Electrickery: It isn't working

If there was a way of storing enough electricity to drive a car it would have been discovered by now. In the 200 or so years since Michael Faraday (1791-1867), we have split the atom, been to the moon and back, invented aviation, television, computers and the world wide web. Yet it still needs a 4 ton battery the size of a 550 gallon petrol tank, to provide a family car with 500 miles’ range and 100 mph performance. Electricity is a means of transmitting power, not a source of power, and the electric car has not come far since 1899 when Camille Jenatzy did his 65mph flying kilometre.
He had to charge the batteries before he could do the return kilometre. Last week Auto Express admitted its Nissan Leaf on the RAC Future Car Challenge was charged up overnight at Brighton to ensure it would get back to London. Driver Sam Hardy slipstreamed a lorry for 25 miles and avoided using heater or demister. Some cars were so slow they caused traffic tailbacks.

Even electrophiles on Autocar revealed that UK electric car sales have hardly passed 1,000 and only the Chevrolet Volt (top and bottom) and Vauxhall Ampera, with on-board generators, stand any chance. More Ferraris were sold last year. The Nissan Leaf has not come near its wildly optimistic sales target. Car of the Year 2011 – what a joke; Chevrolet thought it might manage 10,000 Volts but sold 7700.

To appease greenery-yallery foot-in-the-grave lobbyists the government set aside £300million to subsidise electric cars. Yet hardly anybody’s tempted; throwing money at them hasn’t worked. Milk floats, fine – cars, not a chance. It might be all right for hybrids like the Toyota Prius (below). I tested one in 2004 and over 1,300miles it did 45mpg – about what I might have managed with a real car just driving slowly.


In America the National Highway Traffic Safety Adminstration (NHTSA) has been before a Senate sub-committee. Administrator David Strickland was asked why it kept quiet about lithium-ion battery fires following crash tests of the plug-in Volt. The wrecks ignited three weeks after the tests, but the NHTSA waited five months before owning up and only when a news reporter exposed it.

The Islay distillery of Bruichladdich would be fine for a Leaf. You could drive the 30 miles all round the island without running out of juice. Strickland claimed the NHTSA had not worked out why the Volt caught fire, only to be told nobody believed him. He was accused of keeping quiet in view of his taxpayer subsidy and his relationship with General Motors. The implication was that he had become so influenced by lobbying on electric cars he felt obliged to conceal bad news.

Some politicians will do anything ... Strickland was rather like climate change theorists suppressing anything that contradicts their dogma. Inability to distinguish matters of opinion from matters of fact is the last refuge of the dirigist. Everybody thinks they ought to believe electric cars work. It is politically incorrect to say they don’t. Let’s get real.

VW, Deutsche Post, University of Art, Braunschweig

Electric cars are over-hyped. Hardly anybody buys them. Hybrids with engines that charge batteries are practical; some such as the Toyota Prius sell quite well. But the whole industry is too excited about Evs, and is only preparing itself for the day when politicians outlaw petrol and diesel.
Back in November 1991 California legislature demanded that, “by 2010 seven cars out of ten will be electric”. It hasn’t happened and despite desperate efforts by the motor industry to persuade the world it is green, it won’t. Not yet anyway. You can’t store electricity in a tank, like you can petrol, and the only way we’ll have electric cars is by having two - one car for Town, one car for Country. That’s not very Green.

VW, however, has a hopeful little invention that follows historical precedents. It is the ingenious product of VW’s co-operation with the German Post Office (Deutsche Post AG) and the University of Art at Braunschweig. Dr. Rudolf Krebs, Group Manager for Electric Traction at Volkswagen AG describes the eT! as an automotive building block for zero emissions in urban areas. It has electric wheel hub motors and great freedom in manoeuvering. “If ‘refuelled’ with electricity generated from renewable energy sources, the eT! could indeed be operated with zero emissions,” says Dr Krebs.

Historical precedent 1. Ferdinand Porsche designed hub-mounted motors for his Lohner Porsches at the beginning of the 20th century. They do not require drive-shafts, gear trains or brakes. (Above) This Lohner Porsche had hub-motors in front; some were four wheel drive.

