I work in the Ecotricity offices in Stroud and live in Worcestershire, a daily commute of about 51 miles in each direction, assuming that I take no detours on the way home. My normal mode of transport is either a diesel VW or a motorcycle that each do around 50mpg for the journey (over £12 per day in fuel).

Well, the chance to drive a car like the Nemisis was too good an opportunity to miss so of course I welcomed it with open arms, I mean the chance to drive a super car that would do 0-100mph in 8 seconds doesn’t present itself every day!

So then the reality dawned on me, this was a prototype that hadn’t been used much more than the few miles from Dale’s house to work or the odd test for promotional purposes and now I was planning to do over 100 miles per day including a 25 mile stretch in each direction on the motorway. The first thing that I did was to get my warm coat and the numbers for the recovery company as I fully expected some late nights sitting on the side of the M5 waiting for a recovery truck.

I tentatively took it on its first trip home from Stroud about 3 weeks ago and spent the whole trip watching the volt reader on the dashboard as I didn’t think it would get me home, every sound convinced me that it was about to come to a painful halt and leave me stranded.

I got it home and put it on charge. That meant running the cable the 5 feet from the parking place in my rear garden to the wall socket that was to be the charging point – it was on charge quicker than it would have taken me to open the fuel cap on my VW and put the diesel gun in the hole. As I generally don’t use my vehicle in the evening it was no big deal, I just left if on charge until bed time when it had charged enough to ensure that I would get back to Stroud the next day.

The next morning was pretty straight forward, no worrying about whether I had enough fuel, just get in and drive. The only change to normal was the lack of a heater or radio but a pair of gloves and my iphone soon sorted those issues out.

By about the 3rd day of commuting I found that I had stopped thinking about how many volts were left on the battery, no more than the odd glance at the fuel gauge in my own car anyway, and I was able to relax into simply enjoying driving a small sports car. The practice of charging it when I get home at night and again when I arrive at work added little to my journey time and soon became the norm.

I didn’t realise how much the charging routine had become the norm until last week when I needed to take my VW to work and upon leaving home at 5.45am to go to the gym before work, I found the fuel light was on and I had to find a petrol station that was open at that time – what a pain that was. I had very quickly become confident that I didn’t need to even think about it in the electric car and the experience was literally the opposite to what I had expected when I started driving it.

I do get a buzz from turning heads when I drive the vehicle as it does look special and sounds unlike anything else on the road. As for the performance, the only way I can describe it is like putting your foot down in this car as being similar to a jet accelerating down a runway! The sound and the sheer torque of the power delivery is a very similar experience.

I do take every opportunity to take friends and acquaintances for a drive in the car so that they can experience the drive and spread the word, but I need to mention one particular occasion when I took a friend out in the car who races cars on the track and works at a BMW dealership. He had the opportunity to drive an Audi R8 only the day before and when I took him in the Nemesis and let him experience the acceleration, he just sat there astonished by the sheer thrust and felt that he needed to re-calibrate his own understanding of what could be achieved as it simply blew the Audi out of the water!

After 3 weeks of commuting to work, plus some weekend leisure driving I have now covered over 1500 miles in the car and the biggest compliment I can give it is that it’s nothing out of the ordinary! It is just a very quick 2 seater sports car that happens to be powered by electric. It has a range of around 100 miles and with a charging point at work I am able to easily make it fit into my normal daily routine, even with my longer than average commuting distance to work.

I certainly would consider having an electric car as one of the two vehicles in my family. My wife could easily use an electric vehicle as her daily car as she rarely covers more than 100 miles per week.

I know that if we were to do longer journeys for holiday or visiting family who live in the North of England, then we would currently need to use a conventional petrol/diesel engine, but I am certainly a convert and as the Ecotricity Electric Highway becomes more widespread and fast charging technology becomes the norm I see no reason why my next car will need to be anything but electric.

I would like to try a normal saloon car like the Nissan Leaf for a week or two to see how they compare when you have the additional benefits of rear seats and some boot space as if I’m honest, that is all I have missed during this experience.

Their aim was to demonstrate and promote the recently invented motor car. In addition, they celebrated the new Road Act, which that year raised the speed limit from 4mph to 14mph and removed the need for a man to walk in front of each motor vehicle waving a red flag. Quite a breakthrough for drivers of the day.

The cars taking part that day included those powered by electricity, steam and the internal combustion engine (petrol): back then it was a three horse race, technology wise. The internal combustion engine eventually won out of course. Fast forward to today and we take for granted the quite incredible travelling capability of modern cars. We Britons collectively drive 250 billion miles a year in our 30 million cars – all but 2,000 of which have internal combustion engines.

But the world is changing. Nobody can have missed the twin issues of Climate Change and fossil fuel depletion. Road transport in Britain is responsible for 20% of our CO₂ emissions, the main Climate Change gas. About a third of our oil imports are burned in our vehicles – some 25 million tonnes each year. Two excellent reasons to make a change.

