Is electric really the answer

[pete]

Toyotas ALL NEW Hydrogen Car SHOCKS The Entire Ca…: https://youtu.be/HfnJm7WjOcs

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

My 8 month old plug-in hybrid Passat GTE has just undergone its first safety recall, due to VW identifying a fault with the fuse in the high voltage system. This effects Golf, Tiguan, Passat, Arteon and Multivan vehicles with a high voltage system. Should a short-circuit occur anywhere in the high voltage system, the fuse could potentially burst and allow arcing into the car interior. “This creates a danger of fire and a possible risk of injury for the vehicle occupants.”

Rather than replace the fuse, they have installed an insulating mat for the battery to prevent possible arcing in the vehicle interior.

Seems a bit of a Heath Robinson bodge fix to me. Anyway mine’s done, but there’s now a 2 month waiting list for the work.

[C8RKH]

On 24/05/2022 at 13:45, electro_boy said:

Ohhhfff! Far too expensive for what it is, needed to be closer to £4K.

Behave. That would not even get you a top of the range e-bike.

[ramjet]

On 24/05/2022 at 20:29, exeterjeep said:

Today Citroen announce the price of the city EV. Was hated by Fifth gear when they had a go in it. 

https://www.am-online.com/news/new-car-news/car-model-news/2022/05/24/citroen-s-tiny-ami-city-ev-to-be-priced-from-7-695

Citroën UK has announced the pricing and specification of its tiny Ami electric vehicle (EV), with the entry-level version on sales from £7,695

....6kW electric motor allows the new model to reach a top speed of 28mph while its 5.5kWh battery delivers a range of up to 46 miles 

So not too much danger of getting a speeding ticket or enjoyment from motoring in it.....

I'll have one if they want to give it to me and some money.

Boy, is that ugly.

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

On 19/05/2022 at 19:46, MPx said:

There's a lot of scare mongering about this on the EV sites, but as is often the case there is a grain of truth in it too. Kimbers is wrong - there have been several (many?) fires from using granny chargers on a UK three pin plug.  This is not the fault of the charger, it is a problem with the basic design of our standard plug/socket.  Because we added the safety of a fuse into the plug there are many metal to metal interfaces.  As they age they tarnish and build up a slight resistance to current flow.  SO that's fuse to holder and plug pins to socket receptors.  Uniquely in a domestic environment a car charger will typically draw 10amps continuously for many hours.  With even slight resistance in the path, heat can build up significantly and eventually will set fire to the socket and anything combustable surrounding it.  

If you use a new socket with a new charger plug the risks are extremely low for years.  If you use something old with a bit of play in it then you're asking for trouble.

Edit:  to say as Simon suggests, a 16amp commando plug/socket is a much more suitable connection.   The snag is that the 13 amp charger plug will normally have overheat protection built in to it which you would lose if just cut off and replaced with a Commando.

Just going back to this topic. I have since carried out a couple of empty to full charges on my Passat PHEV and the heat issue was not noticeable. However, yesterday afternoon I charged from 4 miles range and left it for 4.1/2 hours to fully charge. When I opened the garage door to unplug it, there was that pungent smell of electricity melting plastic. The household extension cable socket was too hot to touch and the VW battery charger was showing a red light error message. The socket had clearly overheated and the charger had cut out. I wouldn’t have been very happy if it had burnt my garage down and the two cars therein. After it had cooled down I had a look at the extension lead socket and this is what I found. Look at the discoloured bottom right pin socket.

It still works, but I am not risking it with the battery charger. I have now bought a new extension lead and will see how that works. There’s no real value in me spending £800 on a dedicated charging point, because it will only charge 1.6 times faster.

[C8RKH]

A very lucky escape there.

[pete]

Did @Dan E wire that for you.

[exeterjeep]

Probably some young child in China.

[exeterjeep]

Scrapping of electric car grants sparks backlash - Seems to have hit the press today. Must be a bit frustrating if you were about to sign up for a sub £40k EV in the next few days.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61795693

The Department for Transport said the plug-in subsidy scheme was being closed with immediate effect.

It said funding would now be "refocussed" towards improving electric vehicle charging.

But the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) said the move "sends the wrong message".

The RAC motoring group also warned the decision could "stifle" the ambition to shift most people into electric cars.

[march]

Was the extension lead coiled up in any way?

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

No. It wasn’t a coiled lead.

The new lead seems much better, but I’ve not done a full recharge yet, especially in the hot weather.

[ChrisJ]

 

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

So the warmer weather has yielded an electric only mileage range of my Passat PHEV in the low 30s. I’ve recently been doing quite a few battery only drives. The overall fuel consumption since Day 1 has consequently improved to 50.6 mpg. That will probably represent the pinnacle of what I can achieve, since I have some very long journeys coming up. The new extension lead works fine, with no overheating.

[C8RKH]

Meanwhile my Merc E convertible dieseasel has been quietly notching up an average MPG of 56.4 during my ownership.

Never been convinced by PHEVs. For years been in Prius Ubers were the mpg readout was at best in the mid 40's and didn't seem to improve even on longer journeys.

