EV sales hit speed bump as drivers unplug from the electric dream

Registrations of battery electric vehicles (BEV) continue to fall in the European continent, as sales growth slows in the US and British manufacturing of the wheeled machines declines sharply. The EV revolution is showing early signs of running out of charge in Europe, while reports paint a less rosy picture in the US too …

[Jim Willsher]

Our car is 8 years old so we're considering changing it. EV doesn't even enter the equation. We live in rural Scotland, with no charging infrastructure nearby, our house roof is unsuitable for panels due to dormers, and we tow both trailer (2200KG) and caravan (1800KG).

There's nothing on the market, EV wise, that can tow the above AND that we can afford.

Meanwhile, we can choose from hundreds of 2nd-hand diesels.

Don't get me wrong, getting away from oil is the right thing to do, but EV just isn't the solution, at least not yet.

[Drakon]

Sometimes I think we made a mistake by choosing batteries over fuel cells, but I’m no expert.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Fuel cells are picky and, to the best of my knowledge, don't run on existing pump fuels. So they require an entirely new fuel manufacturing, distribution and storage system just to be viable. Meanwhile we already have fairly widespread electricity distribution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whatever happened to running fuel cells on (m)ethanol? We have plenty of infrastructure for that.

Anyhow, I still think thatt "fleeing forward", writing off the entire infrastructure just to be modern by being electric and nevermind the (environmental) costs of batteries, heavier vehicles, electricity transport losses, and so on, and so forth, just shout louder that you're being green, isn't a real big winning recipe. It smells like panic.

So I would have preferred to see, even expected, a much bigger push in making liquid carbohydrates out of, oh, thin air by preference (the CO2 in there we could stand to lessen a bit) but any feedstock we have surplusses of and don't displace stuff we can eat will do. As long as it doesn't come out of the ground, of course. Because that's the basic problem: The CO2 ends up in the air when before it was stuffed well underground. Otherwise it's a fairly brilliant system that we know very well how to deal with. Bit of a pity that the One True Way Forward is predicated on doing away with all that. Replacing a global infrastructure with something completely incompatible and requiring lots of mining of rare earths and such, isn't exactly ecologically sound either. And that should've been obvious from the start.

Though this piece is a little alarmist: It's "sales growth" that's levelling off, not "sales".

[Dimitri]

There are no electricity leakages in EVs. All the energy produced goes right to the wheel. By contrast fossil fuel engines waste about 20-30% of energy.

And as for mining rare earth etc, futur battery generations don’t use them and current batteries are expected to achieve 90% recycling rate, so it’s not nearly as bad as you think. And the existing infrastructure can’t be retrofitted, that’s a lie perpetuated by the oil industry, future fuels like ethanol, ammonia or hydrogen can’t use them - there physics issues around storage volume required and materials used which can’t be circumvented on existing science, let alone technology.

Besides there really is no chance those things will make it into car or truck engines, as they are also incredibly wasteful in terms of energy (any fuel based system is). Most likely they’ll be used in ships and planes only.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of electricity leakages in EVs. Even just charging the batteries, since that's not 100% efficient. Getting the 'leccy there is another problem, and where does it come from? None of that is 100% efficient either. Thus your claim is silly propaganda, false on its face.

Are those future batteries here, now? No? Then you're making a microsoftian promise: "It WILL BE totes teh bees knees WHEN IT ARRIVES" but no promises on when that will be. If ever.

Existing infrastructure for substantially the same fuels doesn't need much retrofitting, which is exactly why making hydrocarbons ourselves is a good idea to at least try and see where that gets us. Notice that, say, the French already sell "E85", which is not the 15% ethanol it is elsewhere, thus can easily turn into a cruel trick played on the unwary tourist with a not quite suitable ICE vehicle that would run fine on the E85 sold elsewhere. But that already does reuse existing infrastructure. So go tell the French that what they're doing is a lie, eh.

[John Robson]

"There are plenty of electricity leakages in EVs. Even just charging the batteries, since that's not 100% efficient. Getting the 'leccy there is another problem, and where does it come from? None of that is 100% efficient either. Thus your claim is silly propaganda, false on its face."

Ok - so let's take oil as a starting point:

Burn it in a car...oh, sorry, we have to refine/transport it first... that's a 10-15% loss.

Then we have to burn it in a car at maybe 25% efficiency (i.e. a 75% loss) - so that's ~21% efficient.

OR - burn it in a power station at 40% (typical oil fired power station) and transmit it across the grid (8% loss) and charge the car. Let's assume that wall to wheel is only 80% efficient (which would be awful by the way) then we're still at 29% efficiency. To get down to 21% we'd need wall to wheels to be under 60%.

And of course most electricity isn't generated from oil, indeed just shy of half of our electricity comes from non fossil fuel sources.

And no adding ethanol to fuel doesn't actually prevent much of the damage from burning stuff so inefficiently.

[Anonymous Coward]

WrongAC "the French already sell "E85", which is not the 15% ethanol it is elsewhere"

WTF are you talking about? E85 is an 85% ethanol fuel blend everywhere.

Have a stab at what E5 and E10 mean.

[G R Goslin]

Once again the uneducated are comparing apples with oranges. The efficiency of the internal engine is truly what he says it is, but in comparing this with the efficiency of an electric powered vehicle, without taking account of the efficiency of the generating method, is not comparing like for like. Both processes are subject to the Laws of Thermodynamics. natural laws which cannot be broken or changed, unlike those worthless pieces of paper churned out by politics.

[Anomalous Cowshed]

Those "worthless pieces of paper churned out by politics" Sir, are a marvel of science, it's just that people like you are so cynical, you never bother looking into it. Why, imagine a sheet of paper that generates hot air, any amount of hot air you want, you just need to tweak the text! It could be a source of limitless energy, freedom from those passé laws of thermodynamics. A single manifesto could heat a whole neighbourhood, a whole city for the entire winter, year after year. And that's just local politics. Imagine what it could do with a few words of national politics on it. Yet people like you choose to criticise and totally overlook the benefits.

[Scene it all]

We covered this in one of my EE classes. Thermo-powered electricity generation, by boiling water, has a thermodynamic limit on efficiency of about 40%. (look up "Carnot Cycle".) The electromagnetic process of converting the power of a spinning turbine into electricity is over 90%. The transmissions network is also over 90% and battery conversion about 85%. Compared to an internal combustion engine at ~12%, electricity still wins and that is assuming fossil-fuel use to heat the water. With any other source of electricity not involving thermodynamic limits, the efficiency of the electric car is WAY better. And this does not count the environmental factors. Using fossil fuels could be 100% efficient and there would STILL be an excellent reason to get rid of them.

[John Robson]

Well a CCGT gets well over 50%, so there's actually more gain than you allow for, not that that's good for the infernal combustion engine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish that were true Dmitri but you are dead wrong.

When you do a vaguely decent examination of losses from charge point to wheels for a BEV you find they're really not that much more (and sometimes less) efficient than a modern diesel and have some significant disadvantages (charge times, range, cost)

[John Robson]

Sorry - you reckon an EV power train is as inefficient as a diesel one?

So tell me, which has a massive radiator setup, and a massive air intake to keep things cool?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you do a vaguely decent examination of losses from charge point to wheels for a BEV you find they're really not that much more (and sometimes less) efficient than a modern diesel

Utterly false. At best a modern DERV and drive train is up to 30% efficient. So for every 100 gallons you burn, 70 are wasted.

Do they not teach physics & maths in schools any more?

[[e-mail]]

Totally wrong. EVs are the most inherently inefficient. Generating electricity is only 50% efficient. Transmitting electricity loses 10%. Charging batteries loses 10%. Discharging batteries loses 10%. And carrying half a ton of batteries loses another 30%. Converting electricity back to kinetic energy loses another 50%.

And you clearly are totally wrong to claim ethanol or hydrogen will never be used successfully because they have been for decades.

Brazil has been running ethanol for over 50 years, and Iceland has been running hydrogen for 30 years.

They are far more efficient than electricity.

[fxkeh]

160% inefficient?

Over 100% inefficient must mean the car doesn't move at all. Though the bigger question is where does the EV car absorb the other 60% from?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 160% inefficient?

Percentage efficiencies are multiplied not added you muppet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally wrong. EVs are the most inherently inefficient.

Humanities graduate? Or politics? Clearly no grasp of maths or physics.

Even burning fuel oil to generate electricity for EVs is more efficient than refining it, shipping it around in tankers and burning it in DERVs.

God save us from this parade of idiots.

[John Robson]

Generation at 50%, that's about right, it's a bit high for an oil plant, a bit low for a gas plant - but that's fine.

Transmission losses at 10%, that's an overestimate. The number is between 3 and 10% for different DNOs in the UK - averaging 8%, the US EIA claims ~5%.

Charging/Discharging under ideal conditions can get to 99% (combined), now we aren't going to get that in a car. You will get about 85-95% though, so let's call that another 10% loss.

Electric motors are ~90% efficient in vehicles - hence the lack of cooling compared with an ICE.

So that's .5*.92*.9*.9 or a little over 37% efficiency from fuel -> power station to wheels.

Let's have a look at a couple of other things:

- Once you're moving you can then slow down by using that motor to put energy back into the battery for use later, not a trick fossil fuels have managed - increasing efficiency further.

- The grid is already about 40% non fossil fuels, so that starting 50% should probably be 70%, or even more, to account for the energy mix being used.

- Because the mix on the grid is getting greener year on year, the EV is also getting greener year on year.

A car engine isn't going to be exceeding 30% for very long in it's life.... But before the fuel gets there we need to refine and distribute it first - taking at least 10% of the energy content of the fuel before you see it.

TL;DR: You get more miles than an ICE by burning your fuel in a power station and then transmitting that electricity to an EV, and that EV can also be powered from wind and solar, nuclear and hydro.

[John Robson]

"By contrast fossil fuel engines waste about 20-30% of energy."

Erm, I think you've got that backwards... they *use* about 20-30% of the energy (if they're really finely tune it might get up to 40%, but then they're not exactly road worthy, too fiddly)

[Anomalous Cowshed]

How dare you challenge the benefits of electric cars

Oooops, I thought I was clicking "report abuse" but I ended up upvoting! This is not right, the two buttons are too close together... They're not properly labelled! What do I do now? Etc.

[[e-mail]]

Ethanon or methanol is burned not used on fuel cells. Since it is a biofuel, it absorbs more carbon while growing, than later released when burned. So there is zero emissions from burning biofuels like ethanol or methanol.

And no, EV sales are not just "leveling off". They are decreasing after all the fires, dead batteries, slow charges, long recharge waits, etc.

[chriskno]

Gosh you really have swallowed the propaganda continually being pushed out by the fossil fuel industry and the right wing press haven't you? EVs don't catch fire anything like as much as ICE vehicles - check it out with the Fire Brigades or the breakdown companies, batteries don't die - my 6 year old EV hasn't lost a cell yet, chargers, including superchargers are very fast, and long waits are reducing dramatically with the fast roll out of new chargers. Check it out with the Zapmap App. And if you've ever driven an EV you will probably be like me and never want to go back to a dirty, inefficient, air poisoning ICE vehicle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Difference is the outcome - you can put out an ICE fire, best of luck with an EV.

Your 6 year old EV hasn't lost a cell yet? Who told you that, the EV? That's just like my phone still having 90% battery until suddenly it's 40% because a cell or cells have shat themselves and the system clearly doesn't accurately report it.

What makes you think the manufacturer has any interest whatsoever in accurately reporting the battery health? How does that benefit them in any way? In fact there have been cases documented where the vehicle reported one thing but the mileage obtained clearly showed another.

[John Robson]

Short term crop cycles are not zero carbon, because they require harvesting, processing and transporting.

The latest report on Drax biofuel emissions suggests that they're worse than coal...

Wow, if it's the car fires, dead engines etc that cause car sales to level off no wonder EVs are doing well compared with the overall market.

[[e-mail]]

Hydrogen

Fuel cells are not at all "picky", and while they run only on hydrogen, that is easily installed since hydrogen stations are self contained and only require electricity. In contrast, the existing electric grid is totally insufficient for any amount of EVs. You have to spend $20k on solar in order to make batteries work. It is much easier to run heavy wires to a few hydrogen stations than it is to run heavy wires to every home that has an EV.

[John Robson]

Re: Hydrogen

"In contrast, the existing electric grid is totally insufficient for any amount of EVs."

Have you done the maths on that?

UK electrical usage was 309TWh in 2023, and in 2005 it was 406TWh.

That's 100TWh of capacity on the grid that we don't use any more (transmission, not generation, obviously we've shut places down)

Let's say all 33 million cars were electric, at an average of 7400 miles each and 4m/kWh that's 61TWh, well within the usage our grid has handled in the past.

Of course nearly 4% of vehicles are already electric, so their usage is already being counted.

And yes, generating capacity will need to ramp up over the next twenty years as the ancient technology of burning crap and just throwing waste at anyone who you happen to be passing is phased out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hydrogen

Hydrogen is a prick to store. Makes the containers brittle etc. Practical in the lab. In the real world it's a bit of a bastard.

[VicMortimer]

Fuel cells are idiotic.

Hydrogen is a dead end. It's either dirty and energy intensive to produce, or clean but INSANELY energy intensive to produce. We don't have enough clean electricity to even consider it as a possibility, and won't for the foreseeable future.

Batteries are the only practical choice.

[hoola]

If you have enough surplus renewable the inefficiency of hydrogen production is outweighed by the benefits.

Compared to millions of lithium batteries it is a model of green and low environmental impact.

[collinsl]

True, but how does the safety picture look? Are we likely to have more car fires in high speed crashes where hydrogen leaks everywhere and ignites with a spark? As it's a gas I'd imagine it would be worse than petrol to control in that kind of situation. Plus what effect could it have on people trapped in a vehicle if it fills the cabin?

[Jellied Eel]

True, but how does the safety picture look? Are we likely to have more car fires in high speed crashes where hydrogen leaks everywhere and ignites with a spark? As it's a gas I'd imagine it would be worse than petrol to control in that kind of situation. Plus what effect could it have on people trapped in a vehicle if it fills the cabin?

In some ways, it could be a lot safer than fossil fuels, and certainly a lot safer than EVs. Years ago I read a report of an early H2 car that caught fire while it was being refuelled. Driver escaped with just flash burns, so kind of like a bad case of sunburn. Advantages of H2 is it really, really wants to break free and escape. So in a crash or leak, it would quite quickly dissipate. Being rather lighter than air, does that rapidly leaving possibly a brief time between H2 leaking, creating the right fuel/air mix and ignition. Petrol on the other hand can leak, and petrol vapor being denser than air, leave occupants sitting in a pool of explosive vapor. Then EVs just have the occupants sitting on top of an incinerator that's very hard to extinguish if it gets going. And if the passengers can't open the doors, windows or generally GTFO, is bad. But from what I read, the biggest potential risk came from the H2 fuel tank design, it being a high pressure container.

But it was something I got interested in when I was thinking of building a yacht. The Danish(?) I think had just showed off a new and very sneaky submarine powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Fires on yachts* tend to be very bad, and often fuel related. So petrol engines sitting at the bottom of the hull, fuel leaking and pooling and then igniting or detonating when the unfortunate captain starts the engine without venting the engine compartment first. So was thinking an H2-powered yacht could be safer given in the event of an H2 leak, it can vent itself a lot more easily. But work intervened, and also the lack of H2 fuelling at refuelling docks and marinas.

*Which may be an EV-like problem developing. There have been a bunch of yacht fires recently that might be the result of lithium battery fires, or just insurance jobs. A yacht is, after all a hole in the water you pour money into.

[Ian Johnston]

Liquid H2 is by far the most dangerous cryogen and almost nowhere will work with it. Storing hydrogen in any other way brings its own interesting challenges.

[[e-mail]]

Wrong. Iceland has been using highly compressed hydrogen for over 30 years without a single problem from the hydrogen in an accident.

That is because hydrogen disperses so quickly that it does not explode or even burn.

While in contrast, many people have been killed by lithium battery fires.

[John Robson]

First headline I see:

"Iceland Keeps Trying Hydrogen For Transportation Fleets Despite 25 years of Failure"

More people have been killed in the oil industry than in lithium battery fires - certainly if you exclude cheap scooter style batteries without a BMS being plugged into a dumb charger...

[Anonymous Coward]

More people have been killed in the oil industry than in lithium battery fires

And more have been killed by cancer, what's your point? Comparing apples with oranges just shows they're different fruit. If we want to have a look at lithium battery fires and the devastation they cause there's Luton Airport car park, and a couple of recent adventures in underground carparks in Korea that spring to mind.

[Gene Cash]

> If you have enough surplus renewable the inefficiency of hydrogen production is outweighed by the benefits.

No, it takes more energy to produce the hydrogen than you get back by burning it or using it in a fuel cell. That's a losing situation.

[OhForF']

It takes more energy to charge a battery than you get back using it. That 's a loosing situation.

If more renewable energy is available (e.g. during sunny days in summer) than you can sensibly use there is a use case for those loosing situations.

Producing hydrogen may well be more efficient if you plan to store the energy a long time before using it. Currently it is probably not cost efficient to invest in the necessary infrastructure to produce your own hydrogen, Selling the energy surplus and buying energy when you need more than your renewable source provides is easier and needs less investment as the infrastructure to buy electric energy is already in place.

[alisonken1]

How much energy does it take to generate hydrogen?

How much energy does it take to generate gasoline?

How much energy does it take to generate diesel/kerosene?

We don't have the most efficient portable power technology yet available, but it's a matter of what we currently have that gives the best overall results and economies of scale.

[[e-mail]]

It takes less energy to generate hydrogen, gasoline, ethanol, or diesel oil than it takes to transport and charge a ton of batteries.

[Dimitri]

Who told you it takes more energy to charge a battery compared to a fuel cell? You are comparing leaks of 1-5% with a minimum of 60% if you include distribution (which does nonprofit exist in batteries).

You

Also seem to think renewables=hotovoltaics. Other forms of renewables work 24/7 eg hydro, wind or focused solar. Just because PVs are the cheapest way of producing electricity today doesn’t mean other technologies are not coming down in cost (they are, they just need more manufacturing scale).

And storage in hydrogen cells vs sodium batteries or molten sodium turbines is horrendously inefficient.

[Justthefacts]

It costs a thermodynamic minimum of 13% just to chill and compress the hydrogen, to the normal 700bar storage pressure. We get surprisingly close to that in practice, an astonishing 83% efficiency. Standard electrolysis is about 70% efficient. There’s a whole bunch more stuff too.

Hydrogen is environmental vandalism.

[[e-mail]]

There are catalysts that make hydrogen production much more efficient than generating electricity.

And storage of compressed hydrogen is far more efficient than lugging around a ton of heavy batteries.

Retrieving electricity from batteries and converting it to kinetic energy is less than 50% efficient, while burning hydrogen is more than 50% efficient.

Burning hydrogen only produces water and it far better for the environment that burning fossil fuels to create electricity.

[John Robson]

"And storage of compressed hydrogen is far more efficient than lugging around a ton of heavy batteries.

Really? far more efficient?

How do you quantify that - because you're comparing the efficiency of a single use product with a long lasting, multiply reusable, product.

A ton of batteries is a also an awful lot of battery (250kWh+)

"Retrieving electricity from batteries and converting it to kinetic energy is less than 50% efficient, while burning hydrogen is more than 50% efficient.

Why do you insist on such nonsense - battery -> inverter -> electric motor is ridiculously high efficiency. 50% is just flat out wrong, 90% is closer.

Burning hydrogen - in a power station - would probably get around the 60% efficiency we get from LNG, but with alot more effort.

"Burning hydrogen only produces water and it far better for the environment that burning fossil fuels to create electricity.

It also produces nitrous oxides - unless of course you're burning it in pure oxygen (at which point I weep for your turbines, and your RTE just went through the floor).

Yes, it's less bad that fossil fuels - assuming that it hasn't been created from steam reformation to start with - and that's why it's got alot of people fairly keen on it.

I still think it has a place, in large scale, very long duration, static grid balancing systems - but it remains expensive even then.

[The Dogs Meevonks]

you need to read what they said again... because they never compared it to FC, they simply stated a fact that a battery takes more energy to charge than it can give back... That's just basic physics.

According to the ADAC you can lose anywhere between 10-25% of the energy simply in the transfer process... be that from inverters converting AC/DC, resistance in cabling and so forth.

If you've got a 50kwh battery in your car and it's only got 5kwh left... it could take 50-60kwh to fully charge it again, and that's before you factor in cell degradation over time. That could see you thinking you've only put 45kwh in to fully charge it to 100%... but the reality is that the batteries only have 42kwh capacity left in them.

[John Robson]

"If you've got a 50kwh battery in your car and it's only got 5kwh left... it could take 50-60kwh to fully charge it again"

Just not how physics, or chemistry, works. It might take 6 or 7 due to slightly increased internal resistance.

Of course the real challenge is finding a battery with 90% degradation!

People who measure this stuff find that a 24kWh leaf battery at about 60% SOH takes about 16kWh from the wall to charge (i.e. basically what you'd expect)

[Anonymous Coward]

Just not how physics, or chemistry, works. It might take 6 or 7 due to slightly increased internal resistance.

If your battery requires 45kWh (50 - 5) of energy you're going to be sinking around 50kWh into it to take account of the 90% efficiency of charging, depending upon the rate of charging employed. So the OP's point of 50-60 is ball-park correct.

You're looking at 5kWh capacity remaining whereas their comment reads as 5kWh charge remaining of a 50kWh battery.

[[e-mail]]

Totally wrong. Fuel cells do not need charging at all. And charging lithium batteries is less than 90% efficient. Discharging lithium batteries is less than 90% efficient. Carrying around a ton of batteries is less the 50% efficient. Converting electricity to kinetic energy is only about 50% efficient.

Storage in compressed hydrogen tanks is almost 100% efficient.

[John Robson]

Did you get a U in your science exams?

Because *none* of those number is correct.

[John Robson]

"> If you have enough surplus renewable the inefficiency of hydrogen production is outweighed by the benefits.

No, it takes more energy to produce the hydrogen than you get back by burning it or using it in a fuel cell. That's a losing situation."

No it's called thermodynamics.

If you could get more energy out than it took to produce then you'd have invented a perpetual motion machine, and there's a nobel prize (or three) with your name on them.

[Anonymous Coward]

It takes more energy to create any form of stored energy than you get back. That's called "Physics".

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

If you have surplus renewable energy you should be building battery farms and using it to balance out your 24 hour (or even weekly) load profile.

[John Robson]

Frequency regulation - LiIon is currently king, Na is coming in hot though

24hr - Metal Ion batteries still dominate, though flow batteries are starting to become practical

Weekly - Fairly properly into flow battery technology really, though some reversible metal oxide systems are also an option

Anything a week or over is really where things like synthetic fuels, whether they be hydrocarbon or otherwise, start to shine.

And frankly the concept of running electrolysis and a sabatier process makes the whole process easier - you don't try to store the hydrogen directly, you convert it to something more amenable.

Yes, you still end up producing carbon dioxide, but that's a short term cycle; you still up with NOx - but we're looking at relatively few days in a year where it's needed.

[idiotzoo]

Hydrogen is a non-starter unless we can find a new way to store and transport it. For all the noise made by those who would champion its use, it simply isn’t happening. There’s a good reason for that.

[The Dogs Meevonks]

The transport and storage side of it isn't the problem... it's not really that much difference to the transport and storage of LPG for homes and ICE vehicles... and you can buy LPG at many filling stations.

It's all about the economies of scale... and in a capitalist culture... there's not enough profit in it. It needs countries to invest in the production and infrastructure and screw the cost... but with such short term thinking in the capitalist culture we have. No one can see past the next quarters balance sheet.

This is how you get disasters like Thames water trying to force offwat to allow them to raise water bills for customers by 55% to pay for the investment they've failed to do because of collosal mismanagement and stripping of the companies finances... how they can turn around and say... we need 140million of investment over the next 5yrs... weeks after paying out 150million in dividends... is a disgrace and offwat should refuse their demands (as they did when they demanded 49% recently) and laws need to be changed so that if investment is needed in their infrastructure... dividends cannot be paid out until that investment money is covered... if TW goes bankrupt... so be it. Bring it back under public ownership as all essential utilities should be... along with all public transport.

[Anomalous Cowshed]

Well said about the water companies. About the storage of hydrogen, may I be so bold as to point out that you may have overlooked the small size of the hydrogen molecules which makes it able to leak out of containers particularly difficult to store...

[[e-mail]]

People have easily been successful in storing hydrogen or over 30 years in vehicles in Iceland. Leakage exists, but it is very slow.

[[e-mail]]

So according to you, people have not been using compressed hydrogen vehicles for the last 30 years in Iceland?

It is easy to store hydrogen, and you do not have to transport it, since you generate it right at the fueling station.

[John Robson]

"It is easy to store hydrogen, and you do not have to transport it, since you generate it right at the fueling station."

No - storing hydrogen is hard, very hard.

And it does need transporting, particularly if you want to use it in a mobile application...

[Justthefacts]

If I had some bacon, I could have bacon and egg, if I also had an egg.

[[e-mail]]

That makes no sense at all. Hydrogen is the cleanest to produce and is least wasteful. With EVs you have the inefficiencies of carrying, charging, and discharging batteries, which waste more than half the energy. Not to mention battery fires. Burning hydrogen uses almost half the electricity of batteries.

[John Robson]

"That makes no sense at all. Hydrogen is the cleanest to produce and is least wasteful. With EVs you have the inefficiencies of carrying, charging, and discharging batteries, which waste more than half the energy. Not to mention battery fires. Burning hydrogen uses almost half the electricity of batteries."

Let's break this nonsense down:

"Hydrogen is the cleanest to produce and is least wasteful"

Hydrogen takes a significant amount of energy to split apart from water, it takes substantially more energy to the capture and store.

It's only clean to do that if you use renewables, and for *most* storage options the inefficiencies of hydrogen production, storage, and then oxidation (either through combustion or in a fuel cell) are high enough that it's not reasonable, batteries and pumped hydro both do *substantially* better.

"With EVs you have the inefficiencies of carrying, charging, and discharging batteries, which waste more than half the energy."

Yes, you have to carry the batteries. You also have to carry a hydrogen tank, which is pretty heavy duty because it stored hydrogen at frankly obscene pressures to be useful.

However carrying batteries isn't that big a deal. It takes some additional energy to accelerate, and you recover some additional energy when you decelerate.

Charge/Discharge of batteries is up there with the most efficient mechanisms ever - certainly not 50%, it's probably over 90%. One way you can tell is that batteries tend to need to be heated to stay at their best operational temperature - except when they're being DC charged in excess of 100kW.

"Not to mention battery fires."

Why not - battery fires are far less common than ICE fires, There aren't enough Mirais or Nexos out there to have decent statistics on hydrogen cars, but they're probably pretty ok (low risk of spark, fuel that can dissipate in any reasonable ventilation). The reduction in fires is not an argument against batteries - and of course hydrogen fuel cell vehicles also have a battery, because fuel cell response isn't sufficient in an EV, and you can't regenerate hydrogen on the move.

"Burning hydrogen uses almost half the electricity of batteries"

Well burning hydrogen doesn't take any electricity - but then batteries don't "take electricity" either, they convert it to chemical potential energy, and then release that back - so a battery might be considered to "take" 10% of the electricity, because that's a typical RTE.

Using hydrogen however means that you lose 25% ish of the input electricity just to generate the hydrogen, then you have to capture/store it (another 15% loss at best) and then you burn it in a power station at maybe 60% efficiency again - that's (.75*.85*.6=)38% round trip, which means burning hydrogen takes nearly three times as much electricity as using batteries.

For very long duration storage that efficiency cost could be acceptable. But for applications where batteries are already sufficient - not so much.

I can see hydrogen making sense for Edison trucks - not for cars, the cost (both financial and energy) of generating, shipping, storing, dispensing, storing again... the hydrogen is just too high.

[bombastic bob]

I prefer my gasoline engine, thanks.

[John Robson]

"Batteries are the only practical choice" at the moment.

FTFY.

never underestimate the possibility of technology changing.

[Tom66]

Hydrogen fuel cells make really no sense for passenger cars for a number of reasons:

- Expensive infrastructure. Way more expensive than an EV charger or petrol filling station as you need a 700 bar compressor, cryo storage and pumping kit, and precise leak detection all the way from the tank to the user. In California, where a few hydrogen stations exist, the cost per kg of hydrogen is around 8x the cost of gasoline, and there's no tax on it...

- Too expensive to manufacture. At £60k for a Toyota Mirai, it's estimated that Toyota are spending at least that much on manufacturing each fuel cell. That makes them wildly impractical for average cars. All hydrogen cars are effectively electric vehicles, with an onboard hydrogen generator which is used to charge up a small battery (typically around the size of a hybrid battery).

- Efficiency is ludicruously bad. An EV from well-to-wheel is about 65% efficient. A hydrogen car is around 30%.

- There's no sustainable plan to produce the amount of hydrogen required from electrolysis. Freshwater is necessary, otherwise you have to desalinate first, which further impacts efficiency. Most hydrogen is currently produced from natural gas.

- Vehicle packaging. ICE and BEV cars both offer good packaging for the size of the vehicle. In a BEV, batteries can be placed on the floorplan. In an ICE, you just need to find somewhere for 50L of fuel. A hydrogen car needs somewhere to pack the multiple hydrogen tanks. If you look at the legroom and cargo volume in something like a Mirai sedan, it carries only four people and has cargo volume of 272L, but a Model 3 which is 50cm shorter carries 5 people and has cargo volume of 594L.

- Whilst hydrogen ICE is possible, it presents a number of considerable limitations, notably the high compression ratios required which produce large levels of NOx much like diesel engines. And a hydrogen ICE still needs cryo-stored fuel so the tank limitations apply.

Hydrogen does make sense in a few areas. Long-distance trucking, construction machinery, possibly aviation. But it will be competing with synthetic and biofuels in that category which are already being adopted, whilst hydrogen seems to be left behind, possibly because of the added costs compared to hydrocarbon fuels which can be stored at room temperature and pressure, don't leak through at the atomic scale, and can be combusted in regular ICEs and turbines.

[Crypto Monad]

If you have a source of clean hydrogen to hand, then why not convert it to methane or methanol? Both are far easier to handle than hydrogen, and the carbon released in their burning is exactly equal to the carbon you captured during the manufacture.

[Tom66]

Or ammonia.

[Michael Wojcik]

Or propane, if you have enough cheap energy available. We have a mature, extensive propane delivery, storage, and retail infrastructure (albeit not on the scale of the gasoline/diesel infrastructure yet), and existing gasoline ICEs can easily be converted to run on propane.

Or a mix of these hydrocarbons, depending on what the market wants at the moment. The general principle, though, is if you get carbon from some source that's not already long-term sequestered (like fossil fuels), then you're roughly carbon-neutral, and hydrocarbons are a lot more convenient and economical than hydrogen is.

[John Robson]

Yep - Hydrogenation of CO2 via the methanol pathway does provide a potential method of storing energy in a relatively easy to handle form.

It's not at commercial scale, and still suffers from many of the other issues that affect ICEv, so still not suitable for a car.

[[e-mail]]

Wrong. Fuel cells are expensive, but less than lithium batteries, and much lighter as well. And also much quicker to refill.

EV efficiency is only about 12% because you failed to include the fact generating electricity is only 50% efficient, power grids lose at least 10%, charging batteries and discharging batteries each drop 10%, and carrying a ton of batteries loses 50%, and converting electricity back to kinetic energy is only about 50% efficient.

[John Robson]

"EV efficiency is only about 12% because you failed to include the fact generating electricity is only 50% efficient, power grids lose at least 10%, charging batteries and discharging batteries each drop 10%, and carrying a ton of batteries loses 50%, and converting electricity back to kinetic energy is only about 50% efficient."

Well one of those numbers is right, but only one... and that's that thermal efficiency of a fossil fuel power station is about 50% (about 40 for oil, about 60 for gas).

The rest of your numbers are all complete hogwash

[xyz]

I was hoping that influitenergy.com would ride to the rescue but they appear to have been "compartmentalised" by the USAF et al, with their website back to "under construction" for months now.

[idiotzoo]

We didn’t choose, the technology did. Toyota pushed their hydrogen fuel cell tech really hard and it wasn’t viable in the real world, either financially or technologically.

[bombastic bob]

batteries vs fuel cells

yes, but EV BATTERIES create jobs and profits in #CCP China, where they've cornered the market on the stuff needed to make them!

oh, wait...

[elaar]

It's not a solution for all, in the same way hatchbacks aren't suitable for your towing requirement, but that doesn't mean they're not a solution for others.

For the vast majority of the population, the average journey is something like 7 miles, and they don't tow things, so EV is a solution, just not a solution that covers everything.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: not a solution for all

Certainly not, as anyone able to take a rational position on this will agree. The trouble is, they're being progressively forced on us (via ZEV mandates) as the only solution, way before the requisite generating, grid, and charging infrastructure is in place.

[Drakon]

Re: not a solution for all

I much prefer the carrot approach (incentivise buying an EV) to the stick (penalise ICE vehicle drivers or phase out combustion vehicles)

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: not a solution for all

It would still require a major effort to build up a charging infrastructure adequate to support ICE replacement in the time-scale governments want that to be done. That's what needs to be incentivised.

[Tessier-Ashpool]

Re: not a solution for all

That's why it's a decades long project. ICE cars will be around for a long time after 2030. Most people buy secondhand anyway.

[a_builder]

Re: not a solution for all

I’ve driven EV since 2018.

To start with charging was amazing as even on the Tesla network you had soooo many bays to choose from.

There was a time a few years back when it got a bit harder but now the number of services with an awful lot of chargers has massively increased.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: not a solution for all

The carrot approach will take too long. We're well past time for the stick (mandated end to ICE production and no registration of new ICE vehicles).

The only question now is whether we're already too late. I mean, we definitely are for some coastal cities.

Ditching ICE isn't enough, of course. We've also got to commit to ending ALL fossil fuel use within a fairly short timeframe - or just give up, and billions will die from the coming famine.

We're already close to the 1.5C global temp threshold, we've hit the first year of the planet that much warmer, and we're well on the way to 2C. If the methane under the ice caps gets released, humanity's future isn't looking fun.

[Drakon]

Re: not a solution for all

And the sad part is that ICE vehicles have fuck all impact on that.

[Pascal Monett]

Indeed. Why don't we start by replacing the awful cargo ships that pollute as much as 100,000 cars ?

Because that would be penalising industry, and we can't have that, now can we ?

[Rainer]

> Why don't we start by replacing the awful cargo ships that pollute as much as 100,000 cars

While you're at it, why not start by penalizing cruise ships, which basically do the same (though they're required to run on low-sulphur MFO now, AFAIK).

That would penalize pensioners - another influential voter-block...

[ICL1900-G3]

I'm a pensioner. I hate cruise ships.

[UnknownUnknown]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/30/termination-shock-cut-in-ship-pollution-sparked-global-heating-spurt

[alain williams]

Re: not a solution for all

The 1.5°C target is dead, but climate action needn't be

[Grogan]

Re: not a solution for all

I know some fans of the "stick" approach that have come away with pretty serious contusions and skull fractures. (There are millions of people with bigger sticks than yours and they vote and pay taxes)

[The Dogs Meevonks]

Re: not a solution for all

Scientists are saying that out of the 15 trigger points for unrecoverable climate catastrophe... we've already hit 9 of them.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: not a solution for all

Scientists are saying that out of the 15 trigger points for unrecoverable climate catastrophe... we've already hit 9 of them.

Scientists and pseudo-scientists like Paul Erlich's infamous 'Population Bomb' have made a succession of dire predictions, most of which have long been falsified. Reality has an annoying habit of contradicting the sim-scientists models that way. But the Climate Industrial Complex is still determined to extract subsidies in order to fight a phantom menace.

[The Dogs Meevonks]

Re: not a solution for all

Quick, hide back under the bridge... I hear some billy goats gruff coming.

[[e-mail]]

Re: not a solution for all

Wrong. Battery EVs produce far more emissions than most ICE vehicles. That is because coal is still the main source of electricity, and EVs waste huge amounts of electricity by carting around a ton of batteries.

[[e-mail]]

Re: not a solution for all

Wrong. Switching ICE vehicles over to bio fuel will reduce emissions, while converting to EVs will increase emissions since electricity is so inefficient.

[spold]

Re: not a solution for all

...my traction engine can run on either sticks or carrots (dried helps).

p.s. that is a bank-holiday special - being behind a traction engine pulling a touring caravan.

[Dr_N]

Re: not a solution for all

Quite right. These Internal Combustion Engine fan-boys dismissing electric vehicles when clearly they are the misguided ones. (For not sticking with readily available energy sources like coal/wood/fuel-oil to run a steam-engine/ECE.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: not a solution for all

True. But the incentives have to apply to everyone and go directly to the consumer.

Solar installations are a fucking mess in the UK because of the subsidies. All it has done is make solar more expensive for those that dont qualify for the subsidy (which is most people).

It currently takes about 10 years to break even on the cost of solar. Which is also the expected lifespan of the setup...its therefore not really worth it.

If you live by yourself in a tiny house and you're frugal with power. It might make sense.

[The Dogs Meevonks]

Re: not a solution for all

Jan last year, I had solar installed on my home with battery storage... We couldn't get a grant because they changed the Eco3 scheme to Eco 4 and the threshold was only homes with an EPC rating of D and lower, and we were 3 points inside a C.

Thankfully, as we'd sold 2 homes and bought 1 larger house... we had money left over and paid for it in full (9k) I then added a 2nd battery a year later as I realised i'd under spec'd the storage.

We generate about 80% of our energy last year... An avg of 11.5kwh per day with an avg household use of 14kwh/day over 12 months. We exported almost 1100kwh and got a pathetic 4p/kwh for it.

So I added an extra 8.2kwh battery for an extra 2.2k after the govt changed the rules to make them VAT free (before that it was only VAT free if part of a full solar system install)

We've halved the export and are using it instead, and we can now get 15p/kwh for export. Last year the savings + export income was in the region of £1100, this year it's looking more like £1300, with over £600 saved/earned in 4 months. May-July were net zero months were we exported more than we imported and earned enough to cover most of the standing charges too. We paid £400 in direct debits in those 4 months and £118 in bills for both gas & electric. Over the last 19 months, we've built up an £825 credit on our energy account and could stop paying our bills entirely from Sept and no run out until next spring.

We use around 5600kwh of energy a year... we import about 1500kwh of that now.

Batteries have a 12yr warranty on them and will be replaced if they fail or degrade too much in that time (the batteries have 20% extra capacity to allow for that, so the 8.2 is actually 10.2kwh).

ROI is about 7yrs for us. My friend who did qualify for a grant to get his done a few rys ago, only had to pay in the region of £4k for a 4kw PV and 9.5kwh battery. His ROI is 3-4yrs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: not a solution for all

Indeed. This maths stacks up to roughly what I've seen, however, even though £9k seems reasonable...and it is if you spin it through a spreadsheet and compare to your current energy costs (more on that in a bit), but it's about twice as much as it should be given the hardware costs and installation time. I'd be wary of a 12yr warranty on the batteries, there will be clauses galore on those...because even though they might still work in 12 years, the capacity of them will be awful...the warranty probably only covers sudden failure etc...probably doesn't cover you for capacity so within about 3 years, you'll start to notice the reduced capacity. The batteries are probably "good" for about 3-4 years despite the 12yr warranty if they're very good batteries...the panels are good for about 7-10 years, lots of variables involved here though...like local wildlife etc...just like the batteries, the panels get less efficient over time...a lot of the ROI calculation assume battery capacity and panel efficiency are constant...they are definitely not...

My mother in law had solar installed roughly similar to your setup, and within 3 years the system has lost about 20% of it's battery capacity, and the panels are down about 10-15% in terms of what they produce.

Quotes I got for my house were quite a way further north than £9k, I've seen quotes up to £15k, I don't qualify for any grants...and I've got essentially brand new wiring...and given what I already pay in energy bills, it just doesn't make sense. It essentially works out roughly the same as I would pay for regular energy over 10 years...at which point most of the parts would need to be replaced and I'm back at square one.

Here is the kicker though, if I did qualify for a grant, it would be roughly the same cost to me because if you accept the grant, because you can't source your own parts...the grant goes straight to the installer (at least this was the case about 18 months to 2 years ago). A lot of the kit you need is much cheaper if you buy it yourself (can be up to 50% cheaper), especially panels and batteries and you can source better kit if you source it yourself...a lot of installers won't touch the kit if they didn't supply it...even if you buy exactly the same stuff from exactly the same suppliers.

It's a fucking racket right now...and to top it off, it is technology that could be even greener than it actually is...why is it not possible to run DC outlets from a solar/battery setup? It makes perfect sense to have DC outlets that can be adjusted at software level...you'd save a lot more money because you'd lose less energy by not converting some of your power to AC and quite a lot appliances / devices run off DC...outside of the fridge, oven and washing machines etc (the white goods) pretty much everything I run is DC...usually around 12v....seems wild that I can't just run those on straight up DC outlets from a battery that provides DC...my entire home office is DC.

Costing the system up vs existing energy costs is a scam...because the cost of the system has nothing to do with your existing energy costs...all these pirates that sit you down, show you the price and say "look here is the price, it's overall 20% less than your current energy bill!"...they need to be kicked in the balls...because based on the equipment costs direct from the manufacturers etc...that doesn't make sense at all...

Essentially the bottom line is this...does solar save you money alongside your mains feed at the prices the installers are quoting? Yes, yes it does...are the prices being charged fair? No...no they aren't...the savings could be even bigger...two to three times in fact...as with everything else in this country...the costs are inflated, we're over paying for it and this sort of shit has to stop.

This "they're paying £12k over 10 years currently, we can get them to pay £9k, and convince them it's a good deal, which means we're making £6k on £3k of kit Rodders!" Only Fools and Horses style of business is bullshit...people are being robbed under the guise of saving a few grand over a decade...which lets be honest, is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things...it's just another angle to attack peoples savings.

You can look at your monthly bills and see your savings, but you're not remembering that you have £9k less capital in your pocket.

I haven't even begun to explore the tax implications...lets assume your "£600 over 4 months" figure is pure profit for you, not savings, that's what the energy company is paying you...which equates to about £1,800 a year...is that taxable income? Serious question, because I don't know and nobody that I've spoken to at solar installation companies etc can tell me...because if so, then you've converted £9k of capital, which can be invested and earn a tax free return (if done correctly) has been converted into a taxable income. Doesn't seem like much of a tax burden, but it might be just enough to push some people into the next tax bracket and that income might attract a higher amount of tax, and therefore your savings etc aren't actually saving you anything, they're just raising tax for the government.

Even my mother in laws accountant has no answers for this and she generates far more income from excess energy than you do because she lives by herself and uses hardly any power, for her it can easily be £5k-£6k a year or more...she is essentially running off the grid at this point, she generates so much excess power...in fact in general round here there is a massive excess of "green" energy being pumped into the grid...so much so that my energy provider sends us a message every day telling us that we won't pay anything for energy at a given point in the day (usually between 12noon and 3pm, when the sun is highest) to increase demand and just use it and get it off the grid because they can't store it...this alone has brought my energy bills down significantly over the last 6-12 months because the window of time is just large enough to run the washing machines, dishwasher etc on a cycle or two and not pay a bean for it then not have to run any cycles until the next day in the same window. I probably haven't paid a penny to wash clothes and dishes for at least 6 months...maybe more...all I know is that my direct debits have halved because I've made the most out of the "free" energy that is on the grid as I possibly can...which is a greater saving than I'd ever get from solar, because I don't have to trade capital to get the savings.

TL;DR

Solar in the UK, dubious and highly questionable...undoubtedly making a difference, but the people benefiting the least are the people that are paying for it. The people installing it are making out like bandits and everyone else is getting cheaper / free energy in the middle because of excess on the grid (if they are in an area that is generating a massive excess).

[John Robson]

Re: not a solution for all

Warranty explicitly has a capacity clause generally 80%

[The Dogs Meevonks]

Re: not a solution for all

What... carrots like ... oh here's 5k towards your EV and you don;t have to pay road tax.... and then... oh we're taking away the 5k and we're going to be introducing a form of road tax now.

It's no different to the 2000's when it was oh... please buy a diesel with these discounts on offer and the cheaper fuel and road tax to reduce CO2 levels... to, oh here's the extra fuel duty we're going to keep adding to diesel so that it's more expensive than petrol and makes owning one pointless for the better economy.... and on top of that, here's how much extra road tax you're going to pay.

My current 16yrs old diesel gets me an avg of 43mpg around town... my sisters 2021 Juke with a 1.2lt petrol turbo gets her about 39mpg and she's paying 5p/lt less for fuel... and that gap used to be 10p/lt thanks to the price gouging of energy companies during the fuel crisis.

[John Robson]

Re: not a solution for all

Is that why we waited until all the petrol stations were built before selling cars?

The grid/charging has to come alongside the adoption of EVs. And it is, well the grid has been EV capable for decades, but the generation capacity will come on alongside EV market increase.

They are the only solution for cars that makes any sense at all with current technologies, and there isn't anything else that comes close.

[Zolko]

the average journey

It's not the length of average journeys that count but that of the longest journey to be made. If you can't drive your car for week-end or holiday trips then that car is not suited for you.

[Drakon]

Re: the average journey

You don’t have to make that longest journey without stopping though, unless (like one of the posters above) there’s simply no charging infrastructure en-route.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: the average journey

"unless... there’s simply no adequate charging infrastructure en-route."

