Electric cars.

[dad_of_jon]

This is not about car's catching fire, it is about cars being written off because they are unfixable mainly because the car makers refuse to provide battery data, have they something to hide, and Tesla making the battery pack part of the structure in the model Y to reduce production costs

sandy munro does a lot of production teardowns,



his mantra is less components the better. The other side of the coin is that when a larger all in one part that used to be a few parts breaks the replacement costs are dearer. There is something I read about plastic single piece parts on bmw mini's costing a lot more to fix than was previously the case.

Love the new car feeling - Enjoy Nicks90

 

[dad_of_jon]

Tie this up with your smart meters not allowing you to charge your EV up in times of high energy demand / low renewable output and there you have restrictions on your freedom of movement. I don't see a rush of infrastructure being built to cope with the 2030 deadline.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Tesla are currently opening an average of one new Supercharger site globally every 13 hours.

 

[Scrattajack]

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money...st-new-electric-cars-slumps-figures-show.html
Not intended as adversarial, just for info. Alongside the increase in complaints though, could it be a sign of a burst bubble?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money...st-new-electric-cars-slumps-figures-show.html
Not intended as adversarial, just for info. Alongside the increase in complaints though, could it be a sign of a burst bubble?

Just so much talk though, isn't it? Whereas if you look at actual sales figures compared to a year ago, electric sales are holding up, and hybrids are growing, whereas petrol/diesel continue to shrink and represent less than half of sales these days.

Another factor is a lack of supply - VW are on something like a 5-6 month backlog, they're selling all the electric cars they can make.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

electric sales are holding up, and hybrids are growing, whereas petrol/diesel continue to shrink and represent less than half of sales these days.

EV sales will continue to be held back by a lack of charging points when you have no off street parking, if you cannot charge using your own supply the difference In price between using petrol and electric makes owning an EV pointless.

My next car will be a Toyota hybrid as I have no off street parking so an EV is not an option, I have noticed how many hybrids are on the road most of which are Toyota, they are now so popular if you order a Toyota hybrid today you have to wait several months for the car to be built.

 

[Brew_DD2]

EV sales will continue to be held back by a lack of charging points when you have no off street parking, if you cannot charge using your own supply the difference In price between using petrol and electric makes owning an EV pointless.

My next car will be a Toyota hybrid as I have no off street parking so an EV is not an option, I have noticed how many hybrids are on the road most of which are Toyota, they are now so popular if you order a Toyota hybrid today you have to wait several months for the car to be built.

I charged mine at a public point for the first time the other day and the prices are insane. My electricity prices have just gone down and overnight I am 9.5p/kWh. That means my per mile rate is about less than 2.5p.

Until a better public solution is rolled out it'll remain expensive for a lot of people.

 

[Leon103]

I charged mine at a public point for the first time the other day and the prices are insane. My electricity prices have just gone down and overnight I am 9.5p/kWh. That means my per mile rate is about less than 2.5p.

Until a better public solution is rolled out it'll remain expensive for a lot of people.

How much are public ones? I never seem to see a price on the signs

 

[MashBag]

The issue is EVERYTHING is energy, we use to much of it, and the requirement globally keeps growing.

Electric cars polish the tip of the iceberg - maybe.

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

The issue is EVERYTHING is energy, we use to much of it, and the requirement globally keeps growing.

Electric cars polish the tip of the iceberg - maybe.

I agree to a point. Until the day that all the electricity used to power EVs comes from renewables all you are doing is moving the point of pollution from the exhaust pipe to a power station somewhere. That said, the fuels used to power an ICE are far more polluting than those we use to general electricity and an EV motor is about 95% efficient compared to and ICE which is about 35% efficient.

 

[MashBag]

Everything was is caps intentionally, the problem is bigger than wherever/however EVs are charged.

Its a fraction of a grain of sand in the ocean, when you look at the global energy problem.

