[Ed: due to technical problems, Part 2 of this article will now be published tomorrow, 31st Dec 2019]
Being the owner of an electric car (a Mitsubishi I-MIEV) I thought I’d set out a few observations.
Costs
Although there is a government subsidy at the moment, electric cars are expensive to buy and there is massive depreciation. However this does mean that, second hand. they are more affordable.
The new cost of my own car was around £30,000. A government subsidy at that time was £6,000. I bought it as a one year old (ex-demo) from the dealer (Hereford) with 375 miles on the clock. It had depreciated by £7,000. Unsurprisingly, they had not succeeded in selling a single car at full price. At that time, it was the cheapest electric car on the market.
This, by the way, is a small city runabout which was modified from an earlier petrol form. The reason for such massive depreciation is the perceived risk of battery failure. A new battery for my small car cost £7,000 at that time. Ergo, battery failure makes the car instantly worthless in cars less than nearly new. This happened to me at 16,000 miles, fortunately the battery was still under guarantee.
The Technology
There is an electric motor, a control system, a battery and a battery charging system. The inherent problem is that batteries supply Direct Current (DC) and the motor runs on Alternating Current (AC) as do all electric motors.
In days of yore, conversion of DC to AC (and vice versa) was done mechanically by a device known as a “commutator”. These are still in use though they are inefficient, expensive to make and subject to wear. The problem of converting DC to AC electronically has finally been solved. The problem is that the waveform of the generated AC must be a sine wave. If it isn’t, there are significant losses. Also three separate waves must be created (three phase AC) in order that the motor is self-starting, easily reversible and compact. The speed of the motor depends on the frequency of the generated AC.
This means that the electronic device (known as an inverter) must be able to generate a three phase, variable frequency, sinusoidal AC and also be able to control the voltage. This is a big ask and today’s electric car technology revolves around this.
The traction battery
We have had low tech electric vehicles for over a hundred years. The problem has always been that of battery capacity and weight. The recent development of lithium batteries mean that batteries of half the weight can hold three times the energy. Lithium is quite a common element but only in a few places have natural events concentrated it in commercially viable deposits. There’s not enough to go round for everyone to have personal transport. Also needed is cobalt with a similar problem. There is a lot of cobalt at the bottom of certain oceans. Recovering it is certain to be controversial.
My own car has a 16Kwh battery weighing nearly a quarter of a ton. Compare this with a petrol engine car which carries around 100-200Kwh in the form of petrol. It’s immediately obvious that with so limited an amount of energy we are going to have to be pretty frugal and efficient in its use.
The traction battery is generally reckoned to lose around 1% of its capacity per year. This could be a lie, the public has no way of verifying this. Also the charging regime can affect battery life.
If buying, be sure to enquire about the battery guarantee. Some manufacturers lease the battery out for a fixed monthly payment. Some sell you the battery. It’s optional with others. You need to sharpen your pencil and do the calculations.
There is also a small 12V battery to run lights, windscreen wipers etc. This is charged off the main traction battery by yet another electronic gizmo. If flat, the car can’t be started and neither indeed can the main traction battery be charged.
The motor
Big steps too have been made in the efficiency of electric motors. It should be understood that all electric motors can also be generators, there is no difference between the two.
Traction motors work by the interaction between an alternating or revolving magnetic field (or flux) and a fixed one. The stronger the magnetic fields are, the more compact and powerful the motor will be. There have also been big advances lately in motor design. In days of yore the fixed magnetic field had to be generated by a coil of wire which consumed electricity. Nowadays we can produce the same by means of neodymium-iron-boron rare earth magnets, so saving the electricity previously used. As we have seen, the commutator has also been dispensed with. Electric motors used for traction must have independent means of cooling, a simple fan on the motor shaft won’t do. The motor could be running at low speed yet still using full power thus needing maximum cooling. This usually takes the form of a water jacket round the motor and a conventional radiator.
Regenerative braking
As previously mentioned the motor can also be a generator. This means that when descending hills the “potential energy” can be recovered by converting it to electricity and putting it back into the battery. Also, when the car is slowing down, the “kinetic energy” can be recovered. So if you drive up a hill and then descend, about 25% of the energy used going up can be put back into the battery on the descent.
