Dump Your Deezel

[mickeymoon]

I'm sure by then replacement batteries will be freely and cheaply available and a bit of DIY knowledge will have been accumulated with this forum can then add to.

Certainly for the Prius, aftermarket batteries and parts are available. A friend had some dead cells in his Prius (2003 model with interstellar mileage) a couple of months ago and it was about the same price as a Berlingo timing belt change at a dealer with waterpump and tensioners.

[NewcastleFalcon]

Something I'm surprised nobody has asked in this thread yet, but do any FCF members already own an electric car of any kind, perhaps as a second car ? As far as I know nobody has come forward yet

..Or has anyone the necessaries, to engage in a bit of "main-dealer" mystery shopping, and get an ev on an extended test drive and let us know first hand their experience I have already ruled myself out of this...I just couldn't pull it off!

That video review of the Renault Zoe by the young couple you posted up was very informative, both on the car and their experience of the price of recharges at service stations compared to home charging.

https://www.frenchcarforum.co.uk/forum/ ... &start=338

Worth a thread of its own in the "All things Electric" section of the forum if any forum member takes the plunge...or is it just too early for that particular revolution.

Regards Neil

[bobins]

Granted there isn't enough capacity in either generation or transmission at the moment for everyone to be suddenly using electric cars, but it won't happen over night so as the demand grows the grid will have to grow with it. Just like the demand for oil refineries, petrol tankers and petrol stations grew with the increase in petrol cars...

I think this could actually prove to be quite an expensive problem to solve if the motoring majority all voted to go for BEV. We're already at the stage where pavements explode due to creaking electrical infrastructure - I'm presuming they (the underground cables) explode due to being worked hard, poor maintenance, and in need of upgrades. Add another fair few million cars all needing charging during the week / fortnight / month and the local infrastructure in some towns will really start to creak. OK, so it might take a decade or so to get several million more BEV cars on the road, but how long would it take to visually survey and/or upgrade the electricity supply in, say, London ? Presumably there'll be some street's electrical supplies that just can't take 20 or 30 streetside charging points due to the ageing infrastructure. BEV is a way forward, but once you factor in several (10?) million cars all needing their plug in every now and then, a mixed fleet of BEV and Hydrogen starts to make a bit more sense - especially when you consider the 'government' factor and a desire not to cause too much turmoil when it comes to upgrading and paying for the electrical infrastructure and generating capacity.

[mickeymoon]

Granted there isn't enough capacity in either generation or transmission at the moment for everyone to be suddenly using electric cars, but it won't happen over night so as the demand grows the grid will have to grow with it. Just like the demand for oil refineries, petrol tankers and petrol stations grew with the increase in petrol cars...

I think this could actually prove to be quite an expensive problem to solve if the motoring majority all voted to go for BEV. .

Slow, 8 bour charging points are rated at 16A, the fast chargers at 32A. They draw 3.3KW.

I've an electric heater that draws more, blowing on my feet right now. Any domestic electric cooker will require a min of 40A and draw more than a car charger.

It shouldn't be an issue.

[bobins]

Slow, 8 bour charging points are rated at 16A, the fast chargers at 32A. They draw 3.3KW.

I've an electric heater that draws more, blowing on my feet right now. Any domestic electric cooker will require a min of 40A and draw more than a car charger.

It shouldn't be an issue.

I agree it shouldn't be an issue, but try turning on, say, 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 million electric heaters that weren't there yesterday and see what happens !



Not necessarily relevant to the above comments, but relevant to the evolution of BEV in the UK - there's currently roughly just over 30 million cars in the UK, and the average age of them is a gnats under 8 years old. It wouldn't take that long for localised electrical infrastructure and generating capacity in general to become overwhelmed if the British motoring public voted for BEV in huge numbers. I'm not saying BEV isn't an option, just that it may need a bit more of an infrastructure upgrade than a dedicated 16A / 32A socket added to a domestic supply. We're all used to the scare stories of 'the lights going out this winter' due to alleged electricity shortages - factor in the extra draw for cars needing charging and it becomes a little more relevant. Sure, a lot of sensible people will schedule their recharges for night-time economy rate, but what of the million or so that pop their cars onto charge as soon as they get home from work on that cold winter's night 'just in case', or because they're nipping out to the cinema later. In some towns and cities it'd not be a problem, in others it probably would.

[Mandrake]

Slow, 8 bour charging points are rated at 16A, the fast chargers at 32A. They draw 3.3KW.

I've an electric heater that draws more, blowing on my feet right now. Any domestic electric cooker will require a min of 40A and draw more than a car charger.

It shouldn't be an issue.

Some of your numbers are WAY out I'm afraid.

32 amps at 240 volts is 7.7kW not 3.3kW.

