Ban an fuel burning cars coming, time to invest in diesel.

Ah the DRC. Lovely country but not at all the sort of government anyone would like to live under. I used to go past their embassy in Paris on the street Cours Albert 1er when working in Paris.
 
One of the biggest problems with all green energy is storage. For example there is plenty of wind in the UK for turbines ( plenty of hot wind on here sometimes) but it doesn't always blow. So when it doesn't blow there is a shortage that needs to be supplied, usually by burning something. I saw something a few weeks ago regarding a new liquid air storage facility, I think in the UK. So excess electricity is used to compress air, which can then be stored easily and used to supplement other sources as needed. That sort of thing has to be a part of the future of energy, not just in countries like the UK, but worldwide. I just don't see batteries working on a large scale. I don't think there is a single answer to energy in the future, it will be a combination of different sources and technologies with some working in some places but not others. One thing is for certain, things will change and probably quite quickly.

Oh! and £4 billion is not going to cover anything.


The batteries required are Scottish glens filled with pumped water and dammed for hydro electric use.

Wee Jimmy Krankie wont put up with it for ‘English’ electricity.
 
Just heard this 2030 ban is meant to cover commercial vans as well as cars. That's really foolish, there are electric cars on the market now, but vans are way behind. Can you imagine the stink when this starts to affect small business traders? 10 years is a long time, this will be watered down.

Secondly I find people use the word "invest" too freely. The idea of investing in vehicles is laughable. Yes, in odd circumstances you can sell a car for more than you bought it, but with tax, running costs, servicing, repairs, and insurance) the one sure way to burn money is owning vehicles!
 
The story we all seem to have forgotten is - 'the end of oil'

Over the last 200 years or so, humans have behaved like a bunch of teenagers that suddenly inherited the accumulated assets of many generations before them

They (we) have now spent all that inheritance

The lie we are all being fed is that new technologies are going to allow us to continue 'partying on'

The reality, I believe, is that 7.5 billion humans can no longer continue as we have been going

The peak in the world production of crude oil was expected to have occurred at about the year 2000 and that for coal production at about 2150 or 2200.

Other sources of energy and power, - wind , geothermal and tidal power are inadequate to replace that from fossil fuels.

Nuclear power, based on the breeder reactor and utilizing low-grade deposits of uranium and thorium, has a larger potential than the fossil fuels, but it also constitutes a large perpetual hazard.

The largest source of energy available to the earth is solar radiation.

This source has a life-expectancy of a geologic time scale, is non-polluting and is larger in magnitude than any likely requirements by the human species.

However it is hugely difficult to harness efficiently , requiring the use of trace elements and resources which are themselves both expensive and in limited supply

Those large supplies of easily available energy (oil) , since 1800 have been responsible for an era of unprecedented exponential (and inefficient) industrial growth.

This also has been accompanied by a world-wide ecological disturbance, including that of the human population.

It can easily be seen that such a period of growth is ephemeral in character and, in fact, is now almost over.

One aspect of this transition from a state of exponential growth to a state of non-growth is the real cause of the present alarm over our “energy crisis.”

The real crisis confronting us is not purely borne out of available energy but is also a cultural one.

During the last two centuries, we have evolved what amounts to an exponential-growth, with institutions based on the premise of its indefinite continuation.

One of the principal consequences of the cessation of exponential growth will be an inevitable revision of some of the tenets of that culture.

The new religions of climate change etc - like all good lies - have some basis in truth - however their purpose is not to control global warming or habitat loss (too many humans for that), but to get us to accept a level of control of personal freedoms the like of which humans have not experienced for a long time (if ever)

The idea that we are all going to have 'electric cars' and continue on as before is not viable in my opinion - there are not the resources on the planet to allow us all to run battery operated cars - and even if we could, it would have no positive impact on pollution - they merely push the pollution emissions down the development chain

It is more likely that electric cars will be the transport of the rich or those more ''politically equal'' (sorry Mr Orwell)

The rest of us will be restricted to public transport and only if we have a 'pass' to allow travel

Pass laws - an invention of apartheid - will shortly be our new reality

This is, I believe, the new Globalist dream - I hope I'm wrong
 
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The peak in the world production of crude oil was expected to have occurred at about the year 2000 and that for coal production at about 2150 or 2200.
But you've fallen for the green lobby hype BJ. What the figures of 2000 and 2150 or 2200 should be caveated with are the words "economically exploitable" reserves. As the price goes up ponds of oil and seams of coal once not worth the cost realised for the cost expended to extract it become more attractive to exploit. A case in point is copper. A century ago the ore that we mine today for copper wouldn't even have been considered worth mining. In fact it could have only been mined at a considerable loss. Nowadays that once rejected ore is profitable to now exploit. Yes all things such are of course finite but that benchmark of "2000" or "2150/2020" is more likely set against the price presently achievable.
 
