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Anti-diesel measures in the UK - magazine article


Snagger

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For electric vehicles; Iong term I don't think batteries are going to be the main problem, they are improving albeit slowly. Its going to be how we as a whole generate energy in the first place. Personally I don't see wind and solar as the long term solution. Imagine if battery technolgy was good enough for many city drivers but we continue to do nothing about energy sources and lots of people all start plugging their cars in to the mains to charge them.

This is an extemely interesting TED talk, 13ish minutes long....

 

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Actually, the power generation infrastructure is more than adequate for electric cars, overnight it is barely trickling along, which is when you would charge your vehicles anyways.....

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33 minutes ago, monkie said:

This is what I'm getting at given we generate most of electricity by burning things:

 

driving-diesel-car-i-feel-so-dirty-driving-electric-car-i-feel-so-clean-comparison.jpg

Missing the glaring reality that power stations are three to four times more efficient for greenhouse emissions and don't produce the nastier particulates that internal combustion engines do. That's also ignoring renewable generation and an impressively efficient distribution network that doesn't rely on large numbers of large diesel engines. I could go on... 

Sorry to single you out, I know its a flippant joke in this context, but it's also utter nonsense I see repeated as fact far too often :ph34r: please don't take it personally! 

Much as it will pain me to see old Land Rovers dying, I'll be very glad to see the back of large numbers of diesels. They are truly vile things IMHO. 

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4 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

Much like nuclear fusion, plenty of miracle batteries are in development and "just a few years away"... certainly all current battery technologies suck for practical electric vehicles and are only improving by small increments.

I daily-drive a diesel and just avoid London 'cos it's a sh**hole, seems to work OK :rolleyes:

That works for me too, so far.  Most towns with restricted centres like London, Cambridge and York have park and ride or public transport systems which are cheaper and easier than driving in and parking anyway.

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   Stole my point  , @lo-fi
So much is renewable, or nuclear (though the government like to lump the two into one nowadays). And it is only getting better with Hinckley soon around the corner.
At the moment, all cars bar a tiny few are hydrocarbon burning things, you can't say the same about the National Grid supply.

I am looking forward to electric cars becoming mainstream, it will make my trips into London (by train) so much more pleasant, I won't end up with black nostrils or hay fever symptoms in the middle winter for days after.

Then I can come home to Somerset breathe similarly clean air and then fire up the V8.

 

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39 minutes ago, lo-fi said:

Missing the glaring reality that power stations are three to four times more efficient for greenhouse emissions and don't produce the nastier particulates that internal combustion engines do. That's also ignoring renewable generation and an impressively efficient distribution network that doesn't rely on large numbers of large diesel engines. I could go on... 

Sorry to single you out, I know its a flippant joke in this context, but it's also utter nonsense I see repeated as fact far too often :ph34r: please don't take it personally! 

Much as it will pain me to see old Land Rovers dying, I'll be very glad to see the back of large numbers of diesels. They are truly vile things IMHO. 

Don't worry, I don't take this personally.

However I'm sorry, but I don't agree with it being utter nonsense. This is more complex than people realise. Flippant yes I agree , but there is a lot of truth in it. There has been much research published in scientific journals (not news papers) to say that an electric vehicle is only as green as their power source. Generating power by burning coal, oil or gas does put out alot of CO2 plus other gasses.

If you run an electric car in a country that predominantly generates electricity from burning coal (China, Australia, South Africa) then you are doing no better interms of emmissions than an average petrol car doing 30 mpg. In the UK with our current energy mix an electric car is as good as a car doing 50-60 mpg. In Switzerland which is overall low carbon then you are probably doing equivalent to over 100mpg.

Watch that video that I posted earlier. We are not at all in a clean energy revolution. Renewable energy is not 100% carbon free, it does not generate power all the time and it is still a minority contribution to how we generate power in the UK.

I stand by my opinion; any government effectively forcing the public to ditch conventional vehicles in favour of plug in vehicles from an environmental point of view needs to first address how we generate electricity long term.

 

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4 hours ago, Bowie69 said:

Actually, the power generation infrastructure is more than adequate for electric cars, overnight it is barely trickling along, which is when you would charge your vehicles anyways.....

Yes.  It works out actually.  The plants are oversized to handle the daytime loads and run at low efficiency at night.  Solar provides extra daily power which unloads the main producers so that they can run smaller plants and be more efficient.  The power plants burn a lot cleaner and can be placed outside of urban centers so that pollution is not concentrated.

