Electric Vehicles.

[Captain Turdseye]

8 hours ago, johnsusername said:

Seem well too expensive to me. They're nice and all, but don't think I could afford one. I'll stick with my 2016 petrol VW Polo for another few years.

Posh cunt. 

[TheHowieLama]

The guy who sells electric cars used almost a quarter million gallons of gas last year.

 

250k. That is alot of mom's driving kids. A whole fuckin lot. Like 400 moms driving 12,000 miles a year to and from school.

 

[VladimirIlyich]

2 hours ago, TheHowieLama said:

The guy who sells electric cars used almost a quarter million gallons of gas last year.

 

250k. That is alot of mom's driving kids. A whole fuckin lot. Like 400 moms driving 12,000 miles a year to and from school.

 

We are judging it by our own tiny island where millions of us have become lazy bastards(myself included) but especially overweight people driving kids to school instead of walking two minutes instead.

[ZonkoVille77]

https://garagewire.co.uk/news/must-read/mercedes-owner-horrified-at-15k-cost-of-new-hybrid-battery/

 

garagewire.co.uk

 

Mercedes owner 'horrified' at £15K cost of new hybrid battery - Garage Wire

Mike Ruff, GW editor

2 - 3 minutes

---

The owner of an eight-year-old Mercedes Hybrid model has been left shocked at the cost of a replacement battery.

Ranjit Singh, 63, bought the second-hand Mercedes Benz hybrid car four years ago for £27,000 from a Mercedes Benz dealership.

However, the dealership has now told him that the battery has come to the end of its service life.

He claims he was quoted £15,000 for a hybrid battery replacement – excluding labour costs which he was quoted would be roughly around £200 an hour.

Speaking to Leicestershire Live, the Ranjit said: “I have always been a Mercedes customer and loved the cars they produce and we bought the car for its reliability.

“We also looked online at Mercedes-Benz forums, and found a lot of people facing the same issues.

“I fear this is only going to get worse.”

Related: Toyota reveals factory plans to “refurb” cars for second and third owners

Mercedes Benz says information is available online and customers are informed of the battery certificate upon purchasing.

A spokesman said: “We have based the general information below on a 2014 Mercedes-Benz E-Class mild hybrid with a 125V high voltage battery, rather than a plug-in hybrid.

“In 2014, the 125V high voltage battery was covered by the standard three year manufacturer’s warranty (unlimited mileage).

“Without the background information, we are unable to comment on why the high voltage battery required replacement in this particular case.

“Outside influences can contribute to reduced battery life, for example, operating conditions of the car, accidents, repairs and general maintenance.

“When purchasing a new or used hybrid car from a Mercedes-Benz Retailer, customers are informed of the battery certificate, which is alongside the warranty information on the Owners’ Area of the Mercedes-Benz Cars UK website and the smart.com website.”

[TheHowieLama]

An 8 year old hybrid is like driving around a Betamax ffs.

Apple has made 4 series' of phones obsolete in that time.

 

Buy a diesel.

[ZonkoVille77]

Throw-away culture. Good for the environment. 

[ZonkoVille77]

"EV fires are complex and often heralded by a highly toxic vapour cloud accompanied by a hissing noise and highly directional jets, followed, possibly, by an explosion; they can occur spontaneously; and putting out an EV fire is virtually impossible." 

 

Virtually impossible to put out an EV fire? Good for the environment you say? Media says so, must agree.

 

https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/electric-cars/how-much-fire-risk-are-electric-vehicles

 

www.autocar.co.uk

 

How much of a fire risk are electric vehicles? | Autocar

by John Evans

7 - 9 minutes

---

Experts are divided on how best to tackle an EV fire but, generally, immense quantities of water to cool the battery pack (although this won’t prevent fire erupting again), a fire blanket to suppress the flames and breathing equipment for the fire fighters to protect them from the toxic vapour cloud is the standard approach. Either that or simply let the blaze burn itself out. Attempting to suffocate the fire with inert gases is ineffective because, being a chemical blaze, it does not require oxygen. Meanwhile, the surrounding area must be checked for discarded battery cells that could have been propelled from the battery pack by an explosion and might spontaneously ignite later. Following containment, the burnt-out EV must be removed and deposited in a compound away from buildings and other vehicles. (Some 25% of scrapyard fires are caused by spent lithium ion batteries.) More radical steps include immersing the car in water, although not sea water because chlorine gas can be released.

It all sounds quite alarming and a good reason not to buy an electric car, but Paul Christensen, professor of pure and applied electrochemistry at Newcastle University and senior advisor to the National Fire Chiefs Council, is keen to quell fears about EV fire safety, especially given the benefits the technology offers.

