Likely Impact On The Broads?

[Paul]

7 hours ago, JennyMorgan said:

Some mobile phones can be charged just by being laid on a charging pad, perhaps the same system could be developed for cars, even to the extent of them being charged as they drive along? 

You can already buy this type of charging system, certainly for the New Merc S Class where you drive over a pad in your garage and the car charges by induction. Induction chargers are also being trialed on some Scandanavian motorways though these only extend range, they cannot charge at the same rate that power is being used, yet. 

Electric cars don't work. 

I'm not talking about the occasional tree hugger running his Nissan Leaf, that's fine if he is prepared to live within it's limitations but as a mainstream power source for all vehicles they are simply not viable. Toyota / Lexus acknowledged in the last century that no country could ever be capable of running a fully electric vehicle network and it is focusing it's efforts on fuel cell vehicles. That's the company who virtually invented hybrid cars. 

Quite simply we will never be able to afford the charging infrastructure to recharge them, which would make HS2 look like petty cash. If we had the infrastructure we would never be able to generate sufficient electricity to power it. The world cannot produce sufficient lithium to produce enough batteries and if we tried the environmental damage would be colossal. Lithium mines are already responsible for massive deforestation in south america - to run our "green" electric cars.

If we are to end our use of oil based vehicle fuels, then the hydrogen fuel cell is the only viable option. We already have the infrastructure to distribute it, we have much of the required electrical generating capacity to produce it using latent off peak capacity and the technology to build it into vehicles is already in place. And, unlike electricity it could power ALL vehicles, not just cars, but commercial vehicles too. 

The current political policy of promoting electric cars and outlawing petrol and diesel models is simply a cop out. It is the one area that Government can use to tackle climate change and be seen to at least be trying to meet it's emissions targets which it can farm out to third parties, it can make others responsible for implementing the change, and pass on the blame when it doesn't work. 

 

[rightsaidfred]

1 hour ago, Paul said:

You can already buy this type of charging system, certainly for the New Merc S Class where you drive over a pad in your garage and the car charges by induction. Induction chargers are also being trialed on some Scandanavian motorways though these only extend range, they cannot charge at the same rate that power is being used, yet. 

 

 

That's assuming you have a garage. 

Fred

[marshman]

I think it may even be a bit more convoluted than that - I think the major players such as the car manufacturers and more especially the oil producers see the electric car and the charging of the vehicles as a major opportunity to pass a lot of the cost onto the government and /or someone else, e.g. the power network companies who will have to provide the infrastructure and the individual as well.

If we look at the fuel cell, it will be perhaps be the oil companies or rather garages who have to put in the kit - you can bet the government will not stick there hand into their pocket!! And if the simple issue of smart meters cannot be dealt with, how on earth are they going to be able to install the kit for cars? And if we cannot do it properly how are those major polluters such as India and other developing countries going to manage? Surely brainy people like David Attenborough can spot this? 

No chance of doing this in the proposed time scale - of course IMHO!!!!!!

[CambridgeCabby]

My current diesel car when making a journey of over 50 miles is far “greener” than the Toyota Prius , I can go 600 miles without having to refuel and when I do it takes me 10 minutes to do so , 

My friend with his Nissan Leaf can travel 90 miles before needing to plug in for at least 90 mins , with labour costs being most companies major overhead I can foresee inflation getting out of hand.

What will happen to all the 24/7 petrol stations and the staff employed there ?

most importantly do we have the capability to produce and provide sufficient electricity to power all these vehicles ?

[unclemike]

what about people in high rise flats etc, no way for them to charge anything,the lucky ones will have to be on their guard against fly by nights pinching leccy, totally unrealistic

[Malanka]

Don’t worry never going to happen! 
 

there isn’t enough rare earth metals for the batteries currently mined number one!

there isn’t enough copper currently mined for the cables number two!

not enough metals for the electric motors number three!
 

this would mandate an extra 20 GW of leccy ! So not gonna happen.

18 Billion funding gap due to the lack of fuel duty paid currently.  
 

20 million of new charging points by 2035. That’s thousands a day from now until then! 
 

it takes 9 years of driving a leccy car to equilibrate the carbon from a diesel car. By which point the batteries don’t work so excess carbon. PMSL.  The lack of joined up thinking is stultifying in its ineptitude but hey if it appeals to an incredibly uneducated and incredible ignorant 16 yr old Swedish girl it must be good eh!!!!!

 

OMG this is so dumb it’s beyond belief. 

[Paul]

These are all perfectly valid points. Somebody on TV the other day said that an EV battery, once the rare earth minerals had been mined in South America, shipped to India to be processed (a power hungry process in a country where power generation is extremely dirty), made into batteries then shipped to Japan or the USA to be put into cars has an equivalent Carbon Footprint of a modern 2.0l diesel engine covering 90,000 miles.

