Are EVs really the answer in the future? I do not think so.
 

Over on other car enthusiasts' sites, interesting discussions on this subject confirm how I see the reality of the future for transport of people and goods.

The forceful winds of change are blowing but people are leaning in the wrong direction as a result.

German Automotive Industrial Base have BIG concerns. Consider what is written here:~

Germany is Having an Existential Crisis About Cars



How do others here see the future ?

A curious mixture of A. Scargill, Michael Foot and Lenin. A great rant, but I bet he's building an Arc in his shed.
Germany is in trouble, in fact teetering on the brink, but it stems mainly from too much reliance on one industry in the face of technology advances to finance itself. Coupled with the Euro in a wheelbarrow the coffers are depleting. Not dissimilar to the 1930's. Add that to friction from AfD and the seeds are set for upheaval if they are not careful.

As for EV's, bring it on. I can see competition from Hydrogen powered vehicles as well and there's quite a lot of it about too. Plus, the energy locked up in one single atom is phenomenal when compared to conventional electricity generation.

For my part, I am looking forward to the day I can afford an EV that will get me from A to B without the inconvenience that the current technology and infrastructure apparently provide. I think you would have to recognise that whatever its causes, climate change is real, and at a rate that humanity is struggling to adapt to. While I am old enough to take the complacent attitude that it probably won't affect me that badly, the sooner we stop adding to the planet's atmospheric energy, the more chance we have of having the time to adapt to the ever more extreme weather events that will reduce our advanced technological world to submerged rubble, and leave our children spend their lives trying to cope with results of our generation consumption-driven and self-indulgent indulgent lives. No wonder a highly intelligent 16 year old is leading her non- compliant rebels to take actions that will hopefully shake the complacency of so many of us older folk. Are we going to carry on dancing on the deck of the Titanic because somebody said it was unsinkable? There may actually still be time to plug the leak, or close the bulkhead doors.

This is making a lot of sense to me.
The EV technology is just not up to the job of transportation of any kind let alone the huge investment in charging points in streets where you can’t park your car even 50 metres from you house. A friend has just bought a Hyundai hybrid which makes some sense with a 1.6 litre petrol and EV technology combined.
I think back to my Scimitar 3 litre GTE. Fuel spark and compression and it would run all day long. No electronic sensors of gimmicks. Motoring in its simplest form. Add to the fact it ran cleaner than a lot of cars put through the emissions test, the MOT garages loved its ease of testing. Very little to go wrong. All I added was electronic ignition to replace contact points. Improved it overnight with better reliability and smoother running as timing was always spot on.
Have we now seen the best of what a motor car should be? Have we not gone into a period of over complicated and unnecessary gimmicks. The wheel has been the same shape since it was first made. Are we really improving the motor car ability and future viability? I don’t think so.

Andrew, could you please turn out the lights if you are the last one out ;)

Greta Thunberg if she wasn't a singularly minded would see there is little to be gained in mining huge amounts of scarce minerals to create EV batteries, batteries that are hugely expensive to recycle.

Quite contrary to being "robbed of her childhood" as claimed, it should be noted that people who live with ASD often focus on a particular subject, often without seeing the larger picture.


Apart from anything else, there isn't the infrastructure in place to charge these EV, another little snippet the roll out "smart meters", these are very important to allow the national grid to be relieved at peak times by virtue of enforced remotely controlled brownouts.


If there is to be a roll out of EV it should be driven by market forces, and not blinkered politicos with vested interests.

Brian :D

EV is not going to solve any problem, you get nothing for nothing, you get nothing for nothing and Dieselgate should have opened peoples eyes???? The biggest problem in the world is overpopulation and if we ignore it "we are all doomed Captain Mannering" and electric cars/or whathaveyou are going to have no good effect-they are polluting from start to finish. Chris S.

Sad fact is that one North European uses around 100 times the resources that a sub-Saharan African does. Ideally, we all stop using anything that is not naturally renewable, and adopt sustainable life-styles. But unfortunately, we, as a society, are hooked on consumption, and taught that it is our duty to contribute to, and ensure economic growth through hard work and consumption, by our political leaders, and the industrial entrepreneurs whose vested interests we contribute disproportionately to. I have often wondered by what chance, I happened to be born into one of the materially richest societies ever seen, instead of some fly-blown, impoverished country of the third world. It is our massive population explosion, and yes, industrial and scientific progress, that has most affected all parts of the planet, and destabilised and ruined stable and sustainable cultures such as the Native American Indians, the Aboriginal peoples of the southern hemisphere, and the nomadic tribesmen of African and Siberian plains, in the name of huge profits. Every advance we have made, has also brought huge costs to humanity, and are we really any happier than peoples living similar lives to their forbears, on the same land, with the same culture they had?
We have opened Pandora's box, and left the lid off for a long time. It is going to prove very difficult to put the lid back on. Revolution is not the answer, you just get back to where you started from.
Evolution, but quick, is what we need.

There is an immaculate, low mileage Jeep Grand Cherokee with a 4.7 V8 just down the road from me. It has an MOT and runs as it should. Price £900.00 :duh: If only I lived in Saudi!:D


:shrug:

If that reduced consumption most affected those who over-consume the most, we should applaud it, and tell the government they are doing everything right, but can we please do even more to reduce production and consumption? But in reality, it is a sign that the poorest can't afford the basics, let alone non-essentials, while their rich employers cry crocodile tears, tell them there will have to be redundancies, then retire to their mansions to count their riches. Years ago, we were promised that automation would bring us consumer heaven and a shorter working week, with plenty of wealth and leisure for all. Instead, it has allowed owners to employ fewer workers, and pocket the profits from their productivity. Having paid for manufacturing robots that can work accurately, without fatigue, 24/7, they have the ability to manufacture for the world, and not be bothered by troublesome workers rights, unions and the like. So the rich get richer, and the poor only have a job if they can work more cheaply than a robot. Brave new world - I want to get off!

Andrew, I'm a design engineer.............I specialise in factory automation and hate unions.

I also believe in manufacturing things in-house, quality products designed to last, not cheap rubbish from the far east, mass produced cheaply for a disposable market.

Make no bones, the likes of Nissan and Honda will be out of the UK, not because of the current political climate, but because the Japanese have struck a trade deal direct with EU, so as such don't need satellite plants outside of Japan as their "backdoor" into the European market.

All of this has no bearing on climate change, the doom and gloom merchants do not like people pointing out that 10000 years ago, Scotland was a sub tropical paradise :getmecoat:

There is a cycle of warming and cooling that has occurred for millennia, and while I agree rampant consumption of the Earth's natural resources should be reduced, EV are not the answer, and the current mindset of castigating owners of the very vehicles the fickle politicos only a few years ago were urging people to buy, will surely be repeated as soon as the next fad appears.

There are people who thing the glass is half full, others who think the glass is half empty.......personally speaking, I think the glass is twice the size it needs to be ;)

While it is impossible to change the spin that is put on the blind rush towards the totalitarian introduction of vehicles that are "zero emission", it is nothing more than the "elite" as you put it forcing the "underdog" to tow the line, the line that increases the divide between rich and poor.

The only question is, at what point do we reach the dystopia promised in the film "Soylent Green", after all it's only just over two years until 2022 :getmecoat:

Brian :D

So EV are the future, how about 28 years ago, how did the future look then?



So how will we reflect upon the wold when my children are my age I wonder?

