PHEV v EV.

[philip42h]

10 minutes ago, Yugguy1970 said:

There is also initial research going on in how to burn hydrogen to power the wheels directly, removing the hybrid part, so in effect less complex.

... but a lot less efficient. The best of infernal combustion engines is less than 40% efficient. Fuel cells are already running at better than 60% efficiency ...

[philip42h]

18 minutes ago, Yugguy1970 said:

There is howmanyleft.com, that would probably show it.

I'm sure that an answer is there, but the howmanyleft data is quite difficult to interpret. Modern Toyotas have an effective 10 year warranty; other manufacturers have similar so it would be naïve to estimate the lifetime of a car at less than 10 years. On the other hand, scrappage schemes are introduced for vehicles between 8 and 10 years old - largely because manufacturers want to sell new cars - so a good number of vehicles won't make their 15th birthday. 20 to 25 years is probably 'tops' - the number of cars on the road above that age are probably negligible.

[Flatcoat]

1 hour ago, Marcusthehat said:

The PHEV Rav 4 would have been my preferred choice, but the extra purchase cost was sufficient to persuade me that the ordinary Hybrid would suffice.

This despite knowing that the pure electric element would have covered near 100% of our driving needs "for free".

But the upfront savings will pay for a LOT of petrol.

N.B.

Pure electric ruled out due to some towing requirements.

mth

What Are you towing? 

[Flatcoat]

2 hours ago, philip42h said:

Article from Autocar: Top 10 best electric cars for towing. Early EVs tend not to be even rated for towing and towing will certainly kill range but there's no real reason why an EV shouldn't tow - electric trains do it quite well ... 😉

Electric trains do not run from batteries….. and with all due respect to Autocar (I buy it most weeks) how often do their writers tow with an EV? Back in the real world BEV’s are not yet suited to towing. I tow my caravan regularly for 400 miles in a day refuelling my diesel PHEV car once. I have yet to see a charging point that can accommodate a car and caravan…..

[philip42h]

3 minutes ago, Flatcoat said:

Electric trains do not run from batteries….. and with all due respect to Autocar (I buy it most weeks) how often do their writers tow with an EV? Back in the real world BEV’s are not yet suited to towing. I tow my caravan regularly for 400 miles in a day refuelling my diesel PHEV car once. I have yet to see a charging point that can accommodate a car and caravan…..

Did you read the article Adrian? All they do is quote the specified towing capacities of a range of electric vehicles - they certainly don't quote examples from practical experience. And, broadly it agrees with your assertion that "real world BEV’s are not yet suited to towing" - the Tesla Model X isn't too bad but they aren't exactly cheap.

On the trains quip - my point is, simply, that a electric motor is probably better than a diesel engine for delivering the torque needed to tow. So, in the fullness of time, when all diesels are banned, there is some hope for the caravaner ...

[ernieb]

I guess they will all have to be converted to a type of motorvan but that would mean a massive change to the sites to enable the charging infrastructure that would be required.

[IanML]

10 hours ago, Broadway One said:

Spot on, green hydrogen derived by passing electricity produced from wind & solar through a electrolyzer losing 30% in the process, the holy grail, unfortunately it's still a gas. Great to directly charge the national distribution network & replace natural gas production would need to be of scale. However the green credentials take a big hit in the next stage to compress (700bar) or freeze (-253℃) hydrogen gas to liquid suitable for fuel cell application (Mirai). I have little doubt that Toyota will pull it off, but as yet some way off.

Before the days of electric vehicles, the US Army researched storage of hydrogen in vehicles to power IC engines.  They developed a spongelike material which adsorbed hydrogen under mild pressure, and released it when the pressure was reduced in controllable fashion.  The tank did not explode when penetrated by bullets, just released the gas through the hole.  That technology would be very suitable for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and I'm sure it is receiving attention.

The concept of a fuel cell/battery EV or PHEV is very attractive, and particularly so for trucks.  The characteristics of the fuel cell are to impose delay on ramping up and down output, and that is ideally addressed by the Battery delivering power on start-up and acceleration, and storing it on deceleration and shut-down.

