Not really, i just discounted it as i don't believe we'll stop refining crude oil just because of a switch to electric vehicles and as that 6kWh for 1 US gallon of oil has been thoroughly debunked, or at least it's disputable, i didn't pay it much attention. Added to that is the costs involved in the production and disposal of electric vehicles is something hotly disputed and largely dependent on what powers the power stations (1, 2, 3), that's not to suggest EV's are a dead end or not worth pursuing, however to solve these "problems" will take more than simple edicts from governments and a few million pounds.
So I've been developing the idea of electrified roads a bit further in my head, and it just makes more and more sense... If we used tyres that had a contact strip or points around it, we wouldn't need to rely on expensive and inefficient wireless power. If we had an (almost) constant power source, the cars wouldn't need to be weighed down with heavy, expensive, dirty to produce batteries, which would extend the range and lower the power requirements to begin with (and lower the cost of the EV's) BUT also allow some of that saved space and weight for a braking-based energy recovery system to be fitted that can send power back into the grid. Maybe even with roof-mounted solar panels to boost it further. Range? Solved. Cost of cars? Solved. Environmental concerns? Solved. Energy requirements? Solved. Ok, maybe not "solved", but sure as hell makes me sense than the standard model in my head!
Now we just need someone to pay for it. Joking aside something like you suggest would need public money and historically government have been extremely adverse to spending money on things, take our wonderful railways and when we made the switch from steam to electric, the government of the day didn't choose the safest or best option for electrifying the system, they choose the system with the lowest upfront cost and didn't even bother electrifying the whole system.
But if they do it sensibly (oh wait...), it shouldn't be any more expensive than digging everything up to install hundreds of thousands of charging stations. Have a "charging lane" on the motorways and A-roads, which can double up as a self-driving lane, and then just have "charging pads" at the junctions and traffic lights in the towns and cities, so cars can dart around and constantly be topped up while they are waiting (increase the timing cycles if needs be).
Anyone remember the TCR slot cars, i always thought we'd be driving life size versions of those in the future.
Is there a video? I'd be interested to point at all the expensive heavy lifting equipment, and specialist trained mechanic (If something goes wrong, you think someone will wait two, three, four, hours for one to arrive? They'd need to be within thirty minutes to make it viable..) that'd be needed to make it a possibility. I'm betting a 2 post lift, a mechanic, and a forklift truck/load carrying drone. Probably for the same reason no one will hop onboard now. Expense. That will be absolutely absurd money in specialized equipment, and maintaining a local mechanic for when the automated system fails.
I can't see "charging strips" on tyres, because pedestrians crossing the street. I did hear about trials of electric buses that wireless charge when at bus stops, because enormous Qi coils buried under a thin layer of tar.
It's my understanding that pure LPG isn't covered by the ban either, so there might be mileage in a Range Rover, Prins kit, and removal of the petrol tank.
That is rather impressive - But that is a very expensive looking piece of bespoke equipment. I'm not going to look into it now, but does it have the facility for swapping batteries around under the stage? IE: If these were installed, would they store X batteries permanently on charge that were swapped out with user batteries so it wouldn't be a case that only one could be changed every X minutes? I mean, rough math would suggest, if it takes 100 minutes to charge to full, and 90 seconds to change the battery they'd need seven to be able to charge a battery to full before it was required for service, even if there was a queue of seven or eight cars. That's assuming directly interfacing to the battery is no quicker than using the charging port. I know nothing about automation, but I do know people who work in that field - it's not a cheap thing to do, and nor is it flawless. Try as they might, there's still a need for a mechanic/engineer trained in how the system works to be on hand to repair it/correct the malfunction. Which isn't cheap. The demonstration seems typical of Ol' Musky - Here's something that is cool, but wildly impractical cost wise. Of course, he'll do it anyway at some point, and it will be a subscription function that gets eaten up by the hardcore Tesla crowd. Storing that number of batteries is costly in both machinery to move them around, floor space to store them (Either vertically or horizontally), insurance should they get stolen, not to mention to costs of the machinery involved. It's definitely not something the Government is going to be able to subsidize in the next twenty years. Probably not even the next twenty millennia, given their financial ineptitude with the NHS.
