Electric car charging

ElefantEd

Navigator123 said:

Hydrogen is only an expensive and inefficient fuel source at the moment because nobody has put any substantial money into the process.

Hydrogen fuel cell technology was a viable source 20 years ago and all the patents where purchased by a few Crown Princes in Saudi Arabia (I wonder why) and locked up in a vault and the key thrown away.

Can someone please explain to me why we in the UK are having to switch to EV cars but no other country in Europe has set a timeline for stopping the sale of ICE cars?

It wouldn't matter how much money was put into the technology for using Hydrogen; the limiting factor is the energy needed to make the Hydrogen (usually by electrolysis of water) in the first place. Obviously you can use solar power or other renewable sources for this, but if so you might as well just generate electricity and use that directly instead.

ICE cars will die out soon enough anyway, so setting timeline won't make a huge difference. In any case, surely we should be applauding the UK government for being ahead of the curve for a change? Other EU countries are ahead of us in other ways eg. France has just announced that internal flights will be banned if a rail alternative exists; Germany has a much better solar power infrastructure; and so on.

BOWFER

Navigator123 said:

Can someone please explain to me why we in the UK are having to switch to EV cars but no other country in Europe has set a timeline for stopping the sale of ICE cars?

Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, the UK, France, Spain.
All have set definite timelines in the next 20 years.

giraffe69

Navigator123 said:

Can someone please explain to me why we in the UK are having to switch to EV cars but no other country in Europe has set a timeline for stopping the sale of ICE cars?

Just not true!  Here's the start of a Reuters report "PARIS (Reuters) - The French government’s new law on mobility will uphold a planned ban on fossil fuel-powered cars by 2040, Transport Minister Elizabeth Borne said....."

Lots of other countries as said above. In any event buy a petrol car in 2029 and keep it for 11 years and you have moved your own personal response to the ban to 2040!

Flight3287462

Anyone ever seen a Lithium car battery fire which are set to become more frequent, they also can reignite days later.

Yet most problems, especially safety, cannot be addressed as easily. Traditionally batteries have had equal amounts of nickel, cobalt and manganese. But a more recent industry trend has been to increase the proportion of nickel in the battery to more than 80 per cent of the cathode — one of the main components. This helps increase mileage and has the added benefit of using less cobalt — which costs twice as much as nickel — lowering production costs.

Unfortunately, that new combination of metals also makes batteries more volatile. In China, which first began commercialising such batteries, three cars equipped with these battery cells have caught fire since May. Other combinations of metals, like lithium and iron, have proved safer, but have a lower energy density.

https://www.ft.com/content/c4e075b8-7289-4756-9bfe-60bf50f0cf66

BOWFER

Hunyani_Flight_825 said:

Anyone ever seen a Lithium car battery fire which are set to become more frequent, they also can reignite days later.

Yet most problems, especially safety, cannot be addressed as easily. Traditionally batteries have had equal amounts of nickel, cobalt and manganese. But a more recent industry trend has been to increase the proportion of nickel in the battery to more than 80 per cent of the cathode — one of the main components. This helps increase mileage and has the added benefit of using less cobalt — which costs twice as much as nickel — lowering production costs.

Unfortunately, that new combination of metals also makes batteries more volatile. In China, which first began commercialising such batteries, three cars equipped with these battery cells have caught fire since May. Other combinations of metals, like lithium and iron, have proved safer, but have a lower energy density.

https://www.ft.com/content/c4e075b8-7289-4756-9bfe-60bf50f0cf66

There's such a lot of nonsense posted about EV car fires, it just makes ICE owners feel better about being 'forced' to change.
There are 150 fuel car fires in the USA every day.
That's not accidents, that's just fuel cars catching fire, yet do people worry about it happening to them?
Yet when a handful of Teslas catch fire out of 1.5 million sold, it's news!
It's often fake news too, as one 'Tesla fire' where two people died was actually caused by the Ford Fiesta they crashed into catching fire....

Flight3287462

BOWFER said:

Hunyani_Flight_825 said:

Anyone ever seen a Lithium car battery fire which are set to become more frequent, they also can reignite days later.

Yet most problems, especially safety, cannot be addressed as easily. Traditionally batteries have had equal amounts of nickel, cobalt and manganese. But a more recent industry trend has been to increase the proportion of nickel in the battery to more than 80 per cent of the cathode — one of the main components. This helps increase mileage and has the added benefit of using less cobalt — which costs twice as much as nickel — lowering production costs.

Unfortunately, that new combination of metals also makes batteries more volatile. In China, which first began commercialising such batteries, three cars equipped with these battery cells have caught fire since May. Other combinations of metals, like lithium and iron, have proved safer, but have a lower energy density.

https://www.ft.com/content/c4e075b8-7289-4756-9bfe-60bf50f0cf66

There's such a lot of nonsense posted about EV car fires, it just makes ICE owners feel better about being 'forced' to change.
There are 150 fuel car fires in the USA every day.
That's not accidents, that's just fuel cars catching fire, yet do people worry about it happening to them?
Yet when a handful of Teslas catch fire out of 1.5 million sold, it's news!
It's often fake news too, as one 'Tesla fire' where two people died was actually caused by the Ford Fiesta they crashed into catching fire....

You can spin it anyway you want but these batteries are becoming more dangerous and in my view are not the way forward.  Solid State batteries if/when they come of age may change the game but until then I'll stick with my ICE car.  Read the article you might find it interesting.

Herzlos

I don't think batteries are necessarily any more dangerous than driving around with a tank full of combustible liquid in it.

BOWFER

Herzlos said:

I don't think batteries are necessarily any more dangerous than driving around with a tank full of combustible liquid in it.

I don't think they are either.
I remember one article that quoted a fire fighter who stated that even mega crashes in a battery car give time for trapped occupants to be rescued, as it takes a fair bit of time for heat build-up in the batteries to reach fire point.
Whereas a petrol car can literally burst into flames on impact.
There was a recent video doing the rounds of a Nigerian music star who crashed his Rolls Royce.
The sound of the two young girls in the back screaming as the car burned was horrific.
Perhaps, in a Tesla, the fire would have been delayed - who knows.

Flight3287462

You are all missing the point " that new combination of metals also makes batteries more volatile".

To get the power storage capacity up they will be changing the composition of the batteries, by reducing cobalt and replacing it with Nickel the payoff is more volatile batteries. 

ElefantEd

Hunyani_Flight_825 said:

You are all missing the point " that new combination of metals also makes batteries more volatile".

To get the power storage capacity up they will be changing the composition of the batteries, by reducing cobalt and replacing it with Nickel the payoff is more volatile batteries. 

Even if it is true that newer batteries will be more volatile (and battery improvements don't just include decreasing the amount of Cobalt and increasing the amount of Nickel), the question is from what to what. If the change is from a 1 in a million to 2 in a million chance of spontaneously bursting into flames then we can probably all breathe easy, even though it's twice as much. If it means there is now a 1 in 10 chance of immolating yourself every time you pop down to the shops for a pint of milk, that's a different matter. Scaremongering without facts and data helps no-one.