[Roy124]

As with many things, as technology changes so will how we interact with the technology. Coaching inns existed as journeys took days. Long distance air travel took days. We worked our lives around the technology available with our lives becoming faster. 

Even in the 50s car range was only around 200 miles and might take 7 hours for a modest journey. This gave rise to travel lodges. Today on many journeys you can expect 400 miles and 6-7 hours. 

We may have to adapt and accept a more leisurely journey. 

In the US they say EV will not work in remote areas.  Perhaps there is an opening for self - contained recharging facilities. 

[Flatcoat]

EV will not work anywhere in remote areas, UK included. 
However I do agree that electric propulsion is by far the best solution for transport of any kind. I love drivi g my PHEV in EV mode. However It is generation and supply/storage that is the big problem and we are nowhere near solving it. 

[Heidfirst]

16 hours ago, Lawnmowerman said:

It would be interesting to see a graph showing the age of registered vehicles in the UK. One would think that the RAV4 (and Toyota's in general) would demonstrate a healthy lifespan over the generic Ford's, Vauxhall's etc. Is it around 26 million registered cars on the roads at the moment? Anyone know the latest figure? That's a lot of old tech to work through to expiry.

 

Is this of any use?

https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/cheap-car-insurance/average-age-cars-great-britain

https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/car-market-1/2021-05/average-age-of-cars-in-the-uk-reaches-new-high/

 https://www.smmt.co.uk/industry-topics/sustainability/average-vehicle-age/

[PeteB]

1 hour ago, Flatcoat said:

EV will not work anywhere in remote areas, UK included...

It's certainly more challenging in places like the Norfolk coast, where I live.  Back in 2012 I bought a Gen 3 Prius, my 6th Prius, and I thought this would be my last petrol-consuming car (and possibly my last car depending on how long my health holds up sufficiently to retain my driving licence).  I had previously hoped to buy a Plug-in Prius when it was launched in 2012, despite it's low EV range, but the lack of a spare wheel and little space for one scuppered that.

I test drove a BMW i3 with range extender in 2014, but the spare wheel thing did it again, plus having got used to a Head Up Display in the Prius it was something I never wanted to be without again.

When the Gen 4 Prius was announced, the raft of safety features and general improvements made it very appealing, but I still hoped to go EV.  I priced up a Tesla Model S, and after a government grant of £5k it still came to nearly £80k including a £4k Battery upgrade, all wheel drive and one or two other extras.  It had a claimed potential range of just over 300 miles, well ample for my use for all but about 20 days a year.   But it was those 20 days that made it a non starter, at least living where I do.  Also, I eventually ruled it out because of a few missing features I regard as must-haves.

At that time there wasn't a single Tesla Supercharger station this side of the A1 (only one last time I looked), and one of my periodic trips to Hull was over 350 miles return plus some local driving (easily done on one tank in the Prius).  The Tesla web site was quite helpful; you could select IIRC the spec of car, air temperature, climate control temperature, cruising speed etc. and it would calculate the estimated range given those conditions.  The 300+ range quickly dived towards 200.  It would also estimate charge times given the spec of the car and the changing station used.  Since using all available site like ZapMap and various hotel searches came up with precisely zero suitable options, my enthusiasm for an EV started to seriously wane!  In the worst case, if I could only find a hotel that would somehow allow me to plug into a standard wall socket, worst case was a recharge time of nearly 30 hours!  Occasionally, I did the whole trip in a day - that would be really challenging!

For a while, on each of the long trips I did I tried to simulate an EV journey and look for charging opportunities on the route.  A regular 250-300 mile round trip to Bedfordshire & Hertfordshire (always in a day) for a while only had quite modest charging speeds at a couple of Little Chefs, which have now disappeared along with their charging points.  By the time I stopped looking it was still challenging to find a route with reliable access to sufficient charging facilities.

The final issue is that the various legs of the Bedfordshire journeys add up to some 6-7 hours of driving in a very long day, so a couple of extra 20-40 minute charge stops would be rather unwelcome.

