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Cont: Electric Vehicles II

Well, I don't suppose most people commonly drive from one end of their country to the other. A quick Google found one source which suggests the average commuting distance in Norway is less than half that in the US. Will that do?
Nope. Your claim was that Norway achieved a high rate of EV use because 'early adopters' didn't generally drive long distances. The reality is a bit different.

How Norway came to lead the charge in the EV revolution
According to Solberg Thorsen, Norway’s electric car journey began in earnest in the 1990s, when the country started supporting Think, a homegrown compact electric vehicle designed primarily for urban driving that Ford Motor owned for a few years.

At the time, Think "managed to persuade the Norwegian government to give them subsidies and to make the electric car exempt from all the car taxes," he explained. "Electric cars drove for free on the toll roads, had free parking, and free access to the ferries".

Battery-electric vehicles were also exempted from value-added and import taxes, which are traditionally high on cars in Norway...

Initially, however, battery electric cars struggled to gain traction, "and it wasn't until the market introduction of Tesla Model S [in 2012-2013] that things really started to happen," said Solberg Thorsen, who has led the Norwegian Road Federation since 2006.

The Think City electric car had a relatively short range of 160 kilometres, and a top speed of around 100 km/h, while the Tesla S offered approximately 426 km on a single charge with a top speed of 209 km/h - along with more space and more luxurious features.

As the Tesla Model S gradually built its success, other car producers saw an opportunity and they too started to introduce battery electric cars.

"Then it all exploded," said Solberg Thorsen.
In 2011 the Nissan Leaf had an EPA rated range of 117 km. In 2012 the Tesla Models S was rated at 426 km. That was the 'game changer' that caused Norwegian EV adoption to take off. Of course it also helped that Norway got in early with EV incentives, but they weren't the only ones. The US has has had a federal tax credit for EVs since 2008, as well as significant incentives and penalties to encourage auto makers to make EVs. But petrol was very cheap in the US, so fuel savings weren't so much of an incentive.

OTOH in New Zealand the government did nothing to encourage EV adoption apart from exempting them from the Road User Charge (currently NZ$0.076 per km). What helped in New Zealand was the importation of used cars from Japan, which included the Nissan Leaf. The Leaf went on sale here in 2011 for NZ$60,000 new, which was a high price for a car back then. Used Leafs commonly sell for ~NZ$10,000 (US$5,500) for one with 80% battery health. But just like in Norway the low range limits its appeal.

When I bought my 2011 Leaf 6 years ago it had a real-world range of 95km. Now it's down to ~75km (or would be if I hadn't replaced the tires with cheap ones that knocked 7% off the range!), which is enough for me because I am retired now and don't drive long distances. It wouldn't be enough for most people though. Now the government has removed the RUC exemption and is also making me pay a higher ACC (accident compensation) levy. With that messaging EV sales are low in New Zealand, despite still being about half the cost to run as a typical gas car. Perhaps now that petrol is costing over $2.70 per litre and EVs are getting cheaper they might become more popular, but kiwis are cautious creatures who take a long time to accept new things (both the birds and the people).
 
Nope. Your claim was ...
My *suspicion* was. Don't give it a big buildup. I'm not trying to rewrite history. I suspected the main factors were wealth and not driving so far as some other nations. If being wealthy enough to afford big incentives was the single predominant cause then I'm fine with that.
 
My *suspicion* was. Don't give it a big buildup. I'm not trying to rewrite history. I suspected the main factors were wealth and not driving so far as some other nations. If being wealthy enough to afford big incentives was the single predominant cause then I'm fine with that.
I think you're right about the wealth factor not least because it has also allowed Norway to invest heavily in their charging infrastructure so running an EV, even if you cannot easily charge at home, is comparatively easy.