It's adequacy that matters. It's no good saying that you can recharge in the time it takes to stop for coffee unless there's a charger free when you stop. In practice that would mean that most if not all parking spaces at a motorway service station or the like would have to have chargers capable of charging at that rate and the supply to the service station would have to be capable of supplying that much power.

[munnoch]

Re: the average journey

Not forgetting that public chargers are criminally overpriced. The cost per mile for an EV works out significantly higher than petrol or diesel unless you can charge at home.

[Tom66]

Re: the average journey

This is true if you use the PAYG price at most chargers.

But, if you can stop at Tesla chargers (50% are open to non-Tesla now), or Ionity chargers and have their membership for ~£7/month, the cost is about 2/3rds that of petrol.

I actively route away from the expensive chargers - and from my experience I'm not the only one.

[munnoch]

Re: the average journey

Well, I avoid motorway petrol stations but if I get caught with my trousers down it doesn't cost twice as much as filling up at Asda.

I'd say that Ionity Passport Power at 43p/kWh is pretty much a wash against the cost of diesel, both would be about 10p per mile.

Hardly a great incentive especially when we are constantly being told that net-nothing is going to solve all our cost of living problems.

[iRadiate]

Re: the average journey

None has ever said EVs and Net Zero will solve the cost of living crisis. Stupid statement

[John Robson]

Re: the average journey

Cost of GREED crisis

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the average journey

"Hardly a great incentive especially when we are constantly being told that net-nothing is going to solve all our cost of living problems."

We may be told that, but is anybody foolish enough to believe it.

EVs can barely compete with ICE on marginal cost per mile, and that's with fossil fuels being hammered with fuel duties that are 53% of the pump price. When there's an appreciable number of EVs on the road, government are going to want to replace fading fuel duties, and lo and behold, your EV will still be costing 10p a mile for power, but you'll be on the hook for a badly executed programme of road pricing. Current press discussion puts average road pricing at 2p per mile, but I'd assume 3p just to recoup the inevitable multi-billion overspend on such a project. And then, peak time rates, regional rates, and road type will all be opportunities to screw more money for feckless politicians to waste.

[Dimitri]

Re: the average journey

Except that if the externality of an ICE engine was adequately priced in you should probably be paying something important the region of £10/ mile. Not that anyone cares of course, cause it’s our kids that will die because of this, we can’t have that spoiling our convenience now, can we?

This whole discussion is so idiotic as if people taking a weekend trip can’t stop to charge and take a leak, or spend a few pennies more on charging once in a while. And I don’t know what your fuel economy is, but my EV gets me approx 50% cheaper mileage to my ice car when charging at home, which is 90% of my charging anyway,

Christ.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: the average journey

What's idiotic is people like you who assume their use case is everyone's use case, and their affordances are everyone's affordances.

I frequently make a drive of several hundred miles, where there are no vehicle charging stations — not a one — for the first 400 miles (or last 400, for the return trip).

And when I'm on a long drive, I do not stop for the 45 minutes it would take to recharge a typical EV — if a charger is open when I arrive. That's not acceptable, as far as I'm concerned.

Is my case typical? No. Is it still my situation? Yes.

Of course in my case it's moot, because I won't own a car with a touchscreen, which eliminates all of the EVs available in the US, I believe (and pretty much all the new cars, so I won't be buying a new car anyway). And I won't use a smartphone app to pay for anything, because that's an idiotic thing to depend on, and a big expansion of attack surface.

[Crypto Monad]

Re: the average journey

Ionity on Electroverse with Intelligent Octopus Go discount is 63p/unit.

Ionity Passport Motion is £5.49 per month, for 53p/unit..

Ionity Passport Power is £10.50 per month, for 43p/unit.

43p/unit is also what Tesla superchargers cost, outside of 4pm-8pm, and equates to about 11p/mile (at 4 miles/kWh). That's *slightly* better than petrol, but it gets eaten up if you add in the cost of a cup of coffee while you wait for the charge!

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: the average journey

Public chargers are priced roughly the same actually, although it's still overpriced.

"Average" petrol car, current french petrol prices: assuming 36mpg = 12.7km/l, at about €1.78/l means 1000km is about €139

My Kia EV6 gets 3.8kW/km, and last year Ionity network was €0.49/kWh, so the same range would be €128.

But assuming you can charge at either end of the trip off a domestic supply, you'll normally start full and end empty, so it does work out quite a bit cheaper. And as Tom pointed out, there are ways to make this considerably cheaper if you do lots of milage, like Tesla or Ionity membership, or just aiming for cheaper chargers.

[Catkin]

Re: the average journey

36mpg seems incredibly low. The average fuel economy for purely petrol driven (not including hybrids) LDVs in France in 2019 was 5.8l/100km or 17km/l or 48Impg

https://www.iea.org/articles/fuel-economy-in-france

I'd also point out that diesel achieves, on average, better fuel economy and, thanks to strike-inclined truckers, is cheaper per litre in France.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the average journey

The average fuel economy for purely petrol driven (not including hybrids) LDVs in France in 2019 was 5.8l/100km or 17km/l or 48Impg

Would be surprised if that was true. Are those figures from the Energy IEA or the petroleum lobby backing Institute in London?

I'd guesstimate nearer 8 l/100km (35 mpg imperial) based on their being loads of older cars around.

[Catkin]

Re: the average journey

Those figures are from the IEA. The average age of a car on the road in France in 2021 was 10.5 years so, while you might see older cars, they're not representative. The age figure is from an automotive lobby group but please feel free to provide competing figures if you feel those figures are more accurate:

https://www.acea.auto/figure/average-age-of-eu-vehicle-fleet-by-country/

Please also provide hard data that you feel is more accurate to support your guesstimate if you doubt the accuracy of the previous post.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the average journey

Doesn't that report say that EU average light duty vehicle l/100km has gone up?

"Between 2017 and 2019, average rated fuel consumption rose in Europe, as the European Union's COz emission regulations did not require any further improvement until 2020, when rated emissions from new vehicles declined by more than 10% year-on-year."

[Catkin]

Re: the average journey

Yes, the overall impact was a rise of 0.1l/100km for petrol non-hybrid LDVs in France. The figure after that rise was the one I quoted.

I'm unclear on the significance, could you please clarify?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the average journey

I'm unclear on the significance, could you please clarify?

Under-estimating realworld mpg (cars are more efficient than they actually are) is a way the petrochem lobby likes to imply we don't need to fundamentally change anything. Just continue with "business as usual."

[nobody who matters]

Re: the average journey

I have an older petrol car - 24 years old in fact. It is my daily driver and averages just over 50mpg.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the average journey

I'll bite. What make, model and engine?

If it's a 1.0 Yaris or a Prius, that's not really very impressive to either camp in the ongoing EV/ICE culture war.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: the average journey

Not exactl an average Journey but I went from N.E. Hampshire to Norwich in my EV-6, today. 160 miles each way. I started with almost a full battery and did two brief splash and dash trips at Ionity Baldock and Ionity (A47/A11 jcn) and arrived home with 50 miles of range left.

A splash and dash is as follows:

Plug the car in and start charging with RFID card, and go to the loo, buy a coffee and return. End charging, get in car and drive away.

No range anxiety and 3.7miles/kWh at motorway speeds.

I'll charge tonight at 6.7p/kWh. I'll have close on 200 miles of range by the time I get up in the morning.

I'll never go back to ICE.

[Tessier-Ashpool]

Re: the average journey

The price of public EV chargers isn't a big deal for me, because most of my EV miles are powered by my home charger, at a very friendly cost of a fiver for 300 miles. For long journeys away from home, I don't mind paying a bit more, in the same way that I don't mind paying for a hotel room.

However, if you are reliant on public charging, a new EV probably isn't the thing for you at this juncture. It's a bit mad that public chargers attract VAT at 20%, whereas a home charger at much cheaper charging rates attracts VAT at 5%.

It's costing a huge amount of money to build out the ultra rapid charging points. Those costs have to be repaid. Over time, the cost of public charging should drop when the infrastructure has been paid for.

[a_builder]

Re: the average journey

Competition will bring down kWh prices.

People are now able to shop for the best prices and providers with unused charges = no revenue will soon figure they have to change something…..which will be membership rates.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: the average journey

"Over time, the cost of public charging should drop when the infrastructure has been paid for."

Name one time in the history of the world when the price of anything with a baked in cost of anything has ever gone down when that baked in cost is paid. Landlord paid off his mortgage on the rental? Rent's still going up. Drug maker R&D expenses paid? Drug prices remain the same or go up Charging company paid off that last charger install? Prices remain the same or go up. Why in the world would you expect the charging network to lower prices just because their expenses went down? You're already used to paying, that's just extra profit.

[Francis Boyle]

Yeah

It's such a pain having to pay USD5000 for a PC!

[Joe Burmeister]

Re: the average journey

No, it's bad but not that bad.

Assume 3 miles per kWh (new van)

kWh = 7.5p night rate

EV Cost per mile = 7.5p/3 = 2.5p per mile

Assume 30 mpg (old van)

Assume £1.50 per litre

There is 4.54609 litres per gallon.

So 4.54609 * £1.50 = £6.82 per gallon.

ICE Cost per mile = 682p/30 = 23p per mile

Rapid chargers are often about 79p kWh, so 26p per mile. A bit more than ICE. A rip off, but not "significantly higher than petrol".

[Lipdorn]

Re: the average journey

Wait until EVs have to pay something similar to the fuel levy. Think government is going to permanently forgo a tax?

[collinsl]

Re: the average journey

And if they're in working condition. If you look at a map of the US chargers which are broken it's a significant minority, and I imagine the situation is similar in the UK. Plus you get ones which are derated due to a technical fault with the charger, or they've got the wrong socket on etc etc.

Technology Connections & Aging Wheels did a roadtrip video on YouTube talking about this, well worth a watch. There may be more info in the Technology Connections videos on electric vehicles, I can't remember which video has the info above in it and I'm at work so can't look into it.

[toejam++]

Re: the average journey

If you live in a region where public charging infrastructure is too questionable for the routes you take, one solution is to go with a plug-in hybrid. Charge at home using your electrical mains for daily driving and refill at petrol stations while away.

My family has a PHEV and we've cut our petrol consumption by over 95% while around town. For the occasional trip out of town, we can stop off at any regular petrol station and skip the chargers. It is a great compromise.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: the average journey

"It's no good saying that you can recharge in the time it takes to stop for coffee unless there's a charger free when you stop."

Oh yes, something few people consider. Motorway services in particular can get extremely busy during summer holidays and bank holidays. I do a lot of driving for work and across the summer, it's that unusual to see motorway services with staff out in the car parks directing the queue of traffic just trying to park up. Even through most services have at least 6 charging points, often more, in addition to the Tesla charge points they all seem to have 10 or so of, that's still not very many if even 10% of those cars want even a short quick "top up charge". I've certainly seen queue at the services fuel pumps many time in the summer, even at the extortionate prices they charge there.

It can be partially solved by people planning more carefully, arranging re-charge stops to be out of peak lunchtime hours etc, but then there will be a lot of people making that same decision, most likely just extending the lunchtime rush from 11am to 2pm or something.

[Doctor Syntax]

"the average journey is something like 7 miles, and they don't tow things, so EV is a solution, just not a solution that covers everything"

Most people need their car to cover everything. It the occasional longer journey isn't supported by the charging infrastructure then EV isn't a solution. The present refuelling infrastructure for ICE driven vehicles took decades to build up. It would take a major drive to replicate that in the time-frame that governments want to replace the ICE fleet.

[Joe Burmeister]

It's really not that bad. There are lots of rapid chargers and more all the time. I mean you loss the advantage of the 10x cheaper miles cost, but it's just about the same as ICE.

You don't need the massive ranges coming down the pipe if there are rapid chargers. You drive for like 2.5 hours, stop for a wee and leg stretch and charger. By the time you get back to the car, it's nearly full again. And that's if it's decent roads. A lot of the times, the roads in the UK are not good. We regularly do a family trip to deep Wales and it's about 3-4 hours. We don't stop to charge, it's all in range, we stop for wees and swap driver. In deep Wales, an EV is easier to fill up. We just leave it plugged in on a normal socket over night. A petrol station is fricking miles away.

My commute comes out at about 1000 a month. At 2p per mile instead of 22p+ per mile it was before. Saving about £200 in fuel a month. So yes, the upfront cost, thus monthly payments, is more for an EV, but the fuel saving can out weigh that. Or at least balance it.

Plus you know, contributing less to the climate emergency or dirty air the kids breath.

[idiotzoo]

Exactly this… I’ve driven an EV since 2020, for all journeys except hiring a can for moving house.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seven miles, that's a bit short of 12 km? That's biking distance. Pushbike, or moped if that's too much trouble. Or a microcar/quadricycle if you really want to sit inside some windowed box. In fact you can get electrified kick-scooters with ranges well over four times that, so you can make that trip and come back twice before recharching. Being far, far lighter, they need far, far less electricity to make the errands trip.

This is a strong argument for promoting non-car alternatives. Possibly in addition to keeping the petrol car for long distance trips. That will only fly if the infrastructure supports it. Which, in the US, it very much does not. So doing away with stroads and introducing bike lanes is probably going to be much more environmentally friendly than expecting everyone in the US to switch from an already overweight American Car to an even more overweight American Battery Car. Better road design can also do wonders for the traffic death rate.

[ICL1900-G3]

I'm amazed at the downvotes, but people are, in general, so wedded to their cars they are reluctant to consider alternatives, especially in the UK and US. Ultimately, the stick will have to be used, the carrot will never suffice.

[[e-mail]]

No, battery EVs are not a solution because it makes no sense to carry around an extra ton of batteries. Hydrogen or bio fuels make much more sense.

[Michael Wojcik]

that doesn't mean they're not a solution for others

And who claimed otherwise? Not the OP, certainly.

[Henry Hallan]

I live in rural Ireland with no charging infrastructure nearby - except the electricity supply to the premises.

We have a cheap EV *and* one of those secondhand diesels: a 4WD Duster. The Duster does about 5% of our household miles, because the EV saves so much money

Since I commute we needed two cars anyway, but diesel compared to cheap-rate electricity is a no-brainer. It really is

The only reason we would not have an EV is if we couldn't charge overnight at home

[Captain Hogwash]

Re: couldn't charge overnight at home

That right there is the reason for so many people to stick with ICE.

[hoola]

But the EV only saves money because it is effectively subsidised to a high level.

That is not sustainable.

[Tom66]

Cheap off-peak electricity isn't subsidised: it's cheap because there's usually an excess of power at certain points in the day, especially at night, and it incentivises consumers to shift their operation to charge then rather than at peak times.

[Anonymous Coward]

With more EVs you can bet that overnight will become a new “peak”

[a_builder]

Agree.

I’ve a Tesla Y and an oil burner that I rarely use.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

I intend for my next car to be a BEV but I'm happy to continue getting use out of my 12 year old dinosaur burner while waiting for a step change in energy density, battery stability and sustained performance. I don't know how long I'll be waiting but I hope it's not too long...

[Like a badger]

I've been saying that for a decade, and BEVs appear barely any nearer to affordability and practicality than they were in 2014. But affordability and practicality matter not - the government is moving pell mell on it's net zero economic self-crucifixion, and the penalties on car makers for not selling a big enough proportion of EVs are so draconian that car makers will themselves withdraw ICE from the market over the next few years.

So in a few years if you can't afford to drive an EV, stay at home and huddle round your wildly expensive heat pump, and reflect on how you're saving the planet.

[MyffyW]

"BEVs appear barely any nearer to affordability and practicality than they were in 2014"

Affordability for second-hand BEVs is substantially better than the situation in 2014 when you could choose between a Nissan Leaf and a very small number of others, all at a high premium second-hand.

Likewise range has increased markedly from the very optimistic "about 100 miles if you're lucky, only when the battery is new" to a reliable 200 miles+ that will last for many, many years of battery life. I know this from personal experience.

However, we live in a free society and I support your God-given right not to like stuff. As we used to say at the end of the 20th century, YMMV.

[Tom66]

"BEVs appear barely any nearer to affordability and practicality than they were in 2014"

I disagree with this statement. If you go back to 2014, the only EV you could get with 200 mile range was a £90k+ Tesla Model S. They were truly rich person's toys... and not particularly well built. The cheap EV was something like a Nissan Leaf: 80 mile range, 40kW charging, £35k after grant.

This is now available on a £25k Fiat 500e / Peugeot e-208 / Vauxhall corsa-e, or an MG 4, and these cars charge as fast as that Tesla did (100kW+) and there's no plug in grant any more to lower the price, that's the price they're selling for new on forecourts right now.

On the used market, a friend of mine recently purchased a second hand e-208 for £12k, there are many others on the market for that price. Used EV prices have softened significantly. They are now essentially at price parity with comparable ICE vehicles.

Of course, if your idea of a cheap car is £5k and a good MOT history, they're still out of reach, but I do expect that segment of the market will fill out in the next five years. All cars depreciate.

[The Dogs Meevonks]

I know what you mean. My current car is a 2008 Honda Accord EX CDTi with 120k on the clock. I've owned for over 5yrs now and put 20k on the clock. It gets me low 40's around town and low 50's on a long run with a loaded car.

I paid £1800 for it, thanks to covid, it's worth about £2000-2400 on the used market now. I practice what I call 'bangernomics' I buy a used car that's about 9-11yrs old with roughly 100k on the clock for cheap money and run it until it's no loner economical to keep on the road... Usually 3-5yrs on avg. I've done for a long time now, at times having a 2nd sporty car at the same time (I used to run a car owners club)

I know that my car is coming to the end of it's life... but it passes ever MOT without issue. It failed the last one on headlight adjustment after I stripped and repolished the lights and never connected the electric motor properly on one side when refitting them. Emissions are good, there's no blue smoke to indicate turbo wear, no sooty black smoke.

I have solar and battery storage on the house, and they provide up to 80% of my energy for the year (we avg 5300kwh/yr and generated 4100kwh last yr). This year I even expanded battery storage so that we can go for an entire month with only a trickle of energy import... May & June was 42kwh of import over 61 days and we earned enough from export to cover the entire June bill inc standing charges.

But I still wouldn't get an EV... It's not because I'm cheap, it's because it's not suitable for my driving. Assuming the figures are correct and that it takes a family sized EV upto 50k miles just to offset it's production cost, and I drive 4-5k miles a year. It would take me 10yrs just to be neutral on emissions. Up to that point, I've just shifted them somewhere else. After 10yrs... those batteries are kinda done and down to 60-70% capacity... At least the batteries in my home are larger than rated... the 8.2kwh is actually 10.2kwh so that it doesn't degrade over the 12yr warranty and I've got 2 batteries bought a year apart.

I am looking at hybrids though... I might even go for a smaller car... So long as I can get 60-70mpg avg and have heated seats (good for my bad back in winter)... a car is a tool for getting from A-B... outside of that... it just has to be built in Japan because their build quality is superior to anything else I've ever owned in 32yrs of driving.

I've not even mentioned the fact that somewhere between 30-40% of homes are unsuitable for home charging... the figure varies greatly, the infrastructure is poor (there's 6 chargers within a 15m radius of where I live).

I really wish fuel cells had been given the attention and investment... Now, I think FC vehicles should be used for longer range transport like trucks and coaches, public transport too.

Until we get away from the idea that everyone needs to own a car... we'll never do anything to reduce pollution from them. Cheap, subsidised public transport run as a not for profit industry, build cycle routes and eliminate cars from city centres.

I live in a rural setting on the edge of a small town... 65k people live in an area about 260sq/miles... getting a bus to the town 6 miles away, takes almost 2hrs and 1 change... and it goes on a 23m trip. I bought an ebike a couple of years ago and today did an 18 mile ride for pleasure in the sunshine. Stopped at the shops and picked up enough groceries to see us through the weekend. No need to use the car for the 4m roundtrip to buy food for the next 10-12days as we usually do. It's one of the ways I've reduced my car use down to 4-5k a year.

EV's are not the answer... they're the capitalist answer to generate more profit and speed up the destruction of out planet.

[An_Old_Dog]

Public Transit vs Time

I've not owned a car in decades, but I live in an urban area with pretty good bus and commuter rail transport.

In the mornings, I get an automobile ride to work from a co-worker; it's a 15-minute trip. I take a bus and a commuter train home; it's a 1.5-hour trip.

Commute time is a quality-of-life issue.

[ske1fr]

Maybe not

"... it just has to be built in Japan because their build quality is superior to anything else I've ever owned in 32yrs of driving."

Think again. My Jazz E-HEV is on it's third passenger side wing mirror in 4 years, not because I rubbed it on anything, they just wear out. Known design flaw. Propulsion system is excellent, economical, but even for a four foot eleven woman the middle rear seat is just too uncomfortable. No, not for me, 'er when the MIL is in the front. That plus the shrinkage from the Mark 3 ICE Jazz and other reasons are why I'm seriously thinking of switching to an EV, and not that fugly e:Ny1 with what looks like an even smaller boot!

[spacec0w]

Cars in the UK drive an average of 30 km a day, which is equivalent to 205 km a week. I'd hazard a guess that they need to tow something 2000kg+ once a year or less.

Also, why do you think you need solar panels? Charging at home can still be 1/2 to like 1/10th of what petrol costs.

Not saying they fit your use case so well, but for the vast majority they do, and research keeps showing that cost is the main barrier to update. When they're cheaper across the board, that plus much cheaper cost of use will make most people forget that their range is lower. Range also keeps improving in any case. It's happening, just a bit slower than some had forecast. Multiple headlines I've seen also give a fairly misleading impression of what is happening. Growth is simply slowing.

[Evil Scot]

I hear a lot of this at work.

One colleague has a caravan. One has to drive far to visit his mum.

Both have multiple cars at their household.

As a runabout / second car it is perfect.

I have driven my AC charging Zoe from Cambridge to Portmeirion. I have found chargers. One was still free (£0).

At home the charger uses less current than an electric shower, and I am saving £25 off of a tank of diesel each week. Well l 3/4 tank of diesel or approx. 300 miles

This assumes you can get a wall box and have off-street parking.

[steviebuk]

If you have a big enough garden you can have them just on your lawn instead of on the roof. Look Cliff from Positech games. Yes, he can more than afford them now, but as he had a big enough garden, he had his panels put in his front garden.

[Mr. Flibble]

... you mean farm, not garden: https://www.positech.co.uk/cliffsblog/category/solar/

[UnknownUnknown]

Shame your trailer is so heavy as a Rav 4 Hybrid/PHEV would do the caravan otherwise:

[Drakon]

> Nicholas Farhi, a partner at OC&C Strategy Consultants, put the decline down to worries about range

The right-wing media FUD is unfortunately very effective

[elsergiovolador]

Imagine how many perpetuum mobile devices we would have today if only people trying to build them ignored the right wing $cientists telling it will not work.

