Visit the Care4Air Website

Thursday 19 February 2009

Good morning and welcome to the continuation of my Blog. For those of you new to the Blog I am testing a Smart Electric car which is great fun. There have been several questions on the cost of charging the battery. I purposely let the available charge on the battery go very low yesterday so I could assess the cost of the overnight charge.
The result is from a virtually flat battery it took 12.7 kwh to fully charge. This equates to 60p on Economy 7 charging 4.69p/kwh and £1.63 on normal day rate at 12.84p/kwh. At between 50-70 miles on a charge that makes for very cheap motoring and of course zero emissions from the vehicle.
Posted by at

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous19 February 2009 at 18:20

    Hi Gary

    Pleased to see its going well, and demonstrating good performance and low running costs.

    Whilst I agree its zero emissions from the car, and overall this has a lower carbon footprint than oil we need to be clear there will be emissions of CO2 at the power station producing the electricity. We distort the issue if we don't show the whole picture.

    PS Isn't 63 mph on the Dronfield bypass speeding !!

    Robert Almond (couldn't work out how to blog without being anonymous .... clearly I'm not)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gary McGrogan19 February 2009 at 18:40

    Yes you are quite right regarding the production of electricy and it's CO2 emissions. May be one day we will be running electric vehicles from a renewable energy source. The speed limit on Dronfield bypass is 70mph. On the anonymous issue if you click 'Anonymous' then that is what is shown on the Blog.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous20 February 2009 at 09:00

    Gary
    Further to Robert's comment, we also need to consider the whole life costs, including the manufacture and final disposal. Do the batteries last ok for 12 or more years ? and what are the consequences of having to dispose of the (presumably large) batteries ?
    Pete B.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gary McGrogan20 February 2009 at 09:20

    Good point Pete I will find out from CENEX the UK's first Centre of Excellence for low carbon and fuel cell technologies.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous20 February 2009 at 14:04

    Hi Gary, Great Blog! just a reminder that if you get out and about this weekend... we offer FREE recharge facilities here at Meadowhall for our customers... and the electicity we give you is renewably sourced, as such has no impact on a 'life cycle assessment' level.

    We are eagerly awaiting delivery of an electric van to support our new cycle patrols here at Meaowhall. I think it is a FANASTIC opportunity to have a carbon free security team on our car parks. But can I ask, have you had any issues with pedestrians due to silent running? I am installing lights and buzzers for car park use... but just wonder what it has been like for you on the 'open road'.

    Wish I had one of my own, but waiting for the price to come down or a lottery win!

    Best wishes

    Alice Truswell
    (Transport Manager)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Gary McGrogan20 February 2009 at 17:01

    Alice --that sounds great what you are doing at Meadowhall and you are a valued contributer to the Clean Air Partnership.I have not had any issues with pedestians not hearing the silent car on this trial but I am very aware that some pedestrians do sometimes listed rather than look when they are crossing the road.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Gary McGrogan23 February 2009 at 08:43

    In response to Pete B's question on the life of the battery I have the following information from Tom Morrison-Jones via CENEX.
    'At the front end, the emissions associated with the manufacture of the vehicle are offset via a combination of technology & forestry projects.
    At the back end, our batteries are returned to the supplier at the end of their useful life for recycling.
    The definition of useful life is an interesting subject (for any vehicle batteries).
    Ultimately I would expect many vehicle manufacturers to pursue an engineering target where “life of battery = life of car”
    However, batteries are unlikely to simply stop working at that point. They still have a useful life, they just lose some of their efficiency.
    So it is quite plausible that useful life could be extended beyond “life of car” either in a dynamic application or in a static energy storage application.
    The question of how long a battery lasts for is therefore not a simple one to answer'.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)