EVs - have they got it all wrong?
Discussion
Lots of problems.
Firstly, the batteries are very heavy.
Secondly, cars are all different sizes. Will the 'machine' be able to handle a battery swap for a small 2 seater right up to a Audi Q7 sized car?
Third, where are all the flat batteries put to store/charge? A charging station would effectively have to be a large automated factory.
Fourth, if a battery is damaged and sets on fire in your car, who will be held liable?
I get the what you're saying, but it just won't work.
Firstly, the batteries are very heavy.
Secondly, cars are all different sizes. Will the 'machine' be able to handle a battery swap for a small 2 seater right up to a Audi Q7 sized car?
Third, where are all the flat batteries put to store/charge? A charging station would effectively have to be a large automated factory.
Fourth, if a battery is damaged and sets on fire in your car, who will be held liable?
I get the what you're saying, but it just won't work.
skinnyman said:
Lots of problems.
Firstly, the batteries are very heavy.
Secondly, cars are all different sizes. Will the 'machine' be able to handle a battery swap for a small 2 seater right up to a Audi Q7 sized car?
Third, where are all the flat batteries put to store/charge? A charging station would effectively have to be a large automated factory.
Fourth, if a battery is damaged and sets on fire in your car, who will be held liable?
I get the what you're saying, but it just won't work.
I think the real issue is that if you make the batteries really easy to drop out and remove then that's exactly what is going to be done to your car while you sleep. Firstly, the batteries are very heavy.
Secondly, cars are all different sizes. Will the 'machine' be able to handle a battery swap for a small 2 seater right up to a Audi Q7 sized car?
Third, where are all the flat batteries put to store/charge? A charging station would effectively have to be a large automated factory.
Fourth, if a battery is damaged and sets on fire in your car, who will be held liable?
I get the what you're saying, but it just won't work.
Maybe the solution to absolutely having to get from a to B without any fannying about because you're a seriously important player who mustn't be delayed is to simply consider how it used to be done before the motorcar appeared? In the old days you simply changed horses at set points. Hertz can just set up staging posts for Super Importanto Club Members where they dump one car and pick up the next. You could also have an immigrant to move the baggage between boots as that's definitely immigrant peasant work.
Alternatively, elderly folk could solve the problem of the grotesque inconvenience of a child or other relative having to travel travel over 200 miles every so often to make sure they stay in the will by just cutting them out and removing the problem?
The fun thing with EVs is that no matter what the solution is, eventually you need to feed large amounts of power to a set of charger hubs (or set of households). This seems to be the actual constraint as many/all charger hubs run out of puff before all chargers are occupied. So long as that is the case, it doesn’t really matter if you change battery tech or do battery swaps - if you can’t replenish the energy fast enough then that’s that. I’m sure this can be fixed at a cost but it’s quite interesting that even now with relatively few chargers, not that many EVs, and with moderate charge speeds, that it’s a problem.
DMZ said:
The fun thing with EVs is that no matter what the solution is, eventually you need to feed large amounts of power to a set of charger hubs (or set of households). This seems to be the actual constraint as many/all charger hubs run out of puff before all chargers are occupied. So long as that is the case, it doesn’t really matter if you change battery tech or do battery swaps - if you can’t replenish the energy fast enough then that’s that. I’m sure this can be fixed at a cost but it’s quite interesting that even now with relatively few chargers, not that many EVs, and with moderate charge speeds, that it’s a problem.
In some ways this brings us back to the solution that a retail or commuter car park full of a 1000 EVs will only contain a few that actually 'need' charging. If all those parking bays have chargers and all the cars are plugged in then what you have is a Grid. Pricing is easily used to moderate the demand for speed as well as the amount of fuel needed. But you also have the concept of negative pricing. Ie, the majority of EVs will have home charging capabilities, they will be parking up almost fully charged and loaded with excess electricity. Parked next to them also plugged in to this 'grid' is a car that needs electricity and is willing to pay a premium. At this point the grid which in its basic day to day function is seen as a hub for selling electricity isn't at all but is in fact a broker, matching sellers to buyers and taking a commission.
