I've just driven the future
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From: North Herts
Originally Posted by MarkB,Feb 15 2011, 03:20 PM
Aside from a few, they just don't work for most people.
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From: North Yorks
Originally Posted by Chris Type R,Feb 16 2011, 10:29 AM
Particularly as we don't have the nuclear capacity to support most people using them. They may become viable if fusion reactors are ever a reality.
Another non-viable business propped up with public money, it would be laughable if it's weren't so expensive.
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From: Stanmore
Originally Posted by gaddafi,Feb 16 2011, 08:55 AM
but the non-polluting claim is a smokescreen
the cars have to be manufactured - which is inherently polluting and consuming
the electricity to run the things has to be generated - and afaik most electricity here is generated by gas and coal fired power stations
as I said earlier - when you get a real comparison, say a £12K hatch and £12K electric car (one that doesn't need the equivalent of a new engine every four years or so), things might get interesting
not just new cars either, which are run by a small proportion of the population
we need to see people able to choose between £5K/four year old secondhand petrol and electric cars
ps doesn't the Tesla cost nearly £200K?
the cars have to be manufactured - which is inherently polluting and consuming
the electricity to run the things has to be generated - and afaik most electricity here is generated by gas and coal fired power stations
as I said earlier - when you get a real comparison, say a £12K hatch and £12K electric car (one that doesn't need the equivalent of a new engine every four years or so), things might get interesting
not just new cars either, which are run by a small proportion of the population
we need to see people able to choose between £5K/four year old secondhand petrol and electric cars
ps doesn't the Tesla cost nearly £200K?
The Tesla is £88k https://www.teslamotors.com/own
Just over 2million new cars were sold in the UK last year http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/8...ed-in-2010.html
There are around 31m cars on the roads http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/7...-World-War.html
So new cars represent 6.5%.
We won't see 5 year old electric cars for at least another 5 years, and it'll be 10 before there's a decent choice.
By then, fuel prices will be so high, people will be driving around in Australian muscle cars like in Mad Max...
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Originally Posted by Nick Graves,Feb 16 2011, 09:34 AM
Rob, electric cars will make smog worse in cities! Modern cat-cars have been hoovering up the crap spewed out by wasteful bastards heating their houses & making shit in their factories and power stations for years. And stinking diesel-buses, which are usually old knackers.
very interesting.
Electric cars are quiet.
Once they get a bit cheaper I could well imagine some independent race series setting up for them on tracks where the locals don't like the noise.
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From: Hampshire
I seem to remember a study which said that the most "green" vehicles currently on the road were land rovers built before the introduction of the 300tdi engine.
This was on the basis that series vehicles, 90s, 110s and defenders were all built in such a basic way that the build costs (expressed in CO2) were low. Most owners prefer to use recycled/refurbished parts to fix them and they have the highest survival rate (in terms of average lifespan) of any comparable vehicle.
A large number of diesel owners have now moved to either biodiesel or straight veg oil (SVO), both generally from recycled food oils. A large number of petrol owners have gone over to LPG, a by-product of oil production.
Land rovers are simple to dispose of when they do reach the end of their lives and most bits can be flogged on ebay or melted down to be re-used.
Compare this to a prius (or similar) that sources nickel ore from an environmental disaster area in Ontario, Canada, ships it to Europe (I forget where) for processing, then on to china for transformation into nickel foam, then japan to make the batteries, then back to the plant in either blighty or the US to make the cars. The HV systems use a large amount of other rare and far flung minerals and the whole lot is put together in a factory with a huge power requirement. I forget the details of the cadmium scandal, but it was of a similar magnitude...
Trying to fix the things once they start going wrong is going to be a ball ache and when they do get scrapped after the design life of 100,000 miles, or more likely after 7 or 8 years of salt corrosion on british roads does for the poorly made body panels, they will be a big problem to dispose of, due to all the nasties in the batteries and the rest of the car.
Electric cars *might* be the future, but in order to make this a reality, we need to end this country's dependance on fossil fuel for power stations, man up and build a bunch of nuclear stations instead.
Once the energy that we crave is available like this, we can then look to storing it not in batteries, but in hydrogen fuel tanks. There is a new technology emerging that makes storage of hydrogen much safer, it now requires scaling up and refining for use int he automotive industry.
Once this is cracked, we can then look at fuel cells or indeed at conventional internal combustion engines that can use this fuel... and away we go again!
Charging cars over a period of several hours brings with it a whole new level of infrastructure complexity that hasn't been considered. To make it work will require a huge cultural shift which this country is not ready or willing for. The way to make this electric car thing work is by making it easy and accessible.
The government have identified this and unfortunately gone off half cocked by investing in a white elephant scheme, albeit one with the tangible output so loved by the previous incumbants. What they SHOULD have done is to invest in the university research departments who discover the technologies that will bring this revolution about and in the small tech-based companies who then make this a reality.
