So what stopping you carrying diesel generator in back of

[Blib]

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned that it's been done already. The Eagle i Thrust.

[CraigyMc]

McWigglebum4th said:

Ever driven in the highlands on a Sunday?

I have, but my car has a usable range of 900 miles.
The last time I used that was about 3 weeks ago (560 miles in a day).

Shops in Scotland tend to be open longer on a Sunday than in England by the way -- for example, it's usually 24 hours on a Sunday for places like Tesco supermarkets in Scotland versus the archaic 10am-4pm bks we put up with in England for the same company for "religious reasons".

[Engineer1]

kambites said:

Engineer1 said:

Or by the time Electric cars are really common there will be charge points at convient locations, the biggest issue will be the people who put the car on charge and get up to find a car with no charge either because they did't actually put it on charge or because the charging failed.

When was the last time this happened to you when charging a battery powered device like a mobile phone? It certainly never has to me. I have, on the other hand, run out of fuel in a petrol powered car (the fuel gauge jammed at about 1/4 full and I didn't notice ).

On a couple of occassions I've picked my phone up in the morning and it isn't fully charged, either the charger wasn't correctly fitted or an app was drawing power as fast or faster than the phone could charge, I've also been in the position of well you said you'd...

[Mr2Mike]

vrooom said:

To charge thier car with if there is no charge point nearby.

Have you seen the size of a diesel 3KVA generator? (i.e. one that can provide similar output to a 13 Amp socket) It would either not fit, or make the boot completely unusable for anything else. You'd also have to enjoy your car interior stinking of diesel.

Just carrying it around would reduce the range of the car.

[Pixelpeep]

thing that worries me about electric cars is the fact that it may well say 'RANGE 120 MILES' but if it starts raining, you need the heater and wipers that range starts to come down.

I can't remember what car it was, possibly that G-Wizz thing, but the range HALVED if you needed to use the lights?!

how on earth can you properly plan a route and what range you have if you have to take in to account how many times you are going to use your indicators, lights, wipers, screenwash, radio, horn, etc etc..

[DonkeyApple]

Pixelpeep said:

thing that worries me about electric cars is the fact that it may well say 'RANGE 120 MILES' but if it starts raining, you need the heater and wipers that range starts to come down.

I can't remember what car it was, possibly that G-Wizz thing, but the range HALVED if you needed to use the lights?!

how on earth can you properly plan a route and what range you have if you have to take in to account how many times you are going to use your indicators, lights, wipers, screenwash, radio, horn, etc etc..

But, if you were so thick that you bought a car with a range that left no wriggle room to meet your needs then you are also going to be too thick to know that it is raining or it is dark.

There are about a dozen GWiz cars where I live and the commute to the City or West End is under 5 miles. If your commute was 20 miles and you bought a GWiz then you would be a thicko.

As a society, we cannot invest more than the basics into thickos, we must invest in the winners.

[Pixelpeep]

DonkeyApple said:

As a society, we cannot invest more than the basics into thickos, we must invest in the winners.

Natural selection? Let's remove 'caution contents may be hot' on cups of tea. Lets remove 'may contain nuts' on packets of nuts.

Then we can smugly drive through country lanes dodging all the stranded electrics cars with their burnt and puffy necked drivers?

Just buy a modern diesel until they sort out the hydrogen fuel cell thing

[Graham]

Pah My old chap did that 30 years ago. he needed to move a trolly bus ( remember those!)

so got a massive 4 wheeled generator ( about 20 ft long) and towed it behind the trolly with 2 huge jump leads attached to the overhead pickups..


so nice quiet electric double decker bus, towing a noisey smelly generator lol.

the trolly bus did have some range without connected to power but not more than a few hundred yards..

[Pixelpeep]

Graham said:

Pah My old chap did that 30 years ago. .

your penis?

[McWigglebum4th]

Pixelpeep said:

thing that worries me about electric cars is the fact that it may well say 'RANGE 120 MILES' but if it starts raining, you need the heater and wipers that range starts to come down.

I can't remember what car it was, possibly that G-Wizz thing, but the range HALVED if you needed to use the lights?!

how on earth can you properly plan a route and what range you have if you have to take in to account how many times you are going to use your indicators, lights, wipers, screenwash, radio, horn, etc etc..

So assuming you are correct and using the windscreen wiper halves the range then one must assume the motor driving the windscreen wipers takes the same power as the traction motor.

If it takes the same power then it must be the same size.

Which leads to the question


Just how big is the windscreen on electric cars?

