Questions about electric cars.

Thank you Esspee. This is a very informative thread.

Rameses

Esspee

M0nica

“Production of a lithium-ion battery for an electric vehicle emits carbon dioxide equivalent to operating a gasoline car for about one or two years depending on where the battery is produced”
“The carbon emission from battery production can be quickly offset once an electric car is in operation, because it has no tailpipe emissions.”

Source Politifact which gives a list of references.

Whilst we're on the subject of lithium, it's worth reading this....

www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/

Interesting article.

China can only dominate markets because it can get away with the pollution that is caused and widespread labour abuses in developing countries. The dont care who they buy from or how or where they pay and the population does not benefit at all.

Esspee

M0nica

“Production of a lithium-ion battery for an electric vehicle emits carbon dioxide equivalent to operating a gasoline car for about one or two years depending on where the battery is produced”
“The carbon emission from battery production can be quickly offset once an electric car is in operation, because it has no tailpipe emissions.”

Source Politifact which gives a list of references.

Whilst we're on the subject of lithium, it's worth reading this....

www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries/

It’s true the energy used to produce EV batteries increase CO2 pollution to get the real benefit we need more green energy. No excuses let’s have a proper green energy policy.

M0nica

“Production of a lithium-ion battery for an electric vehicle emits carbon dioxide equivalent to operating a gasoline car for about one or two years depending on where the battery is produced”
“The carbon emission from battery production can be quickly offset once an electric car is in operation, because it has no tailpipe emissions.”

Source Politifact which gives a list of references.

DD had to research the environmental effects of making an electric car.

Building the cardwas much the same, no matter what fuel it used, but the excess amount of emissions needed to make the battery was the equivalent of driving a petrol engined car aabout 100,000 miles. Plus, of course the hydrocarbons needed to make much of the electricity they will consume for some time ago.

The electric car is very much the solution to the problems of air pollution in cities, all the emissions attributed to these cars and their operation can be relocated away from city streets and if some inner city areas ban anything but electric vehicles from their streets, that seems reasonable, but otherwise electric cars are over-rated. Their day will come, but not yet.

At my age I wouldn't consider an electric car, especially a Tesla. Apart from anything else, I don't want to help Elon Musk take over the world.

They are cheap (to run) now, but wait until the tax man starts to lose too much income from road tax and fuel tax. It will not always be so.

As for their "environmental friendliness" it's worth looking up how the batteries are made, and from what. Then there's the generation of the electricity. Once the additional power required is being generated, the environmental benefits become less (in 2020 there were just under one million UK homes with solar panels). There are around 420,000 electric cars on UK roads currently and almost 33 million petrol or diesel ones.

My petrol car will do me nicely until I pop my clogs, thank you.

Grantanow. We have solar panels which we use to partially charge the car. Thanks to early adoption of solar panels we get a good return from them as we are paid for the power we generate whether we use it or feed it to the grid. Nowadays we can use it in our car as well as household daytime usage. This is a huge saving.
By being an early adopter of electric cars our pod point charger cost under £300 instead of £900 thanks to a couple of grants and we can presently charge the car from the free fast chargers near us. It is only a matter of time until that benefit is removed but we met a Tesla user who had so far done 13,000 miles without paying for the electricity.
If you decided today to order our car today it would cost £6,000 more.
All in all early adoption works.

As with Solar Panels, when early adopters had an incentive scheme FIT at a very high rate, index linked too, they are now benefiting massivel. EVs have also got massive incentives, particularly for company users, as for reliability of the car mine has been great with a range of 240mls, charging during Covid was not always easy because many hotels with chargers were closed, its much better now.

Battery technology seems to be static currently so range is not going to change greatly, but I’ve not found a range problem, newer models also charge more quickly .

Grantanow

Early adoption of new technology is always a mistake in my view. Wait for the problems to get ironed out. Also, something will have to be done about people with no home charging possibility.

Electric cars are far from new. This all reminds me of when solar panels first came out and everyone was "oh no this is all too hard and rubbish and it will never catch on"...

Early adoption of new technology is always a mistake in my view. Wait for the problems to get ironed out. Also, something will have to be done about people with no home charging possibility.

Most (not all) charge points now accept contactless credit card payment now, but you still need to to check which are not working, use Zap Map to do that. Some areas have a shortage of charging points which can make it tricky.

The idea of a plug in hybrid is to charge at home, they are expensive and unless you do all short journeys don’t save much

Your experience Margiknot is why OH went full electric. I can’t see any point in charging up to go 20 miles (if you have to pay for it.)
We expect the 300 mile range to reduce slightly through time. I think anything less than 200 miles would be unworkable for us as we have most of our friends and family within a 200 mile radius.
With newer cars the regeneration is automatic. I don’t think I could cope with choosing the braking power. My trip to my local supermarket shows a net gain. In other words I return with a fuller battery than when I left - which always amuses me. Driving in town is much more fuel efficient than on motorways, something that seemed counter intuitive at first. It is such a steep learning curve.

We have a hybrid ( plug in) which is now 8.5 years old ( we bought it secondhand 5 years ago) . Mitsubishi Outlander. I try to use mostly electric but am grateful for the petrol range. The electric range is now ( the batteries are aging) between 12 miles in winter with the light/ heating nipping up the motorway to work- and about 30 in warm daylight at lower speeds. It is most inefficient at high speeds- indeed we tend to select ‘save electric’ and use the petrol engine for motorway or higher speed travel. It does charge itself as you go downhill or slow down as long as you use the regenerative brakes to slow down. There are paddles on the steering wheel to choose the braking power - level one for recharging down a gentle hill up to level 5 to regenerate on a steep down hill or to slow down quickly.
Charging away from home can be very hit and miss- and often costly. £8 the other day to get ?20 miles of electric range. Often the charge points are out of order, or non electric cars are parked in the way, or a different charging card is required ( there are dozens of different charging clubs and most require membership to use their EV charge points- only very recently have some charge points started to accept credit card payments. There is also the problem of different type of charger points and plugs as others have mentioned, so only some public charger points are suitable for your particular car.