The new religions of climate change etc - like all good lies - have some basis in truth - however their purpose is not to control global warming or habitat loss (too many humans for that), but to get us to accept a level of control of personal freedoms the like of which humans have not experienced for a long time (if ever)

It is more likely that electric cars will be the transport of the rich or those more ''politically equal'' (sorry Mr Orwell)

The rest of us will be restricted to public transport and only if we have a 'pass' to allow travel

Pass laws - an invention of apartheid - will shortly be our new reality

This is, I believe, the new Globalist dream - I hope I'm wrong
On this, above, I share the same pessimism and I very much fear that you are right.
 
But you've fallen for the green lobby hype BJ. What the figures of 2000 and 2150 or 2200 should be caveated with are the words "economically exploitable" reserves. As the price goes up ponds of oil and seams of coal once not worth the cost realised for the cost expended to extract it become more attractive to exploit. A case in point is copper. A century ago the ore that we mine today for copper wouldn't even have been considered worth mining. In fact it could have only been mined at a considerable loss. Nowadays that once rejected ore is profitable to now exploit. Yes all things such are of course finite but that benchmark of "2000" or "2150/2020" is more likely set against the price presently achievable.

A good point

However I suggest the basic thrust of my waffle remains

The era of cheap energy and the party we all enjoyed is over

Alternative energies will not keep the ‘champers’ flowing

PS - I hope I'm not accepting of, or adding weight to, the green lobby hype through my observations - as I believe their input to be unhelpful boll*cks
 
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I'd say both the last 2 posts are spot on.
But the biggest unspeakable problem is too many humans on the planet.
Everything else is just skirting round the edges.

I've said it before in similar threads another big part off the problem is the way we live, bigger always seems to be better, bigger companies instead of small or regional companies.
How often do companies drive large milages to do contracts, large national/global companies having 1 company doing all there work.

It's not uncommon for joiners to drive hundreds off miles to fix a shelf or sparky to drive 50 miles to change a few light bulbs ( mate used to do it on a regional schools contract) jobs a handy employee/janitor would off done once, but now subbed out for H&S/insurance reasons but not to local companies.
Plenty of rail workers will travel silly miles to a sat night shift often passing squads doing same job as u travelling the oppisate direction.

U seen with the 1st lock down how deserted the roads were when non essential travel was stopped.

Giving more local work to local companies or local squads of big national companies could cut down travel and carbon foot print massively.

But why 10 yrs? Why suddenly bring it forward 10yrs?
My bro has had a few hybrid motors, cheap for running kids to school but anything longer the mpg is really not that impressive.
And nothing that a modern petrol or desiel couldn't match if not beat.

As for realibilty combustion engine Vs electric, yes can see the argument but usually with a modern car it's the bloody electrics that go not the engine.
I've got a few hand crank Lister engines about me still go really well and God knows how old they are.
 
[QUOTE="bowji john, post: 1939872, member: 17185

PS - I hope I'm not accepting of, or adding weight to, the green lobby hype through my observations - as I believe their input to be unhelpful boll*cks

[/QUOTE]

Come on John, your sitting on the fence there........I, however, totally agree.
 
I was the last twenty years working in Germany and always I was at the other end of, so a Mon - Fri commute, the joke was I would get sent back to my area to visit suppliers often for three days midweek so hated the autobahn drag and Fridays full of stressed up folk pushing hard to get home. Totally non joined up concepts.
 
Too many humans , for our planet to sustain, no matter what energy source we use , wether it's for cars or planes etc and industry

Bring the need for supply down and the energy supply required comes down

Simple

Bring forth "The Purge"lol

Or no job = no need to produce kids , can't afford em, can't have em ( should be made law )

But that's a different discussion

Kjf
 
There are no subsidies as such, just tax breaks and interest free loans. The real advantage is that electricity is way cheaper than fuel.