It's important to get away from this spurious concept that when someone switched from ICE to EV they completely change the way that they use a car because they don't and won't. Most people don't fill their car up from empty but prefer to top it up as and when with a few quid. Cars also spend over 95% of their time doing absolutely nothing. They mainly sit there as unused, pointless boxes. They also rarely drive that far. The average daily car commute is 9miles all in.
skinnyman said:
Lots of problems.
Firstly, the batteries are very heavy.
Secondly, cars are all different sizes. Will the 'machine' be able to handle a battery swap for a small 2 seater right up to a Audi Q7 sized car?
Third, where are all the flat batteries put to store/charge? A charging station would effectively have to be a large automated factory.
Fourth, if a battery is damaged and sets on fire in your car, who will be held liable?
I get the what you're saying, but it just won't work.
And the biggest one of all: car manufacturers are developing structural battery packs where the battery itself connects the front and rear of the car.Firstly, the batteries are very heavy.
Secondly, cars are all different sizes. Will the 'machine' be able to handle a battery swap for a small 2 seater right up to a Audi Q7 sized car?
Third, where are all the flat batteries put to store/charge? A charging station would effectively have to be a large automated factory.
Fourth, if a battery is damaged and sets on fire in your car, who will be held liable?
I get the what you're saying, but it just won't work.
Skyedriver said:
So you go in with your recently purchased EV with nearly new battery and the replacement could be 5 years and 90K miles old.with a lot less capacity than your existing one?
If battery swaps became mainstream in certain models, battery ownership in those models would not be a thing. SWoll said:
I don't see this as an advantage personally. Slow acting slush box, noisy engine etc. aren't something I would actively look for in a car?
The issue with PHEV is the huge complexity once they get a few years old and out of warranty, plus all that additional weight/space required reduces practicality and means they are a bit crap on fuel for long runs if you don't keep the battery topped up constantly?
Phevs arent really that complex, specialists will pop up to fill in the gaps.The issue with PHEV is the huge complexity once they get a few years old and out of warranty, plus all that additional weight/space required reduces practicality and means they are a bit crap on fuel for long runs if you don't keep the battery topped up constantly?
Mine gets excellent mpg on a long run, on the motorway at 70 once the battery gauge reaches 0 the petrol engine runs gently for around 10 minutes, then it runs full electric for 5 minutes then on and on. Every time you decelerate or brake a decent bit of that energy is recovered into the battery which would be wasted energy.
Did glasgow to southampton and back without charging mostly around the speed limit, except for a couple of off road secions on my nans private road allegedly where the speed would be custodial if it was on the public road. 58mpg overall in a 3 liter supercharged v6 with a stage 2 tune and double pulley upgrade in a large heavy suv.
230 mpg for the mrs daily driving. Its a step in the right direction without any sacrifices for our usage.
I can’t help feeling vehicle to grid, cars being the storage buffer to supply other cars etc and even swapping cars is all totally unpalatable
It’s a transient situation, that’s all. When my parents house was built it did t have a garage, they didn’t have a fridge let alone a freezer, microwave, tv etc, no central heating, no gas. By the time I popped along they had all those things except the microwave. They’ve also added cavity wall insulation, double glazing and low energy light bulbs (although the house is kept at a much warmer temperature). The point being is simply things change.
I’ve said it before, we’ll look back and laugh at these times and the debates that were had. We don’t have all the solutions yet, technology may well offer up some radical alternatives, and the even the notion of owning a car may be challenged when you can wolf whistle and immediately get a self driving publicly accessible personal utility cell that takes you from anywhere to anywhere.
To use the much abused comparison of the change from horses to cars, it’s like asking how you’ll look after your roses without the horse byproduct when you have a car or what the carriage driver and stable folk will do for a job and resulting mass unemployment that will result of Henry Ford is successful
It’s a transient situation, that’s all. When my parents house was built it did t have a garage, they didn’t have a fridge let alone a freezer, microwave, tv etc, no central heating, no gas. By the time I popped along they had all those things except the microwave. They’ve also added cavity wall insulation, double glazing and low energy light bulbs (although the house is kept at a much warmer temperature). The point being is simply things change.
I’ve said it before, we’ll look back and laugh at these times and the debates that were had. We don’t have all the solutions yet, technology may well offer up some radical alternatives, and the even the notion of owning a car may be challenged when you can wolf whistle and immediately get a self driving publicly accessible personal utility cell that takes you from anywhere to anywhere.
