EV-based road transportation is not viable

[MadScientist]

Hydrogen is DOA for cars. It’s simply another hydrocarbon

Well, it's actually not.   

Agreed. The whole world is buzzing with hydrogen from renewable sources... History repeats itself. 100+ years ago BEVs already existed and the current BEVs still have the same issues with range and long charging times. And just like oil based fuels, hydrogen has the potential to avoid those issues.

'It works for me so it must work for everyone' isn't a strong argument. The same goes for average distance travelled. Arguing that way is just stupid. It is like saying the average person on the world eats half a slice of bread a day so everyone should be able to do with eating half a slice of bread a day.

The evidence is Bev owners are generally happy with their choice and find their solution works. As a “ solution” permeates through society , habits change to accommodate the new “ reality “ so convergence occurs , when was the last time you saw horse rings outside a shop !!  , things change as society adopts solutions and the old arguments fall away , Co is itself has shown many people the fallacy of travel at all costs so even that has to factored in to future usage patterns

[MadScientist]

Regarding large trucks, often times the trailer is owned by some company and the tractor,  / prime mover is owned by a private individual. One option might be to have batteries and maybe even a drive motor in the trailer, and while the trailer is sitting around in a yard or being loaded it could be on charge. The driver could pull in to the destination, swap trailers, and be off straight away. What’s more, if the trailer battery had sufficient capacity the truck and trailer could go that much further than if powered by truck batteries alone. And the trailer owner could likely negotiate better rates seeing they are providing some of the required energy. Maybe even some degree of redundancy if in the unlikely chance the truck breaks down.

Battery tech will meet the needs of commercial usage it willl just take time , shipping is getting so expensive that societal change is needed anyway and that will also change usage patterns. Just in time for example has proven to be highly problematic by covid  and is likely to change shipping patterns from smaller high frequency shipping to larger less regular less time sensitive consignments

[bdunham7]

Thd debate is long over. As a 5 year EV owner with 276,000km on my EV. BEVs ldelivers the solution , it’s a better car then it’s ice equivalent

Hence certainly by 2035 personal private transport will be Bev , commercial will take longer but will arrive with battery trucks etc.

The future is mapped  out , it’s just a matter of time now

That's a ridiculous set of assertions based on your own personal experience.  I've had an EV for longer than you, but I don't assume everyone else is in the same situation.

I have another vehicle, ICE gasoline, that is 20 years old and still going.  This is not at all rare in the area that I live. They are still selling ICE vehicles and people are buying them--even people that can afford EVs in many cases.  Even if you phased out the manufacture of ICE vehicles entirely over the next seven years--a goal I think is absolutely impossible--you will still have ICE vehicles on the road in 2050 unless the fuel supply collapses. 

Also, actual BEV adoption rates are low single digit percentages (most studies mix in hybrids as 'electrified) in the US and globally, although there are few areas that are much higher due to local policy.  The current BEV penetration rates are not even close to what they were in 1900.   Tesla is outsold in the US by niche brands like Jeep and Subaru, let alone the large brands.  So yeah, it's just a matter of a lot of time--and figuring out how to manufacture a few hundred million battery packs!

[sokoloff]

You make a statement with no backup. Bevs are  outselling ICE in many marketplaces ,

They are in Norway.

Since you object to people making statements without backup, in what many other marketplaces is this the case?

[MadScientist]

I think you're wildly optimistic about how much spare capacity there is.

And once again, "miles" or "kilometres" is a completely meaningless way to express the charge in a battery. Miles on the flat? Miles uphill? What about ambient temperature, variations in the mass of the load?

Not super-accurate, but certainlly a long way from "meaningless"
These factors can be avaraged to give a figure that is meaningful enough for most purposes. Flat vs. uphill makes little difference as much of what you spend going uphill comes back on the way down via regen braking.

Can you push energy into the battery as fast as you can pull it out? If not then regen braking will only be that efficient for short durations (e.g. start stop in cities) or on gentle hills.

I wouldn't trust a Tesla salesman to give an answer. In my experience they can't even manage to turn on a screen demister, simply parrot the company line about "typical" range, and spout incoherent DoubleSpeak about whether or not Teslas are self-driving. I doubt other salesmen are any better.