[Zolko]

And flying cars. I blame Trump and Putin that we don't have those

[Doctor Syntax]

None, irrespective of whether advice is ignored or not.

[elsergiovolador]

Exactly

[Doctor Syntax]

Do you really think the people buying vehicles aren't capable of knowing what their longest journeys are nor are they capable of looking around them to see what the existing charging infrastructure is and combining those too pieces of information? Range would not be a problem if available charging capacity matched petrol and diesel refuelling capacity.

If I could be sure of rolling into a motorway service station and finding an unoccupied, working fast charger I'd be confident to buy an EV. I can't therefore I'm not.

[a_builder]

Try looking next time you go.

Went down the M4

Banks if Tesla and Other brands at Reading.

Same just before Bristol.

More than 50 chargers at both locations 3 cars charging.

The number of superchargers is increasing very very fast.

[Jimmy2Cows]

And is generating capacity and grid distribution infrastructure also increasing at this "very very fast" rate? What about the local substations that need uprating to dispatch power to all these superchargers?

Yes, whataboutism, but for genuine questions that need answering.

Lastly, it's been noted by testers like What Car? (who generally like EVs) that while superchargers may well exist in increasing numbers, and when they're actually working, they will often only deliver max charging rates under very narrow conditions. That includes the number of chargers in use at the location. The chargers will often downrate to not overload the local grid connection. So you might get 150KWh if you're the only consumer. Plug in alongside 10 others all wanting 150KWh and watch the rate halve.

[ivan itchybutt]

perceived barrier?

My barrier is that no one is making a sensible small, non-luxury BEV (that can be purchased in North America).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: perceived barrier?

There are small electrics around (IIRC you can get an all-electric Vauxhall Corsa) but the problem is that EV drivetrains are hard to fit in small cars while providing sensible range due to the size and weight of the batteries.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: perceived barrier?

You CAN'T get a Vauxhall Corsa in North America.

Not that much of anyone would, small slow cars aren't practical here.

The problem isn't that small EVs aren't available here. The problem is that cheap EVs aren't available here.

And the biggest problem is that other than California there's no deadline for the end of registration of new ICE cars.

[The Dogs Meevonks]

Re: perceived barrier?

Cheap EVs aren't available anywhere. All of the automakers realised that because an EV is going to cost 20% more than an ICE one... they might as well pivot to the high end. So buying an affordable EV with a reasonable range... is impossible because they don't exist, unless you want to go with uproven brands that buyers have no idea about quality and reliability.

A small city car... 30k and upwards for 100m range if your lucky.

Or 10k for a 4yr old Suzuki Swift hybrid with 30-40k on the clock, that will avg 60-70mpg.

It's a no brainer really.

[Frobbotzim]

Re: perceived barrier?

You CAN get a Fiat 500e in North America.

Whether that badge leaves a sour taste, well, I've met a few who have worked on Fiat ICE's and would never entertain owning anything at all from that manufacturer. But for my own part, the used 2017 500e that I had picked up a few years ago was a fantastic daily driver for about 20K miles until a -40° cold snap prompted a 65-mile tow to the nearest qualified service center where the high-voltage fuse was reseated to fix the issue. Made it home with but a few miles of range remaining, sold the thing the next day for a bit more than I'd paid, and have been content with my 38-year-old Chevy light truck since.

In a couple more years, when there are a few of the 2024 500e's for sale used and cheap, I'll try again.

Anyway, just saying, despite the prohibitive cost of new BEVs from a few nameplates that needn't be mentioned, no-frills low-cost small electric cars exist for those who are interested and willing to deal with the other infrastructure- and manufacturer-related problems that may be a part of the experience. More so if you're not too fancy to drive a used car.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: perceived barrier?

Australia is awash with cheap and cheerful Chinese EVs. Indeed, the Chinese have stolen a march on almost everyone when it comes to EVs, especially Japan which is falling a long way behind.

Even the Teslas we can buy here are all manufactured in China.

Is it a trade sanctions thing in the US?

[ecofeco]

Re: perceived barrier?

Is it a trade sanctions thing in the US?

It is.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/15/joe-biden-us-tariffs-chinese-evs-electric-vehicles-details

[standbythree]

Re: perceived barrier?

Chevy Bolt? I know they've temporarily stopped making them, but you can absolutely still buy new ones. I have one and I love it.

[John_Ericsson]

What really grates is he smug anti-EV youtubers were right.

My plan was to get an EV when I could charge from home. While that happened this year, I had already witnessed friends describing it as their biggest financial mistake (apart from getting married).One friend waited six months for a "part" before being told they could not source the part and they would buy the car back of her for .... 20% of the purchase price (after two years). This is NOT "eco"!

There is to much kid-ology going on and we all need to admit we were duped (like with 3d TVs)

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

3D TVs aren't 'duping'. The technology works, it just has its implementation specific limitations. Some of the auto 3D generation from LG TVs is very impressive.

The issues are more that people don't like wearing extra equipment to watch TV, it's not always a good solution if multiple people are watching, and it can affect brightness and contrast - but it does work.

3D stereoscopy simply goes through phases of popularity - 3D screenings at cinema are now minimal. People won't pay much extra for a 3D showing, and aren't fussed in seeing films in stereoscopy after the novelty wears off, even when it's well implemented.

[Neil Barnes]

Every twenty-thirty years, regular as clockwork. Since not so long after 1840...

(You wouldn't believe the way the Victorians did 3-d movies! Bowden cables to shutters on eye-pieces.)

[The Dogs Meevonks]

the problem with the technology is that it didn't work good enough... I know, because when my dog broke my old TV, my insurance replaced it with a brand new Samsung 3D TV. I even went out and bought some glasses to use with it... I hated it.

The problem with 3D TV/Movies, isn't the TV... it's the way it was produced.

The vast majority of 3D content was filmed in 2D and then had a 3D process applied to it, this creates a horrible viewing experience... where it appears there are layers to the image that float in front of each other... it creates the illusion of depth whilst unable to fool the brain that there is depth. So you get this horrible parallax scrolling effect which is painful tow atch.

The only 3D movies I've seen that worked... animated ones. Toy Story 3 was amazing in 3D... everything else was garbage and the format failed because they tried to charge ridiculous amounts to see them in the cinema... faked the 3D numbers and popularity, by refusing to release 2D versions of movies so that you had no choice but to see it in 3D and then did the same with the bluray releases inc both 3D and 2D versions in the same case for twice the price to inflate how popular it was.

It's dead, it deserved to die and good riddance until the next time it rears it's ugly head in another 15-20yrs time... Because 25yrs or so seems to be the avg gap between their attempts to make it work... 50's, 80's & late 2000's early 2010;s

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

I'd actually say Toy Story 3D was one of the less impressive 3D movies I've seen. I wouldn't say I see the parallax effect - I'd say that largely the upconversion is competently done. Perhaps it's person dependent?

Avatar was obviously excellent 3D (not so much a great film), Men in Black 3, Journey to the Center of the Earth. Dredd 3D.

For some reason I found Gravity moderately subtle 3D, right up until near the end when things are going wrong and they're tumbling to Earth, where it's absolutely stunning.

I have a couple of 3D Blurays, but not a 3D TV, and because of the DRM obsession of the producers it's somewhat of a pain to get it to stream to a VR helmet.

I've played stereoscopic games more than seen films, in passive 3D monitors, ancient shutter glasses, and VR headsets. All work extremely well in some circumstances but again it depends on the game, and frankly much of the time I don't want to wear something else to play a game.

[Drakon]

Is this a problem with EV’s as a concept or shitty manufacturers?

[Like a badger]

"Is this a problem with EV’s as a concept or shitty manufacturers?"

It's a problem that the technology and infrastructure (at a system level) is immature, but government have made it clear to manufacturers that a winner has been chosen (by the government, not the market) and the manufacturers transition to that or find another business to be in. As with most instances of government picking winners, it'll work out very costly, even though the technology can ultimately be made to work.

[sev.monster]

I would say both. EV tech, regardless of if the specific concept is good or not, needs significant infrastructure and support to be usable, and both aspects are still pretty weak right now compared to the alternatives. The EV market is still in its infancy; there is a lack of aftermarket/secondhand cars and parts, few third-party repair shops, iffy software with considerable privacy concerns, and chargers sparsely dotted around unless you're in a bigger city.

The lack of a mature market also makes one very dependent on the manufacturer, and with these EV companies sprouting up and failing over and over again, I imagine it's difficult to get consumer trust—not just with specific brands and companies, but with the industry and EVs as a whole. For example, manufacturer repair centers are basically the only places that can realistically service your car, and wait times can be incredibly high due to the lack of technicians and centers. Tesla owners can wait months on parts and service, and that's a non-starter for many people. Hell, only recently has a unified charging standard come about; previously, you would have to look for specific chargers that supported your specific brand of car, which is absurd. Naturally Tesla dominated the market, and they didn't share their charger design with anyone until recently, when they contributed to the new charger standard. But even then, not all chargers and cars have been updated—some can't be, and require the development and vendor/consumer purchase of adapter kits.

The best hope for the solidification of the EV market is to further standardize, and get more EVs into consumer hands to drive the need for more infrastructure... But manufacturers are still fighting over innovation, and you can't convince consumers to buy EVs without confidence in the infrastructure, so...

[ecofeco]

Sadly this. ^^^

Overall, everyone who could afford an EV has bought for now. A plateau was inevitable. And the cheap Chinese EV's have been effectively locked out of the U.S. market.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/15/joe-biden-us-tariffs-chinese-evs-electric-vehicles-details

[Martin hepworth]

Lease prices are practically the same now and the latest Vauxhall's are the same price for hybrid or bev.....

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Perhaps if demand drops off the manufacturers will be able to turn their factories to producing spare and replacement parts so that all those damaged or broken EVs that have been waiting for parts can finally be repaired...

[Julian Poyntz]

what brand

What brand was that?

I also had a similar issue with a Gilera scooter, took ages for the garage to get the part, which is essentially a Vespa component.

I just had a loan bike from the garage so I didn't really care too much

[Thomas Steven 1]

I was considering an electric car but...

I took my current vehicle (transit connect 2012) for a service near work and was given an electric courtesy car. I drove it home and back, a round trip of 80 miles. The electric car started out saying it had 220 miles of range, and finished back at the garage claiming 60 miles of range. I handed the vehicle back and mentioned it, and the garage kind of looked uncomfortable and said 'yeah, it does that'.

Clearly when a trip of 80 miles uses 140 miles of range, these things can't be trusted. My 12 year old diesel vehicle is accurate within about 1 mile in 50 as to how much range it has left, so yeah it appears that range claims are a real concern, and that electric vehicle manufacturer's vehicles are lying about their available range. As far as I can make out there's no means of holding manufacturer's feet to the fire about this problem, so I'll be avoiding electric vehicles until there's some real world testing that's required to ensure that what your car is telling you vis a vis range is accurate.

[Drakon]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

Manufacturers follow a standardised regimen for calculating range. The problem is that the test sucks.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

The user experiences the problem. The cause is irrelevant to them nor is it their role to fix it. But it's no use the EV proponents saying it doesn't matter, they need to move things along from Only Just Works to Just Works.

[Sparsely the Lion]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

> Manufacturers follow a standardised regimen for calculating range. The problem is that the test sucks.

It only sucks because the final "divide by 2" step is left for the buyer to do. :-)

[cyberdemon]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

> Manufacturers follow a standardised regimen for calculating range. The problem is that the test sucks

Does the test involve driving at 20mph for 15 hours with no heating or air conditioning?

[Wanting more]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

Well my Honda Civic (2007 petrol) was claiming 500 miles range earlier and I'd already driven 100 miles. In reality I know it's more likely it's likely to last another 250 miles (tank lasts about 350 with normal driving, if motorway cruising it does better). It's always been inaccurate like that. So it's not just electric vehicles that get it wrong.

[David Hicklin]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

> Well my Honda Civic (2007 petrol) was claiming 500 miles range earlier

well my 2012 Astra is pretty much spot on with estimated range....less said about my 2007 Renault 120dci horsebox the better....

[sev.monster]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

It's not even that manufacturers are lying, it's that range estimates are just that. Battery temperature and health, as well as driving habits, heavily affect the potential range out of a charge. Software has to be very specifically calibrated to show the correct range estimations, which can fail due to bugs or unexpected battery state. Which, yeah, this is no excuse.

[Like a badger]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

The same is true of ICE range estimates by the car itself, yet I find them impressively accurate even on my ageing Skoda. The reason that EV range estimates are crap is not because of multiple influences, but because either the software is crap, or because the battery technology is so poor that the makers feel compelled to over-represent the remaining range.

From observation of reports rather than any personal experience, it does seem that if you spend enough on the car the makers over-provision the claimed battery capacity, and both expected range and durability hold up pretty well. But I've never been in the market for a £50k+ car, and don't expect I ever will be.

[munnoch]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

An ICE gets the same mileage for the same style of driving pretty much day in day out. A BEV varies wildly depending on environmental aspects. If the battery is too hot or too cold, range goes down. If the aircon or heating is running range goes down.

In a similar vein an ICE will give you the same performance for pretty much its whole design life. Sure you can abuse it and power will drop off, but driven sensibly and given basic maintenance the ICE is essentially a sealed unit and is probably not going to be the reason the car is scrapped. The battery in a BEV degrades over time. Some more so than others, but my PHEV at 4 years and 40k miles is at about 80% of capacity. And that's well within the warranty terms of 70% so something I just have to get on with.

These effects are all for very good technical reasons, but *really* surprising to the average consumer used to just jumping in the car without thinking.

[sev.monster]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

I'm not sure what you're on about, but temperature differences and running AC impact fuel efficiency for petroleum engines too. Not as much as EV's, but still. An engine has to do extra work to provide more output, no matter what it is. Bit disingenuous.

[John Robson]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

I suspect it's more because the people who complain about it are usually in a courtesy/hire vehicle, so they have no idea what the vehicle history is, or what to expect.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

If you write the software better it would give better estimates.

This would require the software to be much more adaptive to the driving style etc of the driver and it would also have to be more truthful overall.

The end result would be a more accurate *BUT* lower estimate ... i.e. closer to the 'divide by 2' figure.

Net result would be less interest in EV's due to the 'range issue' that has not been solved yet.

The manufacturers therefore leave the crappy s/w as it is to keep the lie going !!!

:)

[Tom66]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

Strange. My ID.3 mile-o-meter is damn near on the ball, except if I get a little too enthusiastic with the go pedal. If I set the cruise to 70mph + 10% I get the indicated range without any issue.

[Boothy]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

Same in my Cupra Born (i.e. the ID.3 in a different dress), range seems spot on when I periodically test it out.

Now the rest of the software...

[ecofeco]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

That's anecdata.

Here's what Autoweek found:

https://www.autoweek.com/news/g46077674/electric-vehicle-range-testing/

[John Robson]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

Yep.

And the opposite anecdata exists as well - recently drove 279 miles in our Enyaq, with four people, a dog, and a week's worth of luggage etc...

Had 44 miles reported as left in the battery when we got home (so a total range around 325, which compares favourably with the WLTP 'combined' 339 given that it was well loaded).

I've never actually taken it to zero miles, but I imagine that there would still be some capacity left, even if it's in limp mode.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

Range is based on speed, so on any vehicle - petrol, diesel or EV - it's going to be a wild guess unless you've put a destination into the sat-nav and it can estimate road speed and elevation change. More to the point, unless you've literally run the car out of fuel, none of us know how accurate the range is, surely? I treat that number as rough idea myself, in any vehicle.

[Chloe Cresswell]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

My Q30 is terrible at estimating range. Fill the tank gives you an estimate of 316 miles. After 600 miles, you might think about filling it up.

I did 208 miles on Wednesday, needle on 7/8ths of a tank left. 524miles estimated range. Started it on Thursday, estimated range on that 7/8th's of a tank? 226. When I got home after driving 28 miles to a site and back the estimated range was 410...

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

What?

Range estimate is based on fuel or energy consumption rate, and the amout of fuel or energy the car believes is left. Satnav has nothing to do with it. It simply looks at how you have been and are driving, and adjusts the estimate according to what is left in the tank.

I had a Vectra that would swear there was 40 miles of range left, just as it ran out of fuel. Suspect the fuel sender wasn't accurate or had a fault. Had a Mondeo that was the complete opposite. Zero range showing and it would still happily plod on for another 20 miles.

[John Robson]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

It depends on how you drive compared with how it's been previously driven.

Mine is spot on, yes it varies as the terrain changes, but that's to be expected (until mapping data starts including efficiency data to take account of gradients etc)

[Joe Burmeister]

Re: I was considering an electric car but...

It recalculates miles for battery level all the time. The previous driver was clearly less heavy footed than you. Once your driving miles per kWh becomes its norm, the expected range will closer match the actural miles.

Same as MPG and expected range on ICE.

[elsergiovolador]

Kool Aid

Many neighbours drank the EV kool aid couple of years ago.

Now none of them has an EV.

[Chris Miller]

The problem EV manufacturers face is that EV owners need to: be wealthy (they're still significantly more expensive than ICE equivalents); live in a house with a private drive (so they can charge at home); and not be a road-warrior (or you'll be spending a lot of time recharging remotely at a cost per mile hardly cheaper than petrol). And most people who satisfy these criteria already have an EV.

I live in a wealthy Home Counties village and there are more EVs than you can shake a stick at, with Teslas* on every other drive. But I don't know anyone who doesn't also have an ICE vehicle for when they need to do real driving.

* other EV manufacturers are available, allegedly

[blackcat]

This is interesting reading albeit 2 years old:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-11-15/the-wrong-americans-are-buying-electric-cars

Certainly in the US, and when Musk was still the darling of the progressives, having several EVs on your drive was a major status symbol. A good number of the EVs being sold were second or third cars and hardly driven.

And as you rightly say the lack of a parking space where you can charge overnight is a major stumbling block for prospective owners.

[hoola]

The big take-up in EVs was the corporate business leases. It was all for tax reasons and nothing to do with being green.

Now that huge inventory is starting to appear second hand and nobody wants to buy them.

Too expensive to buy

Too large

To expensive to insure

Concerns about value

Range anxiety

The group that thing EVs are the best thing since sliced bread are the well off who do not take the financial hit of the vehicle and have access to other ICE vehicles.

[John Robson]

No access to another vehicle (other than pedal cycles)

Financially the EV lease costs me less than the equivalent ICE lease would do, and less than owning my previous ICE vehicles, which tended to be 70k-130k miles old.

They're quieter, which is really important when you're deaf - I can actually hold a conversation in an EV, it's a serious challenge in an ICEv.

They're easier to fill, no visits to smelly stations, very much less time spent.

They're substantially more pleasant for pedestrians and other road users.

[elsergiovolador]

They're easier to fill, no visits to smelly stations, very much less time spent.

Indeed, I saw, presumably, husband and wife stuck at charging bay at the supermarket. Wife was constantly yelling and the husband was scrolling his phone. Took me about an hour in the shop as I had a cheeky coffee and a toastie and some articles to read. On my way back wife was still shouting and car was charging.

Indeed easier.

[John Robson]

"and not be a road-warrior (or you'll be spending a lot of time recharging remotely at a cost per mile hardly cheaper than petrol)."

Wrong - so wrong.

You can trivially get fast charging at 1/4 of the price of petrol.

[Chris Miller]

Trivially? If you're a member of the right 'club' (how many different EV charging brands are there?) and pay your dues. But if not, you can be on 70p a kWh (UK), which is broadly the same cost per mile as petrol. Unless you've got an 'off-peak' deal (and are therefore paying more for you 'peak' electricity), even home charging is unlikely to be ¼ the price of petrol.

[Joe Burmeister]

Yer.... you should look at Octopus. Their day rate when you have an EV night rate is not inflated.

It's like 23p for the day and 7.5p for the night.

[Chloe Cresswell]

I didn't know octopus did fast DC charging, which is what the comment was about.

[Joe Burmeister]

Ah, I thought they were talking home AC. They is common trope out there night rates are not worth it because of inflating the day rate. The DC chargers I've seen and used have all been the same rip off round the clock.

[John Robson]

Trivially - just use Tesla chargers.

It’s hardly rocket science.

[Joe Burmeister]

But then you are giving Musk money!

[John Robson]

Yeah - that sucks, but you're giving him far less money than you would be giving anyone else.

And the price difference is substantial... He might be an arse, but the original aims of Tesla where to make electrification happen, and happen as quickly as possible. This is just one aspect of that.

Wholesale electricity prices are still higher than they were pre the war in Ukraine, but only by about 20%.

Back then charging was ~30p/kWh (including VAT). It shouldn't be more than 50p now, but everyone else is charging 70-85p, and Tesla are charging 40p (or ~25p if you are a member).

I'm not supporting the price gouging from the other providers.

[Chloe Cresswell]

Friend rented a polestar 2 for the weekend for a trip. I took my Q30. She used a tesla charger as the cheapest option.

Cost for the trip was £2 more for her than me.

[John Robson]

Your point being?

She clearly wasn’t a regular charger, and therefore was paying their top rate - quite possibly also charging at their peak rate.

[Chloe Cresswell]

Oh shut up you boring fart.

Every post you assume things, every time you ignore what people say. You really aren't worth the time to bother with.

[John Robson]

You're claiming that someone who hired a car for one trip ended up paying more than you managed... I've pointed out that that's inevitable, because they would be unaware of, and unable to access, the best rates for their fuel.

Every post from everyone assumes things... that's what a human world view is.

Of course you could always talk to people who actually use EVs rather than the media who seem unable to cope with the concept of change.

[Chloe Cresswell]

Why would I want to talk any more to the person who decides what EV is best for someone else, not based on what they actually use the vehicle for, but just on the charging system?

Then questions why someone who bought that car even needs the very features they bought it for.

Or claims they can charge, to quote you "Literally any carpark". not any carpark with a charger, any carpark. I just assume you drive in, click your fingers and a charge socket magically appears.

"they would be unable to access the best rates for their fuel" except it's not the best rate for their "fuel", as the cost of the subscription to get the lower cost was higher then the savings, so actually, they would pay _more_ in your example. Because again, you decided that how they use a vehicle isn't the right way for them..

"Of course you could always talk to people who actually use EV" I do, You, however, are not one of them worth talking to, you have proved that.

You have an obsession that means you think people's lives with an EV should revolve around the needs of the EV, not the owner, not the family, not their work. Their car's needs.

Good bye.

[Joe W]

Range is not the issue!

Good grief!

Most car trips are short. Really short. Especailly that stupid range, where a ICV is so abysmal, because the engine is still cold. To be quite frank: most people should not use a car for that, like, at all. Yes, there's exceptions, we all know that (and it is another discussion, not one we need to open here, and I'm guilty ofthat as well, but kids having sport clubs at different ends of town and training at the same time... I disgress). But in this case range just is not the issue. Even my friend's Twizzy does that superbly (not transporting two kids with their stuff, but this was about *range*).