 

[dad_of_jon]

That could be useful it would be great to know the average number of slots you get per site as the one I saw in north wales had 3. you could do the math and see if the gap is being closed quicker than the cars are being made. so that equates to 673.84 sites a year with X average number of spaces. last year tesla made around 1.3 million cars so using an average of 674x20(made the 20 charger figure up as an exercise based on the pic below and the sites I've seen in the uk.)=13,480 I don't know if tesla have opened up their network to other ev's yet as that would lose them their USP.

dividing the number of sites installed per year divided by cars sold would mean each site would need to have 1928 charging slots. Wait a minute that assumes all teslas charge up at superchargers, what is needed is number of superchargers used per vehicle per year. The earlier tesla owners had FREE charging so they may well charge away from home more.

I'd imagine if anyone has a handle on it, it would be tesla. There is less space in the uk for larger sites.

I can quickly get quite complex as in USA they drive longer distances on average so need to charge away from home more. If would be great to get to know if the infrastructure is going to cope or will motorists be sold a pup again like diesel is best.

I get the feeling yet again the government know a lot more than they are letting on (or maybe they truly are incompetent) - as per covid and once the ICE is gone its gone (see what I did there )

Tesla are currently opening an average of one new Supercharger site globally every 13 hours.

View attachment 85142

 

[hoppyscotty]

I agree to a point. Until the day that all the electricity used to power EVs comes from renewables all you are doing is moving the point of pollution from the exhaust pipe to a power station somewhere. That said, the fuels used to power an ICE are far more polluting than those we use to general electricity and an EV motor is about 95% efficient compared to and ICE which is about 35% efficient.

Again you're only considering the motive energy source...what about the energy required to mine the raw materials, transport everything around the world, manufacture the component parts, transport them around the world, assemble the car, ship the car etc. ICE cars have a global integrated supply chain system that is unbelievably efficient. EV's have a long way to go until the entire supply chain network is anywhere as near as established or energy efficient as a typical ICE car. EV's don't move the needle at all regarding overall cradle to grave energy requirements and CO2 emissions...all you're doing is moving the points of pollution away from point of driving them to other parts of the life cycle - and actually increasing CO2 emissions as you're accelerating the early scrapping of perfectly reliable and efficient ICE cars and creating the demand for new EV's and alll the additional CO2 emissions created from their production. But still, people feel better about themselves for driving them even if they're not actually doing anything to reduce total CO2 emissions.

True that EVs are alot more efficient, but in reality this is more than offset by EV's ultimate achilles heal: battery energy density. So about 7.5 litres of diesel contains the same energy as a Tesla Model Y battery...so the inefficiencies of ICE engines are easily accommodated and far more convenient thanks to the energy density of fossil fuels - a typical family cars tank of diesel contains around 650kwh of energy vs a Tesla battery at around 75kwh - Meaning a range of 550 - 600 miles per tank to 280 - 300 miles per charge.

Deisel in a car fuel tank weighs about 65kg vs a Tesla battery weighs in at around 770kg
volume of a car fuel tank is around 0.065m^3 vs. a Tesla battery volume at around 1.5m^3

OK with an EV you're losing the volume and weight of engine and transmission with a couple of electric motors being around 50% lighter...but a Tesla still comes in around the same kerb weight as a similar ICE car.

I actually drive a Tesla Model Y and find it fine. I'm not driving it to save the planet...I'm not that gullible, but so far have not found running it an inconvenience at all for the kind of driving I do. It has more than enough range so I rarely have to charge when out and about...literally 2 or 3 journeys a year I'll have to plan a charge stop en-route. It's cheaper to run than my previous car (mainly due to beneficial tax avoidance mechanisms), cheaper to maintain, drives perfectly well...it's just a car and does what it says on the tin. The main environmental benefit I see with EV's is nothing to do with CO2 emissions, but avoiding general emissions that worsen air quality in towns and cities which are actually causing or contributing to deaths today due to worsening health of people from poor air quality.

 

[jof]

Observation: People go on air quality & how bad it is.
While I agree that we need to improve it, today's air quality is so much better than the smogs of mid last century & even the '80s when car ownership was approaching today's level & hgv/buses & taxis belched diesel fumes with no filters/catalytic converters.

So surely the message should be air quality continues to improve, this is how many lives we have saved compared to the last X decades & we think you can save this many more next decade by switching to electric.

