Electric Vehicles (EV's)

[Pudsey Bear]

Peak oil is a pretty redundant term now. With fracking oil is produced as and when needed and the price is right, there is no shortage. Can’t remember the area but a place in America produces more oil than all but the two top producing countries from just fracking.

Battery’s for transport are an environmental disaster waiting to happen. 10 kilos of liquid fuel is much more efficient than 10 kilos of battery power and when it’s used there is nothing left to dispose of unlike battery’s. The problem with current liquid fuels is the nasties in the emissions from the exhaust (ignoring any from production as battery’s are as bad or worse). Liquid fuel such as hydrogen only leaves water behind. Time governments and industry stopped being greedy and put in place a proper solution

I wouldn't hold your breath while they have a product to tax.

 

[The wilsons]

You will be taxed on electric very soon, and a charge now is more expensive than fuel, then there is the dirt making them and scrapping them which is 25% worse than ice cars, we are not sorting this out as yet.

Where are you charging it is so expensive, I do a home charge at night 12p per kWh, 210 miles costs me £6, my local Tesco has 4 fast charge points since I want to top up quickly, 25p per kWh, around £12 for 210 miles, cheaper servicing costs and zero road tax for another 2 years, I personally would never go back to an ICE

 

[trevskoda]

EVs won't be right for everyone but they have been in existence for over 100 years. At one time the UK had more EVs on the road than any other country in the world, and they were pretty much bullet proof.
Times change and we have to be ready for the down slope from peak oil when the availability and price of fossil fuels become unsustainable.
Currently EVs are marketed to a niche market because that's where the money for buying them is, but that's changing and new manufacturers, Tesla, the Chinese, the Koreans and some small British companies, will start to push the legacy manufacturers into being more innovative.
The charging infrastructure is improving but there's still a way to go and the intelligent grid will become a major factor in making charging cheaper, but it's still a work in progress.
So for all the downsides it's the early adopters who will make, what is inevitable, into reality.
All the same arguments were used against the introduction of ice vehicles and it was only the development of mass production by Henry Ford that brought us a cheap car for the people. He would have chosen electric instead of petrol but for the lack of technology at the time.

Fact is he was going for electric but was stopped by the Mafia who were sent by the oil co.
And then pray tell me where the electricity will be coming from, correct, power stations burning oil/gas, there is no cure for us exhausting the planet of resources.

 

[trevskoda]

Peak oil is a pretty redundant term now. With fracking oil is produced as and when needed and the price is right, there is no shortage. Can’t remember the area but a place in America produces more oil than all but the two top producing countries from just fracking.

Battery’s for transport are an environmental disaster waiting to happen. 10 kilos of liquid fuel is much more efficient than 10 kilos of battery power and when it’s used there is nothing left to dispose of unlike battery’s. The problem with current liquid fuels is the nasties in the emissions from the exhaust (ignoring any from production as battery’s are as bad or worse). Liquid fuel such as hydrogen only leaves water behind. Time governments and industry stopped being greedy and put in place a proper solution

True but the problem with hydrogen is that it takes a lot of power the convert, much more than just burning the fuel as is.

 

[trevskoda]

Where are you charging it is so expensive, I do a home charge at night 12p per kWh, 210 miles costs me £6, my local Tesco has 4 fast charge points since I want to top up quickly, 25p per kWh, around £12 for 210 miles, cheaper servicing costs and zero road tax for another 2 years, I personally would never go back to an ICE

Half the chargers here have been vandalized or not plentiful unless you charge at home from an expensive solar setup if possible.
It has taken over 100 years to get where we are with petrol, electric wont happen in 7 years time.

 

[tonybvi]

Where are you charging it is so expensive, I do a home charge at night 12p per kWh, 210 miles costs me £6, my local Tesco has 4 fast charge points since I want to top up quickly, 25p per kWh, around £12 for 210 miles, cheaper servicing costs and zero road tax for another 2 years, I personally would never go back to an ICE

That night rate looks suspiciously like the Octopus Go tariff - a great rate but offset by around 40p/kWh peak rate. Works well if you do a lot of charging and/or can shift a lot of other useage (dishwasher, washing machine, tumble drier,etc) to off peak.
We have similar but a 4.5p/kWh off peak, 37p/kWh peak rate. Can’t wait to get our 13.5kW home storage battery installed hopefully next month (it’s been on order for a year now) which will mean we should be able to run just about everything at the off peak rate by charging the battery (and the cars!) at 4.5p!!

 

[Drew]

Peak oil is a pretty redundant term now. With fracking oil is produced as and when needed and the price is right, there is no shortage. Can’t remember the area but a place in America produces more oil than all but the two top producing countries from just fracking.

