Solid State Batteries

[Bouba]

It was more the suggestion that a driver would stop every two hours than the electric bit that I was disconcerted by. We were obviously something of a corner case.
Seems pretty clear that range/recharging is a constraint for a few but I'm not dumping on electric cars, just on the suggestion that stopping every couple of hours is normal!
I don't think many people routinely drive five hundred miles each way for a weekend.

I suspect most marinas would gladly get rid of their petrol and diesel if it wasn’t to keep the mobos happy too!

When I was young and stupid I used to regularly do a 5.5-6 hr journey and saw it as a badge of honour to make it all the way without stopping and the fuel warning light on.

I’m now of an age where even if I managed to go that long without peeing my back would be screaming if I sat in one place that long. I will do 3hours in one go, and my EV can do that. But if the total journey is more than about 300 miles the app actually calculates that it’s faster to stop twice (for 20 mins each) that to try and do it with one stop (because getting the last 20% in the battery is painfully slow).
I recently did the same journey I used to 25+ years ago in the EV with 2 short stops and it was much more civilised than I remember it being back then (I also didn’t have to turn the tape over every 30 mins!)


Only when driving our own cars would we think it’s acceptable to put a human being sitting in one place operating heavy machinery at speed for 8hrs - probably after having spent a long day working/sailing etc. if a truck / bus driver did that we’d be outraged.

To give you an idea: Southampton airport to Edinburgh airport (two random locations that I guessed would be about the right distance) is about 7h30 on google maps (via toll road no charging); the car charging app says 8h35 including 3 stops to charge and turning up with 15% left. Obviously that’s not towing.

So glad my kids were never that good at dinghy sailing to make that sort of trip a regular thing!

If you don’t have an enlarged prostate...then my suggestion is to get a dog...either require frequent stops

 

[Chiara’s slave]

I have a wife who needs physio walks every 2hours, I don’t need a dog or an enlarged prostate. I’d rather like to have the dog one day, I suspect the other problem comes one day anyway.

 

[The Q]

Ball park figures,
A 150kw charger takes around 40 minutes to charge a 100kwh battery which in a Tesla 3 gives you a best range of 254 miles.
To charge that same sized battery in 10 minutes therefore would need 4* 150kw= 600kW
Toyota's claim of 750 miles therefore would need a battery of three times that capacity so 3*600kW=1.8MW
That's going to need a lot of power stations and some very thick cables...


Used to regularly do 400 miles plus in a day, and occasionally do the return the next day as a field service engineer. Would only stop the once on the journey for a break. That was about 90% motorway . About 7.5 hours.
There would be no problem charging on that route . But it would add maybe 1/2 an hour to the journey.

These days I only do that a couple of times a year, with dog, , but is half normal main road. It takes 10 hours. Providing you can access chargers immediately on the way not much would be added to the trip.

Unfortunately the main road sections have a very limited supply of chargers, and at my parents end there are no chargers or even the possibility of fitting one. So I'd actually have to go find a motorway service station to get charged up.

More locally, whether to sailing or to model railway shows, a 250mile range would allow a return trip. Towing however is a different matter as boat on trailer is 3/4ton.

At the moment electric in any form doesn't meet my needs. Whether it will in the next 20 years is unknown.

 

[Chiara’s slave]

It may never meet your needs. The solution is to keep an ICE car on the road, til your needs change. Nobody so far has said that cannot be effectively forever. But it may come at a cost as time goes on, and maybe less convenient, buying synthetic fuel at specialist shops. But that is further off than you probably need to worry about, we are all mortal.

