"Roland Perry" wrote in message

In message
,
at 03:53:07 on Wed, 12 Aug 2009, John B remarked:
You might be able to apply some of the engine-improvement
technology to DMUs, but can electric motors be made any more
efficient?

Yes:
1) three-phase induction motors instead of synchronous DC motors
2) regenerative braking

These have been done.

So you can't make them *more* efficient, then (starting today,
obviously).

Note the comments I made upthread about the new Desiro City train, of
which the manufacturer says, "The lightweight design of the train and
the bogies combined with an intelligent vehicle control system reduce
overall energy consumption by up to 50 per cent compared to preceding
models." I assume the comparison is with other electric Desiros, such
as the 350s, so it looks like significant further savings are still
available.

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.

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.

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.

That isn't progress, it is just putting right a major design error,
and restoring things back to where they were a few years ago.

In message , at 13:27:45 on
Wed, 12 Aug 2009, Bruce remarked:
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.

Assuming the treasury doesn't find a way to tax electricity-for-motoring
at 500% like it does petrol and diesel. I look forward to fun and games
with the Excise turning up to see if you've illegally topped up your car
with "Red electrons".
--
Roland Perry

"Roland Perry" wrote in message

In message , at 13:27:45
on Wed, 12 Aug 2009, Bruce remarked:
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.

Assuming the treasury doesn't find a way to tax
electricity-for-motoring at 500% like it does petrol and diesel. I
look forward to fun and games with the Excise turning up to see if
you've illegally topped up your car with "Red electrons".

Even if they fail to do that, I bet the favourable tax treatment of
electric cars won't last long, once they get more popular. And if you
need some sort of special power socket to charge more powerful electric
cars, that would give them to opportunity to insist on a special meter,
so maybe they would be able to tax anyone with an "electron guzzler".

In message , at 14:09:42 on
Wed, 12 Aug 2009, Recliner remarked:
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.

Assuming the treasury doesn't find a way to tax
electricity-for-motoring at 500% like it does petrol and diesel. I
look forward to fun and games with the Excise turning up to see if
you've illegally topped up your car with "Red electrons".

Even if they fail to do that, I bet the favourable tax treatment of
electric cars won't last long, once they get more popular. And if you
need some sort of special power socket to charge more powerful electric
cars, that would give them to opportunity to insist on a special meter,
so maybe they would be able to tax anyone with an "electron guzzler".

Substantial new infrastructure will be required, so that gives an
opportunity for "special sockets" at home as well as at communal
charging points.

The infrastructure is needed for all those homes where the car isn't
parked in the drive, and for neighbourhoods where the electrical supply
hasn't been sized to allow everyone to draw an extra 100amps
continuously (ie almost all of them).
--
Roland Perry

"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.

"Roland Perry" wrote in message

In message , at 14:09:42 on
Wed, 12 Aug 2009, Recliner remarked:
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.

Assuming the treasury doesn't find a way to tax
electricity-for-motoring at 500% like it does petrol and diesel. I
look forward to fun and games with the Excise turning up to see if
you've illegally topped up your car with "Red electrons".

Even if they fail to do that, I bet the favourable tax treatment of
electric cars won't last long, once they get more popular. And if you
need some sort of special power socket to charge more powerful
electric cars, that would give them to opportunity to insist on a
special meter, so maybe they would be able to tax anyone with an
"electron guzzler".

Substantial new infrastructure will be required, so that gives an
opportunity for "special sockets" at home as well as at communal
charging points.

The infrastructure is needed for all those homes where the car isn't
parked in the drive, and for neighbourhoods where the electrical
supply hasn't been sized to allow everyone to draw an extra 100amps
continuously (ie almost all of them).

Yes, that's a very good point. Imagine if every house in the street was
charging its electric car(s) overnight -- it's pretty unlikely that the
local sub-station and wiring could handle the load. It may be OK if just
one or two houses use 13amp sockets, but not if the whole street is
doing it for hours on end.

On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:45:32 +0100
"Recliner" wrote:
Yes, that's a very good point. Imagine if every house in the street was
charging its electric car(s) overnight -- it's pretty unlikely that the
local sub-station and wiring could handle the load. It may be OK if just
one or two houses use 13amp sockets, but not if the whole street is
doing it for hours on end.

Also I wonder how many house fires they might end up causing if a few
hundred amps is put through ancient wiring for 12 hours without a break.

B2003

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.

wrote in message
On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:45:32 +0100
"Recliner" wrote:
Yes, that's a very good point. Imagine if every house in the street
was charging its electric car(s) overnight -- it's pretty unlikely
that the local sub-station and wiring could handle the load. It may
be OK if just one or two houses use 13amp sockets, but not if the
whole street is doing it for hours on end.

Also I wonder how many house fires they might end up causing if a few
hundred amps is put through ancient wiring for 12 hours without a
break.

I think the car needs no more than 13 amps from a 240v domestic supply
for eight hours for a full charge, or can be charged very much more
quickly using a 400v 3-phase supply (not available in many houses, of
course). So individual houses may be OK charging one electric car, but
the neighbourhood supply may run out of juice if they're all doing it at
once.