Right to Repair

When I stated that my dread was being forced into an electric car it was purely from a practical point of view. I like to think that I have a respect for the environment, I am not a climate change denier, my wife and I are almost obsessive re-cyclers, I have the solar panels installed and even though we each have a diesel car (hers is a mild hybrid) every journey of any distance is taken on public transport, either by train or continued by local bus at the destination. In other words we try to do 'our bit'. As we are located in a village in the middle of rural Lincolnshire, with a very poor bus service, and the station on one line is 7 miles distant with free parking and on another line 15 miles away with parking available on my step-daughter's drive, and a free bus pass ride into town, the cars are only used to access either a station or for the weekly shopping. Mine hardly moves from one week to the next.

Notwithstanding the above, I look at it this way. If I need to buy a tank of fuel (not very often in my case) it takes me all of 5 minutes at a self-service station and I am good for another 500 miles (I think). How long would it take if I were to be using the car regularly or on daily business to recharge, that is assuming I could find a suitable charging point? An hour, or is it more or less than that to get a full 'tank' before I would be mobile again? I have no idea but hopefully someone will be adding to my education. I know of only two public charging points in one town 10 miles away and two more on a supermarket car park 7 miles in the other direction, although I do know those who do not live in shared or upper floor accommodation may have a domestic point fitted. The other week I observed a person with an electric car pull up at one of the charging points at the supermarket whilst waiting for my wife to finish the shopping (sounds sexist, I know, before anyone takes a shot, but she likes to shop alone). The man dutifully went to the boot of his car, took out the charging lead and connected the vehicle to the charging point. He then took out his mobile phone and, because I assume TESCO doesn't give away electricity for free, made the necessary call or used an app to pay for the fuel and switch on the current. This must have taken between 5 and 10 minutes. He then went to the shop but returned in less than 15 minutes disconnected the car, coiled the cable and stored in the boot. How much 'fuel' he acquired in this time I have no idea. But I thought then, do I really want all this hassle? No, not for me.

On a wider point, and again I am looking to be educated if I am wrong, I look at it like this; when I think of all the millions of vehicles in motion at any one time in this country alone, there must be countless megawatts of power being released from the liquid fuel they use. I have no idea how many megawatts but I am guessing it is a lot. If all those vehicles were to be converted to electric instantaneously, let alone by 2030 and some years beyond, does or will this country have the generating capacity in wind, solar or nuclear to replace all those megawatts of energy current being provided by liquid fuel. I can only guess that will not and that conversion to alternative sources of power within so short a time frame is just a government fantasy, I think they call it 'greenwash'. I am only glad (?) that I will not be living long enough to see the demise of the diesel of petrol car and that I will never be forced into an electric vehicle despite the costs HMG keep loading on to those motorists such as myself.

Edited By Chris Crew on 09/02/2022 09:32:18

The next generation of electric cars will have quick change battery packs that you just pull into the service station and they yank out the flat battery and drop in a charged one about as quick as filling up a petrol tank, maybe quicker. They are already doing it on long haul electric trucks in Australia, with the battery change stations at the drivers' fatigue break stops. And motorcycle manufacturers are already working on a standard changeable battery pack across all makes and models. Car manufacturers are not far behind doing the same.

But yes, will need a lot of windmills and solar panels to power it. But we are already well on the way with solar in Australia, to the point that power prices are forecast to go down in the very near future and coal power stations are closing down ahead of schedule.

But of course we have the almost limitless space and sunshine for massive solar "farms". And suburban rooftop solar is so ubiquitous it is threatening grid stability with an oversupply of power at times. If only you guys could capture rain power instead of solar!!

Chris Crew
Much of your concerns above depend on the electric car, it's battery size and power usage and your domestic circumstances in conjunction with your driving distance.

Life is undoubtedly more difficult for those without off-street parking and ground floors i.e those living above shops or in blocks of flats or old-fashioned terrace cottages - although that could be sorted with infrastructure changes such as streetside charging points and more points in public car-parks and most importantly the new legislation demanding new builds have such arrangements built in - even if the chargers themselves aren't yet installed

An efficient smaller electric car will consume between 250-400 Wh/mile depending on time of year, distance being travelled and need or heaters at the beginning of journeys i.e short journeys are a lot less efficient in winter until the car has warmed itself and it's battery packs up to optimal.

Domestic charge points typically deliver 7.4 KW/h as do most of the slow on-street or basic carpark systems. Plugging a car into your own point at home requires no fancy interaction with phone apps etc and an overnight charge of say 8hrs will shove 60 KWH into a suitable car, say average 180mile range. 12 hr charging obviously more.

