The big fat Electric Vehicle bashing thread.

[Deleted User]

Petriix said:

TooManyPoints said:

And of course, none of this has actually explored where the (not inconsiderable) additional supply is to come from (especially when it's dark and/or the wind isn't blowing).

Please tell us how much this 'not inconsiderable additional supply' requirement will be. How have you calculated this? 

I have - see above comment.

iwb100

Herzlos said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

 But most people can’t be imaginative. If your journey is on a bank holiday down the M6 and M5 for example with your family and all and sundry are also on the road you aren’t going to get people taking detours. They need to get from Cumbria to Cornwall or wherever and they aren’t driving miles out of their way with their young kids in tow. So you need an infrastructure to support the weight of motorway traffic when the majority of it is EVs that allows people either far greater range than exists or simply has charging points in sufficient numbers to support the on road traffic in these sorts of peak scenarios. Service stations each need hundreds and hundreds of working charging points. I don’t think that’s contentious or even necessarily the full extent.

Once that happens I think majority EV ownership might become viable. But it’s an infrastructure issue. And as much as you now talk about ‘oh change your route and lifestyle to accommodate it’ that doesn’t work for most people and also doesn’t work as the number of EVs on the road increases. You aren’t going to want hundreds and hundreds of cars pottering off into Warwick cos they need a charge and it’s better to explore. It’s just backing up problems. People need ready charging on route. I think people can sacrifice charging taking half an hour. Over say 10 minutes to fill up. But they can’t be expected to queue for an hour for a charger then hang around another half hour. Doomed to failure without the infrastructure. 

Obviously that is true but the infrastructure wasn't there for petrol to replace horses. Why didn't that fail?


(I'm not arguing that infrastructure doesn't need improving - it does, and improvement is hit and miss).

Will hundreds of chargers actually be needed at each service station in the long term?
New electric cars have not dissimilar ranges to ICE vehicles. So surely electric cars will only need to charge as regularly* as cars fill up. But as you say takes longer if we use 30 minutes versus 10 minutes would mean 3x the number of rapid chargers needed as petrol pumps?  (Having not been through how many petrol pumps does a service station have 10? 20?) 

*will actually be lower than the number of petrol cars needing to fill up since many cars will charge overnight** and some will never/rarely need to use rapid chargers. 

**this infrastructure needs improving/a solution for those w.o. off-street parking - could argue is actually the bigger issue.

I suspect because the introduction of automobiles was very gradual and had time for the infrastructure to catch up. You now have 30 odd million cars on the road and growing….

I think the problem is bigger than you think. Currently on a long journey like that I’d probably fill up at the services after we’d stopped for a half hour lunch and toilet break. So get to services. Bob in for a sandwich, change and toilet the kids. Back into car, top up at station, which I think on a normal day is under 10 minutes, and then off.

That’s 40 minutes break.

I think you could achieve that in an EV only if there is a charger there and ready waiting for you. Which is obviously the challenge. 

Then you have the problem of what happens when you get where you are going. I’m not convinced that if we are staying with the in laws in rural Devon who don’t have ev charging will be happy for us to plug into their wall sockets…

This is the challenge for infrastructure…it’s fine now for early buyers. It becomes less fine unless the infrastructure improves in line with adoption. And we know already it isn’t. 

As I said I'm not arguing with the need for improved infrastructure (it is improving by the way), but I think you are exaggerating the problems with your claim that 'hundreds and hundreds' of chargers are needed at every service station, maybe I am missing something but I don't see why this many will actually be needed. 

Obviously there is not much anyone can do if the ability to charge a car exists cheaply but people don't take advantage (e.g outside 3-pin plug on a separate circuit costs a few hundred pounds - also useful for any other electric items one might use outside).

At one point we had a charger per every 4 or 5 EVs. Now it’s 1 per 11. And going in the wrong direction. There has been a lot of coverage even within the EV favourable media outlets. It’s becoming a problem for some people already. And that’s still a tiny tiny minority of EV cars out there. Imagine when we are talking 20M on the roads….I think early adopters can only see how it is now. Rather than imagining 5 cars all competing for one charging point. 