As regards commuting distance, that may or may not be a major factor. Not too many people commute further than their EV rechargeable distance. Mindset may be more of a factor. I have friends who travel 30,000+ miles a year in their electric vehicles and don't report big issues with charging. I also have friends who don't drive far at all who won't even consider an EV because once in a blue moon they go 200+ miles. If one is determined to drive an EV then the charging issues become features and you adapt (one friend stops every 3 hours or so on long journeys to recharge the car, have a break and empty the dog) and adopt new habits. OTOH if you're determined to want an ICE vehicle then you'll find some aspect of EV ownership which is a deal breaker. I'm reminded of my late father and incandescent bulbs; no matter how good the LED, he would insist that the light was of the wrong quality.
 
... I'm reminded of my late father and incandescent bulbs; no matter how good the LED, he would insist that the light was of the wrong quality.
In the few years when compact fluorescent bulbs were 'the future' he'd certainly have had a point. I have a nagging feeling more people would moan about how inadequate LED lamps are if it wasn't for the dramatic improvement over the awful, sickly light from compact fluorescents.
 
In the few years when compact fluorescent bulbs were 'the future' he'd certainly have had a point. I have a nagging feeling more people would moan about how inadequate LED lamps are if it wasn't for the dramatic improvement over the awful, sickly light from compact fluorescents.
There was a time when the energy efficient options were definitely inferior; I remember saying that turning on the light made things seem darker.
 
In the few years when compact fluorescent bulbs were 'the future' he'd certainly have had a point. I have a nagging feeling more people would moan about how inadequate LED lamps are if it wasn't for the dramatic improvement over the awful, sickly light from compact fluorescents.

I was one who stocked up on incandescent bulbs during these few years (partly because my mother, who had glaucoma, couldn't see with the compact fluorescent ones). I bought too many and was still using them till last year. Then I had a damn good look at my electricity usage (prompted by my having installed a solar panel system, itself prompted by the EV) and became a reformed character. The remaining incandescent bulbs were given to a neighbour who gets migraines from LED bulbs. I honestly barely notice any difference, if anything the LED bulbs are slightly brighter than the bulbs they replaced.
 
In the few years when compact fluorescent bulbs were 'the future' he'd certainly have had a point. I have a nagging feeling more people would moan about how inadequate LED lamps are if it wasn't for the dramatic improvement over the awful, sickly light from compact fluorescents.


I don't see any difference between old 'incandescent' bulbs and LED apart from lower running cost.
Why do you think they are 'inadequate'?
 
I don't see any difference between old 'incandescent' bulbs and LED apart from lower running cost.
Why do you think they are 'inadequate'?
My house, in fact, got brighter, because I would replace 60W incandescents with 100W equivalent CFL's, which which not only lasted longer and used less power but gave more light. Win-win-win.
 
In the few years when compact fluorescent bulbs were 'the future' he'd certainly have had a point. I have a nagging feeling more people would moan about how inadequate LED lamps are if it wasn't for the dramatic improvement over the awful, sickly light from compact fluorescents.
Which is the same light any fluorescent tube puts out. The same light used in shops and offices everywhere. The difference is those lights are kept going most of the time, so the few seconds needed to reach full brightness isn't noticed.

LEDs are much better though. They have no warmup period and lifespan isn't reduced by cycling. They have a broader spectrum that produces more 'natural' color, and some can be adjusted to different color temperatures.

Today I installed LED light bars above the benches in my workroom. They are switchable to 300k, 400k, or 500k color temperature. The longer one is switchable between 16W, 24W and 32W, and the shorter ones between 12W, 15W and 18W. Even at the lowest power setting they are more than bright enough - way better than fluorescent tubes! And they were very cheap - less than NZ$40 (~US$22) for the '4 ft' 1200mm light. I wanted to compare the price to a conventional fluorescent batten light, but couldn't find one online. Everybody has switched to LEDs!

Eventually the same will happen to cars. You won't find any for sale new. The few who are sticking with their old gas cars will have to go across town to get filled up, and may even suffer from 'range anxiety' due to the small number of gas stations around. This is already happening in Norway. I'm no stranger to that either since I used to live on a farm 27 miles away from the nearest gas station (better make sure you have at least 54 miles in the tank when you leave town!).
 
