One thing people seem to misunderstand is battery capacity. They think it as a shrinking tank, then it should be looked at as a pipe with constantly widening extra hole (energy leaking through it ends up as heat), In the end the "hole" becomes so big, that you cant get the power required. In real world terms the battery capacity should be looked as an estimate (actually energy that the battery can store doesn't really change during its lifetime, what changes is ESR, in laymen's terms - its ability to give that energy at specific power levels). On even ground/unloaded car the drop will be negligible, but on hilly terrain/loaded car the battery could go "flat" in an instant. Most of us prob. had a phone where on standby it could last days, but as soon as you try to make a call it goes flat. Old EV going for £500 is quite possible, it will only need a new £10000 battery to leave a driveway. As what the future holds for the batteries - it cant be equated to semiconductor/tech industry. Batteries advance is due to discoveries of new chemistries (as opposite to refining existing technologies). There hasn't been a new chemistry on the market in the last ~5 years (for example 18650 cell haven't really advanced above 3.4Ah), the latest advance in Tesla battery is due to them moving to bigger cell (better packing efficiency), but that was one time deal. Maybe tomorrow somebody discovers a new technology that will increase a battery energy density tenfold, or maybe it wont ever happen. Its pretty much unpredictable. Wireless charging is very inefficient (50% currently), electrifying roads wont work anywhere where it rains or snows (snow + salt + electricity = fun). Battery swapping - it might work on small scale (one manufacturer, tightly regulated market), but not for mass consumer product (multiple manufacturers, independent dealers). What happens then you swap your new battery for one that is at the end of its lifetime (or was diy refurbished) and noone wants to swap it? what if that happened in another country? and so on.
Meh...politicians "plan" to do something in 23 years... Don't see then effectively planning anything beyond the next voting period. From the same article, on the current "diesel bashing": I'm waiting for the current diesel bash to slow down, so parties and media can then discover that the brave people that switched back from dirty diesels to clean petrols are now emitting 20-30% more CO² again. Imagine the shock, nobody saw that one coming, i'm sure.
I know you're referring to continental Europe but here in the UK, I don't see any superchargers because there aren't any superchargers. There is literally 1 in the entire region [by which i mean Northumberland, Tyne and Wear and Co Durham], and if that's occupied or not working the next nearest are Gretna [~75 miles away] and Leeds [100 miles].
I think Battery swapping could prove a decent stopgap measure, but it would involve alot of parties all having to work together. I think they only way it could work is if you buy the car, but Rent the batteries the petrol stations could be expanded with hot swap battery mechanisms, you pull up, drive onto a special plate, and your dead battery is replaced with a fully charged one,then pay your fee and be on your way while the dead battery goes into a charging rack to be charged up, then stuck in someone elses car. Once the batteries reach the end of their life cycle they can then be recycled without the end user needing to be involved and if you can charge at home, then the batteries would last longer ( or indefinitly if you have protected parking, cheap power and only drive a few miles at a time ) and can be switched out at an M.O.T. if required But again the Car firms, Battery firms, Charging station owners and likely governments would all have to sit round a table and hammer out an official Standard, but i dont think its out of the realms of possibility
Swapping batteries. How easy on a current model Tesla? IIRC they now have substantial floor pans to prevent the battery packs coming into contact with the road surface after a few of them went Chernobyl
As much as I want to see far more EVs on the road... this is a headline-grabbing publicity stunt. It'll never happen. It's a government initiative so it'll be endlessly bogged down in committees and policy u-turns. If they wanted to make a real difference to climate change then they'd make renewable energy more affordable and accessible. We can do that right now, without spending untold billions on Hinkley Point or making hollow promises about policies that won't even kick in for ~20-odd years. I've actually been considering an EV for our next car. We're an ideal use case: the car doesn't travel more than ~100 miles a week at most and it spends most of its time parked up on the drive. The longest journey we've ever done was about 240 miles each way. But there's one giant obstacle in our way: we rent, so having a high-efficiency charging point installed on the house is out of the question. Even if our current landlord allowed it we'd have to find another sympathetic landlord if we ever wanted to move (which is likely to happen within the next 6-12 months).