With modern BEVs and near future models the edge cases of unsuitability are diminishing fast. The real situations of unsuitability therefore fade away. In early Bev stages people were obsessed with “ range “ but this is because people utterly mis analyse their car needs typically the reality is Bev owners rarely have range issues

Hence one take with a grain of salt claims BEVs will “ never suit “ sone drivers this has proven to be largely untrue in practice

[MadScientist]

I think you're wildly optimistic about how much spare capacity there is.

And once again, "miles" or "kilometres" is a completely meaningless way to express the charge in a battery. Miles on the flat? Miles uphill? What about ambient temperature, variations in the mass of the load?

Not super-accurate, but certainlly a long way from "meaningless"
These factors can be avaraged to give a figure that is meaningful enough for most purposes. Flat vs. uphill makes little difference as much of what you spend going uphill comes back on the way down via regen braking.

Can you push energy into the battery as fast as you can pull it out? If not then regen braking will only be that efficient for short durations (e.g. start stop in cities) or on gentle hills.

I wouldn't trust a Tesla salesman to give an answer. In my experience they can't even manage to turn on a screen demister, simply parrot the company line about "typical" range, and spout incoherent DoubleSpeak about whether or not Teslas are self-driving. I doubt other salesmen are any better.

With modern BEVs and nezf future models the edge cares if unsuitability are diminishing fast. The real situations of unsuitability therefore fade away. In early Bev stages people were obsessed with “ range “ but this is because people utterly mis analyse their car needs typically the reality is Bev owners rarely have range issues

Hence one mixf  take sign a grain of salt claims BEVs will “ never suit “ sone drivers this has proven to be largely untrue in practice

Tesla outsells all other premium ice brands in us for example and several EU countries have bend outselling equivalent Ice market segments

[MadScientist]

You make a statement with no backup. Bevs are  outselling ICE in many marketplaces ,

They are in Norway.

Since you object to people making statements without backup, in what many other marketplaces is this the case?

Google it

“ The tide has turned in the electrification of the German auto market, with plugin electric vehicles taking the majority of sales for the first time in December. Plugins took 55.4% of the month’s passenger auto sales, with full electrics taking a third (33.2%) and plugin hybrids taking over a fifth (22.2%). Plugless hybrids took 12.8%, leaving less than a third of sales for combustion-only autos (31.8%).”

[sokoloff]

BEVs were ~1 in 3 in one additional market, not “many”. Understood.

[MadScientist]

BEVs were ~1 in 3 in one additional market, not “many”. Understood.

Google various sales figures BEV growth is huge

[tggzzz]

I presume that is the same speed up hill and down dale

What would the power meter show going at the same speed on the flat with zero wind?

Indeed.

On the flat, at 70 mph with no head or tailwind, about 20%.  The power meter at 100% represents around 80kW. (It's got weird mapping as the whole car has 150kW and it goes up to 140%, but we'll ignore "sport mode" for now.)   So you need roughly 18kW to maintain that speed.

This gives you an idea of efficiency for an EV at motorway speeds.  In ideal conditions, 60kWh would get you 3.3 hours of driving, or 233 miles - equivalent to 3.8 miles per kWh.  However, once you add variability - hills, stopping, acceleration, plus other consumers, mostly heating/AC, you'll find the figure drops.  A 60kWh car can usually do about 210 miles on the motorway consistently.

I suspect for some time 60kWh batteries will be the standard for EVs.

David MacKay ouitlined the relevant physics; see https://withouthotair.com/cA/page_256.shtml and the surrounding pages (download the pdf if you prefer).

The actual energy consumption of the car will be the energy dissipation
in equation (A.2), cranked up by a factor related to the inefficiency of
the engine and the transmission. Typical petrol engines are about 25%
efficient, so of the chemical energy that a car guzzles, three quarters is
wasted in making the car’s engine and radiator hot, and just one quarter
goes into “useful” energy:

<equation>

Let’s check this theory of cars by plugging in plausible numbers for motorway
driving. Let v = 70 miles per hour = 110 km/h = 31 m/s and
A = cdAcar = 1 m2. The power consumed by the engine is estimated to be
roughly

<equation>

If you drive the car at this speed for one hour every day, then you travel
110 km and use 80 kWh of energy per day.