 

[ylop]

Ball park figures,
A 150kw charger takes around 40 minutes to charge a 100kwh battery which in a Tesla 3 gives you a best range of 254 miles.
To charge that same sized battery in 10 minutes therefore would need 4* 150kw= 600kW
Toyota's claim of 750 miles therefore would need a battery of three times that capacity so 3*600kW=1.8MW

I’m not saying Toyota have it right, but your Tesla numbers are wrong. Best efficiencies for production EVs are quoted as around 5 miles /kW. So Toyotas claimed 745 miles would need a 149kWh battery. Assuming their 10 minute charge is the same 20-80% number most manufacturers claim that is 89.4kWh. To deliver that in 10 minutes requires a 536kW charger. I think the most I’ve seen in the U.K. was a 350kW charger (and I don’t know if any cars can even use that yet) but it suddenly doesn’t quite sound like fantasy land. Of course that doesn’t mean they can deliver it, affordably, reliably etc,

Unfortunately the main road sections have a very limited supply of chargers, and at my parents end there are no chargers or even the possibility of fitting one. So I'd actually have to go find a motorway service station to get charged up.

My EV came with a household charger so anywhere you can plug in a 3pin U.K. plug I can charge (albeit very slowly).

More locally, whether to sailing or to model railway shows, a 250mile range would allow a return trip. Towing however is a different matter as boat on trailer is 3/4ton.

Yes that is a problem. Whilst some EVs do have trailing capability it wipes out the range (no regen breaking from the trailer, plus the aerodynamics and the load).

 

[SaltyC]

You're not seriously suggesting that drivers stop every two hours are you? Our usage has changed now but when we bought our current car we used to drive home from dinghy events regularly and it would take about 8-9 hours to do the 450+ miles from Weymouth to home... so an early prizegiving, full tank of fuel and a clean run could have us home for midnight and a reasonable night's sleep before school & work on Monday... From memory, a toilet break would end up adding about half an hour to the arrival time (never really understood why: slip roads, parking, walking to & from?), so if we stopped every two hours we'd be on the road until ~3AM!

The hood old days! 350 miles Friday evening Ditto Sunday evening with the Junior sailors asleep in tge car exhausted.

 

[Bouba]

The hood old days! 350 miles Friday evening Ditto Sunday evening with the Junior sailors asleep in tge car exhausted.

Electric vehicles don’t have exhausts...so where would you keep the kids

 

[Whaup367]

Yeah, for this particular corner case we're a long, long way from it being possible with batteries- we had a campervan and often towed a triple-stack trailer behind it... range would be in double figures, I suspect, with a pretty high chance of not even being able to find enough charge points to join up... probably only a handful of people doing this sort of thing... mind you, how far do equestrians tow their 'boxes of a weekend?
Maybe Musk's truck thingy will move the goalposts...

 

[Bouba]

Yeah, for this particular corner case we're a long, long way from it being possible with batteries- we had a campervan and often towed a triple-stack trailer behind it... range would be in double figures, I suspect, with a pretty high chance of not even being able to find enough charge points to join up... probably only a handful of people doing this sort of thing... mind you, how far do equestrians tow their 'boxes of a weekend?
Maybe Musk's truck thingy will move the goalposts...

Yes, things are changing...Tesla now make semis that can tow forty tons 500 miles...things are changing and fast...when big electric trucks are common, they will be marinized...just like every large motorboat is running on truck motors at the present time

 

[V1701]

Last time I drove 420 miles up to Scotland to see my Mum I got 61mpg in my little 10 year old Kia Rio 1.5 diesel, with the 10 gallon tank that's a theoretical range of nigh on 1000km and the wee thing has 106k miles on the clock...

 

[dukeofted]

You obviously don't do that very often with such low mileage for a 10 year old car?

 

[Chiara’s slave]

You obviously don't do that very often with such low mileage for a 10 year old car?

Would you want to do that regularly in a Kia Rio?

 

[kwb78]

Toyota's claim of 750 miles therefore would need a battery of three times that capacity so 3*600kW=1.8MW

That’s not necessarily the case. One thing that people often overlook is that electric cars have efficiency figures as well. The equivalent of MPG in electrical terms, miles/kWh. Many electric vehicles are big boxes that are horribly inefficient aerodynamically, and weight close to 3 tons. A good counter example is Mercedes developmental EQXX which can get well over 600 miles from a 100kWh battery, largely because it is very aerodynamic.

 

[rogerthebodger]

The other thing to remember is that FV also tend to have regenerative breaking which helps to regain the kinetic energy used to accelerate the vehicle