UK drivers could be ‘priced out of the electric revolution,’ study warns

From a planet’s perspective a car that is simple and lasts a long long time probably makes most sense.

For short journeys a bicycle or indeed an electric bike makes most sense. Battery powered cars do not.

Most if us use more energu in our homes, and better building standards could very quickly reduce energy usage and attendants bills.

Indeed within the home and workplace putting on a jumper and turning room temp fown to 15°C makes a huge amount of sense along with plenty of fresh air.

We should use fossil fuels sparingly for longer distance and heavy haulage transportation. We should not be using them for basic heat.

And where possible we should make use of our organic waste for power (via methane) and as fertilisers fir for crops. It makes no sense fir our shite to go down rivers causing massive algal blooms, and yet at the same time putting lots of fertilisers (whose precursor is oil) imported from overseas onto our crops.

There is no quick easy fix but it needs collaberative joined up thinking.
 
On your bikes plebs. That or the bus is your place. The roads are for the rich. The wealthy. The privileged few.

If you put that in a manifesto your party would (well I hope it would) be decimated at the polls. Yet dress it us a the new green agenda to "save the planet" and folks lap it up. Smoke and mirrors. Those that have money it won't affect. Those that don't? Then, as said, on your bikes or on the buses.
 
On your bikes plebs. That or the bus is your place. The roads are for the rich. The wealthy. The privileged few.

If you put that in a manifesto your party would (well I hope it would) be decimated at the polls. Yet dress it us a the new green agenda to "save the planet" and folks lap it up. Smoke and mirrors. Those that have money it won't affect. Those that don't? Then, as said, on your bikes or on the buses.
...or WHY are you leaving your home/factory? get back to work, surf - the 3% need to double their profits for the week before you are allowed more nutritious insect-protein bars!
 
On your bikes plebs. That or the bus is your place. The roads are for the rich. The wealthy. The privileged few.

If you put that in a manifesto your party would (well I hope it would) be decimated at the polls. Yet dress it us a the new green agenda to "save the planet" and folks lap it up. Smoke and mirrors. Those that have money it won't affect. Those that don't? Then, as said, on your bikes or on the buses.
It's like everything else: anyone saying they have a simple, painless, one size fits all solution is lying. Carrying on as now isn't an option. Neither can everyone switch to battery-powered cars and communal living for energy/heating efficiencies. You can do a lot of this in cities, but it's the nature of less densely populated areas that there will be more individual dwellings that have to be heated and powered individually, with greater distances to travel than battery powered cars can currently deal with, and indeed dependence on technology for mobility. So you can't and shouldn't demand the same from city dwellers and rural areas. But certainly everyone can do much better than we currently do and this should be encouraged and pushed, and everyone benefits. Most people live in cities anyway so start by dealing with that and you're most of the way there.
 
The thing is that with good maintenance and servicing and that today some of a modern car bodywork is plastic and that which isn't is galvanised steel an car with an internal combustion engine will last years. Decades. Batteries last how long? And cost how much to then replace?
 
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Compare battery prices to a 4 stroke 4 cylinder rebuild? I have had a V8 scout rebuilt in 1993 in New Mexico that ran me $2500 back then.
 
I can rebuild an engine myself and have done the odd one or two...Triumph Vitesse 6 (six cylinder inline 1600cc) and Leyland A Series (1300cc four inline transverse)....but can't rebuild a battery.

OK many people can't rebuild an engine, and indeed I wouldn't want to now no longer having an engine hoist not a bench, that's true, nevertheless the cost of doing so is still less, I believe a set of batteries.


The average cost of an EV battery in 2021 was approximately £87 per kWh. That would put the cost of a new Tesla Model S battery alone at close to £8,870, before you factor in what it would theoretically cost to remove and replace the old one.
 
Looking only at fuel costs and ignoring purchase cost, resale value, servicing costs, insurance and road tax etc
1 litre of diesel has an energy content of close to 10KWH
Diesel engines are at best 40% efficient meaning that, of that 1 litre of diesel, only 4KWH is available to propel the vehicle
Near me, 1 litre of diesel costs £1.75
So, the energy cost for a diesel car is 43.75 (1.75/4) pence per KWH
If your electricity (including the standing charge) costs less than 43.75 pence per unit (KWH) then an electric vehicle will be cheaper to run.

Cheers

Bruce
 
We don't do simple cars anymore, lugging round all the electric seat adjustments, self opening boots, etc. must burn a lot of fuel.

David.
 