/sites/autocar.co.uk/files/styles/body-image/public/98-ev-fires.jpg?itok=fQ0oaWMO

“As someone who assisted Nissan during the creation of its battery plant, I would, if I could afford one, have a Nissan Leaf tomorrow,” he says. “We don’t need to be worried about the small incidence of fires involving electric vehicles but we do need to be aware. A lithium ion battery stores a huge amount of energy in a very small space. Since 2008, the adoption of such batteries has outstripped our appreciation of their risks. We’re running to catch up but we will do.”

As part of his campaign to improve EV fire risk awareness among first responders, Christensen has, so far, presented to 30 of the UK’s 50 fire services, as well as to fire services in Europe, Australia and New Zealand. He begins each talk by describing the structure of a lithium ion battery cell. A sliver of aluminium, called the cathode, is coated with a mixed-metal oxide ink. It’s partnered by a slice of copper coated with graphite called the anode. In between them is a fragile, perforated plastic separator soaked in an organic solvent that contains a small quantity of additives whose identity is, troublingly, known only to the cell manufacturer. Depending on whether the battery is being charged or discharged, the lithium ions move either from, or to, the cathode and anode.

Then the professor gives his audience of firefighters their first shock. Full, a cell contains 4.2V of charge, but even when empty, it still holds 2.5V. A Nissan Leaf has from around 192 cells in 24 modules and a Tesla Model S over 7000 in 16 modules. That’s a lot of energy when the car’s power indicator says it has none. Full or ‘empty’, the risk of this energy escaping in an uncontrolled fashion is what some scientists believe leads to ‘thermal runaway’, when heat and gases fuel even higher temperatures and still more gases, including hydrogen and oxygen, in a self-fulfilling loop until the cells begin to burn and burst. A toxic vapour cloud develops, bringing with it the risk of deflagration. Once thermal runaway has started, no battery management system or circuit breaker can stop it. “A battery fire can be controlled but it cannot be extinguished,” says Christensen.

He has demonstrated in tests how perforating or otherwise damaging a battery pack, as in a crash, can cause it to catch fire. “If an EV’s battery case is dented, you have to assume it’s dangerous,” he says. Battery packs have been known to catch fire through overheating and while being charged. More worrying, a battery fire can erupt spontaneously, contamination of even just a single cell during its manufacture being one possible explanation. “Even the most experienced and careful manufacturers have defective electric cells passing through their very careful quality control systems,” says Christensen. 

 

A battery flame is like a blowtorch that will quickly ignite anything in its path, which is why Christensen wants councils and other organisations to consider EV safety risks in underground car parks, as well as bus depots where vehicles are parked side by side. “In Germany, three bus depots have gone up in flames in the past six or so months,” he says. “Tunnels, ferries, car parks, cargo ships transporting EVs – all the places you find electric vehicles should be considered a safety risk and the appropriate steps taken.”

He’s worried about classic cars being converted to run on used lithium ion batteries, too. “Nobody really knows how safe used lithium ion batteries are and no standard test has yet been devised to tell us,” he says. “Some batteries re-enter the market having been removed in illegal chop shops. How safe are they? There’s a lot of research into lithium ion battery safety but everyone needs to link up because, right now, we’re at the bottom of a very steep learning curve.” 

 

When all else fails…

/sites/autocar.co.uk/files/styles/body-image/public/ev_battery_fires.jpg?itok=CEeVFAxz

For electric cars that are on fire or at risk of being so, the fire service in Copenhagen, Denmark, has developed a truck-mounted vehicle containment solution. The smouldering EV is lowered into the container, which, like a skip, is then hoisted onto a flatbed truck. Nozzles in the floor and sides of the container allow water to be pumped into it. Once full, container and car are taken to a safe storage area and left, possibly for weeks, until the vehicle is no longer a hazard. All being well, the water is then filtered and treated for its safe disposal.

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[TheHowieLama]

5 minutes ago, ZonkoVille77 said:

Throw-away culture. Good for the environment. 

 

It's a hybrid. It still runs.

 

[ZonkoVille77]

I'm glad I ditched my car for a bicycle. Better for the environment you see, plus I don't need any propaganda to tell me a bicycle is good for the environment. Unless it bursts into flames of course. 

[TheHowieLama]

Or ends up in a canal in Amsterdam.

 

 

Cloggy!!

[Harry's Lad]

58 minutes ago, ZonkoVille77 said:

I'm glad I ditched my car for a bicycle. Better for the environment you see, plus I don't need any propaganda to tell me a bicycle is good for the environment. Unless it bursts into flames of course. 

