Prices of the electricity we use to charge

[MikelBikel]

Democracy is not the solution for most problems. If you need to save for your old age, would you ask your family for a vote? Most problems are better solved by people with specific expertise.

It seems illogical to me for people to suggest that the way to alter the naturally self regulating climate of the planet is by *Polluting the Atmosphere* with aluminium, barium, strontium, etc. And then say its only salt.
While at the same time saying we should stop using Legacy fuels because they Pollute the Atmosphere with the gas of life, co2, which is greening the planet.
That really takes the biscuit.
But yes, we get a vote, while the other half of the world carries on with life regardless of kill bates's "expertise".
(You do know he can't go to India and other countries coz they'll capital charge him with crimes against humanity. Maybe you can ask him for some retirement money if you're short? )

 

[MikelBikel]

Brilliant way to boost BEV sales, put a PETROL GENERATOR in it too!
U can say it's a bev, and travel twice as expensively,
with even less efficiency, great.
Now, when do we get the ebike "Range Extenders"? U couldn't make it up, but they can, hehe

 

[flecc]

Brilliant way to boost BEV sales, put a PETROL GENERATOR in it too!
U can say it's a bev, and travel twice as expensively,
with even less efficiency, great.
Now, when do we get the ebike "Range Extenders"? U couldn't make it up, but they can, hehe

The critics continue to show their ignorance in saying this is a latest innovation. In fact BYD's first ever EV many years ago was a range extender, directly modelled on GM's Chevrolet Volt. Both had a 2 litre petrol engine generator which cut in to generate current as the onboard battery emptied.

Nor is this currently only Chinese tech, Nissan ofJapan's Qashqai range includes an EREV version, permanently electrically driven with it's onboard petrol generator running full time to supply the electricity. This isn't as mad as you seem to think, remember how the railways switched from diesel to diesel-electric very long ago for it's efficiency and performance gains. The same energy conversion in a car can improve driving quality too as a bonus.

And BMW's first e-car, the model 3, had a range extender option. However their implementation was very poor and they've now dropped that option.
.

 

[Woosh]

Brilliant way to boost BEV sales, put a PETROL GENERATOR in it too!
U can say it's a bev, and travel twice as expensively,
with even less efficiency, great.
Now, when do we get the ebike "Range Extenders"? U couldn't make it up, but they can, hehe

BYD couple 1.5L petrol engine to its electric motor. The result is a new record in thermal efficiency thernal to electricity of 47%. You can't get that in a normal ICE car. The petrol motor charges the battery which drives the car jointly with the ice if you so wish. The EV portion has 90%-95% efficiency. Finally, the car gives you 2000km range from a full tank. That's progress.

 

[Woosh]

@POLLY and @MikelBikel - saneagle can explain much better than I can why plug in hybrids have excellent miles per gallon, 80mpg instead of 50-55 from petrol is doable. The problem with high fire risks will be fixed in 18 months when new battery certification will be made into law in China.

 

[saneagle]

BYD couple 1.5L petrol engine to its electric motor. The result is a new record in thermal efficiency thernal to electricity of 47%. You can't get that in a normal ICE car. The petrol motor charges the battery which drives the car jointly with the ice if you so wish. The EV portion has 90%-95% efficiency. Finally, the car gives you 2000km range from a full tank. That's progress.

Why are people focused on the type of vehicle? All that matters is how much fuel is burnt for the total miles drivem Fuelly provides real data from real users. Some ordinary diesel cars outperform some PHEVs. Compare some similar cars between hybrids and diesels to see the difference. They're about the same in most cases. See what you think.

Browse All Cars | Fuelly

A range extender motor is different. It runs at constant speed in the range where it has optimum efficiency. For stop-start driving, there can be massive gains, and it's the same to an extent with ordinary hybrids, but on long motorway journeys, the ordinary diesel will always win. There is no one answer that suits everyone. For short journeys and charging at home, the electric car wins. For longer journeys with a lot of stop-start, hybrid wins. For clear motorway driving, diesel wins.

 

[Ghost1951]

@POLLY and @MikelBikel - saneagle can explain much better than I can why plug in hybrids have excellent miles per gallon, 80mpg instead of 50-55 from petrol is doable. The problem with high fire risks will be fixed in 18 months when new battery certification will be made into law in China.

