Re: Electric Cars at the American International Auto Show

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

And?

Let me repeat the question :-

And the answer given was :-

Which is (at best) a massive over-simplification and heads towards patently wrong, as I demonstrated. Very sorry if that doesn't suit you.

Anyway - surely people who use their cars most are the ones who ought to be being targetted by less emissive vehicles? Those who bimble 50 miles per week are, to be frank, irrelevant in emission terms compared to those doing 30,000 miles or more per year.

If somebody's just commuting into a city centre from a suburb...

1. Wouldn't public transport be a better solution?
2. Do they have parking at home where there's a guarantee of a power supply anyway?

Admittedly a gross simplification, but not unusual.

That's a good question though. There's an awfull lot of people who just bimble a short distance

Maybe & maybe. They're hardly a complete solution, but then no transport solutions a complete solution to any transport question.

Well, for any purpose that doesn't involve more than 100 miles a day. Sort of like commuting within a town or between close towns, or driving round London.

I wasn't doubting that that was what Citroen is charging.

That's over =C2=A3550 per battery!!! I can't believe that's a reasonable co= st

- I presume that they're 6V 100Ah each. Given that you can get a 85Ah

12V leisure PbA for =C2=A330 or so that would make the Citroen supplied NiCads 30 times more expensive for each unit of energy storage where normally NiCads are about 4 times more expensive per energy unit (which I just read somewhere while I was looking for the cost of large NiCads).

Batteries are very recyclable in general. However, not done much research into the pros and cons of NiCads. Have you?

As I said, it's not the fault of the EV that the owner couldn't see that coming. Also you're assuming it was scrapped.

In any case I believe the environmental damage that would have been caused by burning the extra fossil fuels (assuming that the owner didn't switch to a green energy tariff for his electricity) had it been a diesel over those 50k miles would be far worse.

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

Yes, yes, yes.

So you buy the batteries individually. Now add in the cost of getting the three battery packs dismantled and rebuilt around the new batteries.

All for a van that - if diesel - would sell for about £2000. Except the diesel would have a higher payload.

I'm not an expert. However I do know that NiCad batteries really aren't very pleasant things to be building and throwing away at regular intervals.

"Rechargeable nickel-cadmium batteries account for about 400 tons of the highly toxic heavy metal cadmium being discharged into the environment in Germany every year." (2002)

Well, yes, it is.

Product A has a greater environmental impact in manufacture and a shorter life than product B...

Nobody wanted to buy it.

I doubt it.

DIY job.

I reckon the high cost is actually to subtly dissuade people from using EVs. It's something that they can point to when the cancel production as a factor which can't easily be disproved.

Same argument. You're ignoring the fact that the diesel would have consumed far in excess of 15k more than the EV in running costs leading up to the point of sale.

No, Li-Ion is a far better technology.

Economically it's the owners fault because they ignored the cost of battery replacement. If someone drives an ICE to the end of it's life without putting any money aside to replace it when it finally breaks do you think that's the fault of the car if suddenly they're without transport?

Presumably everything apart from the batteries was fine so the whole van wasn't end of life. See above.

Are you basing an anti-EV stance on one eBay sale?

Yes, probably in the region of 3 and a half thousand tonnes of CO2 (assuming diesel usage of 125g/km and EV usage of 80g/km - see earlier post) or 10 thousand tonnes if it was powered from a green tariff. And as I said before the van itself was not end of life, if the batteries are replaced as needed an EV is unlikely to become unusable until the bodywork falls apart.

Peter.

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

Small detail, though - PSA built several thousand electric Berlingos & Pug Partners, and sold them for seven or eight years... That's after several other production electric vehicles - AXs, Saxos, 106s.

Would you like to recalculate that price difference...?

Bear in mind, when you do so, that over 50,000 miles, the diesel van would only have _used_ £5,000 of diesel at 40mpg and 90p/litre... Over 50k the engine maintenance will have been minimal - perhaps four oil and filter changes, and one or two diesel filters. There may be a slight saving in brake pads because of the regenerative braking, but I doubt it'd save a single set of pads in that mileage.

Quite how using the electricity for 50,000 miles will have managed to EARN the user £10,000 to get to your saving, I'd love to know...

Not quite. A van is a tool. A business tool. The whole-of-life economics are make-or- break to the viability of it. If a service replacement element costs more after half the expected service life than a new replacement, it is economically unviable to repair and use.

Do NiCad batteries "just suddenly die", or do they lose capacity - and therefore range in an EV - over time?

Bear in mind that the EV van has a very short daily range anyway - 60 miles (I may have said 100 miles in a previous post - a mistake, it's 100km) is useless for most business users.

Economically, yes, it was.

The batteries appear to be 27 Saft STM 5-100 MRE The only reference to a price I can find is here :-

NOS for $200 each. That's $5000 for the lot, before shipping and fannying about. For batteries which probably won't last as long as the originals, as they're old stock, albeit unused. For a van for which a complete diesel replacement would cost less - and for which the complete diesel van would have been *considerably* less expensive originally.

