UKH

Just for the nay sayers! Ok, so it's only a trial, but seems like a good solution if it works

https://newatlas.com/automotive/trojan-flat-and-flush-on-street-ev-charge-p...

But what if you had to charge an EV, down a hole, in the fog, whilst being chased by an owl?  The arguments against EVs are becoming ever more niche and specific...

To head off a couple more common but false claims about EVs

• There's not enough capacity on the grid - false
• It just moves emissions from exhausts to tailpipes - false

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-myths-about-elec...

Also out today - a study showing whole lifecycle emissions for EVs are 60% or so lower than for ICE

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/electric-cars-have-much-lower-life-cyc...

Edit: Forgot to say, those charge posts look fantastic.  I'd buy one for the driveway if I could afford to dig the rotten thing up and repair it...

But (and it's a humongous but) they don't make a very loud farting noise for the autow@nkers

It's true, although I'm coming to find the various sounds of electric motors quite fun and futuristic.  3 years in and the novelty hasn't worn off.  I particularly liked the twin-motor sound of a Model 3 I hired for a week; didn't like much else about it mind...

Although... someone did start and idle the 5 litre V8 in their Mustang GT next us when we were dining outside the other night.  I mean, if someone gave me one I wouldn't be in a rush to return it...

i read other day there's only enough Lithium on the planet to produce batteries for aprox 15 years!!!!  hopefully by then the Hydrogen fuel cell will be viable.

Lithium supply isn’t great but that sounds like FUD to me (perhaps a source misrepresenting proven reserves as total reserves, a classic that).

There’s a lot of lithium, it’s just awfully nasty to extract it. It would take about a decade of current global supply to convert the whole fleet if the numbers I ran a while ago aren’t too far off. After that it can be recycled.  Increasing global supply isn’t great news (!!) environmentally speaking but new options are being explored.

Fuel cells aren’t looking promising for consumer EVs in my opinion.

The future is likely in aluminium ion batteries; lots of stuff there working it’s way through the wide and decade long R&D pipeline.  It would take less than a year’s global aluminium supply to convert the global fleet and extensive recycled supplies exist too.  Aluminium is to all practical purposes an infinite resource.  If we run out of the stuff we’ve probably run out of planet.

Edit; rather than click dislike you could pick holes in my numbers you know…. Or can’t you?

I'm not foresighted enough to be able to envision what a new model of society might be which this exists within, but whichever fuel solution seems to present environmental drawbacks, in the model of capitalism we live under and with growing populations, and personal transport being what everybody seeks, I think we'll be doing well to not reach another kind of crisis, either an environmental one or one of supply.

IIRC, aluminium is considered to have a large environmental footprint in it's manufacture.

Well that's all right then. Electric car production and use is still massively energy profligate. As much as I like my car I can't help thinking a good proportion of the world's population driving round in their own 1.5 tonne metal boxes is compatible with saving the planet. 

A 68% reduction in energy is about 3 times better than the status quo.

It’s going to get much better again - including for existing cars - as power continues to decarbonise.

I’d be over the moon if someone would sell me an enclosed 1-seat commuter vehicle with decent impact protection, decent headlights, a 50 mph top speed, 80 mile range and a 350 kg total weight with 3x the energy efficiency of my EV.  I’d use it for 75% of my miles.  Technically feasible, and more and more startups are in the business.

Tesla's literally do make farting noises.

not tempted by the C5 then?

I missed that edit.  It’s not great but converting the fleet over say a decade will be minor compared to other uses of aluminium and more than balances I think against the emissions reduction from getting cars off ICE; and the material will be recoverable and recyclable at the end of vehicle life.

Shared ownership autonomous on demand BEV pools could at least halve the number of vehicles needed and more importantly perhaps avoid people needing to buy “jack of all trade” vehicles.  Many young people I’ve worked with have never bothered with a car and just use Uber etc already.  In general the concentration of people in to cities continues globally and that makes alternative transport less of a PITA.

The C5 was visionary - just decades ahead of the technology.  A modern version with a pedal electric generator and all-solar PV bodywork and a chunky battery…  Some auto-deploying side skids for when you stop, and some Tron styling…

I had high hopes for the Lit C1, actually balanced by high angular momentum gyros (as opposed to using them as sensors for mechanical balance mechanisms).  That’s not come to pass sadly, looks like management issues; their early videos of prototypes remaining vertical when T-boned were very cool.

IMHO it is ridiculous to click dislike and walk away on a factual post like this.

Dislike makes sense for opinions but not for facts.  It you think what was said is not correct then you need to make an argument.

