Diesel & petrol alternatives? Your thoughts please

Here you are JVB, everything you ever wanted to know about ev batteries  EDF LINK  (well nearly...)

Still does not answer my question , but an interesting read?

JVB66...... No as mostly all were company cars. My present car a  Lexus and a previous personal car a  Granada Ghia were automatics. Now that is something that I am a big fan of. I would not want to tow with an automatic gearbox with those smaller engines however.

Not sure it's as simple as PHEV this and BEV that. Its totally dependant on the specific manufacturer and model. It is true that BEVs (generally) have bigger batteries than PHEV, and that means they are (generally) formed in modular "packs" that can be individually replaced. But there is no hard and fast rule either way...

Apart from the current range issues which I am sure will be resolved with increasing power density of batteries the other concern is the infrastructure required for the transition to EVs. If I imagine the not too distant future where 30% of cars are electric. Consider a motorway services say 100 fast chargers are required to cope with demand, that's around 500V at 100A per plug =50kW.Thats 5 Megawatts peak per service area. With around 100 service areas on the motorway network that's 500 MW a whole power stations worth, plus the extra distribution hardware requirements not cheap. Just a thought.

Your figures of a 'whole power stations worth' of 500MW doesn't ring exactly true, as your calculations are based on a power stations voltage output of 500v.

Given that the average power station outputs a voltage of 25,000 volts, transformed up then transformed down near source, then the figure at the power station would be in the region of 10MW.

@ Metheven Hmm - power (AxV) is constant through transformers (excluding loss). 

@ viatorem - 100 chargers per MSA? That's a LOT. Not that I would not love to see them, but I am not sure 100 per MSA is necessary - perhaps  30 or so. 

But the key here is that not all chargers are used all the time. The MSAs that HAVE got dense deployments (Rugby, Corley, all Tesla supercharger v3) and the charging hubs that are off the MSA network (Gridserve @ Braintree, MFG @ Crow orchard, Ionity @ Skelton Lakes), don't rely on the direct grid connection for peak power draw. They have very large battery arrays that act as a buffer between the chargers and the grid. So while Braintree has a 5MW grid connection, it also has 200KW (peak) of solar and a 5 MWH battery (re-using older car batteries is a great use case here). 

The batteries can be charged over night (low demand for both generation and car charging) and support the charging of cars at peak times. 

That local battery allows Gridserve to export back to the grid to offer local stabilisation at peak times. 

https://www.gridserve.com/ev-power-technology/

Are you sure? A Watt is a Watt irrespective of voltage, its a measurement of power. 

I feel that EV ranges have been resolved. The main problem is lack of charge points (and repairs to ones that don't work.)

Have you also thought about the electricity consumption in the present fuel station system, it must be a massive draw on power.

Also the wastage of power in every day use. I think now that our power prices are about to rocket there might be some conservation in general. We waste power.

One way or another things will eventually balance out. 

This LINK provides a bit of food for thought. Amongst the details are how much extra power might be needed (if we don't conserve etc) it's around 10% and the National Grid says it can cope with that demand.