The death of the piston engine
The Forum is awfully quiet on this front. Mt Gove is hell bent on getting rid of the most reliable and efficient power generating unit ever since Mr Daimler put it in road vehicles and wants to replace it with battery driven motors or other exotic devices.
Comments pls !
So, his idea is stop sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2040 and presumably petrol and diesel sales will dry up just a few years after that to a point where it's not economical to produce for the reducing number of fossil fuelled cars. Petrol/diesel will become extortionately expensive and available at fewer and fewer outlets.
Probably won't be of much interest to me by that stage - I'll have already gone up in smoke by then - but it will be a problem for my son who already has his eyes on my G when I'm no longer here.
Or an industry of electrifying interesting/collectable cars will blossom.
Even the CEO of Shell has said his next car will be electric.
Can a electric vehicle pull a heavy trailer? Don't think so...,
What's gonna happen to trucks, buses and vans ? They will be exempt !
It is a very difficult problem, motorised vehicles have an enormous use value and beyond that we get pleasure from using them too. However the number of vehicles and their use has increased at the expense of our planets resources and the pollution they admit is threatening human health. We can be wise after the event and say public transport should have been better and that if it were better in the future such restrictions would be unnecessary but we all know that people take the easiest option and waiting for a bus or train will come 2nd when we have a car at hand. There is an inevitability about this but I don't see electric cars as the answer, public transport has to be better and better integrated, we can walk and cycle more too, maybe use electric cycles but there simply isn't enough rare materials to make electric cars on the scale of the internal combustion engined vehicles we use today
According to Ricardo, automotive consultants, the internal combustion engine is here to stay for at least another 50 years.
The infrastructure and capacity in the national grid is just not there and is unlikely to ever be there to cope with charging millions of electric vehicles. Imagine everyone coming home at 7:00 pm after a day at work and plugging-in the car to charge. Unless some intelligent, staggered charging system is developed, it will be like everyone turning on 5 - 10 electric kettles every evening, pretty much all at the same time. And if you go for hybrid electric vehicles, these still rely on an internal combustion engine to charge the batteries. And, speaking of batteries, there is currently no way to recycle lithium-ion batteries, so imagine when their use increases by 1000 fold.
Politicians are not engineers and they haven't got a clue.
I don't think anyone has the answer short of very drastic action like stopping car production but that is politically unacceptable because of the jobs it would cost.
Nor has the role of air transport been adequately considered, this industry is moving towards smaller or medium sized aircraft and away from very large carriers like the A380 and 747 this to me seems a very great threat to our environment.
Another factor is our ageing population who are walking less than they would as they age.
Overall though we might have to view the use of personal transport as flexible, shared and for occasional use.
I drive a clean car
A difficult topic but one not quite thought out; I feel this is knee jerking news to be 'seen to be doing' the right thing rather than executing it. The May Government has broken many pre-electon promises, what is there to say this news is not going to be a dead duck?
It is apparent the logistics and infrastructure have not been fully thought out. There is large scale Industry re-trainning to consider, where are the trainers to train the lesser technicians? Who will fund (Grants etc) the re-training Industry is forced to undertake?
Arnie has touched on peak demand for powering the electric vehicles, there is also the power point/station locations to consider; are we to see these points along High Streets like the old parking meters used to be? I don't think so.
40,000 premature deaths is the prime reason given for this measure; please don't tell me that the Government is suddenly pricked with this alarming figure. (Do not confuse my comment as though I do not care for those deaths - please).
Alternatively, petrol and diesels can be blended with menthol, ethanol etc, LPG and, or CNG (Natural Gas) in the transition to full electrification.
Finally, will air travel go electric? - How much pollution do these contribute to our air?
The sea's need cleaning up more urgently in the light of sea life extinction, human kind is not extinct yet but working fast towards that goal and the current US presidency seems hell bent accelerating that goal for short term gains. Before I get moderated for touching onto a political topic, I'll shut up at this point.
Odd comment from me, as I drive the G class with worst fuel consumption and love it, but this
http://www.kreiselelectric.com/en/projects/electric-g-class/
is great.
I'd love an electric G Wagen. Shoot me now.
It is looks like a mini power sub station under the bonnet. The orange leads clearly say "Don't Touch!"
Odd comment from me, as I drive the G class with worst fuel consumption and love it, but this
http://www.kreiselelectric.com/en/projects/electric-g-class/
is great.
I'd love an electric G Wagen. Shoot me now.
Perhaps they can be persuaded to offer a retro fit option too
Looks like a range of 4.5 hours flat out to full discharge of the battery, which most unlikely. More like 60% power, which it will give a decent range at say average 60 mph. The next question is how quickly can it be re charged.
Apart from the above mentioned electricity peak demand, the charging technology has to improve, even on a supercharger it takes half an hour to “top up the battery” (not fully charged), just imagine the logistics at a motorway charging station. On the other hand, electric cars are significantly cheaper to run, “fuel” consumption is the equivalent of 100 mpg (realistic Tesla S figure) and the service charges are lower as the number of moving parts is significantly reduced. The annual service does not exist for an electric car. The electric car/ fuel cell truck is the future but the transition period is hard to predict.
Very good points. Charging points normally have a capacity of about 7 kw. So a fully discharged Kreisler should take a few hours to be fully charged. if you plug it at home with 3.5kw outlets, it will take double that. However as everyone knows, every battery has a finite life and there are so many cycles of charging/ discharging that can be carried out. Every rime the battery is discharged beyond a certain threshold, the full capacity is never regained and eventually the battery does not hold any charge.. At which point the battery is only good for scrap. The replacement battery costs in the old by now car - as I hear- more than the car itself. So good-by car as well. I think there is a case of serious re think here and more attention and research should be allocated to alternative sources of power such as fuel cells for example, if this government wants us to get rid of our piston engines
The energy stored in a tank of fuel (say, 100kg) is many orders of magnitude greater than you can store in the same weight of batteries and as mentioned above, they cannot be recharged in 1 minute.
