Top Clown returns Sunday 2nd November 2008 **SPOILERS**

Im not really sure where you want me to go with this one, you're stating figures that are meaningless and based on future predictions on what might happen to energy taxes, not whats happening today.

Garage roof with 4 square metres of panel at a average UK day of 800KW per m^3 would be a reasonable top up to add to what you would get from the grid. In some cases, you will see 1p a mile :p

Id like to claim the lazy title now actually. Cos tbh i dont know what im supposed to be reading in your posts. Im a comsumer (and engineer) not an accountant so fuel cost is what you pay for it. Where does tax+tax+tax come from aswell, AFAIK theres no triple tax. I guess people who quote running costs of LPG cars TODAY should shut up, as in the future there tax differential on LPG and petrol will close up?
 
Im not really sure where you want me to go with this one, you're stating figures that are meaningless and based on future predictions on what might happen to energy taxes, not whats happening today.

Garage roof with 4 square metres of panel at a average UK day of 800KW per m^3 would be a reasonable top up to add to what you would get from the grid. In some cases, you will see 1p a mile :p

Id like to claim the lazy title now actually. Cos tbh i dont know what im supposed to be reading in your posts. Im a comsumer (and engineer) not an accountant so fuel cost is what you pay for it. Where does tax+tax+tax come from aswell, AFAIK theres no triple tax. I guess people who quote running costs of LPG cars TODAY should shut up, as in the future there tax differential on LPG and petrol will close up?

The easy one first: the issue of tax.

You pay VAT on the fuel.
You pay fuel tax on the fuel.
You pay VAT on the fuel tax on the fuel.

Triple tax.

I gave figures with and without the taxes, because I thought it best to offer the opportunity to do a like with like comparison.

Even if you choose to do a deliberately unlike comparison by comparing different costs, there is nothing like as much of a difference in running costs between EVs and ICEVs as is repeatedly claimed by EV enthusiasts without any figures or evidence. Unless the price of suitable batteries plummets (which might happen), the running costs are comparable. I've seen claims that the running costs of ICEVs are 50 times as high as those of EVs. 10 times is a "conservative" claim from EV advocates. You claimed "at least" 12 times (1p/mile for EVs, "at least" 12p/mile for ICEVs), although you did change your mind about the 1p/mile for EVs. At least 3 times, with 4p/mile for EVs?

Assuming that the government would simply eat the loss of all the tax revenue from ICEVs (which it simply couldn't afford to do even if it wanted to) isn't reasonable. You have a temporary massive tax incentive to have an EV (and even then it isn't any cheaper to run than an ICEV), one entirely dependent on EVs remaining extremely rare. That's not a comparison of true running costs, not a sound basis for advocacy.

800KW per square meter? (I'm assuming that the cubic meter is a typo).

So why are commercially available solar panels that size rated at no more than 200W, i.e. four thousand times less? There's nowhere near 800KW/m^2 of energy from the sun at the Earth's surface, even at midday in the middle of summer on the equator. It's more like 1KW/m^2, and 20% efficiency is good for a solar panel. I doubt if you'd average more than 100W/m^2 from solar panels in the UK, even if you ignore nights.

I've just spent some time looking, and 150W/m^2 peak is the best I could find (actually, 80W for slightly over half a square meter, but of course you could buy two). £2000 for that, as well.

By paying a lot of money up front, a person can pretend the running cost of an EV is far lower than it really is. Pay £12000 for batteries upfront (you have to pay for the batteries that are in the car when you buy it - they're part of the price) and £8000 for solar panels up front and a person might be able to pretend running costs are 1p/mile.

Applying the same line of argument to ICEVs, in order to compare like with like, leads to the conclusion that the running cost of ICEVs is nothing at all, totally free. Just buy £20,000 worth of fuel when you buy the car and you'll pay nothing at all for fuel for a couple of hundred thousand miles, therefore (according to the same line of argument used for EVs), the running costs are zero.
 
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What we do know is fuel duty will never go down, so the point of electricity cost going up is quite moot, today.

I can't find anyone making a point about electricity cost going up. I certainly haven't. I hadn't considered that, but I wouldn't use it in a line of argument because it isn't certain that it will go up.

Even if I had made that point, which I haven't, I don't understand why fuel duty not going down makes any increase in the cost of electricity irrelevant.
 
