THANK goodness someone has considered the reality when every motorist has a battery car, covered in your lead article “Charging Points for 8000 Homes” of 26 November.
All our driveways will be fitted with charging points for our electric cars.
So, there will be row upon row of streets in every town and city with thousands upon thousands of batteries on high rate charge nightly for tomorrow’s commute.
Aggregated charging currents will be horrendously high, enough to warm the coldest of pavements as domestic supply cables glow incandescently beneath from massive overload.
In any case, what is the sense in humping around a ton of battery to haul the ton of car and your shopping?
It’s easy to appreciate the absurdity.
I fear the future of battery for automotive power will follow the demise of the carbon saving LPG mania around two decades ago where filling stations would all include LPG pumps.
How many of us even remember this craze?
I’m not condemning electric vehicles, far from it.
It’s just battery concepts run out of credibility for cars and larger.
Look at it from higher end stuff like lorries, buses and industrial plant like a JCBs?
Power needed here is way outside the wildest dream of batteries and is generated with hydrogen fuel cells. Chances are, if you ride a London bus purporting to be electric, it will be running on hydrogen fuel!
Strenuous efforts are afoot to make hydrogen fuel cells commercially viable for smaller vehicles. Only this week, reports that Ineos, the chemical giant, and Hyundai the car maker have partnered a joint fuel cell development for cars.
The infrastructure for hydrogen won’t be monumentally different to the current distribution systems with widespread filler stations and short fill times.
So, for the Gretas amongst us, please be patient.
Hydrogen power is not quite as ready as yesterday’s awful mineral rich batteries! Keep the wonderfully improved batteries for laptops and so many other portable devices.
Alas, battery power for cars will become a thing of the past!
Dave Porter
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