So .. Sales of new petrol and diesel powered cars banned

[Winston Teague]

Does the planet have the necessary stock of the raw materials to make all these batteries? I doubt it, i suspect it is a bit akin to the pointlessness of biomass crops, you probably cant mine lithium with a battery powered cutter, just like you cant generate enough methane to cover the fuel consumption of the biomass harvesters......we must keep trying though. I'm quite close to wanting a battery pack for home in a quest for domestic energy self suffency, summer at least. Ah well. W

[fetuhoe]

I would really like to know how you propose to replace the National Grid?

I can accept that that Solar and other systems may help reduce demand but do you really think we can replace our entire housing stock in less than 100 years? What will be the life cycle of the Inverters and other hardware needed - I assume solar panels are likely to last 30+ years

What method of generation will be more thermally efficient than the 45% achieved by the Grid for those people who can't use solar of afford modern new housing.

What is the carbon footprint of an Electric Car during its manufacture?

BMW suggest an i3 has a 30% saving on emissions over a 150 000 mile life - does this man that up to 100 000 miles it will be damaging?

When I grew up my home town used Electric Trolley Buses and Milk Floats - all of which were thrown away.

We currently have a new Tram system which also seems to work well and I am sure all these things have a place.

Strangely enough I do know how a battery works and if checked you will see that the Arithmetic I used assumes the car is driven for 10% of the day/night - I really isn't mathematics

My last calculation assumed 3.3 miles per kWh rather than 4 - which isn't really a game changer.

I think the Tesla S is about 3.5 miles per kWh.

Transport is by far the largest consumer of energy in the UK.

About 45% of out total energy consumption is used by transport, 20% is used by industry and service sectors and the balance is Domestic consumption.

The real point of my original post is that glib statements about banning petrol and diesel cars will have a significant impact on everyone's life style and the information being published is scant, inaccurate and frankly misleading.

It is time that REAL data was produced so we all understand the issues that will affect our lives.

In the limit we will need to produce huge amounts of extra electricity and whichever way this happens it will have a significant impact.

How will people tow a caravan for their holidays ?

Are any electric cars currently type approved for towing?

What is the battery life in terms of charging cycles?

I believe a LEAF has a 60 000 mile battery warranty with a new unit costing £5000.00- about 8p a mile - or is that also wrong?

[fetuhoe]

Does the planet have the necessary stock of the raw materials to make all these batteries? I doubt it, i suspect it is a bit akin to the pointlessness of biomass crops, you probably cant mine lithium with a battery powered cutter, just like you cant generate enough methane to cover the fuel consumption of the biomass harvesters......we must keep trying though. I'm quite close to wanting a battery pack for home in a quest for domestic energy self suffency, summer at least. Ah well. W

There is plenty of Lithium in the Earth's Crust but extracting it is a mess.

The same with Solar Panels they are currently manufactured - mostly - in Coal Fired Ovens and consume huge amounts of water in their manufacturing cycle.

The coal used tends to be semi-bituminous which burns hot but creates radioactive as well as carbon pollution.

Coal ash is generally more radioactive than nuclear waste and the radioactivity associated with coal fired power stations is about 100 times greater than that emitted from a Nuclear Power Plant of the same capacity.

I have always been interested by the Plastic Bag ban and charging in a similar manner.

I spent around 12 years involved in Ehtylene Plant construction.

Virtually every ethylene plant in the world has an electrical generator which uses the waste heat to drive a Steam Turbine.

The electricity produced is not only used in the plant but is also sold to the local 'Grid'.

Why - Ehtylene manufacture is strongly exothermic.

In contrast have you seen the pollution associated with paper mills?

Brown Paper bags anyone

I am not really against wanting to clean up our mess, I just want to make the right decisions based on accurate and comprehensive facts and not vested interest lobbying.

The imposition of compulsory catalytic converters badly damaged fundamental research into lean burn engines and had a negative impact on fuel consumption but it did make Johnson Matthey rich.

[moggy]

While I'm eating my sarney here's some quick maths:

Yesterday the peak demand of NGrid was around 35GW, which fell to about 20GW overnight

So for 7 hours (11.30pm thru to 6.30am) the grid could have quite happily kept going at 35GW (i.e. 15GW spare capacity), which after 7 hours would have produced 105GWH (105,000,000 kWh).

