UK switching to electric vehicles discussion

[heathrowrail]

It's never going to work, nearly every engineer you speak too says hydrogen or biogas will be the future and that they wouldn't buy an EV.

 

[trebor79]

It's never going to work, nearly every engineer you speak too says hydrogen or biogas will be the future and that they wouldn't buy an EV.

Hydrogen is very expensive to produce, especially if you don't want to make it from natural gas (which releases loads of CO2, so is pointless from the POV of reducing transport carbon emissions). CNG is practical but I seriously doubt we could produce anything like enough biogas to fuel every road vehicle.

 

[Energy]

It's never going to work, nearly every engineer you speak too says hydrogen or biogas will be the future and that they wouldn't buy an EV.

Most don't like hydrogen because electrolysis is really inefficient and like how simple EV should be. Hydrogen is dead for cars, Shell had a few refilling stations but they have closed now with only a few in the country now.

Fuel cells never really made sense, converting the energy to hydrogen is inefficient and a fuel cell car is effectively an EV but with a fuel cell and a smaller battery. While they are quicker to refill the convenience of being able to charge at home is a bigger deal for most people.

The engineers who wouldn't buy an EV are because it either doesn't work for them yet (no off street parking or regularly travelling very long distances) or because they know they are getting better/cheaper so aren't going out of their way to switch unless they are already changing their car.

 

[Noddy]

It's never going to work, nearly every gas engineer you speak too says hydrogen or biogas will be the future and that they wouldn't buy an EV.

Fixed that for you

 

[Bald Rick]

It's never going to work, nearly every engineer you speak too says hydrogen or biogas will be the future and that they wouldn't buy an EV.

Don’t know what Engineers you’re talking to, but I don’t know any who think that Hydrogen will have any future in automotive except in niche applications and (possibly) HGVs.

 

[jon0844]

It's not surprising that there's a lot of people lobbying for hydrogen, and the public then spread their lies - just like all those saying the grid can't cope with EVs, that batteries won't last 10 minutes and so on.

Even car dealerships are likely to be biased towards ICE vehicles for some time as they are fearful of the loss of long term income as cars won't need expensive maintenance.

There have been quite a few 'influencers' going down the road of promoting hydrogen recently, and also many more 'it is now more expensive to charge your EV than fill up with petrol' stories too.

I would agree that EV tech as of today may not be really suitable for lorries and hydrogen might find a niche there, but only until we can improve energy density/charging technology. So even then, hydrogen may have a limited lifespan.

 

[reddragon]

It's never going to work, nearly every engineer you speak too says hydrogen or biogas will be the future and that they wouldn't buy an EV.

Hydrogen does NOT work for transport or heating or most other ideas promoted by the gas industry with their £100million promotion budget

Watch this video by a world renowned expert

Is It Time to Give Up on Hydrogen?!​

Whatever the dreams of the fossil industry, Hydrogen has severe issues with it's fundamental chemical properties that cannot be ignored

PS - I am an Engineer and compelling evidence says EVs & Heat pumps will beat gas at every turn.

 

[cjmillsnun]

It's never going to work, nearly every engineer you speak too says hydrogen or biogas will be the future and that they wouldn't buy an EV.

Biogas is produced in small amounts and injected into mainly low and medium pressure networks for local distribution as a supplement to natural gas. It’s still a carbon fuel as it’s still methane.

Hydrogen is inefficient to produce and more importantly is difficult to store.

Engineers I speak to suggest electric is the way forward (ideally electric trains and busses in the main)

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Feb 2023 ==

That leads to an interesting social question. Given a full charge could easily cost £30 or more, I would assume that you would offer to pay for the electricity. But what about the skinflint who doesn't offer?

Easily dealt with. The right software can connect the point to a network that bills the user and collects payment electronically. Not a member of the network? You can’t charge your car.

 

[MotCO]

Even car dealerships are likely to be biased towards ICE vehicles for some time as they are fearful of the loss of long term income as cars won't need expensive maintenance.

There have been quite a few 'influencers' going down the road of promoting hydrogen recently, and also many more 'it is now more expensive to charge your EV than fill up with petrol' stories too.

In this video, a Porsche Taycan (EV) owner took his car in for its first service - £1,500 including two front tyres (£750 without). It looks as though dealers are making up for less maintenance by jacking up their prices when you do have it serviced.

This guy also says that it is more expensive for him to recharge than top up with petrol, so not so much an 'influencer' as an actual owner.

 

[cjmillsnun]

Smart charging was chosen by the experts as the top priority. It enables time of use setting and DNO control to get EVs charged during low demand and not peak demand, the biggest potential issue ahead.

