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Post by Rickster on Jan 26, 2020 19:39:12 GMT
I know this is a subject done to death but would be interested to hear what your thoughts are - as we are a community of confirmed petrolheads!
The tech is moving very fast now, we are getting close to high density Li-ion batteries with very fast charge times. We are so seeing new lightweight extra safe batteries emerging like Na-ion glass sphere batteries.
I can see the death knell of mainstream IC engines but sure there will always be enthusiasts to keep the lovely, noisy, smelly things going. I’m sure it will be many years until ICE vehicles leave our roads completely.
So - are traditional car makers stalling, keeping large scale development of electric cars slow and keeping prices high on purpose?.
Will all electric or a mix of EV and Hybrid be the future on the basis not everyone can plug a car in at home.
I have 3 cars but the jag is going soon and I’ll keep the 25 year old MX5 and the 17 year old Freelander. Perhaps I should get the wife to trade in the Fezza for a Leaf or MG ZE
Interesting times.
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Post by atlex on Jan 26, 2020 23:33:30 GMT
Leccy is the Way of the future for sure especially for business/commuter/daily use. I recon petrol will still be available for some time to come however, and will remain the 'fun classics' option for my lifetime.
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Post by zoona on Jan 27, 2020 7:09:10 GMT
My wife got a new company car 18 months ago, and there were no electric (or hybrid options) for her. This really surprised me... as I think we could have gone for one at the time - but may have been a bit too conservative for full electric.
Now, if we were going to get a new car I would definitely go electric, but only if it was somebody else long term risk - i.e. a company car, or a personal lease. Not sure I am brave enough to buy one myself.
I am just waiting for my car to be picked up and taken to Tailgate McNoIndicate to fix a broken drive shaft... so depending on how that goes i may be looking to ditch it. My ideal runabout would be a honda E, but a renault Zoe might work well. Either on a lease, or an old Zoe that will not be too much of a loss if it is completely Canoed by the time we get rid of it.
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Post by Rickster on Jan 27, 2020 7:57:32 GMT
You can buy a used Zoe with the battery lease so less of a risk, though whether that's cost effective I'm not sure.
The problem for me is that all the used electric cars available in my budget are old tech and have poor real world range (compared to latest models)
I am told that there are long waiting times for lots of new EVs particularly the Kia?
I think I am going to wait until the used Electric car market has more choice. I suppose the problem is that they don't "wear out" like IC cars - I wonder what the depreciation is on an Ipace or Etron, or even a Tesla?
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Post by Rickster on Jan 27, 2020 8:08:02 GMT
I think there is a real resistance from the big car makers to pushing electric as a real alternative to their "normal" cars, for instance, if I was Ford I would be making an electric Fiesta, they've just released its pumped up version - the new Puma, but no electric, only mild hybrid, very strange.
I will give them the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe they are all waiting for the next generation of battery tech so they can provide fast charging and real world range similar to a tank of fuel at a reasonable cost?
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Post by wannabe on Jan 27, 2020 8:39:50 GMT
Widespread EV use is all well and good but where is the electricity going to come from? Where are the batteries going to come from?
Just the UK switching wholesale to Li-Ion battery vehicles would require twice the current global annual production of Lithium, I believe. And we in the UK are already close to grid capacity, AFAIK we are not planning on adding more power stations, and renewables are fine and dandy but don't work at night (solar) or when the wind strength is low (wind turbines) and generally have massive visual impact (and apparently kill birds and cause local problems with ULF sound in the case of wind turbines).
Is the argument going to be "sorry, you can't drive, there's not enough power - and BTW we're cutting off your supply for the day tomorrow via our remote control of your 'Smart Meter' that we encouraged/forced you to fit but didn't mention the control aspects of"? At least one government report has already stated words along the lines of 'personal car ownership seems/is incompatible with decarbonisation', so that statement, the (lack of) energy available, and the desire to track our every move and charge us using Big Brother technology on a 'pay per mile' basis in an attempt to recover lost fuel duty, seems to suggest the future is not going to be bright for personal freedom afforded by private vehicles.
