Reading through this thread I realise what it is I have against purely electric cars. The whole point of the motor car is the comparative freedom that it gives us to go where we want, when we want.
Fair point. Owning the current incarnation of an EV is a life full of planning, timetables & discipline. If I wanted that in my life I'd take the f***ing bus!
You might drive the few miles to your office in your EV and in mid-morning suddenly need to do a 100-mile business trip.
Last Tuesday I got a phonecall as I was having my morning toast, telling me somebody has gone sick and one of our retail outlets therefore won't be open. I then had to get down to HQ to fetch site keys & alarm codes, then get 60 miles to cover the site.
Imagine if I only had 40 miles of charge left...
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They only make sense for a subset of commuters who know they won't do more than half the available range each way. Though for someone who is in that subset, an EV would be a gem. If they can charge up at work too that would bring advantages in extending the battery's life, since apparently the batteries last longer when kept topped-up. Not an issue for leased units though, I guess. It would make having an economy-7 electricity tariff worthwhile, too.
Seems like this country's bigger problem is the electricity generation one people have mentioned. At least we have one new nuclear station in the pipeline now but could do with a lot more to avoid either a) being held to ransom by Putin for gas, or b) covering the countryside in wind-farms.
Must say I thought the Top Gear piece was genuinely informative and brought some of the issues out into the open for those of us who don't keep up with the technical developments. The brass-rubbing bit was pricelss too...
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The only "electric" car that makes sense to me is the Chevrolet Volt/Vauxhall Ampera a prechargable range extender - perfectly sensible.
That Top Gear episode where the "Pious" wins the economy test still annoys me to this very day - they gave everyone a gallon of fuel to see how far they could drive in their economic petrol/diesel and hybrid cars - did they start he Pious with a flat traction battery pack? Did they heck, so it started the biased test with a gallon of fuel plus however much fuel it took to charge the traction batteries.
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Apologies for not making a further contribution to the thread I started due to various distractions. Many interesting comments and it looks like the jury is still out. Can't see the economy of having the hassle of two engines in a hybrid and electric is useless for long journeys. Mrs M says if it does not use petrol, have gears and 200 HP she is not interested - but at least she buys her own cars!
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Now that is a proper woman you've got yourself there.
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I like the idea of a electric car as I do less than 20 miles a day in commuting but a weekends we tend do a couple of hundred miles on average and the limited range is what puts me off at the moment. But how about longliverty of these cars can u expect them to still be reliable in 10 years time and could the rack up high milage like a normal car?
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Electric cars don't need to be designed to last for vast mileages - they're only feasible for commuting runs so unlikely to ever do high mileage.
They may make sense for two-car families but means more mileage and emissions for the other, presumably, conventional car.
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Electric cars don't need to be designed to last for vast mileages - they're only feasible for commuting runs so unlikely to ever do high mileage.
They may make sense for two-car families but means more mileage and emissions for the other, presumably, conventional car.
My commuting run is a round trip of 75 miles a day which means I do 19K a year in total. An EV will be of no use for me whatsoever.
They are only any use to lentil munching Guardian readers on a holier than thou quest to prove how stupid er green they are. Shame is that our idiot politicians are totally in thrall to the lentil munchers.
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They are only any use to lentil munching Guardian readers on a holier than thou quest to prove how stupid er green they are. Shame is that our idiot politicians are totally in thrall to the lentil munchers.
Oh dear, another bit of sour stereotyping .... but I guess it must be cathartic for the writer.
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The received wisdom is that you will need a new battery pack, at a cost of £ A lot after about 7 years. This may be why Renault do a lease/rental schemme on their battery packs?
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www.greencarreports.com/news/1084588_update-on-hig...r
I know its from an American website and hes had to have a charging station put in at his place of work and a charge halfway but it seems to be holding up to the high milage.
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Reading through this thread I realise what it is I have against purely electric cars. The whole point of the motor car is the comparative freedom that it gives us to go where we want, when we want.
Fair point. Owning the current incarnation of an EV is a life full of planning, timetables & discipline. If I wanted that in my life I'd take the f***ing bus!