To use the much abused comparison of the change from horses to cars, it’s like asking how you’ll look after your roses without the horse byproduct when you have a car or what the carriage driver and stable folk will do for a job and resulting mass unemployment that will result of Henry Ford is successful
Some interesting replies, and you can see the scale of the problems facing the world in those replies in a tiny catchment on a forum about cars!
I will add for some detail that in the RAC I just went on for three days I did see a couple of Tesla's parked up in stage car parks so fair play to them but each stage was only about 50 miles max out of town, but no others, maybe range being the reason, only place in Carlisle without searching around we saw to charge was two each in supermarkets and obviously en route in services.
I will add for some detail that in the RAC I just went on for three days I did see a couple of Tesla's parked up in stage car parks so fair play to them but each stage was only about 50 miles max out of town, but no others, maybe range being the reason, only place in Carlisle without searching around we saw to charge was two each in supermarkets and obviously en route in services.
To make a cost effective, highest performing and lowest weight EV the batteries can't be replacable.
They are designed as part of the structure of the vehicle.
You could make the same argument for mobile phones but none have changeable batteries anymore (the top models) as it introduces huge compromises for marginal gain.
Optimising and designing the life of the vehicle around the battery pack ensures best possible thermal management, electriconic routing and many other design exercises.
Then there's the infrastructure needed for charging and picking up huge battery packs. The risk management alone there is just not worthwhile.
There will probably be some specialist vehicles or business based EVs where it might make sense but for high volume, low cost consumer cars, no. Not anytime soon. Maybe if battery power density increases x8 it will become viable.
They are designed as part of the structure of the vehicle.
You could make the same argument for mobile phones but none have changeable batteries anymore (the top models) as it introduces huge compromises for marginal gain.
Optimising and designing the life of the vehicle around the battery pack ensures best possible thermal management, electriconic routing and many other design exercises.
Then there's the infrastructure needed for charging and picking up huge battery packs. The risk management alone there is just not worthwhile.
There will probably be some specialist vehicles or business based EVs where it might make sense but for high volume, low cost consumer cars, no. Not anytime soon. Maybe if battery power density increases x8 it will become viable.
MiseryStreak said:
Better idea. Electrified rails that mean the cars don’t need batteries. As they self drive we may as well connect the cars up so they move together in long chains. As they’re all moving together may as well just have two metal tracks rather than metres of wasteful asphalt, saving on tyres too. Rather than the parked cars littering the streets, they could all be waiting to receive passengers at ‘stations’.
You read it here first. I want no more than 0.1% of all ticket revenue.
It'll never catch on, Mr Stephenson!You read it here first. I want no more than 0.1% of all ticket revenue.
kambites said:
Skyedriver said:
So you go in with your recently purchased EV with nearly new battery and the replacement could be 5 years and 90K miles old.with a lot less capacity than your existing one?
If battery swaps became mainstream in certain models, battery ownership in those models would not be a thing. DMZ said:
The fun thing with EVs is that no matter what the solution is, eventually you need to feed large amounts of power to a set of charger hubs (or set of households). This seems to be the actual constraint as many/all charger hubs run out of puff before all chargers are occupied. So long as that is the case, it doesn’t really matter if you change battery tech or do battery swaps - if you can’t replenish the energy fast enough then that’s that. I’m sure this can be fixed at a cost but it’s quite interesting that even now with relatively few chargers, not that many EVs, and with moderate charge speeds, that it’s a problem.
If the charging hubs cannot supply the full power of each charger, and regularly reach this limit they are badly designed, and not designed to the iet code of practice.As has been mentioned, for the small percentage of journeys that are further than the range of an ev, the chargers that are now being rolled out will provide the additional range required in the time it takes to walk to the toilet and back. 10 minutes charging provides 120 miles on an ioniq 5, for example. These changing rates will continue to increase to a certain point (at 350kw for example, even a cooled cable is getting hefty to handle), but they don't need to be much faster.
The longest drives I do are for work, and every two hours we have to take a fifteen minute break anyway.
I admit there are gaps in the charging network, very big gaps, but it will get there.
