Why The Obsession With Electric cars?

[EM2]

And what happens on a cold, dark, windless feb evening?

Electricity from nuclear power, biomass, tidal, geothermal or hydro. It's even possible to generate electricity from rain.
Or you can have a battery at home, like the Tesla Powerwall.

 

[Ken H]

Electricity from nuclear power, biomass, tidal, geothermal or hydro. It's even possible to generate electricity from rain.
Or you can have a battery at home, like the Tesla Powerwall.

Its quite windy at the moment but look at the end of Jan. then were reliant on coal, nuclear and gas turbine. We are a long long way from non fossil fuel energy. and we are desperately short of capacity when renewables provide square root of f-all -usually when demand is high because its cold.

We think the DfT are rubbish at running rail. but the energy dept are even worse.

Edit. you can see current and historical electricity consumption in the UK here
http://gridwatch.co.uk/

 

[Giugiaro]

That's odd. In Portugal 68,4% of the energy used in 2017 came from renewables, of which wind contributed 49,7% of the total.
Next month the results for 2018 will be made public.

Despite its southern location, solar doesn't even show up on the statistics, being combined into the 7,0% "other renewables".

 

[AM9]

Its quite windy at the moment but look at the end of Jan. then were reliant on coal, nuclear and gas turbine. We are a long long way from non fossil fuel energy. and we are desperately short of capacity when renewables provide square root of f-all -usually when demand is high because its cold.

We think the DfT are rubbish at running rail. but the energy dept are even worse.

Edit. you can see current and historical electricity consumption in the UK here
http://gridwatch.co.uk/

All this poo pooing of plans for electric cars because they don't do exactly what current fossil fuel polluters do. Overriding all of this, CO2 emissions desperately need to be brought down to levels that will prevent the global climate from running out of control. Daft claims like replacement cars must have a range of 1000 miles and be refillable in 5 minutes make no difference to the inevitable cuts in emissions. Just as fossil fuelled personal transport has created a certain amount of freedom to move around, the total unacceptability of those fuels in the near future will mean that those wanting road vehicles will have to manage with whatever is offered in their place. If it means change, then so be it, but don't run away with the idea that just objecting to the demise of polluting vehicles will significantly delay their removal.
Those that refuse to adopt clean (electric) vehicles as an alternative will help the matter as the electricity demand will not rise as much. Nor will they be polluting the environment as fossil fuels will be progressively raised in price and eventually withdrawn from private use. So maybe they can be just left to rant on.

 

[radamfi]

Its quite windy at the moment but look at the end of Jan. then were reliant on coal, nuclear and gas turbine. We are a long long way from non fossil fuel energy. and we are desperately short of capacity when renewables provide square root of f-all -usually when demand is high because its cold.

We think the DfT are rubbish at running rail. but the energy dept are even worse.

Edit. you can see current and historical electricity consumption in the UK here
http://gridwatch.co.uk/

Solar and wind energy can be stored when production is low, during less windy time and during the night.

Each country doesn't have to be self-sufficient in electricity. There are other countries which have the potential to generate vast amounts of amounts of electricity, in particular hydropower and solar, which can be exported around the world.

 

[edwin_m]

Electric cars will mainly be charging at off-peak periods when there is more likely to be spare generation capacity available. In fact it has been suggested that people can effectively sell their car battery capacity to the Grid, so when they aren't using the car the battery can be used to store power when available and feed it back into the Grid when needed.

 

[Ken H]

Solar and wind energy can be stored when production is low, during less windy time and during the night.

Each country doesn't have to be self-sufficient in electricity. There are other countries which have the potential to generate vast amounts of amounts of electricity, in particular hydropower and solar, which can be exported around the world.

tell me how this storage thing works, they tried this in a state in Australia and the 'batteries' just went flat causing power cuts. We are a long way from storing the megawatts hours of power we need to cope with the peaks and troughs of renewables.
Dinorwig* cost a shedload of cash but only copes with short term blips, not with storing energy for long periods.

*Dinorwig pump storage scheme near llanberis, N Wales. It pumps water up hill when there is a surplus and works as a hydro power station when there is a shortage.

