Will Electric Vehicles Be Viable? When?

[El Scorchio]

something like ?
'Guy Martin - world's fastest electric car'
ITV4 Monday 9th
(presumably at present UK-watchable on demand)

iirc during GM's project Jay Leno took the record to a place beyond the project's reach

Ha! I was just going to come and post that on here as I watched it yesterday. Really interesting show and some beautiful vehicles. (That van....)
It was on Channel 4 though rather than ITV, in case people are looking for it!

I also watched this documentary and it was very interesting. I was surprised when they concluded it was more expensive than ICE on long journeys. I saw a friend at the weekend who has recently bought a VW ID.3 and he says he absolutely loves it and would never go back to ICE. He doesn't do that many long journeys but said he recently drove from Oxford to Bangor (about 450 mile round trip) and that it only cost him about £15!

Did he say how long it took him though? I guess if Guy Martin had used the slowest charge points he would have got there for a lot less than £204, but spent hours and hours waiting for the car to charge! It's quite interesting, the charge time vs cost issue. Someone will always pay a premium for speed, and I wonder if the prices can be jacked up where they know there aren't many charge points? I guess at some point it'll become super fast and super cheap with an abundance of charge points, but not for a couple of years. The infrastructure development really needs to be rapid.

[Andres125sx]

They havent to start with , 2nd is the grid is not able to charge 180 cars

Who said that?

People usually asume fast charging is the norm, when It is not. Normally slow night charging is enough for most people (ie those who drive up to 100km a day) and that is done with the standard power for homes (around 3-5kW).

If grid can feed homes at day, It can feed same number of slow chargers at night

I said it and i know the grid in my country isnt ready for this , while we are going to shut the nuclear reactors down soon
Wind energy is not being stored and solar energy doesnt work when the sun is down while all these cars needing to charge + the houses need heating based on electricity once we stop using gas

Then you´re wrong, I´m afraid. What makes you thing the grid is not ready for this? You don´t have electricity at day? Because as exposed, if you have electricity at day, then grid is ready for slow charging at night wich is the only thing you need for an EV except if you drive more than 100km daily

You know there are a lot of alternative to gas and electricity for heating? Aerothermal energy is becoming quite popular around here for example. Geothermal energy is another alternative. They use electricity but just a fraction of any electrical heating system

Anycase none is going to shut down any nuclear plant if there´s no viable alternative. Politicians are a bunch of ignorants, but once someone told them there´s no alternative and it´s going to cause serious problems with no easy solution they´ll stop their PR BS.


It´s frustrating watching such ignorants governing tough

[Tommy Cookers]

air & ground source heat pumps compete with EVs increasing demand on (grossly insufficient) supply of 'good' electricity
(ok UK-built turbines will soon be 200+m dia on UK-built masts)

ie we are and will be powering heat pumps and EVs with 'bad' (fossil-fuel) electricity
and 2022 legislation will do this (but make the legislators feel good)

we aren't any time soon rebuilding our housing stock to reduce heat demand
(and there's many billions in legal hangover/undetermined liability on existing building insulation/construction issues)

though (in temperate countries) heating energy consumption is far greater than vehicle energy consumption
so we will still need a 1000% or 2000% increase in 'good' electricity ?

where's that viability ?

[hollus]

Heat pumps save energy. They might appear to spend it, but they use far less energy than a convencional heater making the same function. and in most cases, the heating would been done one way or another.

[nzjrs]

This must be country dependent

We need to distinguish between heat-pumps (and their electricity usage) replacing convectional heating from gas vs from electricity, or being installed into houses that did not previously have heating. Then there is *also* going to be the inevitable and new, relative to the baseline, usage of heat-pumps for cooling.

This all feels like Jevon's paradox with additional demand of EVs thrown on top.

[Tommy Cookers]

Heat pumps save energy. They might appear to spend it, but they use far less energy than a convencional heater making the same function. and in most cases, the heating would been done one way or another.

heat pumps don't really save if run on fossil-fuel electricity (compared to the normal - direct fossil-fuel heating)
but that is what our upcoming legislation will encourage

ground source heat pumps won't do (unless heat losses are slashed) - because we don't have enough land per house
air source heat pumps won't do (unless heat losses are slashed) - because of the (mutual) neighbour-proximity effect

these are said ....

