Electric Cars - A general discussion platform

[DutchAcorn]

Thanks for that, interesting video. It approaches the question from the production capacity perspective, which is relatively easy to scale. I wonder what studies there are on the distribution perspective.

As stated most people charge their EV at home, during the night and modern EVs charge with 16 amps / 380V: 6 KW. This power needs to go to homes, so we can eliminate the distribution capacity used by factories and offices from the baseline because they generally have dedicated infrastructure.

My (admittedly simple) reasoning came from home peak use which come from washers and dryers. Washers and dryers peak out at around 9 amps / 2.2 KW. But most homes don't wash daily and use is distributed over time. So if you have a street of 10 homes and these homes have 3 homes peak out at the same time they are stressing the local distribution station with 8 KW in total. If these 10 homes now charge their EVs at the same time they will draw 60 KW of power (ignoring additional other domestic use).

But I can't quite match that with the numbers presented in the video, so probably missing a step.

The good thing is that infrastructure bottlenecks will gradually become apparent, so we'll see

[BigEd]

Indeed, one or two of the commenters seemed to know a bit about distribution arrangements, and there was an expectation of needing to dig up a lot of roads and lay more cables. Also the idea that the charging of cars might be under central control, or somehow it not being certain that plugging something in will immediately get the expected power.

It does feel like different countries and different localities are going to have different challenges.

It's also possible, for many workers, to charge at work rather than at home, at least in principle.

[BeebMaster]

I am a lifelong pedestrian, never had a lesson or even taken the wheel. There are plenty of occasions when I've found not having a car very limiting, but as it's now well over 25 years since I could have been allowed to drive, I doubt I will do anything about it now.

I can get about by train or bus fairly well, but where that doesn't work is if you have a lot of luggage, such as going to one of our gatherings, and I still feel embarrassed about asking for lifts, I feel it's an imposition. Also it means I can't go long distances (or even short distances really) to collect a giveaway horde, just think how much more kit I could have collected if I could...

My attitude towards public transport has changed during the pandemic. I haven't been on an inter-city train since 2019, possibly went on a local train into Manchester in early 2020, and the last time I went on a bus was 3rd March 2020. I stopped going to work in an office (by bus) in July 2019, and have worked from home (intermittently, it gets in the way of the Beebery) since then. I haven't had a cold or a sniffle or a coldsore or a scabby face since I got over my last cold in December 2019/January 2020 (almost certainly as the result of a novelty train journey just before Christmas 2019), which was one of the worst of my life and could even have been coronavirus, but I've never been tested for it.

I am convinced that my better health is related to avoiding buses full of people transmitting germs all through the journey. It's highly likely that I won't go back on the buses when I do have somewhere to go, but it means massively increased travel costs if I have to have taxis everywhere.

I can't really comment specifically on electric cars as I don't know much about the technology involved but I know that battery life, and the size of batteries is or can be a problem. I'm seeing more and more planning permissions for new build developments where it is a planning condition to provide outdoor electric charging points on site, even in some cases for individual houses. I really don't understand that - surely the electric charging point of the house is the house?

I'm interested in driverless cars, if they can be proved to be safe and infallible, I think that they could be the mode of transport of the future, you would just call one up like you would with a taxi, instead of owning one and having it sitting outside the house most of the time unused. Whether that would work out to be cheaper than an actual taxi remains to be seen.

[fordp]

https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articl ... nd-energy/

Here is an article for those interested in hydrogen.

[1024MAK]

Texas is a good example of poor generation and distribution management - see this article.

I hope and like to think that our national grid system is more robust.

Heating loads are the worst as far as grid operators are concerned. Because often demand increases across the board, as many homes demand more power all at the same time. And that can happen NOW.

There are already plans to provide extra power line capacity for the new Hinkley Point power station. A new high voltage line with new pylons is planned to cross over Somerset on its way towards Bristol. Here is one article about this.

