[Technology] The In no way official Electric Car thread

[Fungus]

things like this expose little recognised reliance on internet where there simply shouldnt be any. just because its electric, no need to be hooked into the cloud. not long ago cars had overrides in case the central locking didnt work, now you're dependent on phone coverage to get in.

There's more to it than phone coverage, or there would always be Teslas stuck in half the coastal car parks in Cornwall.

 

[dolphins]

things like this expose little recognised reliance on internet where there simply shouldnt be any. just because its electric, no need to be hooked into the cloud. not long ago cars had overrides in case the central locking didnt work, now you're dependent on phone coverage to get in.

The news report didn't make it clear that as standard with a Tesla is a keycard (like a hotel card, or credit card) that you use initially to get into/use the car, and to set up phones to use with the car. They recommend you always carry the card with you in case you have an issue with your phone (eg no power, broken, lost).

 

[swindonseagull]

New car time at work, no more car ownership scheme so we have to go company car route with Zenith,
My car is not due change until Sept but they are now alloing a full 9 months for order and delivery.

Choices are ( condensed) a conventional diesel/petrol Ford Focus size car and pay £200 PM BIK tax or Pay £160 PM extra so £40 less and Get a VW id4.
The home charger grant (£350) currently expires in April.......but has anyonr got a VW id4 ? or Skoda Enyak ? any pros or cons?

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

New car time at work, no more car ownership scheme so we have to go company car route with Zenith,
My car is not due change until Sept but they are now alloing a full 9 months for order and delivery.

Choices are ( condensed) a conventional diesel/petrol Ford Focus size car and pay £200 PM BIK tax or Pay £160 PM extra so £40 less and Get a VW id4.
The home charger grant (£350) currently expires in April.......but has anyonr got a VW id4 ? or Skoda Enyak ? any pros or cons?

Only that I hear if you're a football chairman the skoda is useful for driving off to eastern europe to pick up new footballers.

Suppose it must have a decent range

 

[Lenny Rider]

I've got a hybrid funeral fleet, first on the South Coast, and am very pleased with it, however on the recent trip to Chelsea something struck me as walking down the Kings Road passed a large block of flats.

Lets say 50 flats in this block, for arguments lets say only 50% have cars, but where are those people going to charge their cars up overnight, Will they put a charging point in for every car?

With the apparent deadline re Diesel sales growing ever closer, with petrol cars not far behind, have they really thought the whole process out?

 

[nwgull]

I've got a hybrid funeral fleet, first on the South Coast, and am very pleased with it, however on the recent trip to Chelsea something struck me as walking down the Kings Road passed a large block of flats.

Lets say 50 flats in this block, for arguments lets say only 50% have cars, but where are those people going to charge their cars up overnight, Will they put a charging point in for every car?

With the apparent deadline re Diesel sales growing ever closer, with petrol cars not far behind, have they really thought the whole process out?

I think the vision is that there will be charging points in all the car park spaces or adjacent to on-street parking spots. It's also worth noting that most new fully electric cars have 200+ range these days - and that's only going to get better - so the average driver is only going to need to charge 1-2 times a week, particularly in cities with convenient public transport.

 

[Audax]

I think the vision is that there will be charging points in all the car park spaces or adjacent to on-street parking spots. It's also worth noting that most new fully electric cars have 200+ range these days - and that's only going to get better - so the average driver is only going to need to charge 1-2 times a week, particularly in cities with convenient public transport.

There's a lot of infrastructure work required still:

1. More dedicated EV-only parking bays with chargers
2. New EV-only service stations with whatever is the fastest available chargers
3. More conversion of street lights to also handle charging (there's a bit of this in London already)
4. Take up will be slow, but already starting: converting existing gas servos over to EV sites.

You don't necessarily need everyone charging their EV at home, as long as there are enough options "near enough" to home for drivers to keep "enough" charge in their cars. As EV take up increases, you'll see the likes of Tesco expand their existing EV charging infra. I'm already seeing the charge points at Tesco Uckfield being used extensively. If, as an EV driver, you can be confident that everywhere you go away from home also gives you an opportunity to charge, the necessity for a charger at home gets reduced.

