Tesla Model 3 revealed

[98elise]

Blaster72 said:

gangzoom said:

Sadly plenty of people I suspect think like you. Because petrol just 'appears' in a forecourt they forget all the effort (and energy) used to extract/refined it.

But don't worry, you can carry on been concerned and leave us crazies to get on with enjoying EVs.....After all someone has to keep paying fuel duty and fund the EV grant .

Edited by gangzoom on Friday 29th April 19:21

Again totally missing the point, I'm very aware of how much effort, cost, pollution goes into that liquid gold that comes out of the pumps.

It's the EV lot who seems to be missing the point that scaling up EV use would require a similar massive scale infrastructure and all the associated problems and costs. You go and enjoy the earlier adopter perks, as I clearly mentioned a few posts above you are doing well to benefit from those.

If someone would be kind enough to stop turning the argument back onto all that is (blatantly obviously) bad about fossil fuel use and explain to me where all this extra electicity will come from if you scale EV use to the same as current ICE use. Ta very much

Could you put some figures to all this scaling thats needed.

An average driver needs about 7kWh per day, and producing a gallon of petrol uses about 6kWh of electrical energy before you even move a single mile.

[98elise]

jkh112 said:

98elise said:

If we needed to go fully green then a domestic sized solar PV will provide enough energy of an average driver.

That may be true during the summer months ( assuming the car is charged during the day, or a suitable storage system is used) but my experience is that a domestic sized solar PV in the UK will not provide enough energy for an average driver during the winter months.

In practical terms rather than store you would dump the energy into the grid, then charge at night when demand is low. That would alow generators to run efficiently. The net consumption of fossil fuel would be the same as if you charged direct.

You would produce enough energy across the year to get about 9000 miles in an average EV.

[jkh112]

98elise said:

In practical terms rather than store you would dump the energy into the grid, then charge at night when demand is low. That would alow generators to run efficiently. The net consumption of fossil fuel would be the same as if you charged direct.

You would produce enough energy across the year to get about 9000 miles in an average EV.

My experience is that during the winter solar PV would dump very little into the grid so for 6 months of the year the generators would need to be sized assuming very little solar PV input. The year average from solar PV may equal that needed for an average EV, but the miles are spread throughout the year whilst the solar generation is primarily in 6 months.

[coetzeeh]

98elise said:

jkh112 said:

98elise said:

If we needed to go fully green then a domestic sized solar PV will provide enough energy of an average driver.

That may be true during the summer months ( assuming the car is charged during the day, or a suitable storage system is used) but my experience is that a domestic sized solar PV in the UK will not provide enough energy for an average driver during the winter months.

In practical terms rather than store you would dump the energy into the grid, then charge at night when demand is low. That would alow generators to run efficiently. The net consumption of fossil fuel would be the same as if you charged direct.

You would produce enough energy across the year to get about 9000 miles in an average EV.

Just not sure how one would prevent cars being charged during peak demand windows to avoid compounding the already small supply/demand margin.

[coetzeeh]

deckster said:

Apropos of nothing in particular, I've just got back from a trip to Stockholm and was surprised at the number of Teslas there were in the taxi fleets - I presume they have good subsidies/tax breaks over there. Riding in the back of a Model S was a total delight: spacious, comfy, smooth. The quality of everything was top notch, and the huge central screen was a thing of beauty - massive hi-res maps dominating with the surrounding functions putting every other in-car display I've seen to shame. I suspect it wouldn't take too many airport runs to drain the batteries, but I would imagine that these guys have factored that in - if the tech is good enough, and cheap enough, to be feasible as a full-time taxi then I would say the traditional fleet of Mercs/Passats is living on borrowed time.

That's only a view from the back seat - but if this is the future of transport, count me in.

and the same at Schiphol - 300 Tesla taxis apparently acquired at HEAVILY discounted prices according to a business associate. Certainly makes sense.

[greygoose]

Had a mail shot from BMW today that the i3 is going to have 50% extra range from its battery soon, the progress with electric vehicles is certainly going quickly.

[Blaster72]

98elise said:

Could you put some figures to all this scaling thats needed.

An average driver needs about 7kWh per day, and producing a gallon of petrol uses about 6kWh of electrical energy before you even move a single mile.

Not heard the 6kWh for petrol before - is that per litre, per barrel of oil, per mile - what exactly??

As for some EV power calcs Sure, no problem. My maths might be slightly dodgy but going on Tesla Model S consumption and the Uk average mileage of 8000 miles per year consumption is 7.6kWh per day per car.

Lets say we go head first into it an decide on all EV as the future, by 2020 it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect 30% of cars sold to be EV.

That's 780,000 new EV's (going on 2015 sales of 2.6 million cars).