On top of that, and perhaps more importantly for your average motorist – petrol and diesel are escalating in price and will continue to do so as the world runs out of oil. It was only two years ago that we hit the £1 per litre mark, at the time quite a traumatic event – how much further past that are we now – and how much longer before we hit £2 a litre? My guess is less than 5 years.

So we need an alternative to the car as we now know it.

And it’s ‘back to the future’ in fact – with electric cars making a comeback. So far the numbers are pretty small: a little over 2,000 of them in Britain. But all the major motor manufacturers have now either launched a fully electric car, or will do so later this year. You can go out and buy one, they’re just like ‘real cars’ – with some obvious differences.

Upsides and downsides of course. Upsides are a lack of pollution from the exhaust and the possibility of filling your car up at home – even making your own fuel from solar panels on your roof. The main downside is range. Cars hitting the roads this year will have a range of up to 100 miles, and to many of us this sounds like nowhere near enough. There’s even a name for the feeling many people get when contemplating electric cars – ‘range anxiety’.

The fact is we’re all used to driving cars that can cross continents. But we don’t use that capability. In Britain, 99.3% of all car journeys are actually less than 100 miles. Range anxiety is thus misplaced, though still having a very real impact.

People are also concerned about a lack of charging facilities on the road, somewhere to plug in. There’s actually a chicken and egg problem going on – one of the big reasons more people don’t buy electric cars is due to a lack of places to charge-up and companies are not installing places to charge-up due to a lack of electric cars on the road.

And that’s where our Electric Highway comes in. It’s the world’s first national network of charging points – it’s for electric cars and it’s on Britain’s motorways. We’ve completed phase one already, joining up the cities of London, Exeter and Manchester. Phase two will be completed this year and will see ‘top up zones’ at every Welcome Break motorway services in Britain.

They’re currently free to use, all you need – apart from an electric car, van or bike, is to register with us for a free smartcard (to access the chargers). We’ve created the Electric Highway to kick-start Britain’s electric car revolution – because we thought it needed doing.

Later this year we expect to install the first of a new breed of very fast chargers – from flat to full in 20 minutes. At a stroke electric cars will have overcome their only real drawback – their ability to travel great distances, and refill very quickly. It’s an exciting time for electric cars – perhaps on a par with 1896, when the new Road Act made cars suddenly rather more practical as a means of transport.

Nationwide rapid charging will achieve the same thing for the electric car.

[sociable /]

I’ve been meaning to post something before now, but the last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. Here’s a quick heads up, some stuff you might know already from the news, some you probably won’t.

The car arrived in Stroud nearly three weeks ago now (Tuesday the 28th Oct) looking simply awesome. It was the first time I’d seen it in it’s finished form, complete with grey and black union jack paint job and all sorts of other bits and pieces – it really is transformed from the car that was here in the summer of 09 – for a few months.

The day after the car arrived I took the Sunday Times out for a spin. They loved it and published a piece the following Sunday. I haven’t put a link here, because you have to pay to look at it (I guess Murdoch needs the cash to fight the evil BBC).

The Friday of that same week I went for a spin with Robert Llewellyn. That was a bit scary truth be told – never knew he had such a heavy right foot… . Actually, what made it (more) scary was that each time he hit the throttle hard, or came off it, the car twitched, we had a bit of torque steer going on (which was unusual). This turned out to be an early symptom of a problem that would show itself later. Robert made a short video of our spin, which actually was a hoot – you can see that here.

The following Monday (after the Sunday Times piece) I went for a spin with a guy from the Press Association and the torque steer ‘twitch’ under the big right foot of Bobby L, turned into a permanent pull to the right under more moderate acceleration – the problem was developing. I thought it probably something to do with the motor controllers and made a mental note for the engineers to rectify when they next have the car.

And then the next day (fatefully) I went for spin and shot some video with John Vidal from the Guardian. John wrote this piece which appeared in the Guardian the following Friday. And he posted this video on their website.

As you’ll see (or you may know already) the Nemesis broke down……..!

We were on our way to our local windmill to take the final shots of the day, and as we crossed a mini roundabout we just lost drive completely. Had to get out and push, I think he kept filming for a while, in true professional style……

And bless him, he said he wouldn’t use the breakdown as part of the story, didn’t feel the need. I thought that was quite lovely. But the temptation was obviously too much, as you can see or read in the G – it became part of the story.

That wasn’t really a surprise, it was a bit disappointing, but it was understandable. What was a surprise was the stuff that was actually made up – the claim that the Nemesis is known as the ‘Beast of Stroud’, for example – it certainly isn’t, and the first I heard about it was in the Guardian. I think that’s stretching journalistic licence a bit too far.

Anyway, one of our engineers dropped everything to blat to Stroud and take a look (Thanks Bob). The problem was with a small 12 volt battery that drives the motor contactors (the electro mechanical bits that pass the big currents to the motors) – it had gone flat.

Turns out that the diode used the charge the 12v from the main 400v traction battery, had blown. The component was well within design specs, so we suspect a fault in the diode itself – we’ll see. The falling voltage in the 12v battery caused the motor contactors to behave erratically – that’s the working theory. So far it’s holding.

