ECO Car Show.

[pumblechook]

Swapping.....You might be talking about 500 - 1000 kgs of batteries and you would need a small number of standard types. How would you ensure that you are getting a healthy battery?

Swapping stations might need a high capacity 11 kV or higher feed which might not be easily available in urban locations.

The US Department of Energy concluded that EVs cost between double and three times per mile as much as petrol vehicles of similar size.

New reports like that which are totally taken in by the hype make one angry.

Remember how nuclear power was going to be so cheap there would be no need to meter it???

[rsmith7]

A viable electric car needs to be similar in performance to IC cars, have similar range and recharge time, it also needs to have the same reliability and price.
We are a long, long way from that.
Is it even possible?

[jonjel]

One of the problems is our expectations as compared with a few decades ago. We now demand that we can comfortably carry 5 or more people at motorway cruising speed all day, and do it for very little money, or impact on the environment, and that I think is becoming unrealistic.

As other people have said, you don't get owt for nowt. All the people with electric cars are doing is moving the source of pollution to somewhere else.

When our grandchildren or their children are alive I suspect oil or oil based transport will be so expensive it will no longer be an option.

There is no one solution. We have seen 'eco' cars covered in solar panels and it is maybe not a pipe dream to think that with advances in both technology but particularly materials this might become an option with the addition of some kind of on board storage.

We could of course go back to the 'producer gas' power that was toyed with during the war - a stove on the back with a balloon on the top, and it might be conceivable to run those on wood. However to run 25million cars in the UK like that? I don't think so. And I think a top speed of 20MPH and a range of maybe 50 miles to a ton of wood is unlikely to attract too many drivers, no matter how 'green' the credentials they wish to display.

[pumblechook]

We all like the idea of flexibility and convenience which a petrol or diesel car gives us. I could jump in mine now and drive 350 miles to Land Ends or John'o'Groats. I know that there will be a petrol station every few miles and I can re-charge in not much than a minute. I can do 400 miles on a full tank anyway.

I find the news report with sexy sports EVs a bit odd really and the Tesla Sports car. I thought the target market was the greenies and they are not folks who would approve of such cars??? EV cans certainly accelerate and go at high speed by not for long. I estimate the Tesla could run flat out for 20 mins...as per a Top Gear report.

The really fast charge will never be possible. 3 hours is a realistic mimimum on industrial premises...much longer at home.

[jonjel]

I think the way it has evolved is probably thus.

Government to Manufacturer.

G. Why don't you make electric cars?

M. Too expensive and no one wants them at that price.

G. We will make people want them

M. Still too expensive.

G. We will subsidise you and the buyers out of taxpayers money.

M. OK then, for the right money we will make anything you like, as long as we still make a profit. And we will also be seen to be green and wear the halo accordingly.

------------

But, as a stand alone competitive item electric cars are a non investment product.

[pumblechook]

Dragons Den were pretty viscious with Stephen Voller..

www.bbc.co.uk/dragonsden/entrepreneurs/stephenvoller.shtml

[jonjel]

I have just watched that and they seemed to speak a lot of common sense.

And the interesting point which kinda bears out my thinking above is, he asked for 2.5 million which would attract a further 7.5 million from the government.

Correction, the government don't have any money, they have our money, so the 7.5 million would have been from you and me.

[pumblechook]

To be be fair the wider car industry gets or has had 'incentives'. Voller was banking on a Gov grant of £5000 per car making his car £7000 instead of the correct price of £12,000. It looks like in this age of cuts that grant will be scrapped...

www.carmagazine.co.uk/News/Search-Results/Industry-News/UK-Government-will-cut-back-car-aid-EV-grants-at-risk/

The cars are expensive and replacement batteries every 4/5 years could set you back £1000 - £2000.

Study the Gwiz and the ThinkCity. Peter Curran did a trip around Europe in a ThinkCity for Radio 4 and let it slip it that it was accompianed by a diesel support vehicle (probably with changing facilities and a towing rope/bar).

I am 'green' and a bit of a lefty BUT as an engineer I have to look at the facts and figures.

As regards charging a battery with solar panels on a car, forget it unless you can wait 1 - 3 months per charge...maybe much longer in Winter.

Oh, and in Winter, don't put the heater on you will cut your range dramatically.

[jonjel]

I am also a mild green shade pumps, and I hate waste, and am also an engineer.

I take your point about solar charging. However I live in hope because when you go back not so very long an aeroplane was made of canvas wood and string, and was probably (I don't have the figures) grossly inefficient to operate compared with its modern counterpart.

That and if you look at the motor industry, not too long ago you bought a car that did 30MPG if you were lucky, was a white knuckle ride at 70mph and it needed a re-bore every 30000 miles.

Change does happen. It may be slow, but slow is just a measure of time passing.

[pumblechook]

Yes, but to make solar charging with panels on a vehicle viable you would need an increase in energy yeald of 100 times or perhaps much much more. Panels horizontal on a roof would gather very low levels of energy. You really need the panels square on the Sun. The average ouput over a year (taking into account day and night and seasons) is around 15 Watts per sq metre with panels facing south at 30 - 40 degrees. If you are charging a 150 kWh battery pack and had 4 sq metres of PV panels it would take 3000 hours.. Shorter in Summer, longer in Winter. Even if you could extract almost all the incoming solar energy (for a few hours a day in Summer) it would take 10 days-ish.

It is a bit like saying in future petrol cars will do 1000+ mpg or we can build a tower a 100 km high.

[jonjel]

Pumbs.

The actual total energy falling on each M2 is around 1Kw. The trick will be for future engineers to harness most of that as opposed to the miserable percentage we achieve today.

I am not advocating solar panels on every vehicle as a solution, but in future it could be part of the solution.

[pumblechook]

You would need panels nearing 100% efficiency for that and steerable to track the Sun. Even then it is dark half the time on average over a year.

ICE engine efficiency has doubled maybe over the decdes.

What is needed with PV is a 200 - 1000 fold improvement. Probably more chance of me becoming Pope.

BUT all sorts of R&D should be encouraged. Sometimes it leads to unexpected results such as work on a radio death ray which proved to be impractical but the team then developed Radar in time for the Battle of Britain.