S2C Forum Archives
Main Section => Welcome to our virtual Pub Meeting ... => Topic started by: Genem on December 27, 2020, 10:45:38 AM
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Of interest in the debate about the future of the infernal combustion engine. Lithium Ion battery packs have fallen by almost 90% in price in 10 years, with further price reductions in sight as technology changes....solid state batteries expected to be 40% the cost of Lithium....
https://about.bnef.com/blog/battery-pack-prices-cited-below-100-kwh-for-the-first-time-in-2020-while-market-average-sits-at-137-kwh/
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I'm very much looking forward to an affordable electric conversion suitable for a series. Cheap batteries are a key part of the puzzle so this is good news :cheers
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I’m sure any electric conversion on a series Land Rover will immediately loose its MOT exemption and I wonder what other charges will come down the line for electric cars as the government loose the tax income from petrol, diesel and road tax
:shakeinghead
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I’m sure any electric conversion on a series Land Rover will immediately loose its MOT exemption and I wonder what other charges will come down the line for electric cars as the government loose the tax income from petrol, diesel and road tax
:shakeinghead
An MOT is £35, or about half a tank of fuel. I'll not lose sleep about that.
Undoubtedly the taxation on electric cars will increase, if there's one thing we can be sure of it's that the government will try and claw back any losses from fossil fuel taxes. Doesn't put me off - loads of torque, very controllable at low speed, and virtually silent. I think an electric drivetrain would be amazing in a series.
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Could I ask what is the current price or anticipated price of converting a series to electric operation.
I have seen TV programs covering conversions of classics but the costs are not cheap and perhaps beyond the means of many of us :thud
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Depends when you want to do it surely. The article suggests that one of the most expensive parts of EV construction now costs 10% of what it cost 10 years ago, that the next generation of technology will be less than half that ... graph those numbers out and at some point around next May they'll be paying us to do the job....
:-X
4 individual electric motors and gearing where the brake drums sit now, direct drive on each wheel allowing superb Torque control, great ground clearance as most tranmission components can be removed, steering delivered by hydraulics or some sort of "portal axle" arrangement, relatively simple controls to split the power across the 4 wheel stations, battery pack a nice flat space to put a load-bed or seating above, the potential for a very good off-road vehicle is high. You'd not want to destroy a good working example of a classic - but those decent body panels currently sittting on a rusted out chassis behind the shed could find a new home ?
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Could I ask what is the current price or anticipated price of converting a series to electric operation.
I have seen TV programs covering conversions of classics but the costs are not cheap and perhaps beyond the means of many of us :thud
A quick google suggests in the region of £12k for a complete kit.
Too much for me, but I expect buying a brand new IC engine and drivetrain would be at least a similar amount - if not more. Electric drivetrains are a lot simpler than their IC counterparts - in time they will get much, much cheaper. Unfortunately at the moment you can't just go and pick up a perfectly useable 30 year old setup for £500 like you can with, say, a 200tdi!
In time, the tech will improve and more second hand kit will become available, at which point I'll get in on the EV action.
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Now I'm not too bad with the spanners on IC engines and am fairly aware of the associated safety risks when working on them ie risk of fire from fuel/oil leaks, risk of shorting out wiring ect but have no knowledge of electric vehicle safety. What sort of amp/voltages are we talking about? Enough to fry you if spanner put in wrong place?
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Not sure about the latest electric cars, but my 1999 Berlingo EV had stacks of 6V 200 Amp batteries making up 186 volts!
The Citroen technicians who serviced them had instructions to wear heavy rubber gloves which came up to the elbows just to pull the main fuses before working on the drivetrain :agh
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Hi,
I've suggested it previously ... to convert a Series to battery power, simply connect a milk-float or fork-truck motor, via a prop-shaft, to the PTO on the back of the transfer box. How would that interfere with MOT exemption?
The cost of an MOT would not deter me. Standing 8th in the queue at 08.30hrs would be another matter.
602
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I do also wonder what questions and requirements your insurers might have on a DIY EV conversion, perhaps more so if using used parts, and would a MOT station be happy to touch it :shocking
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The bigger worry is whether Lucas is involved......
More seriously, this is where the Federation of Classic Cars (or whatever they're called) needs to start things off to get the "alterations to engines for environmental reasons" added to the exemption paperwork.
Re the MOT, yes it's only £45 but it may not be long before there are too many bits to avoid on an old car that we fail on something silly by omission. Not least, how many test stations still have the Tapley(?) brake tester: mine always struggled with the rollers but stopped well within the distances with the Tapley and in a straight line.
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Hi,
Add the cost of VED to the cost of an annual MOT (shut up,602!)
