Electric vehicles-Conversions

[Michel]

OK, unsure regarding the "pay per mile" scenario.... DVLA recon 30% of road vehicles are untaxed.

No, it doesn't. It's 1.9% of all vehicles.

[Michel]

Worrying. So if 30% untaxed, how about un-MoT'd and un-insured ?

You'd have thought that with ANPR, this lot would have been caught up with by now.
How about going real Big Brother, and making it impossible to forecourt-refuel a vehicle without all/some of these? What would be the justification for not doing this?
After all, it's the rest of us that are paying for the evasion.
Discuss.

Worrying that you believe the 30% untaxed without actually checking the facts..

Big brother? No thanks. North Korea is that way >>>>>> There's enough surveillance and tracking in this world already.

[white exec]

And the facts are?
And your argument for allowing illegal vehicles to continue operating is....?

I suspect the real objection to preventing refuelling of illegal vehicles is that it might be effective.
A similar objection was put forward when speed cameras started being used.
My guess is that so long as enforcement is sporadic and ineffective, some folk are happy. Raise the likelihood of getting caught though, and suggestions of infringement of civil liberties get raised.

I really would like to hear your specific justification of allowing illegal drivers to refuel.

[CitroJim]

The news report is b0ll0cks, as usual.

Same old, same old...

Just goes to prove you can manipulate figures to say anything you like...

As so well demonstrated by certain media outlets...

Lies, dammed lies and statistics...

[Michel]

I really would like to hear your specific justification of allowing illegal drivers to refuel.

I would really like to hear your justification for us being spied on and tracked at every opportunity by the government.

To answer your question ;
a)Systems have errors and take time to update, it will cause problems. I could give 3 examples that could have stopped me refuelling recently, even though my car was totally legal.
b ) There will *always* be illegal drivers.
c) It's a huge waste of money simply because... well, I run a petrol lawnmower. My son will be getting a petrol powered dirt-bike.... Do you propose that my petrol purchases for these are stopped? Surely, you must be, otherwise anyone could buy petrol in a can and put in it a car. Don't tell me only being able to buy a gallon at a time would stop people - it wouldn't. There's a black market for cheap fuel, even here. I reported our neighbour who had 200 litres of nicked diesel in his meter cupboard... not because I really cared about it being nicked diesel, more because it was 4 yards from our front door and I wasn't keen on the fire risk.

[white exec]

I really would like to hear your specific justification of allowing illegal drivers to refuel.

I would really like to hear your justification for us being spied on and tracked at every opportunity by the government.

At no point did I suggest that. Try reading again what I did suggest.

So what is your answer to my actual question: What is your justtification for allowing illegal drivers to refuel?

A car pulls up at a fuel pump. Its reg number is checked, and found to be fully taxed, insured, tested, etc. It is cleared to fill up.
A second car has one of the legally required items missing. Refuelling is blocked, and pump displays reason why. Service assistant also aware. Customer has a clear choice ahead of him.
A third customer arrives at the pump with a completely legal car, and takes a couple of empty jerry-cans from the boot, and fills them. Goes home, and puts the fuel in an uninsured car. A perfect system? No. But at least he isn't allowed to just roll up and fill his illegal vehicle with impunity. The inconvenience might just strike home, or it may not. Operating illegally and dangerously might never be completely eradicated, but there's no reason why law-breaking and evasion should be made dead easy. Or would you disagree?

[Gibbo2286]

You are of course arguing about systems, I think that with the advent of ANPR and its growing use all over the country more and more offenders are being caught, on one of those 'cops with cameras' programmes the other night one cop took out eight cars on one evening shift and had them carted off, I'm pretty sure that the bobby on the beat or the traffic warden looking at tax discs wouldn't have been any more productive/successful.

I remember an old guy I knew running a car for several years with a Guinness bottle label in his windscreen and never got done.

[RichardW]

I don't really follow your numbers here - how is my Ion 4x 10MPG ? On energy terms the Ion does the equivalent of 160MPG, and it is not the most efficient EV by any stretch. (Currently the crown goes to the Hyundai Ioniq, but the Tesla Model 3 is a very close 2nd)

They were only meant to be rough figures... I was thinking that if your Ion was petrol (well it wouldn't be an ION for a start, but hey!) it might do 40 mpg; in which case the HGV only does 25% of the MPG. Back calculating this on electric side where you see 3-4 miles / kWh gives the 0.75 - 1 for the truck.

Perhaps the quoted 23 tonnes for the battery has got the decimal point mixed up - they are American after all!!!

[Mandrake]

I don't really follow your numbers here - how is my Ion 4x 10MPG ? On energy terms the Ion does the equivalent of 160MPG, and it is not the most efficient EV by any stretch. (Currently the crown goes to the Hyundai Ioniq, but the Tesla Model 3 is a very close 2nd)

They were only meant to be rough figures... I was thinking that if your Ion was petrol (well it wouldn't be an ION for a start, but hey!) it might do 40 mpg; in which case the HGV only does 25% of the MPG. Back calculating this on electric side where you see 3-4 miles / kWh gives the 0.75 - 1 for the truck.

