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Electric car choices

Passion, instruction, buying, care, maintenance and more, any form of vehicle discussion is welcome here
Meatyfool
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Re: Electric car choices

#111006

Postby Meatyfool » January 16th, 2018, 2:35 pm

wheypat wrote:I think it will be even better than that - get home, plug the car in and sell the stored power back to the grid at 10p, then start re-charging at 11pm at 5p. Should help overcome the power spikes. Set the car to never allow the battery to discharge below xxx miles.


Absolutely. A million EV cars having 1Kwh extracted from them during peak time. That's 1Gwh of generation that doesn't have to be generated by "peaker" fossil fuel power plants, and which can be returned to the car batteries in the wee hours.

Now, it is likely to be that that energy may be returned in the wee hours with a fossil fuel generator. However, we currently have coal and diesel generator farms waiting in reserve so if we can consign them to the boiler-room of history all the better.

This is a good watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b3ttqYDwF0

Edited - found later version of the seminar.

Meatyfool..

richlist
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Re: Electric car choices

#111019

Postby richlist » January 16th, 2018, 3:19 pm

Seems to me that this utopian vision of an electric car future where mostly positive outcomes are produced on a wave of exponential development is a bit like believing in God.

You either believe, are somewhat sceptical, or you dont.

I dont.......but I'm not going to deny the believers their little bit of fun in letting their imagination run wild. :D

Howard
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Re: Electric car choices

#111029

Postby Howard » January 16th, 2018, 4:01 pm

richlist wrote:Seems to me that this utopian vision of an electric car future where mostly positive outcomes are produced on a wave of exponential development is a bit like believing in God.

You either believe, are somewhat sceptical, or you dont.

I dont.......but I'm not going to deny the believers their little bit of fun in letting their imagination run wild. :D


Yes, but in the meantime, we leave your lumbering old Range Rovers behind at the traffic lights as we use our electric power to zoom away. And enjoy the 70 mpg from our hybrids. How often do you waste a lot of time at those old fashioned petrol stations? Once every two months is enough to fill us up.

No imagination required, with seamless power on hand we can see you receding in our rear view mirrors!

regards

Howard

supremetwo
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Re: Electric car choices

#111036

Postby supremetwo » January 16th, 2018, 4:20 pm

Meatyfool wrote:Get home and put your car on charging timer to charge at 02:30 (off-peak)? 5p/kWh.
Easy. Meatyfool..

In future, the smart meters might be set up to charge you to recover the tax lost on fossil fuels, so 5p/kWh could be optimistic.

Then there is the road tax, at present exempt for fully-electric cars.

It will not take a huge proportion of electric cars for that to change.

wheypat
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Re: Electric car choices

#111056

Postby wheypat » January 16th, 2018, 5:16 pm

supremetwo wrote:
Meatyfool wrote:Get home and put your car on charging timer to charge at 02:30 (off-peak)? 5p/kWh.
Easy. Meatyfool..

In future, the smart meters might be set up to charge you to recover the tax lost on fossil fuels, so 5p/kWh could be optimistic.

Then there is the road tax, at present exempt for fully-electric cars.

It will not take a huge proportion of electric cars for that to change.


Agreed - pay per mile will come in (which lets face it is effectively what tax on petrol/diesel is already)

lbj20
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Re: Electric car choices

#111198

Postby lbj20 » January 17th, 2018, 10:02 am

Many of these things already happen :) (battery swapping, not so much for things bigger than a bike).

Don't need a smart meter - electric cars will usually let you tell them when to charge (you tell them your home off peak electricity hours). Folks with solar can optimise charging for that if they prefer. I know people with solar and home batteries, which charge the home battery in the day, and charge their car overnight...

There are apps to help you find available chargers which aren't in use (the apps will undoubtedly improve in reliability and user experience).

It's harder for folks in areas without offstreet parking to charge at home - again, that will probably improve as more lamp-post chargers start to appear. The grid will need to adapt but this is not an unanticipated challenge.

The longer haul journeys are the most challenging, and I think there it's likely that hybrid options will be useful for some time whilst the infrastructure adapts and car ranges increase.

richlist
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Re: Electric car choices

#111236

Postby richlist » January 17th, 2018, 11:51 am

Now the discussion has included solar.....something i know a little about.

Whilst solar panels are undoubtedly a benefit for domestic users genera!ly, they do have some disadvantages in our part of the world.

