The Tesla Thread

typical nonsense response. obviously no utterly massive infrastructure has been built in the last 30years from pretty much scratch.

grid to your house has to change. the national grid at the moment cant support everyone having solar panels, the grid in the coming decades is going to change massively and not just due to EVs.
 
at the moment they spend over 3bn a year upgrading.
and recon they need about 200bn in total to modernise

and by 2020 they expect to
We anticipate £30bn of investment in transmission – £25bn onshore and £5bn offshore

so yes there is huge investment there, not all of it, but then what plan does have all investment there over multiple decades.
and after 2020, expect another announcement if massive modernisation etc.
 
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I think you need to step back and actually understand what your talking about.

Battery density has little to do with charge speed. And saying things like "they have batteries that can charge in 5 minutes in the lab" is an entirely worthless comment without context. What batteries? How big? For a Tesla battery to charge 170 miles of range in 5 minutes would mean delivering 720kW of power into it over 5 minutes. The heat involved in that would be immense! Are you saying that is technology that exists?



Not really, no. They're only about 40% efficient or something stupid aren't they? Its all heat and noise.

While Glaucus is being overly optimistic you're being overly pessimistic. In 20 years battery tech will have improved significantly, along with national grid power. As an example in North America most houses have at least 100A electrical services, and many people are upgrading to 200A (240V to the panel as well). It's easily doable, and I'm sure in 20 years it'll be fairly easy to get a service upgrade to that sort of amperage in the UK as well.

Take the heat issue you bring up. That's due to inefficiencies in the battery... Increase the efficiency of the battery, decrease the amount of heat generated. If we say a 20 year timeframe (as that seems a reasonable period for electric cars to become the majority of new cars sold) then battery tech, electric infrastructure and all the charging stations are likely (to a lesser or greater extent) to be far more advanced than now.

While I don't think electric cars will ever take over completely - there will always be a need for higher calorie, higher density fuel, like petrol - I do think they will in the near future make up a significant proportion of cars sold and will do just fine for most people.

Edit: By my calculations that means I could charge (assuming no inefficiencies or other things running) I could get 170 miles from a 15 minute charge at home (assuming 200A and 240V), so realistically half an hour easily. Seems reasonable, unless I'm missing something big?
 
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I don't think it's that simple though, and I don't think it's fair to say that "the average numbers can't change much", because the way an electric car is used and recharged will be very different. Realistically it'd need an entire study dedicated to it (if there hasn't been one already) to examine usage and differing driver behaviour, you can't simply replace 'petrol' with 'electric' and assume the same figures apply.

As an example Tesla cars can already park themselves. For those that have a garage, or drive/dedicated parking spot (obviously not everyone, but a significant number) it won't be long before the cars will auto charge themselves as well.

So the procedure for the average daily commuter will be:

Drive home
Stop at front door and get out (and/or)
Get car to park itself in designated spot
Auto charger attaches and starts charging car
Get up next morning to a fully charged car, with no input from you
Never need to use a fuel station for the majority of the time you drive (other than occasional long distance driving - say holiday)

Tesla already have auto park and are testing the auto charge


So while it won't be an option for everyone, it will be for a fair amount of people, helping to alleviate the pressure on chargers around and about. Take half of commuters away from refuelling at the pump and that will be a significant reduction in the number of public chargers needed.
 
Yep, the electricity feed into my house is the same one that was installed 30 years ago...

And like smart water meters that slowly changes...

You can call your electricity company and they will happily upgrade your service.

Things take time. Nothing will change over night, but as shown by smart water meters, they gradually become the norm.
 
Oh great. Another thread about a SPECIFIC electric car ruined by Skeeter. Great.

No-one goes into the threads about specific ICE vehicles and moans constantly about the pollution generated by ICE cars and how they arent the future.

Give it a rest.

Please.
 
You have to be more optimistic about these things...Tesla has done some incredible work in a short space of time. The change is going to come eventually, how ever any decades it takes. 30 years ago who would think you could have a device like a mobile phone in your pocket connected across a network like the internet. New technologies and advances which we can't even imagine will come along.
 
So the electricity vs petrol polluting argument aside, what is going to happen to all of these huge batteries? Aren't they massively polluting?

I had this discussion with a moron at work when he was speaking to my colleague.

