Electric vans

[Avocet]

I haven’t known one to be accrate either in distance or speed, they all read high (something to do with it is illegal to read low and they are allowed up to 10% high)

The regulation for speedometers (on mass-produced cars, at least) demands that they should never under-read (which is fair enough, I guess). They're allowed to over-read by up to 10% + 2.5 MPH. The result of that is that all car speedometers over-read slightly - typically 5% or so, in a modern car. The same regulation specifies odometer accuracy - which is +/- 4%, tested over a 7 mile run on a test track.

and MPG are even more inaccurate, calculate it from the quantity of fuel you use and the milage you have driven and you will get a much lower mpg than the rubbish the car claims via its on board computer.

Trip computers, (in my experience at least), do tend to make the car look better than it really is. Mrs. Avocet's car is 2017 and the long term average fuel consumption is about 3MPG better than filling it brim-to-brim and recording it on a mobile phone app. If it says 43MPG, it has probably done about 40. Remember that we consumers willingly played along with the car industry "gaming" the system, because the same tests gave us the official CO2 figures that our tax was based on, so we paid less tax if the combined CO2 figure was lower than it really was! After the end of 2020, fuel consumption monitoring was regulated, so I imagine it's better on new cars today.

My EV van is following this trend of misinformation too. regularly claims I am getting between 3.5 and 4 miles per kWh
since I bought the van I have done 739 miles and put in 261.7 kWh that works out at 2.82 miles per kWh
(even allowing for 10% loss in the inverter that would sill be only 3.14 mi/kwh) but surely real world fgures should include inverter losses?
No Where near the rubbish claimed on the vans computer, the whole motor industry is smoke and mirrors

mind you 2.82 mi / kwh at 7p per unit is still only 2.48p per mile equiv to a diesel van getting 352 mpg at current pump prices!

EV energy consumption monitoring is still in its infancy and the official tests need to be honed to make them more like real life. Why do you feel the need to add in charger / inverter losses for your electric car, but you're happy to only start counting fuel consumption for your ICE car once the fuel is in your tank? Why not add the transportation and pumping losses for your fuel between the refinery and your tank?

 

[Munroast]

EV energy consumption monitoring is still in its infancy and the official tests need to be honed to make them more like real life. Why do you feel the need to add in charger / inverter losses for your electric car, but you're happy to only start counting fuel consumption for your ICE car once the fuel is in your tank? Why not add the transportation and pumping losses for your fuel between the refinery and your tank?

that is what I am paying for, I buy and send 20kWh to my van, 2 are lost in the inverter, and 18 arrive in the vans battery, and probably only about 17 come out of that battery (5% internal losses within lithium based batteries) and that is what I believe they base the mi/kWh on (it would explain the discrepancies). But, at the end of the day I have used and paid for 20, not 17

Petrol Diesel - I buy a gallon and I have a gallon. all the losses between Well, Refinery and Delivery have been factored in. Huge losses take place within the engine (only about 25 to 35% is used to propel the vehicle) but we still base our figures on the quantity of fuel we have paid for - we should do the same for EV's

 

[Charlie George]

Don't EVs take more energy to produce?, i believe it's around 20 000 mileage to reach the same carbon footprint of an new undriven ICE vehicle?
and the Chinese made EVs a hell of a lot more.

 

[Odds]

Electric vehicles (EVs) generally have a significantly lower lifetime carbon footprint than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, despite higher emissions during manufacturing due to battery production. While EVs start with a "carbon debt," they typically reach parity with ICE vehicles within 1–2 years of driving, ultimately offering 50–70% lower emissions over their lifetime, a gap that widens as electricity grids decarbonize.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I haven’t known one to be accrate either in distance or speed, they all read high (something to do with it is illegal to read low and they are allowed up to 10% high)

No, that only applies to the indicated speed, the speedometer. There is no standard I am aware of, for the odometer accuracy. I have access three speedometers in my car - The default analogue dash, a digital version which is direct reading, and the satnav. The analogue dash reading is deliberately configured in the software which runs it, to read around 5% high. The other two are accurate. Likewise the odometer is accurate.

I also find the fuel range accurate, but it constantly revises itself, dependent on driving style, and the terrain. It bases the calculation, on knowing fast it is pumping the fuel/injector timings, versus distance covered. If I could be bothered - I have access to the software, which allows me to more precisely calibrate the calculation.