So, making the assumptions he stated in the reference, he gets 80kW generated by an ICE assuming a 25% efficiency. That translates to 20kW from a perfectly efficient engine, which is surprisingly close to your figure od 18kW

[tggzzz]

Hydrogen is DOA for cars. It’s simply another hydrocarbon , has safety storage and distribution issues . It’s merely petrol under another name

Ask hydrogen devotees the energy density of fuel (i.e. J/m³), and get them to define the volume of a hydrogen fuel tank relative to a petrol/diesel fuel tank. Make sure they don't have an "insert magic here" clause in their statements

I like to point out there are far more hydrogen bonds in a litre of petrol/diesel than there are in a litre of liquid hydrogen.

The average daily car distance in the UK is 14 km,  ...

Statisticians drown in lakes with an average depth of 15cm

Hint: since we are numerate engineers, we know the mean value conceals more than it illuminates. At least use the median and 95th percentile.

[RJSV]

   Yeah, too optimistic, by at least factor of two.  My case, pretty much life-long, is a slightly miserable trudge, 32 miles each way...up to more normal 38 miles one way, I'm afraid.
That's not the "164 miles every 6 days" being quoted here.  Far from it, at over 200 miles 'per six days', (which is weird, I guess more assumptions).

   That time, regardless of vehicle, amounts to a subsidy to industry and a major source of life-style stress, (even featured in a movie; 'Office Space', as mind-numbing 7:00 am crawl / too fast situations evolve).
   The asfalt and shear space, dedicated to traffic flow still there.  What happened, to mass transit ?  Bus lines got cut back, over the last decade.  Cut back, or (bus) lines altogether eliminated (bay area).

[tom66]

You make a statement with no backup. Bevs are  outselling ICE in many marketplaces ,

They are in Norway.

Since you object to people making statements without backup, in what many other marketplaces is this the case?

Not yet the case in the UK but we're not far from it.  EVs (including PHEVs) already outsell diesel and their combined volume is the same as hybrid (of any fuel type).  The growth in sales looks likely to tip in favour of EVs by about 2025 or so.  Put simply, people do not want to buy a vehicle they feel will be obsolete in the next 10-15 years.

[tom66]

   Yeah, too optimistic, by at least factor of two.  My case, pretty much life-long, is a slightly miserable trudge, 32 miles each way...up to more normal 38 miles one way, I'm afraid.
That's not the "164 miles every 6 days" being quoted here.  Far from it, at over 200 miles 'per six days', (which is weird, I guess more assumptions).

The statistic I quoted and calculated for, was based on the UK average.  Americans drive more than the British, for lots of reasons, including the US just being less dense (although urbanisation is comparable - both countries have a similar percentage of their population living within cities, approximately 75%.)  For the US, you'd of course need more chargers, but then it's very common to have a driveway there, as well as garage space, so I suspect the need for on street charging will be less than that in the UK or Europe.  I suspect the US will be one of the last countries in the Western world to have a majority of its vehicles become electric though the demand for electric pickup trucks (whilst I'm no fan of the pickup truck culture) is a good sign.

[bdunham7]

EVs (including PHEVs) already outsell diesel and their combined volume is the same as hybrid (of any fuel type)...

...people do not want to buy a vehicle they feel will be obsolete in the next 10-15 years.

Combining any other type of vehicle with EV sales, including long-range PHEVs like the Volt, is grossly misleading IMO.  Abolutely any use case fulfilled by an ICE vehicle, including zero access to charging, can be managed by a PHEV and there are tax credits and incentives in many cases to reduce the cost.  I've nothing against PHEVs, but 100% BEV vehicles need to be analyzed in their own category if you want any meaningful analysis of consumer preferences and behavior.

As far as obsolescence, who do you think feels more obsoleted right now--the owner of a 2010 Nissan Leaf or a 2010 Honda Accord ICE? 

[tautech]

Vehiclular obsolescence 
Never heard such BS.
Tell that to the few that still drive 1930's Model A's.

Or the chap that visited us last week with a 60's Fairlane 500 289 powered.

[tom66]

David MacKay ouitlined the relevant physics; see https://withouthotair.com/cA/page_256.shtml and the surrounding pages (download the pdf if you prefer).