My mate Gabe (the shipping bloke) reported a couple of days ago, that "several" electricity sub-stations had "exploded" in the Swansea Valley. ??? Gabe lives in Alltwen, above Pontardawe. (Same general area as the miners who got trapped by water a few years ago). Pontardawe was flooded a few years ago when a stretch of the Swansea Canal emptied itself into the High Street ... window sill deep.
It all happens in the Swansea Valley.
602
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We need to plan not for the conversions but for the disposal of the old lithium or have a real problems similiar to nuke and plastic recycling. There are people that recycle, I think Canada lead this area and the big move seems to be re puprosing where china leads the way. The UK need to step up to the mark and link re pruposing with solar to charge them and power houses this way.
This makes inetresting reading : https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/the-afterlife-of-electric-vehicles-battery-recycling-and-repurposing/
Ian
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I still wonder if we are going down the “Betamax” route to replace Petrol and Diesel.
Should we not be looking more at Hydrogen as a alternative ???
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Now I'm not too bad with the spanners on IC engines and am fairly aware of the associated safety risks when working on them ie risk of fire from fuel/oil leaks, risk of shorting out wiring ect but have no knowledge of electric vehicle safety. What sort of amp/voltages are we talking about? Enough to fry you if spanner put in wrong place?
Well to put it into perspective I calculated the other day that a Tesla 3 has the same energy capacity as 120 average car size (say 55 amp hour) lead/acid batteries.
As Tesla offer an 8 year 80% capacity warranty it could be twice that amount of energy on board when new as they initially only use half available and progressively use the remainder over several years to offset capacity loss with age.
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I still wonder if we are going down the “Betamax” route to replace Petrol and Diesel.
Should we not be looking more at Hydrogen as a alternative ???
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Probably, but look how many "Betamaxes" they are selling....wait a few years and then sell the same customers the next technological leap with Hydrogen power.
I'm looking forward to cost effective electric options for our Land Rovers, a great excuse for one electric, one petrol, one Tdi.... :RHD
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The country is going electric. There is very little choice in this, particularly now that a Brexit deal has been done (if it hadn't, the collapse of the automotive industry would have meant we could only use what someone was prepared to supply).
Hydrocarbon fuels are extremely energy rich. This can be thought of as calories per kg - think double chocolate cake with extra thick icing. By contrast, other options are much lower energy density. Battery storage is more the equivalent of a dry cream cracker. This gives rise to the much reduced range, even giving up the boot space. This is the main limitation to conversions. In a purpose-built vehicle, the cells are made up into modules, the modules into packs, designed to fit within the vehicle frame, effectively a ladder chassis, to keep the centre of gravity low and make space available above where needed. In a retro-fit conversion, you are limited to available sizes and shapes of packs so they can't be packed so well and tend to end up higher in the vehicle. There is also the issue of weight distribution to manage.
Power delivery is more of a challenge with high current/low voltage, requiring thicker cables and more heat management, hence the increasing tendency to push up drive voltages. Modern systems are now being designed around 800-900V. Battery management systems are also a key component - get it wrong and overdriven cells can set a module on fire - these will keep burning underwater so although there is no explosion risk, once your batteries catch fire they will keep going so there is nothing to do but stop by the side of the road and wait until everything flammable has burned.
Vehicles which were not designed for electric propulsion are often best converted by keeping the drivetrain. The gearbox can be removed but it is often left due to the ease of coupling to it. Multiple motors are possible but make it a lot more expensive to design, configure and build when you consider the battery management system and cabling. For a conversion which will not be optimised anyway, the gain is very small compared with the cost.
I think if I was converting a S2 it would be a choice between keeping the main gearbox for the feel of driving a classic vehicle vs. replacing the main box and bolting the motor on the side of the transfer case to decrease weight and save space. The latter would allow the whole engine bay to be filled with batteries which, together with a layer on the tub floor, would probably give a range of 100-150miles - it would be interesting to see whether that compares with any known figures. For most people for most journeys that would be fine, assuming you have a charging point at home. You should be able to make most journeys within that range, although attending rallies or doing long distance towing etc. would become more of an extended logistical exercise.
