How desperate the Anti EV liars are getting

[SmallTown]

EV
The cars are fantastic, except for the batteries.
Totally unsustainable in their current form.
Out of price for most folk.

They’d have been better of pumping all money and time into forming an engine the runs on water

Almost Incorrect abkut the batteries. Although in the 10 years we've had current EV battery tech has improved so much

 

[MolteniArcore]

They’d have been better of pumping all money and time into forming an engine the runs on water

Like a steam engine?

 

[MolteniArcore]

Hi @SmallTown. A friend of mine has a Tesla on lease. She has had 4 punctures in 8 months. She has to take it to a place in Boro each time as part of the lease contract. The guys there say its because the car is so heavy causing nails and screws to penetrate the tyre easier. I mean, all cars are heavy but just wondered if you have found it a thing?

That just sounds wrong. Surely if car weight was a factor then Range Rovers would be getting 5 punctures a year? Trucks would never be on the road with their 20 punctures a year?

 

[SmallTown]

Hi @SmallTown. A friend of mine has a Tesla on lease. She has had 4 punctures in 8 months. She has to take it to a place in Boro each time as part of the lease contract. The guys there say its because the car is so heavy causing nails and screws to penetrate the tyre easier. I mean, all cars are heavy but just wondered if you have found it a thing?

Not at all. It sounds complete BS to be honest. Also what Tesla does she have?

My model 3 is “only” 1.8 tonnes which, whilst heavy, isn’t bad at all for modern standards. If she has a model x then yes I guess that is heavy. That may be different

 

[Boro Devonport]

Why would you dispose of a battery? Everything in it is extremely valuable. Would you bin a rolex if it had a couple of scratches?

Do you know how big the demand is for batteries deemed no longer good enough for the road? It's absolutely massive, way, way, way beyond supply.

There are already companies which can recycle like 90% of the batteries, and 99% of the rare elements, the main problem they have at the minute is there is nothing to recycle.

Loads of companies are looking for EV batteries to use in grid storage/ balancing schemes, they're extremely important to companies building large solar schemes. Same with home storage, can be used for that also. An 80% 50kW battery could provide battery storage for 5-10 houses, depending on load, so they can charge up at night on cheap electric and discharge during the evening when it's expensive (which is the biggest problem for the grid).

You're not going to get scrap yards stacking up car batteries 20m high, it's just not going to happen. It's like why they don't stack catalytic convertors, or gold bars, they're just too valuable, so get used elsewhere, in less demanding roles.

Same for solar, how many have solar panels 5%? How many people will have them at peak? 50%? When is that going to be, 20-30 years? So how will they all need replacing at the same time?

A 25 year lifespan is incredible, will your TV, washing machine, tumble dryer, PS5, mobile phone, laptop, last 1/5th of that time? Do any of those pay themselves back after a 3rd of their life and then start paying out dividends? What about your boiler, is that going to last longer than 5-10 years?
Do we have loads of copper storage tanks stacked up somewhere, from when people started to switch to combi's? Nope.

It still blows my mind that most of the board don’t realise yet that character you are replying to is a professional troll. Once “Boro legend” and God knows who else. It’s all wasted energy that he/it feeds from. He has been successful to a degree maintaining and being consistent with the Warnock character at least.

 

[gravy173]

Do you definitely need 320 miles though? How long would that take to drive? I mean they are cars that will do that but this is like one of those early anti ev conversations where the range someone thinks they need seems to be jsut past the range of an EV.

Trust me in this you don't need a 320 mile range. But there are plenty of cars that can achieve that anyway. BMW themselves make 3 different models capable of it.

It's Teesside to Fawley which is 320 miles, I said 400 initially as I'm aware you don't get the full amount, it usually takes 5 hours on a good run.

 

[SmallTown]

It's Teesside to Fawley which is 320 miles, I said 400 initially as I'm aware you don't get the full amount, it usually takes 5 hours on a good run.

I’ve done a similar route! Man you must fly if you can do that in 5 hours. It’s a good six hour drive usually. You’d only need one stop. Surely you stop in an ICE car? It’s pretty dangerous to drive for 6 hours without stopping

 

[Andy_W]

It still blows my mind that most of the board don’t realise yet that character you are replying to is a professional troll. Once “Boro legend” and God knows who else. It’s all wasted energy that he/it feeds from. He has been successful to a degree maintaining and being consistent with the Warnock character at least.