People do not have to be "against" everything. There is room for everything.

 

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4 hours ago, Bowie69 said:

Actually, the power generation infrastructure is more than adequate for electric cars, overnight it is barely trickling along, which is when you would charge your vehicles anyways.....

I read somewhere that the distribution infrastruture would collapse if rapid charging was widely adopted in a small area - it looks like the Tesla chargers pull 40A or 70A at full whack on single phase - if you have a cluster of people who fitted the fast chargers eg. on a housing estate fed from a single substation, then it would cause the substation to trip as it wouldn't be able to handle the load.

Not sure how accurate it was, but I can see someone having to pour money into the infrastructure to cope with the extra load, which will probably end up coming from our pockets in one way or another :(

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Tesla fast chargers like that are not really for home use, but service stations. Where they are installed, and there are a few in this county now, they use a massive battery pack as storage, charge on night rate and top up during the day = cheap electricity.

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Just now, Bowie69 said:

Tesla fast chargers like that are not really for home use, but service stations. Where they are installed, and there are a few in this county now, they use a massive battery pack as storage, charge on night rate and top up during the day = cheap electricity.

You have to plug your car in when you get home - either with a 32A caravan type socket, or a dedicated (ie. faster) charger.

With the caravan plug it'll sit drawing 32A continuously for 12-18 hours from flat dependant on the battery size of the Tesla, or more with a faster charger.

I'm not sure what A / KW/h a small substation is rated at, but you can start to foresee problems with the infrastructure if everyone gets back from work at 6PM and plugs their cars in...

I know Tesla are trying to get round the problem with their solar roof tiles / powerwall storage systems etc, but they are pretty big money for the average home user...

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The power wall isn’t that bad a price? And you’d expect it soon to be offset against saved cost of petrol or diesel.

For where it comes from - lots of scientists cite figures along the lines of that enough solar energy hits the earth in a day than we use in a year from  fossil fuels 

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For most commuting, not all, most, topping up the battery overnightwill be fine. V2G systems will probably be fitted to park and ride, so your car will power the grid during daylight, leaving enough to get home. Weekends will be different, but the grid has surplus then, so no big deal.

 

As with most things, the future will be a bit if this and a bit of that.

I'm quite happy to fit an electric motor to my series if it does what the diesel does now, long trips with a big trailer, sometimes international.

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I suppose there aren't many Marina's Allegro's Escorts Cortinas, Sentinel, Fowlers in general use for regular commuting today - but they are still about preserved and used for pleasure. I think there will still be room for old restored classics  which will include our Land Rover products. The use of the Diesel Land Rover for commercial use will change and evolve with trends, business will invest in newer technology and pass its cost on to its customers, individuals will struggle through as we always have to.

Reducing the number of diesels on the road is probably a good initiative based on what the experts tell us today. If I live long enough I'm sure that I will read that past experts were wrong and stupid and we should all be changing to a new technology to prevent thousands of premature deaths because of our past mistakes.

It would be useful to start lobbying government to provision in legislation for the continued preservation and use of our motoring heritage, before its too late.

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I would absolutely love to go electric - the torque, smoothness, quietness, ease of servicing and lack of fluid leaks would be wonderful, nevermind the emissions (direct, at least).  The problems are infrastructure, range and cost. 

Certainly, infrastructure is doable, especially if the comments above are accurate.  The 70A figure for a fast charge may be for the US 110V figure, in which case most other nations would only use half that current.  70A , even at every house in a town, is not enormous, given the appliances running int hat house already like TVs, fridges, washing machines and so on, but an ADDITIONAL 70A is huge, probably double or more the load.  Few people need to charge their car in 15 minutes, though, so there is no need for those superchargers except at service stations.  A sow charge probably runs at less than 15A.  So, maybe the bulk of the infrastructure is ready?

Range?  Well, battery tech is coming along all the time.  Energy density is not enough yet unless you have huge batteries. The trouble is, it's so damned expensive to do that.  It's not the weight that is the issue for LRs, but the cost of the batteries.

There are other costs, like the conversion itself, but those aren't bad, comparable it appears to a high quality engine rebuild.  But once done, motoring costs are very cheap.  So, it becomes a cash flow problem.  Unfortunately, few people are likely to be able to stump up the cash to make that leap, and I can't see a government loan system being made up.  If they offered that in place of scrapage schemes, then that would help.  But the battery cost is still going to be too much.