No not at 80-90, but it’s still not bad. Just like regular card don’t get anywhere near the stated mileage if you drive fast on the motorway. It’s still pretty good though, and like I say you can recharge at 600mph which means it’s really not taking that long to get filled up again.. 100 miles in 10 minutes.

Battery Maintenance technology has improved massively along with the batteries themselves, so although performance (Range) will undoubtedly drop off they’re not going to drop to zero. Maybe a car that would do 300 miles will only do 150, someone will still want that...

There’s already a pretty good charging network, so I’m not worried about that at all.

The economics do add up, if our fuel was tax free then yes diesel would be cheaper, but do you really see them slashing fuel duty any time soon? It only ever goes one way. I wouldn’t have bought one if the economics didn’t add up, I was as sceptical as you 6 months ago. But i did the maths on buying a £30k famIly car vs the nearly £50k Tesla over 5 years and the Tesla won. Even if you look at it over 8 years (which is the Tesla battery warranty) and write the Tesla down to zero the massive saving in fuel cost still makes the Tesla cheaper. For me anyway, factoring in the tax advantages.

The other thing is there’s every likelihood that electric vehicles will be much more reliable than petrol or diesel. If you think about an engine, there’s so much to go wrong, heavy parts change direction thousands of times a minute, piston rings scrape up and down the bores, belts cogs and chains all spinning around, sensors, coolant, oil, DPF, add blue, etc etc.. an electric motor is a spindle running on a fixed axis, there’s nothing changing direction, it’s just a bearing either end. Industrial motors can rack up thousands of hours without any maintenance. That’s the other advantage of electric, servicing costs are way less..

So an electric vehicle is a good deal, as long, and only as long as the calculation includes the wide range of enormous market distortions the government has applied to them.
i.e.
1. Company car tax breaks,
2. Vehicle tax breaks,
3. Fuel/electricity taxed at 5% vs. ca. 200% on conventional cars,
4 .Parking charge differentials
5. Subsidies to charging point providers
6. I don't know if you still get a government grant for buying EVs.

It also ignores the egregious charges for electricity that non-home chargers make. The charger opposite my flat has a mark up of over 100% at its cheapest rate, for example, and it is by no means the worst.

These are all massive and only temporary market distortions favouring EVs now. Once EVs become mainstream, then they'll get hit with the £40 billion per year taxes that motorists currently pay. The subsidy only exists to get people to switch, and to bribe industry to provide the vehicles.

The regular car won't do anything like its stated fuel efficiency, but it still does at least 500miles per tank no matter what speed you do, which is plenty for a day's driving in the UK. If the actual efficiency difference for electric cars is the same as motor cars - and you're being deliberately coy on this point, which doesn't inspire confidence - then we're talking about maybe 200-230 miles - followed by 30 mins charging IF it's a Tesla and there's an available Tesla supercharging point at that point on the route.

The charging network is currently provided as a subsidy. Eventually, in the absence of subsidies, if they doesn't pay for themselves stations will have to close. It's an undeniable force of economics.
 
In Europe just under 61% of motor vehicle emissions come from cars. Light trucks represent nearly 12%, whilst HGV's account for 26% - the residual 1.2% is from motorcycles.

Cars are the low-hanging fruit. LGV's and HGV's will be a much tougher nut to crack. The weight of the necessary batteries clearly has a major impact on the payload they can carry, and the need for ancillary equipment such as the tachograph, refrigeration, etc will increase the power draw and further reduce the effective range.

Frequent re-charging means longer journey times, so together with the reduce payload this means more trucks will be needed to deliver the same amount of freight. One of the impacts of Covid has been the huge increase in retail in general and eCommerce in particular - all of it requiring more transportation. So saving the planet will be achieved by putting more vehicles on the road!

A lot of research and investment is taking place, but we are still some way off electric HGV's. Some prototypes look impressive......until you learn that they were only able to film them moving because they were on a gradient and rolling downhill, so not actually relying on the batteries at all.

 
Would be interested to hear somebody from U.K. power networks or another district network operator that supplies and maintains electricity to the nation. The amount of load that will be applied to their grid if everybody is charging their vehicles at night at the same time will be massive. The Infrastructure to the country will simply not take the additional load and will need to be upgraded in my opinion. I imagine roads dug up in some cases and sub stations being overhauled.

