Electric land rover re-power

[Daan]

I have been looking at electric for quite some time. One of the things I realized was that Building a proper Ev means ditching your existing car and start from scratch. It is the only way to solve packaging and weight problems. The energy density is compared to petrol is about 1:100, so for 1 kg of petrol, you need 100 kg of battery. Of course, the set up is much more efficient, so by the time it all is up and running, this ratio is about 1:30. So there is your biggest problem. You need a massive amount of space and loadcapacity. The last thing I would use is a Landrover. All available electric cars at the moment are small, simple and light cars and still with very little range. It is a shame they arent really succesfull. Even the NICE car company (nice for no internal combustion engine) in London went bust twice I think. I mean the one place where I think an electric car would work is in london.

For anyone interested in electric cars, something to put on your christmas lists is a dvd called 'who killed the electric car'.

We are miles away from an electric offroader unfortunately...

Daan

[The Badger]

Hey elbekko

Look, I was not attacking you and your comments, so making a dig at me it not really valid.

Anyhow, back to the topic.

You can recycle batteries, the process to make a battery is no where near as bad as making oil / petrol / deisel.

Here is something you can read about how oil is made, so you know - Crude Oil

And here is something about batteries - Battery

So both power sources have a process, now what happens after this, well petrol and diesel is both burnt, which in turn causes emissions.

Batteries are not burnt, and can be recycled, the power you feed into the battery can be from a green source.

You are also right about the digging under trees issue, however regardless of battery of or, this must not happen. Mainly because tress make oxygen, you know that stuff you breath in every day, all day. Anyhow, I am sure you have another comeback, however the argument is complicated and I can't answer all the questions as I don't have the time.

Have a good one / choose your own gods.

[santalars]

All industrial Hydrogen is currently produced from natural gas. Not water and electricity.

The production of Hydrogen from water is too expensive and ineffective. Thats why the fossil fuel industry is supporting the Hydrogen path.

My vote goes to the batteries.

However it will always be a compromise.

[simonr]

I think trying to build an EV with the same range as a liquid fueled vehicle is a waste of effort.

Before I started building my Freelander I realised that my average daily mileage was only 10 miles. If I had an EV with a 10 mile range, I could save about 80% of the diesel I currently buy. If I had a 20 mile range that only increases to 85% and 100 mile range to 89%. I would need a 350 mile range to cover 100%.

Therefore, a low cost vehicle with a limited range gives the best payback so long as you have the space for two vehicles.

Unfortunately when you look at the conversion losses, weight and cost, running a diesel generator to charge the batteries while you drive is a waste of time! The electric propulsion is using 30kw or so. Think about the size of a 30kva generator. It's more practical/viable to have the engine drive the wheels. It's something that is often suggested - but there is a reason it is rarely, if ever, used.

Having limited power and range certainly concentrates you on driving efficiently! You get immediate feedback (from your ammeter) on how much juce each action is taking. You start to notice how much power you loose at traffic lights versus roundabouts for example. How even 'sleeping policemen' or the condition of the road surface can make a difference. Gentle acceleration and braking help a lot. All things that can be applied to fossil fueled vehicles too. The upshot is that some of your saving is due to the different way of driving that is forced upon you.

Based on electricity being generated at about 0.56kg CO2 per kWh of electricity, my Freelander generates 88g CO2 per Km. That's not fantastic - but it's pretty good compared to most fossil fuel, even hybrid vehicles. The cradle to grave footprint is also improved by the vehicle largely being built from scrap!

That is 0.282 kWh per mile. That is roughly 1.9 pence per mile or the equivalent of 263 miles per gallon in terms of cost (based on 1 litre of Diesel being £1.10).

No brainer!

I have a honking big Fork Lift motor sat on my drive if anyone is interested .....

Si

[elbekko]

Hey elbekko

Look, I was not attacking you and your comments, so making a dig at me it not really valid.

I can't really see where I did that, but if I did, that was not my intention and my apologies for that.

You can recycle batteries, the process to make a battery is no where near as bad as making oil / petrol / deisel.

True.

Here is something you can read about how oil is made, so you know - Crude Oil

And here is something about batteries - Battery

I'm not seeing all that much information there on the exact process, and the chemicals/minerals they release, but I'll take your word for it then.