Just make sure the brake blocks aren't binding on the rims and you should be ok. 

[RedSand]

On 28/05/2023 at 04:07, VladimirIlyich said:

Those Tesla cars look shite. Their drivers are joining the BMV,Mercedes and Audi drivers as cunts.

I like the look of their cars.
So much so we bought a Y last year.

Build quality is not on par with the wife’s Hyundai, but we knew that going in. It’s basically ann iPad on wheels.

All in all glad we bought it and happy to answer any questions if you lot have any.

 

But to your main point. 100%.

I’m my experience the Tesla drivers here in San Diego and California in general just seem to be the arrogant, I’m so important, get out of my way dickheads and arseholes. They absolutely drive like entitled cunts. 

[Waitak]

The issue of battery safety is interesting. Lithium ion (rechargeable lithium batteries) are fundamentally volatile, and I'm afraid that as the boundaries of power output and charging rates are pushed, they become more risky. A few years ago there was a cellphone with a tendency to self-combust without warning - was it the Samsung 7 ?  For a while airlines banned that particular model on flights, and the manufacturer eventually withdrew it. 

 

The International Air Transport Authority (IATA) classifies lithium ion batteries as "dangerous goods" and will only allow them as freight on aircraft under very strict conditions. Meanwhile, every passenger these days gets on a plane with at least one lithium-ion powered device, and many people with multiple devices, all without controls of any kind.    

[razor]

1 hour ago, ZonkoVille77 said:

I'm glad I ditched my car for a bicycle. Better for the environment you see, plus I don't need any propaganda to tell me a bicycle is good for the environment. Unless it bursts into flames of course. 

 

Zonk riding his bike all the way to his broker's to find out how his Ford / BP / Shell shares are doing!

 

But I agree that one of the greatest things we could do for the environment is convince car owners that they don't need to drive tanks and buses as run-arounds.  

 

Like the second amendment, it seems to have been locked into American culture that they need 3 tons of metal to drive around in.

 

The French and Italians were busy making cars smaller, but the power of advertising in associating big cars with masculinity has won the day in America, and across much of the western world.

 

Anyone who calls this out, of course will be hounded as a snowflake Greta-ite who believes in the bullshit that is "global warming".  They're coming for our cars, they'll be coming for our God and our kids next.

 

But back to Harry's question, I would say to anyone who asks that I am really happy with my hybrid car.  It travels about 20 miles on electric alone, and I work less than 10 miles away from my house, so during the week, I hardly use any petrol at all.  And when it does switch to petrol, it is "hybrid" which means it still uses far less fuel.

 

It cost a lot to buy but it will save me money in the long term.

 

And, despite Zonk's protestations, I believe it is better for the planet overall.

[Creator Supreme]

All of our troubles will be over when we develop the Tube they have in Futurama (and the suicide booths obviously).

[ZonkoVille77]

11 hours ago, razor said:

 

 

And, despite Zonk's protestations, I believe it is better for the planet overall.

 

On paper they look to be the answer. They definitely don't have the same negative impacts on air quality and that can only be good for people who suffer from respiratory conditions. 

 

The tech hasn't yet developed to a state where they can be truly better for the environment. So I take issue with the whole green-washing of EV's when the reality is they are currently as bad as combustion engine vehicles when everything is factored in - from mining to transportation to production. That's not to mention that they get their power source from burning fossil fuels (until solar/wind can produce enough). However, we have to start somewhere to get rid of fossil fuel powered vehicles. Hopefully they'll eventually come good. 

[TheHowieLama]

1 hour ago, ZonkoVille77 said:

Hopefully they'll eventually come good. 

 

It doesn't really help that the guy leading the charge is seen as a bit of a con man and a world class gimp. Tesla dropped 50 spots in the last 18 months.

 

https://theharrispoll.com/partners/media/axios-harrispoll-100/

 

[ZonkoVille77]

Few interesting points here.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/03/electric-vehicles-early-adopter-petrol-car-ev-environment-rowan-atkinson

 

www.theguardian.com

I love electric vehicles – and was an early adopter. But increasingly I feel duped | Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Atkinson

7 - 8 minutes

 

Electric motoring is, in theory, a subject about which I should know something. My first university degree was in electrical and electronic engineering, with a subsequent master’s in control systems. Combine this, perhaps surprising, academic pathway with a lifelong passion for the motorcar, and you can see why I was drawn into an early adoption of electric vehicles. I bought my first electric hybrid 18 years ago and my first pure electric car nine years ago and (notwithstanding our poor electric charging infrastructure) have enjoyed my time with both very much. Electric vehicles may be a bit soulless, but they’re wonderful mechanisms: fast, quiet and, until recently, very cheap to run. But increasingly, I feel a little duped. When you start to drill into the facts, electric motoring doesn’t seem to be quite the environmental panacea it is claimed to be.

