What will power our vehicles in the future?

Forums › Transport (cars, bikes and boats) › What will power our vehicles in the future?

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2123 posts

Uber Geek

#2750914 27-Jul-2021 20:11

Grunta47:

It all depends on your definition of speed/fast change. At the moment the EV timeline don't appear fast to me. With current uptake its still going to take 30 years for EV's to be the majority/vehicle of preference and this is only in countries where the Government has legislated and Joe public is on board.

If (and its a big IF) Hydrogen technology could be made to work, in either new or existing ICE vehicles, then you shut down a lot of the concerns of the ICE brigade.

I drove down a certain street for the first time last week and there were at least 30-40 cars parked on the side of the road, with another 10-20 parked in driveways. All throughout Wellington/Porirua there is major on-street parking and this is probably the biggest issue to address for EV's. Many houses will have 4 or 5 cars parked in their drive (I dont know what their situation is) so how do you manage charging all of these?

Hydrogen, or any other green fuel, would make it a lot easier for these people to transition away from ICE.....but that's all waiting for the big IF.

Many countries have deadlines of 2030ish for the end of ICE sales. Decisions like that by other countries, especially the UK and Japan, will have knock on effects for us here in New Zealand as a RHD country. In the next 10-15 years uptake is going to significantly and while the only stipulation for those countries is that new vehicles must be 0 emissions, without any hydrogen vehicles available they will be BEVs.

Street charging isn't impossible to solve, it just requires infrastructure. A few posts back I linked earlier to how the UK (who is far more dependant on street parking than we are) is looking to solve this, with charging via streetlights and charging poles that pop out of the ground as required.

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gzt

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#2750931 27-Jul-2021 21:30

Grunta47: I drove down a certain street for the first time last week and there were at least 30-40 cars parked on the side of the road, with another 10-20 parked in driveways. All throughout Wellington/Porirua there is major on-street parking and this is probably the biggest issue to address for EV's. Many houses will have 4 or 5 cars parked in their drive (I dont know what their situation is) so how do you manage charging all of these?

You're going to see a lot of extension cords, seriously. When that becomes a big enough problem you will see some action on this. Imo this issue is 10 years away.

Rikkitic

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#2750936 27-Jul-2021 21:42

Here is a crazy idea: What about overhead or underground power lines, like those used by trolley busses, that cars tap into when they enter the city? They get power and also recharge as they move around or park. When they leave the city, they revert to batteries.

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gzt

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#2750975 27-Jul-2021 23:04

Tricky for a vehicle the size of a car. Self extending poles and line finding systems.

gzt

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#2750976 27-Jul-2021 23:05

Tricky for a vehicle the size of a car. Self extending poles and line finding systems.

gzt

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#2750977 27-Jul-2021 23:06

Wireless inductive charging at the lights and in parking spaces is a serious contender. The transmission losses are fairly high, 20-30% on a good day if I recall. That's still workable for many people, the average car commute km is not high.

gzt

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#2750980 27-Jul-2021 23:12

Load spreading is a benefit of ubiquitous wireless charging which may balance some of the inefficiencies:

https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/news/2021/06/wireless-charging-is-the-secret-to-expanding-evs

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Technofreak

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#2750984 27-Jul-2021 23:32

gzt: Wireless inductive charging at the lights and in parking spaces is a serious contender. The transmission losses are fairly high, 20-30% on a good day if I recall. That's still workable for many people, the average car commute km is not high.

I've thought wireless charging might be an option but when you read about the issues with the wireless charging with some of the iPhones and pacemakers I'm not too sure the traffic light option will be a goer.

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raytaylor

4017 posts

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#2750988 28-Jul-2021 00:31

Rikkitic:

Here is a crazy idea: What about overhead or underground power lines, like those used by trolley busses, that cars tap into when they enter the city? They get power and also recharge as they move around or park. When they leave the city, they revert to batteries.

My mention earlier of a catinery and pantograph system for trucks in Sweden, looks like Germany is now having a go too.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1104908_road-for-electric-trucks-with-trolley-like-catenary-opens-in-sweden

Whenever a truck gets to an up-hill section of motorway, they raise a pantograph and pull power from overhead lines.
For downhill sections they can make use of regenerative braking and have batteries for a hybrid mode while normally running on diesel.

I think this really is a good solution if we want to lower emmissions from vehicles. Start with the low hanging fruit first and knock out the biggest contributors - trucks in an uphill direction.

Ray Taylor

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raytaylor

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#2750989 28-Jul-2021 00:46

I like the concept of wireless charging. Fill the wellington and auckland motorways with inductive coils whenever there is a road being resealed.

Though I fear that the efficiencies will be about as bad as hydrogen.

