New diesel and petrol vehicles to be banned from 2040

[Guest Alphonsox]

Some clarity on the proposals in today's papers - Apparently documents released yesterday by DEFRA state that new cars with "conventional" engines will be banned from sale from 2040. When asked for clarification of the term "conventional" the response was that this "does not include hybrids."

 

[AliG]

I have been reading a lot about this at work over the last couple of years.

 

Electric motors are much better than combustion engines, as battery technology falls in prices, there should be a crossover point where electric vehicles are cheaper to make and run around 2025. As well as battery technology falling in price, on the other side emissions regulations keep getting stricter for combustion engines pushing their costs up.

 

Once past this point, cars will naturally move to all being electric. Thus 2040 is not really pushing it.

 

Due to the efficiency of electric motors versus combustion engines, even if power is generated by fossil fuels, there are still less emissions overall using electric vehicles and assuming a similar generation mix to what we have at present. In car combustion engines are extremely inefficient.

 

I don't think national charging infrastructure presents much of a problem. There are already thousands of charging points, they should roll out alongside the uptake of electric cars. Even once all new cars sold are sold are electric it will take some time for all cars on the road to actually be electric.

 

The main problem might be charging in urban areas. It is easy enough for suburban owners to plug in overnight on their drives. In urban areas, I suspect that the use of autonomous cars and Uber type services may make owning your own car pretty much redundant.

 

I have seen a lot of commentary around this aspiration in the press. It has been along the lines of.. the electricity will run out, we will all be stranded etc. It has been very ill informed. Most of these problems are already minimal today and certainly I would expect to be solved by advances over the next 20 years.

[Roger440]

Im inclined to agree with some on here. Its just noise from government. What they say or do will have no effect on what happens.

 

However, i still cant see electric cars as the long term answer. Charging time and somewhere to charge it leads me to believe it will simply be a transistional phase to something else that offers the flexibility and ease of use we currently have. Going backwards in our ability to use a vehicle is not progress, nor likely to be tolerated.

 

Regarding the old car issue, arguably they will all be banned long before this. The governments consultation refers to the problems we are likely to face when self driving cars and human driven cars share the roads. However it also refers to a time when this problem will be solved - because ALL cars will be self driving. Given that trult self driving cars should exist by 2030, look forward to having your ability to drive taken away. 

[Trw144]

Has anyone looked at what will be required in terms of additional power stations to charge these cars? Add to this my assumption that most new houses will all start to have a heat pump before too long, and we re suddenly looking at a lot of extra demands on the grid. 

[Jeremy Harris]

8 hours ago, Trw144 said:

Has anyone looked at what will be required in terms of additional power stations to charge these cars? Add to this my assumption that most new houses will all start to have a heat pump before too long, and we re suddenly looking at a lot of extra demands on the grid. 

 

At the most around 10% more generating power than we have now, apparently, if every UK car was electric.  That's assuming smart charging, where the majority of cars are charged when there is excess grid capacity available. 

 

On average, private cars in the UK spend around 95% of their time parked, apparently.  That seems about right, as I spend around an hour driving every weekday, perhaps another hour driving over an average weekend (excluding holidays).  So, for around 48 weeks of the year my car is parked up, next to a charge point, for around 162 hours out of 168 hours, so it's parked for around 96% of the time normally.

 

Nissan have come up with a solution for on-street charging that seems neat. Combining limited (Level 4) self-driving ability, with wireless charging (and they have this working now, as a demonstrator) the idea is that some parking spaces in every residential road with on-street parking will have charging coils.  These cost around the same to install as the sensor coils for traffic lights, apparently.  Overnight, cars will driver themselves around to the nearest vacant parking space with a wireless charger, charge until they are full, then drive themselves back again.  By morning, all will all be parked up, charged, ready for use by their owners

Edited August 1, 2017 by JSHarris

[SteamyTea]

I have just had a quick look at Gridwatch to try and establish what is our normal range of generation.

Over the last two years, we have had a demand range of between 2055 MWh and 165785 MWh, so 163730 MWh.  The average is 32167 MWh

So the capacity and distribution capability is already there, near enough (there is 5% spare capacity already).

There will be many houses that are not capable of having a charging point at the moment, but if we are heading down the EV route (and I think we will and should), this is not a technical challenge, just a financial and timing one.

 

Battery technology is the real killer at the moment.  There will only be small increases in efficiency (because of physics). What will happen is that we will be able to charge them quicker without degrading them and they will get cheaper, while lasting longer.

For every doubling in manufacturing capacity, prices drop about 20% (ish).  So it will take ten years to go from £1000/kWh to £100/kWh.

So no rush at the moment.