During this winter, lets take the 16 days of January......most days have barely produced 1kwh of solar energy. Most if not all of that will be used to run the house......fridge, freezer etc . There is none spare to charge electric car batteries.

scotia
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Re: Electric car choices

#111252

Postby scotia » January 17th, 2018, 12:26 pm

Electric Utopia!
If the power consumed by all current petrol and diesel fuelled vehicles is transferred to Electricity - then we need to generate that electricity and distribute it. The only viable non-carbon-emitting, reliable, Electric Power source is Nuclear. And since we gave up the lead we had in Nuclear Power Stations, we are now relying on the French and the Chinese to build us new ones at a horribly high per unit cost. So any thoughts that the UK government will give up all the tax on petrol and diesel, and also supply us with cheap electricity seems to me to be nonsense. Then there is also the cost of distributing this electricity to homes - over networks never intended to carry such loads. And there is the attendant ohmic losses in this distribution. The result may be better for the environment - but I can't see it being cheaper.

dspp
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Re: Electric car choices

#111265

Postby dspp » January 17th, 2018, 12:53 pm

scotia wrote:Electric Utopia!
If the power consumed by all current petrol and diesel fuelled vehicles is transferred to Electricity - then we need to generate that electricity and distribute it. The only viable non-carbon-emitting, reliable, Electric Power source is Nuclear. ........ The result may be better for the environment - but I can't see it being cheaper.


The combination of wind & solar together is predictable, forecastable, and not as intermittent as you might think. It will be a long time before that combined 'system' intermittency becomes a full-system issue that is bigger than other system intermittency issues (of which the biggest is one of the large nuclear plants falling off the bars with no warning; or demand-side fluctuations). For the UK grid it is a relatively trivial problem through to 40% renewables penetration and the UK grid is now at 25% renewables penetration. Furthermore if you carry out system modelling it suggests that storage (mostly batteries) of relative small amounts gets a typical grid through to 80% renewables penetration with little or no additional cost vs alternatives.

Given that renewables penetration of 25% in UK is growing at a bout 1% per year, and we hope to get that up to 2% per year with a big effort, then things are looking fairly well controlled, i.e. by the time we need large scale storage the factories to build it will have been built, ditto for the big interconnectors. This is all going on now and the results are looking good.

Grid losses are not that great. Trivial compared to thermal losses. On levelised cost basis it looks to be at worst parity compared to conventionals, likely slightly cheaper.

The biggest EV issue I see at present is the charging problem for anyone who does not have off street parking at home and/or at work. That is quite an adoption killer because it forces centralised decision making about street-level charging solutions. Which inhibits adoption.

regards, dspp

scotia
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Re: Electric car choices

#111391

Postby scotia » January 17th, 2018, 7:15 pm

dspp - we are probably moving off-topic, so i'll not debate the future of electricity generation here - suffice to say that after a very long period (and continuing in my seventies) working with the Electricity supply industry and its control, I have a less rosy opinion on intermittent renewables and battery storage than you have. Maybe I'm getting stuck in my ways.
Back to the Electric Car - I drove back and forward across Central Scotland today in Arctic Conditions (in a turbo-petrol engine car). Heater on, heated rear windscreen on, and air conditioning on to prevent misting-up. How is this handled in current All-Electric Cars - particularly the heater?

dspp
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Re: Electric car choices

#111404

Postby dspp » January 17th, 2018, 7:46 pm

scotia wrote:dspp - we are probably moving off-topic, so i'll not debate the future of electricity generation here - suffice to say that after a very long period (and continuing in my seventies) working with the Electricity supply industry and its control, I have a less rosy opinion on intermittent renewables and battery storage than you have. Maybe I'm getting stuck in my ways.
Back to the Electric Car - I drove back and forward across Central Scotland today in Arctic Conditions (in a turbo-petrol engine car). Heater on, heated rear windscreen on, and air conditioning on to prevent misting-up. How is this handled in current All-Electric Cars - particularly the heater?


Scotia,

- Re generation: I too have spent a long time making electricity (and oil & gas) the old fashioned way. But I have the advantage of being a tad younger and trying the new ways as well. Engineering is fun :)

- Re thermal management (hot or cold): It is a serious issue. On some of the early EVs they used to have little kerosene heaters. Now they simply seem to abuse the battery some more, and dump waste heat out of the battery thermal mge systems which are pretty substantial. Some of these are air cooling on the batteries, other liquid cooling. At the end of the day it is just another load and a range-killer if you overdo it. I for one am not trading in my LBYM oil-burning clunker quite yet.

regards, dspp

wheypat
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Re: Electric car choices

#111539

Postby wheypat » January 18th, 2018, 10:27 am

scotia wrote:Back to the Electric Car - I drove back and forward across Central Scotland today in Arctic Conditions (in a turbo-petrol engine car). Heater on, heated rear windscreen on, and air conditioning on to prevent misting-up. How is this handled in current All-Electric Cars - particularly the heater?


My leaf holds up fine - the heating/cooling is faster than the diesel volvo. The range drops by about 5 to 10% when it's on full, depending on weather. I can turn the heater on from the phone or have it timed to come on and the car be ready at 8:30 every morning, ready to take the kids to school. It adapts as well, so in colder conditions it comes on sooner.

