Interesting news for Electric Vehicles out of Texas

[Suff]

I am not buying the emissions free hype, not until the production of renewable energy exceeds total consumption: 2025:2030:2040 - no chance. Then there's the environmental destruction and recycling problems EVs create. Let's just forget them, eh?

Emissions free at the point of use. "So what" you say? Well so what is that if you stall producing electric vehicles until the grid is 100% renewable, then it takes you another 25 years to get the Fossil burners out of the system. However if you spend the time, whilst transitioning the grid, to move off fossil burners and onto EV, the day after you go emissions free 100% on the grid, your transport is emissions free 100%. Well for the vehicles which can. Not all can.

It is not about "today" as such. It is about the journey to emissions free and being smart enough to not have a fully emissions free grid whilst the rest of your country is still pumping out 66% of your energy on fossil fuels.

As for V2G, I've said it before but I will reiterate. The Average miles driven daily, in the UK, is just over 19. 1kw/h averages at 3.5 miles. So when you have burned that 5.7kw/h for today, you can afford to share the wealth of the rest of your 57kw/h battery before it fills itself up again overnight in the low period. For the people who used it as a room heater, it probably had 4/5 of the battery left in the morning. Enough energy to go to work the next day, come back, have another warm night, then charge it up again when the power came back on.

We are way, WAY, past the compliance car Nissan leaf with a 22kw/h battery in it and enough power to go to work, do the shopping, go home and do the work run again the next day before needing a recharge. Even then, the Leaf suffered really badly if you charged it at low power and also even worse if you charged it in temps over 35C due to "passive" cooling on the battery pack.

When I worked at Tesco in Welwyn, I noted that every Tesla in the car park was sitting in a parking bay, just like every other car, but every PHEV (plug in hybrid), was plugged into the very few charging points and hogging them all day long; every single day. I never saw a Tesla plugged in at work.

The new energy world is moving very rapidly today. So fast it is often hard to keep up. From enzyme based energy storage research in Sweden to Perovskite on silicon solar, cyro air in the UK and wind turbines which are ten times the power of the tiddlers we were installing just 10 years ago. Hard to keep up sometimes but we have to because some of these decisions are important and our Criminals erm, leaders, would love to run a snow job on us.

Whilst it is easy to pick holes and claim that it's all a fairy story, that is the picture of a decade ago. Today they have most of the issues thought through. Yes they have a weakness on renewable fragility in the grid, but they are working on that too. This is something which is happening, whether we want it or not, there is no longer any choice. If you ask me I'd rather see a Tesla world than a Nissan leaf world and an overpriced VW cludge.

But that's just me.

[Workingman]

Yes, we have had all the hype, the charts, the graphs, the spreadsheets, the talking-up of the 'positives' and the ignoring or denial of the negatives, but they do not change the fundamentals.

Since the beginning of time personal transport has been one of the most desirable things a human could want, possibly more so than "owning" a home. From a donkey to a Bugatti personal transport has allowed us, within reason, to travel from any A to any B at any time we choose and in a short timeframe with little physical effort. EVs do not change those things.

A few of the major problems with all cars that EVs do not address are: 1. They are often built for four people or more yet for the majority of their use they are single-person people carriers. 2. The average journey in the UK is ~7.5 miles (15 miles there and back) and takes 22.5 minutes each way (20 mph).... this is a direct result of 1..

They all take up road space that could be used more efficiently, but some take up more space and are therefore less efficient than others: Smart = 2.7m v Tesla M3 = 4.7m. Their method of locomotion is also not the major problem nor is the willy-whanging "My battery is bigger than your battery". The big problems are that there are far too many of them (of all kinds) and that their production sucks up more of the planet's limited resources only for the majority of them to sit idle for most of their "working" lives.

Transporting people needs a big rethink.

[Suff]

Transporting people needs a big rethink.

It certainly does but I am a Lit Motors C1 aficionado rather than a Bus aficionado.

The really big change will be autonomy. Today transport is for the cities and large towns. Autonomy could bring car sized public transport to the masses. Reducing resource costs of the vehicles as it radically reduces the number of vehicles.

A journey I may just live to see.

[Workingman]

At last we agree on something transport wise.

In Oct last year Leeds produced its transport plan for 2030. It is not very car friendly but it is smaller and semi-autonomous bus heavy. Bendy buses are back but not the single deck monsters that took up twice the road space of a double decker for 4/5 the capacity. The new ones will be more like a traditional single decker with a flexi element making them nimble enough to get into all the parts of estates. More local hubs, more commuter rail with more stations, more routes and the claim is that nobody will be more than 400m from a bus route. There will be a lot more car share points and all will be EV.

Will it work?

It remains to be seen, but it is a start.... at least for major towns and cities.