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Three Peaks by Electric Car

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 JohnV 10 Nov 2016
Interesting blog post on proving distance capabilities of electric vehicles, via the three peaks challenge.

http://blog.threepeakszero.com/2016/11/the-three-peaks-challenge-another-wi...
abseil 10 Nov 2016
In reply to JohnV:

Thanks. That's an electrifying story.
1
 GrahamD 10 Nov 2016
In reply to JohnV:

The classic "3 highest peaks in the UK" again and sustainable rather depends on the source of electricity, I'd have thought.
In reply to JohnV:

13 years old now but just as relevant. Anyone thinking about the 3 Peaks 'challenge' should read this from the BMC https://www.thebmc.co.uk/three-peaks-challenge
3
 veteye 10 Nov 2016
In reply to GrahamD:

Sustainable would not be the case for most people as they could not sustain the cost of buying and running the car in the first place.
 timjones 10 Nov 2016
In reply to JohnV:

> Interesting blog post on proving distance capabilities of electric vehicles, via the three peaks challenge.


It would be moire interesting to know how long it takes electric vehicles to drive the 475 miles without grabbing a surreptitious charge whilst climbing a random mountain.
 wintertree 10 Nov 2016
In reply to timjones:

> It would be moire interesting to know how long it takes electric vehicles to drive the 475 miles without grabbing a surreptitious charge whilst climbing a random mountain.

How is that surreptitious? That's a large part of the attraction of EVs to me - they charge when you're not using them, so you never have to go to a petrol station again saving journey time, diversionary miles (to get to a petrol station), queuing hassle and getting diesel on my hands because some woppet before me couldn't wait for the dregs to drain clear of the nozzle.

In 21 years of motoring I have undertaken precisely 2 journeys where I've done over 475 miles non stop. Almost all my other long journeys would work with a Tesla S or X and supercharging, and would be non viable with slower charging EVs.
Post edited at 19:23
 timjones 10 Nov 2016
In reply to wintertree:

Unless I'm missing something the article doesn't openly declare the range achieved off a single charge?

TPZ 10 Nov 2016
In reply to timjones:

All three cars had slightly different "Typical" ranges and of course this range can be extended or decreased substantially depending on how you drive amongst other factors.
The Model S 85 which completed the challenge in under 24 hours can do about 243 miles to a tank
The Model S P85+ about 230-235
The Model S 90D I think is about 275 miles

However the exact range of each car is less relevant to the goal of the event, more that it is possible to do using the existing charging infrastructure which is why the article does not "openly declare it". Not a deliberate omission, but I can see how that information might be of interest to some.
 timjones 10 Nov 2016
In reply to TPZ:

Did the S 85 manage to get to Gretna without having to charge at Abington?
TPZ 10 Nov 2016
In reply to yesbutnobutyesbut:

The article from the BMC raises some very important issues that need to be observed, but as some of the commenters on that article have pointed out:
- Much of the litter and other troubles are caused by unprepared tourists taking on just one mountain. "It has been estimated that of the 700,000 visitors to Snowdon only 30,000 were undertaking the three peaks challenge"
- There is a lot of good that comes out of the event, money raised, health etc which should not be discounted.

If only a tiny portion of the money raised for charity was easily directed towards the various services at each mountain via the Just Giving or equivalent page, donors or walkers would be more than happy to do this. I feel this needs to be implemented and would go a long way to mitigating some of the negatives. And of course participants need to be respectful in all regards.

Talking more specifically about Three Peaks Zero, there is a benefit in demonstrating that EVs are more capable than people believe. Many are put off EVs because they think they are only suitable for local commutes. If it helps to take gas guzzlers off the road by encouraging cleaner transport then this adds to the other positives.
1
TPZ 10 Nov 2016
In reply to timjones:
Not quite . We could have fudged it by dropping the speed to 60 abut halfway between Abington and Gretna or stuck at the snails pace behind camper vans on the roads through Scotland, but it was quicker/safer to just do a top up at Abington for 5 mins and be on our way.
Post edited at 22:16
Jim C 11 Nov 2016
In reply to GrahamD:

> The classic "3 highest peaks in the UK" again and sustainable rather depends on the source of electricity, I'd have thought.

The idea is supposed to be that the charging points are only supplying renewable electricity ( how possibly that is I'm not sure)

There is also the carbon footprint of the car itself, how many running miles ( assuming recharged with renewable electricity) will it take to even pay back the cars construction carbon footprint?
1
 timjones 11 Nov 2016
In reply to TPZ:

So it's a £50k car with a range that might stretch to 200 miles of the going is good?

I struggle with the green credentials of vehicle that draws its power from a grid that uses carbon based fuels. Is it really more efficient and therefore greener to turn fuel into electricity, transmit it down the grid, charge a battery and then use that battery to drive a car taking into account the energy losses at every stage of the process?
3
 wintertree 11 Nov 2016
In reply to timjones:

> So it's a £50k car with a range that might stretch to 200 miles of the going is good

When the average journey length in the U.K. is under 10 miles that works for a surprising number of people...

> I struggle with the green credentials of vehicle that draws its power from a grid that uses carbon based fuels.

You do understand that the efficiency of carbon fuels is far higher in a power plant than in an internal combustion engine? This would make electric cars greener even if nuclear and renewables were not feeding into the grid and therefore the car. Which they are. The difference with regards air pollution is even bigger,

> Is it really more efficient and therefore greener to turn fuel into electricity, transmit it down the grid, charge a battery and then use that battery to drive a car taking into account the energy losses at every stage of the process?