It’s also possible to charge just from a 13apm power point but then you are down to reduced current depending on cable lengths/size etc 2.5-3 KW/h or 8-10miles range per hour.

Fast chargers such as those now appearing in supermarket car-parks will deliver anything from 50KW/h to 300KW/h (although no cars can take more than 250 KW draw at the moment and current draw depends on state of battery charge reducing as the pack fills up and some balancing happens)

How each network manages it's chargers does differ. The Tesla supercharger system is the simplest - just drive up and plug in a Tesla and the system reads whose car it is and debits monthly. Some of the networks use RFID cards, some will accept credit cards and many have membership systems and indeed use phone apps.

Since charging from home is the cheapest - particularly for those with cheap night tariffs, then folk generally keep the car topped up at home to a battery saving level circa 80% unless a long trip is planned when they'll fill it to 100% and then only charge as necessary on the trip and combine that with toilet or food breaks.

You can expect most decent range cars to have 2-300 mile ranges but for folk living in towns with short commutes or shopping trips there are cars with less range and hence cheaper to buy. And of course there is the option of a plug-in hybrid with ranges towards 30 miles. Once you have hybrids then you're generally into more maintenance and service costs.

Tesla lead the way with efficiency and simplicity of charging and almost zero maintenance needs but they aren't cheap cars - a standard range model 3 starts at £42K with little need to add any 'extras' and will give 200 miles range even in winter and practical 250 in summer on a motorway. However, Tesla are starting to shoot themselves in their proverbial feet with their minimalist design and simplified construction approach - the next generation Model Y will be built with a single rear chassis casting and a structural battery pack making repair after collision hugely more expensive and hence insurance rates will skyrocket - not helped by the supercar acceleration figures of some electric vehicles.

pgk

Like me and millions of others Chris is a low-mileage user: shopping trips and short commutes etc. Electric cars are ideal for us because we can recharge them at home! No need go anywhere special or queue. Fears about topping up a supermarket are groundless because we would rarely do it. It's easy for us to 'respect the environment'. Switching to an electric car is no problem for anyone doing less than 100 miles per day.

Agreed mid-journey charging will inconvenience long distance drivers, but they're a different problem. They will have to queue and wait while their vehicle recharges, but at least forecourts won't be cluttered by motorists like me and Chris.

Does the country have enough renewable energy to replace oil? Not yet, and maybe never. Worse, carrying on burning oil isn't the answer. I hope no-one on the forum is daft enough to think fossil fuels will last forever! Whilst a false sense of security is possible because energy prices have been stable for about 30 years, the future is grim. We depend on fossil fuels for food, water, manufactures, transport and energy. Unfortunately humanity is at or near peak oil and demand is still rising sharply. From now on expect to see scary price rises, shortages, economic shocks such as high inflation, disrupted services and riots.

Wikipedia says the UK's total energy consumption in 2019 was 1651TWh (equivalent to 148M tonnes of oil). Of this 335TWh was delivered by electricity. This document gives road petroleum usage as 28.9M tonnes, which is about 20% of UK energy use equivalent to 324TWh.

So the UK electrical system is just about big enough to power all UK vehicles provided everything else is turned off! The problem isn't quite as bad as that because Internal Combustion engines are inefficient compared with electric, for example they burning fuel stopped in queues and when rolling downhill, and only get peak efficiency when cruising at about 55mph.

The difficult future rather than the cosy past is why it's necessary to move urgently to renewable energy as much possible, and imperfect though renewables are. The tide is turning, some effects are already visible, and our grandchildren see nothing but problems ahead. My guess is 20 to 30 years before it gets really rough, which isn't long when major changes like new nuclear power stations are needed. Too much time has been wasted already. The change isn't about tree-huggers inconveniencing motorists, it's about ensuring a comfortable future.

How best to convince people to change is a major problem in itself. At the moment, the best thing individuals can do is burn fossil fuels: the short-term results are almost all beneficial. Unfortunately, in this case, the long-term result of individuals doing their best is catastrophic to the whole group. Some way of rewarding good behaviour whilst punishing bad is needed.

Dave

Just as a matter of interest, I looked at Hydrogen charging stations recently. UK has only 3 or 4 available to the public with only another couple planned. But look at Germany, and the map is almost littered with the things. There is the matter of whether the colourless gas is Brown, Blue or Green but that's an issue to be resolved. What is does show is that all those concerns about impracticality of Hydrogen storage etc can be overcome.

pgk

These guys are going one step further and have robots doing the EV battery swaps in a matter of minutes. **LINK**

Just to digress slightly, all cars, those that are ice and EV will continue to need tyres, today I visited my local tyre supplier, have been a customer of theirs since the 60’s and was served then by the present owners grandad, makes me feel really old, we had an interesting conversation on how prices have skyrocketed and the reasons. The tyre supplier purchases the majority of his stock from the Far East, no surprise there, and ships 1,000 tyres at a time in containers, the cost of a container pre Covid was £1,300, last month the invoice for one container was £17,000 for the hire, no signs that costs will be going down. Running any type of vehicle is going to get more expensive be it ice or EV. Cost of four tyres came out at £350.00. Dave W

Where are the plans for all the new power stations that will be needed?

