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 Future War Cultist wrote:
I was thinking about sustainability the other day. How much of a car could be recycled into a new one? And are there developments that can increase this ratio? I ask because I look at the methods needed to make the batteries for EVs and I wonder to myself if that can be kept up. Then I think about hydrogen cars (yes I heard about their problems) and I wonder if hydrogen cars could be close to 100% recyclable?

Honestly with modern technology cars should be lasting a LOT longer as a product anyway. The reason they don't is because the industry is slaved to the concept of selling you a new car. Parts and repairs are insanely expensive and with more and more electronics trapped behind pay walls of official dealers and with designs of components that are far more complex its become increasingly hard to repair modern cars. The irony is that modern equipment is, in general, far more reliable than in the past, but we can't actually repair most of it economically (if at all with the average garage equipment list).

If we were serious about recycling a massive shift in the market attitude toward more expensive purchase, but far cheaper repair and upkeep could easily see cars lasting for decades.

Heck the UK government a few years back mass purchased and crushed a huge number of cars just to prop up the car market by encouraging people to go out and buy new ones.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
I was thinking about sustainability the other day. How much of a car could be recycled into a new one? And are there developments that can increase this ratio? I ask because I look at the methods needed to make the batteries for EVs and I wonder to myself if that can be kept up. Then I think about hydrogen cars (yes I heard about their problems) and I wonder if hydrogen cars could be close to 100% recyclable?

One of the main points they push in the sales info about the BMW i3 is how it's something like 97% recycled and recyclable. It's certainly possible to make a fairly sustainable car from the point of view of recycling or reusing parts of it. Recycling batteries and the materials in them is possible, but currently very expensive. This may change in the medium term as more EV batteries move towards end of life, but it's worth noting that Nissan currently sends old Leaf batteries to Amsterdam where they form part of the power system for the Amsterdam Arena where Ajax play. The original predictions that EV batteries would have a lifespan of 5-8 years seems to have been wrong. Even after they are of little use in a car they still retain enough charge to be useful in other areas.

Hydrogen certainly seems to me like the most reasonable future tech from almost every point of view save the single most important one: infrastructure. EV charging infrastructure is patchy at best but at least there's always the fallback option of charging at home which is what makes EVs a practical choice at the moment. Hydrogen would need to replace the existing network of petrol/diesel fuel stations in order for it to become practical.

I can forsee some issues with charging from home arising (From a UK angle)
Imagine:
You live In a row of terraced housing, your car has to be parked on the road. Usually there is a public pathway/pavement separating your home from the road. Your charging cable has to come from your home to your car and therefore crosses the pathway.
Are you reasonably allowed to deny access for the duration of any charging.
Is the vehicle/home owner liable for hazards i.e trips that may occur with pedestrians coming into contact with the cable?

Near term, parking spaces are at a premium what if access to your charging point is blocked because someone is parked along your frontage?

is there a case for a parking premium to be paid?

Long term. Are charging points to be distributed along public roads, with access to each residential address. Who pays for this infrastructure? Are the charging points open to all or locked to specific address/owner details?

How are charging points to be integrated into the grid?

Yes, the charging at home is only possible for people who have a car port, which is about 60% of UK homes at most. (I read somewhere, it could be worse than that.)

I am guessing charging points will be plumbed into public infrastcuture like car parks and street furniture. There are already some like this in Oxford.

It's just a matter of doing some government spending.

You could operate the public chargers wtih an app access system.

There's definitely a problems with home charging, as I've mentioned a few times ITT. The lack of people with off-street parking in many countries is a real problem that needs different solutions than we currently have. Making chargers just part of the everyday landscape of modern towns and cities is probably the best way forward. Lampposts with charging points, or charging points at every car parking space in a multi-storey are two good solutions form an engineering point of view.

The bigger problems are who pays for it and will the grid itself have capacity if all the cars currently on the road were changed to EVs? I imagine the infrastructure would be paid for by the companies who control it and the hope is that the rise in popularity of EVs will see an increase in the charging infrastructure. Whether the free market will match demand is something we just don't know yet, and it may be that any countries whoa re serious about increasing EV usage may need to spend government money to improve the charging network. This already happens in some parts of the UK with local councils installing charging points for their fleets of EVs and making those points available to the public as well.

