UKC

Posting as people often ask about electric cars on this forum so thought that I would post my fairly abysmal first experience of them. Some of my wife's family have moved to Grenoble and they were having a bit of a reunion. Some of them have never seen the alps so we thought a few days in Chamonix would be good. Myself + the BIL both hired a tesla model 3 from sixt for this from Grenoble. The cars come fully charged and there is a big bank of Tesla supercharges in Sallanches so keeping them charged for the journey looked straightforward. Top up in Sallanches before entering the valley, have a few days not doing a huge mileage and then top then up for the journey back. However, upon arrival at Sixt they announced that there were no more model 3s but we could have an electric BMW. I pleaded for an ice car instead as without supercharging I didn't want an e-car. The only ice car they had would be a 140 euro premium and the guy spent a long time persuading me that there are plenty of public chargers in Chamonix and got me to download the shell e charge map app which did indeed show a reasonable number of public charges. Feeling I had no option I took the BMW. Got to Chamonix fine, took a bit of getting used to the size of the i40 as I only normally drive hatchbacks but it was quiet amd uneventful. First headed to the Aguille du Midi where my app showed a bank of 9(12?) 50kw chargers. All were fenced off with the area looking like it was being used to store lift equipment. Then visited another 5 or 6 sites in the app. Some just didn't have chargers, some were broken (calls to helplines confirmed this amd that there was nothing they could do), and the only working one had been blocked by a tesla for the last 15 hours and was no longer charging (but was still connected to the charger). Eventually we found that parking saint Michel had some 7kw ones but wasn't on the app. These proved nigh on impossible to connect to though as the mobile data reception is so poor in there that even if you go to a window to get 4g for your mobile the unit itself struggles to connect to the Internet and start charging. When we arrived only the bay nearest the window was actually charging although there were some cars parked but not plugged in in other bays suggesting that they also had difficulty connecting. Eventually my BIL got his to charge but after trying many different chargers many times I gave up. It was late by this point and we are staying up the valley so I then ferried everyone to the chalet on my remaining charge while we left the BILs car to charge. There is no feasible way of plugging a car in at our chalet but as luck would have it one of the neighbours was out and had a wall charger. He has very kindly agreed to let me plug mine in from 8 tomorrow but this does scupper the plans that I had for tomorrow as well as having had my whole afternoon wasted. We are not far from the train plus walking from the house so plenty still to do but I would never hire an e car again without the promise that I could have an ice car if not a tesla, BMW is not equivalent due to the discrepancy in the charging networks, and it looks like there is a huge amount of work to be done before e cars can be more than a small minority of cars on the road. I really wanted this to be a success but it has been anything but

They work just fine for anyone with a home charger.

They work just fine for people without a home charger but who can take the time to figure out public charging in their local area.

I wouldn’t reccoomend them for someone travelling as a tourist who doesn’t have charging at their residence.  But I wouldn’t generalise from the experience of someone who did that.  

• Edit: this is your experience, but travelling aboard and hiring a car in an unfamiliar area (in terms of knowing about changing options) is a strict minority experience which is why I don’t think your horror story (which I appreciate was no fun for you, and is in no small part down to the crap state of public charging) justifies your claim that 

I’ve had a couple of journeys in ICE cars where a series of problems getting fuel almost lead to running out.  I didn’t generalise from that “like there is a huge amount of work to be done before e cars can be more than a small minority of cars on the road”.  FWIW if I was travelling abroad I wouldn’t hire an WV, despite being an EV owner.

There’s a long way to go in making public charging suck less, but as stressful as they must have been, your experience is pretty corner case.

Say I lived in Grenoble and had a home charger then my experience today would have been identical. Or, say I lived in Chamonix and was relying on public charging then that clearly isn't viable.

If you’d been driving an EV for some time you’d have been more accustomed to the difficulties of public charging and how to check on charger status; we use Zap Map to look at field reports of chargers on the occasional longer distance holiday.  It’s absolutely crap that you can’t just set off and expect to charge unlike ICE,  I fully recognise that there’s a long way to go for long distance BEV travel, but forewarned is for-armed and we’ve always managed it.  There are real black holes out there for public charging even in somewhere as densely populated as the UK. 

But lots of BEV owners manage just fine at the expense of more forwards planning.  Getting one as a hire car in an area not well served - that’s rough and I fully appreciate your bad experience.  But I don’t think it justifies claiming that “there is a huge amount of work to be done before e cars can be more than a small minority of cars on the road”.  There’s a lot of work to be done before they’re comparable to ICE in all corner cases but most driving isn’t corner cases.

Edit: this is going to be a dislike pile on, isn’t it?  Click away.  I’m openly acknowledging the limitations of public charging but I just don’t think that limits BEVs to the small minority the OP claims.  I’m not contesting their awful experience but it doesn’t speak to most vehicle usage.  Proof of the pudding is in the eating and BEV numbers on the road are expanding dramatically.

And going back to your point that if you don't have off-street parking it is still possible I don't really think this is widely. I would like to drive an ev but don't have offstreet charging, I periodically look at zapp map for my town and it first it looks like there are lots of chargers but once you look into it more closely there are non without a 2 hour max stay or for certain employees. There are a couple of fast (non tesla) 3 miles out of town but purely fast charging is meant to be awful for the batteries amd even at fast charge speeds that's a lot of hours of my life at a random service station that I don't want to be it. The final option is paying individuals to charge at theor House (this is advertised on zapp map) but it feels very risky permanently relying on an arrangement with a stranger that they could terminate at a moment's notice.

And finally, what you appear to be saying is that you should only be able to rely on evs for journeys that you already know which sounds pretty shit compared to my ice car (i have only once in my life got worried that I was running loe on fuel)

I checked the French app before leaving. There are loads of chargers shown as working in Chamonix including a large bank of fast ones. Other than being psychic I don't see what  ore I could have done or how a French owner would have fared any better 

I know a few people in that situation, and there’s a couple of others I don’t know but who post on this forum about doing that.  For sure it doesn’t work for everyone and I’m not claiming otherwise.  But you said:

”there is a huge amount of work to be done before e cars can be more than a small minority of cars on the road”

Quite a few people - far more than a “small minority” have off-street parking.  That alone puts your point in doubt.  That’s all I was claiming, not that everyone can move to BEVs now, nor that they’re universally usable all over the world.  I don’t claim that, not yet.

Public charging as primary charging only works for a minority of people within off street parking - I don’t content what you’ve said about your options.  But between those with off street parking and those who can public or workplace charge, we’re well beyond the “small minority” you asserted.  It’s not universal, there’s lot of people who it doesn’t work for.  But it’s beyond a small minority in terms of those it does work for.

I’m not saying BEVs should only be relied on for journeys you know.  I’m saying that as a BEV driver, when exceeding the range of my vehicle, I’m a lot more careful and pre-planning than when driving an ICE.  Yes, it sucks to have to plan more but it always works out.  What I’m further saying is if someone used to ICE hires a BEV they’re not going to have the experience or sense of the pre planning necessary.  All of this hi-lights how far BEV infrastructure has to develop for ICE level convenience on longer journeys. But it’s manageable with experience; as a hire car user you’re dropped in with high stakes and no experience.  You have my sympathy for something spoiling your trip but I just don’t think it’s a fair basis to generalise from.

I've been a Leaf owner for 3 years and I hate public charging. It works out OK in the end but it's always a PITA. I only stick with it because I'm committed to EVs, and 99% of my charging is at home on cheap rate. I've just upgraded to an e-Niro, spent a ridiculous amount of money on a car, purely so that I can go a decent distance without having to negotiate public chargers.

I believe EVs are the future, at least in the short term, but they do need a commitment to the cause if you want to go a significant distance, and especially if you can't charge at home.

Did either of you happen to work out a rough cost per mile? It's hard to get real world numbers on that with no home charging involved.

And you can do one with the suggestion that I don't have the 'experience or sense to do the necessary pre planning'. I booked a tesla (with free supercharging) after checking where the superchargers were including checking on Google Street View. I was then given no option but to use a non-tesla and even then checked the status of multiple chargers before leaving for my journey which were all listed as working. Bearing in mind that, I believe, after 2035, virtually all French hire cars will be electric how would you with all your experience have avoided my scenario? And bear in mind in mind, that unless there is a step change in the rate of installation, there is going to be a lot more competition for those working public chargers 

Using public fast chargers does eliminate your cost saving compared to fossil fuels. You could pay from 40 - 80 p/kwh depending on the brand, speed amd location. An efficient ev might get 4 miles per kwh, so 10 to 20p per mile on electricity if using fast chargers. I was meant to get free fast charging and the hire cost was about the same as for a similar sized diesel bit obviouslythat hasn't worked. It is crappy for people who don't have home charging as they will have to pay substantially more for their charging than people with it, and you have to pay vat on your electricity at public charges but not for home ones

Aargh! The guy who agreed to lend me his home charger only got it installed yesterday and it doesn't work! I should have enough charge to get me to total energy fast charge one. Fingers crossed that works

Thanks for that. Good to know. 

I’ve said in every post I sympathise with you.

You took a hire car that you did not want and that was not fit for your purpose.  You were shafted.  It in no way means they’re only suitable for a “small minority” of people. That’s not a justified extrapolation.

Yet now you have direct experience of how sketchy it can be doing long distance travel in a BEV on some areas.  You’ve learnt.   As I’ve said you have to really over plan if if going beyond range limits on some areas.  That sucks, but it doesn’t limit EVs to a small minority of people.  

Edit: Do you have a charge cable in the boot?  You hopefully do and then you don’t need someone with a home charger, just somewhere you can plug in a normal plug and offer to pay cash for the power. 

I'm guessing the OP wasn't expecting a scientific dissection of his language after a clearly frustrating time. I think it was a reasonable warming that hiring EV cars is still fraught with difficulty.  I had similar issues in Manchester of all places. I'm sure things will improve rapidly.

You’re right and I’ve agreed repeatedly that its a lot more fraught that ICE.  I just disagree with the over generalisation.

I hope the OP pushes for some money back from the hire firm.

You get problems with garages being shut too, difference is a friend or the AA can’t bring you a Jerry can of electricity so when problems do happen (and they currently happen more often), it’s a lot harder to fix.  The RAC are installing mobile “emergency chargers” in their vans and it’ll get better but that corner case is much harder to solve with BEVs.

