Advisability of buying electric car at this point in time

Goudy

I would hazard a guess it's more than a single digit number.
Is there anything to qualify that?

Millions live in property without access to home charging, so ownership isn't financially viable, most EV owners that have posted to this thread admit that.

There are also millions of others that just can afford one.

All those millions creep up on you.
There seems nothing in the pipeline to help those without home chargers and though ownership is climbing, there's not really many affordable EV cars on the market to penetrate the middle of the market, let alone towards the bottom of the market.
New or used EV's tend to be far higher than a ICE, which have recently increased in price themselves anyway.

We aren't just discussing cars and car ownership, there's is a whole other world of the economy out there that relies on mainly diesel.
As we know some options are efficient and some others perhaps more cost effective, but what is it going to cost us.

At the moment it's costing those that can charge at home and can afford one less than an equivalent ICE and I believe it.
But that's hardly a base for an argument that everything else that follows, freight, plant, whatever using the same technology will be just as low, particularly in those non edge cases, like feeding us. 

WellKnownSid

henry24 said:

How are we told currently I can walk into any garage and buy any car I want but in a few years I can only buy electric where's my choice 

The choice is not to buy a car in the first place.  Everything else is negotiation.

MacPingu1986

henry24 said:

How are we told currently I can walk into any garage and buy any car I want but in a few years I can only buy electric where's my choice 

Henry - This is going way beyond the scope of a thread about whether the OP should change their car for an EV, but assuming you're making the argument in good faith... You cannot, and never could, buy "any car you want" for use on public roads.

For all practical purposes your choice has only ever been from a selection of vehicles that have been successfully brought to the mass market by car manufacturers, that comply with various design/build/safety and emissions standards. Motor vehicles have been regulated extensively for many years because operating heavy machinery in public places creates risks, including environmental risks, that have to managed & regulated to reduce harm. From 2030 additional environmental standards will mean vehicles will need to be zero emission, whether by electric or other means.

Your choice will come from the hundreds of EV models available on the market. 

Martyn1981

Goudy said:

I don't think in these two cases it's all about efficiency. 
It's more being able to carry around enough power to be cost effective.

A set of batteries in say a HGV that has to run a reefer might be really efficient over a small range, but less cost effective over larger ranges due to things like weight and down time from charging.

There's only a finite weight a HGV can legally be, the more batteries the less cargo which equals more cost.

Just look at a car transporter, it's much more cost effective to carry an extra car than it loses because it's less efficient due to the extra weight.

Same goes plant or farm vehicles that mostly work off grid, BEV may work efficiently for short periods of time, but will they be efficient for long enough to be cost effective.

Adding more because of shorter work range/hours isn't cost effect or even efficient.

My whole point, back in the very beginning is that the batteries aren't the whole answer and if we only really invest in them, it'll cost us all, dearly.
Yes batteries are getting better as is charging them, I don't doubt that, but we still have the same age old problems with them we had years ago.
The ability to store enough power either by size or weight, for our demands has always been a limitation, otherwise we'd all have been in electric vehicles since the late 1800's.


And I am sorry but these two examples aren't edge cases, far from it.
I take it that was just a mistaken remark rather than something more flippant, but it couldn't be more further from the truth.

Food production, food transport and building are integral to our whole economy.
We all eat, so that needs to be produced and transported and we all shop for that produce.

We all live somewhere that has to be built and most of our wealth is invested in it.
Our the property market is closely linked to our economy in a way nothing else comes close to.
We need hospitals and roads and leisure facilities and on and on and on.

If that's edge, what is main stream?

Hi, sorry you didn't like the 'edge case' remark, perhaps you believe that the majority of heavy plant, farm vehicles and chilled trucks can't be BEV's in the medium/long term. If so, then fair enough, that's your opinion.