So, do we hold off conversions back to petrol in the hope viable, affordable electric conversions become available before we're forced to retire diesel vehicles?  It seems the most obvious choice, but there is no chance of it being affordable in the near future for many of us.

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19 minutes ago, Snagger said:

Certainly, infrastructure is doable, especially if the comments above are accurate.  The 70A figure for a fast charge may be for the US 110V figure, in which case most other nations would only use half that current.  70A , even at every house in a town, is not enormous, given the appliances running int hat house already like TVs, fridges, washing machines and so on, but an ADDITIONAL 70A is huge, probably double or more the load.  Few people need to charge their car in 15 minutes, though, so there is no need for those superchargers except at service stations.  A sow charge probably runs at less than 15A.  So, maybe the bulk of the infrastructure is ready?

charge_8.png.37d8d4e93530f58f1f4461ce75a01c64.png

(lifted from the the UK tesla owners club - https://teslaownersgroup.co.uk/kb/charging-at-home-guide).

Charging a P85D on a 13A socket will take between 24-30h, a 32A socket would be 10-12h so a more realistic option for most people.

As you say, that's additional load on the network - so you get home, plug your EV in and it's happily sucking 32A down, you go in, turn the oven on, have a shower when it's warming up and you trip your main fuse out, everyone on your street does the same and it trips out the regional breaker..

I'm not being negative about electric cars - until a competing technology comes along they are definitely going to be a big part of our future - but as a country stuff needs to improve to be able to support it - more power stations, better distribution, power storage etc...

 

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4 minutes ago, =jon= said:

 

As you say, that's additional load on the network - so you get home, plug your EV in and it's happily sucking 32A down, you go in, turn the oven on, have a shower when it's warming up and you trip your main fuse out, everyone on your street does the same and it trips out the regional breaker..

I'm not being negative about electric cars - until a competing technology comes along they are definitely going to be a big part of our future - but as a country stuff needs to improve to be able to support it - more power stations, better distribution, power storage etc...

 

Good info in the link and chart.  So, the 70A was not on the weedy US 110v.  

Still, the power generation capacity exists, since almost all cars would be charged at low rate overnight, while the majority of offices, factories, retail and other heavy power users are closed down.  The local distribution would probably need a fair bit of work, though.

What concerns me, apart from the cost, is the materials needed to make the batteries.  All that open mining to get the materials, and then the very dangerous waste when the batteries wear out, are a very serious issue.  Flying across Western Australia, it's quite apparent how devastating it is.

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Lots of risk, though - firstly, it's cryogenic, so a leak could cause serious freezing injuries.  Second, it's an extremely volatile fuel.  Third, it burns clear, so fires can't be seen except in infrared.  Fourth, storage is an issue, though perhaps not much worse than LPG.

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Super capacitors?

But who drives on a full tank every day? I fill the commuter car once or twice a month. It's the long trips that stop the electric cars being viable for me. Getting off a ferry at 2am with an empty battery doesn't appeal. And at present ferry AC isn't clean enough to charge cars. 

When the infrastructure is there to fast charge a car on a long trip, over a meal, say, the dynamic changes a lot.

We've come a long way in ten years, in ten years time a retro conversion will probably make sense.

G.

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There are 22 public chargers in Bristol, according to the local council. I checked this morning, as I'm toying with the idea of a Nissan leaf. 

At present it doesn't add up for me, but maybe in five years?

G.

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Ful batteries would be the norm, Gaz.  This is the range issue again.  Manufacturers of the more expensive models like Tesla typically claim 200-250 miles on a full charge, but that is steady driving without needing lights, heaters or aircon.  I'd be shocked if they manage over 80 miles here in Dubai with the ac demand.  So, for commuters, nightly charging will be necessary.  For long journeys, recharging at service stations is also necessity, but the quick chargers can allegedly do almost a full charge in 20 minutes, less time than it takes to finish a meal and tea in the food court and be horrified by the state of the toilets.  So, they are viable for normal driving use as long as motorway services have the quick chargers.  The portable slow chargers can be used at destination for the return, even though it's a nuisance having cables across pavements, which could become an increasing problem with street parking.

Get the range with a reasonable battery pack up to 500 miles and get the battery price down to under 20% of what they are now and I'm in!

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