Despite the advance in battery technology, we are still at the stage where almost anything powered by batteries is a pain in the backside. Be it mobiles, laptops or eletric shavers they run out at the most inconvenient times and need replacing or at least three hours of charging before you can use them again.
Another problem to be addressed with battery powered cars is the fall off in performance as the battery runs down. A petrol engine will produce maximum power until the last drop has been used - in fact performance increases as you use more fuel because you are carrying less weight.
I have no doubt that at some point a battery will be developed that can store enough electricity from an instant charge to be viable, but we are a long way off yet.
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If your interested in the C5 and other Sinclair stuff have a look at www.nvg.ntnu.no/sinclair/
You can still buy parts for the C5 !
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I think that we are all missing the point here. I rarely do more that 40 miles a day - the round trip home to work is about 24 miles. That could be done with present lead acid batteries. I repeat that most BRs could use the electric vehicle for the bulk of their motoring. (You can used your SUV for weekend fishing trips)
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There is also the point that electric vehicles are ideally suited for these shorter and around town journeys while petrol vehicles are at their most inefficient.
I've said before and will say again, were a small electric vehicle available now that could do even only 50-100 miles I'd be interested. If it came in at around £3k or less (no need for mod cons etc) I'd have one now - I may even replace the Yaris with something a tad larger for the longer runs but all I need for most of my driving is something that can carry one passenger and will get me around town.
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If it came in at around £3k or less(no need for mod cons etc) I'd have one now -
Well it wouldn't have a heater for a start - loads of amps!
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Well, these cost (past tense) about £2k, but it was over 30 years ago!
www.imps4ever.info/specials/enfield/
I now work some of the time on the same site that these were made. Despite the chunky appearance, they had a Cd of 0.28 and were a lot nippier than the figures suggest (very good low speed acceleration). I once X-rayed a chap who had run himself over with one in the factory...
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They could always install a little campingaz stove in the car....
Actually, while it would reduce the range, you could run a heater still. I'd imagine there would be an option to heat while you charged overnight for one, and using more efficient technology than your usual fan heater, you could probably run one from not much more than 100W to keep the chill off and certainly under 500W. Looking at the little Enfield, at 48V and 165Ah, that's only a 16th of the capacity lost and I suspect a car build around NiMH or even Li-ion would have more capacity than that.
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www.paulsexotics.com/showroomFMod.html
electric 959 or Diablo anyone?
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"475 ft.lbs"
Wow! Just shows what can be done (although those "spiral tech" batteries sound expensive).
WRT heating, I don't think it's a problem. The batteries are going to get nice and warm when they start delivering the sort of current required...
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They could always install a little campingaz stove in the car.... Actually, while it would reduce the range, you could run a heater still. I'd imagine there would be an option to heat while you charged overnight for one, and using more efficient technology than your usual fan heater, you could probably run one from not much more than 100W to keep the chill off and certainly under 500W. Looking at the little Enfield, at 48V and 165Ah, that's only a 16th of the capacity lost and I suspect a car build around NiMH or even Li-ion would have more capacity than that.
I wouldn't think 500w would anything like adequate. No idea what the output of a normal car heater is - but the Btu equivalent must be several Kw.
I also wonder what the electrical load would be for the most basic(but mandatory) equipment - indicators, lights, wipers etc.
And my dear simply nobody buys a car without air-conditioning these days!!
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A 2kW fan heater can keep a moderately sized room fairly warm. There are much more efficient technologies than a piece of wire for heating these days as well as the car being much smaller. It may need an initial surge to heat things up but one warm it won't need much to keep warm. I'd guess you'd be looking at something like 10kWh capacity in the battery as a minimum so a heater isn't going to affect things massively. Certainly as a city car I can't see a problem and that is the main area that needs addressing for getting away from petrol and on to more friendly forms of power.
Electric cars are a long way off being able to cover thousands of miles a month but they can't be far off becoming urban runarounds.
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Steve,
We have gone up from "not much more than 100W to keep the chill off and certainly under 500W" to 2Kw! The difference between a room and a car is that the former is well insulated and isn't moving through cold air at 30-40mph!
Actually electric wire heating is pretty efficient. However I think you hit the nail on the head earlier when you spoke about overnight heating. I guess it would be pretty simple to have the equivalent on a Dimplex oil filled radiator or night storage heater that would be heated up during the charging cycle. The heat could be released by a simple fan when required.
I still think the Achilles heel of a cheap small urban runabout will be the cost of replacing batteries every 2 or 3 years. It seems strange that for all the huge advance in technology we are still using the same type of batteries as fitted 70 odd years ago.
C
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We have gone up from "not much more than 100W to keep the chill off and certainly under 500W" to 2Kw!