I think it's unlikely that battery swapping like that would ever be the main way of recharging but I do think it could have it's place. Like Tesla, it could make sense for major manufacturers to have their own network of battery swap stations once there are a sufficient numbers on the road. Not only for instant charging for people who want/require it, but also as part of maintenance, so (at a cost) you could quickly swap your slightly tired battery for a nice fresh one. I'm not convinced that the technology for swapping batteries would be prohibitively complex or expensive (relatively speaking), assuming like that Tesla the car was designed to make it relatively easy. As stated in the video, the sort of automated mechanisms it uses are adapted from the production line where they are mature and reliable. You wouldn't have one at every garage, but I don't think a battery swap station would be huge. I'm thinking like a large automated car wash. You'd only ever need to keep a relatively small number of batteries on site as you would charge and condition the batteries that you replaced all at once and use them as appropriate. I don't think it would be a full blow alternative to charge points, but I could definitely see quick battery swaps being an option at automated maintenance stations, which could well make more sense to manufacturers given the greater modularity of electric vehicles.
Speaking of swapping batteries a company called better place developed and built a battery-switching station but they went bankrupt 4 years ago.
The idea of EV is not to fill up. It's to top up. You'd never want to charge to 90% on a long journey because the last 10% of your charge is taking longer. You'd want to drive to ~20%, charge to 80% during the 20min toilet break. That'd comfortably give you 2 hours of onward motorway driving and 50 miles or so of buffer. In that sense, 20min wait becomes 26min wait, a ladies' loo queue can take longer While you didn't SEE any superchargers, they are all over the place. They have to be near the corners of the car park to stop ICE cars parking on it. From Lichfield to Strasbourg via Brussels is only 650 miles. I really don't see how you would spend 18 hours in that trip. It's completely doable within daytime hours with current Tesla's infrastructure. Teslas are likely to hold their value well due to the firmware updates. Similar to how Apple handsets are holding their values better up until they stop being supported. Other marque's EV are a different story though. If we step back and look from caveman point of view at ICE engines, how can such a complex piece of engineering with thousands of moving parts only worth two cows? 20 years is a long time in technology world, 20 years ago computer were beige and had a turbo button compared to today's smartphone powerhouses. We went from multiple kilograms of laptop battery to sub-kilogram laptops in 20 years. I wouldn't be surprised to see 300+ miles compact battery that are only under the seats in 20 years. Thanks for the links, I only pointed it out because it is not insignificant. But there are other uses for oil products at current moment in time, so electric savings calculations based on this will never be accurate. With the improving renewable infrastructure, it is entirely possible over 50% of EV power will come from renewables in 20 years time. EV disposal is not too different to normal ICE cars. Only difference is the battery packs, and the perfect place for them is solar panel households, industrial power packs etc. For example, an EV battery at 50% degradation means shorter range, but you can put two together for the same capacity. There's no weight problem for stationary installations. The more battery smartly connected to the grid the better, as I mentioned earlier. I'm not sold on battery pack swaps. It's like you wouldn't want to swap your 30k engine with a 90k mileage engine. Battery packs in EV is the engine of the car, the electric motor is not as important. I think in the future, if we can have 1 charger for every parking spot at motorway/A road service stations will solve long distance travel.
I get what you're saying with reusing older batteries however all reusing does is push the "problem" further down the road, IIRC i read it costs something like 5x more to recycle a li-ion battery than it does to make a new one, personally i think batteries are a rather clunky solution, in a utopian world every vehicle would come installed with its own mini power station. One of the advantages of battery-switching stations is that you don't own the battery so not only does it lower the cost of the vehicle but it also takes the "quality" of the battery out of the equation, the down sides are obviously the "quality" of the batteries are dependent on whose running the station and how they all want their battery-switching stations to use proprietary tech.
this however I think the solution will be to fit the electric cars with a tow bar, and then tow a small petrol generator to run the batteries up while driving.
I think no one doubts the future is not petrol, the problem is along with this plan the government hasn’t suggested how it will implement such things, leaving gaping holes, much like other policies such as funding the country and its health and welfare policies, lots of baseless words to appease the people. Electric is probably not the future for some where like the UK. Look at all the planning regs for homes and offices these days, the number of parking spaces per people is grossly unrealistic, public transport can’t fill the hole as the Government can’t get that infrastructure right and it been around for decades, blimey, it taken 10 years to get a motorway junction around here and a couple of years to implement a fecking bus lane, to electrify a city, get real, people are going to be running extension leads from their homes to their cars parked 1/2 a mile down the street The only realistic solution seems to be hydrogen for somewhere like the UK that can’t provide space for power stations or afford to rip up existing infrastructure. I say this as someone with a Tesla on order, it will fit my needs but can’t see it working wholescale.