Hydrogen is an entirely different proposition. There are two main questions - combustion vs. fuel cell, and storage method. Combustion is long-established and hydrogen will run in a petrol engine as a direct replacement with a few setting tweaks. Fuel cells have been around for over 150yrs but have not been commercially adopted on a mass scale. Think of them as being like a battery where you flow the energy source in continuously on demand, rather than pre-charging it. They are very efficient but the cost of the platinum catalyst is not generally economically viable. One major change over the past 20 years is the shift from brown hydrogen to green hydrogen. Brown hydrogen is made by processing carbon (e.g. coal) with water to create carbon monoxide and hydrogen. You then have to remove the carbon monoxide as otherwise it blocks up the platinum catalyst and stops it working - the energy required for regeneration counters the improved efficiency. Switching to hydrogen generation by splitting water with electricity is far more promising, particularly as a use for renewable energy sources which are often out of sync. with demand (what do you do when it's windy in the middle of the night?) - this is likely to result in major growth in hydrogen production and use, although the electricity companies are not yet ready for it. The much greater challenge is storage. Stored at atmospheric pressure, hydrogen has the calorific value equivalent of a piece of celery. Being a gas it can be heavily compressed but a suitably robust storage container which will not puncture is heavy and it still won't carry as much energy as a liquid fuel (hydrogen cannot be liquefied like LPG). If you took a standard welding gas bottle and knocked the end valve off it would go off like a missile and punch holes in walls - add to that the flammability/explosive potential and you can see why carrying hydrogen around under high pressure in every car represents a challenge. There are other approaches under development such as storing as a solid metal hydride which decomposes to release the hydrogen; these work but are heavy so not well suited to transport.
A vast amount of money has been thrown at trying to improve cell chemistry to increase energy density further in batteries but there are some fundamental limits. Standard electric cars will be at around 150Wh/kg; Tesla have hit around 250Wh/kg. Electric flight requires 400Wh/kg as a starting point; some ultra-high performance (but virtually unmanageable) batteries can achieve 1500Wh/kg. Petrol and diesel are at around 10,000Wh/kg. This suggests we are either going to have travel very heavily rationed in the future, some radical technology breakthroughs which are not yet even on the horizon, or we will actually be using hybrids for a long time.
Alec
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I still wonder if we are going down the “Betamax” route to replace Petrol and Diesel.
Should we not be looking more at Hydrogen as a alternative ???
I believe you are right, and many countries (including the UK allegedly) are building a hydrogen infrastructure. It can be produced using renewable sources and stored for when the wind don't blow and when the sun don't shine. Perhaps a better alternative for grid storage might be liquid silicone (search for Australian company 1414 Degrees if you are interested). Hydrogen can be delivered over the existing gas network for domestic heating; boilers are available which can burn natural gas and with a flick of a switch burn hydrogen on the changeover day.
There is new battery technology which has the potential to eclipse that of today, but I think for transportation, hydrogen is likely to become a mainstream fuel. New vehicles will use hydrogen fuel cells to power electric motors rather than IC engines as they are cheaper to build, require no servicing and are not pitifully inefficient.
Rather than an electric conversion, a much move viable proposition for classic vehicles will be to burn hydrogen in our existing engines, which will require nothing more than a new fuel tank and a few bits and bobs in a similar vein to an LPG conversion.
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Certainly worth a good look. All that spare renewable energy that needs to be doing something when the wind blows, the tides flow and the sun shines. Turning water into Hydrogen with otherwise waste energy seems a no-brainer at the concept level. Doubtless the practicalities need work... The lack of inter-connector cables from the Scottish Islands are pushing people to consider Hydrogen production rather than put volts into a non-existent Grid.
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New vehicles will use hydrogen fuel cells to power electric motors rather than IC engines as they are cheaper to build, require no servicing and are not pitifully inefficient.
The challenge is achieving the above position, particularly cost and range. Although fuel cell vehicles have been around since at least the 1950s (we used to have an advertising poster from the 1950s showing a fuel cell powered tractor) there is a series of limitations which still need to be overcome to produce a vehicle which is anything like a mass market commercial proposition:
1. Fuel storage. Current options are low pressure/low range tanks (think of cars in WW2 with a gas bag on the top); high pressure steel tanks which are very heavy and need to be cylindrical to minimise hoop stress so will not pack efficiently; high pressure composite tanks which are also cylindrical but lightweight, however they are very damage intolerant (no ductility), do not always show external signs of damage as the fibres can be cracked internally without breaking the matrix on the surface and therefore need specialist inspection - it may mean a shift to a calor-type model where you swap the tank and it is inspected before refilling. Decrepitation of metal hydrides is not yet anywhere near viable. Today, you would be restricted to short ranges in most vehicles, one of the reasons fuel-cell vehicles are currently on local fleets.
2. Cost of catalyst. Both the anode and cathode use a platinum catalyst. Things have moved on from the tractor which used over 1kg of platinum - approximate cost £30k but you still need over £1.5k of platinum and pretty soon you hit a supply problem - even if you mined every gram of platinum estimated to be on the planet you could still only power 10% of the world's cars.
