All Electric Cars

[ajrobb]

Toyota Prius use an electric heater in the coolant circuit to heat the system when the car is on the electric motor.

I cant remember the size of the heating element.

They must have changed since 2007; my Prius runs the engine if I want heat quickly. Once the engine is warm, it can use hot water with the engine off for a while. Learn to leave the heat off for the first few miles or at least turn it off when idle (or switch to electric vehicle mode).

In the case of an all electric vehicle, I'd have thought running the A/C backwards as an air-to-air heat pump would do it.

 

[Peter.N.]

Very true John, my Hdi 406 has an auxillary diesel fired heater which heats the water directly before the it enters the heater, it's magic I get heat after about 200 yards and a lot of heat before the temp gauge has moved off the stop - and it still manages 50 mpg . Did I mention I was pleased with it

Peter

 

[Donkmeister]

Another problem is how long does it take to charge the damn thing up. Substantially more than a petrol fill up. And aall of these disadvantages for £20,000 subsidised.

Why would you drive it to a filling station to plug it in for several hours when you've got perfectly good electric at home?

The Leaf has a range of ~80 miles, but only a nutter would plan to drive it 80 miles every day without a charge, so let's assume you drive a 50 mile round trip to work each day.

Petrol is currently nearing £6 a gallon, and a typical car does 40mpg - so, that's £7.50 of petrol a day... They reckon a Nissan Leaf uses 2.5p/mile of electricity (not sure what assumptions they make there though!), so that would be £1.25 for the 50 mile round trip. Even if you're comparing it to a super-efficient-ultra-frugal diesel that gets you 60-70mpg, you're still saving £4 a day on fuel.

For an effective after-tax payrise of £1500 a year, I would be more than happy to plug my car in each night after parking it on the drive. If you can afford to pay £20K for a car then you're almost certainly paying 40% tax, so in reality you are taking a £2,500 payrise.

Only problem with this argument... it assumes you don't expect to drive the car too far each day, or do it with any sort of performance. Plus, the connector is under the front cover, so you'd have to reverse off your drive.

 

[ladylola]

in reality you are taking a £2,500 payrise.

Of course there's also no road tax which is a further saving over the life of the car, although I'm sure if we all had electric cars that would change

the connector is under the front cover, so you'd have to reverse off your drive.

The position of the plug hadn't occured to me , but then don't most cars have their filler caps on the offside?

 

[Mursal]

Probably because the car was originally left-hand drive

 

[gblades]

I wonder what the life of a set of batteries is. Smart phones which people typically charge every day show noticeable lower battery life after a couple of years. I bet a new set of batteries for an electric car is not cheap.

 

[Burnerman]

Obviously the batteries will have some degree of shelf life, which is why the car owner will actually rent the things, just to make life easier
I'm wondering how much in the way there are in government incentives to develop these things - a'la wind turbine installations etc.
Curiously I was doing an emissions analysis on a 2002 Micra last week. The gas that came out of the tail pipe was actually cleaner than the air that went in.....granted the atmosphere in the workshop was a bit of a fug but there we are.
I'll stick with the modern diesels..... 1500cc, 65 mpg, 86 BHP, £32 quid a year road tax. The planet will be fine.
John

 

[Mursal]

Some of the Toyota's over here had their batteries changed before the customer took delivery.

5K was mentioned

 

[Avocet]

The Lithium Ion batteries that most of them use are spectacularly expensive and yes, they do deteriorate with time. Figures of around 1.5% per year are bandied about the industry. Just like laptop and phone batteries don't last as long between charges as they get older, electric car batteries suffer from the same problem. If I was going for an electric car (and I admit they have many advantages), I'd want one where the battery was leased rather than one where I owned the battery. Among the other advantages of a pure electric car are running costs - particularly with age. Just think, never pay for another cam belt or exhaust. Never pay for another clutch or oil change...

On the other hand, I don't fancy the idea of a battery that after 5 years, might only have about 2/3 of the range it had when new. The economics of second-hand battery-electric vehicles will be very interesting because unless the price of a battery falls dramatically, people will be spending almost half the value of the car on a battery.

 

[big-all]

On the other hand, I don't fancy the idea of a battery that after 5 years, might only have about 2/3 of the range it had when new. The economics of second-hand battery-electric vehicles will be very interesting because unless the price of a battery falls dramatically, people will be spending almost half the value of the car on a battery.

surely that would come under maintainance where the poorest 5% off cells would be changed every year keeping perhaps 95% off peak performance over the year ??

 

[gblades]

1.5% per year seems extremely optimistic to me. For a device that requires charging every day then 50% capacity after 3 years is not uncommon. For an electric car which has a much greater battery drain even with batteries which are designed for that enviroment I would not be surprised if the usable capacity drops by about 50% in 5 years.
Even if you lease or rent the batteries the cost will be associated with their normal lifespan and replacement cost so you wont be paying general servicing costs but the rental of the batteries means you are no better off.

 

[digdilem]

Interesting, this thing about heaters and more efficient cars.

My vauxhall combo van takes about 10 miles minutes to start chucking out heat, that's a 1.3l turbo diesel.

My 4.0l petrol Jeep takes about five yards!

 

[Avocet]

Yes, when I was a student (25 years ago now!) we had thermodynamics lecturers who lauged at the notion that one day, internal combustion engines would be so efficient that we'd struggle to get enough waste heat out of them to work the heater! Now most modern diesels have a combustion heater to help "top up" the heat in the cooling system!

 

[Avocet]

On the other hand, I don't fancy the idea of a battery that after 5 years, might only have about 2/3 of the range it had when new. The economics of second-hand battery-electric vehicles will be very interesting because unless the price of a battery falls dramatically, people will be spending almost half the value of the car on a battery.

surely that would come under maintainance where the poorest 5% off cells would be changed every year keeping perhaps 95% off peak performance over the year ??

Hadn't really thought about it, but that would make sense, I guess. A single duff cell can trash a battery pack, so I suppose the "annual service" would be more to do with checking the health of the cells and replacing the weaker ones as you suggest.

 

[Avocet]

1.5% per year seems extremely optimistic to me. For a device that requires charging every day then 50% capacity after 3 years is not uncommon. For an electric car which has a much greater battery drain even with batteries which are designed for that enviroment I would not be surprised if the usable capacity drops by about 50% in 5 years.
Even if you lease or rent the batteries the cost will be associated with their normal lifespan and replacement cost so you wont be paying general servicing costs but the rental of the batteries means you are no better off.

Not sure they're THAT bad? My laptop is over 4 years old now and still has about 2/3 of the battery life that it had when new. The 1.5% that I've seen quoted is a "compound" figure, so after the first year (if it had a range of 100 miles when new) it would be 98.5 miles, but after the second year, it would loose another 1.5% off its 98.5 miles (and so on).