RE: Lotus Evora 414E: the tech

[AJLintern]

I think there's some idea that car batteries will prop up the grid in future. However I can't help thinking that the demand at 7pm on a weekday evening when everyone's back from work plugging their car in, watching Eastenders, oven on cooking the dinner, kettle on the boil for post-soap cuppa... won't be enough capacity for such a situation!

[kambites]

AJLintern said:

I think there's some idea that car batteries will prop up the grid in future. However I can't help thinking that the demand at 7pm on a weekday evening when everyone's back from work plugging their car in, watching Eastenders, oven on cooking the dinner, kettle on the boil for post-soap cuppa... won't be enough capacity for such a situation!

If the infrastructure not initially being good enough stopped new technologies from emerging, we'd never had got petrol cars in the first place.

I wonder if one could come up with some kind of variable current charger that cut its usage as the grid's loading reached capacity.

[kambites]

zebedee said:

kambites said:

We're running out of peak capacity; there's plenty of spare off-peak.

would there still be plenty if you had 5 million cars charging their big batteries overnight though?

Yes, I think so in the middle of the night. Assuming they were on standard 13 amp supplies.

Probably not 50 million cars, though.


The change to electric cars isn't going to happen overnight though. Infrastructure will just have to be gradually improved to support them, in the same way the petrol station network grew to support petrol powered cars a hundred gears ago.

[Donkey62]

i'd say its few years too late with this one. The numbers suggest for amount of fuel, range, mpg for its C02 makes its so so average and power figure im pretty sure doesnt last its qouted range either. Or put it another way there is far better 1-1.2 litre engines even three cylinders that overall far more efficient in terms of mpg, C02, range and price. tbh i rather have the range over outright performance

[kambites]

400bhp is an "average power figure"?

[thinfourth2]

zebedee said:

kambites said:

We're running out of peak capacity; there's plenty of spare off-peak.

would there still be plenty if you had 5 million cars charging their big batteries overnight though?

Imagine you had 5 million large battery packs plugged into the national grid

If you could back feed at peak hours you have solved the peak power problem

[thinfourth2]

Hedgerley said:

if the average commute is 8.5 miles daily,

latest research indicates the average petrolhead commute is 8.5 million miles a day


Each way

With a 29 hour working day before driving home to your 28th story flat where you spend 3 minutes beard stroking before driving 12 million miles to buy a pint of milk for your sick relative

[xRIEx]

thinfourth2 said:

latest research indicates the average petrolhead commute is 8.5 million miles a day


Each way

With a 29 hour working day before driving home to your 28th story flat where you spend 3 minutes beard stroking before driving 12 million miles to buy a pint of milk for your sick relative

Luxury!

[zebedee]

Donkey62 said:

i'd say its few years too late with this one. The numbers suggest for amount of fuel, range, mpg for its C02 makes its so so average and power figure im pretty sure doesnt last its qouted range either. Or put it another way there is far better 1-1.2 litre engines even three cylinders that overall far more efficient in terms of mpg, C02, range and price. tbh i rather have the range over outright performance

errrm, of course there are other 1.2 litre engines better on all those things when packaged into a car, but you don't get the performance do you?