V2G or V2H is very expensive to install requiring major changes to the fusebox, addition of a gateway and circuit changes.

V2G/H could be implemented cheaply by using a similar system to solar. Car connected to charge point that incorporates an inverter for V2G/H Inverter feeds back to a circuit in the CU. Inverter checks for 230V AC from the grid. If there it exports, if not then V2G/H is disabled until mains is present. Smart metering can capture any export to the grid.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Feb 2023 ==

In this video, a Porsche Taycan (EV) owner took his car in for its first service - £1,500 including two front tyres (£750 without). It looks as though dealers are making up for less maintenance by jacking up their prices when you do have it serviced.

This guy also says that it is more expensive for him to recharge than top up with petrol, so not so much an 'influencer' as an actual owner.

It’s Porsche what do you expect? I had my Renault Zoe serviced for a little over £100 at a Renault dealer.

 

[reddragon]

In this video, a Porsche Taycan (EV) owner took his car in for its first service - £1,500 including two front tyres (£750 without). It looks as though dealers are making up for less maintenance by jacking up their prices when you do have it serviced.

This guy also says that it is more expensive for him to recharge than top up with petrol, so not so much an 'influencer' as an actual owner.

I use an independent EV servicing supplier and the service is done on the drive or office car park. Cheaper price than the dealer and no time lost.

If you drive an EV like a lunatic (note a Porsche driver) in winter & use the most expensive possible public ultra rapid chargers, it is just possible to cost more than an ICE car, as long as its not a high performance ICE version of his EV

 

[jon0844]

BP (I think) has recently cut its highest charges (for the fastest charging) by 10p per kWh, so that must make quite a difference.

I do think it's cheeky to charge what's essentially a convenience fee and, technically, it is a bit unfair for those cherry picking the most expensive sites to make the argument that fossil fuels are cheaper.

I mean, if everyone always used petrol prices at a motorway service station for comparisons, you'd rightly call them out on it.

But there are many people doing this and it seems some people, like that nutter from the Daily Telegraph, who quite possibly bought an EV purposely to then use that to create many articles saying how awful they are.

I bet Giles Coren earns enough from that to cover the leasing cost!

 

[trebor79]

V2G/H could be implemented cheaply by using a similar system to solar. Car connected to charge point that incorporates an inverter for V2G/H Inverter feeds back to a circuit in the CU. Inverter checks for 230V AC from the grid. If there it exports, if not then V2G/H is disabled until mains is present. Smart metering can capture any export to the grid.

The inverter is in the car. The car cannot put DC into the pins that the home charge point uses.

 

[heathrowrail]

Hydrogen does NOT work for transport or heating or most other ideas promoted by the gas industry with their £100million promotion budget

Watch this video by a world renowned expert

Whatever the dreams of the fossil industry, Hydrogen has severe issues with it's fundamental chemical properties that cannot be ignored

PS - I am an Engineer and compelling evidence says EVs & Heat pumps will beat gas at every turn.

I'm an Engineer too bud and I can tell you all of that is a load of BS.

 

[cjmillsnun]

The inverter is in the car. The car cannot put DC into the pins that the home charge point uses.

No but you could use the CCS pins (DC) instead.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Feb 2023 ==

I'm an Engineer too bud and I can tell you all of that is a load of BS.

I’m also an engineer and I’d like you to indicate why it’s wrong, because to me it checks out.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 6 Feb 2023 ==

BP (I think) has recently cut its highest charges (for the fastest charging) by 10p per kWh, so that must make quite a difference.

I do think it's cheeky to charge what's essentially a convenience fee and, technically, it is a bit unfair for those cherry picking the most expensive sites to make the argument that fossil fuels are cheaper.

I mean, if everyone always used petrol prices at a motorway service station for comparisons, you'd rightly call them out on it.

But there are many people doing this and it seems some people, like that nutter from the Daily Telegraph, who quite possibly bought an EV purposely to then use that to create many articles saying how awful they are.

I bet Giles Coren earns enough from that to cover the leasing cost!

The problem is BP Pulse is probably the least reliable charging network.

 

[AM9]

Don’t know what Engineers you’re talking to, but I don’t know any who think that Hydrogen will have any future in automotive except in niche applications and (possibly) HGVs.

Maybe @heathrowrail thinks that SAV (sustainable aviation fuel) is going to be available cheap at the staff shop!

 

[The Ham]

I'm an Engineer too bud and I can tell you all of that is a load of BS.

Does it require a lot of electricity to create green hydrogen?

As a percentage, what hydrogen is not grey?

