Film, Media & TV1 min ago
Charging Points For Electric Cars
In a local village there's a terrace of small houses with a pavement between them and the road. One of the occupants has an electric car plugged into a charger on the wall of his house and he's put one of those black and yellow box strips over the wire across the pavement to tell pedestrians it's there. It's most definitely a hazard and I'm not entirely sure he would have been given permission to do it. So what's going to happen when we're all forced into electric cars? I'm okay - I have a detached house with plenty of parking space but what about people like him in terraced houses with only the road to park on, or people in flats in tower blocks with little or no parking? I don't think this rush towards electric cars has really been thought through at all.
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A friend tripped over a cable that was run across the pavement charging a normal car battery. His elbow was smashed in the fall needing operations & some ongoing problems. He tried to sue the house/car owner but they weren't insured and had no substantial assets - he got nothing.
The money that's going into EV/battery development would be better spent on developing a hydrogen power system. Which could also replace gas boilers for domestic CH.
Once we have self-driving cars, for those having no convenient way of charging, cars will drive themselves to a charging station (and back when you want it).
In reality, once we get a large number of self-driving cars, those that choose to own their own car will be in the minority – fleets of vehicles will act as autonomous taxis, cheaper than the cost of owning your own vehicle.
I confidently predict that before the end of this century governments around the world will start prohibiting humans from operating self-powered vehicles on the public highway – and road traffic accidents will drop drastically.
People don't keep a tank of petrol in their house to fill up their cars at night, they go to a petrol station.
Owners of electric cars will have to go to fast charging points on their way home to ensure they are topped up for the next day, not difficult really. Though I know there needs to be more of these points installed pdq.
One of the many problems facing the installation of public charging points is their usage.
Consider internal combustion engines and the number of petrol stations we have, making it easy to ensure your vehicle is fuelled. But imagine that a large number of households had their own source of petrol/diesel, would we have such a number of petrol stations?
This is the problem for electric charging stations, in that many have a home source of charging and will avoid public charging when they can buy cheap electricity by charging overnight.
davebro: "The money that's going into EV/battery development would be better spent on developing a hydrogen power system. Which could also replace gas boilers for domestic CH."- common misunderstanding about hydrogen. Hydrogen is abundant,sure but it's usually attached to oxygen. Separation takes electricity, thus using hydrogen is a massive waste of energy. So unless there is a less energy hungry way to extract hydrogen we should just use the electricity directly.
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13:56, just confirms what I said.
"Although it is the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen must be produced by separating it from other elements in water and fossil fuels."
we create electricity with fossil fuels then use that to split water and there's the hydrogen. Much more energy efficient to use the fossil fuels.
Lots of different options ...
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Unless there is some form of energy yet unknown coming along, it's not only car travel which will be in jeopardy, ships, air, (and space, you can forget) all heavily dependent on fossil fuels.
Battery driven Jumbo jets ? Don't make me laugh.
Electric rail & trams might be OK though because they have a direct link-up to the grid.
The practicalities are going by to be very challenging and I'm sure people will do all sorts of daft things. Locally the council are beginning to install on-street chargers in the residential streets but how much will it costs to use them and how early do you have to get home from work to access one of the spaces?
Quote "We're really excited to be working with Norfolk County Council on this ambitious project to dramatically increase the availability of EV chargers. We know from research that the lack of EV chargers is one of the top barriers to people making the transition to electric vehicle, so we're delighted that our programme will now be to install even more chargers which will make switching to EVs a realistic option for residents, businesses and visitors."
Due to the nature of these streets some on-street parking restrictions next to the chargers will need to be reviewed, so electric vehicles can access them. These will be decided at design stage and any changes to parking restrictions will be subject to statutory consultation with residents."
Those who think they will be able to buy petrol or diesel cars for many years are sadly mistaken. The prices are going to rocket.
The ZEV mandate will force manufacturers to sell higher and higher percentages of EV cars, with penalties if they don't of up to £15,000 per car!
The main way they will do this is by price, I reckon.
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// some are pushing ammonia as a zero emission alternative. //
while ammonia contains 18% by weight of hydrogen, it won't burn at much less than 200c more than fossil fuels and only in the presence of free oxygen or a catalyst. this would be ideal for static applications, but a problem for vehicles.
ammonia is however an ideal solution for storing and transporting hydrogen - it can be stored at ambient temperature and takes up less space than hydrogen of the same volume. the problem remaining is that "blue" ammonia cannot at present be produced cheaply in sufficient quantities for transport needs. ammonia itself is plentiful via the Haber-Bosch process but this requires large amounts of energy and fossil fuel, and causes disruption to the natural nitrogen cycle. whilst the environmental disadvantages of the Haber-Bosch process are outweighed by the benefits of the fertilisers it's currently used for, there would be no such balancing effect for its use for transport purposes, which would be as ecologically damaging as staying with internal combustion engines.
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