Assault on Batteries
Tuesday, August 2, 2011 at 9:05PM (Small note on the YouTube video above. Original version has serious sound synch issues, this one is fine. Worked it out finally.)
Over the recent weekend we very possibly experienced a pivotal event, indeed a turning point in our global history.
A few facts emerged around the same time which could be nothing more than 24 hour news fluff, or which could point a way through the chaos of information to some emerging new reality.
Late last week BP announced that China had overtaken the United States as the world’s top energy consumer and largest importer of oil.
Apple computers have more money in the bank than the US government
And there have been incredible breakthroughs in battery design and materials.
Oh, and Top Gear did a review of electric cars.
If you look at these events from a distance, from the perspective of the last century, we are without question now in the future.
You could also deduce from this information that petrol and diesel are going to get a lot more expensive very soon, batteries are going to get cheaper, lighter and store more energy and Apple computers are going to rule the world.
Oh, and the Top Gear team are still living in 1993.
So, because of my rant a few years ago when Top Gear reviewed the Tesla Roadster (and got in a bit of legal trouble that’s still ongoing) it was clear from the messages I received on Twitter on Sunday night that many people expected me to go through a similar tirade.
However there was a very important difference between the two shows.
When reviewing the Tesla the Top Gear team indulged in what could be called a ‘deliberate obfuscation of the facts’ to get across their conviction that electric cars are rubbish.
They also ran the review alongside a piece about the wonderful Honda Clarity hydrogen fuel cell car and stated without hesitation that hydrogen is the future, again underlying the fact that electric cars are okay, but batteries are rubbish and will never work.
This time they didn’t do any fake running out of power gags. Well, not as blatantly.
Mr Clarkson gave the Nissan Leaf a glowing review, he liked it, he said it was very well made and very comfortable.
As they approached the only major town in the UK that has no public charging infrastructure, lovely Lincoln, observant viewers might have wondered why.
Where did they start from? How full were the batteries when they started? We don’t know. Does it matter? I’ve no idea.
Once in Lincoln they went through the now time honoured rigmarole of trying to charge the cars, of getting students to help push the cars to somewhere they could plug in, making much of the fact that they had to trail wires through windows, all the things you’d expect from the men in jeans.
It was all good fun, I didn’t get angry, I didn’t want to rant, it was exactly as I would expect.
But of course it’s Top Gear, they couldn’t leave it. Mr C went on to explain that as well as being prohibitively expensive to buy, these cars were prohibitively expensive to drive. He suggested they could cost as much as £8.50 to charge the battery. At this point I admit my relaxed ears pricked up.
£8.50, that sounds like a lot. Where did they get that figure from?
£8.50 to charge the Nissan Leaf’s 24 kWh battery means the electricity costs 36p per kWh. So the researchers at Top Gear must have searched long and hard to find the most expensive daytime tariff they could, I’ve searched and I couldn’t find anything like 36p per kilowatt hour but I have to accept you could find it somewhere.
According to the plethora of energy comparison websites, the average cost of daytime electricity is between 14 and 18 pence per kWh meaning a full battery would cost £4.23 if you charge in the daytime, working out at 4p a mile as opposed to 12p per mile for a traditional car doing 50mpg.
I charge the Nissan Leaf at night when the cost is under 5p per kWh, which works out at £1.20 for 100 miles, which means it’s costing me fractionally over 1p a mile to drive the car.
However, I’m sure you can pay more if you want and the Top Gear script writers will have underlined that, and Andy Wilman the producer will have insisted to Mr Clarkson that it was imperative that he say, “It can cost £8.50 to charge this car to drive 100 miles.’
‘We all know batteries are rubbish’ said the apparently knowledgeable Mr May, ‘they always run out.’
What, as opposed to a petrol tank that stays perpetually full?
So the official TG line is now, electric cars are fine, it’s just batteries which are useless. It’s a line that, judging from my Twitter stream alone has clearly struck a chord.
Is it true?
I think there is ample evidence to say it is very far from true. The batteries in the Nissan Leaf are extraordinary, they are a step change in technology. If, after say 100-150,000 miles the batteries range starts to decrease, Nissan will re-furbish the battery for much less than the £19,000 figure so casually bandied about in the Tory press recently
Nissan will re-furbish batteries in the UK, at the plant in Sunderland where the batteries are made. They will re-cycle 97% of the materials and fit the re-furbished battery back into the car and it will be as good as new, for another 150,000 miles.
