Banning of petrol & diesel powered cars

[22A]

A few random thoughts on this subject;

No more Formula 1 Grand Prix racing and who will bother going to the Isle of Man for the TT racing when it's just just electric cycles? public transport & good lorries to be exempt perhaps?

Someone rang in enthusiastically to radio 2 today. "I have an electric car and I can travel 90 miles on one charge at 2p mile". Hmm; who will provide the charging points at (say) 50 mile intervals around the country? When the Government realises no more Road Fund Tax coming into the Treasury, will there be a fee added to these charging points?

Someone from Friends of the Earth has been on Sky News stating "2040 is too far off. The Government should act now and stop petrol & diesel powered vehicles from some parts of Britain now".

[RedM]

If I'm not home by a certain time I can rarely park outside my front door, and I haven't got a garage or hard standing. So what do I do..trail a charging lead 500 yards up the road, or even across the street. The roads will just be a mass of cables getting tangled! 

[SARJ]

This idea will never work

[Laner]

Will we be able to generate enough green electricity to power all these vehicles? Or will there be a massive expansion of our power stations?

[Nibor]

I think this is the only way forward really.  We are going to run out of oil eventually, and as we get closer the prices will rocket.  The less we depend on oil the less our politicians will be bribed by business to cock around in the middle east.  We're well past any serious doubt about the human impact on climate change, so we do really have to do something.

Practically you can get up to about 280 mile range batteries in cars now and they'll get better, battery tech improves all the time.  Most people rarely drive that far without a break.  Electric cars can be safer and will require less energy as they'll be lighter.

Charging points are pretty easy because the grid's there already.  Probably need a solution for evening out the load though as otherwise it'll spike at 6pm when every commuter plugs in.  We need better power generation than a rip off Sellafield replacement and buying Russian gas with or without this.  It's going to have to include nuclear but with better reactor design than the 1950s one EDF are putting in - if we were able to build up an industry around thorium reactors we might actually have a market leading position in the world if we can buy it from India.

I can see quite a few things happening:

- houses with heat pumps, solar cells and batteries becoming the norm

- cars with solar cells (tesla are working on this)

- more mass transit in urban areas

- more working remotely

It would be nice if the UK could turn this into an economic positive, the whole world will have to follow eventually.

[Maesknoll Red]

Not exactly banning them, no more new ones to be sold after 2040, so I assume some of us with classic vehicles will still be able to use them.   As for formula 1, there has been the gentle pushing of formula E for a while now, Mercedes have recently announced they are going into it.

[BigTone]

27 minutes ago, Nibor said:

I think this is the only way forward really.  We are going to run out of oil eventually, and as we get closer the prices will rocket.  The less we depend on oil the less our politicians will be bribed by business to cock around in the middle east.  We're well past any serious doubt about the human impact on climate change, so we do really have to do something.

Practically you can get up to about 280 mile range batteries in cars now and they'll get better, battery tech improves all the time.  Most people rarely drive that far without a break.  Electric cars can be safer and will require less energy as they'll be lighter.

Charging points are pretty easy because the grid's there already.  Probably need a solution for evening out the load though as otherwise it'll spike at 6pm when every commuter plugs in.  We need better power generation than a rip off Sellafield replacement and buying Russian gas with or without this.  It's going to have to include nuclear but with better reactor design than the 1950s one EDF are putting in - if we were able to build up an industry around thorium reactors we might actually have a market leading position in the world if we can buy it from India.

I can see quite a few things happening:

- houses with heat pumps, solar cells and batteries becoming the norm

- cars with solar cells (tesla are working on this)

- more mass transit in urban areas

- more working remotely

It would be nice if the UK could turn this into an economic positive, the whole world will have to follow eventually.

What about a car with a wind turbine on the roof ?

[Slippin cider]

I'm going for a Ferrari with solar panels....

[Mike Hunt-Hertz]

Less people! Drastic population control.

 

And more pushbikes, obviously!

[Guest]

Think you're looking at it from todays viewpoint and not 23 years time, 22A.  I actually think by 2030-2035 we nearly all will be on electric cars anyway.  Only last week Volvo said they were only doing plugin hybrids onwards from 2018. 

Battery life development continues to improve.  By 2040 I'll firmly predict we'll have cars that can do 500-600 on a full charge. Charges will take a matter of minutes and by that time charging points will be in every garage/supermarket/service station just like conventional fuel is now. 

The real question in all of this is how they will deal with emissions and Vehicle Excise Duty when we're all going around in 0 emission vehicles. I guess we might see them taxed on size of batteries/charge held or just a return to a fixed price for each type of automobile. 