 

 

 

[Stones]

11 hours ago, Roger440 said:

However, i still cant see electric cars as the long term answer. Charging time and somewhere to charge it leads me to believe it will simply be a transistional phase to something else that offers the flexibility and ease of use we currently have. Going backwards in our ability to use a vehicle is not progress, nor likely to be tolerated.

 

I think range is the big issue, until such time as charging takes no longer than filling up your car with petrol.  Whilst it's perfectly true that most journeys undertaken are short / local, I genuinely believe that people want and like the flexibility of being able to drive longer distances, even if only a few times a year.  I can see shared vehicle schemes, Uber etc being viable for the short range market / those living in built up areas, but doubt they could be made to work for those outwith / out in the sticks, as the cost per mile would be too high, mirroring the current position in terms of public transport - not cost effective to run the frequency of service needed for people to switch from cars compared to what can be done in a city.

 

Self driving / autonomous cars - at some point, somebody named Kevin* (*other names available) is going to 'service' such a vehicle in his garage, corrupt the programming, damage the sensor array and turn said vehicle into a runaway train.  I also wonder how such vehicles will be programmed - in the event the vehicle is faced with a scenario of running down a group of children crossing the road, or swerving out of their path into the face of an oncoming truck or into a tree (potentially killing the occupants) what is it going to do?

[Jeremy Harris]

When I was looking at buying a Nissan Leaf, around 3 years ago (I bought the Prius Plug-in instead) Nissan were offering two weeks free conventional car hire a year with every new Leaf.  That would come close to meeting my needs, as almost all my driving is well within the modest range of the Leaf, and the free hire car would almost meet my occasional need for more range.

 

It does seem a bit daft that over 90% of the time I'm driving around in a car that has around 75 times more range than I need.  If there was a way to just "bolt on" additional range when I need it, then that would be ideal.  Some people have made DIY charging trailers to do just this, but one option might be a large battery pack trailer that can be hired only when needed, perhaps with a built in fuel cell generator to slowly charge it.  Fuel cell generators are around now and being sold for use with caravans and motor homes, the snag is that they are only fairly low power, but that wouldn't matter for a slow rate charger.

Edited August 1, 2017 by JSHarris

[Nickfromwales]

A bit more about these fuel cell generators if you could please @JSHarris

Anything like a super-silenced ethanol IC engine for R/C models? 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

1 minute ago, Nickfromwales said:

A bit more about these fuel cell generators if you could please @JSHarris

Anything like a super-silenced ethanol IC engine for R/C models? 

 

 

This is a tiny one, intended for charging 12V batteries, but there are bigger models available.

 

 

Edited August 1, 2017 by JSHarris

[gravelld]

If the battery shape was further standardised (maybe to a small set of different orientations to support different vehicle shapes, you know, like these things called tyres?) they could be pre-charged and swapped.

 

I think a lot of the nay saying is just plain and simple FUD. All new technologies have downsides and challenges. I can't imagine any of the oft-repeated ones not being surmountable somehow, especially in the 2040 time range which sounds to me rather pessimistic. The benefits seem very real to me.

[jack]

Flow batteries could, I assume, simply swap out the "dead" electrolyte and replace it with fresh stuff. It'd be a similar process and time-scale as for refuelling a petrol/diesel car.

 

Not sure about energy density (or energy/mass) of flow batteries, but that would be of less concern if refuelling were quick and easy.

 

5 minutes ago, gravelld said:

If the battery shape was further standardised (maybe to a small set of different orientations to support different vehicle shapes, you know, like these things called tyres?) they could be pre-charged and swapped.

 

Interestingly, when I first started reading about electric cars many years ago, that was exactly the model proposed.

 

[Nickfromwales]

46 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

This is a tiny one, intended for charging 12V batteries, but there are bigger models available.

 

Any idea of cost ?

[Jeremy Harris]

 I think there are a lot of options, once we get away from the mindset of only refuelling at filling stations.  Fillings stations are just a consequence of petrol and diesel engines, and we don't have to stick to that model for other forms of motive power.

 

With battery electric vehicles, the "little and often" recharging method looks pretty good for a lot of the time.  Instead of always looking to charge to full capacity, charging just enough for the next journey is all that's really needed.  Similarly, for a lot of normal driving there's no need to high capacity chargers, the majority of short journey energy needs could be met with a standard 7kW charger. 

 

Cars use an average of around 6 to 10kW per hour of normal driving, so a charger of this size would give a driving time that equals the charging time.  Not many people drive for more than 8 hours a day, which leaves 16 hours of charging time.  A battery capacity of around 80 to 100 kWh (allowing for losses) could meet the needs of most people, provided there are a lot of distributed charging points around.

[Jeremy Harris]

1 minute ago, Nickfromwales said:

Any idea of cost ?

