Drivers of electric cars should be charged 10p per mile to pay for the power

Maybe, Maybe not. Depends on the recharge strategy.

Don't forget the reserch into:

Ultra Capacitors

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14753-can-nanoscopic-meadows-drive-electric-cars-forward.html​

Lithium Titanate Batteries

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7081​

Redox Flow Batteries

http://www.fraunhofer.de/en/press/r...ed-redox-flow-batteries-for-electric-cars.jsp​

 

This bad boy is what i had in mind not pv cells http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS10_solar_power_tower

Fact is the Middle east has access to large volumes of solar energy and is currently set up for moving energy around. Northern Europe is pretty energy poor even with wind and is more geared up to receiving energy.

 

Not Electric, put solar and transport related - making fuel from sunlight:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring...el-made-from-carbon-dioxide-and-sunlight.html

Essentially it'd be carbon neutral.

Oh - and Solar Impulse managed to fly through the night. The first solar plane to do so!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/10550430.stm

 

I dislike diesel but I'm totally behind you on the weight thing. We could buy ourselves at least another 20 years of development time on these alternative fuels if we halved the fuel consumption of our current cars, and halving their weight seems like a good start. Having spent some quality time in a supercharged Ariel Atom (612kg) and, in more practical terms, in a 30-year old BMW E30 (1070kg), it has become abundantly clear that cars don't need to weigh 1500kg+ to be comfortable or fast. I think we can start by nailing Audi Q5/Porsche Cayenne/VW Touareg owners to the bonnet of their cars cruise liners and then parking them in city centers as a warning to others.

 

I'd argue it's more convenient to do the deed once and fill my car at home, rather than drive to a filling station - you take the middle man (filling station) out the loop and save money. Plus it adds value to the house, it doesn't take long to install, voltage conversion is exceptionally easy to do, 99 per cent efficient and should never break down because no moving parts (think electrical substation). Plus, once more services become available it'll get cheaper and cheaper to do - like bolting on a satellite dish, except, less ugly.

440V supplies can be used for other things like industrial tools (if you're into serious modding!).

 

I user to have a 1.2l MK1 Clio. Even being a bit forceful with the right pedal, I could get £10 to 100 miles, with the added bonus of a top up taking a few minutes.

If electric companies starting charging 10p per mile it would take away one of the advantages that could get consumers to go over to electric cars, as they could get a small petrol / diesel and get the same bang per buck in terms of fuel...

 

zero point energy is where its at!

I dont think any of the current soloutions will ever replace petrol tbh. It is going to take a quantum leap in science before we come up with something that can really replace fossil fuels. Otherwise we are going to need a whole range of technologies applied where appropriate.

We should really start by cutting our energy consumption as much as possible, make our houses more efficient and work at getting micro power generation at the home more efficient and affordable. The less power we use at home the more we have available for electric transport (if needed).

Some of the developments in using algae to create biodiesel are interesting. If we can produce bio fuel without impacting on food production it could an important step forward.

 

Well as someone who has driven Gwizs for the last year, before I get abuse they belong to work I didn't buy them, I feel I should say something. So a Gwiz has a max range of about 40miles (probably measured on a 40 mile long flat track at 20mph lol), realistically I've gotten ~20miles out of them. They also, officially, take about 8 hours to charge but realistically charge in about 1.5/2hrs from mains (240V). So charging isn't as much of a problem as people have mentioned and you aren't with such a low range you aren't going anywhere particularly far away either.

So I know that a GWiz is possibly the worst electric vehicle imaginable, but for what we use them for (driving the 1.5 miles between two university campuses) they are great value. Over the course of a year we have racked up ~1500miles on each one so thats a total of 4500 miles or £450 if we'd paid this 10p per mile. While that's £450 more than we would have paid, that's not bad for "fuel" for 3 vehicles for a year.

Don't get me wrong I don't agree with the idea but it wouldn't effect me too much

edit: Also what's the plural of GWiz? At work we settled for GWiiis.

