Posts by John Robson

You are likely to find that the up and down mountain passes gets you better milage than motorway driving.

Aero losses are the real killer, and BEVs don't just throw away energy as heat when going down, they recover much of it (not all, but infinitely more than an ICE can manage).

"Again, not trying to say an EV is bad, just giving my tale with the data I collected to gauge if it would work for me."

That's a very odd test to see if it would work for you - do you spend lots of time at an unfinished customer site and a distant, and dishonest, hotel?

When you say a supercharger cost you $95 for 90%... that feels like you've fallen foul of overstay charges.

That doesn't *have* to be at home though - it can easily be an hour whilst you're shopping, then an hour or so when you're out for something else - let alone the potential for 8 hours if you have a place of work. It also doesn't need to be DC charging; an AC charger is a glorified light switch, which makes their installation, and therefore their energy, much cheaper.

Destination chargers, and that includes anywhere that has car parking, need to be utterly ubiquitous, and they will be...

Last year took a trip to London to visit the Natural History Museum - we used to drive to Cockfosters, but the tube is a pain in a wheelchair, so we drove all the way this time - pulled up just round the corner from the NHM, plugged in and then visited Hope, Dippy, and various other exhibits... Returned to the car which was heading towards being full again. The idea is to "ABC"... always be charging, just a trickle charge whenever possible is going to get you the miles you need.

An average car in the UK does about 20 miles each day - there will be some drivers who do substantially more, and the distribution won't be even so the relevant number for calculations will be lower, but 20 miles is about 5kWh each day, which is an hour of charging at a standard AC charger, two hours for a granny charger... it's really not a huge amount of charge to find.

They're basically all tap and go now - that technically being a mandated requirement on Rapids at least.

I use a combination of tapping a credit card and my octopus card.

Of course you can't use fuel cards at different groups either, so the situation isn't actually all that different.

It *was* a pain, but hasn't been for a number of years now.

The major exception... Telsa Superchargers, you don't do anything other than plug in, and the car and charger communicate and the billing is done automatically (which really ought to be the overall model).

With them opening up to other vehicles you would need the Telsa app to initiate the charge on those.

But I can't recall a rapid charger I've been to in the last several years that didn't accept contactless payment (though comms issues should be handled better).

In fact I can't recall a fast charger that didn't accept contactless either - though I can't recall (the last one I remember using was in Hull, and that was free, so...)

"non optimal"

110 miles a day from "non optimal"... that's the takeaway here. Even the slowest possible charger gets more miles over a normal day than you are ever likely to use.

I'd also not return to that hotel - getting one closer to the client, preferably much closer. But then I generally prefer to walk/wheel to work whenever possible...

I'd also be raising issues with the hotel... because that looks like deceptive advertising.

Yes - it worked.

A couple of extension cables isn't unreasonable.

Having to go to a smelly "special location" to put toxic fuel in a tank is a far less pleasant adjustment than plugging in a power cable.

Choosing to go to a park for a walk seems like a very nice way of passing time that would otherwise be sat in a hotel room staring at the wall.

Of course the fact that the hotel is aware that charging points are needed, and that the office is looking to install them seems to have completely passed you by.

> I guess I'm one of the vanishingly few to have an issue that's not for lack of trying?

From the voltage I guess you were in a different country, and from the anecdote you were renting on a trip, which is an interesting use case, but one that should be trivial to cover - as you pointed out there were two places that could/should have had destination chargers available...

But also - you made it work without much difficulty...

Even a 110V circuit gives ~ 2kW (1.8-2.4kW for 15-20A) which is about 6 miles/hour, so easily 60 miles overnight, or 50 for a working day.

That's 110 miles a day added on the very slowest of connections - even with a pretty excessive 45 miles round trip (feels like bad planning) that's 65 miles added per day without you ever having to visit anywhere special.

Would L2 chargers have been better - yes, if either location had what is basically a glorified light switch on a decent circuit then you'd not even have had to think about charging - just plug in overnight, or whilst working.

Re: What you said is only true

YouTube video of a Tesla which is rather quick on the track (search for dark helmet tesla for more videos)

Energy density is still increasing.

a) What uncertainties? There is no uncertainty any more, there is just a deliberate lack of research, or a lack of up to date research.

b) Not an option - that's the point.

c) Great, I don't suggest that BEVs are the be all and end all - public transport needs a huge amount of investment, and to be run as a public service, not as a profit centre.

EVs *are* the easy option, unsurprisingly the used market isn't mature yet.

a) What issue - the "I can't drive a million miles before breakfast" brigade are just one group that won't listen.

b) The point is that if the issues disappear with experience... because the issues aren't.

No - because the "issues" are raised by people who claim that they can't possibly do without fossil fuels for journeys which others drive quite easily without them.

There are vanishingly few people who actually have any issue that isn't purely in the "change bad" category.

"The main use for services is usually for a toilet break, and stretch your legs a bit, not to fuel up."

Only because service station fuel is generally expensive... with an EV many more people will be using the motorway chargers on their journeys at the start/end of each major holiday.

We do need a good array of chargers at each service station, but that's a long way from "every space".

I'd like to see SMR or micro reactors located at service stations - with 10-20MW generation at each of the ~100 service stations that's a couple of GW for the grid when the chargers aren't in use, and therefore a 20MW grid connection available, so a max draw of 40MW, which would be a very substantial number of rapid chargers.

People don't like change... that's always been the case, and petrol took a while to take over from horses.

