QOTW: Will your next car be electric?

[kompukare]

Nope, absolutely not. The best internal combustion engines are in the realm of 30% efficient, but there are differences in diesel and petrol due to compression ignition.
[...SNIP...]
You can claim that an electric motor is ~95% efficient however this is in the most efficient states such as cruising. Setting off and so on rapidly diminishes the efficiency.

Hm, so the wikipedia actually said the max thermodynamic limit is 37%, but when in use 18%-20% is about the best you can get:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intern...rgy_efficiency

Okay, fair enough that an electric motor won't be 95% efficient at actual loads, but rather unfair if your quoted 30% figure for ICEs is only the max and not the actual efficiency under actual loads.

I've not looked into the efficiency of the competing technologies or China's investments in renewable energy so i can't comment on those, i only wanted to highlight how it's not a simple matter of EV's good, petrol bad, like most things is a complex picture.

Personally if i ruled the world, or even a country for that matter, I'd be pumping money into fusion reactors as we really need a environmentally friendly source of power and renewables simply can't provide all the power we need, sadly though investment in fusion research is so low it will probably take decades before we crack that nut.

Well, actually renewables probably could provide all the power we need but it would require a big investment:

• lots of PV*
• windmills everywhere - especially onshore where NIMBY's currently object
• pumped-storage hydroelectricity

*but never forget that while PV gets is ~30% efficient, solar hot water heating is closer to 100%: ergo, even in the UK houses should have a few m² of solar water heating before considering PV something the subsidies didn't take into account.

Anyway, fusion has been just around the corner for 50+ years now. Certainly worth spending resources doing more fusion research but in the meantime the nuclear option which is achievable and promising would be Thorium Reactors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
The advantages would be no chance of meltdown, the ability to consume waste products from other reactors, and no chance of weapons grade material.
The theory of the fuel cycle dates back ages but the closest to being developed were a bunch of experimental design decades ago. All rather strange that they never got anywhere unless (and this is almost conspiracy theory) the lack of weapons grade was the reason why, as civilian nuclear and military nuclear have always been very closely related.

[yeeeeman]

If I would have the money, yes, I would.

[philehidiot]

• lots of PV*
• windmills everywhere - especially onshore where NIMBY's currently object
• pumped-storage hydroelectricity

*but never forget that while PV gets is ~30% efficient, solar hot water heating is closer to 100%: ergo, even in the UK houses should have a few m² of solar water heating before considering PV something the subsidies didn't take into account.

Anyway, fusion has been just around the corner for 50+ years now. Certainly worth spending resources doing more fusion research but in the meantime the nuclear option which is achievable and promising would be Thorium Reactors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle

Eh up,

Yeh I was comparing peak efficiency quotes as it would be a mahoosive equation to take into account real world usage, rather than a back of the envelope one. Just a few comments on your comments...

-Wind is a joke, it really is. The downsides, both practically and in terms of engineering issues as well as the noise problems make them a total waste of time. We invested a lit whilst Nick Clegg's wife was working for a German wind farm firm but almost every engineer you speak to will tell you the only reason they have been invested in is government subsidy and that's it. There are FAR better ways of doing it than wind. I would strike this entirely from the list whilst keeping the turbine tech that has been developed for possible hydroelectric purposes.

PV - Now we're talking. 30%? I thought it was 15% until recently. Was speaking to an engineer who is installing the latest generation and they are getting 78%! Plus the panels are said to last around 100 years (just panels, doesn't include ancillary equipment but those panels recently were failing at around 10 years due to the extreme heat). This is not so much due to the underlying tech but the coatings upon it which somehow, without movement, refract the sun straight onto the panel. Far too clever for me. I'd avoid anything with moving parts so I'd be looking at these (not Chinese ones, these are designed in Germany and made in Italy) instead of solar heating. Solid state is far better than anything requiring movement. I think that once these new tiles from Tesla are validated, they should be mandatory on any new builds and decent PV arrays should also be mandatory. Home storage batteries are now saying they'll last 10 years although this sounds like a nice round number to be and no one has run one long enough to confirm it. I also have reservations about increasing our use of lithium batteries on the grounds of manufacture / disposal being an environmental nightmare and the catastropic failure mode isn't exactly "fail safe" so much as "explode in a certain direction". These being in houses does worry me as it's an awful amount of energy potentially being released in a failure. I know we use gas and keep petrol in fuel tanks but fuel tanks are very technical peices of hardware which are very mature and we should strive to ensure modern tech is not as dangerous as stuff we'd have accepted in the past. This kind of domestic generation and storage, combined with a smart system which allows central operators to know how much is stored and thus how much may need to be released from cryo storage (and if they might have to bring a reserve plant online) and the smart stuff which runs your dishwasher, etc when it's sunny could really make an impact. It would be a serious reconfiguration of our energy sector though with some big companies dying if they didn't adapt quickly.

