Zerocarbonista

Petrol Stations of the future – swap shop or not?

Filed under: Transport — dale June 10, 2008 @ 3:46 pm

Thanks to Simon for your comments on Petrol Stations of the Future (and to Will and to Chris also). I started writing responses, but again this is quite a big topic so have turned it into a new post instead (for those who have just joined the thread - you can read the first post in the transport series here, the second which has a little video is here, the third here and the fourth here).

Simon - you make a couple of good points there. The idea of sitting around for 20 minutes while your car charges will be a bit of a challenge for some people, and it could require large numbers of ‘pumps’ or parking spaces. On the other hand we’ll all have ‘petrol stations’ at home, since we can plug our cars in every night and so the number of us using on street ‘petrol stations’ will drop perhaps massively. It would really only be when travelling more than 150 to 200 miles at a time – I don’t know what proportion of car journeys that is, but it would make interesting reading. And when so many of us have electric cars it’s easy enough to imagine fast charging facilities springing up in Supermarket car parks - I mean for how long will Tesco be willing to sit this one out? Even public car parks could have fast charging bays, and slow ones – for short and long stay parking. It’s quite possible that habits will change significantly and trips to the ‘garage’ disappear altogether.

Loads on the local grid are another good point, there’s definitely an issue to look at there. Electric cars shift the current petroleum load (in terms of energy) onto the grid anyway – and that’s a really big shift. Easier to strengthen that infrastructure though than build a new (hydrogen) one.

I don’t personally believe that swappable batteries are something that will work. It would require an incredible degree of co operation between car makers, and similarity of car design. Right now it would be nice if there was a common small appliance charging standard, for mobile phones and cameras etc – but instead we have a vast array of different ones. Bringing all car makers together would be far harder.

And then there’s the question of weight, these batteries aren’t light, it’s not likely to be easy to swap such a thing yourself.

Swappable batteries would be very unlikely to work in retrofit electric cars. And retrofit offers huge potential to reuse what we already have.

And finally one of the big advantages of the latest battery technology is you can shape the battery and distribute and fit it into parts of the car where it can assist to optimise weight distribution and centre of gravity – swappable batteries would negate all of that.

I doubt very much that the idea will succeed. It sounds good in principle though.
Cheers.

11 Comments »

The system in central London seems to be working. I drive to the office, put the car on charge at a public car park. My wife drives it into the west end, she runs off a charging point. We visit a friend and we plug in if they have off street parking. When I started driving an EV I never thought it could work practically for a family , but it does. That’s on a car with a very limited range and first generation battery technology.

Comment by Danny — June 10, 2008 @ 4:09 pm

I am warming to this idea of green charging stations… it needn’t just be about cars/bikes - most people on longer trips (or even pedestrians in an urban setting) might want to charge up other devices such as Ipods, mobile phones and so on while they sip coffee, eat some nice organic food, surf the net or read a book… it could be a whole new model for cyber-cafes.

I still think that ’swappable’ batteries are a very promising concept especially if they are small/light enough to have a few at home as a grid buffer..

But I also think you are right that an international standard would be highly unlikely to emerge in the current climate. Shame. Pesky capitalism has no conscience…

Comment by nommo — June 11, 2008 @ 9:02 am

I agree that car parks and supermarkets could offer charging facilities and that people with driveways or garages can charge at home. But some people have only on-road parking or more communal arrangements, so I think your statement that “we’ll all have ‘petrol stations’ at home, since we can plug our cars in every night” is vastly overstated.

On the other hand short journeys around town are exactly the sort we should be trying to replace with non car transport, leaving car use for longer or more complicated journeys.

Comment by Neil — June 11, 2008 @ 10:02 am

Dale,

The Chinese I believe are mandating a standard (USB) charging mechanism for mobile phones, and we have tonnes of standards for things such as plugs, house wiring, etc, some of which are given the status of law, so I’m sure it could be done if there was political will.

Rgds

Damon

Comment by Damon Hart-Davis — June 12, 2008 @ 11:59 am

@ Damon: That would be sweet if all mobile phones had USB charging! I agree with what you are saying about standards, it just took government to step-in in this particular case.

@ General: Where there is a will there is a way. All these problems are tiny really, and often an inconvenience to life as you know it right now.

