**Tesla Model S** The first nail in the internal combustions engines coffin?

[Glaucus]

Or just like broadband infrastructure has been upgraded and the national grid is being upgraded. Just run another cable from the street to the house, purely for charging. No need for an entire house rewire at all.

Just trying to find issues which don't exist. Or solutions already being implemented.

 

[Jonnycoupe]

Why have you over cooked it by mentioning house rewiring. I was refering to the concept of an extra 300A of draw from the supply that hits your house at the meter.

Broadband is nothing like this. It has not been upgraded anyway, the only parrallel you could draw on would be Fibre to your door... Which hasnt happened yet in the UK.

Someone has issues if they need to drive 300miles. Come home only for 45mins to drive another 300miles anyway.

 

[Glaucus]

Fiber to the door is happening, BT has just announced it's upgrade plans for 300mps fibre to the door.

You don't need Rewiring. You need to pull another cable of the mains.
Exactly like what virgin do. When they install there product. Run another cable from the street service to your house.

The house thing is a small upgrade and pretty simple. The complicated upgrade is the national grid. Which is already happening. 3billion a year and from 2013 for 8 years they want to spend 31billion. That second phase hasn't been set in stone yet as far as I'm aware.

Come home? Why would you come home to charge. You just pull of for a break and plug it in, wherever you are.

 

[OpenToSuggestions]

In my personal opinion electric cars are a complete waste from time as long as most of our power is coming from coal power plants.
Making the car clean just by pushing the problem somewhere else just isn't the answer i.e. Making the car emit nothing when the coal power plant a few miles away is belching out even more crud than ever.

I know not all electricity worldwide is from coal, but most of it is. Natural gas power stations are better, but they are still combusting fossil fuels.

 

[Glaucus]

In my personal opinion electric cars are a complete waste from time as long as most of our power is coming from coal power plants.

Making the car clean to push the problem somewhere else just isn't the answer i.e. Making the car emit nothing when the coal power plant a few miles away is belching out even more crud than ever.

But that's changing. If we aren't doing so well. But if you look at Europe as a whole. We are on target for 20% renewable by 2020 and some European countries ok mainly the small ones are well over 40% renewables.

Also coal is a lot more abundant than oil.

 

[OpenToSuggestions]

But that's changing. If we aren't doing so well. But if you look at Europe as a whole. We are on target for 20% renewable by 2020 and some European countries ok mainly the small ones are well over 40% renewables.

Which leaves 80% non-renewable.
A few percentage reduction here and there is not enough, we need a collosal change.

I just see electric cars being at best being just a bit better than cars.

Also coal is a lot more abundant than oil.

There are a few hundred years worth of coal left, but my goodness is it filthy.

I am doing a PhD in this sort of area . I just started though so am far from a Pro, but give me a few years .

 

[Jonnycoupe]

In my personal opinion electric cars are a complete waste from time as long as most of our power is coming from coal power plants.
Making the car clean just by pushing the problem somewhere else just isn't the answer i.e. Making the car emit nothing when the coal power plant a few miles away is belching out even more crud than ever.

Well its not.

http://www.owningelectriccar.com/national-grid-electric.html

Local emissions are better and its an alternative to petrol derived fuels.

 

[OpenToSuggestions]

Well its not.

http://www.owningelectriccar.com/national-grid-electric.html

Local emissions are better and its an alternative to petrol derived fuels.

Another area not mentioned are the rare earths and rare metals that go into an electric car, the fact that the battery packs need replacing a few times throughout the lifecycle of the car and also that the vehicles pose a huge challenge for their end of life disposal (due to the ELV Directive, 85% has to be recyclable and 10% recoverable currently iirc) as no-one knows much about scrapping electric cars yet.

The fuel they run on is one part of the electric car. Look at the whole life cycle and it poses many challenges.

Life cycle meaning...

Dig up materials -> process ores etc -> manufacture vehicle -> use vehicle -> dispose of it.