 

As you may know, the government has proposed a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030. The problem with the initiative is that it seems to be based on conclusions drawn from only one part of a car’s operating life: what comes out of the exhaust pipe. Electric cars, of course, have zero exhaust emissions, which is a welcome development, particularly in respect of the air quality in city centres. But if you zoom out a bit and look at a bigger picture that includes the car’s manufacture, the situation is very different. In advance of the Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, Volvo released figures claiming that greenhouse gas emissions during production of an electric car are 70% higher than when manufacturing a petrol one. How so? The problem lies with the lithium-ion batteries fitted currently to nearly all electric vehicles: they’re absurdly heavy, many rare earth metals and huge amounts of energy are required to make them, and they only last about 10 years. It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobile’s fight against the climate crisis.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of effort is going into finding something better. New, so-called solid-state batteries are being developed that should charge more quickly and could be about a third of the weight of the current ones – but they are years away from being on sale, by which time, of course, we will have made millions of overweight electric cars with rapidly obsolescing batteries. Hydrogen is emerging as an interesting alternative fuel, even though we are slow in developing a truly “green” way of manufacturing it. It can be used in one of two ways. It can power a hydrogen fuel cell (essentially, a kind of battery); the car manufacturer Toyota has poured a lot of money into the development of these. Such a system weighs half of an equivalent lithium-ion battery and a car can be refuelled with hydrogen at a filling station as fast as with petrol.

 

If the lithium-ion battery is an imperfect device for electric cars, it’s a complete non-starter for trucks because of its weight; for such vehicles hydrogen can be injected directly into a new kind of piston engine. JCB, the company that makes yellow diggers, has made huge strides with hydrogen engines and hopes to put them into production in the next couple of years. If hydrogen wins the race to power trucks – and as a result every filling station stocks it – it could be a popular and accessible choice for cars.

A Volvo hybrid car undergoes emissions tests for the campaign group Transport & Environment in 2021.
A Volvo hybrid car undergoes emissions tests for the campaign group Transport & Environment in 2021. Photograph: Emissions Analytics/Reuters

 

But let’s zoom out even further and consider the whole life cycle of an automobile. The biggest problem we need to address in society’s relationship with the car is the “fast fashion” sales culture that has been the commercial template of the car industry for decades. Currently, on average we keep our new cars for only three years before selling them on, driven mainly by the ubiquitous three-year leasing model. This seems an outrageously profligate use of the world’s natural resources when you consider what great condition a three-year-old car is in. When I was a child, any car that was five years old was a bucket of rust and halfway through the gate of the scrapyard. Not any longer. You can now make a car for £15,000 that, with tender loving care, will last for 30 years. It’s sobering to think that if the first owners of new cars just kept them for five years, on average, instead of the current three, then car production and the CO2 emissions associated with it, would be vastly reduced. Yet we’d be enjoying the same mobility, just driving slightly older cars.

 

We need also to acknowledge what a great asset we have in the cars that currently exist (there are nearly 1.5bn of them worldwide). In terms of manufacture, these cars have paid their environmental dues and, although it is sensible to reduce our reliance on them, it would seem right to look carefully at ways of retaining them while lowering their polluting effect. Fairly obviously, we could use them less. As an environmentalist once said to me, if you really need a car, buy an old one and use it as little as possible. A sensible thing to do would be to speed up the development of synthetic fuel, which is already being used in motor racing; it’s a product based on two simple notions: one, the environmental problem with a petrol engine is the petrol, not the engine and, two, there’s nothing in a barrel of oil that can’t be replicated by other means. Formula One is going to use synthetic fuel from 2026. There are many interpretations of the idea but the German car company Porsche is developing a fuel in Chile using wind to power a process whose main ingredients are water and carbon dioxide. With more development, it should be usable in all petrol-engine cars, rendering their use virtually CO2-neutral.

 

Increasingly, I’m feeling that our honeymoon with electric cars is coming to an end, and that’s no bad thing: we’re realising that a wider range of options need to be explored if we’re going to properly address the very serious environmental problems that our use of the motor car has created. We should keep developing hydrogen, as well as synthetic fuels to save the scrapping of older cars which still have so much to give, while simultaneously promoting a quite different business model for the car industry, in which we keep our new vehicles for longer, acknowledging their amazing but overlooked longevity.

