So the electric car has been around since 1834, but battery and motor technology didn't really evolve into a credible alternative to combustion engines until recently.

We've had the Prius, the Leaf, the Ampera, the Tesla to name but a few. Now we have serious motorbike contenders from the likes of Zero, which have bhp's similar to superbikes, yet 3 times the torque from zero rpm. Oh, and a similar range to a tank of fuel. No gears, simple transmission. Even "old skool" Harley Davidson have entered the fray.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYKFeOQrqg0

Prices are now also comparable to petrol bikes... which is a game changer. I could commute to work and back for pence rather than pounds (and get there with more flies in my teeth than normal).

Seems to me that despite the cheap(ish) fuel at the moment, we are close to a tipping point where electric vehicles will become truly mainstream, due to the obvious cheap running costs, but also for the thrill seekers looking for raw acceleration. Plug in hybrids seem to offer the best all round solution - commute on electric from Monday to Friday, then take the family away on petrol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e-jquwHKtI

For the first time, I've been hankering after something you plug in rather than fill up. So I wondered who else had seen the [electric] light....Skins... I note you have a Leaf.

So, "are we nearly there yet?" Or am I just being a premature greeny ?

I don't think the oil producing countries have been promoting this technology, I'm sure there have been other means of running cars ( I believe it's possible to use water) but maybe the Men In Black pay a visit or they are paid off.

Just not sure if the maintenance and servicing is in place yet to make these a vehicle for anybody! but dont think it will be long!

There was gossip or more likely story telling many years ago the the oil companies went around buying all the fuel efficient idea's up so they could not be produced!
Sounds plausible to me! and now they are keeping oil prices low to try to stem off technological advances based on cost effectiveness! so draw your own conclusions!

I was impressed by how advanced Amsterdam is in the technology - lots of electric cars, bicycles and a few scooters - lots of dedicated parking/charging points. Also a lot of electric taxis. Philips chose an all-electric taxi firm as its preferred supplier. And Car2Go, the shared car scheme, is fully electric. In the UK I think it needs to start in the bigger cities.

The father in law recently fitted an electric motor kit to his push bike.
Very impressed, apparently 30 -40mile range and speeds around 10mile an hour.
If I working in the city it would certainly be my mode of transport for sure.
No tax,low maintenance and very cheap all round. I. Sure it would certainly be quicker also.
I think we're nearly there.

Saw a bmw i3 shoot off the lights the other day. Weird to see something look like that fly off the lights so quick.

My Dad has always been ahead of the game in stuff like this:

He has an electric bike for the hills of Sheffield and last May, bought a VW e-UP! (VW's "!", not mine).

Range anxiety is the only drawback to the VW, but I expect every new EV to address this as time goes by.

I hope it doesn't catch on too much so we can continue to get free fuel without queueing for it. Our problem now is we're used to almost free motoring that it will be very difficult to go back to paying for liquid fuel.

One, no, two minor problems.

One: feel free to calculate the energy spent daily in petrol and diesel cars (ignore lorries and buses, it will only depress you). You will find[1] it equals around two thirds of the current national grid output, which is currently within a couple of percent of falling over. There is therefore a need to pretty much double both the generating capacity and the distribution infrastructure in the next few years.

Two: £37-40 billion pounds is raised in VED, Petrol/Diesel tax, and VAT on those. That's around 8% of the UK tax take. Switching to electric cannot but require electricity prices to include those taxes, or the money to be raised some other way. I note that California (from memory) has a two-level price on electricity: it gets a lot more expensive once you start filling up your Tesla at home.

Nonetheless I would like to see more electric cars around, since they at least offer the chance to use a low-carbon generated fuel at best, and at worst generation at the power station is a more efficient (i.e. lower carbon) way of getting the power.


[1] 30kW is about the minimum to maintain a car at 70mph. For 12,000 miles that's about 5MWh required. For 35,000,000 cars in the UK we need a *minimum* of 175,000GWh. Generation is about 300,000GWh...

That's ok. I generate 3MWh a year from my solar PV array on the roof. Just need to make sure I charge up during sunny days... Which of course isn't when you need it.... Oops.

The a UK power industry is in a bit of a pickle until Nuc comes on line, though there are lots of fossil fuel generators bidding into the market for peak demand. So ultimately this becomes an argument about where we get our power from. Personally I think the UK policy is too short-termist and we should be investing more in diverse renewables.

The map on this page, if correct, is quite startling. How true it is, I'm not sure as it is on the internet!

It's probably true.

Back of the envelope calculation... Insolation is around 750W/m^2 in those locations and conversion efficiencies of maybe 20% would give you 150W/m^2; the sun shines effectively about ten hours a day so that's 1.5kWh/m^2 per day, so 20,000,000,000,000kWh/1.5kWh is about 1,333,000,000,000 square meters, 1,333,000 square kilometers, call it 1300 by 1000 km. About four times the surface area of the UK, so I think their boxes are a bit small (perhaps they didn't account for darkness?)

Unfortunately, I dont think electric will be a motoring platform for those (maybe few) people who intend to keep their cars for years and years.
Battery life is finite (some bodies reckon about 120 - 150,000 miles of driving only), costs potentially a few thousand £ to replace - and that is assuming that the battery banks will still be available for that particular physical design ?.

And if you sell a car every three years....... what value for a battery or hybrid with a duff power source hanging off the back ????.

This is where lease-type deals come in. And where car-pooling helps. I was hearing about some properties built near Amsterdam where there weren't any parking spaces but provided a pool of BMW i3s for the residents. It takes a mind-shift but, in big cities especially, this makes sense.

The only problem with lease duration legal agreements is just that - your are paying £45 per month just for the fuel store container (the physical battery).

And its these costs that the eco fraternity (without disrespecting them!) decide not to make as equally clear as they do the claim that a recharge only costs 'pence' for a journey.




Its like a conventional manufacturer advertising a car at 60mpg and only a few pence per mile and then saying to the customer 'oh! by the way - you've also got to lease the petrol tank at £20 per month !!! '


And you are paying the lease ecven if you do just one mile a month, or 10,000 miles per month (but i suspect lease agreements also stipulate a 'fair mileage' clause ??


Fit sails to the roof - thats the answer !