Thoughts on electric vehicles?

[Night Train]

I am seriously thinking of building/converting a van to electric drive (as if I didn't have enough to do).

I am thinking of something like an Escort or Astra van for the donor vehicle and then swapping all the petrol/diesel bits for and electric motor, controller and batteries.
I figured that the load bed of the van would be ideal for carrying a load of batteries under a false floor leaving me a little space for a tool box and a few bits of wood.
Also I really want it to be able to take me to college and back, 30 miles each way, when I only have myself and a small bag to carry so I can save on burning diesel.

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[MikeG.]

It might make you feel better, but it won't be doing a single thing to reduce your carbon footprint, (presuming you don't live somewhere where all the electricity is generated by renewables such as wind or hydro-).

In fact, because of the relative inefficiency of batteries, and of the generation and transmission of electricity, it is possible this move could actually be worse for the environment than driving a diesel vehicle. All you are doing is shifting the pollution and carbon dioxide emissions from your exhaust pipe to the local power station.

Save your money and effort for something more worthwhile, such as making your house energy eficient.

Mike

 

[Ironballs]

In the style of Homer Simpson, you're living in a land of make believe, full of marshmallow houses and chocolate lamp posts!!

Nice idea but if you're determined to use less fossil fuels (directly - unless you plan to generate your own green leccy to charge your batteries) then you'll be better using yours skills and energy and converting old chip fat into fuel

 

[Night Train]

Tried the chip fat route, made my car very poorly indeed.

I am very aware of the carbon foot print issue and the long tail pipe issue and given I an get 60mpg out of my car on a good run it is as much the desire for a fresh project that is getting to me.

However, I do want to get closer to using less fossil fuels and unless I make a break somewhere then it will never change.
Granted an electric car will rely mostly on fossil fuel generation and that the production of motor and batteries are not that green in themselves but once it is there I can think about what I can do to improve the situation. Also electricity generation will change over time anyway and more of it will be renewables whereas mineral diesel will always be mineral diesel.

My house is as good as I can realistically get it at the moment short of external wall insulation which would be the next major piece if work. After that I will start again on the inside and further improve the heating system.
I want to look at solar roof technology to see which I can afford to use and what to do with the output from it in terms of heat and possibly a small amount of electric. I won't worry about that until the time comes and I will then see what the technology is like then.

 

[MikeG.]

BTW, NightTrain, you can edit both the text and headline of your original posting......so if you wanted to correct "thoughs" to "thoughts" it is very easy.

Mike

 

[Fergus]

I was talking to a friend last week who was making his own bio fuels(has been experimenting for a couple of years), and said that when he was using fuel made from crops his car ran fantastic but he then changed over to chip fat based fuel and had problems. The quality just was not as good.

 

[Night Train]

BTW, NightTrain, you can edit both the text and headline of your original posting......so if you wanted to correct "thoughs" to "thoughts" it is very easy.

Mike

Thanks, Mike. I did spell check the body of the text but missed the title typo.

 

[Night Train]

I was talking to a friend last week who was making his own bio fuels(has been experimenting for a couple of years), and said that when he was using fuel made from crops his car ran fantastic but he then changed over to chip fat based fuel and had problems. The quality just was not as good.

That's what I found. I was using fuel from 'virgin' oil and though low powered it seemed ok. Then I tried recycled oil and with two tank fulls it nearly cost me a new pump after three AA recoveries.
I wnet back to mineral oil and found the performance that I had lost so gradually that I hadn't noticed.

The problem with 'virgin' crop oils is that it uses food crop or potential food growing land to produce it. It isn't economically viable to produce it from the lower grade food crop wastes and as your friend and I found waste oil just isn't up to the job with current engines.

 

[Hitch]

You can get them ready made.... Pug/Citroen do Berlingo/Partner Electriqe.


Might be an easier option than making one 8)

 

[Oldman]

Grab yourself an old milk float, have some fun with that as it will also give you the parts you need if you do go the conversion path.

We used to buy them for transporting materials around the works.

No MOT, Free Tax. One on ebay right now for £1500 Bargain ;-)

 

[Rich]

I am sure that if push came to shove between governments, car manufacturers and fuel producers a much more efficient method of moving a vehicle in a forward motion could be found, the will is not there, the financial incentive is not there, and too many people who make important decisions about our everyday lives are probably shareholders in the companies mentioned, you would think that after getting to the moon the brains of this planet would have come up with something eco friendly by now....... I wonder why not. :shock: :wink:

Rich.

 

[woodbloke]

I am sure that if push came to shove between governments...
Rich.

This is an interesting one. Where precisely though is the 'tip point' where the powers that be say 'enough is enough'...my own view is that we've probably gone past it now and the build up of CO2 will get progressively worse at an exponential rate. As always, there are vested interests at stake (always have and always will be) so it's going to be a slow process of evolution rather than revolution. The problem is that evolutionary road will just take too long.
The other issue is of course, how do you replace the diesel engines in the vast amount of lorries and juggernauts on the roads with something more environmentally sound? Difficult methinks :-k - Rob

 

[Night Train]

I am an environmentalist!