While it is true that no one yet knows exactly how long a modern electric car battery will last, (they’ve not been in use long enough) we are beginning to get a good idea of their longevity.
Once again I will refer to Paul Scott’s Toyota RAV E4 in California which has now travelled over 120,000 miles on the original battery pack and it’s showing no signs of failure. Also worth pointing out that in the time he’s driven the car, Mr Scott had to replace wiper blades and one shock absorber. The maintenance costs of that vehicle are so low as to register as zero.
The ending of the Top Gear section on electric cars was a little tragic. Three men whose lives revolve around internal combustion engines and burning rubber facing the now universally accepted truth that we are going to face a chronic shortage of the fuel we all depend on.
They stood there like confused rabbits with no idea of a solution other than saying ‘hydrogen mumble mumble.’ That’s just it. ‘Hydrogen mumble mumble’ is not a very convincing solution.
Meanwhile, all around the world actual engineers and scientists are working on viable, economic and sustainable solutions to this truly appalling prospect with dedication and enthusiasm. They won’t be mentioned on Top Gear, but they will on Fully Charged.
Petrol currently costs £6.26 per gallon. @ 50 mpg, £12.53 per 100 miles.
Diesel currently costs £6.72 per gallon. @ 50 mpg, £13.44 per 100 miles.
Electricity = max 20p per kWh. @ 100 miles for 24 kWh, £4.80 per 100 miles
Reader Comments (32)
Surprised that no one has picked up that on Monday in the Times, Ben Webster ran a FUD piece on the Leaf's battery costing £19,000 to replace, yet the *the very next day* the same journalist in the same paper is criticising Top Gear for doing much the same to the same car.
It's like kicking a kid in the playground and then saying, "he did it".
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/public/sitesearch.do?querystring=electric+car&x=0&y=0&p=tto&pf=all&bl=on
i think what top gear is trying to say is that electric is the future, with more development in battery wear and UK electric infrastructure needs to be better throughout the country outside the major cities. this Andy Willman's response to the Electric Car film: http://transmission.blogs.topgear.com/2011/08/02/electric-cars-charges-answered/
Hydrogen is a thermodynamic joke. If you take 100 kWh of electrical energy and convert it to hydrogen nature puts a tax of 30% implying only 70 kWh of energy remains. Then there is a further 10% tax for storage in high pressure tanks leaving 63 kWh followed by around 20% tax for transportation of the hydrogen (the containers need to be bulky to provide the 600 atmospheres worth of pressure to contain the hydrogen) and then the fuel cells are only 50% efficient. Overall the energy delivered to the motor is only 25 kWh. A 75% loss. Batteries are only around 10% inefficient. Plus thanks to the national grid we can skip out all the other steps.
Hydrogen is great if we had infinite amounts of clean energy to waste. But sadly we don't. Maybe one day with nuclear, solar and wind we will.
Reference: Ulf Bossel, Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense? IEEE October 2006
As I tweeted you earlier, Robert, Nissan is planning to use "retired" LEAF batteries in its own brand of quick charge stations, powered by solar panels:
Nissan using old Leaf batteries in new solar charging stations
What a brilliant idea! Funny how Clarkson, et.al., never mention these clever developments, huh?
For a Top Gear piece on electric vehicles, it was surprising. No stupid challenge, no unrealistic expectations. I felt that their discussion at the end was veering dangerously towards something sensible and potentially educational, hence they cut it short.
The assorted mobile phones in our house need charging very regularly, my laptop battery is dead and gone. The battery side of things worries me. I work with computers and have fallen foul of MTBF - Mean Time Before Failure - on a couple of occasions. Yes, in theory, the batteries should last a certain number of years. That doesn't mean they couldn't fail tomorrow.
The biggest barrier to me at the moment, though, is the initial cost of the vehicle. We're replacing a family car at the moment, the replacement vehicle wouldn't be doing more than 30 or 40 miles a day, it'd be stored somewhere where charging wouldn't be a problem. Financially, though, I can't justify an electric vehicle. You can buy an awful lot of fuel (even at island prices) and servicing for the difference.
There's no doubt that these vehicles and their descendants, are the future. And there's no doubt that the technologies will improve and become cheaper. I'm looking forward to it when I replace the next car.