[Pixelpeep]

Pixelpeep said:

I can't remember what car it was, possibly that G-Wizz thing, but the range HALVED if you needed to use the lights?!

McWigglebum4th said:

So assuming you are correct and using the windscreen wiper halves the range

No, the lights!

[Paul O]

Graham said:

Pah My old chap did that 30 years ago. he needed to move a trolly bus ( remember those!)

"Remember" them? That institution that houses futuristic planners and forward thinkers that reside in the offices of the finest council in Leeds are bringing them back!

A bit of an embarrasmenet to say we're supposed to be part of an economic superpower, a hugely developed area of the world and the best that our elected leaders can come up with is an invention designed 140 years ago and phased out before I was even born.

Why we need to restrict a bus to a specific route, when they currently have free roam of the roads is beyond me. The infrastructure to support them is a god awful eyesore, the cost is extreme, but this is being sold as some sort of progression.

We must be a bit of a laughing stock around the globe with this type of 'progression'.

Rant over.... back on topic...

[METHS]

Has the chevrolet volt been mentioned?

[Mr2Mike]

Paul O said:

Why we need to restrict a bus to a specific route, when they currently have free roam of the roads is beyond me.

All buses are restricted to a specific route, it would be a bit of a challenge to use them otherwise.

[Carparticus]

Pixelpeep said:

thing that worries me about electric cars is the fact that it may well say 'RANGE 120 MILES' but if it starts raining, you need the heater and wipers that range starts to come down.

I can't remember what car it was, possibly that G-Wizz thing, but the range HALVED if you needed to use the lights?!

how on earth can you properly plan a route and what range you have if you have to take in to account how many times you are going to use your indicators, lights, wipers, screenwash, radio, horn, etc etc..

Using headlights, heaters, windscreen wipers etc, in any car EV, or a petrol / ICE, will drain energy from somewhere. One thing ICE's do well is turn 80% of the petrol into wasted heat, so heating the interior is a by product of the engines huge inefficiency. Bear in mind though that just turning on the air-con in an ICE will increase the work load of the engine, and will cause the MPG to drop by 10-15%.


Working out the electrical loads you mention is fairly easy. In a typical EV they are approx 50wH for headlights, windscreen wipers at full tilt at 100wH, ceramic heater at full blast at 500wH, radio at 25wH, and it might all add up to a total electrical load of around 0.6 KwH give or take. This is tiny fraction of the overall energy stored.

A typical EV, like a Leaf, will average about 300 wH/mile or 0.3Kw/Mile, and its main energy store holds around 25,000 wH …. So, if its average speed A / B roads is the national average of 40mph. that means it will get roughly 25kwh/0.3kwH = 80 miles of range. Obviously this will vary depending average speed, or town use, or if the leaf driver is trying to hammer up a motorway at 80mph using 0.4kwH/mile and getting just 60 miles instead. Around town might be only 250 wH/mile giving the proverbial 100+miles per charge.


Anyway, to calculate the effect on range if all these loads were on, assuming the EV is to be driven for 2 hrs continuously, the total energy drain will be a mere 2 x 0.6kwh = 1.2kwH total.


That 1.2kwh represents a mere 5% of the Leaf’s available 25KwH energy capacity…




So, in this example of a 2hr journey in a Leaf with everything on, its typical range will drop from about 75 miles, to about 71 miles. This is probably about the same percentage difference for an ICE car's MPG, albeit they have bigger 'tanks' that you fill up every week ot two … whereas an EV tops up every night and is always full every morning.


(The orrible G-whizz thing has a very small battery of just 10kwh, and is only supposed to be a city runabout not an intergalactic tourer. The loads would represent 12% of its total capacity)


As an aside, its worth pointing out that EV motors do not consume energy when sat still in traffic jams because the motor is not idling, and it only has the ancillary electrical loads using energy. So in the above example, the 0.6KwH load will mean the Leaf driver could 'theoretically' sit in that jam with everything on, and sit there for a couple of days before running out of charge. I doubt a petrol car would do that !!

[alangla]

Carparticus said:

Bear in mind though that just turning on the air-con in an ICE will increase the work load of the engine, and will cause the MPG to drop by 10-15%.

Funnily enough, the one time I drove an EV, I found the same thing! In the iMiev, turning the aircon off made the remaining range meter jump from 30 to 33 miles to go.