I don't see any difference between old 'incandescent' bulbs and LED apart from lower running cost.
Why do you think they are 'inadequate'?
I don't think they're inadequate, I think more people would complain they were if we hadn't had something much worse to compare. I do think they're not quite as good. They don't give the full spectrum of light that an incandescent does, they emit a selection of individual colours which our eyes blend into a version of white. The lamp looks white but using it to illuminate a coloured object needn't necessarily give quite a true colour compared to daylight.

I'm not advocating a return to using a 100 watt heater to shed 5 watts of light on a room.
 
When does an incandescent give a 'true colour' for daylight?

Even so called 'daylight' incandescents didn't give a 'true colour' for daylight and their balance shifted as they aged.

Back in the 90s, when I worked for MR Systems in London, one of our frequent jobs for customers with support contracts was going to their studios and re calibrating the monitors on design PCs.

Customers where it was critical invested in their own colour meters and calibration packages.
Some very high end calibrated displays like Radius or Barco had calibration hardware and colour meters built in.
 
When does an incandescent give a 'true colour' for daylight?
I'd not claim that. Only that it's spectrum doesn't have big gaps in it. You can calibrate a monitor to show an even level of light across a broad gamut but that's not the same task as using that simulated white to illuminate objects of particular colours.
 
I don't want light bulbs to mimic daylight. I gather that some people, like my neighbour, have issues with LEDs, but I barely notice any difference between the LEDs I have now and the incandescent bulbs I gave away.
 
Back closer to topic, I see the latest anti-EV trope is that people with a home charger won't be able to get home insurance.
 
Eventually the same will happen to cars. You won't find any for sale new. The few who are sticking with their old gas cars will have to go across town to get filled up, and may even suffer from 'range anxiety' due to the small number of gas stations around…

I think a good analogy is record stores in the 1980’s.

I remember when CD’s first came out. Out record store was virtually all vinyl records and cassettes, with a single end cap with maybe 20 of the newfangled CD’s. But, though gradual in retrospect, it didn’t take long for CD’s to take over. Still, in the U.S. I don’t think gas stations will become somewhat rare for at least a decade or two. But it does seem inevitable, regardless.
 
They won't soon be rare but, like bank branches, you'll suddenly notice they're less easy to find. Petrol stations already make more income from being convenience stores than selling fuel. When fuel sales decline they'll thin out pretty fast. There are 3 within a mile of my house but I doubt that will be true in 5 years.
 
And some of them already have some EV charging stations, and we'll be needing more of those as people who don't have the option of charging at home start to buy EVs.
 
And some of them already have some EV charging stations, and we'll be needing more of those as people who don't have the option of charging at home start to buy EVs.
Connected Kerb is quite common round here. 7kw charging in places you're expected to be most or all of the day using your own charging cable. Pricewise it seems to be the same as, or a little more than, standard rate electricity at home.

A good charging infrastructure is vital for those who don't have their own
 
"Interesting" ... citation please ?

Lee "The MacMaster" Davey is stirring up this trouble on his YouTube channel, and there are shills all over Twitter telling anyone who will listen that insurance companies will not cover a house that has a home charger installed. Here's an example.


And here's Lee's latest episode of Fantasy Island.


This one is also rather fun.

 
There are a lot of vids on EV fires randomly starting in the cities in China, taking a swipe at China and the cars equally.

No background information at all like battery damages or whatever else, just look how bad they are. They aren't burning up randomly in Mexico. Hmm...

A lady that does YT vids on small engine repair will only insult battery anything (brand not mattering) and mention the inevitable fires to come. For her it's gasoline or nothing.
I find gas tools a requirement for remote jobs, but more fiddly than battery by far.

Mine haven't burned up in over a year. And barely heat up when charging. I certainly can't see truth in the scare, wish I could afford more and bigger ones.

On the sidetrack, we went near all LED lighting long ago and it's unusual to need to change a bulb anymore. Bill dropped a lot too.
 