No. I'm fundamentally open minded on the subject, but just don't think they're practicable yet.

Are you basing your comments on an absolutely committed pro-EV stance? Because you do appear to be trying your damndest to ignore all practicalities and economic realities.

To be fair, any design of vehicle will require energy.

An Internal Combustion Engine powered by hydrocarbons is inherently polluting (spewing out HC, CO, CO2, NOx, etc).

A car powered by a hydrogen fuel cell is not.

However, completely replacing all ICE cars with hydrogen fuel cells is not enough. We also need some "green" method of producing the hydrogen. However, this could (at least in theory) be achieved using electricity produced from wind/wave/solar/nuclear power, rather than burning coal/oil/gas.

OK :) I may have made a mistake somewhere, let's see.....

Yes, was just thinking about fuel.

OK, I made a mistake somewhere :) Small additional point is the lack of road tax but again it's hardly worth mentioning.

I still think =C2=A315k is too much for the batts but yes, I take your poin= t.

I think the range drops off slowly and then starts dropping fast at end of life.

Yes, I've never said that we should all be driving EVs, however I do think that excluding them as thoroughly as we do is very bad.

Yeah, I had a hard time finding the price. If the real cost is double that then it would be comparable to running on diesel though.

That's at least in part because the diesel vans are mass produced. There's nothing that complicated with EVs and they certainly aren't more expensive by default.

Depends on what you want it for :) Truly long range and fast recharging isn't here yet (though with Li-Ion the ranges can be quite large).

No ;) Just a thought though, what happens to economic realities when global warming really kicks in?

EVs really suffer at the moment due to comparisons with mass produced ICEs, especially in the battery department which isn't fair really. Li- Ion is the way to go with batteries at the moment (high capacity and very light) and they suited to mass production - expensive equipment to produce but very cheap materials (none of which are toxic AFAIK). Because demand for large cells is low at the moment the cost of them is high. Getting lots of energy out of them quickly is a bit of an issue but will be sorted in time.

They will effectively lose capacity as the cells won't all have the same life.

I find even with a sophisticated charger which doesn't damage them about

1000 cycles is top whack at full performance for the very best makes. So that's about 3 years for a vehicle used every day and maybe 4 for a five day a week commercial vehicle. Of course if you demand very high discharge rates they won't last as long.

I've lost count of how many times I've heard this said about a new type of battery. Each and every new one will be the answer to all our problems. Until the next one. But surprisingly, the ancient lead acid still reigns supreme for an ordinary car. Doesn't that say something? They're heavy and bulky. Cost can't be a factor for upmarket cars. Yet they're still with us.

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

So that 60 mile daily range would drop to 50 miles, then 40 miles, then

30 miles across the 50,000 miles the van's done.

Bit useless, really...?

If the real cost is double that - so £5,000 for the batteries alone - the battery cost for 50,000 miles is equivalent to the diesel cost for

50,000 miles, yes.

So - where are you getting all your electricity for free, then? What sort of size of solar cells are going to be required to run the fleet of vans you'll need? Now calculate the reduced daily range into it.

As I said, the electric Berlingo was built in reasonable numbers - thousands - and is predominently identical to the diesel van. It was designed to have different power sources, because of PSA's experience in electric vehicles previously.

Apart from a shitload of expensive (and short life) batteries...?

Tough. If they're going to be used in the same way, they HAVE to stand comparison - unless they're going to be used as toys or very restricted commuters (when they have to start being compared with two-wheelers or public transport)

Dave Plowman (News) ( snipped-for-privacy@davenoise.co.uk) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

Anything near the maximum daily range of 60 miles, you mean?

Bit useless as an urban delivery van, then...

Well it depends on what you want out of the battery, I've not seen a lead acid powered power tool for many a year. I think the last of my Nicds will go next year.

What about this:

100 mile range @ 50mph with swappable batteries, 2 tonne payload. With 2 sets of batteries it'll be fine. Tesco just bought a bunch.

Peter.

The comparison needs to be fair and it isn't because you're comparing a

5(?) year old design using an old battery technology where the manufacturer appears to have inflated the prices somewhat. On the other side you've got a variety of modern ICE vans which are all competing with each other (and so are cheaper).

You also appear to be judging EVs on their merits as delivery vans. It wouldn't have to be a total switch over.

There never really were SLA power tools - apart from some torches, etc. But then a power tool isn't a road vehicle. For a start, it only gets run for short periods. Also tends mostly to be used at maximum power. Weight and size are important.

A delivery van is an ideal candidate for an EV. Used in town. Stop start. Etc. Harrods knew this years ago - as did milk delivery companies.

A small commuter car is even more suited though :) I hardly ever drive my Fiesta for more than 10 miles each way. Check out the Modec for a much better EV delivery van than the Berlingo makes.