New Ford EV teased

[DB74]

I feel your pain...
Thinking about it, all these arguments must have been put forward by those who didn't want to give up their horses as there were no filling stations anywhere etc etc etc...

Funny you should mention that as one of forms of transport to take over from horses in the late 1800's was...electric cars but for some reason it didn't take off

[4251]

Nobody seems to have come up with a solution yet for charging them if you live in a house with no drive.

People keep saying this - I think it will be solved through legistlation: don't have offstreet parking (or a rented offstreet parking space) - you can't own a car. We don't tolerate anything else being stored on public land indefinitely, why do we allow rows and rows full of "parked" cars to be abandoned indefinitely? I don't think it'll be long until the more left wing cities start to push this thinking, and it'll go from there.

As for the synth fuels/hydrogen arguments - they'll be niche, but completely unsustainable for the masses - the round trip efficency (the total amount of energy invested in fuel creation & use that actually turns the wheels of the car), of both are piss poor. An electric motor is likely to be up near 80% efficient. Electricity transmission is over 90% efficent, so most of the consumed energy in an EV turns the wheels.

Synthfuels/hydrogen require burning of the same to transport them and, even ignoring that: synth fuels, 40% round trip efficient. Blue hydrogen, you're better off burning the LNG in the engine, green hydrogen 32% efficent round trip (ie you put 10 kWh into the process, you'll get 3.2 useable kWh back). Neither synth nor hydrogen can compete with using batteries. Yes, the mining is filthy, yes, parts of the 3rd world are being taken advantage of: but to remove our dependency on foreign energy imports, and clean the filthy air that pervades our urban areas they are a necessity

I think it is inevitable electric cars will become mainstream - and the 20 minutes you spend rapid charging every few months will really not seem that bad compared to the expensive faf that is visiting a petrol station.

This Ford however, is about 20K too expensive. When they've sorted that out, people might be more interested.

No can’t agree with much of this. I am an engineer and familiar with electrical generation and distribution. The cold hard fact is there is nowhere near enough generating capacity to charge electric cars in place of ICE, nowhere near! The grid would sit hard on its arse if it was attempted. Plus local distribution (transformers supplying your house) is way under capacity and mega upgrades required and cabling infrastructure etc falls well short of mass deployment. The whole idea as it stands is complete bollocks. They are starting to panic now announcing a big increase in gas generation, pathetic , better off just burning petrol diesel in modern clean engines, overall far cleaner than ev. Not to mention over 50% won’t be able to charge their cars at home at all and then theres millions of multi car households. It is seriously flawed in many unfixable ways.

The near future is clean ICE. But most of us know the govt especially labour ( I am no Tory, couldn’t detest anyone more) is hell bent in stopping people travelling by their own means!

[4251]

What happens where you have multiple cars per household? Do you have to have multiple chargers installed. After owning an EV I still believe there are a lot of issues to overcome and charging in all weathers is a big part of it!

Unless you both do 100’s of miles a day you won’t need to charge at the same time.

If a car can realistically do 300 miles on a charge, then for me I would only need to charge once a week, overnight at home.

Almost everyone by habbit will plug their car in every night but the problem is there would be no control at all over demand, that would down the grid.

[matthen]

Nobody seems to have come up with a solution yet for charging them if you live in a house with no drive.

People keep saying this - I think it will be solved through legistlation: don't have offstreet parking (or a rented offstreet parking space) - you can't own a car. We don't tolerate anything else being stored on public land indefinitely, why do we allow rows and rows full of "parked" cars to be abandoned indefinitely? I don't think it'll be long until the more left wing cities start to push this thinking, and it'll go from there.

As for the synth fuels/hydrogen arguments - they'll be niche, but completely unsustainable for the masses - the round trip efficency (the total amount of energy invested in fuel creation & use that actually turns the wheels of the car), of both are piss poor. An electric motor is likely to be up near 80% efficient. Electricity transmission is over 90% efficent, so most of the consumed energy in an EV turns the wheels.

Synthfuels/hydrogen require burning of the same to transport them and, even ignoring that: synth fuels, 40% round trip efficient. Blue hydrogen, you're better off burning the LNG in the engine, green hydrogen 32% efficent round trip (ie you put 10 kWh into the process, you'll get 3.2 useable kWh back). Neither synth nor hydrogen can compete with using batteries. Yes, the mining is filthy, yes, parts of the 3rd world are being taken advantage of: but to remove our dependency on foreign energy imports, and clean the filthy air that pervades our urban areas they are a necessity

I think it is inevitable electric cars will become mainstream - and the 20 minutes you spend rapid charging every few months will really not seem that bad compared to the expensive faf that is visiting a petrol station.

This Ford however, is about 20K too expensive. When they've sorted that out, people might be more interested.