IMO we need:
1. Properly isolated from traffic cycle lanes, pretty much everywhere
2. Well subsidised Ebikes and cargo bikes (with protections against theft, like you need a tracked receipt of the bike with you at all times, which I think works well in some countries)
3. Low cost EV rental for longer journeys
We shouldn't all get EVs. Most cars are only driven for short journies most of the time and an Ebike is often more fun and quicker at peak times. Plus how much do our cars sit around not being used. Battery recycling is not that practical yet and is a big concern. At least with an Ebike the battery is order of magnitudes smaller than a car. So you'd get something like 50 Ebikes per 1 car.
The mental and physical health benefits of cycling regularly would be another benefit.
I'm not at all anti-EVs, I love mine but I'd prefer my kids to be able to cycle to school safely, segregated from the road and with less fumes from cars.
Re the OP, at least with a Tesla, charging is just not an issue. We have to stop every few hours on long trips anyway and the car is charged by the time we come back. I genuinely spend less time charging my EV than I have done fuelling ICE cars, because most charging is at home and takes about 10 seconds to plug in.
1. Properly isolated from traffic cycle lanes, pretty much everywhere
2. Well subsidised Ebikes and cargo bikes (with protections against theft, like you need a tracked receipt of the bike with you at all times, which I think works well in some countries)
3. Low cost EV rental for longer journeys
We shouldn't all get EVs. Most cars are only driven for short journies most of the time and an Ebike is often more fun and quicker at peak times. Plus how much do our cars sit around not being used. Battery recycling is not that practical yet and is a big concern. At least with an Ebike the battery is order of magnitudes smaller than a car. So you'd get something like 50 Ebikes per 1 car.
The mental and physical health benefits of cycling regularly would be another benefit.
I'm not at all anti-EVs, I love mine but I'd prefer my kids to be able to cycle to school safely, segregated from the road and with less fumes from cars.
Re the OP, at least with a Tesla, charging is just not an issue. We have to stop every few hours on long trips anyway and the car is charged by the time we come back. I genuinely spend less time charging my EV than I have done fuelling ICE cars, because most charging is at home and takes about 10 seconds to plug in.
Edited by BBYeah on Saturday 27th November 20:03
I used to wonder why batteries can't simply be swapped. It wouldn't take much to design a system to handle the weight etc.
But having actually lived with an EV I've learned that:
1) The vast majority of charging is done at home so the perceived need to find a way to 'refill' EV's as fast as ICE isn't the holy grail you would imagine it might be. current public charging is available and fast enough to be more than good enough as it is.
2) An EV battery isn't just a single swappable battery. It's a unit wired in to a control system that manages the charge and discharge rate of each cell within the pack, and cycles them with the overall use and charge routine to maintain peak life. Different manufacturers have different ideas of how to achieve this. To make interchangeable and quickly swappable cell packs would undermine this system. An EV should live with the pack it starts life with until it's required to replace it.
Also for safety, longevity and thermal reasons, the packs are best fully sealed around I/O points and any form of quick swap mechanism would sacrifice those seals.
What we have are a series of technical challenges to make cell packs swappable... All of which are technically solvable, but none of which can be justified solving because EV drivers generally don't have any cause to care about charge times - they charge at home as they sleep.
But having actually lived with an EV I've learned that:
1) The vast majority of charging is done at home so the perceived need to find a way to 'refill' EV's as fast as ICE isn't the holy grail you would imagine it might be. current public charging is available and fast enough to be more than good enough as it is.
2) An EV battery isn't just a single swappable battery. It's a unit wired in to a control system that manages the charge and discharge rate of each cell within the pack, and cycles them with the overall use and charge routine to maintain peak life. Different manufacturers have different ideas of how to achieve this. To make interchangeable and quickly swappable cell packs would undermine this system. An EV should live with the pack it starts life with until it's required to replace it.
Also for safety, longevity and thermal reasons, the packs are best fully sealed around I/O points and any form of quick swap mechanism would sacrifice those seals.
What we have are a series of technical challenges to make cell packs swappable... All of which are technically solvable, but none of which can be justified solving because EV drivers generally don't have any cause to care about charge times - they charge at home as they sleep.