The grid will also need to have multiple times present capacity.

How many battery-packs will a fuel station have to store to keep up with demand?

Martin.

Tesla started out with the idea of battery swaps and indeed built a station in California to do just that. The original design cars were developed for the process but the whole thing was abandoned due to logistics of stockpiling and recharging the packs and the arguments over degradation and ownership of them.
It would be more practical for lorry fleet operations between, say, courier hubs.
It does all come down to infrastructure and compatibility - which also risks reducing innovation.
One of the nicest ideas for lorries was the concept of a smaller battery for local running and then overhead power on trunk routes - until you have hundreds of such trucks all trying to use the same line at once.

pgk

"One of the nicest ideas for lorries was the concept of a smaller battery for local running and then overhead power on trunk routes - until you have hundreds of such trucks all trying to use the same line at once".

Then perhaps the obvious solution to that would be a railway? Or has that been tried before somewhere and then closed down because it was found to be cheaper to put a train load of goods into a fleet of trucks instead of modernising the Victorian way of shifting things around on the railways that existed right up until the mid-1960's. And yes, I do know that Dr. Beeching did try to introduce containerisation and freight-liner terminals but most these subsequently closed too.

With regard to reliability, our first new car was a Ford Anglia 1200, followed by a Renault 16TL, in parallel with the last 6TL to be imported into Britain, (BOY! did that thing consume front silencers Designed to rot )

The last cars from a European manufacturer were Renault 5TLs. Drive shaft gaiters and radiators wer consumables.

The replacements were two of the last 2005 MY Toyota Yaris to be sold.

Each successive car seemed to be more economical and reliable (not always durable though )

After 12 years the Yaris,s were traded in for Aygos, having consumed, other than routine servicing, a set of brake pads and a set of tyres; one brake light bulb each..

So far, one Aygo has had a new pair of front tyres, but nothing else, other than servicing,and is amazingly economical on a long run, especially when the ambient temperature is about 20C

BUT, until the %TLs went all the servicing was done by me. Now I have enough kit to equip a small garage, but nothing that calls for its use! But my days o lying on cold concrete to service or repair are long gone.

PROGRESS!

Howard

That necessitates loading/off loading the containers or the lorries and depends on timetables hence less flexible. I tend to agree in principle that a cheaper form of transport and less 'just in time' transport has merit. Perhaps put it all back on the canals and really save energy...

pgk

Hmm, I don't think so. Cars need custom battery packs due to space constrints. Unless they are all going to look the same. Commercial vehiles aere a different use case.
Do you have any examples of cars with quick-change battery packs?

Robert G8RPI.

because I assume TESCO doesn't give away electricity for free

Not necessarily the correct assumption ! I don't shop at Tesco, but understand that some supermarkets do offer free charging (at lower rate chargers) for a defined period for users of their stores. And such use may require the use on the particular supermarket's "app" to get it going. From my POV, using the MG 5 as an example (as I have recently been looking into them), an hour on a 3Kw charger would put enough into the battery to cover getting me to and from the store (3Kw @ 3.5 miles per KwH). Not much, admittedly, but better than paying for my own petrol / diesel to get to the store and back ! Given the other "loyaty" enticements that supermarkets employ to gain your repeat custom, why not "give away" a small amount of electricty - is it that much of a difference to a small discount on the bill ?

The current requirement for multiple accounts, apps etc for the many different suppliers has been addressed by a recent govenment edict that all chargers have to be available by use of credit & debit cards at the charger. Still in the "grace" period for compliance IIRC, but a move in the right direction - after all, you don't need separate accounts, apps etc. to use petrol pumps. Kia have a card supplied to purchasers of their EVs that gives access to many different suppliers' chargers with the one card, billed monthly. Works throughout Europe as well, not just UK.

I have previously balked at the range issue for EVs as well - just so used to the "once a week" fill-up taking a few minutes & giving 550 miles to a tankful. As my weekly mileage is around 420 miles, I have range to spare, so a 200-250 mile range car seems inconvenient at best - barely 2 days usage. But you just need a different mindset - rather than the once-a-week fill to cover the week, think "when it is parked, plug it in". I appreciate that this really applies to those who can park near their property & have a charge point installed, but my car sits on the drive for 12 1/2 hours between getting home in an evening to going out again the next morning, so why not have it charging while it sits there ? If I could twist my employers arm to get a point installed at work (my brother has this at his workplace) it could be charging for 9 hours there. Plus an hour at the supermarket etc. - it all adds up. I came across an acronym on one EV forum that sums it up nicely - ABC - "Always Be Charging" !