Yes, there are longer car trips. I know, I go on holidays as well. Except that those people I know who have a BEV are actually quite ok with the rythm of driving and taking a break. Sure, takes a bit longer, but they all tell me they arrive way more relaxed than they used to. might be old age and not being too stressed out about things any more, but that was the consensus: more breaks are a good thing. Considering that commercial drivers need to take breaks, we as civilians should maybe think about taking these breaks as well... (yeah, I'm guilty of just trying to get it over with as well).

What is an issue is price. Too many BEVs are fugly homungous[*] SUVs with a price tag to match. What used to be the family friendly car version (Astra or Golf station wagon - or any other brand) just does no longer exist (not as an ICV, much less as BEV). There are a number of smallish cars, nice for a short commutes. And what really ticks me off is that for the smallest solutions (the above mentioned Twizzy) you do not get any subsdies becasue it's too small to count as a car. It is a commuting vehicle, ffs, low road wear, needs less space, highly energ efficient, low cost - so if you subsidise them with the same amount as the stupid fugly SUV you now have a fleet of small light commuter cars that actually do something for electrifying personal transport. Heck, you can probably charge those from a really small PV installation in finite time as well (hm, say, 1kW installation, realisitically 0.5 kW, charges in 8 hours, from empty, I guess).

No, this is not for everybody, but it would be a good start.

And please look at Norway: BEVs are normal there. Not everywhere, sure, but they did pull that off.

[*] just... yeah... one person driving those battle ships all by themselves, taking two parking sports because they are waaay wider than cars should be and... I'll stop here.

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Re: Range is not the issue!

I can very definitely see advantage of a plug in hybrid - if there was an inexpensive one that wouldn't absolutely stuff me on insurance and would *reliably* do at least forty miles under most conditions I'd consider that.

The problem is not just long versus short trips, as you say most trips are short, and these days mostly I don't drive much. The problem is also cumulative trips. If I fill up my ICE I reliably get 450 miles under every condition, in fact it's likely to be an under estimate.

If I have a busy day where there's a trip to do some sport 15 miles away, followed by a trip to pick something up twenty miles away, followed by visiting a friend 60 miles away none of those are excessive distances but suddenly it's almost 200 miles in a day. If your '200 mile' (or higher) electric car only reaches that range in perfect weather and temperature conditions and not turning on the entertainment system, heating, or aircon range is an issue. You may not have the time to reasonably plug in the car, and if you're relying on a charger that may be out of service it's a problem.

It can all be worked around, and you're not wrong that more breaks are a good idea, but it's still fundamentally trading a very flexible ICE for a considerably less flexible BEV. Sometimes you want to do something daft - I recently picked up an old computer one evening with a 200 mile drive. 100 miles there, five minute toilet stop, pick up computer, quick chat, drive back. Not ideal, about the maximum I'd want to do in one go without a break, but I had the option to do it and did it, instead of having to compromise with longer breaks, unsatisfactory and/or unsuitable service station food, finding a working charger etc etc.

[John Robson]

Re: Range is not the issue!

The question is how often do you end up doing more than 200 miles on consecutive days.

That's probably four hours in the car...

Because doing it once is no sweat at all for the vast majority of EVs, with a 7kW home charger that's about 7-8 hours of charging, so it might be two nights if you've got a shorter "cheap" rate.

The BEV isn't "less flexible" than the ICE - in fact it takes vastly less planning most of the time* - but ICE drivers don't realise how much of their time is taken up going off to a smelly refueling station, because it's what they're used to.

* Yes, I'm assuming you can charge at home or work most of the time...

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Re: Range is not the issue!

You say it yourself, you're assuming you can charge at home. Yes, the situation is improving, but to say ICE drivers don't realise how much of their time is taken up refueling is utter lunacy. I know exactly how much time is taken up : virtually zero! Notice you're getting a bit low whilst going to the supermarket anyway, spend less than five minutes refueling, go do your shopping.

From all the posts here, I went and looked at electric cars again. I'm not looking at new cars because the cost and depreciation are obscene. I'm comparing second hand petrol and fully electric Kias from Kia themselves.

There is a notable price difference, but let's pretend for the sake of argument that 4-5 grand is manageable. The cheap ones have lol miles range, let's look at the ones with 280 miles which sounds reasonable, and could potentially cope with my real life 200 miles in a day (and granted you're correct, not every day) example. So, I found a long term test - google for 'Kia e-Niro: long-term test' - read either the Auto Express one I read first or the Auto Car one.

Starts well - glowing review, easy to drive, decent storage etc. scroll. scroll. 'In everyday use, I’ve found that I’m working to a 250-mile range in the summer even if I use the motorway for a lot of those miles, while the winter months saw that drop closer to 200 miles' 'If you live in the Welsh valleys, on the Cornish coast, or indeed anywhere remotely rural, public fast charging is still going to be a problem if you do a big mileage. On visits to see my family down in Dorset, I had to use the cord from a three-pin plug draped out of a window to top up overnight.'. That's a 2019 model.

How about a 2023 model? Autocar 2023 "I found the range to be more than adequate and reliable. While the test average was 214 miles, that included a lot of motorway running."

Thank you for playing, we'll be in touch, on the third of never.

It's clearly improving, but it also obviously not as flexible as an ICE car.

[spuck]

Re: Range is not the issue!

This is exactly why I don't have an EV (yet). Sure, 90% of my trips I could do with a BEV, but it's the 10% that I have to plan for. So if I'm planning to purchase a car, I have to buy the one that can do everything.

I am seriously looking at used Tesla Model 3s, because right now I do have other ICE vehicles that can take those 10% trips, but if I could only have 1 car, it can't be the one that doesn't work for every trip.

I've read a lot of posts on the Interwebs where people try to rationalize away this point; "you can just rent a car for those long trips", "you can take a bus or train", "borrow a car from a friend," etc. No. I'm buying for my convenience, and everyone else is, too.

[John Robson]

Re: Range is not the issue!

10% is an awful lot of “long” trips.

And they do need planning for, in basically the same way as any ICE trip needs planning for.

Yes the variables are a little different, but it’s not like long journeys are hard.

[John Robson]

Re: Range is not the issue!

"You say it yourself, you're assuming you can charge at home."

No - that's not what I said. I said at home *or work*

And you spend five minutes charging your car just once? That's probably more than I spend in a year.

I did a thousand miles in the space of ten days last month (three main journeys of three hundred miles each, and regular travel inbetween), and spent zero time charging. If you're being really strict then you could add a couple of seconds for each major trip. That would have been at least fifteen minutes standing around whilst an ICE vehicle charged.

What really strikes me any time I end up using an ICE vehicle is how smelly and unpleasant fuel stations are.

"On visits to see my family down in Dorset, I had to use the cord from a three-pin plug draped out of a window to top up overnight."

Yes - you can fully charge your car without any specific infrastructure being in place, just a standard domestic socket. When did you last refuel your car at home, at all.

The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure - a three pin plug will charge at ~2.4kW so in ten hours that's 24kWh, that's somewhere in the 80-120 mile region.

"It's clearly improving, but it also obviously not as flexible as an ICE car."

Clearly - being able to refuel anywhere in the country at all isn't flexible, no it's far more flexible to have to go to somewhere smelly and unpleasant and stand around in the cold and wet whilst the car "charges" is far more flexible than just plugging it in and going inside your house.

You appear to be confusing familiarity with flexibility.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: I did a thousand miles in the space of ten days last month ... and spent zero time charging

This again. Conflating time stood next to the car at the filler cap with the actual time the battery takes to charge.

Yes it takes a couple of seconds to plug it in. You are stood at the flap for a couple of seconds. You are then waiting several hours for the battery to charge to full. If you want the battery to be full before you next use the car, you can't use the car until it's full. That's not zero time filling up. That's several hours where you're not able to use the car (and I'll spell this out - because you have chosen to wait until it is full).

The same exercise for an ICE car takes ~5 minutes. Then you can use the car again.

[John Robson]

Re: I did a thousand miles in the space of ten days last month ... and spent zero time charging

Yes, it takes a while for the battery to charge, but I don't have to be with it whilst it does so.

I'm in the house, eating, watching TV, trying to educate people online, sleeping... whatever. Whilst you're stood over a transfer of hazardous chemicals.

As I said - a thousand miles without once waiting for the car, not even a little bit of waiting.

[codejunky]

Re: Range is not the issue!

@John Robson

"No - that's not what I said. I said at home *or work*"

I wonder if your employer should bill you or just deduct fuel from your salary. It doesnt sound as bad if your employer pays your travel expenses anyway but for the rest of us I would expect to be charged (pun intended).

"And you spend five minutes charging your car just once? That's probably more than I spend in a year."

It is hard to pretend the battery car does not need charging in a year. Of course it does. Or it doesnt go anywhere. In fact your battery takes hours to charge vs a quick fuel up.

"What really strikes me any time I end up using an ICE vehicle is how smelly and unpleasant fuel stations are."

Really? What is unpleasant? To make a direct comparison, you spend a short time refuelling your car under cover regardless of the weather to get a great range for your vehicle to travel. If you are one of the few lucky enough to have a garage, with charging socket at home you might get as comfortable an experience to wait hours for your car to charge. Most likely in the sun, wind, rain, snow and whatever else you have to get your charging cable and plug your car in so it has power next time you go out. The range isnt as far and you hope for charging infrastructure along the way because begging for a 3 pin socket somewhere is not a good look.

"The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure - a three pin plug will charge at ~2.4kW so in ten hours that's 24kWh, that's somewhere in the 80-120 mile region."

10 freaking hours. You were saying it didnt take 5 minutes in a year and already you are at 10 freaking hours. 10 hours and all you get is 80-120 miles? I know you are trying to sell the idea of EV but it doesnt work by trying to claim non-existent issues with ICE and making silly claims for EV.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure

And the OP's statement "The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure" is just bollocks, unless they're being deliberately disingenuous and mean domestic sockets.

Actual charging infrastructure away from home (if you're lucky enough to have offstreet parking) is hopelessly inadequate for the future our government wants us to live in. It needs petrol station throughput rates, vehicles per hour.

So assuming an ICE fill up takes 5 minutes, and a super-fast charge takes 30 minutes, charging stations need 6 times as many chargers as an equivalent petrol station needs pumps.

That's a hell of a lot of MW being supplied to each charging station. Knock on effects are first the local grid connection, then the local grid, local substation, major grid connections, major grid, major distribution substations, generators.

If there's not enough power available, or it would ignite the local grid, all these wonderful superchargers derate automatically, and now your 30 min "fast" charge takes at least an hour. Enjoy those queues at the charging stations when more than a tiny proportion of drivers have an EV :)

[John Robson]

Re: The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure

"And the OP's statement "The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure" is just bollocks, unless they're being deliberately disingenuous and mean domestic sockets."

A standard socket will supply a typical UK car's energy needs in about 2-3 hours. A typical car spends 23 hours parked, almost always within spitting distance of said socket.

Charging infrastructure doesn't have to be big and shiny, it just needs to push some electrons around.

Having said that... The fast charging network is rapidly improving - the days of it being patchy and unreliable are long behind it across the vast majority of the country.

There are (at the last update from zapmap) 5,616 locations with 13,094 rapid/ultrarapid chargers and 23,516 connectors.

That compares pretty well with the ~8k petrol stations in the UK.

There are also many lower powered chargers - 99,922 connectors on 66,779 devices at 34,570 locations - and that's public ones, not private ones.

Let alone the 24 million houses which have an electricity supply.

[codejunky]

Re: The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure

@John Robson

"A standard socket will supply a typical UK car's energy needs in about 2-3 hours. A typical car spends 23 hours parked, almost always within spitting distance of said socket."

I live in the UK and that is not the case here. Not unless you are some competition distance spitter. Around here there are 3 such vehicles. 2 rely on parking outside their house (public street so no guarantee) and trailing a cable out of their window, across the pavement and to the car. One lives on my road so thats not an option, she has to move her car at night to park behind her house into the alley (blocks it off from use) and trail the cable that way from her back room.

If you are rich enough to have a garage or even a close driveway you will be better than those but for the rest of the country that just isnt the case. Compare braving the elements for all that messing about to nipping into the petrol station as I am passing, no contest.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure

codejunky>>> If you are rich enough to have a garage or even a close driveway you will be better than those but for the rest of the country that just isnt the case. Compare braving the elements for all that messing about to nipping into the petrol station as I am passing, no contest.

Why not consider "nipping into a petrol station" a waste of time too? Many people will drive miles out of their way to get the cheapest fuel.

If they can instead "fill up" when their car is parked up doing literally nothing (At home. At work At the train station. At the super market. At the cinema. etc) then isn't that conceivably a pretty cool technological advancement to consider?

There are other bonuses to (PH)EV use. Pre-heating/cooling is one I found when I changed to a PHEV as it was the only version of the car I wanted available. Have found it very useful doing a commute to work as an EV, charging at work. Then long distance fun at the weekend as a petrol hybrid.

Also during fuel shortages I had zero anxiety about finding fuel or queueing for it.

Focus on the positives and the tech. Big potentials.

[codejunky]

Re: The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure

@AC

"Why not consider "nipping into a petrol station" a waste of time too? Many people will drive miles out of their way to get the cheapest fuel."

I didnt use the words waste of time, I was clearly describing having to go charge your car in any weather vs being under a shelter at the petrol station. But yes both setting up the charger and time lost unable to use the car while fuelling can be a waste of time. Again thats 5 minutes fuelling up vs whatever hours it takes in charging. I expect driving miles out of the way for cheaper fuel which then only takes a few short minutes to complete the refuel is an acceptable trade off to the person, just as some people will wait until their electricity tariff gives a reduced rate at certain times.

One realisation I had after posting about people here with EV's, I dont fancy the heating bills they must have where they trail a cable out of their window to their car. In summer its ok but most of the time I wouldnt want to leave my window open.

"If they can instead "fill up" when their car is parked up doing literally nothing (At home. At work At the train station. At the super market. At the cinema. etc) then isn't that conceivably a pretty cool technological advancement to consider?"

Of course. For the few it suits it could be a good thing although the country will need some serious infrastructure upgrading (not blaming EV's for that one entirely. it just slows infrastructure needed for EV's). Just like the people who get an air fryer because it suits them. Its just not for everyone and EV's are more challenging than the rainbows John Robson was trying to portray.

"Then long distance fun at the weekend as a petrol hybrid."

I know a couple of people with hybrids, they seem pretty happy with them. I see it as early days but they do seem to be more promising. Again not necessarily for everyone but more reasonable.

"Focus on the positives and the tech. Big potentials."

Thats ok but dont ignore the realities as well. Its great having an EV unless you cant charge it. Its great unless you need to drive far. Its great unless you need to go somewhere and your charge is low. They are great unless they dont work due to battery limitations and then they are a huge problem.

For people who want them I have no issue, my problem is how we are being forced towards using a technology that doesnt work and that will cause a lot of problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure

codejunky>>>Again thats 5 minutes fuelling up vs whatever hours it takes in charging

I think you may have misunderstood my point?

If cars currently spend 90% of the time parked up doing nothing then having them "fuel" during that time doesn't really waste anything. In fact it could be seen as saving oneself time/effort. It's just a matter of adjusting your point of view. And letting go of old fashioned views about driving around in a liquid fuelled car.

Not saying we're there yet. Or that everyone will switch over quickly. But it's a valid path for the future.

Unless one is a gasoline triggered olfactophiliac ?

[codejunky]

Re: The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure

@AC

"If cars currently spend 90% of the time parked up doing nothing then having them "fuel" during that time doesn't really waste anything. In fact it could be seen as saving oneself time/effort. It's just a matter of adjusting your point of view. And letting go of old fashioned views about driving around in a liquid fuelled car."

I dont think I misunderstood, it is swapping one set of trade offs to another which then also is fairly impossible for a large portion of the population.

"Unless one is a gasoline triggered olfactophiliac ?"

In my comment I literally said- 'For the few it suits it could be a good thing'. Your dreams for the future are one thing, but reality is undefeated.

[John Robson]

Re: The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure

"But yes both setting up the charger and time lost unable to use the car while fuelling can be a waste of time"

Ah yes, because I always use my car at three in the morning...

What are you smoking? There's no time lost "setting up the charger" and certainly none lost because I'm "unable to use the car", If I need it I just drop the cable out and go.

"just as some people will wait until their electricity tariff gives a reduced rate at certain times." Nope - I just plug in, and the off peak power is automatically used (in fact, I can get extra time on the cheap rate depending on the market - but I don't have to think about it at all. I just plug in and then use the car when I want/need it.)

- Thats ok but dont ignore the realities as well.

I'm not ignoring them, I'm living with them... and have done for more than four years so far. None of your "show stopping" complaints have ever caused an issue.

Yes, it absolutely works best if you have somewhere where you can regularly charge on AC. For ~65% of households that can be at home, and I am going to wager that whilst the overlap between the 35% without off street parking available and the 16% who don't have a car at all isn't perfect, it's significantly correlated.

That does leave some* households without off street parking, so we need to have facilities at workplaces, supermarkets, train stations, retail parks, theatres, synagogues, mosques, churches, parks.... all the places where those people spend time anyway.

- Its great having an EV unless you cant charge it

So it's like having an ICE that you can't refuel. Charging is *much* more widely available than fuelling.

- Its great unless you need to drive far.

It's great even on long journeys, in fact the peace and quiet makes even more difference the longer the journey.

- Its great unless you need to go somewhere and your charge is low.

As opposed to needing to go somewhere when you've run out of fuel, and what if the local fuel station is shut for the night?

Simply not an issue in real life.

- They are great unless they dont work due to battery limitations and then they are a huge problem.

Good thing that there is no possible failure mode for an ICEv - oil leaks, belt failures, spark plug failures, misfire, bent pistons, water ingress, fuel filter, fuel pump, wrong fuel, failed alternator, radiator leak... none of those could possibly pose a problem.

There is a reason that EV servicing is a case of "check the brake system and tyres, clean the wipers, change the cabin air filter".

There is nothing that would get me back to an ICEv... but of course all of those problems are familiar to you, and therefore dismissed as not an issue.

[codejunky]

Re: The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure

@John Robson

"Ah yes, because I always use my car at three in the morning..."

So you only charge at night and never need to go out at a time your car is charging. That sounds like it works for you. Which as I keep pointing out, your situation doesnt apply to most of us.

Now square that with your other comment about charging when it is cheaper which could move from overnight if everyone is doing so- https://forums.theregister.com/user/20764/

"What are you smoking? There's no time lost "setting up the charger" and certainly none lost because I'm "unable to use the car", If I need it I just drop the cable out and go."

Do you have someone else plug the charger in for you? And are we again going back to you living in the extremely idealistic situation of your own garage with electrical socket instead of having to feed a cable out of your window to the on street parking assuming you could park your car near your house? And again you can only use your car if it is sufficiently charged for the journey vs enough in the tank to reach the nearest fuel station.

"That does leave some* households without off street parking, so we need to have facilities at workplaces, supermarkets, train stations, retail parks, theatres, synagogues, mosques, churches, parks.... all the places where those people spend time anyway."

Reading all you said up to that point you must live in serious comfort. You think people will go to the supermarket, train station, etc every day? For them to wait for hours each day just so they can charge their car? And you make a serious assumption that work would or could charge peoples cars for them. You say you are living it but your comment reads a lot like 'let them eat cake'. As I have already said, if it works for you I am sincerely happy for you, but it really doesnt apply to a hell of a lot of people.

"So it's like having an ICE that you can't refuel. Charging is *much* more widely available than fuelling."

We have already established that is not the case. Great for you living an idealistic EV life but for the rest of us, nope.

"It's great even on long journeys, in fact the peace and quiet makes even more difference the longer the journey."

To be honest I have music playing while I drive. But I guess we can add sensitive hearing to your conditions? And of course you must spend a long time waiting for charge while I really dont have that issue.

"As opposed to needing to go somewhere when you've run out of fuel, and what if the local fuel station is shut for the night?"

They shut at night? I do wonder where you live. You say UK but I am wondering where has these so called issues.

"Simply not an issue in real life."

I assume you mean you dont ever have to go anywhere when your charge is low. Again great for you living the idealistic EV life. Sounds like the EV works for someone like you. Which is not the norm.

"Good thing that there is no possible failure mode for an ICEv - oil leaks, belt failures, spark plug failures, misfire, bent pistons, water ingress, fuel filter, fuel pump, wrong fuel, failed alternator, radiator leak... none of those could possibly pose a problem."

Sure mechanical failures can happen, as with an EV. But I wasnt even talking about mechanical failures, just the same day to day having to charge the damn EV when you dont live in the absolutely perfect EV suiting life.

"There is nothing that would get me back to an ICEv... but of course all of those problems are familiar to you, and therefore dismissed as not an issue."

Sure. And nothing will get me into an EV any time soon because even if ICE cars were banned it would not be possible for me to charge the bugger up. I dont have a nearby socket around the corner where my car is parked. It is a public street so while I currently get to park there there is no guarantee and sometimes more cars than space.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure

Reads like something written by someone who has no understand of cars, (EV or ICE) technology, physics or reality.

Does one work for NetZeroWatch ?

[John Robson]

Re: The UK is very well served by charging infrastructure

"So you only charge at night and never need to go out at a time your car is charging."

If I need to go out whilst the car is charging then I simply unplug and go. Unlike petrol there is no motivation to stand around waiting for the tank to be full.

There is no cost to stopping charging and driving with what's in the battery.

I don't need to square anything, at the moment the grid has most oversupply at night - it won't always be that way, but it will always have times of varying supply and demand - since the vast majority of cars spend the vast majority of their time parked we should be able to use those vehicles to maintain that balance between supply and demand. They are, after all, capable of affecting both sides of that balance.

Does the infrastructure exist yet? No - but we're still in the very early game. Would you have suggested that we didn't bother with electronic communications because we didn't have satellite communications or Tbit/s fibres?

"Do you have someone else plug the charger in for you?"

No - tapping the flap as I walk from the drivers door towards my house, and putting the cable in from where it's hanging within reach takes less time than locking/unlocking the car.

"And again you can only use your car if it is sufficiently charged"

And you can only use yours if you've been to a dedicated hazardous chemical supply facility. You seem to be obsessed with cars being empty - when that's simply not an issue in reality.

Yes, the way you fuel a BEV and an ICEv are different, BEVs are far more convenient than ICEv to fuel, because electricity is far more widely available.

"Reading all you said up to that point you must live in serious comfort. You think people will go to the supermarket, train station, etc every day? For them to wait for hours each day just so they can charge their car? And you make a serious assumption that work would or could charge peoples cars for them. "

People who don't drive anywhere don't need to charge either. I'm more and more convinced that you're being deliberately stupid here.