So both power sources have a process, now what happens after this, well petrol and diesel is both burnt, which in turn causes emissions.

Batteries are not burnt, and can be recycled, the power you feed into the battery can be from a green source.

Recycling still takes up resources. You can't recycle everything, and although Wikipedia claims otherwise, I'm sure the recycling process isn't 100% clean and isolated.

You are also right about the digging under trees issue, however regardless of battery of or, this must not happen. Mainly because tress make oxygen, you know that stuff you breath in every day, all day.

And who's going to stop them? The people that make batteries aren't some hippie gods, they're just companies like the oil companies. They'll dig up what they want, and get away with it too.

[Superpants]

I have been working on electric vehicle projects professionally for the past 18 months- it’s an area where pretty much all the main OEMs are working hard on, and over the next few years expect to see a whole range of new vehicles appearing. Some are taking an existing base vehicle platform and integrating the drive, battery and controls, giving them a quick development cycle, but potentially compromising range as the packaging constraints restrict the battery size. Others are taking the ground up approach , which yields benefits in range, but increases the development cycle. Realistically I don’t believe we see mass market penetration (more than 1 million cars on the road in the UK) until about 10 years from now.

Most commercial products have focused on using one of the Li-Ion technologies (of which there are several competing types), but with two distinct camps over the cell type. Some (most notably the Tesla) use standard 18650 cells (as used in laptops- similar size to AAs). These have the advantage of a mature supply chain, and hence easily available, at reasonable cost, and with known properties (ageing being particularly important). The biggest down side is the number of individual connections to be made- there are approx 6800 cells in the Tesla battery pack. This means a lot of labour is required, there are a lot of cells to monitor by the battery management system, and probably technically most important, the risk of a loose connection is increased.

Many manufacturers are therefore using much larger individual cells. This reduces the number of connections needed, potentially has a higher energy density and should result in a lower cost in the long term. As these cells are largely being developed for the application, they are not yet readily available, and they have a higher cost.

The question over the environmental credentials of the batteries is an important one to be raised, however the amount of metallic lithium (and cobalt which is the other main constituent) is small compared to the amount of aluminium and steel in a normal car. A very large proportion comes from Canada, so there are good environmental controls in place. All we practically end up doing is moving where on the planet we dig the hole! Add to that the fact that the batteries are recyclable, and I don’t see the battery being any worse environmentally than what it replaces. At present a bigger worry is over the supply of the rare earth metals for the magents (Lanthanum and Niodynium), as there is only one commercial mine for these (in California) that is outside China.

My personal view is that although battery capacity increases and cell price decrease will make a big difference, the biggest advantage will be gained when someone manages to create a cell that has a much wider operating temperature range, Typical Li-Ion cells have an efficient operating temperature range between approximately 0 and 35 celsius. This isn't a problem for most usual applications (phones, laptops etc) as we expect them to only operate normally in temperatures where we are comfortable. For a car, even just restricted to Europe, we really need to have an operating range of at least -20 to +50 Celsius. In reality this means that the battery needs heating and cooling. Heating is acheived by some kind of resistance heater, with the cooling achieved using forced air, or an aircon pump. Running either of these requires power- which can be in the order of several kilowatts- quite an issue when the battery only has a capacity of a few 10s of kWh! In addition, these systems add a significant amount of weight and complexity (could include aircon pump, heater, coolant pump, heat exchangers, pipework, coolant, cabling and control). If all this could be removed the system could either be lighter or have greater capacity and reduce cost. A side effect could be packaging batteries distributed round the vehicle to make better use of space.

There is also life in the lead acid battery yet- There are recent advances in technology that give energy densities approximately equivalent to a Nimh battery. With a simple manufacturing process, very little battery management and no heating or cooling required, they could be a practical proposition for some time yet, particularly in applications such as buses and delivery vans where the packaging space is available. Details of the technology are here; Ebonex (no association!)

Another thing that will be positive for electric vehicles will be public acceptance of how we actually use our vehicles. Something like 80% of all daily mileage in the UK is less than 50 miles (IIRC). This means that for most peoples use an electric vehiole with a range of 100 miles would be more than adequete- as already proven by Simon. On the days when we need to go further, then other options could be used- public transport, hire cars, pool cars (Zipcar or if you are in a two car family, one electric and one hybrid.