In some areas, the existing infrastructure has been adapted to carry more power than originally intended. For example some power lines are formed of six cables. Originally three were to be in use and the other three were intended to be used to carry power when work was required to be carried out on the other set. But now all six may be in use due to more homes having been built in an area.

So I think there is no universal answer to the question. It very much depends on what infrastructure was originally provided, and the current loading and the future prediction on loading. Some areas may not need any extra infrastructure. While others may need extensive works.

Local generation also has a factor. For example PV solar panels. And some wind generation. These feed into the local distribution network rather than the national grid.

I don’t work in the electricity distribution sector, so I don’t know the answer to one question, and that question is, are substation and similar distribution transformers and switchgear rated for continuous use. Or is a diversity factor used for peak vs. average loading?

My workplace uses transformers and switchgear that is rated for continuous use. But then, the load is rather stable. If anything because of standard sized units, most run well under their actual rating.

Mark

[sweh]

Heating loads are the worst as far as grid operators are concerned. Because often demand increases across the board, as many homes demand more power all at the same time. And that can happen NOW.

Also see "TV Pickup" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

[Marvin]

When I charge at home overnight it means I drive at less than 2p per mile compared to 9p I used to pay for my Turbo Diesel.

Have you factored in the taxation on Diesel ?

I suspect not, wait until the Government tax electric vehicles at a comparable rate to dead-dino juice and the cost advantage will disappear and believe me they will do it. I used to have a LPG fueled car, by the time you factored in the cost of the conversion and the loss of power etc it wasn't too bad until they raised the taxation on the fuel... then you were left with a white elephant.

The other thing about electric vehicles is that it's much preferred, for battery life, to charge up to 70 or 80% and discharge only down to 20 or 30%. So, again, plan ahead, and fully charge before your long drive.

So you only get to use 40 to 60% of the battery capacity, so fordp's 300 mile range is now only 120 to 180 miles, then allow for the battery capacity reduction with age...

As for long distance travel, well where possible and reasonably practical, that should be by train. Preferably an electric train running on an electrified line.

That's only an option assuming there are trains and railway lines where you live and wish to travel to. Without a massive investment it will remain impractical for many in this country.

In the UK the "National Grid" has looked into car charging and has said that it expects the grid to largely cope well with only a few areas needing upgrades. We are using less electric now than in the past which a lot of people do not realise. There also seems to be an assumption that demand will be the same in years to come.

Demand will go up, more electronic gizmos on charge, electric heating and cooking as gas is phased out, multiple electric cars on charge per house etc etc

Where is all the extra electric going to come from ? Nuclear isn't being built and older plants are coming to the end of their life, solar and wind can only do so much, hydro/tidal has environmental impacts, natural gas will have to stop being burnt...

A lot of Londoners do not have cars and those with cars do low mileages at pretty low speeds (in central London anyway).

In London there is little need for a car as the public transport options are comprehensive, but for those who don't live in cities it's an entirely different story, 100 to 150 mile commutes are not uncommon. For many years I was clocking up 30,000 miles plus a year.

For me there are still too many unsolved/unanswered questions for electric cars to become a reality for the majority.

[fordp]

So you only get to use 40 to 60% of the battery capacity, so fordp's 300 mile range is now only 120 to 180 miles, then allow for the battery capacity reduction with age...

What BigEd said was correct for day to day motoring but when on a long journey I do charge to 100% and I do end up at my house with very little buffer.

If you needed to charge along the way you would not typically charge beyond 80 - 90%.

It would be pretty normal to do 180 miles (3 hour stints) on a long road trip but the UK is not that big that I will have to do that often.

I think they will introduce road pricing at some point. I think I will be retired by then, however. We do need to raise tax for the services we need. The cost savings per mile are nice while they last.

[fordp]

For me there are still too many unsolved/unanswered questions for electric cars to become a reality for the majority.

If you can charge at home or work and do not routinely need to do more than 250 miles in a day then Electric Cars are practical now. Cheap to buy no but practical yes.

