Electric cars, does everyone really think they are amazing.
Discussion
TA14 said:
otolith said:
I did 270 miles without a stop on Tuesday, and to be honest, it was too much. That was in a Merc E class, which is designed to be a mile muncher, but still. Not sensible.
Why do you say that? Did you have problems with battery performance towards the end of the journey?otolith said:
My merc will do a lot more than that without fuel. But it’s too long for my liking without a break, stretch of legs, etc.
I don’t have a distance, but 2 hours is my limit. And more than 4-6 in a day would just not be possible.In my youth I did Wrexham to Glasgow and back for an hour meeting, I had at least 2 1 hour breaks
otolith said:
TA14 said:
otolith said:
I did 270 miles without a stop on Tuesday, and to be honest, it was too much. That was in a Merc E class, which is designed to be a mile muncher, but still. Not sensible.
Why do you say that? Did you have problems with battery performance towards the end of the journey?pherlopolus said:
A question for the No people... It is kind of hypothetical at the moment, but not for long I personally think.
If an EV is on sale, costs the same as an Ice car that you are looking to buy, looks the same as the ICE car, handles the same, battery lasts a realistic 250miles, charges in 15mins on long trips, and overnight at home (and you are never more than 10 mins away from a fast charging point) , and guarantees that the battery will not lose significant capacity over 100,000 miles. Would you buy one? And if not why not? What would be the tipping point for you to switch to a yes?
Nope, still wouldn't. Ignoring the fact it would still take 3 times as long to refuel as my current car, and wouldn't go as far between stops (despite the Zippo BMW fitted for a fuel tank on the 1 Series), there still wouldn't be anything remotely interesting about it, and would make for a fairly sterile, antiseptic driving experience. I'd rather pay a little extra on fuel and have something I enjoy, than save a few pennies day to day. If an EV is on sale, costs the same as an Ice car that you are looking to buy, looks the same as the ICE car, handles the same, battery lasts a realistic 250miles, charges in 15mins on long trips, and overnight at home (and you are never more than 10 mins away from a fast charging point) , and guarantees that the battery will not lose significant capacity over 100,000 miles. Would you buy one? And if not why not? What would be the tipping point for you to switch to a yes?
The tipping point to turn that into a yes? Satan fitting winter tyres to his Leaf?
kambites said:
Two to three hours (depending on how tired I am) is about my limit. My concentration starts to drop off after that if I don't have a break.
Me too, although I'm getting better at it with practice visiting family which is about 2.5h without hold-ups for traffic. Can just about make it and feel decently fresh at the other end, although the bladder is often a limiting factor!kambites said:
Two to three hours (depending on how tired I am) is about my limit. My concentration starts to drop off after that if I don't have a break.
I can understand that if you are in the Elise. I would happily do a four hour run in one hit, but might put a couple of stops in a seven hour drive.bodhi said:
there still wouldn't be anything remotely interesting about it, and would make for a fairly sterile, antiseptic driving experience. I'd rather pay a little extra on fuel and have something I enjoy, than save a few pennies day to day.
You win the internet today for the most overly dramatic post!! "fairly sterile, antiseptic driving experience" - i nearly fell off my chair!Oh and the cost savings on fuel are dramatic not pennies, and you pay a LOT extra for fuel, not a little.
ks.. I try and stay out of these threads as they invariably divide into two camps with very little common ground.
The whole EV argument is that the cars are out there and are ready to drive for anyone for whose budget or needs it suits. As their development continues, you'll get your sporty models, you'll get your range increases, you'll get quicker charging etc etc, in exactly the same way as the ICE has developed over the years.
How many years did it take to develop petrol engines to what they are now? Who's old enough to remember the good old carburetor and chokes and what fun they were on a cold morning? Who remembers when diesels chucked out plumes of black smoke and were so noisy you couldn't hear yourself think? Now they are so much more refined, you even get diesels in convertibles, that's how far they have progressed.