Brian :D

Lol Brilliant clip :D

I see a young fresh robotic Jeremy Clarkson sporting a very posh BBC voice, all that BS spillage seems to have roughened his vocal cords a wee bet during these past 28 years. :D

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/20...in-his-garage/

Has anyone read about this? Maybe batteries as we know it are already on their way out? I'm no expert but if this is genuine there would be no need for chargers or batteries as we know them at all. I've checked and it's not April 1st.

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my wife worked with a chap that had 7 children, note the word worked. not all are on the scrounge

macafee2

Ev's will be part of the solution but as the government has put the ball into local authorities courts to implement ULEZ / CAZ/ workplace parking levies to reduce pollution they're want more people to use public transport.
They've stated in a de-carbonising transport paper that they do not want to replace 40 million ICE vehicles with 40 million BEV's:eek: https://publications.parliament.uk/p...dTextAnchor075

When they say electrifying transport they mean Buses & trains.

The environmental lawyers that make up Clientearth have sued the UK government three times successfully lately and are ready to take them to court again if they don't keep up with the Paris accord commitments.



Greater Manchester for example are at present reviewing all public transport and taking into account all the infrastructure the private car uses (car parks etc) compared to public transport and are going to have seamless transport & ticketing between rail,bus,&tram.
https://airqualitynews.com/2019/08/2...rgets-mps-say/
Stating if you want to come into the city it will either have to be by Train,Bus,Tram Bicycle or walking.:eek:



They've said within the next ten years they want a 50% reduction in private car journeys and the twice daily commuter private car use reduced by 90% into the cities CAZ's :eek:


The other things local authorities are doing to reduce car usage I read yesterday are that Edinburgh are looking to extend the operation of bus lanes for 12 hours/day 7 days a week.
Bus lanes in the city are currently closed to general traffic during peak hours (7.30am to 9.30am and 4pm to 6.30pm, Monday to Friday.


Looks like a lot of park & ride places will need to be made to finish off your journeys into towns Cities.:mad:

I have no problem with using public transport for local journeys, being on the outskirts of London the services are many and regular.

What I do have a problem with is the extortionate prices of some journeys, example used an Aviva bus to go about 5 miles - cost was £4. As I was travelling with a friend we could have got a taxi for less .

@MGJohn.


Most of the new BEV's from 2021 will have to have all manner of mandatory communicating hardware/software installed, VW are just putting the new V2X (vehicle to everything) chip in their new cars.


This will be in street furniture,traffic lights,intersections,roadsigns,speed cameras, it will be able to switch on traction control on wet roads automatically, warn you of red light traffic light jumpers, it can send out a message that is received by other vehicles in an 800 m radius to provide alerts to the driver before they arrive on the scene. Similarly, cars can receive hazard warnings such a car ahead braking suddenly, or motorcycles approaching from the opposite direction that let the driver know not to pass.



I should imagine they will only let said equipped cars on certain stretches of congested roads in the not too distant future:shrug:
Want to go faster than the speed limit of a certain road! .........computer says no. :eek:

All this modern technology ie ADAS that is supposed to warn and help assist safety by warning drivers of traffic approaching and coming up alongside by having radars in the front bumpers and sensors in the mirrors etc makes drivers think their cars are safer.
Working as a QC in a bodyshop I can say that it doesn't seem to be bringing the number of accidents down as they're still rolling in for repair at the same rate even with the new technology installed.
Driver error from either driver is nearly always the cause and the day we have to rely solely on computers controlled by satellites and sensors located in traffic lights and lamp posts as suggested in an earlier post to have complete control over our driving will lead to lawsuits against manufacturers when things go wrong. And they will go wrong .

Oh for God's sake, just chill ... your lives are so short in the scheme of things. then your gone. :shrug:
Don't worry about your children, they will screw up in their own sweet way.

:D:D Kev.

EV’s are no more than the latest fad to be favoured by those in control. It will last until another money spinner breaks out. With ever growing populations the usual pressures will trickle down while the Haves will continue to call the shots with scant real regard for environmental or social issues.

The public misinformation campaigns that surface from time to time will continue, so-called social media is the best thing ever invented for mass opinion management, and the general public will lap it up.

Note Dyson announced the transfer of his HQ to Singapore in January this year and last month further announced the winding up of his EV development plans – ahead of the curve once again. Any bets on the latest scientific marvels in the offing? Whatever anyone thinks of him they can’t deny his acumen. EV’s are a flash in the pan, no pun intended, and our own inventors are already on to the next development. All is not lost!

Our greatest future problems lie not in transport but in dependency on the growing levels of State support for those unable or unwilling to contribute.

Mentioned earlier was the subject of children. More children is not the problem, more children born to mothers with no means of adequate support is the problem. That problem is such because their fathers are transient and their haphazard population growth consequences mean their children grow up disadvantaged. They too become anti-social because they are led to believe it is society’s fault, not theirs. They have rights and so do the same as their absent and untraceable fathers - by a factor beyond measure.

How long before compulsory DNA testing in the style of the MMR campaign? Maybe it’s already being done – has anyone counted the number of spent needles? And where they go?

Scottish Power estimates that in order to achieve this, the UK needs to have 25 million charging points for electric vehicles - the equivalent of installing 4,000 a day - and 23 million electric heat pumps to replace domestic gas boilers.And all at a cost of nearly £300bn.

Just read this on the BBC News website. Sums it up a treat.

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All I need now is some enhancement surgery and higher heels and I'll make a fortune. (Have to be careful though, Celia and the two sprogs are all Essex girls).

And . . . I refuse to have a Smart Meter. The cost to you and I and Uncle Tom C. is around £9 billion. They're supposed to save each household - wait for it - the enormous sum of - £12 a year. Wow. And the first generation of Smart Meters are supposed to be no good anyway. Work that out.

Sorry but this is just not true. The last Ice Age reached its peak 12,000 ago and we are still in the warming period from this. Scotland was not a tropical paradise 10,000 years ago - I suspect it was so cold, the Mammoths felt chilly.

If you really want to wind up the members of the Climate Change Cult, just tell them we are still in an Ice Age and we will only have left it once both polar ice caps have melted. You could also mention that the CO2 levels were 5 times the current level when the dinosaurs were prospering and also mention the their is NO statistical correlation between CO2 levels and global temperature!

On the other hand, if we can reduce our consumption and make our own electricity, then why wouldn't we? I have insulated our house to the point where we have reduced our heating use by over two thirds, installed PV panels that produce more electricity than consume and have installed a Tesla battery to power the house when the Sun goes down.

We have also switch to an electric car and have so say it is vastly nicer than any other car I have ever driven. Brilliantly quiet, amazing acceleration (never need to worry about the poor in their diesels disguised as BMWs!).Also brilliant handling with the weight of all those batteries mounted low down. It has a range of around 240 miles and I can fully charge it at home for less than £8. This electricity is drawn at night when it is cheapest and it is cheap because their is so much spare capacity when everyone is in bed!

Recycling the batteries is a problem right now because their are so few to recycle! Once more are available, then the industry to recycle them will arise. This may however some way off as their are Telsas running around with over 400k miles on the original batteries and they may last for a million miles.

This brings me to the final advantage of the electric car - it could last for a very long time. Why can go wrong? No gear boxes, fuel injectors, valves, bits of metal flying up and down. Very bad news for car manufacturers.

Go electric!

Just to show I am not a closet XR member, our holiday travelling accounts of 14 flights a year but only 5 re long haul!