Robert, Robert, Robert.... "As they approached the only major town in the UK that has no public charging infrastructure", lovely Lincoln. That of course is totally inaccurate. Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen - all have some charging points, but not an infrastructure.
Oh and is Lincoln not a City? ;-)
Batteries, batteries...... range, charging times. Electric motors are great simple, efficient and the future for many forms of transport. But one thing puzzles me. For the past few months we are bombarded by one thing. The average person drive 'X' miles a day well within the range of many current electric vehicles (70-100 miles). Which we know is correct.
We now have this massive push forward with batteries that appears to be aimed at increasing range? Well Tesla have always wanted range - otherwise, I'm sure they could have reduced the cost, by reducing range, but they chose not too.
So, now we have the situation were some ev supports say range doesn't matter, while others say it does. Add to this charging times/infrastructure (imo the biggest issue regarding the take up of eve's) - people don't want to wait hours for anything to charge. Again we have the bizarre situation were people are taking coffee breaks several hours long, or staying overnight to charge vehicles. Over on Leaftalk.co.uk we have stories of people changing routes to avoid hills, etc, etc.
The original story from the early adopters went like this......
Range is not an issue, no one drives that far. We don't mind taking several hours between charges. And I don't see the problem driving a specific route to get from A-B.
The original wish list from the 'fence sitters' ......
We want 200-300 mile range, Fast 30min charging and plenty of charging points - so we can go our normal routes/places.
The current line from early adopters (in the media).....
Fast charging is the way to go (ecotricity on BBC TV) - EV's will not be mainstream until it is in place. Newer batteries are being developed that will vastly increase the range of EV's.
I like to think of range as air conditioning. It's nice to have it, even if I don't always use it. Would I buy another car without it? No.
I'm sure all the early adopters who said a 100 mile range was sufficient wouldn't turn their noses up at 200-300 miles.
Early adopters or EV 'Gurus' trying to convince the majority of fence sitters, doubters, or even Top Gear that 80 miles range, hours of charging and being restricted to the places one can travel is acceptable, just isn't going to work.
The vast majority have said what they want and when the EV industry produce it, they will buy them.
Actually, I think James May pretty much debunked his own comments at the end of the show when he said that it used to be very hard to make the tele work but now there are television presenters. Batteries now might be rubbish, but in the same way hydrogen can be made safe and easy so can batteries be made quick and longer lasting. Or maybe we could have hybrids with very small and efficient biodiesel powered generators rather than petrol engines. But I suppose they have a point in saying that these kinds of cars aren't quite as good now as conventional cars. I guess 100 years ago they'd say the same thing on Top Horse.
Robert,
I had a similar attitude to the Top Gear test - begrudging acceptance - but I still have a question that they, nor you, answered. I do 80% of my driving in and around west london and, for this, an electric car would be perfect. I want electric cars to be feasible, the price of petrol is utterly ridiculous at the moment.
However, that last 20% of my driving is going to visit my and my wife's parents, complete with kids and dog, ergo, we drive. My parents live about 50miles away, which isn't a problem, but my in-laws live in Cardiff, which is a fair trek from London and, if the range figures of the Leaf are to be believed, would necessitate a rather hefty pit-stop to recharge.
I'm keen not to use this as a reason to discount electric cars (see the petrol price comment), and so am happy to entertain suggestions as to how I could pull off this monthly journey in an electric car, so any advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated!
I don't understand why TG chose such absurd electricity costs, they must know EV proponents would point it out or do they think that by being reasonable about the cars we would think they were reasonable about the rest?
As the EV running costs are subsidised by the government, red deisel is £2.93 a gallon for instance. I'm interested to know how and when policy will change. They will need to recover lost fuel taxation and control congestion so presumably EV use will bring intrusive GPS based road pricing.
@Clive Sinclair,
"We now have this massive push forward with batteries that appears to be aimed at increasing range? Well Tesla have always wanted range - otherwise, I'm sure they could have reduced the cost, by reducing range, but they chose not too." Um, yes they have.
Tesla Model S
- 160 mile range, $57,400
- 230 mile range, $67,400
- 300 mile range, $77,400
As to what people want. Some want a sporty 2 door, that does 0-60 in 5-7 seconds. Others want a pickup that can hold a 4x8 sheet of plywood or drywall with the tailgate up. Still others want to fit a family of 6, their dog and sporting equipment for an out of town tournament. Picking one set of criteria is ludicrous.
