I don't believe the problem, is just politicians they may well be to blame for the position we find ourselves in though.
Battery powered cars have been around for over a century and the problem has always been the same, the energy and delivery capabilities of the electrical storage and the speed that they can be “refilled”
Imagine the situation where you could only run your car on fuel from a specific oil company that would be crazy.
Imagine it taking 30 mins to fill your car with conventional fuels crazier.
It seems obvious to me that a non manufacturer specific battery cassette is the way to go, it should have been implemented years ago.
A cassette of batteries FFS!
Oil companies produce fossil fuels (stored energy) to a standard that allow us to fill up at any gas station. So why not have a standardised method of delivering the battery power stored energy too.
At present we have a silly situation that means battery packs are not interchangeable between manufacturers/models and so require “electric filling stations” with fast chargers, if you call 30mins fast, this stifles development and introduction.
A standard battery cassette would allow fast change rounds, swapping would be accomplished automatically by machine at gas stations. If that sounds out of the ball park just look at Amazon and logistics companies for ideas.
Combine this with a different ownership model and you could start rolling out practical usable vehicles in a few years maybe sooner if it were trialed/adopted in public transports like black cabs. In years to come we may well develop other methods but for now this will do.
The biggest expense in the cost of short term ownership is the initial purchase price of the vehicle, longer term it`s replacement of knackered batteries and depreciation..
If a different model of ownership were introduced too then the uptake would increase rapidly. Think of the cost of the vehicle if it were bought sans batteries.
A battery leasing programme along the lines of the gas cylinders we use in our vans and barbecues maybe? An initial contract and then just the refill charge at each swap out.
You would retain the agreement for leasing of the batteries for the next "new" model and so it would stimulate vehicle sales and go someway to offsetting the depreciation.
I completely understand the motor manufacturers reluctance to go along with this.
For years, as anyone in the motor trade will tell you, they have actively lobbied and sought ways to keep the servicing and repair of their vehicles “in house”.
Ironically it was the EU that legislated against the this by introducing a freedom to repair policy and the release of information to enable that unless the information was related to safety.
It is not surprising how manufacturers are combining this repair info with “Safety info" since that legislation came into effect.
Many owners of new vehicles still believe that the manufacturer has to carry out the servicing in the first three years else they would invalidate the warranty!
Back to the plot..
All this would need legislation that required electric vehicles to be able to use these standardised cassettes, this is where the politicians should be working not patching up, imposing restrictions and tolls directly on the motorist. The money raised by these schemes tends to be local and so is fragmented that the best they can achieve is small scale change and not the fundamental one, fossil fuels.
Governments should be actively working with, by that I mean forcing by legislation, electric vehicle manufacturers, to adopt a cassette battery standard.
This would require big bucks and probably state funding.
EU regs say that government, with the exception of the banks and
Renault it would seem,
cannot have extended interests directly.
When we had the Rover fiasco we had a great opportunity to get that back at least partially, into state control .
Hopefully when we are out of the EU we will be able to direct our tax money in a more appropriate way.
As for aircraft I seem to remember (but cannot find it) that FOTE said the amount of nano particulates emitted by one aircraft in the take off stage was equal to 300 unregulated diesel lorries running flat out for seven minutes ( I think this was the average plane take off time) that was some time ago and I hear the mantra by the aircraft/airport business lobby that they are becoming cleaner but not by much, maybe 100 lorries worth?
We have these taking off every 30 secs at Heathrow and Gatwick and soon Lydd.
Incidentally its not the planet that we are currently killing its just the living things on it.
Remember the Dinosaurs.
Helen for world leader!!
Rant over.
