James Bond plus leading female using 'cello power' to get away from the bad guys!
With the exception of cases of excessive snow, driving down to Wexford on a fortnightly basis, is, actually a bit of a guilty pleasure. I get to meet up with a great friend, it's something different during the week, and of course, I get a fantastic cello lesson out of it. So, why am I blogging about this experience?
Well, you see, one of the questions I had to ask myself when considering the purchase of a range-limited vehicle was - can I do everything I currently can if I were to purchase this new car? So then I had to ask myself - well, what is it I do with my current vehicle? The following were the answers:
1. Drive to and from the train station
2. Go to the shops for weekly groceries
3. On occasion, drive into town to go to work
4. Drive to the gym on Saturday mornings
5. Drive down to my parents at the weekends
6. Drive to Wexford every second week for my cello lesson!
A ha! A problem! Blackwater is only 138km away and in theory the Leaf can do 160km, so there really should be no problem getting down there. But getting back would be an issue! That's when I started to look into charging stations and charging times in a big way. I had to find a station that allowed me to get to Blackwater and back while not deviating too much from my original course or extending my journey too much. Luckily, the town of Arklow has come to my rescue.
Tucked away in the very centre of this medieval town is the site of one of Ireland's 30 fast charging stations. A fast charger allows you to charge your BEV from flat to 80% capacity in 26 minutes. Ok, so this is not as quick as filling up a tank with petrol, but it's better than using the standard home charger and waiting eight hours.
Thus, at a maximum this charging requirement would add 30 minutes per direction, and that is assuming that I would empty the entire battery pack by the time I reached the station. Now, of course, this is not convenient. What would be convenient would be to not have to stop and charge and wait and then go again. But, this is do-able. I can make this relatively minor modification to my plans in order to take full advantage of this technology. I'm sure many of you are asking, but why would you bother putting up with the inconvenience at all? Simple answer - very soon we'll all have no choice.
The other day I was basically paying €30 (149.9c/L) for every 20 litres of petrol. This is becoming more and more expensive and I don't believe the trend is going to reverse. My car will cost between €2 and €4 to charge for 160km. This just cannot compare. So an extra hour onto my journey is worth the save for me. I just hope I can't fit my cello into the passenger seat!
Has anyone ever suggested an electric car with easily swappable batteries? Pay a bit more at the charging station for a fully charged battery than you would for the power, and that way you wouldn't have to take the time-to-charge hit.
ReplyDeleteHello Teragram. The Renault Fluence ZE uses hot-swappable batteries. This is an interesting idea. However, the problem here is one of infrastructue. To set up the infrastructure for charging BEVs is daunting but actually quite doable given the omnipresent nature of electricity in our societies. Such charging stations require no special set up or personnel. However, the set up of specialised centres for battery swapping is a good deal more problematic and extremely costly. It's also worth noting that in the last ten years battery packs have halved in size and doubled in capacity. And only yesterday I was reading about Volkswagen's new concept Bulli MPV (multi person vehicle) which gets 300km to a single charge. If this progress is maintained then in 10 years times BEVs will meet or exceed the current range of piston-engine cars
ReplyDeleteShouldnt the last sentence of your blog read I just hope that I CAN fit my cello into the passenger seat!!???.:):):):)
ReplyDeleteD'oh! You're right Dee! Sawee :)
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