Electric cars, Emperor's new clothes???

Thats what I am hoping... a VHS so to speak...
And even they only lasted until DVD's which got replaced by MP3/4's which got replaced by streaming and on and on and....
K ;)
 
I think the current (!) electric vehicle technology will prove to be a Betamax. If we had to have batteries why on earth didn't manufacturers standardise so we could just call into a filling station (the clue is in the name) and exchange a flattish battery for a fully-charged one. With the right design the swap could be done automatically and we'd be on our way in five minutes, just like now. After all, I don't refine my own diesel overnight and pump it very slowly through a hose across the pavement.
Actually the VHS solution might be hydrogen fuel cells - there was an interesting article in last Sunday's paper by James May who has just taken delivery of one. Will be interesting to hear his experience. And the government could tax hydrogen so they wouldn't lose all that lovely fuel duty.
 
DaveP said:
If we had to have batteries why on earth didn't manufacturers standardise so we could just call into a filling station (the clue is in the name) and exchange a flattish battery for a fully-charged one. With the right design the swap could be done automatically and we'd be on our way in five minutes, just like now.
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That would be nice, but since batteries cost several thousand quid at the moment, people might be hesitant to swap theirs for one of unknown quality. They also weigh a lot, so you need robotic systems or at least hydraulic jacks to change them. And lastly, they need good thermal management, so they tend to be well-integrated into the car's heating and cooling systems. None of these is insurmountable in the long term, but I think it explains why that wasn't the easiest choice at the beginning!

There have been some pilot projects doing this with motorcycle batteries, I believe.

Actually the VHS solution might be hydrogen fuel cells - there was an interesting article in last Sunday's paper by James May who has just taken delivery of one. Will be interesting to hear his experience. And the government could tax hydrogen so they wouldn't lose all that lovely fuel duty.
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Hydrogen may well be the solution in the longer term, I think, especially for larger vehicles like trucks, trains and ships. At present, it's rather less practical for cars because there are very few refilling stations, fuel cell cars tend to be heavy and complex (not least because they need to include a decent-sized battery as well), and the process of storing and releasing energy that way is currently much less efficient than batteries.

A very nice feature of hydrogen, though, is that you can create it yourself from any source of electricity. Not really at the home scale, but if, say, your village has a wind farm or a solar array, it could make its own hydrogen. This would probably make sense on large farms, too.

If the government *did* want to start taxing hydrogen, maybe we'd see a whole load of illegal 'stills' brewing it for themselves... :)
 
Aberdeen runs hydrogen buses and I have seen at least one Aberdeenshire Council hydrogen car. I like the idea but there are only 2 filling stations up here and I’ve no idea if there are any others anywhere in the country, so not too practical at the moment!
 
St3v3 said:
You're talking like we must be exchanging tyres and resurfacing motorways on a weekly basis.

I just don't see this as anywhere near the problem it's being made out to be.
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I used to work at a garage/petrol station on a roundabout. The amount of tyre dust was incredible. We had to wash the sale cars twice a day. You could fill a few dustpans from the daily forecourt tyre dust sweepings.
 
FWIW, I've just watched the linked YT review on the Kia E-Niro (and EVs in general). Seems like a well-considered, balanced piece to me, but YMMV:

 
When looking at EV as a way to reduce emissions and comparing against any other means of propulsion should we not in theory be considering the FULL CARBON FOOTPRINT. What I mean is how much CO2 was created in mining Lithium ore, extracting the Lithium, making it into a useable battery etc. Such batteries are not created magically and I would imagine a significant amount of processing and therefore energy goes into the making of these batteries ?
Coal dug up and chucked on a fire to make steam involves much less processing ? Wouldn't it be a laugh if coal has less carbon footprint than the hi-tech Li-Po's.
 
