...doesnt go flat in lane 4 on a wet February evening
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Why The Obsession With Electric cars?
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BananaRepublic
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The AA rescue more than 2,000 ICE cars a week that have run out of fuel (petrol or diesel).
Even higher figures for the RAC.
Extremely cold weather is an issue for battery powered vehicles, and a person stranded in the cold is more likely to need the heater on. Not a reason to not have an electric car of course, but I will only buy one when the range is sufficient, and charging fast enough and readily available when out and about.
I have enough battery anxiety with mobile phones and usually carry a powerbank (to be fair, my current phone rarely needs charging when out as it's so good) so I can't imagine how I'd be with an electric car when I am far away from home and unsure when/where I can recharge - especially given how few charging points I know of near me.
I've had my moments with the fuel low light on in a petrol car, which was stressful, but that was more down to me thinking 'I'll be fine for a bit', plus there are plenty of petrol stations around - and for the foreseeable future.
I do want an electric car though, but think my next car will likely have to be a hybrid for the reason mentioned above.
I have enough battery anxiety with mobile phones and usually carry a powerbank (to be fair, my current phone rarely needs charging when out as it's so good) so I can't imagine how I'd be with an electric car when I am far away from home and unsure when/where I can recharge - especially given how few charging points I know of near me.
I've had my moments with the fuel low light on in a petrol car, which was stressful, but that was more down to me thinking 'I'll be fine for a bit', plus there are plenty of petrol stations around - and for the foreseeable future.
I do want an electric car though, but think my next car will likely have to be a hybrid for the reason mentioned above.
i cant have an electric car. I dont have anywhere to park my car close to my house. I live in a hilly area so would drain the battery very fast, then would be carting half a ton of useless battery around for nothing.
LOL The Irony
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That will quickly change once electric and hydrogen cars become the norm.
If there hills around, electric cars will use power to get up them and partially recharge when going down and/or braking. That is one of the reasons why they are considered environmentally friendly
martian boy
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What happens if a SD is involved in a collision with a padestrian? For example, a padestrian runs out between two parked cars? This is a common occurrence in some places. What happens if a road is suddenly closed? Example, accident. Will the SD car just simply shut down, then have to be manually recovered?
Do hydrogen cars not run out of fuel then? It will be interesting to see how they bring the hydrogen equivalent of a can of petrol to a stranded car...
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LOL The Irony
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So how to interpret
in reply to
then?
Almost certainly not. More likely to tow them to somewhere that hydrogen is stored under proper control and dispensed safely.
LOL The Irony
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The callouts to running out of oil based fules will change to callouts to hydrogen & electricity
Posting that on some motoring forums will get you flamed as a heretic.
Of course full SD is impossible, whatever the evangelists may say, there needs to be a manual over-ride of some sort just as there is with a train on the DLR. The "shunting mode" may only be at walking pace but it needs to be there.
Leaving SD cars to pick you up or go home on their own is unlikely to happen. Read the thread about trains at Wembley and imagine if all those people had SD cars turning up to collect them at once.
When it comes to charging an EV I get fed up with the middle class suburban claim that "everybody" will charge overnight at home. A significant number of people in this country don't live in cosy three bed semis with their own drives.
And even if they do have driveways, the house usually has more cars than will fit on them (a work colleague has house with six cars/vans next door to him, just one on the drive). And if they have a garage it is usually full of household junk.
I don't suppose even a third of all cars can be parked overnight on their owners' property; it would be interesting to know the numbers. There are some schemes with charging stations built into street lamp posts, but I can't see that working well as lamp posts are too far apart, and even if you add more charging posts the trailing cables will be a public hazard, vandalised, and it sounds like a recipe for "lamp post rage".
As it stands, EVs I am sure are fine for short-distance town driving and commuting provided you can park on your own property overnight. if you do longer distance they will only ever succeed if you could change batteries within a few minutes at facilities at existing "petrol stations" en-route, but for some reason the EV industry has dropped that strategy (it was proposed originally). Alternatively, a miraculous development in batteries that meant you could drive say 1000 miles on one charge of a reasonably sized one.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-self-driving-crash-prosecutors-idUSKCN1QM2O8
That's what happens in Arizona, anyway.
