Our push to EV when others in Europe aren't - why?

[CelticRambler]

Branler means to wobble, to shake, to be unsteady.

Not quite: branler implies a controlled repetitive motion or oscillation - to shake one's head, to swing a bell, or indeed a chair that wobbles back and forth on an uneven floor. The dance is the same - a continual back-and-forth movement between the two lines as the men try to seduce the woman in front of them!

Desperately trying to re-rail the thread, I suppose one could argue that pre-pandemic commuting to the exclusion of a meaningful social life would fit within this description.

[dawg]

....The Branle de Noirmoutier is a great dance, that I will forever associate with ...

I dont know where Noirmoutier is but I do know that there is a Moutier in the french speaking part of Switzerland ( I knew someone who came from there ). Might the full name of the dance indicate how a True Frenchman views the people of Moutier

[dawg]

Serious question: is there any demographic analysis of whether EVs are more commonly used now by males or females? One hundred years ago, the first EVs were dealt a fatal blow by being seen as a woman's car ...

Anecdotally, ladies tend to be more reluctant to buy an EV than men but when they do experience driving one they like very much .
Its usual that anyone who drives an EV for any sort of time at all will be very reluctant to change back to ICE.
The things are just so darned nice to drive

[Hairy-Joe]

IME most EVs in Spain are owned by state bodies.
Chargers are carefully located with the compounds of said bodies.
The Spanish know how to run things

You know, you're right on that. Spotted my first EV, a rather battered Renault Kangoo EV with Burgos town council stickers plastered all over it.

[dawg]

You know, you're right on that. ....

Indeed ! ( Its hard to believe but my post was not in jest )

[Peregrinus]

Even leaving EVs aside, there are very definite sex-linked preferences when it comes to selecting makes and models of car.

It would be interesting to compare the demographics of those who buy/drive EVs against those who buy/drive the most similar non-electric models. That would tend to filter out sex-linked preferences regarding vehicle size, appearance, function, etc and highlight any preferences regarding the propulsion system specifically. But I don't know whether that data exists, or whether it would be easily compiled, given that the person in whose name a car is registered and the person who mostly drives it (and may have chosen it) are not necessarily the same, and given that so many cars are registered to businesses or limited companies.

[Peregrinus]

Not quite: branler implies a controlled repetitive motion or oscillation - to shake one's head, to swing a bell, or indeed a chair that wobbles back and forth on an uneven floor. The dance is the same - a continual back-and-forth movement between the two lines as the men try to seduce the woman in front of them!

Does it work? Asking for a friend.

[Cyclepath]

Serious question: is there any demographic analysis of whether EVs are more commonly used now by males or females? One hundred years ago, the first EVs were dealt a fatal blow by being seen as a woman's car - Real Men wouldn't stoop so low as to use a push-button starter when they could stoop even lower to crank the engine by hand. And a noisy engine was as much an expression of ones testosterone levels and the length of ones moustaches (still the case in some quarters ... )

In these more modern times, have EVs become a must-have gadget for mid-life men, are they a handy low-cost runabout for the little woman at home, or have they become a genuinely viable, mainstream choice by mainstream new-car purchasers regardless of demographic background?

Anecdotal evidence only, but the only people I know that have bought EVs were men. I've also seen a few EV taxis lately too (driven by men) - all Nissan Leafs. Interesting note also, one friend of mine actually traded in his BMW i3 and went back to a hybrid Toyota due to recharging infrastructure issues and the poor range of the early i3s.

[Hairy-Joe]

Well I found three charge points today at a service station on the A66 outside Caceres here in Spain. They were not in use but I did spot a VW IDsomething coming into the station as I was leaving.

[dawg]

But did it have Spanish plates ?

[Hairy-Joe]

But did it have Spanish plates ?

Well I didn't really look as I was more worried about avoiding the two 40 foot trucks that were barreling in the entrance.....

[dawg]

Good Call

[Hairy-Joe]

Good Call

I'm driving my own right hand drive camper and I'm conscious of everything is backwards when driving on the continent. What I'd be worried about more is when something happens in front of me I'll default to home based driving muscle memory to avoid rather than doing the correct thing.

Also, spotted another Kangoo EV stickered up with the local authority of Avila this morning.

[dawg]

I'm driving my own right hand drive camper and I'm conscious of everything is backwards when driving on the continent. What I'd be worried about more is when something happens in front of me I'll default to home based driving muscle memory to avoid rather than doing the correct thing....

Oh! I've done that

For me a great issue if at all fatigued

[Hairy-Joe]

Well blow me down! I finally saw a EV being charged out in the "wilds" here in Spain!

I popped into a Mercadona here in Merida to do a bit of grocery shopping. There was three EV chargers outside the door and there was a VW e-Up! being charged!

[dawg]

Well blow me down! I finally saw a EV being charged out in the "wilds" here in Spain! ...

[Luíghne]

If everybody in Ireland switched their private car to a EV over the next 6 months to a year. I wonder could our national grid keep up with the demand?

[Peregrinus]

If everybody in Ireland switched their private car to a EV over the next 6 months to a year. I wonder could our national grid keep up with the demand?

Well, we should note that the hypothesis is wildly unrealistic. If "everybody in Ireland switched their private car to a EV over the next 6 months to a year" the most pressing question would not be whether the electricity grid could cope, but whether the motor trade could. Complete turnover of the national fleet in the space of 6-12 months is never, ever going to happen, so it's not something we have to plan for.

