Is there a case for Electric Vehicles for private ownership?

EvilRacer329 · November 3, 2020

Hey Barry14, you're not wrong - there are a few options, but none of them good. The Harley-Davidson LiveWire, Zero SR/S, and Energica Eva/Ego are the only ones that match ICE motorcycles for straight-line performance, and even then they are heavy and don't yet have realistic real-world ranges. I tested the Zero recently and in normal riding would've been empty by 60 miles, and the gentlemen making the rounds on apple TV were lucky to get 100 miles to a charge on their Harleys while trundling along at 30-45mph.

Lower-powered scooters etc. are available, but mostly with 30-40mph ranges and even worse ranges, so they're still very much toys for the rich or local runarounds. The view in some circles is that motorcycles will die off entirely with this transition, replaced by electrically-assisted bicycles that can be ridden away from our increasingly dangerous and congested roads. I hope this doesn't happen, as I very much enjoy motorcycling and cannot wait for a 200-mile touring bike to replace my petrol versions. Fortunately, motorcycles don't yet seem to be part of the 2035 ban, but it can't be long now...

Taxation is a very interesting question, and one that I and many others often forget. As some have said, this could be a catalyst for a complete rethink and simplification of our taxation system in the UK. I'm sure there are plenty of economists who have been running different models to assess the outcomes, as there are always knock-on effects. No matter what is done, some will benefit and others will lose out.

I have to say, I appreciate how the members of this forum can have a genuinely sophisticated and nuanced discussion about a complex issue like this. On too many corners of the internet this would have already degenerated into a vitriol-filled quagmire. How incredibly refreshing. 🙂

Nick

Thackeray · November 3, 2020

On 11/2/2020 at 1:12 PM, EvilRacer329 said:

We could probably be worlds ahead of where we are in electric vehicle development if we'd started earlier, but no-one was funding the research because it was way easier to make big money selling petrol cars instead.

Absolutely right. But in the early days of cars the front-runners were probably electric and steam. (See https://www.electricvehiclesnews.com/History/historyearlyIII.htm)

They had maximum torque from stationary and they could start themselves without the need for a crank handle. By contrast, the petrol engine had a lot of disadvantages - it couldn't start itself (the later invention of the self-starter helped to eliminate the crank handle); it had no torque at 0 rpm (so you needed to develop a practical clutch); it had limited range of torque (so you needed to invent a gear box that could make use of what torque it did have.) This must all have been quite discouraging for petrol engine inventors.

By contrast steam and electric had neither of these problems so you would think they would be the winning technologies. Among steam cars, Stanley Steamers were pretty popular in the early 1900s.

But steam and electricity both had problems, not with the motor, but with the fuel. In a steam car, you had to plan your journey from river to river to be able to top up the water to make the steam. And for electric cars, 150 years on we still have the same problem - not the motor but the fuel. The Battery is too big and heavy for the amount of power it can hold and it can take ages to fill up.

So although the petrol engine had few merits, it had the advantage of running on petrol (gasoline). The invention of the kerosine lamp in the 1850s had generated an oil drilling boom in Pennsylvania in the 1860s. But you had to refine out the gasoline from the crude oil, otherwise people lighting this new-fangled kerosine lamp might blow themselves up. What could they do with the useless gasoline? You'd be lucky to get two cents a gallon in the 1890s and if there were no buyers it was dumped in the river.

So gasoline was pretty well free. And it contained a lot of energy in a small volume of easily replenished liquid. Without this incentive, petrol cars would probably never have caught on .

Linas.P · November 3, 2020

49 minutes ago, Thackeray said:

But steam and electricity both had problems, not with the motor, but with the fuel. In a steam car, you had to plan your journey from river to river to be able to top up the water to make the steam. And for electric cars, 150 years on we still have the same problem - not the motor but the fuel. The battery is too big and heavy for the amount of power it can hold and it can take ages to fill up.

Very true. Even considering that capacity of most batteries nowadays are generally sufficient, the charging is still the problem. Even when just commuting to work, the only realistic use case is to charge the car overnight, meaning charging facilities at home are required and sadly majority of population does not have parking spaces with right connection to charge them, or no connection at all!

EvilRacer329 · November 4, 2020

If you go to the Porsche museum in Stuttgart, their very first car was, in fact, one of those early electric cars! Very cool, but as you say - the batteries weren't there.

I sometimes wonder if induction charging at traffic lights and in residential roads might be the way forward, but it'd have to be cheap and easy to install. Roads are resurfaced on the regular anyway (although not as regularly as they should be in this country!) so given time you'd have wireless charging for on-street parking and even top-ups when you sat at traffic lights. I wonder how those projects are getting on...

Nick