In idle traffic, it only really needs to power some lights, radios and slow movement. Still better than all those engines running.

Pantographs wont work on cars but a third rail or ground source could work on motorways and state highways.

I liked the concept of the solar roads too - decided to look up a random section of auckland motorway. Looks about 10am and in a 3-lane section of 400m2 there is 15 vehicles.
Thats about 2-4kw per vehicle depending upon the angle of the sun.
Perhaps we could do with a system of a road rail, where your car lowers a pickup device and sends a signal to the road saying which section of hot rail your car is located so it can apply electricity while also being safe for pedestrians.

Ray Taylor

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Sidestep

1013 posts

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#2750992 28-Jul-2021 06:21

RobDickinson:

.. the fundamental energy equations of hydrogen are poor. Those cant be solved by new technology.

Hydrogen’s never been a real contender for light transport vehicles, and even when H2 infrastructure’s built out, will still be a niche player compared to BEV’s..
It’s likely going to be part of our low carbon future though - in medium/heavy transport, construction and particularly industrial processes.

There are two big advantages H2 has for heavy and industrial equipment– its energy density/weight and energy transfer rate.

That’s because battery recharge and discharge rates are limited by heat generated during the energy transfer, but you can transfer bulk hydrogen from storage to a machine’s H2 tank (more compact and lighter than a battery array) very quickly, with no thermal penalty.

POA’s new RSD-‘Electric’ tug (which I reckon is actually a Plug-in-hybrid as it has two 32 litre, V12 Cat C32TA 1-MW gen-sets on board) pushes the boundaries of the use-case for batteries in industrial applications.

It’s 2.8 (usable)MWh of batteries (two Echandia 1.5-MWh air-cooled, lithium titanium oxide battery 4-packs) can run continuously at 6 C (discharge rate vs storage capacity ratio) then takes minimum two hours to fully recharge via Damen’s onshore 1.5 MW ‘fast’ charger.

That gives it 30 minutes of max bollard pull on batteries, or an hour on batteries plus gen sets before it needs another 2 hour recharge.
Because it docks at its charger, is only needed intermittently - a couple of times a day - and floats, so the weight of it’s batteries charged or discharged is inconsequential, battery packs are viable.

Unlike tugs, most large industrial gear is expected to run almost continuously.
There’s no way you can have a bulldozer or excavator spend 2 hours recharging for every hour of use, and unlike tugs, they're not going to trundle back to a charging port every hour.

The Komatsu 1250's and 375-8 dozers working across the Puhoi-Warkworth extension run 550kW engines, there are multiple HD605 dumpers, Cat D9's and 10's, graders and scrapers there.
There would have to be electric infrastructure supplied all across the site if they were somehow converted to battery and needed continuous charging, as opposed to a mobile hydrogen tanker if they ran fuel cells.

RobDickinson

1524 posts

Uber Geek

#2751020 28-Jul-2021 08:04

Grunta47:

It all depends on your definition of speed/fast change. At the moment the EV timeline don't appear fast to me. With current uptake its still going to take 30 years for EV's to be the majority/vehicle of preference and this is only in countries where the Government has legislated and Joe public is on board.

It may not look fast but its going to be one of the largest and fastest switches of technology we've ever seen. The ramping of resources needed for this is incredible and already under way. You dont need long with exponential growth to affect major change.

In 10 years pretty much every new car will be electric. They will be cheaper to make than ICE cars very shortly. Fossil cars are only cheaper today because they get volume production, thats changing, from both directions.

The problem for car companies is how do you sell a substantial percentage of your product when it is more expensive, requires more expensive fuel, costs more to run and maintain, and will be worth a lot less in the future? Running a fossil fuel car post 2030 in any developed country is going to be a rarity.

Dingbatt

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#2751030 28-Jul-2021 08:44

Some attribution for a graph like that would be useful. Did it come from Greenpeace, or Tesla, the EU, or The Climate Commission?

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

RobDickinson

1524 posts

Uber Geek

#2751033 28-Jul-2021 08:48

Its originally form Toby Seba several years ago, and is proving quite accurate.

Dingbatt

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#2751057 28-Jul-2021 09:23

RobDickinson:

Its originally form Toby Seba several years ago, and is proving quite accurate.

Really? You expect BEV production (or in NZ’s case availability) to be the same as FFV demand by 2024? To quote a Mitre10 ad, “Mate, you’re dreaming!”. Unless of course it’s not the Osbourne effect at all and is driven by regulation (politics).

And where do hybrids fit into that graph? Are they BEVs or FFVs?

Toby Seba seems to be* an EVangelist, so no bias there.

* After a limited web search to find out who he was and what the “Osbourne Effect” described.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

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