No change to the RAV, no new model in 2025

[Nick72]

23 hours ago, GBgraham said:

So I agree with the bar being set too high too soon. But I disagree on the other points. EVs will be the solution for all the reasons I've mentioned in other posts in other threads on this. Simpler, Really cheaper, greener, better solutions ...in the long run. But walk before you can run. 

Simpler? Really and where does that come from, in actual moving parts I agree but  the necessary mass of electrical components and electronic control . . . never?

Cheaper? I'm not too sure where you have worked this out, The ultimate need of an unstable, life depleting and expensive power supplies to continue in the expected range within the cars very limited life span?

Greener? surely you don't honestly believe this, sorry but the subject is just far too complex to be short so I think there is a need to investigate the other side of the argument. 

Better solutions ...in the long run? And what are these please. Ask the guy that lives in a street fronted or terraced property or an apartment block what he thinks and what his solutions are. What are the solutions when the sun stops shinning and the wind stops blowing?

But walk before you can run? I can't think of a truer outcome of those two words as a result of the world of total EV's. The world is far from ready for a knee ***** solution of EV's that are being forced upon us . . . . 

Just some of my opinions folks, you can agree or disagree and I'm not having a go at any one person only the narratives of the storyline.

 

 

Yep. Disagree.

 

Simpler. Electric motors, converters, cable and Battery? Can it get any simpler? Versus complex ICE systems? Come on.

Greener. I think I said in time or words to that effect prior. They're not greener today when viewed in whole lifecycle terms. But more common elements are being used in development systems to divorce from the dirty lithium production processes. Like sodium. We also have graphene super capacitors in development. Carbon is pretty ubiquitous. Which you can get from the atmosphere from the CO2 in the atmosphere, so now you're killing 2 birds with one stone. I've had hands on here.

Better solutions. I wasn't referring to the demographics. I'd already covered this point. I'm talking a quieter ride, more design freedoms through improved volume fractions, better acceleration, and longer range than standard petrol tanks. But just on the demographics with respect to folks in flats, if you can put more miles into your car in a 10 minute visit to a charging station then is it really so different. Unlikely? It's already happening.

 

[Nick72]

On 10/16/2024 at 6:51 PM, MC1216 said:

Fully agree and what about the 45% who can't charge at home which makes petrol/diesel cars cheaper to run.

If it wasn't for BIK and other tax benefits they wouldn't be selling many.

They have a place BUT it should be along with petrol bio fuels hydrogen etc and not the only solution.

Google what is happening in Germany and due to all tax incentives being removed sales are falling off a cliff.

So for me, if I lived in a flat, but conscious everyone is different, if someone said you can have a choice of two cars. Both similar in spec, same brand, and one is ICE and the other is electric but lower cost than the ICE, a similar or longer range than the ICE with a full tank, a more roomier interior with more storage, it charges in 10 minutes, and, again, it is cheaper to buy and to run, then I'm definitely going with the EV even if I need to go out of my way once or twice a week. We are not there yet, but my point is we will be at some point in the next decade. All the tech trends support it. But, it is unlikely we'll see a 100% adoption or even 80 but we are going to be heading towards that for the reasons I've mentioned.

Opinions only of course.

[Nick72]

11 hours ago, GBgraham said:

Hydrogen fuels as you say maybe difficult to produce but I ask myself why are the major manufacturers pursuing the intense development of hydrogen engines. Commercials, haulage and plant machinery can not afford the extra weight to be removed from load capacity or working limits, nor can the UK roads.

 

The holy grail for an all new lightweight and high capacity batteries has been going on since the start of the car invention and will probably go on for even longer.

No easy answer imho at the moment except the push for EV's along with the crippling equity loss in any purchase with the very strong possibility of any resale value.

Some very interesting development times ahead.

So a handful of very many have experimental programmes. They're doomed for reasons I've described in other replies. 

Battery development is one of the fastest tech trends for a lot of obvious reasons. Specific energy has tripled over the last 7 years. And tripling over the next 10 with no exotic solutions required.

There's a lot of flawed science and analysis in the arguments around specific energy of petrol or diesel being one to two orders of magnitude greater than batteries ergo there's no competition. It forgets the holistic system analysis, the inefficiencies, and also the trends.

[Nick72]

3 hours ago, Cyker said:

It's because there is no other viable alternative - It is physically impossible to build an EV artic that can !Removed! up and down the country fully freighted with current or even forseen battery technology - The battery would be bigger than the rest of the vehicle - or an EV plane that can perform any longhaul flight, even with only a single passenger - The battery would just weigh too much for the plane to even get off the ground.

If they really don't see sense and actually ban diesel and jetfuel use, the only fuel that doesn't have carbon in it that isn't either extremely toxic or even more difficult to mass-manufacture is hydrogen.