There I've said it. I believe that we are damaging the environment and over consuming the resources that we have and making little attempt at redressing the balance.

I also believe that there is time to make a difference and to redess the balance. That we can do something about it, find more resources, use them better, repair the environmental damage and live a better and happier coexistence with other life on this bit of wet rock.

However, I don't, for one moment, believe that we will. The world will carry on and life will continue to evolve and eventually we will cease to be an important part of it. The majority of the world's wealth and power is too greedy, too short sighted and too selfish, and much of the rest of us just tag along because we don't know what else to do.

Yes, there is a tipping point, a theoretical tipping point based on climate records and industrial output among other things. The tipping point is fairly soon, a matter of a few years away at our current rate of environmental impact. With concerted action we can hold off the tipping point and bring things back from the brink.
What that means in reality is we stop producing CO2 and methane now. We stop consuming fossil fuels by burning now.
We immediately reduce the consumption of energy to a small fraction of what it is now.

Sadly, human civilization has an inertia that prevents any immediate action on almost anything. We can all wail in grief in unison over the death of a famous person but we seem unable to stop ourselves driving the car a short distance when we could walk or cycle. We can't stop buying exotic fruit that has been flown halfway around the world. We can't leave the heating off, by choice, until it is really cold.

In a many million years time more intelligent beings will look back at our time and see us as no more then a momentary catastrophe much like we see the extinction of the dinosaurs. We will be no more then a few inches or feet of archeological digging. An anomaly of heavy metals, toxic chemicals and plastics with a scattering of radioactive isotopes.

In the meantime I will do my part in reducing the effects that we will have on our future and attempt to set some sort of example, even if, globally, it is futile. I just hope not.

As for replacing big diesel lorries how about Smith's Electric Vehicles.
Or canal barges.
Or trains.
Or over head power lines over one lane of the motorway for powering electric, long haul lorries like trolley buses but also with batteries so they can still pull off to do local deliveries.
And for very local deliveries human powered vehicles.

It's just a thought, but not one I am allowed to write a thesis on. :wink:

 

[skyechem]

Environmentally speaking, deciding the best way to power a vehicle is a complicated problem.

There is the efficiency of internal combustion engines (25 % ish) compared to coal/gas power stations (30%+ ish I think) to consider.

If you're charging your electric vehicle from the national grid, then you can consider it being only part coal/gas powers, part nuclear powered, part renewable powered (I can't find any stats just now, but I think current UK electricity generation is very approximately 70% coal/gas, 20% nuclear 10% renewable?). This ratio is only going to shift away from coal/gas, towards renewable/nuclear, making an electric powered car produce less and less CO2 as it goes through life.

There is the energy and hazardous chemicals which go into the production of the battery.

Those are the main considerations I can think of just now, although there are doubtless hundreds more. It's my opinion that anything which promotes less fossil fuel use is a good thing. The amount of research being done into batteries and fuel cells is only going to increase the more people invest in them.

 

[woodbloke]

I believe that we are damaging the environment and over consuming the resources that we have and making little attempt at redressing the balance.

I also believe that there is time to make a difference and to redess the balance. That we can do something about it, find more resources, use them better, repair the environmental damage and live a better and happier coexistence with other life on this bit of wet rock.

However, I don't, for one moment, believe that we will. The world will carry on and life will continue to evolve and eventually we will cease to be an important part of it. The majority of the world's wealth and power is too greedy, too short sighted and too selfish, and much of the rest of us just tag along because we don't know what else to do.

Yes, there is a tipping point, a theoretical tipping point based on climate records and industrial output among other things. The tipping point is fairly soon, a matter of a few years away at our current rate of environmental impact. With concerted action we can hold off the tipping point and bring things back from the brink.
What that means in reality is we stop producing CO2 and methane now. We stop consuming fossil fuels by burning now.
We immediately reduce the consumption of energy to a small fraction of what it is now.

Sadly, human civilization has an inertia that prevents any immediate action on almost anything. We can all wail in grief in unison over the death of a famous person but we seem unable to stop ourselves driving the car a short distance when we could walk or cycle. We can't stop buying exotic fruit that has been flown halfway around the world. We can't leave the heating off, by choice, until it is really cold.

In a many million years time more intelligent beings will look back at our time and see us as no more then a momentary catastrophe much like we see the extinction of the dinosaurs. We will be no more then a few inches or feet of archeological digging. An anomaly of heavy metals, toxic chemicals and plastics with a scattering of radioactive isotopes.

In the meantime I will do my part in reducing the effects that we will have on our future and attempt to set some sort of example, even if, globally, it is futile. I just hope not.


