Is the Diesel dead for autos?

Matts- Jag and BMW have released Tesla competitors. I haven't chased down the specs. 

Here's the results from a totally unbiased Pommy rag

The majority of electric models arriving in the next couple of years are promising between 250 and 310 miles of range on one charge. Those include Volkswagen’s ID hatchback, Mercedes’ EQ C SUV and the Audi E-tron. But away from the mainstream, there are some bolder claims. The Fisker Emotion, designed by Henrik Fisker of BMW Z8 fame and on sale next year, should get a 400-plus-mile range, while the Faraday Future FF-91, also due in 2019, is claimed to offer 435 miles.

That was Musk's original stated goal wasn't it? The whole (partially, admittedly) open sourcing of their patentable tech was done with exactly that in mind. Volvo gave away the 3-point belt I think, and it was absolutely the correct move.  Open source technology is a promising and revolutionary direction for transport to go in.

I doubt the Jag is in the price range of the Model S. Why did they not compare to Model X? personally not a fan of that car.. but probably a better comparison. Quality is still Teslas number one challenge.

Suggestion, sit down at a pub and watch the cars go by. Watch how the light is reflected over the car and the panel gaps.. the Teslas are the worst. That does not mean they can not be quality as in long lasting and durable on the road. Panel gaps are merely a part of the design, but it does make you wonder.

Edited by MatsNorway, 19 October 2018 - 21:18.

Personally I think journalists emphasis on panel gaps is just fake tech talk- its one of the few things they can measure or estimate objectively.

I worked on one car where the choice was bad panel gaps on the hood/front fender, or bad static alignment. So we'd raise a stink, get them to sort the alignment out, then a few weeks later the plant manager would get them to reset the jigs the other way to bring his bloody panel gaps under control. Sod the dynamics and tire wear.

Personally I think journalists emphasis on panel gaps is just fake tech talk- its one of the few things they can measure or estimate objectively.

 

I worked on one car where the choice was bad panel gaps on the hood/front fender, or bad static alignment. So we'd raise a stink, get them to sort the alignment out, then a few weeks later the plant manager would get them to reset the jigs the other way to bring his bloody panel gaps under control. Sod the dynamics and tire wear.

Sure, easy metric for the suits, too. 

thing is, average joe will not know a perfectly tracking car from a pile of junk, but they will see a bad panel gap every time. Just ask any of your non car nut friends how many times did they take the car for alignment in 80000 miles..

Sure, it isn't a showroom problem.

Is compromise between panel gaps and static alignment inevitable?  Which is to say, you can't have both engineered in, that nobody has done such a thing? 

I'm sure that all manufacturers get it right on the drawing board! Cars like the VW Golf will succeed in practice. Problems occur when tools and jigs have worn a bit, even for the best designed vehicles. Some designs (e.g. trucks with ladder chassis) are inherently more flexible than desirable so the body is designed around this limitation. A good example is the Mitsubishi L200 (it's easy to find photos) which uses conveniently placed trim with varying degrees of success. 

Desmo, no not at all, people get it right all the time. I suspect it never made it up high enough on anyone's list of things to fund and fix.

Edited by Tenmantaylor, 18 October 2018 - 06:53.

I see interesting business in 10kW home chargers in the future...

I see a very big business in electricity grid sub-station plant to distribute power to places where it can't be generated on the spot...

The mains supply to my home is fairly typical for the UK, with an 80 amp fuse (about 13kW). Unless I'm using an electrical heater and every major appliance at the same time, I never get close to 13kW. We all have lots of low power appliances with the occasional big consumer like an electric kettle; we don't use electric heaters as much as in the past. Electric car recharging changes a lot of assumptions about how much power is consumed at home.

Is that 80 Amps for one phase or each phase with 80 Amps?

The house I live in has three phases with 25 Amps each. I couldn't hook up an electric vehicle for fast charge if I also wanted to do some cooking as well....

Personally I think journalists emphasis on panel gaps is just fake tech talk- its one of the few things they can measure or estimate objectively.
 
I worked on one car where the choice was bad panel gaps on the hood/front fender, or bad static alignment. So we'd raise a stink, get them to sort the alignment out, then a few weeks later the plant manager would get them to reset the jigs the other way to bring his bloody panel gaps under control. Sod the dynamics and tire wear.

https://newsroom.por...ture-16250.html

Whilst the British auto makers are still reeling from the fact their diesel investments are looking iffy

Who are these British auto makers of whom you speak?  As far as I know, Morgan have never made a diesel car.

