What's the problem with electric cars?

[Moomoo]

Setting off fully charged may make the difference!🤷

[Tannaton]

Originally Posted by Frank Bullitt

Possible but unlikely, the battery lasts for ages if you aren’t moving and just heating/ cooling the car. Most likely that they are known to be especially awful to drive in the snow and are stuck.

^^^ That. Big heavy cars on wide, high efficiency tyres.

I'm guessing those cars with a heat pump will consume <800 watts when heating the car - do the math - 70kWh battery /0.8 = 87 hours.

[DaveNP]

Interestingly as an aside on the episode of QI that I saw on telly last night Sandi Toksvig came out with the idea that a tealight candle will give off enough heat to keep you from freezing in a car overnight. A quick browse of the web finds that idea repeated several times, and the energy of a tealight is about 30 watts so not a lot of power needed. Similarly many years ago when I had a car less happy in the cold I would put it in the garage then use an old bed warmer to keep it warm, the bed warmer consisted of a 60 watt bulb in a metal box about 2ft diameter and 9ins thick as I recall, plenty enough heat for the car to be cosy in the morning and still within the capability of a 70kwh battery. The cautionary note I found was that the low energy heat of a tealight will keep you from freezing if you're dressed for winter, if you want to toast in your car in your office shirtsleeves it will obviously need a lot more energy. I suspect the number of abandoned electric cars has more to do with their drivers than the power supply and we've seen that over many winters where people don't seem able or interested enough to be able to cope with winter conditions.
Time and again I get the feeling the problem with electric cars is that they are being sold to people to use where they are not appropriate, rather like the fad of selling diesels because they were economical (in high mileage use) to pensioners who did only a few short trips each week and thereby had issues with the DPF.

[Tannaton]

About a year ago we had an XC40 twin motor on weekend test… it was brilliant and I did take it off roads (well on wet muddy grass) but I remember thinking at the time how would it be in snow? The regenerative braking is more difficult to precisely control, as is the throttle at very low power.

[Ulrikas PA]

I suspect that most people stuck in snow near a town would get out and walk.

My scenario about people stuck on a motorway overnight (it happens every few years) would lead to flat batteries as people try to keep warm.

That film Centigrade about the couple stuck in their car in the snow in Norway was a bit depressing though

[Mint Cake]

Originally Posted by Tannaton

I'm guessing those cars with a heat pump will consume <800 watts when heating the car - do the math - 70kWh battery /0.8 = 87 hours.

Which is fine, if you had plenty of charge in your battery at the time. The availability of publically accessible chargers in rural Cumbria is very, very low - if you were going to charge up at journeys end at your mates house/one of the few hotels that have chargersthen it would be very squekky bum time when you're stuck in a car and haven't moved for hours. !

Originally Posted by Ulrikas PA

I suspect that most people stuck in snow near a town would get out and walk.

Most of the abandoned cars were quite a distance from a town.

From what Mrs Mint Cake said to me, it wasn't so much that they were abandoned at the side of the road (as happens if you can't get any further and you're caught in deeper snow), these were cars that had been abandoned/left literally in the middle of the traffic lane and a high proportion of them were leccy.

[Frank Bullitt]

Originally Posted by Tannaton

About a year ago we had an XC40 twin motor on weekend test… it was brilliant and I did take it off roads (well on wet muddy grass) but I remember thinking at the time how would it be in snow? The regenerative braking is more difficult to precisely control, as is the throttle at very low power.

I wouldn’t use OPD, other Polestar owners do and claim it is fine but I wouldn’t feel comfortable but then I don’t like it in normal use. The throttle control on mine is fine, there’s a purposeful slight dead spot as you start to apply the throttle so you don’t shoot off everywhere, but I certainly find it easy crawling at, say, 1mph.

[Steve 940]

As a casual viewer of this thread its been enlightening to see the varied thoughts of fellow posters, albeit it seems a divisive subject.

Latest issue of VOC Driver magazine dropped through the letterbox a pre Christmas bonus, article within titled Geoff's Jottings has highlighted a number of major issues with EV's

Seems a catalogue of shipping fires over the year and Mitsui OSK Lines who own 110 carriers no longer ship EV along with Havila Kystruten a Norwegian shipper.

Insurance, apparently John Lewis refuses to even cover an EV with other providers bumping premiums as cars involved in a minor bump, it is difficult to be certain the battery is OK, leading to them being written off and much higher premiums.

Mmmm, well I have no axe to grind either way, but it does seem the whole world is perhaps going down a rather expensive dead end. Especially with synthetic fuels just starting to be commercialised, I believe ex F1 engineer Paddy Lowe is involved in Bicester. Seems workable, as once scalebale the distribution infrastructure is already there, and engines run with minimal alterations.

I will go back in my 940 shaped box

Cheers
Steve

[baggy798]

Tesla finally released their white elephant - Driving the Tesla Cybertruck!

[Tannaton]

Originally Posted by baggy798

Tesla finally released their white elephant - Driving the Tesla Cybertruck!

This one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyrTLYyIvNI