Chinese Electric Cars

Up until the earth quake in 2010/11 in Christchurch(NZ) we had what were known as a shuttle bus route around the CBD, this was run with locally built electric bus'ses, they had a Capstone gas turbine for battery charging. I don't recall what happened to them, I think they may have been sold.

Ian S C

Made for an interesting read regards to charging EV's **LINK**

Just looked at the Leaf. Wow it's expensive.

Even more so when you consider the initial depreciation if you buy new - my brother bought an ex-demo top of the range Leaf (with outright purchase of the bigger battery & the "faster" charger) around a year ago. IIRC the car was under 6 months old with 4000 miles covered at the time & it cost him £14K. Again IIRC, "list" was something like double that !

A year and 9000 miles further on & he thinks it's wonderful. He uses it for work & has covered up to 300 miles in a day - range is up to 135 miles on a charge & the motorway services fast chargers put in an over 80% charge in under 30 minutes for £6. The built-in satnav shows suitable charging points for longer journeys. Last time we spoke he reckoned the 9000 miles had cost him directly under £60 (by using FOC charging wherever possible).

As my daily commute is 92 miles round trip, only Teslas have a "workable" range for me to avoid "range anxiety" & I can't afford one of those without a lottery win.

Nigel B

As my daily commute is 92 miles round trip, only Teslas have a "workable" range for me to avoid "range anxiety"

It would only require a 13A mains connection, while at work, to completely avoid that? Maybe not possoble now... but in the future....

It is possible to travel from Park and Ride into York City Centre by Electric Bus, we've done that. (handy for the NRM).

York has also recently started trialing an Electric double decker.

Link to the story of that here. **LINK*

Edited By V8Eng on 21/08/2017 17:04:11

They are installing lots of charge points at Burtonwood Services. As this is only about 10 miles from the end of the motorway I can think of 3 alternatives. Firstly it is for those who are not quite going to make it home, second it is for those who forgot to charge up before setting off, or perhaps it is for nipping out and getting a free charge so you can go back home and power your house off the free lecky.

Don't take offence scousers, I married one

I see in the newspaper today the electrical suppliers are saying that the average UK household will be unable to recharge an electric car in a reasonable time because the main fuse is undersized.

Or, you can charge it but not boil a kettle or heat water at the same time.

That's rubbish. Smallest main fuse has been 60A for years. I put more into storage heaters overnight than would go into a car. Even easier when you realise most people will only be doing a top up. Long distance commuters like me and Nigel might have to move job or house, or maybe think the lower cost of travel an encouragement.

because the main fuse is undersized.

Debunked as unrealistic. Possible theoretically, but practically a non event. Cars don't charge at 11kW unless on a 3 phase supply (max take is 7.4kW on a single phase supply) and most houses are now fitted with100A fuses to the grid connection. So just a load of waffle, really.

I think we have an 80A fuse - that will cope with 18kW quite adequately. - and one of our kettles is 1kW while the other is 2.6kW, so where is this 'problem'? Scaremongering or a lot of people who cannot work out that it is not reality?

Yes, we can make tea, or even cook an evening meal at the same time as charging an EV. But most will, by another few years, have a battery as well as grid supply, I expect. That or use cheaper leccy later through the night. Those with smart meters will be paying extortionate rates for their leccy at peak times, so that will put them off a bit, perhaps.

Go on, work it out for yourself!

I suspect I had some involvement in this, bizarrely. Back then I worked for a company near Cambridge that made the drive system. One of the directors was a Kiwi and as a result of a domestic negotiation(!!), he relocated back to NZ with his family. Somehow he wangled to retain his job down there for a couple of years with the result that we ended up "winning" some work there. Which meant that we had to support a complex series hybrid bus program on the other side of the world. I know, you couldn't make this stuff up but it happened. My wife saved me from having to spend weeks out there myself by whelping at strategic moments but it was a completely dumb idea from a business POV.

