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"The Challenges Facing Electric Vehicle Uptake"
(61 posts)-
Posted 11 years ago #
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As a wholly unrepresentative contribution, there is an interesting car park in the centre of Dublin with e-charging stations that you could book. No charge for the electricity. 10 euro for 24 hours.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"Cutting-edge electric vehicle programmes worldwide, city by city"
http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/news/2012/may/name,26739,en.html
Posted 11 years ago # -
The continuing challenge is that they are not very good.
Oh, and you have to pay an eye wateringly large amount of money for something that is not very good.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"The continuing challenge is that they are not very good."
And surely electric cars are not that green. You still have to generate the electricity - efficiency loss? And make the things.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Not enough "filling" stations either!! Possibly better than using land to grow cash crops of stuff to produce biofuels from. Come the day when we run out of fossil fuels, and the world's population is starving will the world leaders and people will possibly, just possibly wake up to the fact that cars are not a sustainable form of transport. Land will then rapidly be converted back to use as arable farming land but will have been stripped of nutrients and probably require huge amounts of organo-phosphates just to mess the thing up even further. I really hope I am not alive to see it frankly, I find it all rather too depressing as it is. I think it really sad that so much is spent on the automotive industry and sustaining it to the detriment of the planet.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Electric cars are hobbled by a poor energy storage mechanism.
We are unlikely ever to "run out" of oil; in just the way that we have left 100years of coal reserves in the ground, it will become too expensive and inconvenient to use as a fuel and will become a chemical feed stock for making stuff with.
Chemical fuels will probably continue to dominate free-roaming transport for some time to come and there are loads of efficiencies out there to be won.
Cars can be a sustainable form of transport, but not the monsters we have now for sure.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I've got a driveway so I could sit one there to charge o/n but what about tenements which are very common in Scottish cities?
A Renault electric car passed me a few months back. The batteries cost something like £40 a month in rental.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"Possibly better than using land to grow cash crops of stuff to produce biofuels from."
Heard on R4 Today "40% of US corn goes to make fuel - ethanol"
Posted 11 years ago # -
That's probably about right, though not for any good economic reasons. The "Corn Lobby" in the US is very powerful and have managed to have a very high proportion of biofuel mandated in the gasoline pool thus keeping the prices good and high and keeping corn farmers good and rich. The US already imports a 20-30% of its gasoline adding another 5% (approx the biofuel content) wouldn't make any real difference.
Posted 11 years ago # -
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18858444
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"The time of cheap food prices is over," says Nestle chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe.He is highly critical of the rise in the production of bio-diesel, saying this puts pressure on food supplies by using land and water that would otherwise be used to grow crops for human or animal consumption.
"Posted 11 years ago # -
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Carlton Reid (@carltonreid)
20/09/2012 07:59
MP's slam Govt's e-car subsidy to rich motorists, £5000 cash-in-hand, £6450 per car for infrastructure."
Posted 11 years ago # -
Can recommend http://www.withouthotair.com/ as a good read, although I haven't looked around to see how accurate the numbers are these days. The book is a very pleasant read, but it's available free on the website.
From memory, the chap suggests that the real role for mass electric transport is to act as a battery for storing power that's cheap to generate overnight. Effectively a distributed version of Dinorwig.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I saw a Nissan electric car this morning. For what most people use a car for an electric car would suffice, as they are mostly short trips. Longer trips could be done on public transport. I still think hydrogen is the future though I'm not sure how energy efficient it is to produce.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"still think hydrogen is the future"
Yeah fuel cells have been the future for about 50 years.
Posted 11 years ago # -
"Yeah fuel cells have been the future for about 50 years"
Yeah thats the trouble with the future, its never now.
Posted 11 years ago # -
chdot - a very interesting report by the UK parliament's transport committee, available at:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmtran/239/23902.htm
Favouite highlights:
Just 70 plug-in electric vehicles registered in the whole of Scotland, most of these will belong to public authorities.
199 chargepoints, i.e. charge points outnumber cars by over 2 to 1.
Drect quote from report - "We were warned of the risk that the Government was subsidising second cars for affluent households, as plug-in cars were being purchased as a "support vehicle rather than a primary mode of transport"."
If there was ever an argument for investing the public money being spent on electric vehicles (including a £5000 subsidy to those buying electric vehicles) in cycling rather than electric vehicles then this is it. Let the private sector develop these facilities at their own expense.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Electric bikes, on the other hand, can be great for people who can't manage up the hills without a helping hand.
But of course we need safe, attractive, conflict-free cycling conditions...
Posted 11 years ago # -
Can recommend http://www.withouthotair.com/ as a good read
I have a copy on my desk. It's (only) 370 pages long but I haven't finished reading it yet.
I seem to recall that at least one person enquired to the UKG as to whether the electric car subsidy might be made available to prospective buyers of velomobiles - electric or otherwise - whose prices are in that sort of bracket. The UKG declined.
