Author Topic: The future of electric Vehicles.  (Read 60663 times)

guest22972

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The future of electric Vehicles.
« on: March 14, 2018, 12:03:44 PM »

Long rant, make coffee and come back or skip to next post now....

If you are remotely interested in Vehicles, or even if you are not, you can't look at any form of media now without having something glossy and hyped rammed down your throat about electric Vehicles. The most sedate it gets is the never ending " Banning of IC cars by 20xx in whichever" place or that auto makers are working feverishly to bring out 100 new models in teh next 5 years..... Which coincidently, is an actual scale widely flung around.

We know there is now the technology for cars to cover decent distances, to recharge in a -reasonable- time frame and that many of the past objections are gone.  Today our " green" party, the biggest pack of Idiot ratbags Imaginable ( And yes, I must own up to voting for them once about 25 years ago) called for a ban of all IC car sales in OZ by 2030.

And therein lies the root of my face palm and urge to go beat my head on a brick wall.

These same whining morons are already responsible for STATE wide blackouts due to the blowing up of coal fired power stations.
To stop a grid meltdown, the gubbermint went and put in a stack of diesel generators that consume 40,000L of Diesel an HOUR! That is one standard semi tanker load.  per HOUR!
Yeah! that's doing wonders for the environment right?  ::)

The whole EV thing is a complex one but my biggest concern and where I see the real handbrake is feeding all these clean wonderful cars with power.
 I think it's far from the simple thing of generation growing to meet the demand that many Ev proponents make out.  I also think it's a lot more than a localised consideration. There are few countries with abundant power supply and fewer still that have or will go near being renewable.  Most of the western world does not have a lot of power to spare and even in this day and age, it only takes one hot day to have rolling blackouts because the grid can't keep up. Here it's getting much worse thanks to all the save the planet types and their " Renewable" generation that is unstable, un predictable and very undependable.

The demand on the grid worldwide is growing all the time.  The green washed thing of coal is evil and must be stopped now reduces capacity and stability.  On one hand you have the green washed trying to reduce generation at the same time promoting the increase of consumption. Nothing wrong with that hypocricy, much! It takes a LOT of renewable power to equal one fossil fired station and the renewable is far from stable and dependable.

In a decade, the demand on grids around the world will have grown through all the things that are reliant on it now. Population, business, industry, quality of life improvements Like AC, large TV's and so it goes.
I don't know where to find the info of demand Vs generation relationships but it sure would be interesting to see the projections.

I don't know about other parts of the world but from what I'm reading, The take up of PV is no where near like it is here in oz hich is understandable given the weather in a lot of the northern Hemisphere.  I think rather than have the big blattery, the money should have been spent on putting more localised power where it is needed in the form of solar. Unfortunately the green obsessed and Crazy SA gubbermint is so hell bent on being able to make stupid claims, they do it at the cost of sound practices and stability of power for the state.

I really don't think most of the greenwashed / EV proponents have any idea of the amount of energy contained in liquid fuels, the size of any type of battery to store the same amount of energy as in an average fuel tank and I don't think they understand what that energy equates to in electrical generation terms.  Multiply that out be every car however many there are in your street let alone suburb and city, and the numbers become overwhelming.
Compare that to the amount of power a city generates now and one will get some perspective how mammoth a task this switch to electric really is.

Here's a real quick one....
My 4WD has a 100L tank. Yes, large by sedan standards but around here, a significant part of the local transport.
Diesel is about 10.7Kw of energy per litre. Let's call it 10 for ease of my poor mathematics.
100L in my tank x10 Kwh = 1000 KWh.

My 6.5 Kw solar system is averaging with weather about 25KwH a day atm being summer here. 5kwh is the standard for new systems being installed now but a lot larger than most older ones being 1.5-2 Kw.
If I put my 25kwh a day JUST into my vehicle, Thats going to take 40 days on average to give me ONE tankfull of Diesel. And now of course I must dra everything from the grid for household needs.
Lets halve that as a closer to average sort of tank capacity.  500KWH, 20 days at 25KWH per day.

Look at it another way.  Average home here for a family of 4 my power bill says is about 30 KWH a day.  50L of fuel in the average family car, and few families have just one here, 500Kwh / 30 Kwh = 16 days average power use in that vehicle.
Most people I know fill up at least once a week. 2000Kwh month for the car,  30Kwh x 30 days = 900 KWH for the home.
Anyone getting the picture of the energy load we are talking about here?

That average family car electric needs is worth more than 2 average homes electric consumption per month. If they have ONE car. I l oked up the numbers,  2.28 for Oz with 35% of households owning 3 or more.
US, looks exactly the same, canada a bit less, 1,8 cars per family.