Edit: totally agree with this; I’d be very nervous about hiring an EV in many places.

Sorry.

I went off on a tangent on a small part of your well needed rant. Not helpful of me.  

I hope you have a stress free remainder of your travels and that you can get the hire firm to compensate you for the hassle they caused you.

Depends what you mean by 'widely'. I don't have off street parking available at home. I charge mine mostly at work from a 13A outlet. I occasionally top it up at the local fast charger bank which is annoyingly temperamental about taking bank cards (no keypads so if the bank prompts for a PIN you're stuffed) but that is in part my refusal to engage with various apps. Occasionally I trail an extension lead across my garden and the pavement to charge on the road but I prefer not to.

All in all, it works fine.

jk

I think there's some costings in this video. Away from home charging is expensive and seems pretty stressful:  youtube.com/watch?v=ofEQ38Net0A&

Eco they most definitely are not. Fair enough they lead to cleaner air at point of use, but that doesn't mean cleaner air in general. Lithium mining is pretty messy too. These are the new way we'll wreck the planet which is a pretty sad thought, sorry. 

I don't really get why this is getting so many dislikes, if it's for your wording then fair play, but I wholly agree with your general argument. Of course massive sympathy for the OP - that's a massive pain the arse that you don't need on holiday, I hope you got sorted. Reading this, even owning an EV I wouldn't take one to Europe or hire one anywhere (though I know some people have driven them all the way to, and across, Europe).

BEV cars are definitely slower to refuel in public locations, and more inconvenient than ICE cars, but as you say if you have a home-charger it's a non-issue for the vast majority of day-to-day journeys, unless you regularly travel more than the range of the car in a single day (in which case I would just get a diesel or something).

We've had an e-niro for nearly three years now and I could probably count on my hands the number of times we've used public chargers. The countless nursery and school drop-offs, visiting family, shopping, nearly every other trip has been done on a home charger. We only public charge if we're going on a UK holiday somewhere, then plan meticulously with back-up locations.

The first time I used a public charger the bloody cable got stuck because the stupid machine crashed, and I had to call them up and wait on hold for them to remotely reset it. It is stupid but it's a very small minority of our journeys.

They just need to make it a European/UK law that all chargers can be paid for contactless tap-and-go, don't need an app, don't need to sign-up, don't need mobile phone signal. They should start fining companies that have broken chargers for more than a set period of time (like the empty house council tax fee), that might help.

Can I ask why you were so insistent on having a EV?  

Sorry for your situation - this obviously sucks.  You've been screwed over by the hire company, the charging map app, and the individual operaters.

I am amazed that Chamonix hasn't got this sorted; I've had this sort of nonsense in quiet corners of Cornwall and the Lakes but you'd think a destination like Cham would have been well ahead of the curve.

Some Tesla chargers are open to all, and your i4 has the same charge port.  It would be worth checking if Sallanches is one of the stations on that pilot.

This is really antisocial.  I had a row with a chap a while ago who proudly came out of a service station and proceeded to tell us how he'd deliberately taken two hours over lunch so his car would definitely have crept all the way back up to 100%... then I pointed out the queue of cars waiting for the charger.

Probably the “Wintertree banging on effect”.

Your experiences sound very similar to ours. 

> They just need to make it a European/UK law that all chargers can be paid for contactless tap-and-go, don't need an app, don't need to sign-up, don't need mobile phone signal

This x 100.  If the lady who runs the roadside burger wagon I frequent can do contactless payments, why on earth can’t a charge post?

Right, and this is the thing I keep circling back to. All the electric car (I can call it that and not an eeeeveee because I don't have one. I think thems the rules?) evangelists I work with use this 'majority of journeys' argument to try to convince me It'd save me a fortune, but the majority of miles are on long trips nowhere near home, so when I do the maths it really really won't. 

If you only ever go to work/school/asda I get it, it's perfect. But I don't get how it works for UKCers who are heading out climbing at the weekend, even occasionally.

Hard to read that without paragraphs.

That said, what it does highlight is that the car hire market is utterly broken in one specific way that with decent modern stock control would be reasonably easy to fix - you can't choose to hire a specific model of car, only a class.  Which as I'm tall is useless, I fit some cars and not others - so I never hire cars when travelling alone, only when there's another driver in case I physically can't drive it.

The industry is just institutionally crap and I avoid giving it any money so far as is possible.  I'd choose esoteric public transport trips or driving my own car a very long way over going anywhere near it.

The benefits or otherwise of EVs are really not relevant - the principle is that you shouldn't have to pay a huge sum of money to hire "a medium car" or "an SUV", you should be able to specify what it is you're hiring, even if there was a discount (to aid stock control given that cars get crashed and come back late) for saying "I don't mind".

Presumably saving money isn't the primary reason for buying one  in most cases?

It depends on a combination of your car's range, how far you live from the climbing, and your tolerance for charging faff.  I live in Oxford and manage well enough with a 250 mile range Niro.  The Peak needs ~20 minutes on a charger somewhere along the round trip (assuming not charging overnight) which is fine because that is how long I like to stop for a coffee for anyway. 

Somewhere further like the Lakes or Cornwall needs a small charge on the route, plus reliable overnight charging.  I've once been shafted by overnight charging not being available and that cost me 90 minutes sitting on a fast charger.

I'd not recommend an EV if you want to regularly do trips that are significantly greater than your range and you're in a hurry.  But that'll change; faster charging at an improved network, and greater range, shouldn't be far off now.

In reply to Mark Eddy:

All wrong, and even wronger in France than the UK.  We don't have to disprove this again, do we?

Fair enough if that is actually the case for you but are you sure it is? Lots of local runs really add up! I'm aware my life has shrunk with kids recently but currently no more than about 20% of our family mileage is 'trips' beyond an hour each way and most of that is a the 1000mi+ summer road trip I torment the family with.

200+ mile range from a fairly ordinary modern EV means daytrips don't require away charging.

Weekend trips, charging at or near destination (or topping up each way on route) 200mi range from Sheffield theoretically gets you to all but the remotest Cornish climbing and the Highlands/Islands in a single push.

Longer trips do require top ups but I ran a petrol car for years (before 24H robot petrol pumps) that did less than 200mi tank, you just top up when you get the chance.

jk

It's getting pushed pretty hard by fossil fuel lobby groups across the press and social media, this opinion is only going to get more prevalent.

jk

Are you sure?

A couple of articles that came straight up:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/02/01/1152893248/red-cobalt-...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/14/electric-cost-lithium...

There is and has been for a long time now, a global obsession with travel just for the sake of it, because we can. I'd agree, it's a nice thing to be able to do, but at current levels is not sustainable however we go about it.

Just getting in the car and popping here and there every day all adds massively to the problem. The reality is, many journeys that are made are simply not necessary or at least not necessary to take via personal transport. I'm not suggesting we all just stay at home, obvs that's not a way forward. Just that we consider the long term consequences of each journey before we make it. Do I really need to travel 15 miles in my car for a nice coffee, when instead I could walk 1km and have an equally good experience (just a random example but you get the idea). Do I need to take the kids to school in the car (I don't have kids so doesn't apply to me directly) or can they walk / take a bus? If they can't take a bus/walk, why can't they and is this an issue that needs addressing help to alleviate the climate crisis and health problems.

All this is coming from a life long petrol head. But I get it, there's a very very big problem and we have helped cause it. The EV isn't going to fix it, it simply kicks the problem along the street a little whilst making some feel like they're doing the right thing.

Admittedly low. Motorway service stations are the closest thing I can think of to a physical manifestation of hell. I will stop for a piss, no more, and I will walk round the outside to the bus entrance (Top tip: it's always right by the bogs) so I don't have to fight through the dawdling hordes. 

Irt jk:

Yeah. From the south everywhere is far, and my commute is short. I don't do a crazy mileage but a big proportion of it is on the motorway.

Home charging is where conversation with colleagues normally goes next; I mention that the home leccy rates are not loads better than breakeven with diesel anyway and then people tell me they're on octopus blahblah which gets cheap something something, then I look into it and it's only for 6 hours, which at 6 kW is, what, 100-120 milesish you can put in? So if you live in the south and go somewhere after work and get back Sunday night and need to commute either side it's yet another subtlety to consider. 

So yeah, again, I really want it to be the answer but (and we're possibly violently agreeing with each other here) I'll stick to saluting the climbers who manage it with current technology.

There is an argument, or rather will be* when the charging infrastructure is up to near-guaranteeing a charger at any given motorway service area, that a 200 ish mile range is optimal because it forces strong-bladdered but irresponsible people who will say drive London-Edinburgh without a break to have one or two.

* probably is for Tesla now, given their large dedicated charging areas.

Firstly, I do hope you pay your work for the electricity you use - or pay tax for the benefit in kind otherwise.

Also, is your garden large enough to park the car on ? If so then pave it over, knock down any wall, and pay the council to lower the pavement. You might even pay them to put a solid white or double yellow in front so that you have access/egress.

Mind you, Heaven knows how much all of this would cost - welcome to the brave new world of EV's.

I mention that the home leccy rates are not loads better than breakeven with diesel anyway and then people tell me they're on octopus blahblah which gets cheap something something,

Not sure about this maths (maybe I got something wrong), 

Standard electric car 4 miles /kWh, 27p/kWh = 7p/mile

Diesel @ 60mpg = 13.2 miles per litre. £1.60 a litre = 12p a mile.

Please can someone tl;dr that or put some paragraphs into it?

I was at the southbound Tebay services on Sunday. As I entered, there was a queue of half-a-dozen Teslas at the charging stations, and as I left, 20 minutes later, there was still a queue. 

This is a very considerable disincentive. 

OP booked a sightseeing holiday in Chamonix and got a car charging holiday in Chamonix 

Why in the name of all that is holy would he do that? 

Why are you so upset every time someone finds a way to make EVs work for themselves?

Agree with the sentiment...but doesn't she need mobile signal for the contactless to work?  Some rural pubs round her require you to stand in a specific place in the garden to make the payment!

Your maths looks fine to me.  Except that via Octopus blahblah, it's currently 9p/kWh and therefore 2.3p/mile.