With the problem solved we were off the next day (Thursday) to London for a launch party for the car and for our Ecobonds (I’ll post about ecobonds later, promise).

The party was fab. Probably the best bit for me was that Damon Hill turned up. Here’s a picture.

The next day we were off to Brighton to get ready for the RAC Eco rally, which started the following day (Saturday). The rally ran from Brighton to London, the day before the historic event that runs the other way round. It was fun.

The car park of our hotel was like a spaghetti junction of cables and junction boxes, as the fleet of cars re charged over night – at least in theory anyway. There were obviously some electrical load issues – the Nemesis left that car park after 12 hours of charging, with less in the batteries than we started with……. nice….

But no problem, we still had plenty. We all lined up along Brighton Sea Front and left, kind of race style, at 30 second intervals – somehow we managed to be car 63 of 64.

On approach to the start line an RAC guy came up to the car and said something like ‘can you spin the wheels or something all these Teslas are being really boring’. The wheels won’t actually spin (something we’re looking into, we think there’s some very conservative torque control going on) – but I told him I could ‘boot it’.

And boot it I did. Not too madly, since the start was arranged with a bottleneck of people just in front of it. Short phone video here for your amusement.

And with that we were off to London, my least favourite place in the country to drive to – not sure what I was thinking when I agreed to this.

Before long we found ourselves in the most amusing and frustrating convoy of eco cars. All competing to use the least energy on the drive, which is fine in theory. But in practice it meant these guys would do 30 mph on the flat (in a 60) and when they hit a hill they were doing 20 (not wanting to use the throttle). It was funny to start with but that wore off.

We even saw drivers wiping the inside of their windscreens, because they wouldn’t use their screen demist (we assumed). We had no such problems, the air inside the Nemesis was the same as the air outside (v cold)….

We saw our chance on a long straight and blew off a convoy of eco cars – blimey the Nemesis can accelerate, I was well off the throttle before we reached the lead car…….

Although I can see why the RAC set this event up based on a challenge of efficiency (I think the petrol based cars had to use less than one gallon for example) – I actually think this is the anti message – Eco cars that are not fast or fun, (and if you meet one on the road it’ll be a pain in the arse) but they are economical – it’s the worst possible message, just re enforces the stereotype.

My suggestion for next year would be a balanced approach that requires some semblance of normal road speed and economy – much more of a challenge.

Anyway we got through some hideous traffic and made our way to Regent Street for the line up. And we were mobbed. The Nemesis kind of stole the show. That was fab.

So here we are three weeks later. I just charged the car last night and it was truly plug and play – no laptops needed – just pulled the old three pin plug out of the flap at the back, and that was it – chuffed about that…..

We’re still waiting for the fast charger though, it’s two months overdue now. But we’ve been busy with CAD and have ‘packaged’ the fast charger to fit in the boot – so that all we’ll need for a super fast charge, is a three phase supply. We’ll have no hardware compatibility issues.

After we get the next few weeks of publicity out of the way we’ll draw up plans for the speed record run and for the endurance run – Land’s End to John O Groats, which we’re going to aim to do in less than one day (less than 24hours). That should be a hoot. More on all of that later.

Cheers.

^{Video production: TWA Productions}

A day at Bruntingthorpe

Two weeks ago now we took the Nemesis to Bruntingthorpe, for it’s first real track day.

We had two purposes, to test safety followed by speed.

The safety aspect was about the stability of the car in the event that one of the motors or belts suddenly quit – having separate rear drives means we have the potential for some considerable torque steer in the wrong circumstances.

So our test pilot took the car down the track at increasing speeds, while the co pilot threw a switch – to disable one motor. The car has a system that responds to the loss of drive on one wheel, we needed to know if it was responding fast enough.

The results were good. In a straight line the impact of losing one motor, even at speeds well in excess of 100mph, was very slight (on the steering).

Later in the day we went on to try the same thing driving hard round bends, and eventually we found the limit and spun the car – but the circumstances it took to pull this off were a long way from real road conditions.

Before that though (while we still had plenty of battery) we did some speed tests…….

Results as follows –

Not bad for our first real test. We reckon the motors are spinning about 10% less fast than they could and we think there’s some torque limit applied by software – because we just can’t spin the wheels…..

We’re looking at both of these and confident there’s quite a bit more in the car yet. Top end and 0 to 100.

While we do that, the car is finally off to the paint shop, we’re packaging a fast charger to fit in the boot (for some distance work) and getting ready to launch on the road in October.

So this is the penultimate episode, our next one should take us right up to the launch.

Finally we’re almost there. It’s a good place to be.

Cheers.

PS – In what must be a sign of the times – there were more EVs and Hybrids on test the day we were at Bruntingthorpe than there were conventional ones. Roll on the day.

Meanwhile, on the car front:

The new lightweight rear end and rear diffusers are both fitted and fully functional.