Yes. Many studies show this. Also - renewables and nuclear are in the grid already. As the grid decarbonises so does the whole electric fleet.

Car fuels don't magically refine themselves and transmit themselves to petrol stations, so it's odd that you only consider the distribution losses for electric cars. Further the laws of physics put some pretty severe limits on the efficiency of internal combustion engines that do not apply to electric motors.
Post edited at 08:03
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 colinakmc 11 Nov 2016
In reply to yesbutnobutyesbut:

> 13 years old now but just as relevant. Anyone thinking about the 3 Peaks 'challenge' should read this from the BMC https://www.thebmc.co.uk/three-peaks-challenge

This brings to mind a midsummer visit to the Ben when 3 of us took a notion to leave the car park at midnight, get a couple of hours' doss on the summit, see the dawn, then go back down & climb Tower Ridge. We arrived at Achintee to be faced with the entire path lit up by headtorches, there must have been well over 1000 people on the hill. Going up the path was like trying to get into a Tube station, battling against crowds the whole way up. Many of thm were having to be helped over the soakaways and any boulders on the path. This made me not a fan of organised 3 peaks events to say the least!

To add insult to injury about 150 people had decided to doss on the top, many with those new fangled mobile phones (it was in the nineties) so it was pandemonium all night.
At least Tower Ridge was quiet.
1
KevinD 11 Nov 2016
In reply to timjones:

> I struggle with the green credentials of vehicle that draws its power from a grid that uses carbon based fuels.

Leaving aside the greater efficiency in a power plant at least with that approach you have some renewables included in the mix. Tesla are starting to push other renewable options as well eg their new line of solar panels. So in theory could charge your car from them at home and the charging stations could also use them. Effectiveness in the UK might not quite match elsewhere though.
 jimtitt 11 Nov 2016
In reply to JohnV:

What exactly is "sustainable" about a load of people driving thousands of miles on a completely self-serving journey in a car that had to be subsidised to the tune of about $25,000 by the American taxpayer and uses electricity that may well have been made available because of the buffering capacity in the European grid provided by a load of brown-coal power stations?
6
 LG-Mark 11 Nov 2016
In reply to JohnV:

I wonder how much carbon gets shoved into the atmosphere to generate the £70K wealth to buy one of these things in the first place?
Versus, the amount of carbon to buy an 60mpg petrol or diesel car at £20K.
3
 jkarran 11 Nov 2016
In reply to Jim C:

> The idea is supposed to be that the charging points are only supplying renewable electricity ( how possibly that is I'm not sure)

It's quite simple. For every unit sold from a 'renewable' charging post the supplier buys the corresponding number of units from certified renewable suppliers. Where each individual electron comes from is basically irrelevant.

> There is also the carbon footprint of the car itself, how many running miles ( assuming recharged with renewable electricity) will it take to even pay back the cars construction carbon footprint?

How is that relevant if it's displacing a diesel car that only ever keeps consuming fossil energy but cost broadly the same to make in energy terms?
jk

1
 jkarran 11 Nov 2016
In reply to timjones:
> I struggle with the green credentials of vehicle that draws its power from a grid that uses carbon based fuels. Is it really more efficient and therefore greener to turn fuel into electricity, transmit it down the grid, charge a battery and then use that battery to drive a car taking into account the energy losses at every stage of the process?

Potentially it is more efficient, yes. Grid scale power stations can achieve efficiency far in excess of an IC car burning refined fuel. In reality were you to be buying electricity from a modern gas fired station with heat recovery, passing through two three conversion stages and transmission you probably are looking at roughly break even given the power plant is burning unrefined fuel.

It has however taken the emissions off the streets which improves health. It facilitates carbon capture by having emissions localised rather than distributed. Energy can be sourced from nuclear or renewables, potentially even renewables with carbon capture yielding a negative warming potential from the energy use. The Connection of electric cars, at scale in a managed way to our grid facilitates the adoption of a much higher fraction of renewable energy input while maintaining existing levels of security/robustness and or increases the potential 'efficiency' of highly variable renewables like wind that are currently connected.

The cost today is almost irrelevant, that's just where in the market today's makers are targeting their products, the reality is the cost/performance ratio is steadily falling and as critical elements in the production path scale up and development costs begin to be recouped models at the more affordable mass market end of the market will rapidly become available.

Edit: I see Wintertree beat me to it almost point for point
jk
Post edited at 11:19
TPZ 11 Nov 2016
In reply to timjones:

Tim, you raise some very legitimate concerns which need addressing. I'll try to be as brief as possible, but I'm sure you will appreciate the subject is huge.

First, an ICE (internal combustion engine) is similar to a coal, gas and nuclear power plant in so much that they are all power plants. They all take a source of fuel and convert it in to energy. But unlike regular power plants an ICE power plant needs to be mobile. This places on it a large number of constraints:
- Size - it needs to be packed in to a small space
- Weight - it needs to be light enough
- Price - it needs to be cheap enough to be sold in the millions
- Conditions - it needs to be capable of handling inconsistent qualities of fuel, driven aggressively by some, operate at different rev ranges to handle different terrains, and work in a multitude of weather conditions.
- Fuel - It must use a fuel that lends itself to the above constraints, i.e. we don't have coal powered engines as they would not work well under the above constraints.
All of these constraints mean that it is impossible to engineer the ICE so that it may work at optimum efficiency. It must by design compromise. Put simply the sum of 100's or 1000's of mini compromised power-plants will always be less efficient than one centralised power-plant that is optimised for perfect conditions.