The London based Private Hire firm I worked for from their inception in 2006 until I retired now has over 50 Mirai Hydrogen cars and access to a number of fuelling sites that manufacture Hydrogen on-site using electrolysis.  Now, I'm not prepared to predict whether Hydrogen will gain favour, but simply observe that when the Prius (and Honda Insight) Hybrids were launched in 1997 the majority of the motoring world poured scorn on the idea and many major manufacturers hinted they would never follow suit.  Wind forward 24 years, and...

[Broadway One]

4 hours ago, ernieb said:

I guess they will all have to be converted to a type of motorvan but that would mean a massive change to the sites to enable the charging infrastructure that would be required.

Hi.....Motorhome or towing a caravan is heavy duty, always near max. loading due to fixed furniture & fittings even with empty fresh & grey water tanks, all would need increased scrutiny in a BEV world. Can't imagine even the high end sites offering 240v hook ups plus EV charging any time soon. For the thousands of lower grade certificated sites, forget it. The impact on this part of the leisure industry is yet to be fully realised. 

Barry Wright Lancashire.

  

[ernieb]

@Broadway One agreed, but it seems to be putting the squeeze potentially on a group of people who enjoy the caravan st,ye holidays.  We caravanned for many years and managed to get to some interesting and remote places of the UK.  This form of holiday must bring a lot of revenue to local areas and maybe it would be up to the council’s to provide a local charging site? I’m not sure it would happen but based on the many comments on this forum and others I’ve been a member of it’s a significant potential issue for many.

[Heidfirst]

1 hour ago, ernieb said:

 This form of holiday must bring a lot of revenue to local areas and maybe it would be up to the council’s to provide a local charging site? 

From following news articles/forums/Facebook groups etc. it appears that, at least in Scotland, a lot of caravanners/campervanners bring their own food/drinks etc. into remote areas with them & therefore don't shop in the local shops etc. so how much revenue is brought in may be less than you might expect. E.g for the NC500 or Skye a lot of people will fuel up/supermarket shop in Fort William or Inverness before going on. Good for Fort William or Inverness but not great for the more remote villages & residents who very often also have to suffer the  increased litter/dirty camping, traffic etc. 😞

[ernieb]

@Heidfirst, that’s interesting we always tried to support the local shops as much as was practical a small price to pay when considering the cost of the car/van, site fees and getting there. 

[Nick72]

On 9/21/2021 at 5:37 PM, Broadway One said:

Hi all.....Sure this is a well worn topic.

Further fueled by a friend asking me why I have chosen a PHEV over an EV.

Stop to refuel, stop to plug in & charge what's the difference ?

Stock reply, my badge of choice Toyota don't offer an EV.

When they do I'll take a look.

His take on this was that the window for PHEV's is 5 years max.

Once the public charging network has caught up & EV's become cheaper, PHEV's will have had their day.

He has a point but what about the thousands of tuggers ?

How do EV's fair towing a caravan, a boat, a trailer etc. no small demand ?

Seems the PHEV & particularly the RAV 4 could well have its day IMO.

Barry Wright Lancashire.  

I do a lot of deep tech analysis. Electric motors set to increase power density by a factor of 3 in the next ten years. Battery tech specific energy set to increase by a factor of 3 in the next ten to twelve years. Nothing weird or at the fringe of science required here. 90 percent probable.

Basically, your EV in 10 years will weigh significantly less than today, have significantly more hp and torque, and 600 to 700 mile winter motorway range will be common. All with dual, triple, or quad motor (note that Rivian R1T R1S are quad motor). And they'll cost less. About 20 to 25pc less by my maths. No need for an ICE or PHEV in any circumstances.

But that's by 10 or 12 years. Next 5 years there will still be a choice for most people to make but the PHEVs will be marginalised by that point. I'll be going full EV in 3 years depending on winter range at 70 to 75mph if I don't buy the company car then and only to keep it for perhaps another 2 years then swap to an even better EV option than is available 3 years from now.

