Electric cars.

[Northern_Brewer]

Wow, that is a horrendous difference in weight! unbelievable that a small 2wd electric hatchback is only a couple of hundred KG's lighter than a large family 4wd SUV. I understood that carrying around a heavy 4wd transmission makes cars heavy and the Tesla gets 4wd via two relatively lightweight motors (around 100kg a piece), but scaled down that is a huge gap.

The Mini is likely to be an extreme though just because it is not optimised at all for electric - they literally take chassis off the same production line as ICE and drop an electric drivetrain in it so can't take advantage of optimisations like using the batteries as structural members like dedicated EVs can. I guess they just needed a quick and dirty first-generation solution so that they had something in showrooms whilst they developed a dedicated chassis.

To give you an idea of how unoptimised the Mini is, it weighs more than the basic Tesla Model 3 that has twice the range. So yes the Mini weighs over 30% more than its ICE version, but that's not necessarily representative of dedicated EVs.

I'm a big fan of the synthetic replacement fuels. Seems daft to scrap overnight millions of perfectly serviceable and efficient cars with a couple of decades worth of useful life still left in them and replace them, along with all the global infrastructure that supports them, with a whole fleet of brand new cars all made from fresh resources just dug out of the earths crust, from questionable regimes in far away places, all in the name of sustainability. Not sure we can call that progress.

The average car in the UK has a life expectancy of 14 years, so in reality the average car doesn't have "a couple of decades worth of useful life still left in them", new cars sold today will on average be scrapped in 2037. And people will be replacing their cars with the product of new resources - but if they choose petrol then they will have an ongoing need to extract oil resources from questionable regimes like Russia, Saudi and Iran. At least once the transition to EVs have been completed the main materials can be recycled.

Synfuels will have their place but they're like hydrogen without the infrastructure issues - they are such an inefficient use of energy compared to pure electric that they will be a lot more expensive, which means they will only be used in niches - some big niches admittedly - like long-distance plane travel.

 

[dad_of_jon]

According to this a EV can be 30% heavier than a ICE so when you take away the engine, gearbox, cooling system and everything the EV doesn't need the difference is going to be similar to people driving a small ICE car to a huge petrol/diesel Chelsea tractor, therefore going back to your original question damage to the roads by EV's is not going to be any more of an issue than it is now.

Unless it's a Chelsea tractor EV

I think the roads have already had Their maximum mashing. If EVs remain more expensive and that results in a reduction of cars on the road that could well cancel out any increase wear due to increased weight. Is there such a metric as kilogram miles?

 

[hoppyscotty]

Well the cars do have plenty of useful life left in them.....it's just peoples purchasing habits have changed. The drop in average life of an ICE car is skewed due to recent government incentives to scrap cars to buy new diesel cars. historically people have been quite happy to keep cars running for many years over several owners. Also 20 years of free money due to low interest rates meant that more and more people who normally wouldn't or couldn't contemplate buying an expensive brand new car suddenly were able to get into brand new cars....I include myself in this. So let's see what happens to interest rates and government incentives over the next 10 years or so and how that impacts the purchasing habits of consumers.

Pure electric infrastructure issues and ethical issues around cruel and inhumane regimes are orders of magnitude greater for batteries than ICE cars. 77% of batteries are manufactured in China so that is all you need to know about the current state of environmental and ethical impact of battery manufacture. ICE cars have the benefit of over 100 years of refining the global supply chain into a super efficient thing that minimises energy...energy costs money and is an overhead and has been reduced as much as possible over that time by the big global car giants.

Synfuels have their own challenge as does battery production, but are alot easier to solve as they can piggyback off the existing fossil fuel infrastructure rather than having to create a whole new and completely different global infrastructure - you can manufacture them anywhere in the world, as long as you have a source of clean electricity, and use existing pipelines, and tankers and distribution infrastructure right to existing petrol stations for dispensing into your car. Synth fuel production might be inefficient (as are fossil fuels), but so are wind turbines and solar panels and batteries.

By far the biggest challenge that both battery EV and synth fuels, and hydrogen for that matter, faces is the sheer need to significantly increase the global electricity generating capacity to enable any of these technologies to be delivered and operate. It's a challenge of physical logistics not of money (but also of money). And renewables just can't cut it - not that they're particularly cheap, so you're looking at nuclear to provide the bulk of it, so imagine how many nuclear power plants need to be produced around the world to increase the current global electricity generation capacity by 300% and on top of that replacing the current fossil fuel generation capacity. That is a fair few nuclear power stations, well into the thousands I'd imagine...and how much does a fission reactor come in at these days? and how long from breaking ground to coming on stream does it take? You can do the maths yourself, but it aint pretty whichever way you cut it.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Unless it's a Chelsea tractor EV

I think the roads have already had Thier maximum mashing. If EVs remain more expensive and that results in a reduction of cars on the road that could well cancel out any increase wear due to increased weight. Is there such a metric as kilogram miles?