Once the energy has been generated the same argument applies to the waste fumes. In a big power plant all the waste heat is used to generate a turbine and produce even more electricity and they can also afford to have best in class carbon capture measures. You simply cant do this on a mobile car.
It's also worth asking the question, if ICE was so efficient, why do we not use it to run our appliances? Well the answer is that it is toxic. So why don't we put an ICE power plant outside of every house instead of being connected to the gird? For that matter why is the grid not powered by an ICE power plant.

Moving on, a very important point which is consistently overlooked is that oil needs refining and refining uses up a ton of power from the grid. This short video presents the point in a really good way, but I will summarise.
youtube.com/watch?v=BQpX-9OyEr4&
The energy supplied by the grid to refine one gallon of petrol is enough to drive a Tesla Model S 12-15 miles. All before you factor in:
- The environmental cost of extracting the stuff from the ground
- Shipping across the world and delivering it to the refiners
- Sticking it in to a Tanker and driving it to the forecourt (which requires it's own refined fuel)
- Before finally pumping in to your car and burning it.

EVs are not perfect and they have environmental costs well to wheel of their own but a lot of the materials, including the battery can be recycled to be used over and over again which means less need brought up from the ground. Further more, the environmental benefits of EVs over ICE now are only half the picture. A concerted effort to clean up the grid must also take place and when cleaner energy is produced the EV's emissions are reduced even further.

I've really only scratched the surface here but hopefully I've made sense and would welcome any further questions you might have.

To clarify one other point, you suggested the car can only do 200 miles if the conditions are right. - Not so, an ICE vehicle might achieve 50mpg if you drive at a steady speed, but if you are constantly accelerating, and going up and down hills you can easily achieve 40mpg or less. Similarly you experience the same fluctuations in energy performance in an EV which we describe as Wh/m (watts per mile) the miles is flipped over to the other side of the equation, so in our case a larger number of watts per mile is less desirable. So the Tesla S85 will do 243 miles, but we knew we had the Abington Supercharger to fall back on so we could afford to be more spirited in our driving. Since Superchargers will refill at up to 350 miles of range per hour (120kW), we would need to drive extremely inefficiently to use energy faster than the Supercharger could refill and therefore negatively impact our time.


1
 wintertree 11 Nov 2016
In reply to jkarran:

> Edit: I see Wintertree beat me to it almost point for point

I missed your point about the current excessive cost of decent range EVs being largely irrelevant. Most motoring improvements start in high end models and trickle down to eventual ubiquity.

EV technology is no different.
 wintertree 11 Nov 2016
In reply to yesbutnobutyesbut:

> 13 years old now but just as relevant. Anyone thinking about the 3 Peaks 'challenge' should read this from the BMC https://www.thebmc.co.uk/three-peaks-challenge

I don't have a problem with this three peaks trip, far from it.

The benefits of publicising the capability of current EVs and the current charging network are large, whereas the impact of a few people climbing a few hills and having some fun - well it's not large and it's what we all do.

I'll not lose any sleep over it!
3
TPZ 11 Nov 2016
In reply to jimtitt:
jimtitt - "What exactly is "sustainable" about a load of people driving thousands of miles on a completely self-serving journey in a car that had to be subsidised to the tune of about $25,000 by the American taxpayer and uses electricity that may well have been made available because of the buffering capacity in the European grid provided by a load of brown-coal power stations?"

Respectfully, you are incorrect in everything you just stated.
Post edited at 12:03
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 inboard 11 Nov 2016
In reply to TPZ:

Actually, he's not wholly incorrect. Did you really need to drive? What were the pollution impacts of your drive (eg bits of rubber coming off your tyres)?

Maybe being sustainable needs to involve less automobility all round - however painful that might be for us who love getting into the mountains - whether it's fossil-fuel-powered cars or renewable-powered cars.
 wintertree 11 Nov 2016
In reply to inboard:

> Actually, he's not wholly incorrect. Did you really need to drive? What were the pollution impacts of your drive (eg bits of rubber coming off your tyres)?

That doesn't de-facto make it unsustainable, however. Lots of work going into growing tyre latex in dandelions instead of geographically specific trees, for example.

> Maybe being sustainable needs to involve less automobility all round - however painful that might be for us who love getting into the mountains

Maybe it does, but there is more than one solution. The way the cost of Solar PV is going I think your maybe is quite premature. 50 years from now, if we don't have viable fusion, every roof may be fully solar with balancing provided by smart charging of a nationwide EV fleet.

TPZ 11 Nov 2016
In reply to inboard:

True, you can take an extreme perspective, but we live in an imperfect world and we need to be realistic about what we can change. If you were to max out your theory the elimination of humans on the planet would be the most sustainable but we can both agree that this is neither productive nor realistic (well maybe more realistic now Trump is in office).

The fact is, mobility isn't going away any time soon. It's too much change too quickly and humans do not like change. The problem with cars like the G-Wizz is that it was built by people who felt you shouldn't drive but if you must drive then drive a G-Wizz. It failed not least because it simply was not compelling. You could spend decades of campaigning to achieve the perfect solution and maybe never achieve it, or you can save a ton of Co2 and time by moving swiftly in the right direction by providing a solution which is compelling to the masses who use their mass wealth to fund the technology for further improvement.

In answer to your question, did we need to drive? The answer is, no, we didn't need to do the event at all. But if by running the event we give someone the confidence to switch from diesel to electric which would you consider is the lesser of two evils?
In reply to wintertree:

> I don't have a problem with this three peaks trip, far from it.

