Diesel scrappage scheme

[anonymous-user]

DonkeyApple said:

The tech is more than good enough for urban/suburban usage where the vast majority of vehicles do very few miles a day and also fine for hybrids but I can't see the whole of the West changing to pure EVs without needing a superior tech to Li ion batteries or extremely aggressive legislation that simply forces a change from how we currently use cars. Which is not really impossible to imagine afterall few of the mega mile journeys done by cars are actually absolutely essential and without existing replacement solutions.

Legislation will never be brought in. A good deal of people are on the breadline, they have very modest transport. What are you going to do, finance a Tesla for them? EV's are still in their early stages and the early adopters are being used as guinea pigs IMO. If they work for you and you have the budget then go for it. For me though after an extended spell in an i3 I was not convinced at all.

[culpz]

yonex said:

And with all the development there is still not a viable electric car for the masses. Other technologies will lend themselves better to future cars. The battery is a dead end.

That's more like it

[Devil2575]

yonex said:

A good deal of people are on the breadline, they have very modest transport.

A good deal of people on the breadline don't own cars, they use public transport, walk or cycle.

[Devil2575]

culpz said:

You're boring me now and just repeating yourself. You're just a bit stupid really. Go and buy a Nissan Leaf and stop being a hypocrite.

Another failure to respond to any of my points. Perhaps if you have nothing useful to add don't post? Just a thought.

[culpz]

Devil2575 said:

Another failure to respond to any of my points. Perhaps if you have nothing useful to add don't post? Just a thought.

Bought that Leaf yet?

[Guvernator]

People getting wound up over this? Really? What stake does any contributor on this thread have that would require personal insults to be exchanged? Unless you are an oil baron or a Li-On miner and your lively-hood depends on you being right, I'd suggest it's zero so can we please stick the rather interesting discussion without all the vitriol and name calling.

At any rate the writing is on a the wall, the end of the ICE is approaching, that could be in a decade or it could be in two but it's going to happen. Do I lament it? Sort of as I don't think anything else currently gets near the almost primal pleasure one derives from driving a good ICE car, however I'm also aware it's a very selfish technology and we need to change it if we want to leave a world worth living in for future generations.

The current favourite by far to replace it looks like it will be an EV powered by some sort of battery tech. Nothing else is anywhere near as ready so unless some unknown company does another Tesla and introduces a hyrodogen\fusion\perpetual motion car to the mass market in the next couple of years it will be the EV that will be replacing the ICE in cars, at least in the short to medium term as it's very clearly where the vast majority of the motor industry is placing its bets right now. I was also in denial at first to be honest as I found EV cars to be souless and vowed that they'd prize the keys for my big loud ICE car from my cold dead fingers but faced with the overwhelming evidence, I have come to conclude that this is going to happen whether I like it or not. At least the new batch of performance hybrids and EV's have started to convince me that an EV future might not be quiet so bleak from a driver perspective after all.

[300bhp/ton]

otolith said:

Mr2Mike said:

When it only takes a few minutes to fill a tank with a 300+ mile range, then you don't need many pumps. When it takes hours to charge a car with ~100 mile range, there will need to be a st load more charging points than fuel pumps. It's hardly rocket science.

How many public petrol pumps would we need if every house had its own petrol supply?

Don't really get your question, are you fishing for a response? As MR2Mike said, there simply is no need for a personal petrol pump, as the refuelling experience could easily be noted in seconds.

Even my Impreza Turbo will eek 300 miles to a tank touring. Pay at pump means it's super quick and easy to refill. To do the same range in a Nissan Leaf could take 40 hours of home charging.... The difference is astronomical.

[culpz]

I honestly don't really care what powers our cars in the future as it's out of our hands really. Whatever happens, happens.

MY OPINION, as i have clearly stated in each of my points but obviously and blatantly ignored, is that EV technology isn't/won't be the future. Others disagree and that's fine, apart from when that opinion suddenly becomes a fact.

Edited by culpz on Wednesday 7th December 10:58

[300bhp/ton]

Guvernator said:

There are literally millions, perhaps billions being spent on next gen battery tech as they basically power our modern lifestyle so it's one of the holy grail's. The person\company who cracks it will be rich beyond the dreams of avarice so there is a massive incentive.

In fact quite a few companies have already showcased batteries which hold twice as much energy and charge in half the time in the last year alone. As soon as one of these companies cracks the ability to be able to mass produce one of these new batteries, a lot of the current concerns around EV cars will go away. I really reckon it's a matter of when not if and I don't think that time is too far off either.

Twice the capacity and half the charging time is still a long way off replacing IC engines. Let's use the Leaf as an example, that would mean a 200 mile range and still a couple of hours charging.

I suspect the real solution is not in battery technology, but electricity generation. If there was some device that could be safely installed in a vehicle that could produce electricity for a good period of time, then that would solve the basic issues.

And I know people like to harp on about this currently non existent battery tech as though it will be available in the January sales... but it could be decades or centuries away or never.

And there is a fundamental problem. Running an electric car will always require large amounts of electricity. And electric motors will only get so efficient. So there are probably few gains to be had here, although some.

This means you will always need a 'large' amount of power stored on board for a battery vehicle. The more you hold, the more you must transfer to the vehicle. I would imagine this has real finite limitations. And the power levels you'd end up talking about for charing would get to highly dangerous levels. If cars ran on rails with overhead power, it'd be less of an issue. We know electric motors can perform extremely well as passenger trains can do 200mph using it.

