Electric vehicles are a dead-end with the current (no pun intended) available technology.
They are not environmentally sustainable, there's not enough raw materials available to build the batteries anyway and have you seen how mines operate?
Its all greenwashing, your electricity has to come from somewhere i.e.burning coal, gas or going nuclear. Wind and nuclear tech still requires the use of massive energy expenditure up front and then energy storage (hydro etc)
Want to cut pollution? Its not cars, trucks or air travel that are the big CO2 emitters:
Steel and cement production account for 30% of the worlds emissions.
What we need is for people to travel (drive) less, along with a policy reversal on out of town retail development. Walk or cycle to the village shops, not drive to the retail park.
The current pandemic has shown what is possible for many. Commuting for hours every day en-masse just to be in an office could become a thing of the past.
PS I am not a climate change denier, but I am a realist and wasnt born yesterday.
More honestly, I really want an EV but only if it's vaguely interesting: i3, Twizy, Outlander PHEV, iPace (I wish), yes.
The solution to all of this is Hydrogen fuel cell electric.
Use the very reliable fusion device located some 93 million miles away to superheat steam to drive turbines, the turbines generate electricity, the electricity powers electrolysis plants to evolve hydrogen (the oxygen is a medical gas by product)
The same turbine generators drive compressors that store the hydrogen locally.
The tankers that usually deliver liquid fuel (and burn the same stuff in the process) could possibly run off the same H2.
H2 fuelling replaces petrol stations and the combusion process is.... water.
All powered by the sun.
Batteries are a only stepping stone and not a very good one at that.
A Twizy Barry? You'd be better off with a Brompton Electric. It would be cheaper too (just)!
How about a Citroen Ami:
RAB
I can charge my E-Up from the roof but only with no clouds and at 5A. VW have a charger that you can set to only charge from solar when available. At less than the minimum charge rate it switches off.Love the Ami! I'm so frustrated that by far the majority of EV's are massive things. I'd love something one small step up from a Twizy £15K, 80 mile range, two seat, warm and dry, really, really fun. Small enough to charge from home solar / home battery. That would literally do 85% of everything I need.
As for the Brompton, there are so many choices out there and unless you need it to fold, I can't see it. I do have an electric bike which is brilliant but ironically since the opening of a local bypass, the road is too busy to use it any more (lockdown aside), It's that that's driven my interest in EV's and hydrogen.
Ahh, that is interesting, I wondered if a car could take a very low level of charge. What size array do you have?I can charge my E-Up from the roof but only with no clouds and at 5A. VW have a charger that you can set to only charge from solar when available. At less than the minimum charge rate it switches off.
Local bypass in Heathfield? (We used to live in Lime Way). That's the second dual carriageway (or third?) in East Sussex then!
RAB
Here's the charger:Ahh, that is interesting, I wondered if a car could take a very low level of charge. What size array do you have?
Without wanting to embark on thread hyjack, the new bypass is near Bexhill and effectively has turned my road (B2096) into a shortcut from Hastings / Bexhill to Gatwick and M25. I'd say day traffic has more than doubled and very early morning (4am onwards) by factor of four or five. Two years ago if you heard a car at 4:00 am it was unusual enough to wonder what it was up to. Now there's one every few minutes. At 06:30 it's busier than it used to be at 08:00. It's enough that I've built an acoustic wall in my front bedroom, added secondary glazing and then added another layer over that. I'll end up moving though.
They must be 100 octane electrons then! Ionity charge €0.79/kwh but you can pay a lot less than that. I can find fast chargers in France that charge as little as €0.16/kwh which is probably not much more than cost. Either way, most journeys don't require use of a fast charger and even at the higher rates, it's cheaper than hiring a car.Disregarding the whole Economy & Pollution topic I wouldn't mind driving one of These to Work and Charge it in the Home Garage, however when you have to Charge it Off the motorway at more than 1€/kWh, thats where any Ambition to buy an EV dies for me..
Nuclear is certainly greener than coal!I would say nuclear is green energy; it will come sooner or later just a matter of time and change og peoples mindset.
«Fuel» for EVs is in practical free here in Norway as long as you charge back home. Which the majority does. The daily driven average is 20 miles/day (the reason why it make no sense with big battery-packs)
Things might have changed, but the last time I tried to rent a car in the UK to take to France, I was completely unsuccessful! Longer range also means a longer useful battery life.The point was just that 99,5% of the time, 20 miles range is sufficient for most people. For the yearly trip to France, it would cheaper to rent a car.