In a well known mtoring magazine this week is an interesting article on EV chargers and a look V2G units , and when a petrol head magazine starts getting its act together on EV charging , you can see that , that some of the first on the market are getting more attention on the technicals. One large scale EV makers recent recall for er faulty touchscreen shows some of the problems that were useful in internal combustion designs are starting to be felt , and for EV car makers the attention will eventually turn to what kind of stuff you are putting into , your green vehicle proposion , because even if the vejicle customer is unhappy with any performance fibs , the green lobby will certainly be onto you for stupid, cheap ,designs that have problems in what greenery they achieve.
The big player who perhaps is a little asleep is Toyota , who have gone big on Hydrogen and even though rival Nissan really did design a first really sorted medium sized electric car , its pretty obvious that any car maker that gets design aspects right is going to have a leading edge.
I think most motor vehicle makers accept that the electric motor car , is a do able concept, there are perhaps problems around size and weight packages ,in that the batteries do add weight and that is a problem in subsequent designing for efficiency.So heres my top 6 design approaches I see of being future important.
1 segments , you can configure weight and load , to have performance aspects , and so far most electric cars , will deliver rapid acceleration , but lets be honest , your most likely use/duty will be thinking about reliability and electrical charges , that replaced just visiting a petrol station. So a small car , that gets you and your partner to the shops , or a 50 mile round trip , is I think one type , then I think there is somthing that seats 4o5 people (and the kids regulalry ) , carries larger loads perhaps 150 mile round trip (i know they can have more range but its just more weight in my view) and this is a difficult design decision because maybe 3 or 4 times a year you might want to do more than 150 miles in a round trip , so then i think we have a long range option , which is for people who do use a motor car on long trips regulary. The large luxury car perhaps will always have range problems , but that may suite its buyer well. For commercial vehicles , a recent taxi driver gave the grren thinkers a bit of rebuttal , in that Taxis have very peculiar lives as cars , and the electric vehicle does not suite them , and in fairness they have a point , when on shift they dont want to lose time ... fair enough , but then came the shock horror (which designers and green thinkers should have anticipated, but didnt) ,that the air con/or heating or night time driving , were all big users of the battery , which in turn has lead to some pretty awkard battery calculations to give cabbies a way of living/ delivering gree thinking , so I think some form of internal combustion engine will be the only practical solution for cab drivers . The electric HGV had some real hype marketing and that as design has turned out to be a real dud , and a possible problem in the problem of weight and high speed.
2 EV chargers , so far it seems , the problem of special chargers , for certain brands , seems to have been avoided , but it still remains a common plug design/fitting, is a good route to go , as charging will (at the moment) take at least 10-30 minutes ,and this is longer than liquid refuelling so , time spent at the pump could limit availablity in the bigger picture e.g lunch break on the motorway service station , as well as causing the as yet unmodelled peak loads when people charging en mass starts to be felt by grid supplies. May be the battery will be replaced by a sort of capacitior which will charge instatntly , but until then the comonalty of useage of charger (rather than 4 or five plugs to select) is important.
3 EV batteries , pretty safe to assume that EVs selling point is straight line performance , for less than a supercar and all the big money and vehicle design has been about battery and energy density , yes deisel does still win on energy density , and of course no direct tail pipe emissions , however in getting the first working EVs the recclability of the battery took a very back back seat , the cleverness of Li on technology is a disaster when it comes to recycling , at the moment 40% reccyle rate is about as good as it gets and even then the Lithium fires , that have frequently occured in reprocessing havent made the headlines , new technology as shown in IET magazine thinks recycling can be at 75% , but in reality it needs to be 90% or we may end up with another enviromental problem. I do expect we will find new batteries , they may be at lower energy densitiy , but will have other benefits. Li Ion cells start to lose about 5% of charge holding after 3 yrs and current expectations are they keep losing 5% charge every year after that , at £3000-6000 per battery pack , its pretty obvious from a design point of view taking your car into your dealer for a (brand new) battery replacement , is going to be a fairly common thing , and if your motor manuafcturer has designed a good car , that makes you explode when you see the battery replacement bill , or they design somthing that starts to recomend battery replacement at 5yrs , eventaully customer reports will sink there brand , at the moment battery stories arnt headline news and there are some new batteries where manufacturers are thinking of 100,000 mile warrenties in development . Even though most batteries seem have been technologically outlined , I think new sorts are possible , and whoever gets the battery right in use/recycling , will I think become the stronger brand , without much marketing cost, as such an obvious performance point.
4 V2G thinking , i mean wow, imagine you drive your car to your beach hut , and you run a cable from your car to your beach hut , and hey presto , you got electricty from your battery into your beach hut , and you can cuddleup , make a cuppa, run a fridge or cook stuff , none of this you could so with a internal combustion engined car (well of you could but you would need a genrator off the engine) , take your hedge trimmer to cut the hedge in your horse paddock , all sorts of stuff is possible .But the idea od using them as a sort of grid balancing array i think is a little problematic and perhaps flawed , as in one way we know car batteryes (at the moment) do not like charging and discharging , so anyhting that is quietly taking and giving electricty without you knowing , or even if you do know is going to decrease the life of your battery , which in turn may not make it a cheap storage option for grid thinking , and a whole lot of money will have gone to waste on expensive chargers and distribution managment , that perhaps we should just have kept simple in the first place.