I only charge at 2kW, not 7kW - haven't yet got a dedicated charger fitted - so if I got home on digital fumes and needed to do a big trip the following day, I would be in trouble.  But that more or less never happens for me. 

I can see that someone who needs to recharge urgently outside the cheap hours is going to end up paying more than the 2.3p/mile but it's still pretty damn cheap.

I'm fitting chargers to a car park fairly soon; I'm just going to run some CAT6 at the same time and pop a wifi booster out there.

Why?

Incidentally, I do have a drive but it's blocked by the car I used to keep in my garden

Erm, nothing since my arrangement works fine for me.

jk

From my recent trip I'm a bit surprised the OP's chalet didn't have an overnight charger.

Not sure whether I'd be using a stick or a carrot, but making it compulsory for B&B's, hotels, self catering appartments, glamping pods etc. to have overnight chargers would help greatly for the type of trip the OP had planned. 

Some people are just fanatically anti EV. They'll quote a variety of reasons for this but I wouldn't waste any time arguing with them.

Fair enough. When I stopped climbing the fuel and wall fees I saved pretty much paid for my gliding habit so I do get that!

jk

I would strongly suggest that trailing a cable across the pavement to his car as he said above - "Occasionally I trail an extension lead across my garden and the pavement to charge on the road" - even though he said that he prefers not to, is just plain ruddy dangerous to any pedestrian, and potentially lethal to anyone who is blind or has a disability.

I also am fed up with the "EV's are wonderful" brigade who completely ignore the problems that these bring and who seem to imagine that some "EV Fairy" will magically bring about all the infrastructure required without a penny cost to themselves, whilst also receiving more personal financial aid than any other group of transport users, even though, by purchasing a brand new (and very expensive) vehicle they have demonstrated that they are in the sector of society that has the least need for any subsidies.

Fair point, although based on Jkarran's general posts, I suspect he isn;'t in fact doing anything anti-social, still less dangerous.

What gives you that idea? Chargers etc are mostly commercially provided. Providing new infrastructure for technological developments is hardly rare - mobile phones, broad-band etc etc.

Oh look - a perfectly valid solution for less than £6:

https://cpc.farnell.com/pro-power/srdr-65/cable-protector-grey-66mm-1-83m/d...

Rather than being anti EV, some of us just struggle to see any benefit.

1) Long journeys are made longer by charging/waits at charging points. I do a lot of 2 and 3 days trips from Derby (Skye, Alps) and I can see the faff of an EV eating into climbing time.

2) From a practical point, EV owning colleagues  and friends are quick to point out issues (cold weather reducing range, chargers not disengaging etc) that just sounds risky when you have a tight schedule.

3) As for being better for the environment, VW's own figures showed over 200k km VW eGolf vs VW Golf TDi was only 4 tonnes CO2 difference which would be 0.8 tonnes per year for the distances I drive. Doesn't seem much of a saving for all the inconvenience.

4) These cars are wildly expensive to buy but I suspect the cost per mile is closer to or less than diesel over a lifetime. However as someone who buys high mileage diesels and runs them to MOT failure (no break downs in 18 years in case you are wondering about reliability) the cost per mile on most calculators is at least double what I calculate mine to be. I have access to a salary sacrifice scheme for EVs but even the cheapest vehicle is way over budget.

So I'd like to drive one but can't see any reason to do so. Once the children start to drive there might be an argument for one. Would be absolutely delighted if someone could change my mind/figures.

Once upon a time, there were no petrol and diesel filling stations. Then the oil companies invested heavily to develop a refuelling infrastructure which we see around us today. The development of a suitable charging infrastructure for EVs is simply the current version of that same type of investment. Given that ICE vehicles will be going the way of the dodo over coming years, the sooner the infrastructure is developed the better. 

So I replied specifically to your suggestion that EVs "lead to cleaner air at point of use, but that doesn't mean cleaner air in general".  This is demonstrably true, regardless of whether you meant CO2 or particulates. 

EVs definitely generate less CO2 per km than ICE - exactly how much less depends on how you charge them.  In a nuclear dominated grid like France's, or a hydro dominated grid like Norway's, they are much less CO2 intensive than ICE.  But even in a coal fired gird like Poland's, they're still a small improvement.  In the UK it's somewhere between the two extremes, and improving all the time.

Both your links are about the problems of mining minerals for the battery.  I don't deny that this is a significant problem, and I wish there was a cleaner supply route for these minerals.  I very much hope that the next generation of batteries won't rely so heavily on lithium and cobalt.  I'm also quite interested in the possibility of lithium supply from Cornwall.

The thing is, I don't think these are equivalent evils.  Mining lithium is bad but it's nowhere near as important as CO2.

Totally separately, I completely agree that much better alternatives to car journeys are desperately needed.  It is bonkers that it costs me less to drive into central Oxford, park, and drive home, than it does to get the bus.  The bus should be free and the parking much more expensive.  But try getting people to vote for that.

I had to go to a meeting in Peckham yesterday.  By far the fastest, cheapest and least stressful way would have been to drive door to door.  By far the most expensive and slowest way would have been trains plus underground.  That's not right.

Interesting, as what you usually see is a queue of other cars for the non-Tesla stations but most of the Tesla ones empty.  Maybe the "fancy farm shop, not a services, honest" approach of Tebay, Gloucester and Cairn Lodge means more premium-car-driving visitors?

But I'd agree.  If I'm not guaranteed to be able to charge at a given location, then that's a problem, it means I can't run my typically 200 mile range down to nothing, I have to start planning to charge at around 150 miles or even less, which isn't as convenient and may mean needing an extra charge.  By contrast, much as they're expensive, seeing a petrol station at a services out of fuel is very, very rare and only really happens when there's a fuel crisis which is known about in the news.

You certainly CAN work around it, but it's not as convenient as an ICE car yet.  Maybe when ranges get up to about 300 miles typical it'll be much less of a problem.

No more or less than the countless other raised and dropped edges in it which I'm very well aware of given my own father can't see down.

If I needed to do it regularly I'd ask the council to let a cable guide into the pavement but since it's once in a blue moon I need to top up at home, I prefer the minor occasional hazard I can clearly mark to the minor but unmarked permeant one that would represent.

EVs are wonderful. They're not perfect. But then neither are internal combustion vehicles.

Complaining I'm ignoring the 'problems they bring' is like me complaining you don't caveat each and every one of your whiney posts with a mention of climate change or the damage done in extracting, refining and transporting oil, the murderous dictatorships it forces us to cosy up to etc etc...

The reality for EV infrastructure is the same as for your roads, running water, sewers, gas, domestic electricity, telecoms, and petrochemical infrastructure before it which you obliviously rely upon on while whining about progress, it'll be a mix of consumer spending and the taxpayer which funds it.

Who paid for the internet infrastructure you're using to moan about EV infrastructure?

Who pays for the vast petrochemical infrastructure you're advocating for? Who will pay to mitigate the extinction level environmental catastrophe it has caused? The 'CO2 fairy'?

If we want to head off our own extinction then we need to address our carbon emissions. Fast. Eliminating fossil road fuel is a significant and, importantly, achievable part of that. Since the first generation of a new and superior technology is almost always (and indeed in this case) inferior to the most refined versions of the inferior technology it will supplant we need to do something more than just wait for market forces to work if we want a rapid transition. We need a rapid transition. You moan about subsidies (tax breaks) to the rich and those willing to borrow and I get where you're coming from with that, it doesn't sit well. But we need to make this transition. The alternative to the carrot of tax breaks is of course the stick, fuel duty escalators, carbon taxes, emissions charges and ultimately bans which I suspect you're none to fond of either.

Incidentally, you can pick an old Leaf like mine up for less than £4k if you're interested.

jk

This is actually well worth pointing out. I'm sure there is a lot of this going on, but if caught it's tax evasion. It seems harmless, until you realise that the company will write the electric bill off against their profits and the employee is effectively getting an untaxed bonus.

Tax breaks for EV charging would actually be a sensible move to help establish EVs, but there is no allowance currently in place.

The problem I see; is often the debate against electric cars assumes that people pro electric are suggesting electric cars are the saviour and reduce carbon footprint by 100%. 

The industry is so vast small margins have a big impact. Even at 10% plus no emissions at the tailpipe (massively undervalued benifit imo) would be a big win. 

Interestingly VW quote reduction of 32% over the lifetime of the car vs a diesel and 40% Vs petrol. Sounds pretty compelling if you believe the numbers. 

Do sixt have an office in Chamonix? Yours is the kind of situation that sorts the good companies from the bad.

Wasn't legislation indroduced a few years ago to exempt EV charging at work from NI and income tax?

My brother has certainly been benefitting from it, and not paying tax on the lease, for the last few years

It’s dependant on circumstances. This might be useful - https://www.gov.uk/expenses-and-benefits-electric-company-cars .

I'm not suggesting for a minute that EVs are perfect for everyone. My first "contribution" to this thread was to whinge that I hated public charging. 

I was just commenting that some people have a habit of leaping onto any thread that discusses EVs so they can rant about how terrible they are. If an EV doesn't work for them, then fine. No one is forcing them to get one. But I wish they would just shut up about it.

As might this:

https://www.att.org.uk/electric-cars-afrs-and-workplace-charging

'Workplace charging exemption – an update

Clause 8 of Finance (No.3) Bill 2017-19 (which will become Finance Act 2019) introduces a new exemption which means that no benefit in kind charge will arise where an employer provides facilities for employees to charge their personally owned electric vehicles at work. 

Key features of this exemption are:

It is back dated, taking effect from 6 April 2018.

It covers the cost to the employer of providing charging facilities, the electricity provided and any other connected services. 

It applies to recharging of personally owned all-electric or plug in hybrid cars (including any in which the employee is a passenger).

The employer has to provide the charging facilities at or near the workplace.

The charging facilities have to be made available generally to all the employer’s employees at that workplace.'

The EU forced phone manufacturers to standardise on USB B (but now C).

Sounds like the EU should force some mind of standard so every car can use every charger.

Personally I’m not convinced they’re the future regardless of how good they are, eventually the battery will die and then what happens to it? To the best of my knowledge Lithium Ion can’t be recycled?

Smaller petrol engines with either super or turbo charger which over the course of its lifetime would probably have the same carbon footprint as an EV car (once you’ve mined the Lithium Ion, shipped it all over the world to be turned into a battery, built the car, shipped that around etc)

Who knows, I think Hydrogen fuel cells has legs, I know James May did a YouTube video about getting one and the only downside was the lack of recharging!

