New Diesel and Petrol Vehicles To Be Banned From 2040 In UK (bbc.com) 417
New submitter puenktli writes: The UK is joining the list of the countries which are making a commitment towards diesel and petrol free vehicles. Other countries might be more progressive with such a ban (e.g. the Netherlands: by 2025), but at least it's a step in the right direction. However, if new bans are put forward at such a high rate as now, in 2040, the UK might be the only western country where petrol-fuelled cars are still on the road. Tesla at least will be happy about this ban, especially now with their Model 3. But these bans will inspire other car makers as well to invest more in EV. Maybe not such a bad idea after all: oil will run out one day, but the sun will always shine.
Short-sighted view (Score:4, Informative)
oil will run out one day, but the sun will always shine
Maybe another 4 billion years but hardly always.
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I'd like to keep big V-8's going throughout my lifetime, after that....meh, I don't care.
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Considering that the US is currently pumping more oil than it can use, and is actively selling it on the foreign market...I seriously doubt what you say would happen in my lifetime.
If the foreign market dried up, we'd stop selling our excess and enjoy it for many, many years to come.
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Considering that the US is currently pumping more oil than it can use, and is actively selling it on the foreign market...I seriously doubt what you say would happen in my lifetime.
Er what? Where do you get your figures? Right now the US is extracting less than 10M barrels of oil per week (1.4M bbl/day) [eia.gov]. Current US oil consumption is almost 20 million barrels per day [eia.gov]. That's a difference 18M bbl/day.
Refinery capacity is slightly different because the US can refine more than 10M bbl/day but (and this is distinction), not all of that oil is US oil. For example, one reason for the Keystone Pipeline was so that oil from Canada could be transported cheaper than by rail or truck through the
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Re: Short-sighted view (Score:4, Informative)
The link is from the EIA. Dispute the numbers with them.
You are reading the chart wrong. It is barrels per day, not week, so the production is seven times what you said. The chart is confusing because it also says "per week", but that is because the figures for daily production are updated once a week.
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Re:Short-sighted view (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Short-sighted view (Score:5, Interesting)
The Green River Formation contains the largest oil shale deposit in the world. It has been estimated that the oil shale reserves could be equal up to 3 trillion barrels (480 billion cubic metres) of shale oil, up to half of which may be recoverable by shale oil extraction technologies (pyrolysis, hydrogenation, or thermal dissolution of kerogen in oil shale). However, the estimates of recoverable oil has been questioned by geophysicist Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, who argues that the technology for recovering oil from the Green River oil shale deposit has not been developed and has not been profitably implemented at any significant scale.
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If there are shortage in US produced oil it will be because .gov wants it that way. The surplus that developed during the Obama years was despite his actions, which delayed or effectively stopped development of oil resources on public lands. The growth was nearly all private development on state and private lands.
Bahahahaha. What surplus? During the early Obama years, there was more oil produced and consumed because the price of oil was higher. This was due to OPEC reducing the supply of oil to try to control the market. This increased the price of oil to where sources of fossil fuels like the Canadian tar sands, fracking, etc was profitable worth pursuing. Then some members of OPEC refused to abide and countries like Saudi Arabia releasing a large supply of oil to punish other members.
Want a shortage? Get an administration or an overzealous EPA to prevent private and state level development.
What is the US capacity of o
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It's a good path to take and regardless of regulations it's likely to happen naturally in the market -- oil will get more expensive to get out of the ground sooner or later.
People calling for "clean emissions" as the reason just seem silly to me. We don't have the ability to generate "clean" power at any level necessary to power cars -- and I recall reading an article in popular mechanics (which was debunking a claim about how much CO2 is required to just MAKE an electric car battery). The "debunked" clai
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EVs will have lower TCO in just a few years. You can keep driving your V-8 but it will cost you dearly. Even cheap fossil fuel is more expensive than electricity and, of course, maintenance on that aging V-8 will cost a lot.
