Car (or bike) Chat!

[Macca]

It'll be okay as long as everyone remembers they can't brew up while the car is charging. There'll be little warning stickers on the kettle.

[Pigmy Pony]

No brew? That would be a deal-breaker for me. Unless I use the fuel savings to get my camping stove up and running.

[Macca]

Half of Britons say a 2035 deadline to switch to an electric car is too soon! Drivers name their demands if they're to buy them as figures show there won't be enough public chargers in a decade

Poll by UK trade body finds that 44% of Britons won't be ready to own an electric car if the deadline is 2035
A quarter of motorists interviewed said they can never see themselves owning an EV in their lifetime
The SMMT said the government needs to ramp-up incentives to encourage drivers to make the transition
A survey of 10,000 Britons named the demand for EV ownership: £24k price; 30-min charging; 282 mile range
Report by the ICCT found that the UK currently has just 5% of its 2030 target public charger network

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...cars-soon.html

If you live in a terrace house or a flat how do you charge it? Run a power cord across the pavement? What about health and safety? There's a law which says if you don't look where you're putting your feet you can get free money.

Just doesn't work.

[InThe Sticks]

The conversion from old (and unused) laundry room to bike man cave is getting there.

A door where there was no door..




Door finished and new flooring fitted..



Just got to install the ramp, finish up the decorating and mow the gutter.

[dave2010]

As things stand, the national grid copes with people switching on their kettles in the morning, but how will it go on when everyone wants to plug in their cars upon getting home?

I think more capacity will have to be created in the grid. An electric car charging at home is I think like having 2 (for more) electric kettles on for hours. Typical charging time at home for a full charge is around 10 hours. A fast charger can typically reduce this to an hour, while a supercharger should reduce the time to less than 30 minutes.

We now have a couple of EVs. Figuring out the chargers is quite a headache. It’s interesting to note other people’s behaviours down at the charging points. Several people seem to almost run out of oomph around 6pm, and drop by to get enough charge to get them home. It doesn’t seem clever to run on a low charge, as sometimes the chargers aren’t working, or another car is using one, but it obviously happens. Some people get “free” or cheap electricity at their workplace.

[Macca]

I think more capacity will have to be created in the grid. An electric car charging at home is I think like having 2 (for more) electric kettles on for hours. Typical charging time at home for a full charge is around 10 hours. A fast charger can typically reduce this to an hour, while a supercharger should reduce the time to less than 30 minutes.

We now have a couple of EVs. Figuring out the chargers is quite a headache. It’s interesting to note other people’s behaviours down at the charging points. Several people seem to almost run out of oomph around 6pm, and drop by to get enough charge to get them home. It doesn’t seem clever to run on a low charge, as sometimes the chargers aren’t working, or another car is using one, but it obviously happens. Some people get “free” or cheap electricity at their workplace.

Charging an EV at home from a domestic socket costs about a fiver, boiling a kettle maybe 2p if it's full, less than a penny if just boiling enough water to make a cup of tea. So it's the equivalent of boiling 250 full kettles of water. It will take about 7 hours to fully charge the car from a domestic socket, so it's like boiling the kettle 35 times an hour for seven hours.

Obviously that's a rough estimate but it gives an idea.

Based on that I do wonder if the grid could cope with 30 million people all charging their EVs overnight. And that's assuming they were happy to live with the problem of limited range. Given there's no shortage of oil hybrids do seem to make a lot more sense. No charging required, no range problems, and they still use less petrol and produce less pollution than a car that relies solely on a combustion engine.

[CageyH]

A Hybrid may cause less pollution at the point of use, but making those batteries is not ecologically friendly.
I think we need super capacitor technology before EVs will become viable.

[Macca]

A Hybrid may cause less pollution at the point of use, but making those batteries is not ecologically friendly.
I think we need super capacitor technology before EVs will become viable.

True - but I'd suggest that, from the point were we moved on from hunter-gathering, nothing that mankind does is ecologically friendly.

Maybe technology will provide the answer, that would be great, but I wouldn't bank on it.

[dave2010]

Based on that I do wonder if the grid could cope with 30 million people all charging their EVs overnight. And that's assuming they were happy to live with the problem of limited range. Given there's no shortage of oil hybrids do seem to make a lot more sense. No charging required, no range problems, and they still use less petrol and produce less pollution than a car that relies solely on a combustion engine.

I have wondered about that too. If there are going to be capacity problems in electricity production, then cars like the regular Prius - which manage to squeeze out more miles from a gallon of petrol, may well be better than EVs, but perhaps the electricity production difficulties can be overcome - in which case EVs have many advantages.

There are two slightly different problems relating to fossil fuel cars. Firstly there is the atmospheric global warming effect, and secondly there is the pollution, which in cities at least does lead to illness and deaths. EVs definitely reduce problems due to the second of those, but for the global warming one has to look at the total consumption of fossil fuels. Heating of homes may be more significant than transport in regard to that, which should spur a move towards heat pumps for domestic heating. However I think that will still require more electricity generation even though heat pumps are perhaps 3-4 times as effective as using electricity for heating directly. Burning oil or gas may still be more effective for heating, but issues related to CO2 emissions do need to be considered. Better insulation is essential, whatever mode of heating is used.

Given that many families now have at least 2 cars, it would not be unreasonable for at least one of them to be an EV. Most of the better small EVs now have a range which enables people to do basic actions, such as shopping, going to work etc. - but obviously it does depend on how far people "need" to travel on a regular basis. Currently longer distances are easier to cope with in petrol or diesel cars, but most people don't drive hundreds of miles each day.

There are also some trends starting to be noticeable regarding EVs with small range, or second hand vehicles. Second hand EVs have not seemed to be a very good buy as there is definite improvement in battery technology year on year, and newer cars have better performance and range. However, some people are discovering that they can buy a second hand EV with a manageable range, and if they can charge their cars up at work - sometimes "for free" - that has relatively little adverse impact on their lifestyle, and is quite a low cost solution for their personal transport. One EV enthusiast I met had also bought a Leaf at a very low price because the previous owner had managed to screw up the electronics. As the new owner was an electrical/electronics engineer he was able to fix the car at very low cost to himself. That's an option that most of us will not be able to exploit.

[Macca]

Given that many families now have at least 2 cars, it would not be unreasonable for at least one of them to be an EV. Most of the better small EVs now have a range which enables people to do basic actions, such as shopping, going to work etc. - but obviously it does depend on how far people "need" to travel on a regular basis. Currently longer distances are easier to cope with in petrol or diesel cars, but most people don't drive hundreds of miles each day.

The problem is that although most people don't drive hundreds of miles each day they do occasionally and they want to keep the ability to do that without any added aggravation or delay. If you have more than one car then one could be an EV and the other an ICE or hybrid but how many people can afford that?

And more than 8 million adults in the UK live alone, so seems likely to me that the vast majority of them would not even contemplate owning two cars just for that purpose. Especially if they live in flats, or terraces with either none or very limited off-road parking.

You do a long journey in your EV, you're 40 miles from home and running out of charge. That means finding a charging point and waiting at least 45 minutes in some god-forsaken service station for the car to gain enough charge to make it home. As opposed to a five-minute stop to get petrol, or not needing to get petrol at all. That's the reason everyone I know won't even contemplate all-electric. It's a good reason and I can't see attitudes to that changing.