> The benefits of publicising the capability of current EVs and the current charging network are large, whereas the impact of a few people climbing a few hills and having some fun - well it's not large and it's what we all do.

> I'll not lose any sleep over it!

Except it's not a few people climbing a few hills. It's thousands and thousands of people climbing a few hills, well 3 'hills' mainly, over relatively few weekends in the summer. There's thousands of hills in the UK that can be used for a 'challenge' and have human impact spread lightly with far less adverse affect on the local environment and people. The 3 peaks 'challenge' is one of the worst events you can participate in as a hillwalker and is certainly not what 'we all do'. Go and visit Wasdale on a Monday in summer and see the state of the car park and the litter on the footpaths, any self respecting hill goer would not want any association with it at all.
2
TPZ 11 Nov 2016
In reply to yesbutnobutyesbut:

For clarity with respect to the Three Peaks Zero challenge whilst I sympathise with the issues you have raised
- We opted to do the challenge outside of "Peak" season in part for this reason
- For the purpose of our message in demonstrating long distance travel in an EV, the Three Peaks Challenge is unique in so much that it is recognisable, people can relate to it and it features long distance over a limited period of time plus it has the human element. Therefore it is very effective in presenting our message. We could just drive the same distance and report on how long it took us. But I'm sure you will agree we wouldn't attract any publicity or sponsorship.
8
In reply to TPZ:

I take it all back. Your publicity and sponsorship is obviously more important than any other consideration.
7
TPZ 11 Nov 2016
In reply to yesbutnobutyesbut:

Lets try to be reasonable shall we? Literally everything we do carries an economic impact of some degree. You are typing on this forum which means you are consuming electricity and the electronics you are typing from needed to be mined. If you want to take a holier than tho attitude, you should be holed up in some cave eating berries.

I hope we can agree that global warming is an issue. I also hope we can agree that switching to sustainable transport is part of the solution to mitigate the effects of global warming. If we can agree on that then ask yourself, is it better that people were driving EVs instead of diesels.
If my other posts have made any sense then hopefully you will agree the answer is yes.
So now ask how do we encourage adoption of EVs. I can tell you that range anxiety is a big reason why people are afraid. Therefore one needs to effectively demonstrate the range capabilities of EVs.
The Three Peaks Challenge uniquely allows us to do that. Yes there are some negatives to doing this but one must always weigh the pros and the cons and I'm not sure you appreciate the concept that we live in an imperfect world so we must sometimes choose the lesser of two evils.

5
 winhill 11 Nov 2016
In reply to wintertree:

> How is that surreptitious? That's a large part of the attraction of EVs to me - they charge when you're not using them, so you never have to go to a petrol station again saving journey time, diversionary miles (to get to a petrol station), queuing hassle and getting diesel on my hands because some woppet before me couldn't wait for the dregs to drain clear of the nozzle.

It would be surreptitious in the sense that they seemed to have proved that they can't do the 24 hour challenge unless someone else spends the time charging the car. This is wasting journey time.

With cars taking half an hour to charge, this only works currently precisely because no-one is doing it, if all cars needed half an hour to refuel fuel stations would need to be multi-storey car parks.

I have had 2 LPG cars that had a range of about 250 miles, done thousands of miles round europe in them, so it isn't necessarily off putting but you need to plan your journey well.

Queueing to fill up could be a right pain, waiting for others to finish, then the very slow filling of LPG itself. An electric car ATM will be even worse, bear in mind that this as done using the Tesla, v limited network, which is better than most charging points.

I doubt few people are unaware of the charging network, one of my neighbours is a charge point, another friend is, we have one at the local Lidl and another at ASDA.

People would still regard EVs as inconvenient and expensive, and they're right.

1
In reply to TPZ:

Except that is the 'excuse' that most '3 peakers' use. It's for charity - therefore it's OK. There would be plenty of other ways to demonstrate the range of a car rather than adding to one of the events that has a massive negative impact on a very fragile environment. Using the 3 peaks just shows a complete lack of imagination and your comment about attracting publicity and sponsorship is just plain selfish. As someone who did the 3 peaks in the eighties on a push bike and currently cycles almost everywhere I don't need a lecture about sustainable transport. And yes I have very mixed felings about having done the 3 peaks but 30 years ago it certainly wasn't the circus and local environmental disaster that it is now.
5
Lusk 11 Nov 2016
In reply to TPZ:

Who pays for your 3,672 miles worth of free electricity?
TPZ 11 Nov 2016
In reply to winhill:

I see where you are coming from, but you are missing the point of the event and EVs in general.

People do not go on marathon journeys regularly, for the most part 95-98% all charging can be done at home or at your destination. Which means you do not need a distribution of chargers like we have petrol stations.
You actually save time charging at home. More time than you loose waiting a bit longer at a service station on longer journeys for the EV to charge.

Look at a map and consider how often you travel more than 210 miles in a single sitting. 210 miles is 3 hours @ average speed of 70mph which is actually very good going.
Now the average driver will stop for 15 minutes at this point for a loo break etc but an EV driver will wait an extra 15 mins. After which he will be able to drive a further 150-175 miles.
The reality is it isn't as inconvenient as you might think and you actually end up saving time overall.

