Electric cars

It’s amazing what nonsense people will write/believe in order to support their prejudices against EVs.

The conventional Peugeot 2008 weighs 1247kg. Our e2008 weighs 1627kg.
Hardly going to demolish car parks is it?
This is a zombie thread but obviously the same old rubbish is still being churned out.
Does anyone ever pause to wonder what powerful lobby might have a vested interest in horror stories about electric cars?

That is quite simply not true a Tesla Model 3 battery weighs 530kg a Model X 600kg

The weight of the largest Tesla Model X is 2400kg, the same as an Audi Q7 Diesel, a Range Rover is a lot heavier than either.
The fact is that ALL cars are getting heavier, buyers want ever more comfort, space, features and safety. We have a classic MG Midget that we take out on sunny days, just to remind us of the “good old days” probably weighs about 700kg

I’m sure engineers need to take that into account but it is not just EVs that contribute.

As a scientist I was just pondering the terrible and destructive effects on a person or other vehicle collision with an ev. Force depends on momentum and speed

force= mass x (velocity/time)

gearbox and no fuel tank is not equivalent to the very dense and extremely heavy batteries. A tesla battery weighs approximately a ton and a nissan leaf battery half a ton

blog.evbox.com/uk-en/ev-battery-weight

The institute of civil engineers is to be relied on for facts

Tricoteuse

The latest issue I have read about is the weight of EVs. As they are much heavier than conventional cars there is concern as to just how many can be parked in multi storey carparks without causing serious structural damage.

They probably are heavier than the equivalent diesel car but not much, motors are light and although batteries are heavy you don’t have engine, gearbox or fuel tank.

there will soon be a limit on the number of electric cars being allowed to park on the above- ground tiers of multi storey car parks which were were built for normal weight cars. EVs are extremely heavy and could cause collapse the car parks

www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/rise-in-evs-could-have-implications-for-car-park-structures-04-04-2023/

The danger of joining in an old thread is that you are in danger of repeating yourself. And I have.

The latest issue I have read about is the weight of EVs. As they are much heavier than conventional cars there is concern as to just how many can be parked in multi storey carparks without causing serious structural damage.

The range of EVs has improved over the last few years. My DS2 was an 'early adopter' with a Nissan Leaf which was used as a second car, mainly around the locality and charged at home. Now the family-sized petrol driven Mazda has been replaced with a Tesla, with approximately three times the range of the Nissan. There is an inevitability about this and it seems that non-believers will sooner or later find that they have no option but to acquire an EV.

Lots of luddites here EV are the same size and shape as any other, the battery is under the floor. Some cheaper cars have a range of around 150 miles fine for local use as a second car, you charge at home and it costs peanuts. Most have a range of 200-300 miles, many will charge in 30mins but that’s not needed often, OH has a Jaguar IPace EV we charged away from home 4 times last year.
EVs are not silent at low speed they emit a wirring sound probably louder than others, they are the future so get used to it, last year 30% of new cars were EVs, many of the rest were hybrid.

The scenario that concerns me as we move towards all electric vehicles is when we have extremely cold snowy weather and miles and miles of vehicles are trapped at night on a frozen motorway. One by one the cars will run out of power as the occupants try to stay warm. How on earth is that situation resolved?

M0nica

The range of electric cars is very small. Ideal in towns where there are pollution problems, but not suitable for longer journeys. From what I have seen of the hybrid cars, the battery means they have reduced luggage space.

We have said that when my car dies we will get an electric car, but the amount of energy embedded in acquiring the raw materials and building the electric car needs to be taken into account in working out their efficiency so, currently it is probably more energy efficient to keep my 13 year old, light use car on the road.

Do not forget the emissions from the power stations making the electricity and energy embedded in the wind turbines and solar arrays.

This is outdated I’m afraid. Teslas will do 350 miles and most new cheaper models do at least 200-250. The boot space on my 2018 Nissan Leaf EV is the same as a petrol car. The nonsense about materials and energy is no different from a non-electric car. Maintenance is far cheaper (less to go wrong) and running costs are obviously tiny.

My son is on his third electric car, a company car. The latest is a Tesla. There is no dashboard or buttons or switches, but what looks like a large ipad screen. His journey to work takes 1.5 hours. He charges it from power in his garage and when he gets to work. He seems very pleased with it. It is scarily silent.

I do worry about the mining of lithium for batteries. It seems the environmental costs of producing batteries outweighs the advantages of driving an electric vehicle.

My 12 year old car has only done 41000 miles so I am hanging on to it but I am considering a hybrid when I do change.

We have a Honda hybrid, and it is a dream to drive. It has all the safety features that you would expect in a honda and is extremely economic to run. In our case about £45 every six weeks. We use the car every day although only locally, and drive from top to bottom of the U.K. on our holidays.

Our son owns a fully electric car, and is on his second one. He would never return to the combustion engine. He had an electric point put onto his drive quite a number of years ago, and has solar panelling. He also drives a good few miles if he holidays in the U.K. and has never apparently had any difficulty. His current car does over 300 miles to a full charge.

There was a long thread on mumsnet about this recently. Many drivers loved their EVs but admitted they were a lot less efficient in cold weather when heating the car used up battery power quickly. I believe conventional petrol cars will still be with us for my lifetime.

There are few charging points where I live in the SW sticks and I don't have a drive so could not charge at home. My present petrol car is 17 years old with only 85,000 miles on the clock. It passes the MOT easily. Electric cars, pure and hybrid, are expensive to buy.

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Check that you can change a flat. Some do not have jacks or jacking points due to the weight of the car and battery. A relative was unable to call the AA etc as they do not deal with this and a garage charged a small fortune.

Wait 'till the public catch on to the horrendous damage that lithium mining is doing to the environment.
For those that don't know what lithium is: it's the heavy metal that goes into batteries.
As Elegran said: the only way is hydro.

I'm going to go against Jacob vanWagoner on this one.
I think its a long ways to go before electric cars become mainstream - more than 50% of new car sales.

My DS and DiL have an electric car but not for long trips. For that they have a conventional petrol-driven car. The electric car is a bit like a dodgem! It is automatic and very quiet. One danger is that you can't hear it coming so an unwary pedestrian is at risk. It's charged on the driveway by a lead from inside the garage.

An electric car is an automobile that is propelled by one or more electric motors, using energy stored in rechargeable batteries. The first practical electric cars were produced in the 1880s.

The problem is that even if recharging points are readily available, it takes time to recharge an electric car, possible an hour or more.

On a long journey who wants to have to stop for an hour to charge their battery and imagine the scene at busy times when all the chargers at a motorway service station are occupied and queues are building. It could take 4 or 5 hours to charge a car, most of that time just waiting for a vacant charge point. On a 4 hour journey (which we do regularly) it could double our journey time.

People used to carry fuel with them when cars first became a thing. A bit scary in the event of a crash!

I don't know how they'll overcome problems such as people living in tower blocks or in densely populated aand rural areas. We don't even have mains gas here, let alone fast fibre broadband so it'll be a long time before there's a network for EV.