In article ,
Tim S wrote:
Dave Plowman (News) wrote:


Everyone and his dog announce an electric car every few years as 'the
technology is now here' Except that it's not, and is a long way off at
an economic price to replace the IC engine. And of course domestic
electricity isn't taxed unlike road fuels. So if it became the norm
for road use the price advantage would soon disappear.

I don't know. They'd have to apply duty to all electricity then - it's
not like you can stick a chemical marker on the electrons. I suspect
duty on all electricity would be a real vote killer.

Other ways of getting the tax revenue - which believe me they can't afford
to lose. Road pricing is the obvious one and remove direct taxation on
petrol and diesel. At the moment there are so few electric cars it's just
good publicity for the government to allow them to be cheaper to run per
mile. But if they became popular - let alone the norm - things will soon
change.

I was wondering about the 70A charging mentioned earlier too. 63A would
be more convenient as there are plugs and sockets already available at
this rating. In theory the RECs should love this, if the car could be
charged on a timer overnight when other demands are low.

I doubt the existing grid structure could cope with charging every single
vehicle in the country overnight.

I've always suspected that an electric car could kick the nads off IC
engined types.

It depends entirely on how much power you give it - same as an IC engined
one. Or perhaps the land speed record for a wheel driven vehicle is
already held by an electric car? ;-)

Motor and control technology is already pretty polished - problem has
always been with storing enough electricity. Back in the 80's someone
developed a sodium battery that was supposed to be the answer. Then
there were batteries based on aluminium. This one does sound a bit more
hopeful as it is using mainstream technology - the residual problem 1
now being cost - but we've seen many cases where that's sorted itself
out (early mobile phones were not cheap for example).

It's as I said - there's always a new battery technology just round the
corner which will 'solve the problem'. But it ain't arrived yet for
general use. It will when you can store approx the same amount of energy
(adjusted for the higher efficiency of an electric motor) as the average
petrol tank in a reasonable volume, weight and cost.

The trouble is electric car makers and their advocates always quote the
best possible range and best possible performance without making it clear
the two can't happen at the same time. To fool the gullible like dribble,
who already thinks it's possible to exceed 100% efficiency. Now we all
know that driving an IC car hard results in heavier fuel consumption and
of course the same applies to an electric one.

Problem 2 is infrastructure - for this to really take off, you need to
have top up points available, probably at roadside cafes or car parks.
Not insoluble.

If you had an electric vehicle with the same sort of range under real
world driving as an IC one, which can be charged at home, you'd probably
not need many 'filling stations'. They would have to charge for supplying
the facility, so would only be used on long journeys where they'd be
essential.

Cheers

Tim

--
*Dance like nobody's watching.

Dave Plowman London SW
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