The point of EV's is that they can charge whilst parked at a destination. And the point of the event is to show that if you switched to an EV you don't need to worry about taking the same long journeys you do now in your current petrol or diesel car.
TPZ 11 Nov 2016
In reply to yesbutnobutyesbut:

If you have any bright ideas as to how we can demonstrate the range of an EV which will draw similar interest as the Three Peaks Challenge then I'm all ears.
5
TPZ 11 Nov 2016
In reply to Lusk:
Fair point - Supercharger electricity is already baked in to the cost of the cars, so in theory we prepaid it. Although like for like, if you were to fill up your car from the grid and pay normal rates it would cost you between £5-£10 for 250 miles depending on if you were using economy 7 tariff. So it still works out less than petrol.

Edit - Actually I should clarify, the supercharger network is baked in to the cost, the electricity I believe is subsidized by the local business where the driver/passengers are obliged to wait. E.g. the service station. If we are waiting there then we will likely spend money at said establishment thus providing a profit to the local business.
Post edited at 13:27
 winhill 11 Nov 2016
In reply to TPZ:

> If you have any bright ideas as to how we can demonstrate the range of an EV which will draw similar interest as the Three Peaks Challenge then I'm all ears.

Dakar Rally?
In reply to TPZ:


> If you have any bright ideas as to how we can demonstrate the range of an EV which will draw similar interest as the Three Peaks Challenge then I'm all ears.

If you told me you'd driven from say London to Glasgow or Lands End to John O'groats without needing a recharge it would actually make far more sense than saying you went from Wales to Cumbria to Scotland and most people would have a far better perception of the distance covered.

3
TPZ 11 Nov 2016
In reply to winhill:
Epic idea and would love to do it, but beyond EV capability right now.

Edit: Also not very close to home. People can visualise the UK, driving through Scotland England and Wales gives them a sense of perspective. The three peaks challenge is already well known and there is a benchmark of 24 hours which is already well understood.
Post edited at 13:37
1
TPZ 11 Nov 2016
In reply to yesbutnobutyesbut:
1. Neither option is possible on a single tank with an EV right now. Not unless you hypermile which is very unrealistic driving
2. Whilst that might get you personally excited it wont interest joe public.

Understand you are not our audience, you travel around on a bike. So by impressing you with the virtues of an EV we convert a cyclist to an EV driver. Not a great return. Joe diesel driving Public on the other hand is a much better catch.
Post edited at 13:42
2
 jkarran 11 Nov 2016
In reply to TPZ:

> Epic idea and would love to do it, but beyond EV capability right now.

Erm... aren't you supposed to be the one promoting this

http://www.engineering.com/ElectronicsDesign/ElectronicsDesignArticles/Arti...
jk
TPZ 11 Nov 2016
In reply to jkarran:

Lol. Nice, i did not know they did that Thanks
 wintertree 11 Nov 2016
In reply to winhill:

> It would be surreptitious in the sense that they seemed to have proved that they can't do the 24 hour challenge unless someone else spends the time charging the car. This is wasting journey time.

Okay

> With cars taking half an hour to charge, this only works currently precisely because no-one is doing it, if all cars needed half an hour to refuel fuel stations would need to be multi-storey car parks

I agree with most of what you say but is wrong here. What fractionof the cars on the road are doing 3 peaks length journeys? A very small fraction. There are copious statistics to back this up.

> People would still regard EVs as inconvenient and expensive, and they're right.

Some people. Some. Going of the copious statistics, by no means all people.

So they're not currently a universal solution; does that mean we shouldn't embrace them where they do work? No; we need to recognise where they can and do work to drive the technology forwards.

 wintertree 11 Nov 2016
In reply to TPZ:

> If you have any bright ideas as to how we can demonstrate the range of an EV which will draw similar interest as the Three Peaks Challenge then I'm all ears.

Cannonball! Okay so it's been done, but the record is still up for EV grabs. Probably will be for some decades though.

Thank you taking the time to explain your perspective and the mechanics of this trip to us despite hitting two topics that trigger Pavlovian negativity on here.

I'll bet most people complaining have climbed all 3 peaks multiple times, and done just as many miles as you in the process - or more if not consolidating it all into one trip. They just took longer to do it, which makes no difference to the mountains and communities assuming you were quietly driving, parking and walking on the night sections, easier with an electric car...

I've never seen why undertaking the 3 peaks should be a staunchly binary issue, or how anyone who travels and impacts on others for their activies can insist on it being totally binary.
Post edited at 13:55
3
In reply to TPZ:


> 1. Neither option is possible on a single tank with an EV right now. Not unless you hypermile which is very unrealistic driving

> 2. Whilst that might get you personally excited it wont interest joe public.

> Understand you are not our audience, you travel around on a bike. So by impressing you with the virtues of an EV we convert a cyclist to an EV driver. Not a great return. Joe diesel driving Public on the other hand is a much better catch.

Don't make assumptions. I do travel mainly by bike whenever possible but my car is an A6 Quattro 3 Litre Diesel. Referring to 'Joe Public' as some form of collective reinforces your lack of imagination and makes you seem pretty arrogant.
7
TPZ 11 Nov 2016
In reply to wintertree:

It's been a pleasure and thank you for your own contribution to the debate. People have voiced for the most part very real, reasonable concerns and those concerns need to be addressed. Unfortunately we can not please everyone.
2
TPZ 11 Nov 2016
In reply to yesbutnobutyesbut:

meh
3
In reply to jkarran:

> Grid scale power stations can achieve efficiency far in excess of an IC car burning refined fuel.

A modern IC engine has a thermal efficiency on a par with the best thermal generation stations.

http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1091436_toyota-gasoline-engine-achieves...
http://www.mpoweruk.com/energy_efficiency.htm

Factor in the additional distribution losses (electrical and fuel distribution), battery charging efficiency, electrical drive efficiency and I doubt you'll see much difference in overall efficiency.