But given the many examples I've already given you, hopefully you will be a little more open now to the possibilities, Afterall, these BEV options are already out there, and will get much better over time. To conclude, as you did, that BEV trucks aren't viable, based on a rather poor legacy option, is a little negative. As I (and others) have tried to show you, the viable options are now rolling out.

You say - "I don't think in these two cases it's all about efficiency. It's more being able to carry around enough power to be cost effective."

Well, you may have missed the numbers and info I posted, to explain why the BEV option is more efficient, and that feeds through to make them more cost effective. I also assumed that you were aware that refrigerated BEV trucks already exist, but were pushing for edge cases, where there may be issues. Perhaps.

We've already discussed the weight issue, but to quickly recap;
the EU and US have given BEV trucks increased allowance,
the majority of trips are not max distance,
the majority of loads are not maxz weight (they are max volume),
battery energy density, both weight (Wh/kg) and volume (Wh/l) is improving fast.

Hence why your comments seem to be focusing on negatives that are already out of date, or edge cases. And that term was also used as other comments were about edge cases, such as large combines.

Martyn1981

Goudy said:

I would hazard a guess it's more than a single digit number.
Is there anything to qualify that?

Millions live in property without access to home charging, so ownership isn't financially viable, most EV owners that have posted to this thread admit that.

There are also millions of others that just can afford one.

All those millions creep up on you.
There seems nothing in the pipeline to help those without home chargers and though ownership is climbing, there's not really many affordable EV cars on the market to penetrate the middle of the market, let alone towards the bottom of the market.
New or used EV's tend to be far higher than a ICE, which have recently increased in price themselves anyway.

We aren't just discussing cars and car ownership, there's is a whole other world of the economy out there that relies on mainly diesel.
As we know some options are efficient and some others perhaps more cost effective, but what is it going to cost us.

At the moment it's costing those that can charge at home and can afford one less than an equivalent ICE and I believe it.
But that's hardly a base for an argument that everything else that follows, freight, plant, whatever using the same technology will be just as low, particularly in those non edge cases, like feeding us. 

Hi, with regard to my bold, if you have a read through this thread, I and others have mentioned just some of the solutions already being rolled out. So 'nothing in the pipeline' is quite an odd claim.

But yet again, you seem to be passing judgment on BEV's based on the situation today, rather than where we are heading. The number of SH BEV's will increase as the number of new BEV's sold increases, and the prices will fall, as the age of older BEV's increases. That's normal, isn't it?

Just because BEV's are new, and therefore make up a minority of the fleet, that doesn't mean they can't work. For example, in China, they already have 100's of thousands of BEV buses.

HillStreetBlues

henry24 said:

How are we told currently I can walk into any garage and buy any car I want but in a few years I can only buy electric where's my choice 

You can walk in to a garage and buy any car they have, it will be the same in the future, you will still be able to walk in and buy any car they have.

henry24

CKhalvashi said:

henry24 said:

CKhalvashi said:

henry24 said:

Earlier in this thread the subject of lorries came up which nobody has answered now I've something else, over the last 3 days I've been driving a combine using 47 litres an hour of diesel how's that going to work with electric 
Unless every vehicle is made to change then there's no point and if we have no food then so be, if we shut all the shops that will save the planet 
I think everyone should have the right to decide what vehicle they drive and not be told what to do 

As something I don't know a lot about, what is the power output on that at a typical rpm?

What is the average hours of use daily also?

I can attempt to calculate on that number a battery requirement and associated weight.

You have asked a question here I didn't realise I want to know the answer to!

CKhalvashi  it's a 8.7 litre 6 cylinder developing 276kv at 2100 rpm, length of day varies with the weather the last few days I've done 2 12 hours and a 15 it's now parked up until weather improves. Altogether during the harvest period it will do around 240 hours 

If that is the actual output in use, I agree that you may struggle at the moment to get something within the weight you need.

The next generation of batteries are likely to be acceptable for the job though.

