Tesla News & Discussion

GreatApe

GreatApe:
(MPG) 'Real world' is really difficult to stand over, so we should stick with the proper test figures. A load of Prius taxi drivers in London is not the real world. And hybrids, by their very nature, behave so differently on the open road vs city.

63mpg seems to be the real world mix of a corrolla hybrid
Manufacturer claims higher probably due to professional drivers driving for the test cycles

This also applies to EVs of course, but there's a bigger battery that can be filled. EV, and the EV portion of a hybrid, are ideally suited to a city. No noise or stop/starting the engine to sit there and do nothing.

Yes hybrid technology helps city doesn't do much for motorways
But we are living in an increasingly urbanised world

I think you need to look at how you get 'high power per kWh' out of a Li-Ion cell (or even NiMh for many Toytotas), and again, how that would differ from a full EV. PHEV makers have cars on the road, right now, that happily do 60MPH on EV only. Just seems like a real backward step.

What seems like a backward step?
It's not like the world is full of EVs and I'm suggesting let's go to plug in hybrids
The world is full of ICE cars a step to hybrids would decrease emmissions 25-30%
A step to plug in hybrids would decrease emmissions 90-99%
Jumping straight to BEVs probably isn't possible

The world builds 100 million cars a year
This will increase to 150+ million a year by 2050 as the poor countries get not so poor
There isn't the capacity to build 100 million full EVs not now not anytime soon
There is the capacity to go to hybrids soon though

Yes, that IS how I think of hybrid tech. Good for short urban journeys, not translatable to big motorway ones. That's why I think it's so dangerous to quote one single MPG figure, 'real world' or not.

You are nit picking
To try and avoid the reality
Which is that hybrid tech works
And doesn't require huge quantities of batteries
For example Toyota aims to offer a hybrid version of every model it sells by 2025
And it seems to think by 2030 more than half their sales will be hybrid of some form

Why not 40 Leafs?! Your answer is cost vs ICE of course, but our whole argument is that the price gulf is not as big as you claim.

You have no idea what the price of an EV is
There is only one mass manufacturer of EVs which doesn't have a ICE fleet subbing it
That's Tesla and it's cheap end model 3 is £43,000
Actually they do have ICE fleet subbing it in the form of zero emmissions credits sold to ICE companies

Compare this £43,000 to the fleet mix of the too 10 selling models in the UK of £16,000 and tell me the price differential is trivial...

Next you'll say battery prices are falling like a rock
Only after 2.5 years of rock falling.... the model 3 is no cheaper....

You cannot. When the EV runs out people will slow down on the motorway with their 50hp petrol engine. Unacceptable safety risk. I've told you about the BMW i3 ReX before (EV with petrol generator, generator charges the battery, is not attached to the wheels). Close to what you're talking about, numbers are different, and so few people bought them in the UK that BMW aren't selling it in the UK any more.

I'm not suggesting that it has to be a generator
It can be a hybrid setup like the hybrid corolla or hybrid Ionic with a mechanical link to the wheels
Those are affordable cars £20k Ionic £22k corrolla Vs £43,000 for the M3

That's what the world will move onto
Toyota plans to offer every model in their range as hybrid options by 2025
And expects more than half their sales to be hybrid or plug in hybrid by 2030

So that's at least one big auto company going Hybrid
It makes sense

How many ICE companies plan to convert half their fleet to full BEV?

How many times should I mention Zoe doubling in capacity in 6 years remaining the same price?

You know the price not the cost
They could be selling those at a loss

Model 3 can't keep up with demand so Tesla aren't inclined to discount it. Blantant lie. We can make zany predictions all we like, but you're saying here EVs HAVE NOT got cheaper. They HAVE.

No what I said was no mass market EV selling in 100,000+ units a year has gotten cheaper
This basically means the only well selling EV the model 3 hasn't gotten cheaper
Which is a fact

Model 3 is a car I would describe as 'above average'.

Okay but so what?