 

Inevitable. 

[Marcusthehat]

8 hours ago, Flatcoat said:

What Are you towing? 

A Dale Kane trailer, plated at 3500Kg. Bought for the 1999 290GD Steyr Daimler Puch van(aka a G Wagen) which is still extant and fully roadworthy.

I will prob buy a more suitable/ lighter trailer for piscling about with the RAV4.

Marcus

[Flatcoat]

34 minutes ago, Nick72 said:

I do a lot of deep tech analysis. Electric motors set to increase power density by a factor of 3 in the next ten years. Battery tech specific energy set to increase by a factor of 3 in the next ten to twelve years. Nothing weird or at the fringe of science required here. 90 percent probable.

Basically, your EV in 10 years will weigh significantly less than today, have significantly more hp and torque, and 600 to 700 mile winter motorway range will be common. All with dual, triple, or quad motor (note that Rivian R1T R1S are quad motor). And they'll cost less. About 20 to 25pc less by my maths. No need for an ICE or PHEV in any circumstances.

But that's by 10 or 12 years. Next 5 years there will still be a choice for most people to make but the PHEVs will be marginalised by that point. I'll be going full EV in 3 years depending on winter range at 70 to 75mph if I don't buy the company car then and only to keep it for perhaps another 2 years then swap to an even better EV option than is available 3 years from now.

 

Inevitable. 

But it doesn’t answer Where will all that electricity come from and how the occupant on floor 39 of a tower block built 20 years ago charges their car? So which manufacturers are you talking about? Let’s wait and see. 

[Nick72]

1 minute ago, Flatcoat said:

But it doesn’t answer Where will all that electricity come from and how the occupant on floor 39 of a tower block built 20 years ago charges their car? So which manufacturers are you talking about? Let’s wait and see. 

Electrical supply is an issue but the major issue with it is the peak demands not necessarily total demand. Solvable by scheduling and greater variance in tariff versus ToD. One overlooked issue is however the capacitive load versus traditional inductive loads on the transformers on our national credit. Modern electronic loads versus heater elements in the kettle and oven. That's the more immediate problem. 

The block of flats problem is an issue but not insurmountable. If you can put 700 miles on your car in the two or four weekly supermarket shop charger box then that's probably more than enough mileage for most.

[AJones]

14 minutes ago, Flatcoat said:

But it doesn’t answer Where will all that electricity come from

There's a lot of spare capacity overnight, so there's an emphasis on promoting smart charging, to charge up during off-peak times to utilise the capacity already available and under-used. Now if 20 Million people get EVs and all plug in between 4Pm to 6PM then it would be a major problem as it would add to the existing peak demand, but there's regulations and commercial incentives being put in place to prevent that.

There's already a lot of EV tariffs with discounted rates for overnight power, providing a decent saving for off peak charging.

14 minutes ago, Flatcoat said:

and how the occupant on floor 39 of a tower block built 20 years ago charges their car? 

Public charger provision is a weak spot at present, but over time it will grow with sales and people will charge at some mix of public rapid charging, the EV equivalent of a petrol station, fast chargers in car parks at retail, workplaces or leisure venues, plus the roll out of on-street charging. 

It's like the earlier days of motor cars when they were still rare and petrol availability was still patchy.

[Cyker]

Yeah, my view is they need to have subsidised/free chargers at every single car parking space, esp. at gyms, shopping centres, anywhere where people will be parked for a significant amount of time; That's the only way to get around the current "Home charging is essential" problem.

Fast chargers should only be for occasional use, e.g. on a road trip where you'd have to take a short rest stop anyway - The more you fast charge an EV, esp. at these 100's of amps levels, the shorter the battery's lifespan will be.

For me the lynchpin is the Battery - We either need a huge breakthrough in Battery tech, or discover a new way of storing lighting in a bottle (Or Mr Fusion!  ). I'm not optimistic, as Lithium ion charge capacity has barely changed since it was invented.