In practice, the driver takes no action to enable all this. Speed control is by a “single pedal” If the foot is lifted the car goes seamlessly into regenerative braking mode. This means that 99% of driving is by single pedal. The mechanical brakes need only to be used in an emergency and to bring the car to a halt from 5mph or so. Light pressure on the brake pedal also brings regenerative braking into play.
My own car has a lever to switch braking and power modes for different terrains. There is a “city mode”, a “hilly/winding lane mode” and an “open road” mode. The result is an intuitive and relaxing drive.
[Ed: due to technical problems, Part 2 of this article was not published as planned on Sat 29th Dec, but will now be published tomorrow, 31st Dec 2019]
All the water produced from hydrogen propulsion must surely increase cloud cover, which must do more to keep the globe warm than the carbon dioxide we are producing now.
Global Warming Emergency is a SCAM. It would be interesting if anyone could find proof of who is funding it and why.
I reckon electric cars are simply not feasible for a large majority of us.
Personally I’m wondering whether I could benefit from a mobility scooter, how and where would I recharge that?
Gore has made a fortune out of it after publishing “managed” data and there are many more who have too. Ultimately it is all about control of the majority by a self declared “elite”. Woe betide those lesser mortals who support them in belief that their own future will be better. They are going to have a rude awakening when only an uprising against that “elite” will save us.
Her is an interesting rejection of the climate change scam by a guy (Patrick Moore) who has impeccable “green” credentials but has come to see the light:
Harold, thank you so much for giving part 1 of the perspective from a user of electric car point of view. I have done some calculations based on the use of petrol and diesel cars on the road today. To get a ballpark figure, if we assume there are 10 million cars on the road each working day and each travel a commute of 30 miles then back and that the average car is 1.6 litre petrol consuming 50kW per hour and the journey there and back takes 1.5hours, that is 750kWh of energy.
If the cars recharge over a 5 hour period starting nominally at 5 or 6pm finishing at 10 or 11 pm the National Grid will need to supply 150GW between 6 and 10pm. Now as there is only a headroom of 5GW between supply and demand that means only 3.3% of those cars can be recharged. So 96.7% of cars on the road would need to disappear leaving just 3.3% in the hands of the elite or environmental activists. It just doesn’t add up.
As for hydrogen, what a great idea. It is really a clean burning fuel producing only H2O as a product of combustion. Unfortunately as coal and petrol produce an enormous amount of energy from a small amount of energy used to obtain and process it, hydrogen takes almost as much energy to split the water molecule as it releases when burnt. in other words there is no economic gain in producing it. So it won’t happen. Do the activists know what they are campaigning for. No energy to heat and cook by. No motor cars for commuting. Electricity cost unaffordable. Worse than living in a cave and really back to the African savanna picking berries from trees. Meat will be a no no.
How can logical sane educated humans go for this?
Antony Nailer. Now the question of SANITY I must leave to the so called experts – psychologists etc. Educated? Well I was told by one teaching assistant that 10year olds are still provided with pictures to explain simple phrases. (At 10yrs I’d exhausted the children’s section of the library and was exploring adult books.) That leaves LOGICAL. Clearly the answer is they can’t go for it. Somehow RATIONAL THOUGHT has been lost during the last two or three generations. I’m sure we can each provide explanations of why and how.
Some of us are “logical, sane and educated”. Too many others are missing the ability of logical reasoning, maybe insane, and indoctrinated as opposed to being educated. What else can explain the unquestioning following of an outspoken 16 year old?
My first paragraph stated the total energy used was 750kWh. Sorry it should have read 750GWh. That’s why when recharging over a 5 hour span requires the grid to supply 150GW. That is nearly 4 times what the whole of the UK uses every hour from about 7am till about 11pm.
Were you the Tony Nailer who was an apprentice at GEC with me in the 50’s Of whom the last I heard was on the IEE product committee ar some such. If so Well done !
I’ll let theIEE off,, turning down one of my products, now in general use.. 40 odd years ago.
Re charging the battery. No-one runs the battery to depletion or anywhere near.
I charge my car off solar panels in Summer.
In Winter/dull weather I charge the car overnight on “economy seven” cheap electricity. (ie 2400-0700.) I use a timer to achieve this.