 

[Avocet]

that is what I am paying for, I buy and send 20kWh to my van, 2 are lost in the inverter, and 18 arrive in the vans battery, and probably only about 17 come out of that battery (5% internal losses within lithium based batteries) and that is what I believe they base the mi/kWh on (it would explain the discrepancies). But, at the end of the day I have used and paid for 20, not 17

Petrol Diesel - I buy a gallon and I have a gallon. all the losses between Well, Refinery and Delivery have been factored in. Huge losses take place within the engine (only about 25 to 35% is used to propel the vehicle) but we still base our figures on the quantity of fuel we have paid for - we should do the same for EV's

That's a bizarre way of looking at it?! You're conflating two different issues there? Your previous posts have been complaining about the discrepancy between kWh you put in the other vehicle and kWh that the vehicle says it has consumed. Now you've switched to what you're paying for it?

The price you pay for the diesel includes the cost of getting it from the refinery to the petrol station and into your tank. You're paying for it whether you like it or not. If you're going to compare like-with-like, that 10% of the cost of what you're paying for your electricity, is what you pay for getting it from the grid to your battery. It's analogous to the part of the cost of your fuel that you paid to shift it from the refinery to your tank.

 

[Avocet]

Don't EVs take more energy to produce?, i believe it's around 20 000 mileage to reach the same carbon footprint of an new undriven ICE vehicle?
and the Chinese made EVs a hell of a lot more.

Yes, they take more energy to produce. 20,000 seems like a reasonable figure to break-even with the equivalent ICE on CO2 emissions, when charged from the UK national grid. It might be more like 30-40,000 miles in a place like Poland where a lot of the electricity is generated using coal, and perhaps 12,000 in a place like Norway where most of the electricity is from renewables, but I'd agree 20,000 is a reasonable average for Western Europe. Obviously, once that break-even point has been reached, the EV just gets cleaner and cleaner, the further it drives.

I doubt it's a "hell of a lot more" for the Chinese made ones. Most EV battery cells are made in China anyway - even if the car is assembled elsewhere, and the battery is far and away the most energy-intensive part of an EV to make.

 

[Avocet]

No, that only applies to the indicated speed, the speedometer. There is no standard I am aware of, for the odometer accuracy. I have access three speedometers in my car - The default analogue dash, a digital version which is direct reading, and the satnav. The analogue dash reading is deliberately configured in the software which runs it, to read around 5% high. The other two are accurate. Likewise the odometer is accurate.

I also find the fuel range accurate, but it constantly revises itself, dependent on driving style, and the terrain. It bases the calculation, on knowing fast it is pumping the fuel/injector timings, versus distance covered. If I could be bothered - I have access to the software, which allows me to more precisely calibrate the calculation.

See Post #46. Odometer accuracy is covered in ECE Reg 39, which is a type approval requirement for mass-produced cars in GB and EU.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L_202501902

Annex 4 if you're interested.

 

[Munroast]

That's a bizarre way of looking at it?! You're conflating two different issues there? Your previous posts have been complaining about the discrepancy between kWh you put in the other vehicle and kWh that the vehicle says it has consumed. Now you've switched to what you're paying for it?

The price you pay for the diesel includes the cost of getting it from the refinery to the petrol station and into your tank. You're paying for it whether you like it or not. If you're going to compare like-with-like, that 10% of the cost of what you're paying for your electricity, is what you pay for getting it from the grid to your battery. It's analogous to the part of the cost of your fuel that you paid to shift it from the refinery to your tank.

not a remotely bizarre way of looking at it at all - the EV is claiming a certain miles per kWh which heavily implies if you are paying 7p per kWh and getting 3.5mi/kwh then it is costing 2p per mile
But they are hiding the fact that 15% of what you put in is lost, how many people even know of these losses ?

if you were buying 10 gallons of diesel and 1½ gallons of which "always" didnt make it to the tank, the mpg figures would be misleading

And i think the misleading figures go beyond this, do they even include heating the vehicle, a regular journey i make always shows around 3.8 mi / kwh, the figures are the same if I have the heating on full blast or not on at all. Something else they are not counting to exaggerate efficiency