Now it's the turn of EVs to have some development and it's progressing at a rapid rate. It doesn't need to keep being repeated that at the moment, EVs aren't for everyone, but they soon will be competing with an ICE for your hard earned dollar.
For Joe Public, that means absolutely minimal service costs, no VED, no congestion charges, dirt cheap running costs and a complete lack of engine noise. For 90% of the public, that's what they want.
In x amount of years time, given the choice of an ICE or an EV with the same capabilities at the same price point, what do you think the majority of the white good buying public will choose? All this combined with the positive environmental impact that nearly every country in the world is striving for and there really will only be one winner in the long run.
In our lifetime? Maybe not, but it's coming in the same way some wise person said many moons ago 'A motor car!? No way am I getting rid of my horse!!'
You might still run your V8, but your neighbours will be EV before you know it.
The whole EV argument is that the cars are out there and are ready to drive for anyone for whose budget or needs it suits. As their development continues, you'll get your sporty models, you'll get your range increases, you'll get quicker charging etc etc, in exactly the same way as the ICE has developed over the years.
How many years did it take to develop petrol engines to what they are now? Who's old enough to remember the good old carburetor and chokes and what fun they were on a cold morning? Who remembers when diesels chucked out plumes of black smoke and were so noisy you couldn't hear yourself think? Now they are so much more refined, you even get diesels in convertibles, that's how far they have progressed.
Now it's the turn of EVs to have some development and it's progressing at a rapid rate. It doesn't need to keep being repeated that at the moment, EVs aren't for everyone, but they soon will be competing with an ICE for your hard earned dollar.
For Joe Public, that means absolutely minimal service costs, no VED, no congestion charges, dirt cheap running costs and a complete lack of engine noise. For 90% of the public, that's what they want.
In x amount of years time, given the choice of an ICE or an EV with the same capabilities at the same price point, what do you think the majority of the white good buying public will choose? All this combined with the positive environmental impact that nearly every country in the world is striving for and there really will only be one winner in the long run.
In our lifetime? Maybe not, but it's coming in the same way some wise person said many moons ago 'A motor car!? No way am I getting rid of my horse!!'
You might still run your V8, but your neighbours will be EV before you know it.
manracer said:
You win the internet today for the most overly dramatic post!! "fairly sterile, antiseptic driving experience" - i nearly fell off my chair!
Oh and the cost savings on fuel are dramatic not pennies, and you pay a LOT extra for fuel, not a little.
Saying something is "fairly sterile" is overly dramatic is it? And suggesting you nearly fell off your chair reading a post on the internet isn't?Oh and the cost savings on fuel are dramatic not pennies, and you pay a LOT extra for fuel, not a little.
Shilvers said:
I try and stay out of these threads as they invariably divide into two camps with very little common ground.
The whole EV argument is that the cars are out there and are ready to drive for anyone for whose budget or needs it suits. As their development continues, you'll get your sporty models, you'll get your range increases, you'll get quicker charging etc etc, in exactly the same way as the ICE has developed over the years.
How many years did it take to develop petrol engines to what they are now? Who's old enough to remember the good old carburetor and chokes and what fun they were on a cold morning? Who remembers when diesels chucked out plumes of black smoke and were so noisy you couldn't hear yourself think? Now they are so much more refined, you even get diesels in convertibles, that's how far they have progressed.
Now it's the turn of EVs to have some development and it's progressing at a rapid rate. It doesn't need to keep being repeated that at the moment, EVs aren't for everyone, but they soon will be competing with an ICE for your hard earned dollar.
For Joe Public, that means absolutely minimal service costs, no VED, no congestion charges, dirt cheap running costs and a complete lack of engine noise. For 90% of the public, that's what they want.
In x amount of years time, given the choice of an ICE or an EV with the same capabilities at the same price point, what do you think the majority of the white good buying public will choose? All this combined with the positive environmental impact that nearly every country in the world is striving for and there really will only be one winner in the long run.
In our lifetime? Maybe not, but it's coming in the same way some wise person said many moons ago 'A motor car!? No way am I getting rid of my horse!!'