Not being forced into it yet, but governments are persuading the switch by offering incentives such as zero road fund licence. OF course that will change once enough folk have made the switch, but for now it's a consideration and incentive

All parts of a car will eventually die. Engines included. 15 years for a battery isn't too bad, and will improve as the years roll on. Tesla estimate that their batteries last 150,000 miles (200,000 miles in the US). Most ICE's don't last this long.

As batteries become more energy dense, replacing them becomes for achievable.

It can be recycled.

Not true at all. When I looked up the numbers a few years ago, average ICE/EV's broke even in the 2 - 5 year mark base don average mileage. EV then wins after that. As the grid gets greener the scales tip even further towards EVs.

Hydrogen is just really inefficient. To convert water to hydrogen, then use it in a fuel cell, you loose about 80% of the energy in this process (compared to 30% for an EV). There's lots of talk about hydrogen ICE. This is even worse, and the tanks sizes become ridiculous.

Also, we haven't figured out how to make fuel cells affordable. And I'm not aware of any potential breakthroughs.

Also, ignore any nonsense about ammonia engines being an "EV killer" if that appears in your news feed. All the hype about it seems to ignore that a simple leak can burn the inside of your lungs if breathed in.

The Norwegian story in interesting in this regard:

https://elbil.no/english/norwegian-ev-policy/

Of course, Norway has an advantage over most countries in that almost all of its electricity is generated using renewables (mainly hydropower, but increasing amounts of wind), so there is a readily available energy resource which is not reliant on imports.  

ICE engines will typically last way longer than 150k. I've had a few with 250k and the motors were still fine. It's the rest of the car that falls apart or becomes uneconomical to repair and that will be the same regardless of the powertrain.

Japanese mechanicals have usually proven to be strong over long periods, alas they don't seem to protect the bodywork very well and they rust away long before the engines die.

Love my Q4 and have done 15,000 miles in it since February, including to Aviemore, Skye, Pembroke and Marseilles. I wouldn't go back.

Yes I know someone who recently got a lift back on a tow truck when their carefully planned public charger was faulty so they ran out of gogojuise.

Being able to pop 5l in a jerry can and carry the fuel to the car certainly has its advantages.

True, but I do remember for a friend with a V8 Defender that advantage was only just over 10 miles

"Probably"? Come on, did you just pluck that comparison out of thin air, or have you actually checked?

Whilst the chances of that happening are definitely higher with an EV, I'm not sure why your friend would get a tow all the way home instead of just to the next available charger. There are certainly plenty of places in the Highlands you could easily get caught out even with an ICE.

As is being able to plug your car into a 3 pin wall socket. Takes about an hour to get enough charge for about 7 miles (depending on various factors).

In most places that's enough to get you to a fuel station, or at least to a safer location to park up.

Go back to anything under £50K?!   

The £4k Leaf mentioned upthread?  You don't have to buy a brand new huge Audi...

Most EVs are relatively expensive brands, and by definition they are still all relatively young.  The second hand market will develop soon enough.

He won't be going to all those places in a £4k Leaf.

These threads always end up with people who don't own an EV saying how terrible it is to own an EV and all those that do saying that it is actually pretty good.

My E-niro has just hit 50k miles. It's the best thing I've ever driven: fast, silent, comfy. 

I even got to have  a cup of tea in Blaenau Ffestiniog while it charged on their public fast chargers on my way home from Llandudno. 

I'm not an evangelist. If I wasn't able to charge it at home then it wouldn't have been a realistic option - public charging is just too expensive and too unreliable (at least in the UK. Unlike the OP, my experience with public charging in France was overwhelmingly positive). As it is, the convenience of charging overnight at home at a rate of about 2p a mile outweighs the inconvenience and expense of public chargers.

You also become hyper-aware of things which negatively affect efficiency. However most of those things are just as true of ICE vehicles, such as the increase of drag due to air resistance with speed (drag is approximately quadratic so increase in speed by 10% increases drag by 21%) and driving in wet weather (the apocalyptic rain on the M1 yesterday reduced the efficiency of my car by about 15%).

The average car mileage at scrappage seems to be between 100-120k miles depending where you look and average 14 years old. This seems to be growing as we keep cars longer. 

So I'd suggest 150k is not typical.

Most EV manufacturers offer battery guarantees in the region of 100k miles@ less than 20% battery degregation; so the manufactures seem pretty confident in the battery life. Annual mileage is less than 8k so highly likely to more than easily meet the average 14 years. 

Many Tesla's have reached 400k before battery replacement. 

I don't believe you!
Electricity in Blaenau Ffestiniog.
Whatever next... 

Late to this thread so only skim read but as a Grenoble (ish) based EV owner I've rarely had problems using non Tesla chargers. 

However, and this is the crux. Did you check the Tesla app? It seems the Sallanches supercharger (Megève actually) is open to non Teslas so you could have just used that, which would have improved your experience massively. 

https://www.tesla.com/fr_FR/findus?v=2&bounds=46.27526281054308%2C6.992...

Electricity...and Tea...!

Blimey

I feel so stupid that I didn't think to check that, majorly kicking myself. We spent most of the day not thinking about batteries, train is shut for maintenance, not having much luck with transport, but used the buses and had a great day. Anyway this evening tried the saint michel one again, used the exact same process amd it worked first time, no idea why it works today but not yesterday but will have fully charged cars in te morning. In hindsight, should have taken the coach from Grenoble

Yes I suspect that's the case. But it isn't usually the engine that causes scrappage but a combination of many other items requiring expensive replacement. Rusting of the structure, corroding brake lines, drivetrain issues, electrics, general bodywork wear and tear, etc.

Maybe smaller engined vehicles with turbos will be guilty of not lasting long as they are often worked very hard. Something like the B58 from BMW is a masterpiece and great for starship mileage if looked after. Often the case for ICE manufacturers to offer 100k+ warranties too, on such an expensive purchase it's the least they can do regardless of power source.    

Well unless lithium ion is mined in the UK, converted into a battery in the UK, built into a car in the UK then most probably before it's even hit the showroom the parts have been around the world at least once.

I'm no expert on m the field and will mourn the day ICE are no longer on sale.

This is why we won't solve the climate crisis.

I was obviously joking as it's a well known fact that Blaenau Ffestiniog has had electricity ever since Trawsfynydd became operational in 1965.  

So if you're factoring in the impact of lithium mining into the carbon footprint of an EV, presumably you are equivalently factoring in the impact of the diesel or unleaded refinement and transportation process for an ICE vehicle.

Of course. But any research on lithium mining shows its terrible for the planet.

This doesn’t seem to be terrible for the planet - https://weardalelithium.co/

Lithium is a stepping stone to aluminium ion battery chemistry. Switching the global car fleet to aluminium batteries over 15 years doesn’t make a big difference to the mining of aluminium, which is way more abundant than lithium.

To elaborate on what comment it's more I'll miss the incredible machines and experiences that people have had with them. 

You can make a Ferrari with a battery but sadly it just won't be the same as 599 with a V12

https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/01/south-america-s-lithium-fields-re...

🤷🏼‍♂️

BEVs will never make the same driving experience as a car with a burbling small block V8 or a high revving naturally aspirated straight 6.  In technical terms BEVs can already exceed the performance in some axes, but the magic of ICE won’t go away.  We have people owning steam traction engines and dozens of heritage steam lines 75 years after they faded from grace.  ICE isn’t going away for enthusiasts, and as with the new build steam train “Tornado”, I’m sure the greatest ICE vehicles will come long after their era ends.

Edit: in reply to your other post - yes, some lithium mines are awful.  So are some fossil fuel production facilities, the difference is that the fossils are used once and lost, the lithium is reused and recycled.  I also think BEVs will move to aluminium battery chemistry ending the problems with lithium.

Ye definitely, be a shame if they start extraction in County Durham though!! I just don't understand why electric cars have to be so ugly.

Definitely many advances in technology still to be made for electric cars.

Almost, I would say a better "definition" is that you tend to scrap a vehicle when the risk of losing the benefit of a high cost (*) repair becomes too large because of the likelihood of needing further expensive work in the near future.

(*) high in both absolute terms and relative to the value (to you) of the vehicle

The boreholes are already there.  They were sunk on the former cement works at eastgate to provide geothermal heat for an “eco village”.  It turned out the water wasn’t that hot, and was highly corrosive due to the various minerals in it, including lithium salts.  Turns out they can pump the toxic goop up, extract the lithium and return the rest.  Basically ideal in terms of low impact lithium mining.

Quite.  If you look at some of the rear/mid engined RWD ICE cars freed of the need from front air intakes they’re far better looking than BEVs similarly freed of thoze requirements.  I’ve had a couple of RWD mid engined ICEs and they look better IMO than any BEV out there.  Our BEV is derived from the petrol model and it shows.  But give it time, as they rise in numbers, people’s expectations of what a car looks like will change and so will their looks…

Have you seen the effects of oil refining on people?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7691047/

"We observed that proximity to an oil refinery was associated with a statistically significantly increased risk of incident cancer diagnosis across all cancer types."

Now, I'm not saying the environmental impact of lithium is irrelevant. It is definitely something to be addressed. However, people love to criticise it while being happy to shrug off the effects of oil extraction and refining. 

And once we have lithium, it is recyclable. Oil isn't. 

And the running of a vehicle using a lithium battery adds almost no harm to the environment. 

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. 

Where on earth do you think oil comes from?

There's roughly ten kilos of lithium in an EV. That can be recycled. An efficient ICV might expect to burn ten thousand kilos of fuel over a 150k life.

Yet here we are talking about shipping lithium. 

I will and won't. Very specifically there's something I'd dearly love to build but probably wouldn't finish before it becomes unregisterable. Couldn't care less about modern cars, they're tools.

Jk

As electric power was developed for use in the slate quarrying industry, electricity reached Blaenau fairly early, boasting the first public supply in Gwynedd. Dolwen power station was built around 1900, originally to supply power to the quarrying at Foty.