We could go on all day about politics, environment, lies and the like, but I suspect I have already dragge this thread way OT... sorry!
This is something which, like a number of others, I feel quite passionately about and I am truly pleased to see that this forum has taken an intelligent and appropriately sceptical / cynical view on it. Check the numbers, root out the lies and half truths and always follow the money when trying to get to the bottom of something like this!
This was on the basis that series vehicles, 90s, 110s and defenders were all built in such a basic way that the build costs (expressed in CO2) were low. Most owners prefer to use recycled/refurbished parts to fix them and they have the highest survival rate (in terms of average lifespan) of any comparable vehicle.
A large number of diesel owners have now moved to either biodiesel or straight veg oil (SVO), both generally from recycled food oils. A large number of petrol owners have gone over to LPG, a by-product of oil production.
Land rovers are simple to dispose of when they do reach the end of their lives and most bits can be flogged on ebay or melted down to be re-used.
Compare this to a prius (or similar) that sources nickel ore from an environmental disaster area in Ontario, Canada, ships it to Europe (I forget where) for processing, then on to china for transformation into nickel foam, then japan to make the batteries, then back to the plant in either blighty or the US to make the cars. The HV systems use a large amount of other rare and far flung minerals and the whole lot is put together in a factory with a huge power requirement. I forget the details of the cadmium scandal, but it was of a similar magnitude...
Trying to fix the things once they start going wrong is going to be a ball ache and when they do get scrapped after the design life of 100,000 miles, or more likely after 7 or 8 years of salt corrosion on british roads does for the poorly made body panels, they will be a big problem to dispose of, due to all the nasties in the batteries and the rest of the car.
Electric cars *might* be the future, but in order to make this a reality, we need to end this country's dependance on fossil fuel for power stations, man up and build a bunch of nuclear stations instead.
Once the energy that we crave is available like this, we can then look to storing it not in batteries, but in hydrogen fuel tanks. There is a new technology emerging that makes storage of hydrogen much safer, it now requires scaling up and refining for use int he automotive industry.
Once this is cracked, we can then look at fuel cells or indeed at conventional internal combustion engines that can use this fuel... and away we go again!
Charging cars over a period of several hours brings with it a whole new level of infrastructure complexity that hasn't been considered. To make it work will require a huge cultural shift which this country is not ready or willing for. The way to make this electric car thing work is by making it easy and accessible.
The government have identified this and unfortunately gone off half cocked by investing in a white elephant scheme, albeit one with the tangible output so loved by the previous incumbants. What they SHOULD have done is to invest in the university research departments who discover the technologies that will bring this revolution about and in the small tech-based companies who then make this a reality.
We could go on all day about politics, environment, lies and the like, but I suspect I have already dragge this thread way OT... sorry!
This is something which, like a number of others, I feel quite passionately about and I am truly pleased to see that this forum has taken an intelligent and appropriately sceptical / cynical view on it. Check the numbers, root out the lies and half truths and always follow the money when trying to get to the bottom of something like this!
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From: Stanmore
[QUOTE=ian_6301,Feb 16 2011, 10:58 AM] I seem to remember a study ...
This is something which, like a number of others, I feel quite passionately about and I am truly pleased to see that this forum has taken an intelligent and appropriately sceptical / cynical view on it.
This is something which, like a number of others, I feel quite passionately about and I am truly pleased to see that this forum has taken an intelligent and appropriately sceptical / cynical view on it.
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From: Stanmore
Originally Posted by soulcrew,Feb 16 2011, 11:01 AM
heres my plan.
send all the electric cars to india and china.
more petrol for us.
much less pollution for all of us.
send all the electric cars to india and china.
more petrol for us.
much less pollution for all of us.
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From: Hertford
Originally Posted by lovegroova,Feb 16 2011, 10:29 AM
Trouble is, diesels have been promoted as "green", because they have low CO2 figures, when they are anything but, especially for pedestrians etc. Never mind the racket they make, which is bad for "the environment in which people live".
A bit of peace and quiet is a good thing, something you espoused during the volcanic disturbances to air travel last year.
A bit of peace and quiet is a good thing, something you espoused during the volcanic disturbances to air travel last year.
The Nazis are never satisfied unless they're interfering.
The comment I made WRT aeroplanes wasn't insomuch the noise, more the effects of an uncatalysed exhaust. It's the same reason it's invariably overcast on a saturday, raining on a misnomered sunday and bright blue sky on a Monday morning; industrial fallout, which clears over the weekend. Get a mad mozzer or a volcano to scare the hairyplanes out of the sky and it's beautiful S2000 time every day of the week! The effects are dramatic and point to them beating the noughty car again.
Funny that it's the Nazis who want to stop us S2King about are those who are always jetsetting somewhere for another f ucked-finding mission at our expense...