You might still run your V8, but your neighbours will be EV before you know it.
To say 'The cars are out there and are ready to drive for anyone for whose budget or needs it suits' is one thing, I doubt many people would argue with that. The problems with this are the provisos 'budget' and 'needs it suits', particularly the latter. Even if people do only drive 20 miles per day on average, the problems come for anyone who wants to drive their car much further (even if only occasionally) and don't want to have to wait a long time for a recharge. No matter how long charge time is dressed up, long charge time is an inconvenience that ice users don't have to put up with. The whole EV argument is that the cars are out there and are ready to drive for anyone for whose budget or needs it suits. As their development continues, you'll get your sporty models, you'll get your range increases, you'll get quicker charging etc etc, in exactly the same way as the ICE has developed over the years.
How many years did it take to develop petrol engines to what they are now? Who's old enough to remember the good old carburetor and chokes and what fun they were on a cold morning? Who remembers when diesels chucked out plumes of black smoke and were so noisy you couldn't hear yourself think? Now they are so much more refined, you even get diesels in convertibles, that's how far they have progressed.
Now it's the turn of EVs to have some development and it's progressing at a rapid rate. It doesn't need to keep being repeated that at the moment, EVs aren't for everyone, but they soon will be competing with an ICE for your hard earned dollar.
For Joe Public, that means absolutely minimal service costs, no VED, no congestion charges, dirt cheap running costs and a complete lack of engine noise. For 90% of the public, that's what they want.
In x amount of years time, given the choice of an ICE or an EV with the same capabilities at the same price point, what do you think the majority of the white good buying public will choose? All this combined with the positive environmental impact that nearly every country in the world is striving for and there really will only be one winner in the long run.
In our lifetime? Maybe not, but it's coming in the same way some wise person said many moons ago 'A motor car!? No way am I getting rid of my horse!!'
You might still run your V8, but your neighbours will be EV before you know it.
To say 'As their development continues, you'll get your sporty models, you'll get your range increases, you'll get quicker charging etc etc, in exactly the same way as the ICE has developed over the years' is another thing, you will get argument with that. The points 'you'll get your range increases' and 'you'll get quicker charging', when in the same sentence, are argued because decent range means a big capacity battery and fast charging means charging the big capacity battery at a phenomenal rate of charge, bigger than grid infrastructure allows for a single EV, never mind if EVs were to become the main mode of transport. The figures regards range / necessary battery capacity for said range / charge rate necessary to charge said battery quickly have been discussed many times and these figures describe the problem.
Let's suppose some future EV has 300 mile range and can be recharged from flat to 300 miles in 3 minutes. Even allowing for 'most vehicles drive 20 miles per day', if such vehicle had capability of driving 300 miles without a recharge and 300 miles range could be added in 3 minutes, whom who drives 20 miles one day and has 280 miles range remaining after one day, 260 miles remaining after two days, etc, is going to bother charging for 12 seconds every day (perhaps to help spread load on the grid)? Or who is going to plug in at home for a trickle charge that takes hours to gain 20/50/100 mile range when they could just stop by a supercharger on a forecourt for 20/50/100 miles range in seconds? Now ask the same question again and include another question - what incentives could be put in place to ensure you trickle charge? How about vastly cheaper trickle charging (which you're more likely to be happy to use if you only used small range) compared to fast charging? This in itself could make ices seem favourable to EVs for those who often do decent distance in their vehicle. Now imagine some remote fast charger - with current infrastructure it's probably likely to be powered by an ice generator anyway.
If you use the disclaimer 'In X amount of years' to make any point the chances are you will be right (one day), but if you put a small enough figure in place of X chances are you will be wrong. I just holidayed in Malta, one day my great great grandkids may holiday on Mars but this won't help if I try to book a holiday on Mars lol. Again, EV progress has been compared to ice progress, it is true that both have been around for a similar amount of time but we haven't seen EVs progress at anything like the same rate as ices, EVs have always been hampered and will continue to be hampered by battery tech issues and grid issues - there doesn't seem to be anything on the agenda that will increase battery performance over the next few years by anything like the rate ice's have progressed over the last 100 years and even if such progress were made the grid could not cope if ices were replaced with EVs that charged at that rate.