The rear end is now stiffer, lighter and much easier to get on and off. Also we’ve got the new rear lights installed and wiring complete now as you can see from the picture. The back end of this car is def its best side.

The diffuser (the bit that wraps under the car at the back, with the number plate on) has its twin flaps, either side of the number plate, one for normal and one for fast charge connections.

Our guys have been working on something dubbed ‘the Lobster Claw’ which is a cable retract mechanism. Looks rather cool and is about 90% complete. Basically it allows you to pull a three pin plug (or whatever connection we choose) from the back of the car, pull out as much or as little cable as you need, plug in and when you’re done, snatch to retract – like a Hoover (or should I say Dyson these days).

That may sound easier than it is. The tricky bit is to have a cable that isn’t coiled around a drum, because that would get too hot if you left it partially coiled and ran big a current through it. With a drum approach you’d have to pull all the cable out whether you needed it or not.

So with all this work complete the car left Norfolk yesterday headed back up North for it’s final bits of electronic kit – the VCS or ECUs depending on who you talk to. Either way it’s the bit that connects the throttle pedal, the batteries, the BMS and the motors.

It’s a couple of weeks to fit and then a couple of weeks of shakedown testing and some road testing for the BMS at the same time.

Then the car is coming back to Norfolk for its full on track and road testing, followed by the paint job and that’s it. Several weeks later than I hoped for again, but we are getting there, actually making big strides in what has def turned out to be the hardest part of the whole project – the electronics.

Meanwhile we’re planning some ‘events’.

First is likely to be a crack at the UK land speed record for an EV, for that we’ll need to do 140 mph – should be within the ability of this car. The current record is held by Don Wales, grandson of the great Donald Campbell. Don came up to see me a few months ago and offered to help us with the record attempt, which is really cool of him – then he told me if we do get the record we might not hold it very long as he’s planning another run end of this summer – so it’s on…..

Next event on the drawing board is a run from John o’ Groats to Land’s End, in less than 24 hours if we can. Co-conspirator for this one is Robert Llewellyn (I think he’ll always be Kryton to me… ). Our plan, roughly, is to charge at windfarms and other renewable generators as and where we can, but otherwise use ‘ecotricity’ supplied through the grid and blat down from John o’ Groats to LE just as fast as we can in a non stop (other than to charge) run. We’ll need a fast charger for this of course – that’s currently on our shopping list and proving to be quite tricky.

The aim of this one is to tackle the ‘range anxiety’ that currently exists with EVs. This is a classic British endurance run, no EV has tackled it yet (as far as I know) and it should open some eyes, and minds, we hope.

So that’s it – car a few more weeks away from completion and serious testing (and another video update) – and a couple of record attempts on the drawing board.

Cheers.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

This months highlights are;

Meeting the Sun’s environment correspondent – yes seriously. They’ve not had one very long but they do have one and he is serious about it – and:

That amazing machine at Leeds University – the one that looks like it belongs on a Sci Fi film, in fact I’m sure I’ve seen versions of it, recreating humans from DNA samples… In our case we used to make a ‘gear lever assembly’.

As you’ll see here we’re getting close to the end game now, in fact I’m ready to predict that episode 10 of 6 will see me driving the Wind Car for the first time… !

The thing that’s been holding us up this past month or so is the Battery Management System (BMS), in case you wondered. The solution we were chasing kind of fell apart a few weeks ago and we had to hunt around for some new technology. Bit scary this late in the day…

But we’re very much back on track now having found exactly what we need from Linear Technology. These guys went above and beyond by expressing us a bunch of pre production chips and a board, that’s been a massive help. Thank you.

Returning to the question of a name, not sure if this one came up before, but in an e-mail last week I made a quick ref to the e bird (easier to type than wind car), and I kind of liked it. Any thoughts on that welcome.

Other than that current front runners are still Zero, Hurukan and Zephyr.

I’m off to Norfolk the week after next to shoot episode 10 and, hopefully, actually get to drive it – that’s a pretty exciting prospect after all this time and effort.

Hope you enjoy the vid.

Cheers.

PS – This just in – been challenged to a drag race with an RAF Tornado – can’t turn that down, racing for pink slips I hope, winner keeps all… More on this later.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Here’s our latest video.  The big focus of this episode is design and, as you’ll see, it’s definitely taking shape.

I’m off to Norfolk next week to meet the Sun, they love the idea BTW, and nail down a few questions on detail (with the A team).

Couple more weeks after that I hope we might be having our first test drive, perhaps in episode 9 of 6 – but let’s see….

Some really cool names keep coming in.  Though I’m back to thinking maybe zero.  But as somebody said here, I reckon I’ll need to see the finished thing and drive it – then I’ll know its name.

There’s been a lot of electric car stuff in the news lately, particularly today with the Government’s announcement of a £5k bung to EV buyers and other initiatives. 

The thing that excites me most of all though is the fact that the government has come out and said we all need to be driving electric cars, they even use terms like ‘green revolution’ these days – that’s just amazing, so far from where we’ve been.