If we are talking about the same outfit, the NZ bus company was called Designline, based in Ashburton. The buses used Genesis VRLA gel batteries and originally had a (German) Panda Silentpower diesel genset as a range extender to recharge the batteries somewhat when out of town. These were unreliable (heavily modified VW TDi engines with water cooled manifolds that were prone to cracking etc - I still have a couple in the garage). I knew that the gensets had been changed over to Capstone microturbines but I suspect the vehicles would have been at the end of their useful life by 2010. A couple of our guys ended up at Capstone in California and that may well have been how that connection was made.

Funny old world!

Murray

But Ashburton is in Devon, Still a long way from Cambridge though.

Our local 'Park&Ride' in Hazel Grove [Stockport] is owned by the Stagecoach 'bus company.

There are several parking spaces reserved for electric vehicles, and these have free [gratis] charging points rated at 16AMP (3.6kW) each.

My 'bus pass gives me free travel; the parking is free; the electricity is free; and there is a Tesla showroom a few miles up the road ... So how long would it take to 'break even' ?

Just a thought at bedtime.

MichaelG.

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https://www.stagecoachbus.com/promos-and-offers/manchester/hazel-grove-park-and-ride

https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/findus/location/store/manchestersouth

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 22/08/2017 23:08:51

Just a thought at bedtime.

Without any fine detail, can't tell.

Forever, if you wouldn't otherwise need it and quite quickly if you bought a second hand Leaf and used the free leccy to power your home. Work it out for yourself is my suggestion.

.

Oh dear

The concept was to get a "free" Tesla

Seems reasonable to assume that you were not amused.

MichaelG.

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P.S talking of detail; I presume that "power your home" should read "power you home"

P.S talking of detail; I presume that "power your home" should read "power you home"

Not necessarily - something pubilshed recently by, IIRC, National Grid was suggesting that the batteries of electric cars connected to the grid could be used to supply the grid at periods of high demand & then recharged (as the owner was expecting when they connected it in the first place) when there was excess generation capacity.

NDIYs suggestion of charging your car FOC at a public charging point & connecting the fully charged car to your house to provide power for the house was, I suspect, rather tongue-in-cheek.

Nigel B

On thing that is certainly going to change, any discounts or rebates on EVs will disappear and the cost to charge an EV will increase as there would be huge loss of revenue from fossil fuels after all we are paying the government 65% + of the cost of every litre we use.

I suspect that they will bring in road charges based on ANPR cameras to collect tax revenue in future.

I can't see why they don't incorporate RFID into the charging socket to automatically charge for the charge iyswim.

.

Fair comment, Nigel

... I must admit I hadn't credited NDIY with a sense of humour.

MichaelG.

This has been understood for quite some time. Not only could they be used to provide load levelling to the local grid, they could also improve the power quality (PQ) of the supply by filling in missing lumps on the waveform and improving the power factor. Wavedriver had a patent on this many years ago.

This potential for PQ improvement and load levelling may have been one of the USPs that lead Powergen to acquire Wavedriver back in the late 90s. One risk that arises from a small company being bought out by a large one is that it just takes a new thruster at the top to hold a strategic review and you are buggered. Sure enough, after such a change the Powergen main board realised that they were not actually a national utility after all - but were in fact a major global entity. Naturally this required any silly distractions to be cleared off the table and so we got shut down, along with several other emerging companies.

Regardless of the significant prior investment and serious interest from potential buyers, Powergen found it easier to draw a line under it all than to sell it off, despite their publicly professed to sell it on. It seemed that their corporate lawyers were more interested in eliminating any risk to themselves than to maximise the potential for continuity. In the end I guess we had been little more than green corporate window dressing.

One rather amusing result of the putative globalisation of Powergen was the registration of an Italian division, complete with the domain name powergenitalia.com (I kid you not). Very Freudian!

I suspect the market was not ready for mainstream adoption of EVs back then although there were enough interested parties to have been able to continue what we were doing (we had LOIs for PO vans, urban buses etc). Good to see something finally starting to happen in the end though.

Murray

How is anyone going to connect a battery ( DC ) to the National Grid ( AC ) ?

Roy