Are Electric Vehicles that Green?

[Jeremy Harris]

I think that what happened within Toyota was that they realised that they had spent an enormous amount of money in the 1990's, developing the hybrid synergy drive, and then they haven't seen enough profit from it to justify continued development of pure EVs (which was always the intention of the "car for the millenium" project).  The hybrid programme was very much driven by the personality of Chairman Shoichiro Toyoda.  When he retired, just after the launch of the Prius, in 1999, Toyota changed direction.  They withdrew from their battery vehicle programme in 2003, then made a half-hearted effort, in collaboration with Tesla (Tesla supplied the drive train) for a couple of years between 2012 and 2014.  The fact that Toyota teamed up with Tesla speaks volumes for the inability of Toyota to engineer a pure electric drivetrain, something that I strongly suspect was a consequence of their desire to try and recover the R&D money from the HSD programme first.

 

An interesting book was written on the design and development of the HSD, "The Prius that Shook the World".  It was given away free with the cars in the early days; I have a copy as a .pdf if anyone wants to read it (it's a bit stilted, but a fascinating insight into the way Japanese car design works).

[ProDave]

33 minutes ago, Conor said:

Toyota are dragging their heels. The "self charging hybrid" BS add campaign sums up their attitude.

To some extent I share that view, it is disappointing that the small Toyota's are not plug in.

 

We have just bought a Yaris hybrid.  We did not set out to buy a hybrid or even an Ev, we just went into town with an open mind to find a new car for SWMBO as hers was well past it's best, and was not a very good car anyway (bought cheap to last a few years, which it did)  After spending a day looking at lots of different cars at the end of the day we ended up looking again at the Yaris hybrid and it still ticked the boxes.  But it was another couple of days before we went and had a third look and bought it.

 

What surprised me is the Yaris hybrid was not that much more expensive than the petrol version and I like the £0 road tax and better fuel consumption.  But it is a shame that it is not plug in to be charged in the daytime from our solar PV.  It is also a shame that Toyota tell you you cannot tow ANYTHING with the car.  Not that we want to as my Subaru does all the pulling we need, but it just seems such a strange thing to limit your market by excluding someone that just wants to tow a small trailer.

 

Ours is just about as new as you can get and still get the £0 road tax. and it confirmed my thoughts to never buy a new car, the depreciation the first owner suffered for owning the car for 3 years is eye watering (to me)

[scottishjohn]

I am yet to be convinced that self charging hybrids are any better than small capacity turbo charged 3 cylinder sub 1000cc engines

they can get similar fuel economies if driven correctly .but with 120bhp  people don,t .

we all know the claims fro hybrids are not attainable in the real world by real people ,except for granny going to the church  on a sunday 

your small   hybrids are not exactly sporty  and if same limitation --eg auto were put on the petrol turbo eco engines then i am pretty sure they would do better .t

If you really want to stop pollution --then make less BHP 

the older ones of you will remember the average big family car of the 60,s had 60 -80 bhp or

if you were vauxhall ,you cheated and bhp tested engine with no ancillaries like water pump ,flywheel dynamo ,gearbox --pure test bed bhp for bare engine --which how you got the vauxhall victor  vx4/90 

a toyota aygo 998cc gives 68bhp and are about as heavy as an old morris oxford due to crash regs and will do more than twice as many mpg ,no matter how you drive it

the fire breathing car of  its day,  mini cooper S 1275c -was same bhp as the toyota ,but was nowhere close to same economy and about half the wieght of it.

the point I,m making is that if you really want to cut down pollution --limit bhp of all cars --no need for 200,300, or 600bhp  as in some cars 

even for towing I can never see a real need for more than 100 modern bhp --speed limit is 70mph.

my dads old Riley 4/72 would do about 105 mph -but even driving sensible it never did more than about 34 mpg.

same goes for all these 600-700bhp modern trucks --no need for it and they do about 8mpg.

will it happen --never --unless you tax cars on bhp --back to the first type of car taxation 

do I like fast cars --yes of course i do --but maybe we should be ready to pay for the pollution they make--if you profess to be a "tree hugger"

 

 

 

 

[Onoff]

Genius, hydrogen tanks in a combat zone! 

 

https://www.foxnews.com/auto/chevrolets-hydrogen-powered-stealth-truck-enlists-with-u-s-army

[scottishjohn]

hydrogen is the way we should have been going for a long time --at least that can be refuelled in a few minutes  and at a normal petrol station ,

[Triassic]

Thanks for all the input.

 

I’m in the land of the SUV 6 litre gas guzzler and I’m yet to see an EV.