My two-penneth (shows my age :¬)

1: Having driven a Tesla recently, my word they are FUN. I love the petrol engine as much as the next - my 3 vehicles total 168 years and two of them make glorious noises (while the 75 just purrs) but if I had to drive just one vehicle for the next ten years I'd pinch a Model 3 Performance.
2: Britain doesn't produce enough energy to meet its needs. North Sea Oil was never up to much (and we've sold the last extraction right to the Chinese). We don't have enough power stations (and they aren't owned by us) and we haven't invested enough in wind/wave/solar. That we have to import electricity via cables under the sea from Norway and France is ridiculous. We need to sort this out before things get critical. Fossil fuels will run out, maybe not tomorrow but one day.
3: We should be less dependent on personal travel. 100 years ago we didn't have 2 cars per house hold and we survived.

Finally. If we invested in future technologies we could actually get ahead of the curve for once. Gets my vote.

Thanks Rick o'shea, you have saved me the task of checking all that information out and writing a very similar post (bar the bit about flights - I can't afford to fly that much, but would try to resist the temptation if I could. If I could fill my fuel tank with sunlight, I would do so, as effectively, this is what you are doing. As you say, lithium traction batteries are proving to be very long lived, the ev industry considers a lithium battery has reached the end of its automotive life when it only holds 80% of its original charge, and many a Prius with over 200,000 miles is still on its first battery.
At this stage, electricity companies are happy to use these "redundant" batteries to store off peak energy, to balance out the peaks and troughs of demand, while the battery recycling industry experiments with ways to maximise the percentage of materials retrieved, and maximise the efficiency of these operations, but to date, the quantities involved, rather like the manufacturing of EVs themselves, does not make this a low-cost operation, especially in comparison to the 5 X cheaper cost of mining lithium, and some of the other nasty materials involved. Perhaps if we applied our own health and safety regimes to the workers in these mines, and paid them a European wage, recycling would become a more cost-effective alternative. I wholly subscribe to Labour's eco-home building policy, a building technologist reckons that an average carbon-neutral home will cost around an extra £5,000 to build compared to a conventional one. That sounds like money well-spent to me, and if they could include an end-of-life EV battery in the specification, every home could provide a charge for its electric car, produced from sunlight and off-peak grid electricity. Admittedly, it would be more expensive to make our existing housing stock carbon-neutral, but solar panels and a storage battery with a charging point would be a good start - especially for those of us dependent on car transport. (2 buses a week in my village). All electricity has to be generated - why not use the free power supplied daily by the sun in various forms - solar, wind, hydro or tidal? Rather than continuing to release the carbon into our atmosphere that was trapped millions of years ago. It is not the fact of climate change that is the problem, it is the rate of it. Fake news is just the news you choose not to believe.

EV, HEV or PHEV is the future wether we like it or not. Diesels are being phased out and manufacturers are moving to newer methods of propelling your car along. We are about a month into our new 2020 Hyundai IONIQ HEV and I’ve got to say I love it! We are away for the weekend and sitting at 69 mph using adaptive cruise control and the car happily in full EV mode was quite relaxing.

BL52KRZ - is there any reason you are not driving a steam-powered car? Stanley Steamers were fast and quiet, with amazing torque. Apparently the invention of the convenient electric starter motor on IC engines was responsible for the Stanley's demise. Technology is constantly finding answers to problems. But first, you have to accept ther is a problem. I am pleased to hear that Tesla test the durability of their cars and the life of their batteries, as do most car manufacturers. My brother is shortly to invest in one, and 24 solar panels to provide the electricity, so he can drive the 40miles to his city centre job without the need to pay for fuel or ULEZ charges.

Actually, that's unfair on him - he's doing it to reduce his carbon footprint - he'll get rid of the Audi diesel!

Just purchased a June 2018 Hyundai HEV IONIQ.
It hard not to enjoy driving it.
Puts a smile on my face to easily achieve 60 - 70 mpg, in town or mixed driving.
Hyundai have put a lot of work into making it seem like your driving an ordinary saloon.
This has to be the first step to change driving just petrol or diesel cars.
I do miss my Rover 75 diesel, but if Rover were still in business they surely would have produced a hybrid by now - unfortunately we will never know?

They tried but the battery pack was a bit cumbersome:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...c6e57533_w.jpg

[B]Anyone ever worked out the actual cost ,money, and cost to the environment of electric cars? All the costs. From mining the lithium for the batteries ,to building the actual vehicle? Then of course you have the support structures for the actual mining and building of them. The unseen costs of the mining to the people who do the mining. The support structure for charging the cars The support for getting rid of the cars and their batteries. No? Then why not? I have tried, but it becomes almost impossible to evaluate the amount that is required, but it amounts to trillions over what is a relative short period. No wonder E.V S are being pushed on us, well some of us who are being pushed up a dark alley, not knowing what is up there. here will be some very rich people who deal in this technology, and it will not be the people who own them. Remember, diesels were the best thing since sliced bread not long ago. Now we are told they are the devils own creation. Aahhh the power of the media, and lack of foresight with the benefit of hindsight.[/B

Always remember a Top Gear test on an electric car a few years ago. Ended the segment by saying how clean and green it was . . . . then followed the charging cable from the car to the wall socket, along the main cabling to the transformer, transformer to the overhead electricity transmission lines ending with a power station belching out all kinds of cr@p into the atmosphere.

To be fair these car batteries are providing employment for African children.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cobalt-...investigation/



The environment and electric car mob must be very pleased with themselves.

Just watched drivetribe where James May has just bought a new car, Wise words in there. :cool:

Amazing piece of kit and it is a replacement for our MG ZS 1.0 turbo auto. I’d certainly recommend having a test drive.

See this within my earlier post: "At this stage, electricity companies are happy to use these "redundant" batteries to store off peak energy, to balance out the peaks and troughs of demand, while the battery recycling industry experiments with ways to maximise the percentage of materials retrieved, and maximise the efficiency of these operations, but to date, the quantities involved, rather like the manufacturing of EVs themselves, does not make this a low-cost operation, especially in comparison to the 5 X cheaper cost of mining lithium, and some of the other nasty materials involved. Perhaps if we applied our own health and safety regimes to the workers in these mines, and paid them a European wage, recycling would become a more cost-effective alternative.

The lifetime of a lithium EV battery is far greater than its equivalent weight in petroleum products. Once that considerable charging infrastructure is in place, the saving on drilling, refining, and transportation of fossil fuels will be considerable. Once lithium batteries are beyond use as static storage, after their useful 150,000+ mile life in an EV, current methods show that they can be as much as 96% recyclable. How much does it cost to run the UK fuel tanker fleet, both marine and road? Thousands of them delivering to petrol stations every day. Electricity flows without trucks. And without the plastics which are a low-cost by-product of our petroleum industry and subsidise it, we will perhaps invest more in the local recycling of the plastics we use and throw away so freely. Most plastics are not that difficult to recycle, it is just too cheap and convenient for manufacturers to use virgin plastic. Perhaps cross subsidising of recycling by taxing virgin plastics would produce a sharper focus on this problem.

Not at all, using reprocessed plastic is roughly 65% cheaper than using virgin polymers, you will find it is the customers that insist on virgin materials not the processors.

By customers, do you mean the retailers? I for one, have never been asked if I have a preference. Asking the public might produce a different answer. After all, millions of Londoners (and others) drink water that has been recycled several times! Or perhaps that is why they drink so much of the bottled stuff, although it is no different in content.

Your figure is only true for waste plastic from manufacture, eg mis-moulds etc,
where the polymer is clean, of a known type, and produced in reasonable quantity for reprocessing. Many plastic packaging manufacturers have their own in-house recycling system, so the "waste" never leaves the factory. It is also economic for mass,easily recognised items, such as LDPE milk bottles and PET drinks bottles, but most post-consumer waste plastics are relatively expensive to clean and sort. Colour coding these would make it far more easily achieved/more economic.