And it doesn't take "hours each day" to charge.... If you go to a train station the likelihood is that you're going to be parked there for a while, for huge number of people that's a trip they do five days a week, 45 weeks a year and the car sits at the station for nine or ten hours. Supermarkets are places people visit once or twice a week, often for well over half an hour. Retail centres are regularly visited, many times for several hours at a time. Workplaces tend to be visited for hours on end... Are you getting the idea yet? not everyone will charge at the same place.

And at no point have I suggested that work should pay for your fuel, though many workplaces do even with petrol.

""So it's like having an ICE that you can't refuel. Charging is *much* more widely available than fuelling."

We have already established that is not the case"

Well, actually we've established that it is very much the case - there are an order of magnitude more public charging locations than petrol locations, and practically infinitely more private locations.

""As opposed to needing to go somewhere when you've run out of fuel, and what if the local fuel station is shut for the night?"

They shut at night? I do wonder where you live. You say UK but I am wondering where has these so called issues."

Yes, some petrol stations do shut at night. Clearly living in a city has an effect on your brain - I wonder if it's from all those fumes you so enjoy huffing?

The two petrol stations I pass on route to my closest motorway shut at 11pm and 10pm respectively today (I just checked).

"I assume you mean you dont ever have to go anywhere when your charge is low."

My charge is only ever "low" at the end of a long journey. So no - I never have to go anywhere for the handful of hours a year I have low charge.

Again, you're projecting your dislike of petrol stations onto charging an EV. You don't like going to the petrol station so you wait for the idiot light - I never end up at low charge, because there is no reason to.

""It's great even on long journeys, in fact the peace and quiet makes even more difference the longer the journey."

To be honest I have music playing while I drive. But I guess we can add sensitive hearing to your conditions? And of course you must spend a long time waiting for charge while I really dont have that issue."

Well documented on these fora that I'm deaf after a traumatic illness. So yes, I am much more sensitive to the noise of an ICEv than most.

But even people who aren't deaf can appreciate the lack of noise - and that applies even with the radio on.

As I've repeatedly said in this thread, and you don't seem to be able to understand... no I don't wait around for the car to charge - even on a long journey. Even if we drove from Plymouth to Aberdeen we'd probably need more stops for food and comfort breaks than the car would need for electrons, so whilst we stopped the car would charge, no waiting around. Certainly don't wait for it to be "full" as you seem to believe.

"Sure mechanical failures can happen, as with an EV. "

No - not as with an EV. Yes, you can get a puncture or a suspension failure in either - but there is one moving part in an electric motor, as opposed to thousands in an ICE.

Hell, you even get 150k people a year (RAC) putting the wrong hazardous chemical into their tank, which can really wreak havoc.

Your obsession with the difficulty of charging is at odds with reality.

"even if ICE cars were banned it would not be possible for me to charge the bugger up"

Not true, you already know of charge points near you which are usually available, and by the time ICEv are phased out there will be plenty more. Particularly if you live in an area where you rely on the council to store your personal property for you - since the demand will be highest there.

You seem completely oblivious the fact that there weren't petrol stations when cars were first around - Maybe we shouldn't have cars, because they don't run on oats?

Or maybe the waste problem from horses was enough motivation to move on, and the waste problem from ICEv is more significant than the problem from horses ever was.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Range is not the issue!

I wonder if your employer should bill you or just deduct fuel from your salary

Jealousy is such an ugly word.

[John Robson]

Re: Range is not the issue!

"No - that's not what I said. I said at home *or work*"

I wonder if your employer should bill you or just deduct fuel from your salary. It doesnt sound as bad if your employer pays your travel expenses anyway but for the rest of us I would expect to be charged (pun intended).

Either - it makes little difference, the point is that the vast majority of cars spend the vast majority of their time idle.

"What really strikes me any time I end up using an ICE vehicle is how smelly and unpleasant fuel stations are."

Really? What is unpleasant?

The smell, and the grime that gets everywhere because hydrocarbons are sneaky buggers and coat everything.

10 freaking hours. You were saying it didnt take 5 minutes in a year and already you are at 10 freaking hours. 10 hours and all you get is 80-120 miles? I know you are trying to sell the idea of EV but it doesnt work by trying to claim non-existent issues with ICE and making silly claims for EV.

Oh dear - are you being deliberately stupid? I rather think you must. The charge time is irrelevant, it's the time it takes *me* that's relevant. How many days in a year do I drive more than 100 miles? A mere handful, how often are they on consecutive days? Probably never. The petrol focussed obsession on never having to go to a petrol station (which I understand because they're unpleasant and inconvenient) is the issue here - not that fact that I can fill the car in a couple of nights without spending *any* time doing so.

If you frequently drive alot more miles than that then a "proper" charger at home or work will add ~30 miles an hour, or if you're feeling fancy and have three phase power you can do ~90 miles an hour.

But the real key here is the time spent - and that's as near as damn it zero. Because you plug in as you walk past the charge flap, and unplug as you return.

As I said earlier - don't confuse familiarity with flexibility.

[codejunky]

Re: Range is not the issue!

@John Robson

"Either - it makes little difference, the point is that the vast majority of cars spend the vast majority of their time idle."

I expect that would put a dent in the uptake of EV's if employers charged for the electricity being used for peoples personal vehicle.

"The smell, and the grime that gets everywhere because hydrocarbons are sneaky buggers and coat everything."

What grime? Where do you live, it sounds like it sucks and maybe explains your love of the EV? I dont think I have ever noticed grime at a petrol station, they are generally clean. As for the smell, I cant say it bothers me but if you have a sensitive nose maybe its more of a problem?

"Oh dear - are you being deliberately stupid? I rather think you must. The charge time is irrelevant, it's the time it takes *me* that's relevant"

You were claiming no time then that its 10 hours for 80-120 miles and you are trying to call me stupid? You made 2 very contradictory statements which we both know which one is realistic. You are trying to sell the EV too hard with daft claims of no time to charge. You say its the time it takes you, congrats if you dont need to go out, but people generally do.

If your car is low on fuel and you need to go out (a normal situation) for an EV you must manage your life to never be in that situation ever or be stuck for hours. A normal vehicle you just fuel up in a few minutes. Even if we debate not fully fuelling up, 5 mins of 3 pin isnt getting you anywhere, 5 minutes at the fuel station and the tank is full!

"How many days in a year do I drive more than 100 miles? A mere handful"

That kind of thinking is why a few of the people around here cant get one, because their jobs require travel and what would be a days work with hours of travel and one or two fuel stops would become a couple of days work and multiple charges. Not being sure you can park near your house is a serious consideration here and the one single EV blocks the alley when she has to charge. And for anyone who does like to go away even occasionally must plan around finding somewhere to charge and add travel time.

What is an acceptable inconvenience to you doesnt translate to most others. That is why the actual interruption of charge time isnt zero and isnt stupid to point out you are wrong.

"The petrol focussed obsession on never having to go to a petrol station (which I understand because they're unpleasant and inconvenient) is the issue here - not that fact that I can fill the car in a couple of nights without spending *any* time doing so."

Hang on, a couple of nights? Are you now telling me (honest question) that it takes 2 nights to fully charge your car? I dont understand your over-sensitivity of smell at a petrol station. They dont smell much at all so I wonder what on earth you are on about. When I fuel up my car and the pump is running I can choose to face the way of the smell or not and I am not exaggerating. I am wondering if you stick your head down at the fuel tank or something.

And you spend your time moving your car if it is in the way, putting it somewhere in range of your 3 pin and then whatever the weather going out and plugging it in. If you face none of that then you are lucky to be rich enough to have a garage and not have to go anywhere.

"As I said earlier - don't confuse familiarity with flexibility."

I am going to suggest that to you. It sounds like you have a setup a lot of people could only dream of. Good for you, and I am sincere, but it doesnt sound very viable for the rest of us

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Range is not the issue!

"What grime? Where do you live, it sounds like it sucks and maybe explains your love of the EV? "

You'd have to be a moron to argue diesel & petrol are clean to handle fuels. Or perhaps there is/are no pollution/spills on one's country estate, hmm?

[codejunky]

Re: Range is not the issue!

@AC

"You'd have to be a moron to argue diesel & petrol are clean to handle fuels."

I dont handle it. I take the nozzle and put it into the car. I pull the trigger and the fuel flows into the car.

"Or perhaps there is/are no pollution/spills on one's country estate, hmm?"

Of petrol/diesel? No. Again I wonder where you guys live to be like that. This area is not up market at all but I dont see these issues here (up north).

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Let's see ... ?

Were there any electricity spill incidents on UK roads this year?

[codejunky]

Re: Range is not the issue!

@AC

"Were there any electricity spill incidents on UK roads this year?"

What has that to do with going to the petrol station and filling up pretty quickly? Are you wanting to call any incident involving electricity against EV's? Thats just stupid.

*Edit, just read your previous comment again. No. I dont live in Surrey.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Are you wanting to call any incident involving electricity against EV's?

Currently the narrative/briefing going on against EVs is more to do with fires. The majority of news coverage and social media posts are about EV fires. Ignoring the vast majority of vehicle fires in the UK which are combustion engine cars.

[codejunky]

Re: Range is not the issue!

@AC

"Currently the narrative/briefing going on against EVs is more to do with fires"

I am discussing with someone very over-sensitive to smell and sees grime like Greta sees Co2. The fire conversation is going on elsewhere in this comments section.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Range is not the issue!

>>>I am discussing

Clearly not true. It would appear that you are spouting nonsense, gleaned from briefings and xitter feeds, from pro-petroleum astroturfers & lobby groups. (Without any critical thought applied before regurgitating.)

[John Robson]

Re: Range is not the issue!

"I dont handle it. I take the nozzle and put it into the car. I pull the trigger and the fuel flows into the car."

And your hands end up with a thin film of condensed hydrocarbons.

That fuel is volatile, and the vapours don't magically teleport into your fuel tank, they flow past your hand, condensing onto the pump handle, your hand, the filler cap, the bits of the car around it...

You are just so normalised to it that you don't notice.

[codejunky]

Re: Range is not the issue!

@John Robson

"And your hands end up with a thin film of condensed hydrocarbons."

I can only imagine how spotless your home and workspace must be. I can not imagine you handling your charging cable outside after it has touched the ground, I bet that would make you freak out.

I get the feeling we live in two very different worlds.

[John Robson]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Yes, I live in the real world, where handling nasty chemicals isn't something to be sought out or normalised.

Charge connectors rarely touch the ground, but even if they did they'd be far cleaner than fuel pumps.

[John Robson]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Grime - because filling a vehicle with petrol/diesel involves pumping a volatile, hazardous chemical - the vapours of which then condense onto your hands whilst you are pumping. You're just so used to it that you don't even see/smell it. There are usually buckets of sand around for the inevitable spill, but those are gross liquid spills, not the pervasive nature of vapours.

Time - I'm not spending time planning anything, I plug in and I live my life. When I want to go somewhere by car I just drive there - never stopping anywhere for a special fuel up the *vast* majority of the time. This year we've used public chargers twice, for less than fifteen minutes total, in about 8,000 miles of driving. All of those stops were needed for the occupants irrespective of car performance - one for lunch, the other a (second) rest break for the solo driver. That's a total of zero minutes "waiting" for the car to charge - I had even moved the car off the chargers before the rest of family had even got to the counter to order lunch. Neither stop was due to immediate low state of charge.

Low fuel - You never get low on fuel, because you can effectively always start every day with a full tank. The exception is when you've done a long journey, you might choose to take a couple of nights to top up, but you still get to use the car and go places with the half tank from the first night. If I need to then within two miles of home are more than two dozen chargers which will fill me up at vastly faster rates, whilst still being cheaper than petrol/diesel. I'm not _reliant_ on a three pin plug, but it is _sufficient_ for the vast majority of the year. The few occasions when it isn't - I use DC fast chargers.

You appear obsessed with the idea of me standing over a vehicle and watching it fill up... Do you watch your phone all night to make sure it charges?

Jobs - There *are* people whose jobs require large numbers of miles on a regular basis, but they are actually relatively few and far between. It's certainly not particularly regional (though obviously distances will be higher in the highlands than central Edinburgh). And there is no reason that those vehicles can't charge whilst the person is doing their job at a remote site, meaning they don't have to stop for anything... But travelling workers do already use electric vehicles, quite happily.

The fact is that the average milage of a car in the UK us 20 miles/day, so the number of people who drive hundreds of miles a day is actually very small. I used to do 700 miles a week commuting and between sites, and it's seriously draining (though I only realised how draining after I stopped) If I had to do the same today, I'd be doing it electric without hesitation - it would be at least £75/week cheaper (assuming 50mpg diesel, which is *well* above the UK average) and that's really not to be sniffed at.

"Hang on, a couple of nights? Are you now telling me (honest question) that it takes 2 nights to fully charge your car?"

Honest answer - it depends on a number of factors, most obviously how low the charge is, because there is no reason to wait for it to be low, and how big the battery is..

If I drain the battery completely (maybe coming home from a long journey) then it would take ~11 hours on a standard domestic charger, but there is no need for that to be all at once - so I tend to split it over a couple of nights. If I was limited to a three pin plug, and I wanted to drive 20 miles a day in the mean time... then it would take several nights. Consider a person who charges at work instead - that's eight hours of charging, and with an appropriate (AC) charger that would fill the car well within one day.

The battery in my current car is twice the size of the previous one (primarily because the wait list for the smaller battery version was "over a year", and the wait list on the larger battery was about 6-8 weeks - no logic to that at all if you ask me), so the times are correspondingly longer.

Imagine for a moment that at home you had a system that automatically put fuel into the tank, and one at work, and at the shop, at the train station, and one in that little local car park that's always got a space somehow... "Filling up" suddenly isn't a concept that matters, you only need enough juice in the tank to deal with your normal driving, and a bit spare - have it put in a bit more than that every day, so the tank fills up over time if it's got low. You might then not connect it one day, because the price of fuel (or the carbon intensity of the grid) is high that day - but you know it'll be cheaper (lower) tomorrow.

You can easily start every day with a full car, but it's not necessary for the vast majority of people.

Yes - I have a setup which works well, but none of it is particularly special. I am part of the majority of households who can charge at home, and that makes it *extremely* convenient - that's why I continue to argue for having AC chargers basically everywhere - they're cheap to install, and the electricity supplied should therefore be *much* cheaper than a DC charger - and the use they encourage is zero time. Being utterly reliant on DC chargers is less bad now than it used to be (because they're turning up in more and more places that people might actually want to go), but is still not the "right" way for 99%+ of all charging.

"but it doesnt sound very viable for the rest of us"

That's what petrol/diesel sound like to others... The noise, the fumes, the filth...

[codejunky]

Re: Range is not the issue!

@John Robson

"Grime - because filling a vehicle with petrol/diesel involves pumping a volatile, hazardous chemical - the vapours of which then condense onto your hands whilst you are pumping."

So pretty much in your head not real grime. And a volatile chemical that you dont touch and vapours into the air if you get any on your hand (dont think about what you are breathing when you go into a bathroom).

You do realise your car battery is also hazardous and volatile and the fuel you use is deathly amounts of electricity. How long is your cable? Do you have to connect it outside in all weathers and that cable collecting all that grime from the floor.

"Time - I'm not spending time planning anything, I plug in and I live my life."

Dont need to with ICE either. Dont even have to plug in. In my case that once or twice a month I need to refuel is 5 minutes because I choose to pay at the counter. The rest stops on long journeys didnt require any fueling up.

"Low fuel - You never get low on fuel, because you can effectively always start every day with a full tank"

Again you are very privileged.

"The exception is when you've done a long journey, you might choose to take a couple of nights to top up"

That is 2 nights. That works for you.

"You appear obsessed with the idea of me standing over a vehicle and watching it fill up... Do you watch your phone all night to make sure it charges?"

Not at all. Its fine to plug in and forget. And as long as you have enough charge to get where you are going thats ok. Otherwise you got a long wait.

"And there is no reason that those vehicles can't charge whilst the person is doing their job at a remote site"

That kinda depends what a remote site is. If the site is an actual building with actual charging facilities then yes. For everywhere else no.

"The fact is that the average milage of a car in the UK us 20 miles/day, so the number of people who drive hundreds of miles a day is actually very small."

The joy of an average is to clean up the very noisy data. For those doing very little (I am one of those) comparing against those who do a lot. It isnt what you use the car for some days or most days, but for all your needs. Most days you may be in your unit and others driving long distances to client sites that dont have charging facilities. I am basing that on my neighbour who ran the numbers as he bought 2 new vehicles, one for work and one personal. In neither case could he go electric (with the same road parking problems I have on the same street).

"Imagine for a moment that at home you had a system"

I would have to imagine. I actually dont have that at all. At home I park around the corner because I cant park at my home. Those that can are close to the wall of the front garden (single car road) so opening a flap would depend on the position on the car (cant charge the other side with cars passing, no room).

I work from home so no work charger. When I did go to the office the car park had no charging facilities. Not even to enter one of the buildings to connect a 3 pin plug.

At the shop is 2 spaces for charging and occasionally I see one in use but not often. If most people had an EV there is no hope.

The local train station I rarely had occasion to visit has a small car park out of the way of any charging infrastructure.

I do occasionally use a local multi-storey car park but I dont know if it has any charging facilities, I havnt noticed any.

Btw I live in a small city not some place in the sticks.

"You can easily start every day with a full car, but it's not necessary for the vast majority of people."

I would have to go out of my way and waste time for any charge at all. Probably spend more time visiting parents so I can cadge a socket for a while. They have a hybrid and a driveway and garage although they needed to get a socket installed where it was convenient. Initially they tried to run an extension cable from the socket in the garage but were concerned at the vast heat coming off it that they unplugged quickly. Good job they can afford all that and have good facilities and still they didnt go EV.

"Yes - I have a setup which works well, but none of it is particularly special."

It sounds pretty special. I dont think you quite realise how lucky you are to be able to charge in all of those places.

"That's what petrol/diesel sound like to others... The noise, the fumes, the filth..."

You say that in response to- "but it doesnt sound very viable for the rest of us". Contrast the reality of petrol/diesel that actually factually and demonstrably does work for the rest of us and you. But your preference for your over-sensitivity to noise, smell and fictional fear of 'filth'

[John Robson]

Re: Range is not the issue!

@John Robson

"Grime - because filling a vehicle with petrol/diesel involves pumping a volatile, hazardous chemical - the vapours of which then condense onto your hands whilst you are pumping."

So pretty much in your head not real grime. And a volatile chemical that you dont touch and vapours into the air if you get any on your hand (dont think about what you are breathing when you go into a bathroom).

You do realise your car battery is also hazardous and volatile and the fuel you use is deathly amounts of electricity. How long is your cable? Do you have to connect it outside in all weathers and that cable collecting all that grime from the floor.

Erm - that volatile gas condenses onto your hand.

The car battery is sealed, it doesn't leak electrons, or noxious fumes, as it charges.

The cable is hung up next to where the car lives, so I don't handle the cable, just the connector, no more grime than the door handle I'm about to use to enter the house.

"Time - I'm not spending time planning anything, I plug in and I live my life."

Dont need to with ICE either. Dont even have to plug in. In my case that once or twice a month I need to refuel is 5 minutes because I choose to pay at the counter. The rest stops on long journeys didnt require any fueling up.

So you *do* waste 10 minutes, and more (because you need to travel to a specialist fuelling station) every month, that's a couple of hours a year at a bare minimum...

My rest stops didn't need a refuel, but it was a convenient facility... took zero time (because I was waiting for the rest of the people in the vehicle). Technically I didn't even need it, I arrived with enough juice that I'd have made it without the stop - but it would have been closer than my wife would like.

"Low fuel - You never get low on fuel, because you can effectively always start every day with a full tank"

Again you are very privileged.

Yes, as are you - owning a car is a massive privilege, it's not a right.

"The exception is when you've done a long journey, you might choose to take a couple of nights to top up"

That is 2 nights. That works for you.

Yes, I could do it faster, but it's not necessary.

"You appear obsessed with the idea of me standing over a vehicle and watching it fill up... Do you watch your phone all night to make sure it charges?"

Not at all. Its fine to plug in and forget. And as long as you have enough charge to get where you are going thats ok. Otherwise you got a long wait.

And if you turn up to a petrol station, you've got a wait... heck, I remember queues for a mile down the road on multiple occasions because there was minor disruption to the fuel supply... people queueing for hours (ironically leaving their engines running whilst doing so).

"And there is no reason that those vehicles can't charge whilst the person is doing their job at a remote site"

That kinda depends what a remote site is. If the site is an actual building with actual charging facilities then yes. For everywhere else no.

Any remote site with a grid connection will do.

"The fact is that the average milage of a car in the UK us 20 miles/day, so the number of people who drive hundreds of miles a day is actually very small."

The joy of an average is to clean up the very noisy data. For those doing very little (I am one of those) comparing against those who do a lot. It isnt what you use the car for some days or most days, but for all your needs. Most days you may be in your unit and others driving long distances to client sites that dont have charging facilities. I am basing that on my neighbour who ran the numbers as he bought 2 new vehicles, one for work and one personal. In neither case could he go electric (with the same road parking problems I have on the same street).

"Imagine for a moment that at home you had a system"

I would have to imagine. I actually dont have that at all. At home I park around the corner because I cant park at my home. Those that can are close to the wall of the front garden (single car road) so opening a flap would depend on the position on the car (cant charge the other side with cars passing, no room).

I work from home so no work charger. When I did go to the office the car park had no charging facilities. Not even to enter one of the buildings to connect a 3 pin plug.

At the shop is 2 spaces for charging and occasionally I see one in use but not often. If most people had an EV there is no hope.

The local train station I rarely had occasion to visit has a small car park out of the way of any charging infrastructure.

I do occasionally use a local multi-storey car park but I dont know if it has any charging facilities, I havnt noticed any.

Btw I live in a small city not some place in the sticks.

You seem to think that charging infrastructure is something magical and expensive: "a small car park out of the way of any charging infrastructure" It's not, all it takes is a cable and poof, you can have a bank of AC chargers, perfect for a railway car park. That might not yet exist, but nowhere is "out of the way".

So your local charging infrastructure is usually available, and you can't possibly imagine any other locations where a charger could be put. That is what you're saying, despite highlighting several places where they could be.

I rather suspect you're just looking for an excuse to say that they can't possibly work in direct contradiction of all the evidence.

Sounds like you're one of the large number, but small proportion, of people who can't charge at home... but you also work from home, and live in a city. Why the hell do you need a car most of the time?

I know, I know, it's heresy to suggest that car ownership isn't some divine right afforded to all people, and the city should just create and maintain storage areas for your personal box, ignoring any other possible land uses. When I lived in a city I didn't have a car most of the time (ended up with a hand me down), because it wasn't necessary. I hired one occasionally, and used the train, but mostly I walked.

"You can easily start every day with a full car, but it's not necessary for the vast majority of people."

I would have to go out of my way and waste time for any charge at all. Probably spend more time visiting parents so I can cadge a socket for a while. They have a hybrid and a driveway and garage although they needed to get a socket installed where it was convenient. Initially they tried to run an extension cable from the socket in the garage but were concerned at the vast heat coming off it that they unplugged quickly. Good job they can afford all that and have good facilities and still they didnt go EV.

