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[chenks]

so the government has decided to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 (9 years from now).
well that's all very well and good, but do we really think we'll have the electrical charging infrastructure in place to facilitate that?

and, of course, where does a lot of our elecrtricity come from? nuclear power, which ain't exactly "clean".
And let's now even talk about how dirty the process is to create the batteries that will power these vehicles.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54981425

[sevenlayermuddle]

It’s only cars that run purely on petrol or diesel, hybrids will still be allowed.   And it’s only a plan, I’d bet my bottom dollar it won’t be implemented.   

Reasons for my scepticism include...

1 Shortages of rare earth elements, used in motors.
2 Lithium batteries still being used, but no economically viable process for recycling the lithium, so we create waste mountains (usually sent to China) as well as depleting non renewable lithium resources.

I think cobalt and copper resources might be under threat too, not so sure.

For the longer term plans, of banning petrol/diesel completely, nobody has convinced me that the power generation and distribution network is up to it.  That’s especially as it’s becoming fashionable to switch off the big power stations, and to discourage use of gas for home heating.

[chenks]

"some" hybrids will be allowed.

"electric" cars will only become a viable solution when we are able to re-charge the batteries in the same time as it would be re-fill the fuel tank.
having to wait for 30-40 minutes to not even get to 100% charge is simply not workable.

in reality, hydrogen fuel cell cars are probably the more sensible solution.

[broadstairs]

I'm inclined to agree with 7lm. The other big issue with electric cars is range and until they crack that at a reasonable price point they will not be hugely popular. I think we need some other solutions to this issue. I'm pretty sure that the biggest polluters are in fact HGVs and long distance coaches, there is no way they can phase those out for decades to come! Local buses etc are less of a problem as they don't need the range and in some areas they already have electric buses.

I agree with chenks that hydrogen is a better solution.

If this happens I'll join the queues for a new petrol car in 2029 (assuming I'm still around    )

Stuart

[jelv]

in reality, hydrogen fuel cell cars are probably the more sensible solution.

Spot on!

[Chunkers]

We have been lucky enough to own an EV as our only car for over 4 years now, its an interesting area of debate as there is so much 'politics' in the whole area of discussion, not least from the established vehicle manufacturers, many of whom are struggling to understand how to make money selling EV's

Here's my point of view :

• The current issue is that cheap EV's have tiny batteries which relegates them to run-arounds.  Until affordable EV's have 80Kwh batteries and 250 mile+ range then EV's are not going mainstream
• If your EV has a range of 250+ miles and you have a home charger its really a non-issue, I wake up every morning with a full tank and the fact that it takes 8 hours to charge while I am sleeping is really of no consequence.
• I have been able to charge almost everywhere I have ever over-nighted, have never run out of juice and never got stranded. There are chargers on motorways and major routes and its fine.
• EV's are currently a big problem if you don't have a drive or place to charge them on - this makes life very difficult for people who can't charge overnight.
• The 'charge-network' / 'charge speed' discussion is really a subset of the 'tiny batteries' issue. In fact to me it makes no sense to build a massive charge network so that cars can have tiny batteries and short ranges.  Thats like putting a petrol garage every 6 miles so that we can all have cars with tiny fuel tanks.
• Often overlooked is the fact that Electric cars are much more efficient than ICE cars, the environmental cost of manufacture is very similar to an ICE (possibly lower due to their simplicity) but an electric motor turns stored energy into power at the wheels with 85-90% efficiency vs 20% of an engine.
• The impact on the electricity grid is also over-stated, most EV owners charge overnight when the problem is mostly lack of demand, furthermore EV batteries can also be used to support the power network at high demand
• Hydrogen power - as an engineer this idea is a strange one, producing hydrogen is very inefficient, as a fuel its less efficient than batteries, and its bad for the environment (most is currently made from hydrcarbons) - I guess it appeals to some car manufacturers because they can keep making engines
• Toxic metals etc = this is also overstated, most EV batteries contain very few toxic materials and can be recycled (just google it)
• Electric cars don't require much maintenance and can be made with very little drive-train and moving parts - this is why the industry doesn't like them - no oil/filter changes and spark plugs every year, not much spare part sale

[jelv]

• Hydrogen power - as an engineer this idea is a strange one, producing hydrogen is very inefficient, as a fuel its less efficient than batteries, and its bad for the environment (most is currently made from hydrcarbons) - I guess it appeals to some car manufacturers because they can keep making engines

Producing hydrogen from water may not be that efficient but has other significant advantages.

