Where will the batteries come from? and where will they go?

[Zak33]

Hydrogen is where the HGV market could be and Hyundai and sister company Kia are on a mission on that front. Switzerland has a large 5 year orders (would be the Swiss, huh?) for that. But they likely have the ability to create enough power to create the H

Meantime, petrol and diesel still have a part to play and I worry that some electric drivers don't think that's the case. There are litereally hundreds of thousands of people driving too many miles everyday to use an electric car without stopping for hours and hours to charge. There are huge swathes of the UK that won't have a charge point... ever.. and only a fuel can in the boot of that larger tanked petrol/diselel car can allow someones journey. Refilling at one side of the highlands of Scotland before driving through snow or circumnavigating the Snowdonia region on electric is not possible.
Charging a car outside a terraced house with power leads across the pavements for every house in a row of 100 houses in hundreds of towns is impossible. Lets behonest we all know people who cant even park outside their own house or even in their own road......we can thave charge points in roads that don't even have space for all the cars that live there. And we cant trip over extensdion leads across millions of terraced houses even in summer.. let alone deep winter.


So.. cars will need better batteries and large batteries and viably, more of them in the car, and there we get back to the opening question... where will the batteries come from?
Some will fail and need replacing, recycling stationd are planned across Europe for them. Good news is though the Tesla batteries are currently looking very good with only 5% drop in the first 50k in capacity terms...it's still finite. We know cars can last 150k with sensible service schedules... lets hope that millions of electric cars can too... they'll need a lot of replacement motors if not batteries.

===
Side line :
I know oil is finiste.. I never at any point said it wasn't.. I also know that petrol and diesels need lubricant oil moreso than EV's, which is more fossil fuel use.. ... it seems perhaps people forget I might know a little about this industry, and possibly have owned a few, worked on a few, repaired a fair few and driven many hundreds of thousands of miles in them.

I like a hybrid plan.. I believe that people need that back up.

But I also like the idea of making the petrol and diesel cars last longer. Enforced servicing might be a very useful policy. The amount of people who don't service their new car in the first two years in frightening.. and the wear and tear caused is immense as the oil degrades and burns. If that was irradicated, we'd have a lot more older cars lasting longer.

Which brings me to my last point, as a geriatriac old petrol head....

I believe that smelting the steel, transporting the vehicles across the globe, making the glass, creating the paints, moudling the plastics, forging the suspension components, , rolling the steel, pressing and welding the panels, making the cloth, creating the carpets and the soundproofing, making the airbags, crafting the hunfdred of metres of copper cabing harnesses, winding thge motors, gassing the air con units, creating the rubber pipes, bending the brake hoses and crafting the brake discs and calipers.. all takes energy... and those components travfel the world more times that people might like to know.

or.. keep the 5 year old "dirty" car on the road, with a good service schedule and make it last a few more years.

guess which I think uses less resource?

[peterb]

But it is a lot easier to transport electricity to charging points than it is to transport fuel - and that electricity distribution system reaches practically everywhere in the UK, and while charging for on street parking is challenging, there are other options for fast charging points - supermarket car parks for example, and commercially operated street parking points so there won't be trailing leads across the pavement.

Advances in battery technology (like the sodium ion battery, where a possible breakthrough was reported elsewhere) will eventually reduce the need for lithium, and improved recycling will play their part.

Possibly the greatest threat is the supply of rate earth elements for permanent magnets for the traction motors, ut that is a problem for other forms of transport too.

Hybrids will have a part to play, but at the moment, I can't see a long term future for pure fossil fuel burners when car manufactures like Volvi=o have publicly stated their intention to only make EV/HEV vehicles from around 2019/2020 (although set against that Honda stopped making HEV because they found they were no more economical than petrol.

As an example - I have a friend who travels around 20 miles a day on a series of short trips. He can charge his HEV overnight and use little or no fuel at all during the week, but can use it for long journeys at weekends. That suits his work/life style perfectly. For a commuter to/from work an EV or hybrid would also work, although I'd argue that if possible, public transport is even more efficient and carrying people - it's just that public transport is pretty dire.

[Zak33]

transporting electricty is fine....storing it aint

hence the battery debate.

We've all got electricity at home and none of us has a fuel station on the drive.
Petrol, assuming no leak, holds its energy well, really well and diesel fractionalyl better as its not an easy evaporator..

