Graham wrote:
How is it typically set up – is the brake pedal itself actually linked to the regenerative braking system, such that you press the brake pedal and you get regenerative braking as a response, and only if you press it much harder do the actual brakes come into play?
I can only speak for my own car (KIA E-Niro), but that’s exactly how it works.
@Silvaire wrote:
I found this study to be quite a realistic view of EVs and the irrational activist social context in which they exist.
Thanks Silvaire for posting that study, calls for taking some time to read it carefully which I will do.
Two remarks:
1. I’m old enough to be careful when reading materials from ‘Institutes’ ‘Think Tanks’ or the like. Such parties are usually backed by groups with a clear agenda, be it on the left or the right side of the political spectrum. No big surprise at which side the ‘Manhattan Institute’ stands. And apparently not too valued by some.
When starting to read I noted that in figure 1 not only ‘conveniently’ the Y-axis does not start at zero to make the curve more dramatic, it is not very meaningful because the growth of the population of the US is not factored in. The curve should therefore be about flat. Hmm, is this indicative of the quality of the rest of the data of the report?
2. Amongst (geo) political issues, the report focuses on CO2 emissions which is of course a prime consideration. To me the issue is broader though. One day we’ll run out of oil or it becomes economically unviable to pump it up. Conventional ICE’s are therefore by definition going the way of the dynosaurs. The energy transition is needed, including nuclear fission/fusion. In order to keep our mobility we therefore need BEVs, and/or fuel cell powered and/or or synthetic fuel powered cars, all based on renewable energy. Just like an energy mix, there may be a mobility mix, with an important role for BEVs, hopefully and probably having revolutionary battery design that don’t require exotic materials from certain countries.
Yes, the Manhattan Institute is a conservative think tank and I think it very capably presents a very valid technical and sociological position. Thank God somebody is doing it and bringing rational balance to an otherwise crazy and irrational situation. I hope what is now becoming a trend will accelerate as people start to actually think.
Most EV mileage is powered by burning fossil fuels and there is no indication of that changing. It will be even more true if people at lower income levels who don’t want to buy EVs are now forced to buy them. The Chinese are powering their EVs with domestic coal – EVs for them are a way to avoid oil imports in a country where the authoritarian regime has no issue with limited range.
There is little indication of any revolutionary battery technology coming along, either for the cars themselves or the home or grid-scale energy storage systems that are required to make EVs predominantly solar powered.
It is not entirely clear whether fossil fuel consumption will go up or down if EVs were to be mandated, but it’s very clear that people’s lives will be worse. And it is clear that there is an activist political faction that wants exactly that outcome on a quasi-religious basis, and/or to much expand government authority over our lives. It is just a very bad idea on every level.
The first time I heard it said that fuel for gasoline powered cars would soon be unavailable was 1975, almost 50 years ago. My father, a lefty technologist, was among them and he was wrong then and now (he still believes it at age 95 
) What is actually going to happen is that fuel prices will very slowly trend upwards. We have no idea how quickly that will happen, except that it’s not going to be particularly quickly. When it does start to happen, the market will respond and it won’t be too late.
I do agree that for European energy security more nuclear now would be a good idea, reversing the so-called Green movement’s thoughtless agenda of the past.
Everyone.is entitled to their opinion Silvaire but for an.engineer I see very little fact behind it.
Maybe for the USA but unlike GA the USA is no longer the world leader in terrestrial transportation .
Perhaps @gallois you could yourself present some facts as I have already done. Did you read and absorb the data in the link I provided? Do you have opposing data?
Aimless vaguely insulting expressions of disagreement may be a stereotypical French specialty, one which makes me smile, but amusing me doesn’t really add much to this discussion. Nor does forgetting that Tesla (a US company) is for better or worse almost solely responsible for creating the current commercial EV market. The underlying IGBT power electronics and lithium battery technology are also US inventions.
