I have been to London and back from the North in my mates Prius, a semi electric car. Average fuel consumption around 44 mpg.
I have done the same journey in Mercedes E Class 220 cdi. Average consumption 51 mpg. I know which I would rather travel in.
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I watched the program last night.
Very interesting indeed.
A decent diesel engine will still return a better mpg than a hybrid car.
I still think a diesel hybrid (non petrol) is the way forward (for now) but no one is doing that yet.
As a second car for pottering around town, a plug in electric car would be usable but :-
1. who has a drive in front of their house to plug in and charge up
2. they would need to cost next to nothing to buy
The next version of the Toyota Prius is due out later this year and I can't believe their claim of 80mpg for a car that has a 1.8L engine.
I suspect more hype again.
I did read on the times web site a year or two ago and a long test drive was performed between a Prius and a BMW 2.0L diesel driving to Switzerland.
The BMW beat the Prius on MPG.
Probably not a surprise there then as the Prius only comes into its own around town but then who wants to pay 18K for a 'town car' ?
Hydrogen, urgh
How stupid would that be ?
It just wont work.
If all of the cars were Hydrogen and a major pile up happened on say the M11 you may as well kiss the east of England good bye...
Still at least it would put the terrorists out of a job....
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Any one know where the super clean, non polluting electricity to charge fully electric cars comes from ?
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>Hydrogen, urgh
If you mean the fuel cell why urgh?
>How stupid would that be ?
Not at all
>It just wont work.
It does and is considered the most likely replacement for the internal combustion engine running on fossil fuels.
>If all of the cars were Hydrogen and a major pile up happened on say the M11 you may as well kiss the east of England good bye...
1/ Thas scaremeongering and not factual either
2/ The loss of the east of england is of no consequence, its going to disapear under the waves anyway.
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I have been to London and back from the North in my mates Prius a semi electric car. Average fuel consumption around 44 mpg. I have done the same journey in Mercedes E Class 220 cdi. Average consumption 51 mpg. I know which I would rather travel in.
I take the view that the only people to gain from the Prius are the Toyota shareholders. Fantastic marketing job.
Given that a hybrid car has to weigh more than a petrol or diesel to do the same job except for when it is stuck in traffic. However most traffic congestion is due to so called traffic management by our local authorities.
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> Given that a hybrid car has to weigh more than a petrol or diesel to do the same job except for when it is stuck in traffic.
Have you actually looked at the weight specification for a Prius? Compare it to the Auris and the Avensis, and report back.
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Have you actually looked at the weight specification for a Prius? Compare it to the Auris and the Avensis and report back.
Build two cars exactly the same apart frome one being hybrid and one being normal petrol or diesel. Hybrid has to be heavier, more expensive to build and more expensive over life cycle.
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The electric car has a sensible future for short-run oldies IC petrol and diesel engines are unsuitable for the sort of short runs from cold starts they are subjected to by many elderly drivers who used them as their legs.
Which probably explains the massive growth in the use of Electric Scooters, especially the 8mph versions, we are now seeing, as they are considerably cheaper than owning and running a car...
I didn't watch it, but I'd have thought that there is a massive market for an electric car with a range of around 100 miles and top speed of about 60/65mph.... but they really need to get the pricing sorted, even the GWhiz is far too expensive.
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The TV programme was certainly working to an agenda - but, the people who were using electric cars liked them. They lived with their shortcomings, limited range etc.
The point the programme made was that the lessees were not allowed to keep their cars. All electric cars were taken off the roads of California.
Why? A good question for the conspiracy theorists to get their teeth into.
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The point of the discussion was 'why did the motor and oil companies kill the electric car?',not 'let's come up with some electric car shortcomings'.
There was an old guy featured who developed a more efficient battery,the Ovonic battery.GM bought his company,they did not use the battery in the EV 1,he was not allowed to publicise his battery,later control of the battery went to Chevron.