It's been a while but I've been seeing some more EVs in the news lately. I was just reading about GM bringing the Hummer back as an EV truck. And Jeep just announced plug in hybrids that will be coming out in December. I always been a Jeep guy so that has me interested, but I'm kinda scared to see what the price tag will be. But either way I'm stuck with my jeep compass lease for another 2 years. It'll be interesting to see what other new stuff will be out by then.

toyota also has rav4 prime and prius prime as plug in hybrids with decent range on pure electric. The prius are even pretty cheap as modern cars go.

I like the idea as despite the way some people have to dump on every new idea, they are less polluting that normal cars. They can be recharged thru solar and other clean energy sources.

I would never buy a tesla tho.

Tbh I don't care about if they pollute or not, they allow the West to be energetically independent from the middle east and stop spending so much on oil. But we would need a bit nuclear power plants, but what people focus on is "ecology", oh gosh...

Slipspace wrote:
This already happens in some parts of the UK with local councils installing charging points for their fleets of EVs and making those points available to the public as well.

Yeah. Councils deal this is very different ways though.
Coventry, with Jag heavily involved in the city, has masses of chargers. The council went EV ages ago, and there are parts of the city with a charger on every street.
Warwickshire, and its local councils, have next to nothing. There are 4 council-owned chargers, and 3 more at council-run business centres, for the whole county. They are sitting on a huge budget for this, and have installed none of the 47 chargers have been installed they secured funding for last year.

I got a 'cheap' MG EV in March (the model was released late last year), with a government subsidy. The wall charger was the same, getting roughly £3,500 in grants. Throw in another ~£2,500 off from the dealer, and it came into the budget for our first car bought from new. We've hardly used the ICE we have, what with lockdown and no long trips planned. My wife's looking at the new ranges, liking this one so much.

How big are the batteries in electric cars?

Mine is a 'small' 44.5 KWH.
Phsyically, it is under the seats, in place of the petrol tank.
Like this:
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/mg-electric-car-batteries-built-130000389.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANG5Y69Jd7JaZd769zXqfaOaxrZK8Gidsy5sQpv8IN78yHCnqO1i-mBoC7zu972iAn3GnvvB1nNbrGd6YaopTyHbAMC3gtSXQt2621sUkJNIrCWfNCIPkiiOI4pSsFEsnekHVDC7kZdRE7MN-awwbb_Xgn51clcyoO3-JiqQeJ8Y

I think Target and some other bigger name stores are adding EV parking spaces, though I doubt they're being used too much at the moment. It's a nice gesture I guess, but I think for EV owners you need to charge it up at home for it to be effective. I don't really think they would be able to replace gas cars unless they can get charging times down to 5-10 minutes, and more charging stations have to be available. Might be cool if gas stations could also have charging stations that they charge for, and solar panels all over the roof so it doesn't impact the city infrastructure as much.

Some news which may be relevant

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54170207

 Necros wrote:
It's been a while but I've been seeing some more EVs in the news lately. I was just reading about GM bringing the Hummer back as an EV truck.

Yeah, my work homepage, these clowns are so high on this thing, its not a truck. . . they are calling it a "supertruck"

One thing I know for sure, its made by GM, so it will be, fairly objectively speaking, garbage.

Well, IF human civilization doesn't collapse soon and IF these work out, solid state batteries may pretty much make electric cars a very attractive option with few drawbacks.

https://www.autoblog.com/2020/07/28/toyota-solid-state-batteries-2025/

 Necros wrote:
... I don't really think they would be able to replace gas cars unless they can get charging times down to 5-10 minutes, and more charging stations have to be available. ...

Mine is quoted as charging from 0-80% in 40 minutes on a fast charger. That's enough time to have a potter around the shop, and grab a coffee.
Slow charging, like at home, keeps the battery conditioned, and ready to take a fast charge when needed.

More chargers though, yes, that's the current problem. The DVLA says this:

In 2020 Q2, 19,149 ULEVs were registered for the first time in the United Kingdom, an increase of 30% on 2019 Q2 and 21% on 2018 Q2. ULEVs accounted for 7.8% of all new vehicle registrations, up from 2.0% in 2019 Q2.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/917501/vehicle-licensing-statistics-april-to-june-2020.pdf
Charger installations are far below that increase.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Some news which may be relevant
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54170207

That was the reasoning I took when dropping the idea of hybrids. There are more things to go wrong with them, and what they have will have compromises like this. A tiny battery won't make the ICE much less a problem.