Late reply but you can only be against air travel if you are a member of the Climate Change Cult. I am certain it is nonsense. It used to be call it “Manmade Global Warming”. When the climate went 20 years without warming (despite continued increases in the tiny amount of CO2 in the atmosphere) they renamed it “Climate Change” with the implication that it was down to us. So now whenever anything happens whether warmer, colder, drier or wetter than normal then it is Climate Change – well yes but not caused by us!

Even if you are gullible enough to believe this tosh, air travel is addressing the wrong issue. Air travel accounts for 3% of man made CO2. Cement production accounts for 9%, yet you never see Greta and her mad mates picketing B&Q to stop us buying a few bags of the stuff. Air travel is one of the greatest benefit that technology has delivered us and intend to make full use it (off for a tour of the Far East in a week’s time – and another 6 flights!)

Finally if you don’t think EVs are the future, just remember that China will build over a million this year and that is 4 times the volume 4 years ago.

We got our EV because I thought their is no way this old pensioner wants to drive more than 240 in a day so can cope with home charging - so much nicer than a petrol station.

When Tony and Gordon decided it was a good idea to encourage the financially challenged to drive diesels, their were lots of people saying a minisule reduction in the output of that wonderful gas CO2 to replace it is noxious nitrous oxide was utterly mad - and this included the Civil Servants advising him.

However without Gordon Brown we would not have our wonderful FiT payments. Our have now reached £1,800 pa whilst our gas and electricity bills only come to £700 so our energy delivers £1,100 profit!

Finally the mining of Cobalt in the Congo by children is down to the lawlessness of the inhabitants and their utterly corrupt government. The miners such as Glencore get the stuff from huge holes in the ground using huge diggers.

Just a thought, will there be second hand EV's? I suppose there must be. I will hang onto the Claud Butler though when the ZT bites the dust. Im still doubtful about EV's in this country, we cant even repair/maintain roads and that's a good 3000year old technology. And I have clear memories of power cuts and cold houses, workplaces etc, just consider these were in the 1940and50's and think of what will happen in the present day average house with its multitude of electric based paraphernalia! A recent minor power cut found one hospital with a standby generating that failed. We will need to build many,many new power stations- its a hundreds of billions £'s cost and all to be built and on line before 2025. I accept what many of you are saying about potential but unfortunately the powers to be are not as bright as you lot, look at the last 3 and one half years of rubbish. Chris S.

Polymers are easily recycled, there are various ways of separating the different types of plastic if they are mixed together, you are correct that most processors do recycle their waste as it can be fed back into the process.

As I said in my previous reply, its the customers that do not want to take recycled polymer, by customers I mean the people buying the product from the manufacturer. Over the years I have moulded for Ford, Rover, Jaguar, L'Oreal, Tassimo, and many many more, none of the ones I have mentioned would allow the use of reground polymer in their products even when tests conclude that the items were as strong and durable as the items made from virgin compound.

Joe public in most cases wouldn't care if their coffee pod was made from recyclable plastic, its the purchasing departments of most major companies that wont allow it.

(And as an aside, I had three of my technicians fall ill during the last Month when processing biodegradable polymers) Good for the environment, no so for the guys who mould it)

Yes indeed! Son got a secondhand Leaf, used it for 18 months and sold it for more than he paid (in great demand!) Now has an E Golf that he bought from a VW dealer who just wanted to shift it and did not understand the demand for them (an ill educated petrolhead I expect!)

I could believe that it is easier(ish) to clean power station emissions from charging a large number of EV’s than it is to run a similar number of IC engines with emissions kit fitted.

Many drivers of older vehicles remove emissions kit or have so called remaps where no one knows whats being spewed out.

I had a conversation with a former CEGB engineer a short while back about renewables and he was adamant that clean coal was very promising but got binned for political reasons.

I want ROAD TAX reductions for each city im not allowed to drive my car, this is plain ridiculous with council after council banning diesel cars..

its all BS!

I want some reductions in my road tax as they move city after city off the road network for me.

even brand new diesels are now being looked at being banned on 69 plates absolute crazy left wing nutters

Will be interested to know how we will deal with the mega-gallons of fuel consumed by lorries (transporting food around an already overpopulated UK on a carousel), ships and boats and of course aircraft.

It's all well and good electrifying cars, but I am slightly cynical of the drive to outlaw diesel and petrol cars. Never trust a politician, eh?

The grid can't cope as it is, coupled with also houses built from 2025 will be banned from having gas heating/hot water - all electric from thereon. Couple that with the copious car charging points. We simply can't build power stations that quickly.

Is this the same German think tank that told us that (German) diesels were far more eco-friendly than petrol models? I'm sure the Germans do not like the fact that the top end of their executive car market is being damaged by Tesla, any more than we do, but most scientists and motive power experts agree that the efficiency of the most efficient IC engine is lower (and therefore produces more CO2) than a coal fired steam turbine generator, including grid distribution losses. We have a far greater proportion of renewables than them, and with an emphasis on ultra-low emission, carbon neutral homes, offshore wind, and local solar generation, rather than massive, centralised fossil power station generation, Britain could more easily cope with EV demand than most, and be leaders in the field. We would have to sell and promote it around the world, though, as just switching off the power in the UK would make very little difference compared to the pollution and CO2 produced by the rest of the world.

However, ultimately, the rapid increase in world population, which the UK demonstrated forcibly throughout our industrial revolution, and the consumer society, - also a product of industrialised nations, - need the brakes applying. That's a helluva lot of self-denial and abstention needed by a helluva lot of people. Somehow can't see it happening in my lifetime!

Looks like Virgin Media are getting in on the act offering their 40.000+ street furniture cabinets/equipment to be kitted out with EV chargers.


The new network will operate under the name Virgin Media Park & Charge.


A lot of the new BEV's coming out soon with be equipped with V2G (vehicle to Grid) technology with a bi-directional flow, New apps will allow you to dial in how much charge you need for that particular day whilst parked at work/shopping etc and the national grid will reimburse you for the electricity it takes from your vehicle. It will eventually use hundreds of thousands of V2G BEV vehicles to smooth out the grid in peak periods. https://www.fleetcarma.com/latest-ve...-v2g-charging/

LOL Blimey! I've just been reading a piece about that! We're going back to canal barges in one city :eek:


There are plans afoot for an inland port in Leeds :eek: A new inland port in Leeds could remove up to half a million tonnes of freight traffic from the city's roads and reduce congestion. https://www.leeds-live.co.uk/news/le...-port-17211070

They're also going to power HGV's in the UK on carbon neutral poop :eek: https://airqualitynews.com/2019/11/0...s-in-uk-first/

Never run out of fuel again, just fit a bog seat on top of the fuel tank.

If its a time critical delivery add an extra portion of beans to the trucker's breakfast. There's even an in cab refuelling option.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...aa2b4dafa1.jpg

LOL Beanz Meanz Milez. :D

:Ideal on a long run, but hope I am not behind you. :D:D:bowdown::mad::.

As an HGV driver myself you have prodded me into life here! Trucks are there purely for the reason of supply and demand, belching out particulates? I don't think so. Maybe 40 years ago but not today. Trucks have vertical exhausts today so nothing is being ejected at ground level but even so are modern commercial vehicles not subject to stringent Euro 6 regulations? Our vehicles where I work practically emit nothing but water vapour after the Ad Blue system has done its job. A quick look up at the exhaust on my truck which is now 12 months old and the outlet of the exhaust pipe is clean like new and not black and sooty like in the old days. Just saying.

