Infrastructure Engineering

I can’t find anything about Toyota not making electric cars. They have said that they won’t invest in the U.K. to make EVs, and that they are reviewing their global strategy, because they are finding that Tesla are better than them at manufacturing, and they need to catch up. That is quite an admission from the company that virtually invented modern volume production.

I've had various estates over the decades, including Mondeos and Focuses, and they all worked. I'm happy now with a VW Touran. It's moderate on footprint, economical, reliable and spacious. What's not to like?

Ideal car for a Model Engineer, got to be a Land Rover Discovery, will tow just about anything and with the rear seats folded flat there is about 6 foot by 4 foot load space, swallows a couple of Myfords in the back and most importantly the spare wheel, full size not stupid skinny thing is mounted underneath so you don’t have to empty the load space to get the spare out at side of the road.

But it's a Fiat, the only truly dreadful car I ever owned was a Fiat Punto, same fault on the power steering three times, the roof went rusty round the windscreen because of a built in water trap, even the clip holding the sun visor up broke. I paid for the first power steering replacement, that failed in less than a year so was replaced under warranty, when it went the third time I traded it in. When the sun visor went I thought I'd get one from a scrapper, Internet said don't bother, they all go in the same way. Oh and the head gasket went. My garagiste said they all went in the same place. We're now a Skoda family, 3 Fabias and 3 Octavias. The only fault has been the wiring twixt doors and main body, but that didn't manifest until the car was 10 years old, and wasn't stunningly expensive to fix. Volkswagons for people who are spending their own money.

Strange to see VW re-branding as Reichenwagen isn’t it

MichaelG.

I think I'm the only one mentioning VW in this thread, and I don't know what that's supposed to mean. It doesn't make any sense in my knowledge of German.

Is that the third or the first reichenwagen?

.

It was a response to Duncan Webster’s post

… and was one of several German translations offered by DeepL when I typed-in the English phrase:

Rich People’s Car

Nothing whatever to do with any of your posts, Mick

MichaelG.

And how do you charge that many cars in a parking station? Depending on the rate I guess say 200 cars. at say 10kwh. each Not by any means a fast charge. Do the math. That's a fair size substation. OK what about 10 charging stations? Still a lot.

Thanks for that, I get that now.

Though I paid what seemed a sensible and very moderate price for my low-mileage but (at that time) 9-year-old Touran - and a practical workhorse it has proved to be.

The maths is more complicated than that. At the moment IC car owners put a premium on fast recharging because most people drive them until the tank is something under half full and then start thinking about refuelling. The nature of the fuel makes rapid bulk filling the best way of re-energising the car. It's not the only way.

Electric cars are different. Not smart to drive EVs until the battery is running low, and most urban-commuter journeys make driving that way unnecessary. EVs can trickle charge at any time they're not actually rolling: on the drive at home, from street-side charge points, in car-parks at work or whilst shopping. Most cars do not drive long distances between refuelling opportunities.

Diesel and petrol make it necessary to bury large tanks of oil under a special forecourt, and to keep those tanks full with fleets of road tankers fed by oil refineries and shipping millions of tons of oil world-wide. EVs don't need that infrastructure and fairly ordinary wiring will trickle charge them without fuss. Charging slowly overnight is more than enough to cover the average British commute. It's those who wants to drive the Canning Stock Route who are in trouble. 1800km across 3 Australian deserts and the journey starts in the middle of nowhere...

Not normal motoring! Most British cars are completely unsuitable for this type of trek though I'm sure someone on the forum would try it in their Baby Austin towing a caravan...

Dave

SOD said:
" EVs can trickle charge at any time they're not actually rolling: on the drive at home, from street-side charge points, in car-parks at work or whilst shopping. "
That's fine if you have a drive and charging at work. Same for on-street and car parks. There is no public on street charging in the city near me. The local large supermarket has at several hundred spaces but only 6 charging points.