More info. in Pt 2
“around 100-200Kwh in the form of petrol ” is in 60-80 litres ie much less than 100 Kg weight. A huge weight ad over battery power .
PS heard on enemy radio the Sir climate change scientist say the diesel error was due to the EU being fooled by German auto industry.
Never heard the climate change mugs complain.
In the 70’s there was a petrol crisis, indeed, we were issued WW2 Ration books, on production of your log book. Fortunately you did not have to show a tax disc, and being a mechanic, I had about 4 cars in the process of being done up, so I was not worried! At the time I was studying for my AMIMI (Associate Membership of the Institute of the Motor Industry), and my group of 5 studied alternative to mineral oil. After much debate in the pre Internet days, we ruled out out electric cars for many of the reasons outlined above, but settled on Hydrogen. The engine would have to be radically changed, but was within the technology of the day. The beauty of using hydrogen are manifest, no pollution, a cheap and simple production method , and apart from the volatile nature the stored gas, and the changes to engine construction it seemed a very viable solution. This current fad (no pun intended) for electric cars is crazy! I am surprised that the Tree Huggers are not up in arms. The source of power and the motors require materials that have to be dug out of the ground at huge cost. Many are “Rare Earth Minerals”, and will run out. whereas, to use hydrogen, which is extracted from water by electricity, which we are told can be produced at no damage to the planet, on being used converts back to water! No doubt I will be shot down, as the local environmental group here in Chipping Norton has tried to do, forcing me to dig out my research from nearly 50 years ago! people need to understand that, if we all want to have the advantage of our own “wheels” there is, not only a cash price to be paid, but. because of the nature of just making things, the materials have to come from somewhere, and until we can mine the resources of Mars and the Moon, we are stuck with what we have here!
All due to the demonising of carbon dioxide, a gas that is naturally part of the environment and which allows plant-life to grow more bountifully. Contrary to current propaganda, petrol cars are good for the environment – and for food production.
Take a look at this. Well worth watching! A witty warning from Rowan Dean of Sky News, Australia:
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2244106175654536
Indeed; the Climate Change Scam was designed for one purpose only; to exercise control for the benefit of the self declared global “elite”. We are at war without a shot having been fired.
If they want us to dump petrol for electric, what happens to the millions of scrapped cars?
And – what about the manufacture of all the batteries needed for these ”eco friendly” cars? And their eventual disposal? And the production of the electricity for running them – burning fossil fuels, mostly?
Are these people truly mad? Or just stupid?
Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.
Seems like a scam to outlaw diesel cars and reduce numbers of private vehicles , so that the ‘fat cats’ can swan around in their large executive saloon cars most commentators indicate that the appreciable cost of ownership won’t reduce anytime soon either. As for cars being ‘charged’ in public places, the vandals will have a high old time all the time, then somebody will fall over the charge lead, or gets electrocuted helping after a collision then watch as lawyers make a fortune. I like the idea of hydrogen propulsion cells but what would we do with all the water produced by millions of vehicles .
Export them to countries that have not been infected with the ‘climate’ plague, where they achieve their useful, design life.
Jim, that is the reason many Far East owners of car factories in Europe are pulling out. They see within a decade, maybe two, that cars with internal combustion engines will be outlawed or by punitive taxes on petrol, literally driven of the road.
It’s started now.
‘In 2020 manufacturers will have to meet controls on CO2 emissions averaging 95g per km on all new cars they sell. According to the EU, this works out at fuel consumption of about 4.1 litres per 100km of petrol and 3.6 litres per 100km of diesel. Missing the target will mean a penalty of €95 (£81) per car for each gram per km by which firms miss the target’.https://independencedaily.co.uk/news-review-monday-30-december-2019/
How are manufacturers supposed to spend on research to meet future emissions when faced with punitive taxes/ fines and the declaration that their products will be phased out (or murdered if you prefer) before being able to recoup the costs? VW/Audi were not able to meet the current emissions it would seem without dodgy software and from the above newsround, will not be able to recoup the costs from buoyant sales of the replacement vehicles.
I am in no doubt that this whole thing is part of a concerted attack on our Western civilisation and plenty of the ‘woke’ (brain dead) are on board with it. It will be up to the ordinary people to actually wake up and fight this.