People, forget about charging at workplace or shopping centres. EV are supposed to be slowly charged overnight, or quick charged at motorway service stations. Forget about going to fill up because you will no longer need to plan a visit to stand idle and smell the fumes. Forget about range anxiety because for most people's daily use, you'll never have worry about car's range. With current car usage model (ownership model): You charge at where you stay overnight, tell it when you need the car at what percentage. Be driveway charger or destination charger at hotel. On-street lamp-post integrated charger can be installed (see Fully Charged below). Just remember to plug it when you get home as part of parking up procedure. During your daily drive, for most people, you'll not need to worry about charging it, ever. Then you'll ONLY need to use super fast chargers during long distances, which most people will only use a few times over the year. This. 100x this! James Cooke (search for his channel on Youtube) recently drove his Tesla across France to Italy, 800 miles in a single day using an EV. It is happening now, and Tesla Model 3 will be officially released tomorrow at around £30,000. In 20 years, you should be able to buy a 200+ miles EV for less than £500 today's money (aka "bangers") That's not true at all. Consistent use of superchargers will only reduce your charge rate, but no capacity loss or refusal to charge using a super charger. The guy will only need to wait 5min longer than before, but he shouldn't be using supercharger as his only source of energy to begin with (see above) Re national grid: The grid is ready for mass EV adoption, it's just the chargers that need changing. Smart chargers allow EV to smooth out grid load, even putting electricity back onto the grid if demand is high. This will allow less fossil fuel power plants be on standby. Same principle can be applied to house batteries, to take advantage of per second (for example) electricity price fluctuation and even get paid by the grid for helping to smooth out demand.
You paint an idyllic picture of EV car charging. Even 23 years won't be long enough for a government who can't seem to operate the NHS, negotiate Brexit, or even win a sure thing campaign to build the infrastructure to make that picture a reality. Factor in the doubtless loss of currency value and the inevitable decrease in disposable income over the next twenty years, and where exactly is the money to make this a reality meant to come from? There's been more than one instance of users being unable to use Superchargers (I say unable to use, because if it's charging at the same rate as a 13a plug, it's pointless as a supercharger) due to 'excessive' use of fast charging. Something that, as a tech person, you should know will knacker a lithium-ion battery. Tesla aren't wrong, in this instance, it's technically correct and safe to do so - But if you're going to be unable to charge a car quickly in single ownership periods, and I bet my sock drawer that any second hand EV will be on the ragged edge of being able to charge quickly, you're going to quickly find yourself SOL if you need that facility but are unable to buy any other means of transport. As for less than £500... Have you ever bought a less than £500 car? We're talking 150k miles or more, most appear to be on the ragged edge of MOT (Chances are they'll fail - Warranting expensive repairs), and are over ten years old. Keep a device with the same battery type as a current Tesla for ten years and let me know how the battery life is. Based on current degradation, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say '****' will be the answer. Took a brief look at the Cooke videos. Would need to watch completely.
For a forum full of tech heads, I'm surprised how disparaging and negative you lot are about this. The only way the fossil fuel problem will be solved quick enough is for there to be enough commercial incentives to drive profit-lead research. Bravo government, as far as I'm concerned.
I don't think anyone doubts the tech, it's the realistic chance of everyone working together well enough to put in place the infrastructure required. And that's before you even consider changing the MINDSET of consumers... Which is a whole different challenge.
Pretty much what Wakka said. I don't doubt the tech. And were we in a different boat regarding Europe, I'd probably be more inclined to agree that it's doable. But the current path we're travelling doesn't inspire confidence enough that this is anything but a distraction from the other disasterpieces the government is working on.
Pretty much that, when you consider the lack of mobile signal and high speed broadband in rural locations and the total balls up that is the smart meter roll out, one has to question the ability to get this up and running in 23 years. The tech is or will be available, I don't think anyone is questioning this, in another 20 odd years most of the die hard petrol heads will have come around or stopped driving so consumer reluctance will be minimal I reckon.
What on earth is all of this "most people's journeys are short, so the range ins't a real problem"? So your journeys are short, and you couldn't possible imagine another way to use a vehicle? My "commute" tends to be a 300-350 mile round trip, so electric range and recharge time is a real issue. I'd say around half of my friends and colleagues do even more miles with even greater inconsistency. Yes, electric range and charging will at some point become less of a challenge for such journeys in time, but dismissing it as a non-issue because you think nobody ever ventures more than 100 miles from home is a bit daft.
Do you not understand how averages work? Just about any electric car on the market today would work for my "average" journey I'm sure. Unfortunately that's not a real journey for me, as it's comprised of many local drives and the weekly-ish long commute. On average, there's only one person in the car as well (well, perhaps 1.1), but I still have the occasion where I need to accommodate three, four or five people, so I'm not about to have a 2-seater as my only car.
I could ask you the same thing? You're putting forward all the worst case scenarios to dismiss this when it's clear from the statistics that the vast majority of users could switch to EVs today without inconvenience. Cost is the only real issue at the moment and I have a feeling that might drop in the next 23 years?