Ah right, didn't realise, as I don't remember the names of many of the people who talk crap, might as well just block him.

What a sad little fella.

 

[SmallTown]

Going back to the original post. It’s insane how much the lies are spreading. Have just seen social media of the fire at Luton airport.

Despite the fact the fire brigade said it was a diesel car starting it and video footage of the car on fire clearly being a Range Rover. There was still hundreds of replies saying it was an EV. I wonder how many are big oil bots? And how many are actually humans parroting the lies?

People get annoyed when people like Andy and I try and counter the mistruths but I think it’s worth doing. The mountain of misinformation needs some counter actions. It’s why fully charged started its stop burning stuff campaign

 

[Mr_Fridge]

Going back to the original post. It’s insane how much the lies are spreading. Have just seen social media of the fire at Luton airport.

Despite the fact the fire brigade said it was a diesel car starting it and video footage of the car on fire clearly being a Range Rover. There was still hundreds of replies saying it was an EV. I wonder how many are big oil bots? And how many are actually humans parroting the lies?

People get annoyed when people like Andy and I try and counter the mistruths but I think it’s worth doing. The mountain of misinformation needs some counter actions. It’s why fully charged started its stop burning stuff campaign

I saw one tweet that said even if the initial car wasn't electric, the electric cars that were there helped the fire spread more quickly. Drivel.

It didn't help though that the fire brigade spokesperson (who looked like a teenager) is being quoted as "lots of electric vehicles potentially involved quite early on". No doubt had a leading question for that answer to come out. If saying 'potentially', don't say it. Deal in facts.

 

[starplayer]

Not at all. It sounds complete BS to be honest. Also what Tesla does she have?

My model 3 is “only” 1.8 tonnes which, whilst heavy, isn’t bad at all for modern standards. If she has a model x then yes I guess that is heavy. That may be different

Cheers. She does have an X. She loves it and the guys that sort the tyres out said they like them but would only get them on lease with maintenance due to tyre issue.

 

[SmallTown]

Cheers. She does have an X. She loves it and the guys that sort the tyres out said they like them but would only get them on lease with maintenance due to tyre issue.

I would still question the weight thing. I had a Merc CLS shouting brake that was super heavy. Never once got a puncture from the weight of the vehcile

 

[Andy_W]

EV
The cars are fantastic, except for the batteries.
Totally unsustainable in their current form.
Out of price for most folk.

They’d have been better of pumping all money and time into forming an engine the runs on water

The batteries are brilliant, absolutely perfect for 99% of use for anyone with home charging. Sure doesn't cover everyone but nothing ever does. It will get there though (street charging), it's an extremely simple problem to fix, it just needs time.
Shouldn't be out of price for anyone who buys cars 0-3 years old, and that will be cars 0-4 years by next year, and so on. Same as anything, there will always be early adopters by choice, early adopters for financial reasons for what they want and the rest will learn in time.

They wouldn't be better pumping money into an engine which runs on water (for cars) as physics will not allow that to happen, ever. It would be spending a load of money on something which is effectively impossible. Now, if you mean hydrogen, then that's a different thing, as that's not water and to get it from water takes hell of a lot of electric (twice as much as the electric needed to power an ev), so it's extremely inefficient, and physics won't allow this to change. The only time this won't matter is when we have a massive excess of renewables, but that's probably 30-50 years away. For the next 30 years we need more efficient uses of electric, not less. The hydrogen would basically end up costing at least 3 x the price of an EV to run, forever, just for the electric, never mind the hydrogen plant. Then to store hydrogen or move it costs a fortune, and isn't particularly efficient either. There would be like 4 x the number of hydrogen tankers as petrol and diesel tankers, and pipelines are out of the question. It can work with buses, hgv's and ships, as these have the size and space to make the fuelling situation work, but even these will be replaced by a battery of some sort. purely because hydrogen will continue to be expensive for a very, very long time.

 

[Andy_W]

It's not battery failure they're concerned about; it's damage to the battery in accidents. As I understand it they're not readily repairable. As such, relatively modest damage may result in battery write-offs at considerable expense. I've no idea if this is a well-founded fear - I came across it in an article the other day.

