This is one of the areas that intrigues me, with regard to the charging of EVs, as I once saw a programme about electricity distribution and how they control it. One specific example they gave was that they monitor what is on TV, so that they can determine when there will be a mass demand by millions boiling the kettle, whether it be after Coronation Street, the World Cup or whatever programme likely to have a large audience.

Are they going to be able to cope with thousands or tens of thousands of people plugging their cars in after returning from work?

This one I can definitely agree with, and anyone running LPG would probably agree. Whilst LPG has its advantages (cost being the best), it does take longer to fill them. It may only be a few minutes more, but it's still a case of waiting. The idea of waiting at a service station for a hour or more is daunting.

What's worse is running around in a small convoy with 2 LPG cars just trying to find somewhere that sells the stuff, then waiting while both fill up one after the other! :tuttut:

Hmmm. Not sure what you mean there Andrew. :rolleyes: Neil, would you know anything about this, as it seems to have slipped my mind. :ROFL:

Ok, I'll happily give you my views on each of these recent comments - from smoggy Kathmandu, where there's lots of diesel fumes, people wearing face masks, and zero sign of EV adoption!

Hope this helps...

(1) That's been a problem for years in London, and the solution is already being rolled out there: lamp post chargers - plentiful and already in place +++

(2) Not really an issue for 95% of miles covered - the great majority of drivers don't cover anything like the range of a good EV on a daily basis, so "refuelling" really isn't an issue. For longer drives, rather than "range" anxiety, it's more likely that the drivers (especially some of the, ahem, more "mature" ones on here...;) ) will have another more basic anxiety related to their need to relieve themselves on the trip :D. And/or recharge whilst recharging.

Oh, and I wouldn't regard What Car as objective, seeing as it's basically funded by ICE manufacturers - the reason it took them years to even mention Tesla. So of course the recent What Car article picked the Tesla with the lowest capacity and still managed to achieve a lower range than anyone who I know with one of those. Quell Surprise!


Spot on: as soon as the key players realised there was money to be made, the enablers to adoption started to come: For example, oil companies have started to install charge points at service stations. And in the new "car sharing" world we (well, "people"...) will be less attached to personal car ownership.

This assumes several things, such as a binary and one-way relationship between charging point and car: for example a lot of EV owners also own battery storage and solar panels, which is likely to increase, and some industry players (BMW for example) are talking about the cars themselves being assets in load balancing, with owners "selling" their energy back to the grid when surplus to the vehicle and needed for wider demand - sounds a bit far fetched? Maybe, but perfectly possible.

The thing that is key to this is thinking (and sometimes) acting a bit differently - but as Nick pointed out above, just as people did when horse-drawn carriages were replaced. And that happened far quicker than anyone expected at the time.

OK, that reads a bit better, but not much...that article is typical of the puff pieces that are written in the green press, throwing in lots of facts an figures without qualification.

The article first references the US market for Q3 only, yet then refers to a global total for deliveries. The revenues for the Model 3 for one quarter only are broadly correct, but it is only a 3 month snapshot and only reference the 'US Cars' which ignores the SUV's which are classed as 'Trucks'. FYI Toyota RAV4 had the highest revenue for vehicles that we would consider cars. Also Tesla's total global revenues are still less that what Ford generated for F-150 alone in the US.

The profits are a significant positive for Tesla, but in terms of profitability they are still way behind many global manufacturers who don't carry similar debt burdens.

My point is one swallow does not make a summer. Good progress yes, but far from definitive, at a point in time when a whole raft of competitor vehicles are primed to arrive.