Is it reasonable to expect the percentage of the existing uses to increase their non grey hydrogen before we start to rapidly increase or uses of hydrogen?

Does it only provide back about 1/3 of that energy when used as a fuel?

Is it better to convert back to the grid and charge an EV than use it directly in a car?

I'm sure there's other questions which the video raises however that are a good starting set of questions. Can you also provide sources.

 

[Roast Veg]

Don’t know what Engineers you’re talking to, but I don’t know any who think that Hydrogen will have any future in automotive except in niche applications and (possibly) HGVs.

HGVs are going to be very competitive between Hydrogen and Megawatt Charging Systems, and it's pretty much a race as to who can build the supply infrastructure fastest. My personal monetary bias notwithstanding, MCS standardisation is on the horizon and I suspect we'll get fleet rollouts almost immediately, as the difference between CCS and MCS is minimal.

V2G/H could be implemented cheaply by using a similar system to solar. Car connected to charge point that incorporates an inverter for V2G/H Inverter feeds back to a circuit in the CU. Inverter checks for 230V AC from the grid. If there it exports, if not then V2G/H is disabled until mains is present. Smart metering can capture any export to the grid.

When you're on AC to the car it's a little more challenging, but it's easy enough to control the car's inverter from the charger, so you can just drive it from the power meter the charging station is wired to.

 

[HSTEd]

As someone who literally does this research.... the opinion of the bulk of the decarbonisation science/engineering field is that bulk use of hydrogen for combustion/fuel cells is a desperate play by the gas industry to rescue their assets from being stranded.

I am personally very skeptical of the utiltity of V2G, there are serious operational challenges (what happens when people who've signed up get left with flat car batteries and then want to use the car?) and losses (oh look you've attached all the storage to the end of long 230V distribution circuits, so you will eat ~8% grid losses in each direction)

I honestly think V2G is just desperate modellers trying to avoid paying for the battery parks they like to assume in their models.
Now off peak charging under grid control - that is potentially very interesting and much easier to implement, given that the AC charging spec already supports AC car charging at currents controlled in real time by the interface unit.

Getting a 7kW AC charger into a house is going to cost far far less than a magic DC multi way inverter pack for V2G.

 

[E27007]

A slight blip for the EV / non-IC car, reading a trade journal for the car retail industry, such EV cars are suffering such worryingly high depreciation rates, some dealer chains have imposed a stocking ban, they will not buy a used EV. Some of this may be a reaction to the recent "out of the blue" price cuts by Tesla, but an EV is a big financial outlay, and punishing levels of vehicle depreciation leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the early adopters.

 

[jon0844]

As someone who literally does this research.... the opinion of the bulk of the decarbonisation science/engineering field is that bulk use of hydrogen for combustion/fuel cells is a desperate play by the gas industry to rescue their assets from being stranded.

This.

Have you seen how much the industry is spending in the USA right now on promoting gas for cooking (#CookWithGas) and the number of people on social media pushing that line? Tucker Carlson and the like has also joined in, of course.

I cook with gas, but ultimately will change to induction at some point. It's cleaner, safer and quicker. Sadly the fossil fuel companies, there's a good chance that over 50% of that electricity will be from wind or solar.

 

[Noddy]

Getting a 7kW AC charger into a house is going to cost far far less than a magic DC multi way inverter pack for V2G.

Assuming I’ve not misunderstood what you are saying (which is entirely possible!) the way things are going the two way inverter will be built into the car itself, not on the house/street (Eg Hyundai Ionic 5/6 which already have this)?

Also regarding V2G running people batteries down, surely this would just be controlled via software. Eg the owner/user says they want to have a minimum of 50%, 25% or whatever left and the software just cuts off V2G at that point? The aforementioned Ionics automatically cut off V2L at 15%, it would only be a bit of code to change this and make it a user option.

Totally agree about your points re hydrogen.

 

[reddragon]

A slight blip for the EV / non-IC car, reading a trade journal for the car retail industry, such EV cars are suffering such worryingly high depreciation rates, some dealer chains have imposed a stocking ban, they will not buy a used EV. Some of this may be a reaction to the recent "out of the blue" price cuts by Tesla, but an EV is a big financial outlay, and punishing levels of vehicle depreciation leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the early adopters.

Before Xmas, 2nd hand EV prices were higher than new. Those prices tumbled with much higher availability and a drop in demand. This happens with all products.

Mechanically & battery wise, EVs will have long low issue lives. I do worry about the electronics fitted in all new cars today as they have a shelf life.