Maybe I can help in bringing opposing facts to bear, since you apparently can’t: France has a lot of 24/7 nuclear power and a lot of 24/7 hydropower too, but has very little domestic fossil fuels available (99% is imported) to power EVs. This might perhaps make your small county a special case, if it could increase non-fossil electricity production by 50%. I don’t think that’s possible but regardless it’s an energy security situation unlike China, a very big country that produces a similar level of hydro (16%) but very little nuclear (2.2%) and a whole lot of domestic coal (62%) instead that it is, and will be, using to generate electricity for EVs. I think the isolated French situation may be affecting your perspective.
I think I have given many facts not opinions in previous posts.
So starting.in Europe and letd take the UK which is like the USA highly unlikely to have a very hogh take up of.EVs.in the.neat future. But despite this IIRC corectly from their latest energy figures.more than.40% of their.energy needs are now.met by renewables. On top of this IIRC it also had 10Gw..of nuclear power.(I’m not sure whether Hinckley “C” producing yet but at full output IIUC id 2.5Gw..On.top of this through an interconnector with Scotland, England receive around 2.5GW of.hydro power and.had 2 pumped storage.stations of its own.There are also at least 2 other interconnectors with other countries, the one from France is capable. Of importing 2 to 2.5 Gw. I"m not sure whether the interconnector with Norway is up and running yet and others are planned.On top of this the largest ex.coal fired power station.Drax had recently.been burning wall nut.shells. There is also power stationd generzting from tyres and chicken shxt. Peak demand in England.and Wales on a very cold wet Tuesday, udually the day of highest demand is around 60Gw.
So the UK has a pretty good mix of fuel for generating electricity without too much reliance on fossil fuels and the reliance will get less over the next few years political will allowing.
There are also 2 large battery plants capable of storing along with the 2 pumped storage stations the equivalent of about 5Gw of electricity.
Batteries for EVs have improved dramatically over the last 2 years, allowing more power to be stored for the same weight giving better range to the cars as well as cost reductions .Along with this recharge technology has improved rapidly also. The latest MG EVs claim 80% recharge in 20mins. I I can’t remember the range claimed
Formula E id advancing electric vehicle technology at a rapid pace.
That’s UK where as wrote, I do not expect a rapid take up of EV in the next few years but it just to show that your claim of electricity being produced mainly.by fossil fuels is far from the mark.
When we look to Asia where the take up of EVs is at its highest ie China and India . Both have very fast moving renewables programmes..India are well advanced. Their airport at Cochin, is the first and only airport in the world totally run on.solar power that includes all airside traffic (apart from aircraft that is.)
China, it is claimed are currently ( by Internatiional energy.agencies) as having the fastest growing renewables programme of any country in the world)
France now has well over 100,000 recharge stations and this is increasing by around 9000 per month. This is on top of a large increase in smart batteries in homes allowing fast recharging of electric vehicles at home or the use of stored renewable energy overnight.
I think I have written in the past about planned interconnectors between Europe and UK with giant solar farms in Egypt and about possible alternative fuels such as ammonia for hybrid electric vehicles and/or power generation. Ammonia showing signs of being better than pure hydrogen in many respects.
I could go on and on and on about what is available now and what might be just around rhe corner.
My aim here was not to promote electric vehicles but to provide some factual balance (which you asked for Silvaire) to the opinions in the link you posted and indeed to what seem to be your own strongly held belief.
There are facts which might well slow the developement of BEVs in many first world countries but these were not included in the link you posted or your opinion based on that link but as I wrote you are entitled to it.
The problem with all that @gallois is that none of it, “what might be right around the corner” as you put it actually provides any reasonable indication that it would be possible to power a large fraction of vehicles, in most places worldwide, with renewable electric energy on any time scale. As described in the link I provided, estimates that say otherwise are based on biased predictions and unrealistic assessments of human behavior. France might be able to do it if it starts building more nuclear plants now, but that is an exception and requires the public acceptance of nuclear power (which isn’t actually renewable).
