work with large installations, with high numbers of chargers, so waiting time is just a few minutes.

We can't get to that state until there are lots of EVs to generate the income.

So, if you don't get some intelligent form of subsidy then you end up with lots of Ecotricity's. People put lots of investment in with no chance of an ongoing return and eventually run out of money and the system collapses. We've had Ecotricity and we've had other networks before that - Source East for one.

JKenH

Martyn1981 said:

Updated Cybertruck is still as stunning / !!!!!! (delete as appropriate) as ever. Assuming they are getting closer to production, then the general design is remaining largely unchanged.

Love the honesty at the end of the article.


Leaked photos show new Tesla Cybertruck design with no door handles, removable wheel covers

I still do respect the idea of doing something different, and perhaps the manufacturing cost savings from a simpler design will turn out to be beneficial, but I’d still never want to be seen driving one myself. Luckily there are many other electric truck options available now or soon for prospective buyers depending on how radical your aesthetic tastes tend to skew – the F-150 Lightning, Silverado EV, Rivian and Hummer EV, roughly in that order.

No door handles! That will be annoying when you are stuffing the truck full of cardboard boxes or carpet to take to the tip. How many times have I cursed the electric tailgate that slowly comes down, decides it can’t latch and slowly goes up again. After pushing stuff in the back I like to give the door a good slam, try again after rearranging … until it closes. Waiting for an electric motor to slowly do its stuff 2 or 3 times will be frustrating. 

And what about when the door seals freeze. No chance of giving it a good yank.

Form over function. 

QrizB

JKenH said:

And what about when the door seals freeze. No chance of giving it a good yank.

An opportunity for heated door seals to go with heated seats, screens and mirrors?

But I agree, a number of recent "improvements" to motor vehicles have been for the worse.

JKenH

orrery said:

Grumpy_chap said:

I'm not sure that we can expect the UK Government or the Devolved Assemblies (of any political hue) to make significant investments in something that, ultimately, must be able to survive as a private enterprise.

On the face of it, I agree with those sentiments. There is a big 'but' though, or several in this case...

You can't sell EVs unless there are chargers. Chicken and Egg.

Private enterprise can't make money from charging unless there are lots of EVs. C&E again.

Making 'charging' pay will be difficult: you need high utilisation to keep costs down.

High utilisation is impossible with few chargers (EVs won't queue for hours on end)

The system can only work with large installations, with high numbers of chargers, so waiting time is just a few minutes.

We can't get to that state until there are lots of EVs to generate the income.

So, if you don't get some intelligent form of subsidy then you end up with lots of Ecotricity's. People put lots of investment in with no chance of an ongoing return and eventually run out of money and the system collapses. We've had Ecotricity and we've had other networks before that - Source East for one.

This is the problem when you interfere in the free market. Left to their own devices EVs and chargers would either reach an equilibrium where charging becomes economic for both user and charge point operator or the model fails and we just use EVs locally filling up from home or destination chargers which effectively are subsidised. Larger batteries while apparently good for the user may make stand alone charge point operation uneconomic. 

In the free market, if government didn’t interfere and mandate that sales ICEvs are to be banned, those who needed longer range would continue to use ICEvs/petrol stations while we would use EVs for journeys where a rapid charge wasn’t needed. As more EVs hit the road there would be less ICEvs and less demand for petrol stations so the less economic ones would die out until there were very few petrol stations left. Using ICEvs would then become less convenient and sales would fall further and more petrol stations would close. (Or the price of fuel would rise until it became economic to operate them.)

With the demise of ICEvs increased demand for rapids from those undertaking long journeys should drive the opening of rapids at key locations, perhaps motorways, but at a price. If we want bigger batteries in our EVs we must accept that we will drive some rapids out of business and pay more for those that stay in operation. 

orrery

JKenH said:

This is the problem when you interfere in the free market. Left to their own devices EVs and chargers would either reach an equilibrium where charging becomes economic for both user and charge point operator or the model fails and we just use EVs locally filling up from home or destination chargers which effectively are subsidised. Larger batteries while apparently good for the user may make stand alone charge point operation uneconomic.

You articulate the problems well. Unfortunately, the free market isn't concerned for climate change - we need to 'prime the pumps' in order to make it happen quickly. Otherwise there will be a serious campaign, as we head for 2030,  to delay the date because there is still no usable charging infrastructure - we can't have all the networks descending into some Ecotricity-like state of dereliction (and we are perilously close with BP Pulse now).

This doesn't need to be public money in the form of taxation. It could be a cross subsidy/levy where petrol/diesel sales subsidise charging and ICE sales subsidise EV sales. In intelligent scheme would ensure a low levy on large volume ICE sales and a high subsidy of EV, progressively moving over to a large levy on small volumes of ICE sales and small subsidy on large volumes of EV sales, and similar on fuel and charging, until the small subsidies are meaningless.

Sadly, the free market had failed us in so many areas recently.

QrizB

JKenH said:

orrery said:

On the face of it, I agree with those sentiments. There is a big 'but' though, or several in this case...

You can't sell EVs unless there are chargers. Chicken and Egg.

Private enterprise can't make money from charging unless there are lots of EVs. C&E again.

Making 'charging' pay will be difficult: you need high utilisation to keep costs down.

High utilisation is impossible with few chargers (EVs won't queue for hours on end)

The system can only work with large installations, with high numbers of chargers, so waiting time is just a few minutes.

We can't get to that state until there are lots of EVs to generate the income.

So, if you don't get some intelligent form of subsidy then you end up with lots of Ecotricity's. People put lots of investment in with no chance of an ongoing return and eventually run out of money and the system collapses. We've had Ecotricity and we've had other networks before that - Source East for one.

This is the problem when you interfere in the free market.

It's a bit like railways in the 19th Century. There was a huge surge in railway building, the venture capitalists of the day couldn't get enough of railway company shares, and you couldn't throw a Dickens novel without hitting a railway under construction.

Some of the railways succeeded, a lot of them failed. The failed ones were either taken over by their competitors or closed down.

I get the feeling we're in a similar place with EV charging networks now.