|
Post by johnc on Jan 20, 2020 7:26:04 GMT
Here is an electric car report that tells the truth. Doesn't Harry always tell it as it is:
|
|
|
Post by Martin on Jan 20, 2020 8:26:02 GMT
I watched that last night, excellent and really interesting video.
Of the 8 locations I visit on a regular basis, it would work for 3 of them, so about 1 day a week at most.
|
|
|
Post by Ben on Jan 20, 2020 8:26:14 GMT
But if you are travelling long distance, you are usually pressed for time, meaning stopping to charge up is an embuggerance. For example, we recently drove back to London from my in-laws in Italy, via a stopover to ski near Mont Blanc. That's a distance of 1,100 miles. By the results from that video, in the Tesla, we'd have needed to stop to re-charge three times. In the Merc or E-tron, five re-charging stops would have required, As it was, we only needed to stop for fuel twice (and used less than 2.5 tankfuls of petrol). That is a fair point. I suppose until the super fast charging systems become more commonplace, when you can get nearly a full charge in 30 minutes or less (enough for a quick meal perhaps), EVs still aren't the ideal choice for ultra-long distance journeys.
|
|
|
Post by Ben on Jan 20, 2020 8:32:34 GMT
What I took from the test was that for most people, a realistic range is 180 to 200 miles which for a lot of people is all they will ever need. However if I am taking a trip to Nottingham to see a client or even driving through to St Andrews and back, I will need to stop and charge up which to be blunt would be a pain in the neck unless I could get a fast charger but there is no guarantee of that and as more electric cars take to the road, less and less chance of finding one free. Like Tim, I have been in Teebay and of the perhaps 10 chargers, I have often seen only 2 or 3 occupied. However one time we visited they were all full and this will become much more the norm. I've now watched the video and I'm less impressed by electric than ever. I never realised they lost so much power overnight, for example. So, I could drive to Manchester airport in an electric car but if I left it there whilst I was on holiday for ten days I could expect it to have drained 40% of the battery parked up? So on return I'd have to call the AA as I doubt leaving it in a charging bay all that time would go down well. This isn't something I do often but it seems range anxiety sums up the stress of owning an electric car as you worry about a range of things you were never troubled with before.
Apparently this is a known issue on the Tesla forums, but I'm surprised there hasn't been much more coverage on this. forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/major-loss-charge-while-parked
|
|
|
Post by Big Blue on Jan 20, 2020 10:44:18 GMT
I've now watched the video and I'm less impressed by electric than ever. I never realised they lost so much power overnight, for example. .......but it seems range anxiety sums up the stress of owning an electric car as you worry about a range of things you were never troubled with before.
Apparently this is a known issue on the Tesla forums, but I'm surprised there hasn't been much more coverage on this.forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/major-loss-charge-while-parkedWhy would anyone publicise the shitiness of electric cars in the current climate [sic] of pushing forward a technology that neither the users nor the infrastructure is prepared for? It's no good the yay-sayers telling us that the automobile was similarly blighted at its introduction - there were no petrol stations, they were complex to start and difficult to make progress when running - they were infantile ideas and scarce. Electric cars are trying to replace something that is universally present whether you are a car driver, a taxi user or a youthful or aged passenger. We're not ready for pure EVs yet and these current offerings will be worthless pieces of shit when we are.
|
|
|
Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Jan 20, 2020 10:58:11 GMT
Is it not down the the Sentry function using a lot of power while the vehicle is parked, rather than an issue with the battery? Turning off Sentry seems to solve the problem. With regard to range; 200 miles represents about 3 hours of continuous driving. A stop of 20 mins or so for a coffee and a recharge is no great hardship and to be recommended really on the grounds of driver and passenger safety. I know a lot of our clients won't allow staff to drive more than 2 hours without a break and I remember my Audi flashing to a warning after I'd been driving for 2 hours, advising me to take a break.