As has been said numerous times on here, not all of us live in homes we can even have a charger.
if you live in an apartment block, who buys it, you the tenant, the landlord who owns the property but not say the car parks or land or the owner and administrator of the property who actually own the land the apartment is built on that someone pays ground rent on? Or if you live in a terraced street, where it is possible you might park in numerous places, who installs the charger then? You, the council who own the land it is on, or the government?
A lot of presumption going on about this, and a heck of a lot of people will NEVER own their own property even if they could, they might not want to.
All of these issues are resolvable obviously but not as easily as simply getting one fitted at YOUR house.
if you live in an apartment block, who buys it, you the tenant, the landlord who owns the property but not say the car parks or land or the owner and administrator of the property who actually own the land the apartment is built on that someone pays ground rent on? Or if you live in a terraced street, where it is possible you might park in numerous places, who installs the charger then? You, the council who own the land it is on, or the government?
A lot of presumption going on about this, and a heck of a lot of people will NEVER own their own property even if they could, they might not want to.
All of these issues are resolvable obviously but not as easily as simply getting one fitted at YOUR house.
LukeBrown66 said:
As has been said numerous times on here, not all of us live in homes we can even have a charger.
if you live in an apartment block, who buys it, you the tenant, the landlord who owns the property but not say the car parks or land or the owner and administrator of the property who actually own the land the apartment is built on that someone pays ground rent on? Or if you live in a terraced street, where it is possible you might park in numerous places, who installs the charger then? You, the council who own the land it is on, or the government?
A lot of presumption going on about this, and a heck of a lot of people will NEVER own their own property even if they could, they might not want to.
All of these issues are resolvable obviously but not as easily as simply getting one fitted at YOUR house.
And as has also been said numerous times many millions of people do though? In fact a considerable majority, so not sure why you insist on banging the same drum every few pages?if you live in an apartment block, who buys it, you the tenant, the landlord who owns the property but not say the car parks or land or the owner and administrator of the property who actually own the land the apartment is built on that someone pays ground rent on? Or if you live in a terraced street, where it is possible you might park in numerous places, who installs the charger then? You, the council who own the land it is on, or the government?
A lot of presumption going on about this, and a heck of a lot of people will NEVER own their own property even if they could, they might not want to.
All of these issues are resolvable obviously but not as easily as simply getting one fitted at YOUR house.
8 years till the sale of new 100% ICE stops (assuming they don't push it back) and 13 until they stop selling new Hybrids. When you add used sales that's an easy 20 years for things to improve.
Even now it's not inconceivable for someone to publicly charge a 250-300 mile EV once a week/fortnight to cover a fairly common commute etc? Plenty of people only covering 10-20 miles per day.
SWoll said:
LukeBrown66 said:
As has been said numerous times on here, not all of us live in homes we can even have a charger.
if you live in an apartment block, who buys it, you the tenant, the landlord who owns the property but not say the car parks or land or the owner and administrator of the property who actually own the land the apartment is built on that someone pays ground rent on? Or if you live in a terraced street, where it is possible you might park in numerous places, who installs the charger then? You, the council who own the land it is on, or the government?
A lot of presumption going on about this, and a heck of a lot of people will NEVER own their own property even if they could, they might not want to.
All of these issues are resolvable obviously but not as easily as simply getting one fitted at YOUR house.
And as has also been said numerous times many millions of people do though? In fact a considerable majority, so not sure why you insist on banging the same drum every few pages?if you live in an apartment block, who buys it, you the tenant, the landlord who owns the property but not say the car parks or land or the owner and administrator of the property who actually own the land the apartment is built on that someone pays ground rent on? Or if you live in a terraced street, where it is possible you might park in numerous places, who installs the charger then? You, the council who own the land it is on, or the government?
A lot of presumption going on about this, and a heck of a lot of people will NEVER own their own property even if they could, they might not want to.
All of these issues are resolvable obviously but not as easily as simply getting one fitted at YOUR house.
8 years till the sale of new 100% ICE stops (assuming they don't push it back) and 13 until they stop selling new Hybrids. When you add used sales that's an easy 20 years for things to improve.
Even now it's not inconceivable for someone to publicly charge a 250-300 mile EV once a week/fortnight to cover a fairly common commute etc? Plenty of people only covering 10-20 miles per day.
Who can say exactly how it will turn out. I'm willing to bet that those that live in such properties will still be driving around in 20 years though.
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