RE: Ferrari Says 'No' To Electric Cars...

[XitUp]

martin84 said:

Ive never found driving to a petrol station to be particularly difficult, even if i was far away from one. Its no more difficult than driving anywhere else is it? Nicer? Ive never been stood in a petrol station going 'god this is horrible' well until i look at the price. And as for cheaper? Well perhaps but i'd need to do so many miles to recoup the £25,000 outlay on the car and as said before one day the Government will get us if everybody had an EV, it wouldnt stay cheap for long.

As that is less than the average price of a new car I don't see it as that much of an issue.
Lots of new cars get bought each year. Lots of them by people who have off street parking and do less than 100 miles a day. An electric car would be perfect for them.

Are they perfect for everyone? No. No car is.

No one is saying they are without their restrictions.

[martin84]

XitUp said:

As that is less than the average price of a new car I don't see it as that much of an issue.
Lots of new cars get bought each year. Lots of them by people who have off street parking and do less than 100 miles a day. An electric car would be perfect for them.

Are they perfect for everyone? No. No car is.

No one is saying they are without their restrictions.

An IC powered car is perfect for more people than an EV is though. You said there an electric car would be perfect for people with off street parking and 100 miles a day or less, but that doesnt cover everybody. Certainly not to the extent the IC car does. People who dont have those can still have a normal car, so clearly that is a technology capable of serving more peoples needs. Saying 'no car is perfect for everyone' doesnt get away from this point.

And saying 'no one is saying they are without restrictions' is a bit of a cop out. Excluding a large chunk of the population from being able to drive because they dont live somewhere with their own driveway, in a house and do less than 100 miles is quite a large restriction! A far more extreme restriction than current cars give us.

[Talksteer]

martin84 said:

XitUp said:

As that is less than the average price of a new car I don't see it as that much of an issue.
Lots of new cars get bought each year. Lots of them by people who have off street parking and do less than 100 miles a day. An electric car would be perfect for them.

Are they perfect for everyone? No. No car is.

No one is saying they are without their restrictions.

An IC powered car is perfect for more people than an EV is though. You said there an electric car would be perfect for people with off street parking and 100 miles a day or less, but that doesnt cover everybody. Certainly not to the extent the IC car does. People who dont have those can still have a normal car, so clearly that is a technology capable of serving more peoples needs. Saying 'no car is perfect for everyone' doesnt get away from this point.

And saying 'no one is saying they are without restrictions' is a bit of a cop out. Excluding a large chunk of the population from being able to drive because they dont live somewhere with their own driveway, in a house and do less than 100 miles is quite a large restriction! A far more extreme restriction than current cars give us.

Electric vehicles don't have to suit everyone to gain a foothold in the market. Something in the region of 1/3 of people have a house with a drive and another car. These people don't need any infrastructure of lifestyle changes to make the change to electric vehicles.

The infrastructure to support charging on the streets and at motorway services will come very soon once a substantial portion of the cars on the roads are electric which will allow the majority of other people to make the switch.

In terms of technology electric cars are still making pretty rapid progress. Even without changing the cell chemistry there are large gain in power to weight to be made. There will be large gains to be made in terms of packing density and reducing the mass of the battery structure and cooling system, as design experience improves they will also get better at running the cells harder. The Nissan Leaf would have 50% more range if Nissan used a power pack of the same energy density as the Tesla roadster and 90% more range if they used the same pack density as the Tesla model S.

I suspect in Europe a 200 mile range would be enough for most people to operate an electric vehicle in a "care free" manner. This would cover the range they normally drive without planning in a day, for longer journeys most people would be happy to either take the train or use a motorway service station fast charger budgeting a stop in their plan.

Look at the current car battery packs:

GM Volt 62 wh/kg
Nissan Leaf 80 wh/kg
Tesla Roadster 117 wh/kg
Tesla Model S 150 wh/kg

[martin84]

Talksteer said:

Electric vehicles don't have to suit everyone to gain a foothold in the market. Something in the region of 1/3 of people have a house with a drive and another car. These people don't need any infrastructure of lifestyle changes to make the change to electric vehicles.