To be honest it's not cars that do the damage they recently upped the weight for hgv and when you consider the amount of them, busses, coaches, tractors with huge trailers etc the weight of a car even a EV is not the vehicle doing the damage

 

[Alastair70]

That is a nice deal. All the quotes I have got are nothing near that. Certainly no swapping out.

The 25yr guarantee seems fairly standard now. Also, if it is ever called upon, all the hard work on the instal is done. Replacing components like-for-like will be relatively painless.

 

[dad_of_jon]

At about 6:30 the point is made that any vehicle fire involving an EV li-ion battery results in a worse outcome than if an ICE vehicle catches fire. Bear in mind both vehicles can contain plastics and other materials that give off toxic fumes but the EV's battery gives off more toxic fumes than the ICE car.

Top tip: Don't bother trying to put the fire out. Keep your distance if you want to live.



This guy is a qualified engineer who prefers to follow the facts (when they are of course made available)

I'm not dissing battery powered transport, I have an ebike myself. I take extra precautions with it because it presents a bigger risk if it fails than the petrol alternative. So imagine storing a much bigger battery than that in your integral garage.

To be fair cars are better put together than the average ebike & scooter. - They need to be!

 

[Nicks90]

Totally agree EV fires are no joke, when the go up they go up in style!

Remember 20 years ago when the next big thing was LPG? Everyone banged on about all these cars exploding like mini atom bombs next to orphanages, kitten sanctuaries, nunneries and anyone fitting them was a devil incarnate?
Lots of systems fitted - alot pretty badly - and the prophecies of doom didn't really happen.

Pretty sure the same will be true of EV batteries

 

[Steve.]

Wow, that is a horrendous difference in weight! unbelievable that a small 2wd electric hatchback is only a couple of hundred KG's lighter than a large family 4wd SUV. I understood that carrying around a heavy 4wd transmission makes cars heavy and the Tesla gets 4wd via two relatively lightweight motors (around 100kg a piece), but scaled down that is a huge gap.

But having said all that cars have been getting heavier for the last 30 years. Back when I were a lad a small hatchback was typically under (just) 1,000kg and I was lucky to be getting 30mpg from a 4 speed box and carburettor engine. These days you're looking at 300kg's more with double the power and around double the MPG, slashing of emissions, along with the improvement in safety, chassis dynamics, overall tech etc, so that goes to show the progress made in conventional ICE cars.

I'm a big fan of the synthetic replacement fuels. Seems daft to scrap overnight millions of perfectly serviceable and efficient cars with a couple of decades worth of useful life still left in them and replace them, along with all the global infrastructure that supports them, with a whole fleet of brand new cars all made from fresh resources just dug out of the earths crust, from questionable regimes in far away places, all in the name of sustainability. Not sure we can call that progress.

A bit off subject, but multi-storey car parks designed and built in the 60's are having to be re-evaluated. A mini back then was about 650kg now they approach 1800kg, hope they weren't built with RAAC (I doubt they are as RAAC is not a load bearing design)

 

[Alastair70]

Pretty sure the same will be true of EV batteries

You’re right, and we covered EV fires earlier in the thread.
It’s another in the long list of points in this thread that illustrate the Nirvana Fallacy (rejecting an argument/solution because it isn’t perfect).

 

[Kit-brewer]

Love my electric car!! MG ZS EV. 200miles charge...learning to drive I it. Its like a Noddy car!!!

 

[Rodcx500z]

I had one in 1958

 

[dad_of_jon]

Totally agree EV fires are no joke, when the go up they go up in style!

Remember 20 years ago when the next big thing was LPG? Everyone banged on about all these cars exploding like mini atom bombs next to orphanages, kitten sanctuaries, nunneries and anyone fitting them was a devil incarnate?
Lots of systems fitted - alot pretty badly - and the prophecies of doom didn't really happen.

Pretty sure the same will be true of EV batteries

I looked at an lpg car but soon discounted it when it meant I couldn't go on the chunnel as usual twice a year.

