Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month, Net Work looks at the rise of the most lucrative of all electronic products – the car.
From ‘joke’ to must-have purchase, the electric car is a revolution happening right now.
A
lmost 40 years ago your
scribe could sometimes be seen
hanging on for grim death at
the wheel of an Austin MG Metro, a
cleverly designed compact hatchback
dressed up with fancy British ‘MG’
sports car trimmings. Sadly, the car’s
lineage would go the way of the rest
of the British motor industry and MG
eventually fell into the hands of China’s
Nanjing Auto before merging with
state-owned giant Shanghai Motor
(SAIC). For anyone interested, there are
more Metro reminiscences at: https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Metro
Under new ownership
SAIC sells huge numbers of cars locally
under its Roewe brand (a sound-alike
nod to Britain’s old ‘Rover’ marque)
but elsewhere – including Britain – the
much-missed MG moniker is once again
adorning the front grilles of a range of
medium and large SUVs that originated
in China. When trying to garner sales,
having a historical brand like MG on a
swing-ticket can only help to establish
credibility. Visitors to MG India’s website (www.mgmotor.co.in), for example,
are greeted with a full-on banner exclaiming ‘Morris Garages since 1924’
alongside plenty of MG heritage and
folklore. It would be churlish and naive
to criticise SAIC for rescuing and exploiting the MG brand while claiming
to be a ‘94-year-old start-up’, as MG India’s website proudly boasts. Sales in
India of MG-branded cars are storming
ahead, which also illustrates the extent
of China’s soft power reaching slowly
but surely around the world.
SAIC faces the task of cashing in on
the past while also leaving it behind.
Chinese rival Geely Auto is privately owned and while their cars’ styles
might not suit Western tastes, they also
own Sweden’s Volvo and they design
cars in Gothenburg. Many years ago,
I visited ‘Volvo City’, but now, under
Chinese ownership, Volvo has stopped
the development of petrol and diesel
cars as it moves towards electric vehicles instead. Geely has ambitious plans
for some technologically advanced vehicles, starting with its Xing Yue SUV
designed in Sweden (see: http://global.
geely.com/car/xing-yue/).
Plenty of ambition and innovation
are apparent at a revitalised MG Motors
though, and although they have been a
relatively rare sight on Britain’s roads,
this reborn car brand has formidable
resources behind it and has set its
sights on the future of electric vehicle
(EV) ownership. In the UK, MG Motor
(‘Britain’s fastest growing car brand’)
recently enjoyed its best ever month
with sales up 50% year on year, they
say, despite a general market malaise
and temporary showroom closures.
Their sales up-tick is attributed to the
electric MG ZS EV, and one in three
MG sales were electric cars, selling
just over 3,700 in September. It’s good
news but, looking at the bigger picture,
figures from the UK’s Society of Motor
A revitalised MG Motors is poised to join the electric vehicle
revolution. Shown here, the MG ZSEV electric SUV.
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Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT)
show that 1.3 million vehicle sales of
all types have been sold so far in 2020
and a quarter of them were either electric or electrically assisted. MG has
some appealing electric cars to offer
and, helped by the British branding,
hopes to catch the tide of electric car
sales in the UK.
Going electric
The sun is gradually going down on
the era of fossil-fuelled automobiles,
and clearly the car’s future is in battery
power allied to aspirations for green
electricity generation. Consumers are
being bombarded with images of zero-emission, high-tech electric vehicles
humming silently along, or city cars
plugged into readily available charging
points. Extra benefits of driving these
zero-emission, all-electric cars in the
UK include annual tax-free licensing
and concessionary car parking as petrol/
diesel cars become the bad guys. For
many of us, electric vehicles currently
pose some drawbacks, including their
limited range and the dearth of charging stations, plus the time needed to
charge them, which has given rise to
the terms ‘range anxiety’ and ‘charging anxiety’. And this new technology
comes at a hefty price: even a compact
hatch like the Vauxhall Corsa-E 5-door
weighs in at about £31,000 ($40,000)
and that’s after a £3,000 plug-in car
grant (PiCG). This all-electric car has
a range of [up to] 209 miles from its
The Honda e all-battery electric city car hails the future of BEVs
with some remarkable engineering and design ideas.
Practical Electronics | December | 2020
The Honda e interior is fitted with a full-width all-electronic dashboard with LCD screens showing the rear view.
50kWh lithium-ion battery. More details are at: http://bit.ly/pe-dec20-vaux
Electric car jargon
We will soon specify cars not in horsepower but in kilowatt-hours, and no
doubt electric vehicle ownership will
bring with it a raft of considerations
about refuelling and running them,
along with some confusing new jargon.
For readers who are on the cusp of
considering their first electric vehicle,
here’s an overview of some key aspects.