[Coeus]

...I can get about by train or bus fairly well, but where that doesn't work is if you have a lot of luggage...

How does that work for shopping? It seems to me that people not liking to carry their shopping very far, and load it onto public transport, is a big driver for out of town shopping which has free parking.

...I am convinced that my better health is related to avoiding buses full of people transmitting germs all through the journey. It's highly likely that I won't go back on the buses when I do have somewhere to go, but it means massively increased travel costs if I have to have taxis everywhere.

I am certainly not surprised to hear you have had fewer viral infections recently but is that entirely down to public transport? Surely, every change that has been introduced to stop the spread of COVID-19 will have had the effect of also limiting the spread of others viruses, cold, flu etc.

People have reported suffering from fewer colds when switching from office working to home working. Generally they don't say how they travel to work but being indoors with other people who may be infected may be part of it. A big factor may also be the attitude that a cold just not justify taking sick leave so people continue to work, and continue to travel to work, even when infected.

I'm interested in driverless cars, if they can be proved to be safe and infallible...

That's a very high standard. Human drivers are far from infallible. Surely we just need driver-less cars to be safer than most human driven cars to start to make the switch? The difficulty is the number of human drivers who think they personally are infallible, or at least better than average.

I also wonder how much of the cost of a taxi is the driver's wages and would therefore disappear if driver-less cars could be summoned via an app. I think for many people it would be a big step to stop owning a car and therefore having it available at a moment's notice.

[Coeus]

In London there is little need for a car as the public transport options are comprehensive, but for those who don't live in cities it's an entirely different story, 100 to 150 mile commutes are not uncommon. For many years I was clocking up 30,000 miles plus a year.

But just because that is how things have been, does that mean that is how things should continue to be? The pandemic has shown us that we can make quite dramatic change, albeit predicated on the assumption that is temporary, which previously no-one dared to make. It has also led to some people reflecting on how much of normality they want to go back to.

[BigEd]

For myself, 2020 has shown that I barely need to own a car, so I'm convinced now that my present car should be the last one I own. I can still hire a car when necessary, and a hire car gets more use than a private car, so that's a win for everyone. (Of course, circumstances differ! I'm not suggesting everyone can do this, but it's become a possibility to consider.)

A lot of people have found that grocery deliveries work well. (And years ago I noticed a few people leave a supermarket and load their shopping into a taxi. That seems like a good solution to me.)

[Diminished]

I've never owned a car and I still just cycle everywhere. You can actually carry a surprising amount of load on a pedal bike equipped with a couple of pannier bags. I reckon I can get about 15 kg of shopping on my bike with properly inflated tyres, two pannier bags and possibly a rucksack as well.

As a cyclist, I do worry about self-driving cars. Not sure I'm happy about the idea of sharing the road with some potentially haywire armoured robot.

There's also a big question of accountability if there's a collision. Right now there's a well-established procedure for apportioning blame between two individuals in an accident situation. In the case of self-driving cars this becomes a battle of one potentially crippled individual versus the algorithm of some faceless mega-corporation. Guess which of those two entities has the better legal representation.

[Marvin]

I think they will introduce road pricing at some point. I think I will be retired by then, however. We do need to raise tax for the services we need. The cost savings per mile are nice while they last.

You must be planning to retire in the next few years then, I can't see electric cars getting a free ride that much longer. I thought I was onto a good thing with LPG until they raised the taxes to the point the con's outweighed the pro's.

If you can charge at home or work and do not routinely need to do more than 250 miles in a day then Electric Cars are practical now. Cheap to buy no but practical yes.

I'll agree with you that they are already practical for some, sadly my definition of "practical" also has to includes cost and I sure as heck can't afford one until they seriously drop in price.

What concerns me is what state is the battery going to be in by the time the car is 10 to 15+ years old and hopefully in my price range ? After all the capacity of a dead-dino-juice fuel tank doesn't get smaller as it ages...

I like the idea of an electric car but I can't see it becoming affordable to me in my lifetime unless cars radically change...

