I own a Nissan leaf for school runs and shopping trips. It is fast enough when out of eco mode for most of the roads near where i live and it costs about £2.50 per 100 miles to charge. Approximately a quarter the price of diesel required to propel a 4 /5 seater car the same distance. The range limit is about 128 miles driven carefully, thrashed it reduces to about 70 miles. I love it and would buy another. If I want to take the family a long distance I hire a suitable vehicle which is a lot cheaper overall than buying one and suffering the depreciation, servicing and annual insurance premiums. Electric vehicles as a means of mass transport have a serious problem in that the batteries currently rely on lithium, although alternatives are being investigated. The total world reserves of lithium are 13 million tonnes, it is expensive to extract and energy intensive to do so. I have often thought it would be a great garage project to build an electric bike and if I didn't have too many projects already I would certainly have a go.
Let's take this in easy stages. 1. How many kilowatt-hours of electricity do you put into the battery of your Leaf when you fully charge it? 2. What is the cost of buying that electricity from the grid? 3. How many litres of diesel would it take to contain the equivalent amount of energy? 4. How much would that amount of diesel cost? If you don't know these figures, I suggest you find out. Then I suspect you will discover that you have been misled about the "quarter of the price" you mention. To help you out, electricity costs roughly 13 pence per kilowatt-hour plus a standing charge, depending on your tariff. Diesel fuel has an energy density of about 10 kilowatt-hours per litre, and at present costs about £1.20 per litre including all taxes. In other words, buying energy as diesel is slightly cheaper than buying it as electricity.
Plus the extra cost of those lecky cars over IC engine cars, the cost of replacement batteries when they fail, the cost of mining the battery elements, and the massive inconvenience of not being able to go anywhere more than the end of your street without plugging them back in for a millennia
if your car actually turns 100% of the energy you put into it into motion, then I am very impressed. the correct comparison is "how much diesel/petrol/electricity/fairydust does it take you to do [set distance]and what is the cost of it to you at pump/plug?"
Yes, electric motors are indeed more efficient and do indeed lose less energy as heat - unless they are used hard in high performance applications, when the heat losses become much higher. But the efficiency of the electric motor is only the half of it. Some energy is lost during the process of charging the battery, some more is lost during the storage period, and more is lost again when the energy is extracted from the battery. So the energy which ends up going into the motor is less than the amount you started with. Petrol or diesel IC engines are less efficient, and lose energy as heat. But they are getting more efficient all the time, and no energy at all is lost during refuelling, storage, and supplying fuel to the engine. In an IC car, some of the lost energy is retrieved usefully for heating the cabin, demisting, etc whereas in a battery electric car those uses are an extra energy drain.
Good point. Those trying to sell battery electric vehicles are long on vague waffle and wildly exaggerated claims, and short on hard facts and figures. Personally, I always go for the hard facts. And no car turns 100% of the energy put into it into motion, but since manufacturers are very shy about publishing data of that kind, true comparisons are difficult to come by.
personally i am for hydrogen produced from excess unstorable wind power and carbon capture. but i guess that's a different debate.
100% agree @finm , as I said in an earlier post, the big corporations have already invested in battery tech, so won't let it go now. Hydrogen is the way forward, as is the most abundant element in the universe, but as you say, a different debate.
The whole riding experience will be much less immersive... particularly when you factor in that there will be no gear changing. Who doesn't love the feeling that you've skilfully brought about a rush of power by with a slick gear change at just the right moment? Or charging into a bend and scrubbing off speed by changing down a few gears? Sorry, but silent bikes aren't for me either ... so I am glad I have had 44 years of riding petrol-engined machines all over Britain, Europe and the USA. The only good thing about the electric revolution, as far as I am concerned, is the fact that it will make it much easier for me to give up biking when I can't get my leg over (a bike ) any more. My Multi has 18,000 miles on it and I do about 5,000 miles per year. I reckon if I look after it it should last me out. (Or maybe I will have one last hurrah and buy a Pikes Peak to keep in the family forever.)
I'm not getting this Pete? You're confusing it all with energy figures. Why not just look how much it costs to do 100 miles as an example. I've got very little interest in owning one of these things but I can see huge benefit to society: A bit of googling says it cost about £2 to go from flat to full battery and that does over 100 miles in a Nissan Leaf. I'm assuming you can fit a family in there? Power costs per 100 miles £2 Average crappy family car these days? 2015 Golf TDI 50l tank, 5-600 miles (this is like alien territory for me!). Costs to fill ~£60. Fuel cost per 100 miles £10-12 (Panigale does just a little more miles but lets say the same for ease. Fuel costs per 100 miles ~£18 to full up. Since its a Ducati website but since you can go across Europe on a Panigale without too much hassle, I think 100 miles per top up/battery charge is enough to approach these cars being practical day to day? Maybe these total costs per mile inc tax etc are frigged as you suggest but here it is £5.84 for the diesel and £3.75 for the Nissan Leaf on this website: https://www.sust-it.net/miles-per-g...ent-cars.php?type=all&manufacturer=volkswagen My take is that 'mobile transportation devices' and 'cars' as we think of them now will diverge between the people who actually like to drive and people who are going from A to B. It will be a shame to slow the development of the fun stuff due to less investment but cars are one of the biggest things that are destroying our living environment as well as the climate and getting rid of as many as possible will be a great thing. Imagine all the streets that are now so polluted suddenly becoming nice places to set up home? I'm hoping we get flying cars/motorbikes in my life time haha
It will be great if all cars become self-driving because, presumably, it will mean the end of the SMIDSY and drunk driving, so biking will become safer. I'd love to share the roads with cars driven by computers that don't make mistakes, speed (that's our job!) or cut up bikes for fun. Not sure how bikes could become self-riding - or if they'd sell if they did, though, so perhaps they'd be legislated off the road (not in our lifetimes probably).
Can I just say again. Nissan leaf, over 30 grand, ford focus 1.0 ecoboost, virtually half that. Now calculate per 100 miles
i believe the Chinese can supply cheep replacement lungs now to. feckit, wheres my aftermarket turbo?
Interesting. You are really resistant to taking on board hard facts and actual figures. Instead you actually prefer vague confusing waffle. Well that's up to you, so good luck with your Leaf.