All you are doing is repeating that infrastructure needs to keep improving, and needs to improve more than it is - I don't see anyone arguing with that. But I don't see how you arrived at hundreds of chargers being needed at service stations which was your original claim. Any chance you might shed some light on how you arrived at this number?

The average time to get a car through a pump is 5 minutes. At a large services with say 16 pumps that means a max capacity of 192 cars through. 

So to replicate that sort of rate you would need more than 192 charging points. Because as things stand 30 minutes is NOT the average charge time. And you factor in people will disappear leave their car longer. So because the time is longer you have to somewhat reduce the rate. 

That of course assumes ice range and ev range are the same. Which they currently aren’t. It also assumes same behaviour. People are happy to travel on and fill up later. Suspicion is this will be less the case with charging as we already see the behaviour of ev owners being to grab charge more often when the chance presents itself. So busy periods where long motorway journeys are common and queues on motorways likely I suspect that the number of chargers to get even close to fuel times will be in the 100’s. 

I've never seen a petrol station get all double pumps in use at once, because you can't drive to the front ones whilst the rear ones are being used. I also get the impression that most cars aren't filling the tank but are putting in £5/10/20, especially at service stations where people put enough in to get them home.

Beyond that the math seems fair, but the usage model is totally different; there's nowhere else to get petrol/diesel whereas you can in theory charge anywhere, so a large number of holiday makers can charge at their home and destination, leaving the charging bays for those that need it.

Electric charging is also a lot more dense space wise as you can use regular parking spaces. So a 16 bay forecourt can probably fit nearly 100 spaces in by putting in rows of end on bays. 

We definitely need a lot more infrastructure, but competition will see to that. As soon as a supermarket, shopping centre, restaurant, etc starts losing business because their competition has chargers, they'll catch up too.

Is infrastructure keeping up with the huge increase in demand right now? I don't know. It seems to be up here as most charging bays are empty. I actually see more ICE cars parked in bays than charging EVs up here, but it was probably a bad idea to put a row of EV chargers across from a school.

There have been a number of pieces of research and reports that find in the UK as plans stand we will have a significant shortfall in chargers by 2030. Possibly earlier as adoption seems quicker than many models predict (though supply chain issues perhaps will suppress this).

Car manufacturers have spoken out too on the issue saying that in the UK the infrastructure and lack of is increasingly going to become a barrier to adoption.

European countries like Germany already are ahead on the curve and have a government plan for roll out with a committee £5.3Bn spend. In the Uk we are behind them and the spending commitment is only £1.3Bn. I think it’s pretty clear that in this country it’s a concern. Our geography and logistics mean we probably need greater investment than elsewhere. 

Herzlos

EV charging is usually app controlled to happen off peak when there is surplus energy. There will be some peaks when people get home but most people won't be charging at full speed as soon as they get in the door; most people will only need to charge once a week or so. 

We'll definitely need to increase electricity production but even a 25% increase doesn't seem that bad. 

At some point we'll also reduce the energy consumed in processing oil as demand drops. It doesn't get from the ground to the pump for free 

Petriix

[Deleted User] said:

Petriix said:

TooManyPoints said:

And of course, none of this has actually explored where the (not inconsiderable) additional supply is to come from (especially when it's dark and/or the wind isn't blowing).

Please tell us how much this 'not inconsiderable additional supply' requirement will be. How have you calculated this? 

I have - see above comment.

I appreciate your reply. You'd be right if all charging happened at peak times, but it won't. National Grid says there's already enough production, it's just about demand shifting. Thankfully this is baked into the latest charging protocol. All new EVSEs are 'smart' and will default to avoiding peak times (this can be overridden).

You simultaneously claim that peak demand will be too high while off peak discounts will disappear. But they feed each other. If peak demand is too high then peak prices will go up.

In any case, technology is rapidly improving. Vehicle to Grid will be significant (and earn EV owners money). Domestic battery storage will allow people to shift their grid demand and maximise solar usage. Grid scale storage is also rapidly expanding to help balance things.