HEV – a hybrid electric vehicle is
equipped with a conventional petrol or
diesel engine, but it also uses regenerative braking or has its own generator
to recharge an on-board battery. This
can provide a few tens of miles of
zero-emission, electrically powered
motion before the engine kicks in again.
The industry is falling over itself to
launch HEVs which may be ideal steppingstones for motorists who are buying
their first electric car. There’s the Hyundai Ioniq and Kona, Renault Clio E-Tech
Hybrid, VW Golf and Passat, Toyota
Yaris, CH-R or Corolla… and more to
choose from.
MHEV – a so-called mild hybrid electric vehicle is a scaled-down HEV with
a smaller battery. The electric motor
doesn’t propel the car directly but instead complements the engine to aid
efficiency, also enabling the engine
to switch off during braking, cruising
Rear-facing cameras in door pods act as
‘wing mirrors’
Practical Electronics | December | 2020
or when motionless. To an onlooker
it seems the auto industry has obfuscated the MHEV segment somewhat,
which suggests that MHEVs are currently a work-in-progress. Even so,
sales of MHEVs have accounted for
121,000 diesel and petrol cars sold this
year. Examples of MHEVs include the
Hyundai 48V Hybrid Assist and Kia
Sportage ‘Ecodynamic’.
PHEV – a plug-in hybrid electric
vehicle has both an engine and a larger-capacity battery that can also be
topped up with an external charger
lead at home or at a charging station.
The electric-only propulsion range of a
PHEV is typically in the medium tens
of miles, and the petrol/diesel engine
propels the car the rest of the time,
which gives the car a useful range. Examples include some Hyundai Ioniq
models, Peugeot 3008 and Ford’s Kuga.
About 42,000 PHEVs have been sold
so far this year, says the SMMT, compared with 84,000 HEVs.
BEV – a battery electric vehicle has
no internal combustion engine and
depends on battery power for propulsion – like the Vauxhall Corsa-E, MINI
Electric or Peugeot e-208. Present-day
mainstream BEVs have a typical roundtrip range of 150-200 miles or so. (I say
‘round trip’ because, having travelled
somewhere, you must plan to get home
again!) Some 66,000 BEVs have been
sold so far in 2020.
Japan’s Honda often does its own
thing just because it can, and Honda’s
new and eagerly-awaited all-electric
city car – the Honda e – is no exception. It has already won plaudits for its
advanced and totally out-of the box,
minimalist design. Aimed squarely
at urban motorists and commuters,
the Honda e BEV claims up to 137
miles maximum range and it has a
30-minute rapid charger. The car is
laden with technology inside, with a
full-width electronic dashboard, voice
recognition and rear-facing cameras
instead of wing mirrors. Rear-wheel
drive dispenses with the need for a
centre console. As we gradually move
towards the era of all-electric motoring, six electric vehicles are promised
by Honda over the next three years,
starting with this Honda ‘e’ BEV at
£26,660 for the 100kW version and
£29,160 for the higher-spec. 113kW
model. More details and a gorgeous
website presentation are at: http://bit.
ly/pe-dec20-honda
Half of us are not yet ready for the
proposed 2035 ban on new petrol,
diesel and hybrid car sales in the UK,
says the SMMT. There are plenty of
wrinkles in the ecosystem still to iron
out and the purchase price of electric
vehicles is still high (but falling – production-cost parity with fossil-fuel
cars is estimated to be just five years
away), but these latest developments
are sure signs of things to come and
the future for all-electric motoring has
never looked more attractive or exciting.
A HeimLink manouevre
Back in September’s column I offered
a few practical tips on installing an IP
security camera at home, highlighting
some of the current trends in domestic
network cameras, including standalone rechargeable and solar-boosted
models. If quality and reliability are
needed, there is probably no substitute for hooking a dedicated ‘cabled’
CCTV to a hard-disk recorder, but networked cameras provide a cheap home
solution for anyone needing basic surveillance around their property. One
of the biggest issues is that of wireless
coverage: many IP cameras only operate on Wi-Fi so they must obviously be
within reach of a wireless hotspot, repeater or router, not forgetting a power
outlet too. Another common problem
is that of ‘lag’, where network bottlenecks mean that events may not be
captured until several seconds have
elapsed, when it may be too late to
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The HeimVision HM311 is a budget-price
IP camera with Wi-Fi and Ethernet, plus
two LED spotlights
act. If nothing else, though, IP cameras let you generally keep an eye on
things and some cameras record to an
onboard microSD memory card, or
there is the option of uploading to a
paid-for cloud-based storage service.