I wonder if there are other environmental effects happens that are triggering increased levels of respiratory problems too, as not only are car emissions improving (send a few greens to a classic car rally if they don't believe you), but there has been a big reduction in smoking too. I'm just not sure what it is (no conspiracy theory replies required)

 

[Brew_DD2]

How much are public ones? I never seem to see a price on the signs

Depends. The one I was using was about 65p/kWh.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

EV sales will continue to be held back by a lack of charging points when you have no off street parking,

But not everybody is like you - I forget the exact figure but it's something like 65-70% of people have off-street parking.

And a lot of those who don't live in cities where there's a functioning public transport network so don't have cars anyway.

But even so, they're working on solutions.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Until a better public solution is rolled out it'll remain expensive for a lot of people.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

But not everybody is like you - I forget the exact figure but it's something like 65-70% of people have off-street parking.

“Just one in six rural homes do not have access to off-street parking, while in major cities and town centres this figure rises to 60%, which Andersem suggests may hamper EV take-up in more densely populated areas.

https://www.transportxtra.com/publi...in six rural,in more densely populated areas.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

“Just one in six rural homes do not have access to off-street parking, while in major cities and town centres this figure rises to 60%, which Andersem suggests may hamper EV take-up in more densely populated areas.

https://www.transportxtra.com/publi...in six rural,in more densely populated areas.

Sure - but as your headline says, it's not a problem for 2/3 of households overall, and that's a pretty big market to be getting on with.

And as I also say - the problem is "worst" for people who live in areas that generally have pretty decent public transport. It would be much, much more of a problem if it was the other way round. Imagine that the future of transport was dependent on compressed natural gas, so effectively was restricted to people on mains gas. That would be no problem for people in cities, but a massive problem for people out in the sticks, who wouldn't have public transport to fall back on. As someone who grew up 2 miles from the nearest bus-stop, and until I went to college had only lived in houses without mains gas, I can tell you that way round would be a much bigger problem.

Yes, a proportion of the population have to pay extra for their gas, because they don't have mains gas - so either they get LPG or use an alternative. At least the electricity network is almost universal, compared to the gas network.

And if and when we get self-driving cars, then one solution would be for the car to go and refuel overnight at a central fuelling depot (or the nearest supermarket carpark) - Tesla demonstrated a robot charging station 7 years ago, VW have updated the idea with mobile robots that recharge at the wall and then go to your car whilst it's parked in a carpark :

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Again you're only considering the motive energy source...what about the energy required to mine the raw materials, transport everything around the world, manufacture the component parts, transport them around the world, assemble the car, ship the car etc. ICE cars have a global integrated supply chain system that is unbelievably efficient. EV's have a long way to go until the entire supply chain network is anywhere as near as established or energy efficient as a typical ICE car. EV's don't move the needle at all regarding overall cradle to grave energy requirements and CO2 emissions...all you're doing is moving the points of pollution away from point of driving them to other parts of the life cycle

Not true - Aston Martin funded a report suggesting that EVs didn't "break even" until 50,000+ miles, but most sources reckon it's more like 16k. Yes they do use a bit more resources up front, but the impact of feeding the petrol pumps soon catches up.

even if they're not actually doing anything to reduce total CO2 emissions.

Again, not true. Depends a lot on the carbon intensity of the electricity you're using, that's true - but the UK's electricity carbon intensity has halved in just over a decade, we're now getting more electricity from renewables than fossil fuels (we're now roughly 40:40:20 renewables:fossil:nuclear), and the fossil fuel contribution is less carbon intensive as we've phased out coal. The UK is now at 70% of the carbon intensity of the US or many European countries like the Netherlands, let alone the likes of Poland.

this is more than offset by EV's ultimate achilles heal: battery energy density. So about 7.5 litres of diesel contains the same energy as a Tesla Model Y battery...

Energy density is not set in stone though. It's suggested that Tesla's new 4680 cells will increase energy density by around 20% in two years under current plans; lithium-air batteries currently under development could increase energy density four-fold.

Meaning a range of 550 - 600 miles per tank to 280 - 300 miles per charge.

There's studies that suggest 90% of cars never drive more than 300 miles in a day, so most of them will never need to charge during the day, assuming they have some means of charging at night. My old petrol car had a range of about 260 miles to the tank, I survived.