Aberdeen University’s Centre for Transport Research has been awarded funding by the UK Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) to explore who will buy and use battery-powered or hybrid vehicles.
Other subjects to be investigated include: how much people will be willing to pay for such a vehicle, how it will fit into their current travel patterns and whether they have any anxieties about the new technology.
Identifying the types of people who are most likely to become early adopters of electric vehicles — such as the plug-in car — will also be a key focus of the research.
Dr Jillian Anable, who is leading the Aberdeen study, said: ‘Identifying the key factors that will influence consumers to purchase electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles will be crucial to successfully rolling out the concept to the wider market.
‘We hope our research — which will take place throughout the UK — will identify the type of person that may become an early or future adopter of the technology.’
Aberdeen University is one of six partners undertaking research as part of ETI’s £11m low-carbon vehicle plan to support the roll-out of plug-in electric vehicles to the UK market.
The project is led by Ricardo and also involves the Transport Research Laboratory, Shell, Element Energy and Sussex University.
Surely this research is bettter done by car manufacturers, and haven’t Nissan already done it, as they’ve just announced a £420m investment in the Leaf electric car?
Why the rush for electric cars?
Cars charged from the grid will be an additional burden on an already strained system.
Electricity is a refined product with over 50% of the primary energy lost by the time it arrives at the consumer. In a car you then have additional losses brought about by friction, aerodynamic losses etc.
Until local generation and consumption is possible then electric cars make no environmental sense. Just becauee the pollution doesn’t come out of the exhaust pipe, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
Rather than a burden to the grid electric cars (or rather the batteries in them) can be a huge pool of electric storage when they are connected for charging.This would help smooth out the peak demands that really stretch the system. A truly smart grid with storage capacity!!
Tests and simulations have shown virtually no impact to the grid. Current draw is very small and will likely be primarily charged at off-peak times.
>> Cars charged from the grid will be an additional burden on an already strained system.
I’ve often wondered about that – energy is enerty – it’s got to come from somewhere (and I’d rather see it from an internal combustion engine than a coal-burning plant).
There’s a point to the “off-peak” charging, but aren’t we just robbing Peter to pay Paul?
Gas motors in cars are about 18% efficiant in converting the energy in gas . Coal fired plants are about 33% efociant in converting the energy stored in coal to electricity and electric motors are about 90% efficiant alow for 60% line loss etc and you get 18% so it is aproximately even up.
Maybe since internal combustion vehicles pump most of their energy out through the radiator, electric could actually be more efficient due to greater efficiency at the generating station.
Power to weight battery capacity still needs a big breakthrough. What unequivacal battery life guarantee will the car maker give us ? What will the cost of supplying and fitting a new battery, removing /disposing of the old be, etc ? How will global warming affect battery life ? How long will the battery in a car having a 60HP motor take to charge from a 230v, 13A, socket take to recharge 100% ? I fear honest answers without spin will not make a purchase attractive compared with conventional power plants.
Just send all the natural gas to power stations instead of wasting it on cooking and heating. Losses in distribution system must be huge. Simply lighting the stove or gas fire in millions of homes allows loss, not to mention all the leaky pipes in the network. Bring on the electric car sooner the better.
PLEASE – Informed comment or Nothing.
ICE cars are HORRENDOUSLY inefficient (by a factor of 100s) compared even to burning coal to mass-produce power.
Coupled to the fact that as Power Stations (Coal,Gas,Nuclear,Hydro,Wind,Wave,Geothermal etc.) get upgraded so does the ENTIRE TRANSPORT SYSTEM – get it?
I build & use a long-range Hybrid push-bikes on a daily basis. If & when I can afford to prototype cost-effective electric retro-fits for EXISTING CARS I will be doing that too.
When we can trust the Auto-industry to take the existing off-the-shelf components available for the last 30+ years & just Build – FULLSPEC, HIGHWAY electric vehicles. Then they can do the research & it will be worth listening to their findings… GM EV1-crushed, Toyotas Laughable EU Prius-crap & US Rav4-illegal to OWN, go figure
Electric systems are Great, Cheap & Fully recyclable RIGHT NOW. I know, I use them.
Can you imagine how good they would be if the Auto-industry had invested 100 years of research into them – instead of ICE, which in 1900 was the WORST available technology, taking 70 years to even get it to work reliably. I’m sure we can all remember 1970’s British Leyland cars…
So please, can we silence this ‘doesnt the grid pollute?’ nonsense & Get a Grip.