|
|
|
Post by johnc on Jan 20, 2020 11:51:08 GMT
Is it not down the the Sentry function using a lot of power while the vehicle is parked, rather than an issue with the battery? Turning off Sentry seems to solve the problem. With regard to range; 200 miles represents about 3 hours of continuous driving. A stop of 20 mins or so for a coffee and a recharge is no great hardship and to be recommended really on the grounds of driver and passenger safety. I know a lot of our clients won't allow staff to drive more than 2 hours without a break and I remember my Audi flashing to a warning after I'd been driving for 2 hours, advising me to take a break. Have you watched Harry's video? Won't it be great when people drive 2 hours, then wait 2 hours to get a charging point, wait another hour to get charged and then have to go back to where they came from because there is no time left for them to do what the they made the journey for, in the first place! I think a hybrid plugged into the house every night makes for a much better solution.
|
|
|
Post by Martin on Jan 20, 2020 11:53:25 GMT
Is it not down the the Sentry function using a lot of power while the vehicle is parked, rather than an issue with the battery? Turning off Sentry seems to solve the problem. With regard to range; 200 miles represents about 3 hours of continuous driving. A stop of 20 mins or so for a coffee and a recharge is no great hardship and to be recommended really on the grounds of driver and passenger safety. I know a lot of our clients won't allow staff to drive more than 2 hours without a break and I remember my Audi flashing to a warning after I'd been driving for 2 hours, advising me to take a break. The single journey length of 200 miles isn't a huge issue, it's the return journey range that's the problem. Every week I travel to the NW which is just over 170 miles (each way), there isn't anywhere obvious/easy to top the car up when I'm there, so it would delay me significantly, especially if I was making the return trip in the day. I agree that the technology will change quite quickly, Porsche have already moved the charging tech on from the non Tesla competition, but you'd need easy access to an 800 Volt / 270 KW charging station (60 miles in 5 mins, 80% range in 22mins) for it to be painless. I can see the benefit of a plug in hybrid and not just for company car tax reasons, but not a full electric.
|
|
|
Post by michael on Jan 20, 2020 12:04:46 GMT
The HG video is very good. For me it's the return journey that would be the issue. We do a 200+ mile round trip most weeks, I'm not sure we'd even make it to Kent in one go without a significant pause and although we might make it to Cheshire we wouldn't be able to get the car charged. The inconvenience of the charging network is the major hurdle and all this registering to acquire fuel is an unnecessary complication. Finally, I think there ought to be a cut-off on the government subsidy. I don't see why I'd need a £3k hand-out if I could afford an £80k car - as often with the green agenda it's robbing from the poor to pay the rich.
|
|
|
Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Jan 20, 2020 12:05:24 GMT
Maybe the answer's so simple it's been staring us in the face; longer flexes. The longer the journey, the longer the flex - no charging worries.
|
|
|
Post by michael on Jan 20, 2020 12:07:29 GMT
Maybe the answer's so simple it's been staring us in the face; longer flexes. The longer the journey, the longer the flex - no charging worries. Be realistic. Overhead cables and a pantograph is the way forward.
|
|
|
Post by johnc on Jan 20, 2020 12:51:59 GMT
Maybe the answer's so simple it's been staring us in the face; longer flexes. The longer the journey, the longer the flex - no charging worries. It's much easier than that - just make electric cars and all roads like a Scalextric track.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 20, 2020 13:01:43 GMT
Perhaps we could look at capturing the methane being released from the worlds bodies of water. It could be used to produce clean energy and is definitely renewable which is an understatement. Doing this would also prevent a more damaging substance than co2 from being released into the atmosphere than is currently the case. Much better imho than putting thousands of parabolic mirrors into orbit where they can screw up satellites even more than they are now being. But, where is the profit in that?