Charlieman, the problem isn't you sucking up 13 kW. The problem is you and everyone in your street with a car doing the same at 10 pm. I don't know how the feed from the substation to a street is designed but I'll bet it's designed around an average load for that number of dwellings plus a bit.

I suspect you have hit the nail on the head Greg.  It's fine when there are only a few electric cars in the street, but when there is one in every second house ....

A household battery, charging from rooftop solar, and/or charging from the grid as//when power is available, would be the answer, the car taking the power from the battery rather than the grid directly.  In the context of a car's purchase price, a battery or two is minor expense, even a full solar installation would probably be a value proposition given its long life and other benefits.

However, a high-rise apartment block housing a significant number of electric cars may be a very different proposition.

I did a small calculation on the back of a envelope a few years ago about the idea of our whole country switching to EV for all personal vehicle use. We have about 3.5 million people and according to how many km our average car does, I got a number of about one extra nuclear powerplant, shall we say 700 to 800 MW, nedeed just to run the vehicle network, trucks excluded.

Money wise, it is not such a bad deal, would cut oil imports

However I think the charging network needs a re think. Current push is towards super fast 100 kW charging stations. I see it as a smart choice only for centralized charging points, such as those on a highway. We currently have about 830 petrol stations, and if you divide that 700 MW to 100 kW chargers you get about 7000 charging stations. Problem is, even at 30 minutes to 1 hr per charge we as users dont have time to charge the car, as the efficient usage would be for us to wait 1 hr or 30 min and take the car off the charger and leave it for someone else. What happens now is that people leave the car on the charger for hours and block its usage for other people.

The way I see it is that we need a massive upgrade of the distribution network so that each parking place would have a 10 kW charger, so that the cars could charge during the night. Smart distribution network could surely take care of load ballancing.

Is that 80 Amps for one phase or each phase with 80 Amps?

The house I live in has three phases with 25 Amps each. I couldn't hook up an electric vehicle for fast charge if I also wanted to do some cooking as well....

UK convention is to supply single phase 220/240V to domestic premises. An inline fuse is installed by the distribution company before the consumer unit (fuse box). The inline fuse rating is based on the number of rooms and expected max power consumption -- say 50A for a modest flat, 120A for a large family house. There are obvious exceptions for mansions or workshops.

Charlieman, the problem isn't you sucking up 13 kW. The problem is you and everyone in your street with a car doing the same at 10 pm. I don't know how the feed from the substation to a street is designed but I'll bet it's designed around an average load for that number of dwellings plus a bit.

I tend to agree. Some types of domestic power consumption have changed in the 70 years since my house was built (far less electrical heating) but there has been infill building on former recreational land.

Electric car charging is mostly a fixable problem -- we've discussed smart chargers here before on other threads -- but there isn't much public debate. Sufficient energy is probably available in most places for overnight topups or full charges, so long as demand is spread over time. At the moment, domestic electric car charging points are dumb installations. I am not aware of standards for charging points which communicate with the distribution network or provide scheduled charging. A smart charger with buttons marked "Topup for tomorrow" and "Full charge" isn't that difficult, is it? [Microsoft's BITS protocol for background file downloads is still a work in progress after 20 years; good things are rarely easy.]

kikiturbo2 makes a good point about the human factor: car owners hogging publicly available charging points. I'm not a fan of using technology to fix social behaviour, but I can imagine how it might be applied.

Charlieman, the problem isn't you sucking up 13 kW. The problem is you and everyone in your street with a car doing the same at 10 pm. I don't know how the feed from the substation to a street is designed but I'll bet it's designed around an average load for that number of dwellings plus a bit.

A battery bank as a buffer would even things out a bit.

A battery bank big enough to recharge a car would be 75% of the cost of the car(according to Jaguar). Might as well have one car for Mondays and one for tuesdays!

A battery bank big enough to recharge a car would be 75% of the cost of the car(according to Jaguar).

Are Jag saying that the battery in the car is 75% of the cost of the car? Is there a 1:1 concordance between the two (capacity and characteristics)?

Assuming you did not want a 100% charge 100% of the time, what would an 'average' home charge look like - 20%? - 40%? - 60%? What would that be in kwh - 20? 30?

Seems to me that the commute/shopping/school run would not be a major drain, and home charging to cater for this would be relatively do-able.  Doing a 100kwh recharge would obviously be a much bigger ask, but by comparison less frequent.

A battery bank big enough to recharge a car would be 75% of the cost of the car(according to Jaguar). Might as well have one car for Mondays and one for tuesdays!

Wow! that is insane if true. Could you get away with say 50% tho? doing the rest over a longer period of time if completely empty and quick refill otherwise as it is probably rarely completely emty.

