Scottish Elises

The Times / 5 Live - Electric revolution has fallen flat.

Spending priorities of industry show manufacturers clearly giving up on electric engines.
Combustion engine optimisation and fuel efficiently increasing.
Battery technology research and battery life increase too expenses and no infrastructure for charging.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/business/ ... 651651.ece

So dont buy an electric car i guess ... that puts Tesla in a pickle. Think Dundee City Council has invested a few bob in Nissan Leafs.

Being that fossil fuels are still finite is doest appear to suggest what the industry is ploughing R&D into now. Remembering that episode on Top Gear about the hydrogen honda ... costing a cool 1m.

Hmm DCC also have a few of those little mitsubishi i-MiEV town car (or to be precise, the Peugeot iOn badge engineered equivalent) things but lots of Renault kangoo ZE

Got a driveway?
Sleep more then 6 hours a night?
Drive less the 50 miles a day?

If you answer yes to all of the above then electric cars can work for you.


The main reason electric cars are falling flat on their face is the odd idea that you need to be able to drive hundreds of miles a day everyday.

I'd have one happily as i hate petrol stations and tend to avoid them as much as possible

With you there Thinfourth, they wouldn’t be suitable for lots of people who need one car to do everything but for those of us who run several cars to cover the various needs / wants of our household I think an electric car can add to the mix.

I would say that price is more critical than range. I would buy a £10k electric car tomorrow as long as it could do between 50 and 100 miles on a charge, I might even buy one at £15k.

thinfourth wrote:i hate petrol stations and tend to avoid them as much as possible

Which cant be very much given the current stable

We have got a brand new Nissan Leaf, on loan to us from Nissan, for a couple of weeks. It is a great car to drive with levels of smoothness and silence that only Rolls and Bently can aspire to. Its performance is very good,( Mr Boag will attribute to that) and handles well due to the low COG with the weight of the batteries low down in the car.

HOWEVER, as said before the range of 85 miles Max is only suitable for a certain type of user, and the recharge time of 10-11 hours from a standard socket limits usability.

I live 15 miles from work, and driving it very spiritedly the range drops to about 40 miles (However that is giving it full welly, and seeing over 100 tuts on a couple of occasions. ) I then bring it back into the office, and nobody else can then use it all day as it is charging up!

The new term of "range anxiety", causes ongoing stress, cause if you run out of juice, you cannot jump start it, and you cannot tow it, so you are well and truly F***ed.

Price is the other issue, the cost of that car is over £25k (£10k more than an equivalent petrol /diesel eurobox) and how the hell do you value it after 3 years when the batteries are knacked!

Its a pity, because the virtually zero cost of running, its driveablity and its green credentials are definite plus points.

Wonder how many laps of KH I could get in this w/e?

ruadh08 wrote:We have got a brand new Nissan Leaf, on loan to us from Nissan, for a couple of weeks...

First real world non-journalist (no offence intended ) review I have read of an electric vehicle. Really surprised its that bad , no wonder manufacturers have dropped investment , sounds terribly impracticable , had no idea how bad it was to use in the real world.

ruadh08 wrote:
Price is the other issue, the cost of that car is over £25k (£10k more than an equivalent petrol /diesel eurobox) and how the hell do you value it after 3 years when the batteries are knacked!

Putting aside the range anxiety, the cost is surely the big issue.

The other factor that everyone seems to over look is that they still have running costs. The electricity that charges them is not free - although I appreciate it is a lot cheaper the petrol. From an environmental POV also, the electricity needs to be produced somewhere - which is not entirely green. Then, as you point out, the batteries have a usable life span, after which they are not the most environmentally friendly thing to dispose of.

The entire electric car concept is flawed from the outset IMHO. It's great that the manufactures are trying to find an alternative to fossil fuels, but I don't see the current 'leccy cars being the solution.

scott_e wrote:

ruadh08 wrote:We have got a brand new Nissan Leaf, on loan to us from Nissan, for a couple of weeks...