 

[Ken H]

All this poo pooing of plans for electric cars because they don't do exactly what current fossil fuel polluters do. Overriding all of this, CO2 emissions desperately need to be brought down to levels that will prevent the global climate from running out of control. Daft claims like replacement cars must have a range of 1000 miles and be refillable in 5 minutes make no difference to the inevitable cuts in emissions. Just as fossil fuelled personal transport has created a certain amount of freedom to move around, the total unacceptability of those fuels in the near future will mean that those wanting road vehicles will have to manage with whatever is offered in their place. If it means change, then so be it, but don't run away with the idea that just objecting to the demise of polluting vehicles will significantly delay their removal.
Those that refuse to adopt clean (electric) vehicles as an alternative will help the matter as the electricity demand will not rise as much. Nor will they be polluting the environment as fossil fuels will be progressively raised in price and eventually withdrawn from private use. So maybe they can be just left to rant on.

this assumes that man made global warming is a fact. When you remember that only 10,000 tears ago the UK ( and Europe as far south as the Mediterranean*) was under a mile of ice, there must have been some global warming to end that. But there were no cars then.... Climate cycles naturally - live with it
And while we fanny around in the UK hampering our economy, China and India are building coal power station.

To be honest, I think pollution of the environment by waste plastic is a bigger threat than carbon dioxide.

*There is clear evidence that Kefalonia was glaciated.

 

[Ken H]

Electric cars will mainly be charging at off-peak periods when there is more likely to be spare generation capacity available. In fact it has been suggested that people can effectively sell their car battery capacity to the Grid, so when they aren't using the car the battery can be used to store power when available and feed it back into the Grid when needed.

Yeah great. I come home from work, plug my car in and the grid sucks the rest of the charge from my battery. So when i need my car at 20:00 the battery is flat. And how do I connect my car to the grid when I park it 150 yards from my house, because i live in a village conservation area and there is no parking close by?

 

[anme]

this assumes that man made global warming is a fact. When you remember that only 10,000 tears ago the UK ( and Europe as far south as the Mediterranean*) was under a mile of ice, there must have been some global warming to end that. But there were no cars then.... Climate cycles naturally - live with it
And while we fanny around in the UK hampering our economy, China and India are building coal power station.

To be honest, I think pollution of the environment by waste plastic is a bigger threat than carbon dioxide.

*There is clear evidence that Kefalonia was glaciated.

Please could you summarise your qualifications so that we can judge how seriously to take your opinions?

 

[PeterC]

Yeah great. I come home from work, plug my car in and the grid sucks the rest of the charge from my battery. So when i need my car at 20:00 the battery is flat. And how do I connect my car to the grid when I park it 150 yards from my house, because i live in a village conservation area and there is no parking close by?

No problem to the EV evangilists, they just refuse to believe that your property exists.

There is a lot of work to be done on charging infrastructure before EVs becomes suitable for most people who don't live in the suburbs. What I can see is a few neighbour disputes when somebody gets home at 6, plugs their car into the street's only public charger and leaves it there until 8 next morning.

 

[jon0844]

Electric cars will mainly be charging at off-peak periods when there is more likely to be spare generation capacity available. In fact it has been suggested that people can effectively sell their car battery capacity to the Grid, so when they aren't using the car the battery can be used to store power when available and feed it back into the Grid when needed.

Surely this is really inefficient given the losses when passing charge from one battery to another?

Electric is the future, for sure, but there are still loads of hurdles to overcome and petrol (maybe less so diesel) will be around for a fair bit yet.

The key is to get those who could use an electric car today without issue to do so. But I still think a lot of people buying an electric car probably have a fossil fuel powered vehicle too. Still, that's a start.

 

[AM9]

Yeah great. I come home from work, plug my car in and the grid sucks the rest of the charge from my battery. So when i need my car at 20:00 the battery is flat. And how do I connect my car to the grid when I park it 150 yards from my house, because i live in a village conservation area and there is no parking close by?

Life is full of lifestyle choices. Unfortunately, some get more choice than others but being able to rush out at the drop of a hat won't be considered anywhere near as important as some of the choices that will be forced on everybody by the deteriorating climate that all but the most rabid (mostly misinformed) conspiracy theorists are howling about. We will all have to get used to a new kind of mobility.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Electric is the future, for sure, but there are still loads of hurdles to overcome and petrol (maybe less so diesel) will be around for a fair bit yet.

This is why I think a sensible interim design of vehicle for the next 10 years or so would be a plug-in series hybrid which can run on electricity only in built up areas but for a long journey run up a high speed, turbo/supercharged petrol engine which would run at peak efficiency revs to charge the battery out of town.

 

[AM9]

There is a lot of work to be done on charging infrastructure before EVs becomes suitable for most people who don't live in the suburbs. What I can see is a few neighbour disputes when somebody gets home at 6, plugs their car into the street's only public charger and leaves it there until 8 next morning.

So because there will be a few local disputes, just like parking squabbles and boundary issues, everybody should just carry on regardless of the damage done to everybody by climate change. Price, however is a very useful tool to 'encourage' dissenters.
There are other modes of transport that can be developed instead of a mobile, polluting, road obstruction.