 

There are a few things that need to be clear.

1. the range of the new models currently tested by Danish SydEnergi is between 300 and 500 km depending on the model. (real world testing)

2. charging the new electric models takes 8 ours for a full recharge (at home 220V), but how often will your battery be completely empty?

3. Recharging at stations may take 10 min (fast charger) or less than five minutes (battery replacement, DONG Energy)

I did a project on this at uni so I know these things form "the source."

If all goes well we should see the first cars for private use in a few years, the first cars for the state was delivered back in November 2009. pricing in Denmark would be about 11-12000£.

I do have one tiny problem with Hydrogen cars, the fact that you may as well drive around with a few kilos of dynamite in the back. compressed flammable gas and high speed collisions are a bad mix.

In the end 99,99% of people would never need anything else than one of these cars, only a few people drive more than 300 km a day, and most people drive far less than 100. personally I drive about 60 km on average so this would be more than enough.

 

On the fast charging part look at this car:

http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/vehicles/phoenix-sut.php

10-minute charge on a Off-Board High-Power 250kW Charger


Also we should look at California during the EV1 and RAV4 EV era, you will notice that there are lots of covered parking spaces that have chargers for these vehicles, the covers of these parks are solar panels.

Also notice that during peak hours you have lots of people in their works and their cars are parked in a garage, if these cars are using V2G technology these peak loads can be supported by the cars, when you have these cars parked in a garage and connected to the power supply, during this time you have intermittent power sources (wind turbines, solar, small hydro, etc...) working whose power is going to waste, an electric car can in theory become one with the grid and help increase the penetration of clean alternative energies, thus reducing the need for fossil fuels and further proliferation of nuclear technology, some countries would not even need nuclear, this way you know that they are up to no good (think Iran).
Also, nuclear power as it is today is also intermittent, the power plant must be shut down for refuel and in case of an emergency shut down you need alternative sources of power during the period of time that the power plant is offline.

Also...



FU**ING EFFICIENCY!!!!! Use it.

edit:



notice the sound of the carbon fibre at 3:00

 

TLDR

I really doubt this will ever happen, they would have to replace the electric meter (or put in a secondary meter) in everybody's house to effectively cost the electricity destined for the car, and the electric used by the main household. The only other way I suppose is having little lecky meters built into the dash of the electric cars so they can be read by the meter men from the outside.

But anyway, won't happen. This is just fat-cats panicking because they wasted the R&D budget on hookers and crack.

 

oh god i can see that now a huge traffic jam all becuase the guy at the front of the traffic jam has fogotten to put 50 pence in his meter

(for the youngsters who have no idea what I'm talking about at one stage electric meters only used to take 50 pence pieces so you had to run round trying to find some one who had a 50 pence piece)

 

The flaw I find in the argument of "Well, I don't drive that far in one day, so I am fine with limited range" - what about trips?

Sure, on a daily basis, I drive a 50mi/80km round trip commute. Maybe another 10mi/16km if I go out to dinner, go grocery shopping, go to a store, etc. in the evening.

But what if I want to make a 300mi/480km trip to go visit my grandparents in Vermont? If I bought an electric car, I'd be SOL, because I'd need to give it an 8-hour recharge at some point during the trip.

Maybe I could add even more batteries to it, but how long can that be effective for? At some point, the additional energy supplied by another battery will be less than the amount of energy expended by all of the other batteries to drag the extra weight of it around.

Yeah, maybe most of us drive under 50 miles a day for just our normal commute, but do none of you people ever take trips to other towns for recreational purposes?