An A4 is nicer than a Golf
Yet VW sells more Holds than A4s
Clearly the mass market is price sensitive

All Tesla has done is prove that there is a market for a premium of premium end performance EVs
They have proven unaffordable EVs work as a flex brand
They and no one else either has proven affordable EVs

Best selling car in Europe the VW Polo you can buy one £12,500
Where is the competitor EV to that? Doesn't exist.
EV technology is far to expensive to get.close to that price point
Or even to the average price point of the top selling UK cars £16,000


People hail the victory of BEVs as if they are all so obvious to the internet experts
The reality is cars come at a very wide range of price points
From below £10,000 to above £100,000
With the bulk of sales in the £12-25k range and dropping rapidly after that

Nemo72

in my opinio, Tesla is too expensive, not woth paying what it costs

Nemo72

have you seen the SEAT Mii, it is fully electric car, and costs about 15000 pounds, and not 60.000 of TESLA
for everydays rutine, this SEAT Mii is more than enough and costs 75% less

Martyn1981

Nemo72 wrote: »

have you seen the SEAT Mii, it is fully electric car, and costs about 15000 pounds, and not 60.000 of TESLA
for everydays rutine, this SEAT Mii is more than enough and costs 75% less

I'm seeing 'from £19k? Is your figure after the plug in grant?

And the TM3 SR+ on the UK Tesla website starts at £42k (not £60k) or £38,500 after the plug in grant.

Martyn1981

zeupater wrote: »

National Grid are aware of what's happening on both electrification and distributed generation and their regularly published reports don't seem to convey panic, quite the opposite really ... if they're pretty happy I can't see where the negativity comes from - after all, if they've got it wrong you'll still have your gas boiler & backup battery for a few years yet and there's always the option of fast-charging the car elsewhere! ... :D

HTH
Z

Obviously, I'm quite optimistic about all this. I think it's been shown (over the last decade or so) that anything that can be thought up as a potential problem, has already been considered and is being addressed.

Just some quick thoughts for solutions, especially during any transition:

H2 or methane fuel cell boilers - might not be viable, but as discussed before, combined with PV and a small heat pump, would form a great package, and allow use of the existing gas grid to help out in peak circumstances.

Smart charging - I'm going to stick my neck out and say that this is simply going to happen. As I've tried to calculate, the grid will have no trouble with the additional average demand, or the DNO's with average loading, but if too many BEV's are all plugged in with fast chargers, at the same time, then modulating supply down a bit will work fine, till those needing little start to drop off after a few hours.

V2G - Each BEV on V2G could displace two BEV's, if plugged in and set up to charge if prices are low, but provide some, if prices are high. That way, they wouldn't charge when 'all' the others begin charging, and by discharging, could 'remove' the demand of a neighbouring BEV. They would then charge up later when demand is falling as charged BEV's 'fall off' the grid.


I am not trying to belittle the scale of the power/energy needed for BEV's to replace ICEV's, and heat pumps to displace FF GCH, butit seems to me that whilst the task is big, the difficulty is not, given the range of solutions that are already developing quite nicely.

JKenH

Minsters warned Britain's electricity network needs URGENT upgrade to cope with increased demand from electric cars or risk future blackouts


https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-7894719/UK-electricity-network-needs-upgraded-cope-rising-EV-demand.html

GreatApe

JKenH wrote: »

Minsters warned Britain's electricity network needs URGENT upgrade to cope with increased demand from electric cars or risk future blackouts


https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-7894719/UK-electricity-network-needs-upgraded-cope-rising-EV-demand.html

There have been blackout warnings for the last 15 years....

What happened was LED/CFD light bulbs massively reduced peak demand since a lot of light bulbs are on at the very same time 5-10pm

The result is that the UK peak is down from nearly 65GW to often now not exceeding 50GW
As such the UK was able to close a huge number of coal plants without having to build any significant number of replacements

It wasn't just light bulbs, also more efficient appliances and things like a big desktop using 200 watts replaced by a smartphone using 2 watts, but most of the leak demand falls have been light bulbs


This isn't even over

Peak demands will not go up imo for at least another 5 years As more old light bulbs and inefficient appliances come to the end of their lives and are replaced with more efficient versions I'd expect electricity useage per capita and peak useage per capita to continue falling although less rapidly

iirc 2019 was a record low for UK electricity useage continuing it's fall for the last 15 years or so

zeupater

JKenH wrote: »

Minsters warned Britain's electricity network needs URGENT upgrade to cope with increased demand from electric cars or risk future blackouts


https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-7894719/UK-electricity-network-needs-upgraded-cope-rising-EV-demand.html

Hi

<cough> .... What's new?

