Electric cars.

Not sure what you mean by "up on the technology" but I know enough to know that I'm not about to blow over £20,000 on a car only fit for short shopping trips.

Tim

I have been thinking about buying one. There is a lot of technology & things you would never think of. about them. Hard to find any answers on the internet too.

Depreciation is phenomenal, SH ones are quite reasonable.

first thing to consider is your actual usage, what trips etc. have you got off road parking for recharging. What will you do for longer trips like holidays.

a year old Nissan Leaf is still 17k and in 10 years time will be worth almost nothing, so look at 1500 a year in depreciation. Do all the math and see if it is actually good for your use. As an example, I am very taken with Toyota hybrids, yet for the use we would give it, it actually works out cheaper in the long run to keep the Lexus we have, despite it only getting 23 to the gallon.

have you looked at this site?:

lots of useful info.

The reason for that is pretty simple. The battery pack is the a major part of the cost of the car and has a definitive life. With most, it won't be economical to fit a new one when it gives up.

One way to look at this is to regard the hybrids as development prototypes, so there is as yet no economy of scale. But the conventional internal combustion engine is the established product with over 100 years of development behind it; so there's no way a new product can get into the market without some other assistance.

If the price of petrol/diesel increased 100-fold then it would probably become uneconomic to run a conventional IC engine; but a hybrid then does not offer any advantage; you would need all-electric.

The other thing is that electric vehicles have probably been around since well before IC driven vehicles; yet the battery technology has not improved noticeably. Electric motors are fine; and the concept of having one in each wheel to do away with a conventional transmission system looks good; but carrying electric power around with you is not yet really practical.

I see from:

... that average car journeys are 7 miles. So with a suitable charging infrastructure, for most people range would not be a problem. How long did it take the petrol distribution infrastructure to develop?

Which brings us to the question of why you would want an electric vehicle at all ...

The only rational answer is so that we can totally avoid the use of fossil fuels; either because they have run out, or because we agree that they cause global warming so we should stop using them.

Renewables have the potential to meet our energy requirements, but energy storage is a very real problem. Imagine if every road vehicle stored electricity; and the infrastructure arranged for all vehicles to be charged whenever and wherever they were parked; and further, that these electricity stores could be "borrowed" to supply other needs when the need for travel was not anticipated - all that solves the problem of average journeys. But it does not solve the problem of long journeys: family and luggage going on holiday, for example.

Within the next 1,000 years it will no longer be economical to "mine" fossil fuels, and reserves of uranium with be used up; so the only option will be renewables. But the progression to that stage will be one of smoothly increasing costs, rather than a step change, (although another world war over oil might change that) so electric vehicles will look more competitive. But so equally will changing our society so that we travel less.

Unless of course a new and as yet unimagined solution presents itself ...

If the price of petrol/diesel increased 100 fold, so would all other fossil fuels as the demand would increase. And nuclear fuel too. And I can't see it ever being possible to generate current energy demands from renewable sources, in the majority of the 'developed' world. But then I won't be around to worry about it anyway.

[...]

My brother opted for an Auris hybrid as a company car a year ago. He does around 35K miles a year, mainly longer distance trips. He absolutely loves it. Of course, for him depreciation is insignificant.

Chris

Only is "useful info" is a strange way of spelling "useless propoganda".

Why, because it points out that electric cars are not actually much use to the average buyer and have a higher total cost over their life than a conventional car. What would you prefer? That they said that everything was wonderful with electric cars? Because it isn't.

Come again?...

The sun hits the earth with thousands of times more energy than we use every day of the year, but until we can actually harness a decent amount of it and distribute it.....................

Some time ago I saw something on TV about a new invention of an array of thousands/millions of tiny dipoles at infra-red wavelength, which produce usable power when wired together. The programme didn't go into much detail about what (potential) advantages this has over PV cells except IIRC that it works better in dull weather and can even work at night on heat radiating back from the ground and buildings.

Yes I found that one. No real information.

Eg, they say you can't tow and electric car, but how do you get it on to a trailer. And then I found this.

Then there are the issues with tyres if you get a puncture.

=A0 London SW

Battery is good for seven or eight years. Allegedly. There are ways to prolong it's life. Also doesn't just stop working. Dies gradually.

The answer is to convert the peaks of renewable to chemical fuel,eg hydrogen. All gonna costa bomb though.

why would you tow it? if it is broken call the garage. buy a spare wheel if it doesn't have one, or just call the AA in the event of a puncture.

american electric car talk here:

I look forward to you using a car that contains a hydrogen bomb.

In article , Tony Houghton scribeth thus

And if it worked .. it would it not be on the go?, anyone;?....