There's still a bunch of work to be done on improving the interconnectivity of the grid to get the renewable generation to the demand, but this is already funded and happening.

Solar did have a 13 year ROI before electricity prices went nuts. Now it's more like 7 years. Less if you have batteries.

The great thing about EVs is that you don't need them all to be fully charged all of the time. That means people can be selective about when they charge depending on cost etc. 

Mine tends to sit at around 60% - I'll only do an overnight charge (4 hours x 7kW = 28kWh - roughly half my battery for £1.40) if it gets below 50% or I'm planning a long journey. A good sunny day will add up to 20kWh but only if we're home; more commonly it's ~ 5-10kWh is we're in and out. 

Uxb1

Batteries ROTFL
I can pick up an enphase 1.5KW battery unit to add on to an enphase solar install for around £ 1500+
That would enable a house to use batteries overnight - usually about 1KW
So they would save what maybe 30p each night or £100 a year if you assume the battery could be fully charged EACH and every day...which it won't in winter
so that makes the payback period around 15 years.
It's a nonsense.
Currently the most economic way of using your excess solar given that the payback from generating back into the grid is so low is to use  solar diverter unit which diverts the excess power into your immersion heater for your hot water tank storage...unless of course you scrapped the hot water tank etc for a combi system

While the national grid have said a lot about generation and the grid being OK - the local grid below 132KV run by the local DNO's have been keeping much more quiet.
Work out how many house are fed from your local substation and then have them all charging their cars overnight all at the same time and see how long the 700 amp fuse typically on each of the 3 phases from the output from the substation will last. and that's before we dump all the heat pumps onto the grid as well.
Its all pie in the sky......

Benny2020

But Germany will be powering their EVs with coal.

Martyn1981

Herzlos said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

grumiofoundation said:

iwb100 said:

Herzlos said:

DB1904 said:

Herzlos said:

I don't mean travelling over 100 miles without stopping is extreme, just that for most people it's not really an issue as they can have a coffee/lunch/explore or whatever. 

I do get that EVs may not be suited to a once a year trek across the country and back (although many EV owners don't find it a problem), but I'm not sure it's that big a deal to that many people given the inconvenience is twice a year. It's also worth noting that many households have multiple cars, so many people have the option of using the other ICE car for the holiday road trip.


As for freedom, people can already live and visit where they want; they just tend to want to live close to work and shop close to home and so on.

I'm not convinced anyone can get 12p/mile out of an ICE car now.  50mpg at £1.50/l is 14p/mile

Explore a motorway services. Are you serious?

Be a bit more imaginative. You can charge places that aren't motorway services, so break road trips up by stopping at nice places whilst you charge. 

After 2 hours sat in a car then a short walk around a lake or beach or whatever will do everyone good. We usually do that when traveling with the kids anyway.

 But most people can’t be imaginative. If your journey is on a bank holiday down the M6 and M5 for example with your family and all and sundry are also on the road you aren’t going to get people taking detours. They need to get from Cumbria to Cornwall or wherever and they aren’t driving miles out of their way with their young kids in tow. So you need an infrastructure to support the weight of motorway traffic when the majority of it is EVs that allows people either far greater range than exists or simply has charging points in sufficient numbers to support the on road traffic in these sorts of peak scenarios. Service stations each need hundreds and hundreds of working charging points. I don’t think that’s contentious or even necessarily the full extent.

Once that happens I think majority EV ownership might become viable. But it’s an infrastructure issue. And as much as you now talk about ‘oh change your route and lifestyle to accommodate it’ that doesn’t work for most people and also doesn’t work as the number of EVs on the road increases. You aren’t going to want hundreds and hundreds of cars pottering off into Warwick cos they need a charge and it’s better to explore. It’s just backing up problems. People need ready charging on route. I think people can sacrifice charging taking half an hour. Over say 10 minutes to fill up. But they can’t be expected to queue for an hour for a charger then hang around another half hour. Doomed to failure without the infrastructure. 

Obviously that is true but the infrastructure wasn't there for petrol to replace horses. Why didn't that fail?