The Mk4's Battery is tiny but I already feel how much heavier the car is compared to my previous Mk2 and especially my old Mk1 D4D (Ironic that the diesel was lighter than the petrol and the hybrid!  ). Given that an EV needs a battery with 80-100 times the capacity of the Mk4's to be worthwhile to me, I just can't see how a vehicle I consider suitable will exist within the next 10 years.

They keep touting that EVs are getting longer and longer range but this is a fallacy - They're just getting BIGGER; Every EV with more than 200 miles of real range (i.e. not things like the Zoe and its 235-miles-but-actually-130) is a giant landboat, as this is the only way to fit enough cells on, but the problem is I don't want a giant landboat...

 

[AJones]

17 minutes ago, Cyker said:

For me the lynchpin is the battery - We either need a huge breakthrough in battery tech, or discover a new way of storing lighting in a bottle (Or Mr Fusion!  ). I'm not optimistic, as Lithium ion charge capacity has barely changed since it was invented.

CATL announced they'd developed a sodium ion Battery which they are commercialising, while the energy density wasn't as good as lithium, because it doesn't use any expensive metals and uses readily available sodium it could be a lower cost alternative.

17 minutes ago, Cyker said:

They keep touting that EVs are getting longer and longer range but this is a fallacy - They're just getting BIGGER; Every EV with more than 200 miles of real range (i.e. not things like the Zoe and its 235-miles-but-actually-130) is a giant landboat, as this is the only way to fit enough cells on, but the problem is I don't want a giant landboat...

Yes they are getting bigger but I'm not convinced that's mostly due to the Battery, rather that EVs remain premium priced cars and buyers of premium cars want big vehicles, SUVs, larger cars. Smaller vehicles are targetted at the lower cost segment, there wouldn't be enough buyers of a Zoe or Yaris size vehicle willing to pay for a model with ultra long range.

[Nick72]

47 minutes ago, Cyker said:

Yeah, my view is they need to have subsidised/free chargers at every single car parking space, esp. at gyms, shopping centres, anywhere where people will be parked for a significant amount of time; That's the only way to get around the current "Home charging is essential" problem.

Fast chargers should only be for occasional use, e.g. on a road trip where you'd have to take a short rest stop anyway - The more you fast charge an EV, esp. at these 100's of amps levels, the shorter the battery's lifespan will be.

For me the lynchpin is the battery - We either need a huge breakthrough in battery tech, or discover a new way of storing lighting in a bottle (Or Mr Fusion!  ). I'm not optimistic, as Lithium ion charge capacity has barely changed since it was invented.

The Mk4's battery is tiny but I already feel how much heavier the car is compared to my previous Mk2 and especially my old Mk1 D4D (Ironic that the diesel was lighter than the petrol and the hybrid!  ). Given that an EV needs a battery with 80-100 times the capacity of the Mk4's to be worthwhile to me, I just can't see how a vehicle I consider suitable will exist within the next 10 years.

They keep touting that EVs are getting longer and longer range but this is a fallacy - They're just getting BIGGER; Every EV with more than 200 miles of real range (i.e. not things like the Zoe and its 235-miles-but-actually-130) is a giant landboat, as this is the only way to fit enough cells on, but the problem is I don't want a giant landboat...

 

Lithium Air, Lithium Sulphur, Solid State batteries,  Graphene based ultra capacitors. Many all racing to be the top. We'll be spoiled for choice. And think, in 5 years you might be able to get a form fit replacement PHEV Battery with 100 miles range for 500 quid.

[Lawnmowerman]

7 hours ago, Heidfirst said:

Is this of any use?

https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/cheap-car-insurance/average-age-cars-great-britain

https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/news/car-market-1/2021-05/average-age-of-cars-in-the-uk-reaches-new-high/

 https://www.smmt.co.uk/industry-topics/sustainability/average-vehicle-age/

Thanks Scott, very interesting.

[Lawnmowerman]

11 hours ago, Yugguy1970 said:

There is howmanyleft.com, that would probably show it.

Could spend ages on that site - very interesting. Thanks.