Nope I have no recollection of such a situation at all :Confused: +++

Does the UK still not have its LPG infrastructure well organised? Still, when LPG is up near half the cost of petrol, the sheen is taken off the economical and environmental benefits somewhat (it sat at about 20% the cost of petrol here for a couple of decades, so the uptake was huge, especially for V8 owners in the carby days!).
You can dual fuel oil burners too, which a lot of people dont realise. In the case of diesel it's a true "dual fuel" in that the LPG supplements the diesel burn. I dont know the ins and outs of it, so I dont know how they get the gas in to the cylinders without throttling, or how they reduce the diesel injection, or balance stoich ratios (I would assume it's only feasible on common rail cars).

As for electric, I'm watching with interest. I like Teslas for their innovation, performance and style (Model X rear doors, what were they thinking?!). I dont buy onto their green credentials.
I also dont like self drive tech. I do have a bias in this regard though.
We do need to reduce our CO2 footprint and a huge uptake on electric vehicles could force our respectively hopeless governments to actually govern on behalf of their people (Yes, I've heard all the PM jokes...;))

It is immensely more complicated to convert diesels, as I found out when I spent several years of my life developing this about 10 years ago (you can see a detailed explanation of our solution and the technical difficulties in the owner's manual here). I've never been involved in the physical/mechanical conversion side of things (my business partner does that) but I believe the injectors have 'straws' on the end, which enables the gas to be injected closer to the inlet valves (to minimise 'robbing' of the gas by adjacent cylinders).

The diesel reduction is, to some extent, automatic. Most diesel ECUs will reduce the diesel injected in response to the feedback they receive from sensors when a secondary fuel is introduced. However, for greater levels of substitution, it's usually necessary to remap the diesel ECU. Injecting the right amount of gas is the biggest challenge. Pretty much every system in existence uses an independent gas ECU that has to be custom mapped to the engine and requires connectivity to much of the same sensors that the diesel ECU does. Compare that to the older LPG kits installed on conventional petrol fuel injection systems, which are merely 'following systems'. All they had to do was to proportionately copy and reproduce the petrol injection output.

The problem with modern common-rail diesels is that the injection timing is very complex, and varies a lot from system to system. Unlike the conventional indirect-injection petrol systems of yesteryear, which just squirt an amount of fuel (determined by a simple square-wave duty-cycle), modern direct-injection diesel systems inject many small pulses of fuel (some just a few microseconds long), at different times in the cycle and for various reasons (some are tiny 'pilot' pusles, for example, that reduce diesel 'clatter' under certain conditions). Deciphering all that was the challenge in designing the system I developed, to make something which could 'universally' determine how much diesel was being injected at any moment with a minimal amount of information (just fuel rail pressure and a current-flow signal from a single diesel injector). It took a huge amount of complex calculations, 60,000+ lines of code and a many, many late nights. :eek3:

Very impressive Mark.
Nice to 'speak' to someone who actually knows the technology.
You mentioned that the diesel dual fuel system uses gas injectors with the straws.
That will be similar if not the same as the LPG liquid injectors now available for petrol engines. They inject right onto the valves like a port injection system does. There would be a slight vacuum caused by the cylinder draw whilst the valve is open on a diesel.
That injector technology is only about 10-15 years old, so must have been pretty new when you developed your little black box.
The only time I've come across this system is on a previous generation Hilux.

As you may know, LPG has quite a high octane rating (120 RON or so), and the liquid injection technology has allowed more precise metering of fuel using the engines own ECU (piggybacked) to actually generate a higher power output than its petrol equivalent.
I have a mate with a Holden VE Commodore SS 6.0 with this type of system, and on gas its easily quicker than the S8 (when he can get traction :tuttut:).

Sorry to hijack the thread Tintin... as you were!

I believe so. But while you would typically only substitute about 20% (if I remember our results correctly) of the diesel with LPG, it's theoretically possible to do 100% substitution with direct injection petrol conversions. I say 'theoretically' because the problem with direct-injection petrol systems is that, because the injector tip sits inside the combustion chamber, they can overheat without the cooling effect of the petrol passing through them. So for that reason, many direct injection petrol LPG systems allow petrol to be injected every 'X' number of cycles.