I don't know what's going on in China, but I suspect there are some low-budget cars there with poor BMS. There's probably an explanatory/debunking video about it. Loads of studies showing that ICE cars are 20 to 60 times more likely to catch fire than EVs.

Did you know that most EVs have a "vehicle to load" facility that allows you to drive the car anywhere you like, then plug your electric power tools into the car and run them from the car just as easily as if you were running them from a socket in your house?
 
The danger of fire with EVs is grossly over-rated. Any gasoline powered vehicle is far more susceptible to catching fire. Diesel OTOH, is extremely difficult to catch fire. The problem with EVs is once a Lithium NMC battery catches fire they are extremely difficult to put out. Still, the odds of them catching fire is quite remote.
 
They're not that difficult to put out if the right techniques are used. Fortunately firefighters are learning what works. Most recent discussions say they're no worse than ICE fires, although since ICE fires are horrific themselves, that's not especially reassuring.
 
The danger of fire with EVs is grossly over-rated. Any gasoline powered vehicle is far more susceptible to catching fire.
Diesel OTOH, is extremely difficult to catch fire. The problem with EVs is once a Lithium NMC battery catches fire they are extremely difficult to put out. Still, the odds of them catching fire is quite remote.

A common misconception.

"The flash point of diesel fuel is between 52°C and 96°C (126°F and 205°F). "
 
They're not that difficult to put out if the right techniques are used. Fortunately firefighters are learning what works. Most recent discussions say they're no worse than ICE fires, although since ICE fires are horrific themselves, that's not especially reassuring.
I'd be interested to hear what these techniques are. I know there have been some interesting developments in Sweden (with a particular type of lance attachment), for example, but those have not been adopted in this country yet.
According to my son, the main way to deal with an EV fire in the UK currently (in the unlikely event of one happening) is to let it burn itself out. Putting the vehicle in a skip full of water is another option, but that's rarely practicable, and it's not clear that it actually works.
 
My understanding is that that approach is quite out of date now. It's what you'll probably find if you google for it though. EV battery fires are actually pretty uncommon. Has your son actually dealt with one?
 
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A common misconception.

"The flash point of diesel fuel is between 52°C and 96°C (126°F and 205°F). "

I think the misconception is that the fire starts in the fuel tank. Of course it doesn't. It starts somewhere else in the car, a fault in the 12v electrical system or someone dropped a cigarette end or something, and then the material of the car starts to burn. Lubricating oils, soundproofing, insulation, whatever. Soon there is a good-going inferno, which heats up the fuel tank. These are usually plastic these days, and melt. Extremely hot diesel then escapes and forms what was termed a "running fire" in the Luton report. This diesel is hot enough to burn, and sets nearby cars alight if there are any, rinse and repeat.

EV fires often start in a similar way, though it seems that their makeup makes 12v faults and so on rather less likely to cause fires. They don't have all the lubrication an ICE car has, I suppose. If an EV catches fire this way, the battery often doesn't catch fire at all. The battery in the Cybertruck that was used in a recent sabotage in America was undamaged even though the car itself was filled with fireworks and other explosive materials. Many EVs have been discovered with their batteries intact after being involved in house fires. The car has simply burned around the battery, which is undamaged. In this scenario a burning EV is less dangerous than a burning ICE car, because the fuel isn't contributing to the fire, and the "running fires" don't happen.

The big scary bogeyman scenario is where the battery itself catches fire. This seems to be uncommon. It can happen as a result of the previous scenario, occasionally, or as the result of damage in an accident, or spontaneously. Nevertheless modern batteries are quite hard to damage sufficiently to cause them to go into thermal runaway, and LFP batteries don't do it at all as far as I understand it. Another one is salt water, but again this will only cause a battery fire if the battery is damaged or faulty to begin with. (Shock-horror videos about burning Teslas after the Florida hurricane mainly consisted of multiple clips of the same blue Tesla at different stages of destruction and from different angles.) The Australian body that collects worldwide data on EV fires reports a surprisingly small number of cases of spontaneous thermal runaway going right back to 2010, and most of them seem to have been cars subject to recall for a known fault - principally the Jaguar iPace.