Also a domestic cooker is a lot less than 40A - it may run from a 40A breaker but it doesn't use that much. I measured a few devices in our house to see how much they use:

Electric shower - 10kW
Oven - 2kW
Dishwasher, while heating the water - 2.5kW
Washing machine, while heating the water - 2.5kW
Kettle - 3kW
Toaster - 1.2kW

Of those, the Electric shower and Oven are the biggest electricity users by far when multiplying power consumption by time in operation followed by dishwasher and washing machine.

The proper way to look at charging an EV though for impact on the grid, is what percentage of electricity use does it add to your existing bill ? Some quick back of the envelope calculations:

Our last months electricity use was 348kWh. Pretend I had a Tesla P100D with a 100kWh battery. From a full charge it can theoretically do 300 miles. I currently do about 300 miles a month which means I'd need one full charge to last me a month. (although in practice I'd break it into several smaller partial charges)

Lets say we loose 20% in the charging process so it takes 120kWh to fully charge that battery. The increase in TOTAL electricity use in my house by doing 300 miles a month in a Tesla and always charging at home would be about 34% over my current usage. A significant but not massive increase in my household use, and if that figure was approximately comparable with other people on average it's not nearly the grid massacre that some people are predicting. We're not talking about the grid having to be increased in capacity by 5x or something, we're talking about well under a factor of two - perfectly achievable in a time-frame of 5-10 years.

That 120kWh at 13.7p/kWh would cost me £16 on my monthly electricity bill - at the moment I pay around £90 in petrol for the same distance. (OK I do drive a petrol V6... ) If I had dual rate electricity and charged the car on the night rate I could potentially halve that to £8 a month for 300 miles.

And lets not forget - that is a big, heavy 2200Kg high performance car that can do 0-60 in 2.5 seconds that is being recharged for £16/£8 compared to my much lighter, much lower performing Xantia V6, let alone your typical middle of the road diesel. A smaller and more efficient (by way of reduced weight) EV should be able to do a lot better for kWh/mile.

When you start to look at the numbers like that it looks a lot more favourable. It's a shame however the companies like Ecotricity seem to be charging roughly twice the cost of household electricity for their recharge points! (I think they actually bill based on time spent plugged in and charging not consumed kWh, so a faster charging EV will cost you less)

[white exec]

There will be many attempts to make the cost of 'fuelling' an EV not a lot less than an ICE'd car. Eventually, the Government will levy a substitute for fuel duty/vat too, but not to start with, of course.

In Spain, vat/iva on domestic electricity is the full 21%. I believe it's only 5% in the UK.

[bobins]

Thanks for the break-down of facts and figures, Simon, but it still doesn't make the future picture look that rosey for me. You reckon an increase of around a third on your monthly usage ? Now look at a third ? half ? the population of a city with 'questionable' infrastructure (Brighton ? London ? Oxford ? I'm only guessing there) running BEVs in 10 - 15 years time. Add into that an increase in population density perhaps. Add into that a general increase in demand for electricity for all sorts of household appliances. Now everyone turn on and charge up lots of things on a cold winter's night. What drops out first - the voltage, area supply cabling, or the local transformers ?
It'd be interesting to know just how nervous the electricity distro's are about local supply capacity - how much of a safety margin they've got at the moment.
To put that into context, I previously worked for a property that underwent a rebuild. Admittedly it was a 7 or 8 bedroom property, but the local transformer had to be upgraded purely because of the increased electricity demand for that one house

[bobins]

There will be many attempts to make the cost of 'fuelling' an EV not a lot less than an ICE'd car. Eventually, the Government will levy a substitute for fuel duty/vat too, but not to start with, of course.

My money's on it being a vehicle based 'electricity infrastructure' tax

[Mandrake]

There will be many attempts to make the cost of 'fuelling' an EV not a lot less than an ICE'd car. Eventually, the Government will levy a substitute for fuel duty/vat too, but not to start with, of course.

Even if the long term charging cost benefits are not as great in the future as they might be right now due to the government stepping in to tax everyone, (and eventually ending the EV subsidy) if the end result is that people are moved onto much more sustainable and environmentally friendly transport that is at least somewhat cheaper to run its still a net win ?

Also remember its not just about charging/fuelling costs - in theory electric cars should be a lot lower maintenance than an ICE car, and mechanically they are certainly vastly simpler. You can't get much simpler than a 3 phase AC induction motor with a copper rotor and a fixed ratio step down gearbox as you'll find in a Tesla or some of the other EV's. (Not all EV's use this type of motor)

The only wear item in such a motor is the actual roller bearings supporting the armature shaft, the armature itself has no brushes to wear out, and all the wiring is in the stator.