I don't think many people realise just how technologically advanced modern heavy trucks are. All they see is a big threatening heavy vehicle with no regard at all as to what is going on underneath. The truck manufacturers spend millions developing engines and automatic transmissions that really are state of the art pieces of kit adept at moving heavy weights along the road as efficiently as possible. Obviously they need to be serviced and maintained to a high standard as well. Getting back to this particular discussion about the possible eventual switch to electric vehicles, an earlier post mentioned the 40ton plus freight trains on rubber pounding the highways day and night and the fact that they cannot be replaced by an equivalent electric vehicle? Well i am inclined to agree at the moment for me the diesel engine is a fantastic invention that's been around for some time and is only now really being developed in conjunction with modern technology that we didn't have before. Where we are at now in 2019 the diesel engine in my opinion simply cannot be beaten for shifting heavy loads around the country. Battery technology is advancing at a pace i know but i am not aware of anything in the near future to compete with the diesel on the same scale so the Government may be attempting to phase out diesels or indeed all internal combustion engines to a point but for me in a heavy lorry weighing 44 tons diesel is King!

There are also people who have smoked 20 fags a day their whole life and not contracted cancer, but it dioesn't prove that tobacco is harmless, you are just lucky not to have the kind of physiology that reacts like that.
Shell, and other fuel suppliers have realised that the writing is on the wall as far as fossil fuels are concerned, from the Paris Accord to the depletion and increasing cost of finding and collecting oil, including the massive fines and bad press when they have a hugely polluting spillage or leak, they are future proofing themselves by investing in a variety of alternative energy and motive power solutions. Just good business sense, really.

Modern turbo diesels are remarkably efficient and driven correctly, produce less CO2 (which is not strictly a pollutant), and comparable NOX and particulates to petrol engines. However, hitting the accelerator pedal hard at low revs, produces very inefficient combustion, as the turbo is unable to pump sufficient air into the engine. This is why heavily laden trucks and buses are so polluting in urban areas; their constant starting from traffic lights, often as the driver floors it while he is creeping towards them in too high a gear, is in sharp contrast to the truck cruising at 60mph+ on a motorway.

I surely cannot be alone here, surely this is a forum for car enthusiasts, not one for domestic appliances surely :shrug:

Electric cars have no soul, even the likes of the exciting (sic) Tesla.

The debate over when the powers that be force us to hang up the keys to "real" cars in favour of souped up milk floats, those with vested interest in riding the populist bandwagon of environmental concern, ramming bus lanes, idiotic traffic calming, obscene amounts of road furniture that actually create congestion not ease it etc etc etc. will rumble on I fear.

Over and out

Brian :cool:

Hear Hear Brian!

Well said Brian!

How much fuel is wasted every day slowing down and then accelerating away from sleeping policemen? In this Nanny state, almost every roundabout seems to have sleeping policemen in front of it! If you can't see a roundabout in front of you and heed the signs, you shouldn't be on the road!

100% what Brian said. No soul, is there?

I find it impossible to get excited by a small capacity forced induction engine, never mind a hybrid, or full electric. It is a milk float, or even a hairdryer, or kitchen mixer!

There are two strong interest groups at play: the green lobby (communism in disguise) and the automotive industry (who would love legislation to force us to buy their new products).

Am I alone in thinking that cars were mechanically sorted by the mid to late 1990s, and anything later is a struggle to justify? Notice how car advertisements are all about remote unlock, WiFi, Bluetooth etc. Nothing about the mechanics, as that is a long-solved problem.

I will have an internal combustion engine for as long as I can!

Sent from my Redmi 4X using Tapatalk

I understand this is a car forum and many are not in any way connected to the truck industry but its a simple fact that if a modern truck is running to Euro 6 compliance and the majority of them are then they are amongst the cleanest on the road. Why do you think the Government are planning to ban all vehicles from city centres unless they are Euro 6 compliant? The ad blue system is obviously not yet perfect as it aims to significantly reduce pollutants but its up to the acceptable standard of whatever the powers that be deem to be achievable with the technology that we have available to us. Another thing is on my truck as long as the engine is running the ad blue system is constantly working no matter what the engine revs are or if the truck is in stop/start traffic or out on the motorway so I defy any of you to tell me you have been behind a Euro 6 compliant truck and seen black smoke belching out of the exhaust.

Are EVs really the answer in the future? I do not think so.
 

Well I’ve just fitted a fbh to the ZT, Pity it’s not all full of carbon as I’d quite like one that smokes just to upset the clean air brigade.

I must admit to feeling a little guilty maybe even self conscious when I go out in my ZT which is a V6 and the twin pipes are visible at the back potentially polluting the atmosphere. Sometimes I half expect to be pelted with something nasty by some fanatical green activist while out driving about! I justify myself by thinking well I aint been banned from the road yet by the Government so I have every right to be here but don't get me wrong I can see their point but I just wonder how long it will be before we are faced with that kind of scenario? Anyone else feel that way?

Nope, not at all, to buy a new (or second hand EV) will cost more
in terms of pollution to make it and get it to me than my 18 year old V6 or
15 year old diesel.

To clarify both cars were built at
Longbridge, about 50 miles from me, EV's are shipped half way around the world
on a ship belching all sorts of defication material into the air.

What are they going to throw? Can't waste manure as that becomes eco friendly methane, rotten fruit and veg is composted and returned to the land, stones can be better used to build the base of an environmentally friendly yurt. I think you're safe.

I think I am safe anyway hopefully, my car literally only does a couple of miles a day bless it with an occasional blast at the weekend and maybe 2 or 3 times a year into mid wales and back.

Sunderland is up North I know, but still...……….

There you go, I've completed the statement you know you wanted to make ;)

Brian :D

Careful, Brian; your black and white stripes are showing!;)

I never have and never will feel any guilt or remorse about my 'environmental footprint'. I don't care what the climate activists preach any more than I care about what the latest transitory high priest preaches - they are all fanatics and have a personal position to maintain among their contemporaries, in either financial or hierarchical terms. Sanctimonious twaddle.

Have a look at the Amazon basin in S. America and the wanton destruction of natural habitat which removes a whole planetary lung of life supporting elements from the entire planet. See the aerial photos from 50 years ago of that area and compare it to latest one!

Millions of air travellers in massive planes taking millions of happy travellers on hopeless holidays and spewing out kerosene and human waste above the clouds at 35000 ft.

Then the far east in their passage through a new industrial revolution based almost entirely on coal and other fossil fuels. No, let he that casts the first stone....

Blimey! Just read that BA are conducting a review of their practice of carrying large amounts of extra fuel (unneeded for that journey) to reduce their costs of airport refuelling. They must be watching this forum! They don't seem to realise the irony that to carry the extra fuel thousands of miles they need even more extra fuel!

Here's a twist reported on the BBC News website. Demand for cobalt for EV batteries is soaring and its is reckoned the only way to meet the demand is by mining rocks from the abyssal plains on the Pacific sea floor. Machines would march their way across the seabed hoovering up small rocks sending them up to a support ship on the surface. The machines would destroy anything in their path, the silt stirred up would be disastrous to filter feeders at the bottom of the food chain and smother other seabed life where it settles after being carried by the current.

Wonder what the greens have to say about that, save the environment you can see by destroying the environment you can't see :shrug:

I suspect that the Greens will see this as a potentially serious problem, and will demand that either alternatives are found in battery technology, or alternative methods are found for collecting cobalt. They are more likely to suggest that we all ride bicycles, but then steel and manufacturing use tremendous amounts of energy, so perhaps we will have to adopt an Amish type of existence but then horses NAUGHTY WORD-NAUGHTY WORD-NAUGHTY WORD-NAUGHTY WORD- a lot and produce methane... Oh God, let it stop!