EVs, OTOH, are cheap to run (equivalent to gas at about 50 cents a gallon) and due to the fact that their drive trains have several thousand fewer parts than and ICE car, are much more reliable... not to mention much better performance than any V-8.
Re:Short-sighted view (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm buying a new car, and just ran the numbers for a volt versus a normal gas engine. /state bonuses.
In my commute? I save an amazing $321 a year.
That's less than $1 a day. in a car which is $3K MORE than the gas car, even after $9K in gov't
You wannna push electric vehicles? Lower the cost of Electricity.
Re:Short-sighted view (Score:5, Interesting)
Fuel cost alone is EV=0.03 cents per mile and ICE = 0.20 cents per mile. (YMMV)
Also, EVs have low maintenance cost. Tires are about the only cost. Brakes last forever; no oil changes; drive train has a few thousand fewer parts to wear and break.
The more you drive, the more you save.
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Fuel cost alone is EV=0.03 cents per mile and ICE = 0.20 cents per mile. (YMMV)
Also, EVs have low maintenance cost. Tires are about the only cost. Brakes last forever; no oil changes; drive train has a few thousand fewer parts to wear and break.
The more you drive, the more you save.
On the maintenance, a lot of "maintenance" items I see in cars are outside the base powertrain. I will grant you the brakes(hybrid versions of my car have significantly longer brake life), and I also live in snow country which isn't kind on cars (from corrosion and potholes), but I see people struggling with:
-Tie rod ends
-Ball joints
-Wheel bearings
-Shocks
-body work from corrosion
-random shit failing (instrument cluster, switches, fans, stereos, lights [bulbs or wiring problems], power window motors, power l
Re:Short-sighted view (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm buying a new car, and just ran the numbers for a volt versus a normal gas engine. In my commute? I save an amazing $321 a year. That's less than $1 a day. in a car which is $3K MORE than the gas car, even after $9K in gov't /state bonuses.
You wannna push electric vehicles? Lower the cost of Electricity.
Don't forget to factor in maintenance costs. EVs are much simpler with fewer moving parts. No oil changes, no muffler replacements, etc.
But yeah, I'm not surprised the math doesn't pencil out yet. Modern EVs are still relatively new in the grand scheme of things, and there's a lot of optimizing still to be done. But the math will work out sooner or later. In the meantime the people buying them are doing so for reasons other than hard dollars and cents (i.e. the same reason anyone buys a $30k car in a world where $15k cars exist).
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I'm buying a new car, and just ran the numbers for a volt
Don't forget to factor in maintenance costs. EVs are much simpler with fewer moving parts.
A Volt isn't. It's more complex with more moving parts, since it has all the complexity of an ICEV, plus all of a battery EV, plus all of the complexity for transitioning between the two.
A BEV is much simpler, though. And can be *much* cheaper. I expect that my TCO for owning my originally factory-new Nissan LEAF for 200K miles will be about $20K, or $0.10 per mile.
Granted, I kind of lucked out on the cost of the car. I leased it in 2013. At the time, it was a $37K car ($30K after tax credits, which we
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Considering the timeline picked, and the age of most politicians. It seems they feel the same way as you do.
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Kids will go "whee" instead of "vrr" when they play with toy cars.
Unlikely. They'll learn to make those noises from their older relatives. Just like people still say they want to "roll up/down the windows" in a car. My daughter says it and she was in a vehicle with hand cranked windows once in her life when she was 8 years old. People still "dial" a number on their phone and hang up their cell phone, pump gas, rewind a scene in a video, been through the wringer, etc.
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Kids will go "whee" instead of "vrr" when they play with toy cars.
Unlikely. They'll learn to make those noises from their older relatives. Just like people still say they want to "roll up/down the windows" in a car. My daughter says it and she was in a vehicle with hand cranked windows once in her life when she was 8 years old. People still "dial" a number on their phone and hang up their cell phone, pump gas, rewind a scene in a video, been through the wringer, etc.