Using 3.5 miles per kWh and the average daily car journey in the UK @ 7 miles i.e. the average daily energy required to cover the average daily journey = 2kWh

That means the present NGrid last night could have quite happily charged up 52,500,000 cars ready to be driven off this morning for their average journey.

(Maths now corrected )

[shambly]

While I'm eating my sarney here's some quick maths:

Yesterday the peak demand of NGrid was around 35GW, which fell to about 20GW overnight

So for 7 hours (11.30pm thru to 6.30am) the grid could have quite happily kept going at 35GW (i.e. 15GW spare capacity), which after 7 hours would have produced 105GWH (105,000,000 kWh).

Using 3.5 kWh per mile and the average daily car journey in the UK @ 7 miles i.e. the average daily energy required to cover the average daily journey = 24.5kWh

That means the present NGrid last night could have quite happily charged up 4,285,714 cars ready to be driven off this morning for their average journey.

Its better than that as it is 3.5 miles per kWh (not 3.5kWh per mile) , so 7 miles = 2 kWh (not 24.5kWh). So 52 million cars, not 4.2 million.

[moggy]

Oops that's what happens when you try to answer work emails, do maths and type a post all while drinking coffee and eating a sandwich

Thanks, I've now corrected my original post

[911hillclimber]

Facts about the real scale of all this is missing.

Chris' passages as ever are very interesting, and he feels the same.
NOBODY could come up with the facts about leaving or staying in the EU that the Nation could grasp, understand, evaluate and conclude an opinion.
This issues I feel is much harder to précis into a few pages of bullet points and one reason is there is always an 'agenda', political or commercial, that will weight the argument, just as Brexit was.

Thus, several large influential groups will go their own way, argue to suit themselves (instead of debate) and will confuse the masses.

Only difference here is that there is no vote to be taken.
There are a lot of things to say about how the world will change as this all bites, to be said based on fact, not scare mongering (so you rush out and by a car with alternative power), and with the proviso there is a high degree of inaccuracy in time scales, because few can state a time frame based on fact.

[fetuhoe]

If the average mileage is 8000 miles per year then you will need to have enough charge for 22 miles a day.

This will mean 6.5kWh per car and if we have 35 million cars we will then need an extra 227 GWh per day

We typically generate around 350 TWh per year and this is equivalent to around 175 million barrels of oil.

The change in the amount of electricity we generate to provide this extra will mean that we will need to increase the amount of electricity generated by around 25% in terms of either fuel used or in some other manner. 46 Million barrels of oil per year will have a huge impact on Balance of Trade and emission targets.

If we add the infrastructure that we need to make these ideas work then I just don't see how it will happen.

I have no real interest in complaining about electric cars from any practical point of view and the numbers I chose were simply an attempt to highlight the enormity that hides behind the statements stupid politicians make without grasping the real issues.

Hydrogen powered cars look like an answer but who will insure one? Who will insure a filling station which stores and sells hydrogen?

Having been involved in the design of Petrochemical plants in a Zone 1 Intrinsically safe environment I just don't see it happening.

MicroTurbo of Malmo in Sweden spent 30 years trying to develop small gas turbines to use in trucks along with electric motors but failed to get within 10% points of the efficiency of a Turbo-diesel and eventually sold out to Turbomecca who further developed these engines for drones, cruise missiles and other military uses.

Fuel Cells look interesting but current costs of these devices are presently prohibitive with Fuel Cell powered buses costing around $1 Million Dollars.

It is time for our Government to try to initiate some sensible Research Programmes and stop hoping the Private Sector will solve the problem.

As Graham suggests all the vested interest groups will manage to do is harvest the low hanging fruit and not worry about the future.

In my working life I was told on a routine basis that technology would change my world.

The Fax machine would preclude the need to travel so much, when this didn't happen the Video Conference would take over, followed by e-mail, the internet and then Skype.

The Paperless Office was going to be another revolution but sadly none of these things have really worked.

I receive an increasing amount of junk mail in the post, the same can be said for e-mails, my last few years in a 'regular' job involved and increasing amount of travel and the mobile 'phone means you can never escape.

Sadly I just don't see how an electric car will improve my lifestyle.

I can understand the engineering interest and the challenges but they need far too much planning and Hybrids just seem like a red herring.