[MattWellsyWells]

Ha! I was just going to come and post that on here as I watched it yesterday. Really interesting show and some beautiful vehicles. (That van....)
It was on Channel 4 though rather than ITV, in case people are looking for it!

I also watched this documentary and it was very interesting. I was surprised when they concluded it was more expensive than ICE on long journeys. I saw a friend at the weekend who has recently bought a VW ID.3 and he says he absolutely loves it and would never go back to ICE. He doesn't do that many long journeys but said he recently drove from Oxford to Bangor (about 450 mile round trip) and that it only cost him about £15!

Did he say how long it took him though? I guess if Guy Martin had used the slowest charge points he would have got there for a lot less than £204, but spent hours and hours waiting for the car to charge! It's quite interesting, the charge time vs cost issue. Someone will always pay a premium for speed, and I wonder if the prices can be jacked up where they know there aren't many charge points? I guess at some point it'll become super fast and super cheap with an abundance of charge points, but not for a couple of years. The infrastructure development really needs to be rapid.

Yeah he took his time and also managed to charge over night so it isn't really comparable with what Guy was doing.

To be honest I'm surprised they had Guy Martin do that show because he's always been pretty old school and a sort of "the more oil and dirt the better" kind of person. I think he is right though that EVs are good for a minority currently and will probably never be right for some others but hopefully in a couple of years the infrastructure and costs will be at a level that make them viable for most people

[djos]

One the big benefits the new generation of EV’s are bringing to the table, is home battery storage for solar systems and grid backup.

Personally, if i could buy a good quality BEV that had this feature I’d trade in my warm hatch today for one.

Instead I’ve plonked down $12,000 AUD for a Tesla Powerwall to cover us during increasingly frequent wild storms and power outages. Also because the Australian grid market operator just gave power companies the ability to charge us solar owners for the excess power we export into the grid! (I kid you not!).

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-12/ ... /100368588

If I could get a vehicle with the home storage capabilities of the F150 lightning, it would be a big deal for me and help the economics stack up.

[Jolle]

There are so many advantages hooking up a large amount of EV’s to the grid, a big problem is to keep the power stable (a bigger problem is then pure capacity in most cases). If your EV is hooked up to your personal grid, virtual or physical, you can choose when to buy your power (or even sell it). (Making money when you park your car )

[Just_a_fan]

though (in temperate countries) heating energy consumption is far greater than vehicle energy consumption
so we will still need a 1000% or 2000% increase in 'good' electricity ?

Buildings can be heating using solar thermal panels, directly from PV (not efficient), by air-sourced / ground-sourced heat pumps powered by PV (much better use of the PV energy). It doesn't all have to be grid-sourced energy.

CHP can also be used although that is really only suited to new developments.

[nzjrs]

We have to get to "xxx can be" via non hypothetical pathways of user adoption and incentives or else we will never get to the promised land. We all agree likely on the destination but it's the pathway that is the viability argument. I think there are plenty of local minima that we will just get trapped in.

I actually consider 'can be ism' is something like 'do something ism' which is what gets us paper straws and single use reusable shopping bags.

Edit: this was not at JaF in case it reads that way.

[Just_a_fan]

Heat pumps save energy. They might appear to spend it, but they use far less energy than a convencional heater making the same function. and in most cases, the heating would been done one way or another.

heat pumps don't really save if run on fossil-fuel electricity (compared to the normal - direct fossil-fuel heating)
but that is what our upcoming legislation will encourage

ground source heat pumps won't do (unless heat losses are slashed) - because we don't have enough land per house
air source heat pumps won't do (unless heat losses are slashed) - because of the (mutual) neighbour-proximity effect

these are said ....

Heat pumps give a return of around 3:1 so every kW of electricity supplied gives 3kW equivalent heat to the building. So even if using dino-juice or dino-gas sourced electricity, it's better than burning that dino-stuff directly in the building.

