Chairman's Rant, July 2019

[Fingers]

........the future for cars is electric.

I think so too, but I think purely electric on a large scale is some time away. Personally, I believe plug in hybrids will be more popular for some time, certainly down in this part of the world. Public transport in NZ is pretty poor when compared to most other countries, most people are very attached to their cars and commuting times are on the increase as a falsely inflated housing market keeps increasing, overdue for a crash.

Lunch table chat the other day turned to Tesla, the thinking was Elon may get out of cars and concentrate on supplying batteries to all the major car manufacturers.

[Griff]

Paul,
All your comments about the performance/range of your soon to be delivered Tesla are really valid, but you miss the essential point: (info from Tesla)

How long does it take to charge a Tesla Model 3 at home?>>
Level 3 Superchargers can take a Tesla from 0-170 miles range in just 30 minutes. It can get to 80% full in just 40 minutes.>>
How long does it take to charge a Tesla Model 3 on a supercharger?>>
They take about 20 minutes to charge to 50%, 40 minutes to charge to 80%, and 75 minutes to 100% on the original 85 kWh Model S.

which brings me back to the point, the difficulty is energy density, it only takes a couple of minutes to refuel a petrol/diesel vehicle and have a 300+ mile range, to do that in a electric car takes at least an hour, so your average service station can refuel 20+ cars per hour x number of pumps, whereas you can recharge 1 electric car per hour x number of charging stations. So the major drawback to journey times will be as the number of pure electric cars on the road increases. What happens when you arrive at your charging point, and you are fourth in the queue to use it?

It is for that reason that Fingers and I are in agreement, Phevs' (Petrol hybrid electric vehicle) are the immediate future, the current infrastructure, when combined with the range of current EV's, will not allow or support the immediate and wholesale transfer from hydrocarbon to purely electric propulsion. When I say infrastructure, I also am including the UK electrical generating capacity, We don't as a country generate enough electricity to power all the vehicles on UK roads if they are solely electrically powered.
Once the range for the average EV is beyond 400miles, then a EV will be a viable choice in a rural environment, and allow the vast majority of long journeys without stop. To visit friends and family in either Cornwall or The Lake District from here is 330 miles, I can just about manage it in a hydrocarbon car, and a fuel stop if required takes a matter of minutes. In a Tesla I could get to about 300 miles, an then need a recharge, I can't getter anywhere near that in my Nissan Leaf/VW Golf e, and will need to make at least two intermediate stops of an hour plus (assuming I'm not fourth in the queue-otherwise it'll be longer) for the same journey.

With a Phev, you use the current highly developed and available infrastructure, energy density is very high, it takes a very short time to refuel, and you get most of the environmental advantages to boot. I should add that during the 2012 London Olympics I had the opportunity to drive home in both experimental BMW 3 series and a Mini electric vehicles (55 mile round trip) leaving the Olympic site with a full charge, in summer daylight and fine weather, it was touch and go whether I got back to the site the following morning, to the extent that I turned the air-con and radio off to save electricity. Which illustrates how quickly things have improved around battery technology/energy density, and the consequent improvement in potential range.

[john]

From observations at motorway services and particularly with regard to Tesla I would suggest that Tesla are ahead of the game in provision of charging points to the number of cars on the road. From what I've seen you would never have to queue to charge up. If the number of cars on the road increase they would add further charging points.
On a 300 mile journey you should be stopping for rest breaks equivalent to any necessary charging time ( CPC training) no matter what vehicle you are driving HGV or not.

[Paul]

On a 300 mile journey you should be stopping for rest breaks equivalent to any necessary charging time ( CPC training) no matter what vehicle you are driving HGV or not.

That's actually a very good point that I haven't heard articulated before

[ChrisCar6]

The other option which I have not heard discussed is battery swapping - stop at service station, take out flat ones and exchange for charged ones. Swap over time akin to hydrocarbon fuelling. It requires cars to be designed for mutually compatible battery styles (Think AAAs, not phone charger plugs). Going back to the days of fresh horses at the coaching inn!

And up here the demand of lights/heating/windscreen wipers etc will give vastly reduced range compared with SoCal. We're just getting used to heated seats/windscreens/steering wheels and now we'll only be able to use them in our own street.

[Normb666]

Dunno how long it'd take to swap out a battery pack, but it's still not going to be as fast as chucking 10 gallons in - you won't be able to do it yourself unless you have the strength of the Hulk, so it'll be waiting till Torchy the Battery Boy (showing my age there...) becomes available with his modified forklift to lift the old ones out and the new ones in. And that's assuming they've got a fully-charged set available, which might not be the case if it's a Bank Holiday/start of school hols and they've had lots of customers...

Nope, still not convinced by the "electric revolution" yet. Not saying it won't get there, but it's a good way off still, I reckon.

[ChrisCar6]

That's true Norm, but the point is 'they' have to make it a viable alternative to petrol/diesel, so the cars would have to be designed for quick battery pack changes and the infrastructure to supply them invented. You pay an annual subscription to EverReady to lease a battery pack plus 200 battery changes a year or whatever, they have a network of 'filling stations' on the road network, and you just rock up and say "fill her up guv"; the Duracell rabbits whip the flat one out and slot in a full one. Likely to take 5 minutes to do and you're back on the road. An hour or two later they have that battery recharged ready to punt out again. Bugger that sit-around-while-the-charger-does-its-stuff malarkey.