Pumped storage hydro - unless you're making use of existing geographical structures this is actually very, very expensive. These tidal lagoon things are looking at being far more expensive than nuclear as well as being pretty useless (times of tides, production at correct times and so on). I think before investing in these things (which also devastate large areas of land if it's going to be large scale) we should seriously invest in cryo storage research. There's one experimental facility at the moment and it's looking really good for scaling up.

Thorium reactors - are these basically gen IV nukes or something different? I certainly agree on fusion but you also have to remember that nuclear in general can not scale easily with demand. It provides a good output but can't ramp up quickly so you need it supplemented with gas (with the current model, may be different if everyone had solar and batteries). Personally I think we need multiple small nukes like those found on subs (we have the tech!) distributed around the country. This would ensure redundancy, they're each capable of powering a small city and they're very safe. We could build them fairly quickly, we have the trained personel who could down train and it would put a serious dent in our problem without it being a mahooosive undertaking like these current big projects. They would also be relatively cheap - each entire sub was £1.5billion and we'd only need the reactor and turbines parts. Considering the massive cost of the Hinkley program, this seems to me to be quite an efficient and quick way of doing things. The only thing I'm unsure about is fuelling them as I think they run on pretty highly enriched uranium which could present issues in terms of treaties, security and transport.

Finally, allow me to apologise for any spelling errors - I've just dumped Google for Firefox and haven't got my spell checker set up yet.

[Corky34]

Well, actually renewables probably could provide all the power we need but it would require a big investment:

• lots of PV*
• windmills everywhere - especially onshore where NIMBY's currently object
• pumped-storage hydroelectricity

*but never forget that while PV gets is ~30% efficient, solar hot water heating is closer to 100%: ergo, even in the UK houses should have a few m² of solar water heating before considering PV something the subsidies didn't take into account.

The thing is even with the recent increases in renewable energy it still only meets a miniscule amount of the world energy consumption.


Don't get me wrong i think it would be great if we weren't setting fire to billions of tones of valuable resources each year just to produce energy, however the idea that renewable energy in the form of Biomass, Solar, Wind, Tidal, and Geothermal can meet worldwide demand is nothing more than a pipe dream of the green energy brigade, i don't say that in a derogatory manner it's just unless people who champion green energy wake up to the fact that renewables can only reduce our reliance on fossil fuels we're never going to invest in a long term environmentally friendly alternative

Anyway, fusion has been just around the corner for 50+ years now. Certainly worth spending resources doing more fusion research but in the meantime the nuclear option which is achievable and promising would be Thorium Reactors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
The advantages would be no chance of meltdown, the ability to consume waste products from other reactors, and no chance of weapons grade material.
The theory of the fuel cycle dates back ages but the closest to being developed were a bunch of experimental design decades ago. All rather strange that they never got anywhere unless (and this is almost conspiracy theory) the lack of weapons grade was the reason why, as civilian nuclear and military nuclear have always been very closely related.

Even Thorium Reactors come with plenty of down sides, pretty much any reactor based on the splitting atoms have downsides.

Saying fusion has been just around the corner for 50+ years is perhaps an exaggeration but i get your point, however it took centuries of people dreaming about flying among the stars before we finally committed to actually doing something about it, and when we did it only took ten odd years.

[Macman]

Nope.

Petrol for me Powerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

[SHSPVR]

It already is. Picked up a 30Kwh in April this year, trading in my Jag XJL. It is costing me around £2 to charge it up and a charge is lasting around a week at the moment.

Cant understand why more people dont have them. The cost savings cover the cost of the car, to a point where I have a car with no mot, covered under warranty for around £100 per month.

Granted, longer journeys can take some planning but I have ended up borrowing a free car from Nissan for one holiday and renting another car for £100 for a week's holiday. Good chance to test drive other vehicles.