Local CHP systems are more efficient than large generating stations, because the 'waste' heat is used for heating homes and water, thus increasing the system efficiency.

Battery-powered cars only make real sense for using off-peak generation, allowing base load generators to run at optimal efficiency.
1
 wintertree 11 Nov 2016
In reply to captain paranoia:

> A modern IC engine has a thermal efficiency on a par with the best thermal generation stations.

Well, under ideal circumstances. The engine in an ICE rarely runs close to those. You can improve with a fixed RPM diesel and electric drive and buffering in a hybrid, but having got that close to an EV...

Your link suggest 38% efficiency; modern CCGT is up to 54% - close to 50% better.

> Factor in the additional distribution losses (electrical and fuel distribution), battery charging efficiency, electrical drive efficiency and I doubt you'll see much difference in overall efficiency.

Are you magically forgetting the cost of refining and distributing ICE fuel?

> Local CHP systems are more efficient than large generating stations, because the 'waste' heat is used for heating homes and water, thus increasing the system efficiency.

Yes, CHP is great and it's a shame we don't do much of it in the U.K.

> Battery-powered cars only make real sense for using off-peak generation, allowing base load generators to run at optimal efficiency.

Also make sense for reducing total pollution and for moving what's left out of cities.

Also make sense for nuclear, wind, solar and tidal generation.

As discussed previously by several posters.

 jkarran 11 Nov 2016
In reply to captain paranoia:

Wintertree has covered most of it.

Modern small Atkinson or pseudo-Atkinson cycle engines do achieve remarkable efficiency gains over traditional Otto cycle engines by leveraging the same sort of heat recovery strategy and operating ethos used to boost grid scale energy conversion efficiency but they are not well suited to conventional lightweight cars. That said, it is hard to beat scale when chasing efficiency and the best real world performance on the grid is still light years ahead of the best headline figures for road going IC. They work optimally only in a very narrow speed and load band which is why they have to be coupled to either a torque converter with its inherent losses or to an electrical buffer system. At that point you have an electric car dragging 100+ kilos of largely superfluous weight around with or an IC car with 100+kilos of largely redundant electrical hardware along for the ride.

Torque converters are getting much better, maybe we will see a long tail of IC car sales as the best of the old tech remains competitive against the new, I wouldn't bet against it. And if it competes on environmental merit I have nothing against that.

One application where hybrid technology may find an enduring niche is in heavy road haulage where loads are relatively high, prolonged, and constant for the majority of the journey but where extreme torque is required in short bursts to get loads moving and over hills. Switching heavy and medium goods vehicles away from diesel if we accept they cannot be completely removed form our towns will hopefully soon become a priority. The moment when pressure builds to a critical level for this can't be far off with cities around the world imposing punitive emissions and traffic control zones on their busiest, dirtiest streets, at least it wasn't far off pre-June. Now... who knows.
jk
 GrahamD 11 Nov 2016
In reply to wintertree:

I don't know what the battery storage losses are but grid losses are near 10% aren't they ? so I don't think the gulf between internal combustion versus electric is as vast as that. Certainly nowhere near as large in differences in driving behaviour.

Intuitively local sources of electricity combined with a hybrid internal combustion engine seem to be a better compromise than one or the other.
 GrahamD 11 Nov 2016
In reply to jkarran:

Rail for long haul would seem to be a good starting point to me.
In reply to wintertree:

> Are you magically forgetting the cost of refining and distributing ICE fuel?

Not really, no:

> Factor in the additional distribution losses (electrical and fuel distribution)

> Also make sense for nuclear, wind, solar and tidal generation

I was putting those in 'base load generation'. Even though wind and solar are rather variable, locally.
Post edited at 15:38
 jkarran 11 Nov 2016
In reply to GrahamD:

> Rail for long haul would seem to be a good starting point to me.

Indeed couldn't agree more but it still has to get to and from regional goods yards into the city centers and smaller towns. It's also simply not practical for a proportion of freight, it's too inflexible and too much of a diversion from the optimal route. That's before you run into the cost and capacity issue. All adressable concerns but not in the present political climate.
jk
In reply to wintertree:

> Also make sense for reducing total pollution and for moving what's left out of cities.

Yes; that's a big plus.

I haven't looked in detail at the system numbers; I was just reacting to the 'far in excess' issue of generation, and trying to point out that generation is just one issue of many to be considered in the system. I'm not arguing that either is better (since, as I said, I haven't looked at the numbers. And I don't drive...). If the thread has considered the other factors, fine.
 GrahamD 11 Nov 2016
In reply to jkarran:

"centers" ! aaagh !
 jkarran 11 Nov 2016
In reply to GrahamD:

> I don't know what the battery storage losses are but grid losses are near 10% aren't they ? so I don't think the gulf between internal combustion versus electric is as vast as that. Certainly nowhere near as large in differences in driving behaviour.

Improved driving behavior (slowing, reduced use) applies equally to EVs as it does to IC vehicles, it isn't one or the other.

Grid transmission losses are typically significantly lower than 10% though it does depend where on the grid the power is drawn from and at what voltage 3-4% seems more reasonable. Home charging would be fractionally less efficient than at a dedicated charge station fed from HV lines.

I do find the popular resistance (pardon the accidental pun) to EVs by picking at the minor losses around the edges while studiously ignoring the significant gains quite baffling.

