EVs šŸ”Œ

I believe that self driving cars will be the primary way we will see growth in electric car use. Specifically self driving fleets where usage is similar to Uber. For a lot of people it will be more convenient than owning the car as you donā€™t have to worry about parking and maintenance.

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I think a good step in this direction is

https://citymapper.com/smartbus

If youā€™re in London and interested in trying out EVs, three car clubs offer EVs on per minute or per hour. Zipcar, ecar club and Drive Now.

https://ecarclub.co.uk has all electric fleet Zipcar and Drive now are mixed.

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Can you just charge an electric car from your mains at home? If so how long does it take?

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Yes

Depends on the capacity of the car/battery, but it is usually assumed to be slow-charging unless you have the special charging stations installed at home (fast-chargers) so you are probably looking in the 6-7h e.g. overnight range.

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My ideal plan would be solar panels, a Tesla battery or 2 (or equivalent) and a Model 3 (or equivalent EV). But then you are looking at Ā£15-20k plus the car.

Should reduce/remove reliance on the grid though. Which for me is what the gov should be subsidising more to alleviate grid pressures.

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Is it feasible to have one battery charging at home while the other one is in the car? Are they fairly easy to swap over?

Iā€™m living in the city at the moment, havenā€™t had need for a car in a while. Iā€™ve just been hiring one when needed. Looking to move a bit more rural soon though so looking at my options :slight_smile:

If the Model 3 is widely available by the time I trade in my current car, then Iā€™ll be getting one of them. I did reserve a Model 3, but the delay and the withdrawal of initial offers (free Supercharger access etc) kinda turned me off.

I think itā€™ll be the back end of 2019 before we start seeing them in the UK.

The Model S is a fantastic car, but just doesnā€™t look that nice in my opinion from the outside. The tech, and everything inside it is great though.

I can justify the extra cost in car, if the saving compared to fuel is good - ie charging at home is much cheaper. Iā€™d love to be able to replace the roof of my house with the Solar Tiles, and then charge the car from that - itā€™d be expensive up front, but would pay off in the long term, especially if I save all my fuel costs (~Ā£200/month)ā€¦ Itā€™d soon pay back!

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I believe it has been tried but theyā€™re just too big and heavy to change without mechanical assistance.
I personally think it would be quite a good option, instead of charging your battery during your trip you just stop at a service station and change the battery. Also no need to have a spare at home. Itā€™s just the infrastructure thatā€™s obviously missing and EV battery standardisation which would probably be impossible.

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It is being investigated if your car battery could be used to power your house just by plugging the car in for power cut/disaster situations. This sounds great to me.

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For this I think it was 10-15 minutes to swap the battery vs 30minutes to fast charge. But now we are looking at 300-350 range (5-7 hours driving time) on batteries I think you would welcome the 30 minute break. At that range I see no benefit to battery swaps except maybe for commercial use.

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Youā€™re quite right. I also expect battery tech to improve significantly so it really shouldnā€™t be an issue

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Agreed. I am keen to know if the new Tesla Roadster is already capable of the 500 mile range stated (proving developed tech) or if itā€™s aspirational figures expected from launch (2021-22)

500 miles!!
Iā€™ve not kept up with developments but if they keep moving at this speed by the time i get one Iā€™ll never have to charge it :joy:

Thatā€™s the thing, they didnā€™t confirm if they expect that by 2021-22 or if the Dev models they have built are capable now. I suspect itā€™s an aspirational target.

They are not, normally easily accessible, either. Although I seem to remember some time ago that Nissan proposed an idea where the battery would be leased, rather than owned, and while the user could charge the battery at home or roadside chargers if that was convenient, for longer journeys the driver would pull into a battery replacement facility (probably something like a Kwik-Fit) and have the discharged battery swapped for a full one.

It makes sense as long as there are not too many different shapes, sizes, and capacities of battery.

It was more Renault than Nissan, though they are pretty closely tied together through their partnership. So if it had worked out it clearly would have been taken up by Nissan. But as far as I know the test into battery swapping (with swap facilities across a country a bit like service stations) found that swapping is not the future. A quick search brings up this article from 2013 which goes into the details:

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Tesla actually made the S and possibly X battery accessible for a potential future battery swap service but look to have ended the r&d. The model 3 battery cannot be accessed so easily so appears to have sealed the fate of swapping them other than warranty/repair. At least for now.

Or maybe it is not a priority at the moment. Elon has promised that all of the models are under constant development and each year should get better and better - who knows, once theyā€™re off the lets clear up few million car orders backlog bandwagon they might concentrate on cool features like that.

Not being possible/economical in 2013 is not equal to not being possible in 2019.

You mean few hundred thousand (500,000).

Though I think range will outstrip the need for battery swaps by next year to be honest.