Waiting hours for an EV to charge. You do sleep don't you?
"Over on Leaftalk.co.uk we have stories of people changing routes to avoid hills, etc, etc." You have heard of those odd people referred to as hypermilers haven't you? They do similar things with non-EVs.
So current EVs don't meet your requirements. Maybe in a few years that will change, maybe not. The only thing holding me back is the price. I'll probably wait to buy a used EV. With the telematics systems in use, the status of the battery will not be unknown, so I would have no reservations with that.
Robert, I agree with most of your points and let's face it what did you expect from Top Gear but it still has to be said that the prices that are being charged for these vehicles is ridiculous and obviously set to take advantage of the early adopter - well fair enough I guess - Nissan are a business. Maybe if they charged the same for the Leaf as they do in the USA ($32k before subsidy) they might get less abuse and would do better in the vs BlueMotion argument. Maybe the idea is to drop the price once the UK plant comes on stream - they may even offer a union jack roof too!
I'm not even going to comment on the Peugeot price.....in fairness to Top Gear they did that!
Looking forward to the promised solar pv figures
Why do leaf drivers avoid hills? Surely EVs recover energy, that's the big advantage of electric power. With an efficient recovery strategy it should make no difference how many hills you go up and down if you finish at the same height.
I thought the TopGear electric review was interesting, I found out a few things about the Leaf's design that I didn't know.
"Waiting hours for an EV to charge. You do sleep don't you?" - what about when on a longer trip?
Public transport and/or a scooter are much better for the current use of electric cars - short city driving/short commutes.
@Phil J,
"Why do leaf drivers avoid hills? Surely EVs recover energy, that's the big advantage of electric power." Regeneration peaks at about 75%. Better than throwing the energy away, but you don't get it all back.
@eded,
""Waiting hours for an EV to charge. You do sleep don't you?" - what about when on a longer trip?" Take your other car or rent one. Most of my neighbours have 2 vehicles in their driveways.
My next door neighbours went on a family vacation and rented a vehicle. Their reasons. The one car wasn't reliable enough and the other one was getting close to the warranty mileage limit. They also don't think an EV could work for them. The husband's commute is the longest and could travel 2 days in a LEAF without charging. People will make up all sorts of excuses.
I think there is a terrible confusion between what people think they want 'now' and what they imagine will want in the future.
It's really simple, if you don't like the idea of an electric car, can't afford one or don't think an electric vehicle will get you to Cardiff a few times a year, then keep running a petrol/diesel vehicle. The end.
No-one is suggesting that petrol is not a wonderful fuel, currently easily available, convenient and still pretty cheap. But (and it is a BIG but) it is not going to last indefinitely as an affordable medium to power personal transport, even if it is considered environmentally suitable to do so, so there has to be an alternative to oil based fuel transport developed unless you think wandering up and down motorways on foot is a good idea.
(If you disagree, I really don't care but why don't you stop reading and go and do something else that will reduce your blood pressure, eh?).
So here we are. You can buy an electric car now, even though you don't have to. Why are people complaining? It is hardly as if there is a sudden lack of conventional vehicles out there is there? And some of those are really cheap second hand. Why do people who do not want an electric car complain about the 'cost of the batteries'? They don't have to buy them. Why do people complain about 'range' when they clearly don't have to worry about it? Grow up.
So the future. Currently range is seen as an issue. Batteries wear out. This is entirely a 'battery technology' problem and may well improve. But if it doesn't? We need 'better' vehicles and these vehicles may not be 'cars' as we currently imagine them. Lower drag and low weight will be important (as the Renault chap told Robert recently) and I imagine the streets populated with VW XL1 type EVs - but I think better still would be properly designed low drag PTW's. They are smaller and will weigh less so you have to move less mass, many journeys are one person so why drive around in a box of seats you don't use and have to park up all day when you are working?
The future is unwritten, we can have anything, What we need is open minds, not tiny, closed ones.
I love it when eco-berks such as yourself and the gorgeous George Monbiot throw a wobbly on their favourite issue of smoke, mirrors and conjecture, which easily fits in with their main objectives, the destruction of Western consumer capitalism and private transport (hey, that's not my opinion, that's what Caroline Lucas wants).
