Electric Cars - A general discussion platform

[daveejhitchins]

I've been thinking about this for a while now and have formed an opinion!

Electric Cars today: They use battery technology that have all sorts of problems - here are some:
Very expensive
Very heavy
Inefficient
Take too long to charge e.g. can you imagine going on a long journey and having to stop for longer than it currently takes to fill-up with liquid fuel to charge your batteries? OK they're working on 200 miles with a 5 min. charge - but what will that do to the batteries?
Have demographic issues for charging-at-home e.g. terraced housing with limited parking space

So, I know some manufacturers are working on Hydrogen cells as an alternative - This, to me, has to be the way forward - but, as yet, I haven't researched the pros and cons of the technology - some bedtime reading!

Love to hear your thoughts on this subject? 2030 isn't that far away!

Dave H.

[fordp]

Hi Dave,

I have a Tesla Model 3 Long Range. It is a great car to drive with around 300 miles of range in the summer.

My daughter lives 155 miles away. No problem there is a free charger at the local shopping centre so I pop in there when I go down for a couple of hours take in lunch and a few shops and I am able to get home. 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.

If I want to go to the lake district I will need to take a 25 minute stop at Scotch corner and job done I will be there with plenty of charge.

My work is 45 miles away (when I am not working from home). This is, of course, no issue as I just charge at home overnight at 5p per KWh.

So I have not been to a filling station in a year and I go to public chargers once in a blue moon.

Hydrogen is not a practical fuel for cars and less green than petrol right now. I am 100% sure it will never catch on as a fuel for cars in my lifetime.

[geraldholdsworth]

This worries me, as I live in the north of Scotland and my parents are in the south east of England, with my eldest brother in Bristol - in both cases that is a 600-ish mile journey. Plus, my job and where I live, means I drive a heck of a lot of miles, and there's not always a fuel station where I go, let alone a charging point.

Then, as has been pointed out, how to charge it at home as I can't see charging points being installed outside our houses anytime soon...and we can't always guarantee getting close to our house to plug it into our mains.

So, I might need to buy a brand new petrol car just before the ban comes in and see how long it can last.

[daveejhitchins]

Hydrogen is not a practical fuel for cars and less green than petrol right now. I am 100% sure it will never catch on as a fuel for cars in my lifetime.

They're already using Hydrogen fuel cells for cars, it's just a different method of filling - no more trouble than filling the BBQ gas cylinder at our local filling station (a lot lower cost than changing the cylinder!). And I thought the only by-product from the fuel cells was H20?

Dave H.

[fordp]

This worries me, as I live in the north of Scotland and my parents are in the south east of England, with my eldest brother in Bristol - in both cases that is a 600-ish mile journey. Plus, my job and where I live, means I drive a heck of a lot of miles, and there's not always a fuel station where I go, let alone a charging point.

Then, as has been pointed out, how to charge it at home as I can't see charging points being installed outside our houses anytime soon...and we can't always guarantee getting close to our house to plug it into our mains.

So, I might need to buy a brand new petrol car just before the ban comes in and see how long it can last.

If you want to look at what it would be like to drive long journeys in an Electric car I can recommend having a play with a website called ahttps://abetterrouteplanner.com/. Choose my car or say a 64KWh Kona and plan some of the journeys you often make.

How many days a year would you drive more than 250 miles?

[fordp]

Hydrogen is not a practical fuel for cars and less green than petrol right now. I am 100% sure it will never catch on as a fuel for cars in my lifetime.

They're already using Hydrogen fuel cells for cars, it's just a different method of filling - no more trouble than filling the BBQ gas cylinder at our local filling station (a lot lower cost than changing the cylinder!). And I thought the only by-product from the fuel cells was H20?

Dave H.

There are a few cars and there are a few filling stations but there are more BEVs made every month than Hydrogen cars in all time. The efficiency of Hydrogen from Electric into Electric out is only about 30%. The majority of Hydrogen is made from Fossil fuels today and the cars are very expensive indeed to buy and maintain even compared to a BEV.

[geraldholdsworth]

How many days a year would you drive more than 250 miles?

Under normal circumstances (i.e. no pandemic), probably at least once a month, on average.

[cmorley]

Hydrogen has benefits... you can use spare renewable electricity to split it a the filling station. No tankers delivering hydrogen required.

It has one catastrophic problem though.

It is unbelievably explosive & it will explode at a very high range of air-fuel ratios (significantly wider than petrol or LPG). You need to store it pressurised so you've got a bomb in every car... add in age and poor maintenance (think people who don't MOT/insure their cars at the moment) and you've got a disaster waiting to happen. Think Hindenburg disaster...

