Electric car charging to kill off segregated cycle lanes

[thirdcrank]

... But you've got solar panels I believe? ... .

I have, but without the generous feed-in tariff they would not have been cost-effective for me. When the scheme was launched, part of the justification was that it would trigger much more widespread use, but I'm not sure how much that has happened. At present the "free" electricity isn't much benefit as I only have any when the sun is out so refrigeration is my main use. (This is the con inflicted on anybody who allows a company to install its own panels on their roof in return for the free electricity.) I can see that eventually, there may be a system which allows somebody making only shortish journeys to hook up their car to their own solar panel system, probably with swappable batteries to allow charging during the day when the car is in use.

I mentioned earlier that one of my neighbours has a plug-in hybrid. This claims a range between charges of 25 miles but he says he gets less than that, typically 18 miles IIRC. ie, setting off fully charged, the electric-only range would have you looking for a filling station in a conventional car. He works about five miles away so he's OK for commuting, but as he points out, on the open road on a longer journey he's lugging round a lot of heavy, expensive kit with no benefit. He chose this system because it's acompany car and the tax benefits are considerable.

[Vorpal]

Or someone will put the solar panels on the car.... https://sonomotors.com/sion.html/

[thirdcrank]

Very interesting. Unless I've missed it, the technical data don't include the generation capacity of the system. (I have the largest permitted domestic system within the FIT regime and it's rated at 4Kw but it covers half my roof.) My instinct is that it would be more practical to use fixed panels + changeable battery than panels on the car. But who knows?

[kwackers]

I have, but without the generous feed-in tariff they would not have been cost-effective for me. When the scheme was launched, part of the justification was that it would trigger much more widespread use, but I'm not sure how much that has happened. At present the "free" electricity isn't much benefit as I only have any when the sun is out so refrigeration is my main use. (This is the con inflicted on anybody who allows a company to install its own panels on their roof in return for the free electricity.) I can see that eventually, there may be a system which allows somebody making only shortish journeys to hook up their car to their own solar panel system, probably with swappable batteries to allow charging during the day when the car is in use.

If you had an electric car you can in theory choose to use that to run your house, if you haven't you can get a battery installed that will soak up the energy you're not using and give it back when you do this would increase massively the amount of energy you can use from your panels.

I know a guy who has panels, an electric car (mainly charged at home) and a Tesla power wall. He does around 12k miles a year in the car and his electricity bill is around £150 a year - which if you consider he's also running a car for 12k miles is pretty good.

Now I'm obviously not going to say this is cost effective, the power pack was about £6K installed and I'm not sure if the car can dump energy back to the house or not but this sort of technology is getting cheaper and better very fast.

When you had your solar panels installed it would never have been cost effective without FIT. But we've reached a point now where when I get around to fitting panels I won't bother with it because the money saved by fitting them myself would far outweigh anything I'd get back through FIT (which I believe finishes next year anyway).
You can get all the components now for a 4kw array for well under £3k by the time my current car dies and I switch to an electric one this will be cheaper again.

[kwackers]

Or someone will put the solar panels on the car.... https://sonomotors.com/sion.html/

When you crunch the numbers it works out cars like this would have to sit outside in a sunny spot for a week or more to get any worthwhile distance from the energy they get.

Realistically you can get a few hundred watt hours from peppering a car with solar panels, lets be generous and say 4kwh over 10 hours in the sun.
They're claiming a 250km range which suggests a minimum or 30kwh battery and probably more.

I think it's simply designed to separate people from their money...

[chris_suffolk]

.
(I'm not sure where you get the 10 hours charging time either. I think my neighbours Tesla can get 300 miles worth in about 45 minutes - and if they use the Tesla charging points - which for some reason always seem to be in hotels! Then they get free 'juice' and usually free tea and cake thrown in to boot! i think a 45 minute break every few hundred miles is probably a good idea too.)

From what I've read you can only fast charge once, then it needs at least one normal (2.5 hrs +) charge.

Anyway, electric for me will be a way of yet.