So, realistically, with a small adjustment to how you "fuel" the vehicle, you come to it every morning / evening with a "full tank" . For probably 85% of my car usage, I don't think I would struggle with a 200 mile range EV - 100 miles a day commute for 4 days + around 20 miles for the weekly shop. It is the other 15% that is holding me back - the longer trips for leisure that would require using the (currently inadequate in my view) public charging network. The NEC is around 140 miles from me, so not possible to do the return journey on a single charge with even a "long range" MG 5. But I would be at the NEC for several hours, so why not "ABC" there ? Well it appears that thoughout their extensive carparks the NEC only have 10 EV charge points scattered about - a bit of a lottery as to if there was a free one when you got there & that it was working (unreliable / faulty chargers seem to be common complaint) & the subsequent "range anxiety" and delays to the return journey trying to find an unoccupied, working charger on the way home. The 400 mile trip to stay with friends in the Highlands would be similarly fraught & as for a touring hoilday abroad ....

Robert - have a read of the link in Hopper's post - seems such a system is being trialled, but the operators of the scheme are suggesting that it won't appeal to private users. It is more aimed at taxis, private hire & delivery vehicles whose batteries won't last a full shift. It isn't one large battery being proposed, but multiple instances of a small, standardised cell.

Probably a better solution to the charging issue than that employed by the Berlin bus network, though - their electric buses can only complete the mornning commute up till lunchtime on a charge & they can't recharge before the afternoon / evening stint. So they have a second fleet of diesel buses for that !

Nigel B.

A non-profit organisation of which I am chair of finance has been discussing the provision of EV charging points to encourage their use by employees, purely to enhance our 'greenness'

We can ask people to pay which will entail accepting cards or similar, which we don't at present or offer the electricity for free which is OK as the Inland Revenue apparently don't count this as being a benefit in kind.

While free travel will encourage use of EVs what happens if we have more vehicles than chargers, will people need to stop work and move their cars to allow others to charge to make things fair and will the rest of the employees demand a similar perk at some stage? Should we allow access on seniority or on the state of charge of the vehicle so a charge is needed to get home?

Such decisions depend on assorted factors - how many employees, work shifts, car park availability and power supply to the building and affordability.
I'd speculate that a few chargers to start aren't a bad idea. If they become popular then add as many as the available spare capacity will allow. At that point you have to make some decisions - possibly downgrade the charge capacity on each slot from a typical 7KW to 3KW to allow more folk (and points) a little top-up or make that part of the car park pay-to-access rather than swapping out for payable charge points +/- musical cars at lunchtime
Much depends on budget and shape of buildings and property. Large roofed structures really should be covered in solar panels as should any covered parts of car parks.

pgk

Cars with swappable battery packs:

maybe a potential candidate here;-

New Ecar

Obviously pure coincidence that this new Nio has outlines that are a fusion of the model S and Porsche Taycan and original model S battery swap as well as access to raw materials to throw 150KW batteries into them. The original Tesla Plaid was supposed to have a 600mile range but got reduced due to practical realities in supply.

If I recall correctly, there is an agreement between some European manufacturers to use a joint electric car chassis design?

pgk

Edited By pgk pgk on 10/02/2022 20:14:48

Wouldn't be surprised to see the railways make a comeback because things have changed since Dr Beeching's day.

Most movements today are done in standard sized containers freely transferred between ships, lorries and trains: very different from the limited non-standard and primitive methods available sixty years ago. Another big change is the rise of Logistics companies and on-line purchasing. Stuff is moved in bulk between regional hubs and transshipped to vans for local delivery. Not a major change for inter-regional links to be done by containerised rail rather than containerised road.

Dave

On swappable batteries, unless there is a common design thre will either never be enough stations for some models or the stations will have to stock different types. And as mentioned there are issues with ownership, life and warranty. When batteries were so expensive thry were leased it might have been an option.

On Nick Clarke 3's question on chargers. If its for employees who are on site for several hours, don't install "chargers". Instead provide 13A (16A in europe) outlets and let the car owners use their 3kW "granny" chargers. You don't need a fast charge if you are parked all day. A 8 hour charge will give at least 50 mile range even on larger cars. This is enough for most commutes. A twin RCD protected 13A socket will serve two spaces and cost a lot less than a 32A 7kW charger that will only supply one car.

Robert G8RPI.