At the hearing of the California Air Reform Board(I think,I know it had the acronym CARB) the chairman allowed the anti electric car manufacturers all the time they wanted to make their case,when the pro speakers took the stand suddenly time was short and they had to state their case in 3 minutes.
The manufacturers constantly said there was no demand for the electric car,why were they so bothered about letting a handful run about California that they took them back,transported them to a high security facility in Arizona and crushed them?
I am not a conspiracy theorist but there was definite conspiracy by the motor and oil companies against promoting the electric car and against California's zero emission vehicle law,even tax incentives were biased against electric vehicles:-tax break for an electric car-$4000,tax break for a large SUV,like a Hummer,$100000.I too missed the last half hour but I do not think the electric car won.
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The program did show that around the time that the EV cars were taken off the road there were tax breaks on buying SUV's so it would appear the the average buyer that they can get alot more (physical) car for the same amount of money.
Hydrogen = replace petrol with hydrogen, liquid for liquid
My earlier posting regarding hydrogen not working was for the following reasons :-
1. expensive to produce (even more than petrol in terms of splitting oxygen from hydrogen and even 'cracking' from crude oil)
2. lack of infrastructure - this could be changed with more pumps
3. explosive - see Hindenberg
4. a tank full of very cold and highly compressed explosive hydrogen is more lethal than petrol.
I do believe that some of these problems can be overcome with the economy of scale but some others are a disaster waiting to happen.
The advantage with a plug in car is that people can charge the car at home or at their destination even if the range was shorter the 'refill points' are already present.
Its just a shame that the average charge time of these cars is 4 - 8 hours.
Another design that should be taking off is the compressed air car (see MDI) as the tank can be refilled in as little as 30 seconds.
Still its a high pressure tank sitting underneath the car which may not be good in an accident.
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The biggest 'killer' of the electric car was, I imagine, and probably still is, the time it takes to 'fill-up'.
All (..and ISTBC on this..) batteries I've ever heard of take ages - or unfeasibly long times - to re-charge. No matter what the range, even it was 1000 miles, re-charging times measured in hours, not seconds, effectively relegate the EV to limited town (and specialised) use.
The argument that 'big oil' & other vested interests could stifle a viable technology doesn't bear too critical examination. For example, selling oil (or its components parts) profitably doesn't rely on pumping one of its fractional distillates into small tanks on a regular basis. Oil comanies & other commenators have said for a long time that retailing petrol/diesel is at best is just a slightly-better-than-break-even enterprise. We can easily absorb all those extra hydrocarbons making other things.
Another vested interest might be those component suppliers & vehicle maintainers. But if that type of argument could hold true, we'd probably not have had Henry Ford selling cheap cars in the 1920s in the first place, after being bought-out by railway interests, or rialways in the 1880s because stage coach companies saw them as a threat - ad infinitum etc etc.
Could it just have been that those EVs simply weren't up to the uses they would be required to fulfill?
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" Could it just have been that those EVs simply weren't up to the uses they would be required to fulfill?"
Of course electric cars would not suit everyone,but the people who had them did their utmost to buy them from GM,offering them $1.9million for the 70 odd cars.GM preferred to crush them,apart from one which resides in a museum.It was disabled by GM before going there.
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> 3. explosive - see Hindenberg
the hindenburg was a giagantic canvas gas bag.
>4. a tank full of very cold and highly compressed explosive hydrogen is more lethal than petrol.
Nope, suitable tanks have been developed.
>1. expensive to produce (even more than petrol in terms of splitting oxygen from hydrogen and even 'cracking' from crude oil)
Uses a lot electricity but so does charging 50 million cars.
>2. lack of infrastructure - this could be changed with more pumps
Infrastructure is easy (but costly) to develop and is the real make or break. Hydrogen is the only fuel that can be distributed and filled into cars as easily as petrol
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I never watched the programme, Ive never been a fan of the electric car but im very interested in the way that hydrogen will work.
I may be throwing a spanner into the works here, and i may be saying something totally stupid, and if so "ill get me coat"....