That fine if got good income to afford those over price EV and god help you when have to replace the Battiest, Motor Controller or Motor as there very expensive and poor people will never be able to afford one let alone fix them so that never going to happing any time soon, wow £100/$130 per month for a warranty plus your auto insurance and your car payment on top to boot and from what I under the car insurance quotes for the electric cars are at lease 20%+ higher, on average, than quotes for the gas cars so in long your spending boat load more money in long run hahaha.

[DanceswithUnix]

Pumped storage hydro - unless you're making use of existing geographical structures this is actually very, very expensive. These tidal lagoon things are looking at being far more expensive than nuclear as well as being pretty useless (times of tides, production at correct times and so on). I think before investing in these things (which also devastate large areas of land if it's going to be large scale) we should seriously invest in cryo storage research. There's one experimental facility at the moment and it's looking really good for scaling up.

There are interesting things being done with underwater pumped storage. Build concrete domes underwater, and then pump the water *out*, providing stored energy for letting the water back in.

Back to the topic: I recently bought Petrol, after my first and hopefully last Diesel. I keep cars for 5 years usually, so I expect the next one to be at least a hybrid and preferably full electric, but 5 years is a long time. OTOH, a Giulia Quadrifoglio will be down to affordable second hand money by then for probably a future classic.

Which is an interesting thought, which of the current electric cars can you see being paraded at classic car shows in 20 years time? Most are at best capable, but not memorable and certainly not aspirational. Maybe the Tesla Roadster as that was a watershed moment car, shame they don't make them any more.

[philehidiot]

There are interesting things being done with underwater pumped storage. Build concrete domes underwater, and then pump the water *out*, providing stored energy for letting the water back in.

SNIP

Which is an interesting thought, which of the current electric cars can you see being paraded at classic car shows in 20 years time? Most are at best capable, but not memorable and certainly not aspirational. Maybe the Tesla Roadster as that was a watershed moment car, shame they don't make them any more.

I like the idea of that kind of pumped storage and using essentially gravitational potential energy - I wonder if you could use old open cast mines or quarries for this so the digging is already done? I'll have a google (actually, a DuckDuckGo) but if you have a link to anything interesting I'd love to read it. I've heard of pumping up above dams at cheap rate and then letting loose during expensive times which was just a cost saving measure for business (this was many moons ago before renewables took off). If you could do something similar with renewables it might also be a decent environmental measure. Couldn't use wind, I suppose it would have to be solar and that would also be useful for EVs as you'd end up storing during the day and being able to release overnight when a lot of people are charging their cars.

I think the G Wizz will become a "classic" in the same way the Peel P50 is. It's small, crummy, barely practical whilst trying to be such and awful to use but I bet it'll have collectors (who may have dredged them out of the Thames where kids have "redistributed" them). I reckon a variety of Teslas will be. Whether they are genuine classics in the traditional sense or not, there's such a cult (almost) around Musk that I reckon there will be some hardcore followers whose enthusiasm turns those cars into classics. I think the new "affordable" Tesla may well end up being a classic as it was the moment when useful electric cars which were actually half decent to drive and use became affordable to the middle class.

[peterb]

Don't get me wrong i think it would be great if we weren't setting fire to billions of tones of valuable resources each year just to produce energy, however the idea that renewable energy in the form of Biomass, Solar, Wind, Tidal, and Geothermal can meet worldwide demand is nothing more than a pipe dream of the green energy brigade, i don't say that in a derogatory manner it's just unless people who champion green energy wake up to the fact that renewables can only reduce our reliance on fossil fuels we're never going to invest in a long term environmentally friendly alternative.

Being somewhat pedantic, you don't burn fuel to produce energy, your burn it to release stored energy, and so-called fossil fuels are renewable - just not in the short term. And if you take things to their logical conclusion, all energy converted on this plant is nuclear in origin - the reactor being 93 million miles away.

PV cells are one way of converting the suns power output to another form, plants and photosynthesis is another, converting carbon dioxide to complex carbohydrates. There have been lines of research to photosynthesise products directly, which would be another method of harnessing the sun's power.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arti...photosynthesis

[Corky34]

Being somewhat pedantic....

Only somewhat but i wouldn't expect anything less on a techie forum.

