Electricity

andicole0

andicole0

andicole0

Soldato
Joined
12 Sep 2005
Posts
6,490
Location
Grundisburgh
I had to laugh a bit, all this electric car stuff and now there's a very sudden 12.5% fuel cost increase from British Gas.

Yes I know it isn't that simple but I still have an issue with where all the extra electricity is going to come from, how much it is going to cost and what on earth will the impact be on the environment with all the extra battery manufacture along with their ultimate disposal. I think batteries will be a major issue in the future.
Andi.
 
Anyone who thinks electric cars of the future will give us long term low cost motoring is deluded. Once petrol and diesel is gone there will have to be a replacement tax regime to make up for the loss of fuel duty at the very least.

Petrol is not expensive, it's actually very very cheap. It's expensive for us to buy because of vat and duty...

So we'll end up with cars which are less flexible than petrol and diesel cars and no cheaper to own...
 
Huge hike in electricity, yet the wholesale price has dropped and they made over 600m profit last year.

It's about time it was properly regulated, or taken back in to public ownership.
 
I'm very interested to see what happens with electric cars regarding the grid capacity, i'm currently sat in my office in a decommissioning power station looking over at the proposed site of a new station. They've been messing around there for about 7 years and are still years and years away from building anything as no-one seems able to commit to anything long term in the government. Renewables are great but you still always need some baseline power from somewhere.

I know the grid runs at very little spare capacity of only a couple of % compared to say 20 years ago when it had over 20% at any time. Be interesting in a few years at 6pm when a few million EV cars are all put on charge at the same time after work.
 
The "cheap" future is that we don't own cars at all and just call up a driverless taxi when we need it. Most cars spend over 90% of their time parked. Is there any other complex piece of mechanical engineering our society builds and then barely uses ? Its a huge waste if you step back from the emotions we all have about cars.
 
I just dont see how they can justify it. People are no getting pay rises at the moment in the UK or if they are they are very small ones and the energy prices for British Gas goes up 12.5%?! Its like we are living in crazy land!
 
[TW]Fox said:
Anyone who thinks electric cars of the future will give us long term low cost motoring is deluded. Once petrol and diesel is gone there will have to be a replacement tax regime to make up for the loss of fuel duty at the very least.

Petrol is not expensive, it's actually very very cheap. It's expensive for us to buy because of vat and duty...

So we'll end up with cars which are less flexible than petrol and diesel cars and no cheaper to own...
Click to expand...

They're less flexible than petrol and diesel cars now. But they're more flexible than what electric cars were 20 years ago. And they will be even more flexible in 20 years time compared to what electric cars are now.

The market shift is toward electricity: due to geopolitics (we no longer want to rely on importing fossil fuels); and we need to be seen as green*

More than that, we're shifting towards autonomy. It's easier to implement autonomous systems in electric cars than fossil fuelled cars (see Industry 4.0 for reasons why).

Personally I can't wait for electric cars to become more mainstream - because it will be more autonomy. I can't wait to see the end of middle lane morons on the M1. I can't wait to be autonomously cruisng 100 mph down the motorway, just 2 m in front of another another autonomous vehicle.

* The amount of CO2 released to mine rare earth metals and ship them around the world to manufacture motors and batteries is staggering.
 
sovietspybob said:
I know the grid runs at very little spare capacity of only a couple of % compared to say 20 years ago when it had over 20% at any time. Be interesting in a few years at 6pm when a few million EV cars are all put on charge at the same time after work.
Click to expand...
FYI :

- Peak electricity demand in 2016 was 61GW
- Total 2016 installed electricity capacity : 99GW

In terms of the future : National Grid publishes a future energy scenario document every year which contains some interesting info. Read the summary here : http://fes.nationalgrid.com/media/1245/fes-in-5-for-web.pdf
 
Looking ahead and not focusing on the immediate, the beauty of using electricity to power a vehicle (regardless of how it is utilised) is that there are far more options to generate said electricity.

I think of it this way: at the moment we burn a fuel in our vehicles to make them move. In the future if we utilise electricity then this could be generated in many ways (even by burning the same fuel in a centralised location where emissions and process efficiency can be maximised, unlike doing it on a per vehicle basis).

It's actually a very sensible way forward IF we are able to massively improve the chain needed for this, with storage (i.e. batteries) being the first and most important aspect. I am by no means saying current efforts are enough, they are very much the very tip of the iceberg, however all of the parts of the needed chain (creation, delivery, storage and eventual use) for electricity delivery are currently stagnant in technological terms with very few sources of true innovation. Even the likes of Tesla are users, not innovators, at least outwardly (albeit one of the best examples out there). As long as the future of burning fuel directly in the vehicle as a source of power is a future possibility, the certainty of return in becoming an innovator at any part of the chain was hard to justify for many, the introduction of hard deadlines (even if they are decades in the future and probably meaningless) starts to change this.

Like all things, necessity is the mother of all invention. I welcome a future where our electricity product, delivery and storage is hugely optimised. Not only will this make electric vehicles truly viable, but it can only benefit household use and potentially even allow us to ween ourselves off natural gas.

Not that this changes the facts stated in this thread of course! Now we all need to go out and come up with the solutions!
 
Bloomberg NEF (who know what they're talking about), reckon that in 2040 the total worldwide electricity generation diverted to EVs will be 5%. Plenty else worth reading in the link: Source
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom