What Will Your Next Car Be .....?, Electric?

Hi,

Things seem to be moving apace with developments of viable electric cars. Details of the Mini E announced on the BBC web site today:

Mini E

150 mile range on a 2 hour charge - pretty impressive. Less impressive however is the fact that they've had to remove the back seats to accommodate the 250kg battery!

Much more impressive is the Tesla:

Tesla Sportster

A stylish two seater with earth shattering performance (0-60 mph in 3.9 seconds) and a range of 244 miles between charges.

Neither of these cars are hybrids - pure electric.

Tesla are also developing a saloon.

For the diesel drivers amongst us the torque characteristics of the electric car (to say nothing of the economy) might appeal.

The Tesla (developed and produced by a relatively small company) & costing $109k, seems miles ahead of what the big car manufacturers are doing at this stage. I'd guess the battery performance and particularly the unit cost are likely to improve dramatically in the course of the next 5 years.

So, given that I've no wish to give up on the XM any time soon my next car might just be an electric one?

Roy

But what they don't tell you is that unless the electricity is generated from nuclear or renewables then the environmental impact of running the car is worse than a petrol/diesel (due to the extra ineffeciencies in the system - generation, transmission, charging, storage, motor vs internal combustion engine)

To say nothing of the impact of prduction and disposal of batteries that contain very nasy stuff (from an environmental point of view).

Now, if everyone starts using electric cars then we will need a number of new power stations which may or may not be carbon powered, and either way will have environmental impacts of their own.

Certainly the technology is coming along, and the future must hold an alternative power source for cars, but I'm not sure that a fully electric car is the answer yet. Of course, as you say, most of us intend to keep our XMs for many years to come, so all that could be completely different by the time we do get our next car.

Any vehicle will require 'x' amount of energy to move it, whether it be electric, internal combustion, solar,or hydrogen and it will either just transfer its CO2 and carbon emmisions say to the power station as Rowanmoor has already said or it will be totally impractical for every day use (solar). Hydrogen does not accure naturally in its pure state and requires simply huge amounts of energy to create a fuel cell so that too is pointless.
BE GREEN!, dont waste energy, dont release more carbon and use more natural resources, keep your old car!!!!

D

This post has been edited by dean on December 05, 2008 07:28 pm

Seeing as to how most electric energy today is generated from fossil sources, I think an electric car is somewhat pointless. I mean, if we're going to convert the (kinetic) energy released by burning fossil sources into electricity, and then use that electricity to generate kinetic energy, there are going to be losses in the chain somewhere.
This might of course change when other sources of energy will be tapped. There are huge quantities of sunlight energy wasted, simply because we do not utilise a means of capturing and storing it.

Having said that, I think that the modern diesel engine (either with fossil fuel or with bio-fuel) has a lot going for it in the interim period. My next car might simply be a C6 diesel.

This post has been edited by peterh on December 05, 2008 11:51 pm

Interesting comments. The advantage of electric cars will be evident in urban driving where up to 50% (my guess) of energy is wasted at traffic lights and stop-go driving. Electric cars will eliminate that waste. Huge improvement in the quality of the air too.

I think that in trying to give electric cars a long range and good performance is counter productive. The longer the range the heavier and more expensive it becomes. Most second cars in surburbia probably don't cover more tha 10 miles a day, if they produced a car with a range of say 50 miles at 30 mph it would be much more affordable and I think popular, the main car being diesel.

The law of diminishing returns applies to long range electric cars, the more batteries you have, the heavier it gets - so you need more batteries to compensate, conversly, reducing the battery count increases efficiency, not to mention reducing considerably the cost.

Peter.N.

Hi All

Battery packs are notorious for deminishing output with age. Once outside the warrenty period these current ellectric cars will be a real liability. The very high cost of a replacement battery pack will mean few if any will get repaired and the rest will not work just when you want them to.

John

There are so many disadvantages to cars, electric or not, in urban areas that I think that we will live to see the day when cities will largely be a no-go-area for private cars.

In my next job, which is near the centre of Rotterdam, I'll travel by train or motorcycle.

You're so lucky in the Netherlads for having such a well developed network of bicycle lanes. And for all the country being so flat therefore offering to it. You couldn't do this easily in cities like Athens or Rome: too many hills etc -or their citizens would become real athletes!-.

To my eyes the most advanced setting was in China when everybody was using a bicycle for going to about their business. It's obviously a big part of the solution of the future for city centres. It was a bit of an irony seeing them getting rid of them and buying cars, and making their cities' air quality to the state they are today. I guess soon they'll be literally obliged to return to bicycling for local/city-centre commuting!

cheers
G

Don't forget Citroen!!

http://www.berlingo-e.co.uk/

http://www.citroenet.org.uk/passenger-cars...electrique.html

Interesting, one of the more sensible electric options - I wonder how much the batteries cost though.

More than a good 2.1Td XM!!!

D

You'r not wrong there and I would like to see one do Scotland and halfway back on a charge.

Exactly, that Berlingo looks good but what if you want to do 70miles? do you have to push it home the last 10mls? or stop for a 2hour coffee break while it charges .
No im definatly an internal combustion man .

D

Horses for courses though, as a city vehicle I think it would work quite well.