NY wrote:
"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
That doesn't equate with a vehicle's range with a tankful of petrol
compared to a battery full of leccy. And the battery weighs a lot more
than the petrol.

Bill

no, its fairly close - leccy cars have about 200 miles range and petrol
ones 400 - 600.


200 versus 400-600 is not "fairly close".

Not only do you have to recharge the battery more frequently, but every time
you have to wait many hours, as opposed to 5 mins max when filling up with
60 litres of diesel.

You exaggerate as always. On a high power DC charger 30 mins or less may
be enough to take up you up to 80% charge. Ultimately the speed of
changing is determined by the potential output of the charge and the cars
capacity to utilise that output so there’s a fair variation. In general
though, things are improving. It is not always “many hours”.

Even if it is “many hours”, you can refuel at home while you sleep. Can you
do that with your car?


We have often done journeys of more than 200 miles,
stopping only for brief loo breaks and maybe change of driver. If we had to
factor in a much longer recharging stop, a journey of a few hours would turn
into one with an overnight stop - or a long stop at a place of interest
along the way.


Undoubtably, for long fast journeys, conventional fuels win in terms of
convenience at the moment.

When cars have enough range to do a whole journey on one charging of the
battery, then they'll be a viable replacement. We'll probably never get
anywhere near the recharge rate of 60 litres of diesel (700 miles range) in
5 minutes, but then that is several MW of power.

No, but Tesla’s latest battery design could bring it down to 15 minutes and
that’s not *so* bad.

But if charging can be
confined to overnight when you're not travelling (or 9-5 when you're in the
office) then it's no great hassle. But having to charge during a journey is
a definite disincentive to owning an electric car.

Currently, I’d agree but when you can start off with a full “tank” every
morning you can often avoid having to charge during a journey. I’ve done
10,000 miles since September without ever having to charge during a
journey.

Tim

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Please don't feed the trolls