Electric cars.

[Chippy_Tea]

not having off street parking isnt necessarily an issue.

It wont be in the future but its going to take a long time before we all get the option to charge where we park -

 

[Chippy_Tea]

not having off street parking isnt necessarily an issue.
Friend of mine just installed something like this this on the front of his terraced house. His doesnt free stand but is instead bolted to the front of the house and the arm just swings up on a gas ram and when he has finished charging, he pulls it down and it clicks back in to the frame and he padlocks it shut.

I dont think our council would give permission for those to be installed and how long would it be before some drunk idiot tried to swing on it tearing it down and possibly damaging your car.

You can already get pavement channels but they are no use if you cannot guarantee you can park outside your own house, where i live you are lucky to get a park in your own street parking outside your own house is like winning the lottery

 

[Old Fart At Play]

I very much doubt many of the current EV drivers here don't have off street parking and until they give us on street charging at a fair price EV ownership will never be an option for all of us.

I accept that public charging is an issue for the (apparently) 35% of people who can't home charge. What I'm saying is that for the majority of people it isn't an obstacle. But the *perception* that there aren't enough public chargers is an obstacle.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I accept that public charging is an issue for the (apparently) 35% of people who can't home charge. What I'm saying is that for the majority of people it isn't an obstacle. But the *perception* that there aren't enough public chargers is an obstacle.

The reason a lack of chargers doesn't appear to be an issue at the moment is because the majority of EV owners are charging at home so rarely use them, if the 35% with no option to home charge you mentioned switched it would be a huge issue.

 

[dad_of_jon]

A ship carrying cars has caught fire and is in serious trouble.

Ms Versteeg said: “It’s carrying cars – 2,857, of which 25 are electrical cars, which made the fire even more difficult. It’s not easy to keep that kind of fire under control and even in such a vessel it’s not easy.”

This led me to think a bit....

Is that a typical shipment load 1% of cars being I assume electric (not electrical as all cars have a battery)

What numbers of each makes/models of cars have been lost

What car caught fire first? If it was a car fire that started this.

As lithium ion batteries are a fire risk (that's why the aviation industry has regulation on their transport along with other flammable fuel sources of course). Would those cars be spread out from each other on purpose or even put together in one place to reduce the risk to the ship compared with liquid fuel cars.

I know some Suzuki mild hybrids have the battery under the passenger seat 48v - 10ah In comparison my ebike has a 48v 17.5ah battery so that is a bigger hazard. I thought what about a crash that leaves you unable to escape the vehicle and the li-ion catches fire? Then I thought the drivers and the passenger space are probably the best protected part of the car so probably any crash bad enough to cause the battery to burst into flames would most likely have already killed you.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Then I thought the drivers and the passenger space are probably the best protected part of the car so probably any crash bad enough to cause the battery to burst into flames would most likely have already killed you.

They will have crash tested the cars many times if crashes caused fires I am sure we would know about it.

 

[Nicks90]

Elon Musk’s Tesla plans to launch electricity supplier in Britain

Elon Musk’s Tesla is poised to disrupt Britain’s energy market with the launch of a new household supplier.

The maker of electric cars, which also runs an energy supply business in the US, plans to begin selling electricity to homes and running “virtual power plants”, according to a recent job listing.


The listing for Tesla Electric, which supplies electricity to households that own Tesla products such as cars or batteries, called for a new executive “with a healthy scepticism of the status quo” to manage the company’s entry into the UK market.

The advert for a head of operations, which was first reported by the Daily Telegraph, said Tesla Electric would be able to “support the transition of the entire electricity grid to 100% renewables”.

It is understood that Tesla may be planning to help customers who own a Tesla Powerwall battery, solar panels or one of its electric vehicles to store electricity when it is cheap, and sell electricity back to the grid when market prices are higher.

This can help households avoid peaks in market prices when renewable electricity is in short supply, and help the grid do without fossil fuels by making better use of renewable electricity.

Tesla first launched its household supply deals in Texas late last year, and offered drivers who bought its Model 3 car between May and June a year of free, overnight vehicle charging at home when they signed up with Tesla Electric as their retail electricity provider. After the first year, drivers would default to Tesla’s standard overnight charging rate of $1 a day.

Could be a game changer for those of us with a tesla!

 

[Chippy_Tea]

to begin selling electricity to homes and running “virtual power plants”, according to a recent job listing.

What is a virtual power plant?

 

[Nicks90]

What is a virtual power plant?

If renewable supply is exceeding demand, people with Tesla power walls or cars plugged in start charging up so that power is not wasted.
When demand exceeds renewable supply, then the cars or power walls start feeding the national grid.

