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Cars (all fuels and electric)

There is a commercial advantage to wind and solar power over nuclear in many countries
It is like the difference between buying a Cirrus Jet and a Dreamliner. More companies and even individuals can and will go out and buy the corporate jet wheras only large companies specialising in air transport can afford the Dreamliner.
Nuclear power stations cost a great deal of money, will take several years to start to make a return and 20 to 25 years to get anywhere near getting your money back. And that isn’t guaranteed, much depends on how the political scene changes during those years. Not many companies can afford the risk.

France

- They are quieter to drive (ICE luxury car quietness right down to the cheapest, most basic electric car)

True.

- They are faster and more fun to drive (particularly acceleration which is what is the most “fun” factor of driving fast).

True.

- Fuel costs is much cheaper than ICE

Only if you can home charge. Also for a long trip you will need a fast charger, etc…

- Fuel potentially available from your home solar panels if you live somewhere sunny

Have to be extremely sunny, like… on the sunny side of Mercury

- They require much less maintenance

That one is completely unproven. You may be right but – I work right above a service station which has EV parts spread all over the floor – I doubt it. For 100% sure EVs will be a dealer-only-service proposition for a very long time. Of course you should be right, but that’s how business thinks

- They (should) be more reliable than ICE as they have much fewer moving parts and don’t operate with such a temperature gradient

That one is completely unproven too. Sure, the motor itself should be OK, but take a look at the tens of kg of electronic control gear. EVs are today basically where the Vauxhall Viva was in terms of development of reliable components and systems. Tesla cars have loads of bits breaking; in fact Tesla QA is nothing like say VW.

WORLD average. Peter, if you can take the time…

Sorry – was this for me? I don’t understand. I fix typos in thread headings, when I get time, but not within posts. We get ~100 posts a day.

There is a commercial advantage to wind and solar power over nuclear in many countries

Yes – called a s-u-b-s-i-d-y Nuclear is still a dirty word in most places, even though on any rational assessment it is the safest way to generate the base load. For example the UK is 60-80GW and you have basically two options for most of it: fossil or nuclear.

and 20 to 25 years to get anywhere near getting your money back. And that isn’t guaranteed, much depends on how the political scene changes during those years. Not many companies can afford the risk.

Indeed – the govt (the wonderful intelligent non-corrupt leaders we vote for in elections) are supposed to deal with this. Private industry will do it only if they are guaranteed a min price per kWh, plus a load of guarantees to ensure they can only ever make a load of money. See the UK and China+EDF; what a crazy idea. But as my Nobel prize nomination shows, the odds can only go one way: in your favour

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

@dublinpilot

They’re only quieter at very slow speeds. At any non-trivial speed the dominant factor is tyre roar and the noise of the air over the structure (for those inside).

More fun is a matter of personal taste. I like ICEs because they feel visceral, alive. Eyeball-distorting acceleration doesn’t do anything for me, and I find that EVs feel dead, soulless. But then I’m an odd sort who prefers the throttle feel of a carburettor over an injected engine.

Fuel costs – maybe now, not when they become mainstream. Most petrol/diesel cost is tax, and governments won’t give up that revenue. Eventually your electric car running costs will tend towards what an ICE costs, either via more tax on electricity or road pricing. Fuel/running costs are in any case insignificant compared to the enormous capital cost of EVs, augmented by the short lifespan and lack of functioning second-hand market.

Reliability – modern ICE vehicles are highly reliable. Not a problem that needs solving.

I’ve seen this odd point about the now apparently-nightmarish experience of filling stations before. Not sure where, probably not here. I think it’s pretty standard when evangelising something to pick some ‘problem’ that it solves and blow it out of all proportion, to act as though it’s the nightmare blighting all of our lives. Yes the automatic refill of an EV at home overnight is great, but unless you only drive within the range then you need some sort of away-from-home charging solution, which starts to look remarkably like a filling station except that you need to spend much longer there with a significant chance of having to wait your turn. I find it amazing that you consider filling stations so unpleasant that you’d spend a significant five-figure sum on an EV just to avoid ever going to one, but each to their own. Filling the car up is not how I’d choose to spend my time either, but faced with this 10 minute experience (about once a month for me) or spending £30k+ to make it go away I’m going to keep the money.

