Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Time for Electric Power?

We made jokes about Kia Rio's many yeas ago.
Now look at the Genesis introduction happening at the moment.
Geely own Volvo and Lotus
All the UK factories are transplants, but employ UK people doing what seems to be an excellent job.

It will be cars like the 5 that bring BEV to the next stage of growth.
It seems like a good choice for companies or councils needing to go green with their fleet as well.

Munro Live Model Y teardown is worth a watch, 42 videos and he really does take it apart.

One eye opener is the complexity of the batteries and what a nightmare recycling them is going to be as can be seen in this video.Model y teardown

One thing I haven't understood yet is why the range of EV vans is so much lower than cars. You'd think there'd be plenty of room for batteries below the floor of a VW Transporter for example, but the things only have a range of 85 miles or so.

You and me both. I'd of of thought it's the perfect platform. I understand the quoted figures will always be subject to load capacity but the vans I have looked at recently are literally only useful for very local deliveries.

Yep. An electric VW Transporter Combi with a 250 mile range at £35k or so would suit me perfectly.

I would guess that it is the cost of the battery vs the cost of the van. The trouble with vans is that they are cheap - a bog standard 2.0l transit only costs £18,500 and you won't get a lot of battery even if you trebled the price of the van.

A diesel double decker bus will cost between £250-300k depending on spec - an electric double decker will cost circa £500k with the battery being a significant part of the difference.

There is plenty of space: the issue at the moment is the cost of batteries.
Also, vans are about as aerodynamic as a brick, A ford Transit has a cd of 0.45, a Tesla Model 3 is 0.23 and a flat plate is 1.1!

As speed increases drag increases with the square of speed, at 60 mph about 50% of the energy consumed by a car is needed simply to overcome drag.

So for a "White Van" with twice the cd of a car about twice as much energy capacity would be needed to give a comparable performance and range, further adding to the cost.

My opinion is that for commercial vehicles and vans the only viable source of none carbon power at the moment is hydrogen, but battery technology is improving all the time and it is possible that the cost, per kw/h of batteries will fall far enough to make them affordable for all vehicles.

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Actually it increases with the cube. And of course the critical thing is CdA, not Cd, so a van with a large frontal area is even worse.

But on the other hand you wouldn't expect to go nearly as fast in a van as you would in a car. A Tesla has a CdA of around .56 compared to a VW Transporter of around 1.3, so as you say, twice the drag, but the impact would be greatly lessened by a reduction in speed. A Tesla at 70mph would need 0.5 x .56 x 30666 = 8586W, a VW at 50 mph would need 0.5 x .1.3 x 11089 = 7207W to overcome air resistance.

So yes, to get equivalent performance would be punitive, but if you accept a lower cruising speed then I can't see it would make that much of a difference, especially in a van with a comparatively low payload.

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Ford are to build Transit based lightweight ambulances in 2022 at Dagenham with view to full electric in the near future.

Vans are waiting on the Unicorn powered solid state batteries at 3 shillings and sixpence per kWh.

You want to keep your eye on Arrival Vans.