You get to vote directly for the people with the power to invest and dismiss the Commission, just like you can vote for MPs with the same powers towards the Cabinet. Being a member of the House of Commons is not a requirement for being appointed to the Cabinet, so you haven't necessarily voted for the Cabinet member either. (Non-MPs can, and have recently been, named peers to join the Cabinet.) In other countries being a member of the national assembly is not a requirement to join the Government, so you can't expect the entire EU to follow something that may only be done in the UK.
Finally, commissioners are appointed by their respective governments (who answer to their respective parliaments). If you want the commissioners to be drawn from the EU Parliament, EU would have to change from being a cooperation between sovereign European states primarily represented by their governments (as is usual in international affairs) to a European federated state where final power rests in the federal EU Parliament. That may be viewed as more democratic (I don't agree, though), but I think few Europeans want to go that far now.
The Commission is invested by, and can be dismissed by, the democratically elected European Parliament. Sure, the Parliament could have been given wider powers, but that would make the EU more like a federation, and that was unpopular in many countries, including the UK.
You do realize that the mere existence of the Model S, with an AC motor directly coupled to the wheels and doing 0-60 in a little over 3s, proves that you have absolutely no idea of what you are talking about? Seriously, find any graph of torque curves for AC motors.
Even my humble Leaf is faster than most cars I meet from standstill since it has instant torque from 0 rpm.
By connector I mean the plug that goes into the wall as that is what the post I replied to assumed. This is the same. The UMC, the small box on the charging cable that is not a charger at all, is supposed to be designed specifically for Norway to accept the strange grounding (as in finding 0 V between any wire and ground is a very bad sign!). Obviously, they didn't quite succeed. However, reports from the Norwegian EV-forums seem to indicate that a firmware update of the car itself has solved the problem for most people.
My Nissan Leaf works perfectly during the Norwegian winter, and the Tesla owners I know here in Norway are very satisfied with their cars. They have had some charging problems, though. This has nothing to do with the connectors (which are the same as in Germany and France), and everything to do with the strange grounding system used here. In short: Both wires are live, we have 230 V between the phases (all three), and ground is, well, somewhere, who knows really. This is what seems to confuse the Tesla charging cable as it believes it has detected a ground fault and shuts down. As third party charging cables work perfectly, Tesla probably needs to redesign the charging cable in Norway and give a new one to every customer.
Perhaps you shouldn't give such strong advice on topics you are not that familiar with?
The Norwegian power system is actually very different from the rest of Europe. The three phase system in Europe has 400 V between the phases and 230 V between each phase and the neutral wire which is grounded. Such a system is called a TN system (Terra Neutral).
Norway, on the other hand, has 230 V between the phases and is completely isolated from the ground. With a perfectly balanced load you can expect ~127 V ground-phase, but the voltage can stray far away from that. This is an IT system (Insulated Terra). The Tesla charging cable is quite picky with the grounding, so it isn't working as it should.
This has nothing to do with the connectors, which are the same in Norway as in Germany or France.
Actually, cold weather is good for long term battery life. The capacity loss in winter is only temporary. I don't know which Scandinavian country you are from, but here in Norway Leafs are very popular and the batteries keep very well.
You misread the table. A cycle is defined as the equivalent of one full charge/discharge cycle. This means ten 10% charges are counted as one cycle. In other words: If you charge 10%, you can expect to do it 37500-47000 times.
Citation needed. My Leaf uses about 150 Wh/km. With charging losses that should be less than 200 Wh/km. Even a Model S uses less than 250 Wh/km under normal conditions,
No. Depth of discharge is significant for battery wear. Going 80 % -30 % twice is not the same as going 100 % - 0 % once. Note that laboratory tests on batteries are based on 100-0 % cycles that are deeper than what the car allows. An "empty" battery is not at 0 % SOC. There is a buffer in the bottom and probably at the top too. Look here.
An impact with enough force to punch through the armour protecting the battery can not be classed as "fairly minor". According to Tesla, the force was 25 tons (which means 250 kN), which is a lot. Most likely, the results would have been much worse if had happened to any other car without the extra protection under the floor.
The present city border is completely arbitrary. The municipality and county of Oslo has 623,966 residents (or so), but in most directions from the city centre, it is imposssible to guess when you cross into the neighbouring county of Akershus. The figure of 1.4 million is for the Oslo metropolitan area which at least I think gives a better idea of the city's size.
