Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

JKenH

Volkswagen Subsidiary Skoda’s Electric Enyaq Might Be Too Successful

The West European market for electric cars has grown quickly from scratch to about 1.2 million last year but has settled into a narrow range of mainly medium to high priced SUVs, with no sign of any attempt to cater for the mass market. Analysts at French auto consultancy Inovevsaid manufacturers appear to be happy to sell less volume with higher profits per car.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2022/05/03/volkswagen-subsidiary-skodas-electric-enyaq-might-be-too-successful/

JKenH

Cheaper hydrogen fuel cell could mean better green energy options

Imperial researchers have developed a hydrogen fuel cell that uses iron instead of rare and costly platinum, enabling greater use of the technology.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/235714/cheaper-hydrogen-fuel-cell-could-mean/

JKenH

Mercedes Electric City Buses Will Rule Europe Soon

• Daimler Buses plans to offer CO2-neutral city buses in Europe by 2030, and to launch the first intercity electric bus by 2025.
• The bus maker plans to offer hydrogen fuel cells as a range extender on its battery-electric Mercedes-Benz eCitaro buses, 600 of which have already been produced.
• Hydrogen is increasingly seen as a promising technology for heavy trucks along highway routes from ports to warehouses, with hydrogen infrastructure along busy routes in Europe.

https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a39892884/daimler-electric-mercedes-ecitaro-bus/

Martyn1981

The BEV monster that is Norway continues to impress. The fleet is now about 17% BEV and 23% PEV. That's a big drop in petrol / diesel fuel sales, possibly even bigger if the PEV's are doing more than average mileage for the fleet, being newer.

Norway’s April EV Market Share At 84%, Fleet Share At 23%

April’s combined plugin share of 84.2% comprised 74.1% full battery electrics (BEVs) and 10.1% plugin hybrids (PHEVs), which continues a move towards BEVs over the past 18 months. BEVs are strongly up from 54.9% share YoY, though PHEVs are down, from 25.2% share.

In volume terms, BEVs were flat YoY, whereas PHEVs were down by over 70% (3,316 down to 982). Plugless volumes combined were down by about 40% YoY, with petrol seeing the smallest volume drop, and diesel the biggest.

If we assume an annual transition to plugins (and soon BEVs only) of 6%, over 70% of the fleet will be plugin by 2030. However, I expect it will accelerate to be closer to 7% annual turnover, as noted above. If that’s the case it will be around 80% plugins by 2030, almost all of them full BEVs. Since older cars typically get driven less than new ones, the fuel demand for this aging fleet of combustion-only vehicles is declining at a faster rate than the raw fleet composition numbers.

In 2030, since most of those remaining 20% combustion cars will be at least 10 years old, and each driven much less than the median vehicle, I expect Norway’s passenger vehicle road fuel demand to be around 10% of its pre-transition levels.

2nd_time_buyer

JKenH said:

This forum needs to be more than a channel churning out pro RE press releases and shouting down any one who puts forward an alternative point of view. It also needs to be less tribal, less cult like less insecure, perhaps. EVs and RE are here to stay. Fossil fuels are on the way out so why does everyone get so up set if a downside to a particular RE technology is mentioned? No technology is perfect, they all have pros and cons. It’s good to hear both sides (or rather to most people it is). I welcome reasoned argument in response to something I post but when a contributor ascribes a totally different interpretation eg that “EVs are bad” when nothing like that has been suggested or falls back on the old cliche that it is the oil industry up to its tricks again and then gets multiple thanks it just demeans the whole forum. 

I disagree, my experience of forums is they often work best when they try to form a consensus view. I am very grateful for those who post on developments with RE and BEVs and my experience is that posters are more than happy to discuss relative pros and cons. I think most posters are probably less interested in fossil fuels and ice vehicles because it is a "green and ethical" board.

Personally, I don't think the forum "needs" to be anything other than what it is i.e. a very useful source of information and help.

orrery

JKenH said:

As @Grumpy_chap says, this misconception might be more widespread than you realise.

There is no misconception. We understand perfectly well what we are talking about.

No-one thinks that zero-emissions means that there were no emissions in making the cars, or that somehow the tyres used on EVs are miraculously better than those used on ICE vehicles when it comes to particulates. Just that the motive power (the part we would compare with the petrol or diesel) has zero (added) emissions. Without this, we can't make the transition to a fully renewable energy economy - we have to start somewhere.