I suspect cars will continue to say "Brum-Brum" just like trains continue to say "Choo-Choo"; however, a child playing with a toy car will make sound effects that sound like the car. I didn't physically say "Brum Brum" when pushing my toy cars around... when I was younger of course... I gave up toys when I turned 35.
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Future generations will see your V8 as a stinky, polluting, noisy and wasteful old relic. Kids will go "whee" instead of "vrr" when they play with toy cars. You will become that old fart complaining that today's youth don't get the greatness of your antiquated ways.
I already do see V8's as stinky polluting, noisy and wasteful old relics. I'm not one of these ultra-green environment-folk, and I think V8's are obnoxious and wasteful. Can't imagine what future folk will think.
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How about not making complex diagnosis of rare personality disorders online from a few lines of text?
Re: Short-sighted view (Score:5, Funny)
How about not making complex diagnosis of rare personality disorders online from a few lines of text?
You're paranoid.
Re: Short-sighted view (Score:3)
I do love my ICE, enough to have a moderate collection - going back to the 50s. I've posted pics previously.
Even though someone tried to kill me with their car, I still maintain my bike license. I haven't picked out a new one, but I'm probably going to go with another BMW.
But... Holy balls! Could you imagine a electric bike built for acceleration? I'm pretty sure that would be almost as much fun as an ounce of coke and a rented chimpanzee. I don't even care if the range is just 50 miles. That will only bare
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I thought that was going to happen by 2018 or so, what with all the global warming and such?
Re:Short-sighted view (Score:5, Insightful)
oil will run out one day, but the sun will always shine
Maybe another 4 billion years but hardly always.
Major changes in the planet aside, oil will never run out. Rather, at some point it will not make economic sense to drill for it any more. That will hopefully happen some time within the next 20-30 years.
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I'm panicking here. Is that short scale or long scale billions?
reasonable gamble (Score:2)
... assuming the UK is still a first-world nation by 2040.
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... assuming the UK is still a first-world nation by 2040.
It ceased to be one in 1991, since the "Three-World Model" was about national alignments during the Cold War.
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... assuming the UK is still a first-world nation by 2040.
Assuming the UK will still be a country in 2040. If Scotland leaves the UK, I imagine England will still be first world- and Scotland will at least neighbor a first world country.
Re:reasonable gamble (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe not... By the time the ban comes it, it might be hard to buy a combustion engine car. I expect there will be some specialist vehicles still on the market, but the vast majority will be electric.
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The good news: there will be a huge glut of used ICE cars on the market and cheap prices
The bad news: Even cheap car prices and cheap oil will make ICE cars more expensive to run than EVs.
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They are thinking of banning diesel & petrol only vehicles, not hybrids and plug in hybrids. The transition will be unnoticeable by then. They won't ban all combustion engines.
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Don't confuse Leftist trash with Americans.
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The UK politicians is more into all-controlling than the EU so I don't really know what you are thinking about?
Is it that UK politicians and state bureaucracy should have the freedom to remove freedoms from the people? Is so, yes exiting EU will provide more freedoms. But not for the people - the part of a society that I (and many others) consider the most important.
Otherwise you make no sense at all.
Re:reasonable gamble (Score:4, Insightful)
American. Cheered for Brexit. A lot of us did
Of course you did, and were I American I probably would have done so too because it weakens one of your strongest economic rivals and pretty soon the UK will be turning up cap-in-hand to beg/negotiate a trade deal with the US which will be extremely favourable to the US because the UK will have very little leverage.
From the UK point of view it is going to be a complete disaster though. If you really believe that argument about freedom then are you also an advocate for states in the US all becoming free nations so they can choose their own course rather than being an economic engine attached to Washington's butt? Some of us prefer to think of the EU as our free nation where we enjoyed self-determination along with Germans, French, Poles, Danes etc. in exactly the same way that Californians, Iowans, Virginians etc. all enjoy self-determination together as a single free nation. The UK leaving the EU will be as big an upheaval as say California leaving the US.
