Dyson E-Car shelved!

Yup, we have had it easy, I don’t have a purely electric car, but i like my Hybrid, which wisks me about quite quietly whilst burning less of the amber stuff. I am looking forward to future electric car developments.

It worked, it was just that there was no demand for it. The Superchargers work just fine. The vast majority of charging is done overnight at home, and at destination chargers. Re-fueling an electric car is not really like an ICE. Actually interrupting a journey to charge is fairly rare for most people with cars that have decent range. Spending so little time re-fueling is one of the greatest (and most misunderstood) aspects of EV ownership.

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You’re thinking about it wrong. The fast charging is only for those times you are waiting for your car to charge, like on a long trip. Most charging is done at home overnight, while the car is otherwise idle.

We charge our car at home using just standard 120V. It would take a couple of DAYS to charge it from empty at that rate, but it doesn’t matter. We can get over 100km of range into it overnight, which is more than our average mileage we drive. We charge to 400km so plenty of buffer for driving days that are longer-than-average. Only on road trips (once a month?) do we use the excellent Superchargers which can add 300-400km of range while we have a coffee or a snack.

I agree, i was simply responding to a point made by someone else who thought that 10-15 min charge would help.

I stand by my comment that electric cars as they are are not a direct replacement for Petroleum powered cars as it means a change of habits by the user. By no means impossible but a change all the same.

I am one of those looking forward to a decent choice of electric vehicles, not least because it was the topic of my thesis more than 35 years ago when electric vehicles truly were a brave new world.

I think if we go back to around 1800 - would that work? Global population was around 1bn. Not sure what do with the extra 6-7bn that we have accumulated in the meantime though? No doubt, Greta and Emma can sort that out …

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Yes indeed. And I am waiting longingly for someone to invent a teleport machine…

I was more thinking in terms of a need to abandon the idea of convenient personal transport, easy world travel etc (and I would hate it as much as anyone). But indeed, population is the elephant in the room, as they say. Of course, one answer to food shortage and population growth, though not climate change, is cannibalism…

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Not for people without off-road parking- maybe a majority of U.K. pop!

It is true we need to change our behaviour, on average we travel greater distances because we can, we live further away from work than ever and travel for the fun of it.

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What resources are required in the production of e-cars that are not required in the production of ICE cars ?

How might these differences (if any) affect human extinction (or survival) ?

And what about the resources associated with new infrastructure and through-life maintenance and subsequent disposal/renewal ?

I’m not too clear on these things, but others here might be.

Absolutely, the extra embedded energy in building lots of new types of cars and destroying a bunch of functioning old ones is a massive negative point for switching. The use of sustainable energy and reduced pollutants at point of use a big gain. Although I gather they are worried about rubber particles from tyres too!

Quite a balancing act, i have yet to see the full picture dealt with adequately. One thing is for sure less travelling about would help and better public transport.

Ah ! This business about less travel …
… my daughter and granddaughters live in BC.

Is Mrs D to be pilloried for visiting them two or three times a year for one or two months at a time.

Do we never see them again as if they were Pioneers as per 1860 ?

Life is complicated.

We trade speed for time. Everyone commutes for an hour, and everyone travels for a day to go on vacation. The mode of transport doesn’t affect this.

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What they should do IB, is direct all money to scientist. Not those scientists which celebrate a pseudo religious kind of environmentalism, but those engineers inventing new ways to transform and store energy - and we should not forget those engineers who develop new more sustainable fruit, vegetables etc…

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Soylent Green anyone?

The VW ID.3 looks nteresting. A reasonable price, a decent range and it looks rather good too.

It’s beyond interesting. I think it (and the cars that it will inspire/require from other makers) will transform the private car landscape. We’ve reached the tipping point where ICE vehicles no longer make sense for the vast majority of drivers. It’s just that many of them don’t know it yet. The level of misunderstanding around EV capability and costs is pretty high, but as people gain experience with good EVs, this will change rapidly.

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I’d never suggest that people be pilloried. But the availability of cheap, fast transport has meant that our families now spread out across the world (e.g. my parents live on the other side of the world), and we often choose friends that live far away. We choose vacations that are a day’s flying time away. We choose to live an hour’s drive from work. We choose recreation that requires us to drive distances unthinkable before we had cars. It’s the way it is, but it’s not the way it has to be.

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I wondered if Dyson ever really intended to go into manufacture of his lecky car. I had presumed, given the huge industrial scales required, that his plan was more to develop the engineering concepts and sell these on to one of the big car manufacturers on some commercial basis.

Looking at the massive premium Dyson have introduced to the domestic vacuum cleaner market, I am curious as to what level of profit Dyson was targeting with the car development. Perhaps aimed rather higher than most!

As for electric cars in general, as I have muttered previously, at present they are hopeless for most city dwellers. Certainly in London there is a vast pool of car owners living in flats/ apartments with no dedicated secure parking and nowhere to domestically charge their vehicles. Not even an option at the moment. It is nearing the point as the new generation of EV’s appear on the horizon, where this is a larger problem than perceptions of limited driving range.

Peter

Ours is great. Pretty sure it’s well over a year old, and no battery probs. The good thing is it is so cute and easy to use that it has proved easy to get our two 20-something sons to do their share of vacuuming!! It is used several times a week, as it lends itself so well to a quick suck, so to speak.