Electric vehicles-Conversions

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Re: Electric cars/vans/bikes-Conversions/Secondhand..etc

Post by Mandrake »

bobins wrote:Wooooooo !! That's witchcraft, that is. :-D

Not only can it deal with low ceilings it also knows how to deal with cars parked too close on either side - it is able to hinge mostly at the top pivot first while keeping the sides tucked in until it is high enough to clear the adjacent cars. This video demonstrates that:

Pretty neat, although I think the doors are a bit over the top! :lol: As I said earlier though, both the car and the doors are massive - someone 7 foot tall could walk under them without even bumping their head when they're right open - I had a good 2 feet above my head when I walked under them...
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Re: Electric cars/vans/bikes-Conversions/Secondhand..etc

Post by NewcastleFalcon »

NewcastleFalcon wrote:Just noticed my link above to the electric focus...the prices were in US Dollars. Looks like they are selling it there, but maybe like the Chevy Volt Bolt, being pretty cagey about world wide domination plans with not that much "focus" on selling it in Europe as yet :) .


This article makes interesting reading, including the various comments regarding views on the EV market,
https://electrek.co/2017/05/08/tesla-mo ... ss-margin/
also hints at a reason why the Chevy Bolt expansion is shackled

"As Galliers pointed out, Tesla’s gross margin on the Model S is already impressive, but that’s for a vehicle starting at almost $70,000. GM achieved a $37,500 starting price on the long-range all-electric Chevy Bolt EV, but that’s not without taking a loss on every car before ZEV credits, which is why they are limiting availability despite demand.

On the other hand, the Model 3 would check all the boxes: relatively affordable, long range, and mass-produced.
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Re: Electric cars/vans/bikes-Conversions/Secondhand..etc

Post by Mandrake »

If Chevy are selling the Bolt at a loss that's rather stupid of them.... ? [-X It's one thing to run a company temporarily at a loss by investing in manufacturing capacity (as Tesla are doing with their Gigafactory etc) but you should not be selling an actual car at a loss, especially if you're not sure if the model will take off or not. Too risky. As far as I know individual Tesla's are sold at a healthy profit over manufacturing cost, the reason the company as a whole is still in the red is because they are investing so heavily in manufacturing capacity.

Bolt's are not selling well at all but as has been analysed elsewhere there are probably two main causes for that:

1) Rapid charging ability is not provided as standard, they nickle and dime you an extra $800 or so for rapid charging. So despite a 238 mile range per charge the base model without rapid charging is basically a 238 mile commuter car because if you were to attempt a road trip outside of a 238 mile round trip you're looking at 12 hours to recharge it on a Level 2 charger (at 25 miles per hour of charging) for the next leg of your journey. Unless you stop and charge overnight at a hotel, totally unusable for a road trip, in a country the size of the US.

https://www.chevyevlife.com/bolt-ev-charging-guide

Even if you do pay extra for the CCS rapid charging option the lack of CCS rapid chargers in large parts of the US means that the Bolt despite its huge range per charge is still useless for long distance trips in many states. Here is a picture of Rapid DC chargers in the US from plugshare.com:

Image

There are entire states like North and South Dakota, Wyoming that don't have a single rapid charger installed. And large parts of sates like Montana and Texas without any rapid chargers.

Compare this coverage to Tesla's Supercharger network and the difference is clear:

Image

(And keep in mind that Tesla's can also use the "standard" rapid charger network used by other cars as well as Superchargers using an optional adaptor cable)

Additionally many of the standard Rapid chargers will be a single charger unit (as is often the case here in the UK) while Tesla Superchargers are at minimum 2 stalls, and typically 6 to 8 stalls side by side. So when you do get to a Supercharger there is a very high probability that one of the stalls is available and you won't be waiting behind someone else, and that most if not all of the chargers will be working. Charging rate is also up to 125kW - more than twice as fast as CCS/Chademo at 50kW. At a standard Rapid charger you're likely to have to wait for someone else, and there is a reasonably high probability that the charger will be out of order! If you don't have to wait and the charger is working you'll still only charge at most at 50kW.

Most of the interstates are covered and with a reasonably even distribution, rather than just large clumps of chargers in heavily populated areas. A cross country trip in a Bolt is more or less impossible despite the same range per charge as a Model S 75, while it is quite feasible in a Tesla purely because of the Supercharger network, and savvy EV buyers know this.

Chevy should not be nickle and diming customers for a Rapid charging option. It should be standard in a car with a battery that large otherwise it just takes too long to charge it.

2) The Bolt sales numbers are very low partly because of the very limited release - it's only available for sale in the US at the moment and only in about 5 out of 50 states. Why ? Largely because there isn't the public charger infrastructure in many states as explained above. Why sell the car in Wyoming when the owner would realistically be limited to about a 100 mile radius of their house with no possibility to travel cross state or interstate ? It would never sell in areas like that.

If its true that they're selling it at a loss and therefore don't want to produce too many initially then this may well prove to be a self fulfilling prophecy, if the car is not available in most states and the public perception is that it isn't selling well that will hinder further sales and the whole thing may flop. One thing you can say about Tesla is that they're "all in", almost to the point where they put the company at risk their plans are so aggressive. Companies like GM on the other hand still seem to be toe dipping in a "well we tried but see! it didn't sell!" kind of way. You have to be in it to win it.

Tesla has spent a load of money installing their Supercharger network and started installing it about 5 years ago now, the other manufacturers do not have their own charging network and rely entirely on 3rd party chargers, which have spotty coverage of the country, poor reliability, are complicated and confusing to use, and only charge at a fraction of the speed of a supercharger. Given these circumstances who is going to succeed ?