• It can be stored
• It can be produced when renewable energy is producing excess electricity
• It can be shipped so it can be produced where there is plenty of renewable power and distributed where needed
• The time to refill a car tank is similar to filling a car with LPG
• Hydrogen cars have far greater ranges than those depending on batteries

When you are saying hydrogen is less efficient are you referring to when it is used in an ICE or in fuel cells?

[broadstairs]

For me the biggest issues with EVs are range and charging speed 250 miles is simply not enough range when you consider how long you have to wait to charge it when it runs down. OK petrol cars often have 300 or so mile range but it takes 5 minutes to fill up and you're on your way again, currently no affordable EV can do the recharge is anywhere near the time needed to make it viable.

Stuart

[chenks]

• If your EV has a range of 250+ miles and you have a home charger its really a non-issue, I wake up every morning with a full tank and the fact that it takes 8 hours to charge while I am sleeping is really of no consequence.

just to pick on 1 of your points

where are people to charge these cars if they, for example, live in a block of flats, or only have on-street parking, and use their car every day to get to work (because there is no suitable public transport) and the car is parked in a carpark during the day.

they have no means of charging at home, and no means of charging whilst the car is sitting at work.

at the moment you pop into a petrol station and fill it up and 2-3 minutes later you've got a full tank.
best case scenario if an EV can't be fully charged overnight or during the day is to keep charging it up with enough to get you to where you're going hoping you don't have to detour or have an emergency where you need to get to somewhere quickly/urgently.

or is someone going to install chargers on every street and carpark so that everyone who has an EV has the ability to charge overnight? (cue idiots having a joke going around unplugging everyones car that is charging).

EVs are a good idea, but that's all they are at the moment, a good idea.
in practice for the vast majority it's not going to be a workable solution.

i've watched quite a few of the tesla owners videos on youtube (they are advocates of tesla cars and EV in general), and the amount of pre-planning and worrying about managing to get to your next charging point (and hoping that's it's working and not in use by someone else) when anything other than short runaround distances is simply not the way forward.

[tiffy]

Totally agree with the general lack of infrastructure to support full electric vehicles.

I would have liked to have gone full electric this year but settled for a petrol/electric/regenerative charging hybrid on the grounds of perceived non-availability of re-charging facilities in my local and wider area.
I'm lucky enough to have off road parking and a large garage so home charging would not have been an issue, even so, I still felt that the range of virtually any full electric vehicle on offer was not enough to sway my decision between hybrid and full EV considering the limited and unreliable availability of re-charging facilities.

Was also surprised by the lack of government incentive to purchase hybrid's, £5 reduction on road fund tax !

Do love my hybrid as does the wife, next time around (covid permitting) will very likely go for a "plug in petrol/hybrid", ie., much larger capacity battery, greater range, re-charge every night at home and an engine to fall back on between charging points.
Lets hope these will still be available and government acceptable in a few years time. 

[Chunkers]

As it happens I have a Tesla, although my next car will probably not be one. I don't want to come across as some kind of evangelist, I didn't even buy my car because of the environment

But I can't resist a few more comments on the comments ....

Hydrogen is very difficult to store, its not the same as LPG, to liquify it takes a huge amount of energy (I think its something crazy like -250C?) and fuel cells convert it at 60% efficiency to electricity to then use in an electric motor like an EV  ?  Or you can store it in hugely high pressure vessels in your car, which is also a bit nuts. Why not just use charge a battery and cut out all the inefficiency? I guess I am with Elon Musk on this one, although certainly not on other things. Personally I think its a technology that more likely to find its niche in things like ships or large scale applications.
I agree that EV charging is a big issue for people living in city centres (I made the same point in my earlier post)
4 years ago, with almost no charging infrastructure in the UK a long journey did need careful planning, its simply no longer the case now. The subset of people who drive more than 250 miles / day is tiny - the number of those people who don't stop for 45 minutes during a 6 hour drive to have break and charge is even smaller. I am sure they are out there but there can't be many.... and they probably shouldn't be doing it
The main difference on the range thing, is that if you charge at home, then every day you wake up with full range of 250+ miles. Most people wake up and happily drive around on half a tank of normal fuel and less range without giving it a second thought....