And because you can burn hydrogen, it's possible to retool normal engines, piston or turbine, to run on it, although I dread to think what the engine materials fatigue would be like. More likely they'd be used with fuel cells and electric motors with extremely highly pressurized tanks - That could get the trucks the distance and load they need to go and maaaaybe planes, although the weight is still a big problem with planes.

 

But while it would work it would still be objectively worse - The price of anything that'd need to be transported would rise significantly as no sane haulier would absorb the fuel cost, but instead pass it on to the customer, and given how bad our roads are now, they will get 10 times worse with EV trucks being allowed higher tonnages by necessity, meaning they'll rip up the roads even worse...

 

Until someone invents 'liquid electricity' or a pocket-sized nuclear reactor, there will just be things that are impossible to EV-ify with only batteries...

 

This is simply not the case in the medium term. Both the truck assertion and the retooling for hydrogen combustion. H2 comes with serious issues as explained in other replies.

I'm not anti combustion. I drive a PHEV. Just done a 400 mile round trip with 350 miles on petrol combustion. But my tipping point is probably coming in the next 4 or 5 years. If I can get a RAV-like vehicle which has brand reliability, with 400+ real world miles in winter, with more space in the cabin, more storage space, and cheaper to acquire and operate than the ICE version then I'm sold. If I lived in a flat my next requirement deltas are going to be, I now want 500 miles range (minimise time between recharging) and charging time in 10 to 15 minutes. Not there yet but nothing remotely insurmountable in getting to this position.

If I'm a green, and can charge off street, then I'd use a renewable energy supplier (my current supplier generates the majority of its energy from renewables), and I would want to scrutinize the whole life sustainability including lithium mining approaches if I can't get an alternative Battery chemistry.

Just saying.

[Cyker]

I think you missed what my point was - Someone was asking why, if hydrogen is so bad, big companies are investing so much into it, and my reply was that there is no other alternative.

I'm aware of all the downsides - I'm not a big fan of hydrogen as it's literally worse than petrol and diesel in *every way* except for one - No carbon atoms.

That's what all the hysteria is about - Carbon atoms.

Given they still want to ban anything that burns hydrocarbons in less than 6 years time (I dread to think if that will include us at some point since we do too!), and we've already established batteries will not be able to do what we need with trucks and planes unless a *collossal* breakthrough happens within a year or two, what do you think the alternatives would be if not hydrogen?

Don't get me wrong, I think hydrogen is a terrible alternative to diesel as a fuel for all the reasons you and I have both mentioned already, but given batteries won't work for heavy haulage and long-haul aviation, what else is there? (Seriously, if anyone can come up with something, your fortune will be made!!)

Toyota were even experimenting with ammonia because it technically doesn't have any carbon in it so would satisfy the 'zero carbon emission' mandate, ignoring the fact that it's extremely toxic, just for any alternative.

And all because of this mad hysteria over eliminating CO2 emissions completely at the cost of everything else.

The worst thing is it won't make a blind bit of difference - The CO2 created by normal road transport is a drop in the bucket; The CO2 created by building all the new factories, cutting down all the trees, and creating new vehicles alone *dwarfs* the CO2 that would be saved by having a 'zero emission' vehicle, which is also why things like ULEZ making people scrap cars well before their life is over makes me so angry.

I can only assume we are an easy target, whereas actually targeting the sources that would actually make a significant difference is too difficult for them so they just ignore them and pat themselves on the back for shafting all of us for a 3% reduction and ignoring the 30% increase caused by other sources...!

Toyota had a roadmap for how they envisioned all this unfolding and it was very sensible, well reasoned and was realistically workable. I just wish governments had paid attention to it and gone along with that - It would have made the transition to EV much better, and the technology would have been given a chance to mature to make it more palatable for the general user, not this all-stick approach pushing premature tech with exaggerated promises, which is just making people more and more anti-EV.

People should *love* EVs - They have the potential to be much better than ICE cars, but by pushing them too early they have made future adoption much harder because, like the original Prius hybrid, people now have negative prejudices and preconceptions against them which will take much longer to undo.

 

[Nick72]

2 minutes ago, Cyker said:

I think you missed what my point was - Someone was asking why, if hydrogen is so bad, big companies are investing so much into it, and my reply was that there is no other alternative.

I'm aware of all the downsides - I'm not a big fan of hydrogen as it's literally worse than petrol and diesel in *every way* except for one - No carbon atoms.

That's what all the hysteria is about - Carbon atoms.

Given they still want to ban anything that burns hydrocarbons in less than 6 years time (I dread to think if that will include us at some point since we do too!), and we've already established batteries will not be able to do what we need with trucks and planes unless a *collossal* breakthrough happens within a year or two, what do you think the alternatives would be if not hydrogen?