I've never owned a car and I still just cycle everywhere. You can actually carry a surprising amount of load on a pedal bike equipped with a couple of pannier bags. I reckon I can get about 15 kg of shopping on my bike with properly inflated tyres, two pannier bags and possibly a rucksack as well.

I was late passing my driving test, I used to cycle everywhere, as a teenager I regularly clocked up 12,000+ miles a year. I'd love so see a massive shift to making cycling almost everywhere the preferred option. With electric/electric-assist bikes we could hit our climate change targets far easier that continuing to drive around in multi-ton vehicles.

The electric needs of recharging millions of bikes is a magnitude smaller than recharging millions of electric cars.

I'll confess that I'm a petrolhead and I enjoy driving, I own an old V8 car and several old motorbikes, yet I'd happily commute on a electric bike if/when they become affordable to me. I'd happily have an electric car as my main form of transport if it was enjoyable to drive i.e. a bit sporty and handles well but I suspect anything that ticks my boxes will remain firmly out of my price bracket.

A few thousand easily buys you a sporty car that's exciting to drive as long as you're not trying to save the environment.

[daveejhitchins]

I'm finding the variety of post here very interesting - however, I'm still of the opinion that there are several points that will limit the take-up of rechargeable electric vehicles (in no particular order):

Battery capacity, life and cost - I think here we need one of those Eureka moments in battery technology. Current technology seems to be creeping forward, for all three parameters - but reading the various technical articles it seems to be slowing.

Charging time - My personal belief: the biggest obstacle!

Access to charging points - You have to think about the housing in this country - A large proportion of housing doesn't have parking outside their door! So there would be a requirement for multiple charging points outside multi story housing complexes. There will NEVER be enough - so, what do the people who live in this type of housing do? Go without? You can't say "they can charge at work" or "elsewhere" as they may work for Large companies and you've to consider the charging time for charging "elsewhere"!

There are others, but, probably, of less importance.

Dave H.

[Coeus]

Battery capacity, life and cost - I think here we need one of those Eureka moments in battery technology. Current technology seems to be creeping forward, for all three parameters - but reading the various technical articles it seems to be slowing.

Except Eureka moments don't tend to happen. Development tends to be incremental and even things that appear to have come from nowhere have usually been worked on for some time.

Access to charging points - You have to think about the housing in this country - A large proportion of housing doesn't have parking outside their door! So there would be a requirement for multiple charging points outside multi story housing complexes.

But surely multi-story housing is more common in urban areas where there is less need of a car. There is a question of how to deal with out of town housing that was built with no off-street parking. But people who own cars obviously do park them somewhere so that means there is a somewhere a charging point could be put. If it isn't on the car owner's own house that does mean there has to be some other billing mechanism other it just naturally coming from the household electricity bill.

...You can't say "they can charge at work" or "elsewhere" as they may work for Large companies and you've to consider the charging time for charging "elsewhere"!

Why should working for a large company prevent charging at work? I work for a large company, and though I don't often go into the office, there are electric charging points there. Just like at home, if people drive to work then they must park somewhere. Wherever that is could have a charging point whether it is a company car park or a public car park.

[1024MAK]

I've never owned a car and I still just cycle everywhere. You can actually carry a surprising amount of load on a pedal bike equipped with a couple of pannier bags. I reckon I can get about 15 kg of shopping on my bike with properly inflated tyres, two pannier bags and possibly a rucksack as well.

Only TWO pannier bags

On some bikes you can get pannier bags on the front, and / or possibly a front basket. Two pannier bags on the rear, and maybe a rear storage box as well. And there are those trailers that can be fitted to some bikes...

How far have I pulled your chain!

Mark

[daveejhitchins]

Battery capacity, life and cost - I think here we need one of those Eureka moments in battery technology. Current technology seems to be creeping forward, for all three parameters - but reading the various technical articles it seems to be slowing.