5 Disposal ... its pretty obvious that end of life batteries (with the current technology) will be a numerous thing , so its important tnat they are collected properly and processed properly and safely , lets imagine Gov decides on a disosal tax , lets say £200 , it wont belong before we find old car batteries in hedgrows and lanes , just dumped , the ideal place to ensure safe reprocessing is at the car dealer , who inturn can return the battery to the battery maker/manufcaturer .Putting batteries that are spent but still carry a useful charge into homes , to match with your solar roof sounds at first like an obvious good buisness idea , but hold on a minute , an agening battery will have ageing indvidual cells , and (with the current technology) when a cell fails , you could well have a chemical fire , which you might not be able to put out and will more than likely cause a big fire in your home .Batteries for solar systems do share some develoment with car battereis for the future , but when the best battery for the car is discovered , it may also be that somthing better occurs simoulyainiously for solar PV systems and the spent battery thinking will just not be popular or acceptable.
6 Green energy sources spin and lies , whilst I dont want to get on a petrol heads magazine (which I enjoy reading as petrol head magazine) green thinkers are just wineing losers list , the article did make some rather big claims about how much renewable energy is available in the uk , and they were wrong , there isnt 1800 Mw of Hydro , there is 1800MW of Hydro for peak use , but these are what are known as pumped hydro systems , actaual hydro continously generating electricty at above 100MW is limited to limited to just 3 river sites i think , same goes for quoting 14000MW of wind , true thats installed capacity , but it only generates full output or peak output , for large wind events (big gyratory area weather systems) , the rest of the time sated output is about 50% (on average) of stated output . Wind turbines have developed amazingly (we have even got reclclable blades comming ...yippeee) and we now have the lowind onshore turbine at 4-6MW which opens a whole new area of single turbine to meet demand possibilities, although I think for the UK (providing they are designed well to cope with the harsh life at sea) offshore wind will be a really important busines and technology feature.. Grid thinking at the moment is having trouble , as theres a lot of marketing rather than good engineering , that isnt really explaing the sort of grid we may want in the future , which could be local grids with a renewable , or actual big transmission lines able to carry high demands much more efficienctly . If we do get a room temperature superconductor material , you can no doubt see how quickly things may change .
Ime adding a couple more
7 Its a DC world ... Battery tech is certainly all DC , however most grids deliver an AC supply so to charge your battery from and AC supply requires and inverter , depending on how smart your electronics engineer is and how you control things , this is around 4% loss , so every car that will charge from an AC supply (and this should be done by the charger unit) will be paying for the 4% loss , on board inverters on the car adds weight (quite a lot of weight) so there is an argument for technically defining what both network and car should do do when charging to reduce these losses . I would think we need some sort of electrical efficiency standard , so that poor inverters (quality wise)dont get deployed. I might also want a consumption figure for the chargers when at rest , , or what may be an optimal sort of resting efficiency , if charger company has great customer interface unit (and some are close to the sort of thing that is easy and safe to use) , but has some whopping great fan keeping a unit cool (all the time)then it adds up. it perhaps has dawned on EV thinkers that a DC charger to battery has some advantages , and a DC line to a DC charger (if the voltage can be handled well enough or specified) has some improvements for electrical efficiency for Grid systems.
8 A future EV possibility , ok i admit it I like the lighter vehicle idea , more frequent charges but less losses due to hauling all that weight around , bit hard to sell an EV on this electrical usage athletiscism , but somthing like 23mn cars on uk roads so it will add up , but what about a DC charger that charges a shorter range battery mmm ok , what about a car with two smaller DC battery units , mmm well where am i going . If the DC motor for a car can be perfected and that this motor can also become a generator to give regenerative braking , and if you can send the electricity so generated in braking to a battery (designated to accept charge and DC to DC) , whilst the other battery is the motor supply , then you kind of have system where you can be charging a battery as you drive around , whilst having one on tap for propulsion , you extend range this way , it should be possible , if one gets full you need to switch , I doubt it can be done with a single battery , but I dont doubt someone will claim they can. I would think some proper thinking for how the reality works in cold climates has to be done ,the EV isnt necessarily suited (at the moment) for really cold climates , and going to your car to find after 3or4 subzero days , that your cars minimal heat mode has drained your battery and it will take you 2hrs to get a charge to cover the distance ,is going to be a problem in getting some journies to switch to electric.
might as well go for 9?
9 Toyota have been talking about the car as mobility concept in which you rent out your vehicle ,, I dont particulary like the idea , but I can see some might think its ok , I generally think this will lead to cars that manufcaturers like for the bottom line on balance sheets , rather than cars you really like to own , but maybee Toyota are onto a possible variation , why not have a short range efficienct car you use every day that you own , and lets say you want to do John O groats to lands end (or New York to Sacremento via route 66) , your good car maker runs a scheme where you book , the family long range EV for a couple of weeks and you pay a premium , and when your holiday is done you switch back to your regular vehicle ...?.
General problem for electricty , is although we have technological materials and understanding of electricty , and the future seems to suggest that a great deal of future energy will be consumed in electrical form , then things have to be thought about in efficiency terms , pretty pointless getting 23mn cars electric on the road only to discover when its too late , that chargers when not in use are consumming X 1000MW , as we forgot to specify things properly. If we want green Hydrogen from water electrolysis then that will consume a huge ammount of new electrical demand , we use for industry 7,000,000,000 kgs of Hydrogen in the UK for industyr , so in thinking /designing these EVs and Chargers, every MW that can be saved , is a MW we can use somewhere else , and MWs is winter in a more electrical use economy is going to be quite a figure. ,