I've run off a standard (good quality) extension and "vast amount of heat" are not produced by the cable. You see a cable of appropriate size doesn't get that hot, unless of course they left it coiled up?

Your argument here is that they spent twenty seconds getting scared at a shitty old extension cable and therefore couldn't possibly have gone electric.... You're off your rocker.

So you've already said you're low milage - where *do* you drive? Does that place have electricity? Then no you wouldn't need to go out of your way.

Of course if you ever go to your local shops then you've already said there are chargers there which are usually available - problem solved.

"Yes - I have a setup which works well, but none of it is particularly special."

It sounds pretty special. I dont think you quite realise how lucky you are to be able to charge in all of those places.

All of those places? I charge at one. And I'm in a majority of households with that ability.

There need to be more destination chargers around for people who can't, like you. And indeed you already know of local chargers, which are presumably at places you go (since you know of them). Anyone with a car park should be installing AC chargers in banks, with plans for more banks as the contention gets higher.

"That's what petrol/diesel sound like to others... The noise, the fumes, the filth..."

You say that in response to- "but it doesnt sound very viable for the rest of us". Contrast the reality of petrol/diesel that actually factually and demonstrably does work for the rest of us and you. But your preference for your over-sensitivity to noise, smell and fictional fear of 'filth'

As opposed to a BEV that actually factually and demonstrably does work for the rest of us and you. But your preference for causing health issues to those around you is clearly more important than my preference to not be so injured.

[codejunky]

Re: Range is not the issue!

@John Robson

"The cable is hung up next to where the car lives, so I don't handle the cable, just the connector, no more grime than the door handle I'm about to use to enter the house."

I had a funny felling you might say something like that, you do seem to have an odd fear maybe phobia of the grime you imagine. Does the cable dare touch ground if you charge outside? Do you wear gloves?

"So you *do* waste 10 minutes, and more (because you need to travel to a specialist fuelling station) every month, that's a couple of hours a year at a bare minimum..."

And thats a couple of hours a year my car is busy refuelling vs your 10 hours or 2 nights every day at least. It doesnt matter how many times we go around your fictional problem here, it is only so good if you have the ideal EV setup with your private garage etc.

"but it would have been closer than my wife would like."

I get that. I fill up at half a tank and my other half laughs for it.

"Yes, as are you - owning a car is a massive privilege, it's not a right."

Yet you do seem to have a nice house with private garage and a nice setup. It sounds really nice. I am trying not to misinterpret that quote as meaning the plebs can walk, the car is far more economically essential than we can afford to remove. People are made wealthier by having access to a cheap car they can actually use. As with the mobile phone, the preserve of the rich is now heavily tied into the masses having this device for a healthy economy.

"And if you turn up to a petrol station, you've got a wait... heck, I remember queues for a mile down the road on multiple occasions because there was minor disruption to the fuel supply... people queueing for hours (ironically leaving their engines running whilst doing so)."

That always intrigued me as with the toilet paper running short because of panic buying. The good news is such a disruption is easily dealt with as if you dont need to fuel up just dont go. Its not like the disruption of a blackout or being told not to charge your car to avoid straining the grid (that was California I believe). I guess you could drive to another place with power, use a public charger and sleep in your car?

"Any remote site with a grid connection will do."

You are straining the meaning of grid connection. Say a hospital car park which of course is huge. If it has public chargers what if they are in use? Or if its like the car park at the local hospital you will be lucky to find a space anyway and park on one of the nearby streets. Maybe you can park near someones house but do you beg random strangers to let you borrow a socket? Everyone fighting for a space in front of the receptionist then beg for a socket?

That last one might sound hyperbole but the only socket in range of the carpark I assume is in the reception, if they have any sockets available in that room. My neighbour I mentioned would have the hospital issue and industrial carparks. He travels a lot.

"You seem to think that charging infrastructure is something magical and expensive: "a small car park out of the way of any charging infrastructure" It's not, all it takes is a cable and poof, you can have a bank of AC chargers, perfect for a railway car park. That might not yet exist, but nowhere is "out of the way"."

I think you hit the nail on the head with "that might not exist yet". It doesnt. And it is expensive as the grid must be able to handle the power draw and provide as many connectors as people need. Thats expensive. You could hook up the ass end of nowhere with a massive gigabit internet upgrade but yet this country still doesnt because its freaking expensive. This is talking about having to make this EVERYWHERE.

"So your local charging infrastructure is usually available, and you can't possibly imagine any other locations where a charger could be put. That is what you're saying, despite highlighting several places where they could be.

I rather suspect you're just looking for an excuse to say that they can't possibly work in direct contradiction of all the evidence."

And that is where you make the point I have been drilling at you all this time, the evidence shows it doesnt work for a lot of people and you are just very privileged. If I have to IMAGINE where these chargers COULD be then the chargers are not there. I could imagine a ferrari out front but it doesnt make it real. And to have the charging facilities to make the EV a possibility relies on the generosity of others spending on expensive infrastructure to provide chargers. So I wont hold my breath. I dont need to imagine I have transport, I need transport.

"Sounds like you're one of the large number, but small proportion, of people who can't charge at home... but you also work from home, and live in a city. Why the hell do you need a car most of the time?"

And now it does sound very much like 'walk plebs'. I need a car like the many around here need a car. I shop, I visit people, I transport things that are more heavy and bulky than I would carry, and I have a life where when I go somewhere it isnt when it suits public transport or a charger.

"I've run off a standard (good quality) extension and "vast amount of heat" are not produced by the cable. You see a cable of appropriate size doesn't get that hot, unless of course they left it coiled up?"

It wasnt coiled up as the extension was needed to go from the far end of the garage to the driveway but it bursts your bubble that your magic car works anywhere so you want to ignore it. And while it might have been "a shitty old extension cable" which works perfectly fine for all other appliances they use it for I took mine down and they had the same problem. Now they have a fast charger installed at the door end of the garage so problem solved after paying for further infrastructure.

"Your argument here is that they spent twenty seconds getting scared at a shitty old extension cable and therefore couldn't possibly have gone electric.... You're off your rocker."

You seem to have missed they got a hybrid, but yes now they could probably go electric after having a new socket installed.

"So you've already said you're low milage - where *do* you drive? Does that place have electricity?"

I have already said no. The only places as I have mentioned is the 2 slots at the supermarket and cadge a socket at my parents. I couldnt even charge at home.

"As opposed to a BEV that actually factually and demonstrably does work for the rest of us and you. But your preference for causing health issues to those around you is clearly more important than my preference to not be so injured."

A BEV would be the nearest to work for me and thats mostly for the petrol engine which would have a smaller tank for being BEV. As for your childish stomping of feet about health issues, grow up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Range is not the issue!

"grow up"

Good Lord, do some people not re-read what they type before hitting Submit?

Troll, heed thyself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Range is not the issue!

@John Robson.

"a three pin plug will charge at ~2.4kW so in ten hours that's 24kWh"

It'll be nearer 2.9kW in the UK

It's actually 3.7kW in much of Europe.

[John Robson]

Re: Range is not the issue!

It tends to be limited to 2.4 because whilst a UK socket will happily provide 13A, it's safer to run them a bit below that (10A) for continuous load.

And since it already provides the average daily driving distance in two to three hours (4 or 3.5m/kWh) it's not a significant benefit to run it up to 13A.

[Boring Bob]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Where I live your 200 mile daily drive would take me between 10-15 hours. When do you get time to work or sleep?

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Range is not the issue!

"Except that those people I know who have a BEV are actually quite ok with the rythm of driving and taking a break."

Yes, that's fine and easy to do with an ICE. Not so easy when you're dependent on there being a charger at the parking space where you take your break. I assume Norway put some effort into ensuring that happens.

[blackcat]

Re: Range is not the issue!

This issue has not gone un-noticed but still little has been done to fix it.

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/10/1187224861/electric-vehicles-evs-cars-chargers-charging-energy-secretary-jennifer-granholm

Somehow over the decades since ICE vehicles came about a fairly standard charging port evolved almost world wide with the only major intervention being the smaller diameter for unleaded. For EV charging it seems that everyone has had their own plans...

Also petrol stations were built where there was demand. Now we see companies waiting for handouts to build EV chargers.

[John Robson]

Re: Range is not the issue!

"Yes, that's fine and easy to do with an ICE."

And it's fine and easy with a BEV as well.

[spuck]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Show me the route you will take from Las Vegas, Nevada to Boise Idaho. This is a long day, but easily done in a ICE. Be sure to check the reviews and availability of the charging stations along the way.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Drive to Airport, fly, hire car at Airport. 2 hours.

[spuck]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Could go by horseback too, I suppose. But that's not what we're talking about.

[John Robson]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Well I wouldn't start there...

The tools I use don't have US mapping, so it's a pretty pointless ask.

A brief search on google maps suggests that there are regular charging stations en route - at least 6 different areas on route (most of which have more than one station) - no more than 120 miles between them... That's not a remotely challenging distance, even if one leg is all uphill - but if it is uphill... then guess what happens afterwards. That's right, a downhill, where you can put a substantial amount of juice back into the battery whilst preserving your brakes. Find me a ICE that refills the tanks whilst you drive.

If you're really stuck there are also plenty just off the route as well (i.e. on the parallel roads).

[spuck]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Your answer on how to drive between two US cities is "Well I wouldn't start there"?

You seem so convinced that BEVs are the answer to all driving situations that I just don't know what else to suggest.

I'm not against BEVs, but I am for accepting reality and that some problems are better solved by other tools.

Let us part as friends. Cheers.

[John Robson]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Oh dear - clearly sarcasm has passed you by - I forgot to add the tag :(

It's the classic answer to the question "How would you get to <city>? Well, I wouldn't start from here."

You'll note that I also spent a few minutes looking for charge stations and found plenty on the route suggested by the goo monster... with multiple clusters of sites along the route.

If you want the better tool for long distance transport then may I introduce you to the train ;)

Or of course the telephone for many journeys...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Norway .... sold lots of oil and gas to other countries and used some of the revenue to offer subsidies that made it uneconomic not too buy a BEV. Quick search indicates they give $15-30k subsidies on a BEV as well as things like being able to drive in bus lanes, free parking, discount on road tolls etc. Result is EVs are dominate choice for new cars .... and people are driving much more than before as it's cheaper! Apparently the government wants to reduce these incentives now but this isn't very popular.

[hoola]

Re: Range is not the issue!

They are also a wealthy nation with a very high level of renewable (hydro) power and a small population in relation to the landmass.

[munnoch]

Re: Range is not the issue!

"please look at Norway: BEVs are normal there. Not everywhere, sure, but they did pull that off."

Because electricity is cheap there thanks to all those lovely fjords.

[Tessier-Ashpool]

Re: Range is not the issue!

It's very cheap here in the UK, too. My weekly charge normally costs me in the region of £3 because I charge it when I'm sleeping.

[Chris Miller]

Re: Range is not the issue!

My weekly charge normally costs me in the region of £3 because I charge it when I'm sleeping.

But you're paying more for the rest of your electricity. Ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

[Tessier-Ashpool]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Actually, no. I get stupidly low rates for any electricity from 23.30 - 05.30 (7p per kWh), so that's when greedy items like the washing machine and tumble drier go on. And daytime rate is a pretty average 24p per kWh.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Just wait until everyone tries to do that, then watch that "stupidly low rate" evaporate as the current off-peak gets smeared out.

[John Robson]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Excellent - that's what we *want* to happen. I'll leave my car plugged in and my provider can choose when to charge it to minimise cost to me.

That's the whole point... at the moment overnight usage is 15GW below daytime usage... that's 2 million domestic car chargers running flat out.

There are 34 million cars in the UK, needing maybe 5kWh/day. That's ten hours of that difference, which is probably only 8 hours at the moment.

So there is plenty of capacity without changing *anything* else. Of course there is every chance that over the next thirty years we might add some capacity to the grid, we might even use these newfangled batteries on wheels to help manage the grid loads.

[hoola]

Re: Range is not the issue!

Length of trip is only part of the issue.

An EV would be perfect for my wife for her commute. She has a VW up that costs bugger all to run. We looked briefly at an eUp! however simply could not justify the cost.

Now with very few exceptions EVs are monsters, they do not fit in car parks (try many primary school staff carparks, you can barely fit a shopping trolley in).

They also do not fit down many roads, although that is not just EVs as the current trend for large "SUV" styled wank-o-meter-look-at-me vehicles show.

That without exception they have minimal usable space inside unless you go up to a Q7, X7 or XC90 shows the extent of the problem.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: Range is not the issue!

> Now with very few exceptions EVs are monsters, they do not fit in car parks (try many primary school staff carparks, you can barely fit a shopping trolley in).

Don't be ridiculous. Nissan Leaf, Fiat EV, Mini all produce electric cars - that's just off the top of my head. If you want to go out and buy a big fuck-off SUV you can do that too, in diesel or battery as you prefer. Have a browse through https://ev-database.org and see how wrong you are.

[Nematode]

Re: Range is not the issue!

This is why hybrids are worth considering, and the sales figures show the public is catching on. For those who can't afford two cars, a PHEV allows electric short journeys and conventional long journeys. They weigh a hell of a lot less and the manufacturing CO2 is only a little above an ICV. The resale value risk is reduced, the secondhand buy risk is reduced, and if you do have to replace the batteries it won't completely ruin you.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: Range is not the issue!

You won't have to replace the batteries.

However you are carrying around two entirely independent drive systems - I don't want to put people off if they're moving from petrol, but I recall seeing figures that they are more expensive to maintain and repair than either petrol or EV. If you're a one-car family, I can see the argument. But if you run two cars but want to dip your toe in the EV water, get an EV for short trips and keep a regular petrol for the rest. That's how we started.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: They weigh a hell of a lot less

They still weigh around half a tonne more than an equivalent ICE. And while CO2 and NOx emissions are reduced / non-existent, particulates for brake wear, tyre wear and road damage all go up.

Most roads weren't built for the constant extra weight, so expect more potholes, and more damage to wheels, tyres and suspension because of the extra weight.

Expect higher repair and maintenance costs because wheels, tyres and suspension all have to be a lot stronger to absorb the additional kinetic energy.

[John Robson]

Re: They weigh a hell of a lot less

They don't all weigh half a tonne more... it's just that all cars are bloated monsters nowadays.

Particulates from brake wear are also basically non existent, because EV's predominantly use regen, which doesn't use friction brakes, until the very last moment.

Particulates from tyre wear are about the same, or the tyres would need replacing more often, and they don't (though I'm sure you can burn through a set of tyres very quickly with a leaden foot an any power train)

The weight of all modern cars is excessive, if you want to avoid road damage then let's start walking and cycling more.

Higher repair and maintenance costs? You're barking up the wrong tree there - there is naff all to maintain on an EV drive train. A service involves kicking the tyres, checking the brakes haven't rusted. Then you change the cabin air filter and top up the washer fluid.

Maintenance costs are one area where an EV will beat an ICE to the ground blindfolded with three tyres tied behind it's back.

[Tom66]

I own an EV myself (VW ID.3). I like it, and would buy another EV if this one was written off tomorrow. But... here's where I see the problems:

- If you don't have a driveway where you can install home charging and don't live in London or another big city with good charging provision, seriously don't bother. It's as expensive as a petrol car to run on public chargers, if not more, and the other financial incentives (like congestion charge reduction, reduced/free road tax) are going away. If you do live in London, it's probably slightly cheaper to run than a petrol car just because of the city driving cycle, but you have to live near good on-street chargers, which are hit and miss.

- If you regularly travel long distances between chargers, you can do alright, but the charging network at motorway service areas is still a bit ropey. Personally I avoid MSAs as much as possible and go to chargers at supermarkets, or use Tesla Superchargers (about half of which are open to all EVs). You have to be prepared to plan in advance.

- If you do have a driveway like me and commute a decent distance within the battery range, then they're bloody brilliant.

Sadly, I suspect until the charging situation gets better, EVs will be for people more like me (enthusiasts, essentially), rather than the general public. It needs a huge investment, likely from the government, the current model of letting the private market solve it isn't good enough right now as it is leading to extraordinarily expensive charging and only the busiest areas receiving interest, when it's the 1% of journeys to somewhere rural in Cornwall or the like that people worry about.

[hoola]

I do agree in principal but the big hit comes on the availability of chargers. There are simply not enough at motorway service stations so you end up not being able to charge because you are waiting for others to finish their burgers. This is the huge limitation. ICE fuelling is strictly transient and takes minutes. ICE charging is not and the wait times are not what the vehicle needs but what the time the drive spends doing "stuff" waiting for it to charge.

There are also issues with selfish knobs using charging spaces in carparks to get free parking and not charging. I see no reason why an EV space should be free.

[Tom66]

I've waited once in the 30 or so times I've charged since I got this car for a charger, and that was for 5 minutes at a charger next to Heathrow rammed with EV taxis charging up. It's massively overrated as a problem - I even went to chargers on the BH weekend and there were still chargers free at an MSA. 8 in use out of 16, so definitely busy, but still plenty of capacity. The good thing is where there is demand there's funds to fix it - the problematic areas are the ones less visited like small towns off the beaten track where the nearest charger might be 10-20 miles away.

There's a guy on an EV forum that's done data collection on how busy chargers are based on the public availability information. The reality is very few chargers are ever so busy that you have to wait for a charger, and you can avoid them if you really want to. My car shows live availability and ABRP and other apps can dynamically re-route the car if chargers are busier than expected; Tesla's already do this. Apple is launching an update to Maps later this year with these features built in and no doubt Google will follow soon enough.

If I'm driving less than 400 miles in total, I typically end up stopping once for 10-15 minutes, which is usually used to go grab a coffee or go to the loo, or in our case now, walk the dog. Yes, it's definitely different to petrol, but arguably better in some respects, since you have to attend to your car whilst filling up whereas I can leave my car alone at the charger and do something else. For trips over 400 miles, you start getting into the realm of more convenient to take an ICE, but certainly for me they aren't common enough to worry about.

[Andy 73]

Let them eat cake

Unfortunately the biggest single proponent of electric vehicles appears to be more interested in preventing public transport infrastructure from being developed than actually producing affordable low emissions transport.

..followed by the Marie Antoinettes of EV commentary who conveniently ignore the astronomic prices of their premium vehicles whilst berating people who dared to suggest that they might have range anxiety, and concerns about accessibility, affordability and convenience.

The obsession with battery EVs being the "one true powertrain" has been a curse on the industry, and the dishonest lobbying by evangelists has led to some extremely questionable policy decisions around the world and set back wider research by years.

We can and should decarbonise transport - and EVs will undoubtedly be part of that - but the end result will be (should be) a mix of solutions, from alternative fuels through to better public transport and right on to walking and (gasp) avoiding having to travel in the first place.

[John Robson]

Re: Let them eat cake

Alternative fuels aren't going to cut it...

Come up with a realistic alternative fuel and I might listen, but hydrogen is too damned hard to transport and store (at least it is at the moment) and anything else means you're back to burning crap in populated areas.

Battery EVs are certainly good enough, and they have additional use cases which are taking an annoyingly long time to become mainstream. I have a battery with a big store of energy outside and I can't use it for anything other than moving that car - it could easily reduce my bills substantially by time shifting my usage, which would also lower everyone else's bills, because we wouldn't need as many peaker plants running. It could even export to the grid in lieu of those peaker plants (and yes I'd have it always keep some energy for driving).

[Great Bu]

95% Is Not Good Enough

The underlying problem with EVs as I see it is the combination of great expense and limitations of use - a car is the second biggest purchase you will likely make after your house and is hugely expensive (even more so if it is an EV). In order to justify that expense, it needs to meet as close to 100% of your use cases as possible, so whilst it is true that EVs are likely to meet 95% of most people's needs (daily commutes, local trips etc. are all likely well within the range ability), it won't adequately meet the other 5% - holiday travel, long journeys to see family, towing a trailer or caravan etc. This is why we end up with people who are rich enough owning one EV and an ICE car and people who are not owning just an ICE car. I think the market segment consisting of those rich enough to own more than one $50k + car is now saturated, hence the fall in sales growth.

I like to illustrate this by using the screwdriver analogy - I have many screw drivers of different shapes and sizes to match the many types of screws that exist but if screwdrivers cost $50k each I would only have one - a hammer. Is the hammer the best tool for driving any one screw ? Absolutely not, but I never came across a screw that didn't go in if you hit it hard enough with the hammer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 95% Is Not Good Enough

What if the hammer required very expensive fuel to run, though?

[Bebu]

Re: 95% Is Not Good Enough

if you hit it hard enough with the hammer.

Works for most things.

I recall a manual ed. teacher demonstrating nailing a screw with a hammer leaving around a 1/4 turn for the screw driver to complete. Appears rough as guts but did seem to work. :)

[John Robson]

Re: 95% Is Not Good Enough

"it won't adequately meet the other 5% - holiday travel, long journeys to see family, towing a trailer or caravan etc. "

Why wouldn't it meet those 5%?

EVs are quite capable of long distance travel, and quite capable of towing.

They are capable of both as well, though obviously towing compromises range, as it does in a dino juice vehicle.

What's really interesting is that you can put an e-axle and battery on your caravan - that then eliminates the range penalty (on either vehicle type) and allows you to run the internals of the van entirely on electrics, no more gas bottles to deal with. You can also park it up and use it as a storage battery for when you aren't out caravanning.

Of course there are occasions when I hire/borrow a vehicle for a specific purpose. Had to hire a tail lift van last year to move a piano. Borrowed a vehicle from a friend for a couple of days whilst my wife was away with our car. Both of those *could* have been electric, if that had been available.

[Great Bu]

Re: 95% Is Not Good Enough

EVs can tow and drive long distances but the compromise is too great - the amount of time required to recharge makes those journeys far too compromised. To return to the screwdriver analogy, I can drive a phillips screw in with a flat blade screwdriver but it is such a PITA that the hammer is the better option.

[codejunky]

Yup

I have been reading about the falling interest in EV's in the US and Europe for a little while now. Even being stocked up at ports and various parking places just because dealers cant shift them. This is where a more market based approach would work far better than the stupid gov approach of banning ICE cars by a certain date the laws of physics and economics will not allow.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yup

Which laws of physics are you referencing here?

Kirchhoff's Law of Thermal Radiation?

Stefan-Boltzmann Law?

The First Law of Thermodynamics?

Planck’s Law..?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Yup

A lot of that seems to be drummed up by media outlets (for advertising reasons). 20% of cars in the EU are now EVs. That is actually a lot of cars...

[Nematode]

Re: Yup

We'll really know when EVs have gone Titsup when Governments extend the dates for compulsory compliance to EVs. This has already happened once, quite early on. We shall see. I don't hold my breath!

[John Robson]

Re: Yup

That's when we know who's in the pockets of the oil company lobbyists..