This also makes me wonder when hydrogen becomes a thing.

Edited by MatsNorway, 20 October 2018 - 20:44.

The quote was with respect to the IPACE, you are getting  a $25000  car fitted with a $50000 battery. But I suspect exaggeration may have been involved, given the beer involved. According to the communists at https://www.ucsusa.o...-materials-cost the Bolt's battery is $205 per kWh, which seems a lot more sensible. If that is accurate then it makes a Tesla Powerwall look like a ripoff.

The more I look at the Chevy Bolt, it seems the more clever it looks, at least by the ephemeral standards of the moment. I wouldn't look to buy a new car in a million years, but if I did, I'd give the Bolt a hard look.

Yes, GM have done an 'interesting' job with the Volt- it's actually the powertrain I could justify buying, but I am an edge case, and the Bolt is easily the best of the cheaper EVs. GM has never been shy of innovating, it's their blandmobiles that let them down. To be honest I always thought the Volt was a pretty bad idea  (see the archives of the wiki article's talk page), as it is intrinsically a very heavy and expensive way of saving a gallon of fuel a day. But it is an interesting alternative to the Prius architecture -I suspect there was a lot of NIH involved in the system selection, plus T and F have the Prius architecture patented up the wazoo.

There is a shop here in Detroit (several actually) that specialize in sorting out the panel gaps and paint finish on your brand new vehicles so they will look presentable on the floor at the international auto shows. The cost varies from $20,000 to $40,000 USD per vehicle. 

Then the executives from the other car companies can walk around your products with their gauges and so on and be suitably impressed. This is the sort of attention to detail that creates leaders in the global auto industry.  

To me, the reputation of a car starts to solidify after I have owned it for at least fifteen years and driven it at least 300,000 km.

There is a shop here in Detroit (several actually) that specialize in sorting out the panel gaps and paint finish on your brand new vehicles so they will look presentable on the floor at the international auto shows. The cost varies from $20,000 to $40,000 USD per vehicle. 

 

Then the executives from the other car companies can walk around your products with their gauges and so on and be suitably impressed. This is the sort of attention to detail that creates leaders in the global auto industry.  

reminds me of special prep all press vehicles go trough..

I saw an article on You Tube with some Ford engineers saying the mechanical side of a Tesla is good but the body overweight and time consuming to build. And their profit margin is too low. So really not a viable car with major retooling and jigging.

And ofcourse where do you buy a can of electricity.

. Though nunga nungas too are a problem when they run out of fuel. Modern generally better but never ideal.

I think that the idea of 2+ tonne EV with 100 kWh+ battery pack is just wrong on all fronts...

Nunga is a term of self-reference for many of the Aboriginal peoples of southern South Australia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunga

http://georgianicolson.wikia.com/wiki/Nunga-nungas

Edited by malbear, 27 October 2018 - 20:15.

I think that the idea of 2+ tonne EV with 100 kWh+ battery pack is just wrong on all fronts...

Tesla S is 10% heavier than that. It's not good, but bear in mind cars have got a lot heavier in general in the last 30 years, primarily so you won't smudge your lipstick when you bang into the car in front (and other things).

As I remember it EA Falcon was 1418 kg in 1990 (slightly more than an Esprit) with 186 hp (slightly less than an Esprit). 26 years later BF was 1690 kg. Of course the list of heavy things that have been added as standard equipment in that timeframe is quite long. Actually Esprit is a pretty good example as well, a Series 1 could reputedly come in as low as 900kg (I'd like to see that). The X180 body was quite a bit heavier I think as it was a lot thicker where it mattered (over the front wheelarches for a start), and of course had the structure for airbags, bigger wheels, bigger tires, bigger discs and I dare say it passed some sort of crash test. Weight walks are always frightening things, whether on production cars or race cars.

Oh, and talking of heavy things full of batteries, when the original World Solar Challenge was being set up the rules were in a state of flux. A reasonably late addition was to limit the battery size, as somebody had worked out that a Transit van full of silver zinc batteries (I guess) would win, even if it didn't have any solar panels on it. Silver zincs have about the same performance as a modern LiPoly, but they only work 10 times. That's where the  5 kWh battery limit came from. GM won using a 2.2 kWh battery, a curious choice.

Edited by Greg Locock, 27 October 2018 - 22:57.