So in reality, the average home in these countries would have 4-5 times the demand on the grid for power for their ev's than they are using in their homes now.
At best, the number of houses in your street as far as power consumption goes just tripled. More likely, it just multiplied by a factor of at least 5.
In every street in every suburb in every city and town right across the country......

How many homes do you think will be able to have enough panels to charge their vehicles up in even a week even if they covered the whole block and used the panels as a roof?
When you break it down like this, you start to see the incredible change in the grid infrastructure that is going to be needed to replace  IC vehicles.
Sure it won't happen over night, it can't! If the the take up was too quick ( and ev sales are LESS than 1% overall atm) they would hit a tipping point where all the cars were taking the power and there was non left to run the factories trying to make the things!

How long before you think the grid where you live will be able to handle that 500% ++ increase in demand, and what do you think the price of power might be to pay for the infrastructure to supply it?
More over, is there even space to put the infrastructure in place?  Pretty sure no city is going to have the capacity to distribute 500% mo0re power on existing cabling and the question would then be, is there the space in the ground with everything else to put cables and distribution equipment in place 2with 5x the capacity of what is there now?

How big are the cables going to be on the power poles and how heavy? How expensive will they be with up rated substations, transformers and so it goes.

Of course then there is the thing that comes to mind for me with a personal ( repeated) experience.
My Father lives almost 400 KM away from me. The journey is basicaly up a highway for 2 hours, a 7 km crawl through the bypass of the next major city and then another 1hr, 20 min hop up the other side of the highway to his place. That highway goes another 600KM to the next major city.

In the middle of that 7 Km stretch there is a 2 petrol stations. The one opposite the McDonalds is the busiest and the Maccas can not be got near when its holiday time as it's the only thing on the highway till you get further up to when my father lives.
That service station is VERY busy with people filling up as it's the last fuel for about 2 hours. If you have come from where dad is which is the next major town and you are towing a boat or caravan, You are going to need a long range tank to make it with out a top up.

 EV's on average take an hour to recharge IF they are on a rapid charger. Many take much longer.   How long does it take one to fill their tank with petro fuel? 5, 10 Min?  I'd reckon there are about 20 pumps at that servo opposite Maccas.  that would mean that when the line is out onto the road, each pump should service a minimum of 6 cars per hour. 20 pumps, 120 cars per hour.

Now, if each car even takes 30 min to recharge bearing in mind they would have nearly all just driven 150KM and have another 200 to go to the next place that would have a charging station, those 20 outlets are only going to service 40 Vehicles. in other words, you are going to have to put in at least 3 times the charging stations as fuel pumps. And unless they are all super charger type setups, the far more likley charging time is 2-3 Hours.

Geez, won't that be fun turning your 4 hour trip into a 7 hour one and trying to amuse the kids at maccas for 3 hours. I can see a real possibility of the accident rate going up on that section of road due to fatigue and distraction by the extended journey time.
But wait, there's More....!

As its a big selling point to have " destination Charging" with tesla at least, put a charging station in every parking bay at maccas so people can go in , grab a bite and a coffee and have a break while their car charges up. Tesla luckily it's only an hour.
 I looked up that a tesla can suck down 120Kw at a charging station.  On 240V that's nearly 500A. Yes, the voltage is actually a bit higher but that's irrelevant.  it's the watts that count. A normal house connection here is 80A and it would be extremely rare to find a single place sucking down that much power.
Let say there are 20 Charging stations in the carpark at maccas, that's 2.4 Mw of power just at that site . Across the road in the servo, there is at least another 20 and another 2.4Mw. How many other sites will that segment of the grid be feeding and further back, how many will be in the area supplied buy the local sub and power stations? Those 2 sites are across the road from one another so how big are the cables going to have to be just to feed 2 places?
That sort of power wouldn't be used by factories of that size so to have 2 small sites  pulling that down.... Then of course there are the other food joints about 500M up the road that also fill up at holiday time and would no doubt also have charging in order to get business in the door be the power paid for or not.  Can't see how they could afford to give it away on that scale unless the price of a Burger in the restaurant became 25 bucks.

Another thing that's not mentioned with charging time with teslas is they quote an hour. That's true if the thing isn't completely flat which we'll assume it is not and people leave a small reserve as one normally would with a petrol car.  You go to the supercharger and plug in next to the guy that just pulled up. The charger is current limited and you are only going to get 30Kw being the second car to plug in rather than the 120Kw which is the max charge rate. Because the guy beside was before you but still needs to do a full charge more or less, your recharge could take 2 hours not 1.  And that is if it's getting full power in the first place and the site isn't limited on it's max current draw because of all the other stations and the wiring at the power pole.

