If you had an electric car, what would you want?

[PrincessB]

To my eyes, most electric cars fall in two categories:

Supercar style
Boring

My descision is to run my old petrol car till end of life - It's a very dull looking Suzuki with huge advantages. For one, people think you're about 300 years old and always let you out at junctions, it's also good on fuel (47 mpg on petrol according to the trip computer - In the real world about 43) and the 118hp engine is brisk enough to be brisk enough.

I would like a 100% electric car but on my terms, no one is producing something I'd want - Slight hankering for a Model X, with the gull wing doors, but they are such a big boy.

What I want is a Skoda Yeti full E/V. Why they stopped making them, I don't know? Something to do with VW not being able to provide an alternative to the most excellent peice of packaging I've seen ever.

Lets kit it out.

Twin motors, 75kw at the front and 150kw at the back. Not super fast but good enough.
300 mile range.
Basic spec. No leather, minimal console, pure car.

What can you come up with?

[PhaseThree]

The closest at the moment is going to something like the Kia E-Niro. It seems to be getting good-ish review, What Car car of the year if that means anything.

[9873210]

Twin motors, 75kw at the front and 150kw at the back. Not super fast but good enough.

225kW is 300 horsepower. That should be quite a bit more than "good enough". Unless they muck up the design and bottle neck the performance somewhere else in the system.

[tjh290633]

400 miles range and the ability to recharge in 5 minutes.

[kiloran]

400 miles range and the ability to recharge in 5 minutes.

If I could charge in 5 minutes, and recharging points were as common and accessible as petrol pumps are now, I'd settle for 200 mile range

--kiloran

[AleisterCrowley]

I quite fancy an electric SMART fortwo
No idea if they do them..
I might even be tempted to get a driving licence

[tjh290633]

400 miles range and the ability to recharge in 5 minutes.

If I could charge in 5 minutes, and recharging points were as common and accessible as petrol pumps are now, I'd settle for 200 mile range

--kiloran

My old GPO Telephone van (retired) had a 5 gallon tank and was usually refuelled every 70 miles with 2 gallons, plus 2 pints of oil for the engine. That was a series SZPO like the series E but with a 3 speed gearbox. Less oil if you were doing short runs, but a hot engine drank it. During the Suez Crisis it qualified as a goods vehicle, and I got 16 gallons a month, 4 times the ration for a car.

It was followed by a new VW Beetle, which did 38mpg with a 40 litre tank that took 8 gallons every 308 miles. Nowadays I find that the ability to do a 400 mile round trip on a full tank is helpful. Were it electric, I would need to be able to recharge at my interim destination. That, I think, might be a doubtful proposition. The destination is very unlikely to have charging points.

TJH

[todthedog]

For me it is two things range 200 miles is fine the real hang up is speed of recharging. If you could recharge in 5 minutes with ease of access,then no issue.
When I looked a couple of years back insurance was high on e-cars . Also as a registered old fart, a small car with low running costs would be good.

So for the moment my i10 will be fine

[richlist]

For me the main issue is resale value. I guess as time goes by the resale on most current petrol & diesel powered cars will drop very sharply.

But with technology moving on at a rapid pace.....todays electric or hybrid vehicles will be seriously out of date in 3 years time and their resale value will reflect that fact.

One solution would be to lease the car rather than buy outright. But with many decent electric or hybrids costing £40K - £70K I'm going to need deep pockets.

Let's face it......we just ain't there yet, there are far to many issues for the average Joe to get round to make it anywhere near attractive.

[Dod101]

I was recently accused of being pedantic (on another thread). Were I to be pedantic on this thread, I would say that if I had an electric car, I am unlikely to want another.

Dod

[richlist]

I was recently accused of being pedantic (on another thread). Were I to be pedantic on this thread, I would say that if I had an electric car, I am unlikely to want another.

Dod

But there is very likely to be improvements to electric & hybrid design & development that will increase range, speed up charging, reduce the cost of the vehicle etc that might persuade you otherwise.

