Electric Cars

Electric cars are not as clean as people are lead to believe. In the UK a large proportion of electricity generated comes from fossil fuel sources. Admittedly generating power in a power station is more efficient than in a car engine but you must not ignore distribution losses and battery charge/discharge efficiency. The net result is that the electric car is responsible for nearly as much CO2 emission as a petrol car.

Diesel vs petrol: Diesel cars are more efficient and produce less CO2. Older diesel cars produce a lot of particulates and NOx which give rise to poor air quality in cities however current models complying with euro 6.2 standards produce much less.

Russell

I read that the grand master plan is to equip all houses with some kind of ground or air sourced heat pumps for heating/cooling. Then use smart meters to draw power from all the electric car batteries that will be plugged in for when the wind doesn't blow or the sun shine.

I think gas heating is banned for new build houses within the next couple of years.

Diesel cars remain noisy and smelly objects however you dress them up/

Oddly we had a meeting today at a gas sensor company for whom we're designing an updated PCB and signal processing for their NDIR CO2 sensor. They also sell optical particulate sensors, often used for air quality monitoring. At lunch one of the scientists was saying just that, modern diesel engines are less polluting than petrol for some gases and especially for particulates.

Whatever we do there'll be some "expert" or government "adviser" thinking up a new pollution source or new target to hit. Even if we all walked people will be worrying about particulates from shoe soles. The only permanent solution to pollution is to get rid of everybody. Then at least there'll be nobody to worry about cows farting.

Andrew

Absolutely. And when folks talk of the “virtues” of a few more mpg they conveniently forget the increase in cost of initial purchase, increased tyre wear (and the increased pollution associated with that) and other servicing and spares costs that are higher than comparable petrol cars. Given the average mileage of drivers in the UK if you were buying a new Diesel car you’d need to keep it a lot longer than the popular three year buying cycle. I think it’s a shame that Petrol cars got tarred with the same brush as Diesels but if it accelerates development of new cleaner technologies then so be it. I just hope the price comes down because current electric cars are too expensive for many buyers.

Gee .... sounds just like the oil-crunch of the 70's. Though in that case I think we had only about 30 years left.

Well yes, an electric car charged with oil, gas or coal generated electricity still produces a lot of Carbon Dioxide. Despite that, they have the big advantage of not polluting in crowded city centres, instead most of the pollution is centralised at the power station were it might be treated efficiently or even captured.

Second major advantage is electric cars can run on renewable energy. This is much less polluting than burning fuel. At the same time, the amount of renewable energy available is rising. 10% of UK electricity in 2015 came from renewable sources. By 2018 this had risen to 33%, and 37% in the first quarter of this year. The split varies year by year with weather, cost, and other factors but roughly 40% gas, 30% renewable, 20% Nuclear, 1% coal, and 7% imported. Electric cars may not compare all that well today, but the tide is running in their favour.

I think diesels are probably done for in cities in the near future. Although a modern diesel can meet pollution standards, this is only possible when the engine is well-maintained. Sadly keeping them 'well-maintained' may not be practical. Perhaps technology will come up with a fix, perhaps not. In the meantime many polluted towns aren't happy about petrol either, too many cars in a confined space with too many people.

About 20 years ago, governments focussed on Carbon Dioxide as 'the problem' and encouraged people to go for energy efficient diesel. Unfortunately concerns about particulates and Nitrogen Oxides were brushed under the carpet and these are directly hazardous to human health. The truth is two different problems needed attention and one of them was ignored, probably for political reasons. As voters shoot the messenger, most politicians avoid painful issues if they can, which doesn't fix anything.

Dave

BEVs likely have less than 10% brake wear than ICE vehicles because they actually recycle most of the kinetic energy while decelerating.

Diesel engines are clearly more efficient than spark ignition engines - simple thermodynamics of compression ratio is enough. Some diesels attain just over 50% efficiency (but not automotive ones!).

My diesel car just returned 77mpg on its last tank of fuel (the previous was just shy of 70mpg). Odometer agrees with goggle maps and speedo is about 2-3% optimistic (compared to the satnav). I drive around at between 50 and 60 miles per hour mostly - a little less on small roads.

Housing could be built with far better levels of insulation than current builds.

More and more electricity is produced without burning fossil fuels. Coal has been used for very little generation this year. CCGT efficiency is around, or above, 60% - far better than just over 40% for coal.

Everyone can make an effort to reduce their carbon footprint, but a majority seem to choose to let the minority make cuts while ignoring the simply facts of diminishing fossil fuels and climate change.

Despite my vested interest in Diesel, I had worked out that it would take us over 100,000 miles for the saving on fuel to match the price differential between (first cost of vehicle and current fuel prices ), without taking into account any possible servicing costs. But that is only for our particular lifestyle and useage.

With a small Euro 6 compliant petrol replacing our 12 year old slightly larger petrol, and much better CLAIMED fuel economy, it seemed that we were doing the right thing. (Helped by a trade in / scrappage allowance nearly three time the insurance value., it seemed to make economic and environmental sense )

Our driving style, (SWMBO tends to accelerate harder, and lift off later than I ) provided mpg about 10% better than the claims for the predecessors. Despite the same techniques, and same routes, it is difficult to match the original urban CLAIM on a long run, and the extra urban was just mythical. The newer test figure claims reflect reality more closely. and show the benefit of our driving techniques.

