[You can read Part 1 here]
The mechanics
We have seen that electric cars are electrically complex but they are mechanically simple. The mechanics (fixed speed gearbox, differential and motor) are often in a single compact and lightweight unit with a half dozen moving parts.
There’s no clutch, no gearbox, no exhaust, no generator/alternator, no starter motor, no belts, no air filter, no oil filter, no engine oil and nothing to adjust on the motor. That only leaves the brakes and suspension. I expect there will need to be some job creation.
There is a radiator to cool the motor and an electric pump to circulate the water. This water is at a low temperature so there have to be separate means of heating the cab – a major problem with electric cars. There is also a vacuum pump for the power assisted brakes. There may well be electric fans, an electric heater and water pumps for the cab heating.
Servicing
Check fluids: motor coolant, cab heating system (water & antifreeze), brake fluid, windscreen wash. Braking system is fairly conventional and pads should last virtually the life of the car as they are so infrequently used.
Repairs
Repairs to electric cars in my experience are baffling to traditional mechanics. They will be time consuming and very expensive. There are no “pattern parts” and no “independent” repair shops as yet. The battery on my car packed in – fortunately within the guarantee period. It took six months to determine what was wrong, obtain a battery and fit it. A new battery would have been £7,000 if I’d had to pay for it. The cost of most spare parts is extortionate!
Fuel costs
The fuel is electricity, almost untaxed compared with petrol and as the car is so efficient little is used. The option exists to charge the car at home, by night, on “economy seven” electricity, or even have solar panels and charge the battery for free. (This last works only if the car is at home during the day.) Even in the worst case, costs are miniscule compared with buying petrol/diesel.
If charging is needed other than at home the costs are more complex.
The government is set to lose a lot of fuel tax. But not to worry, they have already put the idea forward that new houses should have charging points routinely fitted. This is a mere ploy, in future these can be separately metered and of course taxed.
Charging the battery
The car is ideally suited for commuting to work. It can then be charged overnight at home (possibly on cheap electricity).
The retired (such as myself) can charge it from solar PV panels for free by day if they have any. It’s surprising how many electric car owners also have solar panels!
There are two charging connections on the car. One is for DC fast charging (around 60Kw), available on motorway charging stations. The other is for slow and intermediate AC charging.
The car comes with a charging lead for slow charging at home. Most can be plugged into a 13a socket (3Kw). It’s recommended that a 13a socket is wired back to the consumer unit (fuseboard) separately for this purpose, The reason for this is that your 13a socket ring main design makes certain assumptions about electrical loads which are invalidated if an electric car is plugged in.
The other possibility is intermediate level AC charging. This is in the order of 30a (7Kw). This takes the form of a separate circuit and socket if you have one at home. At the moment the price of these is ridiculous. What should cost £30 plus labour is priced at several hundred pounds. These charing points are now becoming common in urban car parks.
Most people will be able to utilise slow charging. Remember the battery is never run to depletion, only “topped up”, something not mentioned by the sellers of such articles.
Theoretically, fast charging shortens the life of a battery due to the adverse heating effect within the battery, however the situation is complex.
Range
The problem is of course that, if you run the battery flat, it’s a tow job to some place the car can be charged
Range anxiety is much publicised. However most people use their car on a regular run and one soon becomes used to how fast the battery depletes. (There is an indicator on the dashboard.)
When you do go on a journey close to the maximum range of the car, Google Earth is your friend. It will show the exact distance .
However range is reduced by cold weather, use of the cab heater (the power comes from the traction battery), hilly terrain and driving style. Speed too is a big factor. Friction losses due to air vary as the square of speed, ie. going twice as fast, uses four times the energy, thrice as fast uses nine times the energy.
The range quoted by the manufacturers is total BS. In practice you will get around 2/3 of this. A bit like the mpg for conventional cars.
Driving
Electric cars are a wonderful drive. Once you’ve had one, you won’t want to go back to petrol/diesel. They are especially wonderful for urban driving, twisty roads and hilly roads.
They are not good on the motorway, the battery depletes at an alarming rate. No clutch or gears, seamless and ferocious acceleration from rest. Silence (apart from tyre noise) and vibration free. As you ease off the power, the regenerative braking comes in seamlessly. It’s better even than an automatic, you don’t even have to move your foot from the accelerator to the brake except at very low speeds. (less than 5mph)
The weight of the motor is insignificant, the main weight is the battery, invariably located low down under the floor of the car.