LiON batteries at 20% depth of discharge may last 5,000 cycles;. at 50% discharge, 2,000 cycles and at 80 % discharge, 1,000 cycles or less. So you either need a much larger battery and limit its discharge level or sacrifice life.
Fuel-cells are currently also not the answer - more expensive and far less reliable than batteries. Then there is the question of a hydrogen infrastructure, which they would require.
I thought that was what all these techno companies were busy working on - the next generation of batteries that would be lighter, hold more charge and take much less time to re-charge.
1,000 cycles @ 300 miles = 300,000 miles, that sounds ok.
I've test driven a tesla p100d fastest car I have ever been in.the can tow and mileage up to 350 more than any of my current cars.tesla are making vans buses taxis everything you can think off.battery technology is moving fast now and Toyota have a cell which can be recharged in minutes.1 million mile warranty on tesla no more mechanics or servicing as we know.got a tesla on order mid 2018 delivery.20 years ahead of the rest.and never going to a petrol station again.
Even the 60kw Tesla S is around £65k and the 100kw model is nearly £130k. The X model starts at £75k.
I think a used G63 would be where my money would go and I would still be driving it ten years after the batteries had packed up in the Tesla 
.
But would you be confident about all the electronic gadgetry in that particular model; I think I'd prefer a simpler petrol engine that can be adapted for LPG or even CNG, the latter seems inexhaustible
No service ? Sounds good, but don't they need new brakes, discs, tyres, checks on hydraulics, steering links, suspension and all the non electrical parts?
The brakes would do less work due to regenerative braking.
However, for a typical car, the power required to cruise around town between 20 - 30 mph is around 12 kW (more for a G-wagen).
At this speed, the required power is divided roughly 50:50 between air resistance and rolling losses (tyres, transmission etc). The air resistance increases with speed, as a square law while the other losses increase more linearly with speed. So, at 70mph we have:
air resistance = 6kW x (70/30)^2 = 33 kW
other losses = 6kW x (70/30) = 14 kW
Total: 47kW
Now, if we take an 85kWh battery pack from Tesla (actually tested at 80kWh)
[The 85 kWh battery pack weighs 1,200 lb (540 kg) and contains 7,104 lithium-ion battery cells in 16 modules wired in series]
it would last 85kWh / 47kW = 1hr 50 mins, giving a range of 130 miles at 70 mph.
This is a rough estimate and the range may be lessened by other (electrical) loads such as heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, power-steering lighting, radio, etc.
A similar sized vehicle might be expected to use less than 20 litres of fuel to cover this distance at the same speed. This wold weigh no more than 16 kg, Weight for weight this is a 33 X weight advantage for the fuel.
So, with the above figures and a 1,000-cycle life,, we can estimate a 130,000 mile battery life.
Damn! Not even half way to Cornwall for me.
I suppose I'd have to carry two spare batteries - but then no room for luggage.
The range remains an issue: I drove a Tesla in Switzerland, at 75 mph the range is a about 170 miles, however, driving up an alpine pass at low temperatures the remaining range decreased at an alarming rate;
the lifespan of the batteries seems to be less of an issue: a German magazine (Autobild) tested a Tesla S85, after 212,000km the batteries had a remaining capacity of 90%.
Arnie,
An excellent analysis. Now let's work out the costs for replacing such a battery after 130,000 miles against the costs for replacing an internal combustion engine after half a million miles with a remanufactured engine from a reputable re-manufacturer. I am astonished that the industry does not insist in making good all the know how acquired from F1's excellent engineering rather than sleepwalk to whatever directions ill informed ministers of Gove's caliber serve to us.
Yesterday I did some research on the Tesla models. They have low rolling losses (skinny tyres and minimal transmission- only a differential connected to the electric motor). They have a claimed range of 260 miles (mixed driving at 65mph max) with the 85kWh battery-pack and their batteries carry a 125,000 mile or 8 year warranty against defective manufacture (this might not cover normal wear/ degradation) The rest of the vehicle carries a 4 year / 50,000 mile warranty. The replacement cost for the battery is currently $12,000 if you pre-purchase or $15,0000 for buying when needed.
Their fuel-equivalent MPG is calculated at between 30 mpg and 100 mpg (US) depending on where the electricity to charge them comes from, so not that much better than a modern IC engine.
What I find interesting is that Tesla markets itself as a tech company 50% software and 50% hardware. The vehicle systems run on 4 or 5 Linux (Buntu) based computer systems and much propaganda has been made of the way they can update, for example, the suspension and braking software with updates over WiFi. This reminds me of Windows Updates.
I have no doubt that electric vehicle will displace IC engine vehicles at some point, but I don't think the battery technology is quite there yet and, certainly in the case of Tesla, they have gone for rather basic induction motor technology driving the wheels through a conventional differential. The high-tech solution would be permanent-magnet motors, one one each wheel, Then, you'd really need to get your software right to create an 'electronic' differential.
.
That sounds like a balanced view. Interesting the point re the differential, the Tesla I drove was already quite engaging to drive on a mountain pass, if there are possible improvements in the transmission then we will see some interesting electric sports cars.
Its all there in Adgena 21
For you the age of "free travel" will be over - tho no such restrictions for Al Gore!
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I am rather confused with this. How far would a 360kw powered Kreisel G will go on a 80KWh battery pack?