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Would you buy a new petrol engine car today?

Passion, instruction, buying, care, maintenance and more, any form of vehicle discussion is welcome here
AF62
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Re: Would you buy a new petrol engine car today?

#389849

Postby AF62 » February 25th, 2021, 9:27 am

Mike4 wrote:
Howard wrote:PS Mike: Nissan e Vans start at around £220 a month but don't ask about the cost of stretching a charging cable across the road ;) .



JohnB wrote:Mike4, the Fully Charged Youtube channel had a 5 part series on electric vans over xmas. I found it interesting as it was more user experience than van review, and I don't want a van. The channel is wide ranging about decarbonising, and only a little preachy.



Thanks you two, I'll have a look.

Over in The Combustion Chamber", there is one guy who says his company bought a handful of electric vans for the fleet. Fully laden and in cold wet weather he says the range on a full charge is down to about 65 miles, so no-one will use them. He is a bit of a know-all/whiner though so I don't attach that much credence to what he says with no independent coinciding opinions.


He probably isn't too far off - https://ev-database.uk/car/1117/Nissan-e-NV200-Combi

However it interesting to see that the Nissan van is only using a 38 kWh battery but newer EV cars such as the Kia e-Niro are using 64kWh batteries and a Kia e-Nero has a similar unladen and gross vehicle weight as the Nissan van. Thus as you would expect for a vehicle with a battery with almost twice the capacity the Kia e-Nero has a 'real world Highway - Cold Weather' range of 160 miles compared to 80 for the Nissan van (https://ev-database.uk/car/1338/Kia-e-Niro-64-kWh).

Cold weather use not only has an impact on the battery but also the extra load on the battery from heating the vehicle. This can be mitigated to some extent by setting a timer to pre-heat the vehicle whilst it is still connected to the mains and the use of heated seats/steering wheel which uses less energy. Most manufacturers are also moving from resistive heating of the cabin which is a significant drain on the battery to adding a heat pump for efficiency. Others are using the waste heat from the motor and battery to heat the vehicle.

Mike4
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Re: Would you buy a new petrol engine car today?

#389863

Postby Mike4 » February 25th, 2021, 10:09 am

AF62 wrote:He probably isn't too far off - https://ev-database.uk/car/1117/Nissan-e-NV200-Combi

However it interesting to see that the Nissan van is only using a 38 kWh battery but newer EV cars such as the Kia e-Niro are using 64kWh batteries and a Kia e-Nero has a similar unladen and gross vehicle weight as the Nissan van. Thus as you would expect for a vehicle with a battery with almost twice the capacity the Kia e-Nero has a 'real world Highway - Cold Weather' range of 160 miles compared to 80 for the Nissan van (https://ev-database.uk/car/1338/Kia-e-Niro-64-kWh).

Cold weather use not only has an impact on the battery but also the extra load on the battery from heating the vehicle. This can be mitigated to some extent by setting a timer to pre-heat the vehicle whilst it is still connected to the mains and the use of heated seats/steering wheel which uses less energy. Most manufacturers are also moving from resistive heating of the cabin which is a significant drain on the battery to adding a heat pump for efficiency. Others are using the waste heat from the motor and battery to heat the vehicle.



I know this guy works on large commercial boilers (sized in megaWatts and in boiler rooms bigger than my house) and I think the company runs a fleet of vans to travel anywhere, but much of the work is in London. So when a new employee is taken on, they get given one of the electric van no-one else wants, as the range stress grinds people down. Diesel vans are much preferred by the engineers as finding charge points close to the plant rooms (the vans are used like giant toolboxes) is usually impossible. So a maintenance trip to a boilerhouse in (say) Canary Wharf from home in (say) Reading in an electric van means a stop or stops for charging which in means less time on site which in turn means the engineer gets home later in the day or even causes a second trip the next day. Hence their preference for diesel vans. I dunno what model the electric vans in the fleet are. Point being that this is a real world example of how vans are often used. Van manufacturers in general still don't seem to grasp that not all are vanilla delivery vehicles.

Interesting thing about the batteries having 'waste heat'. The LiFePO4 batteries in my boat are ex-electric car and produce no heat at all when in use. I also read once that Tesla batteries have heating elements to actually heat them up as charging them below approx 0C damages them. Presumably this does not apply to all battery chemistries, just LiFePO4.

Howard
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Re: Would you buy a new petrol engine car today?

#389879

Postby Howard » February 25th, 2021, 10:36 am

Mike4 wrote:
AF62 wrote:He probably isn't too far off - https://ev-database.uk/car/1117/Nissan-e-NV200-Combi

However it interesting to see that the Nissan van is only using a 38 kWh battery but newer EV cars such as the Kia e-Niro are using 64kWh batteries and a Kia e-Nero has a similar unladen and gross vehicle weight as the Nissan van. Thus as you would expect for a vehicle with a battery with almost twice the capacity the Kia e-Nero has a 'real world Highway - Cold Weather' range of 160 miles compared to 80 for the Nissan van (https://ev-database.uk/car/1338/Kia-e-Niro-64-kWh).

Cold weather use not only has an impact on the battery but also the extra load on the battery from heating the vehicle. This can be mitigated to some extent by setting a timer to pre-heat the vehicle whilst it is still connected to the mains and the use of heated seats/steering wheel which uses less energy. Most manufacturers are also moving from resistive heating of the cabin which is a significant drain on the battery to adding a heat pump for efficiency. Others are using the waste heat from the motor and battery to heat the vehicle.