I can't find anyone making a point about electricity cost going up. I certainly haven't. I hadn't considered that, but I wouldn't use it in a line of argument because it isn't certain that it will go up.

Even if I had made that point, which I haven't, I don't understand why fuel duty not going down makes any increase in the cost of electricity irrelevant.

I had some serious typos. Meant m^2 and indeed 800W not KW! :D

How else would you imagine the government covered the fuel duty losses? Afterall you raised this point initially! You seem to have a vendetta againt EV owners, and seem to be stereotyping me into that for no other reason than to rant. :confused:
 
I had some serious typos. Meant m^2 and indeed 800W not KW! :D

How else would you imagine the government covered the fuel duty losses? Afterall you raised this point initially! You seem to have a vendetta againt EV owners, and seem to be stereotyping me into that for no other reason than to rant. :confused:

It's a shame about the KW thing, really. 800KW/m^2 would be rather handy for power stations - a decent-sized garden would be enough!

800W/m^2 is still much too high, though. At least 4 times too high, probably 5 times too high, and that's assuming a totally implausible amount of sun in the UK. Commercial panels are offering in the region of 150W/m^2, and that's peak, not average.

I would not imagine that the government would cover the fuel duty losses by increasing the tax on electricity, because that would be a huge vote-loser. Electricity is used for so many other things that it would be political suicide to increase the tax on it enough. The easiest win for the opposition would be to find pensioners who used electricity for heating, but the government putting a huge tax on lighting, heating, cooking, etc, would be so bad that the opposition wouldn't need to do very much at all to win the next election.

I would expect the most likely route would be taxing vehicle use, probably in the form of a road usage tax. This would require monitoring of vehicle use, which the government would like to do anyway. A GPS system would make it feasible, as that also works as a vehicle tracking system.

I don't have a vendetta against EV owners. I'm just tired of the deceit, and it's deceit on a very large scale, total BS that's deemed unquestionable. When I provide figures and back them up, some people are outraged. But they can't disprove the figures and they can't substantiate any figures that they use, if they use any at all. That isn't stereotyping, obviously, since I have said nothing about EV owners en masse. In fact, I've said nothing about any EV owners at all. If you think I'm stereotyping you, feel free to explain why and what you think the stereotype is.
 
I don't have a vendetta against EV owners. I'm just tired of the deceit, and it's deceit on a very large scale, total BS that's deemed unquestionable. When I provide figures and back them up, some people are outraged. But they can't disprove the figures and they can't substantiate any figures that they use, if they use any at all. That isn't stereotyping, obviously, since I have said nothing about EV owners en masse. In fact, I've said nothing about any EV owners at all. If you think I'm stereotyping you, feel free to explain why and what you think the stereotype is.
As long as the political powers keep pushing EV as a good viable option to petrol you are fightling a losing battle.

I think that companies/governments should invest in Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology a lot more as it could be a much better technology for cars than trying to convice everyone to get a G-Wiz instead of a Golf :o
 
I think that companies/governments should invest in Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology a lot more as it could be a much better technology for cars than trying to convice everyone to get a G-Wiz instead of a Golf :o

That bit is fine, they need to invest in making, storing and piping the stuff around the country. Although I could use the same silly comment like this....

'But the electricity needed to make the hydrogen comes from coal powered stations so its no better.'
 
As long as the political powers keep pushing EV as a good viable option to petrol you are fightling a losing battle.

I think that companies/governments should invest in Hydrogen Fuel Cell technology a lot more as it could be a much better technology for cars than trying to convice everyone to get a G-Wiz instead of a Golf :o

I think that EVs could be a good viable alternative to ICEVs. Not yet, but maybe soon. My issue isn't with EVs, it's with the proselytising lies about EVs that so many people have believed without doing any checking at all.

There are three inherent big obstacles to making EVs truly viable and a fourth in the UK (and no doubt elsewhere).

1) Batteries, part one. Current batteries that can be made into a battery pack that can store enough charge to make an EV practical result in far too high a running cost as they are extremely expensive and degrade too quickly (therefore they need replacing too quickly, at too much expense).

Batteries, part two: Producing them in large enough quantities isn't currently possible. Fine for the few rare EVs that exist now, completely inadequate for scaling up to EVs being anywhere near as common as ICEVs are now.