So, making the assumptions he stated in the reference, he gets 80kW generated by an ICE assuming a 25% efficiency. That translates to 20kW from a perfectly efficient engine, which is surprisingly close to your figure od 18kW

Mmm, I do love MacKay's book.  Another interesting calculation I did which I was surprised worked so well was, on the basis of this power consumption at one speed, what is the top speed of the Golf GTE Mk7 (with battery depleted and engine at full bore).  The engine is 148hp or about 110kW.  So knowing P ∝ kV³, I calculate k = 0.0525 for my car (power in watts).  This calculates to a top speed of 128 mph. And... looking at the specifications: rated top speed 134 mph continuously.

Then back calculate this for the Golf GTI Mk7 with a 227 hp engine and presumably similar drivetrain and aerodynamic losses.   That comes out around 147 mph, the vehicle has a rated top speed of 155 mph.  There probably a slight deviation from a simple power law, or the 18kW figure is a low side estimate.

It's nice when maths just... works out.

Of course, that won't help when plod pulls you over for such liberal use of the accelerator.  Maybe an EV is better for maintaining the licence, given they tend to top out below 100 mph.  Autobahn aficionados need not apply.

EVs (including PHEVs) already outsell diesel and their combined volume is the same as hybrid (of any fuel type)...

...people do not want to buy a vehicle they feel will be obsolete in the next 10-15 years.

Combining any other type of vehicle with EV sales, including long-range PHEVs like the Volt, is grossly misleading IMO.  Abolutely any use case fulfilled by an ICE vehicle, including zero access to charging, can be managed by a PHEV and there are tax credits and incentives in many cases to reduce the cost.  I've nothing against PHEVs, but 100% BEV vehicles need to be analyzed in their own category if you want any meaningful analysis of consumer preferences and behavior.

As far as obsolescence, who do you think feels more obsoleted right now--the owner of a 2010 Nissan Leaf or a 2010 Honda Accord ICE?

Mmm, but both EVs and PHEVs require some form of charging infrastructure; PHEVs ideally want as much charging as they can get with their tiny battery packs, so you can consider a combined statistic as representing demand of one kind or another for charging infrastructure.  Since there are no taxation advantages any more for PHEVs in the UK, these vehicles will be purchased by people who want an EV but aren't brave enough to go fully electric yet.   But, yes, if you want to look at the stats independently, you can still see that battery-electric only will be, if growth rates continue as they are (and looking at other countries there's no reason to think that'll change) beating all other vehicle types by 2025.   We're clearly on the exponential now. 

As for obsolete Leaf - no, I don't think the Leaf is particularly obsolete.  I wouldn't buy one, if only because Nissan can't build a battery pack that lasts a decent amount of time but Chademo is still a supported connector and the type 1 charging connector for AC charging is fully backwards compatible with type 2 with a simple cable.   Given the really poor battery retention on pretty much all Leaf's from 24 to 40kWh (seriously Nissan, what the hell?) and the serious issues with "rapidgate" for the 40kWh models which prevent more than 2-3 rapid charging sessions in any one day, I think road tripping in any Leaf is a particularly brave adventure.  But that's nothing to do with obsolescence, that's just really bad design!

[bdunham7]

But that's nothing to do with obsolescence, that's just really bad design!

If the car can't be practically used due to the condition of the battery pack and that battery pack is cost-prohibitive to replace, your Leaf may well feel obsolete even if you have some other definition for the word.  Even if the battery pack is in OK shape, you have a car with a 60-70 mile range which also feels pretty obsolete by modern standards.  On the other hand, most 2010 Accords will still function as intended and are generally on-par with most modern offerings. 

b/t/w, if I understand it correctly, this website essentially says that BEV penetration in the UK is ~16% of last years sales and ~2% of the total  current vehicle population.  That's a trend, but as I pointed out above, in 1900 BEV penetration was 30%.  We're a long way from ICE extinction.

[tggzzz]

You make a statement with no backup. Bevs are  outselling ICE in many marketplaces ,

They are in Norway.

Since you object to people making statements without backup, in what many other marketplaces is this the case?

Not yet the case in the UK but we're not far from it.  EVs (including PHEVs) already outsell diesel and their combined volume is the same as hybrid (of any fuel type).  The growth in sales looks likely to tip in favour of EVs by about 2025 or so.  Put simply, people do not want to buy a vehicle they feel will be obsolete in the next 10-15 years.

