Thread: EV general discussion

Originally Posted by RANDLOVER

I just went on an electric bus, rubber tyred tram really and no more warnings signage than the usual emergency exits and definitely no ejector seats for escaping the on board battery fire if it happens. I liked it as no engine noise, still has road noise, can't say I noticed wind noise but I don't think it is double glazed....Metro fleet | Brisbane City Council

As soon as one burns or breaks down, they will be removed from service. Of course it works well if it can be charged whilst in use. There is nothing better than electric motors for generating power, why do you think mains powered metro trains and trams are so successful all over the world.

So long as those metro busses don't burn, given the fact they should be constantly on the charge while in use they shouldn't go flat (or be parked for hours waiting on charging). Of course there is no "other than normal" type emergency exits. If that battery torches off, everyone will die, they won't have the opportunity to make it out alive, so why bother with exits.

Fortunately no one was hurt in this Australian bus fire. The Facebook Department of Research has confirmed it was an electric bus and the batteries spontaneously ignited, despite it being combustion powered.

🔥🔥🔥 Electric bus fire 🔥🔥🔥 | EV FireSafe posted on the topic | LinkedIn

the electric busses are burning all over the world. even in autralia. the mainstream media doesn't report on it that I can find though.

electric busses are all over the internet if you look, across many countries being removed from service because the are so unreliable (and keep burning ... wow what impressive fires they make).

Originally Posted by RANDLOVER

I just went on an electric bus, rubber tyred tram really and no more warnings signage than the usual emergency exits and definitely no ejector seats for escaping the on board battery fire if it happens. I liked it as no engine noise, still has road noise, can't say I noticed wind noise but I don't think it is double glazed....Metro fleet | Brisbane City Council

Got on an ev bus in Maroochydore last year. Honestly not difference to the others except at sunrise when I was running. One type could be heard at 100m and the other at about 500m.

Ejection seats could be cool fun if your backs very very good and you like thrilling rides

Funny I remember when Brisbane Council had an issue with their CNG busses exploding. One of them went off while being filled. I know someone who worked there, and they said the person filling it had walked off to do other things and was a very very lucky boy. Apparently exploded well below the known safe level.

Brisbane City Council swaps '''exploding''' gas-powered buses for diesel following gas cylinder explosions - ABC News

Originally Posted by NavyDiver

Got on an ev bus in Maroochydore last year. Honestly not difference to the others except at sunrise when I was running. One type could be heard at 100m and the other at about 500m.

Ejection seats could be cool fun if your backs very very good and you like thrilling rides

They would be way better, no gearchanges, not pollution, 100% power/torque from zero revs. electric motors are awesome for this sort of thing.

Hi,
Trolly busses did that back in the 60s.
That is until the little darlings in the back seat cracked open the rear window and pulled one of the feed arms off the overhead cable with the rope .
How to annoy your bus driver in one easy lesson. (So I'm told at least)
Cheers

Originally Posted by Captain_Rightfoot

Funny I remember when Brisbane Council had an issue with their CNG busses exploding. One of them went off while being filled. I know someone who worked there, and they said the person filling it had walked off to do other things and was a very very lucky boy......

I used to think gas vehicles and power plants would be a good stop gap on the way to hydrogen, nut now I think in practice there is too much leakage.

I thought servos could be converted to gas, with all the tanks, pipes, etc ready for hydrogen. Unfortunately, hydrogen, even green hydrogen is very inefficient for vehicles...Transcript: The Big Switch with Saul Griffith
Recorded live on 24/02/2022
Please note this transcript is automated
hydrogen at scale is green hydrogen and green hydrogen starts with electricity anyway. So if we're
going to drive an electric car, for example, we start with one unit of electricity gets stored in the
battery you lose a couple of cent goes into the motor, it loses about five percent. And so, you know,
85 90 per cent of that one unit of electricity drives the car. If you go take that electricity and you
make hydrogen, you lose 25 per cent or more. Most likely more generating the hydrogen through
electrolysis. Then you lose another 10 to 15 per cent when you compress the hydrogen down so that
it has enough energy density to be stored in the car. Then you either have to burn it in the car
engine or run it through a fuel cell, which is going to lose another 50 per cent of the energy. All told,
that means, you know, you're going to get 30 or 40 per cent of that original electricity out, not 90
per cent as you do with the electric car that before you even consider the cost of the tank, the fuel
cell, the compressors, the electrolysis means that the cost of driving that vehicle will be two to three
times the cost of driving an electric vehicle. So you sort of fail on a technical argument, you fail on an
economic argument. Now you could go through the other uses. What about for heat? What about
for various things? And most of them end up with a like? It's a thermodynamic story that looks that
bad or worse, which then you might say, Well, what might we use it for? Absolutely. We need it for
agriculture for in the form of ammonia. That's about one per cent of the world's energy today.
Maybe we need it for steel. That's another half of one per cent of the world's energy today. So you
start to see that it's looking like a two to five per cent component of the future, not a 50 per cent
component. And that has an enormous impact on how you would allocate precious resources in
addressing climate risks....https://www.google.com/url'sa=t&sour...YqEYLJ0YXpRB3O