 

[Bald Rick]

A slight blip for the EV / non-IC car, reading a trade journal for the car retail industry, such EV cars are suffering such worryingly high depreciation rates, some dealer chains have imposed a stocking ban, they will not buy a used EV. Some of this may be a reaction to the recent "out of the blue" price cuts by Tesla, but an EV is a big financial outlay, and punishing levels of vehicle depreciation leaves a bad taste in the mouth of the early adopters.

I don’t doubt the article, but that seems surprising.

Take a VW ID3. The oldest of these is now around 2.5 years old. The list price starts at £36k Now; when they came out they were £32k IIRC. The cheapest second hand model I can find on Autotrader is £24,450, and that is for one with 58k miles on it (Not bad going in 30 months!). That’s 24% depreciation over 2.5 years. Doesn’t seem ‘worryingly high’ to me.

 

[HSTEd]

Assuming I’ve not misunderstood what you are saying (which is entirely possible!) the way things are going the two way inverter will be built into the car itself, not on the house/street (Eg Hyundai Ionic 5/6 which already have this)?

Yes, I would expect if it does happen that it would be built into the car.

Also regarding V2G running people batteries down, surely this would just be controlled via software. Eg the owner/user says they want to have a minimum of 50%, 25% or whatever left and the software just cuts off V2G at that point? The aforementioned Ionics automatically cut off V2L at 15%, it would only be a bit of code to change this and make it a user option.

Yes, but given the battery capacity of available EVs (like the Hyundai Ionic at apparently only 38kWh) I remain skeptical how much capacity people would actually be willing to give up.

V2G becoming a major player seems to require a very specific set of circumstances to occur, and if it doesn't happen exactly right it seems to be strictly worse than just having a grid connected battery. Which can be placed adjacent to an 11kV or higher voltage feeder, in a climate controlled building. A system which does not require the batteries to fit inside a moving box and unpredictably become unavailable because they are being used for driving.

 

[jon0844]

Used cars, including used EVs, have begun to get down to far more manageable prices this year, which is a good thing (but bad for those people who might have been able to negate a lot of depreciation by selling their existing car on Motorway or Webuyanycar - it seems the bubble has finally burst).

There's a YouTube video from EVM (EVMan) that I saw last week and went through a lot of extremely good value second hand EVs. As time goes on, there are going to be many more bargains as you can get a car with 40-60,000 miles (and loads of battery life left) for a huge discount.

The good thing about most EVs being loaded with toys is that almost every car sold second hand will be of a decent spec.

Last year, an old battered early generation Leaf with an effective range of 50-60 miles at best was still selling for around £10k. Now it seems you can get one of these for nearer £5k, which is perhaps a bit more enticing for a second car 'runaround' with plenty of range for a day or two usage.

 

[Noddy]

Yes, I would expect if it does happen that it would be built into the car.

Yes, but given the battery capacity of available EVs (like the Hyundai Ionic at apparently only 38kWh) I remain skeptical how much capacity people would actually be willing to give up.

The Hyundai Motor Group E-GMP based cars (Ionic 5 and 6, Kia EV6 and Genesis GV60) all have a built-in bi-directional V2X inverter capable of up to 3.6kW. Currently they are only capable of V2L but this seems more about software and establishing protocols to interface with chargers/homes/the local grid rather than any actual hardware limitation. They also have 58 or 73/77kWh batteries (the bigger size is the standard one, the smaller size is only available on some models in the UK). So even 25% is still enough to power a home for a decent length of time.

V2G becoming a major player seems to require a very specific set of circumstances to occur, and if it doesn't happen exactly right it seems to be strictly worse than just having a grid connected battery. Which can be placed adjacent to an 11kV or higher voltage feeder, in a climate controlled building. A system which does not require the batteries to fit inside a moving box and unpredictably become unavailable because they are being used for driving.

I think V2G is much more about balancing the peaks and troughs in demand over the course of a single day. Large grid scale battery deployment seems much more about reducing reliance of fossil fuel generation across a longer period when the wind is not blowing. Of course the application of both overlaps massively which is why we need both.

 

[Roast Veg]

As someone who literally does this research.... the opinion of the bulk of the decarbonisation science/engineering field is that bulk use of hydrogen for combustion/fuel cells is a desperate play by the gas industry to rescue their assets from being stranded.

I am personally very skeptical of the utiltity of V2G, there are serious operational challenges (what happens when people who've signed up get left with flat car batteries and then want to use the car?) and losses (oh look you've attached all the storage to the end of long 230V distribution circuits, so you will eat ~8% grid losses in each direction)

There is a "mobility needs" factor baked in to the protocols, which demands the level of charge on the EV required by a fixed time, which will cover all but "I need to drive 280 miles in 15 minutes notice".

