Author Topic: Electric cars  (Read 695750 times)

madasafish

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #120 on: August 14, 2017, 05:37:21 PM »
According to Justin Laney, the Commercial Vehicle Fleet Manager for John Lewis Partnership, talking at this year's nationalgrid Future Energy Scenarios, Bio-methane is the way that haulage fleets are looking to go, in the near future.
Off street parking is definitely an issue, regarding the charging of electric vehicles. I can see a time, fairly soon, where people do not own there own car. They just call up one as they need it. Driverless cars will go out of town to a charging station and charge up as required. Those people who do want/need to own their own car will charge them at rapid charging stations, possibly using inductive charging, as the prototype Rolls Royce electric car currently uses. With large capacity storage, and rapid charging, a car would be charged to 80% in little more time than it takes to fill up with petrol. Supermarkets would offer cheap charging, in their car parks, to customers. At present, petrol stations are a draw to get people to shop at a store. Charging points will be the new petrol station.
Norway has huge areas for parking and charging EV's, with free public parking for EV's, and car parks, in the likes of Oslo, that provide FREE charging.

Pity driverless cars don't work in snow as road signs and markings are invisible to sensors... Strangely enough, no-one mentions that.....

Jocko

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #121 on: August 14, 2017, 05:42:15 PM »
Here's another interesting speaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b3ttqYDwF0&t=291s

Jocko

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #122 on: August 14, 2017, 05:48:25 PM »
Pity driverless cars don't work in snow as road signs and markings are invisible to sensors... Strangely enough, no-one mentions that.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vShi-xx6ze8

guest1372

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #123 on: August 14, 2017, 06:38:18 PM »
Pity driverless cars don't work in snow as road signs and markings are invisible to sensors... Strangely enough, no-one mentions that.....
Prompts the question, does a car need vision to read a road sign? 

V2X protocol suggests not, simple passive induction loops allow signs and road features to be read via radio.  Kerbs, verges & cones even today are easy to detect in mixed conditions, problems could occur on temporary multi-lane surfaces such as the construction of a new intersection on say the A1 or North Circular.  Markings might be misleading, maybe future contractors will have to lay guide tapes or maybe up to date geometry is passed to the vehicle on approach.  We have to think wider than just imagining a robotic driver with our existing infrastructure.

i.e. Passive road data beacons in every lamppost could easily prevent vehicles exceeding the 20mph residential limits, although the car's navigation systems should also be aware of that.
--
TG

culzean

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #124 on: August 14, 2017, 07:17:11 PM »
I'm really looking forward to driver less cars,  will make pulling out of junctions and getting onto islands a cinch for human controlled cars,  just pull out,  the auto car will have to stop, if you are a pedestrian just cross the road anywhere you want as the car will have to stop. The real problem is that driver less cars cannot be programmed to do anything illegal, so can they cross a double white line to pass a slow vehicle ?  Us humans are very good at making use of road space as well,  when I was in Indonesia a three lane road could easily carry five lanes of traffic and very few if any bumps,  different countries all have different driving styles to be catered for, an AI nightmare. 
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

Jocko

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #125 on: August 14, 2017, 07:23:50 PM »
Googles system depend on the area being mapped to within 5mm, and this information is known by the vehicles. If a vehicle comes on a situation it does not understand they will safely park and call a remote operator (hopefully not in a call centre in India), who will be able to control the car remotely (the military do that with drones over Iraq just now).
I would imagine that in the areas that driverless vehicles are operating there will have to be a protocol for "Off road" diversions. Their LiDAR will cope with temporary traffic lights, contraflows and the like. Getting them to drive off their mapped world will not work.
And once one driverless car has been navigated through the problem, the information will be immediately  downloaded to all the other vehicles in the fleet. Just like taxi's currently do for a speed trap or an accident.
The different driving cultures is what makes the difference between a Level 4 and a Level 5 autonomous vehicle. Level 4 can work in one defined area. A Level 5 in any area. Level 5 will be a number of years behind Level 4.

VicW

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #126 on: August 14, 2017, 07:37:33 PM »
If autonomous cars rely in whole or in part on road markings then they will not work in Lincolnshire. Here, as well as not repairing pot holes largely caused by lack of maintenance over many years and letting utility companies get away with murder when they dig the roads up the other 'saving' locally is not to renew white line road markings.
The only time white lines get renewed is after the highways department has covered them three inches of chippings to renew the road surface.

Vic.

Jocko

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #127 on: August 14, 2017, 07:43:06 PM »
The lane assist of current cars requires the vehicle to detect the lane markings but autonomous cars do't appear to need them.

Jocko

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #128 on: August 16, 2017, 07:01:42 PM »
Found this interesting production from National Grid (8th August 2017) clarifying statements in the press regards charging of EV' s come 2040.
http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1264/ev-myth-buster-v032.pdf

ColinB

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #129 on: August 16, 2017, 08:54:15 PM »
Does anyone else feel that the rush to EVs is backing the wrong horse ? Pure EVs require a huge investment in charging infrastructure both public and private. And even if we can manage a step-change in battery technology and provide roadside charging points every 5m along every residential street, charging your EV is not going to be as convenient as today's procedure of simply pulling into a filling station for a few minutes.