Thing is, sure a slightly damaged battery might not be repairable, and might cost 10k to replace, but the damaged one is still going to be worth an absolute fortune. It's not like the battery is one big cell, which when damaged is completely knackered, it might just be the casing or the wiring which gets knackered, or 20 our of 5000 of the individual cells (just individual batteries effectively).
When they write something off they don't just bin it, it goes to auction, same way all the crash damaged cars do. A possible problem might be there may be less bidders if the battery was damaged, as there would be fewer experienced people to disassemble it. Not that it's hard mind, a battey pack is a lot more simple than a fuel system, problem is there's a small amount of experience with this, with cars, but that will change in no time.

Effectively it's an excuse by the insurers to jack up quotes, if this is what they're doing.

If you have a crash which wrecks an engine, then that engines a write off too, probably 10k worth, but it could still be broken down into individual parts and some cost recoverable.

 

[Andy_W]

I guess it's how you perceive things and the mindset you adopt is where you're struggling. It's all about balance and what is deemed to be reasonable for most people. For instance, 99.9% aren't going to be driving a car that's 50 years old. But many of them will be driving one that's 3-10 years old which does exactly what they need it to. You're always going to the extremes, that's where you're going wrong.

My laptops perform more or less as well as modern ones for what is needed of them. I've compared and tested them. I accept that if you're using them for certain things, then a more recent one would be beneficial. But most people aren't using CAD, etc. Just out of interest - how does your recent laptop knock the socks off anything from 3 years ago? Because it weighs less than 1kg? I think that's probably where you're going wrong again.

I could keep going on - but my response was initiated by you questioning whether things can last 5 years. The clear answer to that is yes - and a whole lot longer.

It's not me going wrong, I'm the one who has three vehicles running on batteries, for far cheaper than their rival ice cars. Maybe the one going wrong is the guy with no experience who just doesn't seem to get it, so much to the point where it actually seems like a wind up, that's how bad it is.

Buying a car 0-3 years old and having a drive/ home charger is pretty reasonable to a lot of people, as I look out my window half the cars are younger than 2 years, and 50% of those are EV's. I don't expect the guy with the 10 year old polo to be buying a new 50k BMW i4 EV as he doesn't even want a 10 year old 4 series, he's happy in his 10 year old polo, good for him. He should be comparing to a 10 year old astra or whatever, and in 8 years time he can compare to a 10 year old EV if he likes. He's got no reasonable comparison now though, other than them both being "cars". Some people have a £200 car budget at 20% of their wage, some people have a £500 budget at 10% of their wage, each to their own.

Your laptop doesn't perform as well as modern ones (not for people who need a lap top), it will get hammered in every single benchmark test under the sun. Even if you bought a top 5% lap top in the world from 5-10 years ago it would still get hammered by something mid range now. With things like lap tops you're often better off just buying low to mid-range, but doing that more often, than top of the range and expecting it to last 10 years. Laptops from 8 years ago were about 1/3 single core speed and about 1/5th multi core, it matters, to those who need a lap top.

It might work ok(ish) for basic web browsing, and basic office apps but that's about it. It's going to be crap for anything using large amounts of files, working with files in the cloud, large file sizes, high res data, or searching e-mails etc. CAD (like AutoCAD) is a different ball game completely, even a £2k PC will largely struggle with CAD if it's not optimized (unless tiny files). You need to be spending 1-2k just on the video card alone for professional environments (to be stable), or you won't be able to work with the files which everyone else is. My 1kg laptop is faster, for every single one of the 20 apps/programs I use, more portable, better processor, more memory, faster Wi-Fi, more high speed ports, quieter (less annoying), cooler (less annoying), than a 1.7kg laptop which cost more, a few years earlier (or the 2.3kg one before that), and it's slightly smaller too, but with a bigger screen. My old laptop was scoring extremely highly on benchmark tests back then too. Maybe you have time to waste, wating for PC to come out of sleep, to boot up, shut down, to search for some files, but if I'm working, I don't. If it saves me an hour a day (10% speed) then it will pay itself back in a week. Portability is helpful, it allows more work, for longer, in comfort and becomes far less of a chore, effectively it allows more efficient use of time. I'm quite happy sat with my current lap top catching up on the sofa for hours, when the footy is on TV or our lass is watching some crap. But 3 years ago I wouldn't even get the old one out of it's case.

Some things can last 5 years, but lasting and being efficient or cost effective to use or persist with is another matter, especially when considering quality, quality of life. Bricks will last 100 years and their function won't be any less than when it was first used, and are something which haven't changed much in a 100 years. The same doesn't apply to anything related to tech.