Don't get me wrong, I think hydrogen is a terrible alternative to diesel as a fuel for all the reasons you and I have both mentioned already, but given batteries won't work for heavy haulage and long-haul aviation, what else is there? (Seriously, if anyone can come up with something, your fortune will be made!!)

Toyota were even experimenting with ammonia because it technically doesn't have any carbon in it so would satisfy the 'zero carbon emission' mandate, ignoring the fact that it's extremely toxic, just for any alternative.

And all because of this mad hysteria over eliminating CO2 emissions completely at the cost of everything else.

The worst thing is it won't make a blind bit of difference - The CO2 created by normal road transport is a drop in the bucket; The CO2 created by building all the new factories, cutting down all the trees, and creating new vehicles alone *dwarfs* the CO2 that would be saved by having a 'zero emission' vehicle, which is also why things like ULEZ making people scrap cars well before their life is over makes me so angry.

I can only assume we are an easy target, whereas actually targeting the sources that would actually make a significant difference is too difficult for them so they just ignore them and pat themselves on the back for shafting all of us for a 3% reduction and ignoring the 30% increase caused by other sources...!

Toyota had a roadmap for how they envisioned all this unfolding and it was very sensible, well reasoned and was realistically workable. I just wish governments had paid attention to it and gone along with that - It would have made the transition to EV much better, and the technology would have been given a chance to mature to make it more palatable for the general user, not this all-stick approach pushing premature tech with exaggerated promises, which is just making people more and more anti-EV.

People should *love* EVs - They have the potential to be much better than ICE cars, but by pushing them too early they have made future adoption much harder because, like the original Prius hybrid, people now have negative prejudices and preconceptions against them which will take much longer to undo.

 

Apologies, yes.

The need for speed in aviation will never be satisfied by batteries, unless they are hydrogen fuel cells, and in which case that's only good up to about 350kts. E-fan and props. There are experimental aircraft here. The hydrogen problem becomes more manageable with an area the size of an airport and hydrogen production and storage can be colocated. 

I agree on the push being too soon. There's the carrot of the subsidies and tax incentives for EVs but the stick to the regular motorists on ICE when it is what they can afford and or EVs don't work for their use case, feels wrong. 

 

[Cyker]

1 hour ago, Nick72 said:

Simpler. Electric motors, converters, cable and battery? Can it get any simpler? Versus complex ICE systems? Come on.

 

I do want to address this as it's another half-truth that annoys me with EVs, this whole "There's only one moving part vs loads for ICE cars".

It is true EVs are mechanically simpler, but they are only simpler mechanically - People forget the thousands of discreet components on all the circuit-boards, all attached with lead-free solder, which is known to fail when subject to extreme vibration and heat-cycling repeatedly, and I'm not sure what level of component quality we'll even get, esp. as they start to cost-engineer things and lower tolerances to save fractions of a penny - We already get bitten by this in the computer and games console world.

The solder issues can be mitigated with things like conformal coatings, but I can't help noticing very few EVs use conformal coatings on the most important boards.

And lets not get into the software side of things!!

This is why a lot of enthusiasts don't like them, as mechanicals are intuitive and diagnosable, but the electronics will be a total mystery to all but a tiny fraction of people. We already complain that mechanics rely too much on computers and ODB2 instead of skill and experience when diagnosing faults, but that's going to be the new normal as there is no other way; No garage is going to crack open an ECU module to do component-level diagnosis and repair.

It's very telling that EVs still struggle to get into the top-10 in reliability surveys, when they should be dominating it.

 

 

[Cyker]

4 minutes ago, Nick72 said:

Apologies, yes.

The need for speed in aviation will never be satisfied by batteries, unless they are hydrogen fuel cells, and in which case that's only good up to about 350kts. E-fan and props. There are experimental aircraft here. The hydrogen problem becomes more manageable with an area the size of an airport and hydrogen production and storage can be colocated. 

I agree on the push being too soon. There's the carrot of the subsidies and tax incentives for EVs but the stick to the regular motorists on ICE when it is what they can afford and or EVs don't work for their use case, feels wrong. 

 

No need to apologise!! This is a good debate, lots of good factual points, and opinions worth considering from all sides; Honestly, this is one of the best things about this forum.

On any other forum, we would have descended into insulting each other's parentage and dress sense by now  

[Nick72]

1 hour ago, Cyker said:

I do want to address this as it's another half-truth that annoys me with EVs, this whole "There's only one moving part vs loads for ICE cars".