3. Other stack components - materials and manufacturing. The fuel cell consists of a series of layers, known as a membrane electrode assembly or MEA. Within this environment it is extremely corrosive and runs just below 100degC so material selection is critical - you can't use metal parts as they will dissolve and poison the catalyst. The inner parts of the MEA are fairly well optimised but the outermost layer is the field flow plate which has to be electrically conductive and non-metallic. Pure graphite blocks with machined channels give excellent performance but are brittle and crack; graphite composites are cheaper to make as they can be press formed and they are less brittle, but they sacrifice conductivity. A whole series of MEAs are layered up to form a stack which has to be gas-tight and electrically conducting/insulating between the correct layers. This is still immensely challenging on a production basis.
The consequence of the above is that whilst fuel cells remain an attractive option at some point, there are some major technical challenges to be solved before that happens.
Rather than an electric conversion, a much move viable proposition for classic vehicles will be to burn hydrogen in our existing engines, which will require nothing more than a new fuel tank and a few bits and bobs in a similar vein to an LPG conversion.
I can see that becoming viable (for petrol engines) but to put it in context:
If you run a petrol S2 and are getting 25mpg that is ~21.5p/mile.
At today's prices a size K hydrogen gas cylinder (146cm high x 23cm diameter) from BOC is £77.39 and contains 7.21m3 of gas. Factoring in the energy density of hydrogen, this gives £6.92/mile.
(a fuel cell could be 3x as efficient, dropping the cost to £2.31/mile).
There is a very big step change needed to make this viable.
Alec
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A point I may have missed :stars but when do we expect not to be able to buy or run our series on Petrol or Diesel, I thought it was about 2030? If true I and perhaps some others on here will be dead so no problem for us or is it 2022 so we might have to give it more thought :hummm
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A point I may have missed :stars but when do we expect not to be able to buy or run our series on Petrol or Diesel, I thought it was about 2030? If true I and perhaps some others on here will be dead so no problem for us or is it 2022 so we might have to give it more thought :hummm
The theory at present is that no new wholly internal combustion engined cars will be sold after 2030. It remains to be seen whether that will be achieved - the infrastructure required to enable this would be phenomenal.
Assuming it is achieved, you still have the existing cars which will run for a further 10yrs or so. You will then have the hybrid cars - these are likely to be petrol hybrids, plus the goods and passenger vehicles which will still run on diesel. It is unlikely that there will be any significant reduction in demand or availability of petrol of some sort, or of diesel, before 2040 at the earliest and there will then be a gradual phasing out rather than a sudden switch. I would be surprised if there was any real difficulty obtaining petrol or diesel before 2050.
Most of us will be dead.
Alec
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What a great thread with some fascinating input from some very knowledgeable people.
Robert L. Aka Crichton runs a you tube channel called fully charged and at one time did a an article on this
https://www.surfnturf.org.uk/
They are very close to running a Scottish inter island ferry that’s been converted to dual fuel to do this as of October 2020...just some regulations to jump before they can trial apparently
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Bit o/t but just want to say I always enjoy and learn from Alec's posts.
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Really interesting topic to read and digest, thank you to the contributors.
I have been watching a different battery technology - https://www.reviewgeek.com/25848/a-new-user-replaceable-battery-could-power-a-tesla-for-1500-miles/ (https://www.reviewgeek.com/25848/a-new-user-replaceable-battery-could-power-a-tesla-for-1500-miles/) - which is far cheaper. If the claims are to be believed then the cost of batteries can be reduced dramatically. The company website can be accessed here: https://www.metalectrique.com/ (https://www.metalectrique.com/)
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Thank you for the kind comments.
Firstly, something was nagging at me on my original figures and I worked out what it was last night and have now corrected it. The figures for hydrogen are more attractive than they were but still an order of magnitude higher than petrol. I suspect, based on other information around some of the hydrogen test cars, that this relates mainly to an inflated cost for the hydrogen from BOC in a cylinder. It is likely that if the infrastructure was rolled out into filling stations it would still be more expensive than fossil fuels but the gap would close significantly even now. You would still have the distribution and storage question to address though.