What because the chemicals we produce and stick in a metal box is worse than the liquid fuel we extract and process then vapourise into a gas during combustion that we simply vent to atmosphere?

I'll stick with the stuff in a nice metal box please.
 
Oh great. Another thread about a SPECIFIC electric car ruined by Skeeter. Great.

No-one goes into the threads about specific ICE vehicles and moans constantly about the pollution generated by ICE cars and how they arent the future.

Lots of threads about specific ICE cars branch into other areas of discussion, whether it be comparisons with other makes, excise duty, smelliness of diesels, comparisons with electric cars (heaven forbid), etc. etc.

Skeeter's is valid challenge and whether you agree or disagree with his points, there's nothing wrong with it.
 
I can see how EV vehicles would work in our household

I currently do approximately 6000 miles a year and my wife does around half that. One could argue that 95%+ of all the journeys we do currently are well within current EV range capabilities. Even without any further improvements over the next 10-20 years.

We would also have access to off street parking with some minor investment. I would also see EV as only one part of the solution. Home electricity generation, and possibly storage being the other major parts.

Monday to Friday our current vehicles are mostly sitting outside the house doing nothing from 18:00 to 8:00. A good 14 hour window to charge an EV. Plus on the weekends we tend to only use one car so there's another good 48 hour charging window.

I can also see a future where places like my work install hundreds of charging points (at last count we had 6) in our underground car park for the staff to use. No doubt they will claim it to be an employee benefit and make it about how 'good' they are to their employees but who cares. So again there's another 8 hours every day Monday to Friday charging window.

So realistically we would only ever need to use a public charging point on the odd occasion I.e longer journey.
 
Lots of threads about specific ICE cars branch into other areas of discussion, whether it be comparisons with other makes, excise duty, smelliness of diesels, comparisons with electric cars (heaven forbid), etc. etc.

Skeeter's is valid challenge and whether you agree or disagree with his points, there's nothing wrong with it.

You'll notice that we have had this discussion on two separate occasions within the same thread. Surely that's enough?

And it's every time. The same arguments. The same debates. The same people.

It would be nice to talk about the Model 3, but it seems we cant. Sad times.

P.s. I'm not saying that Skeeter is wrong either.
 
To pick up someone else's point we need to stop applying current refuelling methods I.e having to go to a designated refuelling station to EV 'refuelling'

I can only see a handful of situations where i would need to use a public charging point. With the vast majority of charging done at my home or work. I agree that this solution won't fit all, high mileage uses for example will undoubtedly be regulars at public charging points. However it's not unreasonable to assume that there is currently a large population of vehicle users where with a small investment, could use an EV and handle the majority of charging at home/work.

My point is that we don't have to create like for like (petrol pump vs charging point) refuelling capacity at dedicated refuelling stations.
 
Skeeter's is valid challenge and whether you agree or disagree with his points, there's nothing wrong with it.

I think Skeeter's points are only valid challenge if you assume the current situation is the end game and no improvements will happen going forward.

Yes it will take massive investment from car manufacturers, governments and electricity companies, but it is not unreasonable to assume this will happen, whether it takes 5 years or 50 years

Apply Skeeter's challenge to when the world moved from horse/self propelled transportation to motorised transportation. I'm sure there would have been people throwing out the same arguments against. Petrol vehicles will never take off because there isn't any infrastructure, the first petrol vehicles are not fit for purpose because of limited range etc etc etc and we all know how that panned out.
 
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The 3 is impressive, I've not disputed that (the interior is awful however), but quite quickly this thread started getting statements made about how "most" people could have an EV and how they will take over personal cars. When you get into that discussion you are talking about all EVs, and as much as Musk may love it, not every EV sold is a Tesla.

There are a lot of points that make a Tesla a viable car, but they do not translate to making all EVs viable, and that's my point. The tenancy for people to happily swap 'Tesla' for 'EVs' and use the same arguments needs to be challenged.

For example, is there any other EV available other than a Tesla that can use a 120kW charger?

@johnny6: there are 2 issues with the infrastructure for EVs that need to be considered. The availability of chargers, and the speed. When petrol cars first rocked up there were no filling stations, but the speed to refuel was already negligible. As we have already explained in this thread, even if they get thousands of charge points distributed across the country, the time it takes to charge is still going to be an issue.
 
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