And that's not to mention the continuing desire to cast emissions of any sort as evil killers - carbon dixoide (plant food), PM10s, PM2.5s, and soon PM1 particles, the last two man-made sources of which are commonly due to brake and tyre wear and their re-suspension (ignoring that background sources are far higher volumes than vehicle-caused emissions) which won't be solved to any great extent by EV use.
Oh, and 'Intelligent Speed Adaptation' (speed limiter systems) which the EU are mandating must be fitted to new vehicles from 2022, which will mean anyone stuck behind one will be forced to do whatever pointlessly low speed limit some local politician has pushed through with no regard for the natural 85th percentile speed of the road - the ultimate aim being 'automatic enforcement of 100% of driving violations'.
We should get as much driving done as we can now, because it's going to be Canoeing miserable very soon.
[/Monday morning rant]
In terms of EVs themselves, very impressive and refined but no emotion and little sensation of speed IMO. Fine for 'white goods motoring' but not fine for driving enjoyment.
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Post by dadbif on Jan 27, 2020 9:20:49 GMT
BTW we're cutting off your supply for the day tomorrow via our remote control of your 'Smart Meter' that we encouraged/forced you to fit but didn't mention the control aspects of"?
At last! someone else who has seen through all the energy saving crap linked to smart meters, I’ve been banging on about it for years but everyone thinks I’m mad....
On the topic of electric vehicles, never mind where the power comes from, how will we recharge them? Not everyone can park outside their home or have the luxury of a driveway, so how can they be sure of access to a charging point?
How about motorway service stations, it won’t take 15 mins to refuel it will take hours, hundreds if not thousands of charging pints and acres of space.
CO2 vehicles are the way forward in my opinion.
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Post by Zed. on Jan 27, 2020 10:20:32 GMT
ev are all well & good but not practical unfortunately, shame as on paper its ace (paper? comes from trees.....) CO2 vehicles are the way forward in my opinion. +1  and Fu ck Gretta & her puppetmasters, plant some trees  Rich. |
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Post by zoona on Jan 27, 2020 10:46:17 GMT
Absolutely agree on the supply of electricity. that is the big problem. "not practical" - We need to be thinking of what works for lots of different people and not just people who use a forum like this... We are going to be more resistant to dropping petrol cars. They are just utilities for a lot of people and they don't give a prarrie canoe how it works. Here in switzerland every car has a parking space. Either a private garage, or a shared garage. Nobody parks on the street. So that removes the charging location issue. And range... well, that is completely down to how you drive/live. We have 4 cars. - My 5. That is always going to be conventional fossil fuelled for me.
- Our camper van. That could be non-fossil fuel powered one day.
- Our 'big' car - A4 avant. That could easily be electric right now. The only time it does more that 100 miles in a day is when we go on holiday. We could easily incorporate some stops for charging where necessary
- My car - the daily run about. I have an M135i. I absolutely do not need a car like that. We could have have a small electric car that I can buzz around in.
Ultimately, we could easily get rid of three of those cars, and be perfectly fine. We could even ditch the 4th and still not have too much of a problem.
The train company here run a couple of interesting schemes. One is like a car share thing from stations. So as part of your rail card you get train use, and the use of a vehicle at the other end.
There is no one solution that will fit with everybody.
I am doing my bit by having the 5 on stands for the last 18 months...
And I am not going anywhere near the "puppet masters" comment. Way too tin foil hat...
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Post by boggissimo on Jan 27, 2020 12:28:42 GMT
I've had a full battery-only EV for about 5 years, there's nothing to be afraid of! It's great for all the boring commuter journeys, costs next-to-nothing to run, and is smooth, quiet and easy to drive. Range is manageable for at least 95% of the journeys we make, and we still have an ICE car for the others, and for having fun. All the early fears of battery degradation are turning out to be unfounded (at least in 'normal' conditions, might be different in very hot/cold places) and it's just a car in the end.
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Post by Zed. on Jan 27, 2020 12:55:23 GMT
www.evalbum.com/2507an expensive & possibly slower solution to EV ownership?  NOT my cup of tea SO I'l keep my overgrown garden & promote photosynthasis Rich.
