Electric car climate control

[Cobaltblue]

Hope you don't mind me resurrecting this old thread it has several points of interest to anyone who drives an all electric vehicle or a plug in hybrid.

I really object to that Lexus advert for the self charging hybrid stating two sources of power Petrol and Electric............

Many of you will know that I have been working with and using electric cars for almost a decade and even in the 2 years since this thread was started things have changed massively.

I got my plug in Hybrid 2 years ago almost to the day and because of my familiarity I knew exactly what I was getting, not what the advertising said and it works for me.

Firstly It has full climate control which works the same in Electric as in Petrol.

I use Electric for my daily commute which is just over 10 miles a day.

In the winter months I program the heating to come on 20 minutes to half an hour before I get in the car I can do this remotely on my phone and I can program it a week ahead.

I means when I jump into my car at 06:45 my car is defrosted the seats are warm the whole car is warm. this reduces my range by between 2 and 4 miles depending how cold it is.

In the summer even with the Aircon on I can easily do 2 days (3 if I have to and the weather is mild) commute on a single charge, and still have enough to go to the shops.

In the Winter I can do one days commute including pre heating the car twice and the shops.

Many stores now (Tesco and Sainsburys) have Podpoint chargers they are free to use and by the time I have done a weeks shop my range has gone up by 6 miles home is 3 (net gain 3 and free).

As the company I work for sells car chargers you won't be surprised I can charge my car in the office for free and as Electricity is not considered to be fuel by the Tax man there is no benefit in kind.

The Chargers are rather exposed and the car can bake in the sun, no problem while its connected to the charger  I can turn the air con on as well so the car is nice and cool, without reducing my range.

In the winter I can heat car again without reducing the range.

In the last 2 years many of my colleges have gone to all electric cars the 2 most popular are the Tesla Model 3 and the Hyundai IONIQ 

Electric cars have still a way to go but for 95% of the time for most people they are adequate but they are very expensive compared to an ICE based car.

The latest generation of chargers are frightening our current largest is 320KW the cables are liquid cooled by what I always refer to as Novichock, it's actually Novec now no one in the office forgets the name.

The cables would simply be too heavy and inflexible if they were a suitably higher rated copper, the chargers have refrigeration in them.

Bigger chargers are coming 

These big chargers are needed to charge the bigger batteries being fitted to improve range beyond 400 miles in minuets rather than hours.


And Autonomous cars are coming too.

Cheers

Mike T

[BusyBee]

I have had hybrid cars for years now and do prefer them. I originally came by the automatic route as I thought it primitive and uneccessary to be using something with gears in this day and age except for sports / racing. With my job I was often in strange locations / cities etc and having to think about gears when trying to find places with agressive people behind was bad. When I bought my current one I did think about the fully electric / plugin route but living out in the country where there are few places to charge and preferring to go awhile without filling up really ruled them out. If I still had the same job they wouldn't have the range or size in many cases and now I am travelling far less so a large additional expense with the car and infrastructue are not really sensible. Your car sounds good Mike. I am not sure about autonomous cars. Mine has got quite a few irritating features, some of which, I have turned off. Lane following warning for one. Good for motorway travel maybe but can be a pain in the neck on the more usual back roads with numerous potholes. I find the collision avoidance possibly dangerous too as the sudden beeping with occasional false triggering can be very startling and offputting. One good point though is that the radio (even on AM) in my current model is the best I have ever used in a car, with no apparent interference from the electrics at all. To go back to the climate control, mine seems pretty much as with other liquid fuelled cars, but has no programmable / remote features.

Tracy

[Murphyv310]

Hi.
All very scary. By the time all this comes in ill not be driving.
For me it was hard to scrape up the cash for my last two cars. It would be impossible to afford the purchase of even a used electric car. So my motoring days will end over the next few years anyway.
Society will change massively in a few short years with a big divide for the less well off, those in rural places could well be cut off from the rest of society.
I can see the horse and cart coming back.

[Cobaltblue]

It's interesting that you should mention Automatic Tracy my car doesn't have a gearbox at all just fixed Ratio and a series of clutches.

The pre September 2018 models of the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV had a CVT the 2019 models that were released in September 2018 don't have a gearbox.

You cannot feel the transitions between the electric motors (2 one front one rear) and ICE at all.

The only time you can feel the ICE clutch come in is when accelerating hard at around 70MPH you feel a bit of extra push and the engine revs drop as the ICE connects to the front wheels.

Below 50MPH the car is always using the electric motors the petrol engine comes on if the batteries are flat and the generator provides the power.

My problem with Electric cars (and Plug in Hybrids ) is in the main they are not big estate cars.

Unfortunately Self charging Hybrids don't work for me as an essential car user I get an allowance to run and buy my cars. 

