Electric vehicles

[Bruce Nicholls]

Interesting topic. This week end I had a visitor who as a motoring correspondent road tests many cars. He set out from Heathrow where he picked up the £70,000 E.V. (200 mile real range) and drove to Bath where he stopped overnight with friends. Here his problems started as he was not able to make a satisfactory connection to their household supply and therefore did not get a full charge. However he set out from Bath heading for us in South West Wales with about 50% in the battery at about 10 am with theoretically nearly enough to make it thinking he would top up on the M4. However with a lack of working fast chargers en-route he eventually turned up 6 hours later. I could have done it quicker in the A7.

The bonus came when he was able to leave it overnight at the local Tesco who had fortuitously just installed a charge point and get a full charge for free!

He left us heading across country for Shrewsbury where I assume he arrived. My conclusion is therefore that they are not yet really practical for longer trips.

[Andy Bennett]

Alan: agree completely.
Electric is pushed as the choice for in-town by everything else being 'fined' out of viability.

I never have understood why hydrogen has not gained ground and if the cleanliness of new oil based transport can continue to improve then who knows?

We sat next to a motoring writer at a recent show and he had just given back his electric test car. As was/is the case with official/real mpg calculations, the quoted distances for electric cars assume no air-con, no radio, no lights, no heaters, no passengers, no luggage, no head wind, no hills. Add in real life and the quoted distances can halve.

Also the answer to electric cars isn't solar. We have 25 solar panels, the largest domestic system our installer had fitted. In summer we can get c.30kW in a day, in winter rain 1kW. Take away domestic use, which uses more power than we can generate in a year and, given that a typical car has a 30-90KWh battery, then a domestic solar system will never do more than a minor slow rate top up portion to the electric car system.

We also have a solar panel on our caravan and there is no way that a solar panel on an A7 roof at perhaps 80W-100W will do more than a trickle top up charge to a normal car battery, let alone do anything for a battery powered vehicle.

But as I say, the bloke who sat there and said that the resistor would never get smaller than 5mm because you wouldn't be able to hold it with tweasers to solder it in place has sort of been proved wrong too, so who am I to say.
Andy

[Robert Leigh]

Does anyone else remember Harrods fleet of electric delivery vans, always sparkling clean?
Robert Leigh

[Austin in the Shed]

I spoke to a chap whose son worked for JCB.He told me that They JCB, had produced a completely electric digger and did a study on what impact producing it had on the environment.
He said that producing just the battery pack was equal to six years use of a diesel powered digger.
What is the life of a battery pack ?
I had read that 90% of the battery material was not reusable,Is that true ?
There is talk of charging EV's by induction,(As an electric toothbrush ) I believe.
James Dyson has dropped the Idea of making EV's with no explanation.

[Ruairidh Dunford]

I don’t think electric cars are the way forward - I would like to see a push in developing co2 extraction to provide a replacement fuel for existing combustion engines.

Production is currently hugely inefficient and small.

[stuartu]

I spoke to a chap whose son worked for JCB.He told me that They JCB, had produced a completely electric digger and did a study on what impact producing it had on the environment.
He said that producing just the battery pack was equal to six years use of a diesel powered digger.

A week or two ago I read that a parliamentary committee had reached a similar conclusion, observing that electric vehicles were not the solution because their production produced pollution far outweighing any gains in the vehicles' foreseeable subsequent use.

What interested me was the report's offered solution, namely, the end of private vehicle ownership.
Buy shares in bus companies now...

Then I remembered my father's (DOB 1921) remark that "after I got a bicycle I never used public transport again and after I got a motorcycle I never used the bicycle again". Perhaps I'll hold back on buying the bus shares.

Regards,
Stuart

[Dave Wortley]

We the general public are so easily convinced:- diesel engines for cars which were the bee's knees at the time, mineral water in plastic bottles (water in bottles? What is wrong with tap water?) , mobile phones that cost £1000, Hitler, Trump, etc, etc. Bah! It's all humbug!

[spannerman]

A friend of mine his wife has an ev
Though work and last week she rang her
Husband and said the cars flat and
Cannot get home! So he told her to
Pull in at at pub near her and her will
Come and get her any way he took
The diesel generator started to charge
The car and had a meal in the pub came
Out and she drove home , nice and green!!!

[Tod]

I have just read with interest that a Swiss company has created an electric mining vehicle that requires zero energy to function. The 100 tonne dump truck, claimed to be the world's largest electric vehicle (EV), it uses a regenerative breaking system that recaptures the energy from breaking to charge it.
Made by Khun Schweitz, the Elektro Dumper is operating at a quarry in Biel, Switzerland,  hauling lime and maul off the side of a mountain to a cement factory. The EV includes a 600kWh battery pack that weighs 4082kg, made by Lithium Storage.
When Formula E driver Lucas DiGrassi test drove the machine, he reported reaching the top of the test site with 80% battery, which recovered charge to 88% on the way down.

I think the way forward is by Hydrogen.

Tod

[Ruairidh Dunford]

Hydrogen is spot on in my book too Tod.

Is this the vehicle? https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.autoblo...-charging/