Why are people focused on the type of vehicle? All that matters is how much fuel is burnt for the total miles drivem Fuelly provides real data from real users. Some ordinary diesel cars outperform some PHEVs. Compare some similar cars between hybrids and diesels to see the difference. They're about the same in most cases. See what you think.

Browse All Cars | Fuelly

A range extender motor is different. It runs at constant speed in the range where it has optimum efficiency. For stop-start driving, there can be massive gains, and it's the same to an extent with ordinary hybrids, but on long motorway journeys, the ordinary diesel will always win. There is no one answer that suits everyone. For short journeys and charging at home, the electric car wins. For longer journeys with a lot of stop-start, hybrid wins. For clear motorway driving, diesel wins.

Yes - true enough, but you can get significant improvements in range with IC and electric, by just driving a bit more slowly.

Last week - 41 mile trip to Newcastle on a single carriageway A road where speed is limited by trucks. Mostly about 50 mph - at times 55. You can't overtake. The road has a bad history of head on collisions and several deaths every year caused by impatient overtaking, and anyway, you end up fifty meters down the road behind more trucks and cars in a convoy, so why bother. The trip has 37 miles of the A69 and 4 miles of urban traffic and I got 70.6 mpg as seen here on the dash photo, from a 1 litre, petrol Skoda Fabia. It is almost as good as the old diesel one. I once got 72 out of that one on the same journey.







The real advantage of electric cars is that they cut air pollution in city driving. Very large numbers of cars only really do short trips in cities, so there is no disadvantage other than the extra cost of buying them and that will disappear as production scale increases.

However - and this is a BIG issue. Long range driving is now and for the foreseeable future a MASSIVE pain because of the charging problem. Don't underestimate this. The inconvenience is serious and everyone I have spoken to who has gone electric says they love the way the car drives, really enjoy driving it in town and HATE taking it on long journeys because of the delay while charging and the problem of finding a charge point. They all complain of real stressful experiences far from home, battery empty and broken or occupied chargers so they end up really wishing they'd left the car at home. I have lost count of how many such reports I have heard.

I can take that Skoda well over 600 miles without worrying about re-filling it, and when I do it takes two minutes to do it. THIS is a major reason why the sales of electric cars have not taken off as some hoped. In the UK we are particularly badly served for charge points away from home.

 

[AndyBike]

People need to keep in mind this is new tech(yes yes i know about the Ev's from the 1800's etc etc) and takes time to develop as investment is put in.

The motorcar itself is about 140 years old approximately give or take, but i doubt there was as great an innovation that we currently see with EV's,
Ev's in a commercially viable point of view probably started about '97' with many of them coming out for the general mass produced public some ten years later
So in the grand scheme of things say 20 years.

In another 20 years the tech and power sources will be unrecognizable to that we are using today.

But people on forums will still be arguing about it

 

[Ghost1951]

People need to keep in mind this is new tech(yes yes i know about the Ev's from the 1800's etc etc) and takes time to develop as investment is put in.

The motorcar itself is about 140 years old approximately give or take, but i doubt there was as great an innovation that we currently see with EV's,
Ev's in a commercially viable point of view probably started about '97' with many of them coming out for the general mass produced public some ten years later
So in the grand scheme of things say 20 years.

In another 20 years the tech and power sources will be unrecognizable to that we are using today.

But people on forums will still be arguing about it

Lets hope the charging network catches up too.

I listened to a business man on the radio a few months back talking about how he wanted to build charge facilities on a motorway somewhere in the UK and was told by national grid that they could not supply the required electric power to run them for ten years. ABSOLUTELY BONKERS!!!

Why not? Mostly because we have an absolutely insane planning system which actively suppresses just about all development outside of urban areas. They just forbid anything being done unless we have a massive expense of enquiries and nimbies moaning about the view being spoiled, in this case by electric pylons.