(I'm not arguing that infrastructure doesn't need improving - it does, and improvement is hit and miss).

Will hundreds of chargers actually be needed at each service station in the long term?
New electric cars have not dissimilar ranges to ICE vehicles. So surely electric cars will only need to charge as regularly* as cars fill up. But as you say takes longer if we use 30 minutes versus 10 minutes would mean 3x the number of rapid chargers needed as petrol pumps?  (Having not been through how many petrol pumps does a service station have 10? 20?) 

*will actually be lower than the number of petrol cars needing to fill up since many cars will charge overnight** and some will never/rarely need to use rapid chargers. 

**this infrastructure needs improving/a solution for those w.o. off-street parking - could argue is actually the bigger issue.

I suspect because the introduction of automobiles was very gradual and had time for the infrastructure to catch up. You now have 30 odd million cars on the road and growing….

I think the problem is bigger than you think. Currently on a long journey like that I’d probably fill up at the services after we’d stopped for a half hour lunch and toilet break. So get to services. Bob in for a sandwich, change and toilet the kids. Back into car, top up at station, which I think on a normal day is under 10 minutes, and then off.

That’s 40 minutes break.

I think you could achieve that in an EV only if there is a charger there and ready waiting for you. Which is obviously the challenge. 

Then you have the problem of what happens when you get where you are going. I’m not convinced that if we are staying with the in laws in rural Devon who don’t have ev charging will be happy for us to plug into their wall sockets…

This is the challenge for infrastructure…it’s fine now for early buyers. It becomes less fine unless the infrastructure improves in line with adoption. And we know already it isn’t. 

As I said I'm not arguing with the need for improved infrastructure (it is improving by the way), but I think you are exaggerating the problems with your claim that 'hundreds and hundreds' of chargers are needed at every service station, maybe I am missing something but I don't see why this many will actually be needed. 

Obviously there is not much anyone can do if the ability to charge a car exists cheaply but people don't take advantage (e.g outside 3-pin plug on a separate circuit costs a few hundred pounds - also useful for any other electric items one might use outside).

At one point we had a charger per every 4 or 5 EVs. Now it’s 1 per 11. And going in the wrong direction. There has been a lot of coverage even within the EV favourable media outlets. It’s becoming a problem for some people already. And that’s still a tiny tiny minority of EV cars out there. Imagine when we are talking 20M on the roads….I think early adopters can only see how it is now. Rather than imagining 5 cars all competing for one charging point. 

All you are doing is repeating that infrastructure needs to keep improving, and needs to improve more than it is - I don't see anyone arguing with that. But I don't see how you arrived at hundreds of chargers being needed at service stations which was your original claim. Any chance you might shed some light on how you arrived at this number?

The average time to get a car through a pump is 5 minutes. At a large services with say 16 pumps that means a max capacity of 192 cars through. 

So to replicate that sort of rate you would need more than 192 charging points. Because as things stand 30 minutes is NOT the average charge time. And you factor in people will disappear leave their car longer. So because the time is longer you have to somewhat reduce the rate. 

That of course assumes ice range and ev range are the same. Which they currently aren’t. It also assumes same behaviour. People are happy to travel on and fill up later. Suspicion is this will be less the case with charging as we already see the behaviour of ev owners being to grab charge more often when the chance presents itself. So busy periods where long motorway journeys are common and queues on motorways likely I suspect that the number of chargers to get even close to fuel times will be in the 100’s. 

I've never seen a petrol station get all double pumps in use at once, because you can't drive to the front ones whilst the rear ones are being used. I also get the impression that most cars aren't filling the tank but are putting in £5/10/20, especially at service stations where people put enough in to get them home.

Beyond that the math seems fair, but the usage model is totally different; there's nowhere else to get petrol/diesel whereas you can in theory charge anywhere, so a large number of holiday makers can charge at their home and destination, leaving the charging bays for those that need it.

Electric charging is also a lot more dense space wise as you can use regular parking spaces. So a 16 bay forecourt can probably fit nearly 100 spaces in by putting in rows of end on bays. 