To me the whole EV thing is one big distraction and bundle of BS.

Given the western world still pulls the majority of it's power from fossil fuel going electric is really only moving the emissions from one place of generation to another anyhow.

broncodriver99

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #1 on: March 14, 2018, 01:32:44 PM »
Given the western world still pulls the majority of it's power from fossil fuel going electric is really only moving the emissions from one place of generation to another anyhow.

Add to that the efficiency of the grid with generation and transmission losses and electric cars end up being ~about as efficient as a IC fueled vehicle.

AdeV

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #2 on: March 14, 2018, 10:35:42 PM »
That is a hell of a rant! Unfortunately time pressures mean I won't have chance to read it before the weekend, but if I may ask a question?

Why is the interior of Australia (which, as I recall, is pretty bloody big - even by Australian standards - and mostly unpopulated) not being carpeted with PV panels? Surely for a country that gets more sunshine than it can possibly need, solar PV is the obvious answer? Or, even, molten salt thermal solar, which has the advantage that if enough heat energy can be banked during the day, can continue to generate power even in the hours of darkness, addressing the biggest problem solar PV suffers from?

Glort - apologies if you already addressed this... I WILL read all of your post, but not right now...
Cheers!
Ade.
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0x Lister JP4 :( - Sold to go in a canal boat.

ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #3 on: March 14, 2018, 10:56:52 PM »
I wonder how much fossil fuel is used to mine the lithium for these batteries. The ore has to be extracted, refined. shipped to China for manufacture into cells. It`s then shipped to tesla for assembly, from there the finished product is distributed all around the world. The logistics must be horrendous.

What is going to happen to all the outback farmers that are not grid connected. how are they supposed to charge their vehicles? Does anyone make an electric tractor or combined harvester, how long would one of those take to charge?

What are the government going to do without the tax revenues from oil? I guess they`ll have to tax electricity, that should make the greens popular.

I have to conclude that once again there is no joined up thinking by the government, when are they going to start listening to people who know what they are doing, rather than following the dogma of the politically correct incompetent?

Mad as a cut snake,
Bob

ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #4 on: March 14, 2018, 11:43:16 PM »
A tanker full of diesel an hour? How big is the injector pump on one of these things?

ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #5 on: March 14, 2018, 11:59:28 PM »
Perhaps someone could explain to me why the greens in the government allowed the closure of the Nymboida hydro electric power station. The water that used to feed it was redirected to Coffs Harbour so they can water their bloody gardens. The international slalom course at the canoe centre relied on the hydro outflow as did all the farmers along the creek.
Nice work by the greedy and incompetent.

ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #6 on: March 15, 2018, 04:30:06 AM »
Tell me if I`ve understood this properly. The a South Australian government can`t keep the lights on despite burning 80,000ltrs of diesel an hour and they want us to trade in our IC engine vehicles and use electric ones instead.
The idiot in charge of this doesn`t deserve an award he needs a lobotomy.

Is there some sort of advanced stupidity course that politicians have to take before they can stand for office? I bet this guy aced it, a masters degree in BS and advanced incompetence.

ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #7 on: March 15, 2018, 05:33:57 AM »
The problem is that whatever fuel you are burning there is only a finite amount available once you have burned it it`s gone for good. We are burning it at an ever accelerating pace. You don`t need to be a rocket scientist to work out that at some time, probably in our lifetime, there won`t be any left. can you imagine what that would do to the global economy? Don`t forget that fuel is only a very small percentage of the crude oil we use every day. Lubricants, paints, solvents, plastics and fertilisers are all oil based. With out that oil the world will quite literally grind to a halt.

As you point out all attempts to grow a crop for fuel have been an extravagant waste. I read one report that claimed the entire land mass of the United States would need to be turned over to ethanol production to service the demand for motor vehicle fuel. What are the people going to eat?

I believe that there is some useful research being done into using solar energy to convert CO2 back into hydrocarbons that can then be burned. The process is very energy consuming but doable. Perhaps a new purpose for all your solar panels. I`ll see if I can find the link and post it.
Bob


ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #8 on: March 15, 2018, 06:06:39 AM »
Here is that research link https://e360.yale.edu/features/using_co2_to_make_fuel_a_long_shot_for_green_energy

I also went out to spend some money today. Sadly my debit card wouldn`t work. Went to the bank and complained. Turns out some f**kwit has been trying to hack my bank account details. The bank decided the safest thing to do was to disable my cards without informing me, they did this at 07:00 hrs on Sunday morning. I will now have to wait a week for replacements.
Very glad I wasn`t on holiday in Bali when this happened. Sh1t creek no paddle and no f`ing canoe.