[Mr2Mike]

Carparticus said:

Using headlights, heaters, windscreen wipers etc, in any car EV, or a petrol / ICE, will drain energy from somewhere. One thing ICE's do well is turn 80% of the petrol into wasted heat, so heating the interior is a by product of the engines huge inefficiency. Bear in mind though that just turning on the air-con in an ICE will increase the work load of the engine, and will cause the MPG to drop by 10-15%.

That might be true in something with a miniscule engine, but I don't see anything remotely close to a 10-15% drop in mpg with the aircon on.

Thermal efficiency of a modern petrol engine is more like 25-30% as well.

[Monty Python]

alangla said:

Funnily enough, the one time I drove an EV, I found the same thing! In the iMiev, turning the aircon off made the remaining range meter jump from 30 to 33 miles to go.

I'm afraid that's a bit of an urban myth - the drop in MPG with aircon depends on the driving conditions.

http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/31861/mpg-my...

[anonymous-user]

Carparticus said:

Pixelpeep said:

thing that worries me about electric cars is the fact that it may well say 'RANGE 120 MILES' but if it starts raining, you need the heater and wipers that range starts to come down.

I can't remember what car it was, possibly that G-Wizz thing, but the range HALVED if you needed to use the lights?!

how on earth can you properly plan a route and what range you have if you have to take in to account how many times you are going to use your indicators, lights, wipers, screenwash, radio, horn, etc etc..

Worth noting that a cabin heater in a conventional cars HVAC system is capable of putting out something approaching 5kW of heat! Your 0.5kW allowance for cabin heating in an EV just about gets you a single heated front seat!




Using headlights, heaters, windscreen wipers etc, in any car EV, or a petrol / ICE, will drain energy from somewhere. One thing ICE's do well is turn 80% of the petrol into wasted heat, so heating the interior is a by product of the engines huge inefficiency. Bear in mind though that just turning on the air-con in an ICE will increase the work load of the engine, and will cause the MPG to drop by 10-15%.


Working out the electrical loads you mention is fairly easy. In a typical EV they are approx 50wH for headlights, windscreen wipers at full tilt at 100wH, ceramic heater at full blast at 500wH, radio at 25wH, and it might all add up to a total electrical load of around 0.6 KwH give or take. This is tiny fraction of the overall energy stored.

A typical EV, like a Leaf, will average about 300 wH/mile or 0.3Kw/Mile, and its main energy store holds around 25,000 wH …. So, if its average speed A / B roads is the national average of 40mph. that means it will get roughly 25kwh/0.3kwH = 80 miles of range. Obviously this will vary depending average speed, or town use, or if the leaf driver is trying to hammer up a motorway at 80mph using 0.4kwH/mile and getting just 60 miles instead. Around town might be only 250 wH/mile giving the proverbial 100+miles per charge.


Anyway, to calculate the effect on range if all these loads were on, assuming the EV is to be driven for 2 hrs continuously, the total energy drain will be a mere 2 x 0.6kwh = 1.2kwH total.


That 1.2kwh represents a mere 5% of the Leaf’s available 25KwH energy capacity…




So, in this example of a 2hr journey in a Leaf with everything on, its typical range will drop from about 75 miles, to about 71 miles. This is probably about the same percentage difference for an ICE car's MPG, albeit they have bigger 'tanks' that you fill up every week ot two … whereas an EV tops up every night and is always full every morning.


(The orrible G-whizz thing has a very small battery of just 10kwh, and is only supposed to be a city runabout not an intergalactic tourer. The loads would represent 12% of its total capacity)


As an aside, its worth pointing out that EV motors do not consume energy when sat still in traffic jams because the motor is not idling, and it only has the ancillary electrical loads using energy. So in the above example, the 0.6KwH load will mean the Leaf driver could 'theoretically' sit in that jam with everything on, and sit there for a couple of days before running out of charge. I doubt a petrol car would do that !!

[Carparticus]

Max_Torque said:

Worth noting that a cabin heater in a conventional cars HVAC system is capable of putting out something approaching 5kW of heat! Your 0.5kW allowance for cabin heating in an EV just about gets you a single heated front seat!

Agreed, but that’s its peak output capacity, not the average over 1 hours use! HVAC energy use will vary considerably with cabin volume, in/out temp difference etc

A Tesla Roadster has a small cockpit volume, uses a ceramic heater with a peak power output of 2.8kw (I think), but over an hour might only consume 500wh of energy on a grim UK day. It will generate heat in seconds and, if cranked up in manual mode, it will make things uncomfortably warm.

Edited by Carparticus on Friday 18th October 12:36