Most of us have got used to driving front engine, front wheel drive cars. Electric cars handle like a mid-engine car. This takes non-Ferrari owners some getting used to.
One snag is the regenerative braking if the car is rear wheel drive. This means the regenerative braking is rear wheel only which means you have to watch it in icy conditions, especially on bends. Electric cars are very poor in slippery conditions even with automatic traction control. Maximum motor torque comes in at zero revs.
The regenerative braking is variable, depending on the speed of the car and the state of charge of the battery. It’s almost zero if the battery is fully charged, this can catch you out in the first few hundred yards of travel.
To save the battery, in cold weather, I put a fan heater in the car for ten minutes before we set off anywhere.
Pollution
As well as being fuel efficient, electric cars take the exhaust gas pollution off the street. These gases are particularly damaging to children. Whoever heard of all these diseases, mental and physical children suffer from nowadays? They also reduce brake dust as the mechanical brakes are seldom used. Tyre dust remains a problem.
The future
If all new cars are to be electric, it’s very unlikely that everyone in the future can have one. There just won’t be enough lithium, cobalt or neodymium to go round. The lithium at least is recyclable.
Also we aren’t generating anything like enough electricity and we don’t have the infrastructure to distribute it. So enjoy your motoring while you can.
The End
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Links – further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsubishi_i-MiEV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_Triangle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_motor
https://independencedaily.co.uk/why-the-age-of-motoring-is-almost-over/
I think that long before electric cars we’ll have put rickshaws back on the streets with gran and grandad in the shafts and provide them with an old chair in a corner of the kitchen in their old age.They don’t need much fuel, and can mostly look after themselves and their grooming. Electric cars ? Daft idea.!
All I need is a method of changing gear
Yes, as an electrical engineer I can add to comments below that this is one of the best short articles on the subject I’ve seen. Interesting, informative and accurate. I’m also not opposed to electric vehicles per se. As a boy growing up in Durban, SA I always used to prefer trolley busses to diesel. The way a full double-decker could pull up those steep Durban hills was truly mind-boggling.
If only there was a way of storing the electrical energy, or powering by induction through embedded cables …
As far as energy storage goes super capacitors looked promising for a while. However, charge your super-cap up at night, and see all your money leak away if not used immediately and if things go pear-shaped expect a VERY loud bang!
Long, long, ago in a workshop nowhere near here, when young, we put a large 24 V rated capacitor across 240 AC mains and used a broom to switch on with one hand while standing round a corner. Yikes! (Don’t try this at home or anywhere else folks!)
And in China they want to use them for buses! (It’s that all the energy in one place thing again.)
https://www.supercaptech.com/the-supercapacitor-electric-bus-is-adopted-in-china
Sorry but I still think, petrol and stinky diesel will be around a while longer.
Great article and very balanced, but don’t underestimate the chance of fire either accidental or following a collision , a risk factor not be overlooked, neither should the possibility of danger from high voltage that may not have been disabled following a collision.
This is an article from 2017 which illustrates what can happen even when dealt with by professional firefighters in that case it involved a crash barrier , but imagine a scenario when two or more vehicles are damaged with people trapped, something that involves potentially high voltage together with a petrol/ diesel/ mix from other vehicles would not be something that I would choose to have to deal with.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/motors/4721171/terrifying-tesla-video-shows-unstoppable-electric-car-inferno-that-took-35-firefighters-to-extinguish/
Great article. I suspect that hydrogen power and fuel cells may well compete with electric/battery.
An important point is being missed here. If electric cars were being introduced by manufacturers in a fully free economy well and good. Indeed, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. They would sell if they were any good otherwise those trying to sell them would crash and burn.
There IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS. We need coal generated electricity which is cheap and reliable and petrol and diesel vehicles to get around.
A petrol tank probably costs less than £5 (yes I’m guessing) and holds something like half the energy. The rest is in the air! So it is safer than a lithium battery where all energy is in one place.
Those waiting for batteries that hold the same amount of energy and at a comparable cost? Don’t hold your breath while waiting!
Now just for fun, imagine a fire in a large parking garage of the future. Packed to the brim with lithium batteries. Roman Candle anyone!