It is true EVs are mechanically simpler, but they are only simpler mechanically - People forget the thousands of discreet components on all the circuit-boards, all attached with lead-free solder, which is known to fail when subject to extreme vibration and heat-cycling repeatedly, and I'm not sure what level of component quality we'll even get, esp. as they start to cost-engineer things and lower tolerances to save fractions of a penny - We already get bitten by this in the computer and games console world.

The solder issues can be mitigated with things like conformal coatings, but I can't help noticing very few EVs use conformal coatings on the most important boards.

And lets not get into the software side of things!!

This is why a lot of enthusiasts don't like them, as mechanicals are intuitive and diagnosable, but the electronics will be a total mystery to all but a tiny fraction of people. We already complain that mechanics rely too much on computers and ODB2 instead of skill and experience when diagnosing faults, but that's going to be the new normal as there is no other way; No garage is going to crack open an ECU module to do component-level diagnosis and repair.

It's very telling that EVs still struggle to get into the top-10 in reliability surveys, when they should be dominating it.

 

 

Those are fair points but if done right, solid state is for me the way to go. Board fails (which it shouldn't for a very long time), swap out for another. But those mechanical systems also come with a whole similar lot of electronics and generally the power electronics on EVs is actually the only difference and power electronics tend to be in a different league at the component and PCB level. Same with the software, which lets face it is extensive and pervasive in all types of cars. 

But yes, fewer folks can fix it themselves. It's harder to diagnose without the expensive kit. OBD devices only go so far. 

That said we, and perhaps, ironically, it makes your point, I had to fix the boiler circuit board myself after 6 failed attempts from the best plumbers and electricians in the area. I would have done it myself straight off but my wife said no, just pay someone, avoid the stress and spend the time chilling. Waste of time and money. That included a new circuit board attempt which they bodged. But then again I have grad and post grad qualifications in physics, electronics, mechatronics, avionics, computing and AI 🤣. So that kinda helped. Nothing I can't fix or maintain, including spacecraft. However, I'd prefer not to waste my time as I did every other day it seemed like on Ford Cortinas & Fiestas, Novas, Cavaliers, and Mini Metros 🤣

[Nick72]

1 hour ago, Cyker said:

No need to apologise!! This is a good debate, lots of good factual points, and opinions worth considering from all sides; Honestly, this is one of the best things about this forum.

On any other forum, we would have descended into insulting each other's parentage and dress sense by now  

Why what are you wearing?

Sounds like a late night phone call 😂

[spicyhotone]

12 hours ago, Cyker said:

I think you missed what my point was - Someone was asking why, if hydrogen is so bad, big companies are investing so much into it, and my reply was that there is no other alternative.

I'm aware of all the downsides - I'm not a big fan of hydrogen as it's literally worse than petrol and diesel in *every way* except for one - No carbon atoms.

That's what all the hysteria is about - Carbon atoms.

Given they still want to ban anything that burns hydrocarbons in less than 6 years time (I dread to think if that will include us at some point since we do too!), and we've already established batteries will not be able to do what we need with trucks and planes unless a *collossal* breakthrough happens within a year or two, what do you think the alternatives would be if not hydrogen?

Don't get me wrong, I think hydrogen is a terrible alternative to diesel as a fuel for all the reasons you and I have both mentioned already, but given batteries won't work for heavy haulage and long-haul aviation, what else is there? (Seriously, if anyone can come up with something, your fortune will be made!!)

Toyota were even experimenting with ammonia because it technically doesn't have any carbon in it so would satisfy the 'zero carbon emission' mandate, ignoring the fact that it's extremely toxic, just for any alternative.

And all because of this mad hysteria over eliminating CO2 emissions completely at the cost of everything else.

The worst thing is it won't make a blind bit of difference - The CO2 created by normal road transport is a drop in the bucket; The CO2 created by building all the new factories, cutting down all the trees, and creating new vehicles alone *dwarfs* the CO2 that would be saved by having a 'zero emission' vehicle, which is also why things like ULEZ making people scrap cars well before their life is over makes me so angry.

I can only assume we are an easy target, whereas actually targeting the sources that would actually make a significant difference is too difficult for them so they just ignore them and pat themselves on the back for shafting all of us for a 3% reduction and ignoring the 30% increase caused by other sources...!

Toyota had a roadmap for how they envisioned all this unfolding and it was very sensible, well reasoned and was realistically workable. I just wish governments had paid attention to it and gone along with that - It would have made the transition to EV much better, and the technology would have been given a chance to mature to make it more palatable for the general user, not this all-stick approach pushing premature tech with exaggerated promises, which is just making people more and more anti-EV.

People should *love* EVs - They have the potential to be much better than ICE cars, but by pushing them too early they have made future adoption much harder because, like the original Prius hybrid, people now have negative prejudices and preconceptions against them which will take much longer to undo.

