The new Defender is now pointless

[smallfry]

If all this REALLY is about air quality and pollution, why is it that the Elephant(s) in the room are conveniently ignored. 

Aviation and shipping.

Aviation spreading pollutants evenly into the atmosphere ? Dumping TONS of fuel in flight ? How many aircraft in the air at one time ?

I am told by a friend in aircraft engine refurbishment that your average airliner produces around the same amount of NOX during the take off run (not climb) as 6000 diesel cars do in 0NE hour. But of course nothing will be done about that because that will affect the world economy.

Then there are the cruise liners...……… another completely unnecessary polluter 

[landroversforever]

11 hours ago, smallfry said:

Then there are the cruise liners...……… another completely unnecessary polluter 

Bring back sail power!  

[FridgeFreezer]

They were also banging on about banning woodburners in London too as they're supposedly worse than driving 8 HGV's up & down the street all day all those trendy folks will have to throw their £1000 log-burners out.

 

Anyway, this has gone miles off topic and is starting to get a bit Daily Mail

[monkie]

40 minutes ago, FridgeFreezer said:

They were also banging on about banning woodburners in London too as they're supposedly worse than driving 8 HGV's up & down the street all day all those trendy folks will have to throw their £1000 log-burners out.

 

Anyway, this has gone miles off topic and is starting to get a bit Daily Mail

Now you've said it, I think it was the Daily Mail where I read about the wood burners!

[Snagger]

I like the idea of electric vehicles - massive torque, good performance, smooth and quiet, and clean in cities.  Power generation isn't anywhere near the problem it's made out to be, as Bowie well cited, and while obtaining the raw materials for new batteries is less than green, so is burning fossil fuels, but at least much of the materials in the batteries are recyclable.  As for the green credentials of renewable power sources, wind and solar are not at all reliable or efficient.  I read repeatedly, although I can't assess how accurately, that more energy goes into the manufacture and installation of those power sources than they return to the grid.  That sounds plausible, certainly for solar at more than 45 degrees latitude.  Will fossil fuel power station emissions from charging EVs exceed those of IC engines?  I have no idea, but they are easier to filter or process, and at least EVs don't use electrical power to sit in traffic, so it seems likely that widespread EV use may reduce total emissions.  As for practicality, for most users, yes, batteries are now generally good enough to be practical.  That's still not enough for a lot of us wit our atypical vehicles and uses, but it's coming.

As for other methods of travel, yes, jet engines do create a lot of emissions per hour, but look at the passenger/distance figures and it's not as damning as mentioned above.  Of course, there is no need for the manufacture, distribution and laying of hundreds of thousands of miles of rock, steel or tarmac, so the environmental factors in the infrastructure are cleaner.  As for dumping fuel in flight, that only happens where an aircraft has to land shortly after take off without flying the planned route, typically in emergencies, and is very rare - I've done it once in 21 years of flying jets, and that's above the average.  The same regarding infrastructure goes for shipping.  Rail is filthy in that respect.  But pointing fingers at other is not the way to improve matters.

Anyway, the Rivian looks good in a lot of ways, but it's payload appears too small.  I'm not keen on the aesthetics either - far too bling for me.  I'd love to electrify an old Defender or Series vehicle - there's plenty of spaces in the chassis for batteries and the payload should still be good even after installing them.  Best of both worlds - a capable and charismatic vehicle with the advantages of EVs.  They just need to double current ranges and I'll be on the hook.

[PaulN]

Very interesting thread this and nicely put @Snagger  😊

With current specs and range I'd have a 'Rivian' in a heartbeat if I could afford it but.....to leckyfi my '90  now there a thought!  🤔

[Bowie69]

1 hour ago, PaulN said:

.to leckyfi my '90  now there a thought!

Got a spare £20K to spend on your £10K defender?

Then it may be worth it.

 

[Ex Member]

13 minutes ago, Bowie69 said:

Got a spare £20K to spend on your £10K defender?

Then it may be worth it.

This is the main downfall of EV.  EV vehicles are double the price of ICE vehicles.

The second problem is battery life.  10 to 15 years in, they will all require new batteries.  The battery cost will far exceed the value of the vehicle at that age and thus they will be scrapped, requiring a completely new vehicle to be manufactured and that is the majority of the emissions and energy used.

[FridgeFreezer]

It's a bit disparate now, but I can see a future green lobby for interchangeable batteries or at least open standards - after all there's far fewer arguments they can make about that compared to things like engine swaps. I could even imagine aftermarket replacement battery companies springing up.

I'd spend the money to electrify a classic car any day if it was viable, but as it is unless you have a decent sized vehicle like a RRC, AND are willing to spend a hell of a lot on fairly unproven technology (some random person's battery pack, or "recycled" Tesla/Prius/Leaf packs) it's a bit tricky. It's a bit like the wild west of LPG installs at the moment - it could be great, or it could burn your car down.

