Company Fleet - going electric

arknor said:
one major manufacturer has quick chargers that can charge a battery to 80% in 30mins but i guess if electric cars ever took of there wouldnt be room for enough of them because they are petrol pump size.

i guess if it were possible to simply swap a used battery for a full one in a petrol station where it gets stuck charging for someone else it could be almost viable but the battery packs they use are mammoth
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Pah petrol stations, what an inconvience for your daily driving needs.
 
The Nissan Leaf and the Mitsubshi IMev look decent enough 'shopping cars'. No idea what HMRC's plans are with them yet though.

The TSB are investing in a lot of charging points in Coventry and Birmingham to run many of the government funded low carbon cars. Tata are even working on an electric car.

Prices of stuff is dropping but I don't know how people think batteries can drop much in price when no one yet is buying them, its totally reliant on big corporations or governments to fund the R&D. There are so many emerging technologies at the moment.
 
Out of interest, why havn't there been more cars that run on electric all the time but use a small motor to constantly recharge the batteries ? Surely this combined with a bit of over night charging would mean for the most part your car would be full electric, but then you wouldn't be limited if you needed to make a longer journey.

Bring on the top gear car I say!
 
We use electric delivery vehicles, and are buying more all the time. But they do a limited mileage (most city drivers only cover an area of a few square miles and their total round mileage is limited) and we can charge them at depot overnight.
 
Are they the Modec ones?

The GM Volt. Vauxhall Amptera will have a range extender so you can plug in for 40 miles electric and then drive with the generator running.

The Rav4 EV in 96 had a range extender option though with a generator port you could drop in the boot.
 
monkey_boy said:
Does that ineffieciency outweight whatever damage the batteries do to the environment?
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I saw an interesting program about battery cars the other night as to make them requires rare earth metals which cause a massive amount of pollution to create. China also holds a 95% share of the market apparently. The guy was saying trading oil for battery cars would be taking us out of one persons pocket and into another!
 
Lopéz said:
We use electric delivery vehicles, and are buying more all the time. But they do a limited mileage (most city drivers only cover an area of a few square miles and their total round mileage is limited) and we can charge them at depot overnight.
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Out of interest, does your depot have any special 32amp or 63amp outlets?

Or can you charge them from your run-of-the-mill 13amp socket?
 
The Electric Mini in the country emits 109g/km to generate the power used to charge it

Petrol equivilant is 107g/km.

However the 'fuel cost' for 100km is 90p for the electicity versus £5.60.

We need Nuclear for electric cars to make sense, the same car to run in France would emit 20g/km.
 
Jonny69 said:
Yes. Batteries are recycled because the resources (lead, lithium, nickel etc) are scarce.

Hydrogen isn't going to be viable economically or environmentally until there is excess clean power to generate it.
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This, the only reason honda and the big companies are pushing it is because its another thing they can have the monopoly over us, electric cars can be charged up at home but you cant make you own hydrogen, in the same way you cant make your own petrol
 
Rich1988 said:
This, the only reason honda and the big companies are pushing it is because its another thing they can have the monopoly over us, electric cars can be charged up at home but you cant make you own hydrogen, in the same way you cant make your own petrol
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The parady here is thats exactly what Honda are doing with the home powerstation, where they take natural gas and split it to generate hydrogen to fill and run your car and power your house.

Of course big oil want a hand hydrogen sell. Hence George W wanting his hydrogen highway and getting the EPA and CARB to stop their mandate for a certain % of cars to be electric cars. The GM EV1 back then with NiMH looked a real solution but the Bush plan stopped battery development pretty much overnight, compounded by Chevron buying the Cobasys patent on large format batteries.
 
Simon said:
The Electric Mini in the country emits 109g/km to generate the power used to charge it

Petrol equivilant is 107g/km.

However the 'fuel cost' for 100km is 90p for the electicity versus £5.60.

We need Nuclear for electric cars to make sense, the same car to run in France would emit 20g/km.
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Thing is with CCS on a rankine supercritcial coal station linked to the vast empty space under the north sea you are looking at close to 0g/km. Use combined heat and power to make use of the heat dumped by the stations and coal doesn't really cause a big concern.

Plus it gives you the benefit of being able to run a car on coal. You can't do that yet.
 
miniyazz said:
As for us only producing 4% of all the CO2 - well the main difference between CO2 and water is that with increased CO2 production, the mechanisms are not in place for removing 'excess' CO2 from the atmosphere, so the concentration will keep increasing as long as there is an imbalance..
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Never heard of the Rain forests or the Carbon cycle? CO2 really isn't a problem, its just thrown about in the media/govenment so much to scare us all. Our planet has dealt with MUCH larger CO2 outputs before, what are are putting out now is nothing.