High battery temperature and a high state of charge is a killer combination for Li-ion batteries. This is exactly what happens in a laptop that is plugged in and running. An electric car, on the other hand, usually avoids this. My Nissan Leaf charges to 80 % SOC, unless I explicitly ask it for a full charge, and even then it will not allow the batteries to reach the real 100% SOC. (Just like the batteries aren't really empty at 0 % SOC.) The advice is not to leave the batteries at full charge for more than a few days, and preferably only a few hours. The Leaf does not have active cooling (but the Model S has) which is not a problem in most climates. The batteries are still cooler than the laptop batteries that are stacked next to the CPU, at least in my laptop. The exception here is Arizona, as some Leaf owners have been unfortunate enough to discover. No problems after 21 000 km in Norway, though... there is still snow on the lawn!
So, is that an average cost of $3.25 per gallon of amps? Or $3.25 per litre of voltage?
$3.25 for ~30 KWh (charging rate for these things is about 65 KW).
So, 330 of the things in Estonia, they each support one vehicle at a time...~8000 EV's per day supported by the entire network, assuming that every one of them is being used 24/7?
Hmm, wonder how far your average EV goes on 30 KWh....
You seem to lack experience with electric vehicles, so let me enlighten you. I have driven a Leaf 12 000 miles the last year and know a thing or two:
Most EV owners will use these stations very rarely. Charging is usually done at night or at work when the vehicle is parked anyway. Any ordinary electrical outlet will supply enough energy in 8 hours for a lot of driving. Assuming 230V/10A 8 hours will give 230*10*8*0.9 ~= 16 kWh of energy (90 % charging efficiency) This is enough for at least 80 km, possibly more than 100 km, depending on roads and driving style. Most places, at least in my country, 16A is available most places which would add 60 % to the above figures.
Quick charging is only ever used if you want to go much farther than usual, which should happen rarely. Few people will buy an EV if the daily commute cannot be done on a single charge, possibly charging in both ends. Luckily, most people commute much shorter than the range of current EVs and with this quick charger network, they can cover longer distances when needed, albeit spending some time charging. Thus this network can service a lot more than 8000 cars. It will be interesting to see if this will result in mass adoption of EVs in Estonia. The infrastructure is certainly there, but I fear EVs are still a tad too expensive for a population that isn't too rich generally.
I see no reason for heating to be less energy intensive than cooling.
I can. An electric heater can be nearly 100% efficient. An air conditioner isn't going to be anywhere near that.
You are quite right. It is more than 100 % efficient since it uses a heat pump. It takes less than 1kWh of energy from the battery to remove 1 kWh of heat from the car. Tesla uses a heat pump for heating too, so it's also more than 100 % efficient, by the way.
Who said anything about stealing? Just ask! Offer to pay! I have had to do that a couple of times and have never been turned down. Then, I live in Norway, perhaps people are nicer here than in the US?
Add up to two hours, most likely less. At an average speed of 64 mph the range should be about 275 miles. Two 45 mins charges at a Supercharger should add enough range, provided there are Superchargers available. Three charges of 30 mins would be better though as the charging power falls with higher charge levels. Add an extra 30 mins somewhere if you want higher margins. You could (and should!) spend some of this time eating anyway which you do while the car charges. Charging is not like filling up a gas car. It has to be done more often and it takes more time, but you can leave the vehicle and do other things while it charges. You will not have to spend two hours watching the car. Best example here is overnight charging at home which is quite slow, but most people need sleep anyway so it is irrelevant.
Whether this is acceptable or not is up to you to decide. If "regularly" means "a lot" or even "primary use of the car" it may not be. And if there are no Superchargers along the way, that trip would require at least two days, possibly more, depending on what outlets you can use.
I talk about the risk of being stranded, not how to solve the problem when it happens. Even then, there are more possibilities than you are aware of. Look at this: http://news.aaa-calif.com/pr/aaa/PRN-first-electric-vehicle-charging-232337.aspx My point is that it is a lot harder to experience an unexpected stop in an EV than in a gas car since the EV tracks the remaining range more accurately and gives out a lot of warnings. Electricity is also more widely available than gas. Electric outlets are everywhere, gas pumps aren't. Even if you drive it until you hit "turtle mode" (or whatever it is called in a Tesla, I have a Leaf), you would most places be within range of an outlet.
Broder knew very well that he would not reach his destination and he left anyway just to make a "better" story. If he wanted to make a case against EVs he could have focused on having to stay 10 mins longer than he wanted at the last Supercharger. Or he he could have insisted of driving somewhere where there are no Superchargers. These are the real drawbacks of an EV today.