Except Eureka moments don't tend to happen. Development tends to be incremental and even things that appear to have come from nowhere have usually been worked on for some time.
Well . . . I didn't mean 'literally' - but we do need a different technology from what we have now!

Access to charging points - You have to think about the housing in this country - A large proportion of housing doesn't have parking outside their door! So there would be a requirement for multiple charging points outside multi story housing complexes.

But surely multi-story housing is more common in urban areas where there is less need of a car. There is a question of how to deal with out of town housing that was built with no off-street parking. But people who own cars obviously do park them somewhere so that means there is a somewhere a charging point could be put. If it isn't on the car owner's own house that does mean there has to be some other billing mechanism other it just naturally coming from the household electricity bill.
Hmmm! I sure the people who live in those environments would argue that they have as much right to own a car as anyone else. Large car parks are usually provided - especially for more recent builds. But, say, for example, a building has 50 floors with 4 to 6 apartments/floor and we'll say 1 car each. A lot of chargers needed - even if you divide by 4.

...You can't say "they can charge at work" or "elsewhere" as they may work for Large companies and you've to consider the charging time for charging "elsewhere"!

Why should working for a large company prevent charging at work? I work for a large company, and though I don't often go into the office, there are electric charging points there. Just like at home, if people drive to work then they must park somewhere. Wherever that is could have a charging point whether it is a company car park or a public car park.

Consider a manufacturing plant like Nissan (not too far from where I live) "The plant employs 6,000 people in Sunderland" OK, probably not all there at the same time. But, most of the workers will be from the immediate area where the housing has a lot high-rise and compact terrace housing. It's Will be a problem!

Dave H.

Edit - Currently around 40,000,000 cars in the UK - lets say we could half that number (?) and chargers are shared - it still a lot of chargers - and the cost? Probably a minor of the problems to come - I probably won't see the end result - but my family will. Still a worry, in my mind!

[arg]

Battery capacity, life and cost - I think here we need one of those Eureka moments in battery technology. Current technology seems to be creeping forward, for all three parameters - but reading the various technical articles it seems to be slowing.

Unfortunately, Eureka moments don't seem to work like that - occasionally radical new bits of technology appear that give a big advance in one particular feature you care about, but usually they compromise all of the other features you care about, so once you've done something about that you end up with only an incremental improvement overall.

However, the incremental improvements do seem to keep coming, and both capacity and life are now OK (of course you'd like better, just as you would improvements in petrol engines, but they aren't blockers to buying today's vehicles). Cost is the limiting factor right now.

Charging time - My personal belief: the biggest obstacle!

My belief, after 6 years of electric driving, is that this is not an obstacle at all and much more improvement could be a disadvantage!

Certainly on long journeys with family on board, the experience is always that the car is ready to go before the passengers - after driving 200 miles you want refreshments, kids debouncing etc. Even solo long journeys aren't usually a problem as I still need to eat.

The only time I find myself waiting for a charge is on the sort of circular day trip visiting multiple clients (so I'm well tanked up with coffee already) and outside the single-charge range of the car. Even this is not too bad - there's a limit how many miles you can drive in a day while still spending long enough at the stops to be worth going there - so it's not a full charge I'm looking for in this situation, just an extra (say) 50 miles to get me home. Yes, that is a disadvantage compared to a petrol car, but it's not too bad (stopping for 15 minutes, there's inevitably some emails to do or notes to write up from the visit), and it's offset by the fact that the petrol car needs filling up with a 5 minutes wasted every time the tank is empty, while the EV mostly gets charged at home. So the loss on those particular long journeys is offset by saving on all the short or medium length journeys where there's no charging time at all. I believe I spend less time overall refuelling than I did with a petrol car.

The reason I say faster could be a disadvantage is that it's never going to be 'instant', you are always going to want to walk away for a coffee, a pee, do some emails, whatever. And if the charge is too quick you might not be back by the time it has finished. Such a fast charger is inevitably going to be very expensive (you'd expect one twice as fast to cost twice as much, but that's OK as it charges twice as many cars in a day), and if the charge finishes while you are still in the queue at Starbucks then the charger operator is going to want to bill you for idle time. So a 5-10 minute charge time is just the wrong length - too slow that you don't want to stand there waiting for it to finish, too quick for you to go off and do something else.

