Right Tesla

[Flibb]

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Interesting when you look ta what produces power and when its used. The one I hadn't considered is biomass, at the moment its producing 5.50%, wind is 6.55%. Also hadn't considered how much more energy we get from gas compared to coal.

[directhex]

I would be very confident that IF this car genuinely has 200 miles between recharges whilst being driven reasonably that I wouldn't struggle with that.

Realistically, an EV gets between 1 and 5 miles per kWh of battery. 5 if it's a hot day, the windows are closed (to not harm the aerodynamics), and you're driving along flat ground at 50 mph. 1 if it's a cold day, your heater is on full, and it's stop-start slash traffic the whole time. Weight of the car has an impact too - more like 3 in a heavy car like a Model S, 4 in a light car like a Leaf or i3

The Model 3 has a 60 kWh battery, so that's worst-case 60 and best-case 300. Realistic case (70 on the motorway with aircon on low), somewhere between 180 and 240.

[aramil]

http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/

Interesting when you look at what produces power and when its used. The one I hadn't considered is biomass, at the moment its producing 5.50%, wind is 6.55%. Also hadn't considered how much more energy we get from gas compared to coal.

Yeah, I guess the issue is, if electric cars become popular and we have great national charging coverage (due to lower electric car pricing/high price of petrol/shortage of oil etc) our only option is to increase generation on our scaleable power generation system, but this demand (everyone is going to want to wake up to a fully charged car) means when have to push them harder for longer (increasing pollution and a high peck times decreasing efficiency), with all these developments in electric cars unless the supplying infrastucture car make a similar change there is no real change we swap ground level car polution in busy areas for country wide industrial pollution concentrated at generation points. for this to really work we need a much better infastructure plan, and should be really push forward in largescale storage/efficient generation research.

[Butcher]

200 miles between fuel stops.

You can easily do more than 200 in a day.

You can, but that relies on being able to drive between charging points. That's fine if you're just trundling up and down motorways, but other than that you're a bit stuck.
You also have an issue of needing somewhere to charge it if you're away overnight. I can't see too many hotels being fine with you just slinging a cable through the window.
It basically adds an extra layer of logistics that just isn't there for a petrol car.

Is it fun to drive? - #### yes. Better than any petrol car you could name. Any.You'll leave anything standing at the lights. You might find the torque curve weird, but nothing compares for from-zero acceleration, and there are enough reaction vids on Youtube to attest to that.

Surely that depends on whether drag racing off lights is your idea of fun?

[jim]

Well we have inconsistent supply and demand. What we need is something that can store peak supply and give it to peak demand.. like a battery sitting in a car. Plug it in at work during the day somewhere that's generating from solar and you're helping use peak supply. Plug it in at home in the evening and you maybe it could help cut your home draw from the grid in peak periods.

An interesting discussion I was reading elsewhere focused on the issues around home charging - of course getting the supply right is a big problem - but there is a much bigger issue around transport.

So although 120kW chargers are the ideal solution, it's impossible to fit them in a domestic home. And even if we fit 7kW devices in our houses, it's going to be a massive pull on the local systems to draw that in property after property overnight - it could easily see properties double their power draw.

I've left it at that, but you can see with multiple cars, need for faster charging etc that the problems are quite significant. I imagine that might be the more difficult problem to surmount.

[Flibb]

It will be interesting to see if the Gov change the VAT and Duty paid on electricity used for transport. With LPG you only pay 5% VAT and no excise duty if its used for heating or refrigeration, if you use it for running a car its 20% VAT and 31.6% excise duty.

[DanceswithUnix]

How long is the UK queue?

This article: http://arstechnica.co.uk/cars/2016/0...p-of-the-list/

says that the US gets them before we do, with the release slowly rolling East so other parts of the world would be worse.

[Butcher]

This article: http://arstechnica.co.uk/cars/2016/0...p-of-the-list/

says that the US gets them before we do, with the release slowly rolling East so other parts of the world would be worse.

Possibly, but bear in mind we're RHD, unlike the rest of Europe and America, so we might have to wait longer, maybe until they do all the RHD countries as one block, which would be when they get east to Japan and Australia at a guess.

[EndlessWaves]

which would be when they get east to Japan and Australia at a guess.

India is right hand drive too.

[Phage]

Well when we can store massive amounts of electricity efficiently we solve a whole host of issues with renewable energy. As yet though...

In the UK at the moment you might as well have a car run on a gas generator and cut out the transmission losses.

Hydrogen ! Store it as chemical energy wehn you're at work. No Grid upgrade required.

[Lucio]

I love the idea of a Tesla, and the Model 3 is really where this starts for the typical driver, my biggest issue (other than the fact that if I had £35,000 to spend on a car, I'd buy a house), is renting a flat doesn't give any opportunities to recharge the vehicle, charging at work is out, and until charging stations become as common as petrol stations are, you can't do without.


Frustratingly it's a chicken and egg situation, electric cars won't take off until charging stations are in place, and charging stations won't get put in place until electric cars take off.

[peterb]

Hydrogen as a fuel source does have attractions, but compared with hydrocarbons, the energy density is still low. Storage is a problem as it doesn't readily liquefy, so it either needs to be stored as a liquid in a cryogenic tank (heavy and expensive) or chemically as a hydride.

Methanol as the source of energy for a fuel cell is a possibility, but at the moment Lithium Ion technology is probably the better of the available technologies, and at least the batteries can be recycled and re-manufactured at the end of the service life (although that has overall energy implications)

But battery technology has improved considerably in the last 15 years, and it is an area of fairly intensive research, so I feel reasonably sure that the technology will improve and fall in price.