That's 5,928,000 kWh per day of charging going on day in day out just for the EV sales that year, if sales stayed static another 780,000 EV's would be added to this each year until say 10 years later you have 7,800,000 EV's on the roads.

That's still only 22% of cars on the roads by 2030 being EV's.

By then they would be consuming 5,928,000,000 kWh per day - I'm assuming this would need extra power infrastructure and production to cope with?? (Is that 5,928 Megawatt hours? - if so that's more than even Drax power station produces, doesn't seem right at all as I thought it'd be less)

I'll admit, these figures sound completely barmy but having seen the rise of the diesel over petrol then it's not completely out of the question.

Tesla may be about to kickstart something we really aren't prepared for, Vauxhall, Honda, Ford, Toyota and all the other big names are developing EV's as well. Just where is that power going to come from??

Disclaimer - Please double check my estimates above, car sales and average mileage are from reputable sources. Power consumption is based on Teslas figures for their Model S. EV sales are purely made up but based on the UK going EV crazy in the next 5 - 15 years as diesels are clobbered for murdering people with their particulate emissions.

Edited by Blaster72 on Friday 29th April 23:12

[Blaster72]

Just stepping back to this thread and away from EV in general for a bit, I saw this article on Wired about issues with the Model X. I wonder if the Model 3 will have a little more time taken to iron out issues before releasing to the public?

http://www.wired.com/2016/04/teslas-model-x-bigger...

I really don't remember many issues reported with the Model S other than the pop out handles failing.

[rscott]

Blaster72 said:

Just stepping back to this thread and away from EV in general for a bit, I saw this article on Wired about issues with the Model X. I wonder if the Model 3 will have a little more time taken to iron out issues before releasing to the public?

http://www.wired.com/2016/04/teslas-model-x-bigger...

I really don't remember many issues reported with the Model S other than the pop out handles failing.

The last item on that list was a manufacturing problem by a parts supplier - they're footing the bill for replacing them. I don't see that as any different to the many ICE recalls we see every year .

[Blaster72]

I agree, you really don't have to defend everything though. It was just an article people reading this thread might find interesting - that's all.

Looks like Ford are joining the party and have bought a Model X to play with

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/...

Edited by Blaster72 on Saturday 30th April 00:19

[gangzoom]

Blaster72 said:

Tesla may be about to kickstart something we really aren't prepared for, Vauxhall, Honda, Ford, Toyota and all the other big names are developing EV's as well. Just where is that power going to come from??

Back in 1910 when the Ford Model T first appeared there was barely a petrol station in sight, and the streets were full of horses.....and society made the transition to petrol cars fine - though clearly at the time we didn't know any better about emissions.

Germany has made a concerted effort to develop renewable energy in recent years, last year 1/3 of their entire electric supply was via renewables. Here in the UK we have some of the best winds resources anywhere in th world, coupled with energy storage we could have access to FREE and almost ULIMiTATED renewable power, all without having to worry about OPEC/Russian oil.

If you want to see the future, look at Norway, they have loads of oil/gas but almost their entire electric supply is renewable. 1 in 3 cars sold there are now EVs, and ironically their biggest export is oil/gas to the rest of Europe who are still addicted to the stuff.

If you than looking at the developing world, China and India are now the biggest investors in renewable energy, it's not a coincidence Tesla is keen to build its next EV factory in China (not Europe). In the first 3 months of this year EV sales in China has already hit 40K.

The world is changing, we cannot carry on with the status quo, and we shouldn't. Solar/wind with a mixture of existing power supply is the way forwards, but it's up to government to drive it. Sadly the current UK government seems more keen to give tax cuts to North sea oil than support wind/solar whilst the likes of Germany keep on reducing their reliance on old money.

Edited by gangzoom on Saturday 30th April 00:30

[Tuna]

98elise said:

I would buy one because they are powerful, simple and efficient. i value that above the fuel tank size. Like it or not electric motors are the only way to do that.

And twice the weight of a simple and efficient ICE car, with all the handling and response issues that entails.

98elise said:

When you ask where the extra power is coming from do you mean green replacment, or just additional energy? If its just energy then we have enough already. If we needed to go fully green then a domestic sized solar PV will provide enough energy of an average driver.

We should revisit this thread in five years' time. My betting is that in the short term electricity is going to start getting increasingly expensive. We barely have enough energy at present, and for transport we rely on the majority of that in the form of oil based fuels that are directly burned in vehicles. Change the ICE to EV and we don't have anywhere else to burn that oil. Nor do we have spare capacity in the other generating sources.

[Flooble]

Blaster72 said:

98elise said:

Could you put some figures to all this scaling thats needed.

An average driver needs about 7kWh per day, and producing a gallon of petrol uses about 6kWh of electrical energy before you even move a single mile.

Not heard the 6kWh for petrol before - is that per litre, per barrel of oil, per mile - what exactly??