[miser]

Nice headline at the moment, but no plan on how to do it. Meanwhile there's a few speed bumps to be removed to ease pollution concerns.

[Slippin cider]

36 minutes ago, Tomarse said:

Think you're looking at it from todays viewpoint and not 23 years time, 22A.  I actually think by 2030-2035 we nearly all will be on electric cars anyway.  Only last week Volvo said they were only doing plugin hybrids onwards from 2018. 

Battery life development continues to improve.  By 2040 I'll firmly predict we'll have cars that can do 500-600 on a full charge. Charges will take a matter of minutes and by that time charging points will be in every garage/supermarket/service station just like conventional fuel is now. 

The real question in all of this is how they will deal with emissions and Vehicle Excise Duty when we're all going around in 0 emission vehicles. I guess we might see them taxed on size of batteries/charge held or just a return to a fixed price for each type of automobile. 

Ok ...rewind 23 years to 1994 ....have we really progressed that much in that time? ...not massively....so what makes you think that we'll be any further forward by 2040....unless we have charging points every 10 yards and lots of new power stations to supply these power points and batteries that give the same kind of mileage as their fossil fuel equivalent, forget it! ...it's all a lot of spin to appease the tree huggers and cyclists ....it'll not happen in 23 years ...maybe 75..

[kevinmabbuttshair]

Ahem, where are all the mines for the metal that goes in these batteries?

Does that mean there will be electric cargo ships?

What about all the extra smelters to smelt all this extra ore that will require mining? Emission free smelters?

How about all the extra gas and electricity these smelters use?

 

[Slippin cider]

6 minutes ago, kevinmabbuttshair said:

Ahem, where are all the mines for the metal that goes in these batteries?

Does that mean there will be electric cargo ships?

What about all the extra smelters to smelt all this extra ore that will require mining? Emission free smelters?

How about all the extra gas and electricity these smelters use?

 

Exactly....it's all a lot of b******s ..you can see it's all been well thought out ! ...nothing to see here...move along ...

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, Slippin cider said:

Ok ...rewind 23 years to 1994 ....have we really progressed that much in that time? ...not massively....so what makes you think that we'll be any further forward by 2040....unless we have charging points every 10 yards and lots of new power stations to supply these power points and batteries that give the same kind of mileage as their fossil fuel equivalent, forget it! ...it's all a lot of spin to appease the tree huggers and cyclists ....it'll not happen in 23 years ...maybe 75..

23 years ago we still had leaded petrol and most cars kicked out emissions well over 200grams of CO2 per KM for little more than 25mpg if petrol and 40ish for diesel.  Most cars are sub 100grams these days and modern diesels will do 60mpg easily.  The biggest difference is the motor industry is also driving this change. 

I don't get the whole charging point thing.   When you are running low on petrol what do you do?   5-6 years ago you could get about 70-90 miles charge on modern batteries. Now you can get 230ish.  Do you see where the tech is taking us?  Who is really going to need 500 miles per charge. Even myself who does 30k miles a year rarely drives more than 350 in one direction in one go.   

There is a question about the power generation for sure but i think we'll see many people simply charging off solar. 

[Nibor]

16 minutes ago, Slippin cider said:

Ok ...rewind 23 years to 1994 ....have we really progressed that much in that time? ...not massively....so what makes you think that we'll be any further forward by 2040....unless we have charging points every 10 yards and lots of new power stations to supply these power points and batteries that give the same kind of mileage as their fossil fuel equivalent, forget it! ...it's all a lot of spin to appease the tree huggers and cyclists ....it'll not happen in 23 years ...maybe 75..

Right now a Tesla X can have a 100 kWh battery which gives a working range of about 300 miles.  I'm on an average tariff of about 15p / kWh so potentially it would cost £15 for 300 miles or 5p a mile.  That's less than a third of the cost of diesel per mile.

Charging that takes 90 minutes with a supercharger or overnight with a wall connector.

Batteries don't need to improve much at all but actually if you look at how they've come on since 94, and project that 23 years into the future they'd be about a quarter of their current weight for the same energy.

The only surprising thing about this is that we're not already using electric cars all over the place.

The Model 3 will retail new for about £30k...

 

 

[Nibor]

18 minutes ago, kevinmabbuttshair said:

Ahem, where are all the mines for the metal that goes in these batteries?

Does that mean there will be electric cargo ships?

What about all the extra smelters to smelt all this extra ore that will require mining? Emission free smelters?

How about all the extra gas and electricity these smelters use?

 

Perhaps we'll find it's more than offset by not needing to produce those giant metal lumps... what are they called?  Engine blocks?