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Post by dadbif on Jan 27, 2020 13:45:52 GMT
I like the electric bike the best....
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Post by wannabe on Jan 27, 2020 14:54:15 GMT
BTW we're cutting off your supply for the day tomorrow via our remote control of your 'Smart Meter' that we encouraged/forced you to fit but didn't mention the control aspects of"? At last! someone else who has seen through all the energy saving crap linked to smart meters, I’ve been banging on about it for years but everyone thinks I’m mad.... There was a consultation document or a Government white paper on 'Smart' Meters that included specific reference to 'managing demand' (or weasel words to that effect) tucked away as a single bulletpoint in an enormous document, but I don't think I saved it and I'm damned if I can find it online again. Annoying!! re: Greta, I've seen mentioned a few times that she is funded by an organisation that is funded by George Soros - you know, that renowned philanthropist who didn't make $1billion betting against Sterling in the Black Wednesday financial crash... If we take the position that oil is a limited resource, shifting to using less of it in the long term would seem a sensible approach - what with it being used for (hundreds of?) thousands of products that would be difficult to replace with other materials, not just to move people and goods around - but what alternative do we have for transport energy sources? There's only a finite amount of lithium in the world, so battery tech needs to shift to solid-state carbon or aluminium batteries (if I understand things correctly) which are (apparently) not quite there yet. Or if we move to Hydrogen-based fuel, we need a load of (renewable) energy to split seawater to make it - but that ignores the fact that water vapour has a stronger greenhouse effect in the atmosphere than CO2 (if you believe CO2 is causing a change in the climate and not the sun). Ultimately, if we all need to use less energy and resources generally, we all need to go back to living the way we did several centuries ago - only travelling by foot or animal within a small radius from our dwelling (which is mostly unheated/un-air-conditioned), eating smaller meals made from produce grown locally and farmed by hand (with no meat, of course), going to bed just after sunset so we don't need artificial light, and not relying on any energy-hungry equipment like computers, TVs, white goods, showers, etc. You know, like how North Korea is. Alternatively, and as the ecomentalists so carefully avoid discussing, we need to depopulate the world - perhaps through enforced maximum family sizes, withdrawal of medical care for patients with ultimately terminal prognoses, or just letting pandemic illness go untreated. (Anyone for some Coronavirus?) Of course, if climate change / global warming / Peak Oil / media-manipulation of the facts during reporting is all just designed to create an atmosphere of fear and some groundswell towards a socialist utopian society with strong central control... [/off topic] [/tin foil hat] I would have an EV for local journeys - the Zoe and the i3 were both impressive when I was in them - but I would not want to give up a fossil fuel vehicle, or live in a world where we cannot travel 'off-radar' if we want to, thanks to Electronic Vehicle Identification and GPS tracking, both of which the EU are mandating and enable pay-per-mile taxation and tracking, which could be enforced in a world with reduced fossil fuel taxation income. |
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Post by wannabe on Jan 27, 2020 15:05:34 GMT
Ultimately, we could easily get rid of three of those cars, and be perfectly fine. We could even ditch the 4th and still not have too much of a problem. The train company here run a couple of interesting schemes. One is like a car share thing from stations. So as part of your rail card you get train use, and the use of a vehicle at the other end. I think I'm right in saying that the difference in Switzerland (and much of the EU IIRC) is that you actually have a good public transport network - and it *is* a *public* transport network, run by the State, not a deregulated, privately-run-for-profit, quasi-public transport network, controlled by a few large companies with their shareholders in mind. The former can run less-well-used routes by paying out of taxation, the latter will drop loss-making routes like a hot potato! |
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Post by martiny on Jan 27, 2020 15:18:59 GMT
Charge times are dropping to the extent that an all electric main family car might be a workable proposition for the great majority of our journeys. But the temptation would still be to go hybrid to avoid range anxiety, even though that's the worst of both worlds in terms of having to lug both drivetrains around and still having all the same servicing hassles as a petrol car despite having gone electric.
A small electric-only car might be a good second car but, as a fan of commuting in a particular small lightweight sports car, I'm not bowled over by the prospect of driving an anonymous potato with a 350kg battery.
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le sigh