It makes me think the changes we need to make are all the more likely.  We know the technology exists or will exist and we know we need to live sustainably – now we seem to have political will behind us.

Just need to re invent capitalism to be orientated to social and environmental outcomes rather than monetary ones – and we’re there…..

Cheers.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

I was in Norfolk earlier this week for a milestone in the development of our wind powered car, the first turning of its wheels…!

While I was there I met with John Vidal the Environment Editor of the Guardian. He’s a great guy John, enjoyed discussing things with him and he really gets the wind powered car thing.

We made this little video with John while we were all there, should be on the Guardian website as you read this.

Meanwhile we still need a name for the car.

Nice idea from Leo recently was ‘the car with no name’ – reminds me of America’s classic hit – Horse with no name.

Kate (my other half) lobbed in the idea of naming it ‘symbol’ – a reference to Prince (just in case… All good fun. We still seriously lack a name though, that’s despite the tons of good suggestions that keep coming (thanks to everybody for those). Here’s why:

This is the latest image of what the finished car will look like, pretty awesome I think.

And Mojo was front running for me but looking at this image I’m thinking the car really does need a name that’s a bit tougher’, I just don’t think Mojo will work.

I’m currently resurrecting Nemesis as a front runner. Zephyr is also back in frame.

As always, thoughts are welcome.

Cheers.

BTW – Danny of Danny’s Contentment came and interviewed me a while back and has posted them up on his blog:

Part 1
Part 2

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Good vid this one, all looks very industrial over there in Norfolk – and stuff is starting to come together.

I’m thinking it’s about time to come up with a name, and I’ve come up with a short list.

First thanks to everybody that sent suggestions, I enjoyed and appreciated them all, very much.

The short list I’ve come up with, and the reasons for each, are as follows:

Zero – Short version of the Zero C suggestion, has a certain neatness about it and many interpretations.  WW2 Japanese fighter of course.  Also a typical car has a badge announcing it’s cubic capacity, valve and/or turbo numbers  – Zero all of this in our case.  And Zero combustion/carbon.  And it has a nice ring to it.  The Zero.

Nemesis – Darker altogether and spawned from my traveller days when 2000 AD (the comic) was a cult read – anyone familiar with that will know the nemesis character.  Pretty awesome.  And Nemesis to the ICE car industry is exactly what EVs and WEVs are going to be, IMO.  Like this one for the dark side.  The Nemesis.

Storm – Weather inspired (not X men… ), toyed with Tornado and Hurricane, both of which I like, but feel that Storm is more understated but still evocative.  This is after all a weather driven car.  The Storm.

I’d love to hear what you all think.  Time to name the Wind Powered Car.

Cheers.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

You can see the body really starting to take shape here, and hear Peter talk about ‘toughening up’ of the look, from his original.

We’ve ‘placed’ all the parts within the car now and began machining/producing some of the bigger components, like the transmission.

And the batteries have arrived. Crazy thing about that was, to travel by ship they needed to be in their own 40 foot container, for safety reasons – but it was OK to stick them in the hold of a Jumbo jet, as they are… Not sure how that works!

Hope you enjoy the vid.

Cheers.

But it occurred to me – there’s an assumption frequently made that riding a bike is for free.  And it’s not.  You have to power the bike, it’s human power but that’s not free – we need food to do work.

The rates at which we burn calories and therefore food are pretty well established for various activities – resting, walking, running for example – as are the carbon impacts of food and therefore of the calories we use.

Typical daily calorie requirements are also well established.   And if you up your activity level you up your need to eat – it’s that simple.

Easy enough then to take a closer look at just how many more calories it takes to ride a bike, and what additional carbon impact comes from that – compared to the calorie intake required to drive a wind powered car instead.

It might not be surprising to find that driving a wind powered car is actually better in terms of CO₂ impact than riding a bike – after all wind power is zero carbon (the embedded energy in a windmill is repaid in about six months of operation – after that it’s all carbon free) – the assumption though has been that biking is zero carbon too, but it ain’t.

Biking requires 40 additional calories per mile – or 400 additional calories for a ten mile trip.

Using some typical food carbon footprints and assuming ten miles a day for a year you get a total annual impact of 333kg CO₂ – from riding the bike.

This is over and above the normal food impact – which, based on a mixed diet of 2,400 calories a day (for example) would be responsible for 2 tonnes of CO₂ a year – veggies and vegans will do better than that of course.

Driving a wind powered car on the other hand requires 100 calories an hour (to power the driver), which is roughly 4 calories per mile (assuming average 30 mph) this produces 76g of CO₂ for a ten mile stint and a total of 28kg of CO₂ for that 10 miles a day for a year.

The difference is 0.3 tonnes CO₂ per year.  The wind car is one third of a tonne of CO₂ better than the bike…!

Like I say not surprising that wind cars win if you accept that wind power is zero carbon and biking requires more food than not biking.

But the big surprise in all of this, and perhaps the bit that makes it worth sharing – is that an electric car powered by the grid as it is, actually emits only ever so slightly more carbon a year than biking the equivalent distance.