We definitely need a lot more infrastructure, but competition will see to that. As soon as a supermarket, shopping centre, restaurant, etc starts losing business because their competition has chargers, they'll catch up too.

Is infrastructure keeping up with the huge increase in demand right now? I don't know. It seems to be up here as most charging bays are empty. I actually see more ICE cars parked in bays than charging EVs up here, but it was probably a bad idea to put a row of EV chargers across from a school.

Just to say that for the services, whilst the entire footprint of the petrol station would allow far, far more EV's to charge, the reality is that EV's charge whilst parked in their parking space and the occupants are inside. So perhaps 30s to plug in and log in (5s for a Tesla*), and 15s to unplug. So much quicker than the drive to the petrol station and fill up, and pay.

When asked how long the car takes to charge at home, I use the cheeky answer of 30s - 15s to plug in, and 15s to unplug when you leave.

*Speaking of Tesla's, they are opening up their supercharger network in the UK to other users this year, so the availability of ultra-fast charging on major roads should then be sorted ..... though they will need to keep increasing their chargers by ~33% pa, and increase charging rates (KW's) where possible.

Martyn1981

TooManyPoints said:

And of course, none of this has actually explored where the (not inconsiderable) additional supply is to come from (especially when it's dark and/or the wind isn't blowing).

I've been answering that question on various MSE EV threads for 5yrs+. It always gets presented as a 'gotcha', making me suspect folk think it's much greater than they realise.

For all cars to be BEV's the increase in UK leccy demand will be about 17% gross, 10% net. "Not cars" (for want of a better all inclusive title for commercial vehicles, vans, coaches and buses) consume about 40% of road fuel (60% for cars), so about 17% net total.

It's really easy to work out, in case you haven't:
30m cars, average (less than) 8k miles pa.
Approx 4 miles / kWh, so 2,000kWh per car = 60,000,000,000kWh or 60TWh.
UK consumes approx 350*TWh pa, so 60/350 = 17%.
Huge amounts of leccy/energy are used to refine petrol/diesel, around 6kWh per gallon. Plus all of the energy and fuel in transporting and distributing it, so a net impact of about 10%.

The National Grid ESO have said they have no concerns about BEV's, and expect a roughly 10% increase for all BEV car fleet and 10% increase at peak demand period in the evening.

For note, the peak and total demand for leccy in the UK has fallen about 10% over the last 10-15yrs thanks to energy efficiency measures such as low energy lamps, TV's, standby's, fridge / freezer compressors etc.

Also all domestic chargers (7kW type) now being installed have to be smart, so that their draw can be reduced if necessary, and I think I recall that they should not operate automatically between 5pm and 7pm (but may be a bit confused on that).

back to a total demand increase, let's call it 20% for all road transport to be BEV's. That'll take around 20-25yrs to achieve (hopefully all car sales by 2030, then 15yrs to displace the bulk of the ICE fleet), so less than a 1% increase pa. Currently RE (renewable energy) is adding 3.5% to UK supply each year, it's gone from roughly 5% just over a decade ago, to about 40-45% now. Costs have fallen dramatically and rollout can be accelerated.

*The 350TWh figure may be a tad high as demand is falling, but due to Covid it's hard to get a realistic figure today. So it was around 350TWh sliding down. Also, many searches will find lower figures, some only giving UK production, missing out export and import, and some using demand, not supply, which is about 8% lower due to losses in the transmission, and distribution networks.

Martyn1981

Deleted_User said:

1. 
   
2. Extra wear and tear - EV cars are on average 250kg heavier - sometimes more, the EV version of the tiny Fiat 500 weighs in at a massive 1400kg. Tyres, brakes, suspension, road surfaces all taking a hit. Must be some extra costs here, heavier cars wear tyres more quickly.
   
   
3. 
   