 

[jon0844]

That just comes over as anti-car, which doesn't help the situation. If anyone tried to price people out of the car and force them to buy an electric vehicle before the infrastructure was ready, we'd have loads of problems. We need more carrots and less sticks.

Having a means to charge at home IS a very big problem. It's so big that it will stop people buying an all-electric car full stop. Nothing will make someone buy one if they can't charge at home because they don't have a parking space. And in London we've had many years where developers have been made to reduce or even eliminate parking, to force people onto public transport, with the obvious outcome that people just park on someone else's doorstep. Now they'll be doing that AND wanting charging facilities.

Now if our Government was serious about reducing pollution, they might consider funding more subsidies on bus routes in rural areas. Running buses later in the evening in the week and all over the weekend and holidays. There's no reason we can't then work to producing more electric buses, with suitable charging facilities for the bus to recharge at the origin and destination, to coincide with driver breaks etc.

 

[edwin_m]

tell me how this storage thing works, they tried this in a state in Australia and the 'batteries' just went flat causing power cuts. We are a long way from storing the megawatts hours of power we need to cope with the peaks and troughs of renewables.

Was that the bank of Tesla batteries promised by Elon Musk? I've not heard how that went and would be interested to see a link.

Yeah great. I come home from work, plug my car in and the grid sucks the rest of the charge from my battery. So when i need my car at 20:00 the battery is flat. And how do I connect my car to the grid when I park it 150 yards from my house, because i live in a village conservation area and there is no parking close by?

It's no more than an idea at present, but people are saying economical storage is the key to making more use of renewables and in principle using batteries while they aren't being used for anything else could be very economical. The car owner would be reimbursed for restriction on their flexibility to drive (much as industries get lower tariffs if they are willing to be cut of in the event of critical power shortages) and there would probably have to be a minimum charge left in the battery and an ability to stop the process and grab a quick charge in case the car is needed in emergency.

Surely this is really inefficient given the losses when passing charge from one battery to another?

It would be passing charge from renewable sources through the grid into the car batteries when there is surplus available, and from the batteries to other users when they need it. Agreed it is much less efficient than direct transmission from the source to the users, but any means of energy storage is going to reduce efficiency and it doesn't matter if the energy in question is from a renewable source and would otherwise just be wasted.

 

[Lucan]

So because there will be a few local disputes, just like parking squabbles and boundary issues

There will more than a few disputes. This is a fundamental problem with EVs, and if street charging becomes the norm in the "Victorian" era suburbs, which are vast, it will become a national issue that everyone is well aware of, and people will simply not buy an EV if they know there is going to be fight every time they need to charge it. So until and unless there is a charging post every few yards along every suburban road, the EV dream won't happen.

As with many things, EVs only work well as long as not many other people are trying to do the same thing. There are people on a roads forum who bang on that everyone will get an EV because they pay no VED; but you can be sure that, as soon as a significant number of people have EVs, they will be taxed. It will be the EVs' "Eternal September" day.

Price, however is a very useful tool to 'encourage' dissenters.

It will need to be a very high price to offset losing your job for repeatedly failing to get to work because you could not park near a street charging point.

 

[AM9]

... It will need to be a very high price to offset losing your job for repeatedly failing to get to work because you could not park near a street charging point.

The high price will probably come from ever increasing duty on fuel used for road vehicles. Initially it will encourage those who are prepared to adjust their habits so that they can live without fossil fuelled transport. Then there will be a steady migration as prices rise further. Of course there will be a small hard-core that considers their convenience more important than both the damage to the environement and eventually their own costs. Most importantly though, over this period:

electric car designs will evolve in terms of range and recharge times
a network of charging facilities and a cost structure to match will be built up
there will be an increasing range of geographical restrictions on where polluting vehicles can be driven, (within 2 years, a large number of vehicles will be banned from the London Ultra Low Emission Zone), - as usual changes in the capital are viewed by other town and city administrations as indicators of the future everywhere
work patterns, travel to work and employer attitudes to electric cars will change, (otherwise, some of them will have difficulty recruiting)​

Nobody knows, but I imagine that within 10 years time, there will be a significant switch to electric and well before the end date for selling new fossil fuelled cars (2040), the majority of the driving population will have learnt to live without IC engines.

 

[krus_aragon]

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.

Sheer trivia: "special roads" already exist in the UK and have for seventy years. See https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Special_Road if you're curious.