Battery’s for transport are an environmental disaster waiting to happen. 10 kilos of liquid fuel is much more efficient than 10 kilos of battery power and when it’s used there is nothing left to dispose of unlike battery’s. The problem with current liquid fuels is the nasties in the emissions from the exhaust (ignoring any from production as battery’s are as bad or worse). Liquid fuel such as hydrogen only leaves water behind. Time governments and industry stopped being greedy and put in place a proper solution

Fracking is an environmental disaster on so many levels.
Lithium ion batteries are recyclable, although at present the small number needing to be replaced are being repurposed into home storage batteries.
For many reasons hydrogen is not suitable for small vehicle transport, not only because of the vast amount of Co2 put into the atmosphere from it's production from, mostly, natural gas but also because of the physical size of the tanks needed and the fact that they still require batteries.
Your assertion that liquid fuel is more efficient than electricity is plainly misinformed and that burning liquid fuel leave nothing behind ignores the fact of harmful emissions.

 

[CriftinsCampers]

2-You CAN charge them to 100% and in 3 years we have had no reduction in battery performance. We mostly charge at home on a 3 pin plug (2.2kW). At this charge rate the battery is fine. On a 50kW DC charger it charges at 50kW until reaching 80% at which point the charge rate is automatically reduced to protect the batteries.

7-For many people a dedicated 7kW home charger is a waste of money. It maybe 3 times quicker, but how much time do most people actually spend driving?

I thought I would pick up on those two points because you could be unknowingly wasting a lot of money.

Your Kia may have a slightly more efficient OBC than the one in my Soul but I can almost guarantee you there is an overhead within the OBC when converting 230v AC into 400VDC. in the same way there is an over head in any Motor Caravan inverter converting 12vDC to 230vAC.

E.g. take a 12vDC inverter (and we will assume for this exercise it is 100% efficient) the electronics will still have an operational overhead e.g. 1A.
If we then hang a 230vAC load off it that draws 12w then the load on the 12V battery is another 1A making 2A in total end result the overhead accounts for 50% of the power being used or to put it another way you are using twice as much power to run the load that it uses itself.

The OBC in an EV is no different it takes power to operate.
When I bought our KIA Soul in 2017 I also downloaded a bunch of pids for an app called Torque PRO one of the pids shows OBC efficiency versus input.

For my particular car this breaks down as follows:
Granny charger 67% efficient
3KW charger 75% efficient
7KW charger 85% efficient.
Rapids vary, typically >90% up to the typically 80% soc cut off point

The above rates assume car locked and no other loads, if for example I was sitting with my Aircon on then the OBC efficiency drops noticeably because even less power is being used to charge the HV battery.

So what this equates to is quite simply money down the drain when using low power chargers e.g
at 67% efficient it takes 89KW to put 67Kw into the battery, at current domestic prices at 34.04p per kWh x 22Kw = £7.48 wasted.
at 85% efficient it takes 77KW to put 67Kw into the battery, at current domestic prices at 34.04p per kWh x 10Kw = £3.40 wasted.

None of this is covered in the sales blurb! and it rarely discussed within EV forums!

I strongly suggest you verify how efficient your own OBC is because your charging regime could be costing you a heck of a lot more than necessary.

There is an excellent thread here with examples and I have confirmed these against my own car.

Onboard charger : less efficience at low power ?

Hello, I have reading somes points about the fact that i charge at 1100w (EVSE charger) because of my solars panels strategy. Torque Pro and Custom PIDs indicate an 33-43% of efficiency at the Onboard Charger. During the august month, i will rise the EVSE Charger at 2500w to view if the...

www.mykiasoulev.com

HTH.

 

[marchie]

I thought I would pick up on those two points because you could be unknowingly wasting a lot of money.

Your Kia may have a slightly more efficient OBC than the one in my Soul but I can almost guarantee you there is an overhead within the OBC when converting 230v AC into 400VDC. in the same way there is an over head in any Motor Caravan inverter converting 12vDC to 230vAC.

E.g. take a 12vDC inverter (and we will assume for this exercise it is 100% efficient) the electronics will still have an operational overhead e.g. 1A.
If we then hang a 230vAC load off it that draws 12w then the load on the 12V battery is another 1A making 2A in total end result the overhead accounts for 50% of the power being used or to put it another way you are using twice as much power to run the load that it uses itself.

The OBC in an EV is no different it takes power to operate.
When I bought our KIA Soul in 2017 I also downloaded a bunch of pids for an app called Torque PRO one of the pids shows OBC efficiency versus input.

