The Tesla Thread

The Running Man said:
It's like when you go to the petrol station and get annoyed waiting 2 minutes to use the air pump or have to queue for gas.. now imagine the same qeues for a recharge. Except everyone takes 15-30 minutes in front of you ..
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Instead of going to the petrol station in the supermarket, you could plug your car in the carpark and do the weekly shop and come back to a fully charged car.

The government could force councils to permit on street charging facilities to be installed.

Going further in the future, motorways could be built with a induction loop so you can charge while driving. Wouldn't that be cool?

In the short term, to help spread the load on the national grid, cars could also sense the AC frequency, when there is high demand on the electricity supply the frequency drops. They could cut off the charging if it drops below 49.97Hz for example.
 
Amp34 said:
Today,

But i'm pretty sure in 3 years time when the 3 comes out there will be a simple way of upgrading your service in the UK. In 20 years Im pretty sure the infrastructure will be able to cope with the number of EVs on the road then.
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The UK are never going to roll 3 phase supplies out to the majority of homes, so we will be 240v for a considerable time. 100amp feeds is pretty decent for a UK home too.

7kW chargers on 240v will need 32amps. Running two of these would need 64amps, which is going to be a push for most homes.

Its not a case of simply upgrading your line here in the UK, it would require a fundamental shift in the structure of the National Grid, which is not even on the radar. UK homes will remain 240v single phase, and likely not exceed 100amps for most homes.

Home charging is a dead end if EVs are to become anything more than a tiny niche.

Edit: Having just properly read the Tesla specs, both the 11kW and 22kW chargers require 400v 3 phase supplies. That means the fastest charger you will ever be able to put in a UK home is a 7kW one. If you have a very good mains feed you might be able to put 2 in. But that's going to be it. Currently the Tesla Dual Chargers only support the 22kW 400v feed, so you can't even plug both 7kW's into your car.

So the fastest you can charge, and will be able to charge for the foreseeable future, at home is about 22 miles range per hour of charge. If your very lucky you might be able to charge 2 cars at that speed, but anything more and your then having to divide that supply among the number of cars.
 
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Skeeter said:
Home charging is a dead end if EVs are to become anything more than a tiny niche.
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What will make EVs main stream is the future of taxation on ICE. You just need to look at London's Ultra Low Emission Zone to see how owning a petrol or diesel car could become very expensive if all towns and cities start charging for vehicles that cause local pollution.

I'm also not convinced the slower charging at home is a huge problem for the mainstream population. Certainly in the short term having electric as an only vehicle may be problematic for those who commute long distances daily, however you are at home for several hours at night and larger offices are already installing electric charging points for the during day top up.


Doesn't the average vehicle only drive 9 miles a day or something very low?
 
What do you people honestly think will happen if EV's start growing as a % of the total fleet, businesses are not going to respond to the need for charging?

Charging stations will end up being installed in corporate car parks, public car parks etc. It's not rocket science. It's already happening where my offices are based, there are (limited) EV charging points.

I bet the exact same debate was being had 100 years ago. People freaking out that there was only 1 petrol station in a 30 mile radius and forecasting the death of the motor car because the Horse and cart were already well establised. :D
 
The batterys are why I wouldn't buy an electric car. Someone needs to invent a better way of storing energy before we start moving on to EVs :P

Plus the UK is already struggling with power capacity. If everyone swapped to EVs we would have country wide blackouts. Or you would need your own generator to charge it, which defeats the whole point in having an EV.
 
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Skeeter said:
So the fastest you can charge, and will be able to charge for the foreseeable future, at home is about 22 miles range per hour of charge. If your very lucky you might be able to charge 2 cars at that speed, but anything more and your then having to divide that supply among the number of cars.
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Or you build more efficient cars.

Cars without 300mile range and the resulting weight/cost/inefficiency would go a way towards that.
 
Nasher said:
Plus the UK is already struggling with power capacity. If everyone swapped to EVs we would have country wide blackouts. Or you would need your own generator to charge it, which defeats the whole point in having an EV.
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Genuine question: Do you apply this logic to other electrical items? Do you not have a television or a mobile phone because of the UKs power capacity issues?

I find it odd that you would argue against EVs, whilst at the same time consume electricity for everything else you do in your life.
 
Given that EV's represent a tiny proportion of overall vehicle production it's impossible for everyone to switch to an EV right now, even if they wanted to. It's not like suddenly overnight everyone will be driving EV's that causes the grid to come to a grinding halt.
 
johnny6 said:
Genuine question: Do you apply this logic to other electrical items? Do you not have a television or a mobile phone because of the UKs power capacity issues?

I find it odd that you would argue against EVs, whilst at the same time consume electricity for everything else you do in your life.
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I think it's more to do with that current TV's use electricity; the next TV's will still use electricity, so the net draw change is negligable.