 

Most people who own an electric car at the moment live in a big city and commute microscopic distances every day. As far as I am aware, there are currently no practical EVs that are licensed for motorway duty and most will struggle to top 60mph. Until technology and infrastructure improves, it's a fair bet that you won't be taking long-distance trips in your EV. However, American families that have the cash to buy bleeding-edge electric vehicles are rich enough to have more than one car. The logical intersection of today's commute and technologies is to have one electric car for daily commutes - small, cheap, easily repaired and resilient to low-speed knocks and scrapes - and one petrol/diesel/LPG/LNG car for large loads and/or large distances. As a five person family with two commuters and four drivers, we've got three cars - one small city hatch, a large estate for moving people to and from Uni terms, airports, and camping holidays, and a sports car. The hatch could easily be replaced by an EEV because only rarely does it travel more than 20mi per day, and on those occasions that the family does pull 200mi trips the Volvo's more than capable.

The battery argument I find on the whole unconvincing. If an iPod battery that costs peanuts can be rapid-charged by 240V mains to 80% capacity in two hours, then a 2015 automotive cell pack, costing several thousand pounds, mated to a three-phase charger at a service station designed for the task, can reach 50% in ten minutes. Think of it as a necessary break after a 200mi burst.

 

If the Tesla model S is a good example to point at, when talking about future electric cars, you have a car that goes 160 miles with the smallest battery pack, recharges in 45 minutes, can seat 7 people, has 2 car boots and has a top speed of 120mph... with current technology.

If i use maximum speed values that are in place here, about 60MPH, it would take you 2 hours and 40 minutes to get a flat battery, i think that after 2 hours of travel you should rest a little, at lest that is what the drivers manual states, and recharge your car.

And I am not talking about batteries that recharge in 5 minutes and are made by Toshiba.
http://www.scib.jp/en/

 

I know what you mean, what we really need is some one to invent a service to take multiple people between two points.

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7938001.stm

 

"Oh, well buy an electric car for short, repetitive commuter driving, and keep a regular car for highway travel" - I do live in a city. I don't know what city you live in, but here parking costs are excessive enough just to have one car, or no cars at all. If they want this to be mainstream, and not just a vehicle designed to help rich people feel snobbier by having an electric car alongside their normal armada of vehicles, it needs to reach the point where the average urban dweller can own it and only it. Having a second car would be completely impractical, and negate any fuel saving benefits.

Saying "Oh, it's not a problem because anyone who can afford the ridiculously expensive electric cars probably already has a bunch of other cars" isn't a solution. The fact that you NEED a second car if you ever travel is a huge barrier towards making these things mainstream.

That's a completely back-asswards suggestion.

Here's a concept - Don't get an electric car. if you live in such an urban environment where you only ever take short trips, chances are there is already a convenient bus or train. If you're just commuting in and out of the big city, well, every big city I've ever been to has had a pretty extensive mass transit system, whether it be trains or buses. Cities, by nature, are very conducive to public transportation.

Then, if you often do long distance travelling, keep a gas car around for when you're visiting people out in the boonies, who might be fifty miles or more from the nearest train or bus station. You really think that every region can be easily accessed by train? Recycling the example of my grandparents in Vermont, they live in a very rural area. It's mountainous, so I've never seen any train tracks around there. It's sparsely populated, and has mostly dirt roads, so there aren't any buses running. I'm using one specific example, but there are huge regions of the United States that are like that.

It's just silly to say that you NEED an electric car for city commuting, when most cities already have heavily developed mass transit systems. Right now, I'm living right outside of Philadelphia. The train going into the city is about the same price as the bridge toll. If I worked in the city, it would be far more effective for me to take the electric train rather than buying an electric car to take. The train travels just as fast as the car (faster than the car during rush hour, because it doesn't have to deal with traffic), and costs the same amount. For urban commuting, public transit > electric cars=gas cars.

However, if I wanted to go to Vermont, I'd have to take that electric train and two others just to get to the airport. From the airport, I could fly to Boston, then take a train to a Greyhound bus station, and then take that bus to a major town about 20 miles away from my grandparent's house, then take a taxi to the house. All in all, that would cost me hundreds of dollars (much more than equivalent gas and tolls), and easily take twice as long as it would to just drive there. For distance driving, gas cars > public transit > electric cars.