Re: Electric Cars at the American International Auto Show

In its case rather worse. I drove one over a long journey and it used more petrol than my SD1. ;-) Admittedly, I was pressing on.

I found it performed very well in my town journeys which tend to be fairly short. Plenty of performance and decent economy too. I wonder if there's less of a cold start penalty with its design of engine than with a conventional design. So a good town car - but far too expensive if limited to that.

I suppose that's the idea of the Stirling cycle engine. But of course later Toyota models use conventional petrol engines. It really is a car designed to get round specific US emissions and MPG requirements, the calculations of which are based on ordinary petrol car technology. And they had to amend the way they are calculated since they gave an advantage to hybrids under certain conditions which owners found couldn't be matched in practice.

Define pollution. If you mean the major one caused by the burning of fossil fuels, CO2, there are other things to take into account than the amount produced at the point of burning, since it's an additive thing. The amount produced in making the product and the power station, for example. Installing the larger grid required if all vehicles were electric. Etc, etc.

Well yes but I still think it's less the electric way. Compare the cost of increasing the capacity of the grid with building lots of petrol stations and petrol tankers. Compare energy lost moving all the petrol / oil around with energy lost in the grid. Compare the cost of power stations with the cost of refineries (and not to mention wars over oil supply). Obviously we'd need figures to settle this completely but my read is that the comparison lies fairly heavily toward electrics.

Peter.

No misconception hard fact. 57% of electricity in developed nations comes from coal fired power stations.

Producing 1 kwh of electricity from coal equates to:

Water usage (litres): 1.26 Coal burnt (kg): 0.50 Ash emitted (g): 0.31 SO2 emissions (g): 7.91 NOx emissions (g): 3.61 CO2 emissions (kg): 0.89

(figures from Eskom who own and run several coal fired powerstations)

So based on 57% from coal a full charge on the tesla electric car would be

Water usage (litres): 41.66 Coal burnt (kg): 16.53 Ash emitted (g): 10.25 SO2 emissions (g): 261.5 NOx emissions (g): 119.35 CO2 emissions (kg): 29.42

With the quoted 250 mile range each mile equates to a band F car for VED in CO2 at 188.3g/km and if the range were to drop below a more realistic 210 miles per recharge then it would be into band G. So they both burn fossil flues, both produce realistically the same CO2 for the same distance driven, so can someone point out why the one that needs Li-Ion batteries is better fro the environment other than at a very local level?

Peter Spikings ( snipped-for-privacy@spikings.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Are you including the battery chemistry and replacement cycle in that?

A couple of years ago, there was a Berlingo electric van on fleaBay. 5yo, IIRC and about 50k miles. Nicely run in if it was diesel, and several grands worth.

But, being electric, the batteries were fooked and due for replacement. As a result, it got not one bid and has probably been broken for parts for diesel vans.

Why? Because a set of replacement batteries cost around £15,000 from Citroen.

The big problem is that hydrogenj production is eve less efficent than battery storage and as I have already provided figures to show that battery powered vehicles realy are just as bad if not worse for the envyroment than petrol cars adding on the inificency of seperatinf hydrogen from water makes them a true envyromental disaster.

Quoted on

DEFRA's average emissions in the UK over the various mix ofpower sources that we use is 0.43kg CO2 per kWh generated. A conservative estimate (on the high side) for usage by EVs is 300WHr per mile. Ergo they will go 3.3 miles on a kWh or 5.3km.

0.43kg CO2 / 5.3km = 80.6g/km which IIRC is A-band. That figure will go down as we move away from coal burning and increase nuclear and renewable generation.

So that's why EVs are good for the environment!

Peter.

Well, that seems a little high, do you know how big the battery pack is capacity wise and what the battery type is?

Nevertheless though that works out as 3.3 pence per mile in battery wear which will hardly break the bank (if budgeted for) when you consider that the electricity will only be 1-2 pence per mile, so in total it's less than half the cost of petrol / diesel to go the same distance. It's hardly the fault of the EV if the owner has shortsightedly spent the savings compared to running a ICE car.

Peter.

But they're already in place.

Petrol is only used when needed. Fossil fuel generating stations can't be started and stopped exactly to meet demand.

At the moment we generate our electricity (in the main) using energy sources bought in from other countries, so the same applies. As it would if using nuclear.

It depends entirely on who you read. Those selling and advocating electric vehicles never give the true down sides - of course they are so rare that many problems might not be apparent yet. We all run petrol or diesel cars, so can't have the wool pulled over our eyes in quite the same way.

It's only cheaper because the tax on diesel distorts the figure. If electric vehicles become widespread you can bet some method of raising the same tax revenue from them will be devised. Road pricing being the obvious one.

You can happily run a diesel on untaxed central heating oil. Illegal, of course, but that's the comparison cost wise to electricity as both carry the same sort of taxation.

True, see my next point though.

Which is actually a plus point of EVs not a negative. As EVs would be charged overnight when there's spare capacity (both in generation and transmission) EVs should tend to even out the electricity demand and hence possibly wouldn't need that much extra grid capacity?? Dunno, figures needed :)

Yes. EVs use less energy though so we'd need to import less.

And the media never gives the true up sides of EVs but concentrate on the perceived inconveniences which I find very irritating. I for one though do my best not to overlook the down sides.

Peter.

Yes that's all true. I assumed when making my comparisons that one is not willing to disregard the law. I suspect that the govt wouldn't be able to get away with taxing EVs though which is presumably why they only make token gestures to promote them. I'm very anti-road pricing because it requires the govt to predetermine how environmentally damaging a vehicle is. Firstly I don't trust them to be impartial and secondly people who have things wrong with their car that cause it to burn lots of petrol unnecessarily may not bother to get it fixed. Fuel tax and congestion charging is the way to go if you want to use economic factors to affect driving habits but even better would be trade-able rations as then you can force the population to use less!

Peter.

"Depresion" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@k58g2000hse.googlegroups.com:

gathered

technology

renewable?

I see. I didn't realise this because I don't know the process involved in the Hydrogen extraction and am therefore unaware of the energy involved.

I foolishly assumed that car manufacturers were developing this technology as a practicable solution to the enviromental problem. Instead, they seem to be simply looking for a way to wash their hands of the issue by producing a non-polluting vehicle, regardless of the required energy source and what is necessary to provide it.

Stu

Peter Spikings ( snipped-for-privacy@spikings.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

That price (those prices, rather) came direct from Citroen's parts computer.

Total of 27 NiCd batteries in three packs under the bonnet and load floor. 162volt, 100Ah.

As I said, have you considered the *environmental impact* of the battery chemistry and replacement? It's generally accepted that the average life of a car breaks roughly evenly into pollution from it's manufacture and it's use. This van was scrapped at around half the life of an equivalent diesel one, and would have had a far greater environmental impact in manufacture due to the large amounts of very unpleasant stuff in the batteries.

They are trying to get somthing as close t what we currently use where you can just fill up at the side of the road rather than have to charge batterys. Car manufactures are looking not to help the envyroment but to make cars they can sell under the short sighted legislations of governments who havent done the mathmatics.

Depresion ( snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Quite.

What use is a car that has a maximum range of 100 miles then needs several hours to "refuel"?

Getting to work in any conurbation?

And something you had to plug in overnight would be of little use to most of the car owners round here...

Duncan Wood ( snipped-for-privacy@dmx512.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Right...

How much use would it have been, for example, to my mother in the last job she had before retiring?

Bear in mind that's 100 miles *optimum* *maximum* range. She was doing 60-

70 miles each way to the centre of Liverpool from the Peak District, and leaving the car in a public car park all day.