 

[Justin Dean]

The 25yr guarantee seems fairly standard now. Also, if it is ever called upon, all the hard work on the instal is done. Replacing components like-for-like will be relatively painless.

Not on the quotes I have got

 

[Justin Dean]

Well the cars do have plenty of useful life left in them.....it's just peoples purchasing habits have changed. The drop in average life of an ICE car is skewed due to recent government incentives to scrap cars to buy new diesel cars. historically people have been quite happy to keep cars running for many years over several owners. Also 20 years of free money due to low interest rates meant that more and more people who normally wouldn't or couldn't contemplate buying an expensive brand new car suddenly were able to get into brand new cars....I include myself in this. So let's see what happens to interest rates and government incentives over the next 10 years or so and how that impacts the purchasing habits of consumers.

Pure electric infrastructure issues and ethical issues around cruel and inhumane regimes are orders of magnitude greater for batteries than ICE cars. 77% of batteries are manufactured in China so that is all you need to know about the current state of environmental and ethical impact of battery manufacture. ICE cars have the benefit of over 100 years of refining the global supply chain into a super efficient thing that minimises energy...energy costs money and is an overhead and has been reduced as much as possible over that time by the big global car giants.

Synfuels have their own challenge as does battery production, but are alot easier to solve as they can piggyback off the existing fossil fuel infrastructure rather than having to create a whole new and completely different global infrastructure - you can manufacture them anywhere in the world, as long as you have a source of clean electricity, and use existing pipelines, and tankers and distribution infrastructure right to existing petrol stations for dispensing into your car. Synth fuel production might be inefficient (as are fossil fuels), but so are wind turbines and solar panels and batteries.

By far the biggest challenge that both battery EV and synth fuels, and hydrogen for that matter, faces is the sheer need to significantly increase the global electricity generating capacity to enable any of these technologies to be delivered and operate. It's a challenge of physical logistics not of money (but also of money). And renewables just can't cut it - not that they're particularly cheap, so you're looking at nuclear to provide the bulk of it, so imagine how many nuclear power plants need to be produced around the world to increase the current global electricity generation capacity by 300% and on top of that replacing the current fossil fuel generation capacity. That is a fair few nuclear power stations, well into the thousands I'd imagine...and how much does a fission reactor come in at these days? and how long from breaking ground to coming on stream does it take? You can do the maths yourself, but it aint pretty whichever way you cut it.

Hence loads of onshore wind though I will believe it when I see it

 

[Alastair70]

Not on the quotes I have got

You need to shop around mate. 25yr warranties aren’t hard to find. Check through this list for examples.

https://energyguide.org.uk/best-solar-panel-installers/?amp=1

 

[Justin Dean]

Too expensive for me

 

[Nicks90]

Too expensive for me

And there is your answer.
10 year warranty using bad products = cheap
25 year warranty using high quality products = more expensive

It's like Terry Pratchett's analogy of shoes. A poor person can only afford 10 marks for a pair of shoes and they lasts one year
A rich person can pay 50 marks for a pair of shoes and they last 10 years.
Poor person ends up paying twice as much for shitty shoes
Same is often true for electrical and mechanical items

 

[Justin Dean]

True but the budget chooses for you.

 

[Bjorn Toulouse]

And there is your answer.
10 year warranty using bad products = cheap
25 year warranty using high quality products = more expensive

It's like Terry Pratchett's analogy of shoes. A poor person can only afford 10 marks for a pair of shoes and they lasts one year
A rich person can pay 50 marks for a pair of shoes and they last 10 years.
Poor person ends up paying twice as much for shitty shoes
Same is often true for electrical and mechanical items

often true but not always, I have had expensive clothes that weren't worth a quarter of the price. Look at cars, the expensive brands often are not at the top of the reliability poles. A quick example the BMW X2, currently a three month wait to get recall work done. Glad I never bought it.

 

[Alastair70]

Too expensive for me

I can appreciate that.
It’s not just about money saving for me, and I know I was lucky enough to be able to invest 3 years ago in view of an 8 year return.
It’s also about carbon footprint.
I’ve done 75k miles in my EV, 10000 of the 12000 tonnes of CO2 are related to the production of the car and the next 75k miles will generate around 2000. An ICE will produce 20000 tonnes at 75k miles and 40000 at 150k.
With the solar panels, I’ve burned no oil from May to September, and generated over 1/3 of all the electricity I’ve used.
Their are downsides to doing 25k+ miles per year in any vehicle. But on the grand scale of things, they are much fewer in an EV.