Side note, does anyone have any statistics for the reliability and average repair cost of an electric vs combustion engine car? I just realised there are going to be a LOT of mechanics that suddenly find themselves out of work or having to re-train...
That's the thing though, "The average journey" isn't a real thing. It isn't everyone always going 5-10 miles in the car, and never having the occasional need for more range, otherwise there would be no problems whatsoever. Of course it will drop in the next 23 years, batteries will be better, charging will be faster. Dismissing range as a non-issue now isn't helpful though.
I imagine it's much of a muchness, the suspension, brakes, and ancillaries are all quite similar which will always be consumable. Electric motors are super simple but petrol engines don't go all that wrong anyway. And Tad, yeah I do get what you're saying; if Crazyg1zm0's correct we can all just buy hybrids and be done with it.
The most conservative estimates I've seen say even with smart chargers and smoothing out the supply we'd still require an extra 3.5GW, the equivalent of the yet to built Hinkley Point C, then there's the estimates that we'd need to invest around £30bn in changing points. This whole no fossil fuel vehicles thing is just a massive kick into the long grass.
Super, and if everything plodded along as it is now that'd be great. But it's being put onto everyone so those that do more also need to be considered, those that do commutes greater than 200 miles, the service engineers that do 400 miles a day all need to be catered for, not just the city boy.
To me, you are complaining about "unable to supercharge" dropping from 120kW to 90kW is unable, despite it is still faster than most other quick chargers out there (most are at 50kW). The use-case is atypical of how the vehicle is used by most other people. https://electrek.co/2017/05/07/tesla-limits-supercharging-speed-number-charges/ I foresee the sub-£500 car will hold more than 80% of its original range, have driven over 200k miles and no powertrain issue. Because EV powertrain is just that much more reliable. The batteries are designed to last, they are completely different to mobile phone batteries. https://electrek.co/2016/11/01/tesla-battery-degradation/ I do have to agree with you that this is idyllic view. But 20 years is a long time, we'll have been through many more governments that are hopefully more capable. China has a more aggressive mandate on EV sales, with this kind of pressure, very soon the whole auto industry will work together and things will move faster. We are only at tip of the EV iceberg. You are forgetting the electricity we'll save by not refining as much oil into usage petrol/diesel. 6kWh for 1 US gallon of oil. That alone can power an EV for 16-20 miles. http://gatewayev.org/how-much-electricity-is-used-refine-a-gallon-of-gasoline Then if needed, we can burn the excess petrol/diesel (because oil have other uses) at power plants that are MUCH more efficient. Modern cars are only about 20-40% efficient in converting fossil fuel to kinetic energy. A much larger power plant can harness that excess heat energy better than a compact ICE.
The drop from 120-90kw seems to equate to about 6-9 minutes (depending on age of car). Considering you're already waiting 45 minutes to hit 90%, that's a hell of a hit. That's putting you into the realm of 100% charge. Considering the range of the P100D (As far as I can tell, the one with the longest range) is 307 at 70mph, with no AC or funny business like charging phones and the like, for some people that's an extra hour on top of an already long journey. Taking my example of driving to Germany and back the last week. I left with a full tank and made it to Belgium before filling up (I was dead impressed actually..), which was six or so hours after leaving home in drive time, seven and a bit including Eurotunnel time and so on. We went on to Strasbourg from there, arriving about 7pm. It'd have been damn near 10pm, and near enough 18 hours later in the Tesla at the same speed - I'd have also had to find a charging point instead of a petrol station. I didn't see many on the way as we avoided the toll roads in France. Chances are we'd have never made it to Strasbourg in a day. And that's assuming I could afford the top dog Tesla. The model 3, doubtless the only model I could ever afford even second hand, has 215 miles of range according to the website. That's laughable. My RS gets that dotting around town. And that's 15 years old this year, as well as being kind of a fuel guzzler. The loud peddle is fun. From what I can find, across 93,000 miles Tesla's are losing ~ 15% of their capacity. I can only find one on Autotrader UK with close to that - 73,000 - And that's still the thick end of £42,000. For it to get to sub £500? It's going to see a hell of a lot more miles than 93,000. Unfortunately the data doesn't exist, yet, as to what the degradation is going to be - But I'd not be shocked to see Tesla's with ~50% degradation still asking around the same money as a Model 3, a far cry from the sub £500 range. ..Are you on something? Do you have any idea how much those batteries weigh (Seriously, they're palletised for distribution)? Do you have any idea how well protected they are, or in Tesla's case, how much of the chassis they occupy? It'd take longer to swap the battery than to charge it twice over.
Telsa had it down to 90 seconds and totally automated before they further reinforced the battery/floor. Now as I recall it's 15min with a manual inspection and less if you do it regularly. People don't tend to do it regularly, because it's charging is cheaper and more available, but it's definitely a possibility.