I don’t think it will be possible let alone sustainable. What will happen to the used car market that most people depend on? How much will an 8 year old EV be worth once the battery is out of warranty? It won’t be a problem for those who can afford to buy or lease a new car (and get it serviced at a dealers) but I don’t think there will be many cheap 15 year old EV’s in the future. That may be a good thing but I think many will get priced off the road and they probably won’t be happy about it.

I reckon it’s the Fuel Cell mafia.

Its not going well for them re: consumer vehicles.  I’m sticking to my long standing guns that batteries not fuel cells will dominate for cars.  Once they do, the synergies and infrastructure boost for trucks will be pretty big…

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/06/planes-trains-but-not-automobiles-why-...

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/07/toyota-bet-wrong-on-evs-so-now-its-lob...

How long until someone trips over one and sues the user or company?

I'd prefer to see charging points built into existing infrastructure.

A couple of years ago, I considered a Renault twizzy for my commute, a step along the way to your requirements. Sadly it wouldn't work for me. Doors are an optional extra, windows an aftermarket retro fit and applying reasonable pessimism to the specified range to allow for over egging, ageing, gradient of my commute and local weather made it a no go. Researching was an interesting project though.

Solve all of these and I am in.

The flip side is the additional congestion created by single user vehicles, which will be slower moving than Mr Angry-Audi behind. Might take some of the hate off cyclists? 

We bought our van at 5 years old, battery out of warranty. It's excellent. I don't understand the issue?

That is exactly the point! They are flush with the pavement so not a trip hazard!

We noticed some interesting new ones near us yesterday. They are just small (knee high maybe?) bollards at the kerb side. They are in line with the other signposts in the street and similar diameter. Very unintrusive visually, one per space on that wee section of roadside parking. I guess maybe no more of a hazard than the other sign posts in the street?

That sounds good, and like a good buy. I understand that it's the rather long in the tooth/high millage EV's which aren't so reliable a purchase. More to do with high millage IIRC.

My Dad's old 1996 plate Audi A6 estate is still being used by my childhood friend from next door, I got the sense Mark Edwards had things like this in mind as 'trickle down' vehicles for poorer road users, the garage mechanic sees it in a similar light to reliable-era Mercs incidentally, compared to more modern Audis.

Perhaps another model will help make transport affordable for all...

There are many tales on the various EV groups which I am on of people with very high mileage vehicles which still have excellent batteries. And batteries can be replaced and have range extenders fitted. In terms of the rest of the vehicle, there is no exhaust to fall off, or radiator to leak, or oil sump to leak, or gear box to wear out... etc! I feel the second hand market is likely to be pretty good. 

Fair enough. 

I see the issue as being what happens when the battery is older than 6 years. How long do you expect yours to last? What will you do when one bad cell (out of the about 80) seriously degrades the range and a few more renders the van inoperable?

Don’t get me wrong I’m not against EV’s and seriously looked into getting one a few months ago for when I don’t want to ride my motorbike, so something cheap would do (say £8-10K). I don’t even care about range as my driving is only ever local. Something I discovered is that the batteries don’t just degrade gradually until you only get about 10-20 miles. The individual cells die reducing the bars on the power meter and once you lose 4 (out of 12) bars the car won’t work at all.

Well at the moment we are still at 92% state of health, so not an imminent concern. 

At the moment, we think we will probably get a Ubex range extender sometime in the future. These are made out of old batteries, so are currently pricey as there are not many old batteries around. We hope they will be cheaper when we get there. 

I also wonder how long the aluminium ion batteries will be in coming into common usage. I would probably pay more to upgrade to one of those if it was an option. 

So, short answer is that I don't know yet for sure, but a new battery or range extender seems likely in the future but we will see what options there are when we get there. 

The same thing I did when the high pressure diesel pump died in my decade old car.  Curse my bad luck and pay a specialist to replace it.

Companies are starting to offer pack reconditioning services.  After market upgrade packs are coming available.  Packs from written off cars can be hot from eBay.  It’s early days yet because there isn’t much in the way of decade old EVs, but the ecosystem is already starting to form to support them and their owners as more old vehicles pile up.

The bigger problem I see is that until lithium is replaced as the anode of choice, the value of battery pack is going to start to put a floor on the cost of 10 year old cars - they won’t sell for less than their battery packs are worth.  A car pack down to 70% is still worth a lot for a stationary battery, for example.  So until we’re post-lithium I doubt they’ll end up half as cheap as decade old ICE equivalent models.

I'd like an EV which went "tut" everytime it was near a cyclist or a pedestrian.  Bet BMW develop that first.....

It strikes me that the gradual decline of EV's will probably be more predictable 'less random seeming' than in petrol or diesel ones, and it will become easier to keep them going as there's more of a network to support their use.

