When are you going fully electric?

b0rn2sk8 said:
Every single review of the iPace I have seen has been overwhelmingly positive. Great drive, fit and finish. The only negatives I have seen are about the in car software being slow.

But there are one issuewhen it comes to owning one in the real world that you will not see in reviews compared to say a Tesla. They are really thirsty when it comes to electrons, the car has a 200miles real world range which is great but charging it away from home is slow due to a lack of high power (100kw+, 50kws are almost everywhere now) chargers currently in the UK.

Because the car is so thirsty those times when you do need to use a public charger the ‘miles per hour’ charging you gain are much lower than the competition, this really important for a long journey and being stuck on a 50kw charger.

Over a 900km road trip across Norway the iPace was no quicker than an old Kia Soul with a battery 1/3 of the size. While this is a huge journey, it demonstrates how ‘miles per hour’ off a fast charger is far more important than its KW rating once you get outside the initial range of the car.
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I think it’s suffering as the ambient it’s currently cold and how much the management system might be throttling DoD back. interested to see real world in summer and spring.
 
Oh I’m not arguing either way just providing some thoughts to bring the charging rate of a petrol tank to life to compare to electric.

Agree the efficient and refining energy need to be considered but charging and conviencience is one of the big negatives of EV compared to just filling up your car. Especially cars that can’t charge at home.

It is orders of magnitude more power needed as even with just the useful power of petrol engines you are charging at 4MW so a battery charger needs to be 40x faster than the current 100kw chargers for 1:1 adoption of EV

But then there is still the challenge of creating enough power.

Is power to liquid the real future of the automobile ? Turning bio, co2 and gas into a ‘battery’.

Mother Nature created alcohols, sugars and fats for storing energy. She never made a battery :)
 
Simon said:
Is power to liquid the real future of the automobile ? Turning bio, co2 and gas into a ‘battery’.
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It's interesting, because we looked that way first. There's been some interest in gas-powered vehicles over the years, particularly in heavier transport such as trucks and buses. I was told that reliability was an issue with some particular gas powered buses bought/leased by a council, but this was probably back in the 90s. Biofuels have obviously been around for several years now.

Personally I think the 450KW chargers being tested by Porsche et al are bloody impressive. 100KWh in just over 13 minutes (appreciate in reality it may be longer, but as a theoretical figure)? Rock on.
 
Simon said:
Agree the efficient and refining energy need to be considered but charging and conviencience is one of the big negatives of EV compared to just filling up your car. Especially cars that can’t charge at home.
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I don't think you are really looking at the full picture its not the case that one is more convenient than the other, both have trade offs. ICE vehicles you must drive to a dedicated filling station every time you need fuel, this is fundamentally inconvenient.

On the other hand an EV can be plugged in when its parked and charged passively, its no different to plugging in a mobile phone, it takes seconds. Most people wouldn't even need to do this every day on a modern EV like a Kona with 250-300 miles range. On the flip side if you need to travel more than the cars natural range then you will need to stop and charge if you can't charge at your destination, this is also very inconvenient but no where near as common as spending the time filling up with fuel every week for the vast majority of people but 'your mileage may vary'.

It's really not that clear cut at all.

Simon said:
It is orders of magnitude more power needed as even with just the useful power of petrol engines you are charging at 4MW so a battery charger needs to be 40x faster than the current 100kw chargers for 1:1 adoption of EV
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This is so flawed as I already pointed out I don't know where to start...

Jonny - 450kw chargers:
https://www.autoblog.com/2018/12/13/bmw-porsche-450kw-ultra-fast-ev-charger/

Full charge in the time it takes you to stop at a service station and use the toilet and gain enough charge to be back on the road for another 3+ hours driving.
 
Skidder said:
Interesting thanks. I tend to drive down to alps once a year. Rest is largely within the range. My parents are 157 miles and that is most frequent long journey. Mostly m4 which i guess would be reasonably efficient.
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You’ll be fine abroad. A charging network called Ionity has been setup by all the big European players (BMW, VAG and others) and they’re building a network of 350kw chargers. They’re expanding very rapidly and these will charge the iPace at 100kw (from low state of charge) which somewhat negates the energy consumption issue. The problem is the UK only has 50kw chargers which means long charge times for the iPace (for now, Ionity has planning permission for a few sites in the UK but they’ve yet to be built).
 
Simon said:
Oh I’m not arguing either way just providing some thoughts to bring the charging rate of a petrol tank to life to compare to electric.

Agree the efficient and refining energy need to be considered but charging and conviencience is one of the big negatives of EV compared to just filling up your car. Especially cars that can’t charge at home.

It is orders of magnitude more power needed as even with just the useful power of petrol engines you are charging at 4MW so a battery charger needs to be 40x faster than the current 100kw chargers for 1:1 adoption of EV

But then there is still the challenge of creating enough power.

Is power to liquid the real future of the automobile ? Turning bio, co2 and gas into a ‘battery’.

Mother Nature created alcohols, sugars and fats for storing energy. She never made a battery :)
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Is 4MW charging a sane solution? The average car would spend just 34 minutes per year plugged in, yet it would spend over 8,000 hours parked up. For the majority of that time, it is likely to be next to a power source.

Seems like a lot of cost for little benefit. But I guess it's not about practicality, but coming up with convoluted ways to hold on to established paradigms.
 
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Nature certainly does not find the "most efficient" ways of working. It finds an effective way of working (in that species that aren't effective tend to die off). Nothing more.

Either way, batteries are an incredibly efficient means of storing energy, with relatively little energy loss through charging and discharging. Compared to the efficiency of burning liquid fuel in an internal combustion engine, they're in a completely different league.

Also, there's a category of bacteria called "exoelectrogens", which are effectively a naturally occurring battery. So there is some precedent in nature.
 
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My dad will be getting rid of his Vauxhall Ampera this year and has decided he can easily go full electric having lived with the limited electric capabilities of the Ampera over the last few years.
His neighbour has a Model X and while he's very tempted by a Tesla I think he's leaning towards the Kona at the moment (too sensible :p)
 
Kona VS Tesla is a bit of an odd consideration, they don’t really cross shop and are aimed at very different ends of the market.

I really wouldn’t think anyone seriously considering buying a Tesla would settle with a Kona.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
Kona VS Tesla is a bit of an odd consideration, they don’t really cross shop and are aimed at very different ends of the market.

I really wouldn’t think anyone seriously considering buying a Tesla would settle with a Kona.
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Well of course they are very different. But if all you need/want from a car is a Kona (or equivalent ) but you're interested in the tech and have the means to buy a Tesla, you're hardly going to just ignore them!
 
satchef1 said:
Nature certainly does not find the "most efficient" ways of working. It finds an effective way of working (in that species that aren't effective tend to die off). Nothing more.

Either way, batteries are an incredibly efficient means of storing energy, with relatively little energy loss through charging and discharging. Compared to the efficiency of burning liquid fuel in an internal combustion engine, they're in a completely different league.

Also, there's a category of bacteria called "exoelectrogens", which are effectively a naturally occurring battery. So there is some precedent in nature.
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How are batteries incredibly efficient ? 300kg of batteries are needed to cover the distance of 40kg of fuel. And that’s ignoring motor vs ICE efficiency.

A typical battery is 0.3MJ/kg. Petrol 44MJ
 
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