On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:31:15 +0100, "Recliner"
wrote:
"Bruce" wrote in message

On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:42:07 +0100, "Recliner"
wrote:

However, I think that electric trains are already so efficient that
the amount of improvement available can't be as much as cars, which
start from a much worse position. After all, you can't do as much to
improve the aerodynamics of a train as you can a car, and there
isn't an idling engine you could switch off at stations.


There is also a heck of an improvement coming in average fuel
consumption of new cars in the next few years. This will eventually
make them more than competitive on CO2 emissions with high speed rail,
which is very hungry for power, and much closer than they are now to
conventional rail.

The first commercially available volume production electric cars are
expected in 2010 from Nissan and Renault. Over the next decade, they
will revolutionise urban transport. Nissan's model will include
leasing the very expensive battery pack, which will make the purchase
price of the car competitive with comparable petrol and diesel engined
models while still costing at least 20% less to run. CO2 emissions
will be only about a third of those of conventional cars, putting them
on a par with conventional rail.

Let's put this into context. The Nissan Leaf is unlikely to reach Europe
before 2012, just before the date when you never cease telling us that
the UK will run out of electric power.

The Leaf has a claimed range of 100 miles, but most electric cars
achieve much less than the claimed range in normal driving. On a 240v
household supply, it will take eight hours to recharge, so for most
people, the maximum miles per day that they could do would be about 80,
and maybe less if they want to be sure of getting home (after all, you
can't just pop in for a fill-up when the red light comes on).

The 270kg Li-ion battery pack would add at least £6000 to the cost of
the car, so Nissan will lease them to customers for 'less than £100 per
month', which implies that it will subsidise them (covering the
expensive manufacturing and recycling costs itself). That lease cost
would get a small diesel urban run-around about 800 miles, but you still
have to pay for the electricity for the electric car, on top of the
battery lease cost.

If you do up to 1000 miles per month (which is, realistically, all the
electric car is likely to be capable of), the Leaf is likely to cost
considerably more to run (battery lease+electricity cost) than a
conventional smallish car. On top of that, you have a car with a very
limited range, which cannot be refuelled on a whim, which won't be very
nice to drive (thanks to the heavy battery pack), with uncompetitive
performance. And if you do cane it, the battery life really will
plummet.

And that's before the government decides that motoring electricity needs
to be taxed at a higher rate, just like petrol and diesel engined cars,
or electricity is rationed, as you keep asserting. And don't assume that
electric cars will keep their exemption from road tax and congestion
charges once there's enough of them to matter.

Yes, I can really see it revolutionising urban transport, and driving
the railways with their fast, long distance electric trains into
extinction.

Rail has no answer to this, other than companies like Siemens
designing *out* the ridiculous excess weight that they had previously
designed *in* to their Desiros.

Yeah, the Nissan Leaf will surely eliminate the need for electric
trains.


I understand your scepticism, but the Nissan Leaf and its Renault
equivalent (the two companies are closely linked) will be the first
available mass production electric cars. You have to start somewhere,
and this is as good a place as any. Others will follow, but so far,
only Nissan/Renault has addressed the problem of the cost of the
batteries.

But you carefully missed my other point, that cars with petrol and
diesel engines are rapidly becoming more fuel efficient. Over the
last few years, the improvement in engine efficiency has been negated
by a weight increase, for mainly safety reasons. If there hadn't been
a significant improvement in efficiency, the fuel consumption would
have gone up, as with the lardbutt Desiros.

Now, there won't be further increases in weight, so future
improvements in engine efficiency will translate directly into
improvements in fuel economy, and these will be substantial. There
simply isn't the scope for trains to make this magnitude of
performance gains, so the CO2 consumption gap between trains and cars
will be substantially reduced.

That can only be a good thing, because rail could never cope with more
than a tiny proportion of the passenger traffic that currently goes by
road. Rail has 6% of the surface passenger-km, roads 94%. So even if
rail doubled its market share to 12%, the roads would still take 88%.
The chances of rail doubling its market share without massive
development of new lines are near-zero. Just look at the high cost of
Crossrail, and of high speed inter-city lines.

So it is in everyone's interests that cars become much more frugal and
emit far less CO2, because people aren't going to give up the freedom
of travelling in their own private, secure and comfortable air
conditioned space.