Tesla probably represents the state of the art, and it will be the early adopters that will provide the funding for further development and refinement.

There is an old saying that says that the Pioneers get the arrows, the followers get the land (referring to the migration West of the America settlers) and that can be true for technology.

But things change rapidly. Concorde was a terrific piece of engineering, and the developments still influence aspects of aviation design, but as a mass transit aircraft, it (sadly) appears to be a dead end, passed over in favour of large airliners like the Aibus and Boeing airliners.

Making predictions is dangerous, but I think there will be a rapid development in electric vehicle in the next 10 years, but then semi-autonomous vehicles, like the Google car, working in collaboration with each other to form virtual convoys may radically change our perception of mass transport, although electricity as the prime mover may still have a part to play.

Bottom line for me though was that if I had the cash, I'd be looking at the Tesla Model S with the larger battery, as that does give a useable range,

[scaryjim]

... how big is your solar farm at work to charge everyone's car? ...

If a workplace knew that its workforce was going electric they could easily expand the solar capabilities. For instance, a large carpark needs what is essentially an extensive road network for cars to move between the entrance and the parking bays. There've been some very positive test of solar roadways in the last year or two...

[DanceswithUnix]

I expect most office space is rented, ours certainly is. I don't see much in it for the landlord to install a solar panel roof on the multi story car park attached next to the building, let alone car charging stations.

[scaryjim]

... I don't see much in it for the landlord to install a solar panel roof on the multi story car park attached next to the building, let alone car charging stations.

We tend to forget that not every employer is like our current one, don't we

The obvious benefit to a landlord is USP. I suspect there's plenty of green deal funding available too - might not even cost them much up front for the install. You could put the charging stations in a special access section of the car park and make it an optional billable extra. It won't attract every client, but I suspect there's enough companies out there who'd be attracted to office space that has part-renewable-driven electric car charging on site...

[Xlucine]

It just takes a few million years

We can do things a bit better than the earth's crust:
https://www.newscientist.com/article...light-and-co2/
Way better than biofuels (rapeseed and the like) since you don't need arable land, deserts are ideal for this kind of production.

Yes, biofuels/synthetic fuels are a possible short term step, but they suffer from the thermal efficiency and emissions problem for long term. We need to get rid of the latter as soon as possible, which may help stave off the long term effects of the former (we need to figure out a way to radiate more heat to space, if we're going to keep generating more heat on earth).

One of the best things about electric in my view is the potential for much greater thermal efficiency - you shouldn't need to waste heat through braking or oversized engines/too much weight etc. Stick an efficient motor on each wheel and you've got torque vectoring for both acceleration and braking, regeneration.. all sorts of things that'll make the driving better too. Maybe couple it with a bi-directional fuel cell for improved energy storage density.

Er, WTF? Total world oil consumption in 2013 was about 90k barrels per day, which works out to 7E19 J, or 2E12 W. Total solar energy hitting the earth's atmosphere is about 2E17, per wikipedia citing a book. That's 5 orders of magnitude. Our oil adds 0.001% of the heat that the sun does - this is why CO2 is such a big issue, any tiny change in how efficiently we radiate it all out will involve titanic quantities of energy. There is no reason on earth to worry over waste heat, the only problem with inefficient engines is the cost of fuel and the emissions.

Exactly. I quite fancy the Honda idea. Fuel up at home with the spare power from your PV array.

Hydrogen seems nice until it diffuses through solid steel tanks and you car runs out of fuel after a week

It is when the country does not generate enough electricity to cover peak periods without running stations harder (effecting their efficiency), if everyone also wanted to charge a car as well.....

All electric cars do is shift the pollution from local (exhaust gas) to concentrated (power generation). We (in this country) have such a poor renewable setup that it could not be relied upon to cover the uptake of electric cars. I agree it's an idea with a good environmental idea at its heart, but unless you can solve clean generation capacity and how to deal with the chemical waste of its storage mediums (in both production and disposal) it on a world/country view has very little effect, it just shifts the problems elsewhere. (Yes I know petrol cars have batteries to, but compared to electric cars they are like button batteries)

I would like to know how "if everyone/a majority went electric" how would we deal with the extra supply/generation demand and chemical waste.

I would love these companies involved in greener/cleaner tech to be open and be having talks about this now, other wise we are just storing another different problem for future generations to deal with. It's all just a little short term for me.

And as someone who on occasion has to travel in a car a lot and gets paid by the hour, but not for travelling, 30/60 mins waiting around not getting paid is not an option.

Not trying to completely write off electric cars, but we are a long long way off making this "green" and a proper replacement for a petrol car.

We'd obviously need to manufacture more power plants, but my point was that the emissions associated with those are much lower than the emissions from internal combustion engines strapped to cars. You can also filter out a lot more of the pollutants from power plants - a filter might be cost prohibitive to fit to every car, but on a several million pound power station it'll make a lot more sense

For long distance drivers, I'll refer back to my suggestion of a hot-swappable battery pack. You park at a garage integrated with a motorway services, and run off for 5 mins to fill up on coffee/empty out the coffee from the last service station, then you're back on the road with a fresh battery. Meanwhile you old battery gets charged for a couple of hours at the services, and then gets fitted to someone else when they pop in for a fill up.

Surely that depends on whether drag racing off lights is your idea of fun?

If it isn't then there's something wrong with your idea of fun