Electric car owners?

...as an additional thought

As a teenager in the 80's passing your test at the first opportunity and getting a car seemed like a rite of passage. Of my 6 nieces/nephews old enough to drive only one has taken lessons, and they only bought a car 3 years later. So maybe the whole philosophy of car ownership has changed.

I know a lot of companies are looking at subscription ownership where you pay a fixed sum and can use this to choose from a pool of vehicles when you want and according to need. City car for 3 days, coupe for a summer weekend away and an estate for moving house maybe. I think this will work for many. It is definitely a move away from the car as a personal status symbol and more as a tool you use when you need and don't just have depreciating on the drive when you don't.

Bruce

Passing car and motorcycle tests was something you just did when old enough to become eligible when I was growing up (late 70s). Peers without driving licences from my late teens and early 20s would probably account for less than 5%.

In addition, from college summer holiday work to having a technical job which required car travel, to repping, training. managing and latterly self employed, I've never had a job that didn't require a driving licence. My daughter has never had a job which did. Different generations, different landscapes.

Bruce Woodhouse posted.

I think we will see more EVs used as buses etc, and would also like to see them creeping into local delivery vehicles etc. Bring back the milk float!

Bruce, there are a fairly large number of electric vehicles in use by local authorities and Utility Companies mainly light vans more so in London but spreading throughout the country.

I cannot remember what company it was that have just taken delivery of 100 vans in London to evaluate our local authority has e few quite strange to see a van go by with just a slight noise from the tyres.

I see in this mornings Construction Index that a company has announced a Hydrogen Powered Fuel Cell to be used to power equipment on construction sites.

I think the speed of switching to EV will be down to the accessibility of charging points.

It's true that getting an electric car in certain parts of the world is not a terribly good idea, as the electricity will be produced by coal-fired power plants - but at least you don't pollute densely-populated areas (if those power plants are located away from urban areas...). In countries which rely heavily on renewable energy (or nuclear energy - but how desirable that is is another story...), it does make sense to get an electric car. Some makers (Renault, I believe) have a scheme whereby you get a big discount on a rented car (rented from Renault, of course), should you need a car occasionally for longer distances.

I am seriously thinking of getting an EV -  I never do more than 200-300 miles a week, except on holiday.

Well, I do about 250 miles per week, and I find it perfect for my needs.  My Nissan Leaf is on a two year PCP contract which, come August 2019, will give me options as to what to do next.  I am considering trading it against a new PCP, for three years, on an eNV200 Combi, an electric people carrier with greater range.  We're going to have it converted into a camper.  By the time that contract will come to an end, in 2022, I will have just retired and my husband and I (and the dog) will be able to spend my time going to music festivals

Bruce Woodhouse posted:

I see the biggest brake on pure EVs (as costs fall and range rises) will be having somewhere at home to charge. Fine if you have your own driveway or garage. Not fine if your car is out on the street. Some employers may add charging stations to workplace parking but that is clearly not going to be an option for the many.

I think we will see more EVs used as buses etc, and would also like to see them creeping into local delivery vehicles etc. Bring back the milk float!

Don, the contrary argument is that if the vast majority of your journeys are within the range of a good EV (and that is getting to be 200miles for many) then you just hire the bigger car for the holidays and exceptional trips.

Bruce

Good point. I made a similar comment in one of winky's threads when he was looking at Teslars.

My youngest daughter lives in a terraced house in Wimbledon without a garage or rear access. She parks her VW Golf in the street. The street is marked out for parking, but it still means there is a footpath and front garden between her car and her front door. And it's not very often she gets to park in line with her house. More often than not she is parked half a dozen car lengths along the road. How many pedestrians would trip over criss-crossing long-lead 240V power cables each night or get electrocuted by a poorly maintained domestic cable in the rain !

Or do we have a deluge of badly maintained street furniture in the form of Local Authority car charging outlets with a mobile phone number to call to hook up to and pay for overnight charging ? How long before your cable gets stolen.

Anyways, enough of the doom and gloom. Myself and my other daughters all live in mansions with room to park half a dozen cars each and power supplies that would make Blackpool's illuminations look dull and dreary. No probs if we each need half a dozen EVs to let the butler pop down to the local wine shop each day................

I would say the biggest issue is that there's little glamour attached to owning an EV - it won't impress the Joneses. It's the same with cycling, which is not the best way of telling the world how wealthy or powerful you are.

Don Atkinson posted:

 

Or do we have a deluge of badly maintained street furniture in the form of Local Authority car charging outlets with a mobile phone number to call to hook up to and pay for overnight charging ? How long before your cable gets stolen.

