errm, not only have City of London Police and the Met been using EVs for several years, but Scotland is/will be...
https://greenfleet.net/news/0810202...tall-over-1000-electric-vehicle-charge-points
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Electric Cars - your opinion?
- Thread starter Clodbuster
- Start date
errm, not only have City of London Police and the Met been using EVs for several years, but Scotland is/will be...
https://greenfleet.net/news/0810202...tall-over-1000-electric-vehicle-charge-points
Yeah like I said, they use use electric vehicles already for mooching around town (and I suppose for PR judging by the tone of that article), but the full needs of a police fleet are not served by electric vehicles.
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It would be interesting to know how many long distance police chases they routinely get involved in. I'd suggest it is very little.
And even if they do have this requirement which electric cars cannot solve, then they need to think outside the box by using drones, cameras, ANPR etc.
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D
Darren_Ssc
The 'theoretical' range of an electric vehicle is multiple times that of a petrol/diesel vehicle. Since we're talking about the future, this could be a solvable problem?
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A car is unnecessary if you are young and live in a city. When I was young and lived in London I never owned a car. I need one know because I live in a small town and have kids.
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No one is scrapping cars - just banning the sale of them.
They don't talk about lorries and buses and there is no suitable alternative.
Have you any proof that they pollute more?
Take a full articulated lorry...drive it from the port to the distribution warehouse. One lorry is required for a large load....how many cars would you need to do the same? Yet you think the lorry pollutes more?
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Unless a solution is found to people who have nowhere to plug the car in, I will just grab the last of the petrol engines in 2029 and hope it lasts the rest of my life.
If a solution is found that does not involve me spending many thousands of pounds, I will buy an EV at the next change, which would be in 2021. But right now, even the non existent roadside charging points would not be a solution for me - I have a remote garage with no power anywhere near it. And roadside parking is currently not available to me.
In all seriousness - I quite like the idea of an EV. And if I lived in a house with a drive, I would be looking at the costs right now.
If a solution is found that does not involve me spending many thousands of pounds, I will buy an EV at the next change, which would be in 2021. But right now, even the non existent roadside charging points would not be a solution for me - I have a remote garage with no power anywhere near it. And roadside parking is currently not available to me.
In all seriousness - I quite like the idea of an EV. And if I lived in a house with a drive, I would be looking at the costs right now.
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The number of people in a similar situation (same as mine) will not change dramatically by 2030, so I don't think you need to worry.
I'll cope as long as I get a chance to buy a 4l V8 Audi RS6 before anything happens, and then it will become my life's work keeping it on the road until I die.
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If it applies to all cars, as would be expected it will make both electric and IC more expensive - in that the increase is cost i equal.
As the proportion of internal combustion cars drops they have to replace the lost revenue which means taxing electric cars more. The current concessions are there to encourage people to switch. Once the switch is complete the revenue from taxes on electric cars will have to entirely replace the revenue from taxes on internal combustion cars.
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I have sought a solution. Get electricity installed into the remote garage. I was quoted £15k.
I decided not to do that, but I don't believe that is unreasonable of me.
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Well, if that turns out to be the case, I shall have to stop using the car.
However, all these asides, whilst correct, deviate from the question. The question is this. When is there going to be some infrastructure? When will be deal with the reality of multitudes of people who cannot have home charging points?
Because I would buy an EV now. But I would then have to drive into town and park it up to recharge.
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I said the cost increase will be the same. So the cost difference between running an electric car and an internal combustion one will stay the same.
In the longer term taxes on electric care will have to climb to bring in the same revenue as taxes on internal combustion cars, so they will become, on average, about as expensive to run as petrol cars are now.
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How about a solar panel on the car's roof
https://lightyear.one/
Sadly won't work north of Birminham due to lack of sunlight.
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There is a lot of merit in this, with the huge proviso that we create a coherent national transport infrastructure
Currently, most big cities are well served, smaller towns are a bit erratic and getting point to point across country is comically bad with public transport.
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As a geek, I love the idea of an electric vehicle, particularly the faster ones
But as a massive petrolhead I'll miss the sound of exploding dinosaurs under the bonnet.
