An interesting take on the new technology of Electric Cars as seen by a Canadian.

[ioweddie]

An interesting take on the new technology of Electric Cars



as seen by a Canadian.
********************************************************


I always wondered why we never saw a cost analysis

on what it actually costs to operate an electric car.





Now we know why.





At a recent neighbourhood B-B-Q I was talking to a neighbour,

a British Columbia Hydro executive and I asked him

how that renewable thing was doing.



He laughed, then got serious.





If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out,

you had to face certain realities.


For example:



A home charging system for a Tesla requires a 75 amp service.

The average home is equipped with 100 amp service.



On our small street, only has 25 homes,

the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry

more than 3 houses, each with a single Tesla.



For even half the homes to have electric vehicles,

the system would be wildly over-loaded.


This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles.



Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load.



So as our 'genius elected officials' promote this nonsense,

not only are we being urged to buy the damn things

and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems

with expensive, new windmills and solar cells,

but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system !

This latter "investment" will not be revealed until

we're so far down this dead-end road

that it will be presented with an oops and a shrug.

If you want to argue with a green person over cars

that are eco-friendly, just read the following:



Note:



If you ARE a green person, read it anyway.



My friend Eric recently test drove the Chevy Volt

at the invitation of General Motors and he writes.



For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles

before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.



Eric then calculated the car got 30 mpg

including the 25 miles it ran on the battery.



So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank

and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.



It will take you 4 and a half hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph.

Then add 10 hours to charge the battery

and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours.



On a typical road trip your average speed

(including charging time) would be 20 mph.



According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity.



It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery.



The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned

so I looked up what I pay for electricity.



I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh.





16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery.

$18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile

to operate the Volt using the battery.





Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg.



$3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.





The gasoline powered car costs about $15,000 while the Volt costs $46,000.







Will it prove to be the same in Australia ?????

 

[grober]

The article is a tad selective with its arguements. Why if a TESLA is in the garage "gobbling "all the electric what's going to charge up/operate the washing machine /tumble drier/ waste disposal/ 3 wide screen TV's/sound system/ 4 mobile phone chargers/ ipad -computer /central heating/ airconditioning/ power drill/lawn mower/ security lights / automatic garage doors/ gates on the drive/ multiple house lights / christmas decorations inside and out the house???? Why focus on the electric car out of all these? Now it could be argued that the TESLA uses a lot more current than any of these but power has a rate determined element to it. Stick the car on a fast charger and I guess it will use 75 amps-----increase the charge time and the current demand goes down. I'm not going to go into his deductions based on a "friends one car sample" -even if correct it has zero statistical validity!
And------ the article conveniently forgets the principle advantage of electric cars--- they have zero emissions when they operate in densely populated areas. I know, I know, its just moving the air pollution somewhere else--- but where hopefully there's not as many people and air movement is going to dilute noxious emissions to where the problem is global rather than local.
So the article makes some interesting points but thats a start to the discussion not a definitive answer surely?

 

[Deleted member 126969]

It’s a very flawed bit of comment I think. In one breath he talks about having to charge a Tesla at 7 odd kW, in the next, you can only charge a Volt at 1.6kW neither are in fact correct. Managed charging will take care of the vast majority of capacity issues and if done properly will be a huge help to balancing out the grids ups and downs.

As for adding that 10 hour charge time to a journey....really?

He’s obviously annoyed about something.....

 

[Deleted member 6183]

Less of an 'interesting' tale and more of a mildly amusing one.

 

[Dryce]

Less of an 'interesting' tale and more of a mildly amusing one.

Simple arithmetic.

A small car like a Nissan Leaf has a 40kWh battery. Assume it takes 40KWh to charge it (it probably takes a bit more). Assume 150 miles per charge.

Now if a household has one of these cars and drives 6000 miles/year then that's 1.6MWh per year. Average UK household consumption is allegedly 4.6MWh per year. So the electric car just increased it by 35%.

Now that's a small car doing moderate mileage. Suppose there are two leccy cars in the household because we dumped our diesel doing the longer commute second car does 10000 miles perannum. So 2.6MWh. So our household now requires about 90% more electrical energy per annum.

Not all households have cars. But many do and many have more than one.

So this is a serious problem.

 

[Dryce]

And------ the article conveniently forgets the principle advantage of electric cars--- they have zero emissions when they operate in densely populated areas. I know, I know, its just moving the air pollution somewhere else--- but where hopefully there's not as many people and air movement is going to dilute noxious emissions to where the problem is global rather than local.

