Electric Vehicle: Will you buy one

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › Electric Vehicle: Will you buy one - if not why not?

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#1825018 19-Jul-2017 10:32

kryptonjohn:

There's a few other factors to take into account. If most EV users charge overnight every night, they would not make use of public charging facilities as often as they would make use of petrol stations. Many people could go for months without using a public charger. The public EV stations would tend to be used by those on long journeys, or forgot to charge overnight etc?

It's hard to predict the usage pattern.

I agree that daily commute demand should largely disappear. People will justs charge at home or wherever they can in the course of their daily routines.

I wasn't very clear but I was specifically thinking about highway service centres\, where there is a sizeable volume of traffic that has to stop and top up. For example perhaps the Z and BK in Turangi - a logical stopping point for Aucklanders heading south or Wellingtonians heading north. Or any service station in Picton, they get very busy just before ferry check in times (on-board charging would resolve that). Or whatever is built on SH65 so EVs can get from Nelson to ChCh.

Mike

frankv

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#1825099 19-Jul-2017 12:24

MikeAqua:

Consider a service station with 10 pumps - it's built around a ~3 minute fill time, after which people move their car to a parking space if they want to stop for longer.

Change the 3 minute fill time to a 30 minute charge time. Now you need many more delivery points (?50 -100?) to serve the same number of vehicles per day.

There's plenty of queuing theory to figure out how many chargers you need for a specified customer arrival rate and expected wait time. The problem is dealing with demand peaks (e.g. Friday & Monday nights on Queens Birthday weekend, or a big sports event). You need a lot of capacity to cater for that peak, which then sits idle for the rest of the year, so price at those locations is very high. Or you have horrendous wait times.

An entrepreneur might rent out battery trailers which would extend the car's range. So, driving Wellington to Auckland you would drive to Bulls on your car battery, then hire a 50kWh trailer which you would tow to Taihape whilst recharging your 30kWh car battery. Drive to Turangi for another battery trailer to Taupo. Rinse and repeat until you get to Auckland. Or you might hire a 100kWh trailer to take all the way from Bulls to Pokeno. On the return trip, you pick the (fully recharged) trailer up at Pokeno and drop it off at Bulls again.

tripper1000

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#1825258 19-Jul-2017 14:34

frednz:

There are some people who think that building a huge network of charging stations is quite impractical and simply not going to be useful into the future! See this article for instance, which sees quite a different future for recharging EVs and which would make current charging methods and equipment irrelevant and a very costly loss for those who have invested in it:

Designing and building enough of these recharging stations requires massive infrastructure development, which means the energy distribution and storage system is being rebuilt at tremendous cost to accommodate the need for continual local battery recharge,” said Eric Nauman, co-founder of Ifbattery and a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, basic medical sciences and biomedical engineering. “Ifbattery is developing an energy storage system that would enable drivers to fill up their electric or hybrid vehicles with fluid electrolytes to re-energize spent battery fluids much like refueling their gas tanks.”....

Mike Mueterthies, Purdue doctoral teaching and research assistant in physics and the third co-founder of Ifbattery, said the flow battery system makes the Ifbattery system unique.

“Other flow batteries exist, but we are the first to remove membranes which reduces costs and extends battery life,” Mueterthies said.

So, it may be too early in the development of EVs for companies to plan their long-term future and investment strategy around current battery charging technologies.

TBH that increase in infrastructure is another line of fud spread to the masses about EV.

Here is an interview with the big cheese at the national grid management centre in the UK, and while not 100% applicable to NZ, we experiences the same peaks and troughs in power demand. The up-shot, if you don't have time to watch the video, is that the effect of EV's on the power distribution network is expected to be small overall and after doing the maths, it barely features on their radars.

Edit: spelling.

MarkH67

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#1825273 19-Jul-2017 14:40

MikeAqua:Consider a service station with 10 pumps - it's built around a ~3 minute fill time, after which people move their car to a parking space if they want to stop for longer.

Change the 3 minute fill time to a 30 minute charge time. Now you need many more delivery points (?50 -100?) to serve the same number of vehicles per day. So you lose the forecourt and pumps and you have a grid of charge points and car parks.

How many would they need? I suspect that they would serve less vehicles per day because so many people would charge at home. Maybe 10 would still be enough, maybe they would need 20? I think they would be likely to start with a few and if too many customers had to queue up then they would realise they need to add more.

My guess (and a guess is all that it could be from anyone) is that they would not need as many as 50.