[Nick Moss]

Has anyone investigated static industrial diesels working at fixed RPM and load to be used as a "range extender" as in the BMW I3? I wonder how efficient and clean they could be made 20 years?

[911hillclimber]

We have, imho, a very good Member of Parliament for my region, Gavin Williamson.
He sits on the Cabinet I think, is a business man, young and very active and passionate about many things.

Wonder what his response would be to the question HOW will a government meet this date for all fossil fueled car to be stopped?

If you burn a fossil fuel to make electricity, then where exactly does that leave this debate? If you burn coal or gas then you are no better off than burning petrol (in principle), but better than burning diesel as you do take the particulates out of the populated areas.

What if you can only charge an EV from sources not on the grid?

Such an action would limit travel, but not stop it. All depends how much you save to use later.
It would promote rapid development of gaining volts from the sun etc, but not in a manner that people think the supply is endless (as they will if all you have to do is plug-in for a while and fill up for 10 pence).
It might develop hydro electric systems? (without flooding all of Wales please) by putting tide generators deep into Scotland's fiords.

[keith fellowes]

I'd love to know how the average car journey per day is only 7 miles? That must be 3.5 miles each way? Where are they going?

You want to be on the M3 and M4 at 6am each day with commuters going to London from Southampton, Bristol and Reading. They may well get to work but unless the infrastructure at work is in place, they ain't getting home.
'Take the train' I hear you say. Have you been on Southern Region recently? Standing room only, if you can get on the train.

[911hillclimber]

School runs, garden centre trips, Sainsburys, walking the dog at the park they drive to, down to the canal to fish and others, but I see your point.
Where did you get that from Chris?
Takes nothing from the fact that there is no evidence this scale of change can be managed by successive governments. Imagine how unpopular travel restriction will be!

[hot66]

We're obviously not average .... The wife does 30k + a year private milage, all countryside B roads .. Then we have my cars

[Tosh]

But I have 4 cars (conservative estimate) and am currently on hols for 2 weeks. 4x7mx14d... and I don't drive them all 7 or more miles a day when I am home. I probably do just above average mileage in total per year: I don't do motorway commuting, nor do I live in the countryside where it might be a 5 mile trip to the post office. Indeed some weeks I never use a car at all.

A reminder here... no NEW car sales with ICEs after 2040. So infrastructure doesn't have to cope with 35+m vehicles in December 2039. Does need ramping up in some way depending on what the alternatives look like (currently it looks electric)

[fetuhoe]

But I have 4 cars (conservative estimate) and am currently on hols for 2 weeks. 4x7mx14d... and I don't drive them all 7 or more miles a day when I am home. I probably do just above average mileage in total per year: I don't do motorway commuting, nor do I live in the countryside where it might be a 5 mile trip to the post office. Indeed some weeks I never use a car at all.

A reminder here... no NEW car sales with ICEs after 2040. So infrastructure doesn't have to cope with 35+m vehicles in December 2039. Does need ramping up in some way depending on what the alternatives look like (currently it looks electric)

New registrations are around 2.7 Million Cars per year so the entire UK fleet will be replaced in around 10 years.

The UK's generating capacity has not really increased in the last 20 years and if anyone believes we can finance or manage the changes we will need in the next 30 years I belive they are being overly optimistic.

The changes to our infrastructure will be so profound that I don't think there is enough time.

This was basically the only point I was trying to make.

My other point concerned the increase in carbon footprint of electric vehicles - something that we never seem to discuss and finding accurate data seems difficult.

I believe a LEAF weighs 1500kg compared to a current Golf at around 1250kg.

If we assume, on a very simplistic basis, that the carbon footprint is directly proportional to weight then we will see an increase in emissions in the short term.

If we take BMW's figures this won't pay back until the vehicle has travlled 100 000 miles so at an average of 8000 miles per year this will take 12.5 years.

It als seems that if we reduce the milage we drive electric cars become increasingly pointless as the 'pay back' time increases and general pollution levels fall.

I also think the number of individual cars we own is not really the issue - the avearge milage data published by government correlate milage against the number of vehicles registered and it currently stands at 8000 miles per year.

This doesn't include vans and trucks which will significantly skew the data upwards.

Suerly a significant improvement can be made by using small, light, fuel efficient petrol engines and this should be partt of the plan - simply banning petrol just seems moronic.