Erm, no, we haven't. I was pointing out that if you can warm a room with 2kW you can certainly warm one occupant of a car with less. Start using ceramic / IR or even peltier heat pumps and I'm sure you'll get the power consumption down.
As you say though, some form of storage heater will be better although there will always be the case where you are starting from cold and need to get the thing warm.
I still think the Achilles heel of a cheap small urban runabout will be the cost of replacing batteries every 2 or 3 years. It seems strange that for all the huge advance in technology we are still using the same type of batteries as fitted 70 odd years ago.
Would we though? Lead-acid batteries are certainly the cheapest per Ah readily available, but these new ones aside they have a very low energy density. That said, all battery types would be a trade-off of sorts. NiCad would be perfect in that they can release large amounts of energy and can be very quickly charged as well as being cheap, but the energy density is also low and I believe they are being phased out - RoHS? NiHM are better in terms of energy density and the cost is coming down, but the self-discharge rates can be rather horrendous. Some form of Lithium technology would be best other than in cost terms.
As for battery life, you may only be looking at a few hundred quid if using standard car-battery type lead-acids but I'd suspect other technologies may last longer, especially if you didn't recharge every day - both NiCad and NiMH can go to over a thousand charging cycles for example, so with say 4 charges a week you'd be looking at 5 years or so.
Of course, another way to look at it is to consider how much you'd save in servicing etc over those 3 years and compare that to the battery cost, never mind fuel savings.
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"how much you'd save in servicing etc"
Not to mention petrol! Electric cars will appear all over the place shortly after the next real fuel crisis...
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I've said before and will say again, were a small electric vehicle available now that could do even only 50-100 miles I'd be interested.
all I need for most ofmy driving is something that can carry one passenger and will get me around town.
Steve, why not buy one of those little "old people's trollies"?
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Steve, why not buy one of those little "old people's trollies"?
Ok, so maybe I should have added some comment on speed to my list! Certainly a top speed of 45 would do for most round-town driving as long as it can get to that quickly enough, although a tad faster would help if you have the odd section of dual carriageway or motorway to deal with.
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"I repeat that most BRs could use the electric vehicle for the bulk of their motoring. (You can used your SUV for weekend fishing trips)"
Nope dont think so - no one is missing the point. I have done 30k miles in 18 months, with the current state of electric car technology there is no way a car of this type would have been able to match those requirements.
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Take heart chaps! (But I expect the Yanks will take the credit.)
www.channel4.com/4car/news/news-story.jsp?news_id=...e
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Very impressive if the claims are true, but unless the batteries are capable of taking a full charge - which would be quite substantial - in around a minute the idea would be hoplessly impracticle. Imagine a typical London street with perhaps 200-400 houses. All those cars parked overnight with a lead from the house trailing across the pavement to the car. The "sue if you've tripped" lawyers would be on cloud nine.
And wouldn't the local yoof have a whale of a time with their new sport of cutting or disconnecting the cables? I know I would have loved it in my imperfect East End adolescence.
One day all cars may well be electric, but we are nowhere near yet.
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"with a lead from the house trailing across the pavement"
It does raise some interesting practical problems, I grant you. It conjures up visions of more pavements being dug up to bury cables (and lots of broken broadband connections) and huge arguments over which socket belongs to whom! New acts of parliament over theft of electricity and a whole new set of excuses for being late to work...
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A battery powered vehicle has quite succsessfully delivered my milk for 30-odd years.
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A battery powered vehicle has quite succsessfully delivered my milk for 30-odd years.
Before that a horse and cart! Technology moves at a frightening pace doesn't it?
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And looking at the vehicle, it's no wonder it hasn't caught on.
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Soon be getting milk even quicker, it seems
www.deliveringthefuture.co.uk/xdv.html
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Battery technology/cost still limits the appeal of electric cars.
But imagine the Toyota Prius set-up, only with a diesel engine instead of petrol - 100 mpg??? Also one could have selectable part-time 4-wheel drive with engine driving the front wheels, electric hub motors/regenerative braking units driving rear wheels or both together.
Wasn't the Smart designed with an electric version in mind in readiness for the great leap in battery technology? And I think I read the same was true of the Mercedes A-Class, with its double floor, described as a safety features but which was also designed to accommodate batteries.
Cheers, Sofa Spud
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I didn't say that the electric car would cover all cases, but I think that if BRs think of their daily mileage they could surprise themselves. Those living in terraced houses fronting directly onto the footpath would at present be excluded, of course, but in the future I feel that local councils will provide the necessary off road charging spaces.