Access to charging points - You have to think about the housing in this country - A large proportion of housing doesn't have parking outside their door! So there would be a requirement for multiple charging points outside multi story housing complexes. There will NEVER be enough - so, what do the people who live in this type of housing do? Go without? You can't say "they can charge at work" or "elsewhere" as they may work for Large companies and you've to consider the charging time for charging "elsewhere"!

This one is a real issue, but fixable. The majority of homes _do_ have off-street parking, but as you say a substantial minority do not, and some of those that theoretically have off-street parking can't charge there due to recalcitrant landlords who won't permit chargepoint installation. The latter needs fixing by legislation (as has already been done, in California where landlords can't refuse permission for tenants to install charging). For those without off-street parking, charging at workplaces or similar (such as the Cambridge park-and-ride sites) will be an option for many - I don't see what "large companies" has to do with it, obviously some will find it easier to install than others, but it's to be expected that most of those that provide employee parking will also provide charging. Lamppost chargepoints are one option for city streets. There may be a trend to lower car ownership in big cities (more use of public transport and/or Uber-like services). If autonomous driving becomes reality within a timescale to matter here (20 years, so not impossible) then that allows cars that go off and charge themselves somewhere other than outside your front door and/or further driving the trend away from personal car ownership - if you are in a big city and can summon an auto-uber at a moment's notice, then why bother keeping your own?


Bottom line here really is money. There are a number of obstacles to EV adoption, but all of them have existing solutions - it's the cost of the cars and of charging installation that are limiting. And there's a bit of time available: nobody is suggesting a change to 100% EVs overnight; the economics (and home charging) already stack up for a fair number of people, and are gradually improving. Those people with the most challenging combinations of travel pattern and home parking will clearly be the last to switch.

[arg]

Edit - Currently around 40,000,000 cars in the UK - lets say we could half that number (?) and chargers are shared - it still a lot of chargers - and the cost? Probably a minor of the problems to come - I probably won't see the end result - but my family will. Still a worry, in my mind!

Really, it's one chargepoint per car (whether at home or at workplace) to get the majority of charging done by slow charging (necessary for it to be economic). Plus some shared fast chargers for long journeys and to pick up the (hopefully small) number of people who can't park in a place with charging.

So you can think of it as, say, 10% extra on the cost of the cars to cover charging. Certainly that's a problem given the cars are already uncomfortably expensive, but it's not an order of magnitude problem.

[Coeus]

The only time I find myself waiting for a charge is on the sort of circular day trip visiting multiple clients (so I'm well tanked up with coffee already) and outside the single-charge range of the car...

That's very interesting because that is exactly the kind of car use where I would expect people to say that electric cars don't meet their requirements. What I think you are demonstrating is that, having decided you want an electric car, you can adapt.

And there's a bit of time available: nobody is suggesting a change to 100% EVs overnight; the economics (and home charging) already stack up for a fair number of people, and are gradually improving. Those people with the most challenging combinations of travel pattern and home parking will clearly be the last to switch.

Indeed new ICE or hybrid vehicles are still available and won't instantly disappear from the roads immediately they stop being made., hanging around for probably 10 years or more unless we pay people to scrap them. Any discussion about whether the target for cessation of sale of new ICE vehicles seem to completely leave that out as if, for someone whose needs are not met by the current breed of electric cars, the only other acceptable option is a new ICE car rather than one of the thousands of ICE cars already on the road.

So installing 40m charging points may seem like eating an elephant if you think of doing it over a weekend, but if you think of doing it over ten years then its not so bad. So back to Dave's car plant at Sunderland, that only 600/year to install, i.e. about 2 per day, and that assumes all 6,000 employees will need to charge at work.