The last sentence above is where EV enthusiasts become confused and flit between scenarios such as whether they see a future where everyone is happy to trickle charge an EV overnight at home, or if EVs will be charged quickly away from home on forecourts which perhaps have their own underground mega-battery that helps spread the load on the grid (in order to be as convenient as ice cars), or perhaps a combination of both... But any of their scenarios still will not get around the fact that their central heating boiler at home is likely to remain ice fuel powered and use as much fuel as their ice vehicle did - The only way to get around that is invention of nuclear fusion power generation, and if fusion is invented and they run their home heating on electricity the grid will need to be vastly improved just to cope with the home heating aspect and until such vast grid improvements have occurred they won't be running both their home heating and EV charging at home at the same time. However, if fusion is invented and represented abundant cheap electricity we could well see home heating being switched to electricity and vehicle propulsion switched to ices burning hydrogen, hydrogen that was produced on a site beside a fusion power station, and neither home heating/power or vehicle power would need any future invention in batteries and the grid wouldn't need to be upgraded nearly as much. There are plenty scientists who see EVs as simply pushing the problem (of emissions etc) upstream - you undeniably have still got to generate the electricity that EVs use to charge by burning ice fuels (or building more risky fission power stations), but fusion power could avoid the emissions from both home heating/power and vehicles altogether and in a comparative stroke. Such scientists would gamble all money and efforts currently being put into developing EVs into instead focusing on invention of fusion power. If EVs were twice as efficient as ices they would still only make for a 25% decrease in UK emissions due to half of ice fuel being used heating homes etc, while abundant cheap fusion power could make for a 100% decrease.
As said, just holidayed on Malta, where all the island's electrical power comes from an oil burning power station / generators. On this island there are roads with lanes that can only be used by buses / taxis / vehicles carrying more than 3 people / or any LPG powered vehicle. Plenty LPG tanks dotted around, EVs not even mentioned on road signage and no fast charge points to be seen.
Edited by SimonYorkshire on Friday 3rd November 14:22
What you miss from the home heating analogy is that new houses have more insulation and other technologies to massively reduce the heating requirement, it is quite possible to heat a modern home using a heat pump so no gas supply is required. Though I dare say many of these will come with a log burner just in case.
Toltec said:
kambites said:
Two to three hours (depending on how tired I am) is about my limit. My concentration starts to drop off after that if I don't have a break.
I can understand that if you are in the Elise. I would happily do a four hour run in one hit, but might put a couple of stops in a seven hour drive.Toltec said:
What you miss from the home heating analogy is that new houses have more insulation and other technologies to massively reduce the heating requirement, it is quite possible to heat a modern home using a heat pump so no gas supply is required. Though I dare say many of these will come with a log burner just in case.
Insulation is a mute point. New homes are a mute point unless you're looking the best part of 100 years into the future. Log burners, when the best part of the case for EVs hinges on emissions...really? Think I'll convert my ice to run on wood gas now lol. Like I've said before, if you think heat pumps are so great, efficient and cheap to run, seems like you have yourself a great idea to start a business that will make you vastly rich. Face it, the biggest reason EVs use heat pumps for heating instead of a normal electrical resistive heater is that they employ the AC components running in opposite mode (to aircon) to provide heat, which limits the necessary component count. Of course this means you can't have both cooling (dehumidifying) and heating at the same time in an EV, and the only reason this is a positive for an EV is actually a negative in itself... you wouldn't want to run both AC and heating at the same time in an EV when either of those uses a lot of power from the battery, so to run both at the same time would use twice as much power from the battery and effect range still further.
Yep, my company is building homes with ground source heat pumps in them, all electric. Super energy efficient (read cheap) to run.
We have had days where I'm fairly sure the countries electric has been solely derived from carbon neutral power. eg, wind/hydro/solar.
this can only be a good thing.
