Author Topic: Electric cars  (Read 694623 times)

Jocko

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #495 on: November 17, 2017, 10:12:56 PM »
while Tesla will be more like Aston-Martin - producing high margin cars but not many of them
So what you are saying is Tesla and Aston Martin are both crap because they both build some of the best cars of their class. Aston Martin spent years pushing the envelope and now Tesla are doing it with EVs.
And today it has been announced that Jaguar are trialling driverless cars in the streets of Coventry. Not that it counts. After all Jaguar is another niche market, selling luxury performance cars.
Tesla sells a lot of cars. The company's Model S was the world's best-selling plug-in electric car in 2015 and 2016. Global sales of the Model S reached 150,000 units in November 2016. In September 2015 the company released its Model X. The Model 3 was released in July 2017. Tesla global sales passed 250,000 units in September 2017. Nissan sold more than 250,000 Leafs worldwide through December 2016, making the Leaf the world's all-time best-selling highway-capable electric car in history. But not all that far ahead of Tesla.

peteo48

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #496 on: November 17, 2017, 10:35:07 PM »
I suppose the acid test will be in, say, 10 years time. Who will be selling and producing the most EVs? At some point, or so they keep telling us, it will possible to buy electric cars for the same price as ICE cars. Will Tesla be knocking out millions of supermini sized electric cars at, say, £15,000 in today's money?

My guess is that they won't and that mass market will be dominated by the usual suspects. Tesla may not be as niche as Aston Martin but they may well remain a luxury car brand. A BMW or a Mercedes and not a Ford or a Toyota.

culzean

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #497 on: November 18, 2017, 10:05:15 AM »
while Tesla will be more like Aston-Martin - producing high margin cars but not many of them
Not that it counts. After all Jaguar is another niche market, selling luxury performance cars.
Tesla sells a lot of cars.

Tesla is not even in the same league as JLR,  who produced and sold over 550,000 cars in 2016 (that is more than 1 vehicle a minute 24/7/365),  while Tesla sold just over 70,000 in the same period.  It has taken Tesla from 2003 until nearly end of 2017 (14 years, or about 18,000 cars per year) to produce less than half the number of vehicles JLR produced in just one year,  and as you say JLR is a niche manufacturer of luxury high performance cars.

For  a 'niche' luxury, high end car producer JLR sure shifts a lot of cars - musk and his team should visit their factory to see how the proper car companies do things .....

In 2016 Toyota produced over 10 million vehicles (including trucks and other) which is pretty impressive,   even Honda made nearly 5 million cars (but they were all cars) and 17 million motorcycles in 2016.

As I have said before car making is a cut-throat, high volume low margin business, not a hobby or pastime.  A couple of the companies I worked for made parts for car makers their volumes were huge,  but the profit per part was low - the penalty clause for say BMW Mini were £250,000 per hour if you short shipped them and stopped their production line,  at one time our company had equipment problems and we had a fleet of Transit vans running to Oxford and back like a conveyor belt,  until we could produce enough parts to start filling the HGV lorries again.  Every nut, bolt. rivet and operation is costed down to fractions of a penny, if a supplier is inefficient they can have a full order book,  be running 24/7 and still lose money.

« Last Edit: November 18, 2017, 10:56:54 AM by culzean »
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Jocko

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #498 on: November 18, 2017, 10:08:07 AM »
Tesla may very well go to the wall. There are many automotive leaders over the years who failed to survive.
Hispano-Suiza (ended up building turbines), Argyll (twice), Jowett, Jensen, Lea-Francis, Armstrong-Siddeley, Bristol and more recently, Lotus.
Then there were all the others who were unable to exist on their own and were absorbed by big manufacturers such as Bentley, Riley, Wolseley et al.
All of these were, and still are, motoring milestones. leaders in innovation in automobile engineering. Just because they failed to survive doesn't mean they are any less worthy. And Tesla, whether they fail or survive, should be treated with the same respect.
If Tesla hadn't come on the scene we would still only have a few 80 mile range Nissan Leafs and Prius and Insight hybrids. Tesla took the EV idea, ran with it, and dragged all the big manufacturers into the 21st Century. I'd like to see them survive, if for no other reason than we need dreamers to push technology and engineering forward, and to shake some life into the fuddy duddys who want to live in the past.

peteo48

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #499 on: November 18, 2017, 10:31:26 AM »
I agree with both Jocko and Culzean and they don't agree with each other - how does that work??!!

I think Elon Musk is an innovator - we need people like him to push boundaries and explore what is possible. That said I can't see his company displacing the big boys any time soon - rather he will trail blaze. A bit like James Dyson who isn't, as I understand it, the biggest manufacturer of vacuum cleaners but is a leading innovator leading where others follow.

culzean

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #500 on: November 18, 2017, 10:54:43 AM »
I agree with both Jocko and Culzean and they don't agree with each other - how does that work??!!

You need to draw a Venn diagram with Jocko and me as separate circles and you as a circle overlapping both of our circles LOL

A bit like James Dyson who isn't, as I understand it, the biggest manufacturer of vacuum cleaners but is a leading innovator leading where others follow.

Dyson could not patent the bagless vortex vacuum because it was not his idea - that is why Hoover and Vax et al bought them out so quickly after Dyson - (they had been making most of their money selling vacuum bags to customers - nice little earner, same with inkjet printers and ink, they could afford give the printers away if people had to buy the ink from them).  Vortex had been around since 1920's and he saw it in operation when he was young at a sawmill sucking up sawdust.  It is also used on compressed air systems to remove water droplets from compressed air.