Wrighpm said:
When looking at EV as a way to reduce emissions and comparing against any other means of propulsion should we not in theory be considering the FULL CARBON FOOTPRINT. What I mean is how much CO2 was created in mining Lithium ore, extracting the Lithium, making it into a useable battery etc. Such batteries are not created magically and I would imagine a significant amount of processing and therefore energy goes into the making of these batteries ?
Coal dug up and chucked on a fire to make steam involves much less processing ? Wouldn't it be a laugh if coal has less carbon footprint than the hi-tech Li-Po's.
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No. As I've explained up-thread, CO2 is irrelevant wrt pollution. It's a non-toxic trace gas that plants cannot do without and it has no significant impact on global temperature. Without plants we are well stuffed. Commercial growers are getting increased yields by flooding greenhouses with additional CO2, which implies that we could actually benefit from more CO2 in the atmosphere, not less.

What EVs were supposed to be good for was moving pollution out of cities. So an out-of-town power station might generate masses of pollution, but the powers that be consider that acceptable because the pollution is not released in the middle of a densly-populated area. However, as the study I cited up-thread shows, EVs might not be the panacea at first thought because Euro 6d ICE vehicles produce less particulate pollution than comparable EVs. That said, we have to wean ourselves off fossile fuels because they are a dwindling resource. OTOH, old lithium batteries can be recycled to make new ones; so lithium doesn't have the same long-term scarcity.
 
davef said:
I have read that older diesel engines produce larger ( and more visible) particulates which are actually less harmful to health - the desire to clean emissions has made the situation worse.
On another note CO2 is essential to all life, we are historically at a low level of CO2, and plants would grow much better if levels were at 1000 pmm. (which would not in any way be harmful to our health) Plant nurseries often increase CO2 in glasshouses for that reason. Levels of CO2 have been at 4000ppm during long ice ages which would indicate it is at best an insignificant greenhouse gas.
NASA photographs taken from their earliest satellites compared to current photos of the Earth show that an increase of vegetation the size of America has occurred due to deserts shrinking as plants are able to grow with less water if CO2 levels increase. Which quite starkly means our producing CO2 is beneficial to the Earth.
There are many pollutants that should be drastically reduced - but CO2 is not one of them!
On charging EVs from your own solar panels - I have 16 full size panels on my workshop roof facing SSW - in the previous 2 cloudy days they produced 0.2 and 0.4 kwh, at which rate it would take 133 days to recharge a 40 kwh battery.....obviously an almost worst case scenario but shows the problems with renewables.
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Most of the above is absolute guff. Desertification is on the increase,not the opposite.Not all due to climate change,but that is a major contributory factor.Vegetation has increased,really?Despite the huge deforestation that has occurred and the huge growth in cities in that time?Some plants are seen to be growing larger due to increasing C02 levels,that is all.
Diesel particulate filters are very efficient at removing larger particulates but not the smallest one's that are so dangerous to health.This was not known a few years back when the legislation was implemented.
 
Here's a nice new landmark to make you feel at least a little bit proud to be British. :)

In the third quarter of 2019, the UK generated 1% of our electricity from coal, 20% from nuclear, 38% from oil and gas. And 40% from renewables.

More details if wanted on my blog.
 
It would be better to make electric car bodys last a long time to get the best out of batterys,this would help stop wast energy making new ones as they do with normal steel engined cars.
 
Vanterrier said:
however I wonder what the cost of having a 7KW charger on for seven hours regularly are? Is that factored into the costs?
K ;)
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Somewhere between £2.50 and £7.00, depending on your tariff. Yes that is factored into the cost- like an LED lightbulb, the initial expense is more than covered by the reduced running costs.
 
GeoffL said:
Global warming really is the Emperor's new clothes IMO. It seems at best naive - at worst disingenuous - to conclude that a multi-faceted, complex system such as World climate is chiefly driven by a tiny fraction of anthropogenic contribution... Global warming is happening, but it almost certainly isn't anthropogenic and alarmists would be better campaigning for mitigation rather than making Canute-style attempts at stopping it IMO.
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Multi faceted, complex and finely balanced. The relationship between CO2 concentration and temperature was calculated in the 19th century. If burning fossil fuels wasn't causing warming we'd have to work out why it wasn't. The comparison with Canute doesn't stand- he would have needed to stop a natural process, we only have to stop our own actions which are interfering with the natural processes. The fact is that when all that carbon was in the atmosphere the earth would have been uninhabitable to humans. I'm not sure what 'mitigation' would overcome that: we have to try and avoid it, and hope we haven't left it too late already.
 
trevskoda said:
It would be better to make electric car bodys last a long time to get the best out of batterys,this would help stop wast energy making new ones as they do with normal steel engined cars.
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Most car bodies last a lot longer than the mechanicals. My 9 year old Skoda looked like new when it was totalled by a cambelt failure. Nissan keep increasing the battery capacity of the LEAF battery in the same size casing, so when my battery eventually degrades it should be no problem not only to replace it but to upgrade.
 