Linuxluver

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#1825457 19-Jul-2017 19:44

frankv:

frednz:

Designing and building enough of these recharging stations requires massive infrastructure development, which means the energy distribution and storage system is being rebuilt at tremendous cost to accommodate the need for continual local battery recharge,” said Eric Nauman, co-founder of Ifbattery and a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, basic medical sciences and biomedical engineering.

I guess that large batteries such as PowerWall are required at car charging stations. Otherwise each charging station would need to download at megawatt rates to be able to charge a dozen cars at a time at 100KW rates.

This is exactly what Tesla Superchargers do: store power in on-site batteries to be delivered at rates the local grid can't support.

It's what those boxes next to the chargers are.....batteries.

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Linuxluver

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#1825458 19-Jul-2017 19:46

frankv:

Linuxluver:

When I was a kid in northern Ontario in Canada, the winters back then were bitterly cold and cars often could not start because the oil in the sump had become so thick and heavy due to the cold that you could not crank the engine. To avoid that, everyone had sump heaters installed in their cars. When the car wasn't running you'd plug it in and the sump heater would prevent the oil from being too cold.

You plugged your car in at home - whether house or apartment. You plugged your car in at the mall....and the mall parking lot had wooden frames with power points mounted on them for every single car park.

On a Saturday morning there would be literally hundreds of cars all plugged in at the mall......in 1968.

Right. But these were powering (I guess) 40W heaters. So total load for a 1000 cars would 40KW. For EV recharging, you need orders of magnitude more power supply, so much larger infrastructure.

No. These would be "destination chargers"....and would supply power at maybe 8amp (2kw) or 10amp (2.4kw). Normal old house power points. You're there an hour? You get an 8% boost. Nice. Probably more than the power it took you to drive there.

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Linuxluver

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#1825461 19-Jul-2017 19:52

MikeAqua:

Building charging facilities for EVs will be less drama than building petrol stations, but it's still not trivial.

I do think the charging station logistics will be interesting for service centres though.

Currently, EV aficionados seem to be people who are about the journey. Happy to divert off-highway to fill up at a cafe, mall etc. When EVs go mainstream, charging infrastructure has to cater for what most people do on longer trips, which is use a service station on the main road, preferably one on the left.

Consider a service station with 10 pumps - it's built around a ~3 minute fill time, after which people move their car to a parking space if they want to stop for longer.

Change the 3 minute fill time to a 30 minute charge time. Now you need many more delivery points (?50 -100?) to serve the same number of vehicles per day. So you lose the forecourt and pumps and you have a grid of charge points and car parks.

It's not a trivial undertaking it's sizeable capex and opex. The total load if all the chargers are in use would be substantial. The land area is substantial (or you build up).

Now exclude that portion of vehicles that are local don't need to use the chargers because they charged at home. Hard to put firm numbers around that.....but I'd be willing to estimate 90% of EVs don't need to use a *local* fast charger other than very occasionally. The larger the battery, the lower the frequency.

There are about 2000 EVs in Auckland and barely more than a dozen fast chargers. Congestion is minimal.....and mainly aruond the free chargers in Newmarket, Hobson St and Greenlane. The ones you pay for are *always* empty when I go to them......and the free ones are available 80% of the time, at least....if not more.

So imagine an EV with 400km range. As a city car, it would only need to charge once a week at most....and it would be charged at home almost entirely, simply because home power is the cheapest.

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frednz

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#1825497 19-Jul-2017 20:39

Linuxluver:

MikeAqua:

Building charging facilities for EVs will be less drama than building petrol stations, but it's still not trivial.

I do think the charging station logistics will be interesting for service centres though.

Currently, EV aficionados seem to be people who are about the journey. Happy to divert off-highway to fill up at a cafe, mall etc. When EVs go mainstream, charging infrastructure has to cater for what most people do on longer trips, which is use a service station on the main road, preferably one on the left.

Consider a service station with 10 pumps - it's built around a ~3 minute fill time, after which people move their car to a parking space if they want to stop for longer.

Change the 3 minute fill time to a 30 minute charge time. Now you need many more delivery points (?50 -100?) to serve the same number of vehicles per day. So you lose the forecourt and pumps and you have a grid of charge points and car parks.

It's not a trivial undertaking it's sizeable capex and opex. The total load if all the chargers are in use would be substantial. The land area is substantial (or you build up).

Now exclude that portion of vehicles that are local don't need to use the chargers because they charged at home. Hard to put firm numbers around that.....but I'd be willing to estimate 90% of EVs don't need to use a *local* fast charger other than very occasionally. The larger the battery, the lower the frequency.

