Electric vehicles
28 Jul 2017 13:12:17 UTC
Topic 208978
As many of you will have seen, there is a move in recent times to move away from internal combustion engines, both petrol and Diesel, by 2040. At least in the UK and Europe.
I All looks very green but have they really thought it through, or are they just climbing on the green bandwagon??
1. Will the necessary battery technology be available in 2040?
2. What about all the redundancies in the engine plants?
3. Car body makers might be OK, but will there be jobs in the marine propulsion industry?
4. Will there be a nationwide system of electric charging points? Will they be free?
5. What about the 10's of millions of people that park in the street outside their homes, how will they recharge them, cables across the pavements?
6. How much will it cost to install charging points in peoples driveways and garages?
7. Could the AA and RAC cope with the increased call outs to flat batteries?
8. What will happen with all the oil and petroleum companies once petrol and diesel fuel is no longer required. Redundant refineries and oil rigs? What about their millions of workers?
And those are just questions for Europe. What if the rest of the world follows suit, and the USA bans their gas guzzlers. Detroit is already a has-been Motown with large areas of urban decay, and the city filed for bankruptcy in 2013.
What about the Japanese car makers, and top end companies like Ferrari, Bugatti, BMW, and Audi? how will they fare? Does anyone really think that an electric version of the Bugatti Veyron will achieve 0-60mph of 2.5 seconds and a top speed of 250mph?
What about the owners of vintage cars, will they be banned from use? Will the London to Brighton iconic Veteran car run be banned?
AND we are apparently only talking 23 years away ........ less than a generation. But it's all coolio to be green at the moment, but think on. Cars are cars no matter how they are propelled, cyclists and cars don't mix full stop finish. Yet we are also wasting millions on introducing mini-Holland schemes that nobody wants.
This household goes to some lengths to re-cycle goods rather than chuck them in the landfill bin, but my own personal view is that the Greens have got it all out of proportion and I will vote against most of it.
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Black
Black Taxis
Britain
France
The end?
Batteries
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Chris S_2 wrote:As many of
YES it's very possible check out the current F1(Formula One) cars they are using small petrol based engines and 2 kinds of hybrid power regeneration all in the same vehicle and doing faster that 250mph top speeds and faster than that acceleration times you mentioned as well. Now they are NOT cheap but they DO work, and Ferrari for one is putting some of that setup into their productions cars right this minute. Honda, Renault, Mercedes and Ferrari all make F1 engines that are all working just fine. The Honda one is not up to F1 specs at the moment but it does work as far as the technology goes.
The problem at the moment for most manufacturers is the lack of a battery that can last more than about 100 miles or so and do it day in and day out, supposedly new ones are coming and that should up the range by double or even triple the current numbers making all electric cars suitable for a wider range of people.
Here in the US all electric cars can be charged off any ordinary wall socket of 120 volts, it just takes overnight to fully recharge the battery, so people prefer to use the 240 volt faster chargers instead. Once the cars can do a days drive on the batteries and still recharge overnight on the 120 volt plugs then all electric cars can stop becoming someones 'commuter car' and instead become their 2nd, or even sole car, and then the market for them will skyrocket. If I can buy an electric car that I can drive from my house to the relatives place 1000 miles away and only stop a couple of times, something I do now in my petrol car, and only need to plug it in to recharge when I stop for the night, then the marketplace is wide open...IMHO. I could pull into the hotel, plug in my car, snooze and wake up in the morning with both me and the car ready to hit the road again.
If I can buy an electric car
So on day 1 you drive 350miles and stay overnight in a hotel, day 2 you drive another 350 miles and again stay overnight. Day 3 you arrive at your relatives. The hotel bills will be the same but will the re-charging costs be more than the re-fuelling costs? Will the overall cost of the trip be cheaper with an electric vehicle or dearer, more hassle or not? Always assuming of course that your hotel will let you re-charge from one of their wall sockets through an open door or window overnight, or have dedicated charging bays.
And you haven't answered my questions 2 to 8.
It may well be that some F1 cars are using hybrid technology, regenerative braking has been around for some years now. OK, another question for you. How do you think the unions are going to react to all of this when many tens of millions of automotive and oil industry workers lose their jobs?
And furthermore, how long will these new type batteries hold their charge? With an ordinary lead acid one, leave it in a garage for a month and it goes flat. Not everybody uses their car every day. How long will these new type batteries last before replacement? How much will they cost to replace?
Just because all this it may be technically possible does not mean we should be doing it!! The ramifications down the line have not been thought about properly that is clear.
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
I wrote a long comment, but
I wrote a long comment, but apparently failed to post it, so here is a shorter rewrite.
120V charging stations for Tesla S cars are generally credited with providing 2 or 3 miles of range per charging hour. So overnight works for commuting, and around-town shopping, but is not an option for travel.
The Tesla SuperCharger stations are a serious attempt to support long-distance travel. But as they can provide up to 140 kW input to a car, they require substantial support facilities and a serious connection to the grid. The car has to work hard to keep the battery and other critical components cool while this is going on. If you think your PC has noisy fans, this is on a whole different level.
Conceptually battery swap seems a better way to support out-of-town travel. Better Place tried this. Their business failure was epic, so it may be a while before someone else tries. I still think that conceptually that is the right answer to pure electric long-distance travel. I remain unsure that pure electric long-distance travel is the right answer to much of anything.