 

According to this https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector - Transport is the 2nd biggest producer, after Electricity & Heat. The UK (and many other Western economies) are making headway reducing CO2 production from Electricity & Heat, so doesn't seem unreasonable to target Transport as the next biggest sector. Not to deny that there's plenty of other sectors which need to improve, but I guess these first two big sectors are the easiest and quickest to tackle with current technologies, are also the fastest growing, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that they've been targeted first.

[GBgraham]

11 hours ago, Nick72 said:

Yep. Disagree.

 

Simpler. Electric motors, converters, cable and battery? Can it get any simpler? Versus complex ICE systems? Come on.

Greener. I think I said in time or words to that effect prior. They're not greener today when viewed in whole lifecycle terms. But more common elements are being used in development systems to divorce from the dirty lithium production processes. Like sodium. We also have graphene super capacitors in development. Carbon is pretty ubiquitous. Which you can get from the atmosphere from the CO2 in the atmosphere, so now you're killing 2 birds with one stone. I've had hands on here.

Better solutions. I wasn't referring to the demographics. I'd already covered this point. I'm talking a quieter ride, more design freedoms through improved volume fractions, better acceleration, and longer range than standard petrol tanks. But just on the demographics with respect to folks in flats, if you can put more miles into your car in a 10 minute visit to a charging station then is it really so different. Unlikely? It's already happening.

 

So many views out there but for these. . . No I disagree, it's not simpler. The workings of the electronics alone make them far more complex than ICE, just because much is solid state does not make them anymore reliable, and look what happened to the whole industry with the semi-conductor shortage, then there is software issues that seem to be a continuous niggle for both companies and owners.  

Again, out there is so much developments still centred around the ICE's and the outcome of the fuel is still to be decided by the men in white coats. Even Porsche are now developing a 6 stroke ICE so nearly all the manufacturers are not surrendering totally to EV lobbyists. 

Greener, I very much doubt it, has anyone who is justifying EV's seriously looked back to the birth, through construction and production of the EV car, through it's short life then to its demise and now what do we do with it issue. Both ends of the process is a near environmental disaster. 

I am not against the need to move to other fuels, hydrogen and whatever is out there in the pipeline, even EV's. The move away from fossil fuels is probably more due to the depletion of eventual oil reserves which will be much needed for other everyday products that we all expect to be there. Environment wise we all need CO2 to survive on this planet and without we just wouldn't be here and definitely not worrying about what type a fuel we need. The pollutants ICE vehicles give out in the big scheme of what's out there is such a very small percentage in the UK. 

Is a quieter ride a great concern to everyday life? I have had many ICE cars that are just as quiet in the cockpit and tyre noise can make things not so quiet. Do we all want to be first off the mark at traffic lights and bragging of who's has the best 0-60 time? Longer range than a fuel tank, really? Under present day technology you are not going to see any more than 350-400 mile range. From the people I know that have EV's, getting hooked up at a charging centre can be a nightmare with so much time being wasted queue waiting.

There will be competent service centres for EV's but they will be unit fitters. Of the many control units needed these will be new or service exchange, probably starting at £2k a unit. Batteries the same and around £15k. Replacement motors around £5k. Then at the end of life what happens, worthless second hand and probably a large end of life fee, well you can't be green and not pay for the privilege. No wonder Hertz and other companies have turned away from EV's

Go woke go broke😜

 

[spicyhotone]

12 hours ago, Cyker said:

I do want to address this as it's another half-truth that annoys me with EVs, this whole "There's only one moving part vs loads for ICE cars".

It is true EVs are mechanically simpler, but they are only simpler mechanically - People forget the thousands of discreet components on all the circuit-boards, all attached with lead-free solder, which is known to fail when subject to extreme vibration and heat-cycling repeatedly, and I'm not sure what level of component quality we'll even get, esp. as they start to cost-engineer things and lower tolerances to save fractions of a penny - We already get bitten by this in the computer and games console world.

The solder issues can be mitigated with things like conformal coatings, but I can't help noticing very few EVs use conformal coatings on the most important boards.

And lets not get into the software side of things!!

This is why a lot of enthusiasts don't like them, as mechanicals are intuitive and diagnosable, but the electronics will be a total mystery to all but a tiny fraction of people. We already complain that mechanics rely too much on computers and ODB2 instead of skill and experience when diagnosing faults, but that's going to be the new normal as there is no other way; No garage is going to crack open an ECU module to do component-level diagnosis and repair.

It's very telling that EVs still struggle to get into the top-10 in reliability surveys, when they should be dominating it.