While many such cameras look the
same, one or two stand out from the
crowd, and one brand that I tried recently was the budget-priced HeimVision
HM311. Usefully, this 3MP 110°-viewing-angle camera offers both Wi-Fi and
Ethernet network connections; has a
built-in memory card slot; speaker and
microphone; and, unusually, also incorporates a pair of high-brightness LED
lamps that can be switched on remotely or instead be motion-activated. The
camera AI can record automatically if
it recognises human shapes or movement in predefined zones (untested by
the author), and in ‘alarm’ mode it can
optionally sound a siren noise over its
small speaker. Also available is their
cloud-based storage for a monthly fee.
Costing well under £40, it was worth
a try and in practice the set-up went
better than expected. The English instructions were very well written,
although some minor discrepancies
were found in practice. It can be set up
on a network by scanning a QR code,
and here was the biggest dilemma: the
proposed location was on an outdoor
block more than 50m away, beyond
the reach of Wi-Fi. It’s also pushing
things to run an Ethernet cable that
far. The solution was, once again, to
set up powerline communications to
run a network over the ring mains with
a legacy Devolo adaptor described in
previous columns. One such adaptor
(the MT2516) has two Ethernet ports
and a mains through-socket (but no
Wi-Fi), which I used to both power
the camera and hook it to the mainsborne network with an Ethernet lead.
The camera’s bulky connection block
carries Ethernet and DC power leads
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plus a reset switch on a short weatherproof flying lead. Note that DC (5.5
× 2.1mm) extension cables are available on eBay.
Out of interest, I tested my idea using
a very long mains extension reel trailing down to the end of the garden, and
after installing the HeimLink app on
a smartphone I was pleasantly surprised by the results. The picture was
very good although there was some
network lag (three seconds or more)
making fluent two-way speech communication nearly impossible. The
‘supervisor’ app logins gave full control, including remotely activating the
LED lights successfully, and it was
also possible to log into the app on
a separate device in ‘guest’ mode or
view the picture in a web browser instead. If you’re looking for an outdoor
IP camera, the HeimVision HM311 is
well featured and may be worth trying
and the price (£35 typical) isn’t out of
the way, bearing in mind all the likely
installation wrangles that I’ve outlined
before. It’s available on Amazon.
Getting Ten of the best
Now a quick roundup of other news.
After years of faithful service, the time
finally arrived for Windows 7 to be
banished from the author’s PC, and
Windows 10 is now installed and running on a new motherboard and disk.
The migration went surprisingly well,
although casualties included an expensive legacy Wacom graphics tablet and
a Logitech webcam that have bitten
the dust.
For those who are still using Windows 7 or 8, it has been found that
Microsoft’s free Windows 10 upgrade
offer still holds true as at mid-October, so an existing Windows 7 or 8
activation code can be used to update
it or, in my case, create a clean new
installation of Windows 10 Pro on an
upgraded PC. Simply visit http://bit.
ly/pe-dec20-w10 and follow the links
to create a USB installation media key
(quite a lengthy process), then reboot
the PC in question using that. No need
to buy another licence!
With demand for rechargeable batteries for gadgets and electric cars
skyrocketing, what better time to rediscover long-lost lithium deposits
ready for extraction, which is what has
happened in the county of Cornwall in
south-west England. Cornwall is an area
known historically for its tin, copper
and cobalt mines (the famous ‘Cornish Pasty’ was baked to feed miners
– see http://bit.ly/pe-dec20-pasty) and
geoscientists are now examining the
feasibility of extracting ‘globally significant’ quantities of high-grade lithium
Be your own ‘Big Brother’ – Ring is
launching the Always Home Cam, a
drone security camera that flies along a
predetermined path around the home.
from geothermal springs that were first
discovered back in the 1860s. Currently, Australia is the largest supplier of
lithium in the world, followed by Chile
and China, but if explorations prove
viable, the UK hopes to establish a
lithium processing facility of its own
in three to five years.
The Ring brand, best known for its
video doorbells and now owned by
Amazon, has announced a home security camera with a difference – the Ring
Always Home Cam is a small drone
camera that works with Ring Alarm
and can patrol indoors to provide a
streaming video feed during flight. It
could be used to check on kids or pets,
or ward off intruders. Ring is also working on car video alarms that monitors
vehicles and alerts owners of break-ins.
Sign up for details at ring.com
SpaceX has suffered delays with
recent rocket launches due to bad
weather interfering with the operation
of drone ships that act as landing pads
for the reusable launch stages. The US
Transport Command is now investigating the feasibility of using Elon Musk’s
SpaceX space launch vehicles to deliver
up to 80-ton consignments anywhere
in the world in less than an hour. Subject to trials, a proof of principle could
materialise next year.
That’s all for this month’s roundup –
see you next month for more Net Work!
The author can be reached at:
alan<at>epemag.net
Practical Electronics | December | 2020
