Electric cars: five big questions, and probably more...

[niemeyjt]

Well at least France has its nukes still and the inclination to build more. Successive idiots in Germany have all but destroyed theirs - and the UK planning system delays makes rollout slow to say the least.

[DominicBest]

This YouTube video was an eye opener for me and illustrated how my preconceived ideas about electric cars range and practicality were wrong. I’d listened to the armchair experts like the one above basing their ICE pattern of using maximum range and saw problems. I knew that for most of the time an EV would be fine but the problem would come on my days out where I would have to find a restaurant and another attraction close to a charging point to allow me to drive there and back on the same day. That was going to be a limiting factor. The YouTube journey on the link showed me I was wrong to believe that that was how it worked. For nearly all the places I would have visited and the range of the EVs I was interested in getting there was a much better solution, I could travel for about an hour and a half, stop for a coffee while the car quickly recharged most of the energy used and then have enough range to get home. If I ate somewhere near to another charger that would be a bonus. Basically the ICE logic says if you want to drive 600km and have a range of 500 you drive as far as you feel comfortable and then top up. The same logic applied to an EV might mean a very long stop at the mid-point and that is the argument used against EVs. The journey on the video has more shorter stops utilising the periods of battery charging when the battery charging is at its most efficient and avoiding those periods when it charges very slowly. It means a change of routine but it also defeats the negative theories about the impracticality of using EVs for longer journeys. Since then one of my cousins has had an electric Audi as her company car, her husband also has a company car, a diesel estate. For their family holidays they always take the EV. Clean, efficient and fast, what’s not to like?
https://www.google.com/gasearch?q=tesla ... 7p9W0,st:0

[Biloute]

I can see a new "Green Tax" being levied to pay for the new nuclear power plants and pylons that will be needed. We are already in a position of barely producing enough during winters of high demand. If the money that is being squeezed out of the motorist was put toward better and cheaper public transport the cost of fuel alone would probably be enough to reduce car usage.

No doubt about it ! The state makes a lot of money thanks to taxes on gasoline and diesel. If we replace them with electricity, they will have to find something to compensate. It will be easy for charging stations on the roads thanks to a basic meter. At home, it seems that your friend Linky is able to detect when you recharge your car's battery to make you put more money in the pot.

[L Austin France]

I get 1400 ks a tank out of my Citroën C4.

Similar here. Our 1.6 hdi C4 constantly does that on 3k round trips to the Orkney Isles proved by counting actual fuel used in 60 litre tank.
Our semi retired 23 year old 2.0 hdi pug 806 still does pretty much the same km/l but more km from it's 80l tank.
It'll take some serious argument, or government brute force, to convince me to 'go electric'.

[Hotrodder]

Or as my previous link suggests, the insurance companys will refuse to cover ice cars at some point so we have no other option. If I was looking forward to another decade or so of driving I would be searching for a cheap tractor with a cab. They seem to be exempt from too many restrictions and they are unlikely to be electrified. Maybe they will have us all eating some sort of mush grown in a hydroponics lab making land cultivation redundant.

[RobertArthur]

From yesterday's pictures. One thought struck me: by calling it an ECOTAP, giving you the green light after paying, isn't there a similarity with medieval practices of the Catholic Church, paying (or praying) to get an indulgence, not feeling too guilty anymore over your sins? With nowadays the added benefit of belonging to the Electric Saints, moral high ground, the others, petrolheads, worshipping the devil, are the sinners. Not a really good start for a rational, fact based discussion I'm afraid.

The five big questions as answered (?) in that BBC article tried to avoid other big questions. There we go again.

1/ Grid congestion, what are we going to do about the already overloaded grid? Doubling the production capacity and the transport capacity and at the same time meeting the 2030 and 2050 climate targets? Not easy.

2/ Congestion management. The continuing promise of new technologies to save old technology. A better coordination between producers and consumers. Clever high-tech AI to predict possible problems, the peak hours problem. In combination with more traditional methods: financial instruments, compensation, rewards and punishments. Trying to convince consumers to use less electricity during peak hours, shaving off demand. Only finetuning?

3/ Energy saving. Use led lights and please, office buildings, they indeed do still use a fair amount of power, please turn out the lights at night. Do not consider these buildings as 24/7 Christmas trees, all year round. The public already took note of these ugly buildings, no need for this unneessary corporate PR.
Anything else? Prevent stealth usage, continue with the insulating of buildings, solar panels (on every roof?), heat pumps (also energy consumers...).

4/ Energy/battery storage. Use thermal storage or gravity and rainfall. Are battteries going to rescue the continuity of the electric power supply? Rising expectations here. One of the unanswered questions is, IMO, that more thought could be given to the enviromental impact of battery production.

Use the battery of your own EV to keep you warm at night? Easier said than done, this is still rather complicated, risk of overcrowding and overcharging your existing tableau électrique. And as long as not everybody has a solar panel ready roof, energy needed to feed these batteries, the overall impact will still be a minor one. It still is a component of the dreams about the virtual power grid, generating your own energy, storing it and sharing it.

5/ More wind farms? . Let's also invest in more ships for the Royal Navy and other NATO member states to keep a close eye on all those Russian (fisher?)ships interested in the cables in the seabed of the North Sea. Vulnerabilities all around our modern energy and telecom infrastructure.

6/ Let's recycle. Why buy a new smartphone as soon as it fits in the marketing strategies of the producers? Buy now or be outdated? Look who is here, a warm welcome to Fred Flintstone and his phone. What about the enviromental effects of shipping, all those soon-to-be-thrown-away consumer goods transported over the Seven Seas?

7/ To conclude: more questions than answers. I'm just a soul whose intentions are good, only small steps, but will this be enough?

[L Austin France]

Use thermal storage or gravity and rainfall. Are battteries going to rescue the continuity of the electric power supply?

Pumped storage seems a good way to store 'leccy for almost instantaneous use when required.
Years ago our trade association had a tour of the Dinorwig station. Now that was something to hear & behold when they 'let it rip'.

[Nomoss]

" .............. We're banning the sale of ICE cars soon so everyone will have buy an electric car or use public transport"

"But I can't afford an electric car, I would get mown down if I drove an Ami on the roads around here and it only has room for two, we have only two buses per day, and you shut down our railway years ago"

"Oh yes, sorry, we forgot about that. It seemed a good idea at the time"

"But you didn't have to sell the track for scrap and sell off the rights of way"

"The ones still left are nice for cycle riding though"

"We can't get to them, though. You're taking our cars and there are no trains"

[Hotrodder]

We will be confined to our "pods" working from home, having everything we need purchased on Amazon and delivered to the door by drones. Social interaction will be by smartphone only and procreation by arrangement with a sperm bank. Geo-tracking chips will be surgically inserted at birth for monitoring purposes.

[Nomoss]

We will be confined to our "pods" working from home, having everything we need purchased on Amazon and delivered to the door by drones. Social interaction will be by smartphone only and procreation by arrangement with a sperm bank. Geo-tracking chips will be surgically inserted at birth for monitoring purposes.

Stalin couldn't have done better.