Electric Vehicles (EV) Thread

Driving and riding in Hua Hin and Thailand, all topics on cars, pickups, bikes, boats, licenses, roads, and motoring in general.
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oakdale160
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Re: Electric Cars

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The power plants can be in remote areas as many are in China. So you move the pollution from the cities to the countryside--problem solved.
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Re: Electric Cars

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The power plants can be in remote areas as many are in China. So you move the pollution from the cities to the countryside--problem solved.
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Re: Electric Cars

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There is a lot of interesting battery research happening. Experts feel that If the distance of a single charge can be increased by a little to 300m/480K and/or charge time to less than 30 mins then the objections based on battery range will fade.
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Re: Electric Cars

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Volkswagen crushes Pikes Peak hill climb record with an EV

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/volk ... cord-2018/
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Ben McLellan, senior research fellow at Kyoto University, warned further: “Manufacturers such as electric vehicle makers should be concerned that the supply of one of the key mineral components, or the processing and refining infrastructure, could become too centralised in a single country. Without diverse source options, the possibility of supply restriction becomes more likely.”
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Re: Electric Cars

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oakdale160 wrote: Tue Jun 26, 2018 8:45 am The power plants can be in remote areas as many are in China. So you move the pollution from the cities to the countryside--problem solved.
Problem shifted, not solved.
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Re: Electric Cars

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Readinf about recharging, most things that I read are North American where there are 3 levels.
Level 1--plug it into the household plug--120v takes about 10-12 hours.
Level 2--Buy for $600-$800 charger to install on your driveway--240V takes 6+ hours
Level 3-- Commercial at charging stations takes 30min

I have a question about charging in the UK. In UK standard household current is 240V. So can you plug into that and get a 6+h charging.
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Re: Electric Cars

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I have a question about charging in the UK. In UK standard household current is 240V
The "current" is not 240 V, the voltage is, and if you read some of the previous posts it is all explained.
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Re: Electric Cars

Post by J.J.B. »

The current of a UK supply us determined by the rating of your distribution board, the device that takes the mains supply and distributes it around the house. Ours is rated at 120 Amps. So 120x240 = 28.8 kW. If I were charging a 90kWh Tesla, for example, theoretically I could do that in just over 3 hours. However, each circuit on the distribution board has a separate current rating with the maximum being 32A. So the figure here would be a full charge in just less than 12 hours.
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Re: Electric Cars

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Jaguar Land Rover increase investment in electric cars
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ctric-cars
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Re: Electric Cars

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handdrummer wrote: Tue Jun 26, 2018 2:43 pm
oakdale160 wrote: Tue Jun 26, 2018 8:45 am The power plants can be in remote areas as many are in China. So you move the pollution from the cities to the countryside--problem solved.
Problem shifted, not solved.
It is not so simple, power plants take years to build, need to be near a fuel source i.e coal or gas supply, they also need to be near a rail line and substantial water supply. It's not so simple.
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Re: Electric Cars

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Electric car buyers claim they were misled by Nissan
Owners of Nissan's new electric Leaf say they were given misleading information about the car before buying it.
They say charging the Leaf can take three times longer than claimed on Nissan's website.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44575399
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Re: Electric Cars

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The German Bosch co. is no longer planning to “re-invent” batteries for the propulsion of cars, according to an article published in the Munich, Germany, daily Sueddeutsche Zeitun
“It sounded so promising in recent years: Bosch was going to invest a three-digit million sum to turn around the car-battery world market. Newly developed solid-state batteries were to replace the traditional lithium-ion technology at some point, according to the ambitious announcement [of the time]. Double energy density at half the cost was the goal. Such batteries would lead both to the final breakthrough of electro-mobility and end the supremacy of the Asian cell-producers. Now, that dream is gone. Bosch-CEO Rolf Bulander announced the end of the project.”
https://principia-scientific.org/batter ... red-bosch/
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Re: Electric Cars

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Although the following is NZ related, it is an International problem:
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Five unintended consequences of the electric car revolution

https://thespinoff.co.nz/the-bulletin/0 ... evolution/

EVs are taking over the world, in the same way that cars left the horse and cart floundering in their petrol guzzling wake. Vector’s Steve Heinen discusses why that might be a brilliant, planet-saving, massive headache.

