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Oh Excoriator i thought we had reached a common ground where we could agree to disagree.
Okay the preheated car is not the deal breaker but a nice feature.

Now please answer honestly, how many times in the last year have you done more than 100 miles a day before getting home?

You like having 500 miles of range. So would i. But again honestly how often do you need it?

If you do 500 miles often then great a diesel is your wagon. However i suspect you generally do less than 80 miles a day.

Of course an ICE heater kicks out 4KW but you seem like an intelligent person who must realise that that 4kw is not free energy, it comes from burning either petrol or diesel and the inefficiencies of that process.

I dare you all to have a test drive. You can have a Leaf for four days or a Zoe for for two days.
Come back and give your opinion.

The GIGA factory is struggling to keep up with demand.
Power wall sounds good.
Come on, stop being so negative.

Well, I do over 100 miles most weekends, going to the narrowboat and back. The marina is about 60 miles away.

The reason I like having 500 miles range is that it means I don't have to think about filling the car with diesel every time I want to go more than 50 miles away. Also, on the occasions when I travel to London, I can fill the car at ASDA, and avoid having to stop for fuel on the motorways and pay through the nose for it. For local journeys, I use a petrol picanto which manages about 50mpg.

Yes I know that the heating cost money, but it is good to know that heat which would otherwise be dumped into the environment is put to good use keeping me warm! As far as I can make out in terms of thermal efficiency, both cars are utilising about 40% of the energy in the fuel. The reason you have the 'preheating feature' is not so much for your convenience, but because the manufacturer knows that without it, you would be shivering far longer in your car on a cold morning due to an inadequate heater!

Both Diesel and Petrol contain about 12.5kWh per kg. By contrast, I doubt Lithium batteries manage more than about 150 Wh per kg. The energy density of the EV's 'tank' is therefore about 1.2% that of a diesel. Efficiency in an EV is therefore a dominant design parameter, and there is as little as possible waste heat, and the heaters/coolers are designed with range in mind.

I would much prefer to pay more for the convenience of having as much range and heat as I want than to have to worry about whether I can afford to switch on the heater or manage to get home.

The other claimed advantage of an EV is that they are 'zero emission'. They certainly are not! Looking at http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ I note that at the moment, 66% of the electricity being generated comes from gas or coal. This is notoriously inefficient, and I estimate about 50% for them. The means that the overall efficiency is comparable with that of an EV. This may change as renewables take over, but sadly our government seems bent on discouraging all forms of 'green' investment.

I have no doubt the cars are fine to drive. Most cars are these days.

I am negative about EVs because batteries remain inadequate, and are likely to remain so for the foreeable future. Also these deficiencies involve more hassle to the unfortunate driver. I am however a supporter of hybrids. It is not electric cars that I dislike so much as the pretence that they are a viable alternative. They are not. They remain incapable of supplying the needs of the vast majority of motorists. Even in the US, they managed, last month, under 9,000 sold out of a total of well over half a million cars and light vehicles. Sales are stuck at about 0.6%.

Perhaps he would have been more credible in his alter ego: Kryten.

Not for you then. But a viable solution for many. Maybe if you also had a second car as an alternative.......oh you do.
I am happy to take £5000 off the British taxpayer to fund my cheap transport and another £1000 to install my home charge point so i can do cheap miles from my free solar.

This is becoming like Clarkson anti EV bingo.
All your arguments are getting batted back so you move onto the next one. Until you end up just with range. Range will never compete as your rightly say due to energy density PER KG.
That in itself is disingenuous as you dont just carry 1 litre of fuel around and burn it to get your 12.5kwh of power. You carry 60-70 litres and an engine to burn it and a transmission to convert it to motion at the wheel.
Efficiency of an ICE is about 35% so you are down to 4kwh actual useful power.
Next, the zero emissions argument. Not one i am bothered about but i will answer it. Sure there are emissions elsewhere to generate the electricity (if not from solar or wind) but to refine your diesel or petrol requires about 6kwh per gallon of electricity. Never mind the energy used to extract, transport to refinery, transport to fuel station. If emissions are your thing you could switch to Ecotricity who emit 8 grams of CO2 per KWH whereas coal is 837 grams.

Whatever the sales figures are really dont come into whether they are a viable alternative. I didnt buy it because it was popular. I bought it because it was a cheap way to provide a second car, the refinement is a bonus. Most cars are nice to drive, this is another level in my opinion, although i have only had mainstream cars not high end ones.

So lets get back to the range!

He was!

I got so fed up with a smartphone that needed charging every day, I replaced it with the simplest one I could find which I charge every two weeks or so.

This does its job well, doesn't have cameras, tell me where I am, direct me to the nearest Starbucks and is smaller to shove into my pocket. The gain in convenience outweighs the loss of gimmickry many times over.

The same is true of charging a car. I do not want the hassle of having to plug it in every other night. And I want a car that - if necessary - is capable of taking me on perhaps a long journey, ANY time I want to.

If Electric cars took 24 hours to recharge once every three months or so, I'd be very happy to adopt them, but they increase hassle rather than reduce it. A car that is out of commission for hours at a time every couple of days cannot be considered an improvement.

As to using solar power to recharge it, this is only possible if you can leave it plugged in during the day. Whilst this is obviously possible, it means that the out-of-commission time is during daylight when you are more likely to be using it.