I'm sure there are cases and situations where an EV wouldn't suit - but as someone who has been driving an EV for the last 4 years I can tell you that if you can afford a car with a real range of greater than around 250m its just not much of issue, plus I saved £200/month on diesel compared to the Audi I had before and pay no road tax .

And to cap it all, they are much easier and more relaxing to drive ... go and test drive a Model 3, you'll see what I mean.  My wife has basically said she never wants another car with an engine and a gearbox as its 'old-fashioned'

OK, I'll get off my soapbox now ...

C

[Weaver]

I have a Landrover Discovery which has no lithium battery and an enormous engine, the least eco thing imaginable, but we only ever go five miles into Broadford and very occasionally to Inverness which is some 182 miles and round trip, roughly and takes about five hours. it can go across the field and copes with the appalling potholes on the minor road to our house. I suggested it as something that would transport me to hospital in comfort as it has a superb ride quality, much better than an ambulance crashing over every bump. And we needed to put three dogs in it too. We could charge an electric vehicle in our garage. The stupidest thing is that we built the garages for much smaller cars and would you believe when we got the Landrover it wouldn’t fit for height, so it now lives outside the (north-facing) garage, under an overhang, where it’s sheltered from the rain. In any case, now the garage is largely a barn storing donkey straw and other animal feed, as we had a stable but no barn and the stable’s tack room isn’t bing enough for all feed storage. So poor planning all round.

[Chunkers]

I have a Landrover Discovery which has no lithium battery and an enormous engine, the least eco thing imaginable, but we only ever go five miles into Broadford and very occasionally to Inverness which is some 182 miles and round trip, roughly and takes about five hours. it can go across the field and copes with the appalling potholes on the minor road to our house. I suggested it as something that would transport me to hospital in comfort as it has a superb ride quality, much better than an ambulance crashing over every bump. And we needed to put three dogs in it too. We could charge an electric vehicle in our garage. The stupidest thing is that we built the garages for much smaller cars and would you believe when we got the Landrover it wouldn’t fit for height, so it now lives outside the (north-facing) garage, under an overhang, where it’s sheltered from the rain. In any case, now the garage is largely a barn storing donkey straw and other animal feed, as we had a stable but no barn and the stable’s tack room isn’t bing enough for all feed storage. So poor planning all round.

I like old LandRovers.

I think the big question for a lot car-nuts is ...  which petrol powered car shall I buy cheap over the next 10 years and keep for fun before they all disappear or become museum pieces? For me it would be something European, with a V6/V8 (preferably no turbo),  with decent brakes and preferably open-top.....hmmm

[chenks]

The main difference on the range thing, is that if you charge at home, then every day you wake up with full range of 250+ miles. Most people wake up and happily drive around on half a tank of normal fuel and less range without giving it a second thought....

the point is they don't need to worry as you can fill up with petrol very easily and quickly. you are never too far away from being able to resolve that half a tank issue.
and my half a tank would do me around 250-300 miles.

as it stands right now, someone could easily drive 250 miles in 1 week and never comes across a public EV charger.
other than at the service station in Gretna (which is 94 miles away form me) i've never seen one, and there is no possibility of home charging for me anyway.

EV cars and the infrastructure as it stands right now is of no use to vast majority of car users. for those that potter about the town and can charge at home then fine, but those are not the majority.

[sevenlayermuddle]

Another aspect I don’t we’ve covered much is that of cabin heating.   Every car my family ever owned, from a 1950s Morris Oxford onwards, had nice cosy heaters.  Since the heating doubled as the engine’s cooling system, it added nothing at all to fuel consumption.

With an EV, heating depletes the battery faster.  Car makers can spin it any way they like, but it’s a pretty inescapable fact.

I know of people who refuse to ever use aircon, because they think (partly true) that it increases fuel consumption.  With EVs,  will these same people turn into heating misers who drive around in furry coats, scarves and gloves, to drive down battery consumption?

There may also be an unhealthy temptation to set the system for recycling warm air, rather than opening the vents and heating the fresh air.