No can’t agree with much of this. I am an engineer and familiar with electrical generation and distribution. The cold hard fact is there is nowhere near enough generating capacity to charge electric cars in place of ICE, nowhere near! The grid would sit hard on its arse if it was attempted. Plus local distribution (transformers supplying your house) is way under capacity and mega upgrades required and cabling infrastructure etc falls well short of mass deployment. The whole idea as it stands is complete bollocks. They are starting to panic now announcing a big increase in gas generation, pathetic , better off just burning petrol diesel in modern clean engines, overall far cleaner than ev. Not to mention over 50% won’t be able to charge their cars at home at all and then theres millions of multi car households. It is seriously flawed in many unfixable ways.

The near future is clean ICE. But most of us know the govt especially labour ( I am no Tory, couldn’t detest anyone more) is hell bent in stopping people travelling by their own means!

You'd be wrong then. There is plenty of power available overnight, and to access the best tariffs you let the provider decide when to start charging your car.

Sure, if everyone plugged in a car (from empty) at half past 5, the grid would fall over. But: the average person does 18 miles a day. That's approximately 6kWh of charge a night. Call it 7kWh to account for loses.

So, they'll be running the chargers for less than 1hr. Spread between 10 and 6 AM, where we typically have 30 MW or more of generation capacity sat idle, it'll generate no more noise than the countries electric showers do.

The maths has been done. The problems will be at motorway services on bank holidays. That is easy to address with an on demand gas plant (size of a shipping container).

[Rizmo]

How is the gas made.

[matthen]

Doesn't matter how the gas is made - the plants are 50% efficient: considerably better than an ICE is.

And there will be an ever increasing number of days/hours where we’ll have excess power available, thanks to the silly amount of wind turbines we seem to have installed - perfect for dumping into a car battery.

[Rizmo]

Doesn't matter how the gas is made - the plants are 50% efficient: considerably better than an ICE is.

And there will be an ever increasing number of days/hours where we’ll have excess power available, thanks to the silly amount of wind turbines we seem to have installed - perfect for dumping into a car battery.

It's my opinion that I don't share your confidence or enthusiasm for EV's, at least not yet.

[DB74]

I'm very skeptical that the UK can cope, judging from the emails I receive from my energy supplier asking to join sessions to reduce electric use over the winter. The father-in-law, who is a retired power station electrician, also has no faith the UK can provide enough power.

[4251]

.

[4251]

No can’t agree with much of this. I am an engineer and familiar with electrical generation and distribution. The cold hard fact is there is nowhere near enough generating capacity to charge electric cars in place of ICE, nowhere near! The grid would sit hard on its arse if it was attempted. Plus local distribution (transformers supplying your house) is way under capacity and mega upgrades required and cabling infrastructure etc falls well short of mass deployment. The whole idea as it stands is complete bollocks. They are starting to panic now announcing a big increase in gas generation, pathetic , better off just burning petrol diesel in modern clean engines, overall far cleaner than ev. Not to mention over 50% won’t be able to charge their cars at home at all and then theres millions of multi car households. It is seriously flawed in many unfixable ways.

The near future is clean ICE. But most of us know the govt especially labour ( I am no Tory, couldn’t detest anyone more) is hell bent in stopping people travelling by their own means!

You'd be wrong then. There is plenty of power available overnight, and to access the best tariffs you let the provider decide when to start charging your car.

Sure, if everyone plugged in a car (from empty) at half past 5, the grid would fall over. But: the average person does 18 miles a day. That's approximately 6kWh of charge a night. Call it 7kWh to account for loses.

So, they'll be running the chargers for less than 1hr. Spread between 10 and 6 AM, where we typically have 30 MW or more of generation capacity sat idle, it'll generate no more noise than the countries electric showers do.

The maths has been done. The problems will be at motorway services on bank holidays. That is easy to address with an on demand gas plant (size of a shipping container).

Your in the usual ill advised cuckoo dreamland. There are dozens of reasons ev can NOT work for a high % of the nation. And the vast majority of cars would be plugged in around 6pm, the amount of charge required is not the overwhelming problem it is the fact a colossal load will be placed on the grid at the peak demand time, YES the peak demand time! The national grid and your local network is light years away from being able to provide this capacity be it for 1 minute or 8 hours, the grid has not got anywhere near the capacity, end off! It’s irrelevant that sometimes all things being good there will be some spare capacity. If it’s not available 100% of the time it’s still useless. Very often the grid is at or near capacity in winter at around 5-7pm and that’s now! A high pressure weather system makes wind power redundant and solar is none existent leaving just mainly (dirty) gas and some nuclear and some coal essentially. This happens every winter fairly regularly. Add to it any substantial amount of ev’s it’s way OTT and candles out. Still got huge local network issues to overcome and the fact the vast majority of cars are nowhere near a power source of anywhere near the required capacity. NO streetlight could provide anywhere near the demand.

The argument is currently so crap it’s embarrassing. A perfect example of thick politicians and sheep following them.