Batteries, part three: The batteries repeatedly need replacing and require several non-renewable materials.

2) National electricity generation capability - it's not enough to meet the massive increase in demand that EVs would cause, and even just meeting current demand requires heavy use of non-renewable resources.

3) Charging time. Even if the batteries can be charged fast enough, the power required is too high. To use reasonable figures, consider charging a 40KWh battery pack. With a very lightweight car, effective regenerative braking and fairly efficient driving, that would give a range of about 150 miles. To charge a 40KWh battery pack in 5 minutes (to make it comparable with refueling an ICEV) you require (60/5)*40 = 480KW, assuming a 100% charging efficiency (which is impossible). So more like 530-550KW, for a reasonable charge time on a fairly small battery pack. Pouring 500+KW into each car in a refueling station is a challenge.

And for the UK (and probably elsewhere), the other big problem is the fact that most houses don't have an attached garage and therefore can't be used for overnight charging of an EV.

There are some very promising solutions to the second problem (electricity generation) and parts of the first problem (batteries), but that still leaves part of the first problem, all of the third problem and all of the 4th problem. Although solving the first three would circumvent the fourth by making it viable to use commercial recharging stations in the same way that commercial refueling stations are currently used for ICEVs.

Hydrogen fuel cells are not very useful unless someone finds a far more efficient way of extracting hydrogen. The current method uses large amounts of electricity - it's much more efficient to use batteries as an energy carrier for that electricity than to use it to extract hydrogen and use the hydrogen as an energy carrier. Also, there's the problem of distribution. We already have an extremely safe, efficient and robust system for distributing electricty. There's no such thing for hydrogen. Simply storing it is a problem in itself.
 
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I had some serious typos. Meant m^2 and indeed 800W not KW! :D
[..]

I think I've realised where you're getting the 800W/m^2 figure from - it's a plausible figure for the total energy from sunlight reaching the surface of the UK on a sunny day. Given that the best solar panels on sale now have an efficiency of about 20%, that would result in a solar power generation figure of 160W/m^2, which is very close to the 150W/m^2 claimed as peak output from the best solar panels on sale.

In purely technology terms, it's more efficient to build solar power stations in the deserts of north Africa, then transmit it using an HVDC line under the mediterranean and up through Europe, then under the North Sea to the UK national grid, then through the UK national grid to wherever it's wanted. It sounds unlikely, but the transmission loss from north Africa to the UK national grid using a suitable HVDC line is about 10% and the transmission loss in the UK national grid is about 8.5%, so the available power is about 82.5% of the power generated. 82.5% of the power output from a solar power unit in the deserts in north Africa is a lot more than 91.5%, or even 100%, of the power output from the same solar power unit in the UK.
 
A reminder that Top Gear is on at 9pm tonight not 8pm

Episode 7 of 8:

Top Gear
Sunday 14 December
9:00pm - 10:00pm (note different start time!)
BBC 2
Motoring news and views from the usual team. James May travels to California to take a look at what is being hailed as the future of motoring, the hydrogen-powered Honda Clarity. On the test track Jeremy Clarkson has a high-voltage encounter with the Tesla, a battery-powered super-car, and Richard Hammond takes an affectionate look back at 50 years of Touring Car racing. The star in the reasonably priced car is Tom Jones, and there are some festive fun and games in the studio to boot.
VIDEO Plus+: 1511
Subtitled, Widescreen

There is no Top Gear on 21st December due to the UK Snooker Championship Final, however episode 7 will be repeated at 7pm.

Episode 8 of 8:

Top Gear
Sunday 28 December
8:00pm - 9:00pm
BBC 2
Motoring news and views from the usual team. Last in the series - Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May embark on a road trip through Vietnam, travelling the full length of the country in just eight days. But first they have to buy themselves some transport.
VIDEO Plus+: 3393
Subtitled, Widescreen
 
Just want to get there in advance really, but..

OMG DID YOU SEE THAT BEHIND JEREMY? AN ACTUAL WOMAN!!!!!"1323423

it was crap this week its crap every week

BRING BACK CHRIS GOFFEY

etc.
 
[TW]Fox;13086561 said:
It's a photo of Ollys car. I used it because his car is identical to mine but he's driven it to more photogenic locations :p

That’s it :D I knew I wasn’t going insane :p
 
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