People getting excited over the CO2 from the 'use' phase of a vehicle is missing the bigger picture completely.

EDIT: That link you gave me says the Leaf is 86g/km - Road cars that you can buy today are almost matching that. You really shouldn't forget about all the other crap that comes out of the chimney from a coal power plant as well as the CO2!

 

[Glaucus]

Which leaves 80% non-renewable.
A few percentage reduction here and there is not enough, we need a collosal change.

I just see electric cars being at best being just a bit better than cars.
.

And that's 2020 how many cars are going to be EV by then. How about if we look at the 2050 road map. 80% reduction in co2 below 199? Levels. That's including national grid and every thing else.

As said there's also the local emmmisons problem characterised by smog in cities. Imagine having very clean air in inner cities.

When you say dispose of cars, cars are becoming recyclable. Even lithium batteries are very recyclable. So another point that just isn't there and if your going to use such an absurd life cycle, why not do one for petrol cars. It's still far far worse, even using a massively flawed life cycle.

 

[Jonnycoupe]

Bluemotion golf doing a cold start for a 5 mile trip will be much higher than paper figures, dont forget to add 20% to account for refining the fuel either. The Leaf charged at night would be around 450g/kWh.... Check later a lot of Ev drivers select renewable sources anyway for their supplier and some home generate.

Leaf doesnt have rare earth in the motor anyway. Sub automotive spec batteries are still useful in large banks where the discharge rate is much lower. GM are trialling battery for wind farms etc.

Covered all this lots before anyway. EV doesnt need war dollars for a start.

 

[OpenToSuggestions]

And that's 2020 how many cars are going to be EV by then. How about if we look at the 2050 road map. 80% reduction in co2 below 199? Levels. That's including national grid and every thing else.

As said there's also the local emmmisons problem characterised by smog in cities. Imagine having very clean air in inner cities.

When you say dispose of cars, cars are becoming recyclable. Even lithium batteries are very recyclable. So another point that just isn't there and if your going to use such an absurd life cycle, why not do one for petrol cars. It's still far far worse, even using a massively flawed life cycle.

Lithium batteries may be recyclable, but is there enough of this resource to make millions of batteries in the first place?
Lithium ion is pretty much at the maximum it can be. F1 cars are just getting the most out of this current technology. There are new battery designs on the way but the electric cars being held back because 'batteries need to get better' may be a loser to begin with, as until these different batteries come along lithium ion is what it is and scope for improvement is limited.

Also the clean cities thing is a bit daft. Yes it works to make cities cleaner, but we all live under one 'roof' in this world. Just like if we both stand in a very big room at opposite ends and I start smoking, eventually it will degrade the air over the other side of the room, it just may take a while to do so. Pumping the crap elsewhere is not a solution at all.

 

[Glaucus]

Lithium batteries may be recyclable, but is there enough of this resource to make millions of batteries in the first place?
Lithium ion is pretty much at the maximum it can be.
.

Yes plenty. More batteries than there are cars in the world, with a huge margin.

Not really huge scope for lithium ion batteries. You just need to add carbon into the mix in clever structures.

Lithium carbon and other lithium combinations is the new tech.

Not silly argument, city smog is a huge problem, it gets "trapped" at ground level. Much better for it to be spread out than concentrated and that's still ignoring the massive EU and world push for renewables.

A snippet of resech, although there is loads going on and not just with graphene
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110727171505.htm

Even flexible research, ok not useful for cars, but portable devices.
Roll out screen coupled with flexible battery.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/02/flexible-batteries-get-the-graphene-treatment-could-be-cheaper/

 

[jigger]

The national grid suffers a lot from over power generation anyway. Making use of that over generation by storing the wasted energy for transport would help massively in reducing emissions.

 

[jigger]

Someone has issues if they need to drive 300miles. Come home only for 45mins to drive another 300miles anyway.

That's true if you need to travel 600 miles a day then the car is useless without fast charging or a secondary battery. But one of the things that first struck me about the car was the amount of luggage space it has. You could probably increase the range considerably by retro fitting batteries.

