Posts by Arisia 27 publicly visible posts • joined 21 May 2013
Jet engines have an efficiency (at best) of about 40%
Car engines are similar.
There's are likely good use cases (yes jets) but won't be cheap for a long while.
The 20% is also the optimistic "please fund us more" number. Going from 4% will be a long path.
Also Bain & Co, a charming bunch.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62408116
Petrol cars have a max efficiency of 20-35%. i.e. a BEV is 3-5x as efficient as ICE using TOE.
Those who can, are going to charge at home. About 50-60% I believe. I do at least 90% of my usage as that.
That leaves a rump of the rest who are going long distance or don't have access to lower speed charging (no off road parking etc). Even relatively long distance, you start with a full charge so you only need the extra to get you there (+buffer).
In reality chargers will pop up in every car park (especially including work ones), supermarkets, multi-stories etc so suddenly even most of the the people don't have offroad parking won't need rapid charging most of the time. So suddenly the infrastructure required - though still significant - is a lot smaller than you state.
https://theenergyst.com/aurora-electric-vehicles-wont-break-power-grid/
I find it immensely frustrating that people assume that you would "fuel" an EV in an identical manner to an ICE. Stuck in a mindset of what they know. YMMV/statistics/damned lies/etc
Wow impressively bleedin' obvious research. Equally bleedin' obvious solutions.
As suggested by our government. In 2011! https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/3986/plug-in-vehicle-infrastructure-strategy.pdf
There are improved documents with more detail that are newer btw.
Page 7:
Recharging at home
Recharging at home, at night, off-peak, is not only most convenient for drivers, but also maximises the environmental and economic benefits of plug-in vehicles by using cheaper, lower carbon night-time electricity generation. It also makes the best use of available electricity network capacity. To help people charge at home as easily as possible, the Government is:
• ensuring that smart metering in Great Britain includes the functionality to support smart charging of plug-in vehicles. This will allow recharging to react to price signals, ensuring that it can happen when it is cheapest for consumers and the energy system, subject to appropriate technology in the chargepoint or plug-in vehicle;
Air con only takes a few hundred Watts. The power usage will be lost in the noise. As electric motors are far more efficient that diesel there won't be the heat source in the first place.
The truck stops will have the mega-chargers so no engine required. I expect initial sales will be point to point though. General purpose will come later when the charging network has expanded out.
Finally, it'll still have normal brakes. They just won't, normally, be used much.
1. Yes LED is irrelevant. Has this statement been mangled after multiple hops... probably.
2. Streetlights aren't a silver bullet but they definitely helps as it avoid installing lots of additional posts in the road and so is much cheaper. Yes, there are several cases it doesn't cover and it doesn't work for everything. Flats typically have dedicated parking, so that's solvable though recalcitrant landlords will probably need "encouraging".
Of course the wiring needs in to the streetlights needs upgrading but it helps to avoid the posts for initial take up unless you think everyone will be in an EV in 2 years. The channels are there already. This reduces the costs considerably.
As for wrong side of the street Chloe, you could just park on the other side to avoid trailing cables.
ok yes, I know for high density terrace housing where there's no room for the cars anyway, it's not the whole solution but there are other (more expensive) options like kerb side chargers.
Other solutions like wireless charging are proven to work but are not (yet) cheap.
You start with the easy stuff, expand to the more awkward stuff later.
At this moment in time, it's hard to recommend an EV unless you have off-road parking.
Now they're looking at the next step to get _some_ people who don't have that onboard.
Blimey people, it's just electricity. It's not exactly a new problem.
More info on Sofia here: http://marcusjenkins.com/hacking-cheap-ebay-ip-camera/
So that'll be a hardcoded unchangeable admin password running on an undisclosed telnet service that can't be turned off.
The simple rule with any of these cameras is not to expose them to the internet as they are mostly horribly insecure.
Actually it's not quite right that the main use is the urban shopping trolley. The most effective use of the current generation of EVs, e.g. Nissan LEAF, is as a commuter car. They can pay for themselves with the fuel savings.
The average LEAF does 40% more miles per year than the average petrol or diesel. This I think was unexpected by the manufacturers.
http://www.newsroom.nissan-europe.com/uk/en-gb/Media/Media.aspx?mediaid=128282
"because there are so many sets of made up numbers to choose from."
Yes precisely.
Every industry is subsidised along the way somewhere whether it's via tax breaks or via something more direct. It's a governmental policy decision to provide incentives for the outcomes we want. Now how that policy is determined is an entirely different discussion.
So to deal with some of the incentives
- factory incentives. These pop up for pretty well any manufacturer. Amazon $1.1bn http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/09/16/amazon-aws-tax-idUSL1N0RH2A820140916
- including all the car incentives is garbage as they are available to all the other competitors. The list is large. Like every maker of a CARB compliance car for California.
- same for solar. Plenty of competition. Solar city has 39% market share. And they don't even make the panels, just install them. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/solarcity-vivint-shares-fall-despite-rising-market-share-2014-12-09
It seems the incentives are working, so what's the problem?
That's what they're there for!
Seems a bargain compared to the fossil fuel industry
"Nissan is the world’s largest maker of cars that include an electric motor, while BMW and Tesla account for 80 per cent of the world’s battery-only cars."
Well pretty well every part of that line is wrong apart from it has words.
Nissan is the biggest seller of battery only cars (BEVs). Toyota with their hybrids probably sold the most cars with an electric motor. Tesla own top end of the market but in volume not even close to Nissan. BMW are mainly selling range extended i3s not pure battery ones. Hard to find correct numbers but between 2:1 or 5:1 REx vs BEV for i3s.
Terminology: http://blog.ucsusa.org/comparing-electric-vehicles-hybrid-vs-bev-vs-phev-vs-fcev-411
The closest Jag is probably the XFR as it's a full five seater.
That'll take £65k from your wallet, so only a couple of years to make that back.
Depreciation - who knows - but it's a fair bet it'll be better than the expensive to run XFR.
Which is unfortunate because I'd like a Model S :)
Apparently there is a 600,000 mile Tesla engineering mule car which still has 70% battery life. Sorry, I can't find a proper source for that information though. 8 years is the warranty. If everything only lasted it's warranty life then an awful lots of cars would be in the scrapper. I think you can expect considerably more than 8 years life.
Yeah, it seems the Norwegians hate the Tesla.
Currently the stats show it has fewer fires than conventional cars.
None of the people were hurt and the fire took a long time to spread as it was well contained in the front.
Also the fires were after high speed collisions.
High energy storage systems are always going to have the potential to fail hot with catastrophic damage.
If flammable liquids poured out of it in a crash, then what would the reaction be?
You know, like a normal car...
Space suit weight = 280lb (http://www.howstuffworks.com/space-suit4.htm)
Shuttle LEO cost per lb = $27,000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_the_Space_Shuttle_program)
Cost to lift a space suit = $7,560,000
Cost of space suit = $12,000,000
Repair costs etc = unknown
So it'd almost be worth the bother.
Anyway you could put it in SpaceX capsule for return. Their costs are approx $10,000 per lb with a full capsule.
http://www.tested.com/science/space/44509-what-spacexs-dragon-brought-to-the-international-space-station/
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