I think the step to remove hybrids was a huge error, and a U turn in the making. A plug in hybrid, or as they are becoming better known, range extended electric vehicle which one can charge at home and use electric propulsion for those short, most heavily polluting journeys would at least make some sense and offer some viability. It would be a realistic target, unlike every thing being electric by 2035. 

 

[SteveO]

It's not just the rare earth metals, the nickel and cobalt that goes into these batteries are both also in short supply and most supplies originate in countries that are politically unstable and unreliable as sources.

[CambridgeCabby]

Irrespective of the impossibility of implementing an electric only option by 2035 , the muppets that pass laws both nationally and locally are all jumping in the band wagon .

In Cambridge the taxi licensing office will no longer issue a new licence for a vehicle unless it is fully electric or hybrid with an age limit of 8 years here that means that by 2027 there will be no more diesel or petrol cabs in Cambridge .

i asked the council if the same rules were being applied to their own fleet of vehicles, it is not .

my emissions are lower than that of most hybrids once their 15 mile electric range has been expended, which in the case of taxis is within the first working hour .

The eagerness of these official bodies in adopting new regulations to be seen to be “green” will certainly come back to haunt them , until a practical system of recharging millions of these electric vehicles is feasible then surely developing better and more efficient exhaust systems that remove 100% of pollutants from the exhaust gases is the way to go .

Call me cynical, but I would not be surprised if the U.K. and US moving away rapidly from gasoline and diesel had something to do with the countries that produce it.

[TheQ]

7 hours ago, CambridgeCabby said:

 

Call me cynical, but I would not be surprised if the U.K. and US moving away rapidly from gasoline and diesel had something to do with the countries that produce it.

The US and UK

[grendel]

10 hours ago, Paul said:

These are all perfectly valid points. Somebody on TV the other day said that an EV battery, once the rare earth minerals had been mined in South America, shipped to India to be processed (a power hungry process in a country where power generation is extremely dirty), made into batteries then shipped to Japan or the USA to be put into cars has an equivalent Carbon Footprint of a modern 2.0l diesel engine covering 90,000 miles.

I think the step to remove hybrids was a huge error, and a U turn in the making. A plug in hybrid, or as they are becoming better known, range extended electric vehicle which one can charge at home and use electric propulsion for those short, most heavily polluting journeys would at least make some sense and offer some viability. It would be a realistic target, unlike every thing being electric by 2035. 

 

exactly, and with the batteries only having about a 5 year lifespan you would need to do at least 18,000 miles a year to beat the diesel vehicle carbon footprint (average yearly mileage is reckoned at 12,000 miles a year), but for those of us that exceed this mileage per year we still wouldnt be able to cope unless the range of the electric vehicle was improved to cope with the daily mileages covered.

at present the only fully electric car that could manage my daily commute is a tesla, , which is quoted as over 300 miles under ideal conditions, but then you read reports on the effect cold weather has on these vehicles, and find this drops the available range  to half, so 150 miles. ok then during the winter all of my driving is in the dark, so I will need to be using lights heaters etc, very soon my 124 mile daily commute drops out of the range available even from the best of electric cars, unless I can recharge at both ends.

currently due to the configutration of my housing estate the nearest I can get the car to the house is 2 houses away (assuming I can get one of the spaces nearest the house). so no charging at home, there is a public charging space a couple of roads away (about half a mile) so I could charge there, assuming no-one else was using it, but at work we are on an industrial estate, with I believe just 2 substations covering a huge estate, spare capacity for vehicle charging - probably none, nearest charging space - 2.5 miles, with the next nearest if that is busy at 5.5 miles, hardly practical.

the electricity infrastructure round my area is not anywhere near modern standards, for example we have a 35mm 3 phase supply cable feeding 16 houses, nowadays the smallest we would instrall for that would be a 95mm cable, the 35mm is the same as we would use for a small retail unit, or for a house it is generally a 35mm single phase cable. if I add a car charging point to my house supply, then turn the oven on, it will come close to overloading my house supply, as unlike a modern house with 100A fuse my house is limited to 64A.

so even if I get the best electric vehicle for range, on a cold winters day when i am travelling during darkness I will always be wondering will i run out of juice 5 miles from home, and then be stranded on the motorway with no lights and no means of getting to a charge point?

Do I forsee myself getting an electric vehicle - heck no, I would love to own one, but its just not practical.

[BroadAmbition]

How would I get on with an electrical version of my Trevor Transit?

Trying to recoup the cost of purchase, never mind the increased electric bills run up in recharging the thing, that's assuming my house electrics would stand the consumption.  It's hardly unlikely my customers would have vehicle charging points at their properties - I have never seen one yet to date - and even if they did, I very much doubt they would appreciate me turning up to do them a tiling job and plugging in for free to charge Trevor up!

Griff

[MotorBoater]

Any one else seen the BBC website this morning ?

Talking about funding for electric buses, and aiming to turn ONE town's buses 100% electric the transport secretary Grant Shapps said:

"With 200 electric buses able to offset 3,700 diesel cars, it is clear they have a crucial role to play in bringing down emissions"

At last we have an official government announcement on the effect of buses on our environment.

2 buses = 37 diesel cars. Should be even more petrol cars. Now tell us about the lorries. My local shopping parade acts as a bus terminus for a couple of local routes and a couple of longer routes. Sometimes the drivers switch off while waiting and sometimes they don't. When there are three there together I have to stand 50 yds away to avoid the exhausts.

Maybe Greta missed her maths lessons on her ocean cruises.

Instead of dreams Boris should look at what is possible.

[Cockatoo]

12 hours ago, Malanka said:

The lack of joined up thinking is stultifying in its ineptitude but hey if it appeals to an incredibly uneducated and incredible ignorant 16 yr old Swedish girl it must be good eh!!!!!

 

OMG this is so dumb it’s beyond belief. 

Governments don't do joined up thinking though. They only do "what will get us re-elected" thinking. :(

[batrabill]

I’m confused about where some of these comments come from.

Do those who seem to think it’s all Greta Thunberg’s fault think that we don’t have a climate problem that does need some “solving”?

 

If you think that is the case then there is no point continuing any discussion. Good luck with everything!

 

If you do accept that there is a global problem then it seems strange to attack a 16 year old girl who has really got off her **** to agitate for what she believes.

If you accept there is a problem then we are just discussing tactics, which Greta Thunberg will not decide as she doesn’t run an industrialised nation. 

Genuinely makes me queasy to watch keyboard warriors get so annoyed with someone who I feel quite proud to share a species with  

 

[Paul]

1 hour ago, MotorBoater said:

Any one else seen the BBC website this morning ?

Talking about funding for electric buses, and aiming to turn ONE town's buses 100% electric the transport secretary Grant Shapps said:

"With 200 electric buses able to offset 3,700 diesel cars, it is clear they have a crucial role to play in bringing down emissions"

I did hear this on the radio news this morning, was it 50 million pounds to turn one towns busses electric? There are nearly 1200 towns in Britain, that alone is 60 billion pounds, and takes no account of our 50 cities.

Where is this money coming from. We can't afford to look after our elderly, to properly educate our children, to effectively police our streets, to heal our sick or properly equip our armed forces.

It makes me quite angry to see our political lords and masters rushing headlong towards impossible pipe dreams when there are far more realistic things that could be done to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. PHEVs are a good start, but seem now to have been outlawed too. Moving more bulk freight back on to the railways is another, and this would also raise revenue and fund investment for ourailing rail network and relieve some congestion on our roads. Better handling of the solar panel debacle, using feedback to fund installations rather than pay unrealistic tariffs for those lucky enough to be able to install them. Instead of covering great swathes of farmland in solar panels these panels should be on house roofs. Then those fields could be used to grow bio fuels.

Sadly climate change, above all, is an opportunity for greed. It is something to be manipulated for personal or commercial profit, and until that attitude changes all of the debate is pointless.

[Islander]

"With 200 electric buses able to offset 3,700 diesel cars, it is clear they have a crucial role to play in bringing down emissions"

Surely these figures can't be right. In my mind 200 electric buses will only take 200 diesel buses off the road. The 3,700 figure is a red herring as the same number of people will be using the bus regardless of how its powered. 

As for the number of buses that pass here each day with less than 10 people on I wouldn't like to guess. The only time these buses have something close on half full is peak morning and evening times.

Colin 

[annv]

It's not just about global warming there is a good case to remove pollution from our streets in towns a hybrid would do this very well the average jernery is three miles so charging overnight or at guaranteed parking spot at  place of work on a 13amp plug would work with the on board geny only being used on holidays or long runs and only running to charge when out of towns nothing is going to be perfect in our lifetime of coarse reps coaches fire engines break down trucks will need to use diesel all be with filters/catalysts how many cars you see during the day in town have traveled a long distance, taxis could very easily use battery when stop/starting in town then geny kicks in when traveling at say 25mph in outskirts then when returning speed drops to 10 mph in traffic geny cuts out. anything is possible if we really want to, BUT not in my wallet or back garden. John

[grendel]

John has a good point, its not the long distance drivers that are the problem, most cars emissions are a lot less when on a long distance run, than when starting and stopping around town.