A grid powered electric car travelling 5000 miles per MWh of electricity will produce 94g CO₂ per mile (including the drivers contribution), that’s 342kg per year of CO₂ for the 10 mile a day trip.   Only 9kg of CO₂ per year more than cycling.  And what’s 9kg out of one third of a tonne?

This is counter intuitive I think.

Biking isn’t so obviously squeaky green as it’s assumed to be – it has a carbon footprint virtually equal to grid powered electric cars – that’s a shock to me.  The reason for that is probably that the human body is not the most efficient user of fuel, whereas electric motors hit the high 90 percents.  And even the grid manages around 50% fuel efficiency.

No embedded carbon in the car or bike (or food chain) has been taken into account here of course – just straight use of each.

It might be interesting to look at embedded levels of CO₂ in cars and bikes and calculate how many years it would take for a wind powered car to……

Any volunteers?

Cheers.

PS – A petrol car doing the same 10 miles a day would emit over 1.2Tonnes of CO₂ in a year – about four times that of the grid EV or Bike – and 45 times that of the Wind EV.

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

I’m off to Norfolk next week to take a look at the proposed body modifications and generally have a catch up with the team. I’m looking fwd to it.

Chassis has been lengthened, battery housing and transmission are now designed and under construction and we’re very slightly behind the estimated timeline, but still heading for Dec on the road.

Meanwhile out in the world, where so much is changing lately – I hear Tesla are laying off staff and suffering some kind of financial difficulty raising doubts about their future.

Regular readers might remember that a guy from Tesla posted on this site. I’d questioned their performance figures and he basically said it works and I should buy a Tesla and not bother building a car of my own. He turned out to be vice president of sales or something, but I could see some sense in not reinventing the wheel and all that. So I said I would buy a Tesla – if he let me drive one first to prove the performance claims. A fair offer I thought, but never heard back from him.

Sat here today, with doubts circulating over their future, only 27 cars on the road after all these years and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, I’m glad I’m not sat in a queue for a left hand drive Tesla, that might or might not one day arrive. It makes sense to have been pursuing a different path.

That said, I hope the dot com guys have the pockets to pull Tesla through, the world is a better place with them in it for sure.

The ranges made possible by new batteries seem very practical, when looked at against current car use patterns refuelling appears to be possible, even desirable, without the need for garages. And the National Grid appears readily able to accommodate the switch from oil to electricity for our entire car fleet.

So far so good.

Justin Noe raised a good point the other week, probably the next big practical question – is there enough Lithium in the world for us all to have EVs?

Justin quotes an article by a Michael C who says there isn’t enough, he doesn’t offer any numbers to support that view though – so we took a look, this is what we found…

Lithium is the 33rd most abundant element in the Earth’s crust – it makes up about 0.0007% which doesn’t sound a lot when compared to Iron’s 5% and magnesium’s 2%, but it may still be enough. How much is 0.0007% in metric tones?

According to Keith Evans, a geologist who’s been working on and writing about lithium reserves for decades, there are 28.4 Million Tonnes of Lithium metal in the ground. Let’s assume he knows his stuff.

That’s (apparently) equivalent to roughly 150 Million Tonnes of Lithium Carbonate – the stuff that goes into ‘Lithium batteries’.

According to William Tahil, the guy who seems to have kicked the lithium shortage debate, a typical Hybrid EV will need 16kg of Lithium Carbonate in it’s batteries. Let’s assume that a pure EV needs four times as much.

There are 900 Million cars in the world and so we’d need 58 million tonnes of lithium carbonate to power them all as pure EV’s with Lithium batteries.

That’s a little over one third of global reserves. Clearly enough to go round with some left over.

The world currently produces and consumes 16,000 Tonnes of Lithium metal a year, or 84,000 Tonnes of Lithium Carbonate (equivalent). And it produces 50 million new cars a year – this needs adding in to the equation.

Powering 900 million cars with Lithium Ion batteries, allowing for the additional 50 million cars a year and maintaining the current levels of demand for lithium in ceramics, drugs, aluminium smelting etc – would leave enough Lithium in the world to last another 28 years.

OK 28 years is not very long, but this assumes that Lithium reserves don’t increase as deposits become more economic as the price goes up – as with oil.

But the bigger factor is that Lithium is recyclable, unlike oil. Currently the USA recycles 98% of its car batteries whilst we in the UK recycle 90%.

If we assume that only 10% of those 50 million new cars need virgin lithium due to recycling old batteries then suddenly our reserves are going to last for over 200 years.

I don’t suppose that Lithium is the only game in town, to power EVs. The article Justin pointed out actually argued that super capacitors were ‘better’. They may or may not be one day, and EV’s will no doubt come with a range of technologies powering them – but there’s one thing we can be clear on;

If we relied 100% on Lithium, to ‘repower’ the world’s car fleet – we should have enough Lithium to do that and still ‘last’ for a couple of centuries.

