Electric Cars - battery swop idea

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Betsy Og

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Wasnt there a plan to drive in and swap your battery??, would solve the problem of having to wait hours (say you're on a long trip and need to keep moving). Maybe test the efficiency of your battery and give you an equivalent quality one (but already charged).

They should get rid of the "rent your battery" idea, sure you might as well be buying diesel as "renting" a batter from Renault or whoever for €100pm.

Looking forward to owning one in due course - though with a 15 mile commute (25 to 30 mins) from a rural to a fairly non choked urban area I'm probably not a classic case for it.
 
Stupid Green Party as usual, do they realise there is life outside Dublin. How long is it going to take to go from Cork/Kerry to Dublin in one of these things, a few days?
As usual Ireland tries to be overly smart and puts the cart before the horse with these pie in the sky cars. Surely it'd be more in their line to put a petrol station for real cars anywhere between Galway and Dublin than a few pointless charge points in Dublin city centre that can only charge one car every four hours or so.

Tesla testing on Top Gear anyone?

End rant
 
Any such battery is unlikely to be practical to replace due to weight and effort required to replace, not to mention different manufacturers using different formats. I don't see that being a viable option.
 
Thats fairly impressive alright. The track is only 20Kms long, so it would run out of charge after 3 or 4 laps then :D

Ah yeah though I really makes my blood boil when government are off doing this thinking they are great and cant service the existing needs of drivers.
 
oh dear, such negativity of a fine day !!

Is it not beyond the realms of possibility that manufacturers could decide on a standard replaceable battery that clicks in and out. Ok with the weight involved it might need to be winched in and out by an attendant (avoiding 'Little old lady crushed by battery' headlines). But remember the replacement would only be needed occasionally for long trips, 90% of the time you get home and recharge.

The top speed on the ones launched the other day is something like 160kph and, apparently, theres good torque in the engine (i.e. you plant the boot and it accelerates quickly). Now I'm sure if you drive it like a racecar you'll run the battery down quicker, and I dont think they'll ever be the chosen mode of a boy racer, but for sensible types they could be good.

Have they been dubbed "hairdryers" yet or am I first with this disparaging title :)
 
username123 said:
Stupid Green Party as usual, do they realise there is life outside Dublin. How long is it going to take to go from Cork/Kerry to Dublin in one of these things, a few days?
As usual Ireland tries to be overly smart and puts the cart before the horse with these pie in the sky cars. Surely it'd be more in their line to put a petrol station for real cars anywhere between Galway and Dublin than a few pointless charge points in Dublin city centre that can only charge one car every four hours or so.

Tesla testing on Top Gear anyone?

End rant
Click to expand...

Electric cars are not really intended for long journeys and the expectation is at the minute is that the people who buy them are those who will not be driving from Dublin to Kerry but who need a car to potter around town. I live in a country town, my aunt live 5 miles outside of it, she drives to mass, in and out to town twice/3 times a week and rarely does more then 50 miles a week, she's the ideal candidate for an electric car and the points are not simply only going to be installed in Dublin.

We also need to look long term, who's to say in 5 years time the technology won't have moved on so that an electric battery will get you from Kerry to Dublin?. It's like any new technology, once companies see there is money to be made, they're more likely to invest in improving it
 
I am not too confident on the way batteries will progress as a technology. Laptop batteries still only last a few hours and progressively get worse over time. Laptops have been around a long time now.
 
Betsy Og said:
... and, apparently, theres good torque in the engine (i.e. you plant the boot and it accelerates quickly). ...
Click to expand...
Quick physics thing. With electric motors you always get maximum torque (twisting ability), irrespective of the revolutions of the engine, unlike with ICEs where torque increases with engine speed and then begins to tail off even if engine speed increases. Torque is what allows an engine to turn the road wheels at a low engine speed in a high gear without stalling; diesels tend to be better at this than petrol engines. So a "torquey" engine has greater in-gear flexibility; there is no need to change up and down the gear-box in order to effect (or reflect) changes in road-speed. Electric motors (generally) have two gears; forward and reverse.
 
Mpsox said:
Electric cars are not really intended for long journeys and the expectation is at the minute is that the people who buy them are those who will not be driving from Dublin to Kerry but who need a car to potter around town. I live in a country town, my aunt live 5 miles outside of it, she drives to mass, in and out to town twice/3 times a week and rarely does more then 50 miles a week, she's the ideal candidate for an electric car and the points are not simply only going to be installed in Dublin.
Click to expand...

Then your aunt will be quite alot out of pocket! The minister admitted that you'd need to be doing over 12K miles per year to get any saving, due to cost of car and battery being higher than a regular car.
 
Well,

Mr Cullen and Nissan / Renault appear to have got the contract for electric car provision here during this initial period? The Nissan Leaf ( Nissan owned by Renault )

[broken link removed]

"Nissan’s all electric car, the Leaf is set to retail for around 4 million yen-equivalent to around £28,000."