Although a third of the price of a 599 a Model S Plaid will beat it comfortably in a 0-60 drag race. However isn't all this just 'old man ranting in a pub territory' though, and not something we want to base a 21st century and beyond vehicle policy for millions (billions globally) of people? We (some) only get dewy eyed about throbbing petrol engines because it's tied up with (usually male, usually teenage) nostalgia -  not because of any inherent advantage of an ICE car. 

My first child will be born in December. She'll only ever know the family car as being electric and to her that will be normal. Pretty sure (gender stereotypes notwithstanding) she won't think a roaring petrol engine is superior, it will just be what her grandparents used to drive in the olden days. The attitudes above will die out with the people that have them. 

The problem is that the bloke on the thread banging on about 'lithium being the problem ' is just using it to back up his 'feelings' about ICEs. There hasn't been some dispassionate evaluation of pros and cons that led him to that thinking. 

I know BEVs aren't perfect but they're far better (as a driving experience, for local air quality and for global emissions) than the current alternative (on average, stop going on about supercars as if they're relevant to most people). Moaning about the loss of Ferraris when you're driving around in a Fiat Punto is a bit of a stretch - for everyday driving a Ferrari is a terrible car - expensive, hard to maintain, difficult to drive for most, awkward to get in and out, not much storage, thirsty, low visibility, are they even particularly safe?

And while ICE vehicles do continue to make small, incremental improvements they're inherently limited by the 100 year old technology of constantly blowing up dead dinosaurs - when I hear the roar of a car or motorbike engine reverberating around our mountain landscape it just represents a colossal engineering failure as all that energy is wasted in noise and heat.

We've seen massive improvements in BEVs in the last 10 years so will be interesting to see where we're at when I trade in my current (already perfectly adequate) BEV in say 5 years. 

The standout advantage is in the OP though. So long as every charge point demands I download its flaky app and dick around signing up before I can put energy in it's a hard sell. That model needs to die and die quickly. I'd fully support legislation (that I think was coming?) forcing them to just let you pay normal money with a normal card. Even just fixing that would remove a huge barrier.

Very well said. There are a variety of reasons for people being emotionally anti-EV, but I bet this covers a fair chunk of them.

Back when I owned motorcycles I would have been the same. But I'm over it now, and it's time for them to get over it too. There is a lot of nostalgia for steam trains, and I love to see them, but they were absolutely disgusting things when they were the main form of transport. Steam trains are a museum piece, and soon ICE vehicles will be too.

I challenge anyone to climb at Cheddar for a day and then tell me that it wouldn't be nice to see the end of ICEs.

I don't know about that. The same people who weld a baked beans tin to the end of their exhaust and rev their way through the gorge to make up for their tiny penis will still need to do something to compensate. You can bet they'll find a way to make the electric car spaceship woowoo noises super loud somehow.

For those people genuinely enthusiastic about classic ICE vehicles - and yes to me there is something intrinsically appealing about, say, an AC Cobra despite its obvious impracticality, sustainably produced synthetic fuels may offer an alternative.

Absolutely. If I had the choice between eliminating arseholes or eliminating ICEs then I'd be keeping the ICEs. But only one of these is an option.

More importantly, for the roles where battery-electric at anything like modern energy density simply will not work, where we can't just keep adding weight, big machines operated at high duty, high power: agricultural and military vehicles, aircraft and ships.

jk

Fine but we're talking about the Corsa type runabout your mum goes to the shops in for a vast majority of use cases so this just gets filed under whataboutery. 

Pepsi seem to be doing ok delivering their stuff around America using Tesla battery powered artic lorries. 

I agree totally, but again this isn't an inherent problem in electric vehicles. If petrol stations only took payment by app (a different one for each brand) you would have exactly the same problem regardless of energy source. 

Secondly, here in the EU anyway legislation has already been passed to make contactless card payment obligatory on all charge points so should fix the problem when they're updated. 

Filling your car up with petrol in 1923 was a crappy experience but things improved. EV charging has been the wild west for the last ten years although at least Tesla have shown how it should be done (minus the contactless payments which they will have to adopt anyway). 

I was until fairly recently sceptical about the benefits of a BEV, but looked at the current electricity generation mix in the UK and publicly available figures on relative emissions for different fuel types and concluded it was a goer.

Bought a newish secondhand E-Niro for mid £20k in April. So far have got C.300 mile battery range, but obvs that is driving at the most clement time of year, nonetheless I'm pleased with that (not a fast driver though!). 

Given the current charging infrastructure I wouldn't have got one if hadn't been able to charge at home. Have used it on longer journeys and charged away, perfectly doable but currently takes more planning (but not that much!). I probably wouldn't hire one abroad unless I was staying somewhere with a charger.

Another factor in our decision was that we run two vehicles anyway, the other is a diesel van, so will be using that for longer 'road trips'. However, I would now be quite keen on getting an electric van, given how much better to drive the car is vs the old ICE one ..

Oh I agree. I was just making the point that burnable fuel (and it'll probably be petrol/diesel/kerosene/oil bio analogues rather than H2 or NH3 because it is supporting long lived legacy machines) will hang about for decades, possibly indefinitely because there are applications where nothing else even on the distant horizon will do. We won't be using it in 20-30 years time to keep the boring old Ford Focus we inherited from granny on the road because there's still life left in it.

I didn't include lorries or trains for that matter because they don't have the same continuous high power demand as say a ploughing tractor or a container ship. Tesla in this case proving the point by doing what the maths says is possible. Musk is a tool but Tesla is fulfilling a role as an American icon for the battery-electric era, swaying people in a way Mercedes or Volvo never could.

jk

Pepsi don’t even have 50 of them. Less than one per state. So no, it really isn’t doing ok delivering stuff around America with them. They’re operating out of two depots.

Who’d have thought that the issues of western over consumption can’t be fixed by EVs? Carbon is the more immediate problem but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t re-evaluate tying up 2 tonnes of complex machinery to very occasionally transport 80kg of humans around. 
As for the loss of the car’s sound and feel these have been neutered over the years anyway and   You can push a button on the Fiat e500 to make it sound better than 911 GT3!

It's trialling a new tech and wisely hedging it's bets. I don't think Tesla can really make them much quicker anyway. My point was that they're working ok in a real world situation. 

Again, no they’re really not..

”And now for the interesting stuff in the video, we learn that Pepsi is running its Tesla Semi fleet in Sacramento for around 12 hours a day (mostly during daytime), delivering beverages predominantly under 100 miles on a daily basis.”

Less than 100 miles a day is nothing for your standard HGV. They’ve got 3 out of Sacramento dedicated to doing longer 250-400 mile a day deliveries. Three. If that’s ’doing ok’ then that’s an awfully low bar.

https://www.mercedes-benz-trucks.com/en_GB/emobility/world/our-offer/eactro...

That's a truck with a 300 - 400km range, available now. No idea what the range of a new one will be in 10 years time, but the trajectory is firmly "up"

Cough. “although the exact range may vary depending on the geography of the area, driving method, outside temperature, load and body, among other factors.” 

Thats no better than the ICE mpg claims that are never matched in the real world. No doubting that the tech will get better as the years progress but lets not pretend it’ll do what it says on the tin on the road.

I know, that's why I mentioned Merc' in my follow up to yorkshirman and why I didn't put trucks on the list of stubborn electrification problems.

But it isn't made by a dickswinging right-winger in America is it, while it does the same job on the road as a Tesla it doesn't do the same work on public perception, especially in the US.

jk

How many 'flyers' went to Kitty Hawk in 1903?

jk

The 'pesky EU' also needs to flex it's influence and regulate on a universal charger for all electric vehicles, so that you can use any charging point regardless of your vehicle model.

They did is with electronics and USBc, so I don't see any reason they can't do the same with cars.

I'm pretty sure that's what CCS is. It's as standard on European Teslas and Tesla have their own charging standard in North America (which other manufacturers are adopting) so pretty sure they only use CCS because the EU told them too. 

I think Chademo etc are still around due to older EVs before the standard was adopted. 

What’s your point? We’re being realistic about where the technology is now, not where it can or will go. The future of electrification is bright, but to use Pepsi having a few dozen Semis on the road doing less than 100 miles a day as some sort of claim that electric heavy goods transportation is making waves is a bit of a stretch. Just be honest. It’s in its infancy, and I would presume the contract with Tesla is incredibly limiting in what information can be released to the wider public.. and if the above is the best that they can release then it’s not currently looking great - as things stand. Will it get better? Of course. 

Where it is now is there are a few electric HGVs working routes in real world trials. You say 3 (doing 250-400mi per day apparently)  isn't impressive. My point is you, we, have no idea if it is or not, what's ultimately possible, yet. They are the first of their kind. When the flyer coughed and hopped down the sand, who could possibly have foreseen the new epoch it marked, what flying machines would be capable of within a few short years. All that mattered was it worked and it proved a point.

Will they win out over other green storage/motive tech? I'd put a small bet on it right now, one growing with every year the infrastructure and ecosystem for BEVs develops ahead of that for H2 or other emergent ideas.

I don't think so. It proves someone is willing to give it a go. It proves it's possible.

In what way, specifically, am I being dishonest?

jk

No one ever said it wasn’t possible, just that it wasn’t particularly of note at the moment. A Semi doing the equivalent a one way trip from Manchester to Birmingham every day is not particularly impressive, given what their smaller automotive cousins are achieving in the private motoring world.

You’re not, I wasn’t replying to your claim. 

I spent a fair amount of time running road tests on a hydrogen fuel cell powered van, we produced hydrogen from water using power from solar cells. Not the most efficient cycle, but properly renewable (don’t mention the solar cells!). However, with economies of scale making wind generation cheap, it will be ok to over generate into an inefficient but renewable energy vector. Hydrogen production also has potential for transient energy storage. Big upside was refuelling in a few minutes, and a much, much higher energy density than batteries. Now we are back in Horizon Europe, looks like hydrogen powered aircraft projects with Airbus are back on the cards.

Actually, lots of people have said it's not possible, myself included and within the last decade. Many still do.

Because it wasn't really, the batteries were too expensive, too heavy, the drives and charging equipment and the high power, high voltage devices underpinning them really weren't there commercially. Sure, a money no object 'moonshot' vehicle could have been cobbled together but it wouldn't have been a daily driver out there working real routes. Battery electric busses are now the majority in my City, they just quietly arrived and took over. A decade ago I'd have laughed at the idea this was technically possible at a price anyone was willing to pay but the technology has come on leaps and bounds, it has become more affordable and as the perceived value they deliver changes, the price we'll pay does to.