 

Even thought the sun shines all day I’ve not see a solar panel or a solar water heater and every shop and hotel has the air con set to an artic blast. If the power went off and the fuel ran out they would all be doomed !

[SteamyTea]

4 hours ago, scottishjohn said:

which how you got the vauxhall victor  vx4/90 

I got one, was a nice revvy engine and a fast auto box.  Like all RWD Vauxhalls, it cornered well.

Would probably be horrible to drive today.

[Jeremy Harris]

56 minutes ago, Triassic said:

I’m in the land of the SUV 6 litre gas guzzler and I’m yet to see an EV.

 

 

Maybe I'll let you have a whizz around in the i3 if I'm ever up your way (which is a possibility, as we're thinking of having another holiday in your neck of the woods).

[scottishjohn]

11 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

I got one, was a nice revvy engine and a fast auto box.  Like all RWD Vauxhalls, it cornered well.

Would probably be horrible to drive today.

yes nostalgia isn,t what it used to be.  LOL

get those cross ply tyres howling  >LOL

 

remember the lotus twin cam escort or cortina--

that was car you dreamed of   

 It had a 120bhp !!

same as a saxo vts 1.6 or a ford eco 1000cc focus  or a citreon c3 hdi 1.6 diesel 

 --no things have moved on a long way with electronics +fuel injection since those days 

its so silly you buy a bmw m3 --400bhp --but the ecu only ever allows it to make full bhp once you are in top gear and over 120mph 

why cos the "boy racers "would destroy the gearbox /clutch if they allowed it to give full bhp from a standstill

you have 10 launch control uses --after that warranty is gone on transmission 

same reason as all these super cars are flappy paddle /auto boxs +4wd--"footballer" would destroy it or kill himself first day 

and killing your customers is not good for biz.

 4wd is a boys  car  anyway 

300bhp through 2 wheels is enough to keep any driver scared if used in anger with no electronic interference./traction control and all the other spoilers on a twisty road

,thats a MANS car 

what was that famous roger clark quote 

"sideways to victory --backwards to oblivion "

 

 

[SteamyTea]

4 hours ago, scottishjohn said:

get those cross ply tyres howling

I peeled the sidewall of one of them, was a bit scary at the time.

[AliG]

An even more aggressive advert on the "self charging hybrid" from Lexus(Toyota).

 

https://youtu.be/2MVooknqpgY?list=PL8Lc2mT_BJcwrc8RgQrZwxCIF3S8olx2D

 

Apparently it has two sources of power "petrol and electric".

 

It really is quite galling.

[Jeremy Harris]

Someone needs to call Toyota/Lexus out on this BS.  My decision to get rid of my plug-in Toyota Prius was driven, in part, by the "self-charging" crap, and I made it clear to the local Toyota dealer (that I've been using for ~15 years) that I was never going to buy one of their cars again because of this, in my view, fake advertising.

 

No hybrid (that doesn't plug in) has "two sources of power".  ALL of the power comes originally from burning fuel within the engine of the car, without exception.  Even the regen charging comes from fuel burned to get up to speed/up a hill before slowing down recovers a portion of the energy used.

 

I was a great fan of Toyota's hybrid technology for years, and owned three Prius variants between 2005 and 2018, but there is no doubt at all that Toyota have been left behind by many other main stream car manufacturers.  My guess is that they are trying to cover up their lack of progress in developing EVs by trying to pretend that their hybrids are, in some way, the same as EVs.  Clever bit of marketing strategy, as I'm sure that most punters will get completely suckered by this.  Probably the only way to get the message across that these cars are just fossil fuel burners may be to remove the zero rate VED for them, and stop classifying them as an "Alternative Fuel Vehicle".  I never could understand how the government came up with that classification for hybrids, anyway, given that they get all their energy from fuel, just like any other fossil fuel powered car.

 

The real shame of it is that, back in the very early 1990's, when the then chairman of Toyota, Shoichiro Toyoda, pushed the development of their very first hybrid drivetrain, his goal was for this to be a stepping stone, a way for Toyota to gain experience and knowledge of designing and developing an electric drivetrain, so that Toyota would be ahead of the rest of the world in electric vehicle technology.  Now Toyota are probably right at the very bottom of the list of manufacturers developing electric vehicles, even the traditionally conservative manufacturers, like GM and Ford, are way ahead  of them in EV technology.  Pretty much every major motor manufacturer in the world is either already selling EVs, or is just about to.  The best Toyota can manage is to develop some low speed electric mobility machines for the 2020 Olympic Games, with no sign that they are looking to release production-ready EVs any time soon.