The major problem I see with that charging mechanism is vandalism - oooh I wonder how strong that post is? Etc.

Difficult to design any pavement charging that could totally avoid this problem. Regardless of how flush the design (when in use), I think the cable itself might be seen as a "valid" target for vandalism even if the car was not.

I didn't click dislike (though I can't prove that) but if I did my reposte would be "what numbers", unless comparatives like "a lot" and "likely" count as numbers.  Despite "You'll never take my Freedom!!!" Tom's assertion that it's odd for people to dislike facts, there seem to me to be very few facts in your post, merely a lot of conjecture.  Quite possibly well informed conjecture (or not, don't claim to know) but still opinion. 

Just to ward off the predictable avalanche of dislikes this post gets, my favourite number is (approximately) 1.618033

Or perhaps theft if it presents some scrote with the opportunity to sweep through a residential street at night and 'harvest' a significant amount of copper.

An entirely fair criticism.  I was kind of hoping someone else would run the numbers to check my working....  Wish they had!  'Cos I guffed...  

Global lithium production ~ 82,000,000 kg / year - https://www.statista.com/statistics/606684/world-production-of-lithium/

An EV uses between 5 kg and 10 kg of lithium depending on range - https://www.quora.com/How-much-lithium-in-kg-is-used-in-an-electric-car

Pick a range in the middle with 7.5 kg and divide in to the annual supply gives (85,000,000 kg/year)  / (7. 5 kg/car) = 11.3 million cars/year.

Looks like I dropped a zero somewhere because that's more like 100 years to replace the entire global fleet, not a decade.     What an idiot.  Mind you, if batteries people with vehicles as urban run-about had appropriately sized batteries that would make it more like 20 years or so.  

Lithium really is a stop-gap to aluminium batteries.  Now EVs are proven and flying off the shelves there's a lot more investment going in to future battery tech.

I stand by my comment that the total reserves of lithium aren't an issue, and I said re: lithium "Increasing global supply isn’t great news (!!) environmentally".  

I'm just going to skulk quietly off now.

They are flush with the pavement when not in use. From the 2 photos of it in use it looks like it sticks up about 2 foot. 

They sound fine but the ones in the photo are stepped in from the kerb by quite a long way. 

YOu said: "I sometimes think that the current model of independent vehicles for everybody or most people probably isn't sustainable, whichever the fuel source is, that more needs to be in place in terms of public transport, and hire vehicles."

Hmm. Bicycles. Scooters.

When in use they look like little grey poles with cables hanging out of them. Perfect to trip over. Not sure why they had to fit them so far from the kerb either.

Visual intrusion is far from my issue.

I guess maybe no more of a hazard than the other sign posts in the street?

Sign post are tall and usually have a big sign on them so you are unlikely to miss them.

I wonder visually impaired people think about these things.

It looks like the car industry is going to substantially succeed in de-carbonising operationally by say 2028.  Meanwhile in the UK, the rail industry is still pursuing the remains of its strategically banjaxed HS2 giga-project which won't be operational until 2030 and won't be completed at all.  Meanwhile there will still be half the UK network using diesel trains at this point.  The rail industry will achieve the staggeringly incompetent feat of being more carbon intensive than road, and spending £100b in doing this..

Whichever route we take, it's got to be a holistic approach, where we don't just look at personal transport being sustainable but we also have a public transport infrastructure that works and is affordable, and accessible, to all. I'm in Stavanger at the moment and all of the buses are solar powered. If they can achieve a successful system with their rainfall pattern and shorter winter daylight hours why are we still building, and running, ICE buses. Why on earth hasn't the government made it compulsory for all new build houses to at least have EV panels fitted? Birmingham has recently introduced it's low emissions zone, a 'stick', but where is the carrot? The 'second city' doesn't have one park and ride scheme. So, my neighbour, who commutes in with his 12 year old, 3 litre petrol BMW sports car, that does 25 mpg if he is lucky can escape the fee for the LEZ,, but I can't with my 8 year old Euro 5 diesel engine that does 57 mpg on the same journey!

Out of interest, why doesn't your neighbour pay?

Can we call you Popeye?

Even Mr Spock makes mistakes 😁. Regardless, according to Wiki there's 230 billion tonnes of Lithium in seawater so it's merely an extraction problem; which would no doubt take longer to solve than sorting out aluminium based batteries.

Indeed. I cycle everywhere, it keeps me happier, and if I keep an eye on traffic stops me dying sooner too, going on the medical science.

'It keeps me happier, and if I keep an eye on traffic stops me dying sooner too, going on the medical science.'

I suddenly thought, this is dangerously good justification for going for a cycle instead of tidying up.