Walking along the pavement (sidewalk) in Leatherhead, Surrey today, I came across a Tesla Model S parked at the roadside, with a heavy duty charging cable attached and running across the pavement and over the garden wall to a power point.  They had put one of those yellow folding 'Trip Hazard' warning boards over it.  This will presumably become the norm, at least until someone trips over the cable and raises a stink. Then it will of course be banned by the local council and then where will the Tesla owner do his recharging?  In this case, there was no off road parking, as is of course the case for very many people especially in city centres.  You can't run a cable down from your 5th floor flat.  I can't see how this is going to work - there will never be enough public charge points to accommodate all those unable to recharge at home.

I think that the idea of 2+ tonne EV with 100 kWh+ battery pack is just wrong on all fronts...

Are you kidding? Lighter than a Mercedes S class despite the 700 kg battery pack.

I can't see how this is going to work - there will never be enough public charge points to accommodate all those unable to recharge at home.

Really? Have you NO imagination!

Tesla S is 10% heavier than that. It's not good, but bear in mind cars have got a lot heavier in general in the last 30 years, primarily so you won't smudge your lipstick when you bang into the car in front (and other things).

 

As I remember it EA Falcon was 1418 kg in 1990 (slightly more than an Esprit) with 186 hp (slightly less than an Esprit). 26 years later BF was 1690 kg. Of course the list of heavy things that have been added as standard equipment in that timeframe is quite long. Actually Esprit is a pretty good example as well, a Series 1 could reputedly come in as low as 900kg (I'd like to see that). The X180 body was quite a bit heavier I think as it was a lot thicker where it mattered (over the front wheelarches for a start), and of course had the structure for airbags, bigger wheels, bigger tires, bigger discs and I dare say it passed some sort of crash test. Weight walks are always frightening things, whether on production cars or race cars.

 

Oh, and talking of heavy things full of batteries, when the original World Solar Challenge was being set up the rules were in a state of flux. A reasonably late addition was to limit the battery size, as somebody had worked out that a Transit van full of silver zinc batteries (I guess) would win, even if it didn't have any solar panels on it. Silver zincs have about the same performance as a modern LiPoly, but they only work 10 times. That's where the  5 kWh battery limit came from. GM won using a 2.2 kWh battery, a curious choice.

Are you kidding? Lighter than a Mercedes S class despite the 700 kg battery pack.

My point is not related only to EV's. In order to preserve the liberty of personal transport we, as a society, need to limit our consumption. Daily driving a 2 tonne+ SUV with a single driver on board, regardless of motive power, is just disrespectfull.

When you take that philosophy to EV's it just compounds the problem. What Tesla did was just give in to the market and produce the same type of overweight benemoth that people actually want and make it look green by giving it electric power. This means that your future average EV will have double the battery capacity, double the weight, take 2x time to charge and put double load on the electric infrastructure than a car that could do everything  it can with much less resources....

What Tesla did was just give in to the market and produce the same type of overweight benemoth that people actually want ...

... and of course, you would build a car that nobody wants?

One point to bear in mind is that if you have regenerative braking then your sensitivity to mass in energy consumption terms is reduced by something like 50%. That's a bit of a tricky one to work out, and I can't remember where I read it, and it may have been based on sims rather than testing. 

Nunga is a term of self-reference for many of the Aboriginal peoples of southern South Australia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nunga
 
http://georgianicolson.wikia.com/wiki/Nunga-nungas
 
 

in:
Slang, Georgia's glossary

Nunga-nungas

 

EDIT

 


 SHARE



 

Slang term created by Ellen's brother. In It's OK, I'm Wearing Really Big Knickers, Ellen says her brother calls breasts "nunga-nungas" because when you pull on one and let it go it goes nunga-nunga-nunga.
In the film version of Angus, Thongs, and Perfect Snogging, Dave the Laugh comes up with the term.

One point to bear in mind is that if you have regenerative braking then your sensitivity to mass in energy consumption terms is reduced by something like 50%. That's a bit of a tricky one to work out, and I can't remember where I read it, and it may have been based on sims rather than testing. 

yes although that depends on the type of braking... take it easy and you are ok, but sudden braking is lost energy to a degree because the system can not recouperate with enough power

... and of course, you would build a car that nobody wants?

no, of course not, I am just saying that the vehicle that the majority wants is not  really good for the environment, and if the majority (in the west) was driving a subcompact everything would be more efficient... Or to put it differently, I dont see much "green" in a Tesla X...

Yet another piece of useless knowledge. 95% of real world braking is at 0.3g or less. We measured it by putting a data recorder in hundreds of customer cars.

Yet another piece of useless knowledge. 95% of real world braking is at 0.3g or less. We measured it by putting a data recorder in hundreds of customer cars.

That sounds low-- assuming you are any good at driving in traffic. The worse the driver, the more brakes they use.

0.3 g is a moderate stop. Most people would be surprised at what 0.3 g feels like.