Electric vehicles (EV) are great. They’re quieter, need less maintenance, provide more acceleration, and in New Zealand, where our power is mostly renewable, create a lot fewer carbon emissions.

The number of EVs on New Zealand roads has exploded from fewer than 600 in January 2015 to 6600 in January this year. That’s still a tiny oasis of green in the vast, smoggy desert of internal combustion engines (ICEs), but the number is increasing exponentially, meaning very soon there will be more EVs being bought here than cars that use million-year-old undersea corpses for fuel.

As the economies of scale for manufacturing, fuelling and maintenance stack up ever more strongly in favour of EVs, they become all the more desirable on a cost-comparison basis. And that is a good thing if you enjoy inhabiting our planet, since about 15% of all global greenhouse gas emissions are from transport (in New Zealand it’s 37%). Interestingly, it might also reduce smoking rates.

And yet, the law of unintended consequences means the EV revolution might not go entirely according to plan. We’ve outlined five factors that could prevent New Zealand becoming an EV paradise.

Charging nightmares
Forget range anxiety, the very advances making EVs competitive with ICEs – their increased range and ability to handle large loads – could soon be their biggest headache. Next generation EVs will have bigger batteries, which will mean longer charging times. Without improved charging capability you could be looking at a whole weekend to charge the SUV. On a 2.4kW ‘trickle’ charge, the upcoming Audi Q6 EV, with an electric range four times longer than a Nissan Leaf, would need 42 hours of charging time.
This might mean that faster charging options may become the norm in the future even for at-home charging. But this is not a zero-sum game as faster chargers may reduce charging duration, but they require more spare capacity in the network, which brings me to my next point…

Local network overload
Obviously, every EV charger adds to the load on our electricity networks, but you might be surprised to learn how much more. Every slow charger (7kW) adds the equivalent of 2.8 houses to the grid and every fast charger (22kW) adds nearly nine. Clearly, major uptake of even low speed chargers across a city the size of Auckland is going to mean adding whole suburbs’ worth of capacity to the local network.
To be clear, I’m not saying there isn’t enough electricity in the national grid to handle EVs, just that with our current local networks, it will struggle to get to the garages and charging stations where it’s needed all at once. It’s like lots of people trying to get through a doorway at once; we either learn to take turns (not all charge at once) or get a bigger door, by using public charging.
In Norway – which has world-leading EV adoption rates – the national energy agency is encouraging EV owners to refrain from charging on Thursday nights. Because, it’s hot tub night. Probably.
Upgrades will be needed, and that costs money, and it’s not necessarily clear how much of that cost non-EV owners will be up for. Speaking of which…

Paying for your neighbour’s car
Just because EVs are environmentally friendly, doesn’t mean all their owners will be paragons of green virtue. EV car makers will continue to cater to buyers with a need for speed, a desire for status, or just in the grip of a mid-life crisis.
Those who purchase a next-generation EV will pay for the charge, and will get the benefit of the mileage, but if they all charge at peak hours or using fast chargers, then we’ll all pay for the network upgrade to cope with the increased charging load.
This is not necessarily wrong – cross-subsidisation is a fact of daily life and makes things like public transport and universal healthcare work – but it raises questions of energy fairness.
Of course, this is only a transitional problem, since the petrol-dependant car could be a historical relic by 2030, and EV owners can ease the burden by choosing to charge in most optimal way, but it does create some interesting social dynamics in the meantime as the late EV adopters subsidise those with the means and desire to get off the petrol station forecourt for good.

Lithium-ion batteries = mining
A bigger long-term problem is the fact that to fuel EVs, you need to extract finite natural resources from politically unstable regions of world, at increasingly inflated prices.
Not oil – I’m talking about cobalt and lithium, critical ingredients in lithium ion batteries. The biggest deposits of cobalt, for instance, are in the Democratic Republic of Congo – a notoriously violent, corrupt and unstable country. And while someone is getting rich off the Congo’s cobalt, it’s not the children used to mine for it.
Similarly, the world’s richest sources of lithium are in South American nations like Chile and Argentina, with historical questions around mine safety and human rights.

Other users of lithium-ion batteries such as Apple are actively looking for alternatives to mined minerals. If EV use continues its exponential growth, some serious recycling efforts will be needed to reduce the reliance on mining, especially as EV batteries eventually need replacement.

