Car (or bike) Chat!

[Macca]

Given the output of a hydrogen power cell is water, would that not mean that if you live below the flight path of an international airport it's going to rain every five minutes or so?

[CageyH]

You might get a few more clouds.

[AJSki2fly]

Where are we on electric aeroplanes?

We can all do our bit to save the planet, in fact we are being made to do our bit. Which I'm fine with, but without the rest of the world getting on board (not just industry but also all those who like to tear-arse around the globe in jets to attend "important" meetings (jollies really) to chat the same shit they could just as easily say via web cam, then we are really (in the words of late comedian Sean Locke) just turning up to the aftermath of an earthquake with a dustpan and brush.

In fact lets do away with all foreign travel and embrace staycationing. Britain is enjoying warmer summers thanks to climate change, and even the crappiest ev will have enough range to make it to the seaside and back. If we did this we really would be doing our bit, but I doubt it will happen.

A couple of interesting articles on future of EP's

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2...ne-ever-to-fly

[struth]

dont see it improving any until new battery types are developed; something that could happen anytime of course as they are constantly beavering away at it.

[Pigmy Pony]

Shell are currently running a TV ad telling us just how green they've become. Part of the blurb is their intention to have 50,000 charge points by the year 2025. That's another two years to get us to about what, about half of 1% of the chargers we need?

Some previous posts make mention of hydrogen aeroplanes - what is wrong with going in that direction with cars? Is it to do with cost? As I see it evs are going to be unaffordable for many for quite some time anyway.

[AJSki2fly]

Shell are currently running a TV ad telling us just how green they've become. Part of the blurb is their intention to have 50,000 charge points by the year 2025. That's another two years to get us to about what, about half of 1% of the chargers we need?

Some previous posts make mention of hydrogen aeroplanes - what is wrong with going in that direction with cars? Is it to do with cost? As I see it evs are going to be unaffordable for many for quite some time anyway.

I don’t get what your talking about with respect numbers of chargers needed? They are talking superchargers for fast charging.

Hydrogen is expensive to produce as you use lots of energy, there are two main methods from coal which produces lots Of co2, so that’s a looser, or from water using lots of electrical energy and metal plates, similar to an old acid battery.

Hydrogen in planes is problematic as the weight of the canister to store the linguistic hydrogen is prohibitive.


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[Barry]

linguistic hydrogen? Does that mean hydrogen can speak protium, deuterium, and tritium?

[Pigmy Pony]

I don’t get what your talking about with respect numbers of chargers needed? They are talking superchargers for fast charging.

Hydrogen is expensive to produce as you use lots of energy, there are two main methods from coal which produces lots Of co2, so that’s a looser, or from water using lots of electrical energy and metal plates, similar to an old acid battery.

Hydrogen in planes is problematic as the weight of the canister to store the linguistic hydrogen is prohibitive.


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No, I don't know how many chargers Britain will need, it just seems like 50,000 chargers (fast or otherwise) will fall far short of what will be needed if ev car sales increase as quickly as they are. But I'm asking these questions as I'd rather get answers from actual owners such as yourself, Grant, CageyH etc. than draw on the manufacturers' advertising blurb.

I'm not a naysayer, I really do hope it all works out for everyone, but I'm just not quite convinced... I stand by my 'staycation' idea though - air travel needs to be tackled.

As for hydrogen power, I know just as little about that. It just seems that at one time it looked like it might be the answer, then it all went a bit quiet.

One more thing - should I be thinking about selling my bike? If petrol becomes unaffordable, will the bike's value be affected?

[AJSki2fly]

No, I don't know how many chargers Britain will need, it just seems like 50,000 chargers (fast or otherwise) will fall far short of what will be needed if ev car sales increase as quickly as they are. But I'm asking these questions as I'd rather get answers from actual owners such as yourself, Grant, CageyH etc. than draw on the manufacturers' advertising blurb.

I'm not a naysayer, I really do hope it all works out for everyone, but I'm just not quite convinced... I stand by my 'staycation' idea though - air travel needs to be tackled.

As for hydrogen power, I know just as little about that. It just seems that at one time it looked like it might be the answer, then it all went a bit quiet.

One more thing - should I be thinking about selling my bike? If petrol becomes unaffordable, will the bike's value be affected?

I think I am correct in saying that there are actually more public EV chargers in the UK than there are fossil fuel pumps. If you go onto Zap-Map.com and look for all chargers I think you’ll be surprised. However there are some issues, a lot of these are less than 22kwh chargers so take too long practically.

To put this perspective if you plugged an EV into one for an hour in a car park then you would put 22kw of power in it, most EVs give a range of 3.5 to 4 miles per Kw so you be adding around 77-88 miles of range, which is fine if you are on a relatively local journey. But there are also a lot of lower 7-11 kWh chargers around at supermarkets and car parks and to be honest you might as well charge the EV at home on a home charger unless your desperate.

What really is the main need for EV charging is a greater number of what is called Superchargers, these are generally consider to be 50khw or greater, I believe the Tesla ones are all over 120kwh. A reasonable range EV today has a 55-80kwh battery storage so doing the math to charge up a on a 50kwh would take 1-1.5hours, a 120kwh charger 25-40mins and on a 250kwh one 12-19minutes. By the way these are high voltage chargers and for most EV batteries it is recommended to only charge with these to 80% of full capacity, on my Tesla 80% battery is around 300-320 miles depending on air temperature, which is fine.

A couple of things Tesla has started to open its Supercharger network up to everyone, 15 of them across the country, they are also tripling the number of chargers over the next two years and will make more available to other EV users.

EVs and peoples perception, generally from those who have never driven one, is ‘range anxiety’, put simply it’s the panic feeling of running out of fuel when you think you cannot get to a fuelling point. This is actually nonsense it is no different whether you have a ICE vehicle or an EV the same applies. What people fail to realise is that 90-95% of the journeys they undertake are local and within 25 miles of there home, so even if a car 80 miles of range available, irrespective of the fuel, it will not run out before being able to be refuelled. So now we come to the longer journeys, even a daily commute of 120 miles in an EV with a total range if 200 miles is doable, it just needs to be plugged in overnight to put around 30-35kwh of power back in, which will take about 4-4.5 hours on a 7kwh home charger. For the journeys that are longer than the vehicles range you just need to stop en-route to put more juice in, no different to a fossil fuel vehicle, this is where fast(superchargers) come in, you pull up, plug up, stretch your legs have a coffee and get on you way after 15-20minutes, actually most fossil fuel fill ups take around at least ten minutes, think about it.

As for your motorbike, if it’s not rare it is likely to loose value pretty quickly as petrol costs rise and becomes less cost effective to use, but that may not be why you own it. However if you haven’t already looked or tried one an electric motor bike might tickle your fancy, they are frighteningly quick, and pretty efficient, oddly quiet, just the rush of the wind.

Go onto YouTube and search for ‘Fully Charged’ and then watch the series ‘Maddie goes electric’ 6 programs about 20 minutes each and it will answer and clarify most peoples questions about EVs. Robert Llewelyn has also done some excellent EV reviews and podcasts about EVs, he has owned an EV since 2010 and talks from personal experience.

[struth]

there is about 4k rapid or better chargers in uk; most will be in london area tho. think there are about 20k(edit, actually now over 24k) all told, but most will be 7k ones; petrol pumps im not sure but think petrol stations have been reducing quite a lot in last few years. maybe 8k stations and each will have a few pumps.

Might add there are lots of private ones too, which some folk open up access to for others(mostly neighbours)