My family has driven a Leaf as our only car for the past year and we know very well how it behaves. We have never feared being stranded anywhere or having the car unexpectedly stop. However we do have to spend more time charging on longer trips than we would have wanted ideally.
Broder deliberately charged it less than he needed. When he left the last charging station the car very clearly stated that it would not be able to reach the destination. This is not "non-optimal user behavior", but a complete driver failure, except that it almost certainly was intentional to make a "good" story. An ICE car would behave in the exact same way. This is not specific to EVs.
An EV generally gives a lot more warnings before it runs out of charge than an ICE car does before it runs out of gas. You are no more at risk of being stranded with an EV than with an ICE car and probably less. If he wanted to make a legitimate case against EVs he should criticize the charging times instead.
The warranty is 8 years. The lifetime is a lot more, probably 15 years at least. It all depends on how much capacity loss you can tolerate. Even at 50 % of original capacity this car would be useful to a lot of people and the battery would most likely need decades to reach that state.
Install HVDC lines and the losses aren't that big, 3%/1000 km according to Wikipedia. PV panels don't need to be installed in the wilderness. Cover parking lots instead. Addition of a roof will not impact the local environment any more than covering the ground with asphalt did. Space is not a problem for PV, price is.
Technically, you left the recession in 2009 as the GDP growth has been positive since Q3 '09, but a very quick look at the world economy makes it obvious that you are not out of the woods.Most likely the stimulus spending in the US is what got you out of the recession early. Cut spending too soon and see the economy tank again. Remember, the debt was not in itself the direct reason Greece is in big trouble, it's that investors lost confidence in the Greeks' ability to pay it back. Tank the economy AND combine it with a debt that is too large (again - in the long run) to really watch things go down the drain.
This is not a small, private economy. For an individual it makes perfect sense to cut spending if the debt gets too high. For an entire country it is difficult to do that without destroying the nation's ability to pay on the debt it already has. Here is a car analogy: If your personal debt feels too high, it is NOT a good idea to sell the car to repay some debt and save on gas if that means you cannot go to work.
Greece is doing exactly what the Republicans want you to do, cut spending in the middle of a recession (inherited from Bush). Of course the deficit needs to be reduced - in the long run. Now is not the time to do it. People are still willing to lend the US money at cheap rates. Use them to get the economy going, then cut spending and/or increase taxes. I wish more people understood that running the economy of an entire country is very different from running their private economy.
For many people 100 miles is enough. It is for me and a quick charge is 30 minutes when I need to go longer. And I'm not alone: More than 5% of all new cars in Norway in September were electric. Vehicles with three times the range are available and they will most likely be a lot cheaper in a few years.
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You get to vote directly for the people with the power to invest and dismiss the Commission, just like you can vote for MPs with the same powers towards the Cabinet. Being a member of the House of Commons is not a requirement for being appointed to the Cabinet, so you haven't necessarily voted for the Cabinet member either. (Non-MPs can, and have recently been, named peers to join the Cabinet.) In other countries being a member of the national assembly is not a requirement to join the Government, so you can't expect the entire EU to follow something that may only be done in the UK.
Finally, commissioners are appointed by their respective governments (who answer to their respective parliaments). If you want the commissioners to be drawn from the EU Parliament, EU would have to change from being a cooperation between sovereign European states primarily represented by their governments (as is usual in international affairs) to a European federated state where final power rests in the federal EU Parliament. That may be viewed as more democratic (I don't agree, though), but I think few Europeans want to go that far now.
The Commission was voted in by the EU Parliament where the UK has (had?) its fair share of votes. You don't directly elect the UK Cabinet either.
The Commission is invested by, and can be dismissed by, the democratically elected European Parliament. Sure, the Parliament could have been given wider powers, but that would make the EU more like a federation, and that was unpopular in many countries, including the UK.
Even my humble Leaf is faster than most cars I meet from standstill since it has instant torque from 0 rpm.
By connector I mean the plug that goes into the wall as that is what the post I replied to assumed. This is the same. The UMC, the small box on the charging cable that is not a charger at all, is supposed to be designed specifically for Norway to accept the strange grounding (as in finding 0 V between any wire and ground is a very bad sign!). Obviously, they didn't quite succeed. However, reports from the Norwegian EV-forums seem to indicate that a firmware update of the car itself has solved the problem for most people.