The point you are making is a dangerous one. There are a lot of people who really do have misconceptions about EVs and you only have to read the comments section in the Daily Mail on-line after any piece on EVs to see the trash being talked. You only need to read the stories about neighbours telling EV owners that they have old technology and they are going to have to swap them for the newer "self-charging" hybrids, or that EVs create more particulates from brakes. We had it with solar panels too (they take more CO2 that they save during their lifetime).

What you need to understand is that there was a (now) well established playbook created by the tobacco industry, where 'scientific institutions' were set up, funded by donations from law companies, who were themselves retained by the tobacco companies. These 'institutions' published pseudo scientific papers, held international conferences and wrote for major newspapers on how the science about tobacco doing harm was dodgy and in some sort of doubt. That playbook is now being used by climate change deniers - and some of the people involved are the same - who are trying as hard as possible to cast doubt on the whole sector. There can be no doubt that many of these stories are being fed into the press behind the scenes by these bad actors.

We still see the usual: the sun doesn't shine every day and the wind doesn't blow for 365 days every year, as though no-one involved in planning a renewable energy economy had spotted that, or that you can't guarantee that the electrons you use came from a wind farm, rather than the gas plant down the road..

We don't need more stories, making trivial points, that can be spun in the comments section of the Daily Mail, where there are plenty of misconceptions.

Exiled_Tyke

2nd_time_buyer said:

JKenH said:

This forum needs to be more than a channel churning out pro RE press releases and shouting down any one who puts forward an alternative point of view. It also needs to be less tribal, less cult like less insecure, perhaps. EVs and RE are here to stay. Fossil fuels are on the way out so why does everyone get so up set if a downside to a particular RE technology is mentioned? No technology is perfect, they all have pros and cons. It’s good to hear both sides (or rather to most people it is). I welcome reasoned argument in response to something I post but when a contributor ascribes a totally different interpretation eg that “EVs are bad” when nothing like that has been suggested or falls back on the old cliche that it is the oil industry up to its tricks again and then gets multiple thanks it just demeans the whole forum. 

I disagree, my experience of forums is they often work best when they try to form a consensus view. I am very grateful for those who post on developments with RE and BEVs and my experience is that posters are more than happy to discuss relative pros and cons. I think most posters are probably less interested in fossil fuels and ice vehicles because it is a "green and ethical" board.

Personally, I don't think the forum "needs" to be anything other than what it is i.e. a very useful source of information and help.

Absolutely.  This thread is BEV news NOT debate.  

JKenH

Exiled_Tyke said:

2nd_time_buyer said:

JKenH said:

This forum needs to be more than a channel churning out pro RE press releases and shouting down any one who puts forward an alternative point of view. It also needs to be less tribal, less cult like less insecure, perhaps. EVs and RE are here to stay. Fossil fuels are on the way out so why does everyone get so up set if a downside to a particular RE technology is mentioned? No technology is perfect, they all have pros and cons. It’s good to hear both sides (or rather to most people it is). I welcome reasoned argument in response to something I post but when a contributor ascribes a totally different interpretation eg that “EVs are bad” when nothing like that has been suggested or falls back on the old cliche that it is the oil industry up to its tricks again and then gets multiple thanks it just demeans the whole forum. 

I disagree, my experience of forums is they often work best when they try to form a consensus view. I am very grateful for those who post on developments with RE and BEVs and my experience is that posters are more than happy to discuss relative pros and cons. I think most posters are probably less interested in fossil fuels and ice vehicles because it is a "green and ethical" board.

Personally, I don't think the forum "needs" to be anything other than what it is i.e. a very useful source of information and help.

Absolutely.  This thread is BEV news NOT debate.  

I think you will find I probably post more news stories than anyone else. Someone else then starts the debate.

JKenH

orrery said:

JKenH said:

As @Grumpy_chap says, this misconception might be more widespread than you realise.

There is no misconception. We understand perfectly well what we are talking about.

No-one thinks that zero-emissions means that there were no emissions in making the cars, or that somehow the tyres used on EVs are miraculously better than those used on ICE vehicles when it comes to particulates. Just that the motive power (the part we would compare with the petrol or diesel) has zero (added) emissions.

So you are saying there are no emissions in producing the motive power? 

gefnew

But there is emissions from battery charging of the BEV with electricity generated by fossil fuels surely.