My leaf is only 24kwh, I will upgrade to a larger 60kwh when they are 2 or 3 years old, so in 2021/22 maybe.

Meatyfool
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Re: Electric car choices

#111558

Postby Meatyfool » January 18th, 2018, 11:06 am

Taking this back to the OP:

Fully Charged episode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k7k3Mzknm8

Slide at 03:19 shows the choice of cars, if not available, then available quite soon.

Meatyfool..

PS: Slide at 10:05 is worth viewing :D

scotia
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Re: Electric car choices

#111604

Postby scotia » January 18th, 2018, 1:23 pm

wheypat - thanks for the info regards the heating in the Leaf - no need for a paraffin stove!
meatyfool - thanks for the link. However I'm a little distrustful of enthusiasts of all persuasions. It was interesting to see how hydrogen powered cars were rubbished - a one time favourite for enthusiasts.
If all of this comes to pass there will be a huge infrastructure bill, and a huge loss in fuel tax. It will be interesting to see how the government attempts to recoup this - and whether or not it will affect the switchover curve.

vrdiver
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Re: Electric car choices

#111617

Postby vrdiver » January 18th, 2018, 1:45 pm

Meatyfool wrote:Taking this back to the OP:

Fully Charged episode

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k7k3Mzknm8

Slide at 03:19 shows the choice of cars, if not available, then available quite soon.

Meatyfool..

PS: Slide at 10:05 is worth viewing :D


Thanks for the video - very upbeat view of how EV will develop. Makes me think waiting until 2020 might be a better decision than jumping in now :(

Slarti
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Re: Electric car choices

#111692

Postby Slarti » January 18th, 2018, 5:06 pm

wheypat wrote:I can turn the heater on from the phone


So slightly off topic, is it possible to get electric cars that are not connected to the internet?

Or at least where the connection is guaranteed not to be connected to car security or controls?

Slarti

wheypat
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Re: Electric car choices

#111795

Postby wheypat » January 19th, 2018, 8:29 am

Slarti wrote:
wheypat wrote:I can turn the heater on from the phone


So slightly off topic, is it possible to get electric cars that are not connected to the internet?

Or at least where the connection is guaranteed not to be connected to car security or controls?

Slarti


Don't know - I've driven a leaf and a Tesla, both of which supported this. You can't (in the leaf) drive it without the key. I believe that some (non electric cars) will soon have the option to use your phone as a key, so presumably electric ones will too.

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Re: Electric car choices

#112144

Postby bionichamster » January 20th, 2018, 5:26 pm

vrdiver wrote:I dislike the concept of PHEV; it seems inefficient to carry two power sources and associated kit, but it looks like the longer journeys will have to carry the battery if I want to take advantage of all-battery trips when traveling locally. Of course, my understanding of the technology is zero, so if anybody can explain (in layman's terms) why PHEV is not a compromise, I'd be grateful.


It probably is a compromise, but maybe not as bad in terms of carrying excess baggage as you have implied. Yes you carry some batteries around even when you aren't using the electric motor, but many petrol or diesel drivers fill their fuel tank to the brim and carry that around until it's about a quarter full, when in fact it might be more efficient for them to half fill it or less, depends on the size of journeys I suppose. Hybrids tend to have smaller engines and fuel tanks which partially compensates for the extra battery weight. I guess they probably are still carrying extra weight, but maybe not as much as you might think in a real world situation.

At the end of the day will a particular hybrid give you better mpg on average for the type of driving you do?

Just a thought.

BH

wheypat
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Re: Electric car choices

#131385

Postby wheypat » April 11th, 2018, 10:32 am

vrdiver wrote:I'm starting the long and protracted debate with myself about what to replace the current motor with.

I have no interest in cars, except as a tool to get from A to B. Mrs VRD or I use a car every day (we're both retired) and would expect to chalk up 12k m/annum in the replacement car. I'm intrigued by the electric car concept, but dubious that any sane Chancellor will allow fuel duty to wither without figuring out how to tax battery-driven vehicles.

I'd like a range of >300 miles on a single charge, as we can easily drive over 200 miles in a single day when heading to the coast and back (yes, we both scuba dive). The 2018 Nissan Leaf only offers 235 miles currently, but may get to 300+ miles range later in the year.

I like driving estates; I always seem to have "stuff" that needs moving that wouldn't be nearly as easy to shift in a saloon. I dislike poor value-for-money cars and don't care about badges or country of origin. Mrs VRD refuses to have a BMW, but otherwise the field is wide open. Electric estates seem to be rarer than unicorns (or offered only as ugly vans).

Is it worth waiting a year or so, or is there something out there that ticks the boxes?


I took a new leaf out for a test drive last week (the one with the 40kWH battery). The sales man estimated that the round town range was 160-180 miles and motorway 120 miles. Nice to drive though and when the 60kWh battery is available at the end of this year I may well be tempted to cancel the model 3 and go with that.


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