It's just a thought, but not one I am allowed to write a thesis on. :wink:

NT - a succinct analysis and one which I generally agree with. I don't class myself as an 'environmentalist' but in common with most other folk these days, I like to try and do my bit...within limits. Will it stop me driving my Landy or having a holiday in the sun again this year? No, and therein lies the problem. We have a fixed way of life and a definite routine which is incredibly hard to break (I'm talking 'attitude' here, which is one of the most ingrained and almost impossible things to alter in a human bean)
The relentless rise in industrialization that first started seriously around the time of the American Civil War has IMO provided benefit to mankind but at an appalling cost to our planet...and there seems to me to be very little chance of it getting better in the future, near or distant.
I often ponder what the planet will be like in say 100 years. From all accounts, parts of the UK will have summer temps of 40deg+...so what will France and continental Europe look like :shock: ...and what then happens to their populations? What will it be like at the next millennium, with the current rate of so called 'progress'?
I reckon the Apollo astronaut who commented about the site of the 'good earth' was right...trouble is, it's not going to be good for much longer - Rob

 

[Oldman]

Its all just too frightening to contemplate, wars over water not oil and millions of us trying to find somewhere to live thats not being turned into desert or being submerged by the seas.

We feel that its something we cannot possibly control or alter so we just bury our heads in the sand and cross our fingers, our great grandchildren are going to really hate us for this, if they manage to survive.

Guilty here...

 

[Night Train]

This is an extract from an essay I wrote and presented earlier this year.

Various Government targets for reducing CO2 emissions are set for 2012, 2020 and 2050 giving up to 42 years for a target to be reached, however, the tipping point could be much closer. Also with targets being only for reduction of CO2 it would only effect a slowing down rather then a stopping of the emissions that are speeding us towards climate change.

Scientists have identified nine indicators of tipping:
Arctic Sea Ice – total melting is imminent, within a few years and can lead to warming of northern oceans
Greenland Ice Sheet – 300 years to melt completely but only 50 years to be irreversible
West Antarctic Ice Sheet – area over the sea can break off at any time
Gulf Stream – Could ‘switch off’ this century
El Nino – could be affected by warming seas
Indian Monsoon – affected by local atmospheric pollution
West African Monsoon – Could lead to droughts
Amazon Rainforest – eco system could collapse with climate warming
Boreal Forests – cold adapted trees could die off as climate warms

If the arctic sea ice is lost then less sunlight is reflected back into space and more heat is absorbed by the darker sea water. This could lead to the Greenland ice sheet melting sooner which could affect the Gulf Stream and so on. If a chain reaction of events is triggered by the tipping of the first event then the true tipping point is only a few years away, much sooner then the targets for CO2 reduction proposed by national and international Governments. If Government targets are as they are and society’s reaction to climate change is as slow as it has been then perhaps the true tipping point has already been passed.

References:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 78027.html 10/11/08

http://www.unep.org/geo/geo_ice/ 10/11/08

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast20oct_1.htm 10/11/08

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/ 10/11/08

BBC4 High Anxieties: The Mathematics of Chaos 20/10/08

Climate change lectures by Ranyl Rhydwen

The Wilkins Ice Shelf is now on the brink of breaking off and being free of Antarctica.

Things are moving faster then politicians can think.

 

[wizer]

Its all just too frightening to contemplate, wars over water not oil and millions of us trying to find somewhere to live thats not being turned into desert or being submerged by the seas.

We feel that its something we cannot possibly control or alter so we just bury our heads in the sand and cross our fingers, our great grandchildren are going to really hate us for this, if they manage to survive.

Guilty here...

I think the aliens will be here before any of that happens. We'll all be either annihilated or the population will be 'diluted' with 3 eyed super humans who can breath smog.

 

[lurker]

I have to say all this "worrying" is a generational thing.

Until recently it was the aftermath of Nuclear war.

I can't accept that the Temperature increase is man made. However i accept resources are running out - so support the aims of those trying to reduce our dependency

UK Ltd. had their chance in the 70s, 80s & 90s when we were world leaders in Nuclear generation technology. By now we could be totally independent of oil & gas.
Unfortunately the civil service & Politicians were (and still are) scientifically illiterate so they were listening to Greenpeace & Porritt rather than the facts.

 

[MikeG.]

Environmentally speaking, deciding the best way to power a vehicle is a complicated problem.
There is the efficiency of internal combustion engines (25 % ish) compared to coal/gas power stations (30%+ ish I think) to consider.

Skyechem,

my understanding is that power stations are below 30%, and that transmission losses can amount to 40 to 50%, depending on where you are in the country. On top of that, you have to consider the inefficiencies of batteries, and their low energy density.

I haven't found anyone anywhere who has provided figures to show that electric vehicles produce less carbon dioxide emissions, in total, than internal-combustion-engined vehicles. I believe that by encouraging electric vehicles we are heading up a blind alley that makes not a jot of difference to our problem.

Mike