You might drive the few miles to your office in your EV and in mid-morning suddenly need to do a 100-mile business trip.
Last Tuesday I got a phonecall as I was having my morning toast, telling me somebody has gone sick and one of our retail outlets therefore won't be open. I then had to get down to HQ to fetch site keys & alarm codes, then get 60 miles to cover the site.
Imagine if I only had 40 miles of charge left...
The Better Place range was meant to solve this problem with battery swap stations. The company failed through lack of take up. They opened for business in Israel (where the idea was designed), Denmark and Australia, none of which is a high population country. They would have been better to start in the UK and Germany. Pity. I know someone who had a Better Place Renault Fluence ZE and he loved it.
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A factory in Germany purely for batteries and battery replacement it has never had any machinery installed it lies empty.perhaps the release today of two new BMW battery cars might kick start the program.
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I'll tell you what I really don't 'get' about Electric Cars, it boils down to one question really;
What's the point?
Seriously. What purpose are they meant to serve?
They can't be to save us from the world running out of oil, because they told us we'd run out in the 1970s yet here we are still. Brazil has just discovered an offshore Saudi Arabia in its own seas, it's not like the stuffs running out anytime soon.
They can't be to save us from the world burning to a crisp next Tuesday, because the climate change lobby has since been hilariously discredited that the general populace doesn't believe them.
They also make no sense from a mere inferstructure point of view. Britain is set to run out of electricity in 2015, so why are we encouraging people to power cars from the plug?
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I'll tell you what I really don't 'get' about Electric Cars,
Seriously. What purpose are they meant to serve?
They can't be to save us from the world running out of oil, because they told us we'd run out in the 1970s yet here we are still.
Just because it didn't run out last time, it does not follow that it never will. Especially as the rate of consumption shows no sign of falling. We all expect the oil companies to go on extracting crude from ever more impossible places (e.g. bottom of sea, Arctic regions) and selling their product to us cheaply.
In any case electric cars are still burning fossil fuel, unless the charging comes from a nuclear power station. Their CO2 just comes out somewhere else.
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Everytime they start to scaremonger about running out of oil, they go and find another 50 trillion barrels worth somewhere else. The biggest 'threat' to oil supplies and prices isn't the amount of oil in the ground, it's the amount of oil the OPEC nations choose to produce. Whenever it gets 'too cheap' the Saudis just switch to a four day week to produce less.
If Electric Cars were viable, they wouldn't need Government subsidy. If Wind Energy really worked, they wouldn't need Government subsidy.
When oil eventually runs out, it's replacement won't be engineered by Government. In fact Government will probably be the biggest obsticle to overcome.
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If Electric Cars were viable, they wouldn't need Government subsidy. If Wind Energy really worked, they wouldn't need Government subsidy.
Roof insulation works, but many people are too tight to pay for it. The Govt would like more people to get it, so there is a subsidy.
Solar panels work, but to make it easier for suppliers to get started the Govt subsidised the tariff. Quite a few benefits (small B) would be less accessible if subsidies were banned.
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Perhaps if Government didn't rapaciously assault peoples incomes to subsidise the few, then maybe more people would feel able to buy roof insulation themselves. It's up to those selling roof insulation to convince the market it's worth buying, but now they largely don't have to, because the State is picking up the bill.
The technology of producing electricity with a solar panel may well work, but the reason you see massive Solar Farms taking up good farmland, pushing up food bills is because there's Government encouragement for building them. When people (companies and individuals) start making things to earn a subsidy, it's not good. If you promise tax breaks for buying/making things you want them to buy/make, then obviously they will do so.
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Perhaps if Government didn't rapaciously assault peoples incomes to subsidise the few, then maybe ....
So it's all down to market forces then? Don't bother with insulation, just burn a bit more fuel. Ah, the price is going up - h*ll, I can't afford to insulate my roof, I must be paying too much tax ....
Anarchists?
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massive Solar Farms taking up good farmland, pushing up food bills
Hoho, Jamie. Personally I don't see the difference between subsidising farmers for generating power and subsidising them for producing food which they can't sell at a free market price.