It would be trivial to turn one into a bomb. The first time this happens hydrogen will be banned by the government for general public.

IMO BEV, synthetic hydrocarbons & biofuels will be the future.

[BigEd]

I think the hydrogen thing might be the betamax to dry cell's VHS - we'll get the winner, not necessarily the best technology.

Remember Tesla's demonstration of hot-swapping batteries, twice as fast as petrol refuelling? That was a great idea, but again it won't happen: there are short-term benefits to building batteries right into the chassis.

My take would be: use battery-based cars, but try not to own a battery. Lease it, or borrow it. Use taxis, hire cars, or public transport more often. Travel less, and expect long journeys to take longer. (Many of us have been travelling a lot less for a year now, and I can see that being normal, but for different reasons.)

This video is fairly good, on Tesla batteries, as of a couple of years ago.

It's a policy question, as to what vehicles will be running, and at what cost. One can imagine various levies, taxes, duties and charges which shift the balance.

Edit: I suppose if you do own a battery, you can buy an extended warranty, to reduce the risk. But ideally you want it to have a second owner, and eventually to be recycled. Perhaps best if it remains owned by the manufacturer.

Edit: as it happens, I do own a battery. So, I don't follow my own advice, or I don't think hard enough before buying something.

[fordp]

How many days a year would you drive more than 250 miles?

Under normal circumstances (i.e. no pandemic), probably at least once a month, on average.

All my long journeys will be leisure/ family-related. It is pretty straightforward to build in a few minutes at a supercharger. The time I save filling up at home will be about equal to the time spent charging away from home WAITING at public chargers.

[helpful]

What is the recommended maximum time to drive without taking a break on a long journey? The battery only needs to last that long.

[daveejhitchins]

What is the recommended maximum time to drive without taking a break on a long journey? The battery only needs to last that long.

It's called Mrs. H.

I'm glad people are chipping in . . . May just turn out interesting to hear lots of different takes on the subject.

Dave H.

[BigEd]

There's an amusing thing about charge rates for electric vehicles: it can be expressed as miles per hour. That is, miles of range added for each hour of charging. Superchargers aside, I think charge rates are something like 100mph. (Edit: umm, perhaps rather less...) So, you might need to take a good hour-long break in the middle of a long journey. (And if you thought you'd stop at the services for pie and chips at midday, you might be competing for the limited chargers with everyone else who had the same idea.)

So, I think we'll get used to planning our journeys a bit more carefully. At present, all I have to know is that the dreaded orange light comes on when I have 30 miles of petrol left, and petrol stations are usually not much more distant than 30 miles, in my overpopulated neck of the woods. (If I was sensible, I'd top up whenever I was below half a tank...)

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.

(Not only would I like batteries to be replaceable and interchangeable, but I'd also like them to log their lifetime usage, so a used car's battery can say how much its capacity has been diminished.)

[daveejhitchins]

(Not only would I like batteries to be replaceable and interchangeable, but I'd also like them to log their lifetime usage, so a used car's battery can say how much its capacity has been diminished.)

They probably do?

While I was still working (maybe around 2010/2012), I read an article about the current battery technology! No wonder they are so expensive - every cell has its own controller and also coupled to a master controller. So, each cell is charged and discharged individually while keeping an eye on all the other cells. The article also went into the chips they used - I'm sure Linear Technology was involved (?) my goto firm for power supply solutions - they just worked and the back-up was second to none.

I'm thinking that it's battery technology - especially the charging side - that will drive what will be used, eventually. As petrol and diesel are phased-out Petrol stations will Have to install more and more chargers - so the I think the availability of chargers won't be an issue.

It's the waiting time that going to be the killer. It's OK to say you can just have lunch - but that assuming it's lunch time! And . . . People are people - we don't like to wait! Some get ratty just waiting for the pumps to disgorge their fuel of choice

Dave H.

[geraldholdsworth]

I read an article about the current battery technology! No wonder they are so expensive - every cell has its own controller and also coupled to a master controller.

One way to make more money - artificially report that the battery has less juice than it has. Laptop batteries already do this - I ran a laptop on 0% battery once for a good hour or so (had to tell Windows not to go into hibernation or anything silly like that).

[dixiestoat]

I'd go to Electric tomorrow, if we had the Infrastructure to back it up.. until we get the equivalent of petrol station numbers for charging points, thats the real stickler for me..

