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Electric cars?

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Battery life seems to be the main problem. Why don’t they make the car roof out of a solar panel? You would need to charge less often.

I imagine the playlist will be more sedate. I don’t picture the wind in my hair driving an electric car. I’m bald for a start. Gary Numan regarded machines as friends. Are ‘Friends’ Electric? is about the right pace.

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  1. Electric is likely to be the standard in future. I’m hoping they can harness the Hydrogen Cell, that appears to be the better and cleaner option.
    I think it will be Electric for consumers, and hydrogen for commercials (would you trust an electric plane?).
    The argument at the moment is about infrastructure for electric cars, but in the early days of petrol the filling stations were few and far between. The infrastructure will come as the market demands. One would hope battery technology will also advance.

    Have you ever had trouble with your automobile?
    Have you ever had to push push push push?
    Car Trouble, oh yeah!

    • I feel I should add that I am a full blown petrol head who is looking at buying a Ford Capri 2.8i – just trying to find the right one (that’s not full of rust and thrashed to b*ggery)

      • A friend who had one, many years ago, reckoned you needed to keep a couple of sacks of cement in the boot to keep it firmly attached the road.

        Talking of car trouble..

    • I went with my son to the National Physical Laboratory open day a couple of years ago and chatted with a lady boffin about fuel cells. She reckoned current (then) cost of a fuel cell car would be about £60k which would, of course, drop with better tech and mass production. You’d think the network of petrol stations would be an easy conversion to providing hydrogen rather than installing charging points everywhere, particularly in cities with high density housing such as Glasgow where flats are commonplace and the opportunities for placing sufficient numbers of chargers are low.

  3. Recently I read an article quoting a mechanic saying they are just so easy to work on. So clean, none of the oil and gunk, none of the burn out and damage caused by a combustion engine. So on that front they seem pretty good.
    Currently they appear very expensive, which is partly a scale thing and the battery issues will no doubt get better and better. For a small densely populated place like Britain they would seem ideal. Here in Oz ,with considerable distances between population centres, the lack of infrastructure is a problem. Very few charging stations outside of the city, so hybrids are likely to be the way to go for some time yet.

      • I think the size and weight would prove counter productive and certainly in a country like the UK would only be useful about 12 days a year.

      • I heard a podcast where panels on car roofs was being discussed. Sorry Tiggs, you can’t patent it.
        There were other ideas discussed like induction charging when a car is stopped at traffic lights, which obviously requires under road surface structures. It sounded unlikely to me, given how short a time cars are stopped at lights.
        Electric vehicles require a lot of infrastructure. Apparently demands on local power networks when multiple cars are charging in a road, can be beyond local capacity. This will require the network having access to electronic diaries so that need can be prioritised. That means I might have my car plugged in first, but you come along, plug your car in and the network reads your diary and sees you have a long journey tomorrow, so your car is prioritised over mine for recharging.

        • I didn’t think I’d stumbled across a pot of gold.

          It’ll take a few years but petrol engines will soon be a thing of the past. I’m sure they are working on battery technology for HGVs. Crack the infrastructure for that and you’ll be laughing.

          • Tesla have developed a truck with a claimed range of 600 miles although haven’t launched it yet. You can buy an electric VW Crafter van but the range is currently only 80 miles. Quite a few buses are now powered by Hydrogen fuel cells.

          • That talk I heard reckoned that trucks will have to be hydrogen powered, simply because recharging will keep them off the road for too long and make them uneconomic. In effect a haulier would need two units for every one they currently own.
            Hydrogen, as with diesel, allows a refill of the fuel tank, and away you go.
            Having said that developing hydrogen powered engines is proving very difficult, though I’m sure it will happen.

            • But couldn’t a truck simply carry an extra interchangeable battery (or two). That would solve the range issue and the need to have two units. A truck would have the space for an extra battery and it shouldn’t impact the weight significantly.

              • The truck batteries would ideally need to be standardised across manufacturers and quickly interchangeable. Like a great big cartridge underneath that can be pulled out and swapped for a fresh one when needed.

              • There’d be a weight penalty with carrying a ‘spare’ battery – the weight of the battery/ies remains constant. Fuel gets burnt off on the journey, so the truck gets lighter, assuming the weight of the cargo doesn’t change.

                The government was proposing not electrifying certain main lines, but having the locos fitted with both a diesel-electric, and the gear to use the overhead wires, but this means that in electric-mode, the train is having to lug a diesel engine around that it isn’t using.