 

 

Is it really true that EV's contain more electronics than ICE cars? I'd always imagine the mechanical simplicity of EVs, fewer interacting components, mean fewer co-ordinated electronics are required than an ICE where there's a lot more going on that needs to be controlled and co-ordinated. 
I've not seen a breakdown of the main causes of EV unreliability - I wonder if it's partly due to rush of new cut-price manufacturers who don't have the years of experience of reliably bolting these things together?
I'd definitely agree about the software - that's the area where modern cars suffer the most, and not limited to EVs! 

[Flatcoat]

49 minutes ago, spicyhotone said:

Is it really true that EV's contain more electronics than ICE cars? I'd always imagine the mechanical simplicity of EVs, fewer interacting components, mean fewer co-ordinated electronics are required than an ICE where there's a lot more going on that needs to be controlled and co-ordinated. 
I've not seen a breakdown of the main causes of EV unreliability - I wonder if it's partly due to rush of new cut-price manufacturers who don't have the years of experience of reliably bolting these things together?
I'd definitely agree about the software - that's the area where modern cars suffer the most, and not limited to EVs! 

Of course it is! All the Battery monitoring, regen braking and and and. EV’s are computers with wheels attached. 

[Yorkboy]

4 hours ago, Flatcoat said:

Of course it is! All the battery monitoring, regen braking and and and. EV’s are computers with wheels attached. 

The main electronics and potential for failure is the inverters. Converting high current, high voltage AC to DC to charge the batteries, then converting high current, high voltage DC to AC to power the motors. Water cooled because of the heat generated during conversion. 

[philip42h]

An interesting debate ... but of course, the worst of all possible worlds is the PHEV combining all the complexity of a modern ICE with the full horrors of an EV ...

and the HEV isn't much better ...    😄 

[Flatcoat]

Part of my gripe is simply the blinkered politically legislated focus solely on EV’s within enforced timescales. Given governments hardly have a record of success in backing technological winners (remember how diesel was once the solution to all our transport needs… that worked out well…)and compounded by communist style 5 year plans, where does democracy come in to this? It will end in tears and in the UK with a bankrupt country if Ed Milibrain carries on much longer. If energy costs matched the US and car prices those in China, buyers would be queuing up to buy EV’s without needing any legislation to force them onto the public. However in good old socialist style we have a scenario where only virtue signalling middle classes can afford to access EV’s. 

[Nick72]

7 hours ago, GBgraham said:

So many views out there but for these. . . No I disagree, it's not simpler. The workings of the electronics alone make them far more complex than ICE, just because much is solid state does not make them anymore reliable, and look what happened to the whole industry with the semi-conductor shortage, then there is software issues that seem to be a continuous niggle for both companies and owners.  

Again, out there is so much developments still centred around the ICE's and the outcome of the fuel is still to be decided by the men in white coats. Even Porsche are now developing a 6 stroke ICE so nearly all the manufacturers are not surrendering totally to EV lobbyists. 

Greener, I very much doubt it, has anyone who is justifying EV's seriously looked back to the birth, through construction and production of the EV car, through it's short life then to its demise and now what do we do with it issue. Both ends of the process is a near environmental disaster. 

I am not against the need to move to other fuels, hydrogen and whatever is out there in the pipeline, even EV's. The move away from fossil fuels is probably more due to the depletion of eventual oil reserves which will be much needed for other everyday products that we all expect to be there. Environment wise we all need CO2 to survive on this planet and without we just wouldn't be here and definitely not worrying about what type a fuel we need. The pollutants ICE vehicles give out in the big scheme of what's out there is such a very small percentage in the UK. 

Is a quieter ride a great concern to everyday life? I have had many ICE cars that are just as quiet in the cockpit and tyre noise can make things not so quiet. Do we all want to be first off the mark at traffic lights and bragging of who's has the best 0-60 time? Longer range than a fuel tank, really? Under present day technology you are not going to see any more than 350-400 mile range. From the people I know that have EV's, getting hooked up at a charging centre can be a nightmare with so much time being wasted queue waiting.

There will be competent service centres for EV's but they will be unit fitters. Of the many control units needed these will be new or service exchange, probably starting at £2k a unit. Batteries the same and around £15k. Replacement motors around £5k. Then at the end of life what happens, worthless second hand and probably a large end of life fee, well you can't be green and not pay for the privilege. No wonder Hertz and other companies have turned away from EV's

Go woke go broke😜

 

Yeh I really don't agree with this. It is a chronocentric perspective and it's what I see on a daily basis in what I do. And I really don't agree on the solid state versus complex mechanical front. It's not what I've seen on aircraft at least. It's going in the right direction but isn't there yet. Most of us will be driving EVs within a decade. It's just overlapping S curves as a new way of doing things. Just like how steam ships replaced sail boats, and those steam ships were replaced by diesel combustion and turbines on the bigger ships. At first then next generation of tech lags behind the existing bit is soon overtaken. 