And that’s a very (very) long way from the conclusion that there’s not enough in the world.

Here’s a short video showing our progress so far:

^{Video production: Tim Walter Associates Limited}

Should be posting one of these a month now as we count down to the day we get this ‘wind powered car’ on the road.

Our first focus was the batteries – where to put them to keep the weight in the car in the right place in terms of centre of gravity and front/rear weight distribution. And how to house them so that we can keep them physically restrained but control their temperature during charging and discharging and protect them from the elements.

We’ve also been working on a ‘transmission box’ to sit at the rear of the car between the wheels. It’s not a gearbox as such just something to slow down the rotational speeds of the motors a bit, to make them more suitable for driving car wheels, and handle reverse as well, a useful consideration….

And we’ve got a transparent rear boot planned so we can show off all this techno stuff, Ferrari style. That could look pretty cool.

We need a name though (‘a hook’ as they say in those Orange cinema ads, which I love).

Best we’ve come up with yet really is the E type or the Zero.

Suggestions welcome.

Cheers.

The first vision was of an internet café style ‘park and surf while you charge’ kind of thing. Looked cool, not a bad first stab, but on further examination – it wasn’t it.

The second vision is an abandoned, moss grown relic. The gist of this vision is that with modern battery ranges of 200 miles + and given that 99.5% of car journeys are less than 100 miles – all we need is some destination charging, in supermarket and public car parks, motorway services, that kind of stuff for long journeys and when we get caught short – and for the most part we’ll be able to plug in at home. We won’t need garages.

This raises the very important question – can the grid take it? Can we switch the entire energy consumption of UK cars – from petrol stations to the grid? By the way the combined power output of the UK car fleet is bigger than the total power output of the grid. So it might be a problem.

We crunched some numbers and came up with this:

In the UK we drive 250 Billion miles in our cars every year…! Seriously.

It’s reasonable to assume that an electric car can do 5,000 miles on one MWh of electricity.

Therefore we would need an additional 50TWh of electricity annually, to power the UK’s cars – if they were all electric.

In 2006 total demand on the grid was 404TWh, so the extra 50TWh we’d need would amount to a 12% increase in grid delivered power. Just 12%. That’s actually four years of annual UK demand growth to give it some perspective. Not so much.

It would take very roughly 10,000 of today’s turbines to produce this 50 TWh and so power all our cars. It’ll be less then that by the time it happened of course because turbines keep getting bigger and more efficient.

In the process we’d save 69 Million tonnes of CO2 per year – that’s 60% of UK road transport emissions and 12% of total UK CO2 emissions. No small achievement.

I was pretty staggered by the results. There are after all nearly 30 million cars in the UK (that’s more cars than homes by the way, about 25% more) and we drive that crazy 250 Billion miles – there was a good chance, I thought, that the extra power demand would be more than the grid could cope with. But an extra 12% is well within the realms of the possible.

It’s worth bearing in mind that most car charging will probably be overnight, the time of lowest grid demand, and therefore we can probably deliver this extra 12% volume without a need to increase the actual capacity of the grid. And such a large overnight load could result in a considerable smoothing of the peaks and troughs of demand on the grid and in the process make the grid more efficient cost and CO2 wise.

And an electric car fleet for the UK could also help with the smoothing of intermittent renewables like wind energy, because for the most part car charging will be non-critical loads, non-time sensitive that is. 30 Million cars could act like vast distributed energy storage system, able to take power when the wind blows and able to manage without when it doesn’t. It could even give power back to the grid at times of need.

All interesting stuff. But one thing is clear – the idea that we could all drive electric cars, powered by existing infrastructure – the grid, looks very (very) doable.

And the alternative vision, of the oil companies – building a new hydrogen infrastructure and for us all to keep on visiting their garages to fill our cars up (for which we’d need three times as many windmills and three times as much additional electricity to achieve the same thing by the way) – is looking more like our second vision of garages of the future – a moss grown relic, though not yet abandoned…

I’m off to Oz in a few days to join the Greenbird team and attempt to take the world land speed record – powered only by the wind.

Greenbird,  the awesome looking craft in the picture above, we named as a nod to Donald Campbell and his historic Bluebird.  We reckon the world is at a watershed, the age of fossil fuels is passing and we’re moving (back) to the age of renewable energy  – Greenbird  symbolises this perhaps better then anything else.

Donald broke his records in the golden age of fossil fuels, the age of big engines and abundant, energy dense fuels.  We’re going to break ours with no engine, no fuel and no pollution – using just the wind.

We’re trying to raise a serious question too.  How are we all going to be getting around in a world without oil?

I reckon it’ll be with wind powered cars.  Check out this illustration sent to us by Dave Mills, I think it’s really cool.  Not exactly what we have in mind but really cool.

Greenbird is our F1 car,  a highly technical, pretty impractical,  single purpose thoroughbred machine, we know you couldn’t go to the shops in.  But we have a second generation wind car on the way – that you could use day to day.  More on that later.