Of course, you neglect to mention the other issues brought up like recharge time, unpredictability of range (you touch upon it, alas in a very naive and optimistic way), increasing electricity costs (which will happen as the country and the world transitions to ETS ponzi schemes and inefficient wind turbines) and having to rip up existing transport infrastructure in order to make way for the Clean Green Utopia.
I regret buying the Red Dwarf DVDs. Should have just downloaded them and not given any of the money I would have spent to someone like you.
I think the important thing to realise is that Top Gear of the current era is a long way away from the Top Gear of old, where they did nothing but review cars. I always see it as best to look at it purely from an entertainment point of view, and that it does that job very well - it's funny, they make no bones about being idiots, and also they make no bones about people who make fun of them.
As long as the context is kept, that they're not there to be entirely serious (this is a show that made a train out of a sportscar, remember...) it's good enjoyable fun. And also, I think that as long as people don't get sucked in to believing the things they say on the show, there's no real problem. I don't mind that they don't like EVs, I don't mind that they stretch the truth to breaking point, mainly because I know the facts about EVs already. If people are stupid enough to believe things that Clarkson says on a regular basis, more fool them. It's just a pity that so many people do believe what he says.
I posted a comment yesterday but it seems to have got lost in the ether between the create button and the wonderous magic that carries it to the page!!!
Top Gear is an entertainment program. I can't remember the last time they did a serious review of a car that was affordable by anyone but the Sunday Times Rich List.
They like to say controversial things and be a little rebelious.
They like to play silly games and do ridiculous things with cars.
They're big kids really, and that's why we like the show so much, because we'd all love to be able to get away with it ourselves and escape the responsiblness of adulthood for a while!
I'm just glad they are featuring EVs at all, and they are saying nice things about them. Their stance has certainly softened as well. Also, Jeremy did make the point that it's cool to like EVs and that people like him were dinosaurs now.
As EV tech improves, costs reduce and barriers fall down, TG will have less to poke fun at. They will of course make up new things to poke fun at, just like they do with all cars they have on, and that's what makes it entertaining.
BTW, I'd love to see a post showing the true total cost of ownership comparison between and EV and a fossil burner. Over 3 or 5 years say. Does the reduced maintenance cost outweigh the higher up front cost?
(maybe someone has done this already - can someone point me there please?).
R
I'd like to ask a question about your numbers. What is the efficiency of charging the car battery? 24 kWh is I assume the energy stored, but how much energy does it take to actually charge, this is the real cost to the consumer (and the environment).
I'd just like to state that I don't even own a car, but if I ever do I certainly hope that my first will be electric! But it's important to correct people with as accurate as possible figures.
the problem is that even if its cheapwr over the lifetime of the EV I would still need the money up front in order to buy it.
The fundamental issue I had with the TG show was: why try to knock in a nail with a saw, and then complain it's not good for knocking in nails?
Electric vehicles (currently) have limited range and so are suited for around town and short commutes. Longer distances require alternatives. The whole design of the cars is aimed at small distance personal travel only.
However, unless we have sustainable ways to generate electricity that can scale to meet demand then the future isn't good for electric vehicles either. Coal/oil/gas will get increasingly expensive if not essential to reduce drastically for environmental climate change reasons. Our only viable alternative (short term) to produce the quantity of electricity the economy demands is nuclear which has terrible longer term issues - possibly worse than global warming (which could be mitigated with carbon sequestration potentially). Truly sustainable electricity generation to the extent our economy needs already; let alone the growth needed to cope with population increase; is still looking like a pipe dream. We could cover the landscape and seas with turbines, roofs with solar panels and still be well short of requirement.
We either need to mitigate our energy needs or embrace nuclear and hope we don't regret it (as a species or as a planet) in the long term. If fusion arrives and can be implemented without leaving a worse legacy than fission, maybe we have a get out of jail card yet, but it's been 50 years away since the 1970s - although some estimates now put it only 30 years away, so it's only taken 40 years to knock off 20 years from the estimate - so it's possibly really only 50 years away now, which is probably 50 years too late to really help us.
To mitigate our energy needs we can either accept a reduction in affluence or hope that technology can delivery efficiency gains and that market forces can be used to avoid the slack derived being taken up with increased consumption.
In transport, that probably translates to accepting reduced flexibility, longer journey times and less "personal" in personal transport.