But the general question is a good one; what are the implications for the electricity market of a large-scale shift to EVs?

Haven't seen any Irish figures, but for Europe as a whole someone has calculated that, when 80% of all passenger cars are EVs, electricity consumption will rise by 10-15%. If we assume that's true for Ireland, then we need to plan to find 10-15% additional generating capacity over whatever period of time we project it will take to reach the 80% mark. That's not 6-12 months, obviously.

A lot of passenger EV charging will of course take place at home, and much of it can take place overnight, when demand on power is otherwise low, so we don't need 10-15% more power stations; we may cover some of the extra demand with currently unused night-time generating capacity in existing stations.

[Calahonda52]

SEAI see 80% of charging at home, and the load will be restricted to 7kW or so on single phase.
The rollout of smart meters will allow load management
pricing will determine that its done off peak.
EV batteries can be used to flatten peak demand

[Luíghne]

I was been provocative with the 6 to 12 months thing for the sake of debate. I was curious to know how an increase in the demand for EVs would have on our grid. In time most houses will need a minimum of 2 and in some cases up to 4 charging points. So that will be interesting. I'd imagine there will be a big push to PV panels and battery back up for charging EVs

[Peregrinus]

I didn't mean to imply that you thought 6-12 months was realistic. I thought you were raising a good point, but it needed to be reframed in a less artificial and unrealistic way.

I'm not sure that solar panels make a lot of sense for home charging, given that I suspect that this will mostly happen at night. As for battery storage, I'm not sure that it makes a lot of sense to charge up battery A at your home in order to drain battery A by using it to charge battery B in your car. A more rational technology might be to have interchangeable batteries, so that you can drive on one battery while another is charging, and just swap them out whenever you need. Swapping batteries could be as routine as filling up is now.

But I don't think this is going to be a huge issue for private motoring. Your typical commuter driver can charge up overnight, at home, off the grid, no problem. It'll be a bigger issue when it comes to electrifying commercial vehicles that see a lot of mileage, or carry a lot of weight. or both.

[CelticRambler]

As for battery storage, I'm not sure that it makes a lot of sense to charge up battery A at your home in order to drain battery A by using it to charge battery B in your car.

One could make the same case against conventional power generation - it doesn't make a lot of sense to burn fossil fuels under a giant kettle of water to generate steam to turn a turbine to produce electricity, which is then transmitted tens (or hundreds) of miles through cables and substations, losing a significant proportion of its power in the process, to end up being used to boil a kettle of water on somebody's kitchen worktop.

As for overnight charging, that's a point that gets pushed a lot, but there are an awful lot of privately owned cars that sit in the one place all day long too. I'm still scratching my head as to the logic of giving planning permission for huge fields of solar panels, and building whole barns in the countryside just to have a structure on which to place a great swathe of panels - yet almost nobody is putting a solar roof over the millions of hectares of bare tarmac of out-of-town shopping centre carparks. Not only would this give protection from rain, snow, and sun to the vehicles and shoppers underneath but such an arrangement could be designed with dozens of top-up charging spaces.

[Peregrinus]

I think the idea is that smart meters will be capable of charging the vehicle at the optimum time. While your car is parked at home or at work it won't charge at the times that you decide to charge it, but at the times that it decides are optimal, given its current level of charge, its usage pattern, the cost of power at any time of day, etc. Of course, you can override this and charge whenever you like, but why would you do this other than exceptionally, when letting the smart meter choose the timing will save you money?

As for covering over car parks and putting solar panels on top, you could do that right now and feed the energy back into the grid. The alternative of feeding the energy to a few dozen charging points doesn't really alter the economics of the situation - in fact, it makes it less attractive, if car park patrons expect to charge for free. And the reason people don't do it now, I suspect, is not the cost of the solar panels; it's the much greater cost of roofing the car park. It makes much more sense to put solar panels on existing buildings than to erect buildings mainly to put solar panels on them.

[CelticRambler]

And the reason people don't do it now, I suspect, is not the cost of the solar panels; it's the much greater cost of roofing the car park. It makes much more sense to put solar panels on existing buildings than to erect buildings mainly to put solar panels on them.

It's probably a difference between Ireland and the Continent, but that's exactly what's done here (France): buildings erected in fields and farmyards for the single purpose of roofing them with solar panels. The land owner is allowed use the space underneath for his/her own purposes as long as it doesn't interfere with the primary function of power generation.

Somewhat paradoxically, as a regular home-owner, it's damn near impossible to get an existing roof fully replaced with solar panels if it exceeds the paltry 20m² for which a tax credit is available.

[Calahonda52]

I was been provocative with the 6 to 12 months thing for the sake of debate. I was curious to know how an increase in the demand for EVs would have on our grid. In time most houses will need a minimum of 2 and in some cases up to 4 charging points. So that will be interesting. I'd imagine there will be a big push to PV panels and battery back up for charging EVs

Why 4 CPs:
Batteries in cars will say max out at 100kW.
Max charging will be say 7 kW per hour, (either limited by car or fuse board) maybe less if there is a heat pump
All four cars won't be empty every night
the cheap rate window is nine hours
Anyway you won't get 4 by 7 in the house
I am fitting a zappone (7Kw max determined by the car) for the id 3 and the old e-cars one for the leaf (3.2 kw max on the CP) with load management across both