(and while we're at it.... firewood is thge ultimate.. but this is a car debate)

batteries lose power over time and lose efectivness over time

and ALL of this assumes we don't every.. never ever... burn oil to make the electricity......otherwise what was the point?

Hey.. electric cars for city work, if the owner can charge them.. rock and roll.

7 people and luggage to the airport and back 6 times per day.. good luck with that
3 people London to Derbyshire, across to Lincoln and back in a day... ditto.

[scaryjim]

Round here that would be ..... cycle to shops, walk home lugging your shopping because some thieving git had nicked your bike. ...

Manchester. I've lost 6 bikes to thieves over the last 10 years. Still cheaper than buying and running a car A good lock to dissuade the opportunists, and good insurance for if the worst does happen. After all, it's not like cars are immune from theft....

More seriously, first, how do you cope with large, awkward and bulky loads? For instance, bags of potatoes, multiple boxes of cereal, large (and heavy) boxes of washing powder, two or three 4-pint bottles of milk, and a couple of bags of frozen stuff that'll ruin if it's allowed to defrost? ...

As I said, properly designed bike. For me it's front and rear pannier racks and some truly excellent pannier bags (that, yes, can hold most/all that stuff). Even better if you can split the load with a partner/friend. And while the culture doesn't exist here so the bikes aren't readily available, where it does (Netherlands & Denmark spring particularly to mind) many people have cargo bikes, which have a front box as big as most small car boots.

... Oh, and of course, the whole cycling thing depends on being both young enough and fit enough. Not everybody is. ...

Which is where e-bikes come in, of course - and potentially we're back to the title of this thread But since you're only moving 1% of the weight in vehicle and it doesn't go as fast you can use orders of magnitude smaller batteries and motors, and you can fit a lot more bikes on the road than cars.

Yes, it's not something everyone can do, and it doesn't work for every load, but if you can change the culture so people stop going straight to a car for short runs you free up a lot of road space for the people who do need it - be that freight/large item transport or for personal reasons.

And while we're on freight, you can also get a week's shopping home without even leaving - order online, get it delivered.


EDIT: to add

... ALL of this assumes we don't every.. never ever... burn oil to make the electricity......otherwise what was the point? ...

AIUI one of the points is to move the pollution generating part of the process away from people. If people really wanted to go entirely carbon neutral we're looking at walking and beasts of burden. Definitely an option, just not necessarily a practical one

[Zak33]

AIUI one of the points is to move the pollution generating part of the process away from people. If people really wanted to go entirely carbon neutral we're looking at walking and beasts of burden. Definitely an option, just not necessarily a practical one

are you sure that's what this EV move is about? Because I'm not certain it is.....

[DanceswithUnix]

If people really wanted to go entirely carbon neutral we're looking at walking and beasts of burden. Definitely an option, just not necessarily a practical one

Methane sources, not recommended

are you sure that's what this EV move is about? Because I'm not certain it is.....

Well I think Tesla is doing EVs because there won't be much fossil fuel on Mars. Or atmospheric oxygen to burn it in.

But on this planet, the push seems to be air quality and efficiency. We won't run out of petrol, as an OPEC leader said, "The stone age didn't end for lack of stone."

There are some interesting developments in petrol engines though, like plasma plugs and Mazda's spark controlled compression ignition which seem to make the economy argument for hybrids look weak at best.

The most interesting study recently though was the amount of particulates that come off brakes and tyres, modern petrol engines are good enough that it is very significant.

[peterb]

are you sure that's what this EV move is about? Because I'm not certain it is.....

What do you think the point is?

[kalniel]

Thinking about it, animal-based transport is possibly worse environmentally. Growing biomass to fuel transport animals takes a lot of land and water, not to mention the energy/CO2 cost of nitrogen fertiliser creation because presumably you wouldn't want to be growing hay on land that could otherwise be used for food production (yes, I appreciate that straw can be a by product of crop production, but doing so lowers yield of the crop overall). Then there's the greenhouse gas effect of all that methane..

[DanceswithUnix]

Then there's the greenhouse gas effect of all that methane..

On the upside, the particulates that they emit are really big and whilst stinky unlikely to give you lung cancer.

[peterb]

Thinking about it, animal-based transport is possibly worse environmentally. Growing biomass to fuel transport animals takes a lot of land and water, not to mention the energy/CO2 cost of nitrogen fertiliser creation because presumably you wouldn't want to be growing hay on land that could otherwise be used for food production (yes, I appreciate that straw can be a by product of crop production, but doing so lowers yield of the crop overall). Then there's the greenhouse gas effect of all that methane..