Originally Posted by RANDLOVER

I used to think gas vehicles and power plants would be a good stop gap on the way to hydrogen, nut now I think in practice there is too much leakage.

I thought servos could be converted to gas, with all the tanks, pipes, etc ready for hydrogen. Unfortunately, hydrogen, even green hydrogen is very inefficient for vehicles...Transcript: The Big Switch with Saul Griffith
Recorded live on 24/02/2022
Please note this transcript is automated
hydrogen at scale is green hydrogen and green hydrogen starts with electricity anyway. So if we're
going to drive an electric car, for example, we start with one unit of electricity gets stored in the
battery you lose a couple of cent goes into the motor, it loses about five percent. And so, you know,
85 90 per cent of that one unit of electricity drives the car. If you go take that electricity and you
make hydrogen, you lose 25 per cent or more. Most likely more generating the hydrogen through
electrolysis. Then you lose another 10 to 15 per cent when you compress the hydrogen down so that
it has enough energy density to be stored in the car. Then you either have to burn it in the car
engine or run it through a fuel cell, which is going to lose another 50 per cent of the energy. All told,
that means, you know, you're going to get 30 or 40 per cent of that original electricity out, not 90
per cent as you do with the electric car that before you even consider the cost of the tank, the fuel
cell, the compressors, the electrolysis means that the cost of driving that vehicle will be two to three
times the cost of driving an electric vehicle. So you sort of fail on a technical argument, you fail on an
economic argument. Now you could go through the other uses. What about for heat? What about
for various things? And most of them end up with a like? It's a thermodynamic story that looks that
bad or worse, which then you might say, Well, what might we use it for? Absolutely. We need it for
agriculture for in the form of ammonia. That's about one per cent of the world's energy today.
Maybe we need it for steel. That's another half of one per cent of the world's energy today. So you
start to see that it's looking like a two to five per cent component of the future, not a 50 per cent
component. And that has an enormous impact on how you would allocate precious resources in
addressing climate risks....https://www.google.com/url'sa=t&sour...YqEYLJ0YXpRB3O

Sal Griffith is great. "Mr Electrify Everything"

There are all those issues with Hydrogen. Rather than using electricity to create hydrogen, which must then be shipped, and pumped into the car, and converted back to electricity, and then used.. it's much more efficient just to put it in the car and use it.

The other issue with hydrogen is it's not liquid at room temperature, so the tanks really need to be big and strong as the pressures are immense. If you have a look at a Toyota Murai they are a large car, but tiny inside because they have to have three large hydrogen tanks, plus a fuel cell, plus battery, plus electric motor and gubbins... Really poor packaging.

Toyota played with liquifying hydrogen and chilling it and using it straight in an ICE - which again had big packaging issues. But the other problem was the fuel was continually boiling off. I think they said the whole tank would empty to dry in two weeks if not used. Really not grateful for a passenger car. Might be ok for things like trucking. I don't believe there is any way around that one.

For the people in this thread - that is one of the cool things about EV's. For their size they have a LOT of space inside. The packaging is really great.

Saul is a great guy, and actually owned two hydrogen cars which he said was scary when filling them. Also he knows the hydrogen industry intimately, as he patented the tanks hydrogen cars use, so stands to lose out on a lot of money if they don't take off.

Talking about scary cars, as someone who has been called to a lot of suspected fires, I'd rather get a call that an EV "smells funny" than a gas or hydrogen car!