WelshBluebird
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A lot of that is still to be figure out! Especially the legal and insurance side of it.
In terms of practicalities about what to do, well I'd imagine in any accident of collision the car would shut down, call the police (any potentially ambulance etc if required) and wait as it is illegal to drive away after an accident! In terms of a road being suddenly closed, well first of all a SD automated car could know about that a lot quicker than a human could so could take action to avoid that road - if that was not possible then probably again do what every other human driver would do if there was no way to avoid it and no way around - wait.
This is one of the criticisms with self driving cars I am a bit confused about. Why do they have to be better at humans in EVERYTHING before they are viable? A lot of things you mention a human has to deal with to and can't really do much apart from wait - so what is wrong with a self driving car just waiting too?
I'd be very careful saying something is impossible. Tell someone from 100 years ago if watching a football match happening on the other side of the world on a pocket sized device with no wires plugged into it whilst moving in a vehicle that is being controlled not by a human at the front but by an automated system, and they'd probably say that was impossible - yet we can do that now by streaming video onto your smartphone whilst on the DLR.
Agreed that it is incredibly difficult though, and will be a lot further off than what some people seem to think.
As for EV's - I have posted this before, probably in this very thread! With charging people seem to think of either existing electric appliances that they charge at home or existing cars where you visit a station, and ignore the other many options. You have things like the: charging points in lampposts, charging points at workplaces, fast charging points at service stations and shops or "petrol" stations etc, charging points in car parks, charging points in assigned parking spots for flats / houses, etc etc. All which help. Sure, some of those will not be suitable for some people, but they all don't have to be suitable for everyone! I don't think anyone is claiming that everybody will charge overnight at home - quite the opposite!
They don't, but a trouble with the SD movement is that they are trying to run before they can walk - like demonstrating SD cars in urban situations. That way they have got all the bad publicity fallout from, for example, the fatal Uber-pedestrian collision in Arizona. Uber (known rogues anyway, which does not help the case either) are pushing for urban SD because it would make a cheaper taxi service. But if instead the idea of SD was confined to motorways, at least for the time being, not only is that a technically simpler challenge, but it would also be seen more favourably by the general public, as motorway driving is tedious and quite stressful.
Bear in mind that the initiative for SD cars comes from the USA, where they have some very long and boring roads with little other traffic. Also they have some very incompetent drivers. In some states the driving test is just a joke and despite the lighter traffic density the USA accident rate is shockingly high for a first world nation. Even the dumbest SD tech would probably make an improvment to safety statistics in the USA. OTOH the UK driving test is one of the most stringent in the world, our accicdent rates among the best, our distances are shorter and less boring, and few of our roads have been built or shaped in accordance with modern "standards" that SD tech could understand easily.
I cannot see my employer, or most (unless they are someone like Apple wanting to pose as "green"), providing charging points because of the cost of installation. There is already an issue with EV drivers parking at charging points and then leaving the car there for hours or days longer than needed (if needed at all), especially as charging bays are usually sited as the most "convenient" for the car park exit or supermarket door. I have seen complaints on a car forum of EVs being parked in a charging bay without even being plugged in.
I have seen the arguments that you can have a coffee or meal en-route if you need to stop to charge. Sound like an exploitable captive market - those coffee prices are bad enough alread. I would certainly not fit in with that model, being one to prefer my own company and eat my own sandwiches with a thermos of coffee in a quiet layby out in the country.
coffee, cake and a wee? 30 mins max
charge a leccy car from flat - 4 hours
what do you do on a motorway services for 3.5 hours when all you want to do is get home?
EM2
Established Member
Rapid chargers charge to around 80% in 30 minutes.
EM2
Established Member
Our office has half a floor of the car park set aside for EVs.
EM2
Established Member
You can sit in the car while it's charging, if you want.
I plan to get an electric car, but I am not a Luddite for thinking we've got some way to go before they're able to properly replace current vehicles, petrol or diesel. And I know the tech exists for a car to drive itself, but there are significant issues with trying to operate them amongst ordinary vehicles and people/animals/obstructions that mean I am sure we won't have driverless cars for 10 years or more - and that's even quite optimistic.
As said above, having a car that can drive itself safely on a motorway - or a closed environment (special roads) is something that could happen, and quickly, but the town stuff will fail for a multitude of reasons.