There are about 2000 EVs in Auckland and barely more than a dozen fast chargers. Congestion is minimal.....and mainly aruond the free chargers in Newmarket, Hobson St and Greenlane. The ones you pay for are *always* empty when I go to them......and the free ones are available 80% of the time, at least....if not more.

So imagine an EV with 400km range. As a city car, it would only need to charge once a week at most....and it would be charged at home almost entirely, simply because home power is the cheapest.

I think it's necessary to try and think ahead to the time where a large proportion of vehicles in NZ might be EVs.

So, we now have nearly 4,000 EVs in NZ, which includes about 1,000 plug-in hybrids.

Compare this with the total vehicle population in NZ which is around 4,000,000.

That means only about 1 vehicle in 1,000 is an EV (one-tenth of 1%)!

So, how many EVs will need to be charged up in NZ in say 20 years?

Now consider the infrastructure that will be needed to support a very large number of EVs instead of just 4,000 as at present.

Is anybody thinking ahead like this instead of just saying that all is well with our tiny EV population at present?

dickytim

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#1825602 20-Jul-2017 06:57

WyleECoyoteNZ:

Linuxluver:

frankv:

Rikkitic:

Although I haven't heard the term used for awhile, Americans used to speak of 'instant gratification' as a symptom of the self-obsessed 'me' generation. The idea is that people want something and they want it now with no conditions or restrictions. I think of this when I imagine the ubiquitous young male hopping into his V8 and turning the key. The problem (if it is one) with electric vehicles is not limited range or slow charging. It is that this style of driving requires change on the part of the drivers. People need to think about things they didn't have to before, or think about them differently. For many that is too much ask. They want to just flip a switch and go, preferably with lots of smoke and noise. When people get used to a different way of doing things, a lot of the objections will disappear.

I'm not a millenial and don't think I'm into instant gratification or self-obsessed. But I do think that it is progress to be able to do more of what I want when I want. So, if I can jump in a car today and turn the key and drive to Auckland, then it will be a bad thing if I can't do that next year. When CDs came out, people continued to use cassettes until writable CDs came out. CDs have been replaced by USB sticks and phone memory and Spotify only because they provide all the essential functionality (listen to what music you like, when you like, where you like, at an acceptable price) that CDs and cassettes had.

When EVs provide *more* convenience and capability and economy than ICEVs, people in general will move to them. Until then, it will only be enthusiasts and early adopters.

The other factor is when people become aware of it.

In a way, that's why I started these threads.....to allow me and others to share waht we know about this with people who don't yet know.

Convenience? I charge at home and never go to a petrol station.

Capability? I've driven the length of NZ twice and there were no issues that disturbed me. Nothing broke. The ride was smooth and quiet. I did have to stop to charge, but I knew that and it wasn't a problem for me. I was ready for it......because:

Cost? I don't buy any petrol. Electricity is much cheaper. Hands down. No question. I spend as close to zero on repairs and servicing as one could ever hope for. My EV cost about the same as a similar class of 4-door sedan bought brand new.....probably even less.

So my EV wins on all counts - for me - for convenience and cost. Capability is in the eye of the beholder. For me, not burning fossil fuels is a critical element in the set of capabilities I require. No normal car can do that at all.

My point here is that this is all in the eye of the beholder. It's not attractive to you. That is fine. But it is very attractive to many other people.....and by discussing these issues like this in some detail, over time, more people will be able to decide if they want to save money on a smooth, powerful ride that frees them from fossil fuels......at the price of spending a few minutes charging along the way and a few dollars more to buy in (which repays itself quickly enough).

Thanks for taking the time. :-)

Cost is lower at moment while demand is low.

There is nothing to stop PowerCo in Waiouru for example charging the same to recharge your EV as it costs to fill a similar class of 4 door car in the future. Supply and Demand.

And in theory, this supply and demand could result in increased household costs for all, regardless of if you drive an EV or not, as the use and home charging (therefore demand) becomes more common place.

I agree, at some point EV users MUST pay their way as far as RUC or similar is concerned. This will then start to change the dynamic somewhat. I think at some point when it is economically and practical for me I will own an EV, this does seem the way things are going and with recent changes in my life this is a real option, like I said earlier the car has the be one I WANT to drive, currently I haven't seen this yet.

I want to drive a CX-5, I want to pay < $60,000 for a brand new one, I want it to cost $2,000 a year to run. So if a EV costs 65,000 then $1,000 a year to run...

I haven't seen that value yet.