When was the last time your saw a cable in the road or overhead being ‘upgraded’?—very rarely. These we installed before we all had televisions in every room, electrical appliances throughout our homes, induction hobs, electric showers and electric vehicle chargers etc. 100s of Amps per road would be added to the sub stations at certain points through out the day. I would like to hear an educated opinion on this.
 
OK, this guy is an EV enthusiast, but he also knows what he's talking about
Let him explain how we can run loads of electric vehicles without major upgrades to the grid and without building loads of power stations.
It's called "balancing the grid"



If you want to know about EVs, batteries, raw materials for batteries then his YouTube channel is a great resource

Cheers

Bruce
 
So an electric vehicle is a good deal, as long, and only as long as the calculation includes the wide range of enormous market distortions the government has applied to them.
i.e.
1. Company car tax breaks,
2. Vehicle tax breaks,
3. Fuel/electricity taxed at 5% vs. ca. 200% on conventional cars,
4 .Parking charge differentials
5. Subsidies to charging point providers
6. I don't know if you still get a government grant for buying EVs.

It also ignores the egregious charges for electricity that non-home chargers make. The charger opposite my flat has a mark up of over 100% at its cheapest rate, for example, and it is by no means the worst.

These are all massive and only temporary market distortions favouring EVs now. Once EVs become mainstream, then they'll get hit with the £40 billion per year taxes that motorists currently pay. The subsidy only exists to get people to switch, and to bribe industry to provide the vehicles.

The regular car won't do anything like its stated fuel efficiency, but it still does at least 500miles per tank no matter what speed you do, which is plenty for a day's driving in the UK. If the actual efficiency difference for electric cars is the same as motor cars - and you're being deliberately coy on this point, which doesn't inspire confidence - then we're talking about maybe 200-230 miles - followed by 30 mins charging IF it's a Tesla and there's an available Tesla supercharging point at that point on the route.

The charging network is currently provided as a subsidy. Eventually, in the absence of subsidies, if they doesn't pay for themselves stations will have to close. It's an undeniable force of economics.
If what you say above is correct then NOW is the time to buy electric, not in 5-10 years when all the benefits are gone. As for the charging, I topped up at a local council charger today as I had some calls to make and emails to send. That particular one charged at 170mph, which is still pretty good, I put a quick 70 miles on and off I went. all for free... its not just the Tesla chargers that are fast, BP and other companies are rolling out fast ones too.
Free charging will end soon I’m sure, and from then on the cheapest way will be at home. But chargers will remain, they are pretty cheap to install and if the owner makes a few pence per kw he’ll do ok..

As for the benefits, even without the tax benefits it’s still pretty economical, insurance is about the same, they hold their value well, running costs are way lower obviously, capital costs are higher... look it up and do the maths yourself for your own situation.

As far as range goes even driving fast at motorway speeds I think I’d still get 270–280 miles out of it. We’ve been to yorkshire from scotland several times since we got it, there’s still plenty charge left when you get there, and that’s starting from less than full..

One other plus point is that it does 0-60 in 4.4 seconds, to get that performance in a petrol car I’d probably have had to spend a lot more...
 
In Europe just under 61% of motor vehicle emissions come from cars. Light trucks represent nearly 12%, whilst HGV's account for 26% - the residual 1.2% is from motorcycles.

Cars are the low-hanging fruit. LGV's and HGV's will be a much tougher nut to crack. The weight of the necessary batteries clearly has a major impact on the payload they can carry, and the need for ancillary equipment such as the tachograph, refrigeration, etc will increase the power draw and further reduce the effective range.

Frequent re-charging means longer journey times, so together with the reduce payload this means more trucks will be needed to deliver the same amount of freight. One of the impacts of Covid has been the huge increase in retail in general and eCommerce in particular - all of it requiring more transportation. So saving the planet will be achieved by putting more vehicles on the road!

A lot of research and investment is taking place, but we are still some way off electric HGV's. Some prototypes look impressive......until you learn that they were only able to film them moving because they were on a gradient and rolling downhill, so not actually relying on the batteries at all.


Hydrogen is a more likely next step for HGVs and machinery rather than batteries. Ammonia also shows interesting potential as a source of hydrogen.
 
I take it when u say 170mph means an hour's charge gives u 170 miles??
Never been involved with charging before.

Do a few of the cars not all have different plugs/sockets so not all chargers fit all cars
 
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