I'm also wondering how I'll tow my caravan but there's a few years for the tech to continue improving, the infrastructure rollout is going to be massive & quite interesting - there's going to be huge economic benefits on the back of that infrastructure work which will hopefully offset the the downturn in the petrochem industries and the problems faced by back street garages which will have to totally evolve and will become a mix of oily ''hit it with a hammer' for the moving bits and geekery for the electro bits - massive changes that's for sure.
But as a massive petrolhead I'll miss the sound of exploding dinosaurs under the bonnet.
I'm also wondering how I'll tow my caravan but there's a few years for the tech to continue improving, the infrastructure rollout is going to be massive & quite interesting - there's going to be huge economic benefits on the back of that infrastructure work which will hopefully offset the the downturn in the petrochem industries and the problems faced by back street garages which will have to totally evolve and will become a mix of oily ''hit it with a hammer' for the moving bits and geekery for the electro bits - massive changes that's for sure.
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That was happening anyway with the control electronics. Motors and batteries are more "oily bits" than "geeky"
What looks like happening with geeky bits is that they just replace whole modules.
The problem is that it will shorten the life of cars and cause security issues etc so I think its a bad thing, but it will be the fault of electronic controls, not motors. For example this: https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/17/tesla_nand_memory/ It happened to a Teslas (and was the result of very bad engineering) but could happen to a petrol car too.
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Yup. Main dealers will fall back on their tried & tested faultfind technique of 'replace bits until it works' which may lead to new opportunities for independent component level workshops.
I once did a huge favour to a local small garage who'd blown someone's ECU, looking at many £00's to replace. Opened it up and it was nothing more than a blown Zener diode.
That was just poor engineering on Tesla's part - or the influence of cost cutting beancounters who refused to accept the technical justification for higher priced parts - Hope SpaceX isn't built to the same standards!
But it should be a reminder to designers that electronic parts have finite lives too.I'm more concerned about cars effectively becoming IoT devices and hanging off the Internet. Wearing my CyberSecurity hat, it's a disaster waiting to happen! The bad guys will be queuing up to see who can be the first to take control... Some access has already been proven possible in tests. Manufacturers really need to think about the security side of things sooner rather than after the event.
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I could install charging points at my house fairly simply. However locally we have considerable loud voices from the large numbers of streets with small terraced housing where every family have two vehicles and there is no parking spaces. The council have converted parking to permit holders only but there are still less spaces than cars, and they cannot park in the next bay if theirs is full. Even worse, they now get tickets if they park on the curb, but the fire engines size vehicles like dustcarts cannot pass unless they do. Nobody can even consider electric vehicles because charging points are totally impossible. The technology cannot support these homes. When my van and car can do the distances I drive, or did, precovid, I’ll happily buy one.
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From a business perspective I'm far more interested in charging tech than the vehicles. Not hard, as the cars themselves bore me senseless.
There are already remote/mobile chargers on the market - though I'm pretty sure they aren't well developed.
For group charging, I'd expect to see some community models. Whilst the industry itself is exploring a mix of 'free to users' vs profit share models.
There are already remote/mobile chargers on the market - though I'm pretty sure they aren't well developed.
For group charging, I'd expect to see some community models. Whilst the industry itself is exploring a mix of 'free to users' vs profit share models.
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D
Darren_Ssc
Most people are not travelling huge distances in a typical week though and could get by charging at work, whilst shopping, etc. People already have to go out of their way to fill up with fuel so I don't think it should be assumed that everyone should have a convenient charging point on their doorstep.
The big oil companies are now re-branding themselves as 'energy companies and are investing in infrastructure or buoying up that which already exists. Over time, batteries will last longer, charge quicker, etc. Charging facilities will pop up all over the place.
I suspect it will be a bit like fast broadband where it takes a while to become mainstream and then in a short space of time most people have it. Also like fast broadband, there will be people left out and we may never see 100% adoption.
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A variation on that theme:
https://www.nio.com/nio-power
You take (or the car takes itself) to a garage, where a robot removes the discharged battery (and recharges it) and replaces it with a fully charged one.
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