It is very easy to sit there, do nothing, and poke holes. But to actually get up take action and start dreaming about solutions, that is where the fun is!

Society has become complacent, technology is meant to assist so we can achieve more. My favourite example, the escalator, how many people actually walk on them, not stand, so they can arrive at the fun sooner?

=-)

Comment by James — June 12, 2008 @ 9:02 pm

Dale, can you guesstimate what sort of carbon cost your electric car will have in terms of CO2/KM IF it were charged by standard fossil fuel generated electric?

I’d just be interested to compare that figure to the average petrol car (which in Europe is about 160g/KM I think!) and also a similar spec’d sports car if you could suggest one.

Apologies for deviating from the blog slightly!

Comment by Chris — June 13, 2008 @ 10:19 am

What if the surface of the car was covered in PV cells to help with charging? Re-generative braking also?

At last an eco car for petrol heads!

Cheers
- jc

Comment by jc — June 13, 2008 @ 2:29 pm

Sunlight hitting car surfaces in bright sunshine AT OPTIMAL ANGLE ~1kW/m^2. Usable surface area on car possibly 2m^2, and best plausible PV efficiency ~25% (wild hand-waving) thus ~500W at best in optimal conditions.

Typical electric car consumption (eg NICE MegaCity) as much as ~10kW, ie 20 times more than you can generate from PV.

Could help run the lights and help charge up in the car-park (I worked out that I could probably do without mains charging if I was very careful, at least outside mid-winter), but it’ll be hard pressed to help you motor much, especially on a cloudy day and/or at night!

It still wish NICE/GW would integrate PV anyway.

Rgds

Damon

Comment by Damon Hart-Davis — June 13, 2008 @ 3:47 pm

@ Neil – Interesting point Neil, I did some digging and the most recent ‘Survey of English Housing’ (05/06) reckons 71% of people have access to off street parking. That’s a big number and if true I think it’s fair to say that I’ve not ‘vastly overstated’ the case for people to have access to their ‘own petrol stations’ – though of course it won’t be all people - as you rightly say.

But there’s no reason that wherever a car is parked it could not be charged at night, on the street, in communal car parks - the lot.

70% of homes could be topping up their cars overnight, the other 30% would need on street and car park facilities – which are possible but not so straight forward of course. But 70% of us could be avoiding using petrol stations at all. That’s a big number, enough to make the oil majors quake in their boots I reckon. Cheers.

@ Damon – If the Chinese are doing that, that’s great. It probably increases the chances of it happening here, since global manufacturers will have to gear up to cater for it. My point really was mobile phones should be an easy thing to produce a standard charger for (and cameras) – but we’re nowhere near that here – cars will be much harder. Not impossible of course, but a far more complex standard to impose. I think swappable car batteries are un necessary anyhow, I’m going to post some further thoughts and numbers on that shortly. Cheers.

Comment by dale — June 17, 2008 @ 8:29 am

Where I am with the nearest parking spot not guaranteed and no closer than about ~10m from the house and across a public footpath, any lead I ran from my house would get ‘borrowed’ in fairly short order (or the power would be).

As to the USB charger standard, unfortunately there are plenty of reasons for manufacturers outside China to resist it, since (1) the chargers/replacements can be a nice little earner and a differentiator and (2) some bloody designers think that their latest shell is *so* neat that it deserves a new connector too and engineering their idea to accommodate USB would be *so* beneath their dignity… %-P

Rgds

Damon

Comment by Damon Hart-Davis — June 17, 2008 @ 9:06 am

Let’s take the charging idea a step further. Most UK towns these days have a retail park of one sort or another, not to mention indoor shopping centres with a large amount of roof space, much of it glass. Why not use this roof space? You wouldn’t even need the retail parks / shopping centre owners to do it, they could have a leasing agreement with utility companies to provide the kit. Stick solar and maybe small scale wind turbines on all of this unused urban real estate, then offer that energy to the customers. How about a floor dedicated to EV recharging in the shopping centre multistorey? Recharge your car while you shop. You get clean energy, plus the retailers get footfall and, in these days of heightened awareness, a USP for their centre. There’s the added advantage of minimal visual impact, as everything is in an already built up setting. I really don’t know why this isn’t already happening? Can anyone cost such an installation?

Comment by Phil — June 26, 2008 @ 8:37 pm