I like the idea of the "range extenders", where the car runs on electric, but you have a teeny petrol engine JUST to recharge the battery as it goes flat .
For me that seems like the ideal solution?

[guesser]

I like the idea of the "range extenders", where the car runs on electric, but you have a teeny petrol engine JUST to recharge the battery as it goes flat .
For me that seems like the ideal solution?

Dragging around the weight of an engine you ideally never use is silly, and it's another complex system that needs maintenance. Why not use that space and weight budget for a bigger battery if you want more range?

[dixiestoat]

True. Good point.
See, there's lots of things you go "Oh yeah...."

[guesser]

Hydrogen has benefits... you can use spare renewable electricity to split it a the filling station. No tankers delivering hydrogen required.

Creating hydrogen from electricity at filling stations and getting it into a car is ridiculously inefficient, If you have excess renewable electricity it makes more sense to store it in a huge battery bank and then charge the cars from that. The whole suggestion sounds suspiciously like fossil fuel companies that see the writing on the wall trying to cling on to a part of the market.

Batteries keep getting better while hydrogen is up against physics from the start.

[1024MAK]

Things to keep in mind:

As the technology improves (both the electric motors and their electronic control systems and the cells and their control systems), so does the maximum available range.

Battery charge control, balancing and low voltage bypass or cut-off technology has been around in various forms for about/at least twenty years. It was however once a specialist market. Since then it’s use has expanded as the cost of the technology has dropped. In terms of consumer devices, it’s now in laptop battery packs and some other battery powered equipment. As the chips used for this are used more widely, so the cost will continue to fall. Heck, have you seen how cheap microcontrollers are now when bought in bulk?

If I had told you even ten years ago that your domestic vacuum would be a cordless battery powered device, you would have looked at me in disbelief.

I currently drive a hybrid car (petrol/electric). I’ve had it for over ten years and the only battery problem I have had is the lead acid 12V battery that supplies the 12V systems needed to be renewed. The high voltage battery that powers the electric motor is original. I’ve had no problems with it at all.

Okay, it’s a different type to the cells / battery that you find in the electric vehicles that are now available.

The battery technology used in cars will continue to advance. And it may well be different to that used in other consumer devices.

For example there are a number of different lithium battery technologies. Some have higher power density, but have a poor longevity. While others have better longevity, but lower power density.

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.

Mark

[fordp]

As someone mentioned the charging speed in miles an hour the above photo from my first public charging came to mind

[daveejhitchins]

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.

Hmmm! I think their pricing structure would have to change - It's expensive for single person travel - then consider a family - OK, I know there are all sorts of offers and 'deals' however, you need to plan way ahead for those - if you can't do that and you have a family of four! Recently we needed to get down South quickly - Flying was less that half the cost of the train . . . Oh! And quicker.

Dave H.

[1024MAK]

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.

Hmmm! I think their pricing structure would have to change - It's expensive for single person travel - then consider a family - OK, I know there are all sorts of offers and 'deals' however, you need to plan way ahead for those - if you can't do that and you have a family of four! Recently we needed to get down South quickly - Flying was less that half the cost of the train . . . Oh! And quicker.

Unfortunately the pricing is a political thing. And flying is subject to it’s own taxation system. Again a political thing. Past under investment in the railway network compared to other countries has rather limited the expansion of fast express / inter city services. Despite the opposition, ‘HS2’ is too little, too late. Again it’s a political thing...

To encourage travellers out of their cars, I think we need to offer far more carrot. But it appears to me the politicians can only come up with schemes where there are more charges (sticks).

I would want far more investment in public transport systems. Including but not limited to interconnected exchanges between railway and bus, coaches, trams and metro / light rail systems. A lower priced and fairer pricing system including through ticketing between any of the public transport systems. Modern clean and comfortable cars/carriages complete with extras like power points/device charging points/WiFi and good passenger information systems. With a seat for everyone, no standing passengers on normal scheduled services. A good reliable regular service. Improved stations / waiting areas, somewhere pleasant to be rather than a chilly windswept concrete dull boring platform.

Moving to electric cars on it’s own is not going to solve the traffic jams in our towns and cities on it’s own. And even electric cars are not very efficient compared to an electric train full of passengers.

Mark

[BigEd]

Yes, I was going to say some similar things: roads and planes both get financial breaks which rail doesn't. Good public transport could take a load off, as well have having economies of scale. But we would all have to get used to less flexible journeys.