We see our current national and regional governments in UK stuggling to come to terms with energy policy to meet existing needs - while pushing electric cars that will increase demand further.

 

[grober]

I have said many times in the past that the chief drawback to the adoption of electric vehicles in the UK is going to be lack of infrastructure and generation capacity. The future---or not? That doesn't negate their unique ability to reduce localised urban air pollution at present. As always these things are a trade off in priorities and how we address them. I just found it slightly disingenuous that someone from the North American continent* who would typically possess a plethora of domestic electrical devices already burning electrical power like there's no tomorrrow should suddenly become concerned about the generation capacity demands of electric cars.

Thats North America whose best selling vehicle for years has been the F150 pickup truck or its Chevy competitor. Historically pickup trucks became popular because as commercial vehicles they were exempt from environmental emission controls when they were first introduced--- prior to that no red blooded American boy would have been seen dead in one. Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose

 

[Dryce]

I just found it slightly disingenuous that someone from the North American continent who typically possess a plethora of domestic electrical devices already burning electrical power like there's no tomorrrow should suddenly become concerned about the generation capacity demands of electric cars.

Why shouldn't they? The different generators in the US have a similar problem with balancing capital investment in new plant against demand. Somebody has to pay for that investment.

Same principle - but presumably different ratios between the impact of a leccy car and the rather higher average household consumption.

 

[grober]

Why shouldn't they? The different generators in the US have a similar problem with balancing capital investment in new plant against demand. Somebody has to pay for that investment.

Same principle - but presumably different ratios between the impact of a leccy car and the rather higher average household consumption.

I would have been more impressed if the writer had presented a more balance arguement instead of a couple worst case scenarios citing a TESLA on a fast charger and his friend Eric's impression of his Chevy Volt?

World Power consumption | Electricity consumption | Enerdata

is a usefull indicator and I would suggest that Canada's urban conurbation energy consumption might be on a par with the USA once you take into account most of the country is devoid of people !

 

[Dryce]

is a usefull indicator and I would suggest that Canada's urban conurbation energy consumption might be on a par with the USA once you take into account most of the country is devoid of people !

Average household electricity use around the world

And ...... drum roll ....... you'd be right!

 

[Deleted member 6183]

I would have been more impressed if the writer had presented a more balance arguement instead of a couple worst case scenarios citing a TESLA on a fast charger and his friend Eric's impression of his Chevy Volt?

World Power consumption | Electricity consumption | Enerdata

is a usefull indicator and I would suggest that Canada's urban conurbation energy consumption might be on a par with the USA once you take into account most of the country is devoid of people !

Me too.

I confess to not really studying the maths and concentrating on the blinkered, one-sided view of the author. His style of prose put me off the message he was trying, rather poorly, to convey.

 

[190]

A small car like a Nissan Leaf has a 40kWh battery. Assume it takes 40KWh to charge it (it probably takes a bit more).

It does take a bit more, something like 10 % more. Batteries are not 100% efficient neither is the electric drive motor or the transmission system. There will be small percentage losses in every part of the drive system.

From a US government web site:

Electric Vehicles convert about 59%–62% of the electrical energy from the grid to power at the wheels. Conventional gasoline vehicles only convert about 17%–21% of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels.
All-Electric Vehicles

Even the above comparison isn't fair as it doesn't include the electricity generation and distribution losses which bring down the electric vehicles overall efficiency down to approx. 30%. The current reason they are so much cheaper to run than a fossil fuel vehicle is differences in fuel taxation.

 

[Piff]

On the atmospheric pollution front, has anyone come up with numbers which indicate the amount of pollution emitted over say a 150,000 mile life of a car.

For a petrol or diesel car there will be pollution in manufacture, both raw materials & assembly. Delivery to the end user. Pollution from burning fossil fuel over 150k, perhaps assuming an average of 40mpg. Pollution emitted in the drilling for oil, transporting & refining. Then end disposal of the car.

For an electric car there will be pollution in manufacture, both raw materials & assembly. Pollution from battery manufacture and how often will they need replacing over 150,000 miles? Delivery to the end user. Pollution arising from additional power station construction & later decommissioning and pollution from the actual power generation. These cars also seem to have a relatively short journey capability on the electric motors so adjustment would need to be factored in for the time they run on petrol. Then end disposal of the car.

