[alancalverd]

I assumed that we would continue to use diesel for long-distance buses, trucks, tractors and site machinery - I just took the figures for private cars. Apparently the hydrogen public transport project in Orkney is doing well - even faster refuelling than diesel, and Orkney is not short of wind.

Burning hydrogen in a recommissioned coal or gas power station will run the trains reliably: you just need new boiler jets.

It might even help with power station loading, with smart chargers the power stations could choose when to charge a vehicle within a set time period.

And there's the rub. The whole point of a car is that it allows you to go where you want, when you want - like a horse or even your own legs, but faster. Daily commuting is quickly going out of fashion for most people, but if you work from home you need to be able to make occasional journeys when business demands, not when the wind blows (remember we won't have any coal or gas power in the foreseeable future, and there is no money to build nukes at the required rate.

Cars are a large capital expenditure for most people. A small investment in a battery charger at home, would be the obvious solution for most.

That doesn't make sense at all! If I've spent £30k or more on a new electric car, I'm going to spend another £500 on a fast charge point so I can go to the pub after dinner instead of having to wait until morning just to go to work. We do not have the infrastructure to support 20,000,000 fast chargers, and never will.   

[Bored chemist]

you need to be able to make occasional journeys when business demands, not when the wind blows

That would be relevant if the plan was to use really long extension cables to run cars.
But, if you have a battery the clever thing is, you can charge it at night- unless you work the night shift, in which case you charge it during the day.

Most vehicles are stationary much more than they are mobile.
The problems are to do with sockets more than the vagaries of the weather.

Burning hydrogen in a recommissioned coal or gas power station will run the trains reliably: you just need new boiler jets.

Great news- just as soon as we find the first hydrogen mine...

[alancalverd]

But, if you have a battery the clever thing is, you can charge it at night- unless you work the night shift, in which case you charge it during the day.

Or if you live in a flat or a house with no off-street parking. Like most city dwellers.

Quote from: alancalverd on Yesterday at 21:44:02
Burning hydrogen in a recommissioned coal or gas power station will run the trains reliably: you just need new boiler jets.

Great news- just as soon as we find the first hydrogen mine...

How about the North Sea? Lots of hydrogen, and plenty of electricity to extract it when the wind blows.

[Bored chemist]

Or if you live in a flat or a house with no off-street parking. Like most city dwellers.

Good to know that we agree

The problems are to do with sockets

[acsinuk (OP)]

I agree with Alan that long range heavy transport will best be served by petrol/diesel engines until the oil  runs out.But city runabouts need to be small economical electric no pollution cars with a little 20 kg battery that a single person can swap for another quickly.
The electric motor must be light and just powerful enough to get around the city.  Possibly, equipmake or some similar startup could gang up with a nearby university to develop this unit quickly.

[Bored chemist]

With sodium sulphur batteries you can  batteries you can store about 0.7 MJ/ Kg
20 Kg gives you 14 MJ (for many of us, it would also give you a knackered back)
Equivalent to 0.4 litres of petrol.
If you had an engine with roughly the energy use of a 50cc moped, which gets 70 MPG you would be talking about a range of 10 miles.
That's a bit minimalist. Might just be OK, depending on the efficiency (it's not hard to do better than a moped).
Sodium sulphur batteries are (I think) the best energy density rechargeables at the moment, but rather impractical- they run very hot.
Maybe Li ion will be that good.
It doesn't seem to need great innovation.

[alancalverd]

You can get 70 mpg from a small diesel car - much warmer than a moped.

I can't fathom acsin's obsession with universities. What you need is a factory - all the technology for electric bikes, motorbikes, city cars and executive cars is already around. Apart from the means of recharging them, which will require the smack of firm government and a lot of money - two things the UK does not have.

[pensador]

I assumed that we would continue to use diesel for long-distance buses, trucks, tractors and site machinery - I just took the figures for private cars. Apparently the hydrogen public transport project in Orkney is doing well - even faster refuelling than diesel, and Orkney is not short of wind.

Burning hydrogen in a recommissioned coal or gas power station will run the trains reliably: you just need new boiler jets.

It might even help with power station loading, with smart chargers the power stations could choose when to charge a vehicle within a set time period.

And there's the rub. The whole point of a car is that it allows you to go where you want, when you want - like a horse or even your own legs, but faster. Daily commuting is quickly going out of fashion for most people, but if you work from home you need to be able to make occasional journeys when business demands, not when the wind blows (remember we won't have any coal or gas power in the foreseeable future, and there is no money to build nukes at the required rate.

Cars are a large capital expenditure for most people. A small investment in a battery charger at home, would be the obvious solution for most.