[Bonefishblues]

Or someone will put the solar panels on the car.... https://sonomotors.com/sion.html/

There have been already. The Prius plug-in had a solar roof as an expensive option, but the technology wasn't fully resolved and they were too heavy for that location, and not very efficient either. In fact I can't remember seeing one with them.

[StephenW]

My understanding is that there are considerable doubts over whether using vehicle batteries to support the grid makes economic sense. Vehicle batteries only have a limited number of charge cycles, so if they are used to supply electricity to the grid then it shortens the batteries' life. It may be better to use some other stationary electricity storage system to support the grid (e.g. using retired electric vehicle batteries?). Nevertheless, the flexibility in charging times for electric vehicles could be useful - as long as it is ready when needed, people will not mind exactly when their vehicle was charged. (A company called Vcharge are applying Demand Side Management to electric vehicles and storage heaters, and selling this flexibility on the electricity market).

There often seems to be a focus on being autarkic (i.e. self-sufficient), e.g. at the level of the individual house. I would argue that this is the wrong scale on which to think about the problem, and can be a distraction. The first question is to think about what a good electricity generation mix looks like. Then, once we know the proportion of solar energy we want, if it makes sense to locate these solar panels on rooftops, then by all means, encourage people to put solar panels on their roofs. Focusing on making individual houses self-sufficient is likely to lead to a solution which is far from optimal.

The other thing which has not been mentioned is heating. Heating and transport are the two biggest uses of energy in the UK. Currently little of either of them is supplied by electricity. The big idea is to switch both of these two to electricity, and generate masses of renewable electricity (or nuclear). This is basically following the proposed solution set out in David MacKay's book. One of the challenges of this is that there is no inherent storage of electricity, unlike gas, and supplies of liquid fossil fuels.

[kwackers]

Or someone will put the solar panels on the car.... https://sonomotors.com/sion.html/

There have been already. The Prius plug-in had a solar roof as an expensive option, but the technology wasn't fully resolved and they were too heavy for that location, and not very efficient either. In fact I can't remember seeing one with them.

I think the Nissan Leaf has a solar panel on the spoiler, although I think its purpose is to charge the 12v vehicle battery rather than the propulsion system.

[softlips]

I thought that the bik was the real attraction for me, but I was very pleasantly surprised at how useful that 13-14 miles of battery charge was because you can choose how and when to deploy it. I was regularly posting overall 85-90 mpg on my regular 55 mile commute down the M40. The battery charge was costing me about 18p on E7 overnight rates and my then employer put in an outside socket for me.

I would have another in a heartbeat, but the cost of entry s/h isn't justifiable.

Good to know as I’m getting a BMW 330e a week on Monday. BIK Tax saving will be over £200 per month and was the main draw.

[ratherbeintobago]

Sad, but true!!
On the other hand, is it really going to happen?

Not if it’s reliant on the competence of Mr Grayling, no.

[StephenW]

When you think about cross rail, they could have used the East to West tunnel simply for bikes and it would have had a greater capacity by far than the trains and at a hugely lower cost.

Is this correct? A figure of 14000 people per hour is sometimes quoted as being the number of people who can be accommodated on one lane of road on bikes. This is attributed to Botma and Pappendrecht, although I haven't read anything where they actually state this explicitly.

Anyway, let's assume that is correct.

On the central section of Thameslink, they are going to run 24 trains per hour, and the trains each have 10 carriages. If there are 100 people in each carriage, that is 24000 people per hour. I presume Crossrail is similar.

There are bus rapid transit schemes in South America that can carry up to 50000 people per hour. This does depend on the buses being very full!

Of course, both public transport and cycling are much more efficient uses of space than cars!

[StephenW]

Page 107 of this document shows the greenhouse gas emissions from cars due to journeys of different lengths. Journeys up to 5 miles are responsible for 19% of UK emissions from cars. Journeys from 5 to 10 miles are responsible for a further 18%. Realistically, a lot of people are not going to want to cycle for journeys of more than about 5 miles, and very few will want to cycle further than 10 miles. So that leaves the other 63% of emissions from cars, which cycling can really do nothing about. (At least not directly - being able to cycle to the train station could make train travel more appealing to many).