                • An fenlander acquantence instists on never filling his car’s fuel tank above half full, to keep the weight down. The car boot contain a gallon of fuel in a can, in case he runs out.

                  He also insists, when taking a flight, on eating and drinking as much as possible, as soon as possible after takeoff, in order to ‘keep the weight down so it can fly faster’.

                • I wasn’t thinking of trucks carrying a spare. I was thinking of transport hubs throughout the country where truck operators can exchange their depleted standard battery-cartridge for a fully-charged one and get straight back on the road again. For a fee, of course. No idle time for recharging necessary.

                  • I’ve been saying that for ages! Why can’t electric cars have a replaceable battery in the boot? You pull up to a “filling station,” exchange batteries and you’re back on the road in about the same time it takes to pump a tankful of petrol.

                    Infrastructure isn’t the problem, I think. It’s the inability to fill up and be on your way quickly.

                    If I drove to Las Vegas for CES in an electric car (just under 300 miles each way) I’d have to stop in Baker (by the “World’s Largest Thermometer”!) to re-charge. That’s going to take about an hour. My truck will easily do 300 miles on a full tank. If I did need to fill up, I’m in and out in a few minutes.

                    Battery exchange rather than re-charge is the way forward!

                    • I read this [battery swap] and although its a great idea I thought it is not practical – well, not for the first time and not for the last, I was wrong – it’s already happening. Chinese car maker NIO are doing it and it’s amazing. It takes 3 minutes!
                      [video should start at the swap section, but its around the 7 minute mark if it doesn't and you want to jump to it]

    • I’ve got an electric car. There are charging stations all over the place – I read somewhere there are more charging stations than petrol stations already in the UK. There’s an app called plugshare which will show you – I think most people would be amazed.

      People don’t like new things, and definitely don’t like to hear that their choices are not so great, and will find reasons to dislike electric. And I’m not saying there are none – but far fewer than there are to dislike petrol – and especially diesel. My car performs great, has about 160 miles of range, zero emissions and minuscule running costs. I lease it – I don’t need to own a car any more than I need a wall full of CDs. It’s a great solution.

      The petrolhead will soon be as much of an anachronism as the guy smoking a fag on a bus or a plane, IMO.

      • I’m not a petrolhead (I drive a Skoda and my favourite ever car is a 2cv) and I looked at an electric car 2 years ago when I got mine. A range of 150ish miles is not enough as I regular do journeys of that length. The lack of contingency capacity versus a car that has a range of 450 miles. Of finding a hotel that would enable me to charge my car. Of a vehicle for £27k that would take a tall family of 4 and a dog on holiday in the UK. I’ve no doubt I will have an electric car – maybe even my next one. But they don’t quite work for me at the moment.

        • Oh sure, I didn’t mean now. I know they’re not practical for people who regularly drive long distances now (though an Audi e-Tron’s real world range is about 320 miles).

          I think for people who only really commute (most of us, no?), the only legitimate consideration right now that would make an electric car unviable is cost. That’ll come down as the technology scales up.

          Even within brands, it’s improving all the time. I got a very late model e-Golf – one of the last ones off the line. That does about 160 miles, plenty for me. VW are replacing it with the ID3, which does twice that. Not bad going given there’s only 3 years between those two models. By 2025 I can’t imagine range will be a practical difficulty for your average driver.

  5. A colleague has a Swiss wife, a 4-y-o child, and a Tesla. They drive from Cambridge to visit the in-laws in the Alps evey year and never have any problems with range as (i) child on board forces a stop every couple of hours (ii) fast charge takes 25 mins. They have to stick to the main roads, of course.

    Electric cars have the potential to be brilliant. What bothers me is the battery is full of nasty and/or rare materials, some only available in the DRC. Have you seen a lithium battery overheat? Ask Samsung or Boeing.

    Don’t play this, Tesla are awful:

  6. My next car will be electric. It won’t be for a few years yet, as there’s nowt wrong with the one I have, but I can’t wait. I read an article yesterday about the research into new battery technologies using durian fruit, wood, and man made diamonds. Of course, in the relatively near future you won’t own a car, so concerns over range etc will become redundant.

    • That’s the thing, right enough. People driving cars will seem very weird to our (great?) grandchildren. The driving gloves brigade and their “I don’t trust a machine to drive as well as me” routine already seem pretty silly when you consider how terrifyingly dangerous people are behind the wheel. I’d much rather the things drove themselves – a computer-controlled traffic system is going to be far less lethally fallible.