MarkH67

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#1839590 5-Aug-2017 18:50

I find it very interesting the different attitudes towards EVs.

Some like me are total fanboys and will buy an electric car knowing the drawbacks and limitations but consider it worth it to be kinder to the environment and have lower operating costs.

Some are in the middle, not opposed to the idea but need to be sure the car will handle their needs OK before going with an EV. Some of these people wont buy an EV today but might in five years when there are many improvements in the cars and reductions in the price.

The ones I feel sorry for are the third group, those that are adamant they will never go to electric cars because noisy fossil fuel powered cars are what they know and like. These people are going to become unhappy because EVs are coming and they WILL be the future of transport.

Yesterday I saw a Leaf driving in front of me and it pulled into a carpark, so I parked up and wandered over to have a quick chat to the driver. She had only bought the car a week ago, she said she just couldn't stand the idea of buying a petrol car. I suspect that many environment lovers will look to electric when they come to replace their current car, over the next couple of years there will be a huge increase in the number of choices of EVs.

I think that there will eventually need to be some RUC for EVs, maybe a new category for the EVs so they pay towards the cost of roads but at a cheaper price than what diesel cars cost. I think this would be fair because over and above the benefit to the environment there is a benefit to the country to have people using domestically produced electricity instead of imported petroleum.

Linuxluver

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#1839623 5-Aug-2017 21:17

MarkH67:

I find it very interesting the different attitudes towards EVs.

Some like me are total fanboys and will buy an electric car knowing the drawbacks and limitations but consider it worth it to be kinder to the environment and have lower operating costs.

Some are in the middle, not opposed to the idea but need to be sure the car will handle their needs OK before going with an EV. Some of these people wont buy an EV today but might in five years when there are many improvements in the cars and reductions in the price.

The ones I feel sorry for are the third group, those that are adamant they will never go to electric cars because noisy fossil fuel powered cars are what they know and like. These people are going to become unhappy because EVs are coming and they WILL be the future of transport.

Yesterday I saw a Leaf driving in front of me and it pulled into a carpark, so I parked up and wandered over to have a quick chat to the driver. She had only bought the car a week ago, she said she just couldn't stand the idea of buying a petrol car. I suspect that many environment lovers will look to electric when they come to replace their current car, over the next couple of years there will be a huge increase in the number of choices of EVs.

I think that there will eventually need to be some RUC for EVs, maybe a new category for the EVs so they pay towards the cost of roads but at a cheaper price than what diesel cars cost. I think this would be fair because over and above the benefit to the environment there is a benefit to the country to have people using domestically produced electricity instead of imported petroleum.

I agree. Its coming...and a lot of people are clicking to the fact they are cheap to run, quiet, need less servicing...and have zero emissions.

As for RUC.....it should be the same for all light vehicles, but petrol and diesel vehicles should pay a carbon tax. The funds raised could / should be used to provide incentives to move to EVs.

The day NZ unhooks itself from the need for expensive foreign oil and instead uses local electricity will be great for our balance of trade and the economy generally.

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MarkH67

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#1839627 5-Aug-2017 21:30

Linuxluver:

As for RUC.....it should be the same for all light vehicles, but petrol and diesel vehicles should pay a carbon tax. The funds raised could / should be used to provide incentives to move to EVs.

That sounds sensible, so it probably wont be how the government does it!

I suspect they will just have an EV category for RUC and charge half as much as for a diesel RUC. My reasoning is that the government departments seem to aim less for 'fair' and more for 'easy to administer'. Having a cheaper RUC and a separate carbon tax would be more complicated. Mind you, they could just add a carbon tax to the fuel and making fuel more expensive would help promote the switch to EVs - I am not sure this would happen because it would be unpopular. In many ways just letting EVs have cheaper RUC would appeal to the government because it wouldn't be an unpopular move - I'm not seeing widespread protests over the current RUC exemption for EVs.

Linuxluver

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#1839658 5-Aug-2017 23:20

MarkH67:

Linuxluver:

As for RUC.....it should be the same for all light vehicles, but petrol and diesel vehicles should pay a carbon tax. The funds raised could / should be used to provide incentives to move to EVs.

That sounds sensible, so it probably wont be how the government does it!

I suspect they will just have an EV category for RUC and charge half as much as for a diesel RUC. My reasoning is that the government departments seem to aim less for 'fair' and more for 'easy to administer'. Having a cheaper RUC and a separate carbon tax would be more complicated. Mind you, they could just add a carbon tax to the fuel and making fuel more expensive would help promote the switch to EVs - I am not sure this would happen because it would be unpopular. In many ways just letting EVs have cheaper RUC would appeal to the government because it wouldn't be an unpopular move - I'm not seeing widespread protests over the current RUC exemption for EVs.