Fuel cells are not going to happen, except in niche circumstances.  Battery prices have come down by a factor of 10, and still going down, so it's commercially dead.

And as wintertree points out, lithium isn't the only game in town now re battery metals-

Secondhand market will evolve.  Given how little there is to go wrong on my Leaf I'd fancy it's chances compared to any i.c.e. car.  Batery degredation isn't linear

Nice article, cute trial and all. If I had to find fault with their solution I would be wondering how that connector gets on with constant dirt ingress and the local ingrates jamming chewing gum into it.

But the much larger issue is that it completely sidesteps all the actual issues surrounding on-street charging, which are:

1) The cost of installing points on a national basis.

2) The cost of installing electricity infrastructure to carry this huge current increase.

3) The cost, logistics and timescale of installing electricity generation capacity (from renewables/nuclear) to provide for this huge current increase.

I don't doubt that EVs are as good a solution as we have right now and it's necessary to develop all the tiny individual bits of engineering like this project. BUT, the blockade to progress is the stratospheric cost and effort needed to install infrastructure on a national scale, that is the actual problem that needs to be solved.

The national grid disagree with you.

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-myths-about-elec...

The generation and transmission capacity is there from significant reductions in energy usage over the last 15 years and from the diurnal cycling.

What’s needed is not the expensive infrastructure you cite but a little bit of smarts to control when cars charge.

I would say the problems to be solved are major misconceptions over EVs - as your post illustrates - and moving beyond a lithium battery chemistry.  The timing issue is not hard to address, although the OLEV scheme cocked up by subsiding a lot of dumb charger inlet units - but the work to change such a unit is not massive, nor is the cost.

"Each Lance is linked to a specific User Account".

Does this mean that if someone else plugs in the person to whom the account is being debited gets to pick up the bill ?

Any grand Wintertree ideas on how to solve the problem for taxis? I was talking to a taxi driver yesterday who was totally on board with EVs as a concept, but wasn't sure how it would work for him. We reckoned something about the model needed to change. Perhaps drivers wouldn't own a vehicle and just swap in and out of the one that has been charged at a depot (which would probably be a less profitable outcome for him compared to his current owner/operator situation). Or perhaps all the owner-operators plug in at a taxi rank and there isn't a "front" of the queue any more, just a beacon on top of the charging post telling the punters which one to walk up to. 

Or (and I didn't mention this one to him) maybe it's a dying industry anyway, and we'll all be riding in Johnny Cabs in a few years time.

There’s a lot of Tesla taxis around Durham now and we saw some Leaf taxis in Morpeth - free charging @ 200 miles / hour in one council carpark probably offsets the time it takes to recharge.  The charger was heavily used by the Leaf taxis.

I like the idea of drivers and passengers running between cars - the first useful tech transfer from Formula E?

Many vehicles are now hitting 300 miles/day range so lower distance urban area taxis are covered (they’ll probably get better than stated range); longer distance stuff will just be some of the later vehicles to convert I think; there is more range to eek out of lithium but once it gets to aluminium hopefully 1000 mile ranges and 800 mile/hour recharge times will be common.  But as you say, it’ll probably all be Jonnycabs by then and they won’t have the same hassle as driver owned vehicles at taking time out to recharge.

I’m starting to think a MWh domestic battery could be affordable and practicable with aluminium one day - a game changer for grid redundant solar that, perhaps I can drop the hydro turbine plan for winter…

I like your taxi tank idea; double benefit of eliminating 25 diesel vehicles perpetually idling…

Edit: Someone - Siemens I think - are working on a smart sensor guided pantograph for lorries.  String those over the left lane on sections of motorway and BEV lorries get a lot more applicable, and you create an incentive for them not to block the next lane constantly overtaking others with a speed regulator set 0.25 mph lower…

Given the average Durham taxi driver's driving habits, I imagine they like the idea of 0-60 in 2 seconds.

I still have flashbacks to one journey back from the airport.  Worse of my colleague after the driver dropped me off at 1 am after asking me if that dirt track went anywhere…

If that were the case and it might be you'd expect the leaseholder to have controlled access.

edit: re-read it, the 'lance' is the plug and kept in the car when not in use, the sockets in the pavement are basically dumb waterproof power+data sockets connected back to the grid via a distribution box.

jk

I think longer distance stuff (for 'proper' taxis anyway, ie: hackney carriages) tends to involve longer waits between fares anyway - taxi ranks at airports and the like where taxis usually expect to be hanging about for hours.  My brother in law was a London cab driver until relatively recently and had a side-business as a mobile mechanic replacing brake discs, pads etc. on other taxis while they, and he, were waiting for a fare at Gatwick airport.  Pre-pandemic at least, apparently it wasn't at all unusual for a taxi not to move an inch for three hours or so at Gatwick or Heathrow.