V2G becoming a major player seems to require a very specific set of circumstances to occur, and if it doesn't happen exactly right it seems to be strictly worse than just having a grid connected battery. Which can be placed adjacent to an 11kV or higher voltage feeder, in a climate controlled building.

A 7kW AC charger with bi-directional power transfer is plenty for Vehicle to Home loads, and will just be an added bonus on your energy bill saving as a Vehicle to Grid load. From the grid perspective, the game changer is at a macro scale with thousands of vehicles all able to distribute their remaining charge at the end of the evening commute.

 

[AM9]

As someone who literally does this research.... the opinion of the bulk of the decarbonisation science/engineering field is that bulk use of hydrogen for combustion/fuel cells is a desperate play by the gas industry to rescue their assets from being stranded.

I am personally very skeptical of the utiltity of V2G, there are serious operational challenges (what happens when people who've signed up get left with flat car batteries and then want to use the car?) and losses (oh look you've attached all the storage to the end of long 230V distribution circuits, so you will eat ~8% grid losses in each direction)

I honestly think V2G is just desperate modellers trying to avoid paying for the battery parks they like to assume in their models.
Now off peak charging under grid control - that is potentially very interesting and much easier to implement, given that the AC charging spec already supports AC car charging at currents controlled in real time by the interface unit.

Getting a 7kW AC charger into a house is going to cost far far less than a magic DC multi way inverter pack for V2G.

In V2G, the discussion is about what will be in 8 years time, not next year. By 2030, at least 95% of the EVs on the road haven't even been built, so their charger configuration isn't a constraint on V2G (or V2H). Their operating firmware can have features to meet the demand for co-operative charging/exporting so whatever is needed will probably be the norm by then.
As for users and their commitment to a V2G arrangement, why are you presuming behavioural changes that go against the deal that they have signed up to will be more than the occasional domestic emergency. The '280 miles in 15 minutes' fraternity is a small minority (although always available to exert their persuasive skills over waiverers on social media), so their impact on temporal grid capacity at a macro level is effectively irrelevant. Anyway, I'm sure that there will be financial disincentives for breaking any commitment to export so that will normalise their behaviour.

 

[HSTEd]

In V2G, the discussion is about what will be in 8 years time, not next year. By 2030, at least 95% of the EVs on the road haven't even been built, so their charger configuration isn't a constraint on V2G (or V2H). Their operating firmware can have features to meet the demand for co-operative charging/exporting so whatever is needed will probably be the norm by then.
As for users and their commitment to a V2G arrangement, why are you presuming behavioural changes that go against the deal that they have signed up to will be more than the occasional domestic emergency. The '280 miles in 15 minutes' fraternity is a small minority (although always available to exert their persuasive skills over waiverers on social media), so their impact on temporal grid capacity at a macro level is effectively irrelevant. Anyway, I'm sure that there will be financial disincentives for breaking any commitment to export so that will normalise their behaviour.

Ultimately the business case only works out if batteries are expensive enough to require strenuous efforts to maximally utilise them, and yet cheap enough that people are going to tolerate battery capacity being taken off them to use for grid operation. If the battery cost estimates from electric-car boosters are even close to accurate their simply won't be any need for any of this because it will be cheaper not to bother with this enormous bureaucracy and just stack more grid side batteries with their lower losses. Let alone true bulk electricity storage options or long downstream heat storage (FIRES, storage heaters, hot water cylinders etc).

A 7kW AC charger with bi-directional power transfer is plenty for Vehicle to Home loads, and will just be an added bonus on your energy bill saving as a Vehicle to Grid load. From the grid perspective, the game changer is at a macro scale with thousands of vehicles all able to distribute their remaining charge at the end of the evening commute.

In order to be macroscopically relevant we will need millions of cars available, and even then their comparatively slow discharge rate of only 7kW (for a ~40kWh battery) will push them outside of the economic sweet spot for battery operation. They will be competing with longer term heat stores like hot water cylinders, storage heaters and the like. None of which have the same restrictions that electric car batteries do. Only available for charging or discharging at certain times of day, they have serious restrictions on their capacity and their charge state at various times of day, and their position at the extremities of the grid system leads to major resistive roundtrip losses.

EDIT:

Vehicle-to-Grid as an idea stems from the same dream of a "decentralised" energy system, that was supposed to be enabled by renewables.
The reality ist hat hasn't really happened - even renewables are centralising into power stations just as their predecessor technologies did.

Wind farms get ever larger and more distant from load centres, and even solar PV, the posterchild of distributed energy is trending more and more towards large "solar farms" with high voltage grid connections.