In 2011 I think it was the tax man changed the rules so even personal leases where a company pays or contribute for things like depreciation, tyres and insurance were classed as company cars.

The CO2 on mine is classed as 40gm/cm so my tax is very low if I went for a self charging car of similar size (Honda CRV for instance) my tax would be double.

Leasing works for me since to keep my allowance my car cannot exceed 5 years old.

All of my colleagues who went down the own source purchase (so called cash takers) route came back to leasing after a couple of big bills!

As we also run my wife's car we are fully aware of all the costs associated with that.

If you live in the Midlands or Newcastle (there are other locations) you will see strange infrastructure going up all over the place.

These are RSU's part of V2X that's why I was in Coventry a few weeks back, Supervising the installation of GLOSA equipment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle-to-everything

https://news.siemens.co.uk/news/uk-autod...astructure

Cheers

Mike T

[Cobaltblue]

Hi.
All very scary. By the time all this comes in ill not be driving.
For me it was hard to scrape up the cash for my last two cars. It would be impossible to afford the purchase of even a used electric car. So my motoring days will end over the next few years anyway.
Society will change massively in a few short years with a big divide for the less well off, those in rural places could well be cut off from the rest of society.
I can see the horse and cart coming back.

Don't be so sure about the timescale it's happening right now JLR have Autonomous vehicles out and about already, I surveyed, costed and wrote the RAMS for the V2X equipment for the Gaydon test track that must have been 4 years ago.

It is for sure that one of big decisions to come is when to retire and still maintain a reasonable lifestyle (at the moment it's around 68 so another 4 years)

This was put in some jeopardy by the dodgy builders and suddenly having to find a lot of extra money.

To be quite honest I no longer enjoy driving like I used to although electric cars are much nicer to drive and running a decent sized car is one of the big costs in my life.

Fortunately you will still be able to run a Petrol or Diesel car for some time to come although the source of new ones will start to dry up soon.

The price of electric cars is coming down slowly, Tesla have been the game changer forcing the car manufacturers to up their game.

Here's hoping you can continue to motor for a few years yet!

Cheers

Mike T
 

[Mark Hennessy]

Personally, I think it's all quite exciting...

While I can understand why people like hybrids, I've always seen them as a bit of a stopgap in the path to full electric. As far as I can tell, the benefits of a hybrid are mostly felt in city driving, where they can make most use of the electric-only mode - this obviously should make things quieter, smoother and improve air quality. As someone who ordinarily cycles to work, that's something I can get behind. But of course, if your journeys are mostly higher speed A-road and motorways, then the ICE is needed much more, and the benefits are less clear, especially when you consider the the extra weight combined to a conventional ICE powertrain. There must be some changeover point where ICE wins, but I don't think it's easy to come up with a quick and pithy generalisation for Marketing to use, and it will be different for every vehicle anyway.

Plug-in hybrids are an interesting development, and make a lot more sense to me. Still a complicated beast, but at least the energy isn't coming entirely from the petrol.

I've always wondered how well the ICE will cope with never getting up to temperature on shorter runs. Those of us of a certain age will remember the days of engines that behaved quite differently when cold, and it's hard to forget about those sometimes quite dramatic experiences! Of course, today's fuel and ignition systems make points and carburettors look like stone age artefacts, and the internal tolerances on engine parts are really very good today. But even with those challenges overcome, engines still require more fuel when cold. The impetus to make engines warm up quickly has led to some notable cases of marginal cooling systems and cost-cutting - such as the early Ford Ecoboost engines (see the "degas pipe" problems).

This year we've changed both our cars, but have stuck with petrol. Our last cars were really well built and gave us 17 and 20 years of service each, and it's hard to believe that the replacements will do the same. I've no doubt that our next cars will be fully electric, and I'm sure that'll be within a decade. In the meantime, I'm impressed with how far petrol engines have come - my car is a heavy estate with a 2 litre turbo engine that'll do 0-62 in 7 seconds (for what that's worth), yet returns between 40 and 50 mpg, depending on the journey. Obviously it'll do a lot less if you drive it like you stole it, but that driving style has no place on public roads IMO. The other car is a 1 litre turbo engine that has more torque and horsepower than the 1.8 in my last car, but without really trying has returned 50mpg so far (only just got it). I was lucky to see 40mpg in the 1.8 - it mostly did mid to low 30s - and that car was about 150kg lighter. But a brilliant drive, so I could forgive it, especially give the low mileages we both do. If fuel consumption were our only criteria, we could have done even better while sticking with petrol. As I say, it's impressive. If only people would learn to drive economically and stop buying SUVs! In my humble opinion

All of this does make diesel passenger cars seem rather silly. I was never a fan, but had to concede that if you wanted a large-ish estate car, petrol engines often struggled for torque. However, the turbo fixes that. Modern petrols are so torquey, and so efficient if driven sensibly. In top gear at 70mpg, my 2 litre estate is running at just 1,500 rpm. Even the little 1 litre is only doing 2,500 rpm at 70, and there's plenty of poke there for uphills or getting out of trouble. My wife loves it - the last 1 litre she had was a mk2 Polo with 45 BHP and only 4 gears!