You're probably right. :-)

I'd only observe that the carbon tax would be unpopular because this government has done so little to raise awareness about climate change and the NEED to change the way we do things.

People will do tings if they know they need to. That climate change isn't an issue in this election for National Party voters tells me all I need to know about this government's priorities....and they feel no need to inform anyone that things should be different.

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BlinkyBill

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#1839686 6-Aug-2017 01:45

MarkH67:
The ones I feel sorry for are the third group, those that are adamant they will never go to electric cars because noisy fossil fuel powered cars are what they know and like. These people are going to become unhappy because EVs are coming and they WILL be the future of transport.

What about the fourth group - those who simply don't care either way?

The fourth group is, imho, easily the biggest group.

Aredwood

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#1839688 6-Aug-2017 02:01

tripper1000:

TBH that increase in infrastructure is another line of fud spread to the masses about EV.

Here is an interview with the big cheese at the national grid management centre in the UK, and while not 100% applicable to NZ, we experiences the same peaks and troughs in power demand. The up-shot, if you don't have time to watch the video, is that the effect of EV's on the power distribution network is expected to be small overall and after doing the maths, it barely features on their radars.

Edit: spelling.

Definitely not relevant to NZ. As GB has HVDC undersea linking it to mainland Europe. And there is lots of intercountry linking within Europe as well. Main benefit of this - the power network covers multiple timezones, which helps to smooth out the morning and evening peak loads. And it is mostly still fossil fuel and nuclear generation on a Europe wide basis. Fossil fuels and nuclear are both fully dispachable - you can pre plan how much power you want them to generate on a future date and time.

While in NZ - no undersea cables linking to foreign countries. Mostly renewable generation, which while is good for the enviroment. Is often affected by the weather or other constraints that limit it's output. Geothermal is the only renewable power that can operate in all weather conditions. While lake fed hydro and geothermal are the only fully dispachable renewable. At the other end of the scale - wind and solar vary so much in output that they are modelled as negative demand instead of generation in the NZ grid control systems.

As for mass uptake of EVs in NZ. It depends entirely around what happens with the laws around how power can be sold. Either way - the current model where most consumers pay a fixed price for power, no matter what time day or night. Has already failed in my opinion, and is very broken. Why? Simple - for almost everyone, fossil fuels are cheaper on a per kW/hr basis. Diesel, LPG, and Natural gas are all available for cheaper than electricity. And for lots of people, coal is also cheaper as well. This is on a per KW/Hr basis of heat produced by burning Vs cost. I have not considered efficiency losses in whatever uses the energy. Yet look at the wholesale market - the trading system considers wholesale prices of more than 15c+gst per unit high prices. And below 7.5c+gst per unit low prices. But most end consumers would consider 15c+gst a low unit price if they could buy power for that.

Problem is how the costs for transmission and distributing that power are paid for. Late at night when demand is low, adding extra demand then has virtually 0 cost. But during peak times, it has a very significant cost. There is 8760 hours in a year. But peak demand typically only occurs over 2 months of the year. Drill down further, and the peak demand could occur over as little as 50 hours in total per year, and can be less again. Now work out the economics of spending say $100 million, on say a new power station or transmission line, just to cover that 100 hours or so of peak demand. Terrible economics, But these costs have been averaged out over all power users just by charging everyone a higher per KW/Hr rate. Consumers have responded by mostly reducing baseload consumption. Things like more efficient appliances are part of that. But what alot of people ignore (and politicians are the worst) is that alot of home energy demand has shifted from electricity to fossil fuels. And most of that is hot water heating. Yet electric hot water is perfect for use with load control systems.

The system has to change both to help the enviroment, and to give cheaper prices to everyone. Prices need to encourage people to reduce peak demand. Not to encourage them to reduce baseload demand. If EV charging adds to peak demand, which today it already is. As when you arrive home or at work and plug in your EV, it will initially draw power at the max that the charging and power supply system will support. Therefore adding to peak demand. And public charging station use im guessing is used the most during peak driving times. Which are close to peak electricity demand times.

At the very least everyone needs to go onto time of use electricity plans. And in some cases capacity based charging plans. But it is too important not to happen. The enviroment will win, low income households will be able to use cheap to buy and maintain plug in electric heaters to stay warm cheaply. And EV owners will have much cheaper at home charging costs.

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