Electric cars

I don't have one, but have noticed the number of charging points in car parks is mushrooming.

Bumped!

Our neighbours have a PHEV, (Petrol Hybrid Electric Vehicle). and love it. They had a charging point installed on an outside wall, but I don't know how far they go in it, or how many charging points there are locally.

I wonder how many will be caught out in the middle of nowhere ? I wouldn't trust them.

The BiL has a hydrid petro and electric. It doesn’t need a charging station.

SIL has a TESLA which seems very swish - and that is the only noise it makes when he is driving it!
A warning though, he charges his on the drive overnight which is fine, but one of their friends whose charging point is in their garage had a house fire recently when the charging point apparently burst into flames.

My daughter has a hybrid electric/petrol car. On her three-quarter hour motorway drive to work the petrol engine is also charging up the battery, which is then ready to use when she is driving stop-start around town (or if the petrol is low). It has proved ecomonical to run and she is very pleased with it.

I thought the hybrid cars still need charging from an electric socket ? Presumably if you drive a distance using electricity and you run out of charge you switch to running on petrol. Are all electric cars hybrid?

Not all, mumofmadboys only hybrid are both. Some like the TESLA are just electric.

Not all electric cars are hybrids. When the electric bit runs out of charge they switch over to petrol. This then recharges the electric bit !

Didn't realise that running on petrol recharges the electric bit. Or that TESLAs are solely electric. Thanks folks. Anyone on the forum got one?

Unnerving in car parks for the aurally challenged

mumofmadboys a hybrid battery continually recharges itself when your car is in motion.

It does this as you drive, through the car wheels turning; and even when you use your brakes, through a process called ‘regenerative energy’. In effect, hybrid cars are like small generators, continually topping their battery power up with electricity and then using it to power the electric engine - and saving on fuel costs.

I don’t have one but DS is a design engineer on electric cars in USA. Most electric cars are hybrid with petrol engines in some way. The one he works on only uses the engine to recharge the battery but not charge the engine - most others drive using the engine while the battery charges. He did have one for a couple of years and spent less than 10$ on petrol the whole year. He had a point in his garage where he could top up at night if needed and at work there was a bank of solar charging points in the car park .His distance to drive to and from work was within the charging time of the battery so his driving cost was virtually nil.
Battery lives are getting longer and will now do a couple of hundred miles. He says that there is a lot of research into battery life.
One of the main safety problems is that they are silent and so pedestrians do not hear them approaching.

Thanks Anja and Welshwife. That's very useful

The range of electric cars is very small. Ideal in towns where there are pollution problems, but not suitable for longer journeys. From what I have seen of the hybrid cars, the battery means they have reduced luggage space.

We have said that when my car dies we will get an electric car, but the amount of energy embedded in acquiring the raw materials and building the electric car needs to be taken into account in working out their efficiency so, currently it is probably more energy efficient to keep my 13 year old, light use car on the road.

Do not forget the emissions from the power stations making the electricity and energy embedded in the wind turbines and solar arrays.

It is such a complicated issue. We run two cars at present- left from our working days. Both are quite old (8 and 11) but when one dies we will go down to one. Was wondering about an electric one but it would be our only vehicle.

Monica my BiL travelled the length of the UK in his hydrid. Their range is not limited. The hybrid is the way to go until the infrastructure of charging points for purely electric cars is sorted.

Anja I did not say the distance range of hybrids is limited I said the distance range of electric cars is limited. The problems with hybrids are that luggage room is limited, or it has been in those I have seen.

Apart from my car we own a large estate car, which is often full. Currently it is loaded up every day with two huge builders sacks full of leaves, which are taken to the tip. We have taken 10 bags so far and have another half dozen to go. You simply cannot load any current hybrid car like that. We use our estate car to full capacity a lot and until electric or hybrid can handle that volume and weight of contents and has a loaded range of over 200 miles, it will be impractical to change.

I know you didn’t Monica which is why I emphasised the hybrid for those who might still confuse the two.

PS newest hybrids can manage 500 miles.

On a single tank of petrol

I’ve just read

But how far does it do on electricity Anja?