The infrastructure to support charging on the streets and at motorway services will come very soon once a substantial portion of the cars on the roads are electric which will allow the majority of other people to make the switch.

In terms of technology electric cars are still making pretty rapid progress. Even without changing the cell chemistry there are large gain in power to weight to be made. There will be large gains to be made in terms of packing density and reducing the mass of the battery structure and cooling system, as design experience improves they will also get better at running the cells harder. The Nissan Leaf would have 50% more range if Nissan used a power pack of the same energy density as the Tesla roadster and 90% more range if they used the same pack density as the Tesla model S.

I suspect in Europe a 200 mile range would be enough for most people to operate an electric vehicle in a "care free" manner. This would cover the range they normally drive without planning in a day, for longer journeys most people would be happy to either take the train or use a motorway service station fast charger budgeting a stop in their plan.

Look at the current car battery packs:

GM Volt 62 wh/kg
Nissan Leaf 80 wh/kg
Tesla Roadster 117 wh/kg
Tesla Model S 150 wh/kg

Yes thats all well and good for the EV to gain a foothold in the market, im not saying its totally useless im saying that it cannot fully 100% replace the normal car as it stands right now. Because as you say yourself in your post 2/3 of the population dont have the inferstructure required to run it, but they do have whats required to run a normal car. So until it can achieve the convenience levels of a normal car (ie charge it up in 3 minutes at a conveniently located filling station etc) its not a viable 'replacement'. Everyone seems to think it catering for 33% of what an IC car can do will make it enough, its nowhere near enough. 100% is the lowest amount required for it to take over.

It may be able to suit those living close to work with their own fancy houses etc but currently it shows very few signs of matching everything the IC can do. Personally im not a fan of EV's because i dont like batteries, ive never owned a single thing with a battery in it which actually worked particularly well. How many times do you get told your laptop will run for 8 hours on its battery for it to drain out in 30 minutes?

What will be the long term solution with haulage? Vans? Taxi's etc? My father used to be a taxi driver and the firm used to have the same group of cars running for 20 hours a day, straight. Doing over 1k miles a week or whatever, many more with 'airport jobs' and right now the EV looks half a century away from ever being able to achieve that. What about Lorries? Are we going to run them on batteries in my lifetime? How about Buses?

It may suit some urban commuters but the IC engine has so many applications and is in my view the most magnificent piece of engineering ever done, i think it takes too much of a beating in these conversations because its versatility in applications is immense and unrivalled. Well over a century since its inception (in a recognisable form to what we have now anyway) and still nothing can beat it, i think as a piece of technology it deserves alot of admiration for that. Its the invention which drives the global economy, i dont see that being replaced by laptop batteries anytime soon.

[thinfourth2]

martin84 said:

Yes thats all well and good for the EV to gain a foothold in the market, im not saying its totally useless im saying that it cannot fully 100% replace the normal car as it stands right now. Because as you say yourself in your post 2/3 of the population dont have the inferstructure required to run it, but they do have whats required to run a normal car. So until it can achieve the convenience levels of a normal car (ie charge it up in 3 minutes at a conveniently located filling station etc) its not a viable 'replacement'. Everyone seems to think it catering for 33% of what an IC car can do will make it enough, its nowhere near enough. 100% is the lowest amount required for it to take over.
.

The only person that has mentioned EVs taking over 100% is you

No on else has said that EVs will take over 100%

Only a retard would say that an EV can take over 100%

But lets be honest the IC hasn't achieved 100% of road vehicles as there is electric cars, electric milk floats, horse drawn, cyclists etc so therefore by your own standards the IC is a complete failure

[martin84]

thinfourth2 said:

The only person that has mentioned EVs taking over 100% is you

No on else has said that EVs will take over 100%

Only a retard would say that an EV can take over 100%

But lets be honest the IC hasn't achieved 100% of road vehicles as there is electric cars, electric milk floats, horse drawn, cyclists etc so therefore by your own standards the IC is a complete failure

Oh now you're just being a pedantic ahole on purpose, like most of the bitter twisted s on this forum. The only reason i mentioned the 'take over 100%' bit is because conversations about EV's usually move into the 'when we run out of oil...' etc etc so surely something which can 'replace' IC has to be the aim? Or have i got that wrong?