Note that the link I provided is not about people buying EVs by choice, because their specific and limited needs are met by an EV. It is about making EVs the only option for new cars, and outlawing any other new car choice, as is the current deeply flawed trend. If that happens in most places around the world the energy is going to come from fossil fuel. And those non-hybrid EVs with large enough batteries to be interesting to an unwilling but otherwise free market are going to absorb a huge amount of energy in their production, as a well as carrying more weight around with an attendant increase in energy consumption. One can point to all kinds of “exciting programs” (I have made my living for decades working on these kinds of programs and their more realistic spin-offs) but it’s not going to greatly change the fact that e.g. China generates 62% of its electricity from burning coal, nor is it going to provide solar energy at night, nor is it going to create energy storage capability to allow solar energy to charge universally adopted EVs in typical housing at night when people need them charged. It’s a dream of some, a group that is disturbingly aligned with authoritarians and environmental wackos who have no problem with eliminating (not changing) our existing individual mobility and freedom, including our freedom to produce new (now illegal) technology in an open, mobile society.
Be careful what you ask for, you might just get it.
Silvaire you seem to have ignored the fact that the technolgies and programmed to which I referred are actually happening now.
Smart Batteries charged by renewable energy capable of recharging an electric vehicle in your own home at night are available now.
A large section of renewable energy in the form of wind power, tidal power, hydro and pumped storage are available now.
Interconnector to transport electricity between nations to offset different time zones and cultures is available now.
Nuclear power might or might not expand in the future. In France the situation with Russia has led to the life extension of nuclear plant. Whether new plant will be built here is another question.
Many countries in Europe have been held hostage by the oil and gas producers controlling the availability of supply and its cost. IMO and this is only my opinion most European countries have said enough is enough.we must make alternative arrangements. It will not happen overnight but V. Putin has given it a hell of a push forward.
China has made massive reductions in the use of coal fired power stations which got its kick due to the Beijing Olympics
India gets a lot of oil from Russia at the moment, but only because they are getting it on the cheap. The Modji Government are well aware that this will not last forever but are using the fact to their avantage and have made such rapid strides in the last 6 years that they have pushed the UK down a place in the top 20 economies of the world.
People will decide for themselves whether or not to buy electric vehicles and there are many reasons why they will not, at present. But many of those reasons are being rapidly overcome.
There are some that will not be which is why I too do not believe that Goverments should make combustion engine vehicles illegal to own.
But whilst Governments might gradually clamp down on the manufacture of new petrol and diesel engine vehicles, I also don’t see them ever being able to stamp them out altogether.
Like aeroplanes there will still be those who have collectors cars, there will be those who enjoy tinkering with old IC engines and perhaps there will even be a experimental , orphan or kit built industry.
I will reiterate that these last 2 bits are opinion and not fact.
Will the transition be fast or slow, I don’t know. But another of my opinions is that I believe electric vehicles will be the future but whether that is via hybrid EVs or BEVs again I can only guess and those guesses change with each new advance in technology and they seem to be coming out at a rapid rate of knots these days.
People will decide for themselves whether or not to buy electric vehicles
I wish that was true, the debate would be a lot less emotional.
But politicians are taking other people’s money to give it to EV drivers as incentive, tax fossil fuels heavily and want to introduce an outright bsn on ICE cars.
No wonder people bristle at that.
What you say about taxing fossil fuels heavily is correct (although many countries also tax alcohol and tobacco heavily too).
Incentives to EV drivers aldo true. Perhaps should just tax CO2 and or CO to keep the environmentalists onside🙂
Although just stop oil and other such groups would love ICEs to be totally banned IMO I cannot see a total ban in most countries across the globe as for the moment to suggest such a thing would be political suicide whereas the phasing out of the manufacture of ICEs or at least petrol and diesel engined ICEs might be politically acceptable and also acceptable to the large vehicle manufacturers. Big oil might fight it more but they too can and will transition to other markets and what support would they have in their fight in the current global environmental crisis?