Yeah, hybrids were something we rejected outright within about 10 minutes of looking when we were considering buying. They make no sense at all to me, especially the plug-in ones that have relatively large batteries and usually have engines too small for the size of the car in order to fit in all the extra electric gubbins. I wasn't surprised to read that article yesterday.

I have now owned an EV for almost 12 months and I can say that the only time I suffered any form of "range anxiety" was our first long-ish trip which was about 150 miles in total. We ended up back home on 8%, mainly due to not appreciating some of the quirks of EVs and the charging network itself. Back then (last Christmas) most charging points needed an app and some needed an account with the company to use them, which left us having to use a slower charger in a Tesco car park rather than the fast charger we'd planned to use. Thankfully, that's now changing and most charging points take debit/credit cards now. Other than that experience, everything's been fine. The furthert we've gone in one trip is about 250 miles, which involved 3 charges: one on the way, one while we were at our destination and one on the way back. Overall it probably added 30 minutes to our journey time since we'd probably have stopped for a coffee or some food anyway.

One thing I think will become an issue is what Skinnereal mentions above. Charging points are usually easy to find and usually available in my experience. However, I don't think it'll take a huge increase in EVs to put more strain on the network so if the government is serious about pushing EVs over ICE cars they need to get the network sorted quickly. Having said that, in the year of driving so far we've only charged away from home about 5-6 times. I suspect a lot of people will be similar. According to our car's trip computer the vast majority of our journeys are under 5 miles (probably because we live about 4.5 miles from the centre of the city).

Has anyone made a range extension pack for EVs, extra batteries that could be put in a trunk or even a backseat for extended range that could be plugged into the car's power system? The abilty to trade range for payload or passengers might be useful to some people.

Get a petrol generator
https://insideevs.com/news/438109/video-gas-tesla-generator-range/

The problem with charging batteries from batteries is getting the charge to go the right way. IIRC, serial connections depend on the voltage output matching, but I've not looked far into that.
Plug them in parallel, and you'll confuse the management computer.

That doesn't mean that manufacturers cannot design a seat-replacement or boot-cavity battery pack that is plugged into the system.

 Matt Swain wrote:
Has anyone made a range extension pack for EVs, extra batteries that could be put in a trunk or even a backseat for extended range that could be plugged into the car's power system? The abilty to trade range for payload or passengers might be useful to some people.

EVs don't have an external port to plug directly into the batteries other than the charging port. Also, the batteries are heavy so it's not really like you could easily take them in and out of the car. It's something that was talked about by some manufacturers, I think but I suspect price probably put an end to it. The batteries are pretty much the msot expensive single component in an EV.

The BMW i3 used to offer a range extender that was a BMW motorcycle engine in the back, that was used as a generator for the batteries. It was semi popular initially, when ranges were very low, but they phased it out with the most recent version of the i3 because it simply wasn't popular (and it was noisy as hell). With real-world ranges starting at around 150 miles now for most EVs there isn't such a need for range extension. As I said above, we've not really experienced any extra inconvenience in our longer journeys by owning an EV. If we went over 200 miles frequently we probably would, but in that case we likely wouldn't have opted for an EV in the first place.

 Necros wrote:
I don't really think they would be able to replace gas cars unless they can get charging times down to 5-10 minutes

That's because you're viewing it as a direct gas replacement instead of a paradigm shift.

In my diesel car, I get about 400 miles range, then need to go to a gas station and refuel. Those 400 miles take me 2-3 weeks to do, with lots of 5/10/30 mile runs. I may occasionally do a 100 mile round trip but it's rare.

With electric, it may take 40 minutes to recharge which is awful if I went to a gas station and waited. But there's no need to do that, because you can refuel it just about anywhere. I could recharge from empty on my driveway overnight, so I essentially start every day with a full tank. I could drive 30 miles to work and then have it recharge at work, so I've got a full tank on the way home. Most cars spend most of their time parked, so you'd find with an EV your car will spend most of it it's time charging or full.