I guess the diesel engines are kept idling most often by the driver wanting to keep warm in the winter.  If there's a charging point for every cab in the rank, perhaps even diesel engined cabs could at least have the engine turned off and keep the inside of the cab warm with a small electric heater instead.  (Essentially the same thing the drivers of electric cabs would be doing while they charge.)

Interesting comment on airport taxis - thanks.

That and the first-in-first-out physical queue jonny taylor mentioned - it's either idle it or stop/start it 10 times to roll 3 meters each time a taxi leaves ahead of them.

I had thought of building taxi ranks on artificial slopes so they could roll down, but jonny's beacon system makes a lot more sense.  Then, at some times of year as you say, there's the climate control options.

One of the unexpectedly awesome things about our Leaf was being able to run the heat pump in winter and the cooler in summer with the car basically silken whilst parked with a sleeping child in it.   During the heat wave I was looking at it and wondering why the AC unit does't have hookup ports to connect it to a house.  For charing taxi ranks,  I think the logic in the computers would need some changes to allow it to run AC whilst also connected to a charge port and with the stereo etc running - currently it only lets us use AC with the car in "full on" ready to drive mode (charging not allowed) or with it in full off, activated by the on-board timer or the satanic phone app (infotainment etc inoperative).

I suppose that highlights another way of managing large-scale taxi pools, because don't they have behind-the-scenes holding pens where they all park up (not inching forwards) until they are eventually called forward to the main rank? Which presumably makes the maintenance you mentioned easier, as well as coffee/toilets etc. Or at least that's the one thing I remember from an awful Will Self book which involved a taxi driver, which I gave up on about halfway through. A friend passed it on to me saying "I thought this was awful but you might like it". Anyway, I seem to have digressed, sorry!

Surely there will be some security, like a padlock on the connector? Or someone looking at the thief with a mk1 eyeball at some point during the hours their vehicle will be on charge.

The problem with taxis is they're often shared between drivers - one will do the 'day shift' and another the 'night shift' thus leaving relatively little time to recharge.  Rank charging stations and speed chargers will help, but it's not something that can be totally ignored. Over here drivers are going to hybrids to use battery power most of the time and only top up with engine power if they have a busy day.

Quite hard to trip over a sign post; walk into it, yes, but it's in your line of sight, so it's pretty rare.

Much easier to walk into or trip over something about a foot off the ground.

Yesterday I read an article stating that a new binder for the electrodes has been found which prevents the gradual loss of capacity seen with the current binders, thus meaning a 5yr old cell has the same capacity it had on day 1.  There's also the technology to nanocoat the electrodes with carbon nanotubes thus massively increasing their surface area and charge/discharge rates by afactor of 10.  Add to that the German project to extract lithium from geothermal brine with the potential to supply the whole of Europe's projected lithium needs, and I'd say a lot of people's concerns about EVs are going to evaporate soon.  The only issue remaining will be the supply of super-cheap vehicles at the bottom end of the market. For example, we have no MOTs here, so it's perfectly possible to pick up an old banger for £50 and drive round in it. My last 3 vehicles have cost me £800 to buy each and lasted me about 5 years each with standard servicing before dying of rust, that's cheap motoring.

I don't know if it's generally the case, but yes, apparently that is how it works at Gatwick.  (Or at least did.  My BiL was already finding it harder and harder to make a living as a cab driver pre-pandemic and found an opportunity through a friend to retrain and get out a couple of years ago.  He's a plumber now.)

A big problem are whiskers, no not the cat food, but tiny little hairs/whiskers that can form at the electrodes (not saying anode/cathode due to charge/recharge cycles) which are conductive (e.g. lithium in those batteries). Over time they can grow towards each other and worst case come like a stalagmite touching a stalactite and when that happens you get a short circuit/fire. Remember all those laptop fires a few years ago?

Amazing how some tree barks and coconut shells can produce nanostructured carbon materials when carefully pyrolysed as well...  

Yes, this seems likely to be reaching its end, not great given that cheap ICE vehicles subsidised by credit fuelled new model fetishism feeds very affordable cars down to the most disadvantaged.  Yet another reason to  prioritise tackling inequality.

In this case it means that ALL EV's would need a standard "lance" in order to utilise such a system, and this would have to also connect with all the current home and public charging systems.

Is there any realistic chance that ALL manufacturers would use a standard system, or would they, as is normal, decide on a "special" one just for their vehicles.

My point exactly.