So why not invest in hydrogen filling stations instead of all the chargers ? Cars will use the H2 in fuel cells to drive electric motors so they'll still be emission-free on the roads, and refuelling them will be just as convenient as today's filling stations. Any peak-load issues for National Grid (if they exist) can be resolved by using the power stations to drive electrolysers in exactly the same way that fuel refineries are now. H2 is even piped into everybody's homes in the form of water, you could conceive of having a home electrolyser in the garage if you really want. Yes, H2 can be dangerous but so is petrol; the Wikipedia article on the Hindenburg disaster (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_disaster) suggests that "Hydrogen fires are notable for being less destructive to immediate surroundings than gasoline explosions because of the buoyancy of H2, which causes heat of combustion to be released upwards more than circumferentially as the leaked mass ascends in the atmosphere; hydrogen fires are more survivable than fires of gasoline or wood".

So why not spend the money on a hydrogen infrastructure rather than electric chargers ? Perhaps the hidden agenda behind the rush to EVs is to reduce congestion (as opposed to emissions) by making vehicles less convenient to use, and thereby reduce the overall number.

Just thinking ...

Jocko

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #130 on: August 16, 2017, 09:44:13 PM »
I think it comes down purely to economics. An electric car requires virtually no maintenance, with electric motors currently good for 500,000 miles. A hydrogen powered ICE car will be just as maintenance intensive as current cars. Hydrogen electrolysers are extremely expensive and very inefficient. It is cheaper to extract hydrogen from hydrocarbons.
Recharging EV's is getting faster as technology advances. It may never get as quick as filling your tank at a garage, but if you can do your supermarket shop while your car gets a full charge in the car park that will suit most people who cannot charge there cars at home. And as range increases so you will need to recharge much less often. The new Tesla Model 3 will do 310 miles between charges. For me that is about once a fortnight. The Tesla can charge at 170 miles in half an hour.
As I said, it will be purely economics. If EV's don't make economic sense they won't take off as promised. If hydrogen fuelled cars make the best economic sense then they will be the norm. Joe public votes with their wallet. Whatever happens it will be interesting times.

ColinB

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #131 on: August 16, 2017, 11:24:23 PM »
A hydrogen powered ICE car will be just as maintenance intensive as current cars.
I wasn't thinking of burning H2 in an ICE - as you say, that'd be the worst of both worlds - but rather using it in a fuel cell to generate electricity. Like in the Honda Clarity Fuel Cell:
http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-reviews/honda/honda-clarity-fuel-cell-2017-review/
So you get an electric car with a 400 mile range that can be refuelled in a few minutes at a conventional filling station (albeit one dispensing H2 rather than petrol).

... if you can do your supermarket shop while your car gets a full charge in the car park ...
Call me cynical, but I really don't think that's going to happen reliably. Every supermarket parking space in the country with charging points ? And there'll be one available when I really, REALLY, need it ? Wouldn't it be more sensible if, instead of putting in all those charging points, the supermarket replaced some of it's petrol pumps with H2 dispensers ?

Joe public votes with their wallet.
True, up to a point. For the many people (self included) who live in streets of terraced houses with no chance of charging at home, pure EVs are seriously bad news. I would welcome having the option of easier fuelling with hydrogen, and if I have to pay a bit more for that privilege then so be it ... because the alternative would be having no vehicle at all.

And as for the economics, yes, you're right, it's currently not very attractive for a variety of reasons. There needs to be lots of investment in the infrastructure and the vehicles to bring the costs down. So all I'm suggesting is that that seems a more sensible thing to invest in than putting hundreds of thousands (millions ??) of charging points all over the country.


Jocko

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #132 on: August 17, 2017, 07:05:06 AM »
Using Hydrogen in fuel cells to drive an electric car would be a much more efficient way of using the hydrogen than ICE. Honda's idea of a BEV that gives a choice of battery or hydrogen at the touch of a control sounds a good idea. Doing the sums it looks like the H2 would work out about the same price as petrol giving 30 mpg, but I would imaging that with increase in scale, the rise of cheap solar electricity and technology advancements, that would improve.
The only fly in the ointment is the date Honda hope to be selling the vehicles. 2022. I think by then they will pretty much have missed the bandwagon for mass uptake.
Regarding supermarket car parks. If Asda don't have as many charger points as Morrisons the shoppers will make their choice, which will force the adoption by the big supermarkets.
Here in Kirkcaldy, Tesco didn't have a dedicated car park, depending on a nearby, small council car park. Despite it being a large store it was forced to close, because their rivals all had dedicated parking. Similar will happen with charger points.

culzean

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #133 on: August 17, 2017, 08:21:43 AM »
https://www.greenoptimistic.com/hydrogen-cars-efficiency/#.WZVFYprWSUk

Production, compression and transport of hydrogen is very energy intensive,  batteries much more efficient.
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

ColinB

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Re: Electric cars
« Reply #134 on: August 17, 2017, 09:09:58 AM »
https://www.greenoptimistic.com/hydrogen-cars-efficiency/#.WZVFYprWSUk

Production, compression and transport of hydrogen is very energy intensive,  batteries much more efficient.
Thanks for that insight, some good points there and maybe they help to answer my question about "Why not H2 ?". But the underlying assumptions in any "EVs are better" argument are firstly that batteries are going to become much better at storing energy safely, and secondly everyone is going to have access to charging facilities when they want/need it. The jury's out on the first point, and fixing the second issue will require absolutely massive infrastructure investment (and I've not seen any suggestions about who's going to pay for that). I just don't see it happening, which is why maybe H2 has a place even with it's inefficiencies.

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