 

[DavidGrain]

Last year I got rid of my 24 year old Rover and my 16 year old VW deciding that I no longer needed a spare car and bought a new hybrid. Not a plug in, a rechargeable car. I am still learning with it and I am aware that I can drive it purely as an electric car but my range will be about 60 miles and then i would have to fill it with petrol to charge the battery up again. I was told that I should be able to get 84 mpg. In fact I am getting 51 mpg which I put down to the fact that much of my driving is on motorways which uses the petrol engine. In town driving I find that up to 30 mph the car will usually drive on electric unless I need to accelerate up a hill or away from traffic lights. I am happy that I do not have to buy petrol so often but the tank is smaller so in fact I cannot buy as much petrol at a time as I used to do.

 

[jon0844]

Tesla announced this yesterday.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/6/18253618/tesla-supercharger-250kw-v3-specs-location

(link talks of new 250kW fast charger for compatible vehicles/batteries).

 

[Ken H]

Was that the bank of Tesla batteries promised by Elon Musk? I've not heard how that went and would be interested to see a link.

It's no more than an idea at present, but people are saying economical storage is the key to making more use of renewables and in principle using batteries while they aren't being used for anything else could be very economical. The car owner would be reimbursed for restriction on their flexibility to drive (much as industries get lower tariffs if they are willing to be cut of in the event of critical power shortages) and there would probably have to be a minimum charge left in the battery and an ability to stop the process and grab a quick charge in case the car is needed in emergency.

It would be passing charge from renewable sources through the grid into the car batteries when there is surplus available, and from the batteries to other users when they need it. Agreed it is much less efficient than direct transmission from the source to the users, but any means of energy storage is going to reduce efficiency and it doesn't matter if the energy in question is from a renewable source and would otherwise just be wasted.

every time you convert energy from one type to another you get a loss, sometimes quite substantial. law of physics.

 

[PeterC]

So because there will be a few local disputes, just like parking squabbles and boundary issues, everybody should just carry on regardless of the damage done to everybody by climate change. Price, however is a very useful tool to 'encourage' dissenters.
There are other modes of transport that can be developed instead of a mobile, polluting, road obstruction.

You seem to be mixing my post with somebody elses.
Carry on regardless with an insufficient number of roadside chargers scattered at random locations is a recipe for disputes of EVs become widespread. Or do you think that people in flats or terraced houses are not worthy of owning personal transport?

 

[Bald Rick]

tell me how this storage thing works, they tried this in a state in Australia and the 'batteries' just went flat causing power cuts. We are a long way from storing the megawatts hours of power we need to cope with the peaks and troughs of renewables.

The batteries did not go flat. They went off line, briefly, after a lightning strike elsewhere on the grid, along with much of the rest of the grid. The battery actually enabled the South Australia grid to get back up and running much more quickly than some neighbouring states. Incidentally, Dinworig (as you mentioned it) can store 9,100 MWh.

this assumes that man made global warming is a fact. When you remember that only 10,000 tears ago the UK ( and Europe as far south as the Mediterranean*) was under a mile of ice, there must have been some global warming to end that. But there were no cars then.... Climate cycles naturally - live with its tastes.
And while we fanny around in the UK hampering our economy, China and India are building coal power station.

It is a fact. The world has been warming up for thousands of years. But in the last 150 it was warmed up considerably faster, and at a rate hitherto unseen. It is also a fact that some people don’t believe it, probably for similar reasons that some people don’t believe in vaccinating their children against deadly diseases, or that the earth is flat. But then some people are like that.

Incidentally China had 163GW of installed wind power in 2017 (according to wiki) which is roughly 10x what we have in this country. And it is growing rapidly.

Yeah great. I come home from work, plug my car in and the grid sucks the rest of the charge from my battery.

No it doesn’t. If you need it to charge, it will charge. If you don’t need it to charge, and you don’t mind losing come charge, then it will drain to the grid to the point you are happy with. All controlled through an app on your phone, which you could set to work automatically. Note that you will get paid for this, and it will be entirely possible to make a bit of cash on the side buying electricity at low rate and selling it back when there’s is high demand. As an example, the wholesale price for electricity right now in the U.K. is twice what it was 7 hours ago. If you’d fully charged a Tesla over lunch today, you could sell it all now and make over a tenner without doing a thing. Do that twice a week and that’s an extra grand in your pocket each year.

This is why I think a sensible interim design of vehicle for the next 10 years or so would be a plug-in series hybrid which can run on electricity only in built up areas but for a long journey run up a high speed, turbo/supercharged petrol engine which would run at peak efficiency revs to charge the battery out of town

That’s what BMW thought for the i3 For about 3 years. And now they have changed their mind and gone all electric. Hybrids have already had their day for cars. There will still be place for them for vans and small lorries.

