So who's getting an i3?
Discussion
covmutley said:
My commute is 80 miles a day so 'in range' but its 95% motorway. I will be interested to see what impact motorway speed has on range.
If I could do it all electric, I'd probably be looking at a 3k annual fuel saving compared to my current car.
£3k a year saving is sweet indeed and at that rate the man maths quickly make sense but IMO you'd need the REx if doing 80 miles a day. There is very little margin for error there and do you want to be doing that day in day out worrying what might happen if there is a diversion etc ? Add in winter driving, a battery range that drops by about 3% per year, etc it's very tight.If I could do it all electric, I'd probably be looking at a 3k annual fuel saving compared to my current car.
You'd still be driving the REx on pure electric 95% of the time but you'd have the flexibility to cope with unknowns and if you want to go somewhere after work you can do it no problems.
Either that or persuade your workplace to have charging points fitted, they get incentives too ;-)
covmutley said:
My commute is 80 miles a day so 'in range' but its 95% motorway. I will be interested to see what impact motorway speed has on range.
If I could do it all electric, I'd probably be looking at a 3k annual fuel saving compared to my current car.
I'd say that firstly with the range being at the top end and taking into account that BMW allow for a 30% fall in charge before they'll replace the batteries means that the EV is of no use. If I could do it all electric, I'd probably be looking at a 3k annual fuel saving compared to my current car.
Plus, at proper motorway speeds you'll be caning the range.
So, even with the RE, for what you need it to do I suspect that it won't be cheaper than an economical ICE car.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-manufactur...
This suggests 65 mile range at motorway speeds. Not sure I agree with tone of the article though, they tried to run it flat and achieved it. I bet they could run a petrol car dry too if they really tried!
This suggests 65 mile range at motorway speeds. Not sure I agree with tone of the article though, they tried to run it flat and achieved it. I bet they could run a petrol car dry too if they really tried!
Holywow said:
Bit frustrated with all the extras on the i3
NISSAN leaf
Has as Standard
1.Heat Cool whilst charging.
2.DC charging.
3.Full Nav
any more ?
i3
DC Rapid Charge preparation £ 560.00
Cold weather cabin preparation £ 530.00
Price "Media package - BMW Professional"£ 960.00
usual BMW .
BMW comes with Nav as standard. DC charge isn't standard on either I believe (currently useless for i3 anyway). Heat Pump is only standard on higher spec Leafs - you wouldn't get it in the i3 Rex anyway. NISSAN leaf
Has as Standard
1.Heat Cool whilst charging.
2.DC charging.
3.Full Nav
any more ?
i3
DC Rapid Charge preparation £ 560.00
Cold weather cabin preparation £ 530.00
Price "Media package - BMW Professional"£ 960.00
usual BMW .
i3 does reasonably specced as standard IMO. Nav, PDC, DAB, LEDs etc.
scrwright said:
How much energy does it take to charge one of these things up? Sod the green side of things, how long before electric car charging will put a strain on UK electricity generation? (not trolling, but has someone done the maths?)
It's a 20 kwh battery. Most will get charged overnight when there's plenty of spare capacity in the grid. From memory, I think we need to see more than 1m electric cars before we have infrastructure problems in the UK. So, an awful long way off!J4CKO said:
An electric car is around three to four times more efficient in terms of energy usage than a conventional petrol engine, and yes it does move the pollution
but it is less pollution.
If we are talking energy efficiency, then you have to take into account the efficiency of the power station (say 50%) losses in the grid (10%) and losses charging the battery (another 10%). So suddenly your 90% vehicle efficiency looks more like 35% which is very similar to a modern diesel. but it is less pollution.
Amateurish said:
scrwright said:
How much energy does it take to charge one of these things up? Sod the green side of things, how long before electric car charging will put a strain on UK electricity generation? (not trolling, but has someone done the maths?)
It's a 20 kwh battery. Most will get charged overnight when there's plenty of spare capacity in the grid. From memory, I think we need to see more than 1m electric cars before we have infrastructure problems in the UK. So, an awful long way off!Obviously at the moment, probably not an issue as so few people will be doing it.
Mr GrimNasty said:
Battery technology is NOT going to improve significantly enough to change this fact. It is a scientific impossibility.
How about 2000 times better...http://www.extremetech.com/computing/153614-new-li...
k-ink said:
For this to occur, though, the University of Illinois will first have to prove that their technology scales to larger battery sizes, and that the production process isn’t prohibitively expensive for commercial production. Here’s hoping.It's interesting however that an increase in the surface area of the cathode and anode achieves a significant gain though. It seems somewhat obvious. In recent years there has been huge advances in synthetic materials containing vastly increase surface areas at a microscopic level so it seems achievable.
Amateurish said:
J4CKO said:
An electric car is around three to four times more efficient in terms of energy usage than a conventional petrol engine, and yes it does move the pollution
but it is less pollution.
If we are talking energy efficiency, then you have to take into account the efficiency of the power station (say 50%) losses in the grid (10%) and losses charging the battery (another 10%). So suddenly your 90% vehicle efficiency looks more like 35% which is very similar to a modern diesel. but it is less pollution.