I know this guy works on large commercial boilers (sized in megaWatts and in boiler rooms bigger than my house) and I think the company runs a fleet of vans to travel anywhere, but much of the work is in London. So when a new employee is taken on, they get given one of the electric van no-one else wants, as the range stress grinds people down. Diesel vans are much preferred by the engineers as finding charge points close to the plant rooms (the vans are used like giant toolboxes) is usually impossible. So a maintenance trip to a boilerhouse in (say) Canary Wharf from home in (say) Reading in an electric van means a stop or stops for charging which in means less time on site which in turn means the engineer gets home later in the day or even causes a second trip the next day. Hence their preference for diesel vans. I dunno what model the electric vans in the fleet are. Point being that this is a real world example of how vans are often used. Van manufacturers in general still don't seem to grasp that not all are vanilla delivery vehicles.

Interesting thing about the batteries having 'waste heat'. The LiFePO4 batteries in my boat are ex-electric car and produce no heat at all when in use. I also read once that Tesla batteries have heating elements to actually heat them up as charging them below approx 0C damages them. Presumably this does not apply to all battery chemistries, just LiFePO4.


I agree with AF62. There are a number of car testing organisations which report that some BEV's ranges drop significantly in cold wet weather. This is a problem for Tesla drivers who find the range of their cars, even the Long Range models, can drop well below 200 miles in rainy and windy weather when driving at motorway speeds. Drivers amusingly resort to turning the heating off and driving slowly to eke out the range. I never noticed much of a drop in range when driving a diesel Merc which could go well over 700 miles, without refuelling, in rain or shine.

Will post about our experiences of a Kia BEV once we've driven a few miles. The real world range is said to be quite good but most of our driving is on dual carriageways even for shorter journeys, so we'll see.

Back to digging the trench for my 32 amp charger cable installation. :)

regards

Howard

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Re: Would you buy a new petrol engine car today?

#389883

Postby nmdhqbc » February 25th, 2021, 10:45 am

jackdaww wrote:i dont know , which? say they are from tests ( by whom ?) - and NOT from preposterous manufacturer claims.


I don't think manufacturers ever make "claims" about range or mpg. They just do standard tests. I think it's the test themselves that are not realistic or nuanced enough. they should have a variety of weather conditions tested as well as different journey types.
edit: obviously setting aside the cheating that previously went on

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Re: Would you buy a new petrol engine car today?

#389898

Postby JamesMuenchen » February 25th, 2021, 10:57 am

ReallyVeryFoolish wrote:
Howard wrote:
Mike4 wrote:I can confirm that in the coldest, most miserable of the recent weather, the range on battery power of our PHEV drops by getting on for half compared to a nice sunny summer day.

RVF

To be fair, the range on my diesel also drops a bit in the cold as the stop/start function disables itself to save the battery.

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Re: Would you buy a new petrol engine car today?

#389912

Postby Urbandreamer » February 25th, 2021, 11:27 am

Mike4 wrote:Interesting thing about the batteries having 'waste heat'. The LiFePO4 batteries in my boat are ex-electric car and produce no heat at all when in use. I also read once that Tesla batteries have heating elements to actually heat them up as charging them below approx 0C damages them. Presumably this does not apply to all battery chemistries, just LiFePO4.


I suspect that all batteries do in fact generate 'waste heat', the amount depending upon use. Ignoring chemestry for a moment, the electricity passing into or out of the battery will cause a heating effect in the wires. This is proportionate to the square of the current.

I found a research paper upon the degredation of LiFePO4 batteries due to self heating when charging (sorry no link, it's a pdf). The chemestry itself absorbes heat when charging and gives off heat when discharging.

Tesla has a liquid loop to control the temperature of the batteries. Though they are not the only one. I believe that they can warm the batteries, but where it really pays off is in removing the heat when charging at very high currents.

The leaf doesn't or didn't have a cooling loop for the batteries. This has had an impact upon the battery life, limits on fast charging and upon their reputation.

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Re: Would you buy a new petrol engine car today?

#389944

Postby bungeejumper » February 25th, 2021, 1:02 pm

jackdaww wrote:i wonder where honest john gets his real world figures from .. :o

He invites his readers to log in and supply them. There are a couple of hundred thousand reports on the register now, so he must be getting close to valid numbers by now. https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/real-mpg/

BJ

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Re: Would you buy a new petrol engine car today?

#389948

Postby DrFfybes » February 25th, 2021, 1:11 pm

Howard wrote: Drivers amusingly resort to turning the heating off and driving slowly to eke out the range.

Howard


I think I posted some years ago about the Leaf driver who would limp along the A38 of an evening at 40-45 mph to eke enough charge for his return trip from Plymouth if the charging point was in use in the car park. He was completely oblivious to the 3 miles of stop/start traffic he generated as the trucks jostled to get past.

Paul

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Re: Would you buy a new petrol engine car today?

#389976

Postby Lootman » February 25th, 2021, 2:51 pm

DrFfybes wrote:
Howard wrote:Drivers amusingly resort to turning the heating off and driving slowly to eke out the range.

I think I posted some years ago about the Leaf driver who would limp along the A38 of an evening at 40-45 mph to eke enough charge for his return trip from Plymouth if the charging point was in use in the car park. He was completely oblivious to the 3 miles of stop/start traffic he generated as the trucks jostled to get past.

That's odd, I thought Swill453 lived in Scotland. :lol:


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