Tesla's battery guru Jeff Dahn has developed a cobalt free battery chemistry that will see the battery pack last for a million miles :eek:



https://electrek.co/2019/09/07/tesla...s-robot-taxis/

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_9Qu9O8Kx5e...eries2edit.jpg

Awesome :drool4:

When were sleeping policemen, bus lanes and street furniture anything to do with Green politics? Seems like people on here wish to blame the green lobby for all the problems of the world. Strange, when they have always been a minority pressure group, with very little representation in our parliament, admittedly more prominent in some European countries. I find much of the commentary on here boorish, lacking in real thought, just attacking sincerely held, and well-researched and considered beliefs - to call it a "populist bandwagon", Brian, is unworthy of you, and the sort of tabloid sound-bite labelling reminiscent of Orwell's "Two legs good, four legs bad",as well as Trump's chanting mobs. We all have a vested interest in saving our planet - to pay no heed to how badly we are polluting it is reckless. Or perhaps you are all old enough to think you don't need to give a damn, you won't be around in 30 years. Look around you, it's happening now! And I am not making a penny out of this. As said before, in the not too distant future, I will be making the sad decision to give up the CDT, which despite it's oh-so bad (because it's that naughty-word "European" so better add that word to the banned list, Eds)engine, in favour of a hybrid. I love driving the Rover, I love the way it looks, but I recognise that all of us will have to make sacrifices if we are not going to spend our lives baling out our homes, - Carlisle, York, Whaley Bridge, Sheffield, Doncaster,, and now Venice again, to name but a few. And then we have heatwaves causing huge forest and moorland or scrub fires. We will soon be using all our energy to rebuild our world to cope with its increasingly violent weather incidents. Yes, this is a car forum, and I didn't start this topic, but somone needs to put some balance in among all the paranoid conspiracy-theory tub-thumping. I could go on, but I'm hoping I have said enough.

Andrew, Newcastle City Council is hell bent on " green traffic improvement" schemes, reams of badly thought out remodelling of junctions, and unnecessary narrowing of carriageways, and excessive street furniture and signage, cycle lanes which happen to be ignored by most cyclists.

I have observed this "progress" first hand, watched how traffic is affected by the congestion caused by traffic light on roundabouts, bus lanes effective from 7.00 to 19.00 where in off peak periods, you find three double decker busses coming along every ten minute with a handful of passengers being carried.

Speed cushions, that wreck suspension components, cause particulate commission in the form of friction material dust, and rubber dust from tyre, irrespective of the propulsion format of the vehicle.

Make no bones, Newcastle City Council have made it abundantly clear that their desire is to make it as difficult as possible for the private motorist to navigate not only the city centre, but the surrounding suburbs with their crackpot populist schemes.

I hope to be around in 30 years, but I would like to think my children will be also, and I'm not as selfish as you seem to be implying.

I'm an engineer, I also have an analytical mind, and I have eyes and ears, and can actually see first hand what is being carried out to the detriment of my local environment, by people with vested interests........vested interests I hear you say? surely not? T.Dan Smith....remember him :getmecoat:

Brian :cool:

I am not going to comment about the seven hundred new houses being built on greenbelt land less than 1/4 of a mile from my front door.

These are being built on drained marshland, the main drains are are you ready for this 9" pipe with a storage pond SUD "sustainable urban drainage"

So based upon the fact the fields these new houses are being built upon were constantly under a foot of water, I wonder what the water runoff from having several acres of hard landscaping instead of fields going to have?

No effect at all, and the resultant flooding can be blamed on climate change.

What utter twaddle, if you are going to have any hope of "saving the planet" you need to scrap all cars, close all power stations, kill all cattle, and lob a few neutron bombs into strategic locations.

There are too many people trying to live in too small an area, consuming with gay abandon what is left of the worlds natural resources......I wonder if the farmers in the surrounds of Fishlake who have suggested the neglect of dredging the rivers have caused, could posibly know anything better than the environment agency "expert" who claimed this wouldn't help (translation, this would cost money, and of course it's up north, and we have cross rail and HS2 to consider)

Perhaps EV are the answer then, the dredging of the sea bed to extract cobalt should help matters immensely :getmecoat:

Oh how my childhood has been robbed from me by those evil people driving around in their pollution causing Austin A35 and Austin Westminsters, with their coal fired houses, damn them all to hell.

** Do you know what I think, if life is going to be so dull, what is the point? can we not just blow up the Sun instead :devil:

Christ on a bike, I hate the planet, in fact I hate life itself, but at least I don't expect every other person to share my "we're doomed" attitude to life **




Brian :D



** tongue in cheek, with a smattering of sarcasm to boot :cool:

Brian, I have no doubt that there are incompetent road engineers mis-applying technology in their re-design of Newcastle's road layout, but I suggest their primary motive is traffic management and congestion, and perhaps their green (pollution) concerns are the natural by-product of having to solve the primary problem of increased numbers of private and public transport vehicles, as well as commercial vehicles, standing in traffic jams for longer and longer periods. Yes, they may even be trying to make public transport more speedy by giving it priority over us car drivers - and they make no bones about it in the city centre. But ultimately, they are trying to improve the lives of all Geordies, by ensuring they can get to their destination efficiently. There simply isn't enough road space at rush hour in our cities if we all insist on driving solo in our cars. Back in the days of the yellow trolley buses, there was far less traffic on Newcastle's streets, but it was still fairly chaotic! It seems like a paradox to accuse our councillors of populism in one breath, and then accuse them of upsetting and annoying their population in another!

PS T.Dan Smith is long dead, and while not wishing to appear complacent, the level to which our public officials are nowadays scrutinised suggests they would soon be held to account, as we have seen in Middlesborough, and other councils. Who is bribing these officials, the manufacturers of bollards, signs and sleeping policemen? I doubt it. They are more likely guilty of lazy thinking, bad judgement and incompetence. Or perhaps we, the drivers, just hate anything that slows OUR progress in our luxurious cocoons.

Wow 14 pages & 133 posts 134 with mine :shrug: I can not believe this thread is still in the general forum for our cars, I thought it would have been moved to social forum after post 1 :smilie_re:

Andrew, everything, and I mean everything that has been carried out in the past five years, in a misguided attempt to "improve the environment" as their current signs proclaim on the section of roadworks which has taken from May until the present to not be completed, has been to the detriment of actual traffic flow.

They are anti motorist, they are creating congestion, this is because they have a vested interest in creating congestion in order that they can then "congestion charge" in order to keep in line with the nonsensical air quality guidelines set out in EU clean air legislation.

The sad fact of the matter is this, unless there is a multilateral approach to tackle climate change, nothing and I mean nothing we do as a nation will counteract the likes of the Chinese and their rampant use of coal fired power stations for instance.

The politicos may argue we should set an example, how naive do these clowns think the general public are, and the brainwashing the media slants on climate change is excruciatingly patronising.

I was cold called by a company offering a warranty on my washing machine last week, I told him I didn't want one, why? because I bought my washing machine when my eldest daughter was two years old.......she is 21 by the way.

Why do I insist on driving an old clapped out banger, when I can afford to buy a Tesla without credit, finance, or loan? because the main damage to the environment is caused in the energy used producing, low quality junk which is used then thrown away.