One REALLY GOOD thing that Labour is doing is taking an axe to the planning controls. They are responsible for a vast waste of public money on any infrastructure project such as power stations and new power lines. Andy is Scottish and he will well know that there are Scottish wind farms hardly contributing anything to the grid and being paid to shut most of the turbines when the wind blows because the power they can produce can not be carried to England where it would be used - Scotland having a very small population bearing in mind its energy generating potential. One of the big blockages on the grid is getting the power south through Northumberland. Nimbies have blocked just about every development there. One of my pals is at war with the planning department over anew shed he built for his cattle for winter to replace a shabby half ruined one. They told him to knock the new shed down - its absolutely nuts. The new shed is really nice looking by comparison to what he had before and it is invisible to nearly everyone except a couple of nimby oafs who objected when it went up replacing the half derelict one that was there before.

Motorway services operators demand “national priority” to access grid power for EV charging

Leading service station operators are calling on the government to declare all 2,300 miles of the UK's motorway network a "national priority" to be given sufficient access to power from the grid, to meet a predicted rise in demand this year for electric vehicle charging.

forecourttrader.co.uk

 

[saneagle]

People need to keep in mind this is new tech(yes yes i know about the Ev's from the 1800's etc etc) and takes time to develop as investment is put in.

The motorcar itself is about 140 years old approximately give or take, but i doubt there was as great an innovation that we currently see with EV's,
Ev's in a commercially viable point of view probably started about '97' with many of them coming out for the general mass produced public some ten years later
So in the grand scheme of things say 20 years.

In another 20 years the tech and power sources will be unrecognizable to that we are using today.

But people on forums will still be arguing about it

I've not seen them arguing about that. The main gripe, AFAICS, is the hassle and expense you get when going on a long journey and the way all the media and government are pretending that it's not a problem. We'd all have them if they were reliable, you could charge them at home at 5p a unit, they depreciated at the same rate as a diesel car and they had a real life range of 500 miles, and zero risk of them catching fire. Sure, we might have that in 20 years time, but we don't have it today. Instead, they're a long way behind on all those things.

 

[MikelBikel]

Spain, Portugal and part of France in huge Power Blackout..
Only DIESEL buses and trains running jam packed.
Isn't Electricity wonderful?
(Hope hospital generators have enough :-/ )

 

[MikelBikel]

The critics continue to show their ignorance in saying this is a latest innovation. In fact BYD's first ever EV many years ago was a range extender, directly modelled on GM's Chevrolet Volt. Both had a 2 litre petrol engine generator which cut in to generate current as the onboard battery emptied.

Nor is this currently only Chinese tech, Nissan ofJapan's Qashqai range includes an EREV version, permanently electrically driven with it's onboard petrol generator running full time to supply the electricity. This isn't as mad as you seem to think, remember how the railways switched from diesel to diesel-electric very long ago for it's efficiency and performance gains. The same energy conversion in a car can improve driving quality too as a bonus.

And BMW's first e-car, the model 3, had a range extender option. However their implementation was very poor and they've now dropped that option.
.

But where's our ebike Range Extenders?
How many CC will it need? 22cc weed wacker?
Those 2 strokes are a bit noisy! Hehe

 

[MikelBikel]

BYD couple 1.5L petrol engine to its electric motor. The result is a new record in thermal efficiency thernal to electricity of 47%. You can't get that in a normal ICE car. The petrol motor charges the battery which drives the car jointly with the ice if you so wish. The EV portion has 90%-95% efficiency. Finally, the car gives you 2000km range from a full tank. That's progress.

"2000km" .. at walking speed?
So BYD have broken the Law of Thermodynamics?
Double conversion is only half as efficient, surely that's common sense?

 

[Woosh]

.

"2000km" .. at walking speed?
So BYD have broken the Law of Thermodynamics?
Double conversion is only half as efficient, surely that's common sense?

Google 2025 BYD SEAL07 DM-I 2000km.
On sale in China for $20,000.

The New 2025 BYD SEAL 07 DM-i PHEV #luxury #chinaautoshow #review #autochina #automobile

Welcome to China Auto Show Channel China Auto Show will bring you brief tour Exterior and interior Walkaround Auto Show

youtube.com

 

[soundwave]

 

[lenny]

Spain and Portugal power outage: what caused it, and was there a cyber-attack?
The Portuguese prime minister, Luís Montenegro, said that the issue originated in Spain. Portugal’s REN said a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” had caused a severe imbalance in temperatures that led to the widespread shutdowns.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/28/spain-and-portugal-power-outage-cause-cyber-attack-electricity

 

[soundwave]