      • To understand Are ‘friends’ Electric? – reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philp K Dick helps. This is of course the book that led to The Afterword’s fave film, Blade Runner. Just about all of that album (Replicas) and a fair smattering of his other songs are set in this imagined world.

        This is why pop stars can be such force for good. He obviously really liked the book (it was published in 1968) and when he became successful, the pop kids of the late 70s were encouraged to read the book that inspired the songs. And then Blade Runner comes out and a whole world of dystopian whatnot opens up.

  11. Can I hijack this thread to ask an Afterword-demographic car question?
    Ads for new cars boast Android Auto and Apple Car Play connections. Presently, in my old motor, I listen to music through a usb stick, or may hook up my old Creative MP3 player through an aux input or, if required, bung a CD into the CD player. I do occasionally yearn to just play Spotify (i.e. continue listening to what I’ve been playing in the house), but I’m an awkward sod who likes his iPhone and does not like having his music on iTunes. Would I be compelled to switch phones to access Google Play Music and, failing that, can I just connect my iPhone and use Spotify in the motor (and does this work automatically when you plug phone into a usb charger or is it a reliable Bluetooth connection?
    And my next car will almost certainly be electric, though I can see how the extra five or so grand for what is – engine apart – the same vehicle makes it a difficult purchase for many people.

    • My car has android auto and apple car play, but I use neither. I simply use the (samsung) music app on my phone and connect via bluetooth. Perfect! Kia Stonic is the car.

      I am not sure about the 5 grand either. I looked at a Kia Soul today and it was 34 grand.

      • Those little words “or so” cover a lot of ground!
        But I reckon if I was replacing my Fiesta it would be about €21,000. A Corsa E would be about €29,000 and a Peugeot or Renault a bit more again. But you do have quite a bit of fuel savings. The only temptation would be a hybrid Yaris which is quite cheap but then what do I do with all the free spare electricity from my solar panels.?

    • I use CarPlay every day. It’s awesome. Essentially replicates your iPhone with all the driving-dangerous apps invisible, so yeah, Spotify will just appear as an app and you’ll be off to the races. It’s ace.

    • I have just swapped my taller volvo for a slightly longer Kia – and whilst usable space was a factor – my first search filter was for Android Auto. In the old car, i *Never* used the car nav, i used my phone so i figured I might as well have the phone mirrored on the car’s actual screen…I can use Google maps for accurate ETAs, BBC sounds, Spotify and phone based music like Pulsar (i have a 256gb sd card in the phone – WAY bigger than my first iPod…) Very satisfied so far. Saying that, mostly I’ve just sat in it stationery as we’ve got no relatives in Durham/Bernard Castle – but next weekend will see its debut beano up to Leeds, and I’m expecting great things…

  13. I have an old (03) petrol-engined Saab and when it dies, that’s me with car ownership. I won’t be getting another. It costs about £3000 a year to run a car, which I can’t really afford, and I have a pensioner’s bus pass. £30 a year for a pensioner’s railcard that gives me 30% off, including on the Tube. I’ve just paid £305 for a year’s road tax and my mechanic has reminded me it’s due a service. That’ll be close to £200 even if nothing needs fixing.
    I have no USB, no Bluetooth or any other mularkey built-in, but I have an Aux socket should I wish to plug my phone or an iPod into the stereo. These days the car stereo rarely gets switched on. I could get a Bluetooth receiver for not much money and plug that in, I suppose, but unless I’m going to be driving for more than about half an hour I don’t usually bother with radio or playing music. Haven’t been anywhere more than 15 minutes away since lockdown.

    • That’s fair enough, but modern ‘cleaner’ (excepting the environmental damage of making the damn things) cars have cheaper road tax and servicing. I’ve just paid £20 to tax my Golf for a year, less than £150 to service it (but another £200 on tyres). And I got £30 back from my insurers for not using it during lockdown.

      Living in the sticks I don’t really have much option. I’m only 12 miles from Cambridge but it takes 90 mins on the twice-a-day bus – I can cycle it in half that.

      • Get an ebike or convert your existing bike. I’ve done a lot of cycling during lockdown (an hour most days). I’ve got a regular bike but if I was going to commute to say, Brighton, regularly through winter, I’d be thinking about an ebike to counter the winds we get here. Mind you, I wouldn’t do a 12 mile commute in winter on country roads, far too dangerous.