That doesn't make sense at all! If I've spent £30k or more on a new electric car, I'm going to spend another £500 on a fast charge point so I can go to the pub after dinner instead of having to wait until morning just to go to work. We do not have the infrastructure to support 20,000,000 fast chargers, and never will.

Again it is requirements and specification. Not everyone needs a fast charge unit. Why not have your missis drive you to the pub in her car, then you can drink. A slow re-charge overnight will then suffice.

ABB have some charger offerings. Much of what has already been addressed on the thread is discussed in this link from intel https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/solution-briefs/transportation-abb-terra-smart-connect-brief.pdf

Pub landlords might have an excellent investment opportunity to attract their regulars with a fast charge unit, it could revitalize pub trade in the UK, same goes for cafes and restaurants.

I agree with Alan that long range heavy transport will best be served by petrol/diesel engines until the oil  runs out.But city runabouts need to be small economical electric no pollution cars with a little 20 kg battery that a single person can swap for another quickly.
The electric motor must be light and just powerful enough to get around the city.  Possibly, equipmake or some similar startup could gang up with a nearby university to develop this unit quickly.

Electric motors are a lot lighter already than the batteries required to power them. For Electric propulsion the problem is the energy storage. Electric Batteries are expensive, and perhaps not the only solution.

Super Capacitors could provide peak current demands in conjunction with a smaller battery or as was suggested earlier on on this thread using hydrogen fuel cells perhaps. https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/how-do-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles-work#:~:text=Fuel%20cell%20vehicles%20use%20hydrogen,electricity%2C%20which%20runs%20a%20motor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell

[alancalverd]

Not everyone needs a fast charge unit.

until they do.

Imagine I just made it home from work with 5 miles reserve, then a kid fell over and gashed his head, but must wait at least 2 hours before I can take him to hospital (6 miles away). Quicker to walk. In the bad old days I would have spent 5 minutes filling up the ghastly smelly dangerous diesel car once it got below 50 miles reserve.

Must remind children to plan their accidents just like I plan doing absolutely everything, to coincide with the availability of electricity.

Or maybe the hospital has installed 2000 medium-fast-charge points at 10 kW each so most people can get home after a 2 hour stay.

[alancalverd]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_internal_combustion_engine_vehicle  shows the way forward.

[Bored chemist]

Not everyone needs a fast charge unit.

until they do.

Imagine I just made it home from work with 5 miles reserve, then a kid fell over and gashed his head, but must wait at least 2 hours before I can take him to hospital (6 miles away). Quicker to walk. In the bad old days I would have spent 5 minutes filling up the ghastly smelly dangerous diesel car once it got below 50 miles reserve.

Must remind children to plan their accidents just like I plan doing absolutely everything, to coincide with the availability of electricity.

Or maybe the hospital has installed 2000 medium-fast-charge points at 10 kW each so most people can get home after a 2 hour stay.

999

[alancalverd]

Only for lifethreatening emergencies, and maybe in an hour or two when they have charged the ambulance battery after that long retrieve from the motorway. Of course in the bad old days they used to use diesel ambulances, but the fumes killed millions of people for every life they saved, apparently.

[Bored chemist]

Of course in the bad old days they used to use diesel ambulances,

They still could.
It's unrealistic to imagine that there will be a "one size fits all" solution.

I'm reminded of the Dom Cummings story where he was so unpopular that nobody within 200 miles would help him.
Wouldn't your neighbours help out?

[alancalverd]

They have all just got back from work too. There is no private road transport between 6 and 10 pm because we all have expensive, useless electric cars and they can't all be charged at once because that would have involved the privatised electricity industry actually investing in infrastructure.

The government policy of prohibiting the sale of internal combustion cars is of course a cunning plan to increase the profits of the privatised diesel-engined bus companies. One size may not fit all, so the rest will have to go shoeless. No problem, kid, the next bus to the hospital is on Thursday. Maybe. 

Come to think of it, the New Dawn has already arrived.  A friend was told to get a COVID test. Turned out that, as a non-essential worker, the nearest she could drive to was 150 miles away, but there was a walk-in about 10 miles distant with the requirement that "You must walk or cycle to the test station." Just what she needs at 91 years old and not feeling well.  So the tiny number of COVID positive tests is because only the fittest can get tested.

[pensador]

They have all just got back from work too. There is no private road transport between 6 and 10 pm because we all have expensive, useless electric cars and they can't all be charged at once because that would have involved the privatised electricity industry actually investing in infrastructure.