[scotia]

both TJH and Kiloran would like a 5 minute recharge time (and many readily available filling stations), and that would also be my wish, but its probably the most difficult to achieve.
The energy density of petrol is about 35MJ per litre, and if you fill up with 40litres, that's 1400MJ. But a petrol car is not 100% efficient - lets say it is 21% efficient, and lets say an electric car is 100% efficient, then the electric car requires about 300MJ to be supplied in 5 minutes - which means that the power output of the charger would require to be 1MW. I believe that a Tesla supercharger supplies 120kW (40 minutes), Most rapid chargers supply around 50kW (100 minutes), fast chargers supply around 20kW (250 minutes) and home chargers supply 3 to 7kW (definitely overnight!)
Now even if we could overcome the technical challenge of supplying 1MW to a battery over a manageable cable and connector, where is the filling station going to get its power? Lets assume it has (at least) 5 pumps - otherwise there are going to be significant queues, then at busy times it needs at least 5MW supply - which implies a significant upgrade in the electrical power distribution system (and/or a large local battery storage system at the filling station).
And whether we choose to charge our electric car quickly or slowly, if we all switchover there will be a need for a significant increase in our electrical power generation. Since it would make no sense to create more fossil fueled generators, and since we would like to travel on windless days and nights, then it looks like we need to build a lot more nuclear power stations. And if we are serious, we had better start now.

[vrdiver]

As per most people, I want what I have now, only better.

So, an estate, a workhorse that goes to the council tip, tows a boat, gets filled with the various toys I want to play with and generally gives me no bother. Oh, and my current car can get 400 miles on a tank for short trips, or 600 to 800 miles when driving longer journeys.

The only way I think this switch to all-electric is going to be feasible is if the car makers standardise on a swappable battery. Then at least I could go to the battery station, drive up to the service point and have a robot remove my discharged battery and replace it with a fresh one, crediting me with any unused charge in the old battery of course. Swap time could be as little as 90 seconds if the engineers are allowed to design it, and most of that would be verifying my subscription to the exchange program.

Battery ownership would be akin to calor gas cylinder ownership; buy one, then exchange when empty thereafter. The battery company would be responsible for battery maintenance (so design them such that individual cells could be replaced when they failed). Modular design would allow different capacity batteries and a sensible design would allow for casing changes (e.g. a 2.5 inch disk drive will fit into a 3.5 inch drive slot with an appropriate bracket, same could be done for cars if required.)

Range anxiety and refuelling delays solved, just need the will and the infrastructure to make it so.

VRD

[Alaric]

A
The only way I think this switch to all-electric is going to be feasible is if the car makers standardise on a swappable battery.

You have to feel that it's the desirable solution that refreshing the car's range takes no longer than a conventional filling station, If that was so, a 200 mile range as opposed to today's 400 mile range plus with conventional fuels might be accepted.

[richlist]

I want what Range Rover currently supply.

A hybrid......It's a 300ps petrol engine together with a 100+ps electric. It does 31 miles on a full charge which will pretty much cover most of my day to day runs. Has the long range with the petrol engine and the performance i want.

Just need to sell a property to raise the funds to pay for it !

[kiloran]

both TJH and Kiloran would like a 5 minute recharge time (and many readily available filling stations), and that would also be my wish, but its probably the most difficult to achieve.
The energy density of petrol is about 35MJ per litre, and if you fill up with 40litres, that's 1400MJ. But a petrol car is not 100% efficient - lets say it is 21% efficient, and lets say an electric car is 100% efficient, then the electric car requires about 300MJ to be supplied in 5 minutes - which means that the power output of the charger would require to be 1MW. I believe that a Tesla supercharger supplies 120kW (40 minutes), Most rapid chargers supply around 50kW (100 minutes), fast chargers supply around 20kW (250 minutes) and home chargers supply 3 to 7kW (definitely overnight!)
Now even if we could overcome the technical challenge of supplying 1MW to a battery over a manageable cable and connector, where is the filling station going to get its power? Lets assume it has (at least) 5 pumps - otherwise there are going to be significant queues, then at busy times it needs at least 5MW supply - which implies a significant upgrade in the electrical power distribution system (and/or a large local battery storage system at the filling station).
And whether we choose to charge our electric car quickly or slowly, if we all switchover there will be a need for a significant increase in our electrical power generation. Since it would make no sense to create more fossil fueled generators, and since we would like to travel on windless days and nights, then it looks like we need to build a lot more nuclear power stations. And if we are serious, we had better start now.

A great summary of one of the key problems with electric vehicles, Scotia. The problem might be alleviated to an extent by the fact that the actual recharging is only perhaps 50% of the time a car spends at a filling station.... park, fiddle around, charge, buy snacks at the shop, pay, back in car, fiddle around a bit more, etc. In the non-charging period, a large (truly massive!) bank of super-capacitors might be charged at a lower rate to provide a boost during charging. But even that, of course, does not remove the need for 12-inch diameter cables to carry the current, unless we go for 100kV batteries

We've a long way to go(!)

Changing human habits and expectations will probably be as big a challenge as the technical issues.

--kiloran