Perhaps the quoted 23 tonnes for the battery has got the decimal point mixed up - they are American after all!!!

A bit more information has come to light - Tesla have reported that a Megacharger is "10x more powerful than a Supercharger", a Supercharger is 120kW so if we take that literally a Megacharger is 1.2MW.

They've also said on a full charge the truck will do 500 miles with a full 80,000 lb load at 60mph on the motorway. Elsewhere they said that a Megacharger will add 400 miles of range in 30 minutes of charging. (Presumably under the same conditions eg 60mph with a full load)

If a Megacharger is indeed 1.2MW then in half an hour it would charge 600kWh. That 600kWh is only any 80% charge since it is only giving 400 miles out of a 500 possible miles. Therefore a 100% charge must be 750kWh.

So, Megacharging is 1.2MW and the battery is 750kWh... impressive...

This also means that the consumption is 0.66 miles/kWh, again at 60mph fully loaded.

And if the battery used the exact same technology as the Model S it would weight approximately 4125Kg or just over 40% of the total cab weight. But given there is no ICE engine, gearbox, diffs etc I don't see any reason why the remainder of the cab would have to be more than about 6000Kg! (We know the total cab weight is near 10 tons, which is a standard weight for a cab of that size and category)

It's likely the battery has been further optimised though and they have probably managed to shave at least 1000Kg off compared to just stacking 7.5 P100D batteries on top of each other...

[RichardW]

My fag packet calcs were almost spot on then - I suspect there are some losses and you won't get 600kWh in the battery in 30 mins.

[Hell Razor5543]

My fag packet calcs were almost spot on then - I suspect there are some losses and you won't get 600kWh in the battery in 30 mins.

Well, not unless you have somebody on top of the battery jumping up and down on it to squeeze in some more wattage! (just like when sheep shearers are trying to push more wool into the sacks).

[Mandrake]

My fag packet calcs were almost spot on then - I suspect there are some losses and you won't get 600kWh in the battery in 30 mins.

Yeah not bad.

There won't be much in the way of losses in that calculation - the Megacharger like all other rapid chargers is DC at the output, which means the lossy AC to DC conversion is done in the Megacharger station, so the power specified at the output of the charger, which we assume is 1.2MW, is what you will get. On the AC side where it is supplied from the grid it will be more - more like 1.35MW after conversion efficiency is taken into account. (About 90% is state of the art at those power levels)

Lithium Ion batteries are also extremely efficient charging and discharging - they have exceptionally good Peukert constant which means only a small amount of internal resistance contributes to charging losses - in many other types of batteries especially lead acid there is not just heat loss from resistance but also inefficiency in the charging process itself like recombination that causes additional charging losses.

What I find interesting is just how much more efficient it is than my Ion when calculated on a load carrying basis. My Ion will do approx 4 miles/kWh at a constant 60mph but only weighs 1080Kg, and only has a 47kW motor.

A fully laden Tesla Semi is 80,000 lb or about 36,363Kg and can manage 0.66 miles/kWh at the same 60mph. So it weighs 34 times as much but only consumes 6 times as much energy at the same speed even allowing for the massive increase in frontal area for windage! And it has 4 motors which combined can produce about 800kW. (It uses four Model 3 motors, each one of which is 192kW)

If the battery is indeed 750kWh and full acceleration is only 800kW (more than any other big rig) then that is only a 1.06C discharge rate for the battery - it could do that all day long with its hands tied behind its back without any thermal limiting or falloff in performance, so would have no trouble climbing the rocky mountains...

By comparison a Model S P100D has 100kWh battery with a peak motor draw of 500kWh or a 5C discharge rate - which is very high, pushing the limits of even a liquid cooled battery, which is why it can't run at full power output continuously.

The scale of the power levels involved in the Semi truck is truly mind boggling.

[Michel]

The inconvenience might just strike home, or it may not.

It would p**s far more legal drivers off than the amount of illegals it would catch. It would have got me twice in the last month. Why should I suffer because my car (legally insured) isn't showing on the MID database as their system hasn't updated? How do I explain why I can't get to work as I've no petrol...

Oh, and police should police. Not petrol station attendees.

[CitroJim]

It strikes me these so-called 'megachargers' and cables are going to be quite hairy-arsed devices with lots of potential for some spectacular incidents, accidents and general danger...

I'm staggered that unskilled drivers will be permitted to operate such powerful devices and handle their connecting cables...

Only those highly qualified and certified are allowed to touch 240V house wiring but it seems any old fool will be able to handle the chargers...

This seems to me like a perfect recipe for some spectacular disasters...

Electricity and idiots generally do not mix very well...

Or are they going to receive appropriate training before they're permitted to use them?

[white exec]

You have a point, Jim. Charging cables (for modest recharging) in and around public streets are something of a hazard in themselves, and there will be instances of these being run across pavements. Inductive pad (contactless) charging could be a solution, but this gets a tad challenging at the mega level, unless there is a breakthrough in transformer/inductive design.