[ash73]

I don't think most people care what's under the bonnet, it all comes down to lease cost. Once they're cheaper people will buy them.

One thing I'd point out, if you need to charge away from home, the non-Tesla charging network is a mess.

I wonder if Sir Clive is thinking "told you so!"

[1024MAK]

I don't think most people care what's under the bonnet, it all comes down to lease cost. Once they're cheaper people will buy them.

One thing I'd point out, if you need to charge away from home, the non-Tesla charging network is a mess.

I wonder if Sir Clive is thinking "told you so!"

Some people buy a car purely for transport. Others buy because they love petrol engines and speed and excitement. Those that buy for transport reasons, are not going to be bothered about what technology is used, or how it works.

“Petrol heads” are never going to be won over. “Speed freaks” may well be won over if they can experience the same enjoyment from performance electric cars. Then there is everyone in between...

But isn’t it normal with a new technology (*) or new products that have come to market from a new technology (*) to all be bespoke and not be fully compatible with one another.

Like domestic video cassette recorders (VHS vs. Betamax vs. V2000) and then with recordable CDs, and again with DVDs. And there have always been different implementations of anything you can think of in the world of computing, from non-standard ‘standard’ interface ports to disk/disc formats, even the order of most significant vs. least significant byte order. At one time, we could not even agree how many bits were in a byte...

And going back further in time, electricity supply networks at one time even in the same part of the same country had differing nominal supply voltages, or were DC rather than AC, or where they were AC, different frequencies...

Unless a ‘standards’ company, government or international agreement forces the issue, eventually the market will select a common ‘standard’. But this may take time...

* electric vehicles are not that new, electric vehicles have been around since before the ICE was mass produced. Obviously they had a very limited range and were rather slower compared to our current technology.

Mark

[arg]

The only time I find myself waiting for a charge is on the sort of circular day trip visiting multiple clients (so I'm well tanked up with coffee already) and outside the single-charge range of the car...

That's very interesting because that is exactly the kind of car use where I would expect people to say that electric cars don't meet their requirements. What I think you are demonstrating is that, having decided you want an electric car, you can adapt.

Well, on the one hand that's true, but on the other the adaptation is very easy in my case.

For me, the sweet spot (sour spot?) of a multi-stop journey just long enough to exceed single-charge range yet not so long that I'm going to stop overnight doesn't come up very often and the rare occasion it does is counterbalanced by the fact I no longer get in the car to go somewhere and find my wife has left it with only half a pint of petrol in the tank. For someone with a more challenging driving pattern, they will obviously be a later adopter than me. Something approaching a worst case is a travelling salesman with a large territory connected by fast roads - drive for an hour, 30 min appointment, repeat, so 6 hours of driving in a 9 hour day, maybe up to 300 miles/day if the roads are fast enough. Someone with that profile would have found even the best EV to be a severe compromise 5 years ago; now they can, at a price, get that 300-mile car. Or they can accept that their time isn't worth that much and they fit a lunchbreak into the schedule (with charging now more widely available than it was).

Certainly overall there's adaptation/learning required as EVs are just different - it's pointless to spend loads of money trying to get close to identical to previous vehicles and ending up frustrated when you can never get 100% there, while a change of approach gets you to something very acceptable. We will no longer teach our children the hack of using a credit card to scrape ice off the windscreen when EVs have instant heat from the heater (just as well, given the switch to contactless - I don't fancy using my phone to scrape the windscreen!). But they will have to learn that range is shorter in winter than summer, and when buying a car the difference between the cheap model and the one you lust after but can't quite afford is no longer that zippy 0-60 time, but rather more range and so less hanging around at chargepoints in the winter.

[DutchAcorn]

An interesting development in battery technology: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2021 ... s-too-soon

Nice thing is that it approaches more efficient H2 production as well as environmental impact reduction.

And of course that it is Dutch research

[cardboardguru]

It's another format war, isn't it. VHS vs Betamax. CDs vs Vinyl. 8" vs 5.25" vs 3.5" vs 3" disks. etc.