However could we not make a alternative to petrol (ie snythetic), could we not make a man made gas/petreloum that would operate in the same way but is interly man made, then we could possibly control/alter the exhaust emmisions?
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>4. a tank full of very cold and highly compressed explosive hydrogen is more lethal than petrol. Nope suitable tanks have been developed.
I remember watching a programme many years ago - might have been a Horizon or similar - which claimed that hydrogen was safer than petrol, in that you get a big bang and that's it. Petrol tends to hang around longer and does more damage.
Just reporting as I remember it.
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>4. a tank full of very cold and highly compressed explosive hydrogen is more lethal than petrol. Nope suitable tanks have been developed.
What would these suitable tanks be?
>1. expensive to produce (even more than petrol in terms of splitting oxygen from hydrogen and even 'cracking' from crude oil) Uses a lot electricity but so does charging 50 million cars.
Really? So you convert energy to electricicy and use it to split water into H2 and O2. You then combine the H2 and O2 to electricity and use that to power a car. That is pretty inefficient. And the original energy source is most likely to be fossil fuel. So the net result is a very non-green propulsion source. And the fuel cell most likely uses very expensive and rare metals such as platinum as the catalyst. These fuel cells cost a fortune and were demand to increase would cost even more. Unless research finds cheap catalysts, which might happen.
>2. lack of infrastructure - this could be changed with more pumps Infrastructure is easy (but costly) to develop and is the real make or break. Hydrogen is the only fuel that can be distributed and filled into cars as easily as petrol
How can infrastructure be easy but costly? Surely you really mean that it is hard due to cost.
The advantage as you say is that a fuel cell can refuel quickly. However, there is a new batery technology (in the research labs) that allows very fast recharging. Unfortunately batteries are expensive and the energy is most probably non green.
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>> The electric car has a sensible future for short-run oldies I didn't watch it but I'd have thought that there is a massive market for an electric car with a range of around 100 miles and top speed of about 60/65mph.... but they really need to get the pricing sorted even the GWhiz is far too expensive.
Agreed, the GWiz at a couple of thousand pounds and with batteries that are good for at least 5 years would make sense.
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Part of the problem with electric cars, as mentioned in the film, is that the patents for NiMH batteries - the current most effective technology - are controlled by an oil company. And they refuse to license high-capacity NiMH batteries. You can't have a pack much larger than that in the Prius and other hybrids.
That's why electric cars have stalled - during the first generation development (the GM EV1, the Toyota RAV4-EV, etc), the NiMH patents were held by GM, who would license it. But the supply of NiMH batteries to anyone was cut off when GM sold the technology to Texaco after abandoning the EV1.
So new electric cars currently have to use either lead-acid batteries (low-power, low-range) or Li-Ion (expensive). The oil companies have managed to stall EV development quite nicely for the best part of a decade, by totally blocking a whole generation of battery technology from use.
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www.honestjohn.co.uk/forum/post/index.htm?t=73037&...f
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I take the point of view that the current crop of electric and hybrid cars (Prius et al) are simply a testing ground for new technologies.
We're already finding the limitations and benefits of them, the next generation will improve, and then several generations down the line we might have a perfect replacement for the current car, whether electric, biofuel, hydrogen or whatever!
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Ermmm, Why the fight over Hydrogen in this thread?
I dont think anyone would think Hydrogen in to an IC car is the way forward.
Hydrogen=fuel cell=electricity=electric car.
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I dont think anyone would think Hydrogen in to an IC car is the way forward.
A friend works for a certain manufacturer who has been experimenting with this, and although they have working examples, they have a couple of issues - such as needing a 6 litre engine to generate about 200 bhp, and self emptying of the fuel tank within 24 hrs, whether driving or not.
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At least the engine in the BMW 7 series hydrogen car can also run on petrol. It losing the hydrogren over 24 hours is a bit of an issue though.
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Ermmm Why the fight over Hydrogen in this thread? I dont think anyone would think Hydrogen in to an IC car is the way forward. Hydrogen=fuel cell=electricity=electric car.