If we ended farm subsidies tomorrow (a good idea, in my opinion), we'd find out that most of the UK agricultural sector is not viable in a free market. Won't happen though, because the major landowners who benefit from these subsidies permanently have the ear of government.
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I don't see the difference between subsidising farmers for generating power and subsidising them for producing food which they can't sell at a free market price.
I do.
we'd find out that most of the UK agricultural sector is not viable in a free market.
major landowners who benefit from these subsidies permanently have the ear of government.
Well it's very little to do with the British Government really, it all stems from the European Unions Common Agricultural Policy, which the French President of any political stripe is expected to fight to the death to preserve at every Brussels summit.
Subsidies need to change. The incentive for farmers needs to be to produce as much food as possible so cut them a deal whereby encourage maximum land use.
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I don't see the difference between subsidising farmers for generating power and subsidising them for producing food which they can't sell at a free market price.
I do. Well, what is it?
we'd find out that most of the UK agricultural sector is not viable in a free market.
major landowners who benefit from these subsidies permanently have the ear of government.
Subsidies need to change. The incentive for farmers needs to be to produce as much food as possible so cut them a deal whereby encourage maximum land use.
Are you in farming? You might take a different view. 'Cut them a deal?' Perhaps offer a subsidy?
Enough farmers already leave the land because making a living that way can be living on a knife-edge. Would you rather have less and less UK land usefully farmed, and become even more dependent on imports?
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Well, what is it?
The difference is clear. You can't grow lettuce at the bottom of the sea, but you can certainly get energy from there. So let's take energy from there and grow food where food can grow, rather than using it for fuel.
Are you in farming? You might take a different view. 'Cut them a deal?' Perhaps offer a subsidy?
I'm in favour of a subsidy if it helps produce affordable food for the public. That's a good use of public money, unfortunately too much of it is now going to landowners rather than active farmers and there's little incentive to actually use the land you have.
I'm not in favour of subsidies for multinational conglomerates to sell things they otherwise couldn't sell.
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In any case electric cars are still burning fossil fuel, unless the charging comes from a nuclear power station. Their CO2 just comes out somewhere else.
Which produces less CO2 though? A tank of petrol or diesel or the equivalent of electricity?
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In any case electric cars are still burning fossil fuel, unless the charging comes from a nuclear power station. Their CO2 just comes out somewhere else.
Which produces less CO2 though? A tank of petrol or diesel or the equivalent of electricity?
It depends on how the electricity is generated - hydro and nuclear power stations don't emit CO2, coal and gas fired stations do, but their overall thermal efficiency is probably higher than a diesel which is not operating in an efficient mode.
Wind power I refuse to accept as a viable power source, if there is no wind it might as well not exist, wind can't be controlled, so if you want light to read the paper by and depend entirely on it, wait till sunrise or the next breeze.
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It depends on how the electricity is generated - hydro and nuclear power stations don't emit CO2, coal and gas fired stations do, but their overall thermal efficiency is probably higher than a diesel which is not operating in an efficient mode.
Wind power I refuse to accept as a viable power source, if there is no wind it might as well not exist, wind can't be controlled, so if you want light to read the paper by and depend entirely on it, wait till sunrise or the next breeze.
That's why nuclear power is the lesser of several evils - England cannot ever cope alone on weather dependent energy sources like solar, wind or tidal so will always have to top up with nuclear, coal, gas or oil fired stations - of which nuclear is the cleanest albeit we have to store the spent waste but that's not large volume.
Scotland might cope on weather dependent sources but for the concentration of demand in the Central Belt where they'll always need to "import" huge amounts of energy.
Wales might cope with weather dependent sources but only by covering the country in pumped storage schemes to store the energy when the sun was shining, wind was blowing, etc and release the energy back when needed.
Northern Ireland would probably be similar to England in this respect.
On top of all that, there's transmission losses is the power cables and all the various transformers, that enough to power a region on it's own!