The gearbox is a simple fixed 2:1 step down ratio consisting only of an input gear and output gear that drives a conventional differential - the step down gearbox will theoretically wear out eventually as it has roller bearings and a thrust bearing but should last at least as long as a current manual gearbox, and probably much longer because it has no complex selector shafts, no syncro's, no clutch, and is not subject to a user crunching the gears due to poor gear changing. So in practice the gearbox and diff will probably last the life of the car, as current manual gearboxes (minus clutch) generally already do.

Brake life is greatly extended since most normal braking is done by regeneration. The conventional brakes only hold you stopped below 5mph and perform harder emergency stops that are beyond the regeneration limits. In fact the conventional brakes are used so little that rusting of the discs is actually a problem with some EV's as the brakes are hardly used enough to keep the surface rust at bay.

The main potentially nasty points of failure in EV's are battery, (although most of the time it will be a loss of capacity not an outright failure) inverter, which is a pretty complex and bespoke piece of high power electronics that generates the AC signal to drive the motor from the DC from the battery, and the general control system that manages all the systems such as battery charging, battery heating and cooling and so on.

But if you look at a 2017 model year ICE car the computer systems within it are already incredibly complex and inscrutable to the DIY'er, so in some ways an EV's control systems may turn out to be a bit less convoluted...

In Spain, vat/iva on domestic electricity is the full 21%. I believe it's only 5% in the UK.

Yes indeed, electricity and gas in the UK is only 5% VAT - something I was not aware of until switching provider recently!

[van ordinaire]

I think you'll find that duty IS due on electricity used for electric vehicles but, as with vegetable oil, there's no system for collecting it - yet!

While electric vehicles may improve local air quality there can be no other justification for them. The ecological damage done by a vehicle in use pales into insignificance compared with that caused by its manufacture - & how are electric vehicles greener to make?
No one has ever been able to explain to me how, when the time comes, you dispose of of those batteries in an environmentally acceptable manner. Now, as I understand it, the latest models would need major dismantling to access, never mind change, the batteries - so they will become disposable; like mobile phones which are cheaper than their batteries & printers that cost less than a replacement toner cartridge.

Then, of course, there's the polution caused by producing the electricity. I'm all for green initiaves but this just hasn't been thought through.

OK, enough! I'm off my soapbox/high horse now.

[daviemck2006]

No one has mentioned that electric may well be cleaner at point of use, but what about all the extra emissions x and pullutants when the electric is generated?

Sent from my SM-T705 using Tapatalk

[CitroJim]

No one has ever been able to explain to me how, when the time comes, you dispose of of those batteries in an environmentally acceptable manner.

This remains my biggest concern along with potential pollution produced in generating the electricity in the first place...

[NewcastleFalcon]

I did pose the question on Electric cars..etc thread-Why are rechargeable batteries not infinitely rechargeable?

There are reasons of course, but research and development is going on into exactly that subject as discussed in that post and subsequent replies.

Another question to ask is...what are the consituent parts of a Lithium Ion battery cell? I would summise that the most expensive bit will be the "Lithium" content whether this is Lithium Metal or Lithium Carbonate. When indeed the batteries do come to the end of their useful lives by degradation of the anode or other such phenonema, it is surely better for the manufacturers to be given the responsibility for recycling, and I would suggest that it would be easier to recover the lithium from the spent batteries than to dig it up out of the ground in tiny concentrations from naturally occuring minerals, or expensively extract it from it from seawater.

Regards Neil

[white exec]

Even if the long term charging cost benefits are not as great in the future as they might be right now due to the government stepping in to tax everyone, (and eventually ending the EV subsidy) if the end result is that people are moved onto much more sustainable and environmentally friendly transport that is at least somewhat cheaper to run its still a net win!

I absolutely agree with this. Society has to collect its taxes somehow, in order to pay for all the services citizens expect. Obviously a nice idea to slash the cost of personal travel, but there is a knock-on effect which simply needs dealing with.

On the potential increased reliability of EVs, there is potential for this with the simplified mechanics of the EV drivetrain, although the basics of suspension, steering, and bodywork functions still remain. Hopefully, EV manufacturers will not just aim for "minimum acceptable spec" for drivetrain and battery components and construction, to leave the user with a less-than-spectacular-but-tolerable level of reliability, balanced against their own requirements for minimum production costs and after-sales servicing earnings. I'm not overly optimistic about this, as the history of not just cars but other consumer durables (like white goods) illustrates.

We shouldn't underestimate the benefits of clean air at the point of use, but neither the benefits of moving the generation of power (electricity) to less-populated and centrally manageable sites. We now know the impossibilities of managing the toxic emissions of thousands of ICE vehicles - far easier to do this at the single power generating station supplying those vehicles, and to be able to feed in renewable energy as available.