Hiya, apologies rushing, so just a quick comment. Yes BEV's are heavier, though battery weight is falling quite fast as density (Wh/kg) is rising. Regarding wear, brake wear is almost non-existent, expect pads on a BEV to outlast discs on an ICE due to regenerative braking. Tyre wear is actually quite good since BEV's are insanely powerful, leccy motors have, effectively, max torque at zero rpm, so you could shed tyres, so power supply is managed to help with grip, minimising wear, and back to the regen, tyre wear when slowing is minimised too.

Road surfaces probably irrelevant since the impact of cars with 4 tyres (at 30-40psi) and let's say 2tonne weight is negligible compared to HGV's with 14 tyres (160psi) and 40tonne. I believe the comparison for road damage is about 1:5,000, with most wear and damage a metre or so after a dip or rise in the road, where the HGV's weight bounces on the suspension.

Counterpoint, BEV HGV's in the EU, so probably UK too, will be allowed to weigh about 2tonnes more to offset any load losses from batt weights, though in reality somewhere north of 85% of HGV loads are volume (not weight) limited.

Martyn1981

Uxb1 said:

Work out how many house are fed from your local substation and then have them all charging their cars overnight all at the same time and see how long the 700 amp fuse typically on each of the 3 phases from the output from the substation will last. and that's before we dump all the heat pumps onto the grid as well.
Its all pie in the sky......

I've never understood why comments about domestic draw always state - "all cars, all charging at the same time", is there a reason for this?

TBF cars average about 22 miles per day (7,900m pa), or did, I think the average keeps dropping, and that's before Covid is considered. 22 miles would be about 4.5kWh. Let's say 1.5 cars per property, so 7kWh, and most night rates are 7hrs, so 1kW draw average*. That's probably less than the evening peak demand with lights, telly and cooking. I suspect many households will just charge their cars once or twice a week, assuming a 40kWh+ battery pack with around 160 miles of range (about the average weekly mileage for cars in the UK).

*We could of course suggest that plugged into a 7kW domestic charger, then the demand would be 7kW at say 12 midnight for 1hr, but different households, different low price periods, possibility to charge anywhere between 7pm and 8am, and most importantly the chargers are smart, so the power can be dialled down if necessary. So ~1kW for 7hrs seems a fair and reasonable figure.

Of course some cars will be charged during the day when demand dips (folk in work perhaps) or from home solar (mine's ticking away at 6A's at the moment (low PV gen currently)), and of course some of the UK's demand will be met by faster chargers during the day for people doing long distances - all of these factors will have a small reduction on the night-time demand since it won't have to meet all BEV consumption, but arguably 'most' of it.

Heat pumps are by far a bigger issue I believe, and important that you mentioned them, though these again will be deployed over a long time period, during which the DNO's should be improving the supply. Apologies for digressing, but my household was recently uprated from 60A to 80A (in a 100A DNO fusebox). There has been a lot of criticism that UK properties are on limited single phase supplies, and that all new developments should have 3phase, or at least have it available and easily/cheaply upgradeable to meet future leccy demand increases. I recently persuaded my sister to upgrade her property to 3phase having noticed it was available locally (at the pole across the road from her) that meant the upgrade cost was 'only' about £1,500. She then had 10kWp of solar installed on 3phase, with no issues around the usual 3.68kW limit, and will now be getting a 3phase ASHP (air source heat pump) which is a little more efficient.

There are solutions, they already exist, and we have two decades(ish) to evolve. Luckily NG and NG ESO are modifying fast (....cough....) and the DNO's are at least aware that they need to lift their game.

Lastly, just in case anyone looks at the energy demands of the UK, and spots that leccy is a small percentage, don't get misled by primary energy demands, such as oil, coal, gas etc. Most FF energy is wasted, think gas and coal leccy generation at 35% to 50% efficiency, or a petrol car at 25%, and all the losses in the system. Yes gas boilers can be around 90% efficient, but the average COP for ASHP's in the UK is 2.9, so that's 2.9kWh(t) output for 1kWh of leccy input, versus 0.9kWh(t) for 1kWh of gas for a boiler. So our energy consumption will drop dramatically and only lead to about a doubling of leccy consumption ..... though I'm being slightly tongue-in-cheek calling a doubling 'only'.