Historical precedent 2. When VW was run under the British military government of 1945 its principal customers were the British army and the German Post Office. The army bought VWs as communications and staff cars, the post office for delivering mail in the war-torn country.

It was Reichspost before it was Bundespost
Deutsche Post is still one of the largest customers of lightweight commercial vehicles, and wants a postal van that can operate semi-automatically. eT! can follow a postman from house to house (“Follow me”), or return on command (“Come to me”) – driverless. It can be operated by a ‘drive stick’ from the passenger’s side and its electric sliding door reduces a delivery person’s walking movements.


The eT! concept shown in a world premiere at the Design Centre of Potsdam will now be analysed. Let us hope if it ever gets made they find a name without the !

Electrickery

Ford Comuta electric 1967
Legislators in California and their eager apostles in Westminster and Brussels cannot reverse a tide of events by passing a law. Los Angeles tackled photo-chemical smog by regulation and now nothing turns politicians’ heads so much, especially on America’s West Coast, by proposing (according to Automotive News and the Wall Street Journal) new rules that 5.5 per cent of cars must be zero emission by 2018.

They have said all this before. The accompanying Sunday Times column of 17 November 1991 said California was insisting on seven cars out of ten being battery powered by 2010. Legislators have had to back-track several times. Demanding 1.7 million electric cars by 2000 proved absurd. Even now there are only some 5,000 on the roads of the Sunshine State.

Ford Comuta chassis (batteries not included)
We are still not much better at storing electricity than Camille Jenatzy was in 1899 and Jacques Calvet’s plea for on-street battery charging remains as piously optimistic now as it was in 1991. And as Ben Webster the Environment Editor of The Times pointed out last week, the Low Carbon Vehicle Partnership has admitted that electric cars could produce higher emissions over their lifetimes than petrol equivalents owing to the energy consumed in making batteries. An electric car would have to drive at least 80,000 miles before producing a saving in CO2. Many will not travel that far in their lifetime because they typically have a range of less than 90 miles and are unsuitable for long trips.
Even those driven 100,000 miles would save only about a tonne of CO2. Emissions made by manufacture, driving and disposal of electric cars, does nothing for tackling doom-laden environmentalists’ belief in climate change. The government Committee on Climate Change has called for them to be increased from a few hundred to 1.7 million by 2020. The Department for Transport is spending £43 million over the next year giving up to 8,600 buyers of electric cars a grant from taxpayers of £5,000.
Sounds like California. Perhaps the environment lobby will shut up and Our Leaders will back-track. Let practicalities prevail.


