Electric cars, does everyone really think they are amazing.

[Lorne]

Cold said:

Lorne said:

Your average petrol (or diesel) engine makes 200 bhp of motive power, but generates 400 bhp equivalent of heat whilst doing it.

Ermm, what?

ICE's are at best 35% efficient at converting chemical energy (petrol/diesel) into motive power. The other 65% goes from chemical energy onto heat. If your engine produces 200 bhp, then it's chucking out double that as waste heat.

[RobDickinson]

Worse than that. They throw 20 percent of that 35 percent away in drive train losses.
Then most of the rest as heat through braking.

[Lorne]

Honeywell said:

There isn’t enough lithium in the world.

There isn’t enough copper in the local grid to carry the amps.

There isn’t enough generation capacity to make the amps.

There isn’t enough renewable or nuclear generation to save any carbon dioxide emission which I rather the whole point.

Other than that, great.

Road pricing will replace fuel duty and your electric car motoring will be just as expensive as any other.

All completely irrelevant.

EV's just need to be 1% better and 1% cheaper than ICE's for all these types of assertions to suddenly disappear.. Anyway, the answers to all three points that you raise are, 'actually there is'.

I agree though that some other form of tax will replace fuel duty. The gvmt isn:t about to kiss goodbye to all that money it relies on.

[Smiljan]

RobDickinson said:

Typically an ev will use about a fifth of the energy an ice car will for going a to b

How much energy does an EV use parked up compared to an ICE car?

[RobDickinson]

Eh what?

[Smiljan]

It was a simple question but I understand maybe you haven't heard about it. I'm hoping the vampire drain will be a thing of the past when my Model 3 arrives.

https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-phantom-dr...

Nice study here also shows EV's use around 2/3rds the energy of an ICE car to travel the same distance.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactiv...

[Kawasicki]

Diesel golf

Tank capacity 50 l of diesel ...about 500kWh, with a range of about 1000km...so 2 km per kWh

Electric golf

36kwh battery, with a range of about 180km...so 5km per kWh

[RobDickinson]

I understand the question I just don't see the relevance.

Typically it depends on the specific ev, and it's usually pretty minimal, often you can if needed put them into a deep sleep mode to minimize it anyhow.

And for that small loss I can switch my ac or heating on from my phone etc if I want.

The first time I done that at work I got rather a lot of jealous looks.

[Smiljan]

RobDickinson said:

I understand the question I just don't see the relevance.

Typically it depends on the specific ev, and it's usually pretty minimal, often you can if needed put them into a deep sleep mode to minimize it anyhow.

And for that small loss I can switch my ac or heating on from my phone etc if I want.

The first time I done that at work I got rather a lot of jealous looks.

Why the obnoxious response (eh what?) then? It's really hard work on these forums with you sometimes. You don't think it's relevant that an EV (Tesla in particular) can easily lose 10-20% of it's fuel just sitting doing nothing in a few days.

ICE cars don't do that unless the tank has a hole in it.

[Cold]

GroundEffect said:

Cold said:

Lorne said:

Your average petrol (or diesel) engine makes 200 bhp of motive power, but generates 400 bhp equivalent of heat whilst doing it.

Ermm, what?

It's not all heat (it's mainly heat, sound and accelerated exhaust gas), but indeed around 2/3 of the power of the combustion doesn't go the way of torque at the wheels. As an engine cooling engineer, I would generally look at the power rating of the engine (in kW) and use that as a rough guide for how much heat to coolant it would produce. A lot of heat goes down the exhaust too - almost an entire third.

Yes, I understand that. It's well documented. I was querying the sentence I quoted as it seems to suggest that petrol (when introduced to a combustion engine) can produce more energy in heat than it actually contains.

[TooLateForAName]

Smiljan said:

Nice study here also shows EV's use around 2/3rds the energy of an ICE car to travel the same distance.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactiv...

That looks like total rubbish to me. I need to look through the data but I dont believe it. Just from a starting point that we dont have much oil powered electricity production. look at gridwatch.

[98elise]

Honeywell said:

There isn’t enough lithium in the world.

There isn’t enough copper in the local grid to carry the amps.

There isn’t enough generation capacity to make the amps.

There isn’t enough renewable or nuclear generation to save any carbon dioxide emission which I rather the whole point.

Other than that, great.

Road pricing will replace fuel duty and your electric car motoring will be just as expensive as any other.

