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Rich

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Jun 12, 2018
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44640647

https://newmotion.com/en_GB/about-us/press-room/newmotion-welcomes-acquisition-by-shell-one-of-the-world-s-leading-energy-providers

Good thing or bad thing that electric charging networks are moving into the ownership of the oil companies?

Rich
 
At the risk of talking to myself!!

I was just thinking that they have a lot of the infrastructure in terms of garage sites so their cost and speed to roll out should be dramatically reduced vs new start-ups. I don't think they would accept the current levels of downtime and time to fix either. Maybe some pro's as well as the more obvious con's.

I wonder when we'll be talking about the cost of electricity dropping and the savings not being passed on "at the pump"....

Rich
 
Well, if you look at the numbers of people using petrol forecourts at any one time, can you imagine what gridlock there could be when we all drive electric? There are major infrastructure problems ahead, if the public are pushed into electric car ownership too quickly. At the moment, I wouldn't buy electric unless I could charge at home daily. We need a battery technology breakthrough before electric vehicles become the norm. That is, we need to recharge when out and about in the time it takes to fill a petrol tank today. It isn't going to happen any time soon, I'm thinking.
 
Quite so, Regulo. Let's get out our calculators. A mid-size EV needs at least 50kWh of energy capacity to deliver a reasonable range. So let's say we need to 'put in' 40kWh of energy in 2 minutes at the 'pump'. That requires a power level of over a megawatt. I'm not sure anyone wants to trust Joe Public to fit an electrical connector delivering that sort of power - I've worked in large computer farms with that size of power supply and the number of ways of killing yourself are quite extensive (while the connectors used are too heavy for one person to lift). And if you've got a dozen cars 'filling up' simultaneously (not unreasonable at a busy service station) you're going to need something like an overall 15MW supply. That's well into non-trivial territory.

Then there's the inevitable inefficiency of recharging, which means there's going to be many kW of heat produced, which must be safely disposed of. Today's 'fast' chargers take half an hour, rather than two minutes, to deliver this amount of energy and handling the waste heat is a major constraint on the process (as, of course, are battery limitations - but they're often limited by heat, too).
 
Don’t forget though, almost everybody has to buy petrol/diesel at public fuel stations whilst it is possible for a fairly sizeable chunk of the population to run an ev without using public chargepoints at all. Our 28kwh ioniq has a 140 mile range thereabouts and the only time we would “need” to use a public chargepoint is for holidays or long range days out (maybe one or two a year). With an ageing population I reckon a good proportion of us could charge an ev weekly (if that).
Just thinking aloud really because it winds me up that so many people say you need to be able to get 300 or 500 miles of fuel in 5 minutes before I’ll consider an ev - maybe that is right for some but people need to be realistic about their usage and mileage’s.
H
 
Of course, there's also the consideration of the large urban concentrations of terrace houses. Not much point in trying to charge from home when often you can't even park in the same street you live in! The utopian ideas of politicians just don't translate to real life, in nearly all cases, not just the electrification of vehicles. Not saying it can't be done, but it will take a long, long time. Unless new battery (or other power storage media) comes along.
 
I would think home charging will continue to be the most convenient, cheapest and reliable source of energy for most of us. As you've said there are issues with some types of housing that make this impractical but they don't seem impossible to overcome.

Given that the average trip length in the UK is 7 miles (so the research says), I imagine petrol/service stations will become places rarely visited by most of us? Maybe they'll need to drop their prices to increase demand :D

Rich
 
One suggestion for charging at homes without off-street parking, is that every lamp post could also contain a socket for recharging. Power up the socket by inputting the socket number into your mobile phone.

I wouldn't be surprised if they end up with NFC communications and Q-code labels.

Remember, when people first started driving cars, they had to buy petrol in one pint bottles from chemists.

:lol:

Meanwhile, I've had mine for two years now, and never needed to charge it up away from home (unless you count using charge mode while driving in the country to help use some of the mandatory 15 litres of petrol per six months).
 
With the advent of LED bulbs, there's spare capacity in streetlamps nowadays. But you'd need more than one chargepoint per lamp to cover a street, unless you fancy shuffling cars round in the middle of the night ;)
 
ThudnBlundr said:
With the advent of LED bulbs, there's spare capacity in streetlamps nowadays. But you'd need more than one chargepoint per lamp to cover a street, unless you fancy shuffling cars round in the middle of the night ;)
Streetlamps were already quite efficient even before LEDs (typically high-pressure sodium vapour), so they use only 100-150W. It'll take a long time to recharge your I-PACE from that :).
 
Charge points in lamp posts...the next big thing for EVs :D
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44759150

Rich
 
Need more than that! With the spacing of most lamp posts in our streets, you'd need about 50 charging points on each one! Can you imagine the tangle of charging leads overnight? It would be like one of those kid's puzzles - "Can you find a route for Freddie Frog to get home to his lily pad". There's a business opportunity here - Advanced Untangling Solutions, we come to you. 24 hour callout. Tongue firmly in cheek, of course. The proposal would be a start, but I still feel the push towards EV's will outstrip the infrastructure for the immediate future, given the sclerotic pace of change in any public works. Hope I'm wrong.
 
Perhaps the answer might be to adopt the charging concept of the latest mobile phones and run powerlines beneath the roads. I gather some research as been done with the idea at 'places where they stop' for electric busses so it might be a goer in the end. Haven't a clue what the high magnetic field effects are on people though.
 
The wireless chargers for mobile phones (ie Qi standard) are totally passive and act as a receiving antenna until a device placed on top sends a signal to start charging (the phone also tells it when to reduce current and stop too) - so that's not a bad strategy for charging a car as there's no issue when there's no car stopped above it. I know BMW and others have demonstrated this technology with their PHEVs.

However whilst that's fine for a nice garage or driveway, or a well maintained carpark, I can't see it happening on streets where they're going to get damaged by heavy traffic and utility companies digging the road up.
 
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