All car manufacturers do think this is the way forward. you appear to be the only one who doesent.
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Whichever way you look at them, electric cars are boring.
The interesting question would have been, who killed the steam car? Even in 1908 steam cars had the acceleration and speed of modern cars, so think what a modern version could do.
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How long would it take to get steam up on a car size steam engine? Steam isn't instant by a long way. There were a small number of steam lorries up to the 1930's but not a practical proposition for cars I wouldn't think.
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not a practical proposition for cars I wouldn't think.
Stanley, White, Doble...
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The argument about having a tank full of compressed hydrogen is only applicable to the current crop of fuel-cell cars. Eventually, a solid material will be developed that will hold hydrogen within it's matrix and release it on demand. There are already patents on clathrates that can store hydrogen and release it when heated.
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How long would it take to get steam up on a car size steam engine? Steam isn't instant by a long way. There were a small number of steam lorries up to the 1930's but not a practical proposition for cars I wouldn't think.
Steam lorries worked by shovelling coal and heating up a boiler like on a traction engine. Steam cars had flash boilers heated by forced-draught parafin burners and took about as long as diesel plugs do.
Steam cars could easily do over 100 mph before the first war, and could reach it in seconds at a time when petrol cars took minutes to struggle to reach 30.
There is a story of Mercer, one of the rival American steam car manufacturers, being booked by the police for allegedly doing 80 mph. He complained that his car would go much faster than that
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What happened to the Norwegian one on this site a week or so ago?
65mph, 120 mile range, 10000km for £100 of leccy.
IIRC the Think with the i upside down?
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We have been told that we can't produce enough electricity to meet the current demands if the weather was to turn really bad across the whole country and that we could be experiencing regular black outs in just 5 years time. What use will an electric car be then ?
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We cant produce enough power at PEAK times. Your car can charge overnight when there is plenty of cheap power.
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We are now living in a 24/7 life style. Peak time is becoming a thing of the past. The warnings about are lack of electricity generating capacity have been coming thick and fast. I wonder how few electric cars hooking up to the mains it would take to produce black outs in some districts ?
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Utter nonsense Mr X. Mrs Oilburner works in the energy industry, and she tells me that one of their biggest problems (other than nutty environmentalists protesting about the building of cleaner power stations than what we have at present...) is what to do with the electricity generated during the night-time. Most of this is from nuclear power stations that can't be simply spun down and turned off easily when not needed.
Sure, at peak times there might be issues, but all you need is the application of smart metering and appliances that use dynamic demand monitoring to smooth out the peak(look it up) and the problem will go away pretty quickly.
Also overnight charging on electric cars would actually be good news, because it would make increased nuclear energy more viable (higher night-time baseline load) and less costly per unit of electricity (less lulls in demand where actual oversupply becomes an expensive problem), easing our peak problems. Think about it....
Edited by TheOilBurner on 01/04/2009 at 18:04
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I'll get my coat in a second, but here's an idea - Nuclear powered cars!
Submarines use them. If a car can be safely modified to ensure hydrogen is safe - surely it can be done for nuclear.
My coat is on now and I'm jumping into the taxi.
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So a car that can be charged overnight and run on electricity for short local runs, but also has a petrol, diesel or LPG fuelled IC engine for long runs would seem to be the ideal single car.
HJ
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So a car that can be charged overnight and run on electricity for short local runs but also has a petrol diesel or LPG fuelled IC engine for long runs would seem to be the ideal single car.
The Chevy Volt is exactly that HJ!
The trouble with IC cars is that you have a gearbox, clutch, starter motor etc this adds weight and adds to unreliability. The system also doesn't recover wasted energy so is inefficient, the longer runs with less stopping the more efficient the IC car becomes.
Electric cars on the other hand have far less mechanical running gear, recover wasted energy and are more refined. The batteries are heavy and expensive but the energy in the first place is cheap.