We mostly use the electric range locally, and the petrol engine (with electric in slow traffic)for occasional longer journeys. The petrol engine also cuts in when more power is needed as the electric motors would struggle for instance accelerating on steep uphill.
Difficulties recharging when away from home would make me nervous of changing to a full EV as our only car at this stage but we may eventually change to a small EV for local use and have a bigger family car ( not EV) for longer journeys. My brother has an EV and gets a range of about 200 miles between charges.

Esspee Mostly the car is used as a car, but probably once a month at most we need the big square space. So many modern estate cars have sides that slope inwards and very sloping backs, so you can get one layer of boxes in but cannot get a second laayer on top, but that gripe is not relevant to this thread.

M0nica

*Esspee*, I spoke of engine and battery together. Our need is for a car to have a big square cavernous boot like Volvos used to have. We currently run an elderly SAAB with a similar size boot. We are representative of a goodly number of people who attend shows, whether like us they are at antique fairs, or craft fairs, dog shows etc, where we have our stock neatly packed in to large plastic crates for transit. A number of tradesmen, representatives and specialist salesmen, also use cars like these.

Small of areas of storagelike the 'frunk' you mention and then more odd spaces spread around the car are absolutely no use at all.

Hi Monica, there isn’t an engine in an electric car, at least not in ours. The battery I am told is under the seats. Our boot is much the same size as our previous Peugeot SUV and the back seats fold down to give the same sort of extra space. I would think you need something bigger than that. All the manufacturers seem to be introducing electric models so some may have a very large boot. Perhaps a van would suit you better? The frunk is small but we just put an inflatable kayak in ours and there is room for a life jacket on top.

Karmalady According to OH the hybrids I thought were Teslas weren’t. They were on Tesla chargers so must have had adaptors. Apologies I got it wrong. You will notice I said dual fuel when the term is hybrid.
I truly know next to nothing about cars. Think of them as a way to get from A to B.
The electric cars are quite a revelation to me. We will all have to adapt I suppose but I just glaze over with discussions about charging curves etc.

Esspee

Apologies Karmalady. I assumed the car you were talking about was dual fuel because others with dual fuel Teslas had told us about their experiences.
Tesla chargers are the most expensive we have encountered and they do fine a prohibitive amount if you overstay your time on the charger.

There arent any “dual fuel” Teslas

Esspee, I spoke of engine and battery together. Our need is for a car to have a big square cavernous boot like Volvos used to have. We currently run an elderly SAAB with a similar size boot. We are representative of a goodly number of people who attend shows, whether like us they are at antique fairs, or craft fairs, dog shows etc, where we have our stock neatly packed in to large plastic crates for transit. A number of tradesmen, representatives and specialist salesmen, also use cars like these.

Small of areas of storagelike the 'frunk' you mention and then more odd spaces spread around the car are absolutely no use at all.

Nannarose

Thank you for the information about towing.
Indeed Tesla chargers can only be used by Tesla cars, and that was my point! It is very inefficient to have different systems.

I agree. It is crazy that the government allows different chargers. You can get an adapter cable so you can charge at a Tesla charger but it costs £260. Tesla chargers are the most expensive we have encountered and they fine you for overstaying, quite prohibitive amounts so OH has decided not to buy the adaptor.

ElaineI

Esspee when you charge overnight do you do it every night or just when the charge is running down? Also once it is fully charged does it stop taking the electricity? TIA.

It is recommended that you keep the battery at 20-80% charged. The range of our car is 300 miles so we have only fully charged it when going on a long trip, Glasgow to Manchester so about 200 miles. When we got there we had enough charge for the next few days.
When home we charge it as needed. So far about once a fortnight when we have no long journeys.
My OH likes to take it to a free fast charger when he can. It is most unlikely they will continue to be free but while they are he is taking advantage of them. The drive to Manchester cost nothing and on the way back we topped up the battery free once we crossed the border. While in England we did pay 47p. per kilowatt hour.
OH reckons that to travel the same distance, assuming we were charging at home on the current price cap, it is half the price of petrol. This would apply to everyone on the price cap. If you have a better deal such as economy 7 and charge overnight it would be cheaper still.
We have solar panels so if we charge up during the day we use our generated electricity only topping up with paid electricity.

M0nica

How does the load you are carrying affect range? How much space do the battery and engine take up compared with a petrol or diesel car?

We run a large estate car because one of our hobbies is antiques trading and the car needs to have a really big boot to get all our stock and paraphenalia in and transport us all to a location up to 100 miles away and back. We also have several other journeys we do of a similar kind?

We currently run a big square -rofiled SAAB estate. We have considered a smaller car and a trailer, but have nowhere to park the trailer.

There isn’t an engine, not in fully electric cars. When you lift the bonnet you have another boot (or trunk). The manufacturers refer to this as the frunk. ?
I don’t know the answer to your other question.

Apologies Karmalady. I assumed the car you were talking about was dual fuel because others with dual fuel Teslas had told us about their experiences.
Tesla chargers are the most expensive we have encountered and they do fine a prohibitive amount if you overstay your time on the charger.

I’m still a little concerned about topping up, but the model of car I had before is no longer available in diesel, and the choice was very limited.
I’m pleased I’ve made the change, but still a little apprehensive.

Esspee when you charge overnight do you do it every night or just when the charge is running down? Also once it is fully charged does it stop taking the electricity? TIA.