Advisability of buying electric car at this point in time

HillStreetBlues

mgfvvc said:

Lower fire risk. I'm not sure if the data here is reliable or comparable, but it is claimed that the number of EV fires, per unit is about 1/10 of the rate for ICE vehicles.

There was a FOI about this covering London in 2019
https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/manufacturer-news/2020/11/27/vehicle-fire-data-suggests-higher-incident-rate-for-evs

Data obtained through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request revealed that in 2019 the London Fire Brigade dealt with 54 electric vehicle fires compared with 1,898 petrol and diesel fires.

Vehicle registration numbers from the Department for Transport (DfT) show there are 50,000-plus plug-in cars licensed in the capital out of a total 4.63 million licensed cars.

Looking at the London Fire Brigade data, that would suggest an incident rate of 0.04% for petrol and diesel car fires, while the rate for plug-in vehicle is more than double at 0.1%.

Martyn1981

Just in case anyone is interested in comparing numbers for Tesla rapid chargers, a friend used one a few days ago for his 'non-Tesla', and the rate was 53p/kWh.

Playing with that number (as it's 39p for Tesla's, or 43p during the evening peak), and assuming prices eventually get back to where they were before the gas crisis / invasion of Ukraine. Then it used to be ~20p, so non-Tesla, pro-rata would be about 27p/kWh.

Hopefully a positive decision will be made on VAT, so BEV charging can be 5% (as per household leccy), rather than 20%. If so then that would reduce the price to about 24p/kWh. [But this is just me pondering and playing. I'm not suggesting that these prices are right.]

Obviously, slower street parking, especially at night/low demand periods, needs to be cheaper, than those ultra fast charging rates.

mgfvvc

HillStreetBlues said:

Looking at the London Fire Brigade data, that would suggest an incident rate of 0.04% for petrol and diesel car fires, while the rate for plug-in vehicle is more than double at 0.1%.

That data seems to be an outlier. If I google "ev fire rate vs ice" every other study in the first five pages of results found EV fires at between 1/4 and 1/20 of ICE car rates.

henry24

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 

CKhalvashi

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!

HillStreetBlues

mgfvvc said:

That data seems to be an outlier. If I google "ev fire rate vs ice" every other study in the first five pages of results found EV fires at between 1/4 and 1/20 of ICE car rates.

But are they UK studies? Other counties might have a lower standard (less rigorous than our MOT) so more ICE are likely to catch fire.
It's actually surprising that in London it was 250% more likely, as overall the EV would be newer.

Martyn1981

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 

Just to say that BEV versions of tractors (as well as heavy plant, such as excavators, back hoe's, bull dozer's, and mining dump trucks) do already exist*. However, the tractors I've seen are smaller models, so not (I assume) comparable yet to a combine. But, interestingly, one did have swappable batts. I thought that was interesting, as it would reduce the price of the vehicles, and allow batts to be used across a range of vehicles. Also allow for batts to be charging whilst others are in use.

It also struck me, that whilst swapping batts on large vehicles would be tricky, it would be ideal for farms, since the workers have experience, skill, and access to the necessary plant, perhaps forklift attachments, or a telehandler? Also farms are ideal for large PV installs, so may be able to generate much of their 'fuel' on site, if large building roofs/walls are used for PV panels.

Regarding energy, a litre of diesel has about 10kWh of energy. Large HGV's operating at the sweetspot of rpm's can achieve 40% efficiency. But a combine, with power take off, I doubt could reach 30%, so that's 3kWh's, or for your hourly figure, approx 141kWh. I don't think that's a problem, assuming large packs of 150kWh+ (perhaps 600kg+). And the combine, being designed to use 2 or more packs?

But, you are talking about edge cases here, not 'normal' cars, nor road vehicles. So it may be that for examples like you've given, it would be simpler to stick with diesel, ideally bio-diesel, or synthetic diesel, using green H2 and captured CO2 to produce the required hydrocarbons.


*Worth remembering that when you want an absolute ton of power, you go for leccy - such as diesel electric trains, or the massive diesel electric dump trucks on mining sites. These are powered by electric motors, to get the necessary huge torque needed, but the leccy is generated by the vehicles diesel engines. The leccy motors (not the diesel engine) provide the motive power.

Martyn1981

Just a thought, but some folk may be interested in Janus Trucks, an Australian company.

I mention them because they tick a number of boxes for points raised on this thread. Such as BEV trucks, swappable batts, fuel cost comparisons, and the cost of a new BEV, as they actually convert older diesel trucks to BEV.

Googling will find many article's on Janus, including Youtube vids such as Fully Charged, but here's a link to their own webiste:

Janus Electric - Electrifying Australia's road transport fleet with tomorrows technology, today.

The Janus fleet electrification solution will provide for up to a 60% reduction in maintenance and operating costs over the vehicle's lifetime. Electrification means no oil changes, no oil filters, no air filters, no fuel filters, and a massive reduction of heat also extends the life of brakes and tyres. Operationally fleets are also cheaper to run as the cost of electricity is cheaper than diesel per km. 

​COST PER KM DIESEL                     0.96

COST PER KM JANUS ELECTRIC      $0.33

And whilst I'm posting stuff nobody asked for, here's another clever way to save fuel for a diesel truck, by 'converting' it to a hybrid, by simply adding an extra axle and battery:

Tandem Centaur

And might as well go three for the price of two, with another way to use an existing diesel truck, but electrifying the trailer

Watch how Range Energy turns a semi-truck electric just by adding a trailer

Range figured that so many people have thought about electrifying the semi-truck tractor, but nobody has really focused on the trailer. This makes sense considering the trailer is just dead weight on most trucks, so why would people think about changing the motive power of something without motive power?

But with EV tech, Range thinks it can change that and add more safety and fuel efficiency. And it can do this much more quickly than it takes to build and validate new electric trucks.

The idea is to add electric motors and a battery directly onto the trailer itself. This gives the trailer the ability to provide some of its own torque to help lighten the load on the diesel tractor, effectively reducing the amount of mass it needs to pull around on its own.

henry24

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 

Martyn1981

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 

The great thing about electric motors is that they don't need to hit that sweet spot of rpm's to reach max power. Their torque 'curve' is actually a flat line of peak power from zero rpm, until it starts to slide down at really high rpms.

Apologies for the pedantry, but I assume you mean 276kW. And whilst I appreciate that the gearing will be totally different, just wanted to point out that that's a relatively small amount of power for leccy motors. My ickle BEV car TiMmY has ~370kW ....... but that would drain the battery in about 12 mins!