Was that the bank of Tesla batteries promised by Elon Musk? I've not heard how that went and would be interested to see a link.

Recent news:
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...its-own-in-a-burgeoning-energy-storage-market

The Tesla big battery at Hornsdale in South Australia continues to make its mark on the Australian energy market, pocketing another $4m in the fourth quarter from the provision of frequency and ancillary services.
(Sorry, I still haven’t worked out how to quote from other websites)

every time you convert energy from one type to another you get a loss, sometimes quite substantial. law of physics.

Correct. And rarely more more substantial than converting hydrocarbons to physical work via an engine and gearbox. Transferring electricity from one battery to another is, by comparison, rather efficient.

 

[Dent]

every time you convert energy from one type to another you get a loss, sometimes quite substantial. law of physics.

What law of physics would that be?

 

[edwin_m]

every time you convert energy from one type to another you get a loss, sometimes quite substantial. law of physics.

And I explained in the post you quoted why losses may not matter in this particular situation.

 

[krus_aragon]

What law of physics would that be?

The second law of thermodynamics.

 

[Ken H]

Last year I got rid of my 24 year old Rover and my 16 year old VW deciding that I no longer needed a spare car and bought a new hybrid. Not a plug in, a rechargeable car. I am still learning with it and I am aware that I can drive it purely as an electric car but my range will be about 60 miles and then i would have to fill it with petrol to charge the battery up again. I was told that I should be able to get 84 mpg. In fact I am getting 51 mpg which I put down to the fact that much of my driving is on motorways which uses the petrol engine. In town driving I find that up to 30 mph the car will usually drive on electric unless I need to accelerate up a hill or away from traffic lights. I am happy that I do not have to buy petrol so often but the tank is smaller so in fact I cannot buy as much petrol at a time as I used to do.

The batteries did not go flat. They went off line, briefly, after a lightning strike elsewhere on the grid, along with much of the rest of the grid. The battery actually enabled the South Australia grid to get back up and running much more quickly than some neighbouring states. Incidentally, Dinworig (as you mentioned it) can store 9,100 MWh.



It is a fact. The world has been warming up for thousands of years. But in the last 150 it was warmed up considerably faster, and at a rate hitherto unseen. It is also a fact that some people don’t believe it, probably for similar reasons that some people don’t believe in vaccinating their children against deadly diseases, or that the earth is flat. But then some people are like that.

Incidentally China had 163GW of installed wind power in 2017 (according to wiki) which is roughly 10x what we have in this country. And it is growing rapidly.



No it doesn’t. If you need it to charge, it will charge. If you don’t need it to charge, and you don’t mind losing come charge, then it will drain to the grid to the point you are happy with. All controlled through an app on your phone, which you could set to work automatically. Note that you will get paid for this, and it will be entirely possible to make a bit of cash on the side buying electricity at low rate and selling it back when there’s is high demand. As an example, the wholesale price for electricity right now in the U.K. is twice what it was 7 hours ago. If you’d fully charged a Tesla over lunch today, you could sell it all now and make over a tenner without doing a thing. Do that twice a week and that’s an extra grand in your pocket each year.




That’s what BMW thought for the i3 For about 3 years. And now they have changed their mind and gone all electric. Hybrids have already had their day for cars. There will still be place for them for vans and small lorries.



Recent news:
https://www.theguardian.com/technol...its-own-in-a-burgeoning-energy-storage-market

The Tesla big battery at Hornsdale in South Australia continues to make its mark on the Australian energy market, pocketing another $4m in the fourth quarter from the provision of frequency and ancillary services.
(Sorry, I still haven’t worked out how to quote from other websites)



Correct. And rarely more more substantial than converting hydrocarbons to physical work via an engine and gearbox. Transferring electricity from one battery to another is, by comparison, rather efficient.

but you are talking about doing many transfers. those losses add up
and while we are on a rail forum, look at the amount of energy put onto the rail by an electric train as a %age of the chemical energy of the energy in the first place. think its about 30%

 

[AM9]

You seem to be mixing my post with somebody elses.
Carry on regardless with an insufficient number of roadside chargers scattered at random locations is a recipe for disputes of EVs become widespread. Or do you think that people in flats or terraced houses are not worthy of owning personal transport?

Carry on allowing unsustainable burning of fossil fuels for personal transport is a recipe for far worse, - and everywhere, not just local squabbling which ultimately can be fixed with restrictive legislation. The inexorable rise in the cost of activities that create unsustainable pollution will change society and the way that we organise out lives. As indicated in my post, I was addressing a comment by Lucan, but of course posts by other members seem to reflect similar sentiments.