Thread: Goodnight Diesel. ...Land Rover get your EV skates on!

Originally Posted by bee utey

Anyone dim enough to come home with a nearly empty battery and expecting a magically full battery a couple of hours later will of course be left in the lurch. Those EV's have displays like a fuel gauge too you know. Anyway, a smart charger coupled to a smart meter will know at all times how much extra capacity your grid connection has and will charge your vehicle accordingly. And there's always the ancient D3 or D4 you keep on the front lawn on club rego that is 100% reliable and able to go no matter how long it's been parked up.

That is Funny . I was keeping the petrol engine that I pulled from my Landy incase I ever wanted to put back , well no after the first drive I knew I'd never put it back, but its the original matching engine & only done 68,000 miles . But I answered the call & someone here needs it for their Series3 so its moving on. Preparing it for transport I took the bowl off the fuel pump to clean it out & that stuff stinks, didn't realise petrol went off so fast (only been 15 months) it smells like turps. Imagine the fuel in the carby will be the same non voliatile stuff. But to be fair When I first bought the lightweight nearly 3 years ago it hadn't been started by at least 2 of the previous owners due to a clogged fuel pump,an air leak and replace the water pump and flush the radiator. It only took me about 2.5 hours work to get it running, not bad for an ICE thats been laid up for years, once cranked it ticked over like a swiss watch.

Now picture an Electric car thats been laid up. Pump the tyres, and go. A LiFePo4 cell does not need float charging, in fact its bad to top it up before storing. it will happily sit on its nominal cell voltage of 3.2 for years. ( the aux 12v battery will need charging as the security will have drained it) Almost like woody Allen finding that VW in a cave 200 years into the future.

Originally Posted by Meccles

I’m keeping my 2012 build RRS for as long as possible hopefully at least another 10 years in expectation that my next vehicle will be ev or hybrid and able to drive me home if I can’t drive for some reason

I expect I'll be blind in about 15 -20 years, I'd rather drive myself and prefer not to have an autonomous vehicle , but that is one upside that might come in handy.

HRH should have been in an autonomous vehicle. As are many we see on road hanging onto their license way longer than they should because they still rely on the car as transport. I like driving too but know that someday - I shouldn’t be

Originally Posted by vnx205

That would be balanced to some extent by the fact that a lot of EVs are more aerodynamic than a LR and would not need as much energy to cover the same distance.
Direct comparisons are difficult because there are so many variables.

So we aren't getting any LR Ev's?

That will upset a few

All Ev's won't be aerodynamic i am sure.

Many will be loaded,pulling trailers,vans,etc.

We don't all drive Nissan leaf sized vehicles

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Also, the first wave will be hybrids, not pure RVs and they recharge themselves while driving so there is no effect on the electricity grid.
Hybrids dont cause range anxiety either since they keep going as long as the driver remembers to refuel, just like any other vehicle.
LR already has a hybrid available in the Range Rover Sport, and all LRs are to have hybrid versions, so imagine a version of that in the New Defender.
It could travel about 50ks on electric, so that covers average daily driving. Then the petrol or diesel kicks in and recharges it while driving on. Once it's recharged there is another 50ks of electric and the process is repeated several times. Some hybrids can go 8-900ks depending on the size of the fuel tank.
What's not to like about that?

I've driven a couple of different generations of the Prius, mostly in Japan but also here. The interesting thing about them is that they actually deliver the economy they promise, unlike a lot of other supposedly super-economical cars.

The best economy I've had in a Prius was in a Japan when we were going from the Alps to Tokyo. The distance would've been about 110kms and, funnily enough, it was mostly downhill. When we got there, although the fuel gauge hadn't moved we dutifully went to the petrol station and asked them to fill it up. They only managed to get 3 litres in, I presume up to the first click. Can't complain about that.

I'll happily use a range extender electric vehicle when they become available. I'd buy the BMW i3 now but the rear doors are beyond stupid when you actually have to regularly use them, which we would be.

Originally Posted by DiscoMick

EVs don't have to recharge every night. The average person does about 40kms a day so an EV with a range of say 300 ks might only need recharging 2-3 times a week.
This whole argument about overloading the electricity grid is just wrong.
Also, Qld is going fine, in fact we're currently exporting surplus power to keep NSW from suffering brownouts.
Also, the first wave will be hybrids, not pure RVs and they recharge themselves while driving so there is no effect on the electricity grid.
Hybrids dont cause range anxiety either since they keep going as long as the driver remembers to refuel, just like any other vehicle.
LR already has a hybrid available in the Range Rover Sport, and all LRs are to have hybrid versions, so imagine a version of that in the New Defender.
It could travel about 50ks on electric, so that covers average daily driving. Then the petrol or diesel kicks in and recharges it while driving on. Once it's recharged there is another 50ks of electric and the process is repeated several times. Some hybrids can go 8-900ks depending on the size of the fuel tank.
What's not to like about that?

Nothing wrong with Hybrids,they will be fine.

So NSW is having brown outs,as we did for quite a few years only in hot weather,lets see how they go with a heap of Ev's charging as well....




Going by average mileage figures that are around, that is correct.Around 14K to 15K per annum,so they come up with.Private vehicles only?Or does that include commercial vehicles?I don't know.

Lets look at reality,and an example,using Ev's,not hybrid.

There are many families around,similar to below.

When we had the two kids(thats only two) in school,doing school run,sports on weekends,etc,our private vehicle averaged between 32K to 35K a year.Say 90K a day.So thats over double the average,and because it is bigger and heavier,needs 7 seats(cos we took other kids around,etc),i would say it would use more battery power than say a current Tesla or Nissan leaf.Then on top of that is the work vehicle.Averages around 40K a year fully loaded,driven mainly 5 days a week.So it averages around 155Km a day.Uses a lot more power as well,fully loaded,sometimes with trailer.Some days it will do 500Km,other days 50Km,who knows.

