https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/industry/analysis-just-how-green-are-electric-vehicles

 

Yet no reference to the huge amount of energy required to produce petrol or diesel fuel? 

 

Hey why let the facts get in the way of a good argument?? 

 

Put solar panels on battery factories   

 

In all seriousness, I personally think the push for longer and longer range, thus bigger and bigger battery, does not make sense.

A good charging infrastructure is all that's needed. People generally don't drive 5 hours non-stop so why require the car to be able to drive that distance? 3 hours at average speed of 70mph gives 210 miles range, as long as the car has more than 250 miles it would be ample, as long as rapid+ charging is ubiquitous. 

 

This is where investment need to happen by car manufacturers. Due to low volume of installs, there is not enough utilisation to offset the high cost of low volume charger production. This area cannot be left to energy suppliers alone, it must have huge investment car manufacturers. Think Tesla supercharger, think early Ecotricity Electric Highway which was mostly Nissan funded. Ionity is funded by auto industry, but it still hasn't opened their first charger in UK.

 

For the cars themselves, high speed efficiency is key. Paired moderately sized battery and short charging speed back to 80% is all that's needed. Not 500 miles of range.

 

4 minutes ago, Gizmo said:

Yet no reference to the huge amount of energy required to produce petrol or diesel fuel? 

 

Hey why let the facts get in the way of a good argument?? 

 

Good point. The average 120g/km CO2 emission of your average car is actually a lot higher if you include emissions from car production (just like EV figures in the article), oil drilling, oil transport, oil refinery, petrol/diesel distribution and emissions generated from ICE servicing (consumables, garage operation emissions, etc)

 

Also, the ICCT lifetime emission calculation only used 93,200 miles for EV lifetime. We know even a small battery Leaf can drive 100k miles easily, with little battery degradation: https://evobsession.com/wizzy-the-nissan-leaf-taxi-surpasses-100000-miles/

 

3 hours ago, wyx087 said:

3 hours at average speed of 70mph gives 210 miles range, as long as the car has more than 250 miles it would be ample, as long as rapid+ charging is ubiquitous.

So long as that range of 250 miles is valid when driving with a fully laden car on a cold dark snowy Winter night (e.g. travelling to family for Christmas) with the heating, wipers & headlights on - and applies to a battery that is (for example) 5 years old. SWMBO wouldn't be SWMBO for much longer if you ran out of charge in that situation

 

AFAIK the range quoted by most EV manufacturers is a brand new battery with driver only on a temperate bright day with no heating, wipers or lights?

Edited 10 May, 20197 yr by PetrolDave

1 hour ago, PetrolDave said:

So long as that range of 250 miles is valid when driving with a fully laden car on a cold dark snowy Winter night (e.g. travelling to family for Christmas) with the heating, wipers & headlights on - and applies to a battery that is (for example) 5 years old. SWMBO wouldn't be SWMBO for much longer if you ran out of charge in that situation

 

AFAIK the range quoted by most EV manufacturers is a brand new battery with driver only on a temperate bright day with no heating, wipers or lights?

Correct.

 

So today's car's ~300 miles is more than adequate if infrastructure is available.