You've decided im a retard so even if i agreed with you you'd still come back with some pathetic pedantic putdown. This forum really is full of s. Quite depressing really. Almost makes me want to sign up to the Guardian instead.

[XitUp]

I pointed out when you agreed with me on something.

You don't need to get so stroppy, it's just the internet.

[martin84]

XitUp said:

I pointed out when you agreed with me on something.

You don't need to get so stroppy, it's just the internet.

I wasnt talking to you. Its the other guy who was being a cock on purpose. It just comes naturally to you so its not so bad

[Talksteer]

martin84 said:

Yes thats all well and good for the EV to gain a foothold in the market, im not saying its totally useless im saying that it cannot fully 100% replace the normal car as it stands right now. Because as you say yourself in your post 2/3 of the population dont have the inferstructure required to run it, but they do have whats required to run a normal car. So until it can achieve the convenience levels of a normal car (ie charge it up in 3 minutes at a conveniently located filling station etc) its not a viable 'replacement'. Everyone seems to think it catering for 33% of what an IC car can do will make it enough, its nowhere near enough. 100% is the lowest amount required for it to take over.

Firstly there are 0.4 cars per person in the UK, those who don't have the infrastructure for an electric car are disproportionately those who don't have cars full stop. The people who own a drive are much more than 1/3 of the car owning population.

I was not arguing that today electric cars are a replacement for all petrol vehicles. What I am arguing is that there is a very good route-map to them being viable for virtually everyone by around the 2020 time frame. At which point electric vehicles still won't be the majority car on the road because it will take at least another 10 years to phase out the last generation of mass market petrol cars.

Currently electric cars are in the early adopter phase people are buying them just to have the newest piece of kit. The next generation electric vehicles post 2015 are likely to come in at around £3-4 thousand pounds more than the equivalent petrol vehicle. These will make a compelling economic case for people who can easily adopt them.

This compelling economic case will drive infrastructure very rapidly. Expect shared housing car parks to be wired up fairly quickly, then workplaces. Once this happens the momentum for electric vehicles will be very strong. Most people will be happy with a 200 mile range and the only place that will need fast chargers will be motorway service stations.

Plug in hybrids will still exist for those who do big mileage or frequent long trips but the majority will be electric cars most of the time. In fact plug ins are likely to be a route for which many cautious adopters will end up in electric cars, they buy the plug in hybrid and hardly ever put petrol in it.

martin84 said:

What will be the long term solution with haulage? Vans? Taxi's etc? My father used to be a taxi driver and the firm used to have the same group of cars running for 20 hours a day, straight. Doing over 1k miles a week or whatever, many more with 'airport jobs' and right now the EV looks half a century away from ever being able to achieve that. What about Lorries? Are we going to run them on batteries in my lifetime? How about Buses?

The taxi market is tiny and virtually inconsequential, the average taxi does 100 miles per shift. If they are double shifted 200 miles. Given that this is around the range figures for current electric vehicles this is unlikely to be a massive ask to either run a trickle charge during lulls in the day or a fast charge occasionally if desperate. A taxi only needs high overall availability, if has to be take off work for 45 minutes during the day for a quick charge nobody is going to be too annoyed.

The same argument goes for buses, the overall mileage per day they do isn't that high around 100-200 miles due to the low speeds. Electric vehicles do disproportionately well in these conditions due to regenerative braking and no idle when stopped dead. Most bus routes stop at a bus station which would allow you to do numerous small quick charges during the day to top off the battery if it was being drained faster than usual.