Each person will set what their minimum battery capacity should be and you will allow Tesla to charge and discharge your batteries accordingly based on national supply and demand.
I only do a maximum of 50 miles per day during the week in my Model Y, so about 25% battery. Therefore Tesla could 'store' 75% of my battery capacity during periods when it can and then draw that back as a virtual power plant in an evening at high demand. And i would get paid for it!

I am already on an energy tariff that does similar for just charging. When it recognises there is excess supply, it starts charging my car and only costs me 10p kw/hr. So it might start and stop charging several times - but i put a minimum charge by 7am in the app and if it hasnt had enough "cheap" excess energy to get to that limit, it then charges on regular expensive electricity to get me to my minimum charge level.
So the tech already exists for feeding your consumable, Tesla just wants to make it a 2 way feed

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Wow as you say it sounds a game changer.

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

Elon Musk’s Tesla plans to launch electricity supplier in Britain





Could be a game changer for those of us with a tesla!

Peaks and troughs in energy generation and usage causes havoc with the grid and is wasteful. The answer is to have the ability to store all this energy but building loads of giant storage facilities would be really costly so it makes perfect sense to instead make use of the thousands of little storage facilities sitting on people’s drives.

 

[Leon103]

How does it effect the battery life?

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

How does it effect the battery life?

Good point. There will be increased charging and discharging so it’s likely to have an impact on battery life.

 

[Nicks90]

Gentle charge and discharge doesnt seem to be negatively affecting EV batteries (based on Tesla data, cant comment on other brands), with most people who have hit 150K miles primarily home charging are losing less than 5% of their capacity. That equates to approximately 600 0-100% full charges for 5% loss. Being realistic most people home charging dont 0-100% their cars and usually do 25-75 or 50-100, so probably nearer 1200 charging cycles.
Losing approx 5% of your overall capacity with over a 1000 charging cycles is pretty damned good!

Again cant comment on other brands, as they all use slightly different battery designs and more importantly, battery management systems. And its the BMS that is crucial, which Tesla have absolutely nailed. Remember they are a technology company, not a car company. They just happen to make some cars :-)

So extrapolating that further and allowing Tesla Electric to utilise 50% of your cars battery every day for power storage for the grid - therefore DOUBLING the overall charge/discharges you car does over the same time/mileage - thats an additional 1200 cycles at home. Leaving you with a car that has lost 10% of its capacity instead of 5%
Might seem a bad tradeoff, but when you consider the standard model Y has a 60Kw battery and if you let Tesla utilise 50% per day - over that charging period above you would be effectively storing and releasing 30,000KWh of energy! 30 megawatts! No idea how much Tesla will pay for this, but it looks like it will soon add up to be a nice sum of money if you do it.


Power walls - well they are specifically designed to do massive numbers of charge/discharges. I would not expect there to be any significant issues with that either.

 

[dad_of_jon]

They will have crash tested the cars many times if crashes caused fires I am sure we would know about it.

yup, I surmise the chance of mechanical damage to the suzuki's mild hybrid under seat battery is lower than dying from the force of a big crash.

does that apply to vehicles where the whole underfloor is packed with batteries?



A couple of great tips in this video. I didn't really think about the fumes aspect even though I know an ICE car can give off toxic fumes if burning an ev would give off more. Most multistory car parks have one vehicular entrance and exit. For escapes on foot from the building there are more options due to fire regs.

I learned from this disaster that due to a chimney effect it's usually safer to get beneath a fire......
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaprun_disaster
fire usually burns upwards and rises, if you have to pass even more toxic fumes to escape your chances are reduced. maybe ev's should be encouraged to park on upper floors? - Am I missing something here?

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Am I missing something here?

I don't know how many EVs have caught fire so don't know if it's a big issue, would I charge one in a garage attached to my house or in the drive away from the house, probably the latter.

 

[Alastair70]

- Am I missing something here?

I don't know how many EVs have caught fire

Real world figures - There’s been 753 call-outs in 5 years for all types of battery powered vehicle, over half of those were scooters/hover boards etc. Electric cars constituted 44% of the total and appear to be safer than ICE by comparison.

https://www.thecarexpert.co.uk/are-...arch indicates that,a very small sample size.

 

[gavp1979]

Real world figures - There’s been 753 call-outs in 5 years for all types of battery powered vehicle, over half of those were scooters/hover boards etc. Electric cars constituted 44% of the total and appear to be safer than ICE by comparison.

https://www.thecarexpert.co.uk/are-...arch indicates that,a very small sample size.

Look at you coming on here with facts and ruining a good witch-hunt/conspiracy theory

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Electric cars constituted 44% of the total and appear to be safer than ICE by comparison

The difference is an ICE car is more likely to catch fire while you are driving it rather than when it's parked in your garage so no danger to your property and people asleep in it. AFAIK the majority lf not all EVs have catch fire when charging.

 

[Leon103]

My father was driving his diesel bmw when the electrics caught fire. That's the only stats I have