I can imagine eventually, as the battery tech improves, the long-term solution will be battery packs that are small enough and light enough to removed from the car for charging indoors. Tesla has already talked about designing cars where the battery can be easily removed and swapped for a full one - the idea being you pull into a servo, swap your empty battery for a full one, and drive off again.

 

[Stumpy Tim]

I've had my BMW i3 for 3.5 years and absolutely loved it. I would recommend it to anyone. I've just ordered the i4 which arrives in July as it'll give us a bigger range.

What i would say is that over the last 3 years I've noticed a significant upgrade in the infrastructure. When I started driving electric the charging points were not only scarce, but also often broken. I don't see that as often these days.

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

There's a lot of infrastructure work required still:

1. More dedicated EV-only parking bays with chargers
2. New EV-only service stations with whatever is the fastest available chargers
3. More conversion of street lights to also handle charging (there's a bit of this in London already)
4. Take up will be slow, but already starting: converting existing gas servos over to EV sites.

You don't necessarily need everyone charging their EV at home, as long as there are enough options "near enough" to home for drivers to keep "enough" charge in their cars. As EV take up increases, you'll see the likes of Tesco expand their existing EV charging infra. I'm already seeing the charge points at Tesco Uckfield being used extensively. If, as an EV driver, you can be confident that everywhere you go away from home also gives you an opportunity to charge, the necessity for a charger at home gets reduced.

I can imagine eventually, as the battery tech improves, the long-term solution will be battery packs that are small enough and light enough to removed from the car for charging indoors. Tesla has already talked about designing cars where the battery can be easily removed and swapped for a full one - the idea being you pull into a servo, swap your empty battery for a full one, and drive off again.

This would represent a huge tipping point to get EV's into the mainstream. My understanding of Tesla batteries is that they are already lots of different batteries connected together, so hopefully this would be an exercise in swapping lots of little batteries rather than one big one. I'm always interested if you have more detail on how this would work.

 

[dsr-burnley]

There's a lot of infrastructure work required still:

1. More dedicated EV-only parking bays with chargers
2. New EV-only service stations with whatever is the fastest available chargers
3. More conversion of street lights to also handle charging (there's a bit of this in London already)
4. Take up will be slow, but already starting: converting existing gas servos over to EV sites.

You don't necessarily need everyone charging their EV at home, as long as there are enough options "near enough" to home for drivers to keep "enough" charge in their cars. As EV take up increases, you'll see the likes of Tesco expand their existing EV charging infra. I'm already seeing the charge points at Tesco Uckfield being used extensively. If, as an EV driver, you can be confident that everywhere you go away from home also gives you an opportunity to charge, the necessity for a charger at home gets reduced.

I can imagine eventually, as the battery tech improves, the long-term solution will be battery packs that are small enough and light enough to removed from the car for charging indoors. Tesla has already talked about designing cars where the battery can be easily removed and swapped for a full one - the idea being you pull into a servo, swap your empty battery for a full one, and drive off again.

The long term plan must be to have electric vehicles that "refuel" as fast as petrol vehicles. Without that, everything else is just patching up and making do in an attempt to get back a little of the convenience that petrol cars have, and electric ones don't.

 

[Audax]

This would represent a huge tipping point to get EV's into the mainstream. My understanding of Tesla batteries is that they are already lots of different batteries connected together, so hopefully this would be an exercise in swapping lots of little batteries rather than one big one. I'm always interested if you have more detail on how this would work.

I went googling. It turns out that as far back as 2014 it was already possible to swap out a Model S battery in about 3 minutes. Tesla ran a pilot program. No idea how that went and what the result was, but when I ran my search I came across a company called Gogoro who are already well advanced when it comes to pioneering battery swapping as a solution (for two wheel EVs): https://www.gogoro.com/news/battery-swapping-future-mobility-urban-smart-city-gogoro/

 

[Silverhatch]

The long term plan must be to have electric vehicles that "refuel" as fast as petrol vehicles. Without that, everything else is just patching up and making do in an attempt to get back a little of the convenience that petrol cars have, and electric ones don't.