I'd only need to fast charge on road trips, which with the current ranges of about 200 miles means I'd need to stop every 3 hours to recharge. I'd need to stop at least as often as that to pee anyway, and can use the parked time to grab food, chill out or whatever.

The only people who EV's don't suit now and those doing huge mileages under time pressure - couriers, taxis and so on. For those people, hybrids will likely save them a fortune in fuel whilst allowing them to fall back onto gas if they can't recharge in time. Or those who need to do a lot of towing.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Matt Swain wrote:
Has anyone made a range extension pack for EVs, extra batteries that could be put in a trunk or even a backseat for extended range that could be plugged into the car's power system? The abilty to trade range for payload or passengers might be useful to some people.

Not yet, and the weight would make an internal battery a nightmare. There'd be no technical reason that you couldn't have a giant battery pack on a trailer which you could plug in to extend your range, in fact I'd be surprised if EV Semi's didn't fill the trailer floor with batteries.
For more uses, it'd probably easier to just stop and grab a coffee whilst you fast charge.

I've heard some police dislike electric cars because of the dangers of electrocution and burning/exploding batteries. Rendering the car a high hazard if they are involved in a crash or other incident. Granted its not as if petrol cars are safe in a crash; but I think it helps highlight how police and emergency services are likely not yet well trained and equipped to deal with electric cars.

Again its swings back to that aspect of infrastructure support. At least in many regions of the UK there just isn't the structure there to make the electric car superior or at least comparable and that's before we consider both the price and the fact that their secondhand price tends to be very low. Which is understandable given that its "new tech" and thus advances pretty fast. But its a huge issue for many who rely on the previous car to help pay for a new car. If the car price went up and the exchange rate on the old went down then that's a much bigger cost for the average person to have to stump up to keep on the road

Mmm. Battery in the Tesla Model 3 weighs 480kg. It's not something you could just pop the equivalent of into your back seat to double your range...

Crispy78 wrote:
Mmm. Battery in the Tesla Model 3 weighs 480kg. It's not something you could just pop the equivalent of into your back seat to double your range...

See if I were into electric car business, I'd be considering making a portion or all of the battery in the car a standard fit and design. The idea being that since you are renting the battery anyway you could roll up to any garage and swap batteries. So instead of having to charge your car you simply swap over the battery for their stock battery and keep going.

I read a while back that Tesla had a plan for batteries being replaceable - you'd park over a service bay type thing and a robot would remove the current battery from the bottom of the car and replace it with a new fully charged one. Not sure what became of that, it may have been slightly wishful thinking.

Crispy78 wrote:
I read a while back that Tesla had a plan for batteries being replaceable - you'd park over a service bay type thing and a robot would remove the current battery from the bottom of the car and replace it with a new fully charged one. Not sure what became of that, it may have been slightly wishful thinking.

Aye I was thinking a more hands-on approach rather than something that would require rebuilding the entire garage to function. But its an idea when you consider that the battery is essentially an element that is not affordable and thus already a null cost in the system to make it "work" for the average person. Just have no battery ownership - you own a car shell and simply rent the battery. Either paying for a fresh charge at the garage or simply pay for the electricity yourself at home. Gives you the ability to recharge overnight and also do long haul trips just swapping out batteries.

For the UK one charge might be enough; but for Africa/Europe/America - ergo big places, you need to have a means to charge in minutes not hours.

Found a video of it being demoed:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlaQuKk9bFg

Won't be a fun thing to do manually, given the weight of the battery etc.

I don't know if EVs would be very practical for law enforcement.. mostly because they wouldn't have a lot of downtime for charging like people who just plug in at home after work. I worked as a police dispatcher a while back, there were only so many cars available and each shift new officers would be assigned to them, so they were constantly in use. They would have to come up with a way to keep a car down for an hour or 2 a different times of the day to recharge it.

Herzlos wrote:

 Necros wrote:
I don't really think they would be able to replace gas cars unless they can get charging times down to 5-10 minutes

That's because you're viewing it as a direct gas replacement instead of a paradigm shift.

You will NEVER get widespread adoption of electric cars unless they are a direct gas replacement. Society as a whole cannot change how we use vehicles to accommodate for the shortcomings of electric vehicles overnight, its just too drastic of a change.