Most people find them unattractive for this reason. And it is just as well that they ARE so unpopular. We would have have great difficulty supplying the extra power needed for 30 million cars to get the 12kWh a day needed for their daily 40 miles. It comes to an extra 360GWh a day or 15GW continuous extra load if spread evenly through oput the 24 hours. Given the total UK demand is only around 30GW, massive infrastructure would be needed to support this.

Not for you then.
I like having top tech.
It really does take seconds to plug in, much preferable than visiting a petrol station in my opinion.
A car out of action for hours at a time? What like when you sleep or park up at work or park up shopping.
All that electricity that would be saved from refining the fuel could power the cars.
I work shifts so day solar charging works FOR ME.

If you feel that plugging something in is more hassle than going to a petrol station and pumping that fuel and giving the seller £60 i am amazed. Plugging something in! Thats all it takes. Just plugging in.

So lets get back to the range. You win.
On one aspect of the argument. You win.

You are also ignoring the power supply problem were these cars to ever become universal. The demand would not be uniform over the day. It would peak, sometime in the evening I expect, meaning that you would have to at least double the UK's generating capacity as well as beefing up the transmission capability.

Someone would have to pay for all that. Changing oil refineries over to power stations is probably infeasible as they are not generally close to major demand. Converting them to synthesise fuel is still a chemical process and it seems to me that if we ever are to get off oil, a sensible approach is to leave cars as they are, and slowly increase the synthetic/biological content of the fuel until it hits 100%.

You can use renewable power to do this. The product is easily stockpiled using the same infrastructure as we have now and intermittency is not a problem. The public doesn't have to buy new cars unless they want to or do anything. Slowly their ordinary cars will become carbon neutral.

This is a much more elegant solution than the massive upheaval and expense required for EVs.

I think, also, the expectation that batteries will dramatically improve is likely not to come about. People - talented and well resourced people - have been trying to improve on the 150 year old lead acid cell still in use in cars, aircraft and submarines with not a great deal of success. In terms of expense, safety and robustness the lead acid cell still wins as often as not. As I pointed out earlier, the energy density remains stubbornly at a negligible level compared to hydrocarbons.

Incidentally, somebody in Israel I think, tried a system of battery replacement, which would - had it worked out - might have over come the recharging time problem. This involves a whole shedload of new problems like a common battery size for all cars, a massive recharging facility etc and it didn't work out.

Charge as you drive is being trialled with under road induction.

I've not read-up on the theory or practice of charge as you drive using underground induction. However, when I first heard of it, I thought that it would need ac, due to transformers.
But what if a low-slung aluminium car, say a sports car, went over the top of the inductors? Alloy 'floats' on top of inductors, hence the principle of some high speed trains.
Interesting - as would be the efficiency figures the system.

It is clearly impractical on the grounds of cost. You would have to install induction coils plus all the supporting electronics for miles to transfer enough energy into a moving vehicles - not forgetting to remove all rebars from the concrete before you start!

The efficiency would be terrible too, and I don't know how metallic rubbish such as squashed drinks cans would affect things either. They'd certainly get hot due to eddy currents and might melt. This would suck energy from the system.

Induction charging for parked vehicles is more practical, but even there I doubt whether you'd get more than 80% or 90% of the power across. It sounds high but a simple piece of wire can be expected to be pretty close to 100% and is dirt cheap by comparison.

Nope, not ignoring the power supply problem. Answered that with the electricity required to refine petrol/diesel. Maybe some will plug in when they get home, some will plug in every other day, some may wait until economy 7 makes it cheaper.
Not my concern, works for me now. Could not care less about about the UK energy infrastructure.
"Changing oil refineries over to power stations is probably infeasible as they are not generally close to major demand". I dont think Stanlow is that far away.
As for renewables to generate, brilliant, yes please. Like hydrogen they are the fuel of the future and always will be.
As Henry Ford said if i ask the horse rider what they want they would say a faster horse.
The business in Israel went bust with massive debts. That was never a viable solution. Only tried to support the Renault Fluence.

So looking at an EV today, not worrying about lithium supply, or electricity provision, or efficiency of batteries, or hydrogen is the solution, etc etc.
Is an EV a viable cost effective transport solution available today?
And please answer honestly, do you really give a toss to the future viability of the energy supply in the UK or are you like me and just want to cover your families transport costs as cheap as possible?

I have been out with my mates tonight and do you know what we all still love our cars. One of my mates is thinking of a Zoe as his second car rather than a Mondeo.

Now i must question your original post.
"Has anyone any experience of these vehicles? Are they as hopeless as I suspect them to be?" You then go on to quote all manner of facts and figures and arguments against EV's. Do you work for Esso?

Lets get back to the range..............

Apologies for the very brief post before but I had to shoot off.

The trial is mentioned HERE (I was praying I hadn't dreamt it!) and it appears to be serious with a UK trial and a 15 mile stretch already in place in South Korea.

@norton, not quite, levitation has to have coils wound a certain way and phased, as Excoriator points out it could just get hot and may also act as a brake.

I've not looked into contactless charging systems but I presume they work on tuned circuits and if resonances don't match then little current is drawn???

@Excoriator I also guess that a modern version of pennies-on-the-line would come about!

I presume it is a demand based system - vehicle sends a signal saying "hit me with it", I also assume it is a resonant system to get the efficiency up but even so I would agree that breaking the 80% efficiency mark would be difficult or even miraculous unless something was near enough touching the road surface. I'm sure I read somewhere that the initial idea was that it would be a stationary system in car parks and at traffic lights etc but they appear to have progressed - or someone had their eyes on a lucrative research grant.

EDIT: Apparently its not a new idea CLICKY