Chinese Electric Cars

Electric Cars and road vehicles are the future but as many here have said, where is all the power going to come from to charge them all. The government has given the go ahead for new nuclear power generating plant to provide energy for part of our future energy needs at massive cost to the nation.

I Can't help think that the government would be better off providing all households in the UK with solar panels free of charge and investing money into accumulator research so that electricity can be stored in large amounts.

Different company for many years now. Still called Volvo Group Trucks but now own Renault, Mack and UD - ie what used to be Nissan's heavy truck division. Nissan's light trucks are still part of the Nissan / Renault car group.

Volvo cars have been owned by Gelly (China) since 2010. They seem to be doing well.

Saab cars went bust after GM sold them to Dutch Spyker and the remaining Swedish operation seems to be planning an electric vehicle in conjunction with a Chinese company (SOP 2020?), although they won't be able to call them Saabs. Scania (the truck part of Saab-Scania) is doing very well it seems.

On a similar note, Mitsubishi Fuso (formerly Mitsubishi Commercial Vehicles) got into serious trouble after they were caught falsifying OBD data for their engines (echos of VW here!). IIRC, they were subsequently 85% bought by Mercedes, so the Fuso vehicles you see on the roads are now made by a Mercedes-owned company.

It's swings and roundabouts!

I was in Japan talking to Mitsubishi Fuso about hybrid and electric commercial vehicle roadmaps back in 2010 when I worked for Ricardo. All the major companies have plans for this technology although obviously it's not a simple journey from where we are today. The idea of a 40 tonne battery electric HGV doesn't work too well if it only has a payload of 10 tonnes. But a tractor unit for urban routes (quiet and emission-free) makes sense for that part of the route.

Murray

Norway has/had adopted a system where new electric cars come with no purchase tax or VAT which is probably something that can be done in Norway as they have a surplus in fossil fuels they sell and most of their power is generated by Hydro and a small population. How long that situation is sustainable is a question but I do not think you could take the Norway model and replicate it here in the UK as the loss to the revenue stream would need to be made up else where. It is not all rosy in Norway as people are using their EV rather than public transport causing congestion and ferries are suffering a loss of revenue as EV's are free.

This is election year in NZ, the current govt is promising that one third of govt cars will be electric by 2021, the Christchurch City Council says that's too long, they will anounce when the city will go electric in a couple of weeks.

Ian S C

Yes, it's amusing (bemusing?) to hear Norway being held up as an example of a possible route for the UK to take - not just in EVs but also after we throw ourselves off the cliff. Unlike us, they used the proceeds of the North Sea oil and gas reserves to build their pensions and health services. Norway's national debt is about 32%; UK's is about 92%. Their health service may not be #1 in the world (only 3rd in Europe) but it's one of the best funded. It's not very comparable...

Murray

Two things.

One - A correction. Stats quoted by Robert Llewelyn on Fully Charged were incorrect. Apparently it is 42% ' with a plug'(so doesn't include non-plug in hybrids?), and 22% fully electric.

And two - I've certainly not held up Norway as a possible route for the UK to take. It is clear that after 2040, there will be fewer purely ICE cars (as a percentage) in the UK. All I wrote was that the UK government would be aware of the changes occurring in Norway.

Sure, there will be unintended hiccups along the way (a bit like the Germans producing more PV generation than their grid could cope with - leading to negative electricity pricing, on at least one occasion), but I daresay the Norwegians will overcome these small problems (like removing EVs from free travel on ferries?). Question might arise that new ferries will be electric as well?

"The allure of the gasoline automobile is somewhat perplexing. Its widespread use has worsened dependence on foreign supplies of oil for many countries, inducing price spikes and fuel shocks and transferring wealth to petroleum producers. Increased reliance on the car has threatened the vitality of urban centers, required the construction of massive roads, highways, and parking structures, degraded communities, and socially excluded individuals that do not own vehicles. Automobile accidents cause more than 1.2 million deaths per year and injure 25–50 million more, making them the third largest contributor to death and injury in the world. Interstate highways, avenues, streets, and boulevards are noisy and often congested, and gasoline vehicles spew a variety of unhealthy pollutants and particles into the air, contributing to acid rain, ozone depletion, and climate change"

**LINK**

All of which are near to 'invisible' to the individual. Even road death for the majority is what happens to other people.

There is generally a fairly major disconnect between personal perception and remote data sets.

regards Martin

Very true Martin. It's strange but true that personal perception often misleads. When it comes to change, most people overestimate what's likely to happen in the near future and underestimate what's likely to happen in 15 years. We have very peculiar notions of risk. Heavy smokers are afraid of spiders, but not of cancer, bronchitis and heart disease. People loyally support football teams despite their repeated incompetence, not to mention political parties. Bad habits are hard to break even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they're harmful.

My theory is that the human brain has two components and they are always jostling for control. The emotional half is tuned to deal with surprises like being attacked by a bear, when an instant decision is required. The intellectual half is tuned to recognise patterns; it learns from experience, analyses, considers options, and plans ahead. Given time to think it will out manoeuvre the emotional part. Unfortunately we go through life with both sides swapping in and out subconsciously and it's far from clear which is in charge. This leads to situations like: 'I dithered and missed my chance to take charge' and 'I wish I hadn't slept with the wife's sister'.