Edited by Blaster72 on Friday 29th April 23:12

Come on mate, "a gallon of petrol uses about 6kWh of electrical energy". I don't think he could have been any clearer ...

[gangzoom]

For those people really worried about grid supply here is a live link to the UK grid.

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk

As you can see demand is easy to predict, and at midnight (when most people will be charging their EVs) there is about 40 GW of redundancy.

[Flooble]

Only 40GW?

So just the 10 Drax stations worth of spare capacity?

Is that all night then? So say, what, 9 hours of generation? Or 40 GW * 9 hours = 360GWh of electricity available to cover 7kWh per person?

360GWh/7kWh = 51,428,571 people can have an EV charged up for the average commute distance overnight.

As there are only 45 million licence holders (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/397430/FOIR4341_How_many_people_hold_licences_in_the_UK.pdf) ... hmm.

Is that right? I fear I must have misplaced a decimal.

Edited by Flooble on Saturday 30th April 00:56

[Ozzie Osmond]

gangzoom said:

As you can see demand is easy to predict, and at midnight (when most people will be charging their EVs) there is about 40 GW of redundancy.

Yes, but when are batteries least efficient? In the winter. When do people have the heating on most? In the winter.
It's a bit like going to a hotel for a room on bank holiday weekend and they say, "On average we're only 70% full so why don't you come back on Wednesday?".

[jamoor]

Blaster72 said:

I agree, you really don't have to defend everything though. It was just an article people reading this thread might find interesting - that's all.

Looks like Ford are joining the party and have bought a Model X to play with

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/...

Edited by Blaster72 on Saturday 30th April 00:19

I'm sure every single car company has bought ever other manufacturers cars to dismantle, hardly a ford thing.

[Blaster72]

Flooble said:

Blaster72 said:

98elise said:

Could you put some figures to all this scaling thats needed.

An average driver needs about 7kWh per day, and producing a gallon of petrol uses about 6kWh of electrical energy before you even move a single mile.

Not heard the 6kWh for petrol before - is that per litre, per barrel of oil, per mile - what exactly??

Edited by Blaster72 on Friday 29th April 23:12

Come on mate, "a gallon of petrol uses about 6kWh of electrical energy". I don't think he could have been any clearer ...

Yep, it is right there isn't it. How the heck didn't I see that

So the conclusion is that generating the extra power needed is ok. We have enough spare capacity at night for people to plug in and charge any number of electric cars and the world will reduce electricity consumption due to no longer extracting so much oil.

Thanks for helping me work it out without jumping all over me chaps.

But, there is just one fly in the ointment there. All the extra capacity that we don't use now means bringing plant on line over night that would normally be idle. That means burning fossil fuels at night that aren't normally burnt. That means production of emissions, CO2, etc. etc. that isn't normally done.

Isn't that just swapping one problem for another? It's not like solar power works at night and we all know wind turbines have extremely variable output depending on the er, wind.

Still a problem with the power lark??

Edited by Blaster72 on Saturday 30th April 07:22

[98elise]

coetzeeh said:

98elise said:

jkh112 said:

98elise said:

If we needed to go fully green then a domestic sized solar PV will provide enough energy of an average driver.

That may be true during the summer months ( assuming the car is charged during the day, or a suitable storage system is used) but my experience is that a domestic sized solar PV in the UK will not provide enough energy for an average driver during the winter months.

In practical terms rather than store you would dump the energy into the grid, then charge at night when demand is low. That would alow generators to run efficiently. The net consumption of fossil fuel would be the same as if you charged direct.

You would produce enough energy across the year to get about 9000 miles in an average EV.

Just not sure how one would prevent cars being charged during peak demand windows to avoid compounding the already small supply/demand margin.

Very simple to achieve. Just have a smart meter that cuts or throttles charging when you are running a hob or electric shower. If you current run either then you have the capacity to draw at least 7kW without any issues. 7kW would take an hour to replanish the average daliy drivers consumption. Spread that overnight and you are looking at less than 1kW.

Rather than smart meters I suspect people would be incentivised by cheap overnight power, than charge on a timer or smart meter.

[Blaster72]

Yep, I agree with 98elise. I think there would have to be a resurgence of Economy 7 type tarrifs with new meters installed to cope with the dual rates.

My water is heated purely by electricity overnight (Pulsacoil system) and consumes 3kW per hour it runs the immersion.
I only have a normal meter though so get charged the same at night as I do during the day (still relatively inexpensive to run).

If charging a car at night becomes the norm, dual rate meters would be a sensible addition to most households. There is a problem with that though, if demand becomes high at night there will be no incentive for the power firms to charge a lower rate. They do after all only do it at the moment as they have a huge drop in demand overnight.

Interesting to see what happens here.