Sunday Times: Motoring, Eric Dymock 17 November 1991
Stand by for the charge of the battery brigade
The Californian legislation that obliges car manufacturers to offer electric alternatives is spreading. Nine other US states have announced they will follow California's lead, and with three more thinking about it, the electric car now seems likely to become big business.
This week Citroën announced the promising battery-powered Citela in Paris, and the Worthing-based International Automotive Design (IAD) launched in Los Angeles the production version of the car it revealed at the Frankfurt motor show in September. Its LA 301 has a tiny petrol engine providing the energy for a 32 kw (43 bhp) electric motor.
Electric cars have seen false dawns before. In 1874 Sir David Salomons of Tunbridge Wells built a 1 horse power three wheeler powered from Bunsen cells. In 1899 Camille Jenatzy set a world speed record with an electric car, covering a kilometre at 65.79 mph. But hardly anything more practical than a milk float has ever gone into production. Electric cars have been frustrated by heavy expensive batteries, long recharging cycles, and short range.
Jenatzy's car had to have its batteries charged before it could do the return kilometre, and there has been little real progress in terms of speed and range. Even with modern sodium-sulphur or nickel-cadmium technology, a 4 ton battery the size of a 550 gallon petrol tank would be needed to provide a family car's 400 mile range and 100 mph performance.
Until Californian air pollution provided the incentive, electric cars seemed destined to occupy the margins of motoring. But now any manufacturer who wants to sell cars on the rich market of the American west coast has to answer California's call for 1.7 million electric cars by the year 2000. The state will demand a proportion of the cars sold must be TLEVs (transitional low emission vehicles), followed by ULEVs (ultra low emission vehicles) in phases up to 1995.
By 2010 seven cars in every ten will need to be electrically powered or, in the legislative jargon, ZEVs (zero emission vehicles). When I asked a senior General Motors executive what would happen if nobody bought the electric cars it had to offer, he said flatly, "We have to sell them."
The law will demand that the quota is sold, at a loss if necessary, on pain of not being allowed to sell anything else on the territory until they are.
Manufacturers the world over, including Renault, Fiat, BMW, Peugeot and Volkswagen are pressing forward with electric developments. General Motors has revealed the unfortunately named Impact, which is designed to keep up with the speed of urban traffic. It can reach 60 mph as quickly as a Jaguar XJ6, has a maximum of 100 mph, and a range of 124 miles. But like Jenatzy's record-breaker of 1899, it still can not do both at once.
GM is reticent about how often its heavyweight batteries would have to be recharged after sprinting to 100 mph. BMW has found that its sodium sulphur batteries are more responsive but they are also more expensive. They need replacing after about 30,000 miles at a cost of £30,000.
Audi has a hybrid full-sized 100 estate which does shopping trips on electricity, and uses its ordinary engine on the motorway. It would not meet California's requirements, but it would do for congested town centres closed off to petrol or diesel vehicles.
Its nickel-cadmium batteries occupy the space normally taken by the spare wheel, last ten years, and provide sufficient energy to drive the car at 30 mph and accelerate to 20 mph in 8 seconds - adequate for town driving. A small auxiliary electric motor drives the power steering and there is a petrol-fed water heater. Audi says the extra cost would be under £10,000, and its operating range at town speeds would be about 20 miles.
The combustion engine takes 45 minutes of main road running to recharge the batteries, and Audi awaits encouragement from local authorities, delivery services, and residents in noisy and smoky streets before making production plans.
The British-designed IAD LA 301, with a 660cc Subaru engine, is ready for production under an arrangement with the Los Angeles department of water and power. Some 10,000 are expected to be built, with a range of 60 miles on a dollar's worth of subsidised off-peak electricity. The most likely price is £15,000.
The Citroen Citela, like the Audi, uses nickel-cadmium batteries with a long life expectancy, giving a range of up to 70 miles. Recharging takes two hours from a standard three-pin plug, or half as long from a specially transformed power supply.
There is space for three adults and a child, in a vehicle the size and weight of the Citroen AX on which it is based. When it goes into production in 1995, Citroen expects it to cost no more than a basic AX, around £6,000 excluding the batteries which account for a further £2,400.
What is needed now, according to PSA chairman Jacques Calvet, is for electricity authorities to start making provision for on-street battery recharging. A pilot scheme is to be run at La Rochelle in 1993, in which 50 Citelas will show their paces, and try out a recharging network of power points installed by EDF the French electricity undertaking. EDF plans a national programme of recharging outlets in French cities by 1995, ready for the start of Citella production if the La Rochelle experiment proves a success.

Boris johnson hopes... Nissan Leaf and charging for London

Exhibition Engines

Naked engines are offensive. They should be undetectable and decently clothed. Designers apply engine-shaped shrouds so buyers feel they are getting their money’s worth. But nobody is allowed to touch them. Car makers have become so guilty at having made anything so toxic, spewing out noxious vapours, using up scarce resources, that they have swept engines under the bonnet, concealed and silenced.

It is all to appease the greenery-yalleries. Engineers used to be proud of engines. Delighted owners opened them to view. When William Lyons launched the Jaguar XK120 he insisted on polished cam covers so envious onlookers could drool over the twin overhead camshafts. It was part of the mystique. It was as important as the body style. It had to look the part.

No more. Bentley hides its W12 under plastic. Compare its anonymous pall with a self-confident old Jaguar.

Yet to anybody with an ounce of engineering soul the W12 is a work of art. Twelve compact cylinders, four-valve heads, I took this picture at Crewe. What perfection, what symmetry, a symphony in aluminium. You can see why a Bentley is expensive. It is made with such care to make it exquisitely balanced and smooth-running.