Conversion efficiency into and back out of the battery will typically be around 85% each way so maybe 72% efficient wall to road. By comparison grid losses are tiny. This also makes EV broadly comparable in efficiency with IC before refining and fuel transport costs are factored in and assuming fossil-sourced electricity.

> Intuitively local sources of electricity combined with a hybrid internal combustion engine seem to be a better compromise than one or the other.

Hybrids really are a messy kludge, an evolutionary stepping stone in the history of the car. Likewise, power generation or at least thermal power conversion is best done at scale. Local CHP has some merits but it's not free heat or free electricity, optimising one compromises the efficiency of the other and units must be carefully designed to function well in a given role. Small scale generators suffer higher proportional losses than large ones. Intuition can be misleading. Remaining waste heat from grid scale generators (there will always be some) can still be harnessed for district heating, swimming pools, commercial greenhouses. We tend to just dump it into the sky or the sea because fossil energy has been cheap enough to burn for decades but times are changing and so are power stations.
jk
 jkarran 11 Nov 2016
In reply to GrahamD:

> "centers" ! aaagh !
Sorry, american spellchecker and lazy right-click the red bits proofreading
jk

 timjones 11 Nov 2016
In reply to wintertree:

> When the average journey length in the U.K. is under 10 miles that works for a surprising number of people...

It will work for many people but given that the purpose of the trip was to highlight the longer range capabilities of such vehicles there could have been greater clarity in the article.

> You do understand that the efficiency of carbon fuels is far higher in a power plant than in an internal combustion engine? This would make electric cars greener even if nuclear and renewables were not feeding into the grid and therefore the car. Which they are. The difference with regards air pollution is even bigger,

Of course but surely you also understand the concept losses during transmission down the grid, whenever there is a transformation between voltages and during battery charging and discharging. Many factors need to be considered.

> > Is it really more efficient and therefore greener to turn fuel into electricity, transmit it down the grid, charge a battery and then use that battery to drive a car taking into account the energy losses at every stage of the process?

> Yes. Many studies show this. Also - renewables and nuclear are in the grid already. As the grid decarbonises so does the whole electric fleet.

> Car fuels don't magically refine themselves and transmit themselves to petrol stations, so it's odd that you only consider the distribution losses for electric cars.

I consider both but given that the article was EVs is it really "odd" that I asked a question relative to the subject.

> Further the laws of physics put some pretty severe limits on the efficiency of internal combustion engines that do not apply to electric motors.

The laws of physics can be inconvenient

However I suspect that when it comes to vehicle range and ease/efficiency of refuelling IC engines and liquid fuels will continue to have the edge for some years to come.
 timjones 11 Nov 2016
In reply to TPZ:

> Tim, you raise some very legitimate concerns which need addressing. I'll try to be as brief as possible, but I'm sure you will appreciate the subject is huge.

Thanks for the detailed reply.

One other point that puzzles me, when you did the cost calculation how did you manage to arrive at zero cost for the electricity?

FWIW I'm hugely intrigued by the business of energy efficiency which is every bit as important as where we source our energy from IMO.

You really didn't need to go to the trouble of doing the three peaks to whet my curiosity
 wintertree 11 Nov 2016
In reply to captain paranoia:

> Not really, no:

> I was putting those in 'base load generation'. Even though wind and solar are rather variable, locally.

Sorry, I misinterpreted what you wrote with fuel being lumped in with other EV factors and use of "and" to mean you were implying the increased fuel used and moved to generate the additional electricity

> I was putting those in 'base load generation'. Even though wind and solar are rather variable, locally.

Okay. This is where having EVs with 5-30x the range of an average journey shine, as you can reserve some range/battery for charging at times of excess renewables, overridden where needed. Applied fleet wide this is a massive boost to a renewables laden grid.
Post edited at 18:15
Jim C 11 Nov 2016
In reply to jkarran:

> It's quite simple. For every unit sold from a 'renewable' charging post the supplier buys the corresponding number of units from certified renewable suppliers. Where each individual electron comes from is basically irrelevant.
I guess that explains it, thanks

> How is that relevant if it's displacing a diesel car that only ever keeps consuming fossil energy but cost broadly the same to make in energy terms?
That sounds reasonable, I was unsure in energy terms what an electric ( battery) car takes to build compared to Diesel/Petrol.
Although happy to take it that they are broadly similar.

In reply to wintertree:

> Sorry, I misinterpreted what you wrote

No worries; I realised what you'd read, probably assuming I was trying to make a polarised case againt EVs, rather than a more balanced analysis...
1
Lusk 11 Nov 2016
In reply to jkarran:

> It's quite simple. For every unit sold from a 'renewable' charging post the supplier buys the corresponding number of units from certified renewable suppliers. Where each individual electron comes from is basically irrelevant.

What happens when demand for green power outstrips demand?
Do you stop using your electric car?
We've got a hell of a long way to go before everyone has a green EV.
1
 GrahamD 11 Nov 2016
In reply to jkarran:

I'm not sure I agree with hybrids as necessarily being a kludge, but I would have the engine part of it much smaller than the electric part of it and the engine is basically background charge for the electricity which can keep running even when the vehicle is parked if need be. Try to remove the need for storage for the longest journey and limit an engine to being the smallest and most efficient generator it can be. So the engine size does not have to provide the power under higher loads, just to tide the storage over between charges.
 jimtitt 11 Nov 2016
In reply to TPZ:

> jimtitt - "What exactly is "sustainable" about a load of people driving thousands of miles on a completely self-serving journey in a car that had to be subsidised to the tune of about $25,000 by the American taxpayer and uses electricity that may well have been made available because of the buffering capacity in the European grid provided by a load of brown-coal power stations?"