The Bolt seems like a good car but I fear it might flop due to not being sold in enough states/countries to gain traction before the Model 3 is released, not having rapid charging as a standard feature, lack of suitable public charging infrastructure in the US and a complete lack of interest from manufacturers other than Tesla in paying to build out a decent charging infrastructure.

Here in the UK things are not quite as gloomy. I gripe about the reliability of the chargers over here but we do have pretty decent and pervasive coverage of the UK (apart from mid Wales!) with most of the main routes in Scotland having a rapid charger every 30-40 miles for example. So that is a good starting point and we are way ahead of the US in this regard.

What we lack is charging locations with multiple charger units, (to help avoid queuing and provide redundancy if a charger develops a fault) a faster response time when there are faults, and a simplified and unified authentication and payment mechanism so that people don't need to carry cards from multiple companies for access. (Only really a problem in England and Wales not Scotland where Charge Place Scotland kind of fulfils this role already) You can drive the length of the country in a petrol car using a single Debit card (or indeed cross over onto the continent) and the same needs to be true of EV charging.
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Re: Electric cars/vans/bikes-Conversions/Secondhand..etc

Post by white exec »

Just like the early days of fire/insurance companies, electricity and water companies. Just sometimes, central government does need to make a decision. Probably too much to hope for in the UK at the moment!
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Re: Electric cars/vans/bikes-Conversions/Secondhand..etc

Post by Mandrake »

I'm optimistic that the charging situation will shake itself out eventually, but it will probably take a few years, and I suspect government intervention will be required both to provide standardisation of access and billing, and also to mandate SLA's for the actual chargers so they don't sit broken for ridiculous amounts of time with nobody giving a fig. It won't be until EV's are a larger percentage of the market that there will be more scrutiny on the public charger situation and action will be taken.

At the moment its "OK" for the only rapid charger near Edinburgh airport to be out of action for over 3 weeks, (and for there to be only one rapid charger there with no backup in the first place!) because there are so few EV drivers trying to use that charger, and as they are early adopters who are used to dealing with snags and problems with chargers they report it to whoever runs the charger then shrug their shoulders and drive to the next nearest charger. (if they can make it) Or perhaps after reporting it the last two times they were there they give up even reporting a faulty charger.

However the people that buy EV's beyond the early adopter stage will not be so forgiving, and will be jumping up and down when such situations arise. Being able to charge your car to continue your journey should not be a lottery. You don't phone ahead to make sure that a petrol station on your route is open and has fuel available, you shouldn't have to check ahead to make sure all the chargers you need to use are operational either, but that's where we're at at the moment unfortunately.

Longer range EV's will ease the problem quite a bit though - because if you arrive at a charger and find it out of order or too busy you'll still have plenty of range to just continue your journey to the next one. Just like you do in an ICE in the rare event that a petrol station is actually closed or out of fuel - unless you're very unlucky you'll have enough fuel to reach another one.
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Re: Electric cars/vans/bikes-Conversions/Secondhand..etc

Post by bobins »

A(nother) serious question (must have a lie down after this one !!), what are the practical implications of having range extending battery trailers for BEVs ?
Basically, a large battery pack complete with cooling / heating / charging infrastructure on a trailer towed behind (and plugged into) your car to allow 500? mile trips in one go. The trailers could be rentable so you don't have to stump up the eye-watering cost to buy one.
What are the reasons this would be a non-starter ?
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Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Here's an interesting comparison.

The whole of the UK is about 57% of the size of California...

nice little pic here

http://www.travelersdigest.com/wp-conte ... fornia.jpg

Much of it is "urban" and developed with the only true wilderness rural Northumberland...(only kidding Scotland obviously has its wilderness bits!)

In agricultural terms the UK could be termed grade 1 land for growing a 100% electric transportation road network.

Can't see a downside to that ambition. Need to overtake little Norway first though.

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Post by Mandrake »

A bit of "bedtime reading" on Hydrogen Fuel cell cars versus BEV. A couple of years old now but definitely interesting reading!

https://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/1 ... ork-part-1
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Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Quite a few "bedtimes" in that :-D

69 seconds tells you all you need to know about the Opel Ampera-E here.

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Re: Electric cars/vans/bikes-Conversions/Secondhand..etc

Post by harryp »

Mandrake, The "bedtime reading" was fascinating and very, very informative. A real can of worms; so how come large organisations hadn't thought it through properly then I wonder :shock: . Does make one wonder at their competence?
Back to the "do and understand" :wink: , rather than "best guess"?
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Post by NewcastleFalcon »

Posted up couple of the "Allied Conversions" here

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=57477&p=533479#p533479

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Post by Mandrake »

Shamelessly lifted from a post over in speakev:





These are actually from late last year, at that time they managed a 7:05 at the Nurburgring, according to this Wikipedia article they went back in March this year and got it down to 6:45: :shock:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_N ... l_vehicles

Quite impressive. :)
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Post by Mandrake »

Here is an article on the most recent attempt:

http://newatlas.com/nio-ep9-production- ... 2-89883046
With 1342 hp (1001 kW) on tap, it'll accelerate to 313 km/h (194 mph) in 7.1 seconds. So lap records aside, this thing is an absolute weapon.
:shock:
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Post by CitroJim »

Gosh :shock:

That's quick!
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Re: Electric cars/vans/bikes-Conversions/Secondhand..etc

Post by RichardW »

There was a report in Monday's Telegraph about a (very!) optimistic view that BEV will take over in < 10 years. It's still premium at present so you can't see all of it, I guess it will drop out of that soon: report. You can download the report it is reporting on here
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