The government policy of prohibiting the sale of internal combustion cars is of course a cunning plan to increase the profits of the privatised diesel-engined bus companies. One size may not fit all, so the rest will have to go shoeless. No problem, kid, the next bus to the hospital is on Thursday. Maybe. 

Come to think of it, the New Dawn has already arrived.  A friend was told to get a COVID test. Turned out that, as a non-essential worker, the nearest she could drive to was 150 miles away, but there was a walk-in about 10 miles distant with the requirement that "You must walk or cycle to the test station." Just what she needs at 91 years old and not feeling well.  So the tiny number of COVID positive tests is because only the fittest can get tested.

A more flexible arrangement in work hours, and more working from home, might go some way to answering your first paragraph.

A government conspiracy/plan to reduce the amount of vehicles on the road in favour of public transport . 

Umm! Covid-19 or a mutation will if the politicians do nothing, take out a huge chunk of the human population, thus reducing the need for all the internal combustion engines, sorting out global warming at the same time and the politicians dont need to do a thing.

Specifications > Different countries with different resources dont all need one solution controlled by multinationals.

[alancalverd]

Specifications > Different countries with different resources dont all need one solution controlled by multinationals.

Tell that to the EU!

More to the point, EVs will be manufactured by various companies in various countries to various specifications to suit various customers. The joy of diesel cars (or even gasoline nowadays) is you can refuel them all from the same source. Imagine if you could only put Volvo petrol in a Volvo, and it wouldn't work in a Ford - there would be an outcry from Volvo owners because Waitrose supermarkets don't sell petrol!  We already have a problem with incompatible charging sockets and power specifications, even in those rare cases where the forecourt charger actually works.

Government-led standardisation will reproduce the 47 different kinds of incompatible domestic mains plugs currently listed by the International Electrotechnical Commission. Industry-led standardisation will be a bit closer to the USB socket on your computer - apart from the Applecart, of course.

[Bored chemist]

Tell that to the EU!

My best guess is that Pensador can tell the EU stuff because he has an MEP.

The UK decided not to do that, but to just accept whatever France and Germany want. They called it "taking back control".


The reason why you can use petrol in your car across Europe (and the world) is because of standardisation brought about by organisations like the EU.

http://consiliari.co.uk/gasoline_en_228/

[Bored chemist]

Government-led standardisation will reproduce the 47 different kinds of incompatible domestic mains plugs currently listed by the International Electrotechnical Commission.

I don't want it to be possible to accidentally plug my toaster into a 440V 3 phase socket.
I want those plugs to be incompatible.
I also don't see how you can expect something as varied as " electrical mains connector" to be standardised. For a start, you would need a time machine to go back to a point where the different commercial suppliers had not all introduced their own (incompatible) systems.

Industry-led standardisation will be a bit closer to the USB socket on your computer

Or Edison and Westinghouse.

On the other hand...
https://xkcd.com/927/

[alancalverd]

Two very interesting posts. BC.  I can't work out whether you are in favor of government-driven standardisation or not!

In any case, statutory standards and in particular EU Directives are nowadays mandated by and for the benefit of industry via ISO and IEC, set up to avoid repeating the Edison/Westinghouse nonsense.

You can't plug your toaster into a 440V 3φ socket without an adaptor (in a TPN supply you get 230V from each phase to neutral), but to do so would be as absurd as putting diesel into a petrol car (not possible! the filler on modern "lead-free petrol" cars won't accept a diesel spout, but sadly the converse is entirely feasible and much more damaging!).

But the fact remains that until EV manufacturers can agree on not more than two worldwide charger interfaces (~440V 3φ and ~220V 1φ), there will be a lot of frustrated motorists and manufacturers.

[Bored chemist]

In any case, statutory standards and in particular EU Directives are nowadays mandated by and for the benefit of industry via ISO and IEC, set up to avoid repeating the Edison/Westinghouse nonsense.

Sounds like a good idea.

I think that adding a bit of petrol to diesel fuel  to improve cold weather performance ( and reduce waxing) was once common practice. It's hard to see that it did much harm. There's a potential risk from the petrol being abetter solvent.

Probably better to avoid doing either. Easy to address.
Make sure that the diesel spout is bigger then the petrol tank hole and also that the petrol spout is bigger than the diesel tank hole.
That guarantees that you can't put the wrong fuel in the tank

And that's why the decisions are actually made by industry experts (and scientists) rather than elected politicians.

The so called "un elected bureaucrats" who "make decisions" in the EU are chosen because unlike MEPs they actually know stuff.
The MEPs get to choose what experts to listen to.
They no longer have the option of listening to the UK's point of view because the UK "took back control".

But hey... blue passports!