In 15 years there will be many cheap 15 year old EV's - and plenty of even cheaper ICE ones. In 15 years the 15year old second hand EV's (built now) will still be cheaper to drive the the ice (built now) ones so will be more in demand. There is no reason an out of warranty battery will be useless, just as an out of warranty engine will keep going nicely with some tlc. Most EV packs can be maintained If indervidual cells fail, and a new industry is growing from scratch to undertake this work with the limited number of old batteries that are not still being used. 

These changes are designed for the use of the people who live on the residential street, and are paying a subscription as their home charging solution.

No one is proposing this as a solution for town centres or public car parks. 

Yes or one of several other 'standard' charging cables the cars come with. Setting good standards early in a technology's life cycle is really important but we know they evolve fast when a technology is new and are often supplemented as the technology and standard matures.

There are already standards, no unfortunately not just one but relatively few. AFAIK there isn't a standard for waterproof in-street connections, that's up for grabs. I doubt the Trojan 'lances' will win out over all the other options but you never know, so long as they can be made to work it'll be about getting a really big backer and manufacturing partners.

jk

I think the female to male "type 2" plug is now firmly set as the European standard used by all including new Teslas, and all od Nissan leafs came with a type t2 male to t1male cable for use at public un-tetherd chargers. Definitely the way forward. For local residential schemes I don't see a problem with bespoke solutions for the local subscribers to the seceme. 

My neighbour doesn't pay because exempt petrol engines, EU4 or later, date from either 2005 or 2006. So, a 16 year old petrol is deemed to be cleaner than a early 2015 diesel.

I know. But in a novel approach to UKC postings, I was reinforcing your comment, not disputing it...

I've got to give my increasingly vocal critics something to point at and mock me for....

Lots of lithium in some underground brines as well, as another person noted.

If you're building a sea-water extraction plant, you could start extracting fissile uranium as well, get the most out of the infrastructure.

That's my take/hope.  The energy density of aluminium solves a lot of other problems as well, assuming the way charging rates are rising can be carried forwards to aluminium cells.

Have you come to loath the video game style, feedback free electric power steering on your Leaf?  I bet you've got all the kit you need to get in to the microcontroller in the EPS module and give it a more tactile response...

Part no. EANCEC0102 to get one off eBay to experiment with...

It may well be in particulate output terms, and that's what urban 'clean air' restrictions are about. Don't get CO2 output and particulate output confused.

But better than those short sighted contributors to these forums who regard spaghetti from lampposts a workable idea. The magnitude of the investment required is way beyond that sort of thinking- every street needs a proper solution along these lines, millions of them, or mass eV ownership is a pipedream.

I think it will happen though..... 

I sometimes think this but am heartened every time I leave the house. I live in the NW of England and everywhere I go I see Victorian era infrastructure. Miles of railways, tunnels, canals, cuttings, reservoirs, drains etc all built in a few decades, with minimal mechanisation, poor transport infrastructure etc. There was an entire railway network on the moor above my house just for moving stone around, if you think about the profit on a ton of gritstone vs the profit on a KW of electricity I can’t see how shifting the latter from one place to another is not economically viable if the former was. 
In less than 5 years (a complete guess on my part!) the majority of new models brought out by car manufacturers will be EVs, there’s no way that will be reversed so the infrastructure will be forced to catch up.

Maybe I misunderstood the following link, but it seems to show that the majority of energy usage in the UK is from transport and the majority of that is domestic usage. I'm not sure how that squares with the having enough generating capacity to cover electrification of our cars.

Eyeballing the chart on the first page in 2019:

Petroleum usage, approx 65 million tonnes oil equivalent

Electricity usage, approx 25 million tonnes oil equivalent

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

Have I got this wrapped round my arse?

I don't think so, but I think you've over stretched that plot a bit, neither side of the plot is granular enough for a true comparison for electricity generation vs road transport.  It's going to take me a while to fully unpick that PDF mind.   

The quote from the national grid is purely about motor cars and not all transport, and relates to there being quite a bit more capacity in the grid than we are using - both at peak due to a fall in demand over the last 16 years and at night.  This is currently unrealised capacity so doesn't show in the data you linked.

Running the numbers independently I think it would be a very tight squeeze if all cars converted tomorrow, but in reality there's more than a 15 years before conversion would be complete.

One thing to keep in mind is that BEV energy economy far surpasses ICE economy - so you can't directly compare energy between types - both because internal combustion sucks from a thermodynamic perspective and because BEVs embrace regeneration which makes up for most of the energy wasting ways that humans drive cars.

Converting all transport to electrical power is a much tougher proposition than consumer vehicles, and dealing with fossil heating compounds that.  

A lot is going to have to change over the next two decades.

The steering is horrible but I think i'll just live with it, I can't be arsed developing a fix for it. That said, I may see how it feels without the fuse in, if it's actually a decent chassis ruined by electronics... Maybe.