I'm not against electric cars but I don't know if we are being given full facts as usual. I wouldn't be surprised if the figures are not too far apart.

As an aside, I have 2 sons who have their own houses. One does over 30,000 miles a year in a company car mostly for his employer. The other does around 20,000 miles a year in his own car, of which probably 50% is commuting. They both have parking spaces at home but these spaces are not "attached" to their houses. Neither would be able to charge an electric car at home without trailing an electric cable along public footpaths. How much of the nation is in this position?

 

[grober]

Where electric car technology may become less natural resource dependent is if the present trend of a move to renewable energy sources continues. Be it photovoltaics [solar] wind or tidal/ hydro-electric the generation costs are predicted to fall as the technology matures. The type of energy these sources produce is of course electrical. As always projected figures and geographical constraints but if the big money decides to switch investment from carbon ???
Renewable energy - Wikipedia
http://www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Expect-the-Unexpected_CTI_Imperial.pdf

 

[Steveml63]

Hi,
The consumption figures for electrical energy around the world are very interesting.
I note that UK average is 4648 units per year and USA is 11879 units per year.
Out of interest - I looked up our consumption in the last year for our house in Abu Dhabi.
Now - we live in a modern 4 bedroom semi-detached villa that has low energy, mainly LED lighting throughout.
It uses the latest LG variable frequency air-conditioners (big chillers on the roof) - so they are much more economical than our previous place.
It also has solar thermal system on the roof to give us hot water for most (but not all) of the year.
Our total consumption for past year was 63,524 Units! - average 174 per day!
In the summer we can use more than 300 units per day - about what we used in the UK in a month!
If we buy a Tesla here - we get free electric charging on public chargers until end of 2019!
Cheers
Steve

 

[Deleted member 126969]

If they are to be a success, then sorting out the charging is going to be the main issue I think. It's all fixable now, the technology required exists for in-road charging as you drive, parking bay charging, intelligent scheduled charging. The only questions are money and the will. With the will, the money will follow.

As I've said before, our existing infrastructure is already almost there, it just needs to be managed. Nobody except the tabloids is expecting the grid to support 20 million cars to be fast charged when they get home from work at 6pm. Wind power is now cheaper than any alternative - something I never thought I'd ever be saying, and more is being put up every day. My hope was always for Fusion, but as ever, it's still ten years away and the way things, are always will be, sadly. Fission has its place, but not mis-managed the way Hinkley Point has been.

I'm doing my own small bit. I had solar PV put in last year, along with a Tesla Powerwall, and even this time of year, when the sun shines, I can get close to 20kWh in a day. We got enough on Monday to run the house until 6am the next day and charge the C350e. A Tesla it ain't, probably only taking about 5kWh to top it up, but it's something.

 

[190]

Our total consumption for past year was 63,524 Units! - average 174 per day!

That must be down to the aircon. Are you sure there isn't a decimal point misplaced ? At Uk Rates that would cost £8500 per year!

 

[Steveml63]

That must be down to the aircon. Are you sure there isn't a decimal point misplaced ? At Uk Rates that would cost £8500 per year!

Hi,
No mistake in the figures - this is the reality of living in a hot country!
Aircon generally accounts for around 70% of electrical consumption in this country.
We pay around £600 per month for electricity and water.
Cheers
Steve

 

[190]

That's the place for electric cars then. You have the sun for solar generation and any extra electricity usage will be dwarfed by the present base load due to aircon.

One downside of high ambient temperatures is batteries don't last. I'll bet you don't get 10 years out of a car battery. I wonder how that will impact on batteries in electric cars.

 

[Steveml63]

That's the place for electric cars then. You have the sun for solar generation and any extra electricity usage will be dwarfed by the present base load due to aircon.

One downside of high ambient temperatures is batteries don't last. I'll bet you don't get 10 years out of a car battery. I wonder how that will impact on batteries in electric cars.

Hi,
Solar only generates about double what it does in the UK - for an equivalent sized system.
The high temperatures really hurts the output of solar PV along with the dust on the panels - that does not get washed off, like it does in the UK.
Our house consumption is 14 times that of a UK house - but the roof is not any bigger!
The battery on our last car (Infiniti G37 coupe) lasted 4 years from new, before it needed to be replaced - so not too bad really.
Tesla’s still have a five year battery warranty here, I believe.
Cheers
Steve