I think I'll leave it there for now!!

[simonr]

Well done Mike!

Si

[landroversforever]

The catering company i work for part time has a little 'Mega' electric van for trundling around site great fun

[Pete Attryde]

Slightly OT, but whilst flicking through the channels on sky this morning I came across Trophee Andros Electrique (French Ice Racing) which is a series for electric only vehicles on Motors TV.

Very odd watching a car race (especially the start) with no engine noise just a high pitch whine.

Pete.

[The Badger]

Another point to add on the electric front, good solar panels are getting more readily available and in the public realm.

Last year a dutch institute, Delft created the fastest solar panel car. Now Delft develop the solar panels that are used on satellites/ space shuttle things like this, the ones they create are 98% efficient!

The ones they used on the car they created, were the seconds / cast off, they were on 50% efficient. Think 5 years from now actually how good such tech will be, i.e the paint on the whole car will be able to conduct / charge. Just another point to raise.

Not saying it will give you all the power, but it will help allot.

[xychix]

10 years past, things have changed somewhat but I'm still not converting my Series III to electric for ±6K euro's

[FridgeFreezer]

On 12/13/2009 at 12:22 AM, The Badger said:

Now Delft develop the solar panels that are used on satellites/ space shuttle things like this, the ones they create are 98% efficient!

As this has just been dragged up... I really bet they're not making 98% efficient solar panels as the absolute world record for solar panel efficiency (in a lab in  ideal conditions) is about 47%, real-world is still around 20-25% if you're lucky.

[Snagger]

14 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

As this has just been dragged up... I really bet they're not making 98% efficient solar panels as the absolute world record for solar panel efficiency (in a lab in  ideal conditions) is about 47%, real-world is still around 20-25% if you're lucky.

I have been reading a lot of EV, battery and PV articles over the last year.  Current figures for real world PV are average of about 10%, with the newest tech, very expensive stuff around 20%.  More encouraging is the battery development, specifically solid state batteries and sodium ion batteries.  Most of both types under development have over double the capacity of Lithium ion batteries, with much greater cycle capacity, far better temperature resilience and fast charges.  The best bit is that sodium based batteries should also be very cheap as their resources mostly come from sea water.  More than range anxiety, the limiting factor for EVs is the cost of the batteries - if they can make batteries at 1/4 the cost with twice the energy capacity and longer life, then it’s a done deal.

[Gazzar]

Are motors going to change much? Musk was hinting at significant changes in his cars electrics for this year, but how much can you do with a copper wound motor, I wonder?

[Cynic-al]

Yeah but remember a petrol engine at 35% efficient is 35% of £1.30 per litre so going from 35% to 45% would be a good direct saving. A solar panel is 10% efficient at £0.00 per sun ray so the cost is more based on how many panels to get your 100kw charge and their life span. Going from 10% to 20% efficient reduced the number of panels you need upfront but it doesn't effect the running cost as directly. 

Using sea water to make batteries? The perfect solution! It'll stop the sea rising save the polar bears... and Withernsea! Not sure the underwater data centres will help with the temperature though.

The big improvements we have seen with motors at work are more accurate manufacture means smaller air gaps and more efficiency, they're lighter too. Also motors driving hydraulic pumps tend to be servo motors so the machine can match supply to demand. Traditional motors used to run flat out all the time and just pump the unused oil back to the tank. The servo motors maintain a small excess flow just to lubricate the valves and so on. The machines have heat exchangers that we send cooled water through and they have the valve open nearly all the time to keep the oil down to the 45 degree operating temperature. When we went onto the servo drive machines we had to have a warming cycle put in the software as the oil wouldn't stay up at 45 degrees during the normal operating cycle. So that's an improvement in feedback, processing speed and control software more than anything. 

 

[FridgeFreezer]

3 hours ago, Gazzar said:

Are motors going to change much? Musk was hinting at significant changes in his cars electrics for this year, but how much can you do with a copper wound motor, I wonder?

TBH as Cynic-Al says the motors are not the big problem, they're always getting better of course but they're already pretty damn good as we've been powering stuff with electric for a loooong time now.