 

Friends with an environmental conscience often ask me, as a car person, whether they should buy an electric car. I tend to say that if their car is an old diesel and they do a lot of city centre motoring, they should consider a change. But otherwise, hold fire for now. Electric propulsion will be of real, global environmental benefit one day, but that day has yet to dawn.

 

    Rowan Atkinson is an actor, comedian and writer

[bossy]

Re the Atkinson column. This guy answers back. 
 

https://twitter.com/gnievchenko/status/1664926665225453568?s=46&t=UJ6-gN7wOvBSyByJXyjAeA

[VladimirIlyich]

5 minutes ago, bossy said:

Re the Atkinson column. This guy answers back. 
 

https://twitter.com/gnievchenko/status/1664926665225453568?s=46&t=UJ6-gN7wOvBSyByJXyjAeA

Not sure I know how much of each to believe. I do think that simply making our current vehicles last longer on cleaner fuel is better than manufacturing millions more cars and all the energy and pollution that will use up and cause though.

[TheHowieLama]

Keeping current autos running longer is a scammeroo.

 

My 2009 Audi will not become more efficient - ever. It might perform differently with different fuel (good or bad) but it is what it is.

Any alt fuel source would need to be cheaper to get to the pump, while being markedly cleaner and then need to improve my car's mpg for that to make sense.

 

[Red Shift]

On 28/05/2023 at 12:11, Waitak said:

A mate of mine bought a new BYD Atto 3 full electric SUV a few months ago. The advertised driving range is 420Kms on a full charge. Yesterday he took it on a longish drive - 150Kms from Auckland to Te Aroha.  He got 90Kms into the return journey before having to stop for a recharge with the battery reading 10%.  Realistic driving range appears to be around 250Kms, despite what is advertised.

Personally, I think it's hard to go past a hybrid.  You get some points for saving the planet if that concerns you, but you are never going to be restricted by the limited range of a full EV. 

I think the science confirms the hybrid as the superior vehicle in terms of practicality, performance & with climate change in mind.

 

I’m keen to see how the Labour government’s investment in hydrogen pans out, to be honest.

A hybrid duel fuel system between petrol and hydrogen gas (as a replacement for LPG) would allow for the existing fleet of road worthy vehicles to continue on the roads, through the transitional period while new technologies are developed.

 

The only hindrance to a conventional vehicle running hydrogen, is the advanced timing. An adjustable timing mechanism, for adjusting on the fly has been developed.

 

Tax breaks or subsidies could be made available to help people convert.

[ZonkoVille77]

Huge if true. 

 

 

[Harry's Lad]

On 04/06/2023 at 23:41, Red Shift said:

I think the science confirms the hybrid as the superior vehicle in terms of practicality, performance & with climate change in mind.

 

I’m keen to see how the Labour government’s investment in hydrogen pans out, to be honest.

A hybrid duel fuel system between petrol and hydrogen gas (as a replacement for LPG) would allow for the existing fleet of road worthy vehicles to continue on the roads, through the transitional period while new technologies are developed.

 

The only hindrance to a conventional vehicle running hydrogen, is the advanced timing. An adjustable timing mechanism, for adjusting on the fly has been developed.

 

Tax breaks or subsidies could be made available to help people convert.

I remember when unleaded replaced leaded fuel (1991?) where cars had to be converted for this by having a wiring loom fitted by the main dealer which made the necessary timing adjustment. 

 

The problem was that you still had to fill up with leaded every 4th fill or engine damage could occur.

I was wary of this so I used to do 1 in 2 rather than 1 in 4.

 

It didn't stop my car, 3 year old Sierra having to have the valves replaced at 30,000 miles because of it amongst other damage.

[Red Shift]

10 hours ago, Harry's Lad said:

I remember when unleaded replaced leaded fuel (1991?) where cars had to be converted for this by having a wiring loom fitted by the main dealer which made the necessary timing adjustment. 

 

The problem was that you still had to fill up with leaded every 4th fill or engine damage could occur.

I was wary of this so I used to do 1 in 2 rather than 1 in 4.

 

It didn't stop my car, 3 year old Sierra having to have the valves replaced at 30,000 miles because of it amongst other damage.

Yeah the removal of lead caused issues for some vehicles, until the standardised alternative lead additive came along, which is now in all petrol.

 

In terms of hydrogen, it is exactly the same as running LPG. After combustion the emissions are essentially water. After combustion of petrol, the emissions are about 97% water, from memory. Exhaust pipes eventually need repairing even with petrol.

Ideally, new vehicles would have hardened valves and stainless steel exhausts. Or better still, as it gets cheaper, carbon fibre.