Edited by RT on 19/11/2013 at 08:20
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< That's why nuclear power is the lesser of several evils - England cannot ever cope alone on weather dependent energy sources like solar, wind or tidal so will always have to top up with nuclear, coal, gas or oil fired stations - of which nuclear is the cleanest albeit we have to store the spent waste but that's not large volume. >
It's all fine and dandy until something goes wrong, as the Japanese recently discovered. We are lucky not to be in an earthquake zone, but remember Chernobyl. Cleaning up a failed fossil-fuelled power station is imaginably possible. With radioactivity you have to wait decades, centuries or longer for it to die down, or dilute the whole problem on an impossible scale. When human error can be eliminated, nuclear will be a brilliant option.
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Human error will never be eliminated.
You need to look to Nuclear Fussion power - if we can get it up and running as planned it will give all the benefits of a Nuclear power station without the downsides.
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I think we are at the very beginign of electri mobiles. I bet in 2-3 years time they will be able to travel at least 300 miles without recharghing the battery. I mean take a look at some Teslo mobiles, they have an enouromous potential.
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I think we are at the very beginign of electri mobiles. I bet in 2-3 years time they will be able to travel at least 300 miles without recharghing the battery. I mean take a look at some Teslo mobiles, they have an enouromous potential.
I agree - the world of cars and how they are powered is under a lot of change at the moment. From electric cars, through to hybrids.
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It's all fine and dandy until something goes wrong, as the Japanese recently discovered. We are lucky not to be in an earthquake zone, but remember Chernobyl
What did Japan discover well that they should a decommsioned the power plan at the end of there natual life and not to put them on an earth quake zone.
Chernobyl used RBMK reactors while cheap to build are not safe (yes they are still in operation). Lession being you must have a full containment structure.. That directly affected some 148,000 people and took two years and 800,00 people to get under control.
What ever is said or done things happen and we need ways to contain them safely. It's the way forward but care is needed.
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^ agreed, and in addition to the RBMK being a bad design, they were playing silly b*****s with it at the time, which caused the event.
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110 years or so years ago there were very few cars on the road. People at the time were 100% sure they would never catch on for the masses. Horses were reliable and were fueled by simply adding hay and water when needed which was available in most towns. Cars needed petrol and there were very few filling stations meaning your range was limited to the fuel you could take or you had to carefully plan your route to ensure refueling was possible.
Move onto today. Cars with internal combustion engines are reliable and are fueled simply by adding petrol or diesel which is available at any of the 1000's of filling stations and supermarkets across the country. Electric cars obviously need electricity and there are relatively few places when you can top up, you need to ensure you have enough when you set off or plan your route very carefully to ensure you pass a charging point.
Sound familiar.
Technology progresses so much faster today than it did 110 years ago, there is no way it will take the same time for electric cars to become viable transport as it did internal combustion powered cars.
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For me at least, the issue is less about the viability of electric cars - of that I have few doubts - but their emissions.
If the same emissions are being produced, merely away from the vehicle at a power station, why go electric?
Only perhaps if we go fully nuclear to produce the electricity? Of course, if the oil does run out, electric gives us options.
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If the same emissions are being produced, merely away from the vehicle at a power station, why go electric?
And mark my words, there will be more accidents because no-one can hear the gosh-darned things coming. We need a man with a red flag. Harrumph.
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If the same emissions are being produced, merely away from the vehicle at a power station, why go electric?
And mark my words, there will be more accidents because no-one can hear the gosh-darned things coming. We need a man with a red flag. Harrumph.
They could give the car a sort of ring tone so your Nissan leaf or gewiz could sound like a Ferrari or a jag.
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And mark my words, there will be more accidents because no-one can hear the gosh-darned things coming. We need a man with a red flag. Harrumph.
You can hear them coming - most of the noise is from the tyres. Engine noise is only noticed from something like a TVR :)
At low speeds you have a point, although I would welcome some peace and cleaner air in built up areas.
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QUOTE:...""If the same emissions are being produced, merely away from the vehicle at a power station, why go electric?""
At the moment all the fuss is about emissions, but as oil gets more scarce and expensive, we will be forced to rely more and more on renewable energy. The depletion of finite fossil fuels is an inescapable fact.
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