With cars though, the next generation will be electric instead of petrol, so will have a huge net change in electricity draw per household.
 
Rosbif said:
What do you people honestly think will happen if EV's start growing as a % of the total fleet, businesses are not going to respond to the need for charging?

Charging stations will end up being installed in corporate car parks, public car parks etc. It's not rocket science. It's already happening where my offices are based, there are (limited) EV charging points.

I bet the exact same debate was being had 100 years ago. People freaking out that there was only 1 petrol station in a 30 mile radius and forecasting the death of the motor car because the Horse and cart were already well establised. :D
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The limitation to the petrol station network is your ability to transport fuel around to stations, and then build more stations. This grew considerably and is only limited by the capacity of oil we can refine, which we have only ever hit during a few fuel crisis eras.

The limitation to electric charging is the National Grid and the supply fof electricity within it, which is very much finite. Sure a business can jump on the EV band wagon by sticking a couple of charge points in the car park, but there is not the capacity to put a charger on every parking space in the country, which is what would be needed to sustain widespread EV take up.

The barriers to the supply and distribution of electrical energy for charging are very real, very visible, and really not far away. Throwing pie in the sky upgrade theories into the mix to support the argument is not a case either. If everyone had 1 EV on charge over night, it would probably see the UKs energy consumption more than double, probably more (I'd certainly hope my house wasn't pulling 32amps all night long already).

Jonnycoupe said:
Or you build more efficient cars.

Cars without 300mile range and the resulting weight/cost/inefficiency would go a way towards that.
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The biggest inefficiency in an EV is having to haul around the battery. Its a self fulfilling issue. Having 500KG of battery in a 5 seater car to do 200 miles is one thing, but how big would the battery need to be for the same range in a van, or a minibus? What about trucks? Will we see lorrys having to allocate half their payload to battery to be able to actually do any sort of distance?

johnny6 said:
Genuine question: Do you apply this logic to other electrical items? Do you not have a television or a mobile phone because of the UKs power capacity issues?

I find it odd that you would argue against EVs, whilst at the same time consume electricity for everything else you do in your life.
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I don't have an electric oven or a power shower, so I doubt my house regularly pulls anywhere near 32amps constantly. Plugging an EV in to charge is not like adding another lamp to the living room, its like plugging a whole second house in.

Edit: Average UK electricity consumption per household in 2014 was just over 4,000kWh. That's 11 kWh a day. If you plug a top end 7kW EV charger in and run it for 90 minutes (about 20 miles range) that will add another 11kWh's, and double your energy consumption.
 
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Nasher said:
Plus the UK is already struggling with power capacity. If everyone swapped to EVs we would have country wide blackouts. Or you would need your own generator to charge it, which defeats the whole point in having an EV.
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It's highly unlikely the country would suffer blackouts because of EV charging.
Peak electricity demand generally happens around 5pm - the majority of EV owners will be charging their car overnight where demand is low.

Current Electricty demand and generation data
Generator capacity : 74 GW
2015 Peak winter demand : 54 GW

20 GW of generator spare capacity (worst case), is enough to charge over a million EV cars :)
There are currently electricity generators which are paid not to operate.
 
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Skeeter said:
There are 35 million cars in the UK
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There are currently about 50,000 plug-in cars in use in the UK :)

The change from petrol to EV cars is going to be staggered.
Current estimates for the UK put the number of EV cars at about 5 million by 2030.

So calm down on your statement :p
 
SDK^ said:
It's highly unlikely the country would suffer blackouts because of EV charging.
Peak electricity demand generally happens around 5pm - the majority of EV owners will be charging their car overnight where demand is low.

Current Electricty demand and generation data
Generator capacity : 74 GW
2015 Peak winter demand : 54 GW

20 GW of generator spare capacity (worst case), is enough to charge over a million EV cars :)
There are currently electricity generators which are paid not to operate.
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But if everyone is charging cars up overnight there would no longer be a period of low demand. The grid would be getting hammered 24/7.
 
Nasher said:
But if everyone is charging cars up overnight there would no longer be a period of low demand. The grid would be getting hammered 24/7.
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Could the current electricity Grid cope with 35 million EV cars - no
Will the future grid be able to manage EV car charging demands - yes.

National Grid has demand and generation scenarios planned out for the future generation mix.

It's a bit like internet connections.
Could the network of 1996 cope with everyone having superfast broadband - no
Can the 2016 network manage the data throughput of superfast broadband in most homes - yes

:)
 
Nasher said:
But if everyone is charging cars up overnight there would no longer be a period of low demand. The grid would be getting hammered 24/7.
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Or another way of looking at it, the assets are being better utilised. This also suits nuclear power generation as the base load will be higher.
 
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