[Slippin cider]

1 minute ago, Tomarse said:

23 years ago we still had leaded petrol and most cars kicked out emissions well over 200grams of CO2 per KM for little more than 25mpg if petrol and 40ish for diesel.  Most cars are sub 100grams these days and modern diesels will do 60mpg easily.  The biggest difference is the motor industry is also driving this change. 

I don't get the whole charging point thing.   When you are running low on petrol what do you do?   5-6 years ago you could get about 70-90 miles charge on modern batteries. Now you can get 230ish.  Do you see where the tech is taking us?  Who is really going to need 500 miles per charge. Even myself who does 30k miles a year rarely drives more than 350 in one direction in one go.   

There is a question about the power generation for sure but i think we'll see many people simply charging off solar. 

Its still not a massive move forward though is it? ...yes we've seen the demise of leaded petrol and the advent of catalytic converters etc but even with all the filtration etc we are where we are and the powers that be are still not happy...even though previous governments promoted diesel cars and actively encouraged people to buy them! ...I'll sit and wait and see what happens...personaIly I can't see it happening in 23 years but each to their own ....I'd like to think that it'd happen one day but the whole thing raises more questions than it answers so I'll sit on the fence and watch patiently....

[Nibor]

2 hours ago, BigTone said:

What about a car with a wind turbine on the roof ?

My cousins got some stupid little hyundai thing that sounds like a hairdryer.  It's about as close as I can imagine.

[Maesknoll Red]

23 years..... to deadline day,  I hope the project team electrifying the railway aren't managing this pipe dream!!

[Slippin cider]

Just now, Maesknoll Red said:

23 years..... to deadline day,  I hope the project team electrifying the railway aren't managing this pipe dream!!

I heard it was the very same people ...and upon completion of this project they're going to look into bringing back the Portishead line with a halt at Ashton gate ! 

[Erithacus]

Good points being made here. Mine two penn'orth  recognises them but will emphasise the fact that we (as a planet, if Trump and a few others are ousted next time around) are going to be short of petro-chemical fuels before too long and the transition (back) to electricity is all but inevitable. Yes, the internal combustion engine will still be around for a good while yet (take steam trains as an parallel) but it will have to be greatly reduced in application. There will still be many areas where a good torquey diesel will be the only real option, such as industry and agriculture; electric will need to be an equal before replacement.

As an aside, the minor revolution in ocean-going cargo in recent years is down to the rise of the super-sized container ships. By making them so huge, the numbers actually make it worthwhile to make things in foreign parts (China being a prime example) and ship them half way round the world - and still make a profit. It's been said that the top ten vessels now consume more fuel than the whole of Britain's road traffic every day. And they use the nastier end of the petroleum industry's dregs and cause some worrying amounts of pollution.

 

OK, so we get rid of engines and make motors. That, as kevinmabbuttshair mentions, is going to require a huge increase of some rather rare precious metals. While we might well be in hock to the Middle East's sheiks or Russian moguls, it will fall to the nations who can mine the stuff who will find themselves in the same position of power. The global balance will shift again. And of course, the energy will be relocated, not removed from the planet. Who knows how much more generation will be needed in the future if the traffic system becomes converted? Nuclear programmes a-plenty? Hmmm. Our National Grid will have to have a massive overhaul (read: investment!) if we all drive electric vehicles. We stand on the edge of quite a revolution that we really don't have a good grasp of yet.

There are lots of different aspects that are going to change noticeably in our future. I'm almost glad I am an old duffer and by 2040 might not be capable of driving then.

  

 

1 hour ago, Mike Hunt-Hertz said:

Less people! Drastic population control.

Could be something of a natural balance happening: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40719743

Maybe only those blokes who have looked after themselves will be in demand. Form an orderly queue, ladies! 

[kevinmabbuttshair]

19 minutes ago, Nibor said:

Perhaps we'll find it's more than offset by not needing to produce those giant metal lumps... what are they called?  Engine blocks?

Engine blocks made of easily recyabl aluminium

How's those lithium recycle plants coming on?

What about all the precious metals that is required to make these electric motors? Having said that how about all the extra copper to manufacture the power units? 

 

Look up the joke that is the conversion of one of Drax coal fired boilers to wood to expose the bullshit

[Mike Hunt-Hertz]

11 minutes ago, Erithacus said:

Good points being made here. Mine two penn'orth  recognises them but will emphasise the fact that we (as a planet, if Trump and a few others are ousted next time around) are going to be short of petro-chemical fuels before too long and the transition (back) to electricity is all but inevitable. Yes, the internal combustion engine will still be around for a good while yet (take steam trains as an parallel) but it will have to be greatly reduced in application. There will still be many areas where a good torquey diesel will be the only real option, such as industry and agriculture; electric will need to be an equal before replacement.