I recycle properly, and by which I don't mean washing out yoghurt pots for the local authority to send thousands of miles overseas to developing countries to "recycle" into their watercourses :getmecoat:


As a conclusion to the question raised in the title of this thread, no vehicle, EV or internal combustion are the answer in the future, but I will say this I will as long as there is life in my body, enjoy driving my old bangers until the fuel required to propel them runs out, and be damned :drool4:

Brian :D

Brian - totally with you on housing policy like that - THAT does smell of back-handers from the building companies - or perhaps more incompetence in high places. I've dealt with incompetent so-called professionals in my former lives as a laboratory specialist and kitchen designer (in the latter, considered "not a proper job - so what do you know"). I'm not saying EVs are the solution, and undersea cobalt mining may, like fracking in this country, be killed before it ever gets going. But looking at the extent of the floods in south Yorkshire, and the rate of rainfall, I suspect you could have dredged the Don to three times its capacity all the way to the Humber, and it wouldn't have made much difference to the flooding, apart from perhaps a dangerously faster flow of floodwater across open ground. And you appear to agree, that Weather Incident Severity (I won't dare call it climate change again for fear of being labelled a Green Meanie!) is going to cost us a lot more money, - in flood prevention, fire fighting, imported food, insurance premiums etc. Sorry to be such a killjoy, but I'm sure some on here are burying their petrol-heads in the sand, and won't accept that there is anything to worry about.

Trivial tangential query, but speaking only for myself of course, I only ever click "New posts" to see what gems have been added since my last visit. Doesn't matter to me which category posts are made, but maybe I trawl alone?

No, that's what I do as well :}

And I would have left a note on his nose! loud mouth cent. Chris.S.

sorry David but I though you realized that you and your generation are a load of knuckle dragging, fascist thicko's who have spent your life raping the planet of its riches and spoiling everything for the "wokes" Shame on you. Chris S.

I think this sums it up nicely...

Well put!
 

Exactly!

Well put

Anybody want to start slagging off David Attenborough? And for Greta Thunberg, those crosses are at least 3 generations ago - she is talking about people who were born after WW2. I'm fed up with people carping about greens. Time will tell who was right or wrong. just as it will with Brexit. Why do you all assume that people who believe a different set of "facts" to those that you do, must have some dark, ulterior motive, or are stupid and gullible? Fake News is what you call news you don't believe. I see a lot of it, and I see a lot of gullible people believing it!

I'm looking forward to throwing off the shackles, aren't you :shrug:

I have my rattan smock at the ready, along with my wooden clogs, and step through bicycle.

Recently I've turned my garden into a nature reserve, along with a ground source heat pump, windmill and carbon capture.


Brian :getmecoat:























P.S. it's not really a rattan smock, but a rather fetching LBD embellished with intricately carved black rhinoceros horn, and a stole made of the pelt of three Amur leopard :drool4:

My garden is currently being used for the illicit storage of toxic waste, and I have an arrangement to allow fly tipping of microplastics into the water course :cool:

My dog Alfie was less than impressed with the puddle he stepped into at my local nature reserve........poor soul :(

https://the75andztclub.co.uk/forum/a...1&d=1573777638

If I'm not mistaken that, the top picture, is remarkably close to either child cruelty or abuse of a minor by the organisers of whoever produced it. It is tantamount to provocation by exposure to ridicule. There would also be a possibility of parental reckless endangerment.

The bottom half is no more than is regularly seen on various social media platforms. Nuff said about those bear pits. I wonder why nobody sees the need for a legal challenge - for the use of such publicity and the ludicrous supposition theory behind it.

Everybody is entitled to their opinions and, of course, I respect that but what gets on my wick is when they start preaching to me about it trying to convert me to their beliefs, I'll make my own mind up thank you.

Dave- it was in jest , and only jest, I will be more careful in future. Chris.S.

Trikey - how low can you sink? No, sorry, don't bother, I'm already feeling sick! Patriotism (of this fake type) is the last refuge of scoundrels. Sorry to modify the quote of a hero. No wonder this country is in such a mess.

PS I'll leave you lot to sort out the world, you seem to know what the solutions aren't.

Start building fire-proof arks! Cos it looks like not enough people are taking it seriously!

We need to tackle world population increase. Starting with the greatest consumers and polluters - namely the western world. Don't blame the Chinese, they are only churning out the cheap, disposable c**p that most of our heedless society loves to buy. We tut and cry crocodile tears over their filthy coal fired power stations and smog bound cities as we fill our homes with more of their cheap tat, and even their better made stuff.

I'm not sinking low, I just don't like the way this child thinks she has all the answers, no doubt she is having her strings pulled by folks higher up.

I also think her carbon footprint would have been a lot smaller had she not been front page news for the last few months.

I make no apologies for the example in the picture (Yes it is a bit facebook) But the youth of today have the past generations to thank for their position in life now, I wish the majority of them would show some respect, starting by getting off their ar$es and voting for what they believe in, rather than whinging about it after the event.

I absolutely could not agree more

This child has ASD, this condition will make the behaviour of the individual focused to the point of obsession, and they find it extremely difficult to relate to others, having limited or no empathy.

So you can take this however you wish, children are exactly that, they are not miniature adults, however mature they seem, they lack the vital life experience of their elders.

I find the rantings of this girl disturbing, she is definitely being manipulated as one of the major ways ASD are displayed in adolescent females, is the "parroting" of others.

Anyway none of this is particularly "on topic", this is a forum for car enthusiasts, EV's are not a vehicle for an enthusiast, they are simply a means of getting from A to B.

Are they the future? well they will be as the powers that be have decreed it so, I will be 71 years of age when the ban on new petrol and diesel comes into force, and if I'm still on the planet, I won't be buying one.

Brian :D

You spritely young thing :D The only electric cars that are interesting have Scalextric on them.

I can remember the powers saying the same about LPG, then diesel! Its whatever they want to sell to the masses.

Beautiful moths, John. Are they about 3 - 5inch wingspan? I remember something similar flying in through the open door of a chip shop in York as I was queueing, to the consternation of several customers. I thought it was an Atlas moth, escaped from a banana box (had a picture of one in a book)! I heard the bats in our barn squeaking tonight while working on the 75. I thought they would be hibernating by now.

I've been reading a piece about the de-carbonization of the railways this very morning. :D



Interesting reading.


https://theconversation.com/decarbon...be-done-124905

Not as much goes by rail as used to, its all bulk loads now whereas used to deliver individual wagons to small local goods yards for companies but the rail industry decided that individual wagon loads wasn't economical and stopped it concentrating on bulk loads resulting in the companies having to move their goods by road. Every city or large town had a marshalling yard, trains would run with mixed goods, drop and pick up so many wagons at one marshalling yard, carry on, drop/pick up more at the next yard etc. and the individual wagons would go forward to their local destination. This wasn't 100 years ago, this stopped in the 1990s! The marshalling yards are all now either closed, used by passenger franchises as storage depots or by Network Rail for track maintenance trains. The freight yard at Leith in Edinburgh for example used to have four or five companies receiving raw materials and sending out finished products by rail, there was even a shunting locomotive located there, now the place is so overgrown you'd need a chain saw and a JCB to get near it.

It's such a shame when you realise that a large percentage of all new railway stock is built overseas.

My nephew works - currently - for one of the contractors who moves imported trains via road in order to be commissioned. Such a shame they're not built here.

Likewise in Glasgow the Caley works shut it's doors for the last time a couple of months ago. So sad to see all that skill going away. I was there supporting the workers when they marched out with pipes playing for the last time

We still have several train manufacturing facilities in this country, admittedly now mostly, if not all, foreign owned. I believe there is still an enquiry going on as to how Hitachi's Shildon works lost the contract for replacing the 40 year old (and now very unreliable) Tyne and Wear Metro trains to an overseas competitor. How useful would it be to have your rolling stock made within 30miles of your operating centre? And how much will redundancy of skilled workers (especially in that high unemployment area) cost in both social and economic terms? PS, the building with the scaffolding in the background is (or was) the Central Plaza Hotel Its demolition started 2 weeks ago, as it was declared unsafe, following a thorough survey, after bits of the upper parapet fell into the street below.