So we like to think that we are being environmentally friendly, apart from all the energy and emissions involved in our now nearly two year old puddle jumpers.

Probably, neither of us will be around to get involved in the electric revolution when it will be possible to cover our present long distance journeys without the need to stop for a recharge en route.

it may well need a holder for the telegram from Buck House!

Howard

The decline of society happened when we started selling bottled water, accelerated with take-away coffee and the final crunch came with mobile phones and reality TV. You can't put these genies back and there isn't the politcal will globaly to do so- just some tub-thumping and sops to the electorate.

It's all very well to criticise our generation for starting all this but just try telling a millenium to put their phone away or not consider flying off on foreign holidays or get everyone to stop buying fruit and veg brought in by air from distant lands instead of eating seasonal stuff from nearer home.

BEV;s are a tiny bit of help that won't be enough. I didn't get mine to save the planet so much as because it has the potential to be safer as i get into my dotage and frankly i wanted to play with it and it;s nice to be ina quiet car with bags of instant torque where one rarely needs to move to the brake pedal. But not cost efective unless you do huge mileage.

My 2004 diesel is pretty much spot on the claimed MPG figure of 49 with a mix of local and long range driving. On a very long, gentle run I can get it up to around 60 and on one run to and from Dunblane where I 'used 'hyper miler' tactics like sitting behind HGVs, I got 67.

Neil

I would guess it's little about the risk of actually making a claim and more about the cost of any claim that is made. Given the disparity in purchase price between an ICEV and EV the financial risk of claim is increased as it seems most vehicles can be written off these days for a moderate sized dent! Writing off an EV is therefore going to cost substantially more.

Paul.

Barnaby, is it anything to do with battery fires or explosions in a crash, If I am right I was always taught charity begins at home and I look forward to a hundred quid to buy some coal stock for the locos😊

EVs are quiet, so the people you run over don't even hear you coming. The cost of insurance isn't particularly tied to write off value. It's much more to do with potential costs if you injure people and they require lifetime care. And you can just as easily do that in a £100 banger as a £300k supercar.

Andrew

No, I don't know that 'the EV equivalent of an ICE vehicle costs substantially more to insure'. Is it true? Can we have some examples please?

A common reason for insurance to be expensive is that the level of risk isn't understood by the insurer. On average they have to make a profit, which is difficult when the average isn't known. There's plenty of statistical experience of life expectancy when calculating the cost of Life Insurance and Annuities. Ditto the cost of insuring against motor accidents is well known. Maybe there's not been enough EVs on the road yet to fix the rate.

Another reason might be that because EVs (at the moment) rise in value after purchase, and the batteries are expensive, they're more likely to be stolen.

Dave

Insurance risk covers the cost of the vehicle repairs or theft and the potential liabilities from injuries to passengers and third parties/property.

I can't speak for every BEV's insurance cost or the differences geographically and how kept etc. I have a 26yr old nissan sports car worth very little that costs me just under £200 a year to cover compared to my £92K Tesla that costs £400 to insure. Safety specs for passengers in crash tests on the Tesla, the security levels built in that make them very hard to steal, the crash level mitigation and inbuilt dashcam/security cam systems (which you could put in a non EV) are the reason for the relatively low premium. So i don't think one can carpet state that EV's cost more to insure.

I understand one poll of stolen Teslas US showed circa 120 stolen one year and 118 recovered. this is down to a combination of frequent communication with base and the ability to track the thing (unless codes input to disable that by owner).

Not something I'm going to lose any sleep over though; there are things that matter and those that don't.

Andrew

Lets face it, insurers look at a multitude of factors. One will be power - and most electric powered cars are fairly sharp on acceleration. 200 horse power in a relatively small car is one factor (examples are hyundia kona or kia nero). The bmw i3 is a small car with 170 geegees driving the wheels. So they are regarded among the ‘hot hatches’ rather than a ‘cooking’ models’.

I don’t suppose that the differential is so great when all factors are taken into account. Apart from that, the insurers likely know that they can charge extra because they have been a niche market so far. Most are current layouts converted to electric - and could anyone expect to get cheaper insurance for a car conversion, (over the base model)?

Are we re-inventing the wheel. I well remember the trolly bus, a common mode of transport in my youth. Very little noise, smooth ride and no smoke but those overhead cables could be a pain. The last time I used one was on a night out during my national service days when the driver took a corner a bit fast and the arms became detatched, we had to walk the rest of the way- a bit like running out of power in a new electric car

Correct, according to published figures my DPF equipped 150hp 1.9 turbo diesel Fait produces less particulates than the wifes 2.0 140 HP petrol (and 3 years younger) Ford. The new direct injection petrol's are worse for fine particulates than the old ones.
One thing has not been mentioned is that most people seem to think that the proposed ban on new petrol and diesel car sales means we will have to buy plug-in electrics. This is not try, Hybrids will still be sold and I'd guess initially a lot of those will be "light" ones with most power from the IC engine.

Robert G8RPI

Edited By Robert Atkinson 2 on 12/07/2019 07:25:41