Whitetornado said:
Multi faceted, complex and finely balanced. The relationship between CO2 concentration and temperature was calculated in the 19th century. If burning fossil fuels wasn't causing warming we'd have to work out why it wasn't. The comparison with Canute doesn't stand- he would have needed to stop a natural process, we only have to stop our own actions which are interfering with the natural processes. The fact is that when all that carbon was in the atmosphere the earth would have been uninhabitable to humans. I'm not sure what 'mitigation' would overcome that: we have to try and avoid it, and hope we haven't left it too late already.
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CO2 levels are self regulating to a large extent the more CO2 the more vegetation growth , and therefore more fixing from atmosphere . Re high levels previously , what you think made all the limestone , chalk deposits etc .
 
Well, well, well. What’s just been on the news? Supermarkets use of plastics has increased over the past year.

Nothing to do with ev’s I know but illustrates the way people will spout on about something but totally disregard it eh. How many are going to boycott supermarkets to save the planet now I wonder?
 
Whitetornado said:
Multi faceted, complex and finely balanced. The relationship between CO2 concentration and temperature was calculated in the 19th century. If burning fossil fuels wasn't causing warming we'd have to work out why it wasn't. The comparison with Canute doesn't stand- he would have needed to stop a natural process, we only have to stop our own actions which are interfering with the natural processes. The fact is that when all that carbon was in the atmosphere the earth would have been uninhabitable to humans. I'm not sure what 'mitigation' would overcome that: we have to try and avoid it, and hope we haven't left it too late already.
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While you claim that the relationship between temperature and CO2 concentration was calculated in the 19th century, I can't find any source to verify that claim. That said, at best a correlation was established but not causality. First, CO2 is a "trace gas" -- only 0.04% of the atmosphere is CO2. Of this small amount, only 3% is from human activities -- i.e. CO2 from human activities accounts for approx 1 thousandth of one percent of the atmosphere. CO2 concentration might be significant if it were a toxin, but it isn't; it's harmless. The fact is that CO2 concentration was ten times higher during the Cambrian Explosion (when oxygen breathing animal life really took off), so even doubling of atmospheric CO2 won't be an issue.

Now to my "Canute" reference. Atmospheric CO2 concentration lags temperature change. That is, changes in CO2 concentration occur in response to changes in temperature. Several proxies show this for the rapid warming events that occured during the last ice age and the holocene -- all but the current one occurring before industrialisation. Trying to lower (97% natural) CO2 atmospheric concentration is futile -- just as was Canute's attempt to control the tide.
 
RV2MAX said:
CO2 levels are self regulating to a large extent the more CO2 the more vegetation growth , and therefore more fixing from atmosphere . Re high levels previously , what you think made all the limestone , chalk deposits etc .
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If you take us out of the equation, yes. Since the industrial revolution we've put about 375 billion tones of carbon back into the atmosphere that was safely put out of the way during the carboniferous period- about 100 billion tonnes of that since the year 2000. If we'd allowed unlimited plant growth that might have been OK, but we've been clearing the forests and draining the peat bogs for agriculture at the same time. The planet is currently managing to absorb about half the carbon we emit through things like marine algae, but that still leaves a huge increase, and global warming creates global warming- for example, vast amounts of methane are being released due to the melting of ancient permafrost in the far north. Please note that the above figures are for carbon, multiply by 3.66 for weights in CO2.
 
Asterix said:
I've just been wandering around a one horse town in Scotland and was surprised to come across a charging point,just shows the infrastructure is getting better all the time.
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I think Scotland is a lot more switched on regarding renewables than England in the main
 
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