If the actual power use is around 100kW, then a 1MW battery will weigh 5-6t and should last around 10 hours in actual use. That is around £150k of battery.

Throughout the year with tractors, vans/lorries for farmers markets etc, something with similar power output to this should work for you. I have no idea on the cost of plumbing it in, but a look online shows it shouldn't be too high. https://aec.energy/charge-complex-t/en

Depending on conditions the engine is working between 60 and 80% of power how this compares to your figures I don't know but for a farmer to spend £150k on a battery it's not going to happen 
I've just looked up the neighbours combine and it's 515kw what battery will it need 

Martyn1981

Herzlos said:

Goudy said:

LVEC make the new black taxi, why is it a plug in hybrid rather than all electric?

I'm looking at the website now and it seems to be a range extender hybrid?

So it's battery powered (~78 miles range) with a range extender to bring it up to ~330 miles which probably suits the taxi's use case a lot better which is a lot of short journeys with the odd long one thrown in. The inability to plan for that means they'd want to keep a pure BEV near fully charged all of the time which isn't practical.

Maybe that'll change if there are more facilities to charge whilst waiting.

There are definitely cases now where a BEV doesn't make sense, but I don't believe they apply to more than a single digit percentage of car owners.

Thought you might be interested in this slightly old news, of an underground charging statiuon for commercial BEV's in London. It's aimed at taxi drivers etc.

Installing an EV charging hub underground

Also, the taxi solution of a BEV with Rx, is really just another point in time issue, when the rules were written. I think the decision was taken in 2015 for 2018. Seems like a great solution for the time, and dare I say a 'gateway drug' on the route to BEV's. 

henry24

Goudy said:

I don't think in these two cases it's all about efficiency. 
It's more being able to carry around enough power to be cost effective.

A set of batteries in say a HGV that has to run a reefer might be really efficient over a small range, but less cost effective over larger ranges due to things like weight and down time from charging.

There's only a finite weight a HGV can legally be, the more batteries the less cargo which equals more cost.

Just look at a car transporter, it's much more cost effective to carry an extra car than it loses because it's less efficient due to the extra weight.

Same goes plant or farm vehicles that mostly work off grid, BEV may work efficiently for short periods of time, but will they be efficient for long enough to be cost effective.

Adding more because of shorter work range/hours isn't cost effect or even efficient.

My whole point, back in the very beginning is that the batteries aren't the whole answer and if we only really invest in them, it'll cost us all, dearly.
Yes batteries are getting better as is charging them, I don't doubt that, but we still have the same age old problems with them we had years ago.
The ability to store enough power either by size or weight, for our demands has always been a limitation, otherwise we'd all have been in electric vehicles since the late 1800's.


And I am sorry but these two examples aren't edge cases, far from it.
I take it that was just a mistaken remark rather than something more flippant, but it couldn't be more further from the truth.

Food production, food transport and building are integral to our whole economy.
We all eat, so that needs to be produced and transported and we all shop for that produce.

We all live somewhere that has to be built and most of our wealth is invested in it.
Our the property market is closely linked to our economy in a way nothing else comes close to.
We need hospitals and roads and leisure facilities and on and on and on.

If that's edge, what is main stream?

Sometime towards the end of last year Tesla released a video of their electric truck showing how it could fly past a diesel but when people looked at it it only carried 6 tonnes and when everything was worked out the maximum weight it could carry would be about 22 tonnes against 30 fo a diesel so for 2 diesel trucks you need 3 electric I can't see that happening 

henry24

HillStreetBlues said:

henry24 said:

How are we told currently I can walk into any garage and buy any car I want but in a few years I can only buy electric where's my choice 

You can walk in to a garage and buy any car they have, it will be the same in the future, you will still be able to walk in and buy any car they have.

But that's taking choice away from me if I want a petrol or diesel 
My current car is 29 months old with 57000 miles I will keep it same again and then buy another diesel that will last me out as my mileage will drop when I retire