My Nissan Leaf works perfectly during the Norwegian winter, and the Tesla owners I know here in Norway are very satisfied with their cars. They have had some charging problems, though. This has nothing to do with the connectors (which are the same as in Germany and France), and everything to do with the strange grounding system used here. In short: Both wires are live, we have 230 V between the phases (all three), and ground is, well, somewhere, who knows really. This is what seems to confuse the Tesla charging cable as it believes it has detected a ground fault and shuts down. As third party charging cables work perfectly, Tesla probably needs to redesign the charging cable in Norway and give a new one to every customer.
Perhaps you shouldn't give such strong advice on topics you are not that familiar with?
Norway, on the other hand, has 230 V between the phases and is completely isolated from the ground. With a perfectly balanced load you can expect ~127 V ground-phase, but the voltage can stray far away from that. This is an IT system (Insulated Terra). The Tesla charging cable is quite picky with the grounding, so it isn't working as it should.
This has nothing to do with the connectors, which are the same in Norway as in Germany or France.
Actually, cold weather is good for long term battery life. The capacity loss in winter is only temporary. I don't know which Scandinavian country you are from, but here in Norway Leafs are very popular and the batteries keep very well.
You misread the table. A cycle is defined as the equivalent of one full charge/discharge cycle. This means ten 10% charges are counted as one cycle. In other words: If you charge 10%, you can expect to do it 37500-47000 times.
Citation needed. My Leaf uses about 150 Wh/km. With charging losses that should be less than 200 Wh/km. Even a Model S uses less than 250 Wh/km under normal conditions,
No. Depth of discharge is significant for battery wear. Going 80 % -30 % twice is not the same as going 100 % - 0 % once. Note that laboratory tests on batteries are based on 100-0 % cycles that are deeper than what the car allows. An "empty" battery is not at 0 % SOC. There is a buffer in the bottom and probably at the top too. Look here.
An impact with enough force to punch through the armour protecting the battery can not be classed as "fairly minor". According to Tesla, the force was 25 tons (which means 250 kN), which is a lot. Most likely, the results would have been much worse if had happened to any other car without the extra protection under the floor.
The present city border is completely arbitrary. The municipality and county of Oslo has 623,966 residents (or so), but in most directions from the city centre, it is imposssible to guess when you cross into the neighbouring county of Akershus. The figure of 1.4 million is for the Oslo metropolitan area which at least I think gives a better idea of the city's size.
High battery temperature and a high state of charge is a killer combination for Li-ion batteries. This is exactly what happens in a laptop that is plugged in and running. An electric car, on the other hand, usually avoids this. My Nissan Leaf charges to 80 % SOC, unless I explicitly ask it for a full charge, and even then it will not allow the batteries to reach the real 100% SOC. (Just like the batteries aren't really empty at 0 % SOC.) The advice is not to leave the batteries at full charge for more than a few days, and preferably only a few hours. The Leaf does not have active cooling (but the Model S has) which is not a problem in most climates. The batteries are still cooler than the laptop batteries that are stacked next to the CPU, at least in my laptop. The exception here is Arizona, as some Leaf owners have been unfortunate enough to discover. No problems after 21 000 km in Norway, though... there is still snow on the lawn!
So, is that an average cost of $3.25 per gallon of amps? Or $3.25 per litre of voltage?
$3.25 for ~30 KWh (charging rate for these things is about 65 KW).
So, 330 of the things in Estonia, they each support one vehicle at a time...~8000 EV's per day supported by the entire network, assuming that every one of them is being used 24/7?
Hmm, wonder how far your average EV goes on 30 KWh....
You seem to lack experience with electric vehicles, so let me enlighten you. I have driven a Leaf 12 000 miles the last year and know a thing or two:
Most EV owners will use these stations very rarely. Charging is usually done at night or at work when the vehicle is parked anyway. Any ordinary electrical outlet will supply enough energy in 8 hours for a lot of driving. Assuming 230V/10A 8 hours will give 230*10*8*0.9 ~= 16 kWh of energy (90 % charging efficiency) This is enough for at least 80 km, possibly more than 100 km, depending on roads and driving style. Most places, at least in my country, 16A is available most places which would add 60 % to the above figures.
Quick charging is only ever used if you want to go much farther than usual, which should happen rarely. Few people will buy an EV if the daily commute cannot be done on a single charge, possibly charging in both ends. Luckily, most people commute much shorter than the range of current EVs and with this quick charger network, they can cover longer distances when needed, albeit spending some time charging. Thus this network can service a lot more than 8000 cars. It will be interesting to see if this will result in mass adoption of EVs in Estonia. The infrastructure is certainly there, but I fear EVs are still a tad too expensive for a population that isn't too rich generally.