  14. We’re currently into our 4th year of running an electric car, a BMW i3, and would never want to go back to an internal combustion engine. This is our second i3 and it has a usable range of about 350 km (220 miles), which means we realistically only have to charge it about once a week. However the real “feel-good“ factor comes from charging it for „free“ from our solar panels. In the past this would have meant being at home during the day when the sun shines, but 4 years ago we installed a Tesla battery in the cellar which stores the energy produced during the day and can then be used to charge the car and/or supply the house in the evenings. This was a game changer; our electricity bills have more than halved, we have no fuel costs, and from April to September we are approx. 95% self-sufficient.
    We’ve now exchanged our other car for a plug-in hybrid, which allows us to drive electric around town but also enables us to do long (>220 mile) journeys when necessary.
    In the long run I think hydrogen fuel cells are definitely the future, but for now, for us, electric is a step in the right direction.

    • When you factor in the purchase cost of the panels and the battery wall have you actually saved any money yet? I’m not being snarky, by the way, I’ve bought solar panels myself and would love a Tesla battery, but I’m aware that any actual savings are years off yet.

      • Almost everyone in this thread so far is reasonably well-heeled or at least has a good credit rating. For someone whose income comes from a job as a night-shift supermarket shelf-stacker or office cleaner, at not much more than minimum wage, and needs their rusty old wreck (petrol or diesel-engined) to get to work, there being no buses home at 5am, spending several thousand on going electric is not an option. Every occasion when the car tax or insurance runs out, or the car needs an MOT, is a major trauma for them.

          • And, the younger petrol/diesel cars the middle classes trade in for EVs are more efficient, reliable and cheaper to run than a rusty old wreck. And make cheap s/h buys as the market becomes saturated with them. Also good for young drivers as first time buys.

      • As far as the infrastructure is concerned, and if our calculations are correct, we should be in the black after approximately 8 years. However, because we are now running a second (partially) electric car, and due to government and manufacturer incentives, substantial additional tax breaks, reduced parking charges etc., we are also reducing a lot of the additional costs of running a car.
        On top of this is also the aspect that you can’t (so easily) put a price on – trying to reduce our carbon footprint.

        • Of course the carbon footprint reason is strong and was a driver in my decision to get the solar panels, but when it comes to switching cars I struggle with the logic. Is it helping the environment to change my diesel for an EV, when the diesel is in good working order, will probably last another 10 years and if I sold it someone else would buy it [so it would stay on the road anyway] and I would then be adding to my footprint by purchasing an EV that has an environmental impact [during production and it still needs fuel] Would I therefore be better keeping my Golf until it dies and then switch to electric?

          • The logic is your low-emission diesel would replace someone’s older, more smoky, vehicle.

            EVs are not net-zero yet, though. Apart from the materials to manufacture any new car, today’s batteries contain lots of nasty/rare stuff.

            I’d hang on to the Golf and switch in a few years when EVs are more mainstream/better tech and there is more infrastructure. That’s what I’m doing, anyway.

            • Me too. When I retire we’ll consolidate down to one car, Mrs. T’s cute MX5 will have to go and Twang Jr will want to learn to drive so my automatic isn’t great. So we’ll go EV then. I’ve never been an early adopter. In the next few years they’ll become much more usable.

    • I too own a very fuel efficient low emission Jaguar XF diesel car .

      It has a road tax of £30 so must be full efficient by government standards and on my trip this weekend from Oxfordshire to Norfolk to see the folks for the first time since Christmas we did c. 47 mpg on a mixture of narrow country roads, town driving and dual carriageways.

      It has a range of 500+ miles on a full tank depending on driving conditions.

      My next car will be electric but that Is probably three years away.

    • @Freddy Steady: not at all – I think a good flogging should be sufficient!

      My last five cars were also diesels, and other than their use of a finite resource, their low emission diesel technology was, in my opinion, far less polluting than many with vested interest groups have been claiming.
      Be that as it may, the current move away from fossil-fuels can surely only be regarded as a positive development.

    • I believe that it’s already being developed – or at least a variation using wireless magnetic resonance coupling. Magnetic resonance is more efficient and works over a larger distance that standard inductive wireless charging (and also has the advantage of being able to do you a quick MRI scan on your prostate whilst you are driving to work……)

      • I think it absolutely needs to have a slot and braids at the front of the car. And the occasional cross over for excitement.

        Also, am I the only one who thinks that Elon Musk is a 1970’s aftershave?

  19. If I can make my Kia last another couple of years I’d be very tempted by the e-Niro which can supposedly do 280 miles. If it died tomorrow I’d probably go for a self-charging hybrid. Plug-in hybrids aren’t much use to me because of my 40-mile commute.

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