Battery Powered Vehicles, The Future??

[Murphyv310]

Take a look at this and the cost of leasing a battery
http://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/2013-63-Nissan-L...SwDrNZUPx8&_trkparms=pageci%253Affc06f5e-750f-11e7-acf9-74dbd18015fa%257Cparentrq%253A92fe43d815d0abc0224ca534fff34981%257Ciid%253A8

[Pat Pending]

By 2040, if I'm still around, I can almost guarantee I'll be driving electric transport

[Murphyv310]

That'll be me too!!!!!

[ppppenguin]

Take a look at this and the cost of leasing a battery
http://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/2013-63-Nissan-L...SwDrNZUPx8&_trkparms=pageci%253Affc06f5e-750f-11e7-acf9-74dbd18015fa%257Cparentrq%253A92fe43d815d0abc0224ca534fff34981%257Ciid%253A8

The VAT position for a business purchaser is more complex than the vendor makes out:
http://businessdatabase.indicator-flm.co...01/related

[Murphyv310]

I didn't look at the VAT side at all as I'm no longer in business. For the private motorist the price is very low but a friend in the trade tells me trade in prices are low for EV, the previous owner would have been lucky to get £3500 for the car I linked to.

[ppppenguin]

I hadn't realised that London already some pure electric buses:
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport...67256.html
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-...ntral-lond

There are loads of hybrid buses in London though from what I've seen and heard they are very shallow hybrids. They seem to pull away from a stop on batteries but then switch to diesel within a few seconds. Even if the electrics are just doing some load levelling it may be a worthwhile saving as diesels work more efficiently with a more constant output.

The new Routemaster "Boris Bus" I think is a series hybrid (electric motor always drives the wheels) which is relatively unusual. I also think that their powertrain has been unreliable. This is not a damnation of series hybrids in general, just poor engineering in this case.

With their stop-start running, precisely known routes and proper depots they're an obvious choice for pure electric. Likewise any urban stop/start vehicle with well defined routes. That would include delivery vans and dustcarts. http://www.dennis-eagle.co.uk/pdfs/press...015%20.pdf

Most hybrid cars are parallel hybrids, with both the petrol engine and electric motor(s) capable fo driving the wheels. This needs a relatively complex gearbox to combine the 2 sources of power. Unless you take the BMW approach of driving front wheels with one and rear with the other. This is done on their I8 sports car. Also with their 225xe which I'll be getting. I test drove an i3 which ran in pure electric throughout the test drive. It was a lovely car but a bit too small for my needs. If I wanted a city car and didn't mind the high price I'd buy one in an instant. The pure electric version rather than the hybrid which is series hybrid. A small petrol engine recharges the onboard battery as required. It's a very deep hybrid with 100+ miles range on battery alone.

Somebody I know test drove a big Tesla a year or so ago. She's a complete petrolhead and pronounced it the most fantastic car she'd ever driven. If she'd had the money she'd have likely placed an order there and then.

[Terry]

I think the early unreliability of the Borismaster was because the drive needs a different configuration for normal and long distance running. The earliest examples were, essentially, prototypes and needed on occasion to be returned to Wrights in Ballymena for modification. If the drive configuration wasn't changed they had a habit of failing on the Motorway!

There have been electric buses in London before - about 10 years ago, from memory - but these were hydrogen powered. Although they operated and were garaged in Central London, the refuelling plant was out near Brentwood!

So these buses were a common sight running back and forth along the A12.

I travelled on one of them and was rather disappointed.  Being of an age to remember the silent running of the Trolleybuses, I was expecting to refresh my memories and enjoy the sensation again. Unfortunately, to make it easy for drivers to switch back and forth between these and there diesel engined versions they were fitted with the same gearboxes and automatic transmission system so, rather than being silent, they sounded like any other similar bus, albeit with the absence of engine noise.

As it happens I did travel on a London Trolleybus last Sunday at the Trolleybus Museum at Sandtoft. However, four circuits round a small running track aren't quite the same ...

[ppppenguin]

We have hydrogen buses in London right now. The RV1 that runs roughly alongside the Thames. Don't know if it's fuel cell or burning hydrogen in an IC engine.

I can just about remember trolleybuses. A childhood memory is the forest of overhead wires at Golders Green station. A latter day trolleybus with onboard batteries (a mains/battery hybrid if you like) might be practicable https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor...trolleybus

[Terry]

The original hydrogen fuelled Citaros were also on the RV1 but I didn't realise that hydrogen buses were back.

I'm sure the original refuelling site was decommissioned after the previous experiment - I wonder where they are refuelled now?

Large fleets of buses running empty back and forth along the A12 would hardly be practical so I hope a more central location has been found for a permanent fleet. (The Citaros were only ever intended to be used for a short time for evaluation purposes.)

[peter scott]

There aren't a lot of hydrogen filling stations in Los Angeles either but I suspect that will change.

Peter