 

 

[SteamyTea]

I read a piece in the motoring press that claimed that the reason that Toyota did not make a full EV was because a greater CO2 reduction could be made, overall, with PHEVs.

Last week the chairman of Honda said that customers wanted Hydrids at the moment, not full EVs or, the worse of all worlds HFCEV.

With a product cycle of 7 years, this is probably a prudent commercial decision.

 

Edited December 30, 2019 by SteamyTea

[Jeremy Harris]

20 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

I read a piece in the motoring press that claimed that the reason that Toyota did not make a full EV was because a greater CO2 reduction could be made, overall, with PHEVs.

Last week the chairman of Honda said that customers wanted Hydrids at the moment, not full EVs or, the worse of all worlds HFCEV.

With a product cycle of 7 years, this is probably a prudent commercial decision.

 

 

 

It almost certainly has as much to do with Toyota losing out on a source of suitable batteries, I think.  Toyota has always had battery supply problems.  When they chose NiMH cells for the first volume production Prius models, they were hampered by the inability of any suppliers to let them use larger format cells, due to the patents having been bought up by another car manufacturer, who just sat on them, and refused to licence the technology for anything other than small cells.  Toyota had to use a work-around, which (like Tesla years later) relied on using lots of small format cells to make the HV battery pack.  At the time, this made the HV battery, and its management system, expensive to manufacture, as unlike lithium chemistry cells, NiMH cells don't take kindly to just being connected together in parallel.  By the time Toyota shifted to using Lithium Ion cells for the plug-in variant they were way, way behind the curve in terms of access to decent battery chemistry.

 

Access to batteries has been well and truly stitched up by the early entrants to the EV market, some of whom realised early on that control of battery availability was the single biggest production problem they had to overcome.  Even Hyundai/Kia, who have access to probably the best/second best, battery technology around, are having major supply problems at the moment, which are delaying sales of their Kona and eNiro models, and they have the major advantage of South Korea being a world leader in the manufacture of lithium cells.  Tesla got around the battery problem by bringing battery technology in-house, and stealing a march on Toyota at the same time, by partnering with Panasonic (who had been Toyota's NiMH battery partner).

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, Jeremy Harris said:

almost certainly has as much to do with Toyota losing out on a source of suitable batteries, I think

Yes, it was to do with the supply of batteries. But I would have thought that the world's largest car producer (not sure if it still is) could have sorted that in a decade. Tesla have built a factory and delivered cars in about 10 months.

[Jeremy Harris]

Something changed after Shoichiro Toyoda  retired, I think.  He shook up Toyota, by almost single-handedly pushing through the "car for the Millenium" project, which became the Prius.  There was a heck of a lot of internal strife within Toyota at the time, as, by nature, they were a "conservative" car manufacturer, one that believed in small, incremental, changes, and high levels of reliability.

 

I strongly suspect that the company just reverted to type when he'd gone, and scorned the idea of ever designing a radically different type of car again.  It seems odd, given the success of the Prius, and the other hybrids that share the same core technology, but it was probably seen as a safe thing to do when there was that massive downturn in vehicle sales around 10 years ago. 

 

Interesting that Nissan decided to take the fairly radical (for a Japanese car company) step of creating the Leaf.  They've almost certainly gained a great deal of EV experience in the years they've been making and selling those.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, Jeremy Harris said:

Interesting that Nissan decided to take the fairly radical (for a Japanese car company) step of creating the Leaf

That could be the Renault influence, which is really the French government, who own most of EDF.

I wonder who is pushing hardest for EVs to be the only choice, not that it is a bad thing.

[epsilonGreedy]

James May likes his new hydrogen power Toyota. For those not blessed with a brain the size of planet, here is an interesting comparison of a Teslar and a hydrogen fuel cell power Toyota.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Ovn4REO2w

 

Edit: And here is the Part II road test.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaIW5CQQ3Zo

 

Edited December 30, 2019 by epsilonGreedy

[Jeremy Harris]

22 minutes ago, epsilonGreedy said:

James May likes his new hydrogen power Toyota. For those not blessed with a brain the size of planet, here is an interesting comparison of a Teslar and a hydrogen fuel cell power Toyota.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2Ovn4REO2w

 

Edit: And here is the Part II road test.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaIW5CQQ3Zo

 

 

The big problem with shifting to another energy source, for any new car technology, is the same one that petrol engined cars had to tackle when they first came into being.  The first car owners had to buy fuel in cans from a chemist, storing it at home, and strapping extra cans to the car if they needed to make a long journey.

