Electric Vans

[Drago]

I don't know how much you need to carry, but I think the electric Citroen berlingo has a half decent range. They do a people carrier version as well with the electric drivetrain.

For all its faults and problems, not least of which not being a total air pollution solver, its undoubtedly the coming thing. I've enjoyed my petrol Smart car so much I'm considering a Smart Fortwo ED.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

It's a common argument. However, 60% of all car journeys are 5 miles or less. 96% are 20 miles or less. So the majority of people don't really need to worry, but if you're a travelling salesperson traversing the country, then electric won't be the answer.

I went up to the Isle of Skye in May, and am back to Scotland next month. I've regularly been doing 110 mile trips which costs less than £4 in juice. How much is petrol these days?

Until I get the new car, just have to take a 30 minute break to recharge, which conveniently fits in with my bladder! But yes, the charging infrastructure can be an issue due to often only one rapid being installed in each location, so you need to have Plan A & B.

What is the Plan B if the rapid charger is chosen - Just park up and wait?

Heard a report on the radio recently about liquid batteries. https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_601603_en.html That's the kind of technology that could be truly transformative.

One potential benefit of this system is that electric cars could be charged in seconds, as the material is a pumpable liquid. This could mean that the battery of an electric car could be “recharged” in roughly the same length of time as petrol cars can be filled up. The old battery liquid would be removed at the same time and recharged ready to be used again.

 

[perplexed]

I love the idea of an electric vehicle, but as others have already noted, it's the range issue which kills it for us just at the moment (and the lack of choice and price). The majority of the time the range concern is not too bad, but a not insignificant amount of the time the range is a problem.

I don't know about other places, but at my local supermarket (for instance) there are about 6 recharging points. I would say that over 90% of the time, unless you go first thing or just before they close, they are full of petrol/diesel cars parked there because their owners are too bloody lazy to walk an extra 50 yards where there are probably usually well in excess of (conservatively) 80 to 100 free spaces. Until these issues are policed somehow and the range improved, electric is going to have to go on the proverbial back burner...

 

[Venod]

I am another who likes the idea of an electric vehicle, but as they become popular I can envisage problems of congested charging stations with long waits before its your turn, this is a huge barrier to the rollout of EV.

 

[Flying Dodo]

I don't know how much you need to carry, but I think the electric Citroen berlingo has a half decent range. They do a people carrier version as well with the electric drivetrain.

The Citroen & the almost identical Peugeot Partner Tepee only has a 22.5kWh battery and a not very powerful motor. They've sold only a few hundred a year of them, and I believe suffer from various reliability issues. Has the same range as the old 24kWh Nissan van, but a smaller load space.
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[QUOTE 5365980, member: 9609"]what are the heaters like in electric vehicles, I'm a cold soul and like to drive with the heaters on full blast. If you have a range of a 100 mile on a summers day, what sort of range would that be on a very cold winters night. And if I parked up for 20 minutes with heater on to have a brew, how many miles would that knock off ?[/QUOTE]

A cold, very wet, night drive into a head wind is the worst scenario for an electric vehicle. If you set off in a cold, fully charged vehicle when it's freezing outside, then you can expect to lose 15-25% of the range, depending upon the car. This is because the heater has to heat up a large volume of cold air. One way to improve that is to pre-heat the car when it's still plugged into a charger.

The great thing about my Nissan is that on a cold winter's morning, whilst I'm having my breakfast, I can load up the Nissan app on my phone, press a button to start the heating for the car, and then when I go to drive off, the ice is all melted and it's toasty inside. If it was still plugged in, then that's not coming off the battery.

For a 20 minute stop, obviously if the car was already warm, then keeping the heater going won't affect things so much.

Most cars also have heated steering wheels & seats, so the main heater can be used less.

All dealerships should let you do an extended test drive over a weekend so you can see how the range gets affected. On longer journeys you can end up doing a bit of mental juggling thinking about how the range is dropping, any hills coming up, when the next charging point is. For instance if you're doing a return journey where outbound there's far more uphill, that will clearly reduce the range compared with coming back, as typically you can gain an extra 20% when going downhill.

As more and more cars get bigger batteries, then the penalty for heating will become less of an issue. Excluding Teslas, currently 40kWh batteries are the norm, but within 2 years, most new cars will be 60kWh. This in turn will ease some of the problems about lack of chargers, as because the cars will have longer range, and so the Plan B or Plan C charger will still be able to be reached. In any event, there is a big ramping up of the numbers of chargers, with BP having recently taken over one of the major networks, Chargemaster, and they've stated they'll be adding 4,000 chargers in the next few years (a 40% increase).