I hope snagger's optimism about batteries is well founded, there's a lot of people throwing a lot of stuff at battery tech nowadays but there's been no major breakthroughs for a long time, mostly just polishing the existing lithium tech and (as Tesla is) going for economies of scale.

[Ex Member]

2 hours ago, Cynic-al said:

... so the cost is more based on how many panels to get your 100kw charge and their life span.

So a 100 kW-h charge.  Let's say you live somewhere sunny.  Best case, average 8 hours at capacity.  100kw-h / 8 hours = 12.5 kW of panels, to support the one car being charged once per day.

Say about 15000 pounds for a grid tie system of that size.  20000 for off grid. Then 5 to 10% annual cost for replacement and degradation.

 

[FridgeFreezer]

You're assuming someone's using a full tank of electricity every day there. 100kWh is enough to do a lot of miles.

I can see the solar-plus-"house battery" setup getting popular especially as used EV batteries pile of and give us stacks of affordable cells with a fair bit of life left in them. The grid would certainly thank you for it, smoothing out peak loads and/or re-charging when the sun's out / wind's blowing would make a huge difference to the way the system works.

[Cynic-al]

I believe the most panels they will allow on a domestic supply where your back feeding through the meter is 4kw. Dont know why that limit is imposed though. 

Nissan are putting their ex vehicle batteries on the grid. There was talk of 'smart' chargers which talk to the grid via your 'smart' electric meter. When you plug your car in to charge it doesnt just charge at the maximum rate, it charges based on supply availability, even taking energy back out of your car if generation is low. The charger learns your pattern of living so ensures the car is charged for your usual get up time. Let's hope you never have an emergency! 

[Ex Member]

3 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

You're assuming someone's using a full tank of electricity every day there. 100kWh is enough to do a lot of miles.

No I was not assuming that.  It was an example.  You can apply the appropriate math to your own situation.

[Peaklander]

My sister's Tesla Model 3 has 55KWh of battery capacity I think. There is something in the re-charge software that prevents a full charge unless a "peak charge" is required to maximise the range. This is something to do with battery preservation but I don't know what.

So at this limit of 80% or whatever it was, the range is a little less than 300 miles. It took two nights to charge back up as she plugged into my garage and was limited to 10A.

[TheRecklessEngineer]

I've been looking at this for some time. Currently, the cheapest drive train/battery combo can be bought in a used Nissan leaf. 80kW matches an older LR quite nicely.

There's a guy here in NZ who's beating me to it. He's got a Leaf motor mated to a Land Rover gearbox (I forget which variety). I'm going to be watching with interest.

[Cynic-al]

9 hours ago, Peaklander said:

My sister's Tesla Model 3 has 55KWh of battery capacity I think. There is something in the re-charge software that prevents a full charge unless a "peak charge" is required to maximise the range. This is something to do with battery preservation but I don't know what.

So at this limit of 80% or whatever it was, the range is a little less than 300 miles. It took two nights to charge back up as she plugged into my garage and was limited to 10A.

My conventional car battery on my diesel car doesn't charge beyond 80% to allow capacity for the 'regenerative braking' via the smart alternator. They call it a mild hybrid.  With a volt meter in the cigarette lighter you can see the voltage sits at around high 12s then when you lift your foot off the accelerator it goes up to high 14s. It's great for a caravan as it also discharges your caravan battery to 80%  You can buy a box to go on the caravan to overcome this. Some sort of DC-DC supply with outputs for the fridge and battery. The car also struggles to turn over on a cold morning so they clearly haven't adapted the starter motor to cope. The voltage when I get in in a morning is usually around 11.8v.

Maybe the regenerative braking is partly why they don't allow a full charge on the tesla? 

[FridgeFreezer]

43 minutes ago, Cynic-al said:

The car also struggles to turn over on a cold morning so they clearly haven't adapted the starter motor to cope.

I'm willing to bet the alternator IS the starter, and also drives a little bit when you floor it hence the "mild hybrid" label.

[Cynic-al]

Definitely a separate starter and the alternator doesn't drive. It's not officially a 'mild hybrid', that's just me being grumpy as both my car annoys me as does the phrase mild hybrid.