EGLM & EGTN

My idea of a fun car to drive weighs about 1500 lbs. Not changing speed is a whole lot more fun than changing speed. EVs have all the driving excitement of a Toyota Camry with the residual excitement removed.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 11 Aug 15:03

Does anyone have an estimate of how much power aircon uses?

Someone is now driving an EV from Wales back to near Brighton, and has turned off aircon to be able to make the distance. In this heat – probably +35C on a tarmac road – this is pretty bad.

I reckon a normal car at 50mph needs about 30kW. A google on aircon suggests anything from 1kW to 10kW depending on various factors. I would have expected about 3kW.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Graham wrote:

I’ve seen this odd point about the now apparently-nightmarish experience of filling stations before.

I wouldn’t call it a nightmare but it is by a country mile my least favorite shopping activity.

Andreas IOM

Graham wrote:

Fuel costs – maybe now, not when they become mainstream. Most petrol/diesel cost is tax, and governments won’t give up that revenue.

Especially given the costs to maintain the roads. The Isle of Man has already floated the idea of weight-based car tax bands, which made people howl with protest (and given it was election year, I think it got quietly dropped – my Dad would have loved it – his rotary powered Mazda would have fallen into a “medium car” tax band and the car tax would have fallen dramatically!)

Just today someone was whingeing on one of the DoI’s facebook posts (about some road repairs being carried out by a company brought across from the UK) – “the DoI used to do it all with their internal teams” – well, yes, 30 years ago cars weighed a lot less, there were fewer of them, people didn’t have incurable cases of “car brain” (driving 1 mile in nice sunny weather when they could easily walk it). Road wear goes up something like the 4th power of axle load, so when people get a penchant for driving Chelsea tractors (huge SUVs) and Teslas which are immensely heavy, the DoI can no longer keep up with road damage with just their own in-house repair team and have to hire from across. Not only are there more cars being driven on more journeys, they are on average twice the weight of what they were (in other words, 16 times the road damage).

They re-laid the road by my house just 10 years ago – in the past the kind of work they did would have been expected to last at least 30 years (they dug right down and replaced it down to the foundation, not just a skim of new asphalt). But in just 10 years it’s rutted on the nearside and had to be repaired once due to the accelerated levels of wear caused by excessively heavy cars being driven excessively often.

The idea of going to weight based car tax bands was a really good one, it’s a shame it was never followed through (although they did lower the motorcycle tax).

Last Edited by alioth at 11 Aug 15:26
Andreas IOM

It would be great if they’d lower the annual road tax on motorcycles here, but the trend is the opposite. I pay a total of $1300 for nine motorcycles, which is three times what it was 5 years ago. One of those motorcycles hasn’t turned a wheel in the state since 1998 and most of the rest do minimal mileage – I can’t ride them all at once.

The 5 minute hassle of refueling a car is a desperate defense for EVs. It’s nothing in comparison with the hassle of taking two days to get somewhere that would otherwise take a day, driving and sitting where you don’t want to go to recharge, staying in a few hotels based on their EV charging capability and so on.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 11 Aug 15:43

Peter wrote:

For 100% sure EVs will be a dealer-only-service proposition for a very long time.

That’s not the case in my home town for Kia, at least…

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Peter wrote:

I reckon a normal car at 50mph needs about 30kW

That much? A steady 50mph cruise uses a pretty tiny proportion of maximum power – in an ICE-powered car one is feathering the gas pedal to maintain that speed, and max power is of course foot on the floor and rpm close to the redline.

EGLM & EGTN
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