I found a better video on batteries, with an emphasis on Tesla:
Tesla's Future Battery Strategy Explained

And this is good too, arguing that we need standards and state investment in charging infrastructure, electric cars already doing pretty well on range and cost and even charging times:
The Electric Vehicle Charging Problem

(It turns out to be a shorter journey overall if you charge twice, making use of the faster charging when batteries are neither very full nor very empty. So you need even more charging stations than you'd think.)

We've all lived all our lives in the age of oil, and even before that, the so-called age of steam was essentially the age of coal. So, take away fossil fuels, and the baseline is walking, cycling, horseback, horse-drawn transport. We'll still be ahead - will still have made progress - if we only travel by electric bus. But I fully expect we'll have loads of electric cars.

[DutchAcorn]

I have owned a Tesla 3 Long Range for over a year now. The first few months I had range anxiety. But if you never run out of battery power, that quickly fades. Then again, the charging infrastructure in the Netherlands is probably quite good.

The beautiful thing about an electric car is that you charge it overnight. If you're commuting, most of the time there is nothing to worry about, the battery is always full and the need to go to a charging station is rare for me. When I drove a regular car I have had my worrying moments about making it to the next petrol station.

I don't agree with the views on hydrogen. The thing with electricity is that there is not enough transport bandwith to support mass use of electric vehicles. We now use the existing electricity infrastructure but that has taken decades to build. What if we now need to upgrade the networks so that they can handle 5x the load (or more)? What infrastructure would you need in London if every Londoner would need to charge their electric car overnight?

Hydrogen currently comes from fossil fuels mostly and yes, it is very inefficient to convert electricity to hydrogen and then back to electricity. But what if you have a large solar parc in North Africa and you want to export that power to China? Batteries are polluting and expensive storage. In fact it is currently simply impossible to create batteries that store serious quantaties of power.

So taking energy logistics into account hydrogen may not be such a silly choice, even with the poor efficiency.

Hydrogen in cars is not as unsafe as people may think. The gas cilinders in hydro-electric cars are made to survive crashes for obvious reasons. And if there is a leak, hydrogen quickly spreads and moves up into the air. You'd have to make a very air-tight car to create a zeppelin-like hydrogen concentration. Funny comment I heard was: "I would never drive a hydrogen car; don't you know they make atomic bombs with hydrogen?"

[fordp]

What if we now need to upgrade the networks so that they can handle 5x the load (or more)? What infrastructure would you need in London if every Londoner would need to charge their electric car overnight?

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. I worked in the lighting industry for over 20 years and during that time we saw a massive reduction in power consumption especially in the home with the switch from GLS to CFL and the CFL to LED.

Your 5x growth is way off the mark with the average car travelling only 30 miles a day which is around 8 kWh per day. A lot of Londoners do not have cars and those with cars do low mileages at pretty low speeds (in central London anyway).

The big worry with electric consumption going forward is the switch from natural gas to electric for space and water heating.

[BigEd]

It would be good if a plugged-in EV could charge in the early hours, and not immediately it's plugged in. Even better if it could charge when, say, wind power happens to be abundant. And even better if it can give some power back to the grid as needed.

[fordp]

It would be good if a plugged-in EV could charge in the early hours, and not immediately it's plugged in. Even better if it could charge when, say, wind power happens to be abundant. And even better if it can give some power back to the grid as needed.

My car is set to automatically set to charge between 00:30 and 04:30 to correspond with my Octopus Go EV Tariff by using my MyEnergi Zappi II Charger. It cost me 5p per kWH which works out at less than 2p per mile I drive.

There is another tariff called Octopus Agile which tracks the wholesale rate and you can get chargers that will charge your car with the cheapest Electric possible. The cheapest energy matches the lowest carbon and most green.

Octopus do have promotions from time to time where you get paid to consume Electric during periods where there is excess wind generation. I have been paid to charge and cook!

Nissan Leafs support V2G (Vehicle to Grid). In my view apart from this feature, they are not competitive with the best EVs today. They are however common on the second-hand market and may be ideal as a second car.

(If any UK EV drivers are not on an EV Tariff I can snd you a referral code which will gives us both £50 when you sign up. Octopus is pretty much the best company for EV drivers)

[1024MAK]

John Ward covers EV vehicles and the U.K. National Grid in his video here
Definitely worth a watch.

Mark

[BigEd]

> John Ward

That was excellent, thanks Mark. (Some good youtube comments too!) So, the UK grid makes use of a great deal of wind power, which is surprisingly reliable, and the overnight excess capacity of the grid could support, very approximately, electrification of half the UK's car travel. (So there's no order-of-magnitude shortfall, but it might be close-run, without some adjustment. And there's still the question of local connection capacity.)