You are quite right. It is more than 100 % efficient since it uses a heat pump. It takes less than 1kWh of energy from the battery to remove 1 kWh of heat from the car. Tesla uses a heat pump for heating too, so it's also more than 100 % efficient, by the way.
Who said anything about stealing? Just ask! Offer to pay! I have had to do that a couple of times and have never been turned down. Then, I live in Norway, perhaps people are nicer here than in the US?
Add up to two hours, most likely less. At an average speed of 64 mph the range should be about 275 miles. Two 45 mins charges at a Supercharger should add enough range, provided there are Superchargers available. Three charges of 30 mins would be better though as the charging power falls with higher charge levels. Add an extra 30 mins somewhere if you want higher margins. You could (and should!) spend some of this time eating anyway which you do while the car charges. Charging is not like filling up a gas car. It has to be done more often and it takes more time, but you can leave the vehicle and do other things while it charges. You will not have to spend two hours watching the car. Best example here is overnight charging at home which is quite slow, but most people need sleep anyway so it is irrelevant.
Whether this is acceptable or not is up to you to decide. If "regularly" means "a lot" or even "primary use of the car" it may not be. And if there are no Superchargers along the way, that trip would require at least two days, possibly more, depending on what outlets you can use.
I talk about the risk of being stranded, not how to solve the problem when it happens. Even then, there are more possibilities than you are aware of. Look at this: http://news.aaa-calif.com/pr/aaa/PRN-first-electric-vehicle-charging-232337.aspx My point is that it is a lot harder to experience an unexpected stop in an EV than in a gas car since the EV tracks the remaining range more accurately and gives out a lot of warnings. Electricity is also more widely available than gas. Electric outlets are everywhere, gas pumps aren't. Even if you drive it until you hit "turtle mode" (or whatever it is called in a Tesla, I have a Leaf), you would most places be within range of an outlet.
Broder knew very well that he would not reach his destination and he left anyway just to make a "better" story. If he wanted to make a case against EVs he could have focused on having to stay 10 mins longer than he wanted at the last Supercharger. Or he he could have insisted of driving somewhere where there are no Superchargers. These are the real drawbacks of an EV today.
My family has driven a Leaf as our only car for the past year and we know very well how it behaves. We have never feared being stranded anywhere or having the car unexpectedly stop. However we do have to spend more time charging on longer trips than we would have wanted ideally.
Broder deliberately charged it less than he needed. When he left the last charging station the car very clearly stated that it would not be able to reach the destination. This is not "non-optimal user behavior", but a complete driver failure, except that it almost certainly was intentional to make a "good" story. An ICE car would behave in the exact same way. This is not specific to EVs.
An EV generally gives a lot more warnings before it runs out of charge than an ICE car does before it runs out of gas. You are no more at risk of being stranded with an EV than with an ICE car and probably less. If he wanted to make a legitimate case against EVs he should criticize the charging times instead.
The warranty is 8 years. The lifetime is a lot more, probably 15 years at least. It all depends on how much capacity loss you can tolerate. Even at 50 % of original capacity this car would be useful to a lot of people and the battery would most likely need decades to reach that state.
Install HVDC lines and the losses aren't that big, 3%/1000 km according to Wikipedia. PV panels don't need to be installed in the wilderness. Cover parking lots instead. Addition of a roof will not impact the local environment any more than covering the ground with asphalt did. Space is not a problem for PV, price is.
This is not a small, private economy. For an individual it makes perfect sense to cut spending if the debt gets too high. For an entire country it is difficult to do that without destroying the nation's ability to pay on the debt it already has. Here is a car analogy: If your personal debt feels too high, it is NOT a good idea to sell the car to repay some debt and save on gas if that means you cannot go to work.
Greece is doing exactly what the Republicans want you to do, cut spending in the middle of a recession (inherited from Bush). Of course the deficit needs to be reduced - in the long run. Now is not the time to do it. People are still willing to lend the US money at cheap rates. Use them to get the economy going, then cut spending and/or increase taxes. I wish more people understood that running the economy of an entire country is very different from running their private economy.
For many people 100 miles is enough. It is for me and a quick charge is 30 minutes when I need to go longer. And I'm not alone: More than 5% of all new cars in Norway in September were electric. Vehicles with three times the range are available and they will most likely be a lot cheaper in a few years.