It seems the proponents of of battery-powered electric cars are as uspet as I am at Brian Milligan's electric road trip up the UK.
They seem not to like Mr Milligan's apparent bias in not promoting electric vehicles and have challenged him to a race.
Yes, the nice chaps at Tesla have decided that they'll show Brian that you can drive their car from London to Edinburgh in one day. Hurrah! The world is saved, battery-powered electric vehicles are back on track and the saviour of the world again... Well... Not quite. You see, Brian Milligan is driving North in an electric Mini, the sort of car normal people can afford, whereas a Tesla is the best part of 100K. So not an even race then. Do I sense bias from the EV people too?
Not only does the Tesla cost a LOT of money, listen to the video on at the link above and you hear talk of fast charging points. Well, fast they may be, but they're at or beyond the limit of household mains supplies. A single phase 240v domestic mains supply is rated at 100 Amps max: thats the maximum the feed from the grid to your house is rated at. So when someone glibly talks about a 70 Amp fast charger, hopefully you understand how unlikely a normal house would be to have one. Especially when you realise when you come home from work of an evening, plug in your Tesla for charging, turn on your TV, put the kettle on for a brew and the electric cooker on for a bit of tea you risk blowing the 100 Amp safety cut-out fuse the electricity company put in the supply to your house.
Usually that sort of current drain is reserved for 3-phase industrial/business supplies, so not only is the Tesla beyond average wallets, so the charging rate they're using to fast charge is beyond most households.
I'm still convinced battery power is a dead end. How do people in terraced housing charge their cars: run a lead across the pavement for people to trip over? Maybe you have an unsightly gantry running over the pavement (I'm sure council planners would hate that) which allows the charging lead to drop to your car: but there's no guarantee with on-street parking that you can park up outside your house every night. What do you do if you can't? You could have charging points for every car in the street, at huge expense.
Don't get me wrong, I want electric vehicles to succeed, but I also don't want to be catapulted back a century. I want a vehicle that can take me on the short range journeys to work, but at a moment's notice can take me on as long a trip as I need, without having to factor in recharging times along the way.
Nope, hydrogen is the future and no-one can persuade me otherwise.
Any ideas, Sherlock?
-
There’s a cartoon meme with two charts on the wall listing the spike in
crime and the spike in something else … an observer then asks Holmes the
titular qu...
5 hours ago