Is this big news for Electric vehicles?

strtdv

Exactly. If you drive in the city the chances are your average speed is well under 20mph anyway, and being able to pretty much go door-to-door rather than looking for parking and then having to walk saves further time.

In a previous job, doing the 5 mile commute by bike saved me 20 minutes each way, plenty of time to have a quick wash or shower, and it got my exercise in as well.

BigMonka

Danny1969 said:

Removable batteries are the answer .... then no one needs to charge on the street ... no cares so much about range because you have more than one battery and can flip a switch to bring in a spare battery should you run out mid journey. 

Most people need to put enough KWh in a battery to get to work and back and maybe go to the supermarket or offy .... a battery pack giving a range of 30 miles would do for a lot of people. Especially in a car that only weighed 1\4 ton and not 1 ton 

I unfortunately think that we've missed the boat by there being an international specification for batteries, or even better how they fit in the car. I love the idea of pulling in to a "battery swap station" instead of a petrol station, but it would have required government intervention before it (understandably) became a commercial competition between car manufacturers.

Ddigger

31,000,000 cars in the UK, battery weight 190kg, 4 batteries per car...

23,500,000 tonne hole in the ground... 

Back of a fag packet numbers, late at night. 

digitalscream

The trouble with bikes of any kind is that they're a fair-weather vehicle.

Imagine this: you get 40% of the traffic off the roads in a city, and the city's infrastructure adapts to its newly-light traffic load. Road maintenance are adjusted accordingly.

Then the first big rain hits in winter, and suddenly there's a 65% increase in the amount of traffic.

That ain't gonna be pretty.

Whatever the solution is, bikes ain't it.

hywelg

Ddigger said:

31,000,000 cars in the UK, battery weight 190kg, 4 batteries per car...

23,500,000 tonne hole in the ground... 

Back of a fag packet numbers, late at night. 

And did you notice the billion tonne hole in the ground that was coal? No, didn't think so. We used to take 100-250 million  tonnes a year out of the ground and burn it. 

crunchman

digitalscream said:

The trouble with bikes of any kind is that they're a fair-weather vehicle.

Imagine this: you get 40% of the traffic off the roads in a city, and the city's infrastructure adapts to its newly-light traffic load. Road maintenance are adjusted accordingly.

Then the first big rain hits in winter, and suddenly there's a 65% increase in the amount of traffic.

That ain't gonna be pretty.

Whatever the solution is, bikes ain't it.

Why not.  I cycle all year round.  Get decent gear and it's fine.

digitalscream

crunchman said:

digitalscream said:

The trouble with bikes of any kind is that they're a fair-weather vehicle.

Imagine this: you get 40% of the traffic off the roads in a city, and the city's infrastructure adapts to its newly-light traffic load. Road maintenance are adjusted accordingly.

Then the first big rain hits in winter, and suddenly there's a 65% increase in the amount of traffic.

That ain't gonna be pretty.

Whatever the solution is, bikes ain't it.

Why not.  I cycle all year round.  Get decent gear and it's fine.

And you genuinely believe that the majority of the rest of the population, who are used to showing up to work dry, feel the same way you do?

crunchman

digitalscream said:

crunchman said:

digitalscream said:

The trouble with bikes of any kind is that they're a fair-weather vehicle.

Imagine this: you get 40% of the traffic off the roads in a city, and the city's infrastructure adapts to its newly-light traffic load. Road maintenance are adjusted accordingly.

Then the first big rain hits in winter, and suddenly there's a 65% increase in the amount of traffic.

That ain't gonna be pretty.

Whatever the solution is, bikes ain't it.

Why not.  I cycle all year round.  Get decent gear and it's fine.

And you genuinely believe that the majority of the rest of the population, who are used to showing up to work dry, feel the same way you do?

When it's quicker and a lot cheaper, and you get your exercise in, why not?

I don't know about cities elsewhere around the country, but in London you won't have much alternative.  New developments do not have parking.  Driving won't be an option.  Public transport is very slow, and expensive.  I expect that we will eventually get road pricing as well to stop electric Ubers from gridlocking the roads.

Fretwired

Danny1969 said:

mmm Austin Electric turns up feck all on Google ..... I smell a rat !

https://www.austinelectric.net/

Ddigger

Hiwleg, yes I know what coal is.  The Internet uses a million barrels of oil a day to power it. Cement/concrete is what we consume the most of every year and how much energy is used in making cement, before you even dig up the raw materials?

If you took all the steel and concrete from windfarms and put it in one place, it would be a very large pile.

I am all for electric cars (which will have to be a lot smaller, lighter and utilitarian), some folk just have a bit of a simplistic idea about it all. 

goldtop

Ddigger said:
I am all for electric cars (which will have to be a lot smaller, lighter and utilitarian)

For sure, using a 1500kg box to move a 75kg person to and from a place of work at an average of perhaps 20mph is an appalling situation. That's true whether it's ICE/EV/fuel-cell.

Most people aren't ready for an e-bike and its compromises.

There's a middle ground for city cars (perhaps Renault Twizy-ish), but getting there from here is the problem.

roundthebend

goldtop said:

using a 1500kg box to move a 75kg person to and from a place of work at an average of perhaps 20mph is an appalling situation.

Really like that simple observation, I'm stealing it.

Roland

Better electric motors might be bigger news than battery technology
 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49958457

crunchman

Roland said:

Better electric motors might be bigger news than battery technology
 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49958457

I've just googled and the electric motors used in cars now are typically better than 85% efficiency, and can peak at 92 to 95%.

Even at 85% efficiency, that's only wasting 15% of the energy that goes in.  That compares to around 60% wasted with an internal combustion engine.  There isn't a scope for huge savings in energy as they already have good efficiency.  If you can make them 95% efficient instead of 85%, that's only a 10% saving in energy.

There are other things that will help.  If these can sit within the wheel, you save on the weight of drive shafts, and friction in the drive train.

You might be able to make a car 100kg lighter by having the smaller motors, and losing the drive shafts.  That will help, but it's still the weight of the batteries that is the big issue.  With the more efficient motors, and reduced frictional losses in the drive train, you might not need as much battery capacity, and might be able to save another 50 to 100kg on the batteries (with current batteries).  The problem is that your 1.5 tonne car is still 1.3 tonnes.  You are still wasting an awful lot of energy moving it around.  You aren't solving the fundamental problem that there are too many cars on the road making journeys that should made by other means.

hywelg

crunchman said:

You might be able to make a car 100kg lighter by having the smaller motors, 

And at some point  were going to have to ban f**k off big tractors masquerading as personal vehicles. Wheels will have to revert to 4" wide and acceleration be artificially  limited. 

Ddigger

E-bike - might work.  Maybe a massive scalectrix set where power is drawn from under the road...?

Back to that hole in the ground we were talking about...

http://https//www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/08/britain-faces-waste-battery-mountain-electric-car-use-surges/

ICBM

Ddigger said:

Back to that hole in the ground we were talking about...

http://https//www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/08/britain-faces-waste-battery-mountain-electric-car-use-surges/

It won’t be too much of an issue, the materials they’re made from are valuable. All it needs is enough of them to make full recycling efficient and the problem will solve itself, as it already has with lead batteries.