Battery Storage for solar

[BobbyD]

I live in the real world of NOW, not some utopian future world post 2030. In my world most electric cars are hybrids. Some are plug in with a ridiculously inaccurately marketed range of 35 miles. The majority of these vehicles need charging on a daily basis not twice a week.

At the moment there aren't enough EV's being produced to satisfy demand from those who do have a driveway or garage in which to charge. With time BEV's will become dominant over hybrids, and charging capability and infrastructure will improve. We don't need an infrastructure which can support 100% electric fleet when electric cars represent a tiny percentage of the UK motor fleet, and when we do need it it won't be nearly as daunting as the infrastructure which would be required to support 100% BEV fleet today.

Well that doesn't answer the problem we have now.

How do the 50%+ of the UK population......the ones who park their car in the street or on some remote park bay.......how will they charge their cars ?

No, it shows we don't currently have a problem because their aren't enough BEV's to go around, and one of the major properties according to which buyers will sort themselves is practicality. People who need home charging but don't have access to it will continue to charge their cars at the petrol station as they do now and not one BEV fewer will be sold as a result.

As charging requirements and infrastructure progress the incidence and inconvenience of not having 'at home charging' will diminish, and BEV's will become a viable product for an increasing percentage of the population, alongside which there will be more units available for purchase.

[richlist]

Well the only limits are those of vision. If you are right, the country will have pulled off an amazing success in less than 8 years.

Can't see it myself.

[DrFfybes]

Well the only limits are those of vision. If you are right, the country will have pulled off an amazing success in less than 8 years.

Can't see it myself.

A bit longer than that - you'll still be able to buy ICE vehicles until 2030, and most cars being bought today will still be on the road then. Average vehicle age is 8.6 years and growing, I suspect the UK won't reach 90% BEV until around 2040, by which time the problem will be where you can go to get petrol.

Paul

[BobbyD]

More than 20% of cars on the UK roads atm are more than 13 years old, and BEV's make up a very low single digit percentage of the UK fleet. Whilst they are doing very well in terms of new sales we have a long way to go before we are anywhere close to fleet replacement, or even half fleet replacement.

[richlist]

Well the only limits are those of vision. If you are right, the country will have pulled off an amazing success in less than 8 years.

Can't see it myself.

A bit longer than that - you'll still be able to buy ICE vehicles until 2030, and most cars being bought today will still be on the road then. Average vehicle age is 8.6 years and growing, I suspect the UK won't reach 90% BEV until around 2040, by which time the problem will be where you can go to get petrol.

Paul

It's 8 years after which if you want a new car it's gonna be an electric one. So, if the guy in the high rise flat and his pal who parks in the street outside his house are able to home charge by then the country will have performed a remarkable feat.

It's not impossible but it's highly unlikely.

[BullDog]

Well the only limits are those of vision. If you are right, the country will have pulled off an amazing success in less than 8 years.

Can't see it myself.

A bit longer than that - you'll still be able to buy ICE vehicles until 2030, and most cars being bought today will still be on the road then. Average vehicle age is 8.6 years and growing, I suspect the UK won't reach 90% BEV until around 2040, by which time the problem will be where you can go to get petrol.

Paul

It's 8 years after which if you want a new car it's gonna be an electric one. So, if the guy in the high rise flat and his pal who parks in the street outside his house are able to home charge by then the country will have performed a remarkable feat.

It's not impossible but it's highly unlikely.

A hybrid car will still be available new till 2035, I think.

[stevensfo]

Well the only limits are those of vision. If you are right, the country will have pulled off an amazing success in less than 8 years.

Can't see it myself.

A bit longer than that - you'll still be able to buy ICE vehicles until 2030, and most cars being bought today will still be on the road then. Average vehicle age is 8.6 years and growing, I suspect the UK won't reach 90% BEV until around 2040, by which time the problem will be where you can go to get petrol.

Paul

Average vehicle age is 8.6 years and growing

I can't remember ever getting rid of a car till it was at least 10 years old. Given the cost, that's outrageous (sorry to sound like a Daily Mail headline ) Surely, if you look after a car, it should last longer than 8.6 years?

Steve ....whose Volvo is now 8 years old....but now I may keep a bicycle in the boot.

[BobbyD]

Well the only limits are those of vision. If you are right, the country will have pulled off an amazing success in less than 8 years.

Can't see it myself.

A bit longer than that - you'll still be able to buy ICE vehicles until 2030, and most cars being bought today will still be on the road then. Average vehicle age is 8.6 years and growing, I suspect the UK won't reach 90% BEV until around 2040, by which time the problem will be where you can go to get petrol.

Paul

Average vehicle age is 8.6 years and growing

I can't remember ever getting rid of a car till it was at least 10 years old. Given the cost, that's outrageous (sorry to sound like a Daily Mail headline ) Surely, if you look after a car, it should last longer than 8.6 years?