My Toyota RAV is old enough to vote but for sheer ‘grunt’ in towing a trailer up the Devon hills or transporting bales of haulage it is worth its’ weight in gold. No plans to scrap it.
What happens if an electric car catches fire in a collision?
What happens if a petrol car catches fire? The batteries are in a steel box. (Lithium burns really well.)
Electric cars have famously caught fire on the production line
There is an anti-collision switch that isolates the battery if there’s a crash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_electric_vehicle_fire_incidents
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Plug-in_electric_vehicle_fire_incidents
Batteries are improving. On the horizon is the lithium/air battery which theoretically would give similar energy density to petrol.
Prices will fall, manufacturers are bent on recovering development costs ASAP. All hangs on how much lithium we can find.
We have our own lithium in the UK in the Cornish tin mines. Whether it’s commercially viable remains to be seen.
https://www.cornishlithium.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium%E2%80%93air_battery
My belief is that we should be conserving all resourse, particularly the scarce ones, and all taxation should be transferred onto resources. Stuff in the ground is not free , nor is it the property of governments, nor is it the property of manufacturers, nor is it the property of multimationals bribing everyone in sight. . Instead of listening to the Crazy little girl from Sweden we should beconsidering properly. At the very least an open royal enquiry or whateverit is that these people will be satisfied by.. Can we not be the FIRST IN THE WORLD ( In BBC Braggery ) in something worth while unsullied by vast wealth, or vast stupidity.
There must have been a select committee somewhere by now..
Thats shut me up.
As the saying goes, ‘what goes around comes around’. Sooner or later the the world oil reserves will become exhausted and so too will fossil fuels like coal and gas, so what does the long term future hold. It is obvious that insufficient electricity will be created to power everything, so it will be back to walking or even horse power in time. So will life in 2275 return to how it was before the steam age………..
Bottomline we should consider full costs/benefits
Every time you spend £1.30 on petrol/diesel £1 goes into some government’s coffers in mining tax,fuel, VAT etc.
Without it you need to pay more tax.
And your tax money is already going in subsidy to rich people who buy electric cars.
#2 If EVs are set to improve in tech, what will that do for the second hand value of an EV you buy today ?
The other link I mentioned before – worth a look! Rowan Dean on the possible future of electric cars…..
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2244106175654536
Thank you for these two articles. Comprehensive and reasonably balanced.
All very interesting, so many Thanks ! ….. I will be keeping my old Rover 75, which now for insurance cover is an old banger with little book value ! – but I like it, and having it well maintained has resulted in it never letting me down ever ! ….. Good Luck in an electric future !
Thanks for an interesting and informative article which does raise serious concerns with respect to government policy. As for me I’ll be sticking to a conventional diesel van and happy to avoid those places likely to ban it.
In 1982 at Linwood Elwctronics ,and Electronic products ( coventry ) ( Car alarms, Electronic Ignition, Inverters , battery chargers , Fly Killers etc ) we developed an electronic golf trolley, an elecronic/ electric Bike or trike. etc.. Plans and offers were sent to the council, Clive Sinclair ( AS a big improvement on his C5 ( or whatever ).We decided in 1983 that this was OK but would soon be overtaken by technology.. As far as I can tell the technology has not yet passed 1950 except for battery and materials technology. In other words China and Japan.
And , what is infinately worse. Politics , Economics and other subjects have seriously stunted under the Internet. Management and leadership have disappeared ( A bit like spelling ) in favour of smart stuff.. There are many examples, foreseen in the 1930’s, of backward developement.
EDucation is now a just daft and appalling from age 3 to 25 and is a reflection on teachers and lecturers alike ( Thank god for private education and Good Universities.). Without them we would be in the dark ages again thanks to Crossland and OFFED or whatever.these people call themselves.
I suppose I should have said. I believe That commercial interests will keep the commercial 120 year success of the old car going for as long as humanly possible to gain max profits. Sort of crazy I know , but thats commerce.
I would also point out that in those days the car accessory and parts trade invented, and car makers followed and adopted ..Governmental interference , regulation by the ton virtually killed and buried that The car trade now is lost in space.
The best article I’ve seen on electric cars yet, interesting and comprehensive. I think I’ll keep my fourteen year old focus till it drops.