@zzzzz
What? You seem to have wandered into the wrong website. This is for grownups.
at the moment most people struggling to understand and accept Electric cars because with the century's of using fossil fuel for such a long time it has become like a drug to the human race to help fuel our busy lives and now we find our selves struggling to ween our selves off it
I think that most people don't really take issue with EVs per se. I certainly don't. Interesting technology, must be fun to try out one, not all of them look bad and if it's the way of the future, why not? The main reason why people are complaining, which is not mentionned by Voyager03, is that at a time when cuts are being made and people are still reeling from the effects of the financial crisis, it is difficult to see public money go toward vehicles that can only be afforded by the well-off. Not everyone can afford to buy a 25,000 pound car, especially one that is as limited as current EVs are. I think that many, myself included, object to the incentive scheme that is currently in place. If people want to drive EVs, good for them. However, taxpayers should not have to foot part of the bill.
I think it's worth repeating again that there is at least one link between BBC Worldwide and oil money.
According to a 2008 Guardian report, Top Gear is distributed outside of the UK by Bedder 6 ltd, which is a joint venture between Clarkson, his producer Andy Wilman and BBC Worldwide. They also exploit other aspects of the Top Gear brand, such as magazine, DVD and toy sales. Three BBC Executives are directors of Bedder 6 (note, BBC directors have changed since the Guardian article, but there are still three).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/08/jeremyclarkson.bbc
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/7093546/Jeremy-Clarkson-made-830000-from-Top-Gear.html
http://bizzy.co.uk/uk/05982502/bedder-6
In turn a company called Sub Zero Events was set up by BBC Worldwide and is a JV between Bedder 6 and Brand Events. This runs Top Gear Live.
Both companies are registered at BBC Wood Lane.
Top Gear Live is international stadium show that tours the world, whose title sponsor is Shell V-Power.
Shell has this to say about their relationship with the Top Gear brand:
"We are delighted that Shell V-Power continues to be a global, key partner for Top Gear Live. With its dynamic platform, Top Gear Live provides an excellent opportunity for us to communicate the benefits of Shell V-Power to customers and help them gain a real understanding of the difference premium fuels can make to their driving experience."
Katy Barber, Shell V Power
http://www.brandevents.co.uk/brands/top_gear_live/
So a company registered at BBC Wood Lane, with direct links to senior BBC personnel, receives significant income from Shell for its activities and its promotion.
Shell has a decidedly pro-hydrogen agenda. Perhaps more so than any other oil company with their roll out of some hydrogen stations in California.
http://www.shell.com/home/content/environment_society/alternative_energies_transport/hydrogen/
You will notice that among their alternative fuels, they also mention biofuels and compressed natural gas but not EVs. That is because an oil company need play no part in the supply chain for electricity.
Shell's hydrogen stations in California were featured prominently in James May's report on the FCX Clarity (a hydrogen car) and May has mentioned hydrogen in other Top Gear episodes when the subject of EVs has come up. May has also promoted hydrogen in programmes he has presented for the Open University and in James May's Toy Stories. He gives the viewer the impression that hydrogen is abundant, easily made from renewables and has not once mentioned that the two most common means of producing hydrogen produce significant emissions when compared to those produced in the supply of energy to EVs. Conversely, there has never been a mention of advances in the huge storage potential of Lithium-Air batteries or the demonstrated 5 minute recharge times of Lithium-Titanate batteries.
This kind of brand promotion has spread outside of the confines of Top Gear. Shell V-Power was given five minutes of prominent on-screen time in last week's Hungary Formula 1 coverage during a piece on the performance of race fuels against road fuels. There was no editorial benefit to displaying the Shell logos on the containers for this fuel repeatedly throughout the piece.
But more worryingly, there appears to be endemic anti-EV bias in BBC News coverage of any EV story (if it is covered at all). In the worst case, the BBC saw fit to create its own EV story by driving a Mini-E from London to Edinburgh in four days. At no point did the BBC explain in its TV coverage that the prototype Mini-E had a 50A charge capability which would potentially have enabled this trip in one day or explain that production EVs with rapid charge were weeks away from delivery to paid-up customers. They also felt it not worth mentioning on TV that another EV covered the same distance in one day and furthermore beat them to the finish line by a whole day.
This is not a new phenomenon. To the best of my knowledge, the BBC never covered the 1999 trials of the Rav4 EV on Jersey, despite attempts to get them to do so at the time. One would think that the presence of the first 120 mile range, highway speed capable EVs in the British Isles would be newsworthy. Or the first one-day drive from London to Edinburgh. Or the first trip from John O'Groats to Land's End. It would appear that no positive news story on the subject of electric cars gets BBC coverage. What is behind this?
