So .. Sales of new petrol and diesel powered cars banned

[fetuhoe]

This idea just doesn't seem to work - at the moment we can't even manage to build one new power station and when we shut down the coal fired stations we will lose another 19 GW, all of the Magnox plants being decommissioned ( 8 have been de-fuelled already) and all of the AGR Nuclear plants are about to reach their end of life and start being decommissioned by 2032 at the latest.

This means we will lose another 5GW within 6-7 years and at present there are NO visible plans to replace the dramatic shortfall this will create.

Apart from the EPR Fiasco at Hinckley (which I doubt will ever be fuelled) our 'Government' has done nothing to manage our energy since the late Eighties other than to import energy from France.

With the Gas storage caves at Rough having now been closed we no longer have any gas reserves either and still these morons do nothing.

If we include Cars, vans and Lorries we currently have around 35 Million vehicles on our roads.

If we make some very conservative estimates of 100kW average per vehicle and an average 10% duty cycle we will need to provide around 350GW of generating capacity to keep the country moving.

35 x ^6 x 100 ^3W x 0.1 = 350000000000W = 350GW

An average power station produces 650MW of power generation so we will need to build around 538 new power stations and some means of storing the power so it is available for charging a vehicle.

Even if we all drive 50kW micro cars we will still need huge amounts of electricity and additional capacity and solar panels and wind mills just won't do the job.

Clearly just not sensible.

E-motor design will also need to change and power densities will have to fall as I believe Aluminium will have to be substituted in place of copper.

This will add to the burden of electricity generation around the world due to the nature of aluminium manufacture.

We will also need to switch the Traction Motors to induction motors as currently the Permanent Magnet designs that dominate the market will be increasingly difficult to source due to the price volatility and availability of the 'Rare Earth' Magnets being used in their construction.

Currently induction motors using a copper based system would have around 25% less torque capability that a PMM of similar power output, they would be 40% heavier and need around 15% higher current, this would also mean battery size would need to increase substantially.

Using Aluminium would mean these figure would quite likely to be 10% worse.

As an aside - has anyone seen a Lithium mine ?

[Nige]

Now that is looking like a scene from Mad Max.

[Ashley James]

It's also full of important fact. Thanks for that.

[shambly]

If we include Cars, vans and Lorries we currently have around 35 Million vehicles on our roads.

If we make some very conservative estimates of 100kW average per vehicle and an average 10% duty cycle we will need to provide around 350GW of generating capacity to keep the country moving.

35 x ^6 x 100 ^3W x 0.1 = 350000000000W = 350GW

An average power station produces 650MW of power generation so we will need to build around 538 new power stations and some means of storing the power so it is available for charging a vehicle.

If I assume a car will travel 3.3 miles per kWh (My leaf does more), you are assuming each of those 35 million car travels 289,080 miles a year.
UK average mileage in 2013 was 7900. So its only 15 new power stations.

Simon

[Tony]

I personally think that the manufacturers would do well to market the EVs as fun and not from an eco perspective. Currently IMO Leaf's, Zoe's and I3 (and TBH most modern cars) are soul-less and boring to drive. Someone needs to do what VW did with the Golf GTi and re-invent the hot hatch with a balls out electric motor in, 0-60 in 6 seconds and 250 mile range. It needs a game changer like that which would appeal to the petrol heads rather than the eco heads. If I can build it out of a 1973 Beetle surely one of the big guns can do it. Electric cars do NOT have to be boring. In reality EVs should be bloody fast and fun to drive but for some reason the marketing morons and design people think they should be marketed as the planets saviour and have a nice eco button with a picture of a leaf on it, or a dashboard that should how many trees you've saved as you drive along. BOLLOCKS!!!! give me nuts acceleration and weight distribution in the floorpan for outstanding handling any day

Amen to that.
And another thing, why does every manufacturer insist on their electric cars looking like a bad idea that fell out a cornflakes packet?
OK the Porsche's not bad, but the dashboard?
Moggy's conversions are the first all electric cars I've warmed to!

Tony

[orkneydave]

As an aside - has anyone seen a Lithium mine ?

That's actually a diamond mine!

[fetuhoe]

That's actually a diamond mine!

http://futureofenergy.web.unc.edu/picture1-2/

[fetuhoe]

That's actually a diamond mine!

http://futureofenergy.web.unc.edu/picture1-2/

[fetuhoe]

If I assume a car will travel 3.3 miles per kWh (My leaf does more), you are assuming each of those 35 million car travels 289,080 miles a year.
UK average mileage in 2013 was 7900. So its only 15 new power stations.
Simon

If we have a vehicle that uses 100kW of power during it average journey to achieve say 60mph average speed then for every hour it is driven it needs 100kWh.

If its duty cycle is 10% it drives for 2.4 hours a day at 60 mph and travels 144 miles. This means that it travels 1.4 miles per kWh.