 

 

Expensive!  They are between £2k and £4k, depending on capacity.  However, these are a niche market product at the moment, aimed at the caravan market, where a near-silent generator is worth paying a premium for.  They aren't a volume production product, and I strongly suspect that the technology could be value-engineered a fair bit.  There are fuel cells in the pipeline that will run on petrol, too, meaning such units would work with existing filling station infrastructure.

 

However, assuming they can be made for a much cheaper price, with a higher capacity, then they could form the basis of a built-in slow battery charging system.  They are clean, the emissions from the current ones is mainly deionised water.

[SteamyTea]

I am always a bit intrigued by the recharging times claims i.e. 80% charge in 30 minutes.

Is that 80% when the battery is effectively empty, or up to 80% of full capacity when only 50% of the charge has gone.

 

@JSHarriscan you put a temp logger on your battery pack and see what temperature it reaches while it is being charged?  Be interesting to know what is happening for different states of discharge.

If there is a significant temperature rise, could that be used to demist/defrost the car in winter?

Edited August 1, 2017 by SteamyTea

[Jeremy Harris]

6 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

I am always a bit intrigued by the recharging times claims i.e. 80% charge in 30 minutes.

Is that 80% when the battery is effectively empty, or up to 80% of full capacity when only 50% of the charge has gone.

 

@JSHarriscan you put a temp logger on your battery pack and see what temperature it reaches while it is being charged?  Be interesting to know what is happening for different states of discharge.

If there is a significant temperature rise, could that be used to demist/defrost the car in winter?

 

 

The charge characteristics with time for most batteries are pretty non-linear with battery state of charge (SOC).  I can't get near the battery pack on mine to log anything - it's protected within a sealed, ventilated, case, with all sorts of safety interlocks to prevent access, but the car does provide some data, and logs lifetime data for things like charge and discharge kWh, as well as display the charge rate in kW whilst it's charging.  It seems that around the first two thirds of the battery charge period is at close to the charger maximum power, with very little variation.  After this time the charge power starts to drop, so that by the last ten minutes or so it may well only be a hundred watts or so. 

 

The final charge stage is the one that balances out the charge between all the cells, and is primarily there to ensure that the full usable capacity is available and that the battery pack as a whole has a long life.  This means that a battery pack that is nearly discharged can accept a greater charge in a given time than a battery pack that is only partly discharged, and the simplest way to look at it is probably in terms of range available for a given charge time.  Tesla used to quote "200 miles per hour" for their supercharger (it's faster now, I believe).  However, lots of users have reported getting closer to "300 miles per hour", presumably because they started charging with a lower battery SOC.

 

When it comes to battery temperature, then there is built-in cooling to EV batteries.  Tesla (and some others) use a liquid cooling system, my battery pack is air-cooled, using cabin air.  The battery pack cooling system is silent, and only runs when the battery needs cooling, but there is no indication at all from the driver's seat that the cooling system is running.  Someone sat in the right rear seat might be able to put their hand over the intake grill and feel it (the intake grill is in the trim next to that seat), but I've never heard anyone comment on it.  I suspect that the cooling system may only run rarely, if at all, given the relatively low power that the Plug-in Prius pulls from the battery (only around 60kW maximum).

[Roger440]

10 hours ago, Stones said:

 

I think range is the big issue, until such time as charging takes no longer than filling up your car with petrol.  Whilst it's perfectly true that most journeys undertaken are short / local, I genuinely believe that people want and like the flexibility of being able to drive longer distances, even if only a few times a year.  I can see shared vehicle schemes, Uber etc being viable for the short range market / those living in built up areas, but doubt they could be made to work for those outwith / out in the sticks, as the cost per mile would be too high, mirroring the current position in terms of public transport - not cost effective to run the frequency of service needed for people to switch from cars compared to what can be done in a city.

 

Self driving / autonomous cars - at some point, somebody named Kevin* (*other names available) is going to 'service' such a vehicle in his garage, corrupt the programming, damage the sensor array and turn said vehicle into a runaway train.  I also wonder how such vehicles will be programmed - in the event the vehicle is faced with a scenario of running down a group of children crossing the road, or swerving out of their path into the face of an oncoming truck or into a tree (potentially killing the occupants) what is it going to do?

 

Agree, with myself too, that range is still a problem. Maybe some clever people are working on a 3 minute re-charge, but unless thats achievable, limitations on use exist. Currently, none exist on my current car (assuming a petrol station is open of course). Therfore not to be able to go where i want without considerable planning and inconvenience doesn't look like a great idea.