[Snagger]

Tesla are using removed, aged batteries to make domestic and grid powerpacks, recycling the batteries directly where their capacity is reduced but they are still viable.  Obviously, energy density doesn't matter as much in a fixed installation.  If that repurposing and later recycling takes off, it should feed back to reduce initial battery costs.

I'm not satisfied with EV range just yet, but I think they're close to making it viable for those of us who will be driving around 1st world countries.  For those who want to drive across Africa, South America or the deserts, well, I think you'll have to wait a bit longer.

The concept of converting a Series or Defender is expensive.  I'm following a FB group lead by an Aussie (they lead the way on vegoil conversions and now seem to be pioneering this) called Don Incol.  He turned a Lightweight into an EV very successfully at the cost of $15,000.  I think that may be AUD, which would be quite cheap, but even at USD, he now has a vehicle that will suffer no appreciable engine wear in its existence.  At worst, he may have to replace the brushes, if the motor even has them, but I think the AC motors are inductive, so don't even have brushes to wear.  What costs he will bear in batteries look to be less than fuel and normal maintenance costs for a petrol powered SIII.  He is chuffed to bits with the result - 1st and 2nd are redundant in normal driving, and 3rd is only needed if he wants brisk acceleration.  Being an 88", he has less battery space and so his range with what are essentially home made batteries is under 100km, but with a little more investment and a 109 or 110's space, longer range would be easy to achieve, at least on par with a petrol model.  For now, you'd still be constrained to areas with electric charging facilities (including regular mains sockets for slow charges), but charging points are slowly spreading in the 1st world.  And he manages to commute on power generated from his domestic solar panels, so he gets the electricity for free - we in the UK might struggle to make that work economically, especially after recent regulation changes over selling back power to the grid and the dropping of grants for solar installation, but for some, it looks like a very good long term investment.

[Tanuki]

4 hours ago, Red90 said:

The second problem is battery life.  10 to 15 years in, they will all require new batteries.  The battery cost will far exceed the value of the vehicle at that age and thus they will be scrapped, requiring a completely new vehicle to be manufactured and that is the majority of the emissions and energy used.

The sane way to go is to have some sort of easily-swappable, standardised battery-packs.  Which you lease from your power-company rather than buying them as part of the vehicle.

Then - you drive up to a filling-station, the robotic pit-mechanic drops the empty battery-pack from your car and lifts a new fully-charged one into place. You drive away a minute later with another 250 miles range, and the various electronics sort-out how much to bill you.

Not personally 'owning' a specific battery-built-into-the-truck is the key here.

For me the big issue with electric cars is that there's no quick-and-easy electric equivalent to the convenient 5-gallon Jerry-can-of-Diesel when your electric vehicle runs out of charge at 23:00 on a Sunday a few miles outside of Rhayader and your business means you really need to be in Exeter by 08:00 to sign your next contract...

Edited January 17, 2019 by Tanuki

[Ex Member]

And that is what would happen if we lived in a communist society.  There is no way that a standardized battery of any reasonable size would ever be designed to fit multiple cars and be easily removable.  The batteries are huge and finding places to stuff them that do not take up interior room is the whole challenge.

[monkie]

This is why I think we will have to wait for a radical change in battery design before they will really take off and start shoving petrol/diesel cars off the road. I agree with Red90, removing batteries and putting a charged one on like you do with an electric drill - I can't see that happening for many reasons. Imagine if we did reach a point where most EVs did share a common battery to allow this to happen; it would limit innovation or design change of new batteries and/or when a change did happen it would render the charging/swapping system useless.

Batteries have got to be cheaper, smaller, lighter, longer useful lifetime, charge in about the time it takes to fill a standard car with fossile fuel, and give about the same range as a tank of fuel does. I don't know if we are getting anywhere close to that with current technology. Not to mention cleaning up how electricity is made.

[Escape]

I think it was Renault that had made an easily removable battery in some prototype. As said this would avoid having to wait for it to charge but you just replace with a charged battery. Pretty much how we use battery powered tools nowadays.

[mad_pete]

https://www.halfords.com/kids-zone/ride-on-toys/electric-ride-ons/land-rover-defender-6v-electric-ride-on-car?istCompanyId=b8708c57-7a02-4cf6-b2c0-dc36b54a327e&istItemId=-xwwariiwtt&istBid=t&_$ja=tsid:94971|cid:1492666992|agid:57866634376|tid:aud-80976661069:pla-371250140596|crid:285009191502|nw:g|rnd:1387728698393750781|dvc:m|adp:1o1|mt:|loc:1007203&gclid=Cj0KCQiAj4biBRC-ARIsAA4WaFjEPhhTRE3a6HLXwJIfGUHywznNQks8-sevPvMhLEDSB2lUCSs9Tz4aArtJEALw_wcB

 

There you go. £50 for electric defender.

[Snagger]

16 hours ago, Tanuki said:

The sane way to go is to have some sort of easily-swappable, standardised battery-packs.  Which you lease from your power-company rather than buying them as part of the vehicle.