PHEVs are in my humble opinion a fudge, and not a successful one.

Which? Suggests that the extra cost of an EV is only recovered, over an ICE, after 9 years. Makes me laugh when smug EV owners post how cheap it is to refuel their EV as they are often too dumb to realise they paid thousands extra upfront and don't look at total cost of ownership comparisons, conveniently.

Yes EVs are the future for sure, but so much disinformation really grates.

[madmax]

Not being a wealthy guy I run a small but cute Audi A2 as a daily driver - the tech may be old fashioned by some peoples measure but it can carry four people in relative comfort and is immesely practical with almost as much useable luggage space as an old Volvo estate I had if you fold up or remove the rear seats.

It costs £30 per annum in road fund licence, a hundred quid to insure and it's made of lightweight aluminium and so doesn't rust. I also achieve consistently around 65 miles per gallon in real world driving so in the scheme of things, it's cheap to run and a little left of centre and quirky, which I like.

Prior to this I ran three First Generation Honda Insights which I loved for their quirky looks, aluminium and composite construction, hybrid technology and other worldly mpg figures of up to 94mpg. My whole life average mpg however was in the low sixties and in reality, day to day, it couldn't really better my Audi A2 on all but the longest and gentles of runs and it could only accommodate two people. The battery pack cost about £1200 to replace and because of its age, it fell into a road tax bracket that was many times that of the Audi.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that we should all ditch everything and run an Audi A2 but for the moment I couldn't possibly afford to buy a modern electric vehicle unless I sold all my Lotus cars and that, for me would defeat the object. I use them when I can, and when I can't I use as little fuel as possible in an old german diesel car - in which if the world runs out of fuel I'll hopefully be able to run on vegetable oil!!

Happy driving everyone, however you enjoy it

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

40 minutes ago, C8RKH said:

Never been convinced by PHEVs. For years been in Prius Ubers were the mpg readout was at best in the mid 40's and didn't seem to improve even on longer journeys.

Well that’s just it with a PHEV. The longer the journey, the worse the mpg. They make little sense for taxi drivers, apart from the con of driving in LEZs. Even if you start with a fully charged battery, those 30 odd miles are soon used up, getting from your home/cab office and carrying out your first fare of the shift. You’re not going to then search out a battery charger and spend ages re-charging before starting your next job, are you? You’ll just stick with the petrol engine for the rest of the day and end up with 40mpg.

[madmax]

Perhaps also we should remember that coal for electric power stations is also a fossil fuel and mining lithium for batteries is unlikely to be an infinite resource.

Don't get me wrong, I do like the idea of electric propulsion and watched a YouTube video yesterday about a chap who had converted an Elan to electric with some measure of success - tongue in cheek he renamed it an Elon!

He enjoyed the benefit of being able to charge at home purely from solar panels on his roof so, apart from the twenty grand it cost him to do the conversion, he observes that his classic motoring is in effect 'free'. I'm pretty sure it will now require annual MoT tests which is perhaps no bad thing and he says, with much improved torque it drives even better than the original.

I quite like the idea of certain classics being converted to electric propulsion, but for me the limiting range of them for the moment would really put me off. The Insights I had were a hybrid vehicle that always ran on petrol power and that tiny unit was 'assisted' by a clever electric motor which sometimes felt like a turbo or a supercharger - but it never ran solely on electric.

The 'ENOUGH' video liked above is really quite good and well worth a twenty minute watch - one wonders, if the guys logic is correct (which it seems to be) why all the fuss is being made about EV's actually being the future - maybe not a future in our lifetime....................

Now, an electric A2........that could be a thing!

[C8RKH]

2 hours ago, LotusLeftLotusRight said:

Well that’s just it with a PHEV. The longer the journey, the worse the mpg. They make little sense for taxi drivers, apart from the con of driving in LEZs. Even if you start with a fully charged battery, those 30 odd miles are soon used up, getting from your home/cab office and carrying out your first fare of the shift. You’re not going to then search out a battery charger and spend ages re-charging before starting your next job, are you? You’ll just stick with the petrol engine for the rest of the day and end up with 40mpg.

New electric London Taxi's (the famous ones) are lasting 60 miles between charges in London. The cabbies ain't happy given their £75k+ cost.

[Bibs]

For anyone with an EV, can you please check your V5 and see what it says in the spot where the engine number would usually be please? 

Thanks

 

[MPx]

Odd though it is, I appear to have an engine number E044B780     (BMW i3 94AH BEV)

[Bibs]

Thank you. I wonder if that's for the engine or battery pack?

[ramjet]

Electric motor serial number?

[MPx]

Quote

16 hours ago, Bibs said:

I wonder if that's for the engine or battery pack?

 

no idea...seems a weird thing to record, but must be something to do with a significant part I guess as a sort of two factor authentication.

[C8RKH]

To the best of my knowledge an EV DOES NOT have an engine number on the V5, it is a reference number for the battery package fitted that you see on the V5, as that is now the significant entity, not the engine 

[pete]

Correct.