Road haulage is actually an excellent potential application for electric vehicles. For cars swappable batteries is a bad idea as car have so many different form factors and packing the batteries in a optimum way is such an advantage that nobody would agree a common standard. On an articulated lorry you have one basic form factor that would be relatively easy to standardise. The law dictates that an HGV can't go more than 220 miles between stop before the drive has to have a rest. It is certainly not beyond the wit of man to have swap out stations at distribution hubs and service stations.

At current prices the cost of a 220 miles battery for an HGV is likely to be in the region of £125k, however given that a lorry munches it's way through £1.3 million of diesel over a 10 year period you can see that electric propulsion might be a good idea even if you had to swap the batteries every 5 years.

The caveats to this: battery use in buses and lorries is actually feasible given then energy densities claimed for the Tesla Model S and the cost per kwh quoted for the Leaf. First generation automotive batteries are unlikely to have the life required for heavy duty applications. However with only a few generations of automotive batteries out there I expect that the operational data will probably allow for the design of sufficiently durable batteries.

[XitUp]

Regarding busses, many towns and cities could benefit from a trolly bus network. I think Leeds is/was planning on redoing theirs.

[thinfourth2]

XitUp said:

Regarding busses, many towns and cities could benefit from a trolly bus network. I think Leeds is/was planning on redoing theirs.

Trolly buses have a HUGE disadvantage when compared to trams

You can't spend 3 years digging up the streets and causing huge hold-ups for car drivers

yes edinburgh i'm lookng at you

[thinfourth2]

The Crack Fox said:

An EV must have ..

a price (without subsidy) <= an equivalent size/spec IC car AND

Agreed

The Crack Fox said:

running costs (including servicing/depreciation) <= an equivalent size/spec IC car AND

Agreed

but deprectiaion is pretty much outside the manufactuers control

The Crack Fox said:

performance (range/0-60/driving characteristics) <= an equivalent size/spec IC car AND

They could be better to drive then a IC car with no gears and huge engine braking we are comparing EVs to dull shopping st not caterhams

The Crack Fox said:

safety <= an equivalent size/spec IC car AND

I can't see why an EV is any more dangerous then a IC car

The g-wiz isn't a car

The Crack Fox said:

refuelling convenience (time, location, frequency) <= an equivalent size/spec IC car AND

This more needs a mental shift away from the pumps and towards home charging.

Yes you can bang on about the instant extra 400 mile range but i can't see how being tied to a petrol station is easier then home charging if you only ever do 20 miles a day.

I know everyone in pistonheads land drives 800miles a day but in the real world most folk are under 50 a day.

So while any improvement in tech is welcome the biggest change needed here is attitudes and an improvement in the amount of fast chargers.

The leaf can charge to 80% in 30 minutes. So assuming a Leaf is your only car, you recharge overnight for your daily commute of 30 miles and once a month you drive 150 miles to grannies stopping off at a fast charger for 30 minutes.

So instead of thinking "Oh MY GOD 30 Minutes thats terrible!!!" we should be thinking "30 minutes cool lets get a coffee and a some cake while the car recharges itself"

So for EVs to gain more acceptance we need more fast chargers and better cakes

And better cakes can only help those dedicated to petrol

EVs the future is cake

The Crack Fox said:

compelling, factual 'green' credentials ...

before 99% of consumers will start to take them seriously.

People forget that EV's have been around as long as IC engined cars, they haven't progressed because there isn't the demand for them in their current state, the Times reported that only 500 EV cars were sold in the UK in the first half of this year. They are, in their current state, an utter failure.

But a proper EV has only been on sale since April so give it time before looking at sales and screaming failure

[Mr Gear]

thinfourth2 said:

But a proper EV has only been on sale since April so give it time before looking at sales and screaming failure

...and there is a waiting list for stuff like the Leaf anyway, so it's not as if they are gathering dust in showrooms. They are being bought as fast as they can make them.