I borrowed a gen2 Leaf the other day, it's a lot faster and the range is now a non-issue but the steering is still horrible. Why aren't they RWD, such a missed opportunity.

Jk

Great to see some innovation in this area, shame it’s on the pavement and not in the road though. Urban pavements are already littered with obstacles (normally cars around here!) and we should be trying to clear them, not add more.

What do you base that on? From what I have read there are a significant number having problems with even newish batteries, so many, it put me off getting a second hand EV. Old ICE vehicles usually still have a working engine when they are scrapped as it’s the rest of the vehicle that becomes uneconomic to repair. I can’t see the current batteries lasting anywhere near as long. Yes, they can be repaired but it costs about £1500 to repair just one cell. Many of the EV’s I looked at were all ‘sold as seen’ which is a red flag to me. Buying from a dealer seemed the only reliable option but that comes at a price.

Really? I've not heard anything? Bearing in mind the number of "Tesla haters" out there, if there we a significant number of problems with the batteries I'd be hearing about it, instead I just get stories of them still going well after 200-500k miles.

No good for overnight charging when you go to visit someone though.

There really should be only ONE type of connection, so that EV's can be charged up at your own home, someone else's home (with permission), the street, stores (as in supermarkets) and service stations.

Having a plethora of connections is asking for trouble.

You could borrow their hardware.

Yes (and no) but it's also part of arriving at a mature standard. In the meantime there are already plenty of workable charging options even if you're excluded from some.

jk

I think the only place where there is need for a bespoke solution is on residential streets, as in the scheme being discussed. In which case the person you are visiting can led you their 'lance' (at the point where EV's are the dominent vehicle of choice). In most cases I think most people visiting will just do a rapid change either on the journey to or from their destination. This is what we do with our Gen 1 leaf when there is no easy charging at our destination and isn't really a problem for the odd trip. We often try to stop at a Morristons or Tesco near the destination to buy chocolate/wine/flowers and can rapid charge while doing this. In reality the shopping usually takes longer than the charge. 

Not to say a standard solution would not be great, but given the many different street landscapes out there i don't think we should get hung up on this issue as a blockage to full EV adoption. Especially if early standardisation might stifle innovation. 

You can make batteries with things other than Lithium....

A related question if I may, which I was musing on this morning: here on the west coast of scotland we have massive problems with our car brakes binding, because we often only use the car at weekends. A week of dreich rain (and especially when there's also salt around in winter) plays havoc with the callipers if not driven daily. For an EV I imagine this would only get worse, as the calliper brakes aren't used as much. Not sure how one would even "exercise" them other than doing a bunch of emergency stops! Anyone seen any discussion about how that challenge might be addressed with EVs?

Cables have TWO ends - You are assuming that the one for the EV will fit. Knowing manufacturers that isn't necessarily so.

Break disk corrosion can be a real issue for BEVs...

I can only speak for our Leaf, but...

1. It can barely regenerate when the battery is charged to > 90%, and uses mechanical breaks
2. There's a wide band of deceleration somewhere between "not even mildly enthusiastic late breaking" and "full on emergency stop" where the mechanical breaks are used.  Of the top of my head, 60 mph to 0 mph in under 12 seconds is going to need the mechanical breaks, comparing the maximum regeneration charge rate and the motor power
3. You can put the gearbox in to neutral to prevent regeneration regardless of battery capacity, and then use the mechanical breaks.

EVs are pretty much standardising on a Type 2 socket for an AC inlet and a CCS socket for DC rapid charging.

The real standardisation issue isn't the connectors any more, it's a communications protocol to allow the car and charge point to talk to each other and arrange billing without having to sign up to a raft of accounts with different charge network operators, and use a raft of mobile phone apps and RIFD fobs to make charging happen.  Tesla have this integrated comms, and I think there's some EU legislation to harmonise this sort of thing...

I'd imagine most get used carelessly enough that the brakes get a regular scrubbing.

If it becomes a persistent problem then I guess the engineers will look at the disk material* or a patch on the stability control software to drag the hydraulic brakes for a few seconds each trip rather than re-gen braking.

*Early Elises were equipped with aluminium disks and lots of performance cars use composites and ceramics.

jk

Stainless brake rotors have been standard for motorcycles (and performance cars) for decades, Brembo haven't made iron discs for 20 years or more. With the right material and sintered pads they outperform iron by miles. Norton fitted stainless to the first Commando.

I cycled past this today.. 

https://smartcitysweden.com/best-practice/409/worlds-first-wireless-electri...

Might not be the answer anything depending on the results, but it might be another option for some ev transportation. Right method in the right location. 