Back to hybrids, I could be tempted by a mild hybrid. They add much less weight, cost and complexity than a "traditional" hybrid. I was recently reading about Ford's take on this, and my first reaction was "why bother", but the more I read and thought about it, I can see that it's not a bad idea. I first noticed this when I saw that they have dropped the 1.5 petrol Ecoboost from the current Focus range, which is a shame, as it's quite a nice engine - not much thirstier than the 1.0, but quite a bit more peppy (but relatively rare second-hand, sadly). It's been replaced by a mild hybrid which appears to be just a motor/generator bolted onto the existing 1.0 Ecoboost. Literally just connected to the crankshaft with a belt. The 48V battery is small enough to sit under the passenger seat. It's not possible to drive the vehicle on battery power alone, but the motor adds to the ICE output to give a bit more torque. In addition to working in parallel with the ICE, it helps to "fill in" below the point where the turbo can kick in, which helps with efficiency and drivability. It also allows them to lower the compression ratio and fit a larger turbo, which apparently improves efficiency again - and the resulting turbo lag is covered by the mHEV motor. And the mHEV motor replaces the standard starter motor, which is a good thing if you want to use the stop-start function (I struggle with that idea in our new cars, especially on short journeys - I know everyone says that the starter motors are designed to cope with it, but if you plan to keep the car longer than the warranty period, I personally worry it might be a bit of a gamble). This engine already had cylinder deactivation, but the electric motor will allow that to happen more often. So the system brings a number of incremental improvements that allows them to drop a larger engine from the range, lowering their fleet average CO2 emissions. But expectations need to be managed here, as the marketing can be misleading. It's not what most people understand a hybrid to be. Rather it's an efficient petrol engine with some extra technology to improve efficiency and the driving experience. I haven't driven one yet, but am impressed with the basic 1.0, and could well be tempted by one in the future if the promised benefits are delivered in practice. But ideally, I'd rather go full-electric. Just need to be patient...

I also like automatics. IME, I'm not fully convinced by DSG or CVT autos, but modern torque-converter boxes are very good indeed, and are a good match for larger vehicles.

[peter scott]

While I can understand why people like hybrids, I've always seen them as a bit of a stopgap in the path to full electric. As far as I can tell, the benefits of a hybrid are mostly felt in city driving,

I agree. Last year touring in the US we hired a Ford Fusion hybrid and I had hoped that the regenerative braking would prove useful in the mountainous regions but I was disappointed at how quickly the battery became fully charged and consequently the relatively short duration of "free" motoring that was thus gained. It just didn't have enough battery capacity.

Peter

[Cobaltblue]

Hi Peter did you have the self charging or the Plug in Hybrid version?

the battery on the Self charging is tiny 1.4KW its a bit better on the plug in Hybrid at 7.6 KW

The Battery on my Outlander is 13.8KW the price you pay is weight the Outlander is shaped like a brick and weighs 1.9T empty.

So its not very economic when on Petrol if you keep to the speed limits its about 38/40 MPG where as my Diesel Honda CRV was 60MPG and it was bigger inside.

The boot floor on the PHEV is raised due to the rear electric motor.

Hence my dislike of the Lexus advert there are not two sources of power there is one your ICE.

What Self charging hybrids can do is make petrol engines more efficient by taking the strain accelerating from from energy recovered when braking.

Cheers

Mike T

[peter scott]

Hi Mike,

Yes, there was no provision for plug-in charging, only self charging.

Peter

[ex 2 Base]

Recently we watch TV program on the dark side of electric cars, wind turbine, PV panels and batteries. Apparently not much thought has been given to how these are going to be recycled or where and how the base materials are sourced. Already in Germany they upgrading wind turbines and just leaving the old blades on site, does anyone need some glass fibre turbine blades cheap. As always, its the poor and poor countries who are exploited. Also, can the 1920 street wiring cope with the numerous charging point needed. When our street was built, most houses had just lighting and a couple of sockets, no washing machine, tumble driers or immersion heaters those days , so the under ground cable is really slender. A friend who works for local bus manufacture told us that there are two air conditioning systems on the all electric double decker, a large all important one to keep the propulsion system batteries cool, and a lesser one for the customers, and interestingly some of the cable are 800 volt rated. Ted