Steve ....whose Volvo is now 8 years old....but now I may keep a bicycle in the boot.

Average age, not average age at retirement. Over 20% of cars are over 13 years old.

[JohnB]

Of course the mileage done by different ages of vehicle changes a lot. Taxis, rental cars and reps all put high mileage on new cars, while older cars are often owned by 4k a year people. And we've seen how keen taxi fleets are to switch, with their organised work patterns, need to work inside congestion zones and keen appreciation as to the lower running costs.. So the environment improvements will come quite rapidly.

[BobbyD]

It's 8 years after which if you want a new car it's gonna be an electric one.

...and if he can't make it work with the local infrastructure then he'll decide what he actually wants is to keep his existing car, or buy a second hand petrol car, or to use UBER instead, or since he lives in an urban area public transport. Car numbers were actually falling pre-pandemic, and the practicality of car ownership in cities was already falling. The resident on the 17 storey of a housing block is already amongst the least likely people in the country to own a car, it seems like an odd case to focus on when considering the viability of electrification.

[richlist]

I own cars that each only do 2K - 3K miles a year. Although its a ridiculously low mileage I get many hours of enjoyment out of them & lets not forget it would be a long way to walk.

[gryffron]

I suspect that day might arrive when there's huge stockpiles of used batteries from EVs available. If I recall correctly, when no longer suitable for EV use, there's a second life possible as battery storage. I seem to remember Nissan are developing this for batteries removed from Nissan Leaf EVs. Soon there might be more batteries available than anyone knows what to do with!

EV batteries are made from extremely valuable rare earth metals. That’s one of the reasons EVs are so expensive. At the moment these are not recycled. But the raw materials are worth a lot of money. So as soon as there are commercial quantities of scrap batteries available, the technology to recycle them will follow. I am very confidence of capitalism’s capacity to develop solutions to make money. Of course they could be used as house batteries for a while and then recycled. But the scrap will go where the money is. And I suspect that is not household power storage.

Gryff

[BullDog]

I suspect that day might arrive when there's huge stockpiles of used batteries from EVs available. If I recall correctly, when no longer suitable for EV use, there's a second life possible as battery storage. I seem to remember Nissan are developing this for batteries removed from Nissan Leaf EVs. Soon there might be more batteries available than anyone knows what to do with!

EV batteries are made from extremely valuable rare earth metals. That’s one of the reasons EVs are so expensive. At the moment these are not recycled. But the raw materials are worth a lot of money. So as soon as there are commercial quantities of scrap batteries available, the technology to recycle them will follow. I am very confidence of capitalism’s capacity to develop solutions to make money. Of course they could be used as house batteries for a while and then recycled. But the scrap will go where the money is. And I suspect that is not household power storage.

Gryff

Who knows? Nissan is certainly repurposing end of life Leaf batteries for domestic use. The next few years will be enlightening. It would be a crime to landfill the used EV cells.

[Watis]

Well the only limits are those of vision. If you are right, the country will have pulled off an amazing success in less than 8 years.

Can't see it myself.

A bit longer than that - you'll still be able to buy ICE vehicles until 2030, and most cars being bought today will still be on the road then. Average vehicle age is 8.6 years and growing, I suspect the UK won't reach 90% BEV until around 2040, by which time the problem will be where you can go to get petrol.

Paul

Average vehicle age is 8.6 years and growing

I can't remember ever getting rid of a car till it was at least 10 years old. Given the cost, that's outrageous (sorry to sound like a Daily Mail headline ) Surely, if you look after a car, it should last longer than 8.6 years?

Steve ....whose Volvo is now 8 years old....but now I may keep a bicycle in the boot.

Average age, not average age at retirement. Over 20% of cars are over 13 years old.

I've noticed a cliff-edge of about 20 years in terms of vehicle age on our roads. Loads of 52 plates or later, but not many older than that.

Watis

[JohnB]

200 Germans are already recycling batteries for VW. https://www.carscoops.com/2021/01/volks ... n-germany/

[BobbyD]

200 Germans are already recycling batteries for VW. https://www.carscoops.com/2021/01/volks ... n-germany/

You can see their battery recycling pilot plant in operation here: https://youtu.be/Qi8Y2lF7Luw

Northvolt, a company in which VW have a stake, built recycling in to their plans from the earliest stages and have already produced a cell with 100% recycled nickel, manganese and cobalt. - https://northvolt.com/articles/recycled-battery/

Tesla founder JB Straubel's Redwood materials is also big on developing battery recycling.

The only reason there is so little recycling at the moment is that there are so few end of life automotive batteries to recycle. At the end of the day as long as batteries contain expensive stuff there will be people queuing up to extract it and sell it back tot the market.

...and yes second lives as static storage batteries is a thing, but it's an intermediary step not a replacement for recycling.