Strangely its mileage is 52560 per year. This may be high for road cars but if we take trucks and vans into account the power requirements increase as does the average mileage.

We can debate the real situation but 289000 miles a year is way off the mark

If we switched to 50kW electric cars it would be better but to get down to 15 power stations you could generate 9.75 GW but you have to assume 10% down time so in reality you have around 9GW.

If you generate an can store all the output you will have around 2600kWh per vehicle available which seems to be equivalent to an average of 9000 miles per year assuming 30 million passenger cars.

This leaves nothing for the vans or trucks and if we put averages up to 12000 pa and take just vans into account we are mre likely to need more like 50 stations.

This country hasn't commissioned a new power station since 1987 (Sizewell B) and this wasn't commissioned until 1995.

It has taken 10 years from initial concept to start of work at Hinckley Point C and completion is unlikely to take place until 2025.

The simple fact is that the French are having to build our new Power Stations because the UK no longer has the engineering capability and the Chinese are paying the bill because we don't have the money.

How on earth can we believe that these clowns can provide the infrastructure needed for us to drive electric cars within 25 years.

The EPR built at Hinckley is also very worrying as the Flamanville reactor has serious metallurgical anomalies in the channel heads of the steam reactors and this discovery has led to a widespread investigation across France

About 12 reactors had been shut down to these issues but the French Regulator has just allowed them to be re-started but there has been no data released concerning the level of reduction in mid-section fracture toughness of these components due to a carbon segregation problem.

I must say I find this very worrying and I don't believe we have heard the last of this problem and it could really make a mess of the UK's crappy energy strategy. I must say I would like to see the numbers.

http://www.french-nuclear-safety.fr/Inf ... -the-steel

I still think the idea that we can all drive electric cars by 2040 is just not practical.

[Hannibales]

That's actually a diamond mine!

http://futureofenergy.web.unc.edu/picture1-2/

A great example of mislabelled images being spread on the web and incorporated into lazy research....

Mirny Diamond Mine

[orkneydave]

That's actually a diamond mine!

http://futureofenergy.web.unc.edu/picture1-2/

A great example of mislabelled images being spread on the web and incorporated into lazy research....

Mirny Diamond Mine

Thanks! The power of social media in spreading misinformation is amazing!

http://www.amusingplanet.com/2013/04/ab ... ussia.html

https://www.teslacentral.com/comparing- ... ain-stupid

[moggy]

Fetuhoe - you are a classic example of why education on this subject is so important. Your maths and facts are so wrong.

I've not got time to correct you on everything right now and quite frankly can't be arsed but you need to do more in depth research. I've worked in the power industry since 1999 and come from a real EV users point of view. So here's a few correction s..

25kwh usually gets you 100 mile range depending on how you drive and what car e.g. my bug driven at 60 will get me 200 mile range and has a 48kwh battery pack.

Regards N Grid capacity. It's not a case of how much peak can be produced but more about when it's used. E.g. most EVs charge up overnight when the grid has huge amounts of capacity available.

Batteries flow both ways meaning that when there is a peak In demand they can act as a sponge and soak that energy back into the grid. Or more likely simply back into your home.

I personally think the days of building big power stations is also an outdated idea. On site generation in homes and businesses will continue to grow at pace. Which coupled to an energy storage device like a car could mean a lot of homes simply use no energy from the grid - like mine.

The future is scary enough without misinformation so as I said, education on this subject is something that needs to happen quickly or the void will be filled with bollox.

[Winston Teague]

I still think the idea that we can all drive electric cars by 2040 is just not practical.

We don't all have to drive them, then, it's is 'only' a ban on new car sales. Surely all your doomsday maths assumes the replacement of all cars.

I have not yet ever bought a new car, and am not likely to, though i could see myself buying a second hand electric one sometime.

W

[orkneydave]

I personally think the days of building big power stations is also an outdated idea. On site generation in homes and businesses will continue to grow at pace. Which coupled to an energy storage device like a car could mean a lot of homes simply use no energy from the grid - like mine.

I think this will be key. I can see homes eventually being able to produce virtually all the power they need with the grid supplying power to fill the peaks and power utilities, block housing, businesses etc. A local builder to me is now installing Tesla Powerwalls in every new build to absorb peak energy (we have the ability to produce over 100% of our electricity here from renewables and 1 in 12 households where I live already have their own renewables generation). Most interesting for me is the Tesla Roof which looks like a conventional roof but is actually a solar array.

Capacity wont be an issue. I do have concerns over the green credentials of batteries but with better capacity and life and improved methods of recycling many of these concerns should hopefully be addressed. The biggest hurdles will be political and economical but as we are already on this path, these will be overcome.

[smallspeed]

I'll keep rocking my 1988 e30 I think

P.S. Was due to visit that mine with work a few years back but the trip got cancelled last minute and with very little explanation - possibly they heard the rumours about my sticky fingers