Again, I disagree. It demonstrates a number of key technologies have scaled, are now aligned and that there is serious commercial interest in pursuing these ideas and products, supply and demand side.

jk

Were you involved at all with the Unst hydrogen project? I was on Unst last year and was disappointed to see that there is virtually nothing left of the project (as far as I could see). 

Sorry, was referring in context to this thread.

Fair enough  

That's a typical comment that makes one think of evangelism, they are class 8 semis (much lighter than a Euro artic) and they deliver in a radius of 100 miles from their base.

What's wrong with that? If all ICE journeys less than 100 radius became electric, that would be huge progress on several fronts.

I know. You're not the first person on the thread to labour this point. Couple of things. 

So what? The key to running a freight business is to generally run your trucks where you need them to go. If that means several stops within 100 mile radius (spoiler alert, this is not the same as only driving 100 miles) then surely that's ok?

Secondly, if you're responsible for the smooth running of the logistics and supply chain at PepsiCo, you maybe would consider running a limited trial that ramps up over time to spread the risk? I'm pretty sure that's what they're doing. 

At the moment that is the barrier for me adopting an electric vehicle. I'm prepared to do more planning, getting a home charger installed and even take longer to do long journeys. But at a very high price point it's a tough ask. I bought a newish 2nd hand diesel 3 years ago which was half that price, admittedly just before the prices shot up. I don't think about trips away, I just go.

Until electric cars are within the same price range of their ICE equivalents a lot of people aren't going to take that jump.

At what point either pay-per-km or massive rises on electricity taxes comes in waits to be seen, it will come in some form, just no one seems to be willing to admit it publicly. 

I note JCB are still pushing hydrogen engines and fuel packs for heavy industrial equipment as the recharge times on construction sites is problematic, be interesting to see if that takes off.

No I wasn’t, any hydrogen R&D I’ve been involved with have been aero or auto. Although fuel cells are the likely direction of development for those sectors, I’ve seen quite a few convincing demonstrations first hand of burning hydrogen directly in IC engines and gas turbines, so it isn’t over for the fuel burning  engine.

It's still early days for EVs and the situation is improving rapidly. 3 years ago a car with 250 miles range was over £30k, now you can get one for under £20k. In three years time, maybe £10k?

Right now, if you need a car with a decent range then you are going to spend a lot of money, but we're already at the stage where you can make it work if you put a bit of effort in, especially for households that have more than one car. We did 10k miles a year in our Leaf, at 2p a mile for fuel and zero tax we saved well over £1k a year on fuel alone. No oil or timing belts to change, and it's still on the original brake pads. You can get a Leaf for £5k now. If you can find a way to work with a 90 mile range it's a pretty cheap car all in.

It's not helped the EV cause that ALL cars are silly expensive at the moment.  I bought a Ford Kuga 2.5 years old with about 20K on in 2020 for £13K, I reckon that'd easily be £20K now, and in size terms (while they aren't the same type of car) the Niro is fairly comparable - though annoyingly I don't fit comfortably in the driver's seat or I'd have bought one by now!

Of course it does help that used values are up too so you will get more for your trade in, but that does nothing for those who run cars into the ground rather than changing every few years.

Why have car prices shot up so much? Are they expected ever to come down again?

Are they? A year or so ago WBAC offered me nearly £12k for my Leaf, more than I paid for it. Now that I actually want to sell it, they are offering £3500. ☹️

What are the numbers for comparison of energy density? Is that gaseous hydrogen?

When I've looked at this in the past (for compressed gaseous hydrogen) the mass required for the hydrogen tank made it so it ended up being pretty similar to batteries - storing 350 bar is a big ask!

I had a look to change last month and prices for used were still very high. The dealer told me that used prices were too high overall but they were still selling meantime at those prices. However, they and the secondhand market in general did expect the prices to fall and heavily sometime in the near future.

Pricing for a trade in was on basis if they could shift/resell immediately, and price for even a month ahead if there was to be any delay they weren’t prepared to quote. Best they would do was give an estimate subject to revision when you exchange.

Maybe WBAC are just covering themselves not to get stung if the market does fall quickly.

There is also a shift in the new car market I was told with the likes of Mercedes and Volvo so far who have gone over to dealer agencies. Apparently other manufacturers are actively watching with interest and may follow similarly if it works. Uncertainty will no doubt be keeping prices uncertain for second hand.

Your calculations were wrong, around 1.6kWh/kg for the hydrogen systems used nowadays and 0.3kWh/kg for batteries. A 5kg tank weighs around 100kg or less.

And the relevance? My comment was claiming Pepsi were delivering "around America" was a massive leap from the truth. A cynic might ask why we are using any of the worlds resources transporting worthless products anyway but that is another debate.

Good to hear, and glad that's better performing than I remembered. Is the overall system mass including the fuel cell?

Well it's not, is it, unless you take "around" to mean trundling Pepsi from New York to San Francisco or something, which it obviously doesn't.  It  means delivering from bottling plant (of which there are many) to retailer.

Of course not, it's the energy density of the different storage mediums.  That fuel cells will be the future technology is unknown.

Prices will come down, or at least not match inflation.  The "proper" second hand market for 5 year old plus cars is still in its infancy. This also has to feed through to non-dealership garages to keep maintenance costs affordable to many.

This is as you say early days for EVs. Super low charging rates won't last (spare gris capacity will decrease with more EVs needing charging overnight). EV tax free charging is surely time bound.

I'm not a dinosaur, ICE are on their way out but I'm not convinced EV offer the savings claimed beyond the very near future. 

Someone mentioned on another thread about high tyre usage due to higher torque, is this something you have experienced?

A sub 90 mile range (less in winter) just doesn't work for me. I'd be better off getting a moped.

One cause of higher tyre wear is that BEVs weigh more than the equivalent ICE. The increased amount of rubber pollution this gives is of course sufficient reason in itself to discredit BEVs.

I don't have any strong views about BEV/ICE. It's fairly obvious which way things need to go and which way they're currently going.

But I suspect I'm one of many who won't currently make the switch because:

1. BEV range (combined with the current charging infrastructure) isn't convenient enough yet when I consider the number and location of long journeys I make. 
2. 2nd hand BEVs aren't yet cheap enough.

The question for me is more, will things have progressed enough when I next come to change my automobile? And since I don't know when that will be (hopefully a few years), I'll just happily chunter on getting good MPG out of my diesel and diluting the initial environmental cost of actually constructing a car by keeping it going for as long as reasonably practical.

My son has an interesting point about switching over to BEVs.

At the moment, there don't appear to be any problems for manufacturers selling BEVs, they're basically sold as soon as they're manufactured (if not sooner).

From an environmental point of view, they should be sold to the people whose travel requirements will make the biggest difference; i.e. not to low mileage virtue signallers.

If when you come to consider a BEV, you're not a high mileage user (even if you're not a virtue signaller), then should you be making the switch or should you leave it for someone who's changeover will have more impact.

We are lucky to have a drive to charge, but have recently bought a 2014 leaf, 100k miles for under £4k. That's a tidy up front cost for an oldish vehicle, however, it only costs 3p per mile, so for the vast majority of our local miles, it's saving us a fortune. The key is overnight cheap rate tariff. The demand from people in our situation means the value will stay higher than ice for some time.

Even with short 60mile range, it runs around north Wales  most days for us and can fast charge on a longer trip if needed. 

We have another vehicle (also ev but could be ICE ), as we both have jobs that may need driving too.

This is the only reason 2nd hand values are higher, it's because it makes economic sense to own one. Even more so if you live on a ULEZ city or similar.

When the range finally drops below an acceptable figure it will be very easy to reuse the good battery modules as static storage and recycle the dead ones. 

Out of interest, I have done some 'back of a fag packet' maths on current overnight surplus in UK grid. 

Current difference between daily high and low demand is about 12 GW.

Most home charge setups will be under 11kw unless three phase and many cars can only charge at 7k on AC anyway. 

On our tariff we get 4 hours cheaper. 

That means if on average a household could take 40kwh each night. (Enough for at least 120 miles) 

So that's 300k charges every night to reach the daytime peak. Clearly daytime peak is most expensive but there is capacity. I note it is generally more windy at night. 

Now consider the average miles driven per day in UK is 20 (according to Google), so you could multiply the 300k, 120mile charges by 5 to mean that 1.5million additional households could use this charging routeen at night like this. 

Not the whole country, but certainly a lot and of course price up to peake level would not be ideal. This could indeed mean overnight will not always be lowest demand, but could mean grid usage is spread more evenly across day, so other times may become lower demand and be priced accordingly. You can already access Veriable even negative priceing with smart chargers. 

Pepsi recently announced they had done a 1k miles in 24 hours test with one of their Tesla Semis under working load. I belive Tesla are indeed ramping up production at the Nirvada factory to meet orders. 

Is there higher tire ware? Our EV estate has done 35,000 miles on original tiers. May need new fronts in January. What would the average be for estate cars in UK? I'm certainly not a particularly careful driver and have spun the fronts a few times getting on the power.

A quick skim of some VW forums about Passats has some people changing fronts after 20k, although VW claim they should do 50...

The tyre wear thing is a bit of a myth. The tyres on my Leaf lasted a similar time to the ones on my Golf. There is a lot more torque and acceleration available in an EV compared to a similar level ICE, so if you hoon around like a dickhead you can certainly eat through tyres. But if you drive an EV in a sensible manner you will experience similar tyre wear to driving an ICE the same way.

Although EV tyres cost more -

https://www.moveelectric.com/e-cars/why-ev-tyres-cost-more-and-its-money-we...

Crikey. I'm getting new winter tyres in a couple of weeks and I was quoted exactly the same price be it  electric or whatever. I think that article is nonsense.

This is like looking at another world. I've been driving an electric car for five years, am buying a new one. Charging network has worked for me , and I like the low running costs. Ditto all my neightbours as it's about 80% electric on my road.

  I have nothing to add to all the above, except that if you think hydrogen is the answer, well you can't even build a railway, and hydrogen infrastructure is a lot , lot more complicated than that.

That's just nonsense. By "EV" tyres, they just mean what everyone else refers to as "Premium" tyres. 

