Electric vehicles

[Ruairidh Dunford]

So let’s get the big boys behind it and find a route to market for the excess without the ridiculous situation you describe.

Just because the system isn’t working just now does not mean it cannot work, does it?

[Austin in the Shed]

If not pure electric vehicles,what about hybrids ? I've seen several used as taxis so they must be capable of doing the miles.Does anyone have one or used one.Are they the current answer to clean transport at the moment ?

[Jack in the Box]

Just thought I'd share my experience, that may be of interest in this debate.

My penultimate job before retiring was at a fuel cell company.

An attractive view that was held at the time was that Hydrogen would be extracted from water using solar powered hydrolysis.
The Hydrogen would power vehicles, generators etc. The by-product is water and so the cycle begins again.

Just reinforcing Reckers' point, we converted a 3500 kg delivery van from 115 kW diesel power to battery electric. We data-logged it and ran it on food delivery cycles in London. It had regenerative braking and fantastic acceleration. Amazingly, the average power requirement on this duty cycle was only 5 kW! So using an on-board 5kW fuel cell as a generator should suffice.

At the time, the technology would not lend itself to higher duty cycles, like sustained motorway driving and, as far as I know, that challenge remains.

Alan

[JonE]

Hybrids are loved by many as they provide a reasonably economical "automatic" (i.e. gears) solution for the driver. But they are still inefficient and complex as they link heavy, resource-hungry battery production with the additional old-style gearbox technology which are not necessary with modern electrics.
I've also found that one of my bug-bears in staying efficient is precisely that a manual gearbox, if you don't change down and spill speed, allows you to efficient use of fuel - thus cars slowing unduly, or traffic management inclusions, may increase pedestrian safety but they rely on cars running in generally lower gears for a given speed.
We need to get used to simpler, lighter cars (I used a newish 3-pot sub-1 litre petrol with wind-up windows this morning and returned nearly 75mpg on a shortish run) and be taxed severely for luxury things which go beyond "basic transport". But vote with your anticonsumist purse and just keep a reasonably-efficient old one running for as long as possible, while you can?

[Mr Pharmacist]

I have a hybrid company car. Its a plug in variety and when fully charged it can get a whopping 15 miles out of the battery. so it spends most of its time running on the 2.0 litre petrol engine and has returned an average of 40mpg over the past 12 months ( alot of it motorway driving).

So, in my mind that is not helping the planet at all and I think i'd be doing less harm in a normal petrol or diesel car as i wouldn't have to lug 250kg of battery around with me everywhere for no real purpose.

there is no easy solution to our dependance on cars unfortunately and the debate will rage on for a long time yet i suspect.

[andrew34ruby]

 As the economy expands, the base load requirement increases with it - 

Is that a big part of the problem? Why do we presume the economy will continue to expand? We should try to find a sustainable economy.

[spannerman]

Survey was done on plugin
Hybrids and it turns out that
Most of them are company cars
And that the recharge lead as not
Been unwrapped on 98% of them
And only used as a tax incentive?

[Ian Williams]

No one can deny that once built an electric vehicle is in most cases good for its immediate environment, and often in real terms to the owner cheaper to run for the daily commute than an normal car. However as illustrated by Steve Hainsworth's post most owners, and it appears a lot of politicians, are sucked into the blatant lie that the electric car they drive is also saving the planet when in most cases the painful truth is that they are, in big picture terms, causing more harm to the planet than the fossil fuel cars they replace.
Of course as has been pointed out we may soon make a big leap and come up with a solution to impact caused by this technology, and we know that something needs to be done about human impact on the planet. I believe the developed world needs to take a very close look at its economic model, how through its short term disposable policies it is feeding the pollution belching economies of developing countries, which is a massive problem, and how we deal with human population explosion.

[Marcus Ling]

If you look at global greenhouse gas emissions, the biggest producers are :

China 30%
USA   15%
EU      9% includes the UK, (but only for another 2 weeks according to that nice Mr Johnson)
India   7%

So while China is a big producer of goods for the world market there is a significant cost to the environment.

[Bob Culver]

For kiwis in particular, currently an article on the Stuff website.
For whole of life world CO2 for an electric car in Australia and NZ reckoned as 273 gm CO2/km, 128 gm repectively. In Oz about 20% of electricity from non fossil sources, in NZ about 80% (in past). Fossil fuel cars 333 gm CO2 /km. Based on somewhat short life of 150,000 km, which could be hugely increased if motorists were not fashion conscious, although probably represents top battery life. So 100% electric cars not the total CO2 cure our PM presumes. I think we produce less than 1/4 % world CO2 but are determined to wreck the economy showing others the way.