You would expect that engineering decisions would always be based on evidence and cold logic. Apparently not: the experimental evidence is that a young lady in a swimsuit will persuade grizzled and cynical experts to buy an inferior product! For that reason science and formal technical evaluation both take rigorous steps to reduce bias.

For myself, I mostly use the thinking part of my brain to justify the stupid decisions made by the emotional half. I like to think I'm a logical man of the world, but close examination suggests much of what I actually decide was self-deluded. Oh dear...

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 15/08/2017 10:33:18

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 15/08/2017 10:33:58

Did a 320mile round trip up to Worcester and back yesterday and spotted 3 Tesla S cars, none of which was hanging about. Then when I was leaving the Oxford services noticed they were fitting a whole run of Tesla and possibly other charging points. With investment like that in charging points it is going to help sell their cars.

Also noticed on You-tube that there are quite a few DIY EV conversions, maybe a good project for our Editor Neil to do and write up, must be more exciting than making another shunter

You'd struggle to insure a home made vehicle here in the UK. In the US and Canada it seems to be much simpler, probably to do with the tradition of making and running hot rods etc. When we made battery EVs in the UK back in the 1990s, they were for commercial operation, with homologation, type testing etc but we ran the development vehicles on trade plates. I think you will find there have been very few amateur EVs here.

Murray

Going back a long way to Mike's comment about Perkins having a gas turbine powered truck running in the 70s, and as a deviation from the thread.

I worked for them from early 1973 until retiring in late 2003, and never heard of such a vehicle.

Over the years that I knew the company (starting contact with regard to Fuel injection Equipment, in 1964) Perkins looked at many different types of prime mover, from attempts at a constant horsepower diesel, two strokes and so on, but the conventional four stroke diesel engine was always the commercially and technically most viable.The only gas turbine which they produced was before my time, as a four man portable fire pump. The gas turbine was made under licence from Solar. (We have one in our Perkins Heritage Group collection)

By the 1970s, the nearly constant horsepower Differential Diesel Engine had been abandoned, so that was unlikely to be what he heard. (Strange to hear the engine speed falling as the vehicle accelerated!)

What Mike may have heard whistling was an engine pressure charged by a "Comprex" unit.

This was investigated as an alternative to the turbocharger, consisting of a rotating tube nest, alternatively connected to the exhaust and induction system. Again, found to be unsuitable.

Returning to the thread, pure electric vehicles are non polluting at point of use, but how is the electricity to be generated if the vehicle is to be truly non polluting?

For local use, they are the way to reduce air pollution (ignoring any pollution from the production of,  and assembly of, components)

The emphasis has to be on development of batteries capable of providing adequate range for cars, and more importantly for goods and large passenger carrying vehicles. AND the resulting vehicles have to priced such that they are affordable. UNLESS everyone is prepared to change their lifestyle quite markedly, which I very much doubt.

Howard (now minus typos)

Edited By Howard Lewis on 20/08/2017 21:30:35

Edited By Liam Mulcahy on 20/08/2017 22:40:25

Edited By Liam Mulcahy on 20/08/2017 22:43:42

My daughter's generation already have a very different lifestyle from mine when I was that age... we can't assume these changes will happen to us old stick in the muds, they will happen to our children

Neil

.

Thanks for that, Liam ... I had never heard of Drumm

Very impressive !!

**LINK**

https://nitum.wordpress.com/tag/inventor-of-the-drumm-traction-battery/

MichaelG.

I pass through Oxford services fairly regularly, it's certainly a good place for Tesla spotting. There has been a row of charging points at the end of its hotel section for a long time (now I know what all the work is about).

Lusted after an 'S' since I saw the first ones, no way to afford it though.

Edited By V8Eng on 21/08/2017 00:48:05

We may not have any choice in the matter! I have very strong reasons for maintaining my lifestyle for ever. It's very sad but the aging process alone will soon put an end to it. My wishes in the matter count for nothing.

The lesson of history is that nothing lasts. Instead people adapt to the opportunities and disasters of their time. All I know for sure is that the futuire will be different. At the moment it looks as if it will be dominated by energy shortages and the consequences of global warming. That might be completely wrong. Having advanced technology is good reason for optimism. However, it's not a panacea, for example technology won't save us if the earth is struck by a large meteorite or from a gross political mistake.

Dave

Technology has been changing people's "lifestyles" since the industrial revolution started. The public don't have a choice in this change, they never have. In the not too distant future the only private car ownership will likely be in museums, in Europe at least. I'm sure there will be some redneck Americans running cars on corn oil or similar for many years to come though.

Just looked at the Leaf. Wow it's expensive. A lot of people even in the country only need to do a 20 mile round trip to town, and as a step up from waiting at the bus stop in the rain only need the feature set of an Austin 7. When the local hospital closes they might need to do a 50 mile round trip to a bigger town but that should help keep the local facility open or reopen the railway line. So some joined up thinking is needed here - a long term government plan.

Re charging all these vehicles. More people might get solar panels installed if the planning constraints and gold plating requirements for FIT were sorted out.