How Will People Charge Electric Cars If They Dont Have A Driveway

[Guest busdriver1]

8 hours ago, old tup said:

I see no one has mentioned hydrogen cars ,they would take the same time to fuel up as a petrol or diesel,the car produces its own electricity eliminating the worry with charging times!.Up to just the technology is dragging behind the push for EVs and is expensive to purchase a hydrogen car but it makes more sense to me than all the problems mentioned on here!.I think this will be the choice for HGVs in the future it is already being used on bus services at this time in several towns,I think at the moment there are only a few filling stations in the UK Sheffield being one of them!.In my humble opinion we ought to be pushing this technology not the present one with all its problems!.

completely agree. EV is a flawed method of propulsion and will be outdated before the cars are due for scrap

24 minutes ago, Jim117 said:

Who would want to buy a 10 year old electric car given the likely maintenance cost involved?

Nobody. Simple. In 10 years time the industry will have realised the folly of electric and will by then have started mass producing Hydrogen cars that will cost the  same. Hydrogen will be available on filling station forecourts and people who rushed out to buy milk floats will have red faces.

[Guest busdriver1]

8 hours ago, tinfoilhat said:

No breaks? That sounds fun. 

 

But for 300 mikes a day electric, at the moment, isn't viable unless it's a top end tesla.

I make my own breaks but mostly they are 10 - 15 minutes when and where I can grab them. Mostly in laybys with no charging points. Just a burger van 🙂 I drive a small van. Cant see my boss splashing out on a tesla that will depreciate faster than any vehicle type ever built. 

[butlers]

Hydrogen  cars are going to face a huge hurdle in energy loses, so inefficient .

It's something like 80 percent energy efficient to get electric to a car battery against maybe 35  or so for hydrogen.

Even assuming hydrogen is got from electrolysis  rather than hydrocarbons  enviably the fuel cost per mile is likely to be at the very  least double an EV car.

 

 

 

[tinfoilhat]

1 hour ago, busdriver1 said:

I make my own breaks but mostly they are 10 - 15 minutes when and where I can grab them. Mostly in laybys with no charging points. Just a burger van 🙂 I drive a small van. Cant see my boss splashing out on a tesla that will depreciate faster than any vehicle type ever built. 

You drive 300 miles a day in a burger van ?!?!? Don't they go cold?!?! ;););)

 

Joking aside, I see your point. In the before times I did more than that on busy days, with a full van. Commercial vehicles, particularly big 3.5t tonne  ones are miles behind. Yeah, I could get the range, but there's a big financial cost and big drop in payload. 

[Resident]

12 hours ago, butlers said:

Hydrogen  cars are going to face a huge hurdle in energy loses, so inefficient .

It's something like 80 percent energy efficient to get electric to a car battery against maybe 35  or so for hydrogen.

Even assuming hydrogen is got from electrolysis  rather than hydrocarbons  enviably the fuel cost per mile is likely to be at the very  least double an EV car.

 

 

 

It is worth noting that HCF is 3 times more efficient than petroleum based fuels. 

Also worth noting that the efficiency figure you quoted is the discharge efficiency, ie battery to wheels & doesn't cover the charging efficiency, which is still high but not as high, closer to 60% (I just googled it, I'll admit)

[geared]

15 hours ago, Jim117 said:

I have the same reservations as the OP and have wondered for a while whether the lucky ones with a drive or garage are going to be the only ones able to drive. Another consideration occurs to me regarding service life. At present a well maintained petrol or diesel car will probably last maybe 10 or 20 years without massive expense. If an electric car requires a new battery pack at 10 years old then the cost of this will probably outweigh the value of the vehicle. My mate lives down south and he says there is already a problem in his area with electric/hybrid cars being nicked then found completely intact apart from the battery pack being missing. Who would want to buy a 10 year old electric car given the likely maintenance cost involved?

Certainly if you don't have off street parking you're extremely unlikely to be charging your car at home.

Trailing cables etc across the street is completely unacceptable and not something that should be encouraged.

 

People are starting to see Tesla's with 100,000 on them, Batter capacity still 90% or better.  Perhaps not all batteries are made equal, so there is hope even the current gen cars will be perfectly useable when they reach big miles or age.

The problem is you've gotta wait 10 years to see what condition the batteries are in.

[Cyclecar]

Hydrogen is no more "free" than any other fuel. You can get it from electrolysis, which is expensive, or use the industrial process of combining ammonia and steam (from my neolithic A level chemistry!).

 

CH4 + 2xH2O results in 6xH plus CO2. Plenty of "H", then. However "H" is very light, so in reality for every tonne of hydrogen you produce ten tonnes of CO2. Which kind of defeats the objective. Plus you have to compress it for storage, etc. 

 

Science can be a nuisance. 

[butlers]

 

I think my figures are if you have 100 units of non C02 produced electric by the time it gets to the car wheel hydrogen provided for 35 units after loses against 80 units for electric.

 

 

[dave_the_m]

On 23/04/2021 at 13:21, Bargepole23 said:

Doesn't seem particularly onerous or technically challenging.

It's not technically challenging, but mostly importantly it lacks the political will. There is currently no mandate that charging points installed in users' houses should communicate with smart meters (and thus with DNOs) to limit or vary the charging rate based on network and generating constraints. At the moment when people plug their cars in they get immediate max power until their car is charged. Which works ok as long as only a few people per substation have electric vehicles.

 

I could see there being a backlash against a government forcing you to install equipment that allows a remote organisation to take control of your car's charging rate.

[butlers]

It's inevitable that if millions of home charging units are fitted there has to be load management.

That 6pm - 8 pm peak time might well have very high rates to discourage charging then