Long distance travel by
Long distance travel by individuals is a thing of the past. With the new no carbon future, you will walk to the electric bus stop, take it to the electric train, where you will be strip searched for security, it will take you to the hyperloop station, and it will all happen in reverse when you get to your destination. Of course you will need to be a member of the frequent travel persons, so you will have your RFID tag implanted to the government can track you location in real time. Since you will be tagged, it will double as your payment. The only individuals who will do long distance travel will be HGV operators.
But it doesn't have to be this way, even if the government wants it.
Electric cars are a fad.
Electric cars are a fad. Eventually they will go the same way as all fads do. They aren't any more carbon neutral than a conventional car. Gas and coal will never go away as you still need a way to generate the electricity that power these things. Wind and Solar don't produce enough now and you would probably have to cover all of UTAH just to make a significant dent. Lithium is mined in only 3 places in the world...care to guess where? 2 of them aren't favorable to the West, the third is in turmoil. Long distance travel is a very common thing here, the idea of having to stop every few hours to "top off" an electric vehicle proves their inadequacy in the real world. The US venture in the last 8 years shows how fruitless this ventures has been. Most of the money went to companies with direct ties to the former Government. Almost all of those companies went broke yet HUGE sums of money for the CEOs and others who walked away after the bankruptcy. If it makes you feel better to own and drive one, good for you. The rest of us are just fine with our current vehicles. PS...Mass transit, other than the NE USA and parts of california, has failed. People will never give up their cars. Politicians have been dreaming of converting the population to mass transit for as long as there have been cars. It hasn't worked yet.
Zalster wrote:Lithium is
Australia produces not too far short of half the world's output, according to these stats. There seem to be a few more than three in the list given there, though.
I could imagine that #4 would be deemed "unfavourable" if only because they will surely require all of their production for themselves. I think the rest would be quite happy to sell whatever surplus they have to the highest bidder. I'm interested in which of the "only 3" is "in turmoil". Must be Australia
as I wouldn't regard any others in the top producers to be so handicapped in this way so as not to be able to produce and sell. I imagine the desire to have the revenue would easily overcome any 'difficulties'.
Seriously, I would tend to "follow the money" as to what is likely to happen in the future. In Australia at the moment, there is a lot of money going into new Lithium exploration and potential production. There are resources here that have been known about for years and not previously developed because the demand really wasn't there. It's a different ball game now. Share prices in stocks with Lithium exposure are increasing quite markedly. There is a lot of quite bullish sentiment around.
Cheers,
Gary.
Mass transit, other than the
I've been on the San Fran BART and it works very well. Then there is the Kong Kong Mass Transit Corp which is popular. Depends how you want to define "mass transit". Isn't it the same as public transport in it's conception? i.e. you don't own the transport you simply pay a fare to the operator use it. Every city and country has its buses and trains, what about the Paris Metro, London Underground, NY Subway system, Moscow Metro, they are all forms of Mass transit.
Ok, so you would recommend all the worlds airlines to stop selling tickets to businessmen flying around the world to meetings, for lack of demand?
Not if Google drones have their way. And as we are seeing petrol and Diesel engines are seemingly being phased out. HGV lorries powered by electricity taking a month to go from LA to NY, I rather not think so.
Hyperloop will never come to fruition it is a bored rich man playing with his toys. Some might say that airport scanners are pretty much electronic strip searches. What's wrong with ID cards? If you are an honest citizen with nothing to hide you simply show it if asked. Those without one are in trouble and so they should be.
All electric cars may catch on for inner city travel, and hybrids are getting quite popular for longer travel. But no the world won't be going fully electric any time soon. The power grids weren't designed to cater for it. And if a solar flare wipes out a whole grid, nobody goes anywhere.
Politicians and others are all climbing on the Green wagon at the moment because it is seen as a vote winner. When they all realise that it isn't deliverable, they'll switch to something else. We have been hearing about carbon neutral footprints for so long now, that even the Yeti's don't walk in the snow any more!
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Mass transit, other than the
Should this man be allowed to sell cars?
New Tesla model
Waiting for Godot & salvation :-)
Why do doctors have to practice?
You'd think they'd have got it right by now
Chris S_2 wrote:All
Except cities are starting to remove recharging stations. They don't make sense economically in these times. When electric cars first came out, they were placing them all around cities because the federal government gave them money to put them up. Then they figured out most people don't want electric cars. Then the grants stopped and the real cost to maintain and upkeep came in. Now you can see them digging up and removing them from the cities.
If you want a hybrid or electric, good for you. But you aren't helping the environment. The cost for production and disposal of the vehicle is on par with the cost of a modern car. So at best, very best, you are carbon neutral.
Then there is the hazards of electric batteries when the vehicle catches fire. Almost as bad as when a FORD aluminum truck catches fire (want to see a trunk burn to the ground in under 5 minutes? youtube Ford aluminum truck fire. Thought they would have figured that out after the HMS Sheffield)
BART only works so well when it's actually running or the entire cart isn't getting robbed (another youtube moment). Also refer to only certain parts of california. Mass transit is a joke, expect to spend half a day trying to get any place.