There needs to be a clarification on what is driving this agenda and whether commercial interests that should remain within the confines of BBC Worldwide are having a wider effect on BBC editorial policy. This is more than just a bit of messing around by
the NTA 2006, 2007, 2008, 2011 best factual programmea light entertainment show.I like Clarksons comments
The more rubbish he spouts about Electric cars the sooner they become cheap enough for me to buy one secondhand.
I think the phrase is useful idiot
Robert, Robert, Robert.
I need to correct your statement, "£8.50 to charge the Nissan Leaf’s 24 kWh battery means the electricity costs 36p per kWh. So the researchers at Top Gear must have searched long and hard to find the most expensive daytime tariff they could, I’ve searched and I couldn’t find anything like 36p per kilowatt hour but I have to accept you could find it somewhere."
From Nissan themselves it takes 8 hours to charge a Leaf from a 30amp 240V outlet. Energy consumed during charging equals power multiplied by time. Power (in watts) equals amperage multiplied by the voltage. Therefore Energy in kWh for charging the Leaf is 240x30x8/1000 which equals 57.6kWh. Which using your power consumption rates equals between £8.06 and £10.36, which makes Top Gear's £8.50 quite reasonable.
Charging the batteries on an electric car is not 100% efficient as you claimed in your blog but only 41.7%. While you do not have a physics degree, you should have at least known that the laws of thermodynamics prevents anything being 100% efficient.
Nicholas Cobb
Without hesitation I bow to your superior grasp of maths, you understanding of physics and the law of thermodynamics. I must admit I cannot remember where or when I said that charging a battery was 100% efficient, if I did say that I am even more of a fool than I thought.
However your calculation of 240x30x8/1000 which equals 57.6kWh is slightly confusing. I can only question this from experience, from miles driven and amounts used and cost.
For a start, you need to trickle this fact into your calculations. The standard charge lead which comes with the Leaf runs at 10 amps, not 13.
If I am right, you use the 30 in your calculations to represent 30 amps, am I wrong? If indeed you could charge a Leaf with a 30 amp input it would take maybe 3 hours to fill the battery from completely empty. I have to say I've never charged from completely empty but that's another issue.
I use a dedicated 16 amp re-charge point which takes maybe 5 hours to fill the battery. I think the figure you really can't use with any reliability is the time it takes to charge.
I'm feeling more confident now, you've made me think about it. Your figures are nonsense, I accept it may take more than 24 kWh to fill a 24 kWh battery, I will endeavour to find out elsewhere exactly how much, but 57.6kWh really does not add up.
In 2010 I drove 9,300 miles in a Mitsubishi iMiev for a total electricity cost of £125. According to your calculations that should have cost me in excess of £1,000. Something is wrong in the sums.
@Nicholas Cobb,
To bad you failed physics and don't understand electrical codes.
The LEAF's on board charger is 3.3kW. Therefore the maximum current draw at 240V would be 3300W / 240V = 13.75A. That would be too much current for a 15A circuit and would require a 20A circuit. The maximum recommended current draw on a circuit is 80% of the breaker rating, so a 20A circuit would allow 16A draw.
In North America, Nissan is recommending a 40A circuit for 240V charging. I believe this is for future proofing as the 2013 model LEAF is supposed to be getting a 6.6kW charger, which would draw 27.5A at 240V. A 35A circuit would suffice, but Nissan might just be playing it safe.
@Damien I very much disagree that 'the main reason why people are complaining ..... is difficult to see public money go toward vehicles that can only be afforded by the well-off.' Indeed, I don't think that I recall that has been high in any of the comments I have read about electric vehicles. Do you have any links to any mainstream media that have made these sorts of comments?
I agree that not everyone can afford to buy a 25,000 pound car and only yesterday I said exactly the same to a Nissan salesman, but he still let me have a test drive!
As to your argument that taxpayers should not foot the bill, that is hardly the fault of the buyers, I don't think there was any great demand from them that government should reduce the cost of the vehicles. The money is there intended to help encourage manufacturers to develop the market. It is an incentive for them, not for the buyers. I would expect that if the incentive was not available the market would drop the price to something that the buyers would bear if the additional £5k was too much for them.