Interested to hear of experiences of Electric Vehicles

[Baron von Lotsov]

You won't have too long to wait to find out will you. I understand they are planning to build their own battery factory next door at castle Bromwich. Let's hope you don't have to eat your words if you're proven wrong. Surely it's their job to do the maths not mine.



As I'm sure you know car manufacturers are notorious for over egging a cars capability, why would electric versions be treated differently.



I guess your sceptical of most things unless it Chinese, You can always buy from China if you prefer  

My guess is 200 miles under normal driving conditions. I do not understand why they are building a battery factory considering they are not players in the battery market. This goes against conventional business reasoning, where those who know about batteries build batteries and those who know about cars build cars. The battery market itself is huge and highly competitive. The countries that are leading are Japan, China and South Korea. To give you an example of how it is in the battery market, a new technology was under development and the company doing the research sold a 10% stake for $10bn. If you do not have that sort of money then best to stay out of it. Of course they might know something that the world's best physicists and chemists do not about batteries, but then if that is the case they will probably make far more from the batteries than any car they intend to build. So it leaves me thinking it is more probable that the batteries will be bad value for money. Batteries need to be manufactured on a huge scale to make them good, cheap and reliable.



I suppose though there will always be those who will buy the car just because it looks smart, is made by Jaguar and is British (ish).

[GregB]

"Although Jaguar has been coy with any specifics"



It does not matter really which make of car or bike it is, because they will all use very similar electric motors and battery technology. I'm sceptical that such a  large mass as that could be have a 300 mile range. Do the maths. Think how much power a normal car of that size would need and then work out how many batteries it would need. They may well be using figures based on batteries that are not in production.



There's a lot of hype in this market, and British are hype shtsters from hell.

You won't have too long to wait to find out will you. I understand they are planning to build their own battery factory next door at castle Bromwich. Let's hope you don't have to eat your words if you're proven wrong. Surely it's their job to do the maths not mine.



As I'm sure you know car manufacturers are notorious for over egging a cars capability, why would electric versions be treated differently.



I guess your sceptical of most things unless it Chinese, You can always buy from China if you prefer  

[Baron von Lotsov]

How about a Jaguar



https://www.whatcar.com/news/2020-jaguar-xj-electric-car-what-we-know-so-far/n19717">https://www.whatcar.com/news/2020-jagua ... far/n19717">https://www.whatcar.com/news/2020-jaguar-xj-electric-car-what-we-know-so-far/n19717

"Although Jaguar has been coy with any specifics"



It does not matter really which make of car or bike it is, because they will all use very similar electric motors and battery technology. I'm sceptical that such a  large mass as that could be have a 300 mile range. Do the maths. Think how much power a normal car of that size would need and then work out how many batteries it would need. They may well be using figures based on batteries that are not in production.



There's a lot of hype in this market, and British are hype shtsters from hell.

[GregB]

How about a Jaguar



https://www.whatcar.com/news/2020-jaguar-xj-electric-car-what-we-know-so-far/n19717">https://www.whatcar.com/news/2020-jagua ... far/n19717">https://www.whatcar.com/news/2020-jaguar-xj-electric-car-what-we-know-so-far/n19717

[Baron von Lotsov]

Right, I've been investigating this more thoroughly to see what the crack is.



If you have an 8kw motor then this should give you 120km/hr according to the manufacturer. A chap in Canada did a road test and found it went 105km/hr, but he was not going full wack, so believes this figure is about right. The bike tested on was about 200lbs and 80 lbs of that was for the battery which was 4.8kw/hr. This is a size where it fills the whole frame and sticks out at about 1 foot width. Note some bikes are very fat, like twice as fat. Li ion is not that compact for the energy needed. So the conclusion is a 10kw is not going to go 160km/hr, or I would be very surprised if it did, but the Chinese bike had better fairings, and high speed is all about drag coefficients, so maybe it is not that far off.



Anyhow, going on the test he managed about 100km and there was still a lot of power left, so we could be talking about a good range. If one can get 75mph then I'd say that for most driving that would be sufficient. It would bug you if you were on a motorway, but we don't have any in our area, so it is academic. Another point was the Chinese bikes can be a less comfortable ride, and it is suspected the rear shocks are important here. If you pay the money you get decent shock absorbers, so one can not expect the best from economy. These things can be easily upgraded if it is a problem. It's interesting to look at the kind of controllers you get in these things as well. The motor drive circuit was wirelessly connected to the dash unit via Bluetooth. That's a nice touch because an important wire like that is just one more thing which could fail. Simplicity is the key to reliability.