Stuff happens. But if you don't report on ICE fires (they're so common, they're not news) and saturate the media with horror stories about the relatively few EVs that have actually experienced battery fires, a very misleading picture emerges.
 
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The danger of fire with EVs is grossly over-rated. Any gasoline powered vehicle is far more susceptible to catching fire. Diesel OTOH, is extremely difficult to catch fire. The problem with EVs is once a Lithium NMC battery catches fire they are extremely difficult to put out. Still, the odds of them catching fire is quite remote.
That never-ending thread on the car park fire cited some stats showing that ICE vehicles are about 10 times more likely to catch fire. Although it seems obvious that EVs are less prone to fires, I was surprised by the magnitude of the difference.
 
Did you know that most EVs have a "vehicle to load" facility that allows you to drive the car anywhere you like, then plug your electric power tools into the car and run them from the car just as easily as if you were running them from a socket in your house?
Better yet, it allowed me to run our refrigerator, TV, and a few other things when the power went out after Hurricane Milton passed by us. I didn't by our Ioniq 5 as a emergency power backup, but it is really nice to have that option.
 
I use corded yard tools on small area yards but don't want a car. I would prefer a road legal golf cart car ( my wife would hate it and me) for my business. Right now I am making bigger cash on a full time job unrelated to that to enable me to tool up faster.
A solar charged battery backup unit with ac converter would be ideal to get started. Small enough to hand cart to jobs, enough to recharge batteries during.

A real issue with not using gasoline tools is I am leaving double the money basically unattended somewhere as I work. Electric stuff does cost more to get it to a a level to complete bigger jobs. Spare batteries and all related.
 
Did you know that most EVs have a "vehicle to load" facility that allows you to drive the car anywhere you like, then plug your electric power tools into the car and run them from the car just as easily as if you were running them from a socket in your house?
Most current models, I would guess, rather than most EVs. My 2022 model Kia doesn't do it, but the next newer model did, IIRC.
 
I think the misconception is that the fire starts in the fuel tank. Of course it doesn't. It starts somewhere else in the car, a fault in the 12v electrical system or someone dropped a cigarette end or something, and then the material of the car starts to burn. Lubricating oils, soundproofing, insulation, whatever. Soon there is a good-going inferno, which heats up the fuel tank. These are usually plastic these days, and melt. Extremely hot diesel then escapes and forms what was termed a "running fire" in the Luton report. This diesel is hot enough to burn, and sets nearby cars alight if there are any, rinse and repeat.

EV fires often start in a similar way, though it seems that their makeup makes 12v faults and so on rather less likely to cause fires. They don't have all the lubrication an ICE car has, I suppose. If an EV catches fire this way, the battery often doesn't catch fire at all. The battery in the Cybertruck that was used in a recent sabotage in America was undamaged even though the car itself was filled with fireworks and other explosive materials. Many EVs have been discovered with their batteries intact after being involved in house fires. The car has simply burned around the battery, which is undamaged. In this scenario a burning EV is less dangerous than a burning ICE car, because the fuel isn't contributing to the fire, and the "running fires" don't happen.

The big scary bogeyman scenario is where the battery itself catches fire. This seems to be uncommon. It can happen as a result of the previous scenario, occasionally, or as the result of damage in an accident, or spontaneously. Nevertheless modern batteries are quite hard to damage sufficiently to cause them to go into thermal runaway, and LFP batteries don't do it at all as far as I understand it. Another one is salt water, but again this will only cause a battery fire if the battery is damaged or faulty to begin with. (Shock-horror videos about burning Teslas after the Florida hurricane mainly consisted of multiple clips of the same blue Tesla at different stages of destruction and from different angles.) The Australian body that collects worldwide data on EV fires reports a surprisingly small number of cases of spontaneous thermal runaway going right back to 2010, and most of them seem to have been cars subject to recall for a known fault - principally the Jaguar iPace.