Plus the pollution problem of the "exhaust". All the manure has to be disposed of. In Victorian times manure from the London streets and stables was transported by train to the countryside (Oxfordshire) for crop growing - but I couldn't really see that happening today.

Of course you could anaerobically digest it to produce methane to burn to produce electricity for electric veh... oh, wait...

[Moby-Dick]

7 people and luggage to the airport and back 6 times per day.. good luck with that
3 people London to Derbyshire, across to Lincoln and back in a day... ditto.

I dont think its quite as far fetched as you'd think - I know of at least one Airport Transfer firm in MK using Model S's that are trundling down to heathrow and back all day long. I@ve a mate who does Croydon-Liverpool-Croydon 4 times a week in an EV without any issue.

[Zak33]

I dont think its quite as far fetched as you'd think - I know of at least one Airport Transfer firm in MK using Model S's that are trundling down to heathrow and back all day long. I@ve a mate who does Croydon-Liverpool-Croydon 4 times a week in an EV without any issue.

because he can charge at both end and afford that car to start with. MK to Heathrow is easy miles

Croydon Liverpool Croydon is more impressive. But how long is he there at Liverpool and does he need to go anywhere while it charges? Does he ever go Croydon Liverpool, Manc traffic for 3 hours, then straight back? nope.....

[Zak33]

What do you think the point is?

i think that political powers have jumped onto the moving EV bandwagon and now are spending enormous efforts and budget on something that might be a little wide of the mark.

If we lead the way Globally in the UK along with America on developing EV's we're going to shine like a beacon across the world as awesome global saviours will we be able to sell these awesome beasts of burden to India and China?

[peterb]

i think that political powers have jumped onto the moving EV bandwagon and now are spending enormous efforts and budget on something that might be a little wide of the mark.

If we lead the way Globally in the UK along with America on developing EV's we're going to shine like a beacon across the world as awesome global saviours will we be able to sell these awesome beasts of burden to India and China?

I think it was more an EU moving bandwagon as we are committed to reducing carbon emissions - its the same bandwagon to lead to the promotion of solar PV panels and wind turbines. In reality we have exported our most polluting industries to India and China.

But this same solar PV and wind turbines can provide the power to charge EVs - there are also high capacity battery banks in use (in Australia) that are used for load balancing on the grid, and we may see those in this country.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/1/1...outh-australia

But EVs have a way to go in development. Modern IC cars are the result of 100 years of development - modern EVs are less than 20 years old.

And while its true that the chassis and construction of EVs benefits from the advances in IC vehicles, the relative simplicity of electric traction is a definite advantage. Battery technology will improve as it is still early days. LiIon cells are only 15 years or so old.

What's not to like?

[DanceswithUnix]

But EVs have a way to go in development. Modern IC cars are the result of 100 years of development - modern EVs are less than 20 years old.

That seems a tad unfair. There were electric cars right at the start of the automotive era, and I think IC engines have moved on way more than electric motors. Really it is the batteries that are key in an EV, we have got to the point that range and charging speed aren't deal breakers any more.

I think it is unfortunate that diesels got so much development with common rail, which partly down to future emissions regs getting stupidly tight and partly thanks to VW dragging diesel through the mud is now going to be a dead end. Petrol engines are now getting that sort of attention with some amazing tech coming out, shame we couldn't have had it earlier. Just 20 years ago a car with fuel injection and an overhead cam was considered fairly advanced. These days if you haven't got twin cam per bank, variable geometry turbos, continuously variable inlet valve timing (muti-air/valvetronic), direct fuel injection with everything robotized and fly by wire you aren't in the game. But that's what puts me off with modern IC engines, there's just so much to go wrong.

[Moby-Dick]

because he can charge at both end and afford that car to start with. MK to Heathrow is easy miles

Croydon Liverpool Croydon is more impressive. But how long is he there at Liverpool and does he need to go anywhere while it charges? Does he ever go Croydon Liverpool, Manc traffic for 3 hours, then straight back? nope.....

I dont think you even need charging at either end - Depending on your dwell time at each stop would indicate the type of charge you need, if at all. As Far as I know, The only charging the Liverpool run requires is a splash and dash at the Warwick supercharger ( and a full charge at home)

Sitting in traffic isn't that much of a problem - In the same way stop start tech reduces fuel consumption in traffic, an EV crawling along is going to be pretty efficient ( especially if its one you can tweak the regen on )