PV cells are one way of converting the suns power output to another form, plants and photosynthesis is another, converting carbon dioxide to complex carbohydrates. There have been lines of research to photosynthesise products directly, which would be another method of harnessing the sun's power.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arti...photosynthesis

Well we'd need something other than traditional PV cells as from what i gather there's not enough silver in the world to manufacture all the cells that would be needed.

[adidan]

Whatever happened to that Norwegian Osmosis plant?

As for Thorium, looks like it's back on the agenda with molten salt reactors.

[1stRaven]

That fine if got good income to afford those over price EV and god help you when have to replace the Battiest, Motor Controller or Motor as there very expensive and poor people will never be able to afford one let alone fix them so that never going to happing any time soon, wow £100/$130 per month for a warranty plus your auto insurance and your car payment on top to boot and from what I under the car insurance quotes for the electric cars are at lease 20%+ higher, on average, than quotes for the gas cars so in long your spending boat load more money in long run hahaha.

My electric car is costing me half of what I use to spend, and that doesn't include the fuel savings..

Battery packs are now expected to last over 10 years, with the development of battery controllers.
Motors - Haven't heard of any failures of these and an electric motor is going to be more reliable that an internal combustion engine.

[KN1GHT]

Well I'm not into cars at all so no, but as for a bike. Maybe. Depends how long my Honda CBR1000RR will last me and how expensive these electric versions will be. I'm actually all for it. If only they kept the nice sound of the liter bikes. When you open the throttle on a electric super-bike it sounds pretty good as well though, but still a tad bit too quiet for my taste and as they say loud bikes can save lives.

so far with my twin brothers exhaust system it seems loudness does help people notice you and as a biker every little thing helps.

[big_hairy_rob]

I'd consider it should the cost be worth it, but I'm not likely to find anything suitable for the right price; however, I am more tempted to consider switching to public transport.

[philehidiot]

Battery packs are now expected to last over 10 years, with the development of battery controllers.
Motors - Haven't heard of any failures of these and an electric motor is going to be more reliable that an internal combustion engine.

I do not know what kind of motors are used in EVs however I would not expect them to last as a unit as long as an internal combustion engine. It may be that they are essentially modular, like an engine, and that various parts of the motor (such as brushes) are serviceable. Knowing what I know of high torque motors, I would expect them to be a point of failure (there are multiple failure modes of an electric motor, usually related to heating / cooling cycles) but as I say, I'm ignorant of the design in use in EVs. Personally, if I were running a service network, I'd have the motors exchanged every so often with a refurbished one and then the old one sent off for refurbishing and put into another vehicle, etc. You'd just order in the motor required along with the service pack for the vehicle.

[Ttaskmaster]

Cant understand why more people dont have them. The cost savings cover the cost of the car, to a point where I have a car with no mot, covered under warranty for around £100 per month.

An Nvidia Titan XP Quad-SLI is such an awesome setup and you won't have to buy a new GPU for a good five years, probably. I don't know why more people don't have them.......

I'm sure you save a load of money.... but you need a load of money to buy one first. And you will still need an MOT after 3 years, just like any other road vehicle. Plus insurance costs... and they will end up being taxed.

Diesel cars are rubbish to drive (especially if your journey doesn't start and end at 70mph on the motorway, but actually involves towns at any point), and are driven by people who hate driving.

Lies, lies, and lies. I love driving... I prefer riding, but still, I love driving. Don't have a problem with towns either and still average about 40-mpg in them.

More people should be absolutely rejoicing they're going away.

The only people rejoicing are those who can afford them... and the occasional hippy.

Isn't the best ICE around 25-30% efficient whereas an electric motor is closer to 100%?

I'm sure they are.
They tell me storage heaters are the most efficient form of home heating, but they still cost a bomb to run!

Anyway, fusion has been just around the corner for 50+ years now. Certainly worth spending resources doing more fusion research but in the meantime the nuclear option which is achievable and promising would be Thorium Reactors:

Been saying this for years...

All rather strange that they never got anywhere unless (and this is almost conspiracy theory) the lack of weapons grade was the reason why, as civilian nuclear and military nuclear have always been very closely related.

I thought it was well understood that research into thorium was clearly abandoned in 1964/5 because they wanted something easily refined into weapons grade, which is precisely what thoruim isn't.
I copuld always ask the guys at AWE round the corner, if you like?