A mixture of the two is required but the IC engine shouldn't be directly connected to the drive train, rather used as a generator when required. Diesel electric trains after all have been popular for years
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So I take it this is all lies ?
tinyurl.com/d6lca3
tinyurl.com/c7o7c3
I won't add the countless other examples as I m' sure you know better but it's worth a read for those who don't.
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Do you actually read some of the links you post Mr X? or the ones on here?
what part of no shortage *AT NIGHT* do you not understand?
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Electrical energy cheap?
Petrol and diesel would be cheap if it wasn't taxed at a rate of around 300%.
HJ
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for its energy value? yes its cheap.
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Petrol and diesel would be cheap if it wasn't taxed at a rate of around 300%.
It would certainly look cheap compared with today. But on the other hand we have an economy based on fuel at say 25p litre in 2006. How would trade react when that price doubled over the next 18 months?
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Electrical energy cheap? Petrol and diesel would be cheap if it wasn't taxed at a rate of around 300%. HJ
Exactly. I still reckon the main reason the government is so keen on road pricing is that they can't easily tax electric cars that plug into household mains overnight to recharge.
They're very scared of losing the fuel duty cash cow that they've become totally reliant on over the years.
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SQ
They're very scared of losing the fuel duty cash cow that they've become totally reliant on over the years.
No question about it. At some point an electric car will be cheaper than a petrol or diesel car, either due to developemts in batteries or the increase in the price of fuel at the pump. At that time the goverment stands to loose a nice revenue stream as it would be difficult to put red dye into domestic elictricity.
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 02/04/2009 at 14:43
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With the number of people operating night time storage heaters growing and industry operating around the clock, the night time slow period will become a thing of the past. 25 years ago, the telly went off at midnight, the pubs had long shut by 11 pm and the clubs closed at 2am. People were not sat at their computers arguing the toss about electric cars or pretending to be some one they weren't. There were less street and motorways lit up.
Now lets say just half of the country has an electric car come 2012... still think there is more than enough power to charge them all ?
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Don't see why not... the vast majority of electricity, is as EA indicated, is used during the day... most electricity users are fast alseep at night.... and not using much, if any electricity!
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It will be only a matter of time and dedication before the electric car is as cheap as the petrol/diesel type. Think of all of the moving parts in an 'ordinary' engine, over a hundred, all needing precision machining and quality controlled assembly. Think of the gearbox in the same terms. Think of the servicing at the prescribed intervals. Then think of the modern electric motor, one moving part and two sealed for life bearings. The motor can accelerate up to full speed in seconds, or it can creep away and one revolution per minute at full torque. It can run stably at any speed in its designed range.
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So the next question.... How will the govt replace the money lost through reduction in fuel duties as raised via petrol and derv . Some sort of tax on electricity used for the charging of electric vehicles ?
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>With the number of people operating night time storage heaters growing
I got this far and its so far off the mark I lost the will to live.
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+OK, lets say it slowly for you
There is no abundance of cheap electricity in the UK. It is my belief that there is in fact a shortage of the stuff and a shortage that gets more acute every year due to increaseing consumer demand in a growing population.
Now if we are to rush down the road of the electric car, we are going to find that we don't have the leccy to charge the things. Simplezzs
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+OK lets say it slowly for you
let me say it even more slowly for you
There is no abundance of cheap electricity in the UK.
yes there is - at night. Night is that dark time when everyone goes to bed and doesent use electricity
It is my belief that there is in fact a shortage of the stuff and a shortage that gets moreacute every year due to increaseing consumer demand in a growing population.
during the day
Now if we are to rush down the road of the electric car we are going to find that we don't have the leccy to charge the things. Simplezzs
except at night - when everyone has gone to bed and are not using electricity and are not using their cars. ooo I know - Lets charge them up then!
Now its not difficult is it?
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Mr X - please listen to AE, he's making it quite clear for you and he's even being quite polite about it.