 

[gravy173]

I’ve done a similar route! Man you must fly if you can do that in 5 hours. It’s a good six hour drive usually. You’d only need one stop. Surely you stop in an ICE car? It’s pretty dangerous to drive for 6 hours without stopping

As I said I prefer not to stop and I do it overnight so there’s no traffic, if unlucky you hit a closed junction or two and then you might do it in 6.

 

[MolteniArcore]

As I said I prefer not to stop and I do it overnight so there’s no traffic, if unlucky you hit a closed junction or two and then you might do it in 6.

320 miles and not one stop? Wow. That’s pretty dangerous.

 

[Andy_W]

That can't be done in 5 hours legally, surely? Unless in a helicopter. Even if caning the bits you can at 80, you still end up averaging 65mph at best. Loads of that journey is down the M1 too which pretty much always has 50-60mph TM on permanently during works and then also on a night for opportunistic roadworks. My guess would be 5 hours 20 at best, but more like 6 hours on average at night door to door. Far too many variables over 320 miles, and also going around London. My back would be killing after 3-4 hours no stop driving.

Overnight as well, must be shattered or gearing up the body clock for a few days, all to avoid and an hour or so's extra journey time?

@gravy173 what time would you set off, like 9pm and get there at like 3am and then in work at 8am? Seems rough, no matter how you do that.

What about coming back, do you wait until it's night or just set off when you finish? Obviously sitting around to drive back quicker won't save you any time? Surely you've had loads of times stuck on the M25 or whatever. Our lads regularly take 6/7 hours in the van and that's just from Slough.

As for "needing 400 mile range, to get 320 miles", there's like 5 no 350kW charging stations on any route to Southampton area, a car with 200 miles WLTP range, so maybe 175 real range would need maybe a 10-80% top up (about 40kW), which should only take ~15 mins charging at 200kW. Even if you call it half an hour, it's nothing over 320 miles.

Just seems odd to want a double range car, for the sake of avoiding a half an hour break, which most would be taking anyway. You would need destination charging mind, but even with ICE that's a trip to the petrol station before you set off and another one again when you get to the other end or half way back, so that pretty much gets cancelled out.

There's quite a few EV's with ~300 mile range, and I think Mercedes have a 400 mile range one but it's an S class, so will be expensive. Long ranges are not the key, fast charging is.

 

[BoroPhil]

This has probably been asked a million times but...

a) where is the best place to buy a home charging point from? I see Scottish Power do one for just over £750 with installation and a grant applied
b) can you just put them on the wall next to your garage? we don't really use our garage to put the car in so would be a lot easier outside

 

[Andy_W]

This has probably been asked a million times but...

a) where is the best place to buy a home charging point from? I see Scottish Power do one for just over £750 with installation and a grant applied
b) can you just put them on the wall next to your garage? we don't really use our garage to put the car in so would be a lot easier outside

a)
It's not so much the where/ who from, it's the what and who by, I would say.

If you want something cheap which will do the job, then your car may come with something which you can plug into a commando socket (blue industrial socket), I do this and charge at 7kW which is all a home user needs. I paid about £50 for the parts and fitted it and got a "sparky" to hook it up and sign it off. Hi only fitted a 32A breaker though for some daft reason, and 7kW EV's should be on 40A really, so I'm going to change that.

Had a BP one on the old house, it was £500 more and no better.

Some of the better ones like Zappi etc can be controlled via apps and wifi etc, which can be important if you're going to sign up to an EV tarriff or if you want "smart" charging if you have solar or the energy unit cost is low etc. Most people just seem to go down this sort of option, and don't use all of the features.

If you look on YouTube for EV charger install, see what ones they're installing, it might give you a good idea. Artisan Electrics do quite a few EV installs, they're robbers on price, but do good work, with good gear.

b) Yes, can basically put it where you like.

I had old one inside garage and cable running under garage door (wasn't sure if it would be safe outside), but on new one it's just outside. It's safe enough I think, not heard of anyone's chargers getting stolen, would be a dangerous passtime.

If I was you, I would buy the charger which gets good reviews for your needs, but absolutely only get it installed by someone who does a lot of EV charger installs and who has a good name, as from what I've seen, a lot of "electricians" aren't up to the task as some others.