I don't think this has much to do with wokeness. But climate change is very real and transport is a major contributor, but more immediately the asthma deaths from particulate pollution. The milk floats are taking over in time. 🤣 You'll be on the back of the milk float band wagon soon Graham. 🤣🤷

[Nick72]

7 hours ago, Flatcoat said:

Of course it is! All the battery monitoring, regen braking and and and. EV’s are computers with wheels attached. 

Engine management system and all the sensors on an ICE. Even more on a hybrid. 

[GBgraham]

1 hour ago, Nick72 said:

Engine management system and all the sensors on an ICE. Even more on a hybrid. 

All put there supposedly to make the car burn leaner and cleaner to satisfy the dark legislative quangos that are built in and around governments. The ICE will be around longer than me or thee o feel sure.

[GBgraham]

3 minutes ago, Nick72 said:

Yeh I really don't agree with this. It is a chronocentric perspective and it's what I see on a daily basis in what I do. And I really don't agree on the solid state versus complex mechanical front. It's not what I've seen on aircraft at least. It's going in the right direction but isn't there yet. Most of us will be driving EVs within a decade. It's just overlapping S curves as a new way of doing things. Just like how steam ships replaced sail boats, and those steam ships were replaced by diesel combustion and turbines on the bigger ships. At first then next generation of tech lags behind the existing bit is soon overtaken. 

I don't think this has much to do with wokeness. But climate change is very real and transport is a major contributor, but more immediately the asthma deaths from particulate pollution. The milk floats are taking over in time. 🤣 You'll be on the back of the milk float band wagon soon Graham. 🤣🤷

Well we are getting the drift from where you are coming with being a rocket and aviation specialist. Don't you feel guilty working in an industry that uses so much carbon fuels in such disregarded abundance and pollutes the atmosphere? 

I too have been around aviation for a lot of years and I can assure whoever is reading this that the fly-by-wire aircraft I know of have the complexities of at least a triplex back up of computer systems plus at least one mechanical system for primary flight controls. So there's a vote for the possible unreliability of solid state going tech!

No, most will not be driving EV's in ten years, a huge amount of folk just will not be able to afford what the privileged few can and more won't have the ability to charge the said vehicles because of where they live, all this depends only if the sun shines and the wind blows. 

Please don't try to make out that I'm some sort of luddite, I'm a pragmatist and massively against stupidity from any corner that is trying to blindly take us down a route that has no light at the end of the tunnel. 

[Nick72]

34 minutes ago, GBgraham said:

Well we are getting the drift from where you are coming with being a rocket and aviation specialist. Don't you feel guilty working in an industry that uses so much carbon fuels in such disregarded abundance and pollutes the atmosphere? 

I too have been around aviation for a lot of years and I can assure whoever is reading this that the fly-by-wire aircraft I know of have the complexities of at least a triplex back up of computer systems plus at least one mechanical system for primary flight controls. So there's a vote for the possible unreliability of solid state going tech!

No, most will not be driving EV's in ten years, a huge amount of folk just will not be able to afford what the privileged few can and more won't have the ability to charge the said vehicles because of where they live, all this depends only if the sun shines and the wind blows. 

Please don't try to make out that I'm some sort of luddite, I'm a pragmatist and massively against stupidity from any corner that is trying to blindly take us down a route that has no light at the end of the tunnel. 

I just don't think this is true. Batteries and electric motor costs are falling at an exponential rate. These are the biggest drivers of EV cost. So affordability is coming. And they cost less to run already.

On the aviation front, we don't have a 1 in 10^9 failure rate to design for on cars so I don't take the argument. Noting that triplex or quadruplex is driven more by software reliability than actuation or flight control surface multiplex and diversity (noting the mechanical non-fly-by wire aircraft share the same actuation and flight control surface challenges and design needs). 

Honestly I really don't buy the dark conspiracies on twitter or the daily mail. It's b*****ks.

 

 

[Cyker]

10 hours ago, spicyhotone said:

According to this https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector - Transport is the 2nd biggest producer, after Electricity & Heat. The UK (and many other Western economies) are making headway reducing CO2 production from Electricity & Heat, so doesn't seem unreasonable to target Transport as the next biggest sector. Not to deny that there's plenty of other sectors which need to improve, but I guess these first two big sectors are the easiest and quickest to tackle with current technologies, are also the fastest growing, so it doesn't seem unreasonable to me that they've been targeted first.

I'm curious what "Transport" includes with that, as that can't just be cars, and I'm also confused why aviation and shipping are so low as the sorts of figures I've seen for those put them much higher...?

