The Future

[modeller]

Rolec EV has launched a new range of public facing EV charging points which are incorporated within energy-efficient street lighting columns.

http://www.rolecserv.com/ev-charging/news/view/ROL...

[herewego]

I'm not so sure about that cable lying around in the street but it does raise the point that as street lights are converted to LEDs even more electricity will be available for EVs.

[AW10]

What did an old-fashioned mercury vapour street lamp use - 500 watts? And a modern LED street lamp is perhaps 50 watts? I think the first variant of the i3 has a 22 KWh battery pack? This would need more than 44 hours to charge using the spare capacity. Where I'm going with this is that the street lamp wiring network would need a significant upgrade - that won't be cheap.

[otolith]

AW10 said:

I think the first variant of the i3 has a 22 KWh battery pack? This would need more than 44 hours to charge from completely flat using the spare capacity.

Fixed that for you - the thing is that they generally won't be charging from completely flat, they will be charging for the day's use or even just the last journey if there was a charging point at the other end.

[otolith]

ash73 said:

tl;dr hydrogen is more difficult and more scaleable. The question is whether EV is a stepping stone or a diversion that will set us back 50 years.

The basic physics is unfavourable.

I can see why people would cling desperately to the hope of hydrogen if they thought that it meant they could keep an internal combustion engine, but that's simply out of the question. They would be fuel cell EVs. The only real advantage is that you could use the car in a more familiar way (run it empty and then quickly fill it up again), but I don't see that doing so is overall intrinsically better than topping up the car's batteries whenever you park it.

I think that once battery EVs become commonplace, a hydrogen car with considerably higher running costs and a need to visit hydrogen stations will be completely undesirable.

[AW10]

otolith said:

Fixed that for you - the thing is that they generally won't be charging from completely flat, they will be charging for the day's use or even just the last journey if there was a charging point at the other end.

Fair point about few people charging from flat but I can't imagine many users will want to go through the faff of charging their car every day to replace 10 or 20 or 30 percentage if that's all they used just like few people top off their petrol/diesel tank at less than (I'm guessing) 1/4 full unless they know they need a full tank in the next day or two? And even at 30% discharged the estimated space capacity in the typical lamp post will still take 12+ hours to charge the car.

IMHO for EVs to be accepted by the masses charging has to be reasonably convenient and reasonably fast.

[otolith]

AW10 said:

Fair point about few people charging from flat but I can't imagine many users will want to go through the faff of charging their car every day to replace 10 or 20 or 30 percentage if that's all they used just like few people top off their petrol/diesel tank at less than (I'm guessing) 1/4 full unless they know they need a full tank in the next day or two? And even at 30% discharged the estimated space capacity in the typical lamp post will still take 12+ hours to charge the car.

IMHO for EVs to be accepted by the masses charging has to be reasonably convenient and reasonably fast.

I think EVs will need a change of mindset. It only appears that running it empty and then driving to a filling station is the more convenient thing to do because that's what we're used to and that's what works best for liquid fuels. If we were used to just plugging the thing in whenever we weren't using it, the petrol station model would sound like a right pain in the arse. So we look at the charging times and think "that just won't work" because we are still thinking of the way that we use liquid fuelled cars. It only really becomes an issue when we are looking at journeys beyond the single charge range, at which point things like fast charging stations become relevant.

[AW10]

I can appreciate a change of mindset is required - maybe I'm a luddite?!

But if a lot of people plug in their EVs when not in use that's a shedload of charging points.

[babatunde]

AW10 said:

I can appreciate a change of mindset is required - maybe I'm a luddite?!

But if a lot of people plug in their EVs when not in use that's a shedload of charging points.

Yes it is, but remember they don't all have to be fast chargers, when using a Leaf I mostly simply plug it into a normal socket at home, kind of the same way I plug in my phone, yes it will require a different mindset but takes no real time.

I actually see the future of charging as utilizing some form of Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) where you simply plug in anywhere and get charged accordingly so the local shopping mall would have a couple of 100 "slow" 13amp sockets points, infrastructure cost a few £1000.

[exelero]

I think every battery has a lifetime, which at some point will reach its end. If we are creating millions and millions of EV cars and the battery dies in most of them at some point, where will we dump all that? Isn't that more dangerous to the enviro than petrol/diesel?

[otolith]

exelero said:

I think every battery has a lifetime, which at some point will reach its end. If we are creating millions and millions of EV cars and the battery dies in most of them at some point, where will we dump all that? Isn't that more dangerous to the enviro than petrol/diesel?

Not that I am aware - what particular hazard are you thinking of?