The infrastructure needs to be in place both physically and economically - because the technology might already exist. Global economies are (have been) built/funded on oil. Loads of old "Dinosaur" economic, political and taxation global taxation thinking has to be completely overhauled. Bin off the word Taxation completely and replace it with the word contribution. Bin off the term shareholder value and replace it with the term societal contribution... Ahem, back to electric cars - Mercedes have just run a concept car from Southampton to Inverness on a single charge. The EQXX concept looks like something out of a 70s sci-fi series

 

[schmunk]

All EV batteries are an array of smaller cells, similar to power tool battery packs. They're somewhat larger, though - this is a Tesla battery pack (the flat bit), it weight about 600kg.

Making this replaceable will take a little work.

 

[m@goo]

Obviously the holy grail for EV's is very fast charging and very long range and Mercedes have a concept car at the moment that is capable of 1000km and runs on a 900V system which means charging will be very rapid.

They need to filter this technology down and offer it to all manufacturers as soon as possible.

https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/vehicles/passenger-cars/concept-cars/vision-eqxx-the-new-benchmark-of-effiency/

 

[beorhthelm]

The long term plan must be to have electric vehicles that "refuel" as fast as petrol vehicles. Without that, everything else is just patching up and making do in an attempt to get back a little of the convenience that petrol cars have, and electric ones don't.

more practically the long term plan is for people to accept the limitations of electric and adjust to them. like owning small lower range vehicles for around town, lease medium size for commuting, hire a long range tourer for the trip to Wales. fast charging hits walls of physics, while battery swaps relies on the entire industry agreeing to a single, simple format and capacity (reducing market competitivness).

 

[Deportivo Seagull]

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[Deportivo Seagull]

Obviously the holy grail for EV's is very fast charging and very long range and Mercedes have a concept car at the moment that is capable of 1000km and runs on a 900V system which means charging will be very rapid.

They need to filter this technology down and offer it to all manufacturers as soon as possible.

https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/vehicles/passenger-cars/concept-cars/vision-eqxx-the-new-benchmark-of-effiency/

The main problem is with speed of charge and ability to hold the charge.
An article on Imeche website discussed the new rapid charging algorithms (offsets internal resistance, temperature, charge state and battery age) being designed and the fact that after 40 rapid charges the cell capacity falls to 60% which is not really acceptable.
Batteries don’t like rapid charge (or rapid discharge for that matter). Personally I think we are stuck with hybrids unless hydrogen kicks. Hydrogen is ecologically the best solution.


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[m@goo]

Hydrogen is ecologically the best solution.

Absolutely. That and I think synthetic fuel should be pushed.

 

[Audax]

All EV batteries are an array of smaller cells, similar to power tool battery packs. They're somewhat larger, though - this is a Tesla battery pack (the flat bit), it weight about 600kg.

Making this replaceable will take a little work.

Tesla Model S back in 2014, the battery could be replaced in as little as 3 minutes.

They may have made changes since then that means it takes longer, given they abandoned their trial battery swapping site (where a swap took more like 7 minutes) back in 2016. Tesla are currently backing super-fast charging as the right approach.

Stepping away from Tesla, apparently NIO (in China) have a successful battery swapping program. So it can be done - you just need to design the car to allow for it and have a population who are willing to take that approach.

 

[Icy Gull]

I am the 21st century equivalent of this video in regard to electric cars. I KNOW they are the future but I cannot embrace it on a personal level. Petrol all the way for me

I am hoping Alfa Romeo entering the world of electric cars in 2027 will swing me and I’m not holding my breath that there won’t be a considerable delay to the muted 2027 launch

I will not be buying a Tesla or a Chinese car

https://youtu.be/4PCtapneHWE