Think of the benefits. With modern power electronics (improving all the time) and a permanent magnet motor, if you press the accelerator normally the control circuit would ramp up and accelerate the car at a controlled rate, until you reach your chosen speed, no wheelspin whatever the surface. If you bang it down (like some idiots do) controlled acceleration that would make a Porche look silly, again minimal wheel spin.
Starting off in snow would be a doddle.
If you are stopped in traffic the motors are stopped, i.e., no drain. If you are going downhill or you brake on the overun the motors generate and feed back into the battery.
Demerits : No Brmm Brmm exhaust. They are so quiet that if you are not careful you could run down pedesrians.
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But the problem is that where the electric car is being touted as being most useful is in the cities, which is where the majority of residents have neither garage or off-road parking leading to the drawbacks I have stated.
For every ten people who say they would use an electric car I bet nine would not once all the implications were made clear. Your journeys would have to take the form of a railway timetable. Thirty miles running time, eight hours unusable whilst recharging, forcast of rain tomorrow so mileage cut by ten because I'll need the wipers, demister and heated window. Can't use it tonight because the traffic is very heavy and if I have to sit in a jam with the wipers going and the heater on I might not make it home, etc etc.
When they develope an instant charge battery we will be on the way, but not before I'm afraid.
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"When they develope an instant charge battery.."
Hence my support for hybrids. Once you've got a generator on board, the battery requirement (and cost) reduces, and you can still move when they are depleted.
It even provides a better application for diesels, which are much happier at constant revs, although personally I'd rather have a small gas turbine.
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Funny, nobody has mentioned fuel cells ! Anybody got any up to date information on them? I believe that Ballard are well on the way to 'perfecting' them.
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Hence my support for hybrids. Once you've got a generator on board, the battery requirement (and cost) reduces, and you can still move when they are depleted.
Trouble with hybrids are that they are far more complex and costly than a pure electric vehicle would be, as well as costing more per mile in fuel terms. Toyota are supposedly bringing out a hybrid version of the Yaris soon but I'll believe that when I see it - what's the betting there are batteries stuffed in every bit of spare space they can find.
I suspect there will be two different sets of requirements that current technology cannot fill with one solution. For longer journeys and high mileages, a hybrid will be a good solution - the car will be bigger anyway and range is the primary concern. However, for around town driving you want something small, light and nippy that uses minimal road space and gives out zero pollution. During the average week I drive less than 100 miles normally. (Weekends are either pretty much zero or loads) I might only need to charge the car once or twice a week (depending on the self discharge rate of the cells) I suspect this is the same for many people so provision of charging may not be such an issue.
Of course, once they perfect this technology of zapping energy from space to earth it'll all become easy...
although personally I'd rather have a small gas turbine.
Wasn't it proved that GTs below a certain size are massively inefficient? I have a feeling this is why their use in railway engines was dropped.
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Chronically innefficient initially. A GT locomotive from Switzerland's Brown-Boveri was tried for a while in the 60's but it's hopeless economy and overwhelming smell of kerosene upsetting passengers led to it's rapid demise.
During this time, Leyland (The only company who have only ever correctly understood the GT) refined Gas Turbine development and in conjunction with BR the idea was ressurected in the 70's with the APT-E, an experimental 4-car unit powered by 8 Leyland units which still holds the speed record on UK railways (152 mph) Efficiency had markedly improved.
But with the change of Goverment in the late 70's meant lack of investment on both sides ensured the complete collapse of any further development.
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Sorry, starstorm, a few minor corrections. The Uk rail speed record is now held by a Eurostar and stands at just over 200mph. I'm not totally sure but I have a feeling that a 91 may have 'unofficially' beaten the APT also.
Wasn't there a UK loco build around a GT as well? I have a feeling the problem was more to do with the GT not working well over a range of speeds. You might get away with it in a car with enough battery capacity to dump to when stationary but in a railway environment it wasn't as easy to manage. That said, there are rumours it is being looked at again, I believe with a smaller diesel as a power source during low-load periods.
The APT-P was an electric unit of course, although this was initially intended for the WCML which was already electrified. Whether a GT version would have appeared for other routes I don't know. Of course, the (tilting) technology went over to Fiat and we are now buying it back in to the country in the form of the new Pendolino fleet.
I know this is drifting a little OT, but there have been various discussions over time as to whether it is more efficient to generate power on-board, or have electric locos. Shunters and most multiple units aside, most diesel trains these days are diesel-electric, essentially the diesel is a generator so fairly similar to what is being proposed here. Opinion is actually quite divided over whether it is more efficient to generate power at point of use or centrally and distribute it be OHLE. Whichever, neither seems to be massively more efficient than the other.
In car terms, I suspect the same may apply but it is difficult to judge as things are skewed so much by the tax on petrol. The main advantage a purely electric car would have over one that is either a hybrid or conventionally fueled is that a proportion of the power can come from renewable sources, with the rest being generated in one place so pollution can be more readily controlled.