No I'm not anti-EV, just pragmatic. I own a PHEV. I can actually charge at work but with a10kW limit and only If one of the 6 spaces (shared with over over 1000 employees) is free.

This really has drifted off hasn't it? What I object to is one manufacturer of hybids advertising the as 'the electric car that charges itself'. No it's not, it's a petrol car with a complicated transmission system. I appreciate that around town it might be a good idea, but for those of us who don't live in metropoli, you're just dragging round a big battery to no purpose.

But many cars are needed to do more than commuting. I don't want to arrive in Dartmoor or The Lakes from the Midlands with a near-exhausted battery, and then have to join a queue to spend hours recharging.

Last year we went to Orkney, which needed a 400 mile trip each way to Aberdeen, and a couple of hundred more miles touring. That'd be considerably more difficult and time-consuming in most current EVs. Right now I can put in over 500 miles' range in a few minutes. I'll be interested when I can buy a lowish-mileage but several-years-old EV that can deliver comparable performance for a modest SH price.

" lowish-mileage but several-years-old EV that can deliver comparable performance for a modest SH price. "

Err, I wonder if that will ever happen, rather than second-hand at modest price because the £ umpteen-thousand batteries are on their way out, perhaps?

On other points raised, it's amazing how many EV enthusiasts glibly talk about trickle-charging your car you only ever use around town, at home, from a street-side charger or a charger in their employers' car-parks. I suspect these people all live in suburban houses with sizeable drives and work in big premises with ample car-parking; not live in flats or in narrow terraced streets (be those Victorian or the modern pseudo-village type); nor are retired or work in premises with little or no parking. Oh, and constrain even their social lives to a 10-mile radius from home.

It’s rapidly emerging that EV ownership will be for a certain social sector of society, many of us live in circumstances that mean owning and maintaining the batteries on said EVs is not going to be practical, a recipe for dissatisfaction amongst the peasants ! Dave W

Interesting piece on the news this morning, electric HGV needs, I think they said, 340kW charger connection. Can you imagine the drain on the local grid when they all settle down for the night.

It is hard to find hard and fast figures for this and it is based on current technology. The break even point for the green credentials of an EV is a far greater mileage than I will do in 15 years since I no longer commute to work 5 days a week. Since it seems likely that the battery will need replacing if it gets wet or damaged in that 15 years the true eco-friendly cross over point of an EV is probably greater than claimed. Estimated lifetime of the batteries is turning out to be optimistic. Insurers are writing off EVs with damaged batteries because they are too costly to replace.

My conclusion is that it makes little sense for a driver doing low annual mileage to be forced to buy and use a vehicle whose production using current technology causes such damage to the planet over and above current ICE vehicles before they have left the showroom. Where I live is poorly catered for by public transport so a car is pretty much essential. I was recently asked to go to for routine check-up at a local hospital 39 miles away.

Back to infrastructure matters, I remember reading that if all cars are driving down the centre of traffic lanes under the control of a self driving vehicle computer then the road will rapidly become rutted as wear is not distributed over the whole area of that lane. I was reminded of this recently when driving in lane 1 of a motorway that had obvious ruts from HGV wheels. Heavy EVs will also add to this damage.

Perhaps we need a small, lightweight, high mpg class of ICE vehicle for people who only do a low annual mileage as an alternative to being pushed into a heavy EV with a high, upfront, carbon footprint.

Martin C

Edited By Martin Connelly on 19/04/2023 08:42:51

Is there a phone app, without being full of spyware, that tracks you movement over a year to give you a profile of usage that then helps you select the most suitable battery size / range?

Then we need a car designed for different sizes of battery to match this, with a system of either hiring a different car for occasional long journeys or a battery trailer that you exchange halfway down the motorway.

BTW one third of urban households don't own a car, and one third own >2.

Or tow a trailer with a nice big diesel genny in it for recharging on long journeys.👹😉.

Sorry I just couldn’t resist that one!