Green cars - All Comments

re: Welcome to the electric future

hyf — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:20:33 GMT

When ever Electric cars are mentioned they say they emit zero emissions. This is not strictly true as everytime one charges, more emissions are being produced by the power stations. I would like to know what are the true emissions of these vehicles. The rates of emission produced by each model should be quoted as for a conventional vehicle.

Also where is all this power going to come from? Certainly wind farms are not going to produce enough!!

re: The great congestion charge debate

VieT Bwoii — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:56:11 GMT

I actually own a "ford Fiesta Econetic". My car's shows on paper that it achieves around 76mpg, but normally i achieve an average 60mpg. I think that it is not fair beacuse my car only emmits 98g/km of CO2, whereas the lexus hybrid enmits more than double my car and gets free congestion charge. This is all because of "Borris Johnson" who says that hybrid cars are green. To be honest, hybrid cars aren't green at all, yesterday i saw the new "toyota hybrid" which emmits 87g/km of CO2, but then i saw that car release smoke out of it's exaust, this is because that it has a 1.8 litre engine. My car in the cold snow does not release any kind of white smoke because it emmits so little pollution whereas the hybrid cars emmit more. Hybrid car's are rubbish because of their CVT gearbox.

re: Shock horror - electric power has character

Z131 — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 01:55:37 GMT

;)

re: Renault makes electric cars look easy

Dave Ryan — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:59:55 GMT

I do wonder whether Steve might have a point about the lack of gears. As the electric motors are revving up to 13,000rpm in some prototypes - with the requisite high power drain this will bring - I wonder whether the removal of gears owing to the abundance of torque is the right approach. You could instead install longer gear ratios which a petrol engine might struggle with, but which an electric motor could easily adopt and thereby increase range by a significant amount. The only issue I can see is working out how to ensure smooth enough gearchanges owing to the seamless delivery that ordinary bloke points out. Perhaps something like VW's DSG box would be suitable or similar sequential boxes.

The real question, though, is have I missed something blindingly obvious which would stop this working?

re: Renault makes electric cars look easy

ordinary bloke — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:30:06 GMT

These cars are definitely indicative of the way forward. If politicians can resist the temptation to meddle (not much hope of that in reality) then the manufacturers and energy suppliers should be allowed to get on with it and work out the best way of setting up the infrastructure and technology behind the battery packs etc. I'm surprised to read Steve say that he misses the gearchange aspect of driving - the CVT is the way forward with all its benefits of smooth fast take-up of power, its particularly suited to the seamless delivery of electric power. Well done Renault, I say.

re: Renault makes electric cars look easy

tonym911 — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:45:37 GMT

Given that there's nothing new under the sun, is anyone looking into the potential of clockwork as a green, infinitely re-usable slow-release hybrid energy source? Mainspring lying flat under the floor (= low c of g = good handling), get a wind-up on garage forecourts or do it yourself at home, auto-engagement of clockwork drive once you've reached motorway cruising speed. Different spring densities/tensions for sports, touring etc. Cassette-style installation for easy spring switchovers.

re: Renault makes electric cars look easy

Bristolbluemanc — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:45:36 GMT

Human ingenuity if given the chance knows no bounds. What will slow this development will be (not necessarily in this order)

1. Politicians and Bureaucrats who will want regulations and taxes.

2. The attitude expressed by Steve (and others) above where he says perhaps he's defeatist. Yep, that's right always think of the reasons why you shouldn't do something.

3. Pressure groups such as the Oil companies and Environmentalists - the former because it will affect their revenue and latter because they are Luddites.

What we need to understand is that in 50 years time the World will be a very different place - just compare our world with that which was reported in say 1900. There will be technological advances beyond our wildest dreams and motoring/travelling will be just another area in which one will see this. I'll not be here to see it but I do know that time only goes forwards and that means enormous changes to come (the rate of change appears to my old brain to be getting faster and faster|).

re: Welcome to the electric future

superstevie — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 17:29:22 GMT

as someone who drives a lot of miles for a living (around 35k a year) battery tech would need to get substantial better before my work could even consider it. its all fair enough stopping for a coffee and a charge for 20 mins, if your not in any rush. Having to do this every 100 miles or so would be completely impractical for a lot of people, assuming thats how much mileage you would get from a 20 min charge!

And then there is the problem of charging your car when you live in a flat. In Edinburgh where I live, most of the properties are flats, with a lot of on street parking. Are they really going to install a charging point at every space?

re: Welcome to the electric future

chandrew — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:01:12 GMT

NiallOswald,

No, for many power plants like coal it's not economical to switch them on/off as it takes a long time to get up to operating temperature so they continue to produce electricity that (unless there is a storage mechanism like extensive wide-scale batteries or hydro pumped-storage) the electricity effectively goes to waste. A fascinating aspect is that consumers could buy electricity at cheap times (night) and sell it back to the grid at expensive times with their car batteries acting as the storage mechanism. Obviously this depends on more market-orientated real-time pricing.

re: Welcome to the electric future

Uncle Mellow — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:18:19 GMT

Some folk don't realise that the Tesla is American and the Americans dont do kilograms... god bless them

the rest of us can just divide by 2.2 and that doesn't need a calculator.

Anyway Chas , if this is the electric future , you're welcome to it. I'll stick with what passes these days for premium petrol.

re: Welcome to the electric future

Ruined — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:43:54 GMT

"400-500lbs, rather than the sports car’s current 1100lb battery pack."

Can we have that in kg please?

re: Welcome to the electric future

NiallOswald — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:32:48 GMT

"excess electricity that’s produced during the night with nowhere to go"

What you mean to say is "unused generating capacity during the night".

re: Welcome to the electric future

beachland2 — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:45:21 GMT

you convert $ to £ but not lb to kgs. i'm not that young but since the 70's schools taught metric measures. give it up, bring on the kg please.

re: Welcome to the electric future

sirwilliam — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:18:03 GMT

Good blog... I agree when you say "No-one doubts though that lithium ion is the way to go", but the real key to all this technology is the actual variation on lithium ion.

For example, Lithium Cobalt Oxide batteries (the ones in most laptops and mobile phones) are indeed lithium ion batteries, but they have proved to be incredibly unsafe in some scenarios (temperature and pressure related mainly).

However, Lithium Phosphate technologies - also a member of the lithium ion family - have proved much more stable (see here for great video from Valence Technology: www.youtube.com/watch).

Our battery literacy has to improve to fully understand and communicate these subtle but important differences to the public.

re: Welcome to the electric future

MrNorthToYou — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:52:11 GMT

Can you imagine yourself saying: ‘ a large cappucino and 20 minutes charge please’?

Over inflated price, underwhelming and dull........ Starbucks Coffee or hybrid?

So no not really..........2 minutes in a petrol station and a Ginsters pasty............yep!