Hi All,
Something i have had a Bee in my bonnet about for a while now, Electric cars, and the posibility of all of us being able to transfer over to using one within the next 15 years or so.
I, as i am sure there are many others here who have given the logistics some thought; think it a near imposibilty for it to work with our current infer-structure, i was listening to radio 2 this morning, where they were discusing that very topic, and one guy put things into perspective; he said and i quote; if just one person in every household in Britain who currently use a car was to change to a fully electric vehicle; at 6-00pm when most are home from work, and therefore are wanting to plug in the car to re-charge, it would quite posibly cause a widespread blackout, now,,,he went on the explain that for it to have any chance of working, we would need at least another 4 nuclear power stations, or around 9 fossil fuel power stations to cope. The so called informed one on there making the arguement for the electric car explained; well you may plug your car in at that time, but it won't get charged untill the grid can cope, and also; if the charging system detects that you have a near full battery, there is a posibilty that the charging system may even take energy from your batteries to supply the grid, or to charge batteries in other cars on the same system!
Now, anyone who has thought about this, and have an idea of how much energy electric cars currently need to deliver any sort of useable mileage, will have realised that its a lot, and therefore the electricity needed, or should i say; the Kilowatt hour it takes to in affect reverse the chemical reaction of the battery, and therefore; allow the battery to re-charge, is many kilowatts, for hours. therefore some of the so called fast charger systems currently used to charge these cars are on par with leaving your shower on for hour after hour, i know they are relying on the fact that many cars wont need to be re-charged from scratch,ie, they may still have half charge, but come on, as more and more of us are expected to go over to this technology;how many cars are eventually going to need to be fully charged on a regular basis ?
I know this post is a bit of a rant, but its one of those subjects that has been annoying me now for a few years, and there still doesent seem to be any answers coming forward that look to me as sustainable long term answers that i can see, ofcourse there's Hydrogen technology too, but again; what energy source are they going to use to create that ?
Please join in and discuss.