 

Id love to see some statistics on how many people run out of charge. Once electric cars become more widespread and used by normal people, rather than, as clarkson would no doubt put it, "electric car enthusiasts", i suspect this will be a common problem. Cold dark nights stuck in traffic jams. Genuine question for those with cars, how much of a hit does range take if you run the heater or air con when its cold or hot? ie zero degress or on a 30C day?

 

Ref your last question, kill the occupants. No other answer will be acceptable. Maybe this will be the aftermarket tuning upgrade in future. Adjust the cars parameters to look after you? Going to get complicated.

[gravelld]

Are you suggesting people should drive long distances, over 200 miles say, then just stop for a three minute refuel?

Edited August 1, 2017 by gravelld

[Roger440]

16 minutes ago, gravelld said:

Are you suggesting people should drive long distances, over 200 miles say, then just stop for a three minute refuel?

 

You mean, just like we do now? 

 

Not sure if you say this in jest or are serious?

[Guest Alphonsox]

13 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

 

Agree, with myself too, that range is still a problem. Maybe some clever people are working on a 3 minute re-charge, but unless thats achievable, limitations on use exist. Currently, none exist on my current car (assuming a petrol station is open of course). Therfore not to be able to go where i want without considerable planning and inconvenience doesn't look like a great idea.

 

The current "near future" solution to the charging problem seems to be solid state lithium batteries. Toyota announced last week that they had started work on "productionising" the technology with commercial sales expected in 2022. Charging time drops to a few minutes from half an hour or so.

[Jeremy Harris]

I've never run out of battery charge in over three years of driving.  The pattern of "refuelling" is very different, and means a change in thinking.  Weekdays I charge twice a day, overnight at home, during the day away.  Weekends the car stays on charge at home unless we're going somewhere.  I've never felt the need to charge at a filling station.  When on holiday I've always been able to charge somewhere, it's never been a problem.

 

The only issue is the occasional long journey.  If your driving pattern involves driving hundreds of miles a day, then current electric technology doesn't cut it.  However, for the vast majority of people, something like 90% or more of their driving is within the range of even some of the lowest range electric cars.  The problem is one of people getting their heads around the idea of changing the whole way they use and "fuel" cars.  I happen to think it's a hell of a lot more convenient to just open the charge door and plug the cable almost every time I get out of the car, than it is to faff around at a garage, filling the thing with petrol, queuing to pay, etc.

[Ferdinand]

8 hours ago, JSHarris said:

I've never run out of battery charge in over three years of driving.  The pattern of "refuelling" is very different, and means a change in thinking.  Weekdays I charge twice a day, overnight at home, during the day away.  Weekends the car stays on charge at home unless we're going somewhere.  I've never felt the need to charge at a filling station.  When on holiday I've always been able to charge somewhere, it's never been a problem.

 

The only issue is the occasional long journey.  If your driving pattern involves driving hundreds of miles a day, then current electric technology doesn't cut it.  However, for the vast majority of people, something like 90% or more of their driving is within the range of even some of the lowest range electric cars.  The problem is one of people getting their heads around the idea of changing the whole way they use and "fuel" cars.  I happen to think it's a hell of a lot more convenient to just open the charge door and plug the cable almost every time I get out of the car, than it is to faff around at a garage, filling the thing with petrol, queuing to pay, etc.

 

I wonder how that will change when you switch from 'voluntary day job' to 'properly retired', should that ever happen, and start 'living at home'? Not that I expect that to happen in the JSH case ;-).

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited August 2, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Crofter]

11 hours ago, Roger440 said:

 

You mean, just like we do now? 

 

Not sure if you say this in jest or are serious?

 

You must have more stamina that I do!

 

if I've just driven 200 miles, I'm going to need to stop for more than three minutes. Twenty would be a minimum, I would say.

[Nickfromwales]

It's very strange that a HGV driver must take breaks in accordance with the law, but 'you' or I could just drive around the clock on nothing but coffee or energy drinks. I used to do a LOT ( 1500+ miles per week ) and have been close to nodding off many many times. I doubt that would ever have happened if the company I worked for had to make me take breaks, eg had Tacho's fitted to the fleet cars to enforce it. 

I wonder if restricting charge times to a minimum of 30 mins ( if the charger 'knew' that you'd depleted your battery by 70% or more in one go ) would ever become legislation. I suppose not, unless they could enforce that accordingly across the electric / fossil fuel population. As always, I suspect more people would have to die through that type of accident first before the statistics showed up on the scale of consideration.

My road is like Brands Hatch, but when I asked the neighbours a few years back why the next road down had two Gatos's but we had none, the answers were, 1) this is the main route for the hospital so they won't fit one until they go digital image & 2) Nobody has died on this part of the road whereas someone did die on the stretch further down  They got 2 cameras, we get none. 

Digression over.