There are certainly problems with the EU but show me a nation that does not have problems. The adult response to challenges like this is to work together to solve them, not to get in a hissy fit and take your ball home. I have always felt far more European than just British and now, having being denied the right to vote in the referendum, my EU citizenship is still going to be stripped from me. If this is the sort of "democracy" that a "free" Britain will have then I want none of it thanks.
the UK might be the only western country where pe (Score:5, Insightful)
the UK might be the only western country where petrol-fuelled cars are still on the road
No, the USA will be dead last
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Half of America thought the same thing about the last president.
Yes, this did. That said, their reasoning was pretty terrible.
Clever Politicking (Score:4, Insightful)
Car makers stay profitable by making the same car and selling it around the world (with a few planned modifications, such was flipping the steering wheel, and maybe a renaming). It keeps supply chains simple and amortizes design costs. If major markets in the rest of the world are banning new gas cars by 2025, 2030, or any year before 2040, then the UK won't actually have to do anything. GM isn't going to make an electric cars for other markets, and then have a special gas car for the UK; they'll just stop making gas cars. Legislation or not, by the year 2040 you won't be able to get a new gas car in the UK.
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Car makers stay profitable by making the same car and selling it around the world (with a few planned modifications, such was flipping the steering wheel, and maybe a renaming). It keeps supply chains simple and amortizes design costs
While car makers manufacture the same model for different markets (normally in the same region), no maker makes the same car and sells it around the world. There are a number of differences between countries that simple modifications will not be sufficient. At best the cars might look similar but have different interior, engine, features, etc.
In terms of supply chains, most manufacturers tend to assemble cars closer to their markets (or in their markets) for logistical,economic, and tax reasons. For example
Probably moot by that point... (Score:5, Interesting)
Some analysts are already predicting [youtube.com] that the car market will be 50% EV by the mid-2020s, and will "tip" rapidly thereafter. This trend is mostly driven by the cost of Li-ion batteries, which has been falling at about 15%/yr for the last couple of decades. When it becomes possible to buy an entry-level EV for $20k or less, why would you even want an ICE vehicle?
The "fuel" price for EVs is a fraction of that for ICE, as is the maintenance cost. EVs only have a couple-dozen moving parts, compared to thousands in an ICE car. Of course, there will still be "gas car" enthusiasts in 2040, just as there are hobbyists who still maintain antique steam-powered farm equipment. But even by 2030, there will no longer be a need for this law, because the market will already have flipped.
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Re:Probably moot by that point... (Score:4, Informative)
Lithium is the 25th most abundant element in the Earth's crust. Running out of it is roughly as big a concern as running out of iron or aluminum.
You left out the road tax on hydrocarbon fuel (Score:3)
At least for USians, a substantial part of the cost of gas or diesel is the tax earmarked for new roads and maintaining existing roads. That the EV owner currently does not pay these taxes could be regarded as a subsidy to encourage use of electric cars, but when EVs are numerous, this will change the fuel-cost calculation, especially against the coming generation of more fuel efficient IC engines.
Re:Probably moot by that point... (Score:5, Interesting)
To put it simply, Tesla's Gigafactory will take 5 years to build (2015 - 2020 for full capacity) at a cost of $5 billion and will supply batteries for 1.5 million cars. European vehicle sales (passenger cars and light commerial vehicles, which includes SUV's) are in the 10 - 15 million per year range, US are 15 - 20 million per year range. So to supply this volume of vehicles (50% of 25 - 35 million per year), you would need 10 Gigafactories, with building to start by early 2020's. I haven't seen any plans for this to happen, so the battery supply will not be there to build these vehicles. Infrastructure is the second issue. It takes time to build out the network of charging stations and there are no widespread plans to do this either.
So, all these plans and commitments are meaningless unless they are accompanied by major investments into battery and electric component production and infrastructure investment. When that happens, I'll believe that electric cars will have meaningful sales.
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Gasoline is about an order of magnitude more expensive than coal per unit of energy. This is why Hawaii has the highest electricity prices in the U.S. - they generate most of their electricity by burnin
Re:Probably moot by that point... (Score:4, Informative)
The "fuel" price difference between an EV and ICE is almost entirely due to the price difference between coal and gasoline.
No. The main difference is due to the 4 - 5 times higher efficiency of an electic car.
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Because they have limited range
Irrelevant as long as the range is long enough.
take too long to charge
Also irrelevant as long as the range is long enough.
are boring to drive
That's not been true for many many years - every hypercar these days is going the electric route because they're *way* more fun to drive than petrol cars thanks to the instant torque.
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The range needs to be infinity because they take too fucking long to recharge.
Why? Current EVs can charge at 24kW, giving them 100 miles of range per hour. ChargePoint's new DC chargers can charge at 100kW, giving vehicles 400 miles of range per hour. Humans sleep for at least 7 hours per 24, giving the vehicle a potential 2800 miles of range per sleep cycle, which is way above the distance they can drive in the other 17 hours.
Given that, it seems like there's an upper bound on the "what range is enough range" at 2800 miles. In practice, that upper bound is also way too high. In
Re:Probably moot by that point... (Score:4, Interesting)
> Because they have limited range, take too long to charge
Mostly this, right, trying to do a 1600km (1000 miles) trip in an ICE vehicle? I can do it with just 2 tanks of gas in 16h. However with an AV? This would need a station where you can swap your depleted batteries for full charged ones. Maybe one day this will exist at enough places?
The floating electric car (Score:3)
> Because they have limited range, take too long to charge
Mostly this, right, trying to do a 1600km (1000 miles) trip in an ICE vehicle? I can do it with just 2 tanks of gas in 16h. However with an AV?
I don't know how you would do a 1600km (1000 mile) trip within Britain in any kind of car, electric or petrol. Unless it floats.
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drive around the circumference [wikipedia.org]? That would be 11,000 miles.
No, I don't know why anyone would do that either.
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This would need a station where you can swap your depleted batteries for full charged ones
Or a superfast charger.
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Why swap your battery when you can fully charge it in less time than it takes to eat lunch?
Or do you regularly drive 1000 miles at a time without any bathroom or food stops?
Battery swaps were a dead end idea that have no place in modern EV infrastructure. They're too expensive, too complex, and provide no real benefit over modern fast charge systems.
I regularly drive an EV 1000 km at a time, and it takes me no longer than it used to take me to do the same trip in my old diesel vehicle, sure it takes longer
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I can do it with just 2 tanks of gas...
You have a vehicle that gets 500 MPG? Somehow, your claim is less than believable.
You probably misread what he said. My car (which I drive about once every week or two) gets 24 miles per gallon on the highway. Assuming I don't drive it until it's completely empty, I can go about 350 miles per tank. That means I can do a 1000 mile trip in less than 3 full tanks. Drive something smaller and more practical and you can easily get over 500 miles in a single tank. My parents car has a 14 gallon tank and gets over 40MPG on the highway. That means they can do a 500 mile trip and still have
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Are you saying he only has a one gallon tank?
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are boring to drive
Computers are more boring to use than they used to be and despite that, they're still more popular than ever. So, your point is?
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If you're going a long distance, take a train.
They do still have trains in Britain, you know.
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The question is: what percentage of the market will be put off by refueling time? Most people only gas-up a couple of times a week. And most of the time EV users simply charge overnight while the car is parked in the garage. Unless you're a field-rep or salesman, very few people have a frequent need to drive 500 miles in a day without taking an hour to recharge (both mentally and electrically).
In any case, what are the chances that they won't have ubiquitous availability of battery swap by 2030, or a new ba
Hold on a second! (Score:4, Insightful)
What if this global warming thing is a big hoax and we make a better world for nothing?! ;)
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Re:Hold on a second! (Score:4, Insightful)
That's arguable. Lithium is the irreplaceable element in batteries, and lithium is recyclable.