Stuff happens. But if you don't report on ICE fires (they're so common, they're not news) and saturate the media with horror stories about the relatively few EVs that have actually experienced battery fires, a very misleading picture emerges.
I've dealt with dozens of engine fires. Never with a diesel. If you put a match to diesel fuel, it's not going to light. Whereas gasoline fumes and a match will start a fire. But, yes most fires in an engine bay are started with an electrical short.
 
Actually there are plenty videos on YouTube where people put a match to diesel and lo and behold, it lights. But that's not relevant anyway, because the fire doesn't start with spontaneous ignition of the liquid fuel, petrol or diesel, but elsewhere in the car, and by the time that fire has caused the plastic fuel tank to melt, its contents are way hot enough to ignite.
 
Actually there are plenty videos on YouTube where people put a match to diesel and lo and behold, it lights. But that's not relevant anyway, because the fire doesn't start with spontaneous ignition of the liquid fuel, petrol or diesel, but elsewhere in the car, and by the time that fire has caused the plastic fuel tank to melt, its contents are way hot enough to ignite.
I have tried and unless you stand there and hold the flame to diesel fuel it won't light. But diesel fuel definitely burns.

 
Well, yes, you do have to hold the match to the fuel. But it's irrelevant. That's not how diesel car fires start.
 
I've dealt with dozens of engine fires. Never with a diesel. If you put a match to diesel fuel, it's not going to light. Whereas gasoline fumes and a match will start a fire. But, yes most fires in an engine bay are started with an electrical short.
On the farm we used a diesel-fueled cooker to make dog food. Guess I must have imagined starting it with a match. It's harder to get started than petrol and doesn't have the same tendency to explode, but burns well enough.

Engine oil is also known to cause fires if it leaks. Ford had continuous problems with its hybrid engines seizing and cracking the case, releasing oil into the engine bay. In 2023 they recalled 125,000 vehicles, and applied a 'fix' that consisted of drilling holes through the shield below the engine so liquids could run out onto the road. This didn't fix the problem, which was made worse in their hybrids because the vehicle would switch to electric and keep going for miles after the engine seized.
 
Stuff happens. But if you don't report on ICE fires (they're so common, they're not news) and saturate the media with horror stories about the relatively few EVs that have actually experienced battery fires, a very misleading picture emerges.
ICE fires do get reported if they are 'newsworthy', but aren't accompanied by headlines like 'this is why EV's are so dangerous'. If it's a Tesla the headline will always include this information too, because the News Media won't miss any opportunity to stick the boot into Elon Musk This goes at least as far back as 2016.
 
I did a search one day to see if I could find information about a car fire that had been tweeted out as a traffic warning a few days previously. I just put in the number of the road and the words "vehicle fire". I was deluged with reports of fires on that road, all ICE, going back a few years. Most of the reports were in local newspapers and had headlines like "bus route diverted on Tuesday" or "local mum's lucky escape". None of them had been picked up by national newspapers.

I then tried to be a bit more specific to find out what the score was, and found out not just about the Vauxhall Zafira, which had a recall that was widely publicised, but things like the Mercedes A-class, which included the account of one woman whose car had caught fire and she was given another identical car while they looked at her original one, and it caught fire too! There was a BMW model that was used as a police car which had so many incidents, including the death of a policeman in a car that caught fire while he was driving it, that the police stopped using it. Also this.


The main EV recall I know about is the Jaguar iPace - I suppose JLR didn't want their EV to feel left out of the tradition of the manufacturer. There has also been a recent advisory for the Porsche Taycan, although I've not heard about any Taycans which have actually caught fire. EV fires do happen. Just an awful lot less often than ICE fires. But we've got to the point where any news of a car fire is greeted with a horde of people insisting it must be an EV and if anyone says it isn't they're involved in a cover-up (q.v. the thread on the Luton Airport fire). Last week there was a bus fire in (I think) Southport, and half of Twitter was screaming that it must be an electric bus, even after the local MP intervened and said all the buses in Southport were diesel (and he should know, because he'd been trying to get them to introduce electric buses with no success).
 
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