Re: battery tech
I doubt we will ever reach a point where we can state something cannot be improved. As soon as new approaches are uncovered there are vast gains to be had. Just look at the new microchips coming out, based upon light rather than electricity. Processors which do not create heat, which normally limits their power. Chips will operate at the speed of light. Expected performance gains will be in the multiples of thousands. These discoveries will keep on coming in all sorts of fields.
I doubt we will ever reach a point where we can state something cannot be improved. As soon as new approaches are uncovered there are vast gains to be had. Just look at the new microchips coming out, based upon light rather than electricity. Processors which do not create heat, which normally limits their power. Chips will operate at the speed of light. Expected performance gains will be in the multiples of thousands. These discoveries will keep on coming in all sorts of fields.
J4CKO said:
Amateurish said:
J4CKO said:
An electric car is around three to four times more efficient in terms of energy usage than a conventional petrol engine, and yes it does move the pollution
but it is less pollution.
If we are talking energy efficiency, then you have to take into account the efficiency of the power station (say 50%) losses in the grid (10%) and losses charging the battery (another 10%). So suddenly your 90% vehicle efficiency looks more like 35% which is very similar to a modern diesel. but it is less pollution.
DonkeyApple said:
For this to occur, though, the University of Illinois will first have to prove that their technology scales to larger battery sizes, and that the production process isn’t prohibitively expensive for commercial production. Here’s hoping.
It's interesting however that an increase in the surface area of the cathode and anode achieves a significant gain though. It seems somewhat obvious. In recent years there has been huge advances in synthetic materials containing vastly increase surface areas at a microscopic level so it seems achievable.
All they have to do is sell the rights to use their new design concept. Let industry work out how to manufacture the new batteries on a large scale. It is a market worth trillions. From micro watch batteries to car size batteries. Whichever company can crack it will become one of the most successful and profitable companies in the world, imho. It's interesting however that an increase in the surface area of the cathode and anode achieves a significant gain though. It seems somewhat obvious. In recent years there has been huge advances in synthetic materials containing vastly increase surface areas at a microscopic level so it seems achievable.
Amateurish said:
scrwright said:
How much energy does it take to charge one of these things up? Sod the green side of things, how long before electric car charging will put a strain on UK electricity generation? (not trolling, but has someone done the maths?)
It's a 20 kwh battery. Most will get charged overnight when there's plenty of spare capacity in the grid. From memory, I think we need to see more than 1m electric cars before we have infrastructure problems in the UK. So, an awful long way off!Check the graphs at night... there's a spare 20GW of generating capacity when all the CCGTs (Combine Cycle Gas Turbines) get shut down and the coal stations get throttled back.
If you are the type to worry about using coal to generate electric for an electric car, don't. The well to wheel emissions of derv or unleaded are higher than the equivalent mine to wheel emissions for an EV. About 30% less for the EV even using the dirtiest coal station. It's because the pwoerstation is optimised to generate at maximum efficiency whilst your ICE has to run at different speeds and loads so isn't running at peak efficiency all the time. The EV can also turn braking energy into battery charge, where as the ICE powered car just generates heat in the brake discs.
Assuming all EV drivers do 80 miles on the same day...
80 miles (or they won't be using an EV) and
the efficiency is a typical 0.35 kWh / mile you'll need 80x0.35kw = 28 kWh per car to top up.
20GW x 6 hours (when you can get economy 7) = 180GWh available in current capacity for charging.
Convert to GWh to kWh x 1 million = 180,000,000kWh spare capacity on the grid over night.
Divide by 28kWh / car = 6,428,571 cars can be charged in the current economy 7 cheap rate period without any new power stations.
Don't forget not everyone owning an EV will do 80 miles a day. that's a typical max range for the current fleet (Tesla isn't available here yet).
Big 6 energy profits will be up. Oil companies will be down. (I am not a financial adviser, but if I was my investment advice would be based on this).
The next question - is how do you make sure everyone doesn't go on charge at the same time. Well, co-incidentally I'm currently doing a contract at one of the big 6 ( I'm an IT Freelancer) and they are currently defining the "Smart Grid" standards. Sadly not the project I'm on, but have been reading about it on the Intranet. They are defining protocols that will allow anything from fridges to EVs to be switched on and off remotely, or in the case of EVs, allowing you to specify you don't need it between 9am and 6pm, so as long as there's enough leccy for you to do a 50 mile commute back home after 6pm, they can take some juice and pay you up to £1 a kWh for the privilege as they are using it for load balancing.
Did you know that if everyone waiting till 10pm to put the washing on, we could all have cheaper leccy!? It would flatten out the 4-8pm peak and mean they don't need as much generation and distribution infrastructure - reducing the standing charge.
mids said:
Yep, shame we can't link/sticky individual posts like that to reference when the same old questions keep coming up on EV threads.
Great stuff. The total traffic volume in the UK is approx 300bn vehicle miles per year. The i3 has an efficiency of 0.2 kwh/mile. So if all vehicles were i3s, we would need 60 bn kwh / year = 164m kwh / day. If there are 180m kwh available in spare capacity each night, does this mean theoretically that we could power all vehicles with the spare capacity, and no new power stations needed?Gassing Station | EV and Alternative Fuels | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff