Electric vehicles (split from Quentin Willson's hot tips)

[Richie]

Jesus wept.
Colin, the point I made, which you somehow managed to miss, was that we need to move away from fossil fuels, be that to power our cars or generate our electricity.

Only then will we increase our control, our stability, our security because as we have so clearly seen in just the last couple of years, those who control fossil fuels also control us.

[johnw]

I completely disagree with you on all the below Richie. Also I don't see how any of that is the slightest bit relevant to a driving experience, unless it is some woke rose tinted feel good factor clouding the experience. EVs have some niche applications, and I am please to see that in the UK take up of EVs is levelling off which probably reflects their practical application in real life. Interesting how all these big thirsty EVs with expensive tyres and maintanance programs a few years old are piling up at dealers unwanted. They are an environmental disaster, ther creation, their use, and their disposal. Dealers are being forced to sell a proportion of used EV I heard. Is that really true?

So I call it all out as "tosh". We can and will continue to use fossil fuels. By we, I mean the majority of humans on planet earth, China, India, Pakistan, the majority of the world, like it or not.

In your brave new world Riche, those who control our digital currency and electricity really will control us, if we can't buy diesel, if we can't own our own solar panels. Sales of solar panels could be stopped to joe public due to very real human rights abuses in their production.

Open the pits again. Get making steel. What is up with this country? Why is it OK to do that in China but not here? I would say it has gone to the dogs, but they will be banned in the UK unless fed as vegetarians.

Jesus wept.
Colin, the point I made, which you somehow managed to miss, was that we need to move away from fossil fuels, be that to power our cars or generate our electricity

Only then will we increase our control, our stability, our security because as we have so clearly seen just the last couple of years, those who control fossil fuels also control us.

[felixkk]

By we, I mean the majority of humans on planet earth, China, India, Pakistan, the majority of the world, like it or not.

Probably better not to compare ourselves too much to those countries though:

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[Richie]

My enjoyment of an EV is not based on anything 'woke' (which, incidentally means "enlightened") but, as I have repeatedly stressed, is entirely on its driving characteristics and convenience which i have thoroughly enjoyed over 45,000 miles; a convenience which, again, I have stressed I recognise won't suit all. I was just chatting to the owner of a VW Buzz whilst at my daughter's swimming lesson and though he too stated that he wouldn't want go back to an ICE car, also agreed that public charging network is insufficient.

I'm not in pursuit of some idealised romantic world but recognise that if we can reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, we can reduce our dependency on those that supply them.

Were the Gulf wars really about Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and weapons of mass destruction, or about our access to oil from Kuwait?

Putin has nearly brought Europe to it's knees by turning off the gas and oil taps.

So yes, whilst it's ridiculous to suggest "no more oil", reducing our oil dependency can surely only be to our strength and benefit?

And whilst the world will always have its faults, I'm hoping to see a bit more of it, and with that in mind, the wife and I are hoping to book our holiday this afternoon. So get me on the 'plane.

[johnw]

By we, I mean the majority of humans on planet earth, China, India, Pakistan, the majority of the world, like it or not.

Probably better not to compare ourselves too much to those countries though:

Interesting figures Felix. Russia is very low given the cold climate there and lots of fossil fuel. I thought they opened their windows with the heating on full? Nuclear power? Could it be that the majority aren't in cities and use renewables like wood heating in remote areas?

[Richie]

Slave labour probably John

[johnw]

Slave labour probably John

Just googled the average American car doing 11,000 miles a year emits 4.5 tonnes of CO2
Probably about what a Jensen would do in daily use or maybe a bit on the low side but that ballpark. North Korea per capita C02 is around 450kg. Climate in NK is closer to the UK than Russia. South Korea higher numbers than the UK.

[mojo]

Mojo .

I’d be interested in how old the car is and did you check on the batteries health & depreciation value ? (What car is it?)

Was it bought to enter a ULEZ area.

My real problem with EV’s is firstly where our electric comes from
and secondly it’s like buying a petrol/diesel car where after every journey the fuel tank shrinks a little !

As an electrician of 40 years I’ve already noticed I’m fitting less EV sockets than I was last year ..

John - it's a 2-year-old BMW i3. Partly chosen because it was (when bought) already a 10-year-old design (updated over the years) so that in theory a lot of the early design mistakes will have been fixed, and partly because it's obviously secondhand (already discontinued by the time I bought it).

The battery health can be assessed in a crude way by inspecting some diagnostic data from the vehicle - that is widely accepted to be a very inaccurate measure, but better than nothing, and i3 batteries have a good reputation for longevity as they have active cooling for the battery and a fairly clever battery management system (plus an 8-year battery warranty). Like any car, I might get unlucky, but it's been OK so far.

My personal view on the "where will the electricity come from" is that there are challenges ahead, but the situation is (at present) reasonably under control. The people that run the National Grid are the ones that we have to trust on this, and here's what they have to say on future power uncertainties:

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/jo ... onceptions

...though I fully accept that they have a vested interest in making the future look as positive as possible...

I'm not surprised that you're doing fewer Charge Point installs - the subsidies for installation have mostly been chopped, and it seems a lot of people are wanting to avoid paying maybe £1k to have one installed - it's surprising how many people get by, simply by charging from a 13A socket. It cost me about £300 to have a proper 32A unit professionally installed, but that's because I was willing to buy a broken EVSE and repair it!

[colin7673]

Jesus wept.
Colin, the point I made, which you somehow managed to miss, was that we need to move away from fossil fuels, be that to power our cars or generate our electricity.

Only then will we increase our control, our stability, our security because as we have so clearly seen in just the last couple of years, those who control fossil fuels also control us.

Richie, Jesus may well have been weeping,
I did get your point, but you just did not answer my question which you seem to be avoiding.


So we should also move to hydrogen vehicles as water is plentlyful.

[Richie]

Apologies Colin, I thought your question was rhetorical. But if I were in the market for a new car, it would 100% be electric. So much much better to drive, so much more convenient, so much easier.

I've no interest in converting classics to electric - I'm not really into the resto-mod thing at all - be that for example an LS Chevy or electric powered Interceptor - give me an original one all day. But equally I wouldn't entertain buying, or more likely leasing, a new ICE vehicle.

Hydrogen sounds good - but only of course if it can be extracted from H20 without using loads of energy to do so. And there's the rub at the moment of course.
But if that issue can be solved, it may have its place as part of a multi faceted approach.

[RockyUSA]

So we should also move to hydrogen vehicles as water is plentlyful.

The challenge is that the Hydrogen/Oxygen bond in water is very strong.

The predominant technology currently used to create hydrogen is steam reformation of methane (SMR) or other fossil fuels. None of that process is “green”.

Nuclear electrolysis could be green. If we (globally) used nuclear fission to generate electricity, EVs might be a little more green - notwithstanding the need for exotic and rare earth materials needed for batteries and in EVs on a massive scale….

Rocky

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[mojo]

So we should also move to hydrogen vehicles as water is plentlyful.

Unfortunately hydrogen poses other problems, in addition to the fact that (at present) almost all sources come from fossil fuels.

Probably the biggest is the fact that hydrogen is very very difficult to transport in bulk. In rough terms, it has about one eighth the energy density of petrol, so if transported by road, you would need around 8 times the number of tankers moving about. And the pressures involved in transportation and bulk storage are extremely high (of the order of 5000PSI), so safety measure need to kept at (and maintained at) a very high standard - serious mistakes are likely to be very costly at those pressures.

And at present, maintenance on hydrogen fuel cell cars is very expensive. I can recall seeing the cost for a routine, scheduled overhaul on a Mirai (replacement of fuel tank which must be replaced every x years), and the cost was horrendous.

You can get a good idea of the prospects for hydrogen fuelled cars by looking at the attitude and confidence of hydrogen fuel suppliers. The number of fuel stations where you can fill up a privately-owned car has been falling over the years, and is now down to just 3 locations in the whole of the UK. If the people selling hydrogen have so little confidence, what hope is there for the unfortunate owners?

[MikeWilliams]

I've enjoyed reading these posts and learned a lot. I do however question figures given without a source. And even if there is a source how can they tell the CO2 output of an entire country? They can't even tell what the GDP of the UK was last quarter without revising it later, so how do "they" know how many trees were chopped down and burned? in country areas? of Argentina? Particularly in countries where their disclosure record isn't great.

Mike

[David Davies]

I tend to agree with Mike about the above stats. I too have learnt a lot from some of the posts.

I don’t have any particular missionary zeal one way or the other on EVs. It will be inevitable here in due course. My only observations are

- while the UK and most European states will play ball re climate change measures, I find it hard to believe Russia, China, India and even the USA, plus a host of others, ever will do so

- the politicians and manufacters need to take the vast majority of people with them. At the moment a 40 per cent uplift for electric (on 5 Series BMWs for example) is frankly taking the ‘you know what’. Prices will radically have to come down like for like. This is not so much of an issue for company car drivers who do not buy their cars

- politicians need to be up front about how much still needs to be done to produce the green energy to power EVs and put in place the charging infrastructure. Also how little has been done on carbon capture and other initiatives

- having previously driven a BMW plug in hybrid almost wholly on the electric for a year ‘the driving experience’ was fine but not much different so I’m not sure for many people there will be a great plus point there

- it would have been useful for people to be reminded that the earth has suffered huge climate changes in it history and will do so again and there is nothing we can do about it. ‘Global warming’ changes are miniscule by comparison - that’s not to say current ‘climate change’ issues are unimportant, it’s just they need to be put in a context.

[felixkk]

I've enjoyed reading these posts and learned a lot. I do however question figures given without a source. And even if there is a source how can they tell the CO2 output of an entire country? They can't even tell what the GDP of the UK was last quarter without revising it later, so how do "they" know how many trees were chopped down and burned? in country areas? of Argentina? Particularly in countries where their disclosure record isn't great.

Mike

Here are other sources you can compare (even the CIA has a list ):
https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2 ... ions_table
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN ... _desc=true
https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/ ... omparison/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... per_capita
https://www.wri.org/insights/charts-exp ... -emissions

I'm sure there are plenty of others, probably also with varying numbers and methods of calculation, I can't remember from where I had the list. The only point I was trying to make is that it's probably difficult to compare our situation with other countries

PS Burning wood is, if I am correctly informed, Carbon neutral (with certain ifs attached)