We're in a position now where we don't have the time to take a generation or two to transition away from ICE vehicle (to whatever).

The "issues" which are raised are always raised by people who haven't driven an EV, not by those who have.

Re: Ah yes - the "there aren't enough charging points" defence...

"It's a valid defence when the government is trying to force mainstream EV adoption now. There's no way, not with current levels of investment in power generation and charging infrastructure, that this country will be ready for hybrid-only new cars from 2030 and zero-emission only new cars from 2035."

So from a legislative perspective... in 2045 ish there will be few ICE vehicles on the road...

"During the first half of 2022 an average of 891 charging devices were installed each month. Fast-forward to the beginning half of 2023 and the UK is now seeing an average of 1,622 charging devices installed per month."

In terms of power generation... assuming all miles are driven at 3m/kWh then we don't need any more electricity generation than we had earlier this century.

The reasons for mandating V2H are nothing to do with "oh the grid can't cope" and everything to do with allowing people to use their assets more than 5% of the time, and yes - to act as a decent grid stabilisation option.

There are vanishingly few people for whom an EV isn't already suitable - I can't think of any actual examples in fact (ignoring such complaints as "must to a million miles to a ten second charge before I'll consider it" and "but it's got no clutch").

Ah yes - the "there aren't enough charging points" defence...

At what point were there "enough" petrol stations for our current fleet of vehicles... The infrastructure is being built, and there are a couple of decades before EVs will be the majority of vehicles, let alone all of them.

Re: Lamborghini going EV ?

"A gas-guzzling supercar isn't economic, but you can floor the gas pedal without immediately checking how many minutes you have left."

Clearly never driven one hard... The Veyron famously had a 12 minute tank IIRC? (obviously rather difficult to find a location where you can burn through the fuel that fast).

An EV does lose more range when used at high power... but not nearly as much as you might expect - you really lose range by braking hard (and the two tend to go hand in hand). Accelerating onto a motorway, or as part of an overtake, makes substantially less difference than you might expect.

"I'd be happy to switch to electric when they can do 300km on a single charge and get an 80% charge in 10-15 minutes."

Well both of those are already possible... but neither are really necessary for the *vast* majority of users...

300km is 185 miles, so at least 2.5 hours - which is definitely comfort break territory, and that usually takes quite a few minutes.

80% charge would be 150 miles range (still over 2 hours), and at a reasonable 3.5-4m/kWh is ~40kWh... for that to take 12 minutes is a "mere" 200kW (CCS already supports 350kW).

Even the MG4 does 450km, and 135kW charging - not quite the 12 minutes you're looking for, but also 50% more range.

Re: 2 weeks?

As mentioned in the article it was the letter requesting the information, which *always* includes fine warnings - irrespective of manufacturer.

And who the cluck needs 10Gbps?? Seriously, stop stroking yourself.

Maybe video editors working from home?

But yes - in general that's massive overkill, but it's not that long ago that 1Gbps, or even 100Mpbs would have been considered massive overkill.

I'm old enough to remember having a 9600 baud connection, and that was amazing - in part because it was completely uncontested, and so if a download said 3 hours and 5 minutes it would take 3 hours and 5 minutes - enough time to head down to the bar for a refreshing glass or two, and come back exactly as the download finished.

Re: That's a lot of money

The hat doesn’t sound too bad…

Having recently had a foul waste connection installed for ~70m

Re: Bets

Well on neither the Moon nor Mars do you need a superheavy, which is what needs the orbital launch tower...

You build it by taking materials, or using local materials.

Re: Bets

cow: learn to quote

cow: learn to quote

cow: learn to quote

cow: learn to quote

cow: learn to quote

cow: learn to quote

cow: learn to quote

Everyone else - learn to read.

Re: Bets

The flights are cheaper because the technology for reusing rockets has been developed.

Yes SpaceX is in receipt of US government contracts, so is Boeing...

You seem to be confused about what those contracts are for, and how much SpaceX charges compared with other launch providers - they charge 60% of what boeing or roscosmos do for their seats, and only one of those has launched.

Re: Bets

So you think that an airline could compete if it threw away each plane after a single flight?

The incremental cost of a starship launch will be disruptive - the ability to throw a substantial payload to anywhere in the solar system will change how we do research in the solar system.

What I don't buy is the point to point suborbital transport model - I can't imagine there are nearly enough people who need to get from, for example, London to Sydney in that short a time to make it a sustainable model - but then I haven't seen the passenger density yet.

The risks involved in the landing just don't make sense for something as trivial as on planet transport... those risks are far more reasonable when looking at interplanetary hops.

Re: Bets

"a little premature to think it's going to be a paradigm shift. A successful launch would be nice."

Given SpaceX's history it would be a brave person to bet against them getting Starship to work (stupid bloody name for a rocket).

The big question, and the only real disappointment from the last test, is the performance of the heat shield.

Re: Side effects

Why move to one battery, just have both batteries removable... you could even arrange to be able to swap batteries out without the device powering down.

Re: Unique keys

I went to uni with someone who had that issue at banks in the times of paper forms... 88 character name (and yes, I can still remember it all) simply didn't fit...

He ended up using just the first name (which was a reasonable length) and the last part of his surname - and missed out the rest.

Re: Unique keys

Who needs a central database - we have cryptographic signatures.

An ID doesn't have to be stored centrally with other data to be a validated and useful "single" ID, it can simply be signed, and that signature verified on use.