We need to do about 120 mph to scoop the record, and if the wind blows we’re very confident we’ll get there.

Right now the Salt lake we’re using for the attempt is flooded, and there’s no wind – both unusual this time of year.  So it’s all against us.

But we have another 10 days of weather window and have our fingers crossed.

You can find out more, and follow our progress at greenbird.co.uk, we’ll keep the zerocarbonista site updated too.

Finally, thanks massively to Fred Chambers for sending us the image below, of a land yacht from 100 years ago, on the same lake we’re using.  I think it’s just awesome.

Wind power is so ‘back to the future’.

We’ve been discussing the charging of electric cars in previous posts and I’d suggested a vision of rows of charging posts and it taking 20 minutes or so to fill your car up while you surfed the net or otherwise chilled out. In a nutshell.

Two good counter points were made – we’d need big garages if it took that long to fill up (to hold all the cars) and why not swap batteries instead.

I think the case against swappable batteries is pretty clear, primarily that we just won’t need them and secondarily that it would be a huge undertaking to standardise car designs to accept a common ‘cassette’ and we’re talking maybe 100 Kilos each – that’s a hefty thing to just ‘swap’.

On the question of how many charging posts we’d need at these new garages, I pointed out that most of us (70% – I stand corrected that it’s not all) could charge at home each night and so would only need a ‘garage’ on long journeys. How long typical car journeys are, I thought, is going to be key to this.

I went away and did some digging and it’s altered fundamentally how I see garages of the future – I don’t think we’ll have any!

It turns out that less than 1% of all car journeys are above 100 miles. There are no figures above 150 miles, which is easily possible with today’s batteries – but it would follow that it’s a smaller number again. Some people talk of 200 miles being possible now – certainly in the future we can expect that. So far (far) less than 1% of cars on the road at any one time will need a filling station – as we know them.

There are 27 Million cars on the road today by the way – re-fuelled by under 10,000 petrol stations. Clearly we don’t all want fuel at the same time – except when there’s a scare on – otherwise that would be 2,700 car visits per garage per day. The fuel tank range of cars is a buffer, a vast rolling fuel tank. And so it will be with batteries. The big difference will be that we can fill up our cars at home and for most people (70%) and most journeys 99%+ that will be enough.

If just half a 1% of cars on the road were on journeys their batteries could not support (ie 200 miles or more) – which is a very reasonable ‘if’, then in theory, if it takes say four times longer to charge batteries than it does to fill with petrol (20 minutes versus five minutes) – we’d need four times one half a % of existing garages (if you follow). I make that 200 garages max, to simply meet the capacity – not taking location into account.

But if you factor in the probability of charging points in car parks and supermarkets – giving the chance to charge at your destination, for the return leg (doubling the range before a garage is required) I think we’ll need virtually no garages at all. Maybe a few on the motorway network – but then again, they can be in car parks.

Petrol Stations are destined to be extinct.

Where does this leave Oil companies?

With no liquid fuels to make and deliver (though they’ll try and foist Hydrogen on us first) and no retail outlets. There’s no future for them, except as reborn renewable energy companies. Or footnotes in history.

Roll on the day.

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.

Has Tesla really killed of the myth of rubbish electric cars as Simon says? And are we just trying to make another Tesla as Peter says?

Tesla’s big success has been to convince so many people that they’ve actually done it. That their car is on the road and does what they say it would. I think they’ve created a new myth (for the few), that the Tesla works. It’s a great piece of PR. Hasn’t killed the old myth though (for the many).

Behind the PR – $150 Million spent so far, running 2 years late, only one car just delivered to the CEO – and this with the ‘gearbox problem’. New plan is to fix this later. Performance will drop. But we knew that, because the numbers don’t add up anyway.

Do we want to make another Tesla, no we don’t. But we share similar goals.

The current myth of electric cars lives on and it will be years before Tesla, or anyone else, gets it together in the UK (if they ever do). So we’re stepping up. It needs doing because it has not been done yet and we don’t actually have any time to lose.

If all cars in the UK were electric (and wind powered) we’d cut CO2 emissions by 12.5%

Cheers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz4mGpwJlSM

Transport is one of the really big issues we have to face up to – how are we all going to get around, post oil and post carbon?

I think the answer is electric cars, cars charged using wind energy – in fact I prefer to think of them as wind powered cars.

We’re building one right now – a car to smash the stereotype of looking like something Noddy would drive. An out and out sports car. Capable of 0 to 60 faster than a V12 Ferrari, able to top 100 mph for sure – and do 150 miles on one ‘tank’. All with zero emissions. Cake and eat it. Petrol head meets zerocarbonista.

We’re making this car with technology available in the world today. Throwing down the gauntlet to the big car companies. If we can do it – why (the hell) can’t you?

Work is underway, I expect this car on the road for the summer.

We’re keeping a film record as we go, hoping we might make this into a film for TV, if not definitely for our web site.

Watch this space! And Clarkson beware, or maybe not. I’ve a feeling he might like it…

e2a: check out the little clip of the video intro