I can't help but feel we'll need to advance induction charging to make it possible to charge cars without cables, and to have them at places like traffic lights, car parks and so on. It isn't ever going to work to have limited numbers of charging bays. Once electric cars properly take off, almost everyone will be looking for charging facilities and who will pay for all that infrastructure? And, again, they'd need to be wireless to properly succeed.
As we have ever more blocks of flats being built with next to no parking, and councils encouraging a lack of spaces to get people not to buy a car of ANY type, we are really not helping ourselves. Get home at 10pm and there's no parking anywhere - and you need to charge the car to get to work the next day? What now?
It will all get sorted, but not for some time. Hybrids are likely to remain the best compromise for a long time to come, with an electric car suited as a second vehicle for people with short commutes (that allows charging at work, or to allow a trip to/from work with charging at home).
so. it works for those with a rive to park and have charging, and live fairly close to work, and work have charging
But those who live in older houses, who do long commutes or who need to make longish journeys, no good at all.
And a hybrid - well you pay a shedload on your leccy bill to charge it, and hey are heavy so you drag half a ton of stuff around not nothing. There is evidence many hybrids that are company cars are never plugged in. So all the energy comes from fossil fuel. Leasing companies say they come back after a 3 year lease with the charging cable in its original packaging having never been opened.
The main reason people put up with this technology is cos of the tax regime.
EM2
Established Member
That's plug-in hybrids. Hybrids like the original Prius don't need to be charged, the battery is charged when the petrol engine is running.
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Really? If we can't build HS2 for use by everybody without dissent (let alone NPR, and ignoring their possible cancellation) what on earth leads you to think that a network of "special roads" could possibly be justified just for users of self-driving cars?
The only rational answer to most of our transport problems is not all this energy-guzzling sci-fi fantasy crap but high density cities and towns, people walking and cycling more and good public transport.
I'm not saying we'd ever build them, but the technology exists to allow them to happen now. Cost, land availability and politics would certainly cause bigger issues than the tech itself.
It's the 'level 5' autonomous stuff (that enables them to co-exist with people, other cars, animals and other day-to-day obstructions) that is going to cause the pain. A lot of the 'AI' stuff we hear about is really just machine learning and systems don't learn as they go - they must be programmed for any given scenario. Cars will need a number of software updates and you can already imagine the issues with bugs or system failures that will impact a car that one day might have no manual control fallback at all.
Take an accident where people, right or wrong, will do a three-point turn and maybe drive the wrong way down a road to avoid. Or maybe use the pavement to pass. A self-driving car is just going to sit down and not move. Stuff like that, and countless scenarios, is why they're not ready. We've still got to decide how a car will decide who lives and dies when an accident is inevitable. So many issues.
I've written about tech since the 90s. I am fascinated by it, but I can see when something is overhyped (take things like Hyperloop as another example) but where you can be shot down as not being a visionary, because so many people with vested interests are trying to convince everyone that it's all fine and the new tech is 'just a year or two away'.
Also, what about the environmental impact of Uber taxis and the like going around without a driver waiting to be summoned? How many will you need to cope with peak demand? What if there's an event somewhere that now has thousands of people in one place wanting a taxi? Do these empty cars know where to be, as a real person might? What happens when one gets soiled? Does the next person have to get in, see the vomit and report it to get another car sent out? Plus where do these charge during the day?
I live sort of near Skipton. There is no rail line to manchester, just the bus. Loads of trains to Leeds and bradford, and some to lancaster and carlisle
There is a good (passenger standard) double track railway from Hellifield to Blackburn that sees 1 or 2 passenger trains on a Sunday, nothing Monday to Saturday. Would extending a train every 2 hours from Clitheroe to Hellifield be so difficult? Make journeys from Craven to Lancashire and Manc (and reverse) possible with no new infrastructure. (Settle and Skipton passengers change at Hellifield)
jonty14
Member
If every car and vehicle that is on the road now was electric, would there be enough electricity to charge them without the countryside being covered with wind turbines and solar farms? Also what would the environmental damage be producing so many batteries?
and all the concrete for the windmill bases (lots of carbon dioxide in concrete making) and the energy and rare minerals in solar panels. And what happens on a cold, dark, windless feb evening?
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