Just to emphasise the point a little more:
DAY TIME (when the sun is out and people are at work): possible supply issues in the future
NIGHT TIME (when the sun disappears and people go bed): actual issues TODAY with OVERSUPPLY.
Solution: increase NIGHT TIME base load by building lots of electric / petrol-electric cars that will, on the whole be charged at NIGHT. This will allow us to build MORE nuclear power stations without NIGHT TIME over-supply issues, thus helping contribute towards easing DAY TIME supply shortages when most cars are sat outside homes and offices not doing an awful lot.
The only fly in this ointment is getting the political will and public backing to build the nuclear power stations. This is why the power companies are scaremongering in the press about shortages, it's the only way to raise public awareness and remove PR obstacles to building more nuclear power.
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The way forward would be decent electric cars provided via Motability.
The qualification for motability is receipt of the Mobility component of Disability Living Allowance at the Higher Rate. Claims for DLA for Mobility must be made before age 65 (ie it is not available where mobility is limited by old age).
Edited by Bromptonaut on 01/04/2009 at 23:08
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Mr X... which is more efficient... a large power station producing vast amounts of electricity or thousands of small inefficient car engines producing small amounts of power...
Ooops, I gave the answer away....
Re the tax, same as they always do, tax something else like they will have to do when not enough people smoke... road pricing probably... though I'm sure they can think of other things if they really want to...
Edited by b308 on 02/04/2009 at 09:15
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b308
Your question is of course loaded.
What about the miles of losses through cables and distribution substations..?
When you ask the right question... but your loaded question will give the wrong answers..
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I have neither the intelligence or inclination to work out the maths, but if you transfer the total daily energy consumption of private road transport onto the national grid, surely you are going to need additional generating capacity, regardless of when people opt to charge their cars up.
Don't forget that the national grid in this country is a propped up by nuclear power stations that are 40 years old, and well past their original design life. There is also no commercially available means of generating the power for all these vehicles that doesn't carry its own major environmental burden, nuclear probably being the most acceptable of a pretty awful bunch.
Moreover though, I just don't see how the system will cope with such a massive additional burden unless it sees significant additional investment.
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Surely the point here is not electric cars v/s IC cars. It's which is most appropriate for the sort of use to which it is put. For distances an electric car cannot compete with an IC car. But for short runs from cold an electric car obviously makes the most sense. So there is a place for both and it's plain stupid to simplistically argue one against the other for all types of use.
HJ
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Exactly HJ. We need a combined approach that takes the best aspects from both technologies and put them into a usable platform at a competitive price.
The first manufacturer to do this and make it an attractive looking car that's also comfortable and well built, will clean up the market.
Toyota's Prius is almost the right idea, but it needs to be able to plug in to the mains for overnight boost charging (get the first 5-10 miles for "free"), be a lot more comfortable and sacrifice some aerodynamics to make it look prettier.
It's a stepping stone to greater things, hopefully.
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So there is a place for both and it's plain stupid to simplistically argue one against the other for all types of use. HJ
Exactly.
How many people here have more than 1 car in the family and how many of the cars need to do more than 100 miles in a day. IIRC the man from Ford said they were suitable for 90% of drivers.
We have 2 cars and SWMBO maxes outr at a 40 mile round trip - electric would do fine for her, she saw parts of the programme and wanted to know why she could not have one!
BTW
For those preaching hydrogen - the disadvantages quoted included "relies on future developnments (which may not be possible), no infrastructure, short range (1/4 economy of petrol), high cost (average over $1M per car, and cost benefit based on competing technologies not improving - and they are).
And I would not want to be sat on a hydrogen tank in an accident.
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Time to kill so
Lexus GS460 Kerb weight 1695-1735kg
Lexus GS460H Kerb weight 1865-1930kg
So difference is 200kg or in real terms three adults.
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The point that the television programme made was that the electric car was perfectly acceptable to quite a large number of people.
The programme concentrated on the State of California and GM's electric car, although passing reference was made to Ford and Honda.