The answer is stupifyingly simple…
YES IT DOES – but HUNDREDS of time less than Your Fossil-fueled Car.
Period.
I go along with the view that electric cars pollute less than Internal Combustion Engines and are a contribution I can personally make to reduce pollution.
Power Stations need to be updated to reduce their pollution but I cannot do that on my own.
Meanwhile I am on my second hybrid car with the first sold on without battery problems at 9 years old.
Negative talk achieves nothing. Do what you can and try to persuade others, particularly Government, to do what they can.
Longer tailpipe? False. Who cares more about the efficiency of burning fossil fuels to create electricty or motive power? Power companies who spend billions a year on coal, or car manufacturers? Yes, power stations are more efficient then cars.
Plus, if you have sufficient microgeneration, or are signed up to a green provider such as ecotricity, you have clean power.
The technology is here, now. The Leaf will struggle because of it’s limited range, but the Vauxhall Ampera with it’s range extender will be an amazing commercial success. who can argue with a family size car that will cost ~2p a mile on electricity, but can still have un unlimited range when topped up with death juice?
Recharging a battery is a electro-chemical reaction?
What Gasses are produced by this, are they posionus to us or our enviorment.
How many years before we see what the new technology is doing?
Incorrect, HCS, and an intrusion here anyway – gas used in the house for heating/cooking is direct with very little loss. Moreover gas has a huge/established infrastructure for delivery to houses and many other users (note, many countries can only use “bottled” gas).
Turning the gas into electricity has an intrinsic thermodynamic loss, around 60%.
It was Mrs Thatcher’s government that initiated the “dash for gas” which made us dependent on gas imports, consuming an abundant available heating and cooking fuel with very little thermodynamic loss, downgrading it to generate electricity with the inevitable losses..
And CHP only works in winter, when there is a use for all that wasted heat (which thermal power stations generally dump via cooling towers or into a river). Unless there is a use for process heat.
Until batteries are proved to last 20+ years or become so cheap that it’s inconsiquential there will always be a problem with fully battery powered cars. the weight of the battery pack is also a problem, not only for effieciency but also for the cars handling, braking and interior space.
I personally feel that the best route to go down would be the fuel cell as in the Honda FCX. Using Hydrogen to power the fuel cells that power electric motors seems very sensible to me. The whole package seems smaller lighter to me and the re-fuelling is much faster. There are perhaps a few questions still to be answered with the fuel cells, for example the cell life expectancy and how easy it would be to contaminate with bad fuel, but I see there is a lot of potential there that is being overlooked because Governments seem intent on promoting all electric.
electric vehicles:
I fear we are looking at the obvious clean-electric vs. dirty-fossil-fuel arguement and missing the bigger picture.
1. when comparing electric v petrol/diesel, we need to take into account everything during its whole-life cycle: raw materials need to be sourced, and transported, and processed. metals, rubbers, plastics etc.
the rare earth magnets used in the motors of electric cars are mined in China, and treated with chemicals and acids, and much is allowed to flow on land (inc farmland) and into rivers etc. Thats just 1 example (and not even accounting for the carbon used mining and transporting it). Looking at it that way, are electric cars REALLY cleaner? or are we swapping one form of pollution for another?
2: At the end of its life, the car will be destroyed; what problems will all the batteries/motors/circuitry pose? Where will it all go? landfill? re-use elsewhere? Will it require transport to some special treatment centre?
3: When the oil finally dries up and runs out, what will we use to construct and maintain our road network?
Yes, I realise we’ll ALL have to make difficult (and possibly unpopular) decisions and the my point is we all seem to be screaming for new technology to come to the fore – but are we being blinded by the light?
One last point: wind power is being bandied about as the next big thing as its renewable and widely seen as “clean”, BUT : How much energy (ie carbon) is required to construct and install one? For example, say for arguements sake 150kg of carbon is spent to get it up and running (from mining the steel, through manufacture, installation and commisioning), how long would it take to “neutralise” that 150kg? Because up until that point, its carbon negative – ie, made the situation worse instead of better.
just a thought.
There can be an option of Stack of Batteries in the vehicle, the configuration being a set for propelling the vehicle and another one being charged by the Generator driven by the vehicle movement. The Vehicle user/autoswitchover based on the battery energy content.
The internal combustion engine is not a perfect solution, nor is the electric car.
The reality is that you have to move away from “individual” transportation and develop mass transportation!
Why are trains and diesel trucks (semis) more efficient than personal transportation (they carry near full capacity loads as often as possible)?