Here's a sign of things to come!!! Audi announces today it's electric vehicle plans with a $12billion investment and at the same time announced it's cutting it's workforce by 10% by 2025. :eek:

I think we should all shout from the rooftop that this belief that humans are responsible for global warming (sorry climate change now the temperature is not rising) is nonsense. The Climate Change Cult does not want to control the climate, they want to control us. These folk want us to all live miserable, subsistence lives. They failed to do this via socialism so are now trying this new approach.

I am doing my bit to battle these idiots. This year we will have taken 14 leisure flights (although only 6 were long haul...). Join me in this noble battle!

I do appreciate that humans are damaging the planet with plastic pollution, forest clearing and driving diesels. Clearly anyone doing these should be shot!

Note to Mods: The following is a reply to current posts on this thread and refers to matters that might be better placed in Social. Transfer might be preferable!

There are activists with best intentions. There are evangelists with supreme but misguided faith. There are innocents prostituted by elders who should know better. Then there are the objective scientists with differing views.

Thought it might be useful to read eminent scientists and logical and well informed and respected philosophers as a much needed alternative opinion.

They only reach a limited audience so don't achieve much traction but doubters on both sides would benefit from a quick scan. Enjoy.

Principia Scientific International.com

Electroverse.net

When the fossil fuel burning power stations of India, China & the USA start caring about the global warming situation.. So will I.

Whilst renewing my VED, there was a button on the DVLA website to make a comparison on running costs between your car and a EV.

I chose to compare my diesel against a model 3 Tesla. Based on the mileage I do, I would save over £1300 a year on running costs.

But even at £1300 a year saving, it would still take some 20 plus years to recover the capital cost.

EV’s are a good idea and would seriously consider one when the purchase prices hit parity with existing IC models.

Do they take into account battery life and the cost of replacement Steve?

If not then that comparison is about as level as Mont Blanc.:getmecoat:

Pretty certain that battery life was not factored in as they assume that you will be buying a new vehicle every 3 to 5 years.

I think their figures are based entirely on VED and fuel saving costs.

Lots of early Tesla’s running around with over 500,000 miles on the original batteries. At the other end of the scale some early Leafs have needed new batteries at 50,000 miles. However those early Leafs were not using
Lithium Ion battery technology. In short I think modern batteries should outlast vehicles relying on bits of metal flying up and down by a huge margin.

Well I've got over 400k miles and coming up for twenty years out of my up and down flying bits of metal - don't think the current battery technology could improve on that. ;)

While I have no statistical evidence, just my own experience, I suspect that the last generation of diesels before the introduction of DPFs and Adblu will prove to have been the most reliable IC engines ever. I remember talking to one of the mechanics at a local haulage company who used Peugeots fitted with the XUD engine as company cars saying that 400,000 miles was not uncommon for fully maintained and serviced company vehicles, as reported by the head of maintenance at the local dealership, - David Hayton. I suspect that apart from battery changes, steering, tyres, brakes and suspension, EVs will need very little maintenance and servicing over their lives, unless cynical manufacturers build in short service life parts to make sure you have to return to the dealership to spend money at intervals. It certainly won't be difficult to programme them to throw up a fault code which puts them into limp mode. Perhaps we'll get over the battery limitations by turning our motorways and trunk routes into giant Scalextric tracks, and reducing the need for large batteries.

Have to say that I'm getting close to giving up the Rover & buying a Nissan Leaf

Looked at the figures today. The Rover costs me around 22p/mile in fuel and has averaged almost £50 pm in maintenance (blummin cambelts). Tax is £265 pa

2017 Leaf from my local Nissan dealer about £11k with 6k on the clock. Fuel prices should be about 5p/mile, maintenance should be minimal, zero tax. The batteries are guaranteed for 100k but I'd expect range to reduce over time.

Currently 90% of my usage is just commuting 20 miles a day so a 100 mile range is no problem and in five years time if say the range had dropped to 80 miles it wouldn't be a problem. We could use the better half's Yaris for longer journeys if necessary.

So all in all, even with depreciation I'd be saving enough to make the small inconvenience worthwhile. Thankfully I could charge it up at home so to balance the inconvenience of having longer stops if I ever used it for longer runs, on most months I'd never have to "fill up" at a station at all.

Finally - because no post about cars is complete with a political comment - I'm keen to batten down the hatches financially as far as I possibly can. If that chump Johnson gets in and bangs us out of the EU (if he sticks to his word, which will be a first, we'll end up with no deal) our economy will be in deep poo for the foreseeable future. I'd be tempted to emigrate but when we lose our freedom of movement in Europe where could I go?

There have been many posts in this thread which is now over 200 posts long that contain no political comment !

Do you mean WITHOUT a political comment ????

2000 miles in with our Hyundai IONIQ HEV and absolutely love it

I did - sorry.

And Tesla is now working on a battery pack that they claim will last 1,000,000 miles !

Well if they also have a decent range and fast charging rate then they will have cracked it. :bowdown:

Electric cars have been around since the 1850s, and the battery technology has been the only thing over the years to hold them back.

If by 'cracked it' you mean an average hatchback will cost £50,000 instead of less than £10,000....



'Battery technology' continues to hold 'them' back. Still not learning the lessons of ubiquitous products. E.g petrol / diesel only two fuels used in 99% of road going vehicles (ok now complicating by adding Ethanol etc). But I was more thinking of the nightmare of mobile phone chargers - remember before they standardised on the charging voltage and connector? Rechargeable battery packs should be swappable and fit many vehicles. Imagine the 'recharge' speed if you could swap out some (or all) of your batteries for ready charged ones? and simultaneously charge the 'fixed' batteries (if any) at the same time. The two problems that affect electric cars from a user perspective is range between recharges when coupled with recharge times, and the weight of the vehicle (battery weight).


Currently it's 1:45 each way to visit my Mum and just over 80 miles meaning I'd have to stop twice to 50% recharge (at least) in a Nissan leaf That would either mean having to stop at my Mum's for 13 hours to charge from a normal household plug, or two 30 minute stops mid journey each way for rapid charging. So now my 3 hour round trip is 4 hours - an hour of it spent somewhere I don't want to be?



Here's another - Currently planning next years tour of the highlands - it's well over 300 miles to Inverness from home. that's 8-9 hours driving with one good lunch stop. In an electric vehicle I'd need a 200mile range and a rapid charger at very close to the halfway point. But continuing on around the top of Scotland for another 1000 miles in 4 more days? I don't fancy my chances at the moment.

Only if you buy a Tesla. :icon_lol:

Yes the battery technology isn't at a stage where I would buy an electric car, as I also drive long distance sometimes for work, but it is improving, as is the charging infrastructure.

Ok, true - but the fact is that you still pay a hefty premium for EV cars. Look at the leaf - if it were £11k new then it might be better value (if it had 3 times the range...).


I've no doubt that there's further progress to be made in all areas with electric cars. And many applicable uses. Whether they'll be able to be competitive with the utility of an ICE powered car by 2040 I doubt. On the subject of cost I can only see that going up while the batteries continue to require rare minerals in their manufacture.

I notice nobody mentions the effects of cold weather on the battery packs of EV's ;)

Reduced range, and not recommended to charge lithium ion batteries under 0 degrees.

That's going to cause all sorts of problems in very cold weather.

Russ