Dyson has large R&D facility in Maidenhead, Berks. and is branching out into all sorts of stuff,  including rumours of an EV - I would concentrate on the tech and keep away from making vehicles - remember what happened to (Sir) Clive Sinclair ? He was an innovator as well,  but his products after computers were deeply flawed.
« Last Edit: November 18, 2017, 11:46:45 AM by culzean »
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sparky Paul

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #501 on: November 19, 2017, 11:16:38 AM »
Stand by for graphene-based hybrid supercapacitor technology...

500 mile range and 1 minute recharge!

https://electrek.co/2017/11/14/fisker-solid-state-battery-breakthrough-electric-cars/

Jocko

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #502 on: November 19, 2017, 11:31:07 AM »
Technology is moving at a phenomenal rate. I started in the valve era, moved on through transistors, into integrated circuits and ended up working in a chip manufacturing fab for 10 years. The rate of change during my working life was unbelievable. I used to install transistors into the ELDO inertial navigation systems, that cost the same as an E-type Jag. By the 1980's I was buying the same at a pound for 10.
Scientists are currently working on things that we cannot conceive. Technology is always progressing, finding answers to questions and questions for answers.

MartinJG

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #503 on: November 19, 2017, 01:07:00 PM »

Seems to me it is all about energy storage. Currently, this is not commercially viable on a large scale. Crack that nut and we literally jump to a new dimension. But I suspect 'the crack' will be more the result of a slow process of cumulative R&D. Solve that one and the implications are immense as solar energy can then be converted, bottled, stored and distributed. Meanwhile, the EV early adopters are financing R&D. 

culzean

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #504 on: November 19, 2017, 03:31:54 PM »
Stand by for graphene-based hybrid supercapacitor technology...

500 mile range and 1 minute recharge!

https://electrek.co/2017/11/14/fisker-solid-state-battery-breakthrough-electric-cars/

Then why are they using Li-ion in their cars,  this company has a history of making wild claims,  this is just one more.  Trouble is with capacitors compared to batteries is that their voltage drops as they discharge,  batteries store a chemical reaction that is capable of maintaining output voltage until battery is pretty well exhausted  capacitors store electricity directly,  and they have a 'discharge curve' where as they discharge the terminal voltage drops.
Some people will only consider you an expert if they agree with your point of view or advice,  when you give them advice they don't like they consider you an idiot

culzean

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #505 on: November 19, 2017, 03:58:07 PM »

Seems to me it is all about energy storage. Currently, this is not commercially viable on a large scale. Crack that nut and we literally jump to a new dimension. But I suspect 'the crack' will be more the result of a slow process of cumulative R&D. Solve that one and the implications are immense as solar energy can then be converted, bottled, stored and distributed. Meanwhile, the EV early adopters are financing R&D.

The early EV adopters are being somewhat subsdised by taxpayer and electricity users as a whole.

Attached PDF is a photo I took yesterday of gridwatch dashboard,  if you hover mouse over the meter it brings up the label shown.  What it is saying is that the solar that is deployed in UK at present is making little or no difference to demand at midday (when solar is strongest and you would expect it to replace demand on other sources of electricity, at least for a few hours ) they are seeing no such  evidence - they admit the figure for solar they show on their meter is being  'generous',  and figure shown was just above 3%. 

There is an installed solar PV capacity in UK (as of May 2017) of 12,318 megawatt,  yesterday panels were supposedly generating about 1.4GW,  which as the site states  is an 'overestimate' as they are not seeing any such affect from solar on the grid to lessen demand from other sources.

[attachment deleted by admin]
« Last Edit: November 19, 2017, 06:36:08 PM by culzean »
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sparky Paul

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #506 on: November 19, 2017, 04:05:07 PM »
capacitors store electricity directly,  and they have a 'discharge curve' where as they discharge the terminal voltage drops.

To be fair, there are ways around that - the important thing is the amount of energy stored, if indeed the technology works at all.

Jocko

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #507 on: November 19, 2017, 04:11:02 PM »
Then why are they using Li-ion in their cars,  this company has a history of making wild claims,  this is just one more.  Trouble is with capacitors compared to batteries is that their voltage drops as they discharge,  batteries store a chemical reaction that is capable of maintaining output voltage until battery is pretty well exhausted  capacitors store electricity directly,  and they have a 'discharge curve' where as they discharge the terminal voltage drops.
They are only just patenting the technology. If they get a patent (not automatic), and the technology is developed (they may license the development to a more able third party), we may see a working, saleable product in the not too distant future. Unless something else comes along sooner!

Jocko

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #508 on: November 19, 2017, 04:20:51 PM »
The good thing about EVs is it doesn't matter where the electricity comes from. Solar, nuclear, coal, all the same when it comes out of the charger.

culzean

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #509 on: November 19, 2017, 04:40:14 PM »
capacitors store electricity directly,  and they have a 'discharge curve' where as they discharge the terminal voltage drops.

To be fair, there are ways around that - the important thing is the amount of energy stored, if indeed the technology works at all.

Problem with capacitors they don't store anywhere near the power of li-ion batteries, and it leaks away - they can stand many more charge-discharge cycles than li-ion and can be fully charged and discharged without damage, they can absorb and release power very quickly, but they are more complementary to batteries than competing with them. Could maybe be used to capture regenerated energy that will be used again  fairly quickly - trouble is all this is adding extra weight to the EV.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2017, 06:57:51 PM by culzean »
Some people will only consider you an expert if they agree with your point of view or advice,  when you give them advice they don't like they consider you an idiot

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