> Respectfully, you are incorrect in everything you just stated.

Sorry about that, you are of course correct. Tesla lost $19,059 per car for the first quarter this year and have received $2.391 billion in government subsidies, tax breaks etc for a total of 164,000 cars produced.
2
 jkarran 11 Nov 2016
In reply to Lusk:
> What happens when demand for green power outstrips demand?

Market forces act don't they. We build more capacity or cut demand. I get the impression you view this as a bad thing? I don't.

> Do you stop using your electric car?

No, obviously not, in the short term you pay more to charge it. This is high school economics.

> We've got a hell of a long way to go before everyone has a green EV.

Yes we do. What's your point?
Jk
Post edited at 19:53
 jkarran 11 Nov 2016
In reply to jimtitt:

It's clearly a big gamble America is taking on Tesla but of it pays off they have a decade's head start on the defining technology of the next couple of decades, if it doesn't then it's probably still less than they spend in a year keeping their military aerospace industry ticking over. Brunel's projects were mostly commercial flops but the work has endured and inspired.
Jk
TPZ 12 Nov 2016
In reply to timjones:
Hi tim
> Thanks for the detailed reply.

My Pleasure

> One other point that puzzles me, when you did the cost calculation how did you manage to arrive at zero cost for the electricity?

Someone else pulled me up on this also. Strictly speaking, whilst none of us handed over any money for charging, it could be argued that we paid for it by other means.
- The Supercharger network cost is baked in to the price of each Tesla after which we get free Supercharger access for life (this is changing with new cars sold from 2017). It maybe that the local establishment where the Supercharger is located subsidises the cost of electricity on the basis that we are obliged to stop there and we may as well buy our lunch at the same place. Although I'm not sure on their exact contribution.
- We didn't have to stop at any Ecotricity charge points, they charge £6 for 30 mins charge. We did however stop at a different charge network in Scotland called CYC (Charge Your Car) Their Fort William Charge point was free, not sure who foot's this bill but clearly that cant be free forever.

What might be of more interest to you is that 250 miles should cost circa £5-£10 depending on what electricity tariff you are on. So that calculation would come out at £73 - £146 in electricity charges vs £538 for the ICE vehicle.

> FWIW I'm hugely intrigued by the business of energy efficiency which is every bit as important as where we source our energy from IMO.

Absolutely! I'm just getting my teeth stuck in to learning about home energy and passive house standards, what's crazy is that you can have a building so efficient that it does not require central heating. If every new build was made to this specification we could save a ton on the energy we consume.
TPZ 12 Nov 2016
In reply to jimtitt:
> Sorry about that, you are of course correct. Tesla lost $19,059 per car for the first quarter this year and have received $2.391 billion in government subsidies, tax breaks etc for a total of 164,000 cars produced.

Jim, I don't fancy getting in to a long and drawn out debate on this, certainly not on this forum anyway. I know there are a lot of people out to hate Tesla and they like to throw around whatever the latest scare story of the day to justify why the company is doomed. They are not interested in seeing reason. I don't know if you are one of these people or if you are just misinformed. So I will address your points with the following and if it isn't sufficient then I'm afraid we'll have to agree to disagree.

Tesla is currently a loss making enterprise and it is a high risk investment, there is no denying it. They make a loss because they are expanding the company at a furious pace. They are doing this in a highly capital intensive industry whilst at the same time trying to pioneer new technology. My expectations as an investor is that if they wish to achieve the goals that they have set, then they should be reinvesting in to the business (wisely) all the profit and additional capital they can get their hands on. The money they spend currently is chump change in comparison to the annual R&D budget of any of the big Auto's and yet they are out pacing in growth and innovation.

The figure $19,059 used to be $4,000 and then some other number which keeps changing. The suggestion that they are actually making a loss on every car sold is absurd. Their last quarter saw them sell the highest amount ever by quite some margin, just shy of 25,000 and yet they also showed a $21.9 Million profit. Sure the $138.5 million of ZEV credits they sold to other manufactures made that possible, but where has the $475 million of loss that they should be making on all those cars gone? The money they loose is from CapEx and R&D, not on the cars which they make 25% profit on.

Edit: For clarities sake, a ZEV credit is not a subsidy and Tesla does not benefit from these credits to the same value as other manufactures do.
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/california-and-western-states/what-is-...

Subsidies are not given to Tesla but to the buyer of any EV of any manufacture they choose. Any subsidy given to the buyer is there only to level the playing field with the subsidies given to the oil industry and thats before you even factor in the costs that the oil industry gets a free pass on, namely the billions spent annually on pollution related diseases and the damage to the environment.

Tesla took a loan out from the DOE of $465 million which they paid back early with interest. A win for the US tax payer. GM on the other hand went bankrupt and got bailed out by the government. Ford have not paid back their own $5.9 billion loan it borrowed from the DOE around the same time Tesla did.

Finally the Tax breaks. If Tesla did not exist there would be no tax to break anyway. Local governments see the value of attracting Tesla to their state because it brings employment from Tesla as well as any suppliers that relocate. An entire ecosystem will develop to support the Tesla workers etc at the Gigafactory. If Tesla did not exist then this investment in the area would not take place and the state would ultimately be worse off. The tax breaks are dependent on Tesla achieving certain milestones which represent value for the state in terms of employment numbers amongst other things. If Tesla does meet these miles stones then they don't get said tax break.
Post edited at 01:38
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