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Electric cars? Practical in UK?


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Stolen from Bluesman on other post, but worth starting?

" The only time electric cars will be a serious mode of transport( this is just my opinion) is if you can charge them up wirelessly. Something the Battery car lot seem to have forgotten What happens to all the cars that are plugged into their charging points and late one night along comes little Johnny, drunk and as high as a kite with his mates out come all the charging cables. If you have a nice private drive with gates or garage then you will be OK but for huge numbers of people who live in the inner towns and cities, you won't have a chance in hell of the electric car succeeding."

 

Not to mention all the other related topics such as ...Cost. Scarce supply of rare metals.....the comment I read that having only two cars in a street plugged in would cause voltage drop.....so infrastructure needs expensive upgrade (more Windmills! Yippee).

And, taking Blues' point, if they need contactless charging, that's even MORE costly! Imagine great huge plates set into the street.

No, it's back to walking with only the rich owning cars!

 

Though I guess the possible answer to the Urban street hassle is that folk need reliable bus services? And no car expense.

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I found this old internet post from 1919:

Quote

Will these horseless carriages take off? We will have to have petrol stations at regular intervals and roads built all over the country. There is one fuel station, how will people fill up? What for? Why do I need a huge road to take my cart full of turnips to the next village when I just use my horse? The wife says she won't go in one as Jeremiah Clarkson III from Galloping Horse magazine says the human body will explode over 18mph!!! It will just be for rich people anyway.......... oh why did we move out of our caves !!!

Investing in infrastructure is good for the economy and good for technology and good for the people who will get cleaner air and some good technology jobs.

Will the government f*** it up? Different question.

Do I want an electric car? Not yet.

 

But.............

 

If all the sunlight energy striking the Earth's surface in Texas alone could be converted to electricity, it would be up to 300 times the total power output of all the power plants in the world! 

Total world electricity production was 20,261 TeraWatt hours (TWh) in 2008[2].

Power plant output in watts is:  20,261 TWh  ÷  365 days/year  ÷  24 hours/day  =  2.31 TW

Texas is 696,241 km2, so, 1,000 w/m2  x  1,000,000 m2/km2  x  696,241 km2  =  696,241,000,000,000 Watts =  696.241 TW

So, the sunlight falling on Texas at noon is equivalent to 696 TW solar energy ÷  2.31 TW power plant output  =  301 times the output of power plants.

 

There is no info on stopping drunks pulling charging cables out :(

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Interesting maths but not really relevant. Texas is almost 3 times bigger than the UK, we couldn't transport it from there to here, and it's mostly cloudy here anyway :biggrin:

Seriously though, until a Battery can be recharged in the same time as filling a tank of petrol and has the same range as a tankful of petrol, it's a non-starter. My wife and I take about 25 days holiday in summer to drive around Poland, Czech Republic and/or Slovakia. The way we usually do it is to leave Preston then perhaps first night in Ostend, Belgium; second night somewhere in the Rhine Valley region of Germany and third night, we are somewhere in our destination country of Czech. How long will that journey take in an electric vehicle? Could it even be done? Will there be charging points on the continent?

The transmission network (the National Grid) is creaking at the seams with no spare capacity. There used to be redundancy built into the system but a lack of maintenance and spending has seen that backup plant brought into daily use to plug gaps that shouldn't really be there. We haven't got enough generating capacity anyway, even if the transmission network was up to it. Even now, not in the depths of winter, but just a few minutes ago, demand was fairly high:

grid.thumb.jpg.9729dec6bfbe4980c73d66cd8e8d11b6.jpg

Add into that a load of electric vehicles recharging (can't ALL be done overnight) and it's a recipe for disaster. Not to mention the more 'local' infrastructure of cables from substations along the streets to the houses - they'll all need digging up and uprating as well as the Grid systems. And what about people who live in high-rise flats?

Eventually, of course, oil and fossil fuels will run out and I've no doubt that electric vehicles will someday be the norm - I just think it's unrealistic in the government's timeframe.

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1 hour ago, Comedian said:

Why isn't calculating how much energy is available not relevant to how much energy we need?

 

http://www.sandia.gov/~jytsao/Solar FAQs.pdf

It probably is in the long term but the title of this topic is "Electric cars? Practical in UK?" I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that we could tack on to the end of that, "in the context of the government target to do away with the manufacture of diesel and petrol engines by 2040"

The calculations may be relevant by, say, 2080 or 2100 but certainly not by 2040 as we won't have anywhere near the infrastructure needed to deliver it by then. And there's also the question of the availability of enough raw materials and the production processes to take into account in order to produce the stuff to capture all that solar energy. But that's (yet) another discussion.

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isn't this a reason why Toyota are thinking that Hydrogen Power will be their future for cars ............  the trial 80 taxis in London just on HP  (  hahahahaha ..........not sauce nor batteries nor baked beans  ( wind/fart power ) BUT hydrogen power )

Malc

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It probably is in the long term but the title of this topic is "Electric cars? Practical in UK?" I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that we could tack on to the end of that, "in the context of the government target to do away with the manufacture of diesel and petrol engines by 2040"



Oh I see where you're coming from there.

Can the govt sort electric cars by 2040 is almost a definite no. But luckily politicians don't build the world, Engineers and entrepreneurs do. Politicians will just make it harder or easier.

Based on our cynicism though - best start sooner rather than later!

Sent from my STV100-4 using Tapatalk

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Having fancied a Nissan Cube for a few years (stop laughing!!) I was lifted by reading that there was an electric one! Denki.

There's clip on Youtube.  But they never followed up on the concept.

The comment on range is valid. It only takes 5 mins to get -say - a weeks supply of fuel, not a 5 hour+ charge.

I guess the answer might be changeable/plug-in batteries (copyright me!) except that they are rather LARGE to run a car. Twizys all round?

As long as there's an electric hearse, I'm not too bothered! I'll be gone.

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