Heat pumps do require a change in how the occupant uses the heating, however. Gone are the days of walking in and turning up the thermostat to get the gas boiler chucking 20kW in to the building via the radiators. Many of the problems associated with heat pumps (usually air-sourced because ground-sourced is rare in the UK) are because the occupants don't understand the system - they're often used in new social housing so have people who perhaps aren't interested or capable of learning / changing their habits.

Ground sourced heat pumps don't have to be big pipe networks spread across fields (although they are great if you have the ground). Boreholes can also be used and these can also be used for several properties so doable for a group of houses. One could have a group of new houses built with a couple of boreholes shared by them. Again, really most practical for new builds.

Replacing the existing housing stock is an issue - particularly where the house builders control the market for new builds thanks to previous decisions by Government (many years ago and never changed since). Building highly insulated, high air tightness dwellings is important. Once insulation levels are high, the heat losses associated with air leakage become important. The mantra "build it tight, ventilate it right" is key. Difficult to do with some older stock, however, although even replacing windows and doors will help.

So lots can be done that doesn't require massively more electricity demand from buildings.

[Just_a_fan]

We have to get to "xxx can be" via non hypothetical pathways of user adoption and incentives or else we will never get to the promised land. We all agree likely on the destination but it's the pathway that is the viability argument. I think there are plenty of local minima that we will just get trapped in.

I actually consider 'can be ism' is something like 'do something ism' which is what gets us paper straws and single use reusable shopping bags.

Edit: this was not at JaF in case it reads that way.

I agree with your sentiment, to a degree, but I would say that telling people that things can be done using X, Y or Z instead of the status quo, is the first step in getting people to consider doing things. It makes a lie of the all too common "yes, it'd be great but it's not possible because..." excuses.

The issue isn't a technological one. It's social / political one. By showing technological solutions that are really possible (rather than hypothetical), the pressure is put back on to people to make decisions based on realities, not excuses.

[DChemTech]

There are so many advantages hooking up a large amount of EV’s to the grid, a big problem is to keep the power stable (a bigger problem is then pure capacity in most cases). If your EV is hooked up to your personal grid, virtual or physical, you can choose when to buy your power (or even sell it). (Making money when you park your car )

You can, although purely from a cost-perspective the idea of using electric cars as buffer storage (or, using Li-ion home batteries) has never made a whole lot of sense to me. With the costs of a Tesla Powerwall and some very, very generous assumptions we got to a cost of ca. $0.2/kWh for storage, which is more or less equal to grid electricity (generation, distribution, profit and taxes). Market price fluctuations (or costs to supply electricity back to the grid) may make the economics work, but that feels a bit artificial. I would think it preferable that car batteries are used for, well, moving the car - instead of suffering wear & tear from continuous charge cycles for stationary applications.
That said, there is of course a need for storage for stationary applications, but I hope other technologies with more favourable economics are developed for that in years to come.

[Just_a_fan]

There are so many advantages hooking up a large amount of EV’s to the grid, a big problem is to keep the power stable (a bigger problem is then pure capacity in most cases). If your EV is hooked up to your personal grid, virtual or physical, you can choose when to buy your power (or even sell it). (Making money when you park your car )

You can, although purely from a cost-perspective the idea of using electric cars as buffer storage (or, using Li-ion home batteries) has never made a whole lot of sense to me. With the costs of a Tesla Powerwall and some very, very generous assumptions we got to a cost of ca. $0.2/kWh for storage, which is more or less equal to grid electricity (generation, distribution, profit and taxes).

I do like the idea of a battery store for PV-generated electricity. It's more about reducing the need for dino-sourced electricity than economics, but it is a "first world problem" type position really. I like the idea of generating electricity during the day and then using that to run the house during the dark hours. Obviously, that works better in summer months, especially in countries that are well north/south of the equator, but it would certainly be possible to be effectively grid neutral for quite a good percentage of the year. But admittedly it's not a solution for people on low wages etc., because of the cost of the kit (PV, controllers, switches, battery system).

Having said that, in countries where there is a lot of solar energy potential but not the grid infrastructure (thinking many African countries, for example), PV linked to battery storage would certainly allow for a modern lifestyle
(whatever that means) without the need to develop a generating and grid infrastructure at great cost.