Now if those two vehicles were Ev's,to keep them both fully charged,they would use a substantial amount of power and our house(no solar) would have needed a mains upgrade,probably to 3 phase.If we wanted to 'quick'charge,then a mains upgrade would definitely had to be done.

Anyway,moving on,once the children grew up,mileage on the private vehicle dropped off,then they had a car each.So there were now 4 cars that needed charging.(yes i couldn't wait for them to leave home,bloody cars and there mates cars everywhere)

Anyway,just an example,and there are so many variables in this whole thing as everyone has different lives,no one can accurately predict much at all.

What we do know is EV's are coming,and as technology improves,so will battery range,charge times,etc.

And they will need is a heap of power to charge them,what % will come from solar and batteries,and what will come from the grid,who knows?

Its all approximate and guesswork.

Electric cars have always been a desirable target (I seem to remember one held the land speed record briefly around 1900), but until the last ten or fifteen years an EV that was really competitive with ICE vehicles has seemed unachievable technically. More recently than this it has become clear that it is possible to build an EV that, at least for some uses, is equivalent to or even better than ICE vehicles. One problem remains - the one that has loomed over EVs for 120 years - they are very expensive.

We are now beginning to see that, at least in the fairly near future, it will be possible to build and sell one for around the same price as an equivalent ICE vehicle, at least for passenger cars, and as production of these ramps up, resulting in lower battery costs (and it is the battery, always the battery), this will bring the costs of the utes, vans, light trucks into equivalence with ICE vehicles. This is when the real changeover will happen.

Heavy transport, especially long distance, presents different issues. The problem here is that as currently operated, these vehicles may operate 10 hours virtually non-stop, or even double this by swapping drivers. Not only does this not leave a lot of time to charge, but it is unclear whether it is possible technically to provide enough battery capacity without using too much of the payload. Autonomous vehicles, if they ever happen, make the situation worse.

I think that the solution will probably eventually lead to new business methods, possibly swapping prime movers along with drivers, for example, as the cost advantages of electric trucking are likely to be sufficient to cover these changes.

The EV is inherently a lot simpler than the ICE vehicle, and, apart from the battery, should be a lot cheaper to build. And most of the complexity lies on the electrical and electronic side, where the electronics industry has long proved very expert at reducing costs by astounding amounts. But one has to hope that these electrics have no input from Joseph Lucas. (Worth noting that the poor performance of Lucas electrics can be fairly clearly traced back to their taking over or forcing out of business all of their competitors in the UK, and continuing pressure by manufacturers for the lowest possible cost of electrics. Let's hope there is no repeat!)

The above describes the future I see for EVs, and I don't think there can be much doubt about it. What there is doubt about is the time scale. I do not think five years is reasonable, ten is more likely, twenty possible, and there are events that could derail the whole process - a major financial crisis for example, or open hostilities between the US and China, or a repeat of the 1919 flu epidemic.

Originally Posted by scarry

Nothing wrong with Hybrids,they will be fine.

So NSW is having brown outs,as we did for quite a few years only in hot weather,lets see how they go with a heap of Ev's charging as well....




Going by average mileage figures that are around, that is correct.Around 14K to 15K per annum,so they come up with.Private vehicles only?Or does that include commercial vehicles?I don't know.

Lets look at reality,and an example,using Ev's,not hybrid.

There are many families around,similar to below.

When we had the two kids(thats only two) in school,doing school run,sports on weekends,etc,our private vehicle averaged between 32K to 35K a year.Say 90K a day.So thats over double the average,and because it is bigger and heavier,needs 7 seats(cos we took other kids around,etc),i would say it would use more battery power than say a current Tesla or Nissan leaf.Then on top of that is the work vehicle.Averages around 40K a year fully loaded,driven mainly 5 days a week.So it averages around 155Km a day.Uses a lot more power as well,fully loaded,sometimes with trailer.Some days it will do 500Km,other days 50Km,who knows.

Now if those two vehicles were Ev's,to keep them both fully charged,they would use a substantial amount of power and our house(no solar) would have needed a mains upgrade,probably to 3 phase.If we wanted to 'quick'charge,then a mains upgrade would definitely had to be done.

Anyway,moving on,once the children grew up,mileage on the private vehicle dropped off,then they had a car each.So there were now 4 cars that needed charging.(yes i couldn't wait for them to leave home,bloody cars and there mates cars everywhere)

Anyway,just an example,and there are so many variables in this whole thing as everyone has different lives,no one can accurately predict much at all.

What we do know is EV's are coming,and as technology improves,so will battery range,charge times,etc.

And they will need is a heap of power to charge them,what % will come from solar and batteries,and what will come from the grid,who knows?

Its all approximate and guesswork.

No problem with averaging 90 or even 150 kms a day in either a hybrid or an EV. Easily done.
Many EVs can recharge to 80% in an hour, particularly on a 15amp or larger charging point, or a bit longer on a normal power point. It's the last 20% that takes longer, as anyone who has used a multi-stage battery charger knows. For example my Projecta charges at 2amps to 80% and then reduces to 1.5, 1.0 and 0.5 amps as it moves towards 100%.
As for long distance trucks, as you say they could just have depots and swap prime movers. Another option is slide out battery modules. Flat battery pack out, charged one in and away goes the truck. Mining trucks have power train modules, so battery modules are possible.
One thing is for sure, as others have said, it's inevitable now, just a matter of time.