It's like everything else: anyone saying they have a simple, painless, one size fits all solution is lying. Carrying on as now isn't an option.
Why is carrying as now not an option?
Neither can everyone switch to battery-powered cars and communal living for energy/heating efficiencies.
It is incorrect to think that communal energy schemes are more efficient. I live in a purpose designed block, with a completely modern communal heat system which produces 775% of the waste heat which a minimally efficient new gas boiler for an individual house does. As a general rule, modern communal energy schemes are a failure, certainly in this country, in that they do not perform with anything like the efficiency touted, and they are usually managed by fools. It is impossible to properly convey to a normal person quite how incredibly stupid and incompetent (this is the charitable assessment) the management of a housing organisation is.
You can do a lot of this in cities, but it's the nature of less densely populated areas that there will be more individual dwellings that have to be heated and powered individually, with greater distances to travel than battery powered cars can currently deal with, and indeed dependence on technology for mobility. So you can't and shouldn't demand the same from city dwellers and rural areas. But certainly everyone can do much better than we currently do and this should be encouraged and pushed, and everyone benefits. Most people live in cities anyway so start by dealing with that and you're most of the way there.
The difficulty with dealing effectively with the challenges is that the institutions responsible for doing so have packed themselves full of fools who subscribe with religious zeal to a set of beliefs about transport which are extremely harmful. That public transport is a good idea, that personal mobility must be suppressed, and that state control needs to be tightened - hence our North Korean style surveillance system.
 
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Looking only at fuel costs and ignoring purchase cost, resale value, servicing costs, insurance and road tax etc
1 litre of diesel has an energy content of close to 10KWH
Diesel engines are at best 40% efficient meaning that, of that 1 litre of diesel, only 4KWH is available to propel the vehicle
Near me, 1 litre of diesel costs £1.75
So, the energy cost for a diesel car is 43.75 (1.75/4) pence per KWH
If your electricity (including the standing charge) costs less than 43.75 pence per unit (KWH) then an electric vehicle will be cheaper to run.

Cheers

Bruce
Since the price of electricity from next month is 52p/kWh (excluding standing charge), then an electric vehicle is more expensive to run, which is really saying something given that diesel is very heavily taxed and electricity is heavily subsidised.
 
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I'm quite happy with my little van , absolutely no desire to sign upto the green agenda as it's a pipe dream and I genuinely can't see it become a reality in my lifetime .
Couldn't of put it better myself 👍

Its all a load of box locks riding on the back of pre conditioning, unfortunately the people spinning these notions haven't done their sums.
 
Aside from the sheer cost of electric vehicles, Look at Independant tests on the actual mileage you get per charge on these vehicles compared to what the manufacturer claims. In most cases, it is not even close.

Manufactures inflate the true figure, as these figures are generally obtained under controlled conditions and normally on a rolling road with everything in their favour, just like they normally do on mpg figures. Imagine getting stuck on the M25 in traffic in the height of summer with the air conditioning on for a couple of hours and going nowhere. See how long your batteries last then.

Hydrogen power is a far better solution and the technology already exists, it is being used by JCB currently. It requires modification to the cylinder head on existing engines that we use now, plus a high pressure fuel tank. Exhaust emissions are water vapour.


Volvo has stated that vastly more CO2 is produced in manufacturing a fully electric vehicle than in producing either a petrol or diesel powered vehicle. Their own tests have shown that an electric car used for average mileage, would have to be run for 7 years just to negate the extra CO2 used to make it! It is only from that point on that it is beneficial in terms of CO2 produced. Of course, you might well find yourselves needing new batteries at that point.

Why the lemming like rush to convert to battery power? Johnson and his policy maker wife are out of power now. Let’s hope the government comes to it‘s senses and drops this net zero infatuation.
 
Never mind the cost of EVs. The next round for EU regulation is going to make ALL cars unaffordable the average person. Prices are forecast by manufacturers to nearly double in 3 years to comply with the new set of regulations, and they openly say that motoring will be unaffordable for average people.
Doesn't really matter what the government does because our bureaucracy is stuffed with people ideologically opposed to private mobility.
 
Most cars of either source run at 20-25%efficiency, ie where 3-4 of the seats are empty, that does little in terms of easing congestion, parking availability, etc. The weight of the whole vehicle (and the energy required to move all) when transporting just one or two people does not seem overly efficient either, though of course comfort is a greater attribute when comparing with personal micro-mobility vehicles.

Its somehow strange where on the one hand govt. professes it wishes to promote clean and efficient transport, but if you try to do this (especially in London, where I understand there’s quite a few folk commuting to work these days) the authorities are wont to confiscate your electric last mile vehicle of choice - if you own it…

Electric scooters, ebikes and electric unicycles are all good for 30-50 miles, take up little room either on the road or at the kerbside when parked, and are capable of getting folk from A to B fairly effectively and as quickly as urban speed restrictions dictate, it’s therefore a bit hard to understand why their users should be in some way discouraged or regulated against - where is the harm, after all? They help create space, rather than unduly take it up.
 
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One must also take into account of not only how the hydrogen fuel is derived in the first place but also it’s relative efficiency.

The simplest solution, in my uneducated best guess, is to reduce our need for these fuels in the fist place.
 
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