Posted 11 years ago # -
For what most people use a car for
an electric cara bicycle would suffice, as they are mostly short trips. Longer trips could be done on public transport. I still thinkhydrogenthe bicycle is the futureFTFY
Posted 11 years ago # -
electric charging points in the carpark of a new supermarket in Inverness ! no electric cars but shiny range rover sports in the bays ! Spotted a few electric trucks, (7.5 ton ) recently, TNT, matalan etc. Anyone got any stats on how far they can travel etc ?
scottPosted 11 years ago # -
St Enoch's car park has charging points as does Whitelee windfarm.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Funnily enough I was overtaken by an electric van/truck while going uphill on the cobbly Old Hawkhill in Dundee yesterday. I knew it was electric as it was silent, looked like a souped up milk float (small wheels, white) and had a big sign on the back, ELECTRIC VEHICLE (instead of LONG). It was pretty nippy for a turbocharged milk float.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Using bicycles for *all* short journeys is no more "the answer" than an electrically powered copy of an IC car, but it is potentially a part ofthe answer, they both are imho. (and why do so many people seem to assume any reference to electric vehicles somehow means current (geddit) style cars and not e-bikes/trikes/whatever). There are a large number of people who either cannot or will not ever ride a bicycle, but it
does notshould not exclude bicycles as a transport solution. Same goes for E (or Hydrogen) vehicles.As soon as someone says electric there seems to be the immediate cry "they're not green the power still has to be generated", well yes it does, but electricity can be produced in a renewable form, even if it isn't it is massively more efficient use of a given amount of energy than a portable ic engine, given they (automotive IC engine/transmission) are generally (if I remember correctly from auto eng cse!) about 30% efficient in terms of fuel in against motive power generated, and remember, that is ignoring aerodynamic losses, and the inefficiencies involved in refining the fuel and then transporting it (generally by 14mpg diesel truck for the last part of the journey!) to the point of sale. Of course it also puts the (reduced) pollution away from schools, houses etc and provides the added benefit of reduced noise.
They may not be *that* (define?) green, but I believe they are considerably better than rolling along with the status quo, we need imperfect solutions now, and lots of them, not a perfect solution at some unknown point in the future imho. Surely a new bicycle is not that green once you count the building and shipping from Tiawan(or wherever is cheap at the moment) to Europe??As to the argument that they're only for the rich, well yes, of course... until the tech becomes more refined and more mainstream. Go to parts of London and every other car at roadside is electric, (St Johns Wood since you ask), now in a year or two they'll start appearing on the used market, prices will creep down, more will be sold, etc etc. But it has to start somewhere!
What I fail to understand is why no manufacturer (as far a I know) is trying to produce a real game changing vehicle. The "Zero" E-motorcycle has ove 80mph performance and over 100mile range, yet is styled after the least aerodynamic motorcycle type in existence!! Take that engine/battery set and give it to a velo designer and you could see something warm, dry comfortable like a car but with the performance of a bike, fantastic range and economy, and a completely "modern" look. But it would require a major manufacturer to take it on to make it work :-/
(As to only for the rich, a zero costs about 11k if you want to buy one now, that is not crazy expensive for a motorcycle, it's not cheap, but neither is it in the realms of exotica.)So can we please be a bit more positive than Pte Fraser? I know we're all probably doomed, but maybe not if we push alternatives??
(and I promise to be less grumpy once I've had another coffee;-) )Posted 11 years ago # -
"I know we're all probably doomed, but maybe not if we push alternatives??"
I fear that electric vehicles are a red herring - the main routes to reducing CO2 emissions are through changes to the way energy is generated and through massive reductions in the energy consumed. That inevitably means big changes to the way that we live, including the distances that we travel.
Sorry to be glum, but society doesn't seem to have a stomach for this and the effects are becoming clearer each year.
Posted 11 years ago # -
I'll look the story up properly later when I get the chance but I believe it is Sweden who has successfully managed to convert a goodly number of driver to electric cars. Their CO2 levels have actually gone UP as electric drivers have greatly increased their car usage, secure in the knowledge that the more they drive, the more they are saving the planet..
Posted 11 years ago # -
lol, though in fairness some drivers I see would struggle to up their car useage :-o
Joking aside, maybe, but until we try, we'll never know, and is that a short term blip or a long term result? We know adopting Dutch/Portland type models could increase cycle useage and potentially reduce car useage, but imho we need to strive for other options in tandem with that, the thread above struck me (perhaps wrongly) as an anti e-vehicle rant that mirrored the newspaper ranters "increased cycling just wont work because they all do 10mph and get in the way of the cars".
I strongly believe that e-vehicles can, perhaps should form a part of the way forward, equally, I believe that in their current form they are not and cannot be a sensible global solution. Surely though that does not however mean they are rubbish and we should ignore them and strive for another, as yet unavailable and unspecified solution to the transport part of global warming, or indeed the dangers of excessive traffic?
Posted 11 years ago # -
Their CO2 levels have actually gone UP as electric drivers have greatly increased their car usage, secure in the knowledge that the more they drive, the more they are saving the planet..
Which rather gives the lie to the idea that cars (whether fossil fuel, hybrid or electric) are a sustainable form of transport, when they patently are not!
That's even before we begin examining the resources needed to produce them. Lithium shortage, anyone?
We are not all doooooooooooooomed, I tell ye. But people need to stop gassing, making token gestures and actually do something to change their lifestyles. Can't see it happening in "oil rich" Scotland any time soon...
Posted 11 years ago # -
Found it.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/10-3
I don't know if it is a long term thing or not.
I agree with Amir that we have to make changes in the way and the amount we travel. The problem with electric cars is that they are being pushed to the exclusion of everything else - they are not a bad thing per se but the car habit needs to be broken first.
Posted 11 years ago # -
Like lots of things, it's all relative:
Posted 11 years ago #
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