its those that drive a couple of miles or less that could benefit from using electric vehicles, the school run mums who drop little Timmy off at school, and drive a whole couple of miles at most to do so - when I started school we had to walk over a mile to get there, twice a day, every day, yet the same trip would now be done in the car.

there has been a local campaign around turning the engine off when stationary, at road crossings and railway crossings, this to me is ludicrous as if you have just started your car for the first time of the day, you need a good 10 minutes just to get the battery back to its initial level, now that 10 minutes gets me to the start of the motorway, so I am ok, but if I was to turn off my engine at every roundabout when I am stopped, every railway crossing, every pedestrian crossing, by the time I get to the motorway I could easily have stopped and started my engine 10 times, each time with a cold engine, each time emitting maximum pollutiuon as i restart, ditto on my return home, when at least I haev a warm engine, but stopping and starting 10 times in the last 10 minutes when I cannot top the battery back up to its previous levels and i am then risking a flat battery next morning, i will stop my engine iat a railway crossing on red, but not at every point the car stops for a fraction of a second.

the protesters were talking about an app where you could take a picture of a car that hadnt turned off its engine in these cases and they would be issued a fine, this doesnt take account of the reason they might have left it running (ie they had stopped and restarted five times already and last time the battery was a bit sluggish and they were worried if they stopped once more they might not get restarted)

reduction of pollution is a great objective, but it does seem to me that all of the authorities are going about things in totally the wrong way, sort of cart before the horse, before change can happen there need to be viable options, charging infrastructure before electric vehicles, hydrogen supplies before fuel cells.

and the protesters dont help, recent demonstrations at dover where they glued themselves in place in the road, yep huge tailbacks - more pollution, locals unable to park because of all the protestors cars (yes the vast majority drove miles to get there) parked on all the side streets, all to protest about the pollution caused by the lorries to the port, plastic waste, and all the other things they protest against.

 I was suggesting amongst my industry (electricity supply) that we should be looking at installing charging points in public car parks and other advantageous spots 20 years ago, the solutions were there, but nobody wanted to be the first to stick their neck out and start installing them. no demand for it was the answer I was given, people werent buying electric vehicles back then because there was nowhere to charge them.

[ChrisB]

Many people who suffer Asperger's become obsessive about a cause. The truth is, the poor girl sees this threat in an exponential way others don't. Personally I find it unbecoming of members of this forum to slag off a 17 year old girl , who, like it or not, has brought the threat of Global Warming to a worldwide audience. 

I really wonder where this forum has been heading in the last few months, it is certainly not portraying it's self in a very good light reading some of the comments.

 

[ChrisB]

If I had a plug-in hybrid I would be on electric over 90% of the time. The problem is the press and media have picked up on companies buying and leasing these vehicles because of financial advantage for company and employee but who never use the vehicle as intended.

[VetChugger]

Very well said Chris, I agree totally! I don't give a chuff what sort of person or people raise this issue so long as they continue to raise it! How many Bojo/Trump clones have we on here??

The comments around Greta Thunberg's  appearance and/or need for a boyfriend are childishly pathetic! Some folk really need to grow up. I'm really disappointed at the level some people on here are "discussing" this and does no favours at all to support any pretentions of caring about our world or our environment!

[SteveO]

Oh lighten up! I used a "tin hat" emoji with my post to indicate that it was meant to be light hearted. I am sorry if this was mis-interpreted as a personal attack on the person involved or your tender sensibilities, It wasn't meant to be. 

Personalities aside,  I do think that people travelling for miles to attend environmental protests and climate change conventions, often business or first class, smells of fakery and "do as I say, not as I do. I hope that the British people are sensible enough to see this for what it is, even if our politicians are not.

[grendel]

I think the issue here is more that the eco warrior types who go round protesting, dont do any favours for the resolution of the problem, I would rather see those who go around picking up litter from beaches and rivers and leading by example, than those who cause great disruption to others and try and force their ideals down others throats, this second method never works as it just makes those affected more stubborn. the first method can make people stop and think.

As for Greta, good luck to her, but her methods seem to be encouraging the former group above, not the ones who show by example in a more peaceful manner.

[batrabill]

1 hour ago, ChrisB said:

Many people who suffer Asperger's become obsessive about a cause. The truth is, the poor girl sees this threat in an exponential way others don't. Personally I find it unbecoming of members of this forum to slag off a 17 year old girl , who, like it or not, has brought the threat of Global Warming to a worldwide audience. 

I really wonder where this forum has been heading in the last few months, it is certainly not portraying it's self in a very good light reading some of the comments.

 

Yes. I am slightly taken aback. It just goes to show conspiracy theories are very attractive. 

 

Is it George Soros who is pulling GTs strings? Or the illuminati? It’s hard to keep track. 

 

Wait it’s obvious!

 

Its the devil himself Dr Packman!!