Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Autowirral Electric cars.

Those little yellow buses that ran from Woodside to B'head town centre were electric. They seemed to be ok at crawling pace.

Why is it not possible to have the electric cars with the switch to petrol when the battery dies. That would be so much more sensible .

How are we going to manage supply of all the electricity ? We keep on getting told to switch off and save energy !!

Talking to a guy today who went to Greece for a holiday ,staying with family members. Celebrating a birthday when all the electricity went off. Not knowing what was happening, he was told that different poorer areas outside the centre of Athens have their supply cut off to boost the wealthier areas !

I reckon we should be looking into cow pat in far greater detail. Back to nature

They have them, they are called hybrids. However the concept is flawed:- Battery cars have very little energy storage so need very light vehicles to give them a decent mileage. The batteries are heavy, adding a tank full of fuel and a petrol engine makes the cars even heavier and the battery range much less. Even worse, all the extra clobber a petrol engine needs these days for emission regulations adds to the weight, cost, reliability and serviceability. Petrol engines also need a heavy gearbox as they have a limited power range.

The answer is a hydrogen-fuel-cell/battery hybrid, the batteries and the hydrogen both provide electricity so there is only a need for one engine, the electric motor. Hydrogen is a clean energy, no emission control stuff required. In mass production the fuel cell cost will drop considerably and the control systems are very simple. The disadvantage at the moment is the weight of the high pressure hydrogen tank but carbon fibre/graphene and maybe other laminates will reduce that weight considerably. Either no gearbox or a much smaller gearbox are needed with electric motors as they have a very wide rev range and almost full power at all revs (compared to petrol).

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Yes apparently , as assassin said in an earlier post answering mine, its already been done in London. Thought Id hit on a new idea lol! Went to London recently and yep , sure enough, they are being used already.

All this talk of Electric cars to reduce pollution. Surely the problem of pollution is just being masked, as Power stations produce pollution while making the Electricity that charges the pollution free cars.

But the polluting power stations are being shut down mostly because they are working long after their end of life. The main reason the Government is interested in wind power etc is because they are quick to build, they haven't got enough time to build nuclear/gas/biomass power stations. We were about to run out of electricity in 2020, wind power is plugging a big hole.

Unfortunately the Mersey barrage is being looked at again which isn't good and even worse is that the Government has stitched us up with the stupidly high price and danger of nuclear stations.

Tidal turbines are the best solution but is largely being overlooked despite all the trials proving the technology.

Storage of electricity is our next problem and no clear leader is coming up but don't be surprised if you have to fork out for substantial batteries to be fitted to many houses in the near future which is another poorly thought out concept.

Maybe it's time to buy a good set of Jumper leads, just in case my battery runs flat.