I'm all for cutting costs/bills in life. Yes, electric cars do this better than anything. But as I've said before, if you could run a car as cheaply on minced puppies/kittens/sex offenders/labour voters/Brexit voters/BNP voters/prisoners, I'm up for it.
Just seems the infrastructure and technology isn't here yet to achieve this and who knows how many miles you can travel on a diced convict.
Clearly until they get the ratio of 500 miles per 100kg of murderer, its not viable for 99.9% of the country who might just need to travel 500 miles in one go.
plus you'd need some sort of storage and charging system. A logistical nightmare.
We have had days where I'm fairly sure the countries electric has been solely derived from carbon neutral power. eg, wind/hydro/solar.
this can only be a good thing.
I'm all for cutting costs/bills in life. Yes, electric cars do this better than anything. But as I've said before, if you could run a car as cheaply on minced puppies/kittens/sex offenders/labour voters/Brexit voters/BNP voters/prisoners, I'm up for it.
Just seems the infrastructure and technology isn't here yet to achieve this and who knows how many miles you can travel on a diced convict.
Clearly until they get the ratio of 500 miles per 100kg of murderer, its not viable for 99.9% of the country who might just need to travel 500 miles in one go.
plus you'd need some sort of storage and charging system. A logistical nightmare.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
No, I didn't say that, and I think you know I wasn't saying that. Maybe read my post again?In a nutshell - If EVs saved 50% of the road fuel that the UK uses (which they don't and won't), this would still only be a saving of 25% of ice fuel because central heating boilers use as much ice fuel as vehicles. But nuclear fusion power stations could mean home heating (and cooking) is switched to electric, thereby saving that 50% of ice fuel (ice fuel can be natural gas). And vehicles could be powered by hydrogen via ice engines, the hydrogen made using abundant electricity produced by fusion power stations with no grid problems because the hydrogen production plants could be next door to the power stations.
Not so confusing really ;-)
SimonYorkshire said:
Insulation is a mute point. New homes are a mute point unless you're looking the best part of 100 years into the future. Log burners, when the best part of the case for EVs hinges on emissions...really? Think I'll convert my ice to run on wood gas now lol.
Like I've said before, if you think heat pumps are so great, efficient and cheap to run, seems like you have yourself a great idea to start a business that will make you vastly rich. Face it, the biggest reason EVs use heat pumps for heating instead of a normal electrical resistive heater is that they employ the AC components running in opposite mode (to aircon) to provide heat, which limits the necessary component count. Of course this means you can't have both cooling (dehumidifying) and heating at the same time in an EV, and the only reason this is a positive for an EV is actually a negative in itself... you wouldn't want to run both AC and heating at the same time in an EV when either of those uses a lot of power from the battery, so to run both at the same time would use twice as much power from the battery and effect range still further.
The spelling you are looking for is moot.Like I've said before, if you think heat pumps are so great, efficient and cheap to run, seems like you have yourself a great idea to start a business that will make you vastly rich. Face it, the biggest reason EVs use heat pumps for heating instead of a normal electrical resistive heater is that they employ the AC components running in opposite mode (to aircon) to provide heat, which limits the necessary component count. Of course this means you can't have both cooling (dehumidifying) and heating at the same time in an EV, and the only reason this is a positive for an EV is actually a negative in itself... you wouldn't want to run both AC and heating at the same time in an EV when either of those uses a lot of power from the battery, so to run both at the same time would use twice as much power from the battery and effect range still further.
If a new house is insulated and air tight enough so it needs a quarter or less of the heating of an older house then using electricity is going to be cheaper than the gas used by the old house. It depends on the overall energy required, for a small house it may be economic anyway given the costs of fitting a hydronic heating system versus a simpler electric system. Heat pumps only make sense where there is no mains gas and the house has a modern thermal design, i.e. they make sense for certain use cases. If you are going to fit air-conditioning then the extra cost to put in a reversible system vs a gas boiler may also work out.
The log burner was intended to be ironic.
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