That's unconvincing.

You can play that statistic any way you want, e.g. people that

• can afford a car at the moment have sufficient spare money to pay the "excess" cost
• buy an EV know how they will charge it
• buy an EV have an ICE car for when the EV won't cut it
• are prepared to be bleeding edge early adopters

so that's the low-hanging fruit, which won't continue for people without dedicated off-street parking with charging facilities and a second car as a "workaround".

The chasm has yet to be crossed.

[jonpaul]

hear 75% of public EV chargers in USA are un useable at any moment.....defective, software issues, loss of payment system,

In some areas you drive, run low, get to a,EV charge, line to wait, wait in que Finally charger will not work or incompatible to your car.

Jon

[tggzzz]

   Yeah, too optimistic, by at least factor of two.  My case, pretty much life-long, is a slightly miserable trudge, 32 miles each way...up to more normal 38 miles one way, I'm afraid.
That's not the "164 miles every 6 days" being quoted here.  Far from it, at over 200 miles 'per six days', (which is weird, I guess more assumptions).

The statistic I quoted and calculated for, was based on the UK average. 

Yeah, riiiiight... and Tesla employees have an average net worth of >$2m? (Musk worth $140bn, 70k employees).

Your number is based on the UK mean, which can disguise all sorts of phenomena if the distribution isn't normal. So, what's the median and 95th percentile mileage?

[Black Phoenix]

I think that our problem is that we tried to find a new method instead of trying to find a solution that could reuse what we current have with minimal conversion.

Where's the Synthetic Fuels?

https://www.bosch.com/stories/synthetic-fuels/

https://jalopnik.com/five-synthetic-fuels-that-could-replace-gasoline-and-di-1849446204/slides/3

Although it is true that EVs being a success. I live in Shenzhen, and all Bus and Taxis are EV powered. Even construction dump trucks are now EV powered too, with some construction companies already using trucks made by BYD. But in China EVs are heavily subsidised by the Government (or were, subsidies ended in 31 December 2022 for normal road cars).

EV Road scooters and rental bikes are common. In Zhongshan, a city without a Metro infrastructure I used a EV bikes for a month there working that I could rent and would pay 10RMB per 20min of use. It made 90% of my transport per day since the BUS public transport infrastructure is mediocre at best.

[themadhippy]

Where's the Synthetic Fuels?

same place as the ever lasting lamp,in the hands of those with the most to lose

[james_s]

Agreed. The whole world is buzzing with hydrogen from renewable sources... History repeats itself. 100+ years ago BEVs already existed and the current BEVs still have the same issues with range and long charging times. And just like oil based fuels, hydrogen has the potential to avoid those issues.

'It works for me so it must work for everyone' isn't a strong argument. The same goes for average distance travelled. Arguing that way is just stupid. It is like saying the average person on the world eats half a slice of bread a day so everyone should be able to do with eating half a slice of bread a day.

The majority of hydrogen available today comes from cracking fossil fuels. Producing it from renewable energy is very inefficient.

BEVs existed 100+ years ago but they were primitive. Battery technology was in its infancy, there were no inverters or microcontrollers or any of the things that make modern EVs practical. Gasoline engines got ahead pretty quickly but now ICE technology has pretty fully matured, there is nowhere else to go. BEV technology has in the last 15 years or so caught up and in many ways surpassed it.

It really takes some serious mental gymnastics to make a claim that hydrogen cars are anything but dead. You have to pretend that tens of millions of cars that are out there already don't exist, and a few thousand hydrogen cars are the future. That's like claiming LED lighting will never catch on and induction lamps or some new refinement of incandescent is the future. How can you even make such a claim with a straight face? Even wanting something badly to be true does not make it true. Hydrogen is dead, within a decade I would wager that even Toyota will give up. We are probably close to the peak number of hydrogen filling stations that will exist in the world and within my lifetime they will all be gone.

[james_s]

Where's the Synthetic Fuels?

same place as the ever lasting lamp,in the hands of those with the most to lose

Ever lasting lamp is trivial if you don't care about either efficiency or cost.

You can have long life, high efficiency or low cost, pick any two.