Grumpy Bob

LowGear

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #9 on: March 15, 2018, 04:54:30 PM »
My turn.

Electric cars are neat.

Yup.  That's it.

Cheers,
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ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #10 on: March 15, 2018, 10:38:44 PM »
Thanks for reminding me that all my online services will need to have the CC number edited. What a pain in the ar*e that`s going to be. I  wonder how many passwords I`m going to have forgotten.
Strange thing is that the suspicious activity the bank flagged was someone PAYING me 43 dollars and some change! Doesn`t sound like the actions of a criminal mastermind.

I agree that electric cars are cool and probably an ideal way of reducing air pollution in built up areas. For those of us that live rurally and have to travel long distances they are completely impractical.

AdeV

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #11 on: March 15, 2018, 10:45:07 PM »
The problem is that whatever fuel you are burning there is only a finite amount available once you have burned it it`s gone for good.

Hmm, I'm not so sure about that. Coal - sure, definitely. Oil, however... well, the Japanese have proven that there are algae out there which eat CO2 & energy (ideally light, but heat will do) and shit out crude oil. I read, somewhere (can't remember where) that some formerly dry oil wells have, in fact, been found to have some oil in them again.

What is true, is at our present rate of extraction, there will come a day when effectively all of the earth's accessible (or, rather, known AND accessible) oil reserves will be consumed, and even if some are replenished by natural processes, it certainly isn't going to be fast enough. Plant-based alternatives are OK, but simply put we don't have enough space to grow the crops to produce the yields necessary to cover all oil consumption, even if that were possible (which, as glort points out, is highly unlikely at best). Well, maybe we could, but then there's no space left over to grow stuff to eat.

So... where do we go from here? Solar & wind could help reduce oil/gas consumption, but they'll never replace it completely. Nuclear would seem to be the most viable option for the short term - at least to cover the base load currently covered with coal/oil/gas. Unless someone finds a way to store the energy from solar/wind when it's not wanted & can be released back into the grid when it IS needed, then we'll need rapid reacting gas turbine power to keep or grids stable.

Personally, I think they should use surplus wind/solar to generate H2, which can either be pushed through hydrogen fuel cells, or even burnt in a generator (gas turbine or reciprocating, whatever works best); that at least allows solar/wind output to be levelised and made much more predictable (higher than predicted, store any excess; lower than predicted, burn into your store to supplement). H2 has the advantage of producing very little additional pollution when burnt (only waste heat).


It's all moot anyway. The plants are LOVING the extra CO2 that's in the air. So the odd polar bear gets it in the neck, it's all terribly sad, but lets face it - if Antarctica melts, there's a whole new landmass just waiting to be turned into a gigantic farm to feed the world (and the rising sea levels will have killed off anyone careless enough to live by the sea, so there'll be less mouths to feed as well! Perfect for a new low-oil economy...

... so I got in my planet destroying car and went to blow some more cash on light fittings.....

I hope you tweaked the "injector output" knob I'm sure you have under the dash, for that "extra black smoke" effect?  :laugh:

I drive a 4 litre supercharged Jaguar XJR about the place (20mpg *at best*). I'm just trying to feed the plants, that's all, and offset all of those damn Priuses!
« Last Edit: March 15, 2018, 10:51:43 PM by AdeV »
Cheers!
Ade.
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ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #12 on: March 15, 2018, 11:36:02 PM »
You make a good point about solar and wind generation. The problem is that the sun doesn`t shine 24 hours a day so storage for use at night is essential. Battery storage works but is bulky and expensive and has only a short life expectancy. Pumped hydro is a possibility but the costs are astronomical. Nuclear has very nasty long term consequences which we are not technologically advanced enough to overcome. Experiments into the feasibility of fusion reactors are producing good results but a working prototype is probably fifteen years or more away.

Has anyone considered the idea of a world power grid that would transmit solar generated power from the sunny side of the planet to those on the dark side? Nice idea but probably too expensive and would require global cooperation.

Bob

mike90045

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #13 on: March 16, 2018, 02:02:10 AM »
...
Has anyone considered the idea of a world power grid that would transmit solar generated power from the sunny side of the planet to those on the dark side? Nice idea but probably too expensive and would require global cooperation.    Bob


Giant orbital mirrors !

ajaffa1

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Re: The future of electric Vehicles.
« Reply #14 on: March 16, 2018, 03:18:50 AM »
...



Giant orbital mirrors !
Great idea, until you realise that some stupid SOB would weaponize them and use them to fry countries which didn`t share the same point of view.

There has also been talk of solar shades being shot into orbit to reduce global warming. Great if you live near the equator and want to drop the summer temperature a bit. Totally rubbish idea if your an eskimo.