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Umm... maybe that's because Lithium is an extremely light element, and only comprises a small fraction of the weight of the battery?
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The battery technology is much worse for the environment than fuel.
Oh look. Another person with views from the 1970s. This is a technology site. Clearly no place for you.
Even works well for fossil fuels (Score:3)
Even if you're burning gas and diesel at electrical plants to generate the electricity, there has to be some economies of scale at work here to give better efficiency. More than enough to outweigh transmission losses and battery charging losses.
Your opinion BP? (Score:2)
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Also how will this affect trains? Rail primarily use diesel fuel.
Rolling Coal (Score:2)
In other news, rolling coal [youtube.com] is alive and well in the US.
Re:Rolling Coal (Score:5, Funny)
In other news, rolling coal [youtube.com] is alive and well in the US.
Yeah, those fucking idiots. I really, really hate those assholes. I fully support their right to do this in the confines of their garage. Preferably, with all of the doors closed and any ventilation sealed shut.
Everything can happen in 23 years from now (Score:2)
Like leaving the Europe or reintroducing diesel engine vehicles! Meh!
Far Enough Off... (Score:5, Informative)
2040 is far enough off that the current politicians can make all the promises they want and not suffer any repercussions from failing to meet that goal nor any backlash from folks who object.
2040 is also far enough off that we might reasonably make the transition from fossil fuels by then as that is a long time in technological terms.
On the other hand, I have 1968, 1986, 1996 and 2004 delivery vans and there is not a whole lot of difference between them. They all get about the same gas mileage. In fact, they get about the same mileage full or empty. The biggest thing you can do when driving a larger vehicle is make sure you're always carrying at capacity for this reason. It's called backhauling. When we make deliveries we also pickup up spent barley and such for our pastured pig farm to optimize our time and vehicle usage. That makes more difference than doubling the gas mileage.
In Vermont, where we're located, they aren't quite as optimistic as the UK politicians so they set the deadline for this sort of thing to be 2050 to give another decade of slack.
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Actually not.
Simple evidence is evidence enough for anything.
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Agreed--it'd be much more effective and efficient to beef up public transport.
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The form of public transportation I'm guessing you see is not happening in America without many trillions of infrastructure investment to rebuild our populated areas to be friendly to it. So not happening.
What WILL happen is a transition away from private vehicle ownership to autonomous fleets. The efficiency gains in doing so will be vast, mostly due to the sudden appearance of million mile vehicles now that the car companies are selling miles instead of vehicles.
A side-effect of that will be new energy c
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Electric cars suck.
I own an electric car, and am quite happy with it. It meets all my needs as a commuter and errand car. The range is limited, but my commute is only about 15 miles per day, so i only charge it once a week or so on standard US house current (120v).
Nobody wants one so the government is forcing you to buy a shit car.
I see scores of electric cars on the road every single day on my way to work. Clearly, your statement is without merit.
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
I propose a deal:
You consider your use cases.
And I consider my use cases.
And please leave me alone while I consider my use cases as I will leave you alone when you consider yours!
Different uses, different cars (Score:2)
limited range, long recharge time, what little infrastructure there is to support it, is typically broken, price, longevity. just off the top of my head
Depends on what you need.
Almost all of my driving is around town, and it turns out that this is actually very typical-- most people use cars for mostly short trips. Actually, a ten mile range would be fine for me-- we're a two-car family, so it would be practical to have one car used for most of our uses, and when we do need longer range, we could use the other.
I have a perfectly good ten-year-old car, so I don't need a new car now-- but when I replace it, an electric car makes sense.
The take-away lesson i
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Real people move more than 10 miles from where they were born. You should try getting out more with a real car and see the world.
Real people fly home to see their parents, as they are often well out of driving distance. It would take three days of driving (in an ICE car) to get from where I live to where my parents live.
You should try getting out more in order to understand that there's a whole world around you, filled with people with different needs than yours.