In the 1930s people admired technical accomplishment.

This SS proudly announces its valve clearances. Now they are ashamed of valves and pistons and crankshafts; apologetic about turbochargers, reticent about revs.

Bentley swathes its V8 in funereal plastic. Here (above) is what it looks like underneath. What equilibrium. What sense of proportion. Just because some people are getting over-excited about hybrids and electrics that will barely get you to Sainsbury’s and back, there is no need to be shame-faced about bhp.

This is a modern Jaguar, dolled up for the Geneva Motor Show. They wouldn’t dare dress it up like this for a real car. The greenery-yalleries and their earthy friends would accuse it of glorifying speed and power, and dealing in death.

A pallid and thin young man,
A haggard and lank young man
A greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery,
Foot-in-the-grave young man!
So sang Reginald Bunthorne, the fleshly poet in Patience, Gilbert and Sullivan’s masterpiece of 1881. Greenery-yallery was Gilbertian code for hypocrisy. Green-yellow for political colourists lies somewhere between environmentalists and the Lib-Dems. It is not too close to the reds although Roundheads and dirigists embrace it. Once it was almost the entire spectrum away from true blue Tory. Hard, alas, to believe now.

Environmental Car of the Year

Car of the Year jurists have, not for the first time, devalued their award. The Nissan Leaf may well be Car of the Year 2013, when it will be in production, but climbing aboard environmental zealots’ bandwagon makes 57 “leading” motoring journalists who voted look opportunist. For the first time in its 47 year history the award it has gone to an all-electric battery car. It is also the first time it has ever gone to a car you can’t buy.

“The world’s first mass-marketed, affordable, zero-emission vehicle for the global market beat 40 contenders to win motoring’s most important accolade,” trills the COTY announcement. Alfa Romeo, Citroen, Dacia, Ford, Opel/Vauxhall and Volvo, who were the leading contenders must feel bemused. “The jury acknowledged that the Nissan LEAF is a breakthrough for electric cars. Nissan LEAF is the first EV that can match conventional cars in many respects,” said Håkan Matson, President of the Jury, Car of the Year.

No wonder he said, “…in many respects.” By the same token in many respects it does nothing of the kind. It has a range of only a hundred miles before it needs an electric top-up of several hours. They might as well award the title to a golf trolley. This blog has highlighted the doubts over all-electric cars before. The head of research at Mercedes-Benz told the Fleet Street Group that the only viable electric cars were only satisfactory for cities. Everybody would need a second car to drive anywhere else. Until batteries develop in a way we still cannot see, such zero-emission cars will be zero-practical.

The Leaf will have regenerative braking, air conditioning, satellite navigation, parking camera and IT and telematics systems. What it calls “Innovative connectivity will allow owners to set charging functions to monitor the current (sic) state of charge and the remaining battery capacity, as well as to heat or cool the interior remotely via mobile phone or computer.” Just don’t try all these at once in winter, or the thing will never start. COTY jurists should really get out more.

Solar Power

The Sunday Times 21 April 1991
Austria had ideas for recharging electric cars nearly 20 years ago. Solar panels will charge batteries, but the optimism of the ÖAMTC in setting up the free filling station I wrote about has not been borne out. Solar cells might produce enough power to run a small scooter a mile or six but despite decades of airy talk Austria has 4.5million cars of which only 2800 are electric. Campaigners want 100,000 by 2020 and what they contemptuously term gas guzzlers phased out entirely, yet despite tedious conferences, well-funded academic papers and hopeful debates, practicalities are overwhelming. Electric cars are as old as the industry but like so-called renewable energy from subsidised wind farms they remain unattainable except within towns. Dr Thomas Weber, head of car research at Mercedes-Benz, which spends €4billion every year second-guessing what the politicians will try to appease shrill cries from the Eco-biassed, readily admitted to the Fleet Street Group (see older blog) that if the lobbyists got their way, we would all need not one but two cars. Human ingenuity can not yet square the circle. Nobody knows how fast fuel cells will develop but the nature of electricity still defies storage in anything as readily portable as a car fuel tank.
Pious hope. Kerbside charging with road painting and metered refuelling