Why worry about litium when it's only a smattering in each cell?

If you can't draw 7kW for an hour now, how do you operate your hob or electric shower.

Spread that over the night and you are down to the level of amps my garden flood light uses.

The national grid published a paper about future EV charging and they were pretty cool with it.

[98elise]

Smiljan said:

RobDickinson said:

I understand the question I just don't see the relevance.

Typically it depends on the specific ev, and it's usually pretty minimal, often you can if needed put them into a deep sleep mode to minimize it anyhow.

And for that small loss I can switch my ac or heating on from my phone etc if I want.

The first time I done that at work I got rather a lot of jealous looks.

Why the obnoxious response (eh what?) then? It's really hard work on these forums with you sometimes. You don't think it's relevant that an EV (Tesla in particular) can easily lose 10-20% of it's fuel just sitting doing nothing in a few days.

ICE cars don't do that unless the tank has a hole in it.

ICE lose quite a bit in stop start traffic, and quite a bit just keeping the engine turning.

Edited by 98elise on Monday 24th September 12:57

[Lorne]

Cold said:

GroundEffect said:

Cold said:

Lorne said:

Your average petrol (or diesel) engine makes 200 bhp of motive power, but generates 400 bhp equivalent of heat whilst doing it.

Ermm, what?

It's not all heat (it's mainly heat, sound and accelerated exhaust gas), but indeed around 2/3 of the power of the combustion doesn't go the way of torque at the wheels. As an engine cooling engineer, I would generally look at the power rating of the engine (in kW) and use that as a rough guide for how much heat to coolant it would produce. A lot of heat goes down the exhaust too - almost an entire third.

Yes, I understand that. It's well documented. I was querying the sentence I quoted as it seems to suggest that petrol (when introduced to a combustion engine) can produce more energy in heat than it actually contains.

Sorry, my mistake in trying to phrase it in a way that people would be able to visualise. The fuel burn rate that a typical engine uses has about 600 bhp of energy. 200 of it goes into motive power and the rest is turned into waste heat that goes out of the exhaust pipe and radiators.

[Lorne]

TooLateForAName said:

Smiljan said:

Nice study here also shows EV's use around 2/3rds the energy of an ICE car to travel the same distance.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactiv...

That looks like total rubbish to me. I need to look through the data but I dont believe it. Just from a starting point that we dont have much oil powered electricity production. look at gridwatch.

Forget the fuel that's being burned at the power station to make the electricity and look at it this way:

The petrol/diesel engine in your car is at bout 35% efficient at turning whatever it burns (petrol/diesel/bio ethanol) into motive power.
The power station is about 65% efficient at turning whatever it burns (natural gas, coal, woodchips, household rubbish) into electricity. It's more efficient at energy conversion because it always runs at the peak efficiency speed (which a car doesn't) and it has secondary systems that can get some energy out of the waste heat (which a car doesn't).
The wires from the power station to the car, charging the car and the small amount of waste heat an EV produces all remove about 5%.

Overall then at energy conversion into motive power; ICE car = 35%, EV car = 60%.

Of course, the power station these days is increasingly not burning coal but instead making electricity out of the wind, but that's a side issue.

[TooLateForAName]

Lorne said:

TooLateForAName said:

Smiljan said:

Nice study here also shows EV's use around 2/3rds the energy of an ICE car to travel the same distance.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactiv...

That looks like total rubbish to me. I need to look through the data but I dont believe it. Just from a starting point that we dont have much oil powered electricity production. look at gridwatch.

Forget the fuel that's being burned at the power station to make the electricity and look at it this way:

The petrol/diesel engine in your car is at bout 35% efficient at turning whatever it burns (petrol/diesel/bio ethanol) into motive power.
The power station is about 65% efficient at turning whatever it burns (natural gas, coal, woodchips, household rubbish) into electricity. It's more efficient at energy conversion because it always runs at the peak efficiency speed (which a car doesn't) and it has secondary systems that can get some energy out of the waste heat (which a car doesn't).
The wires from the power station to the car, charging the car and the small amount of waste heat an EV produces all remove about 5%.

Overall then at energy conversion into motive power; ICE car = 35%, EV car = 60%.

Of course, the power station these days is increasingly not burning coal but instead making electricity out of the wind, but that's a side issue.

I think you're misunderstanding my quibble.