 

Gradually, over a few decades, filling stations started to be built alongside well-used routes, to save owners having to take cans of fuel with them.  We've become used to a pattern of car use where we fuel cars exclusively at roadside filling stations.

 

Both hydrogen fuel cell powered cars, and battery powered cars, face the same issues that early car owners faced, but with one key difference.  

 

Hydrogen fuel cell cars owners cannot keep a store of fuel at home, so are wholly reliant on new hydrogen filling stations being built along commonly used routes.  It may be that some existing petrol/diesel/LPG filling stations can be adapted to include hydrogen storage and filling, but many cannot, primarily because of the additional space required to accommodate hydrogen filling points (for safety reasons).

 

Battery powered cars have the advantage of being able  to be "refuelled" pretty much anywhere that there's a supply of electricity.  The snag is that maximum recharge rates are (as of a couple of days ago) limited to 250 kW, which is roughly 900 mph charging speed (versus a typical petrol engined car's ~3,000mph refuelling speed).  The upside is that many battery electric cars can be charged fairly slowly whenever they are parked, at home, at work, or when parked away overnight.  Right now, it seems that very few EV owners do much charging at public, roadside, charge points.  The majority charge overnight at home, or during the day at work.

 

Whether hydrogen fuel cell powered cars will become mainstream very much depends on whether enough investment is put into refuelling facilities.  I'm inclined to think that it's more likely that alcohol fuel cells might be more likely to be a better option, as they are already available (in the form of generators for RV's, etc) and a petrol pump can easily be adapted to dispense alcohol.

[Jimbouk]

I’ve now done the best part of a thousand miles in the Hydrogen powered Nexo and am impressed. Refueling is not that different to a pay at the pump petrol experience, albeit rather harder to find a station.

 

Real world range is about 320 miles, performance is adequate for a suv size vehicle, lots of tech inside, comfortable.

 

Biggest draw back is other drivers not concentrating on driving when they realise they have just seen a hydrogen car, it has a fairly blatant hydrogen themed wrap on it

What I can’t figure out though is why they only fitted a 1.6kwh battery into it. This uses the energy from regenerative braking and provides additional power when required, if they had fitted a battery with a 50 mile range capacity to it, that could be charged to supplement range and /or  when hydrogen supply was not available, then they would have had a real game changer.

 

Edited December 31, 2019 by Jimbouk

[SteamyTea]

11 minutes ago, Jimbouk said:

What I can’t figure out though is why they only fitted a 1.6kwh battery into it

It is the mas of the thing.  One of the criticisms of EVs is that they are heavy because of the battery pack.

Mirai has a mass of 1850 kg, Tesla 3 is anywhere between 239 and 3 kg lighter.

Now I know it is very hard to compare like for like, but at the moment, HFCEV are just heavy bits of kit.

Makes me wonder what they are bothering with all the other drawbacks of hydrogen.

I also wonder how fast the hydrogen is produced if done on site.  Is it really worth pumping in 100 kW to crack water when it could be shot into a BEV.

I know these are relatively short term problems, but there must be a reason why car manufactures have gone down the BEV route, especially considering that lithium cell technology is a lot newer than fuel cell technology.

 

[epsilonGreedy]

14 hours ago, Jeremy Harris said:

Whether hydrogen fuel cell powered cars will become mainstream very much depends on whether enough investment is put into refuelling facilities.

 

 

James May mentioned that Germany and another country are way ahead on the hydrogen adoption curve compared to the UK, though a quick Google search indicates even Germany has just 75 roadside hydrogen filling stations.

 

14 hours ago, Jeremy Harris said:

Battery powered cars have the advantage of being able  to be "refuelled" pretty much anywhere that there's a supply of electricity.  The snag is that maximum recharge rates are (as of a couple of days ago) limited to 250 kW, which is roughly 900 mph charging speed (versus a typical petrol engined car's ~3,000mph refuelling speed).

 

 

At one point during the video JM explains that the slow Tesla charge rate is because other vehicles were charging concurrently at the same public charge point. Your 900/3000 charge rate ratio is unrealistic because it assumes a 1/4 Mega Watt power cable is laid on to every public charge point.

 

14 hours ago, Jeremy Harris said:

I'm inclined to think that it's more likely that alcohol fuel cells might be more likely to be a better option, as they are already available (in the form of generators for RV's, etc) and a petrol pump can easily be adapted to dispense alcohol.

 

 

They are niche trickle charge devices. Methanol fuel cells have a limited life span, I think they clog up over 100's or 1000's of cycles.