Thats the UK Price which doesnt have VRT or equivalent? Translates to €31688. Thats a direct currency exchange, but as we know we usually get a few 1000 special Irish hike for crossing the Irish Sea. So say optimistically, €33000 here? From this take off the €5000 grant, that gives us €28000 for one of these babys.

I think I will buy two :D

Bobalong

PS - WUH HOOWW, maybe I was being too optimistic price wise:

[broken link removed]

"Nissan's Leaf electric car, some of which will be built in Europe, will go on sale in Japan in December with a starting price of about €45,000."
 
[broken link removed]

Under the VERDICT section further down:

"According to our ownership analysis, it would take 12 years for a Mitsubishi i-MiEV owner to recoup his/her initial outlay when compared to a similar petrol engine car through the savings that can be made by charging a car rather than filling a tank. With most of us still reeling from the global recession and struggling to make ends meet, savings need to be made now rather than in the long term and even additional savings through government incentives and freedom from congestion charges may not fail to sway all but the most environmentally conscious drivers."

And from a comment further down:

"Here in England [ I assume same here in Ireland ] the price will be significantly higher until Sunderland starts cranking out right-hand drive Leaves in 2013."

Bobalong
 
Isnt it also about time that car engines have a clock that measure hours done (like tractors) rather than miles. Us country bumpkins are penalised for actually moving while the engine is running, while the city slicker engine runs for an hour to go 4 miles.

Would I be right in thinking that an electric car wont be "running" while stopped in traffic, so use will only be actual time in motion, which will allow good battery life.

re below and an electic motor being either in fwd or reverse, does that mean no gears in these new cars?, didnt hear that. Could affect learners re the restricted licence if the car is, effectively, automatic.
 
[broken link removed]

"EVs pollute and that’s proved. Production of lithium-ion batteries is pollution-intensive and for recharging the batteries we need electricity which is mostly generated from coal and in gas-fired power plants, emitting massive green house gases. And if we compare the emission done while producing that extra electricity for recharging car batteries against the savings from burning less gasoline, it will be at least equivalent, if not more."

AND

Electric cars will not cure environmental woes:
[broken link removed]
 
Thats one thing that annoys me, theres always some "zero sum" merchant - i.e. a person who claims that, taking all things together under the sun this [whatever it is] will make no difference.

Now I dont even really buy into the whole global warming thing (in case anyone things I'm a green evangalist) but a few points:

  1. Better to have emmissions in a controlled industrial environment than belching out on pedestrians and the general public (I'm 100% for cleaner breathable air). Let 'em spend the money to deal with it at a few sources rather than in millions of vehicles which emit uncontrollably.
  2. Power plants need to run all the time, they dont fire them up at 6am and shut them at 10pm. So there's power wasted overnight, therefore having cars charging overnight (which most will be as no doubt they will be incentivised to do so) doesnt necessarily require more electricity or emmissions than currently.
  3. Ireland has a growing amount of wind power which is clean, again its "wasted" overnight. The whole emphasis of that plan (whatever its merits) about using glacial valleys to store water for hydro projects was that wind power is wasted overnight so use it to pump water up and then release it at peak periods during the day.
  4. A general point that I always get comfort from "The stone age didnt end because the world ran out of stones" - i.e. we will think of ways of replacing oil, this is just the start of it, batteries will improve, someone will develop a 'bumper car' overhead grid to continuously recharge a car on a motorway (i.e. drive in this lane for 30 mins for a full recharge) etc. etc., people just need a bit of imagination.
 
Betsy Og,

I would generally concur - other technologies OR far more improved battery technologies will turn up in time. However I think the big Electric Car drive here is happening NOW for only one reason and a wrong one too - the Greens are in power and trying to get all things green done NOW and fast while they are in power.

THIS does not mean however that this is the best time to be diving full into this whole electric car thing, I think IT IS STILL TOO SOON. I get the feeling in my gut that this could become a sort of E Voting Machines venture, this time courtesy of the Greens.

Bobalong
 
Why do we need to even replace the entire car with an electric one?
Why can't we just replace the engine?

The body of my 13 year old car is fine, with no rust. Why should I dump this, when all I need is a new electric engine? It all sounds very wasteful and terrible for the environment.
 
If we all used cars for a lot longer (ie, 15-20 years rather than a rough average of 5-10) then the energy consumption of the car industry and resulting pollution from cradle-to-grave of each car would be a lot less.

Think about it.
 
battery issues aside I think electric cars are suposed to take hardly any maintenance, so maybe they will be more reliable in the long term and run for 20 years. I suppose the body and the interior will become dowdy but if the engine was trusty then there should be a market for them (the main problem with existing old cars isnt so much the look or them but the fact that you have to keep repairing them, they're hard on fuel, and there's always the chance they'll let you down).
 
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