[exelero]

otolith said:

Not that I am aware - what particular hazard are you thinking of?

Well AFAIK all the batteries have to be disposed securely? Is it not dangerous waste whatsoever?

[JonV8V]

exelero said:

otolith said:

Not that I am aware - what particular hazard are you thinking of?

Well AFAIK all the batteries have to be disposed securely? Is it not dangerous waste whatsoever?

I don't know why nobodies ever thought of it before, but I've this idea that you could take stuff made out of valuable elements that don't work any more and sort of break them down into the elements again and then reuse them. We could call it recycling or something like that.

http://www.recycle-more.co.uk/how-is-it-recycled-/...

A battery pack is not nuclear waste.

[chandrew]

exelero said:

Well AFAIK all the batteries have to be disposed securely? Is it not dangerous waste whatsoever?

The batteries are considered not suitable for transport when they drop to 80% of their original capacity. They then have a second life as suitable for grid storage as for that application size / energy density isn't as important. There has been a whole industry built based on this premise. The issue they have at the moment is that the batteries aren't 'aging' as quickly as was predicted.

If you want to get a good view of where this is taking us I suggest two recent sources:

See from abut 23:40 on in this video.
This report from McKinsey.

[otolith]

exelero said:

Well AFAIK all the batteries have to be disposed securely? Is it not dangerous waste whatsoever?

There's a fire risk if they aren't handled safely, and there is some nickel and cobalt in them, but no, I wouldn't say that they are anything like as much of a problem as the use of liquid fuels. It's all recyclable, although at the moment it's cheaper to make new ones from scratch.

[JonnyVTEC]

caseys said:

I'm sure I also read somewhere that some buildings had banned hydrogen vehicles parking in basement car parks, probably being caution of said pressure and also the explosive potential.

It's a shame as it's quite abundant in the universe in general. Maybe truly long term hydrogen will be used (I'm thinking centuries).

What someone needs to do is step up on the Cold Fusion / Mr Fusion stuff :-D

Cos it leaks out!

Yes very abundant, just pop to your nearest star now before it turns into helium.

[JonnyVTEC]

ash73 said:

What about people who park on the street, often not outside their own houses? Are you expecting charging points to be installed for every parking space at the kerb? Or is it an "I'm all right Jack" technology for the middle classes?

I know, I wish there were some electric posts in streets. We could make it obvious where they are by putting lights ontop?

[tankplanker]

ash73 said:

Yes, the existing cabling won't need upgrading at all. And they won't need to install access points. And everyone will be fine with cabling on the pavement. And nobody will get unplugged, ever. And there's plenty of spare capacity in the national grid. Oh wait.

Charge cables can already "lock" into the car and charge port when in use, so randoms plugging stuff shouldn't be a problem. If they want to cut a potentially live cable then good luck to them. To stop people staying plugged in all the time charge a lot extra if they go over an agreed period of time. Tesla already have unique codes in the car's charge port that identifies the car as you so using the same system so you could use this to identify who is who.

You could also encourage night time charging when the use of the national grid is at its lowest by offering considerably lower rates to charge, or even only turn on the ports at periods of low usage. It isn't enough capacity currently for everybody to switch to EVs all at once but it would get a lot closer than you think with the spare overnight capacity.

[JonnyVTEC]

ash73 said:

Yes, the existing cabling won't need upgrading at all. And they won't need to install access points. And everyone will be fine with cabling on the pavement. And nobody will get unplugged, ever. And there's plenty of spare capacity in the national grid. Oh wait.

Upgrading?

Perfect - exactly my point.

[Otispunkmeyer]

Well

Things are escalating fairly quickly in battery land. Check this out:

The Next Web: Samsung sets out to blow up the electric vehicle market with powerful new battery. http://google.com/newsstand/s/CBIwupeZlzM

Samsung subsidiary SDI reckons they have a battery tech, that will be ready for use in vehicles by 2021, that will give 500km range and take a charge in 20 minutes. And it's light weight to boot. Part of their success is being able to drastically reduce internal cell resistance.

Whilst I am here. Another exciting bit of news for the ICE:

http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/Mazda-s-...

Seems Mazda are further along than I thought with Skyactiv 2 and sounds like they have managed to crack HCCI combustion for practical road use (I bet it still only does it at certain speed-load points, but if that includes motorway cruise then great!).

Last I read about Mazda and Skyactiv 2 they were aiming to push the current 14:1 compression in their 1st gen engine up to a diesel like 18:1!!!

To be honest Mazda makes downsizing look pretty boring and conventional. It's great that they're taking a different approach.