Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Electric Cars

Just reading our local paper and we have the overwhelming figure of 30 publicly accessible charging points and we are the 4th largest county by the way, just saying..
Figures issued by DCC.

I have recently got a Range Rover with the straight 6 P400 petrol engine which is described as a mild hybrid.

It has the alternator and starter motor replaced with a 48v "mild hybrid starter generator" and a 48v battery. The starter generator generates electricity back into the small 48v battery during braking and then use it when starting the car and setting off. The 48v system which runs in parallel with a 12v system was developed as it provides a lot more torque than using a 12 v system.

Hi Graham

I don't know where this battery farm is located. We have one a few miles from where i live. It has a capacity of 40 Mw. Together with a bunch of local "engineering" types we visited. We were told that the deal on the batteries from the supplier was "for life" ie whenever a battery fails the supplier provides a replacement FOC. Nothing was said about SH batteries, but the "for life" suggests they might be SH because there will be a continuous supply from EV's. ....Very interesting i would say?

I can easilly arrange another visit if there is interest.
Pm me if you would like to do.
It is the Glassenbury Battery Park, Location is TN17 2QF (TBC)

Looking at the above is sobering viewing... transport uses nearly 3x the currently available energy from electricity... Even accounting for higher efficiency from EVs there's a massive shortfall in generating capacity..... Adding in that, concurrent with migrating the overwhelming transport energy needs from oil to electric, there's also the massive input from natural gas, a large part of which is domestic and due to be phased out from new housing.

Numbers don't add up.... Whatever the power source moving from A to B (assuming EVs are twice as efficient as ICE) will need another one and a half-ish amount of electricity on top of what we're already generating (not even considering the amount needed for domestic heating etc currently covered by phased out natural gas and due to also be replaced by electricity.)

Whether you move about in your private car or some autonomous uber-thing it still takes that energy to move mass from A to B.... Efficiencies only get you so far.... Looks like private transport will be a rarity and we'll all be moving about a fraction of the amount we do now... And most of that by cycle and foot if you live in town.

K

Great graphs, and the numbers add up fine as there isn't going to be some overnight switch to electric... although I think the new car sales transition to EV is going to be a lot faster than the car industry thought (just judging by aquaintances' interest in EV for new car purchases or leases). BUT new cars use a small proportion of the overall transport energy budget (vs lorries, buses, everyone's existing cars etc etc). Folks with on-street parking are not going to be transitioning to EV so much. And the overall desire to phase out gas CH is going to be a much bigger issue than transport...

PS: I wonder if the gas network will end up transitioning to biogas or even hyrdrogen? Is the latter even feasible?
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-pipelines

I'd certainly be interested - have to fit around MMC work at present, but I'm sure that can be sorted...

There's a fair amount of biogas already in the network, I am on a Green Gas tariff from Ecotricity. Not sure you could put hydrogen though the existing pipes though.

A man after my own heart.

Tesla Model S and Model X come with free supercharging for life on the Tesla network. If you are a high mileage user then the S & the X are really the only ones to consider until another manufacturer or group of manufacturers get together and build a charging network.

When I got my first Tesla, it would charge from empty to full in about 1 hour 40 to 1 hour 50 (very rarely does anyone find themselves needing to do that). Because of software updates and charger improvements, that is down to about 50 minutes now.

If I charged only using economy 7 electricity at home, the approximate MPG equivalent based on cost of petrol and real world achievable miles on a full charge, my Tesla does the equivalent of 200mpg. However, I have 36 solar panels and 3 Tesla Powerwall's installed at home so my running costs are virtually zero charging at home and absolute zero travelling anywhere in Europe.