[Baron von Lotsov]

I'm serious. I've seen the photos and the machine has good types on it, probably as good as a Perelli, it has twin disk brakes front and back, and all in all it looks very similar to what the West charge a packet for. One way to find out is to place an order. You simply can't go wrong, since for £1.5K you could sell it for more second-hand if you fell out of love with it. My experience of Chinese factories is they are generally good to their word. It will run, that's for sure. How many charging points are there though in the South West? That's the next issue.

[patman post]

Or abracadabra...?

[Baron von Lotsov]

In the past, British car buyers were usually charged more for their vehicles than buyers of the same models on the European mainland and in the USA. I guess bikes were similar.

Being an island with few people traveling to buy everyday items abroad (other than  booze and fags), manufacturers were able to get away with it.

A small, but thriving trade in UK customers buying and picking up new vehicles, mainly in Belgium, did well until the Rip Off Britain campaign in the 1990's — enabled by the UK's closer trading relationship with the EU — forced manufacturers to drop their prices.

Incidentally, Italian manufacturer, Energica, offer state of the art electric motorcycles. And AJS offer cheap  Chinese made models — electric versions planned soon...

£1.5K for a 100mph sports bikes which look the same as a £30 grand made in the great shithole version though!!! One word they forgot was Alibaba.

[patman post]

In the past, British car buyers were usually charged more for their vehicles than buyers of the same models on the European mainland and in the USA. I guess bikes were similar.

Being an island with few people traveling to buy everyday items abroad (other than  booze and fags), manufacturers were able to get away with it.

A small, but thriving trade in UK customers buying and picking up new vehicles, mainly in Belgium, did well until the Rip Off Britain campaign in the 1990's — enabled by the UK's closer trading relationship with the EU — forced manufacturers to drop their prices.

Incidentally, Italian manufacturer, Energica, offer state of the art electric motorcycles. And AJS offer cheap  Chinese made models — electric versions planned soon...

[Baron von Lotsov]

In the meantime I've been looking at electric motorcycles. Some are actually made here. I can't believe this country. The firm wants £30 grand for one, and another make they want about £20 grand.



Looking over to the East though, I can get a brand new electric bike, which has a top speed of 100mph and a range of 150 miles for a whopping £1500!



this is an EEC compliment and they deliver it to your door in a crate. It seems someone is doing some serious rip-off. British punters eh?

[patman post]

The Sinclair C5 first appeared in 1985 — it still has its own Facebook page... https://www.facebook.com/groups/289235301207706/">https://www.facebook.com/groups/289235301207706/

[Baron von Lotsov]

Old rechargeables as found in computers of the late '90s and early 2000s displayed noticeable memory effect. But I doubt any  li-ion battery made since 2014 "suffers" from it...

The Sinclair C5 was made from a lead acid battery driving a washing machine motor.



For a battery, take a look at this mother.



72v 40AH, 38 * 28 * 28cm & 10kg



https://www.dhgate.com/product/72v-5000w-electric-motorcycle-scooter-lithium/491602943.html?skuid=636709919838953476#cppd-11-5%7Cnull:2202:r1663057162">https://www.dhgate.com/product/72v-5000 ... 1663057162">https://www.dhgate.com/product/72v-5000w-electric-motorcycle-scooter-lithium/491602943.html?skuid=636709919838953476#cppd-11-5|null:2202:r1663057162



and these are some motors. Notice you can get 3kw ones which fit in the hub. The C5 was 250w by comparison.



https://www.dhgate.com/wholesale-refine/electric-bicycle-motor/c024057009001-mqrz-mqsk.html#as-mqsk-1">https://www.dhgate.com/wholesale-refine ... #as-mqsk-1">https://www.dhgate.com/wholesale-refine/electric-bicycle-motor/c024057009001-mqrz-mqsk.html#as-mqsk-1



So you see the batteries and motors are no problem these days. The really difficult thing to design would be the aerodynamics. You do not want it taking off, i.e. correct down forces etc.



Also just as a really rough idea, a 3kw motor on a pedal bike gives you 40mph on a straight.

[Barry]

I'm not buying any car that takes more than 5 minutes to refuel.

You have a good point, why would anyone want to drive for 2 hours needing to recharge and wait 8 hours. Either a self charging hybrid or a charging hybrid is the way forward for anything but Mabel doing her shopping locally. For some, a mobility scooter would be just as effective.

[Nick]

I'm not buying any car that takes more than 5 minutes to refuel.

[patman post]

Old rechargeables as found in computers of the late '90s and early 2000s displayed noticeable memory effect. But I doubt any  li-ion battery made since 2014 "suffers" from it...