People are forgetting that Volvo have already set themselves this target, for all new models from 2019.
It'll be interesting to see if hybrids still have a place, or if pure EVs will take the market. I dunno if technology or policy will decide?
This announcement pleased me tbh. Whether we'll get there in time or not is another matter, but I hope it's a catalyst for adding infrastructure. We've got a Tesla Model X, it's brilliant and even on the limited infrastructure we have now it's simply very practical. Street charging is very much a viable method if you're not stuck to those poxy token chargers you find at Sainsbury's etc. We've got 3 lamp post chargers on our road now, they work very well too as they're experimental 30KWhr models, can easily get your full charge overnight. My dad pops over to Wales from London every week to go fishing, he had a little scare once when the bridge was unexpectedly closed, but apart from that he's never come close to running out of juice. What they need to do is encourage companies to continue placing high wattage chargers around. If they try to centralise things it will never work, not enough coverage and too expensive. There's money to be made on the charging front, use that to get them everywhere.
I think refining existing chemistries and changes in manufacturing will give substantial benefits in the medium term, even if a revolutionary change in chemistry isn't forthcoming. There to an extent an end goal with range. What is the maximum speed you can drive on public roads and how long would/could the vast majority want/need to drive in a day? ≈300 miles is maybe 5 hours? Double that and I think range issues largely go away. I think with refinements in technology and manufacturing that sort of range is conceivable with current chemistry.
If anyone's interested in where chargers are located, try Zap-Map The map can be filtered by connector type, network & charge level available. It even shows if a charger is broken or already in use.
I've got a Model S, and it is absolutely amazing. Just now (as I type this as a matter of fact) got back to work after a three week vacation, two of which were spent road-tripping around Norway with the wife and our kids. Range was never a problem, and it seemed there was always a supercharger between us and our next destination. Charging times varied between 30 mins and 60 mins, which were excellent oportunities to stretch our legs and have a look around or a bite to eat. My next car will most definitely also be electric, probably another Tesla to be honest.
Teslas are awesome cars, but they are very expensive and far out of reach of most people. Even the Model 3 is likely to be around £35k - that's a luxury for many, even on finance/PCH. They're probably worth it, but on their own they're not going to drive mainstream EV adoption.
Actually I think quite the opposite. What the Teslas do it open up the market for those able to finance the early bird issues. Driving down the road in a Model X people actually stop and look at it, especially when the rear doors open. That sort of reaction drives the desire for the car, and it's exactly the reaction many high end SUV owners would like. You can bet that the likes of Range Rover, Porsche, Mercedes etc. will be looking at the Teslas and wanting to get in on the action else they lose their potential customers. These owners can afford to subsidise the infrastructure needed for them to operate properly. Sure enough, once the infrastructure is there, going for an EV becomes much more attractive. Similarly you'll have more affordable models slowly creeping into the market that will eventually trickle down, and in a few years hopefully there will also be a growing second hand market, assuming current EVs are reliable enough.
Tesla will drive the market (pun totally intended), but will not be an immediate effect. Tesla are the real high end luxury cars of the EV world and they will push the top-end of the technology - range, performance, features, comfort levels, fancy stuff like "autopilot", etc; some of that technology may, if not directly, make it down to the lower end of the market, and thus the field as a whole eventually moves forward. But you're not going to see them lining the streets of your average working-class town, that's where the likes of the Nissan Leaf or the Renault Zoe come in. I don't know, maybe it needed a bonkers rich person like Musk to come along and say "I am going to make a high-end luxury sports car... and it'll be all electric". Maybe without that influence the market wouldn't have moved the way it has, it's hard to say.
