Re: Electric Cars at the American International Auto Show

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

OK, find me the verifiable figures for current technology EVs.

Ones with production runs into the thousands, preferably with a direct diesel equivalent.

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

Why don't you use a bicycle, scooter or public transport?

Hmm, I'm in Milton Keynes so....

1) Bicycle - takes 45 minutes home and 60 minutes to work as it's mostly uphill on the way there. Would arrive very knackered and needing a shower. Plus I'd have to leave an hour earlier (I'd get super fit though!) 2) Scooter - Possible but a bit dangerous. The roads to work are all national speed limit and MK rush hour can be hectic. 3) Buses - Journey time is 60 mins, I kid you not. They used to run along the grid roads but 12 years ago the council took the brilliant decision to make all the routes run through the centre of the estates. They now have to cope with low speed limits, narrow and twisting roads and cars parked everywhere. All the bus stops and lay-bys alongside the grid roads are now pretty much unused. Plus they don't increase the frequency during the morning and I have to choose between one which leaves at 7.30 or 8 (which is totally packed and would probably get me there late quite a lot). 4) Car - Can leave at 8.45am and get there on time every day. Easy peasy plus it's cheaper than the bus by quite a long way! (Bus would cost £3.50 - £4 per day).

The EV1 springs to mind. I'll look up it's stats at some point.

Yes, as always better things are in the pipeline :)

Presumably a lot of that is set up costs. They're going to be selling the vans for £23k so I doubt it's £26k per pack.

Maybe, maybe not.

OK. I'm not sure how much would be needed though. Do you really carry stuff dense enough to weigh that much and still fit inside the van?

What's the difference aside from driving licence restrictions?

Charge speed won't matter as it'll be an overnight job. Again, I don't believe £26k.

That's why the battery can't cost £26k. It's just advertising for the lease deal.

Electricity and diesel being on top of those. 1k miles per month would even out that difference.

Yes, we'll have to see.

Yes, the difference being though that 95%+ of the energy in a battery is utilised, well under 20% for diesel especially if the driver has a heavy foot. For delivery vans they still use fuel idling while stationary doing the delivering, an EV will use nothing while stationary.

Yes, well, time will tell :)

I used to have some black & Decker professional (turned into elu) 24V SLA power tools (drill & circular saw). As you say weight & size is important, it's pretty irrelevant for a car starting battery, the price is the only deciding factor.

Right. I've never come across those.

A car battery does rather more than just start it and I'd say cost would be pretty irrelevant if an alternative was better for say a expensive high performance car where weight matters.

The more than just starts it bits probably relevant, LiIons going to be bugger all use as a cheap regulator :-) When I worked on the diesel electric locos we did actually use wet NiCds as the starters, saved 250Kg & worked out cheaper over 10 years. That was

20 years ago though.

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

the vans for £23k so I doubt it's £26k per pack.

Maybe.

The body weighs *something*. There's only one set of figures given - I think it's safe to assume they're the best available.

Many will, yes. Take the weight of the refrigeration equipment and insulation off the standard van payload, too.

I'll leave it for others to give the full list, but at a minimum the necessity for tacho fitment and an HGV operator's licence for *each* site. That's not going to be trivial for urban supermarkets.

So these Tesco vans are only working one shift, are they? With 14 delivery hours on week days, 11 hours on a Saturday and five on a Sunday? What about downtime if a battery pack fails?

A mate of mine's a home delivery driver for Tesco - I'll have to ask him what kind of mileage he gets through per shift.

Mmmm. That'll be why the £26k figure came out of an official financial statement by the battery manufacturer, then?

Diesel for 1000 miles is £135. VED is less than £15/mo. If the cost split is 80/20 battery:electricity, then there's £100/mo of electricity. So that's £450:£500 in the diesel van's favour. Close. The second 1000 miles per month takes the cost to £585:£1000.

Oh, plus you've got a £25,000 electric van (depreciation? Probably horrendous - will Modec be about in four year's time?) to finance on top of the battery & electricity costs.

So that's 95Wh/kg vs 1,000Wh/kg. You were saying...?

Contrary to general practice, diesel vans don't HAVE to be left running...

Before you raise the subject of "needing to run the diesel van to keep the fridge going", you may like to consider what's running the fridge on the electric van. Yep, same battery as traction.

Cars use PbA because nothing else (yet) provides the ability of quick discharge for starting and quick charge to act as a regulator, it's also cheap and easy to recycle. The downside is that it's heavy, low capacity, doesn't like deep discharges and emits explosive gasses but none of those matter too much when used as a starter battery for cars as you only need one and hardly anything in the way of capacity.

When starting bigger things or for an EV then other batteries become more useful as you need more capacity and hence more cells so the charge / discharge current limits (which are per cell obviously) become less important as it's offset by having more cells.

The cost of the electronics for a suitable regulator in an alternator over that of those already needed would be the square root of FA.

Probably some development engineer with a bee in his bonnet? And I can't see why weight saving would be any priority with a rail traction engine - often quite the reverse.

Oh - I'd love to see the actual figures about it being cheaper over 10 years. This goes precisely against my findings with using various types of batteries for location filming. Where weight and size aren't a priority, SLA works out much cheaper overall.

At the time they cost 30% more but had a fifteen year lifespan. Wet NiCds probably wouldn't be much use for location work, they're unlikely to fall over on a locomotive.

Er, we're comparing a 5 year old design with a who-knows-how-old design for the ICE.

As is the design of any battery. Two different conductive materials in an electrolyte. All the rest is just development.

Yeah, but show me ANY electrically-powered vehicle that can compete with a 5-year-old ICE-powered vehcile? Or even 20-year-old?