Diesel & petrol alternatives? Your thoughts please

I think that electric campervans and motorhomes will probably be more popular. As delivery vans go electric, more attention will be paid to conversions.

You could be right as vans are designed to carry bigger loads  and can then have a battery large enough for possibly? a decent mileage although the max load margins will be greatly reduced by the weight of the battery

Vauxhall are expecting to introduce an EV camper on their vivaro van later this year.

 

That’s fair enough- each to their own. Like I say, towing for 2 hours is enough for me. I was ready to stop long before the car was. 

But even if stopping that frequently was a compromise (which for me personally it is not) it’s more than made up for for 330 days of the year that I am not towing, and get to enjoy the driving style, convenience and low costs associated with an EV.

And it’s an amazing car…

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That’s fair enough, and while people who tow are a minority amongst drivers, people who’s car tows 80% of the time are so far away from “the norm” as to not be a target for any manufacturer. That being said, the new 800v systems in the latest generation of EVs can charge incredibly quickly (faster than my car) doing 20% to 80% in 20 mins, and with a towing starting range of over 150 miles. That changes the game again for those who want to long distance tow with minimal stops. 
The gap then would be a more complete ultra-rapid charge network (350kW+) to support those charging stops. 

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Is there a change of heart regarding electric vehicles? The government have announced that they are going to plough a lot of money into hydrogen cell technology for vehicles. Coupled with this, Toyota have a TV advert running about their development of a hydrogen powered car. How many people seeing this advert will have second thoughts about buying an electric car and defer their decision for a year or two to see how things develop?

Although we don't yet have the infrastructure to be able to refuel hydrogen powered cars at 'petrol stations', I assume the technology is not vastly different to that used for LPG vehicles. Far easier to kit out a fuel station with a hydrogen tank than to dig up thousands of miles of roads to install all the cabling that would be required to charge electric vehicles. 

Investments into Hydrogen fuel cells is important to support applications where battery power is not available or practical. Right now that does not include cars. Contrary to being easy to retrofit, H2 storage is surprisingly difficult. It requires extreme pressure to keep liquid, around 10,000psi as opposed to 100psi for LPG. And H2 is an aggressive reagent, attacking the compounds it is stored in. It’s also expensive, requiring 3x the electric per mile at the wheels of battery electric vehicles. 

One of the great things about electricity, it’s already as widest spread infrastructure we have ever built. There is no need to dig up thousands of miles of road because the main grid connections are already in place. Yes there are local installations to be carried out to install each specific charger, but that is really no different to the dig to retrofit a fuel station, and is far simpler as the technology of electricity transport is well understood and  ubiquitous. 

I am sure H2 will have it’s place in transport (aero, shipping, non-electrified trains, plant machines) and probably in grid or energy storage. But cars? It’s just too expensive. 

 

I think most caravanners would agree that tow-car technology has some way to go before we make the leap from diesel to electric.  The problem that I see more immediately is that the affordability of diesel too will become prohibitive as price is ramped up to force the migration to electric.

Cars such as the newly released Kia EV6 are showing a potential for towing a 1500kg caravan, but only for about 150 miles.  I fear that in addition to the cost of migrating to electric, we may also have to change the way we tour, introducing more overnight stops, unless the technology and its affordability change radically in the next 9 years or so.

It could be that we return to the ethos of caravanning in the 60's and 70's that part of the holiday is the getting there, with more stops en-route!

Beyond car technology, I am concerned by the absence of movement in caravan design, with radical change needed pretty quickly.  Weight is going to have to reduce, so compromise on some of the goodies we haul around with us is likely.  I don't think many caravans will have microwaves, going forward!  I think some pretty big compromises are likely in the way we tour, what we tow with and what we tow, but whether this can be achieved by 2030, I am unsure.

I think that you will find the electric infrastructure we have will not cope if we all have electric cars, the existing cable will just melt when we all want to charge cars at the same time like overnight. Therefore the roads will have to be dug up to lay new bigger cables to cope.Best of luck doing that in 8 years and 3 months.