[AdamSee]

Electric cars are going to be the future, granted we have issues to sort out such as recharge times, battery construction and lifespan. But you can work on these while rolling out cars and without much change to the current infastructure. With hydrogen cars it would take large investment to upgrade certain filling stations to hold gas. Granted that some around me are setup for autogas already but it's a much more intensive process compared to fitting a charger.  I've posted a link before showing our current energy generation which shows just how much electricity we produce from low carbon sources.

 

The main problem with the slow development and uptake of electric vehicles stems from places like Germany. Their manufacturing industry is so heavily reliant on car manufacturing that it would be devastating to their economy if there was a sudden switch over. Think of all the factory's churning out pistons, valves, spark plugs, specialist grinding processes for engine components like the valve seats and engine blocks. Not only are these used in huge numbers for new cars but as spares aswell. None of these would be needed in the future. 

 

Hence why countries with small to non-existent car industries such as Norway have been the best adopters of EVs becuase it generated jobs for, rather than losing them.

[Jeremy Harris]

1 hour ago, epsilonGreedy said:

At one point during the video JM explains that the slow Tesla charge rate is because other vehicles were charging concurrently at the same public charge point. Your 900/3000 charge rate ratio is unrealistic because it assumes a 1/4 Mega Watt power cable is laid on to every public charge point.

 

Tesla are in the process of rolling out 250 kW rated Superchargers across their network, now that cars (like mine) can charge at 250 kW.  The first Supercharger bays to get uprated were the Park Lane ones, which went live just before Christmas.  Given that Tesla managed to convert all their Superchargers to accept the Model 3 in the space of a few months (needed a connector change, as the Model 3 uses the CCS international fast charge standard) then I doubt there will be much delay in getting their network upgraded.

 

The paired Supercharging rate halving issue has been around since day one, but every Tesla owner knows about it, and it's easy to see from the screen in the car if you're heading towards a Supercharger where there's a strong probability that you'll end up being paired.   Anyway, with the roll out of V3 Superchargers this issue goes away.

 

1 hour ago, epsilonGreedy said:

Your 900/3000 charge rate ratio is unrealistic because it assumes a 1/4 Mega Watt power cable is laid on to every public charge point.

 

Not at all - the HV lines run in to Supercharger arrays are massively more capable than 250 kW and the V3 Superchargers being rolled out all have a dedicated 250 kW feed to each one, unlike some of the V2 bays that used a shared feed between two stalls.  There's some info here on the V3 Superchargers now going in: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/08/16/a-quick-guide-to-teslas-new-v3-supercharging/  Quote from that article:

 

Quote

The biggest improvement with the new V3 Supercharging stations is their dedicated 250 kW power feeds for each station. The previous generation Superchargers utilize a single 150 kW backend that is shared between two charging stalls. If a single vehicle is charging, it can pull down the full 150 kilowatts, but if a second vehicle plugs in, that 150 kW feed is shared between the two vehicles.

 

The new V3 stations, on the other hand, get their own dedicated 250 kW feed. No more sharing power or having to check to see which charging pair you’re plugging into at a Supercharger. Just plug in and start gulping down power as fast as the station and car can handle. To achieve 250 kW charging, Tesla brought a new 1 MEGAWATT (1,000 kW) backbone to the party. This is then split amongst four Supercharging stalls, with no need to share.

 

 

1 hour ago, epsilonGreedy said:

 

They are niche trickle charge devices. Methanol fuel cells have a limited life span, I think they clog up over 100's or 1000's of cycles.

 

At the moment, yes.  However, the cycle life issue seems to have been largely resolved, and the output capability is gradually increasing, but seems to be driven by the demands of the primary market, which aren't that high.  The useful thing about liquid fuel cells is that they open up several, fairly safe, ways to refuel, or make the fuel in the first place.  We already know how to make alcohol cheaply and in large volumes (petrol currently has 5% to 10% ethanol added).  Similarly the distribution network is already in place - nothing much needs to be changed to switch conventional filling stations over to dispensing alcohol; I'd guess that the same tanks and pumps used for petrol could just be relabelled, almost.  The real issue is whether enough investment is going in to liquid fuel cell R&D, or whether most of it is going into hydrogen storage and distribution, or battery development.

 

My gut feeling is that gaseous hydrogen as a road vehicle fuel may not prove to be cost-effective.  The cost of producing hydrogen is high, and it's a wasteful process, plus it costs a lot to transport (the vehicles needed are expensive) and it costs a lot to store and dispense (the storage tanks and dispensing systems are very expensive, because of the pressures involved and the fire hazards associated with hydrogen).

[SteamyTea]

39 minutes ago, Jeremy Harris said:

fire hazards associated with hydrogen

Perceived is a better description.