For my particular car this breaks down as follows:
Granny charger 67% efficient
3KW charger 75% efficient
7KW charger 85% efficient.
Rapids vary, typically >90% up to the typically 80% soc cut off point

The above rates assume car locked and no other loads, if for example I was sitting with my Aircon on then the OBC efficiency drops noticeably because even less power is being used to charge the HV battery.

So what this equates to is quite simply money down the drain when using low power chargers e.g
at 67% efficient it takes 89KW to put 67Kw into the battery, at current domestic prices at 34.04p per kWh x 22Kw = £7.48 wasted.
at 85% efficient it takes 77KW to put 67Kw into the battery, at current domestic prices at 34.04p per kWh x 10Kw = £3.40 wasted.

None of this is covered in the sales blurb! and it rarely discussed within EV forums!

I strongly suggest you verify how efficient your own OBC is because your charging regime could be costing you a heck of a lot more than necessary.

There is an excellent thread here with examples and I have confirmed these against my own car.

Onboard charger : less efficience at low power ?

Hello, I have reading somes points about the fact that i charge at 1100w (EVSE charger) because of my solars panels strategy. Torque Pro and Custom PIDs indicate an 33-43% of efficiency at the Onboard Charger. During the august month, i will rise the EVSE Charger at 2500w to view if the...

www.mykiasoulev.com

HTH.

I remember one of those 'Hot Topic of the Week' newspaper articles from about 1973/74 [or possibly even earlier - from 1967?] during the oil crises that we all just accepted ... The article said that even a new [run in] petrol engine, properly and thoroughly serviced & maintained, wasted some 3 pints of every gallon of petrol because of the various mechanical inefficiencies of the ICE in getting power to the roadwheels. 50+ years later, 'tis only the fuel type that has changed, and the blame falling on the Russians instead of the Arabs and Israelis for not playing nicely ...

Steve

 

[Drew]

Fact is he was going for electric but was stopped by the Mafia who were sent by the oil co.
And then pray tell me where the electricity will be coming from, correct, power stations burning oil/gas, there is no cure for us exhausting the planet of resources.

This year I've 40% of the electricity generated in the UK has come from non fossil fuel sources. That percentage is increasing year on year. All of the electricity that goes into my ev comes from solar panels.

 

[nabsim]

This year I've 40% of the electricity generated in the UK has come from non fossil fuel sources. That percentage is increasing year on year. All of the electricity that goes into my ev comes from solar panels.

I don’t believe that for a minute. Power goes into the National grid, there is no way of knowing where the power you use come from, UNLESS you are producing and storing all the power you use from you own solar setup.
The ‘our power comes from’ are usually derived from offset figures same as how they get reduced carbon footprints.

 

[runnach]

A wee bit of Scottish EV history.

Granton History: The Madelvic Car Factory

www.grantonhistory.org

 

[Caz]

This year I've 40% of the electricity generated in the UK has come from non fossil fuel sources. That percentage is increasing year on year. All of the electricity that goes into my ev comes from solar panels.

But what about all the fossil fuels involved in the production of the car and the solar panels?

 

[Geek]

Where are you charging it is so expensive, I do a home charge at night 12p per kWh, 210 miles costs me £6, my local Tesco has 4 fast charge points since I want to top up quickly, 25p per kWh, around £12 for 210 miles, cheaper servicing costs and zero road tax for another 2 years, I personally would never go back to an ICE

The current (capped) price for domestic electricity is 33p per KWh. You can easily pay twice that at a public charger.

 

[Geek]

I don’t believe that for a minute. Power goes into the National grid, there is no way of knowing where the power you use come from, UNLESS you are producing and storing all the power you use from you own solar setup.
The ‘our power comes from’ are usually derived from offset figures same as how they get reduced carbon footprints.

G. B. National Grid status

www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk

 

[trevskoda]

The current (capped) price for domestic electricity is 33p per KWh. You can easily pay twice that at a public charger.

Chargers are free in N Ireland for now.

 

[nabsim]

G. B. National Grid status

www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk

My point was I don’t believe that any ev charged at night is getting it’s power from solar

It’s all manipulation

 

[trevskoda]

My point was I don’t believe that any ev charged at night is getting it’s power from solar

It’s all manipulation

Not unless the solar charged a battery bank which is charging the car.

 

[Pudsey Bear]

It's too dark for solar anyway at night in winter

 

[Drew]

I don’t believe that for a minute. Power goes into the National grid, there is no way of knowing where the power you use come from, UNLESS you are producing and storing all the power you use from you own solar setup.
The ‘our power comes from’ are usually derived from offset figures same as how they get reduced carbon footprints.

Well I do have solar panels which have kept my car topped up for 6 months. Plus I buy my energy from Good Energy who are exempted from the price cap because they BUY all their electricity from renewable sources. Of course it all come down the same wires, who would have thought it , but that's not the point.