 

 

10 hours ago, spicyhotone said:

Is it really true that EV's contain more electronics than ICE cars? I'd always imagine the mechanical simplicity of EVs, fewer interacting components, mean fewer co-ordinated electronics are required than an ICE where there's a lot more going on that needs to be controlled and co-ordinated. 
I've not seen a breakdown of the main causes of EV unreliability - I wonder if it's partly due to rush of new cut-price manufacturers who don't have the years of experience of reliably bolting these things together?
I'd definitely agree about the software - that's the area where modern cars suffer the most, and not limited to EVs! 

It's more the power electronics (i.e. the high voltage stuff) that take the hammering - You're right that even normal ICE cars there are a lot of computers, and they tend to be more reliable as there are established industry standards for hardening and reliability with those, but the power electronics are more of a wild west.

From what I've read, the majority of EV problems are caused by software bugs and failures in the power electronics.

 

4 hours ago, philip42h said:

An interesting debate ... but of course, the worst of all possible worlds is the PHEV combining all the complexity of a modern ICE with the full horrors of an EV ...

and the HEV isn't much better ...    😄 

This is one of the biggest contradictions of hybrids - People have said I'm talking poop about EV electronics as hybrids have mostly the same components and power electronics as an EV, but then why do EVs and even ICE cars generally do worse than Toyota hybrids in reliability surveys?

It's all about the load - the ICE and EV parts of Toyota hybrids have such an easy life compared to EVs and ICE cars - They are never over-stressed, and compliment each other to cover each others weaknesses. The ICE doesn't have to deal with cold idle running or being lugged or over-revved, as the electrics take over, and the electrics never get over-stressed as the ICE cuts in to support it.

Contrary to what everyone claimed, i.e. that hybrids would be incredibly unreliable with the double-trouble complexity, they've turned out to be the most reliable vehicles on the market, and all because Toyota did them right.

The better EVs have immense amounts of liquid cooling to try and make things more reliable as they are so stressed, but that adds more complexity and failure points.

EVs should be a lot more reliable, but at the moment they don't for the same reason that LEDs don't last forever when they really should - They are often over-driven and underspec'ed, often for cost reasons, and that whole "It just has to last the length of the warranty, anything else is a bonus" mindset some manufacturers tend to have.

I think when Toyota feel they are ready and start making serious attempts at EVs we'll see ones coming to market that genuinely don't suck, but we're not there yet...

 

[philip42h]

59 minutes ago, Cyker said:

I'm curious what "Transport" includes with that, as that can't just be cars, and I'm also confused why aviation and shipping are so low as the sorts of figures I've seen for those put them much higher...?

 

 

It's more the power electronics (i.e. the high voltage stuff) that take the hammering - You're right that even normal ICE cars there are a lot of computers, and they tend to be more reliable as there are established industry standards for hardening and reliability with those, but the power electronics are more of a wild west.

From what I've read, the majority of EV problems are caused by software bugs and failures in the power electronics.

 

This is one of the biggest contradictions of hybrids - People have said I'm talking !Removed! about EV electronics as hybrids have mostly the same components and power electronics as an EV, but then why do EVs and even ICE cars generally do worse than Toyota hybrids in reliability surveys?

It's all about the load - the ICE and EV parts of Toyota hybrids have such an easy life compared to EVs and ICE cars - They are never over-stressed, and compliment each other to cover each others weaknesses. The ICE doesn't have to deal with cold idle running or being lugged or over-revved, as the electrics take over, and the electrics never get over-stressed as the ICE cuts in to support it.

Contrary to what everyone claimed, i.e. that hybrids would be incredibly unreliable with the double-trouble complexity, they've turned out to be the most reliable vehicles on the market, and all because Toyota did them right.

The better EVs have immense amounts of liquid cooling to try and make things more reliable as they are so stressed, but that adds more complexity and failure points.

EVs should be a lot more reliable, but at the moment they don't for the same reason that LEDs don't last forever when they really should - They are often over-driven and underspec'ed, often for cost reasons, and that whole "It just has to last the length of the warranty, anything else is a bonus" mindset some manufacturers tend to have.

I think when Toyota feel they are ready and start making serious attempts at EVs we'll see ones coming to market that genuinely don't suck, but we're not there yet...

 

Anyone would think that you are taking this seriously ... 😉

[Cyker]

It's partly because I really want an EV, even more so now I've had a taste of their potential from the Yaris hybrid (Which has also raised the bar of expectation considerably!), but there is so much that is deficient with them right now and it feels like everyone is going in the wrong direction instead of improving the important stuff that would make them good.

If Nick's hypothetical scenario was the case, where there was a Yaris that was exactly like my hybrid but an EV, I'd totally get one! Alas we're a looong way off from that right now. It's starting to become a parody of nuclear fusion, i.e. it's always 10 years away