 

[Flying Dodo]

Car drivers needing to think carefully about how they use their car - I like it! I like it much, much better than the idea that, with driverless cars, drivers won't need to think at all.

A lot of car drivers don't think at the moment!

With 25% of under 25's now not having a driving licence, coupled with increasing congestion, hopefully an ever increasing proportion of the population will make use of car share schemes, for when they really need a car. However, I don't see the technology developing for at least 10-15 years to have true autonomous driving, able to cope with all types of roads, especially those without any white lines. Motorways are easy, so I can see in 5 years sections being allowed for hands-free. Urban environments with people on foot & bike will be harder. Far better just to ban cars in town centres.

 

[T4tomo]

I am another who likes the idea of an electric vehicle, but as they become popular I can envisage problems of congested charging stations with long waits before its your turn, this is a huge barrier to the rollout of EV.

Doesn't take much to install a charge point though does it? I'm pretty sure infrastructure will keep up with demand.

 

[Drago]

All I hear are excuses. When the oil runs out, becomes so expensive no one can afford it, or is illegal to burn because of climate change, then people will have no option but to go electric, or go on the bus.

Best to adapt your lifestyle and needs now when it can be done at leisure in a phased manner, rather than moan and do nothing and then be found wanting when you are finally forced to go electric. People that moan and moan and moan but actually do nothing will get zero sympathy from be when the hammer falls and they're caught with their **** in their hand.

 

[MontyVeda]

someone mentioned an idea on the radio the other day about fitting charging points into every lamp post... as things currently stand, EVs aren't much use for those of us in terraced housing or flats with no off street parking. The lamp post idea was a good one, but still has its problems.

 

[Flying Dodo]

All I hear are excuses. When the oil runs out, becomes so expensive no one can afford it, or is illegal to burn because of climate change, then people will have no option but to go electric, or go on the bus.

Best to adapt your lifestyle and needs now when it can be done at leisure in a phased manner, rather than moan and do nothing and then be found wanting when you are finally forced to go electric. People that moan and moan and moan but actually do nothing will get zero sympathy from be when the hammer falls and they're caught with their **** in their hand.

Very true. The sad thing is that with the large scale use of PCP deals to buy cars, it means people have got used to paying £200-£400 pm or so to effectively rent a car, which they then roll over every 2-3 years into a new car. People are then stuck on the conveyor belt of never actually owning a car, but getting a new one regularly, which merely encourages more mass production of new cars. All part of the crazy consumerism habit to have the latest gadgets.

someone mentioned an idea on the radio the other day about fitting charging points into every lamp post... as things currently stand, EVs aren't much use for those of us in terraced housing or flats with no off street parking. The lamp post idea was a good one, but still has its problems.

There are some quite large trials going ahead in Oxford, Portsmouth and other cities, with London intending to have over 1,000 points by the end of 2020. They'd have to installed in consecutive lamp posts, to ensure someone can charge close to where they live. Again, the emergence of larger batteries should reduce charging issues, as people will need to charge less often, so if they go to a shopping centre and intend to stay for 4-5 hours, then they can get a full charge.​

 

[Pale Rider]

Some indication the National Grid couldn't cope with widespread adoption of electric vehicles.

Could be an element of scaremongering, but the power has to come from somewhere.

 

[Flying Dodo]

National Grid did some modelling showing under the worst case scenario of 90% of all new cars being electric by 2050 and the majority of all vehicles on the road being hybrid or pure electric, then that would require 30% more capacity than the current peak demand. That's simply looking at the total power requirement of those cars, compared with the estimated generating capacity available.

Of course the Daily Wail used that to scaremonger, ignoring the blinding obvious fact that 38 million cars wouldn't plug in at the same time! In addition, by then, Vehicle to Grid (V2G) will be commonplace, whereby a proportion of cars act as mobile storage, being charged off peak and the owners being paid to release energy back to the grid at times of high demand.

I fully expect Smart Metering to be used as a method of encouraging time shifting of charging (and general electricity consumption), by having a wide band of costs depending upon time of day and night.

 

[screenman]

I have many customers that would shy away from taking one in p/ex, mainly I think down to fear of the unkown.