The electric and fuel cell technology have huge environmental impact unless you generate the full recycle infrastructure (co generation, full recyclable process of batteries etc..). Without these you are white washing, one bad idea with another!
Batteries of all types do not do well at low temperatures. Recharge cycle has massive impact on battery life. Depth of draw and many more factors (such as packing around 500+ lbs of battery).
There is no free lunch, why do you think small cars get better fuel efficiency than large vehicles? Conversely, the most fuel efficient engine ever built is a huge diesel designed to power super tankers… I.E. the mass transportation of goods…
Russel James calls for informed comment but immediately devalues anything meaningful that he says by ridiculous numbers. An ICE has an efficiency of rather better than 1%; the chain from fuel to wheels via the electric route has an efficiency of rather less than 100%, so whatever the factor invoved may be it’s not 100’s! It’s possibly a lot closer to unity than he would like to admit.
Could some one help me produce a working model i have designed a motor that runs on air and electric that re uses its fuel , and refuels itself when slowing down, its more green than anything i have seen in production or on the market, email me thedean3@hotmail.co.uk if you can help,
I know this is probably a flawed suggestion, but have any electric car manufacturers or scientists looked at the use of dynamos for recharging? Is it possible that the car could use a dynamo to recharge itself as its driving along? This would save on recharging for long lengths of time at a power point and also give the car a greater distance range.
Okay so ICE cars are inefficient and burn dirty – how about external combustion engines? Steam cars have been around just over a century and produce almost no emissions …
This debate is incredible, the amount of people who come up with this spurious and tired old argument of overburdening the power grid, the plain and simple ‘wrong’ argument that electricity generated by burning coal means electric cars are as polluting as fossil fuel burners. Power plants are hugely more efficient than internal combustion engines, and far easier to treat/deal with the toxic output. But the most obvious argument is, a fossil car can only use one fuel, fossil fuel. An electric car can use electricity generated by any means. Add that to the incredible socio political damage done by the global oil industry and our meddling in foreign countries and there really is no excuse.
@ Anon 11:19 – Yes this has been done before (think diesel-electric locomotives), and I think I’m right in saying this is what Vauxhall’s new car will have. Useful for when the charging infrastructure isn’t in place away from home. An IC engine can run a lot more efficiently at constant speed and load. You can even use a tiny gas turbine for this. In practice you would not use a dynamo though, you would use an AC generator (alternator) with an output similar to the mains supply.
I am not sure if the whole queston of power generation has been thought through. We have atomic submarines powered by presurised water cooled atomic generators that are an abundant source of energy. I understand the atomic pile is about as big as a dustbin and sailors pass close by at all times. Why cannot we use this technology for our power needs by having mini versions dotted around the country? When these boats are tied up at Faslane why not connect them to the national grid?
Lets ask ourselves a simple question, what use are electric cars in the real world? Will they allow me to cover my 60,000 miles per annum? no, can they be refuelled in just a few minutes as we do with a filling station? No, are they practical or realistic in the modern world? no.
Who is prepared, or even in a position to pay an inflated pride for an electric vehicle which claims 50 mile ranges, but in reality it is 12 miles. Who in reality can wait for several hours for a vehicle to recharge, fine if you are office based and can charge a vehicle for several hours, but most of us cannot.
The realities are simple, they just do not work in the real world, they appeal to a minority for whom they work, but they are still a minority and a very small minority. Most vehicles are company cars, these have to fulfil many roles and duties, be cheap to run, and provide the comfort and safety, electric vehicles by comparison are very poor in these important areas, particularly safety.
Green credentials do not add up, complex electronics to control them which cannot be effectively recycled, so where are they going to go. Rare earth motors which pollute more than any internal combustion engine and use many dangerous chemicals in there manufacture, usually in third world countries which do not adhere to any environmental legislation.
Perhaps people should look at the realities of these electric cars, but it does not require so much taxpayers money to give us the conclusions we already know.
HAS ANYBODY THOUGHT WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN FOSSIL FUEL IS DEPLETED. WE HAVE REACHED THE PEAK IN THE GRAPH AND ARE NOW ON THE DOWNWARD SLOPE. IT IS HIGH TIME WE TRIED OTHER METHODS OF RUNNING OUR VEHICLES.
Yes, I drive a 30 yr old Jet Electra. I was promised 55 mph and 60 mi range. I was only looking for 45 mph and 45 mi range.
What I got was 39 mph for brief periods, and 15 mi range, at only 10 mph. I bought 10 new batteries.Sparky