I think that those figures are being too generous to ICE. Does it really take 3 times as much energy to put electricity onto the grid as it does to deliver petrol to a fuel station? I suspect they are quoting oil powered generation to make the ev figures look as poor as possible.

[GT119]

TooLateForAName said:

I think you're misunderstanding my quibble.

I think that those figures are being too generous to ICE. Does it really take 3 times as much energy to put electricity onto the grid as it does to deliver petrol to a fuel station? I suspect they are quoting oil powered generation to make the ev figures look as poor as possible.

Comparing the overall efficiency of EVs with ICE cars is not for simple-minded journos!

This thread has covered this topic at least three times in the past and the last time there was arguably a consensus that EVs are in the range of 3 to 4 times more efficient than ICEs overall.

One of the most overlooked reasons behind this is the present need for electricity used in refineries to refine liquid fuels. Tesla quotes a number of 6 kWh of electricity per gallon of fuel, (assume that's a US gallon). My take on it is that the electricity used to produce 1 gallon will probably give an average UK EV a range of around 20 miles, which means that nearly half of al the electricity needed by any given EV is ALREADY being produced to power the refineries. This is why there isn't going to be a significant problem with the load on the national grid when EVs start to significantly replace ICE.

If most EV charging takes place overnight then its entirely possible that the peak load on the grid will never actually exceed what it reaches now during the day, even for 100% EV adoption. The National Grid white paper on the subject pretty much says the same.

[Lorne]

GT119 said:

TooLateForAName said:

I think you're misunderstanding my quibble.

I think that those figures are being too generous to ICE. Does it really take 3 times as much energy to put electricity onto the grid as it does to deliver petrol to a fuel station? I suspect they are quoting oil powered generation to make the ev figures look as poor as possible.

Comparing the overall efficiency of EVs with ICE cars is not for simple-minded journos!

This thread has covered this topic at least three times in the past and the last time there was arguably a consensus that EVs are in the range of 3 to 4 times more efficient than ICEs overall.

One of the most overlooked reasons behind this is the present need for electricity used in refineries to refine liquid fuels. Tesla quotes a number of 6 kWh of electricity per gallon of fuel, (assume that's a US gallon). My take on it is that the electricity used to produce 1 gallon will probably give an average UK EV a range of around 20 miles, which means that nearly half of al the electricity needed by any given EV is ALREADY being produced to power the refineries. This is why there isn't going to be a significant problem with the load on the national grid when EVs start to significantly replace ICE.

If most EV charging takes place overnight then its entirely possible that the peak load on the grid will never actually exceed what it reaches now during the day, even for 100% EV adoption. The National Grid white paper on the subject pretty much says the same.

Good points, and in my defence I must admit I haven't read all 175 pages of comments

[GT119]

Lorne said:

Good points, and in my defence I must admit I haven't read all 175 pages of comments

The thread is just over a year old and I have followed it from the start.
I'm in two minds about recommending anyone to read it all as it has been very entertaining but also painful to read sometimes.
Some of the comments, self-proclamations and blinkered denial are highly amusing, predominantly from one poster ooop north who just cannot help himself from typing theses worth of drivel about how the whole world has got it wrong when it comes to EVs and that combustible fuels such as hydrogen and LPG will win the day.

[danp]

The Crack Fox said:

Yup. The rise of EVs, environmental pressures and rising fuel costs are driving manufacturers to make engines with some incredible economy in recent years. 20 years ago most folks seemed happy with 30MPG in their family transport, now most stuff seems to do 50+ MPG and, if you're not in a rush, much more. ICE tech evolves and will have a place on the forecourt for many years more, albeit probably with some titchy motor to satisfy tax/EU legislation nonsense.

I quite like chugging along in my big ol' diesel doing 50MPG. I can do 600 odd miles without stopping if needed, can refuel anywhere in the world in minutes, can get it serviced anywhere, can refuel from a jerry can if I get it wrong, have plenty of shove at motorway speeds and and and... above all, I don't want an EV. To spend such a huge amount of money on a new (or new-ish) car I have to really want it. Yet EVs are just appliances to me. There are so many more interesting ways to spend your money on transport.

Sorry but you’re an unusual case, most people do want to use the car as an appliance as opposed to having the kind of adventures in old bangers that you write so eloquently about.

Your 600 mile non-stoppers - which method do you favour, nappies or the more hardcore catheter?