"Fully Charged" - Robert Llewellyn's excellent video podcast on EV's
 

As usual, Robert Llewellyn gets to the heart of the matter.

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I hope that you get to watch these videos -- Robert takes on Top Gear (and their anti-EV stance), and many of the myths and FUD surrounding EV's, and he doesn't blink at the downsides of EV's, either.

His show used to be called Gearless: http://www.youtube.com/user/GearlessUK and I agree that Fully Charged is a much better name.

good vids. And very true. If gas companies want $$$$$$$$ why don't they get in on the electric cars? There is no shame in taking stock in electric cars...THEY ROCK.

...they did--didn't Exxon or Chevron buy-up the U.S. Patent for Lithium batteries here in the USA?

The Chevron thing you are thinking of was for large pack NiMH batteries.

Chevron holds the patent for large format Nimh batteries. Other oil companies have also invested in battery technology.

Very cool videos Neil.

The spirit of the podcast appears to be: "Electric cars are green, practical, and fun." That's only a slight overstatement, so I'll go along with it.

Lewellyn is upset with "a certain popular light entertainment programme", i.e. Top Gear. I understand. Those guys are clowns, and they glorify tire smoke and engine noise. He's trying to reach out to Top Gear viewers using an approach that program is familiar with: sensationalism and goofy camerawork.

However, the specific claims made in the podcast, especially the first video, aren't quite right. His math is completely off, e.g. suggesting 40Wh/mi for a Tesla. This podcast is a light entertainment program, and should be used only for entertainment. Don't take any of the numbers it presents seriously, and I have to disagree with many of his conclusions too.

Hi Matt,

You may be right -- the numbers, may be completely off, or he might be right. His number of 120gm/km for a typical ICE powered car (in England/Europe) is correct, I think. Here's another take on this, from Mike Boxwell:

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Interesting video. One thing I noticed is that he focused on cost to "run," not cost to own. Take the iMiEV, for example. It costs $43,000 to buy (before government incentives). The Aygo costs $10,753 to buy. How many miles will he have to drive his iMiEV before he recoups the cost difference?

The iMiEV electricity cost $0.30 for 14 miles: 30/14 = 2.14 cents/mile.

The Aygo gas cost $0.92 for the same distance. 92/14 = 6.57 cents/mile.

So the iMiEV saves him: 6.57 - 2.14 = 4.43 cents/mile.

$43,000 - $10,753 = $32,257 price difference.

$32,257/$0.0443 = 727,923 miles he'd have to drive the iMiEV just to break even on the price. After that he'd start actually saving some money.

I highly doubt the car would last that long. But if it did, how many times would he have to replace the battery pack and at what cost?

And he says that if the powerplant is coal fired the carbon footprint is 30-40 % lower. Not much better than the ICE cars. I don't think too many people are going to pay the huge price difference for a small reduction in CO2 output.

I'll agree, in his tests the iMiev and the G-Wiz came out ahead of the Aygo and Panda. However, the G-Wiz isn't really a car. It's an enclosed moped on four wheels, with little cargo room and no crash safety. The iMiev is an electric keicar, which is fine if that's all you need. But to compare it to an Aygo isn't quite apples-to-apples.

The Aygo starts at 9575 Euro in Germany. That's 2100 Euro less than a base model Yaris, which has a 1.0L and a stick. The Aygo is engineered to be a very cheap car. But for vastly less than the price of the batteries and motor in the iMiev, you could have something more efficient than a 1.0L gas engine. A hybrid Aygo would certainly beat the CO2 figures of a BEV Aygo, and there would be room left in the hybrid's budget for things like an aluminium unibody, active aerodynamics, and all the goodies we wish automakers would spend money on to save us fuel.

I think the first apples-to-apples comparison will be the Focus BEV vs Focus HEV vs EcoBoost Focus in 2012 or 2013. I expect the BEV to be roughly on par with the ICE-only focus in terms of CO2, which will be very disappointing considering the price of each of the three.

I'm happy to see that Mr. Boxwell has come with the same upstream refining efficiency figure as I have: around 83%.