Electric cars

[springswood]

I've been really enjoying Fifth Gear Recharged. Nice to have a source of info on EVs that's got a positive attitude that evaluates them as cars. Exemplified by VBH's attitude to the Honda e

It seems they do rather well, not least I suspect because the torque character of an electric motor is actually suited to driving. Dare I say an internal combustion engine is not. To get one with enough torque to be fun you end up with so much excess power it will do dangerously high speeds. Then there's the ludicrous complexity with hundreds of parts sliding and reciprocating and vibrating.

Did anyone see the wacky prototype in the first show? It's covered in solar cells and they reckon it'll pick up about 15 miles of charge a day even in Germany. That might work for me as I don't have off street parking. Plus the car is a practical supermini body not unlike a Jazz. Be a couple of years before there's a right hand drive version.

I hope we may be getting to the point where there's more to be said about EVs than range anxiety and complaining about charging infrastructure. Rather highlighted to me when the person on the checkout in a supermarket the other day was saying - EV's are great, just get one. I wish I'd asked which they had... Me want.

[culzean]

Solar power in Northern Europe OK between April and September,  except when cloud cover.  Solar between October and March - useless,  look how solar hugs the X axis of the graph on gridwatch ( like wind often does )...  Solar is OK in a desert on the equator..

[Neil Ives]

I wonder if fans of EV forget where the energy comes from. Drivers of an EV should not be environment guilt free.

[Jocko]

The car in question just used solar, when the sun was shining, as a mini top-up. In no way was it meant to be as a means of recharging the vehicle,
Copenhagen's International School generates 300-megawatt hours of energy per year from their solar panels. Though energy production decreases with increasingly dense cloud cover, panels continue working to a greater capacity than one may expect. The good news is that even when covered with snow, solar panels can generate electricity.

[Jocko]

Personally, it doesn't trouble me where the energy for an EV comes from. They could be burning tigers to generate electricity. I want an EV for the simplicity and the driving experience, not as a means of reducing global warming.

[John Ratsey]

The good news is that even when covered with snow, solar panels can generate electricity.

Please tell that to the panels on my roof. A thin layer of snow on them means zero output.

[culzean]

The good news is that even when covered with snow, solar panels can generate electricity.

Please tell that to the panels on my roof. A thin layer of snow on them means zero output.

I have noticed on gridwatch that the slightest, thinnest cloud cover and solar drops alarmingly.. One of our CCTV cameras is fed by a solar panel to keep battery topped up, I noticed after a few cloudy days the charge in the battery has dropped.. 

[madasafish]

At 9.19am it is cloudy and UK solar output is err 0.05GW.

[culzean]

At 9.19am it is cloudy and UK solar output is err 0.05GW.

With installed capacity of about 25GW wind and 14GW solar in UK we rarely see more than 4GW solar and 12GW wind,  the problem with renewables is 'intermittency' - and grid level storage,  even for a few hours is horrendously expensive..  Solar in UK is pretty useless for 6 months of the year,  and even in high summer only good for 8 to 9 hours a day,  and even then cloud massively reduces output.   Better output could be had from solar if the panels followed the suns path,  but that would be very expensive,  so we are stuck with a hump at midday and dropping off quite sharply either side ( a sine wave shape ) - the attractive thing about solar for the people who own and install the farms are the subsidies... and who pays for them ?

[culzean]

Sobering thought from an article,  which mentions that China is presently buying all the coal it can get coal from many countries... Of course China will happily sell electric vehicles, but as for decarbonising its economy anytime soon, maybe not.

"For President Xi, the decarbonisation agenda is just a very easy way to get the West to weaken itself. He will make all the right noises, but nothing more."

[richardfrost]

Sobering thought from an article,  which mentions that China is presently buying all the coal it can get coal from many countries... Of course China will happily sell electric vehicles, but as for decarbonising its economy anytime soon, maybe not.

"For President Xi, the decarbonisation agenda is just a very easy way to get the West to weaken itself. He will make all the right noises, but nothing more."

It is a sobering thought, which only makes sense if you have a deep distrust of China, which I accept some people do. For me, I believe Putin and Xi are mainly aiming to defend their own nations, but there strategy does involve attempting to destabilise others. Promising not to build any more coal fired power stations outside China seems, on the face of it, a good thing. But there is no promise not to build any more within China. So it strengthens their short term position in terms of having a stable supply of energy. A very trick one to call and requires a lot of trust in them to eventually work towards their 2060 target. By which time China will have a different leader.

[ColinB]

From yesterday’s Tortoise.com:

“Toyota’s big bet
Toyota says it will spend $35 billion retooling factories and redesigning cars so that by 2030 it’s producing 30 fully electric models. It’s hard to overstate what a capitulation this is to the all-battery approach Tesla has popularised on the other side of the Pacific. Toyota was an early adopter of hybrid tech in its Priuses. It has been fascinated for decades by fuel cells and was the first big manufacturer to bring a fuel cell car to market. But it has been conspicuously and deliberately slow to invest in all-battery cars, and now it’s admitting that was the wrong call. If you can’t hear Elon Musk yelling “I told you so” that’s because you’re not in the room or he doesn’t feel the need. But he has sneered at hybrids as unnecessarily complicated ever since his first roadster stunned the critics 13 years ago. The world’s biggest car maker (Toyota) has now joined the world’s second-biggest car maker (VW) in officially playing catch-up.”

Perhaps not surprising given that anything with an ICE - including hybrids - are being legislated out of existence. More surprising though is that Honda are introducing more hybrids just as their rivals are getting out.

[culzean]

From yesterday’s Tortoise.com:

“Toyota’s big bet
Toyota says it will spend $35 billion retooling factories and redesigning cars so that by 2030 it’s producing 30 fully electric models. It’s hard to overstate what a capitulation this is to the all-battery approach Tesla has popularised on the other side of the Pacific. Toyota was an early adopter of hybrid tech in its Priuses. It has been fascinated for decades by fuel cells and was the first big manufacturer to bring a fuel cell car to market. But it has been conspicuously and deliberately slow to invest in all-battery cars, and now it’s admitting that was the wrong call. If you can’t hear Elon Musk yelling “I told you so” that’s because you’re not in the room or he doesn’t feel the need. But he has sneered at hybrids as unnecessarily complicated ever since his first roadster stunned the critics 13 years ago. The world’s biggest car maker (Toyota) has now joined the world’s second-biggest car maker (VW) in officially playing catch-up.”

Perhaps not surprising given that anything with an ICE - including hybrids - are being legislated out of existence. More surprising though is that Honda are introducing more hybrids just as their rivals are getting out.

This is a triumph of stupid legislation over good engineering and common sense... not Musk. 

[madasafish]

EVs will be a success until countries screw up their electricity production and end up with an overdependence on electricity.

A dark calm spell ## such as we are having now in the middle of a cold winter leading to blackouts, failure of home heating and EVs stranded without charge will change attitudes  . The resulting court cases over deaths could last decades.
The UK is going merrily along that course.

## or a major Icelandic volcanic eruption lasting for weeks. But that could never happen surely? errr....

[John Ratsey]

Here's s couple of graphics that summarise the situation.