As an aside, the minor revolution in ocean-going cargo in recent years is down to the rise of the super-sized container ships. By making them so huge, the numbers actually make it worthwhile to make things in foreign parts (China being a prime example) and ship them half way round the world - and still make a profit. It's been said that the top ten vessels now consume more fuel than the whole of Britain's road traffic every day. And they use the nastier end of the petroleum industry's dregs and cause some worrying amounts of pollution.

 

OK, so we get rid of engines and make motors. That, as kevinmabbuttshair mentions, is going to require a huge increase of some rather rare precious metals. While we might well be in hock to the Middle East's sheiks or Russian moguls, it will fall to the nations who can mine the stuff who will find themselves in the same position of power. The global balance will shift again. And of course, the energy will be relocated, not removed from the planet. Who knows how much more generation will be needed in the future if the traffic system becomes converted? Nuclear programmes a-plenty? Hmmm. Our National Grid will have to have a massive overhaul (read: investment!) if we all drive electric vehicles. We stand on the edge of quite a revolution that we really don't have a good grasp of yet.

There are lots of different aspects that are going to change noticeably in our future. I'm almost glad I am an old duffer and by 2040 might not be capable of driving then.

  

 

Could be something of a natural balance happening: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40719743

Maybe only those blokes who have looked after themselves will be in demand. Form an orderly queue, ladies! 

I`m fairly fit so the ladies are welcome to all the Mikey-lovin` they can handle.

[Nibor]

26 minutes ago, kevinmabbuttshair said:

Engine blocks made of easily recyabl aluminium

How's those lithium recycle plants coming on?

What about all the precious metals that is required to make these electric motors? Having said that how about all the extra copper to manufacture the power units? 

 

Look up the joke that is the conversion of one of Drax coal fired boilers to wood to expose the bullshit

There are definitely going to be challenges in scaling up production but I expect innovation will beat them quite well.

Electric motors aren't likely to continue using rare earth magnets and copper is recyclable and fairly abundant.  There are other savings - things like not needing platinum for catalytic converters.

Sodium anode batteries with glass electrolytes and no lithium look like the future and they'll have about three times the energy density and many, many times the number of cycles.  There's plenty being done in that field.

The emissions cost to produce an electric car now including batteries is slightly (10-20%) higher than a conventional one, but when you include the entire operating life it's less than half.

The inescapable fact is we can produce electricity without burning fossil fuels, and we can't burn fossil fuels for much longer, so there's no real alternative is there?

[Eddie Hitler]

All this announcement represents is a tick box to satisfy the legal requirement of the EU; which we are leaving.

Quote

 

 some areas such as London, Birmingham and Leeds would not meet pollution limits until 2030. The original deadline for meeting the targets, set in the European Commission's Air Quality Directive, was 1 January 2010.

In May 2013, the Supreme Court declared that the UK had breached its obligations under the Directive.

The case was then heard in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which ruled that national courts can force governments to comply with EU rules.

The CJEU empowered the UK courts to take any necessary measure to ensure compliance.

The legal action then returned to the Supreme Court on 16 April this year.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32512152

 

Job done and now this will be forgotten.

[kevinmabbuttshair]

OK, MR faraday, how do you make EMF in a DC motor without magnets and copper?

 

Build six new nuclear power stations and stop passing off incinerators as power stations, continue to burn coal with the correct carbon capture and it may be achieved, electric cars for all.

 

As normal with govt legislation this is bullshit, limit all engines to 1.6 in all cars and vans next year. 

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Eddie Hitler said:

All this announcement represents is a tick box to satisfy the legal requirement of the EU; which we are leaving.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32512152

 

Job done and now this will be forgotten.

So you think the car companies will just make petrol and diesel cars for the UK? 

[Nibor]

2 minutes ago, kevinmabbuttshair said:

OK, MR faraday, how do you make EMF in a DC motor without magnets and copper?

 

Build six new nuclear power stations and stop passing off incinerators as power stations, continue to burn coal with the correct carbon capture and it may be achieved, electric cars for all.

 

As normal with govt legislation this is bullshit, limit all engines to 1.6 in all cars and vans next year. 

I didn't say they wouldn't use magnets or copper, I said they're unlikely to continue to use rare earths.  I don't think copper's too much of a problem, it's not needed in vast quantity is it?

Six new nuclear power stations would be fine by me if we actually advance the reactor design.  I don't really see why we need the coal, it's only a tiny proportion now I think and clean coal isn't really that clean.

Haven't seen anything about a limit on engine size or is that what you're suggesting?  It'd be a start.

[Eddie Hitler]

3 minutes ago, Tomarse said:

So you think the car companies will just make petrol and diesel cars for the UK?