When you connect the car up to the charger, the plug locks in automatically as soon as the charge starts.  It's immoveable until the car owner returns and unlocks it.  May I also add that, with the forthcoming new models with ranges of over 300 miles and an expansion of rapid chargers, the issue of needing home charges will be solved to a greater extent.  That said, I don't have problems with the 130 mile range of my Leaf, although I do have a charging point at home with off road parking.  I accept that not everyone is so lucky.

I have the Audi a3 etron (Hybrid) for a half year now and i like it very much . Best of both worlds (at the Moment). Normally, i drive about 50km a day only in a big City fully electric. For longer distances, the range with petrol is about 600km. It is fast if you want and comfortable and the monthly leasing is very cheap. But if it is very cold, the electric  reach decreases to 20km.

I have a BMW i3 (pure electric) delivered february 2014. They had some real problems the first 18 months (on my they once had to change all batteries, both computers and the motor after a combination of software error and the motor coming loose. There was a very loud bang and it all stopped and went dark. The big 350A fuse held though (the last safety line). They have re-done this and use much stronger stuff now).  

But since then it has been absolutely reliable. No problems at all. It is very-very quick and easy to handle in and around town. Fun to drive. For longer trips they gave me good rebate on rentals of a petrol BMW.

We sometimes get a lot of snow during the winter but the i3 handles this surprisingly well to. Much better than the Prius I had before.

I usually recharge at my house every other night. I use the slowest setting since I have an old house and need to keep a reasonable load.

ursus262 posted:

Don Atkinson posted:

 

Or do we have a deluge of badly maintained street furniture in the form of Local Authority car charging outlets with a mobile phone number to call to hook up to and pay for overnight charging ? How long before your cable gets stolen.

When you connect the car up to the charger, the plug locks in automatically as soon as the charge starts.  It's immoveable until the car owner returns and unlocks it.  May I also add that, with the forthcoming new models with ranges of over 300 miles and an expansion of rapid chargers, the issue of needing home charges will be solved to a greater extent.  That said, I don't have problems with the 130 mile range of my Leaf, although I do have a charging point at home with off road parking.  I accept that not everyone is so lucky.

If thieves can steal live electric power cable from the railway with 25kV, they can steal your car cable.

Even the signalling cable gets stolen and that only has 600V in it !!

And despite car doors being locked by their owners, one or two thieves still manage to ply their trade

We have a few i3s with range extender at work. I have driven one of them a few times a really enjoyed doing that. Based on these admittedly few drives, I can imagine one as my next car. Nearly all of my trips could be done within the distance provided by the batteries and. We have another car for the family , which I could use for the few long distance journeys.

I still feel that this needs to be fixed further up the food chain. Electrics cars run on power station output and what do they burn I wonder? Anyone able to burn CO2 and emit O2 will be on a winner. Until then we all need to travel less and consume less from this finite ball of ours.....far too many of us and not enough to go round...speaking as a scientist of some 38 years so with some insight I fear. Sorry to throw a dampener but that’s how things are unless you’re Trump of course.

Ravenswood10 posted:

I still feel that this needs to be fixed further up the food chain. Electrics cars run on power station output and what do they burn I wonder? Anyone able to burn CO2 and emit O2 will be on a winner. Until then we all need to travel less and consume less from this finite ball of ours.....far too many of us and not enough to go round...speaking as a scientist of some 38 years so with some insight I fear. Sorry to throw a dampener but that’s how things are unless you’re Trump of course.

The UK generates about 30% of it's electricity via renewables, nuclear is about 20%. This was a figure from March this year.

That rising proportion of renewable energy was one of our prompts to buy electric. Having refused to campaign against the construction of a small local windfarm (to the consternation of neighbours) we thought we should walk the walk!

Bruce

I'm not sure where those numbers come from Bruce,  I suspect best/ideal or potential rather than actual.   I've seen renewables swing from around 10% up to 40%,  depending on sun & wind & weekend or working day load.     This morning (07:35)  renewables are at 16.5%,  this is practically no solar & low wind,  nuclear is running at 16.5%.  The biggest generator is CCGT at 51.3%.   The other generator types are adding to that but at that time we are buying 5.5% from France & 2.9% from Holland. 

Out of interest I will take another look around mid morning when the working day is fully up & running.

Re Nuclear:  its is pretty well flat-line 24/7 constant in the overall mix as its not possible to increase & decrease over short periods,  I note its abnormally low at the moment, only pushing out 6GW, I guess due to maintenance as it's  normally somewhere around 8GW. 

Ravenswood10 posted:

I still feel that this needs to be fixed further up the food chain. Electrics cars run on power station output and what do they burn I wonder? Anyone able to burn CO2 and emit O2 will be on a winner. Until then we all need to travel less and consume less from this finite ball of ours.....far too many of us and not enough to go round...speaking as a scientist of some 38 years so with some insight I fear. Sorry to throw a dampener but that’s how things are unless you’re Trump of course.