I heard someone talking about this as a possibility a while ago and I remember thinking that it sounded like a nice idea but unlikely to be feasible. I am delighted that they are trialling it, would be great if it did turn out to be feasible! 

I've never really understood why this is the case. In a modern industry a standard from day 1 would surely have been expected.

As it is it all feels a bit VHS and Betamax, one system will win over but you don't want to get caught out with the wrong one.

It's the same with all the charging apps, surely a single system is what is needed.

Even easier if the cars are parked; this removes the need for pesky cables.  The complication for parked cars is that they'll need to be precisely aligned to the buried coils, but with the right field sensors or visual fiducials on the road/kerb the autopark software can take care of that.

Seems ok, short distance / repeated runs work well, bus routes, shuttle buses etc... urban deliveries, zero particle pollution in cities, not just the carbon side of things. 

any idea what frequencies are used to transmit the energy? will it comply with the new ICNIRP levels of exposure?

It's done by a company called Electreon, but I can't find any precise data, maybe they are protecting info for commercial reasons. 

it's interesting because at the moment OFCOM (among other national regulatory bodies) is imposing new requirements on users of radio to ensure safe exposure levels to humans for any transmission of >= 10watts EIRP and those limits extend right through the spectrum (variable depending on frequency).

It's hard to believe you could charge a car on power levels of less than 10W EIRP and so in the UK considerable study of effect on human tissue at the required power levels would be needed as well as installers to provide evidence of safe compliance.  There is currently some debate as to whether metal shielding can be taken into account.  All of this seems to have kicked off to placate the 5G tinfoil people.

While wireless is certainly interesting, I think the energy losses on a whole road would not be very economical.

A simple wire and pentograph system for lorries and busses looks far more practical. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/27/eh...

Not really needed for passenger cars, but could mean long distances professionally driven vehicles can be cheaper with smaller batteries. You just need a 150 mile range battery then to cover almost all of the UK between wires on moterway and truck roads. 

Just to be clear there is already an EU standard connector for both AC and DC charging for all new vehicles. 

Mr Farage has promised us freedom from such bureaucratic dictatorship

We are free to choose our own Chinese copy CE marked variants!

I imagine a parked car could even clamp on, remora-style, to a metal plate in the road surface for pretty good EM coupling for power transfer?

Both very good points I hadn't thought about - in particular I hadn't ever thought about the *rate* of power delivery (removal) involved with regenerative braking - must be some interesting electrical challenges involved with that. To my inexpert mind it seems like you must need a supercapacitor or similar to serve as a short-term energy dump before transferring to the battery at a slower rate. Or maybe not - I suppose by definition you're looking to reverse the energy flow at a similar rate to how you'd drain the battery during heavy acceleration, so maybe that's more feasible than my initial gut feeling had suggested.

That would be pretty cool.  

> in particular I hadn't ever thought about the *rate* of power delivery (removal) involved with regenerative braking - must be some interesting electrical challenges involved with that.

Kinetic/thermal breaks can dump a *lot* of energy very quickly if not already red hot.  Most cars can spread energy removal over 4 breaks and 4 wheels vs energy supply over one motor and two wheels.  Most cars can do 60-0 mph faster than 0-60 mph…

As I understand it the main limits to charging currents are the power converter going motor > battery, lithium dendrite formation and the handling / traction issues of 2-wheel breaking.

Power converters are getting better and I think the coming move to 800 V for packs and solid state electronics is going to help again by keeping charging currents down.  Higher current charging is a thermal PITA because cars rarely run at their max discharge rate for long so heat dissipates, whereas charging is continuous.  If I thrash our Leaf for more than about 5 minutes it gets it’s version of the “Sad Mac” icon and won’t go very fast until it cools down.

Its lithium dendrite formation that breaks the physical symmetry between discharging and charging, this happens under charging and particularly under high current high field gradient conditions I think, which is why charging is often limited for the top end of a pack’s capacity.  Electron micrographs of these in the literature are very cool.  Almost nanoscale fulgurites.

In theory supercaps can help but it needs a lot and funky power converters because they’re not constant voltage devices (anything but), and with their low cell voltages and liquid electrolytes, cell balancing is critical during charging and non trivial for high current charging.  I charge my 12,000 F bank up over about half an hour to keep it simple…  Although it’s been banished from the house due to some , erm let’s call them armature, yes armature burns in the carpet.

In practice, manufacturers just seem to be moving to building packs 5 kWH bigger than needed and not normally fully charging them.

What about Heart Pacemakers - are they affected by this ?

The whole road isn't powered, it's split into sections and the vehicles have some transmitter so they only activate with the right traffic. 

I don't think it's a solution for everything, short distance shuttling: buses, taxi, or quarry vehicles maybe.