Electric Vehicles

[ScottsGT]

1 hour ago, GusM said:

Our neighbour is a manager with one of the biggest UK supermarkets and he was saying they have stopped installing EV chargers as they think hydrogen will win out, especially for freight vehicles. 

Interesting. Hydrogen was a big deal here years back, but just fizzled out for some reason.  Even GM came out with a basic hydrogen car chassis and drive train concept and you could literally swap bodies every few years if you got tired of the old one. 
Hydrogen fuel cell technology research was big at the university I retired from.  They were even installing some hydrogen fuel cells around town to try to power homes.  The city also had a hydrogen fuel cell bus. Not sure what ever came of it. 

[TankBuster]

Petrol tech stopped at fuel injection which is a shame because if you heat the fuel up first and then inject the fumes you can go way further on a tank, but it seems they like us to use more petrol/oil. Cheers.

[scvrobeson]

2 hours ago, ScottsGT said:

 Not sure what ever came of it. 

 

Fueling infrastructure wasn't there. Now, whether it was because companies weren't producing the cars is an interesting chicken/egg scenario, but that's most of it

 

 

 

Matt 

[Dpgsbody55]

9 hours ago, JeepsGunsTanks said:

 

 

Yeah, with wind and solar not as good as advertised, we need many more Nuclear Power Plants before a mass conversion to electric vehicles could be practical. 

 

Another aspect that has not been discussed is all the electric vehicles, and most new cars can be tune updated, or even turned off by the automaker. There have been reports of newer GM cars cutting engine performance on acceleration tests under certain conditions. Big brother is always with you in new cars, including reverting custom tunes, overnight, because the cars are all internet-connected and talk to home the carmaker all the time. 

 

I'm pretty sure a 'lawmaker' has called for cars not to be able to exceed the speed limit, and through the modern electronics in cars, this can be done. 

 

Connectivity is likely to become a concerning issue in the future.  It has lots of benefits, but just as many downsides.  Great that the operating system can be upgraded and improved.  Many Tesla owners say their car is working better now due to internet transmitted updates while you sleep, though I believe many manufacturers don't do this unless there's a problem or fault with the old software.  The downside is possible remote control of your vehicle by those in authority to stop you speeding, or to issue a speeding fine every time you go over the posted limit.  Not good when you're stuck behind some inconsiderate caravanner or slow moving truck.  There's also the question of who should have access to the data harvested as you drive.  The issue become even worse once, or if, the world moves to driverless cars as these will need to broadcast to all other vehicles on the road to maintain traffic flow and avoid collision.  This brings into doubt just who will have access to that positioning data.  There are early moves by the insurance industry in parts of Europe, independently verified, to upwardly adjust your car insurance premiums if you go over the speed limit.  We all know that insurance companies exist only to help us in times of need, right???   And our elected Fearless Leaders will of course be the first to ensure that there's no invasion of privacy from data broadcast by your car.   Whether those insurance company allegations really are true or not is immaterial.  The point is that such data broadcast by your car for your benefit must only be used for your benefit as it's your data, and not for the commercial or criminal benefit of others.

 

3 hours ago, ScottsGT said:

Interesting. Hydrogen was a big deal here years back, but just fizzled out for some reason.  Even GM came out with a basic hydrogen car chassis and drive train concept and you could literally swap bodies every few years if you got tired of the old one. 
Hydrogen fuel cell technology research was big at the university I retired from.  They were even installing some hydrogen fuel cells around town to try to power homes.  The city also had a hydrogen fuel cell bus. Not sure what ever came of it. 

 

You'd think that hydrogen might be a better way to go rather than lug about a heavy, slow charging battery all the time.  The criticism of hydrogen as dangerous because of explosion risks to me is ludicrous considering that we currently have petrol/diesel tanks in all cars.  My own opinion just now is that hydrogen electric is a more seemless transition from petrol.  Given that fossil fuel's life is finite, you'd think that oil companies would be driving a switch to hydrogen as at least some of the refuelling infrastructure is already there and they own it.  Yet in this country, the number of hydrogen refuelling stations can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and you'll have some change.

 

Wierd.... 

 

 

Cheers,

Michael

[Martinnfb]

To lighten matters up a little

[D.B. Andrus]

3 minutes ago, Martinnfb said:

To lighten matters up a little

 Two electrically operated Webers....very contemporary. About as close to an EV as I'd get.

[LSP_Mike]

I know I get a charge out of it.

[Lee White]

28 minutes ago, Martinnfb said:

To lighten matters up a little

In my dreams, when I buy my Volvo Amazon, the engine is going to look like that.

[LSP_Ray]

Here is a blurb on Toyota's take on hydrogen engines: Toyota's Upcoming Hydrogen-Powered 5.0 V-8 Engine Has The Potential To Bury EVs (topspeed.com)

[LSP_Ron]

Toyota is on the right path…

[europapete]

Thank you Michael, your posts are eloquently put, informative, and accurate. 

Personally I will pass on EV's, they don't fit in to what I need a vehicle to do for me.  Also the infrascructure around here in the US (New England area in general) just is not available yet. Charging stations are few and far between once you get out of the cities. 

As for being "green", I suggest you re-read Michaels first post. EV's are horrendously bad for the planet to build. 

Regards, Pete.

[denders]

I have to agree with Pete, they don't fit what I need in a vehicle. The closest is some sort of chargeable hybrid. In our Christmas travels, our son who has a chargeable hybrid was disappointed that the vrbo place we rented together didn't even have an outside 110V outlet to plug into to charge. And there weren't any charging stations close.

[rigor]

Buy the time they have a good battery for theses cars I'll be dead so gas for ever 

[dennismcc]

The other problem I have with EV's is battery degradation over the years, would you trust a second or third hand EV, I would be very dubiuous.

As to hydrogen I have worked with hydrogen for nearly 40 years on oil refineries and commisioned a new HMU at my last refinery.

Hydrogen has to be treated with respect it is dangerous, hydrogen atoms are small and will leak through metal walls in pipe lines, also the metal walls can become brittle.

The explosive range for hydrogen is very wide, the lower explosive limit (LEL) for H2 is 4% in air and the upper limit (UEL) is 77%, for petrol (gasoline) the figures are 1.4 to 7.6% quite a difference.

 

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[chrish]

On 1/22/2024 at 5:50 PM, Martinnfb said:

To lighten matters up a little

 

Looks like an old ford engine but the brake booster is on the wrong side…well wrong side for me.

possibly a British thing?

 

as for vehicle software being kept track of, (ratting on its driver) most modern vehicles that I’m aware of, have the capability of doing this. I remember taking a GM course on the Tech II when it came out having the ability to not only read codes, diagnose and communicate bi directionally with the cars on board computer but read vehicle history files “incidents” from the first occurrence to present day, this was back in the 90’s the software could even tell us how many times a trouble code has set and been cleared, maximum rpm, what road speed was, what wheel speed was etc. similar I think to aviation FDR info.

Chrysler had/ has a similar thing up to when I left the industry in early 2014….Ford? Couldn’t keep ‘em running long enough to have a problem, “check engine” light was to tell the operator the engine was running….

Edited January 24 by chrish