 

[Angilion]

Aren't current solar panels something like 75% efficient?

No. Not even if you're using the most expensive cutting edge panels, made from rare materials using a very expensive fabrication process. 20% in perfect conditions, maybe. If they're brand new.

Stuff like that will help. If you could buy a solar station for your home and install it ready for your electric car then each day it could store enough energy to charge the car at night.

A quick look at a website devoted to promoting solar power (i.e. any bias will be in favour of it) gives an average solar irradiance in Stoke-on-Trent of 2.7 KWh per day per square metre. I think that's probably rather generous, since you only get 1368W/m^2 at the top of the atmosphere bang on the equator. But I'll go with 2.7KWh per day per square metre on the ground in S-o-T, because I'm going to bias this post in favour of solar power as much as possible, to prove at point.

I'll bias it in favour of solar power some more by assuming that you are rich enough for money to be irrelevant to you, so you buy the most efficient solar panels in existence.

I'll bias it in favour of solar power to a silly extent by pretending that the weather conditions are always, every moment of every day, perfect for those solar panels.

So you generate 540Wh per day per square metre, in this example biased to a silly extent in favour of solar power.

So every square meter would, in this example biased in favour of solar power to a silly degree, provide enough electricity to drive the car about a mile and a half, which could probably be stretched to 2 miles by additional electricity generated by regenerative braking.

So if you want a full charge per day you'd need at least 150 square meters of solar panels, and that's biasing it in favour of solar power to a silly extent.

 

[Angilion]

Try 13% for one of the mainstream units that isnt an expensive galleium arsenide panel material. (20%+)

There is nothing limiting with the rate of solar charging, just need lots of area.

A pond of water with a turbine and lift pump is a simple way. Pump water up in the day using sun power then let it down at night whilst you generate electricity.

Yes, but the amount of area required is prohibitive. Solar power is fine in many parts of the world, but it's not much use here. If you have a spare hot desert that gets baked daily in the blinding glare of equatorial sunshine, solar power is great. If you have a crowded island that gets moderately hot in summer and isn't cloudy all of the time, it isn't.

 

[Angilion]

I don't think Lithium packs deplete heavily like other batteries, each cell just needs to be kept within parameters. You should never really need to deep cycle but even if you did it's not a huge problem setting up a fast charging station at home should you need to.

I'm not seeing any connection between that text and the question you posted it in reply to. Can you explain the connection?

 

[Angilion]

In my personal opinion electric cars are a complete waste from time as long as most of our power is coming from coal power plants.
Making the car clean just by pushing the problem somewhere else just isn't the answer i.e. Making the car emit nothing when the coal power plant a few miles away is belching out even more crud than ever.

I know not all electricity worldwide is from coal, but most of it is. Natural gas power stations are better, but they are still combusting fossil fuels.

Power stations can be more efficient than an ICE, though. Even after you factor in transmission and charging losses, you'd probably still come out ahead. It wouldn't be a complete waste of time for that reason. Although I'm not so sure when you factor in making batteries - that's a dirty process.

Besides, there are options for generating electricity in Britain using different methods. Wave power and tidal power have a lot of potential in this long, narrow island noted for heavy tides and rough seas. There's a staggering amount of kinetic energy in the movement of that much water and it's much more reliable than ground-level wind or solar. Higher-altitude wind also has potential, though the practical problems seem worse. Solar could add a bit. Hydro-electric is useful in some parts of Britain. Then there's the wild card of nuclear fusion - the most efficient fusion reactor in the world is here.

It's not an overnight job, but it looks probably possible.

 

[Angilion]

On a bit of a tangent...has anything happened with the STAIR battery? Lots of attention a couple of years back and they apparently had prototypes, but I've seen nothing since.

 

[Glaucus]

Just looked and 2009 articles said it had another two years of research on it to do. So should have herd something now ish. But seems to of gone totally quiet which is never good news.