[Blogitus Maximus]

Standards

EV charging infrastructure is the big one for me and is number one on the contributors to range anxiety . The notion of multiple independent payment systems, apps and infra should have been banned from day one.

Standard hardware on these sites with a common system means cheaper and easier to run and would be instantly recognisable wherever you go.

But you know...capitalism yay.

[John Robson]

Re: Standards

"Standard hardware on these sites "

Type2 & CCS is the standard.

With contactless payment.

There are a couple of exceptions to this:

- Some vehicles don't need to do the payment at all at some chargers.

The most obvious example is Teslas at superchargers, but it also applies to VAG cars with powerpass at Ionity chargers, and I'm sure others as well.

- Some of the earlier Tesla superchargers never had payment built in, because of the first exception. So you do need their app to instigate charging there.

- Plenty of places have preferential rates for membership, similar to petrol cards, but with much greater savings.

So I'll use my electroverse card where it's accepted, because that's an immediate discount. But that doesn't stop a normal contactless card working just as well.

[cdegroot]

I have both BEV and PHEV, and our PHEV has 95% electric use and zero range anxiety. The BEV is for fun but I'd never consider it as a first car. I think our driving patterns are fairly typical - lots of short trips within PHEV battery range and the occasional longer one where the ICE kicks in,so to me it smells like a good solution to drastically decrease burning dino juice.

I guess the biggest issue is that the hybrid stuff only works for larger cars. I'd like to see an Aygo PHEV.

[hoola]

Hit the nail on the head here.

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest issue is going to be price. A PHEV requires paying for both an ICE and a BEV in one.

[Nematode]

But a smaller ICE and a much smaller EV, net result, not much more expensive, but still a lot cheaper than two cars. The Mitsubishi PHEV was very popular at one time.

[Anonymous Coward]

'A PHEV requires paying for both an ICE and a BEV in one.'

Not really. A small 48V Lite-hybrid with a slightly bigger battery pack would suffice. It's more about market segment and positioning. And the massive mark-up car companies are putting on (PH)EVs.

Stellantis already has a B platform That can do petrol, lite-hybrid and pure EV. It would not take much to just give the lite-hybrid a bigger battery/range.

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: It would not take much to just give the lite-hybrid a bigger battery/range.

Except a complete redesign of the platform to cope with the additional weight.

Stronger chassis, stronger suspension, more capable brakes, strong wheels, tougher tyres, retuning / bigger turbo one ICE to generate the extra torque and power needed to get the increased weight moving, improved cooling for the ICE because it's now running hotter, changes to engine bay layout, ventilation systems, exhaust systems.

That's not "not much".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It would not take much to just give the lite-hybrid a bigger battery/range.

Seems you only read the 1st half of the post. Go back and read the 2nd half.

[John Robson]

Re: It would not take much to just give the lite-hybrid a bigger battery/range.

Why would you need more power from the ICE - you need less, because the electric motor can supplement it when needed.

Why would need more powerful brakes, you can use the motor to regen.

The ICE should be running cooler, because that's more efficient, and it's never as heavily loaded.

It's almost as if you didn't actually think about what a hybrid would look like.

Of course the real issue is that you either end up with an ICEv with an extra battery being carried about, giving at best a modest improvement to fuel consumption - or you end up with an EV which is carrying around a bunch of stuff it doesn't need and which can go badly wrong. People with range extender EVs often don't put petrol in for so long that it risks going stale...

[Anonymous Coward]

One problem is that the cost of repairs are holding back the used car market. The price of used BEVs is very low, depreciation is staggering in some cases, but the used market knows that if a battery or inverter or the charger needs to be replaced in a $25k BEV, it could cost, in the case of the battery, more than the car is worth, even if the majority of the battery is working. Manufacturers can only replace, not repair.

Where a petrol or diesel engine might have some minor failure, they can be repaired usually for $500 or $1000, not the end of the car.

And until the used car market is more buoyant, new sales will continue to suffer. In the UK there are only so many company owners who can buy new BEVs for the tax breaks.

[Victor Ludorum]

Several factors come to mind...

We've just bought my wife a 3.5-year-old EV. It would have been ~£67k new. We paid £23k. That's about £1k/month depreciation. Why would anyone buy a new EV with that level of depreciation?

Also, if you can't have home charging, public charge rates are often greater cost per mile than the equivalent petrol or diesel. 85p/kWh? - I'm looking at you Shell...

[Tessier-Ashpool]

Re: Several factors come to mind...

Why would anyone buy a new car of any type? Most car purchases are secondhand.

[Victor Ludorum]

Re: Several factors come to mind...

That may be true, but somebody somewhere must have bought it new?

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

Re: Several factors come to mind...

Of course - there's company car drivers, people who buy cars outright, and quite a lot of people on a permanent PCP (in the UK) where you're continually on a car no older than three years.

The difference is large, however. I went for a dealer certified Kia with four years left on the seven year warranty - about as safe as you can get for a second hand purchase. This was half the cost of buying it new for a three year old car. It's been almost entirely reliable other than needing new disc brakes, and costs me effectively 3-4 pounds a day (insurance, tax, roadside assist, servicing, MOT) after the purchase price and excluding petrol.

Looking at ebay now for a non dealer car, six years old, acceptable number of miles, and what looks like a decent advert, two owners, full service history etc, and the price drops again to half of a three year old dealer certified car and it *still* should have a year on the warranty. You can get a huge amount of car for not too much money, and the range on it will be great.

I have to admit, things are looking better. When I checked out electric cars properly around 5 years ago, there was no way it was economic or acceptable. Now, it's still too expensive but it'd basically work whilst being somewhat of a pain in certain instances. Give it another five years, or hopefully less, when the range is at least 300 miles under even the most adverse conditions and it'll probably have promoted to a bit more expensive, but only unacceptable in specific edge cases.

If I was buying now I would not buy a BEV. However, whilst the price of a second hand PHEV is more than a similar ICE I would definitely have to look at the car, insurance, and the fuel saving over the minimum expected lifetime of the car - it may well now be worth it.

[Steve K]

Re: Several factors come to mind...

There are amazing deals on first-generation Audi E-trons at the moment (more so on the 50 model due to the limited range). You can get a 3 or 4 year old one for well under £20k

I was tempted, but the insurance costs puts me off, and also the (potential) maintenance costs, since a £67k car still needs £67k car parts fitted when required.

[John Robson]

Re: Several factors come to mind...

"Also, if you can't have home charging, public charge rates are often greater cost per mile than the equivalent petrol or diesel. 85p/kWh? - I'm looking at you Shell..."

Yeah - you wouldn't pay that if you relied on public charging... it's like relying exclusively on an Uber delivery for your daily pint of milk.

Sure it might be worth the price once in a while, but you wouldn't use it every day.

You'd join one of the myriad of charging membership schemes, depending on where you lived and what chargers you used.

Tesla are down to ~30p, Ionity ~40p, others exist...

[Detective Emil]

Sitting on my hands

We've decided not to replace our medium-recent, medium-premium car just yet, not because we don't like EVs, but because anything we might buy is encrusted with stuff we don't need, don't want to have to stab at a screen to control, and don't want to pay for (and to keep paying for). And it's likely to be nosey. We can tell ourselves we're being virtuous by postponing the carbon cost of building a new car.

[John Robson]

Maybe it's the media's continuous dunking that's the issue

Range is fine nowadays, and the infrastructure has improved massively over the last few years.

Yes, it's still best if you can charge at home, but a 3 pin plug is sufficient there.

The media however seem unable or unwilling to do anything other than claim that BEVs are all of zero range and explode if looked at wrong...

[Marty McFly]

"...production of electrified vehicles appears to have backfired..."

I am not sure if the author intended irony or not. Having a "backfire" is something that applies exclusively to ICE vehicles.

[cyberdemon]

Re: "...production of electrified vehicles appears to have backfired..."

Electric motors can still skip a pole if the commutation sensor isn't working - so they can also "backfire" - albeit without the black smoke like Onslow's car..

[Bebu]

Re: "...production of electrified vehicles appears to have backfired..."

without the black smoke like Onslow's car..

The village in the home counties with the alternate driveways exhibiting an Tesla EV keep to up appearances also brought to my mind Hyacinth Bucket Bouquet as it must yours with Daisy's spouse's vehicle.

[ComicalEngineer]

As a consu;ltant engineer i travel to places which are not easily accessible by public transport and I cover the whole of the UK. My last couple of trips were to Cornwall, 3 6 hours and 320 miles. Even with a full charge starting out I'd have had to stop for an hour even assuming I could find a service station with a working and available charger. Then I'd have to hope that my hotel had a working and available charger for the way home. The hotel I stayed at (a Premier Inn) had no charging facilities.

In contrast,my 2.0 litre Volvo XC40 (Euro 6 compliant, with DPF and Adblue) does 58 MPG on the motorway driven sensibly and will do over 500 miles on a tank, taking 5 minutes to refuel at a cheap supermarket or filling station.

Having driven an electric car I have to say that I hated the experience. Too many distracting gizmos, bings, bongs, chimes and stupid flashy graphics, never mind the obvious 2 tonne weight making it handle like a truck.

Thankfully when I want some fun I have a Mk2 Golf GTi in the garage for proper motoring.

Just one other point, all our bleating about UK car emissions is trivial because China and India both commissioned gigawatt power stations this month, and continue to do so every month.

[Tessier-Ashpool]

China currently has 440 Gigawatts of installed wind power capacity. They are investing in renewables more than the rest of the world put together. Coal power stations are a stop gap. You must look at things in the round.

[blackcat]

China is also building nuclear power stations and even dabbling in thorium reactors. They know they need a mix.

[John Robson]

"My last couple of trips were to Cornwall, 3 6 hours and 320 miles. Even with a full charge starting out I'd have had to stop for an hour even"

Erm... why? 320 miles is only just outside the (comfortable) range of most EVs you'd end up with... A five minute charge whilst you nipped to the loo at any of the service stations en route would get you there with range to spare. Ideally you'd be able to charge whilst sleeping (might need a different hotel), but maybe your evening meal will be somewhere with a charger instead, or maybe the place you work has this new fangled electric light...

The gizmos, bings, bongs, and chimes are not an EV thing - they're a new car thing.

And the commissioning of other power stations doesn't actually stop UK motoring being a major contributor, both to global pollution and in particular to local pollution, which directly affects the health of everyone in the UK - and therefore the cost of health services.

[Matthew "The Worst Writer on the Internet" Saroff]

How much of this drop is a drop in sales, and how much is people not buying Teslas, because .... ELON!!

I remember seeing numbers like this in the US, and every other EV manufacture saw an increase, but the total was lowered by Tesla cratering.

[Anonymous Coward]

EVs and safety

There’s no way I’m parking an EV under my houses roof line.

Same reason I’m hesitant in buying a home battery.

Safety first.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: EVs and safety

"Cooking appliances are by far the most common cause of house fires in the UK, accounting for 44% of fires in 2022/23" - direct quote from an insurer's website. So I hope you got rid of your oven first.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: EVs and safety

False dichotomy.

Besides, a cooking fire can be extinguished by a non expert.

A lithium fire, not so much…

[John Robson]

Re: EVs and safety

And of course a car fire is much more likely if you have an ICE than if you have BEV (it's even higher if you have a hybrid)

Fires per 100,000 sales by type (Statistics from 2021):

BEV: 25

ICE: 1529

Hybrid: 3474

So don't live anywhere near a car of any sort.

[Henry Wertz 1]

I'd do a plugin hybrid

I'd do a plugin hybrid. My Chevy Cruze gets 40 MPG (us, 48 uk mpg or 5.88 L/100km... and has a 16 gallon tank. so on a road trip with thaty 640 mile fuel range i can pick out the cheapest gas stations.). And then I can fuel it up in like 2 minutes and keep going.

I don't want to have to wait in line to spend 45 minutes charging. Or plan my routes around available charging points.

But I have a 120V outlet next to my driveway. so i could put 10 or 20 miles range into a plugin hybrid overnightt, plenty for driving aroind town, and just gas up on road trips. I conserterd getting a Volt when I got my Cruze but the used Volts wrre selling for about what they cost brand new, like 3x the cost i got the Cruze for. But when I look at a next vehicle I'll certainly cobsider a plugin hybrid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lies, damn lies, and statistics...

Yes - those graphs show that July had lower sales than June. That's one month!

The general trend of that graph is actually up. It's even up on July last year....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Lies, damn lies, and statistics...

From the Article:

The European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) represents the 15 major Europe-based car, van, truck and bus makers: BMW Group, DAF Trucks, Daimler Truck, Ferrari, Ford of Europe, Honda Motor Europe, Hyundai Motor Europe, Iveco Group, JLR, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Renault Group, Toyota Motor Europe, Volkswagen Group, and Volvo Group

Note that all car sales are down recently, not just EVs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Lies, damn lies, and statistics...

Where I work it is a problem of the mix as ICE sales are increasing and BEV sales falling - at a time when governments are setting targets for that mix ratio which if they fail to meet them then they get hit with a fine for each ICE sold.

Even worse for companies that have set up dedicated BEV production lines that are incapable of mixing ICE and BEV down the same lines

[Anonymous Coward]

Best look at what infrastructure providers are doing..

.. because they need to plan years ahead, and guess what?

They are changing the gas network to handle hydrogen.

To be honest, the problems with hydrogen are not trivial, but companies like Toyota and JCB have progressed far, with JCB already offering full plant hydrogen support (because batteries just don't work for gear that is in use all day - they tried that).

The politicians just don't want to tell you about it because then it becomes clear their (EU and UK wide) hard push for EV was the usual sating one thing while knowing full well there were options in the make.

[Anonymous Coward]

A neat little trick

If my ICE vehicle runs dry 3 miles from a service station, I can walk there, buy a fuel can and fuel then walk back. Problem solved.

Try that with an EV. A multi-pack of Duracells?

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: A neat little trick

Or a diesel.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A neat little trick

Oh, it's worse.

Even a flat tire means you'll have to call in a range extender aka diesel powered towing truck because Joe Public is evidently not trusted by EV manufacturers to put the jack in the right place place (mistakes mean a dent in the battery pack with all the associated toasty fun) - heck, my company car doesn't even /has/ a spare anymore.

Given that the UK is hard at work to convert its gas network to be able to support hydrogen and that that effort is fanning out all over Europe I'd say politicians knew this ages ago, the lying bastards. An EV is OK is you drive short distance and certainly if you have a solar setup to generate your own power, but the electricity network is not up to support the extra load, certainly not now we're blowing so much more energy on AI..

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: A neat little trick

The UK is not hard at work to support H in the gas network - that (stupid, Johnson-era) idea was trialled and rapidly discounted.

Most new cars haven’t come with spare tyres for years now, not in the UK at least.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A neat little trick

It appears the network operators disagree.

As I said before, I look at what network providers do because they have to plan long term. There's also the fact that we're already using mixed gas (a bit like the E10 petrol) so it's not like we're unfamiliar with the idea.

[John Robson]

Re: A neat little trick

Neat trick - just charge your EV before you leave, try that with a petrol car.

[Filippo]

If cost of purchase is a major problem, explain me again why we're panicking about cheap chines EVs and slapping enormous import duties on them so that they become no longer cheap?

[Jean Le PHARMACIEN]

where do I charge...?

I live in a terraced house in UK. No drive.

How do I plug my BEV car in overnight?

Tesco chargers are nearest but only 2hrs max, if working and only 2 spaces

The whole BEV thing almost seems like a plan to put large numbers who live in terraces carless and the 'wrelthier' with drives, a BEV. Welcome back the 1930s

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: where do I charge...?

I have that too - I live in an apartment.

When my company told me I had to select an EV I did tell them that was going to cost them a lot of money in 'fuel' as the only option I have hear is a fast charger.

Now they're trying to get me signed up to a new charging policy they were taken aback when I asked them who would be paying for my time. The other impact of this nonsense is that I blow 30mins or more of my personal time on charging (5 mins refueling is acceptable, but 30 mins or more IMHO not) and I cannot find in my contract that says anything about my personal time being wasted on dumb company choices - despite multiple warnings from my side that it was a bad idea.

It appears the HR director didn't like that question and what's more, the company lawyer has as yet not found a counterargument..

[John Robson]

Re: where do I charge...?

"When my company told me I had to select an EV I did tell them that was going to cost them a lot of money in 'fuel' as the only option I have hear is a fast charger."

So why would that mean it would cost you a fortune?

Is it because you didn't actually research anything? -I mean you did say you didn't "hear" about anything else :p

[John Robson]

Re: where do I charge...?

So do you work somewhere? Do you go to a supermarket for food? Do you go to a retail park?

Do you park anywhere, or do you put your car in your pocket when you get home?

Do you think it's technically possible for Tesco to install more than two chargers, or is that their entire car park already full?

[Grunchy]

No worries about spontaneous combustion?

I find that interesting that the only concerns are range and battery charging infrastructure (and cost). Really? Nobody cares about electric vehicles spontaneously catching on fire and burning down the car park or garage or killing somebody?

Huh!

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: No worries about spontaneous combustion?

Writes a man who presumably hasn’t thought too deeply about sitting in a steel box with 100 litres of petrol.

[TheMeerkat]

Re: No worries about spontaneous combustion?

The fire-related problem with EV is not that they catch fire, but that once they caught the fire it is impossible to extinguish it (unlike petrol fire).

[Androgynous Cupboard]

Re: No worries about spontaneous combustion?

LiFePo4 cells will catch fire if they are overcharged (not immediately, but certainly with enough charge) or punctured (not always, but it's a risk). They will not catch fire from dead-shorts - seen it done - and of course if they're in a fire started for another reason, well it's reasonable to assume they're going to catch alight as well.

This much is true. It's also true once they start burning, they're somewhere between hard and impossible to put out.

What's not true is that they're going to spontaneously combust just sitting around. which is what the poster above claimed and what I was replying too.

[John Robson]

Re: No worries about spontaneous combustion?

You can chuck them on a fire for alot longer than you can chuck a tank of petrol on a fire.

And of course EVs do have BMS which don't allow for overcharging, as well as pretty good protection from punctures.

An ICE vehicle is twenty times as likely to catch fire than an EV. That's a pretty good trade off, given that both will likely be written off by said fire.

[Filippo]

Re: No worries about spontaneous combustion?

https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/tusker-fleet-data-reveals-the-truth-about-ev-fires

"With data corroborated from a US insurer, the study found that EVs suffer 25 fires per 100,000 sold. Petrol or diesel vehicles were found to experience 1,530 fires per 100,000, with hybrid vehicles at a notably higher risk of 3,475 fires per 100,000​​​​."

Basically, the EV fire risk is not a real thing. It looks like a real thing only because EVs are a comparatively new thing and we all love hearing about new things and even more bitching about new things. ICE fires are so common, and have been that way for literally a century, that they don't make the news. Unless they're exceptionally catastrophic, nobody cares.

This is actually a phenomenon that, if you pay attentions to how news work, is depressingly common across many topics, not just cars. News these days have to be fun more than they have to be true, and correctly-reported statistics are true but boring.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: No worries about spontaneous combustion?

Basically, the EV fire risk is not a real thing

I work for a company of which one part is the equivalent of the AA in the UK. EV fires are very real.

The second issue I have with your metrics is that they fail to take into account the actual impact of the fire. With an ICE fire, all you need to do is deprive the hotspot of oxygen and you're done. When an EV catches fire (which is in >90% the cases the battery) there is NO way to extinguish it. Yes, an EV gets dunked in a water container but that will not extinguish the fire - the hope is to coll things down to below around 70ºC where you will at least not have the self-ignition to deal with to further spread the fire, but it will not stop reactions already in progress.

The battery self-immolating is the reason all EVs have an airco, without exception. Sorry to tell you you this, but that it keeps passengers comfortable is but a nice side effect, its main function is to keep the battery from going up in flames.

Last but not least, an ICE catching fire in an underground garage I can extinguish before it causes structural damage to the building above. No such luck with an EV.

Basically, the nature of EV fires almost render the mandatory car fire extinguisher a futile exercise.

[John Robson]

Re: No worries about spontaneous combustion?

"The battery self-immolating is the reason all EVs have an airco, without exception. Sorry to tell you you this, but that it keeps passengers comfortable is but a nice side effect, its main function is to keep the battery from going up in flames."

Ah yes - so the device which actively cools the cabin and dumps the heat in the battery is there to keep the battery cool?

You're completely mad.

[Anonymous Coward]

My ICE vehicles engine is good for 350,000km plus

At 12 years old and just 65,000km, it makes better financial sense to keep it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: My ICE vehicles engine is good for 350,000km plus

My company car was a Peugeot. The media interface was worse than even Microsoft could make it, but I think the turbo diesel that thing had felt that at 180,000km it was just run in - perfect for long drives. I'm pretty confident it will clock up 300k too before it needs anything dramatic - sadly no longer in my hands.

I am now suffering an EV..

[Badbob]

Not for everyone, but I like mine.

I agree that there isn’t yet an EV solution for everyone, but I like mine. Nowt fancy, just a Vauxhall Mokka-e. I bought it just before Covid kicked off to replace a diesel.

I’m paying the same monthly payments for the car itself and my fuel bill went from around £8/day to £1.25. I had a broadly 80mile round trip commute and have the luxury of a driveway and an off-peak electricity tariff.

I even drove the Mokka to Paris and Lille from central Scotland last year to watch some Rugby. Charging was pretty easy, though I have to say, far easier and cheaper in France.

I don’t really care what other people drive, and the mandate to change is between those that can’t/won’t and their MP. My EV suits my purposes and I wouldn’t change back. I just wish that when people find out I have an EV that they wouldn’t then explain to me why they won’t. I don’t care.

[Spanners]

Most of those reasons are ir3ellevant

The range is fine. My commute to work etc is 11 miles. A range over 200 miles would be very adequate.

The relevant one is the excessive cost. People in houses around me can afford the poor build quality of Teslas but I can't!

Give me something well built for a decent price and I will be fine on a 65 mile range, I can charge it every few days! So it might be expensive to replace a battery. 666,000 miles divided by a few hundred per week will outlast any petrol powered one by a good margin

[[e-mail]]

Odd how people forget how inefficient electricity is, since electric motors and generators each are only 50% efficient. And people seem to forget electricity comes almost entirely from fossil fuels.

Or how adding a half ton of battery weight doubles energy consumption.

[John Robson]

"since electric motors and generators each are only 50% efficient"

Welcome to the real world, where both are well over 90% efficient.

Electricity also doesn't come "almost entirely" from fossil fuels - both the UK and US exceed 40% from non fossil fuel source.

If you took your petrol and burnt it in a power station, then transmitted that power to your house and charged an EV - you'd get more miles out of the EV than a car would have done with the petrol.

[Martin hepworth]

Norway at 94%

Meanwhile Norway July sales were 94% BEV.

Germany is the lagard here due to poor EVs and shipment from their local manufacturers.