Assuming there's little chance that you'd sit down and read National Grid's latest FES document in full without understanding what it is first and that applies to most that have little more than a basic interest, so they've effectively started publishing a 'Dummy's Guide' to future energy scenarios to wet the appetite!

It can be found here ... http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1410/fes-in-5-2019.pdf

With the full 166 page version of the report being available here ... http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1409/fes-2019.pdf

... plenty of network changes been happening around here over the last 5 years or so, they've even removed the cones & temporary traffic lights a couple of miles away to alleviate unnecessary traffic queues over this weekend which are related to major upgrade work on a Grid/DNO substation, our local DNO substation was upgraded ~5 years ago to support distributed generation growth (multiple PV farms) & the transformers serving our area were upgraded (/replaced) about 3 years ago ...

As mentioned, national Grid don't seem to be in a panic, but it certainly will be used as headline fodder by those looking to employ apocalypticism to their advantage for some reason or other, after all, there's plenty of column inches to fill now that the rabid coverage of the UK/EU relationship has started to subside ...

Happy reading ...

HTH
Z

JKenH

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

<cough> .... What's new?

Assuming there's little chance that you'd sit down and read National Grid's latest FES document in full without understanding what it is first and that applies to most that have little more than a basic interest, so they've effectively started publishing a 'Dummy's Guide' to future energy scenarios to wet the appetite!

It can be found here ... http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1410/fes-in-5-2019.pdf

With the full 166 page version of the report being available here ... http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1409/fes-2019.pdf

... plenty of network changes been happening around here over the last 5 years or so, they've even removed the cones & temporary traffic lights a couple of miles away to alleviate unnecessary traffic queues over this weekend which are related to major upgrade work on a Grid/DNO substation, our local DNO substation was upgraded ~5 years ago to support distributed generation growth (multiple PV farms) & the transformers serving our area were upgraded (/replaced) about 3 years ago ...

As mentioned, national Grid don't seem to be in a panic, but it certainly will be used as headline fodder by those looking to employ apocalypticism to their advantage for some reason or other, after all, there's plenty of column inches to fill now that the rabid coverage of the UK/EU relationship has started to subside ...

Happy reading ...

HTH
Z

Thank you, that was most interesting and very different to the energy profile we have today. I doubt 30 years ago we would have imagined the grid would be like it is today and I imagine those of us lucky enough to be around in 2050 will say just the same about current predictions.

zeupater

JKenH wrote: »

Thank you, that was most interesting and very different to the energy profile we have today. I doubt 30 years ago we would have imagined the grid would be like it is today and I imagine those of us lucky enough to be around in 2050 will say just the same about current predictions.

Hi

Yes, but in failing to plan effectively, you're effectively planning to fail and that's essentially what the less successful scenarios show.

I believe the most interesting take-away from the exercise is that the range of options available to achieve the targets is pretty wide-ranging and not limited to what has been analysed therefore the report shouldn't be read as a 'current prediction' but as a likely range based on potential policy decisions - eg centralised generation vs distributed etc.

Effectively what the exercise does is describe the expected boundaries within which a successful outcome can be achieved in a way which allows for a high degree of flexibility on the path chosen, probably because many of the required choices are political and there's plenty of scope for various parties to create idealogical waves of change over the 30 year period being described.

In reality this means that there are a myriad of hybrid solution options sitting within & between the described scenario boundaries which would also achieve a successful outcome if given the required support and not simply allowed to drift aimlessly, for example, a generation mix which involves more of a mix between centralised & decentralised models than described should logically provide a similar outcome ....

National Grid's FES isn't therefore a 'current prediction', just a test of scenarios against which the robustness of the future grid infrastructure can be planned & measured using the best set of variables currently available from which an assessment of the date/ability to achieve targets can be made .... this becomes a lot clearer within the detail of the full 166 page report, but it's not exactly what anyone would describe as enthralling reading ! ...

HTH
Z