No petrol or diesel cars from 2040.

[fest0r]

I work with two British companies that would disagree and when I said 2-3 years I meant actually shipping units… not just prototypes.

I could easily be wrong and we can always agree to differ but I’m not the only one: graphene battery - Google Search

[Crasher]

I am not holding my breath, there are downsides (recycling, sensitivity, lifespan) and we STILL don't have the generating capacity to charge them.

[Phutters]

Electric only vehicles will pull into a car park/driveway for embedded wireless charging or plug in for a full charge that takes less time than filling up with conventional fuel.

What about all the people - and there are one or two - who have no option but to park on the street, and quite often nowhere near their own houses?

Are they not allowed to have an electric-only car?

Or maybe the gummint will have ordered city councils to have installed all the infrastructure necessary to allow kerbside wireless charging for everybody who has an electric-only car, wants one or is obliged to buy one by the early 2040s.

I can't really see any logistical, financial or administrative problems arising from that, can you?

A piece of cake.

Dig up miles and miles of urban roads and footpaths along streets which are barely wide enough for the existing vehicles?

A doddle. Just get everybody who spends ten minutes trying to find somewhere to park within a five minute walk of their own house every night to park somewhere else while the roads are dug up for weeks on end.

You can't bar people from owning an electric car because there's nowhere to charge it. For this to work, access to the technology has to be available right across the board, and not just to people who have a nice new house with a nice tegula-paved two-car driveway, two and a bit children and a garage door that goes up when you press a button on your key fob.

Or maybe councils will install kerbside charging bollards every few yards, each one fitted with a couple of self-retracting cables to catch out unwary late-night revellers, unsteady old-age pensioners or people with pushchairs. And there's clearly no danger of yobs unplugging stuff, or tying knots in the cables 'cos it's well cool.

I'm sure it can be done. No, really. This country's recent history is bursting at the seams with triumphs of infrastructure engineering which have made life so much better for all its inhabitants. Things like Crossrail. And... erm...

We've got twenty three years to get it all sorted out. It'll be fine. When I look round our town, I marvel at the changes that have happened in the past twenty-three years, never mind the next.

There's the pothole down the road that finally got filled. The bulb in the light over the crossroads sign just round the corner which was changed. The fire brigade got a swanky new garage for their fire engines (though there didn't seem to be much wrong with the old one), and the railway station got a new coat of paint. Astonishing. The landscape has been utterly transformed.

Anything is possible. We're standing wide-eyed in wonderment as the dawn of a new era lights up the sky in front of us.

Init.

.

[fest0r]

Just to clarify, this is not my proposal, or even what I want What I’m suggesting is that by 2040, an electric vehicle will have a much, much longer range and easily charged (at a converted petrol station) in less time it takes to fill up with fuel… no need for charging at home. Just like there is no need for home/kerbside filling stations today. If you can pull up at a Tesco car park and charge while shopping, it will just be a bonus... if supermarkets still exist

People seem to be applying current technology to this for some reason. I think they have come a long way when you consider they have been fighting against a huge money machine. Exxon Mobil (on their own) have spent over $200mil lobbying in the past 10 years… just in the USA

Look at how far the smartphone has come in 10 years. Truly embedded in the culture and spawned numerous disruptive technologies. With Volvo and (Fiat owned) Maserati already going hybrid/electric I’m not sure we will have the option of anything else by 2030 never mind 2040… maybe an Aston?

[Deanoc]

Electric cars first appeared about the same time as IC engine cars. They have not taken over in nearly 150 years so there is no danger of it happening in the next 23.

Who's to say 20 years of development won't make the IC engine cleaner than burning coal and oil in a powerstation. I mean sit behind a 20 year old Vauxhall cavalier and it's plain to see (smell) that things have moved on.

It's fine experimenting as we are now but there are just several fundermental issues that are too big to solve in that timeframe if you dream of going 100% electric. We dont have enough electricity (imagine millions of people switching on a 12kw supply at 6pm after work!), we dont have anywhere to charge them, they are rubbish, there would be a real challenge getting that much lithium out of the ground.

And on our history of infrastructure change as mentioned above. I mean christ it takes 5 years to turn the hard shoulder of the M3 into a lane and call it a smart motorway

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[fest0r]

I hope something does come along to revolutionise conventional engines. At the moment we are far too dependent on oil and whoever can supply it. If we can dramatically cut that requirement while keeping the internal combustion engine it would be great… more choice is better.

In my humble opinion, EV technology hasn’t had any substantial, sustained investment until the mid-nineties. Even then, it was only a tiny fraction of any conventional R&D budgets. Prior to that, technology and projects were bought up and mothballed or actively blocked. I think a big driver (pardon the pun) was the California ZEV Mandate… 2% of vehicles by 1998 and 10% by 2003. It was heavily lobbied against, watered down and GM even sued the California Air Resources Board with the backing of the Bush administration. Remember GM’s EV1 smokescreen project? The real game changer in public perception was the Prius in 1997. It was obviously never going to win over petrol heads, but it brought hybrid technology to the mainstream and other manufacturers wanted a piece of the pie.

Roll on to 2006 and the launch of the Tesla Roadster. I think Musk has transformed the sector and made EV’s desirable even to petrol heads… he has some other very interesting infrastructure projects going too.

Seeing as it’s a proposal to go 100% hybrid or electric I think it’s quite a generous timeframe. If things don’t work out and nothing really advances then I suspect it will dramatically favour the hybrid setup.

[FrenchAudi]

Maybe it would work if the batteries are standardised, rented, and designed to be quickly installed and removed, so that you just swap your almost-flat battery for a charged one at the service station. If you run out of juice on the road you pay for a tow, or to have a charged battery hauled out to you.

Service stations would need large power supplies and storage facilities, and machines to move the batteries around, none of which would be particularly difficult even today.

[fest0r]

Absolutely, but that might mean the government would need to play a bigger role

Tesla’s battery swap program (for the S) has been pretty much cancelled. The process only took 90 sec, but after an invite to a few hundred owners there was only handful of users. The others were happy with the Superchargers. Coupled with the upcoming version of the Tesla Supercharger bringing the time down do 5 min it probably wouldn’t be viable financially or logistically.

It’s not just Tesla obviously. Audi, Porsche, Ford, BMW and Mercedes are deploying around 400 stations (initially) throughout Europe rated at 350 kW… over twice that of Tesla’s current 145 kW Supercharger.

Elon Musk wants to power the US off of solar - Business Insider

“If you wanted to power the entire U.S. with solar panels, it would take a fairly small corner of Nevada or Texas or Utah; you only need about 100 miles by 100 miles of solar panels to power the entire United States,” Musk said. “The batteries you need to store the energy, to make sure you have 24/7 power, is 1 mile by 1 mile. One square-mile. That’s it.”

Obviously you wouldn’t locate this all on one site, but it’s a good example of an alternative big picture. Not sure if the SolarCity venture will work out for him, but I genuinely believe that Elon Musk is a bit of a visionary and nobody could argue he is beholden to big oil.

[Whippy53]

We need to standardise the charging system, agree on a standard industry wide and go with that. Fuel companies would then simply charge for power drawn. A development of the supercharger system would be a good first step. Lots of them in France, lot of Teslas as well! Just have to provide the power is all. Get the range and efficiency right and it's not a problem, no-one refuels their diesel at home.

[Crasher]

Lots of them in France, lot of Teslas as well! Just have to provide the power is all.

France generates all its electricity by nuclear power, we need at least 10 new nuclear power stations to catch up and look at the storm just getting one STARTED, never mind built, has caused.