VW have reduced production since last year, closed one plant and cancelled plans to build a new factory citing slowdown in EV sales. A number of countries are reducing or ending new car subsidies this year.

The entire article is absolute nonsense.  Apparently changing EV tyres puts you at risk of electric shocks and fires. I'm at peril every time I change my wheels 

The problems VW have is that they don't have a very competitive product, and the waiting times to get a car are still ridiculous.  I can buy from Tesla, China, Kora and get a car in a few weeks or months at worst but if I order a VW or Cupra, it's still 9 months away. 

 The Audis are way overpriced, VW have rubbish software and me interiors and Mercedes are very expensive for a dull product TTrying to sell that into China is not going to go well. 

Toyota aren'r looking too clever either, but the problem isn't with BEV's , it with manufacturers flogging uncompetitive product

I realise you and wbo2 are tyre experts but..

https://www.michelin.co.uk/auto/advice/ev-guide/electric-car-tyres

Also nonsense. That's just an ad for their expensive ev tyres.

That the tyre-related MOT failure rate for EV's is 40% higher than i.c. cars is "interesting".

Even low end EVs accelerate like stink, so if you drive with a heavy right foot, as with ICE cars, it'll cost you.

Considering the (comparatively) low distances that can be covered by a BEV compared to ICE, anyone who covers a high mileage is probably going to have problems recharging a BEV, so remaining with an ICE is surely the only safe option. Also anyone doing low mileage is more likely to be spending a larger percentage of their driving in built up areas, where the complaints regarding exhaust gases are more prevalent.

So Michelin are talking nonsense about tyres? It may well be an add and their tyres may be pricey, but surely it's acceptable to say they know what they're talking about when it comes to tyres.

EV's a heavier than the equivalent ICE car. Fitting regular tyres to an EV is very likely to be a false economy. I remember years ago when I used to buy cheaper tyres for my cars and laughed at the price of the likes of Michelin etc. Now I use Michelin there's no way I'd go back to the cheap stuff. Better traction, safer, longer lasting. 

Looks like marketting copy to me.

You should get a tyre with a suitable weight rating for the vehicle. For comparable ICE and BEV it’s going to be higher for the BEV.  It should also have a suitable speed rating.

I put “normal” tyres on our BEV with a suitable weight rating (the tyres don’t know or care where the weight comes from…) and speed rating.  No problems getting my preferred tyre with the required ratings and size.

Having met the weight and speed ratings, it’s a trade off between traction, handling, noise, longevity, efficiency and cost.  The “EV” tires tend to lean in to efficiency and low noise at the expense of other characteristics.  I prefer having about 3% less range and having tyres that can lay down the torque the car can produce under most conditions, and I can’t say as I noticed a jot of difference on the noise front.  The factory default EV tyres were horrid.

Who are these super users and what do they genuinely want to do that a decent BEV can't do?

My drive to the UK from Grenoble takes barely any longer in my Tesla than it did in a Land Rover even with charges. After 2-3 hours on the autoroute we would need to stop anyway to change drivers and by the time we've had a wee and a coffee, let the dogs out etc, the car (having been on charge all the time we've been doing that) is ready to get going again. 

I think most people have a distorted impression of life with a BEV. 

Just checked and I've done 27,000km on my summer tyres and they're still going ok and I enjoy ragging the car from time. 

Tyres are made for wheels not cars, the wheels on my car are the same size as for the next two major model ranges up from the same maker adding nearly a ton to my car's curb weight. Tyres: are they rated for the load and speed, do they fit? If yes, how much do you want to pay? If no, not suitable!

For normal driving in normal cars, premium tyres are basically just bling. Taking modern cars to the edge of traction on open roads is lunacy, whatever they're shod in. 

Jk

From that article

" the sound of the tyres on the road surface is much more noticeable in an electric car. So, manufacturers have to create tyres that are far quieter."

Utter marketing bullshit. You don't have to have a quieter tyre because your car is quieter, it's a nice-to-have premium option that makes more sense on a quieter EV than it would on an ICE. 

Weight wise, I replaced my Golf (1500kg) with a Leaf (1540kg). Similar sized cars. So yes, the Leaf is heavier. By the weight of a child. 

Fair enough. I was under the impression that weight differences between ICE and EV were greater than that.

As someone who for the last 15 years has regularly driven over Hardknott Pass, I'm well practiced in the edge of traction. It wouldn't be unusual to wheel spin at very low speeds and when being very careful. Since moving over to Michelin cross climates the journey is now thankfully smoother and wheel spin a thing of the past. Admittedly this is a road most don't need to find themselves on. The point I'm trying to make is that all tyres are not equal and some premium tyres will work better than non-premium. The additional traction will come in very handy if an emergency stop is required too.

I'd always assumed (from its external appearance) that a Leaf was same size class as a Polo. Does the easier packaging of EVs mean it's got as much interior space as a golf?

Chelsea council employees for one.

They've just received a fleet of vans for their employees - all ICE.

Reason - said employees mainly live in high-rises and have nowhere to recharge BEV vans.

And this is CHELSEA - right in the middle of London's ULEZ area.

Mind you, I wish more people would leave the car at home and use their feet, a bicycle or a small scooter/motorcycle or moped to do these piddling short journeys in town - reduces congestion as well as emissions and fuel useage.

My 2010 diesel Golf was 1269Kg - so 11 bags of cement lighter!

Ok, can't say I'd spend the difference to avoid a bit of wheelslip on a few greasy hairpins but that's me. I think we just disagree about whether the marginal differences are really noticeable, not usually swamped out by other effects and worth the money. I don't deny there are differences, I've run premium/specialist tyres on fast toys in the past and I would again because they did get driven to and occasionally past the edge but for my daily drivers good enough is good enough.

I remember getting a round of applause from a couple of traffic cops dealing with literally dozens of crashed and stuck cars as I crawled slowly up the hill past them all to the Nevis ski centre without slipping off and adding to their ever growing mess. That was an old 3 series with an open diff, no electronic trickery and barely-legal budget tyres. Good enough.

jk

Alright, full confession. I had no idea how much either car weighed, I just Googled it and those were the figures I got. 🙂 

But whatever they weigh, tyre cost and wear was similar for both cars.

Good skills. I've always found Beemers to be a handful even in the wet let alone snowy hills. 

What do you mean, we all know from Formula 1 that it's the car that counts 😁

Just demonstrates how fat modern cars are. Mk1 golf diesel weighs 820kg!

Apparently the average HGV journey in the UK is 85 miles.  That means a huge percentage of journeys are doable with Etrucks that charge at their destinations.  Essentially that means every supermarket delivery. All the post / courier work. That's a lot of trucks.  Add to that the other regular a-b work.  Pepsi's fleet managers aren't stupid, they know what will save them money.  The only use cases that e-trucks fail at will be long haul, and heavy haul (scrap / aggregates).  I suspect the business model for long haul will change to the trailer doing the whole journey but being pulled through sections by multiple rigs, each working between depots.  Changeover time will compensate for time lost in working hour stops - the delivery will probably be completed sooner if an overnight stop would be involved.  Driver recruitment will improve because drivers will be able to go home every night.

This is not the way to think about tyres.

Premium tyres will often reduce your stopping distance. Especially in wet conditions when your stopping distance is likely to be longer.

Budget tyres will often perform poorly and are ill-advised, but midrange are generally perfectly adequate in terms of performance.  I completely agree with jkarran that we should not be driving our cars anywhere near the limit of their handling in normal use of the public road, and if you are you need to reconsider your driving, not your choice of rubber.

One of my buddys drives a big truck, his average journey is around 40km, trouble is he makes between six and eight journies every day. From leaving the depot he racks up over 400km having never returned. Not many businesses can afford to only operate an HGV and it's driver for only two hours a day. 

Unsurprisingly while I understand what you're saying I disagree.

So will: driving slower, replacing tyres prematurely, better suspension, optimised geometry, weight reduction, a higher performance ABS system, or none, collision-detection brake-assist systems, aero, parachutes, even something as simple as not driving a wobbly old RangeRover We don't worry about investing in these things, some of them absurd but all of which could one day prevent us having a 'can't stop!' crash.

There are many ways to reduce braking distances some actually really significantly, that tyres are one of them does not justify to me spending significant money for marginal gains. I've had a fair few 'oh cock, this isn't going to stop!' near misses (and a couple of hits) over the years, racking my brain I can't think of a single one where premium tyres would have made a jot of difference. Not saying that fringe case can't or won't crop up, just that in 25+years of sometimes vigorous motoring, it hasn't yet.

jk

I've heard it said that if you're going to inadvertently step out in front of a car, then make it something like a Porsche because it'll have bigger better brakes and a shorter stopping distance.

That is of course assuming that it's not just been hired by some complete twassock.

I've never felt so offended.

Are you sure this is true?

All cars (at least since 2004) have pretty comparable stopping distances.

It doesn't matter how big the brakes are, they all have to have brakes powerful enough to lock the wheels, and controlled with ABS. So weight becomes irrelevant.

So It doesn't matter if you by the cheapest hatchback, or the most expensive hyper car, they have comparable stopping distances.

At least this would be true if it weren't for tyre selection. Sportier cars usually have gripper tyres from the factory so will generally have shorter stopping distances. Sure, some top end cars can have downforce. But for your 30mph to zero distance, it's all about tyres (and parachutes).

I actually think this should be a legal requirement for all new cars.

They all have the expensive part of the hardware (the ABS system) anyway. The software has already been developed (at least by many manufacturers), so adding it would not be an expensive feature.

Size of the brakes is irrelevant. A Ford KA can lock it's wheels using milk bottle top brake discs. And they have ABS. Stick some grippy tyres on them and they'll match super car stopping distances.

The public infrastructure in Manchester (or at least the area covered by Manchester City Council) is pretty poor. A colleague is doing quite a lot of work at the moment trying to put that right, intervening where the private sector seems unable or unwilling.

If it’s business mileage, the big saving isn’t always fuel. That said, my bother-in-law operates what is effect a high end taxi service for footballers, minor celebrities and business folk. He has gone electric in the last year and says it has saved him £800 a month in fuel costs.

Good. It worked out all right. I just took the hire car back half charged and Hertz shrugged!