True.  It does move the pollution away from where you live though 

The throwaway mentallity still prevails with electric cars.  PCP contacts etc  Get rid after two or three years and have a nice new one.

I still have my cars after 33 and 23 years...

In my dream world every new house would be required to have solar tiles, with a battery to store the power. The car could then be recharged from the battery. This sort of thing is under development I believe. 

The trouble with running old cars is that they can be incredibly polluting, especially diesels. You quite often see old 80s diesels belching out black smoke. The owners are either unaware or simply don’t care. 

hungryhalibut posted:

In my dream world every new house would be required to have solar tiles, with a battery to store the power. The car could then be recharged from the battery. This sort of thing is under development I believe. 

The trouble with running old cars is that they can be incredibly polluting, especially diesels. You quite often see old 80s diesels belching out black smoke. The owners are either unaware or simply don’t care. 

Neither of my two diesels belt out black smoke. Neither is particularly new.

The big diesel polluters were HGVs and, as you say, pre-1990 diesel cars. There are very few of these left and compared to a Chinese coal burning power station these old cars are environmentally irrelevant.

But, as Tescos say, every little helps. We all need to do our bit. It’s just not logical to say that because China belches out smoke we are justified to do it too. It’s been shown that black soot from diesels is causing deaths from pollution and can even get into the placenta. In my book it’s time sales of diesel cars was banned. 

Most Diesel's over 5 years old put out smoke/fumes.  There's no need to put "TDi" on the bootlid as you can smell it before you can read it

hungryhalibut posted:

But, as Tescos say, every little helps. We all need to do our bit. It’s just not logical to say that because China belches out smoke we are justified to do it too. It’s been shown that black soot from diesels is causing deaths from pollution and can even get into the placenta. In my book it’s time sales of diesel cars was banned. 

Diesel [1] - fuel of the Devil!

Yes, I know it should be DERV but nobody knows what you mean.

The sales of diesel cars around EU & other parts has a planned phase out,  some manufacturers are doing this before any country deadlines,  Volvo have already stopped & Toyota I believe at the end of this year,  to name just a few doing the same.  The big challenge is HGV's,  that is a much longer time frame to solve the problem,  its do-able but the forecast at at the moment is that it seriously impacts the cost of transport = it will cost you & me.      Also keep in mind air & sea transport is using a similar fuel so its a case of reduction rather than elimination.

Re Diesel cars and Volvo - they are still building diesels. Their statement means that they will not introduce any new models as diesels. The model lifetime is quite long, they have just about intriduced their latest range of vehicles so it could be 5 or 6 years before their next range is introduced.

The pollution aspect of diesels can be made as clean as petrol using Ad Blue to remove the particulates and NO2 aspects.

As an aside the company that builds the London black cab is a kissing cousin of Volvo as both companies are owned by Geely (a Chinese company) the two companies will be sharing components in the new range of cabs with the Volvo models.

Mike-B posted:

I'm not sure where those numbers come from Bruce,  I suspect best/ideal or potential rather than actual.   I've seen renewables swing from around 10% up to 40%,  depending on sun & wind & weekend or working day load.     This morning (07:35)  renewables are at 16.5%,  this is practically no solar & low wind,  nuclear is running at 16.5%.  The biggest generator is CCGT at 51.3%.   The other generator types are adding to that but at that time we are buying 5.5% from France & 2.9% from Holland. 

Out of interest I will take another look around mid morning when the working day is fully up & running.

Re Nuclear:  its is pretty well flat-line 24/7 constant in the overall mix as its not possible to increase & decrease over short periods,  I note its abnormally low at the moment, only pushing out 6GW, I guess due to maintenance as it's  normally somewhere around 8GW. 

I got them from an article in the Independent online, which of course made me an instant expert!

This Ofgem report ( https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/data-...r-and-fuel-source-gb) looks close to those numbers I think?

Bruce

(incidentally our third car is a hugely inefficient old beast, consuming fuel and belching CO2 in terrible amounts. it appears to be recycling itself into iron oxide though...)

Derek Wright posted:

Re Diesel cars and Volvo - they are still building diesels. Their statement means that they will not introduce any new models as diesels. The model lifetime is quite long, they have just about intriduced their latest range of vehicles so it could be 5 or 6 years before their next range is introduced.

The pollution aspect of diesels can be made as clean as petrol using Ad Blue to remove the particulates and NO2 aspects.

 

As an aside the company that builds the London black cab is a kissing cousin of Volvo as both companies are owned by Geely (a Chinese company) the two companies will be sharing components in the new range of cabs with the Volvo models.

Geely manufacture the new Hybrid London Taxi at a new plant in Coventry and interestingly will commence production of a delivery  van very shortly can't remember if the van is Electric or Hybrid