That doesn't mean we can be wasteful though.




Back on subject, PH had a news story of Fords Focus Electric car. it could do a whole.....75 MILES before it needed a full recharge, No wonder they aint taking off in a big way.
 
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There not for sale, why would they be 'taking off' ?

Jay Leno has one on his show that the celebrities drive. Top Gear Star in a car inspired.

Citroen N-zero and Peugeot Ion will be using the iMev platform and pretty much car for their products aswell.
 
Jonnycoupe said:
Thing is with CCS on a rankine supercritcial coal station linked to the vast empty space under the north sea you are looking at close to 0g/km. Use combined heat and power to make use of the heat dumped by the stations and coal doesn't really cause a big concern.

Plus it gives you the benefit of being able to run a car on coal. You can't do that yet.
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Problem is cost. Retrofitting CCS to current plant is going to make Electricity prices sky rocket, and they're already high enough. I work at a Coal fired station, and to retrofit the plant at our stations the company will likely want to see a huge rise in profits before considering it, both the coal stations we own were both built in the 1960s and only originally intened to have a 25 year life span. Both have been generating over 40 years and thats very similar to a lot of the coal stations about. Drax is one of the newer ones and is more efficient than any of the ones from the 60s as it was only built 20 years ago, rather than 30 or 40. Heavy investment in supercritical boilers + CCS technology would be needed, and this will make it likeley that electricity prices will go up to provide the investment needed.

New nuclear stations will cover baseloading for the UK, but the problem with them is they're not flexible. For example, a peak in demand at dinner time when people cook, boil the kettle etc can be met by increasing production at a coal station, or even bringing a unit on from a coal station. Nuclear stations aren't as flexible from what i've been led to believe by people at work.

Fitting CCS to new supercritical boilers is also expensive, and they're then still only 60% efficient, using Gas (from Googling it). Googling brought up about 38% efficient for Coal at the moment in America, only a quick google though. CHP is a good idea as most of the efficiency losses are from heat as you have to condense the steam to pump it back to the boilers. Supercritical technology has been about for a while, not many people have taken advantage of it in the UK so far, I'm presuming that the cost of replacement outweighs the reductions in costs from increased efficieny. Also the loss of money while the plant is modified. Takes a while to sort as the boilers are hung from the roof and are 160ft-ish tall ;)


ON TOPIC: Until technology increases the capacity of batteries, or decreases the weight and charging time it doesn't look viable for most day to day uses. I'd be fine for my job but there are many people who travel and it would be impossible for them to use them. :(
 
Prices are going to have to go up really though, whethers its for new nuclear or coal, current prices are just sustaining the current infrastructure and paying shareholders. Like anything to do with most things there is never a long term plan that extends much longer than a goverment sitting.

I think a real concern is a fuel duty applied to anything to charge your car putting prices up though. Smart public chargers have the potential to charge your car and the kWh you use gets thrown on to your monthly utility bill. Easy to police that and apply any government taxes to differentiate between home power and car power, same with any fast chargers in your garage etc.

The problem I find with the electric car is people view them as an overarching replacement to superscede the IC. Its not at that stage, its just a alternative that meets most peoples daily needs, the Rav4 was, the Ev1 was and the Nissan Leaf will be. Petrol lovers should embrace them as a big cause to drop the demand for petrol and hopefully its price.
 
Hybrids could be more popular with fleets if it wasn't for the stupidity of the manufacturers. Discounting all the 30 grand + hybrid SUVs only one hybrid on the market is hatchback. The importance of hatchbacks in the fleets should not be underestimated. The three main fleet cars in Europe are Mondeo, Vectra/Insignia and Avensis. So honda can pretty much go and jump with that US Civic IMA saloon and Accord Hybrid saloon, it's about as useful to fleets as monocycle to bike couriers.

So that leaves us with Prius. The now 1.8 petrol hybrid hatch that does less mpg than large diesel fleet cruiser, and at whooping 4 grand over the price of Mondeo Titanium X, in top trim it doesn't even offer options like heated seats or Xenon lights... So choosing hybrid over Mondy means to the fleet higher price, less spec, lower economy, less space and more grumpy drivers.

Current hybrids are just too American for European market. They make no sense.
 
Lopéz said:
Smith Newton, the 7.5 Aero body ones.

http://www.smithelectricvehicles.com/index.asp

http://www.smithelectricvehicles.com/casestudies_tnt.asp

Drivers love 'em. Quiet, no gearchanges, no vibrations.
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crikey id no idea that electric trucks were a reality

They make perfect sense for a company running vehicles during the day. Drive to and around destination, covering limited miles (say under 100)

then return to base at the end of the day and just stick it back on charge all night.

Hopefully this tax incentive will mean that business use of these type of things become more common.
 
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