Like them or loathe them, petrol and diesel cars are on their way out. The scientists say they're a problem and the government are going to stop new sales. So they'll end up with retro enthusiasts, keeping vintage examples running.

So there's a bit of a format war between EVs and hydrogen? Well sometimes the best technology wins, sometimes the cheapest. In the end it's always the one that captures the early adopter market. Get the sales figures at the right time, and your format wins. Innovators will buy anything that looks interesting, but it's the early adopter market that matters.

EVs have around 13,000 public chargepoints around the UK right now. Plus all the private chargepoints people have installed on the drives and in the garages. And failing that, anyone who can get access to a 13A socket can charge overnight. So every house with a drive is equipped to the most basic impromptu level of charging. (Analogy to the way 1980s micros could make use of a family's existing cassette player to load files at a slow rate there!)

In contrast, the last time I checked, there were 13 public hydrogen points. And absolutely no one has one at home. And there's no possibility of impromptu refuelling. Yes, just 13.

I've got a sales chart for EVs here. It doesn't show absolute sales of cars, which vary a lot by month. It shows the percentage of EVs as a proportion of total car sales.

BEV = Battery Electric Vehicle. HEV = Hybrid Electric Vehicle, PHEV = Plugin Hybrid.

Ignore the spike in the last couple of months. They are a combination of lockdown stopping most car sales, whilst Volkswagen stuffed the channel with EVs due to some legal requirements, and Tesla, who don't use a dealer forecourt network, continued delivering. I similar thing happened last lockdown, and I took them out of the chart because they distract from the general trend.

So, between pure EVs, and plugin hybrids (the gateway drug to EVs) they have 13% of the market. And the classic technology adoption curve.

Hydrogen cars are not even reported on by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. It's too small. But I would be extremely surprised if it exceeded double figures per year. Even single figures.

And it's not that hydrogen vehicles are brand new. Both EVs and hydrogen vehicles have a history going back more than 100 years. And in their modern form, lithium ion vs fuel cell, they've both been around over a decade. It's just that hydrogen is losing the format war, badly.

[BeebMaster]

Interesting to hail everyone who jumps on a new technology bandwagon as an "innovator" and to brand those who wait until it's proven as "laggards". I'm a lifetime laggard. Until about 3 hours ago I only had 1 HDMI cable.

[cardboardguru]

Interesting to hail everyone who jumps on a new technology bandwagon as an "innovator" and to brand those who wait until it's proven as "laggards". I'm a lifetime laggard. Until about 3 hours ago I only had 1 HDMI cable.

You must have been an early adopter when it came to computers though, if you're now nostalgic for Beebs. You must have got in in the early 80s.

[Zigzagsky]

Working up in London over the last few weeks, I noticed that there were a number of “hydrogen powered” buses running around.

I wasn’t aware of that.

[arg]

Working up in London over the last few weeks, I noticed that there were a number of “hydrogen powered” buses running around.

I wasn’t aware of that.

They've been around for a while, some history here:

https://www.londonreconnections.com/202 ... gen-buses/

Unfortunately, the fuel source so far has been hydrogen from steam-reformed methane, initially trucked in from Rotterdam! So that's good for air quality in London, but probably negative overall for CO2 emissions.

There's been a plan to use greener hydrogen from electrolysers in Runcorn, (but still trucked to London with diesel tractors!), but I'm not sure if that is live yet:

https://forecourttrader.co.uk/latest-ne ... 64.article

Meantime there's lots more battery buses than hydrogen ones (both in the London fleet and elsewhere).

There's no credible case for hydrogen in cars; in buses it's more marginal, but still unconvincing for city buses (as opposed to long-distance). Likewise for rail it mostly doesn't make sense (compared to conventional electrification for long-distance/high-speed, and batteries for shorter distance branches off electrified main lines) but there are some niche applications where it might - the far north line in Scotland is the example most often quoted.