|
|
|
Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Jan 20, 2020 13:08:35 GMT
Perhaps we could look at capturing the methane being released from the worlds bodies of water. It could be used to produce clean energy and is definitely renewable which is an understatement. Doing this would also prevent a more damaging substance than co2 from being released into the atmosphere than is currently the case. Much better imho than putting thousands of parabolic mirrors into orbit where they can screw up satellites even more than they are now being. But, where is the profit in that? Natural gas is methane by another name. Obviously, you can release hydrogen from water but to make it a virtuous circle the energy used to split the hydrogen from the oxygen has to be from renewables or nuclear at a push. There are a number of experiments going on, particularly in Leeds, where they are mixing hydrogen in with the natural gas supply to see if they can reduce the carbon footprint of gas heating systems.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 20, 2020 13:10:24 GMT
There is a huge amount of naturally release methane being released from the floor of every large body of water from the decaying bodies of anything that dies there.
|
|
|
Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Jan 20, 2020 13:11:30 GMT
There is a huge amount of naturally release methane being released from the floor of every large body of water from the decaying bodies of anything that dies there. That's a big area to cover to catch minute concentrations of methane.
|
|
|
Post by PG on Jan 20, 2020 13:51:52 GMT
The HG video is very good. For me it's the return journey that would be the issue. We do a 200+ mile round trip most weeks, I'm not sure we'd even make it to Kent in one go without a significant pause and although we might make it to Cheshire we wouldn't be able to get the car charged. The inconvenience of the charging network is the major hurdle and all this registering to acquire fuel is an unnecessary complication. Finally, I think there ought to be a cut-off on the government subsidy. I don't see why I'd need a £3k hand-out if I could afford an £80k car - as often with the green agenda it's robbing from the poor to pay the rich. Agree on both counts. I've watched that Harry video. He's spot on with his observations. Assuming you can charge at home, use an electric car as a runabout / commuter on a mental tether of 50% of your range, or use one in town. As he said, "if I want to go 200 miles, I take my six grand Range Rover." If I was still working in Birmingham and my journeys were basically to Birmingham (60 miles) or to the airport or railway station (77 miles from me) it would make sense, but going to Heathrow for example (180 miles) would then entirely depend on either a car park introducing a "charge your car for you while you are away" service or finding a charger pretty quickly on the way back home. And the absolute shit nature of the non-Tesla UK charging infrastructure makes that unworkable at present. That said, if we go on a journey (like driving to London), we always stop for a coffee break after a couple of hours, so if you could be sure to get a fast charge it all becomes much easier. So, we're back to the UK charging infrastructure as the ever-present issue. So for us, if we wanted to go electric, the sensible thing would be to change the Mini for an EV and keep the Jag for the longer journeys.
|
|
|
Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Jan 20, 2020 13:55:54 GMT
. As he said, "if I want to go 200 miles, I take my six grand Range Rover." The last 140 miles on the back of an AA flatbed then?
|
|
|
Post by johnc on Jan 20, 2020 14:01:04 GMT
On longer journeys I would also fear the unknown - the accident that leaves you sitting still with nowhere to go for 4 or 5 hours on a cold wet night or the road works that create massive tailbacks of stop start traffic. I know you can run out of petrol/diesel in the same circumstances but it's much less likely and unless you run down to near empty on purpose, you would normally have a much bigger margin of error with a 400/500 mile range than you would with a 200 mile range.
|
|
|
Post by michael on Jan 20, 2020 14:01:13 GMT
. As he said, "if I want to go 200 miles, I take my six grand Range Rover." The last 140 miles on the back of an AA flatbed then? That would make the Range Rover zero emissions using electric car logic!
|
|
|
Post by racingteatray on Jan 20, 2020 15:09:18 GMT
So for us, if we wanted to go electric, the sensible thing would be to change the Mini for an EV and keep the Jag for the longer journeys. This^^
|
|
|
Post by Tim on Jan 20, 2020 15:28:07 GMT
On longer journeys I would also fear the unknown - the accident that leaves you sitting still with nowhere to go for 4 or 5 hours on a cold wet night Is there any indication of how quickly your battery power would disappear if you were parked like this with the heater on for an hour or two?
