Which EV's charge the batteries as you brake?

Andy From Sligo

thats a nice looking motor that GM EV1

Andy From Sligo

hi5 wrote: »

Regenerative suspension should be coming eventually, would be great on some of the roads around where I live.

seems good addition

zilog_jones

unkel wrote: »

As I said, the Ni-MH patent was just an excuse to withdraw the car and get on with cosy high margin ICE business as usual. I'm not one to fall for conspiracy theories, but this is as close as it gets to a good one

Well I think it's fairly obvious that GM were in on the shenanigans too. But by the early 2000s, Ovonics/Cobasys simply would not fulfil orders for EV batteries unless they were for >10,000 batteries, and at that point in the development in EVs that meant there were no Ni-MH batteries being made for EVs at all.

Toyota didn't take back and crush all their 1st gen RAV4 EVs - they actually sold them to customers, and some are still on the road today. But they were unable to continue production due to lack of batteries from the patent encumbrance, and weren't even able to get spares for servicing the cars already on the road. They were only allowed to continue selling hybrids in the US after they and Panasonic paid a $30m settlement to Ovonics/Cobasys.

The whole situation stank, and easily set back the development of EVs by a decade.

mr chips

Sorry for resurrecting some of the slightly off-topic discussion from before, but I decided to check the exact output from the panels yesterday seeing as I hadn't bothered to do so since the start of the summer and it was due to be fairly clear. In total, they generated almost exactly 15kWh, which is pretty good for the second half of October when there's only about 10 hours of usable daylight. I'll check how much of a difference a properly dull day makes, if we get one in the next week or so. It's bright again now but was fairly dull and drizzly here for the first part of this morning - despite that they'd already generated 1kWh by 9.40.

To my mind, that really does support the notion of microgeneration being a financially viable means of fuelling your commute, as if I had a decent capacity battery to store any surplus (instead of exporting to the grid) and was able to take all the house's electricity requirements from yesterday's output, it would still have left about 6kWh that could go into topping up an EV. That'd be enough for at least a moderate daily commute, somewhere between 30-40km in winter?

Obviously there would have been more surplus juice available in September, more again in August etc, and even as we head towards the shorter days now I reckon it'll still be another 3 or 4 weeks before the array's average daily output stops keeping up with the daily domestic consumption. Effectively that means that once I have a battery and an EV, simply by plugging in daily and using up my surplus I should be able to travel on 90-100% renewable electricity generated at home for at least 9 months of the year.

In terms of the economics of doing this, the fact that grants are now being introduced in the south for domestic PV and battery installation means that the remaining cost needs to be measured against what one would expect to pay not only for household electricity, but also for road fuel. The grant for those resident in the 26 counties is €3800 AFAIK, which at today's rate is just over £3400 - that equates to about 6 years' worth of what I get in feed-in tariffs, but up front. My own PV array is 3.92 kwp, south facing, approximately 14 square metres in area and cost a shade under £6000 sterling installed just over two years ago, and I estimate the payback period at slightly under 7 years based solely on domestic electricity consumption. Someone else can calculate the payback if you factor in the saving on road fuel for e.g. 8000km p.a. - I've gotta go!

Next thing is to monitor the price progression of battery storage over the coming 2 years or so - ideally I'd have at least 15kWh, preferably 20+ but that would cost a fortune unless I went down the lead acid route.

unkel

mr chips wrote: »

My own PV array is 3.92 kwp, south facing, approximately 14 square metres in area and cost a shade under £6000 sterling installed just over two years ago, and I estimate the payback period at slightly under 7 years based solely on domestic electricity consumption

That seems extremely optimistic on the face of it. What's your rough calculation for that?

mr chips

It includes a feed in tariff of around £550-600 p.a., a reduction in electricity bills from around £55 per month to around £30 (and that's before electricity bills were raised twice in the past year by a total of roughly 20%), plus a reduction in expenditure on home heating oil for showers etc, down from running the boiler just for that 20 minutes every day to zero for about ten months of the year, anything from 20-60 minutes a week in winter. Might be even better once I get the iBoost fitted.

unkel

mr chips wrote: »

It includes a feed in tariff of around £550-600 p.a.,

That's £4k over 7 years. That sure helps to pay back the £6k the system cost :cool:

What is the FIT per kWh?

mr chips

Not at home right now so can't double check all this, but I'm pretty sure it's 12.2p per kWh for 20 years, while buying it from the grid is going up from IIRC 14p per kWh to something like 16.5-17p per kWh as of this month. Counterintuitively, this shortens the payback period!
We got in before the end of the FIT here, or the payback would have been a lot longer - if we'd managed to get in a year earlier, the FIT would have been better again. But now that there are upfront grants available in the south and the price of panels continues to decrease, the situation is actually reversed and it's less of a one off financial burden for you guys than for someone here.

unkel

mr chips wrote: »

Not at home right now so can't double check all this, but I'm pretty sure it's 12.2p per kWh for 20 years

Sweet!

If only we had a deal like that down south, we'd all get our houses plastered with solar PV, taking a huge dent out of the massive fines the government tax payer will have to pay because of our failed emissions promises

grogi

Andy From Sligo wrote: »

which (if any) EV's out there charge the batteries when you brake like the Toyota hybrid cars do ?

And also, do any EV's have any kind of dynamo/alternator or inverter system to charge the batteries as the car is moving ... even if its putting a trickle charge into the batteries?

All.

mr chips

unkel wrote: »

mr chips wrote: »

Not at home right now so can't double check all this, but I'm pretty sure it's 12.2p per kWh for 20 years

Sweet!

If only we had a deal like that down south, we'd all get our houses plastered with solar PV, taking a huge dent out of the massive fines the government tax payer will have to pay because of our failed emissions promises

Well, that deal is gone now. The new grants in the south should lead to a significant uptake of PV at the very least, if not storage - I think it's easy to underestimate the importance of an upfront contribution to costs like this. For us, we happened to be repaid a long-term debt at just the right time, otherwise we wouldn't have been in a position to do this in spite of the fact that it would make us better off in the medium and long term. A lot of people won't have six grand to spare for an array this size, but might well be able to stretch to three (after the grant) just for the array with no battery. The rest of the payback would come from reduced household bills, at least in the short term. But those with a bit more cash in hand should see the benefits of investing in storage too, especially when that can dovetail so well with running an EV.