Re:Different uses, different cars (Score:4, Informative)
Most people settle into the same state where they were born. Your idea of "real" is unrealistic. You should try getting out more to understand that there is a whole world around you, filled with people with different needs than yours.
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/12/17/who-moves-who-stays-put-wheres-home/
Among all respondents to the Pew Research Center survey, 57% say they have not lived in the U.S. outside their current state: 37% have never left their hometown and 20% have left their hometown (or native country) but not lived outside their current state.
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Whatever. Toyota is already backing out of that approach. It was just a hedge.
The only change that hydrogen produces versus gas is that the carbon is removed at the refinery. This is because it is still much cheaper to produce hydrogen from oil than other sources. Splitting water economically is still a fantasy.
So, a hydrogen economy is still petrochemical based. Other flow battery technologies (essentially that is what a fuel cell is) already exist that could achieve the benefits you speak of without strip
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They do dribble out periodically. For example:
There are also many examples of lab successes in charging lithium and other batteries in times that are equivalent to supercapacitors
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Why do electric cars cost the same or more than gasoline cars even though they have fewer parts?
Because *one* of those parts is currently *very* expensive (but getting cheaper all the time).
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But those incentives aren't free. Everyone is paying for them, including those who purchase 'non-government-loved' cars, and their government is deciding who gets the option to partake (quid pro quo, you buy what the government approves of and they grease your palm).
Wrong thinking will be punished (if very indirectly); right thinking will be as quickly rewarded. Hold out your hand! Here's a rebate! Woohoo!
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By 2040 the number of EVs on the road will probably be as great, or greater, than hydrocarbon-fueled vehicles.
Great island for electric cars (Score:2, Insightful)
We'll see what happens to their economies when these bans are ready to take place, I will bet that they end up backing off rather than crippling themselves (or people will end up using a lot more used cars and trucks until they vote the bums out)
I don't see any reason why not selling petrol cars would "cripple" Britain. You do know that it's a tiny little island by American standards of distance-- all of the U.K. is still a little smaller than Michigan-- and few people drive long distances. As far as I can see, it's a great location for electric cars.
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You make a good point, but:
If electric cars were a better deal than non-electric cars for UKers, you would not have to get the government's guys with guns to force them to buy electric vehicles at gunpoint...
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It will cost you more to drive your old fossil car than an EV... so the economics of shifting to EVs will be compelling to most people. There will always be "enthusiasts" who are willing to spend more.
transmission losses (Score:2)
...With about 65% of that energy lost in transmission, that number doubles.
source: http://insideenergy.org/2015/1... [insideenergy.org]
65% loss?!? What do you think they are they using to transmit, wet string?
The link you cite says "Energy lost in transmission and distribution: About 6% – 2% in transmission and 4% in distribution".
But Britain's a small place, and they don't wheel power thousands of miles (they don't have thousands of miles), so I expect a smaller number is appropriate.
Re: (Score:2)
We know how oil is produced in nature, we know how long it takes, we know how much oil is consumed => it will run out using any practical definition. It will then be replenished by the same processes that produce the oil we use today, that doesn't change the fact it will at a point of time run out.
Happy?
Re:Citation needed (Score:4, Interesting)
It will then be replenished by the same processes that produce the oil we use today
Actually, it won't. Because we have oxygen in our atmosphere now.
Oil was produced by vast piles of organic matter being covered by sediments and baked for hundreds of millions of years. Once our atmosphere got a significant concentration of oxygen, those vast piles of organic matter no longer formed in the same way. The organic matter oxidizes too much before it can be buried. Instead much smaller molecules (aka natural gas) are created instead.
And before the post above asks, the problem with just relying on natural gas is it tends to not stay in the ground on its own. You need particular geology to hold it in place. So there's way less natural gas forming than the way oil formed 250M years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
Really? Asking for a source? How about "there is a finite volume to the inside of the Earth, and we know that 100% of the volume is not oil"
Any resource that has a finite volume can be exhausted if it is continually used. The only way it would not 'run out' is if we aren't using it any more, and then nobody cares.