Incidentally, Vector has made a start in this direction with a mobile generator made from repurposed EV batteries. Expect to see more innovation around secondary uses for the ever-growing pile of EV batteries, like a Taiwanese ‘swap-a-battery’ scheme.
The other long-term solution is to find an alternative power source to batteries – something manufacturers are actively exploring.

ICE dumping
Finally, there is a problem that might hold-up our conversion to an all-EV national fleet – at least temporarily.
As Europe prepares to ban internal combustion engines, car makers will look for a market to offload their stock as they switch to EV production. New Zealand is already a popular destination for used Japanese cars, could our appetite for a good deal mean we will be flooded with cheap ICE cars, delaying the transition to carbon neutral transport?

The answer is a firm maybe. Cheap new ICEs would be hard to turn down, but in the long run, EVs will simply be better, and ultimately cheaper to make, so car makers will stop making them.

While there are a few potential speedbumps on the road to a carbon neutral fleet in New Zealand, but overall the reality is that EVs are going to take over, and we’re going to be fine – it’s just a matter of when. In fact, given a humble Nissan Leaf can provide enough power for the average home for 10 hours, EVs potentially present the answer to a whole lot of problems including power network resilience in the face of climate change.

There’s a whole lot more detail on the impact of EV adoption on local power networks in Vector’s green paper on the subject, available here.

This content is brought to you by Vector. If you live in Auckland, they also delivered the power you’re using to read it. And they’re creating a new energy future for all of us, as showcased by the incredible Vector Lights.
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Re: Electric Cars

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New Zealand study finds power network threat from electric cars

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation ... d9db7f69ee

Electric vehicles pose a threat to national power networks as next-generation cars with bigger batteries multiply household electricity demand by up to 20 times, a new study reveals.

New Zealand’s biggest energy distributor, Vector, warned electric vehicle chargers “put a large electrical load on the network”, with even 2.4kW “trickle” chargers adding the equivalent of one additional home to the grid.

Vector’s electric vehicle network integration green paper said the shift to larger batteries would encourage drivers to opt for faster chargers, to avoid a two-day charge. A “slow” 7kW charger would add the equivalent of 2.8 homes to the grid, while a “rapid” 50kW charger would add the equivalent of 20 homes.

“The local electricity network was not designed for … any significant uptake of EVs and the consequential demand for charging at home,” it said. “The perception that networks can absorb the uptake of EV charging is only true for the short term while batteries have a short-range capability, customers are satisfied with long charging times and chargers are evenly distributed across the network.”

It said New Zealand’s power grid could require a $NZ530 million ($500m) upgrade if 7kW chargers were used, and one in four cars on the road were electric vehicles. New Zealand’s population is about a fifth of Australia’s.

Australia’s Electric Vehicle Council predicts more than three million electric vehicles could be on Australian roads within 12 years. The council, which wants $7000 tax breaks for buyers of electric vehicles, will release a report by PwC today arguing “growth in electric vehicles can contribute billions to Australia’s GDP and create thousands of jobs, if the government acts now”.

The report’s launch in Can­berra will be attended by Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg and Cities Minister Paul Fletcher.
Mr Frydenberg has predicted one million electric vehicles on Australian roads by 2030 in what he has described as a “revolution”.

He said the 2017 Finkel Review on Australia’s energy security found electric vehicle charging could be “relatively easily managed” while the energy market regulator AEMO said the impact on overall consumption was ­“expected to be relatively minor”.

The Vector study was framed around the need to future-proof New Zealand’s electricity network in the face of growing take-up of electric vehicles.

It warned “charge anxiety” could lead many users to opt for faster charging options, noting that Audi’s new Q6 e-tron, on sale later this year, will take two days to charge on a home trickle charger.

The Q6 has a 90kW battery, while the batteries in most currently available electric cars are under 50kW. “These larger batteries, combined with customer demand for shorter charging times and increased affordability of high capacity chargers, mean a single EV household has the potential to increase its electricity capacity needs between 100 per cent for very slow trickle charging, and 2000 per cent for rapid charging,” the report said.

Malcolm Turnbull has warned that reliability of the energy network is one of the government’s top priorities.
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