What I am saying is that if the government wishes to reduce transport emissions, bikes are a part of the solution, but cannot be the whole solution. It's not a case of either bikes or electric cars. We may need both.

[forgot the link! here it is: http://www.zerocarbonbritain.org/images ... cb2030.pdf ]

[The utility cyclist]

When you think about cross rail, they could have used the East to West tunnel simply for bikes and it would have had a greater capacity by far than the trains and at a hugely lower cost.

Is this correct? A figure of 14000 people per hour is sometimes quoted as being the number of people who can be accommodated on one lane of road on bikes. This is attributed to Botma and Pappendrecht, although I haven't read anything where they actually state this explicitly.

Anyway, let's assume that is correct.

On the central section of Thameslink, they are going to run 24 trains per hour, and the trains each have 10 carriages. If there are 100 people in each carriage, that is 24000 people per hour. I presume Crossrail is similar.

There are bus rapid transit schemes in South America that can carry up to 50000 people per hour. This does depend on the buses being very full!

Of course, both public transport and cycling are much more efficient uses of space than cars!

IMO I think such a system could transit more people on bikes.
Theoretical max capacity of crossrail2 is quoted at 270,000 journeys at peak times (over a 3 hour period) which is disputed by many, this will be maxed out in less than a couple of years according to most and the quoted 'additional 10% of rail capacity' is laughable.

In any case the number of cyclists on a road (only 3.5m wide btw) does not reflect a totally segregated, multi lane wide motorised free 'road' without having to deal with junctions or indeed traffic lights which is precisely what an East to West cycle-motorway (not the crud they laughingly call a superhighway) or tunnel solely for one mode of transport with bi-direction totally separated would afford, not even close.
Take your 14kx2 (two x 3.5m lanes each way to surplant the internal 6.2m for crossrail which has a greater external width both widthways and height wise) then add that again from the other direction and that's 56,000/hour before taking into account the increase in capacity due to the totally uninterrupted transit (that according to various papers could be 30% more)
The cost of such a project (remember Crossrail 2 alone is £30 Billion) without having to build what they have to accept trains never mind the cost of the stations and trains themselves + other infra would mean the cost would be mutiples less or simply build more capacity for same cost with more projects. The benefit ratio would be massive as opposed to what that is for crossrail which despite the bluster and lies is only 1.3:1 which barely puts it in the 'medium' catergory

[StephenW]

I had not realised the Crossrail tunnels are as wide as that. OK, let's suppose that if they were dedicated to bikes, they could transport 28000 people per hour, per direction.

The crossrail trains are designed to carry 1500 people each. If they go for 24 trains per hour (in each direction) that would make 36000 people per hour, per direction.

So it's close, but slightly more for the train. If we add in the 30% extra which you mentioned, then they are almost exactly equal.

But in any case, is putting bikes in tunnels a good idea?

There are several advantages:
-no hills (almost)
-no headwinds
-not having to stop for junctions

But there are some disadvantages:
-limited entry and exit points
-need to climb up a ramp or use escalator to exit
-no sunshine or fresh air (maybe not that fresh in London...)

London is not an especially hilly or windy place, in my experience. However, not having to stop for junctions is important, and can make a big difference in how much effort is required to cover a given distance. But putting the whole thing in a tunnel isn't the only way to achieve a route with no stoppages! What is needed is for this is for the cycle route to have priority over crossing traffic when the volumes of traffic are low, and an underpass when volumes are high. By changing the road layout for cars, and consolidating several moderately busy crossings into one very busy one, the number of underpasses required could be reduced.

I'm not sure that thinking of one east-west "super-route" is really that relevant to the kind of bike journeys most people are likely to make. What is needed is a dense network of cycle routes, to a similar standard to the current east-west "superhighway".

I'm not sure I agree that the current east-west "superhighway" is crud, as you call it, although I don't think it should be called a superhighway either. I think it is an "adequateway", as it is an adequate cycle path.