How about electric cars that when parked, pop up a little wind turbine to help recharge the battery... ;)
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Correction on the speed accepted - but I should also correct myself in saying the APT-E reached 162 mph, not 152. And this on existing rail and not stretches banked for speed/tilt. You have heard that 91 rumour too, then!
There was no UK loco build of mainline GT -The efficiencies over a range of speeds were still an issue by the mid 70's but with solutions in sight from Leyland which did not see the light of day due to project abandonment - But all the chassis tech developed went to the APT-P which were, as you correctly say, taken up by Fiat Ferrovia and flogged back to us. Brilliant.
Now we are dependent on foreign manufacture for our trainsets, we are seeing a definite skew back to diesel-electric power in multipe unit form (Viz the Voyagers, the chance to travel on which I can easily contain my excitement) so I am musing that the auto industry will follow suit. But the most interesting source of power came from those little electric class 71's from the southern region. They were fitted with a massive flywheel to power the generator when 3rd rail pick-up was unavailiable at gaps such as points, junctions etc.
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Hi SteveH42.
An alternative to the 8 hour recharge is what we do with lift and tow trucks, another battery. Drive up, decouple, slide out used battery, slide in another, put the charger on the first battery, drive away. With fleet vehicles you can use the same car 24 hrs. a day with all of the reliability of the electric motor. No smoke, no fumes.
Question: how many separate moving parts are there in a four cylinder 8 valve engine and it's gearbox, and how many bearing surfaces to go wrong if you don't religiously change oil and do your servicing?
2nd question: how many are there on an electric motor. (Solid state variable speed controller, no moving parts)
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Actually, Hillman, I suspect that may be part of the solution. However, I also suspect we may need to re-evaluate how we see cars sometime in the very near future. It may be that rather than everyone owning their own car, rental, but on a much larger and more organised scale may become the way to do things. After all, most cars probably spend 95% of their life sitting doing nothing. It would more than likely be cheaper overall to rent as the costs could be shared between many people. You would also have a car more in tune with your needs at the time:
Going to work alone? A little one seater electric would suit you.
Taking the family on a holiday? A hybrid people carrier for the week.
etc, etc.
With one central agency dealing with all rentals then matters such as recharging no longer need to be the problem of the driver - batteries can be changed if needed, charging will take place out of the way.
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Strange that no-one has mentioned solar panels, which could top up the batteries when stationary and reduce the drain when moving.
And, after manufacture, are 100% non-polluting, any other form of electric vehicle is only as environmentally friendly as what is producing the juice at the other end of the recharge cable.
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Solar would be next to useless in this application. There are better technologies at the cutting edge, but readily available panels give about 40 to 50W / sq. m. (taking two typical units from the CPC catalogue) Now, the Enfield quoted elsewhere in this thread had about 8kWh of battery capacity. I doubt you can get much over 2 sq. m. of roof space on a city car so you'd be putting 100W in to the battery. In other words, it would take 80 hours of good sunlight to recharge it, or during a good summer day you might put 1500W in. I think the Enfield motor is quoted as being 10kW so you'd get about 9 minutes of running from a full day charging... Come winter and you'd be lucky to get out of the carpark.
Solar technology will improve significantly, but you are always going to need some backup for those days when the sun barely peeks out from behind the clouds, and even then, the initial cost is significant.
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"Demerits : No Brmm Brmm exhaust. They are so quiet that if you are not careful you could run down pedesrians"
I very nearly was, by one reversing down a one-way London Street a few months back.
Pedestrian casualties would be set to go through the roof.
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>> A battery powered vehicle has quite succsessfully delivered my milk for30-odd years.
Usually with a long line of petrol powered cars stuck behind it.
With the current technology and safety requirements electric cars are too heavy. Electric Scooters like the Peugeot ones I see aroud perhaps.
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I remember seeing an empty electric milk float going so slowly along the road that I asked the driver what was wrong. "Out of juice", he replied. That was more than 60 years ago. I hope that he got home by now, but it does illustrate the technology is not new. I read somewhere that at one time there were as many electric cars as petrol on the road. It was only the improvements in starting the petrol engine that enabled it to take over from the electric.
SteveH42 is right. The future will bring about a change in the usage and ownership of vehicles. I already know people who find it cheaper to use public transport or taxis for day to day travel, and hire a car for long journeys. In Japan you cannot get a local license for a car unless you have off road parking.
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Where I live there is a long hill down into town, where the empty electric milk floats on their way back to the dairy can, for once, pretend to be white vans! Sometimes milkfloats can be seen screaming and rattling down the hill at 30-35 mph!
Cheers, SS
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