First real world non-journalist (no offence intended ) review I have read of an electric vehicle. Really surprised its that bad , no wonder manufacturers have dropped investment , sounds terribly impracticable , had no idea how bad it was to use in the real world.

Scott, I think if you lived in a city, doing 40 / 50 miles a day, charging up overnight, it would be quite practical, however if you ever needed to go further afield, you would need another car as well.

Nissan are bringing out an Electric van, based on the NV200, in March, and I think that would be a great solution if you had a small around town business, such as a flower shop.

As I say the car itself is a good, well made car, but will battery technology ever make it practical?

Dominic wrote:Putting aside the range anxiety, the cost is surely the big issue. .

Yip. A brand new cheap (sub £6k) electric city run around with short range (20 - 30 miles per day) and overnight recharge time and room for the kids would be great for me ..... but that's never going to happen now.

It was my understanding that battery technology was the limiting factor (from a realistic production cost point of view) with EVs, anything with a more practical range (ie near or similar to ICE cars) would cost silly money which is commercially unviable.

I still think a modern diesel is the most cost effective and environmentally friendly (when you consider energy to produce the electric car and disposal of battery when it's dead) mode of transport for those that do lots of miles.

My Audi A4 1.9 TDI is now 12 years, I've had it from new, it has never failed an MOT on emissions and gives me on average 650 miles to 66 litres of fuel, done 170,000 miles so far and still running great. Not bad considering in that time if I had an electric car I'd have had to change the battery about 2 times by now all of which would have had to be disposed of somewhere. On top of that I've heard the batteries can cost anywhere from £6k - £10k!!

Now the current TDI engines are even cleaner given DPF technology so for me electric is pointless until there is proper infrastructure to support charging them up, battery lifetime is increased, range is increased, time to charge is decreased a lot and the cost to buy one comes down.

Why are we not seeing lots of diesel hybrids, surely that is the best of both worlds?

ruadh08 wrote:how the hell do you value it after 3 years when the batteries are knacked!

Go find me

1 A Toyota Prius with a knackered battery pack

2 A company that has a battery replacement service for the toyota prius


Its been on the market for over a decade so these must be easy to find if the batteries only last 3 years

SAJ wrote:Why are we not seeing lots of diesel hybrids, surely that is the best of both worlds?

I've been wondering this for years, especially as diesel is supposed to be better at pulling the extra weight too..

The only answer to this that I could find was that most hybrids were Japanese, and the diesel market in Japan is tiny.

thinfourth wrote:

ruadh08 wrote:how the hell do you value it after 3 years when the batteries are knacked!

Go find me

1 A Toyota Prius with a knackered battery pack

2 A company that has a battery replacement service for the toyota prius


Its been on the market for over a decade so these must be easy to find if the batteries only last 3 years

The prius is a bit of an odd ball in this respect. It uses a massive NiMH battery which it only half charges. The battery is relatively large for the energy it actually provides - remember it's a hybrid so whenever the demand on the engine is more than a a few kW it switches into petrol mode.

For a proper EV you'll need to fully cycle the battery in order to get a reasonable range/weight of battery pack trade off.

Also you'll need to factor in the differences in battery technology. NiMH if properly managed can retain substantial capacity after 1,000s of cycles. LiIon (and LiPo) will lose some capacity on each charge cycle; the LEAF will be masking this by using a slightly larger capacity pack than you can actually use and they will also be limiting charge to somewhat less than maximum, but still the capacity of the LEAF pack will erode faster than the NiMH pack in the prius.

Having said all that, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that with all the electronics and sophistication that goes into making EV battery packs they will last much longer (more cycles) than your mobile telephone or laptop. Nissan are notoriously conservative (I've worked on the fringes of Nissan once or twice, and believe me, they are ultra conservative); they suggest that the pack will last 5 years and retain 80% capacity and that even at that point it will be individual cells (modules) that need replacing, not the whole pack.

Cheers,
Robin