I thought some background might be useful in explaining why I know some of this. I started my career with Johnson Matthey, developing fuel cell catalysts, specifically for the anode which would tolerate residual carbon monoxide. My first patent was on this subject - https://patents.google.com/patent/US5939220A/en. This has now expired but is also now obsolete as electrolytic hydrogen made by splitting water with electricity inherently avoids this problem. I have spent the last 19yrs working on joining processes including electronics and electrical assembly. This includes working on high current capacity cables, high temperature electronics and motor manufacturing. At one point around 2010 I was responsible for micro-laser welding (amongst other things) and developed a capability in thin section aluminium and copper welding. I originally planned this around solar thermal panels, but it turned out to be far more useful for welding batteries. Although I have not been responsible for this for some years, this core technology was used to make over 3 million welds last year in support of the UK's vehicle electrification programme. I am currently in the process of finalising the UK's Battery Assembly Technology Centre which should start sometime in Q1 2021 (COVID permitting) and am currently writing the scoping document for the UK's battery validation centre for electric flight development. My involvement these days is therefore more big-picture commercial on a national scale than detailed technical but hopefully I haven't forgotten all my chemistry and materials knowledge!
Metal-air batteries are a very interesting technology. They do overcome the fundamental power density question (referring to my previous analogy, they will get you up to a Victoria sponge cake). There are some technical challenges to overcome - not least the exact same phenomenon which makes our Birmabright panels last so long, that aluminium forms a passive layer on the surface which protects it and for the battery to work you need to break this down which takes energy. That said, there is some rapid progress being made and there is a lot of potential there - see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S246802571730081X#:~:text=For%20aqueous%20electrolyte%20metal%E2%80%93air,higher%20charge%20overpotentials%20%5B20%5D for a good review of the current challenges and proposed solutions. The non-rechargeable nature does present a different challenge. Funnily enough, for a Series Land Rover it may be one of the smallest problems if you were prepared to have the battery cassette on the floor of the tub. Otherwise, the challenge with cassette-type interchangeable systems is usually access to remove the old one and insert the new. If you make it too accessible it is vulnerable and bear in mind this weighs over 100kg so even on quick-release it is not going to be trivial to get in and out. 90 seconds as advertised by Metalectrique would only be achievable under some very specific circumstances. There was a trial run on cassette type battery systems in Israel around 5yrs ago which generated some good data around the challenges. One of the major ones is compatibility - think VHS vs. Betamax as if you buy the wrong one your car will be obsolete very quickly. With a video recorder you could afford this; with a car the depreciation on a new Tesla was already high enough that it really worried our CEO when he worked out what it was on his. Now imagine that depreciating to zero! We are beginning to see similar issues as voltages for EV increase. It would be less of an issue if car ownership models continue to develop further - if you never really own the car and just rent it for a fixed period then you are less vulnerable to obsolescence.
I think the bottom line is that we have very little to worry about for classic vehicles. An electric conversion will become increasingly feasible and cost-effective but if you choose to keep it original this will not cause you a problem for 30yrs at least, which is as far as any of us would probably care to predict. If someone does undertake an electric conversion they are unlikely to see their money back, but driving a Series 2 is not about best economic performance anyway so the reasons to do so may be less cost-driven. If you do convert to electric, the biggest threat may be that your long-term ownership plan does not fit modern vehicle access models and hence charging may become a problem, except at home.
Alec
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If you do convert to electric, the biggest threat may be that your long-term ownership plan does not fit modern vehicle access models and hence charging may become a problem, except at home.
Alec
In a similar fashion, my little Merc has a connector for the ECM that was only used for a couple of years in the late 90s. Luckily I know a garage that still has the kit that can read it. It would have been built just before the major manufacturers standardised on OBD 2. The problems with being what the marketeers call "an early adopter".
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Interesting, and shows the battery & fuel cell work still has a long way to go: I've obviously seen too many marketing brochures!
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what you really need is a :Tdi that will happily run on veg oil, and buy a chip shop tiz the future, and if you are posh, i’m sure a bit of the old olive oil every now and then wouldn’t go amiss on the occasional Sunday afternoon :RHD
i do agree with the above i’m in my 40’s and im pretty sure the pumps will not be turned off in my life time, certainly not something to be worried about now, technology and infrastructure has got to get a whole lot better before any major changes can progress, there was an article sometime ago that said if you were to convert a classic with current mot and tax exemption that the governing body had stated both exemptions would be lost due to the vehicle being heavily modified and not powered in any way or form how it was originally intended, or something like that!
time will tell, we will only get to know when the powers that be want us to know, i work in infrastructure, I get the roads dug up and cables laid, i haven’t seen any real investment in the electrical networks for many years, they are too busy keeping up with new housing estates and keeping the existing networks running, where are we going to plug all these vehicles in will be a massive challenge, this is where we will see the start of the future plans, no point in mass production of something you can’t charge on large scale... It was once said many years ago, we were only ever five minutes from black outs @ 19:45 on a week day, when millions of kettles were switched on during the advert break of coronation street, what about if there were 20 million extra vehicles switched on at 18:00 we will see...........
nice read Alec :o