Then - you drive up to a filling-station, the robotic pit-mechanic drops the empty battery-pack from your car and lifts a new fully-charged one into place. You drive away a minute later with another 250 miles range, and the various electronics sort-out how much to bill you.

Not personally 'owning' a specific battery-built-into-the-truck is the key here.

Tesla played with that, demonstrating a robotic drive-through battery swap system that dropped the old battery through a floor aperture and fitted the new one through the same space in moments.  I don't know why they dropped it, but I suspect it may have something to do with their liability for damaged batteries that caused any problems.  But Red's comment about standardised batteries is likely the biggest factor - they would be severely limited in dimensions and mass if they were to be universal, or even able to fit all models from one brand, and that would make their range very limited.  They seem to have pursued rapid charging of a semi-permanent battery instead.

[FridgeFreezer]

6 hours ago, monkie said:

Not to mention cleaning up how electricity is made.

This is something of a fallacy though, and it always comes up in these discussions.

Generating electricity from fossil fuels in one BIG building is more efficient than burning it in a million tiny boxes, and it's easier to clean/capture/tax the emissions.

Electricity is a very good medium for powering things, as you can convert lots of things into electricity without having to change all your cars, trains, tools, etc. - if everything's electric, everything gains as you put more clean power into the grid and take old dirty power stations off it.

Yes, it may be a bit daft to be powering your Prius from electricity generated by coal, but when that coal station is switched off and replaced by something cleaner, you don't need to change your car, your charger, your network...

That's why people push for trains to be electrified - once the rails are electric, you're on a far more flexible standing than if you're relying on one particular fuel.

[monkie]

2 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

This is something of a fallacy though, and it always comes up in these discussions.

Generating electricity from fossil fuels in one BIG building is more efficient than burning it in a million tiny boxes, and it's easier to clean/capture/tax the emissions.

Electricity is a very good medium for powering things, as you can convert lots of things into electricity without having to change all your cars, trains, tools, etc. - if everything's electric, everything gains as you put more clean power into the grid and take old dirty power stations off it.

Yes, it may be a bit daft to be powering your Prius from electricity generated by coal, but when that coal station is switched off and replaced by something cleaner, you don't need to change your car, your charger, your network...

That's why people push for trains to be electrified - once the rails are electric, you're on a far more flexible standing than if you're relying on one particular fuel.

Very true that burning stuff in just a few big boxes is better than burning stuff in many more little boxes - It is also very measureable in those big boxes in terms of the carbon used to generate a given unit of electricity.

In the USA for example, the department of energy have an online calculator (here) to show you how green an EV is compared to other cars. It is state dependant because of how each state generates the electricity differently to the next. So in Idaho for example where they have a lot of hydroelectricity in the mix an EV comes out very green in terms of CO2 output per mile. If you then look at West Virginia where they use a lot of coal in their power mix, the CO2 per mile for an EV dramatically rises.

EVs win on CO2 every time compared to a petrol car but it is clear the CO2 from how the electricity is generated dramatically changes based upon how much carbon is in the energy mix. Therefore I can't agree with saying this is a fallacy - it simply isn't.

[Anderzander]

4 hours ago, Snagger said:

Tesla played with that, demonstrating a robotic drive-through battery swap system that dropped the old battery through a floor aperture and fitted the new one through the same space in moments.  I don't know why they dropped it, but I suspect it may have something to do with their liability for damaged batteries that caused any problems.  But Red's comment about standardised batteries is likely the biggest factor - they would be severely limited in dimensions and mass if they were to be universal, or even able to fit all models from one brand, and that would make their range very limited.  They seem to have pursued rapid charging of a semi-permanent battery instead.

How far apart is the lifespan of a battery pack to that of a modern car?  Cars seem to have shorter and shorter lifespans .... batteries are getting better. You’d imagine they will meet in the middle at some point - unless we really do move to a subscription model.

Some good reading on a subscription model in bicycles here: https://www.islabikes.co.uk/imagine-project/

[soutie]

Talking about changing batteries on electric cars - have a read of this article on Nio battery swap system. The company uses pop up centres and swops the battery in 5 minutes.It even includes a story on a driver driving from Beijing to Shajing and back [about 2,800 miles] and swapped the battery 16 times!

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/features/eyes-china-next-level-customer-care/

Wonder when the Western car makers come up with this sort of infrastructure to support electric cars? 

 

 

[FridgeFreezer]

I did see a thing recently about a swappable battery pack for (I think) electric mopeds, about the size of a 2L coke bottle, they just had a big vending machine thing - you pull up, plop your dead battery in a spare slot, pop out a freshly charged one and pay a small fee.

Subscription model for the battery is not a bad idea, I think Nissan or Renault do it on their EV although the £/mile stacks up like hell if you go over 5k/year.

Hopefully batteries are a simple enough concept that aftermarket ones would become commonplace - after all, it's easier than making an aftermarket replacement engine! Grab old dead batteries from the scrapper, weigh in all the dead cells and refill with fresh ones, maybe flash a bit of software to "reset" the pack and voila! Not far off what they do with recycled printer cartridges really...