|
|
|
Post by johnc on Jan 20, 2020 15:38:11 GMT
On longer journeys I would also fear the unknown - the accident that leaves you sitting still with nowhere to go for 4 or 5 hours on a cold wet night Is there any indication of how quickly your battery power would disappear if you were parked like this with the heater on for an hour or two? Given how much power an electric heater uses, my guess is you would be draining power at a fairly quick rate.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jan 20, 2020 21:18:27 GMT
That faff that Harry had trying to charge up the car at more than a trickle puts me right off an EV. Only Tesla have a decent charging network but with no decent cars to go with it. I don't like any of their range (pardon the pun!).
|
|
|
Post by Ben on Jan 26, 2020 4:50:09 GMT
My take is until fast chargers (half an hour or less for full or nearly full charge) become plentiful, convenient and as commonplace as petrol pumps (which is what I feel should be a starting point, start installing chargers at petrol stations, if the petrol companies can be persuaded), EVs aren't suitable for long journeys as yet.
As such, their current use case is still limited to those who don't go beyond the typical EV range, and mostly do urban or intra-urban traffic of 100 miles or less.
Obviously things will change over the next decades or so, but it requires the cooperation of the relevant stakeholders (beyond manufacturers) to get the infrastructure properly set up.
|
|
|
Post by grampa on Jan 27, 2020 17:13:22 GMT
The V bombers do go quite a bit quicker than your average ferry though... Very good. I reckon a decent North Sea gale could help spin some shipboard wind turbines pretty quickly though, at least it would add a bit of extra juice to the batteries to help limit range anxiety on something that weighs a few thousand tonnes (I mean the ferry, not any of the pure electric cars that are scarily heavy ). I would think the power required to shift a ferry would need more than a few days of turning turbines even if the ferry was festooned with them - a bit like the people who put a solar charger or small wind turbine on a leisure boat - you may be able to run some cabin lights from it, but you can forget about moving the boat with the amount of 'juice' they generate. (There are a few specially designed boats that move under solar power, but they are basically a floating solar panel and don't move very fast)
|
|
|
Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Jan 28, 2020 8:57:57 GMT
Very good. I reckon a decent North Sea gale could help spin some shipboard wind turbines pretty quickly though, at least it would add a bit of extra juice to the batteries to help limit range anxiety on something that weighs a few thousand tonnes (I mean the ferry, not any of the pure electric cars that are scarily heavy ). I would think the power required to shift a ferry would need more than a few days of turning turbines even if the ferry was festooned with them - a bit like the people who put a solar charger or small wind turbine on a leisure boat - you may be able to run some cabin lights from it, but you can forget about moving the boat with the amount of 'juice' they generate. (There are a few specially designed boats that move under solar power, but they are basically a floating solar panel and don't move very fast) I'm thinking outside the box here and I've no idea if this sort of thing is in development but what if the ferry or ship or whatever had some vertical structures and attached to these were some high tech fabric configurations - we could call them windcatchers for want of a better word? The windcatchers could trap fast moving air as it passed over the ship and translate this (don't know how the actual physics work) into lateral movement. By adjusting the vertical structures and the windcatchers a ship would be able to travel across oceans using completely renewable energy at zero emissions. Probably a pie in the sky idea that would never work but worth a thought?
|
|
|
Post by johnc on Jan 28, 2020 9:32:57 GMT
We must be way ahead of the curve up here near the Clyde. We were using windcatchers on my Dad's boat to travel all the way up the west coast of Scotland 40 years ago and they really work. I don't know who had the idea first but there were lots of other people who did the same!
|
|
|
Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Jan 28, 2020 10:08:26 GMT
We must be way ahead of the curve up here near the Clyde. We were using windcatchers on my Dad's boat to travel all the way up the west coast of Scotland 40 years ago and they really work. I don't know who had the idea first but there were lots of other people who did the same! I bet it was called Dignity wasn't it?
|
|
|
Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Jan 28, 2020 10:11:58 GMT
|
|