I find that difficult to accept - if they were on the same size tyres, then maybe.

But a Porsche has a lot more rubber on the road than a Ford Ka, which means it can generate higher friction (I'll bet that's not the correct scientific description but whatever) and hence more retardation before losing traction.

Also, stronger brake servos would apply more retarding force to the disks, again slowing things down more quickly (i.e. reaching the "loss of traction" more quickly), and I know which out of those two will have the better brake servos etc.

Simplistically F=muR, so area irrelevant. Perhaps too simple?

Yes, tyres are everything everything (almost).

Less than you think. They often have rigid side walls due to the low tyre profile which reduces contact patch area.

Not exactly. In an ideal world contact patch makes no difference to friction. Double the contact patch and you half the pressure resulting in the same friction.

In our less than ideal world we find ourselves in there is a mechanical contact (and chemical I believe) but changes in contact patch area still don't have as much impact to grip as you might assume.

But you're right, a tyre than can generate a larger contact patch with all else being equal will marginally reduce stopping distance.

This isn't correct. Remember every car made in the last few decades has brakes strong enough to lock the wheels. Bigger brakes can't lock the wheels any more.

They just offer better cooling which is irrelevant to normal road use (so driving down a mountain towing a trailer you'll want the bigger brakes).

Any evidence to back that up as convention dictates that the easiest/cheapest way to gain car performance is by uprating the brakes.

If you race a standard non performance car you'll get brake fade. This is because you are always on the throttle or the brakes. 

So if you want to race and avoid overheating you'll need bigger brakes, or venting etc.

But for brakes that aren't overheating, then bigger brakes don't reduce stopping distance.

Also, I should add that the easiest/cheapest way to improve performance is better tyres (at least cheapest until they wear out)

Edit: what am I talking about that's not true at all. Reducing weight is the easiest and cheapest. Followed by speed holes.

I think you're basically correct that braking distances for most modern cars aren't going to vary all that dramatically and that bigger brake discs are more about sustained performance than gains in a single braking event, but I think you might be over-egging it a bit. All brakes have more than enough bite to lock the wheels at low speeds, but I'm not sure that would be true at higher speeds, though I've no idea where the boundary would be for different brakes. Certainly pre-ABS I never managed to lock brakes at the start of braking, only ever once I'd got significantly slower, though those were probably weaker brakes than you might find in a modern car.

Practical testing from this magazine apparently gives braking distances ranging from ~130ft for high-end sports cars to nearly 200ft for large pick-ups, not an insignificant difference. That was from 70mph, and you did suggest at one point that you were talking about stopping from 30 (though I don't think that was in the statement that kicked the conversation off), where the differences would admittedly be much smaller.

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g29674610/best-stopping-distances-bra...

I wouldn't say I'm a "super user", but I drive 19,000-20,000 miles/yr, mainly on site visits to random locations, anywhere within an approx. 120 mile / 2.5 hour drive radius (none of those miles are commutes to my base office - as it's a 5 minute walk away).  I usually get to arrange these trips for the next day, but sometimes I have to drop everything and go - meet a Client there and see what I need to see before it's destroyed.  And sometimes, I will have to go to another site the next day!  I would not be able to charge a BEV at home - using one and relying on public charging might not be impossible, but it would make my working days a lot longer - with lots of late night charging quests - and would still risk annoying lots of clients.

A modern car (and by modern anything sold in Europe after 1971) should have enough braking power to lock up at any speed.

The main reason it's hard to lock up at high speed is it's scary. Your brain stops you.

Then as you slow down and get closer to whatever you're trying to avoid you naturally press harder.

Bigger brakes will reduce the stopping distance because they will be applying more friction in a shorter space of time than brakes with less pad material. i.e. the initial reduction in the stopping distance will be at the start of the braking cycle.
As the braking cycle continues, the bigger pads will still produce more friction and quicken the process even more.
Friction is friction and the more you apply the quicker things touching each other will stop.
At the extreme end of the scale, the bigger pads will again be better due to as you say things like the brakes cooking.
As linked in another post, the best braking performance from 70mph which is UK Motorway speed is markedly better in cars with bigger brakes than standard. i.e. those bigger brakes aren't just valid in performance type scenarios and there is absolutely no reason why the same wouldn't be carried forward to lower speeds. 
In essence, bigger brakes are better.

I'm assuming that the speed holes comment is a joke?
Anyway, the best way to improve performance is to change the nut behind the wheel... 

Before ABS, the most common lock-ups were at high speed due to people stamping on the brakes in panic and it would take an experienced driver not to lock-up and/or use cadence braking. 

I've heard that said, by Jeremy Clarkson. He did a whole programme on it. Like nearly everything he says, it's a load of shite.

And this is why it's a load of shite. A Porsche will almost certainly be driven by a twassock. No one buys a high performance car to drive it around at the same speed as you'd drive a family runabout, so any gain from better braking is more than offset by the fact they'll be going faster. Just try telling your insurance company that you've fitted better brakes and tyres to your car. Will you get a discount for having a safer car? No, you'll pay more, because you're now statistically more likely to be involved in an accident, not less.

I have twice bought a bike with crappy but legal tyres on it and promptly thrown it down the road as a direct result of the tyres not being up to the job. A classic false economy 🙂 Obviously on bikes tyres are more critical than cars, as cars don't fall over when they lose grip, but there are still situations where a decent tyre means avoiding a crash.

I don't get picky about car tyres and I wouldn't be able to feel the difference in performance, but I always go for a premium brand, whichever one is on special offer.

I think you need to take a step back and think this through.

Bigger brakes will apply more stopping power to your wheels. That's a given.

But since stock brakes can lock up your wheels or trigger ABS at all speeds, bigger brakes can't slow you down any quicker.

There's a lot of literature on this out there.

Simpsons reference. Homer tries to make his car go faster by making holes in it with a pickaxe.

OK, so what about the practical results I shared? I agree with you that the results wouldn't be dramatically different at 30 and that the people arguing bigger and better brakes will make a huge difference are wrong, but I still think you're arguing too far in the other direction.

+1 As I was taught: Brakes don't stop the vehicle, they just stop the wheels. Tyres stop the vehicle.

I used to have a job that for many years involved testing car tyres and emergency stopping distances.

The conclusion was that the particular type of tyre made minimal difference if any at all to stopping distances. Under or over inflation or lack of tread in the wet then yes but not the tyre itself. I'm talking about what would be considered a "road" tyre, either premium or budget. Tyres designed for racing are different.

Any car brakes can apply sufficient force to lock the wheels. ABS systems are now sophisticated enough to keep the tyre almost at this locking point. The limiting factor is the tyre road interface, nothing to do with the brakes. Yes, a more advanced and quicker cycling ABS system would make a difference but it would be minuscule. As for bigger brakes they are designed for repeated heavy application from high speed, the extra surface area keeps the heat in the system within working tolerances.

So you're telling me that if a Porsche (and I mean one of their sports cars, not the SUV monstrosities) did a 30mph stop test and it was measured as X feet (and repeated testing showed a test variation of Y feet), that you'd be happy to stand X+Y feet in front of a Ford Ka doing a 30mph stop test - this I want to see.

And I don't want to hear any backtracking that there'd maybe be a small difference, small differences in braking distance can be the difference between "phew that was close" and serious injury.

You effectively said it makes no difference.

A more interesting experiment would be to fit the brakes from the Ford Ka to the Porsche and do a brake test from 70mph.

If you're designing an SUV, you're likely to fit a tyre that's all season, quiet on the road and offers good mileage. I suspect these are fairly high priorities. These priorities do not translate to good stopping distances.

If you are designing a sports car, it's all about performance figures. So you're going to fit the stickiest tyre you can get away with that perform best in warm dry conditions. Also, many performance cars have downforce so get better stopping distances at higher speeds.

These are why you are seeing a difference in stopping distances.

However! Doing an emergency stop isn't a question of locking the wheels but applying maximum usable braking force until the vehicle stops. Forget the 30mph stuff with only a driver, try fully loaded and the maximum speed (allowed or possible) and you will soon discover the limitations of most braking systems, all the cars I've owned suffered from considerable brake fade when things get tough. Even my Subaru Forester struggled at this even though it was the turbo model which used the brakes from the WRX rallly Impreza. Judging by the popularity of brake upgrades for the Ka it appears this is also not immune! 

Interestingly apropos tyres there is a test by Consumer Reports of a number of cars where they back to back 60mph tested standard and hybrid versions of identical cars, the  hybrid versions all had longer stopping distances (ca. 4m) due to the low rolling resistance tyres fitted.

This is clearly a daft question.

First, I wouldn't stand in front of the Porsche. There are just too many variables you can't account for. Temperature, road surface etc.

Second, you've ignored everything I have said. The Porsche is likely to have more downforce (even some at 30) and assuming both cars have factory tyres, the Porsche will have sticker tyres.

So I'm answering no to your question. For so many reasons.

I've got a Hybrid, and it does this annoying thing where it decides it doesn't want to use regen anymore mid braking and switches to only friction brakes and you feel the car braking effort suddenly reduce. It's quite unsettling.

This isn't under emergency braking conditions, and I hope it wouldn't try and maximise mpg efficiency under such conditions, but I do have my concerns.

I've been wondering when someone was going to mention rolling resistance or friction.  It has quite different physics to the other kinds of friction forces and doesn't necessarily scale in the same way.   Looking at the physics, I wouldn't trust results based on a couple of equations and would only take empirical evidence (edit) or detailed physical simulation including tyre deformation and heat dissipation.

My brief empirical evidence suggests that an airbrake can make a difference to stopping distances, and it handily avoids complex discussions about the physics of friction.

The problem with low rolling resistance tyres, apart from the rubber compounds and tread pattern is predominently the stiffer sidewalls which under hard braking reduce the amount the contact area increases.

Mercedes fitted an air brake on the 300 SLR for the 1955 Le Mans which was relatively brutal, the whole bootlid was hinged at the back and raised hydraulically. It wasn't without it's problems and banned quickly!

If you save up and buy a Porsche Cayenne Turbo you get an air brake as standard, the rear spoiler tilts up to provide increased rear grip and air braking, Porche claim up to 2m shorter stopping distance. However this function is only used at speeds over 170km/h. The effectiveness of aero systems at the normal UK driving speeds is debatable!