Is this the end of diesel cars?

A court in Leipzig, Germany, has today (27th February 2018) ruled that German cities will be permitted to ban diesel vehicles.  The ban will likely only affect the most heavily polluting vehicles and won't happen overnight, 2025 being a year mentioned, but even that is just seven years away, well within the sort of time period that'll make current diesel owners nervous and potential new buyers a whole lot more interested in petrol or, hopefully, electric vehicles.

Although this is just Germany, and no bans yet exist, it's not hard to see the writing on the wall for diesels all over Europe and other parts of the world.  VWs "dieselgate" was followed by report after report finding new problems with these engines at a time when even without such reports, the rise of EV model availability would have been worrying to diesel builders, so it's hard to see how things can get any better following this ruling.

For buyers, it's an interesting time.  I took my Mercedes (petrol) in for a service last week and spent some time browsing the forecourt looking for EV or hybrid models.  I didn't find any, but what I did see was that all but two of the 30 or so cars visible were diesels.  It's hard to imagine that this is a result of demand, given the news over the past year or so, it seems much more likely this is Mercedes desperately trying to shift diesel stock.  So, if you're not worried about a ban, I'd expect to see some substantial deals available very soon.

For owners, it's an interesting time, but more in the sense of the old Chinese curse.  If you currently drive a diesel, especially if you live and/or work in a major European city, this ruling may well feel like unwelcome news from your doctor.  It will, of course, be especially galling to those that were encouraged to buy diesels by their government when not so long ago we were told they were better for the environment.  It'll be interesting to see what happens to the second-hand (sorry, "pre-owned") market after today.

Of course, as with all such news, we're really not looking at diesel cars vanishing from our streets by this time next Wednesday, they'll still be pumping out their particulates all over our countries for at least a couple of decades, but that writing on the wall has just got quite a lot bigger, and even the most ardent diesel fan must be starting to wonder...

Drone Charging? Cute, but pointless

A Korean product designer, Yeop Baek, has come up with a neat idea for solving the "problem" of EVs running out of juice in the middle of nowhere.  The "volt drone"

Cool huh?  Your beloved Chevy Bolt has crawled to a halt in the middle of a desert somewhere, but fear not, a quick tap at an app on your phone will call this flying battery out to your location.  When it lands you pop in the charging lead and before you can blink, you're off on your way.

Sounds great, but there are a few tiny problems with the concept.

Capacity
The article talks about "most remote areas", so let's assume you need at least a 50 mile top-up of your battery.  The original Nissan Leaf 24kWh battery pack, which gave the car just about a 100 mile range with a following wind, weighed 218kg.  That's two big men.  So, let's say the battery pack can get away with being "just" 100kg, that's still a huge weight for a drone.  Such a payload will need a correspondingly large lifting capability and power for the drone itself.  To put things in perspective, when drone nerds talk about a "heavy lift", they're usually talking about something like this:

This is the Alta UAV used for filming and it has an enormous payload.  It can carry up to 9kg.  Yes, nine.  So for a 100kg battery pack, we'd need something 11 times beefier.  I think we can safely say that the image of the volt drone at the top of the page is not realistic.

Range
This thing is supposed to come out to your car in "remote areas", right?  So how far will it have to fly to find you?  A typical "heavy lift" drone like the Alta above has a flight time of about 20 minutes, so unless you're supposed to fold it up and put it in your boot (or trunk), that's 10 minutes out, 10 minutes back.  I couldn't find any stats on how fast these things might fly, but I doubt it'll get above 60 mph, so that's er... 10 miles.  So, as long as your car runs out of juice within 10 miles of the nearest drone depot, you're set.

Landing
Your car can't move, it's got no battery power.  The drone weighs about 250kg (100kg payload, 150kg structure, power, batteries, etc.).  Unless the charging cable is about 10m long, that drone is going to have to land really close to your charging port, because you're not going to able to move it yourself.

Coverage
Let's be really generous and say that we can have a drone that can carry a decent charging pack, that it can fly a round trip of 200 miles and that it can pinpoint its landing position.  How many drones will you need to provide a decent service in, say, Nevada?  I've no idea, but it'll be a lot.  Hundreds at least.  In one State.  Which brings us onto...

Cost
The Alta 8 in its base configuration costs $17,500.  We need something 11 times bigger, with autonomous control, a 100kg battery pack, and a range of 200 miles.  So let's guess that'll cost $200,000.  Each.

Bases
The drones will have to live somewhere while waiting for their call-up.  These bases will need to have charging facilities for the drone and their battery packs, staff to service them (unless they can be hooked up automatically by some horrendously expensive robot), a building for storage and so on.  That ain't gonna be cheap either.

Let's sum up.  For this idea to get off the ground (sorry), you'd need drones that cost $200k each, and you'd need base depots for the drones in a vast network across the US, with each depot probably having at least two drones.

I may not be thinking clearly, but wouldn't it be a lot simpler and probably quite a bit cheaper, just to build a vast network of stations that charged the cars?