Re: electric car plans

Dave Plowman wrote:

JNugent <JN@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dave Plowman wrote:
JNugent <JN@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Electric cars would be mostly charged up overnight when there is
spare power station capacity.

No need for all these charging points as it'll be at home, then?

If electric cars/vans are ever to be a success, there'll need to be
an extensive network of charging points in order to cater for
vehicles which are run to (or near to) the full extent of their
range, just like driving to Scotland and back (from Southern England)
requires a refill.

Then they won't be charging overnight when there's a surplus of
capacity.

Very true - on those occasions. But charging overnight (which will still
be possible at other times) is only a bonus, not the basic raison
d'etre for electric vehicles.

I started this part of the thread by saying the infrastructure wasn't up
to having vast numbers of vehicles charged up from the current system. And
with a little thinking there's not much point in going to electric cars
*unless* that electricity is not generated from fossil fuels - if it were
you might as well use it directly in a car. And there's little progress
being made in that direction here - certainly not enough to allow lots of
electric cars in a few years.

The government have just announced that they will (in principle) permit the building of a set of new nuclear power stations. Given the current state of electric-generation technology, that's the only way to avoid charging electric cars from the use of fossil fuels.

Emissions, whatever the type of power station, will be the same (net) no matter what time of day the battery is charged. The rest is all about economies of scale at the power station.

The possibilities have to include charging points in car-parks
(especially indoor and lockable car-parks). But the most obvious
model would be quick-release batteries with a contract hire system
where the vehicle owner never has to own a battery (bit like BOC,
etc). Drop off a nearly-discharged battery and strap on a
fully-charged one. No waiting - as quick as filling a tank - though
it would require standardisation of the battery and therefore also
the co-operation of vehicle manufacturers.

Given the investment, storage and labour needed, you're into making the
running costs way higher than needed.

The whole point of car ownership is its convenience and immediacy.
Having to wait sveral hours for a battery to charge (a situation which
would *frequently* have be endured without a facility for instant
change) would not be acceptable to the user. Having vehicles conk out
on the road because they've run out of charge is the negation of
convenience and would be a major barrier to the wider use of electric
cars. As soon as anyone experienced it (whether in a hired or borrowed
electric car, or as a passenger or as a disppointed customer waiting
for a delivery or a visitor), they'd mentally cross electric cars off
their wishlist.

I doubt electric cars will ever be on manys' 'wishlist'. They'll be forced
upon us by circumstances.

But they won't succeed by force of personality.

And you're assuming near identical power requirements between makes
and models.

I'm not, any more than I assume near identical power requirements between makes and models of chemically-powered cars.
I'm suggesting that the *battery* would have to be the same size (or at
least, that there's have to be a very limited number of different sizes,
with stndard fitments for easy and quick changing). If something like
that did not come about, there'd be a constant problem of vehicles
being immobile for hours at a time, and electric cars would be
discredited. Fact.

But have you thought of the nut and bolts of such a scheme? For a start
they will be too heavy to manhandle in place.

I know.

They'll have to be trundled on trolleys or something and bolted on underneath. It'd be a bit like re-arming a WW2 bomber.

That will need either lots
of man power to change them - or an expensive automated system.

It'll probably be manpower. The expense need not be totally prohibitive. After all, the cost of the fuel would be so much less than oil that there could be extra cost elsewhere in the system and still keep the overall cost better than a petrol or diesel engine.

Just think
about it. And to be sure of them being available they'd need to be
probably as many outlets as filling stations now - more even since you can
always carry a gallon of petrol to your car - and the numbers needed
large.

I agree.

It also make a nonsense of reducing CO2 outputs - given how much extra
energy will be needed to make these millions of extra batteries. And
it would be millions if they're going to be easily accessible.

It's the only way round the problem of being able to refuel and use the
car at will.

Fast charging seems a better option. It's already possible to do this in a
short enough time.

Interesting.

How short?

But the idea is nonsense in practice. Even with things as basic as
torches there are several 'standards' for batteries. The chances of
getting every maker to cooperate on just one for something as varied
as transport is about as likely as equine flight. They could already
have done so for lead acid starter batteries - or at least reduced the
variety - but of course don't.

That's now. And it doesn't really matter, as you only need to buy a car
battery now and then* and torch unit cells *do* come in a very limited
range of sizes. I'm talking about the future - and it is not at all
impossible to envisage an industry standard for electric car batteries.
We have them for most things with replaceable and rechargeable
batteries.

No we don't. Those are cells - not battery packs. And although most power
tools use the same physical size cell - the sub C - this doesn't extend to
laptops etc. BTW I can count some 8 different types of batteries for
torches in this house. I'll bet others can do more...

Most handheld torches make do with one of just three types of unit cell which were standardised decades ago by industry agreement. But torches are not the subject of intense official interest like electric cars will be. Standardising the battery (whatever its array of cells) can be done. It'll have to be.

[*I haven't had to buy a car battery in over twenty years.]

You'll be buying new cars, then, and that includes a new battery...

True. But new ones last far better than they used to. I've kept some cars for six years and never had to buy a new battery.

It would be expensive (the hire charges would need to be high enough
to cover the replacement of the chemical elements in due course), but
it could be economic as long as the government kept its sticky
fingers off. But they won't.

The one thing you can be sure of is a government of any colour will
find a way of getting the same sort of tax income from electric
vehicles if/when they become common.

They'd still need to cover track costs (with a road tax of sorts), but
they probably won't want to overdo it whilst the industry is in its
infancy. In the longer term, they'd need to ensure that electric cars
were properly viable (especially in quick refuelling terms) before
starting their usual antics with taxation.

Think they're doing all the borrowing they can at the moment. It will be a
long long time before they have any leeway in the overall taxation needed.
So if they make electric cars an exception, they'll get it in other ways.

Yes.
.

Relevant Pages

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