A significant percentage of the population found that the limited range was not a problem. The electric car in California didn't fail, it didn't die, it was killed, appararently by a combination of various vested interests.
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b308 Your question is of course loaded.
Nor really, the discussion on this thread is about whether electric cars should be brought in in large numbers... it seems to be accepted (later in the thread) that most cars do short journeys for most of their time... I'd have thought however you measure it, that one large power station charging x thousand electric cars for those journeys would be far more efficient that running x thousand ic engines?
Or looking at it from another angle, if you wanted to produce x amount of electricity (a large amount, btw!) surely one large power station would be more efficient than numerous small engines?
Edited by b308 on 03/04/2009 at 09:12
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BTW I don't think that the Hybrid is the way forward... in fact I think its an expensive dead end...
What we really need is an electric car with a decent range, 200 miles would seem about right, and then those who need a car for longer milages on a daily basis could have an efficient petrol/diesel car and for when the rest of us need one for longer journeys we hire one...
But its getting awfully like "restricting our motoring freedoms" by going down that route... I'd be surprised if HJ would agree for a start!
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I've come rather late to this, but here are my views:
There may be a bit of a crunch in terms of electricity supply as old coal stations come off line by 2015 in response to the LCPD, and nuclear stations because they're knackered. But from the PoV of recharging electric vehicles, it's worth saying that we're probably 3 years from a half-decent plug in car suitable for non-urban use (Ampera), and it will be more years hence before there's a fleet large enough to really be causing problems for National Grid (2020-ish maybe). Remember that the driver for much of this is CO2 and emissions from conventional vehicles are falling - EVs are up against a moving target and are not competitive on cost.
If there is a serious shortfall, it will probably happen at around 5-5.30pm on a very cold, weekday in January, as this is when demand peaks (because there's still lots of commerical/industrial demand and domestic demand picks up quickly) - you can get all the demand data from nationalgrid.com (click electricity then demand data). Night-time oversupply is less of a problem now because of declining nuclear, and generators have made a lot of effort to improve flexibility of fossil generation. However, by 2030 with the nuclear new-build it could well be an issue on a windy night in summer.
The UK power system needs to get a lot cleaner, and batteries need to get a lot better before it's worth doing a mainstream battery car. A battery Mondeo with a range near that of a petrol version would probably weigh an additional tonne with current battery technologies, and might well be around 180-200gCO2/km based on the UK generation mix (saw another manufacturer's design study), which shows the kind of progress in clean energy and batteries that is needed.
MadF: Good point to raise on distribution losses, however I believe that for National Grid it's around 2%, and the distribution networks it's about 5%, so it's not horrendous.
Long-term, I think the future is electric for most vehicles because it's possible that sometime in the 2030s we can have an essentially zero-carbon grid based on wind, nuclear, coal with CCS and marine (steering clear of whether society is willing to pay for it, or perhaps more accurately, the costs of NOT paying for it, because that's another issue).
I'm sceptical about hydrogen, simply because it's very inefficient to make it from clean & green sources via electrolysis of water - much less than 50%, so even a good fuel cell hitting 60% efficiency is still less than 30% well-to-wheel, whereas using the national grid and a decent battery may be about double that. H2 also has very low energy per unit volume, compared to hydrocarbon fuels.
AE: I think that manufacturers see H2+FC as *a* way forward, not the only way. I see their maneuvering as effectively a massive hedging/risk mitigation exercise, so most are backing almost everything to some extent. And that's also because all fuels, and both evolutionary and revolutionary technologies have a part to play.
Snakey: Agree - the Prius has been a commercial demonstration to date - i.e. big enough numbers to understand all of the issues with producing at scale.
Hillman - I agree a pure EV should be much more reliable- far fewer moving parts, and there will be step-change improvements in batteries. In rail applications, electricity spanks diesel on reliability every time, even with the disadvantage of all that wire to blow over in the wind.
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American technology 20 years behind as usual...
tinyurl.com/l6vno
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American technology 20 years behind as usual...
Hows that then captain chaos?
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