But if you need to transfer vast amounts of electricity quickly, everyone will need 3 phase or better electrics and then some.

Think about it like filling up a large tank with water. If you make the tank twice as big, you'd need twice the flow rate to fill it in the same time. To fill it twice as quickly you'd need 4 times the flow rate. But you can only flow so much water through a certain size pipe and at a certain pressure. The bigger the pipes get and the higher the pressure, then the more dangerous it becomes.



I do agree with one of the comments above. More people could probably make use of current EV tech, with only minor inconveniences. And maybe for city centres it is a way to go. But the trouble is, people don't just drive in city centres. So it will never be the ultimate solution.

[Guvernator]

culpz said:

I honestly don't really care what powers our cars in the future as it's out of our hands really. Whatever happens, happens.

MY OPINION, as i have clearly stated in each of my points but obviously and blatantly ignored, is that EV technology isn't/won't be the future. Others disagree and that's fine, apart from when that opinion suddenly becomes a fact.

Edited by culpz on Wednesday 7th December 10:58

Ok so lets discuss that opinion. An electric vehicle is not just the battery tech but the actual use of electricity as an energy input source to drive an electric motor. Currently that electricity is provided by Li-On batteries but in the future it could be some other sort of battery tech, they could put a mini nuclear reactor in it or it might be some magic fairy dust that will be invented at some point. The point is I think the primary source of power will be electrical no matter how that electricity is stored\produced as that is what the industry is heavily investing in.

If you are convinced it's not going to be electricity powering our future cars, what do you think it's going to be? What other technology can you see being developed right now that will mean that at some point in the not too distant future, all manufacturers will just write-off the massive amounts already invested in electric powered cars and switch to something else?

Edited by Guvernator on Wednesday 7th December 11:17

[Devil2575]

culpz said:

Devil2575 said:

Another failure to respond to any of my points. Perhaps if you have nothing useful to add don't post? Just a thought.

Bought that Leaf yet?

Yes, I have a perfectly fine car that suits my needs, I own outright and costs me feck all to run (I cycle to work 4 days a week) but to prove a point to you I'm going to go and buy one (Actually I'd lease one). Don't be such a stupid idiot.

You'd have to be a complete and utter imbecile to not think that this was not a reasonable position for me to take...oh hang on, you are an imbecile.

Now fk off.

[otolith]

300bhp/ton said:

otolith said:

Mr2Mike said:

When it only takes a few minutes to fill a tank with a 300+ mile range, then you don't need many pumps. When it takes hours to charge a car with ~100 mile range, there will need to be a st load more charging points than fuel pumps. It's hardly rocket science.

How many public petrol pumps would we need if every house had its own petrol supply?

Don't really get your question, are you fishing for a response? As MR2Mike said, there simply is no need for a personal petrol pump, as the refuelling experience could easily be noted in seconds.

Even my Impreza Turbo will eek 300 miles to a tank touring. Pay at pump means it's super quick and easy to refill. To do the same range in a Nissan Leaf could take 40 hours of home charging.... The difference is astronomical.

The point is that we already have more places to refuel an electric car than we have petrol pumps. We would need far fewer petrol pumps if you could have the car fill itself up on your driveway overnight. So on one hand you have a faster fill-up, but you need dedicated infrastructure, tanker deliveries, etc, on the other we have a slow fill from a distributed system with an outlet in every property. If you come at it thinking that the way to manage this is something like a petrol station but with charging points instead of pumps and cars queuing, you're trying to apply the wrong solution. Of course that isn't the way to do it. You charge them where you park them when you aren't using them - homes, destination points, car parks at the services. Cars spend most of their time doing nothing, all you need is charging infrastructure where they are parked.

You can sit there saying it can't work, but the fact is, it already is working. Around 20% of new cars sold in Norway are pure EVs, closer to 30% if you include plug-in hybrids. This is the kind of infrastructure they use;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z56mkGUSvY

[DonkeyApple]

yonex said:

DonkeyApple said:

The tech is more than good enough for urban/suburban usage where the vast majority of vehicles do very few miles a day and also fine for hybrids but I can't see the whole of the West changing to pure EVs without needing a superior tech to Li ion batteries or extremely aggressive legislation that simply forces a change from how we currently use cars. Which is not really impossible to imagine afterall few of the mega mile journeys done by cars are actually absolutely essential and without existing replacement solutions.

Legislation will never be brought in. A good deal of people are on the breadline, they have very modest transport. What are you going to do, finance a Tesla for them? EV's are still in their early stages and the early adopters are being used as guinea pigs IMO. If they work for you and you have the budget then go for it. For me though after an extended spell in an i3 I was not convinced at all.

Although more and more legislation is being brought and lobby groups are pressuring for even more so it's a tough call to say that there will never be legislation banning ICE. And although there may be a good deal of people in the breadline I'm not sure there's much evidence (beyond chucking them a few quid to ps off) that legislators give a single flying fk about them. If they can't afford an EV car they can get the EV bus. It's not as if any of the existing legislation has ever paid the slightest heed to the poor so there isn't a huge amount of evidence to support a total vault face in that regard.

Besides, Eloi Musk is promising free batteries for all next week.

[DonkeyApple]

300bhp/ton said:

Guvernator said:

There are literally millions, perhaps billions being spent on next gen battery tech as they basically power our modern lifestyle so it's one of the holy grail's. The person\company who cracks it will be rich beyond the dreams of avarice so there is a massive incentive.

In fact quite a few companies have already showcased batteries which hold twice as much energy and charge in half the time in the last year alone. As soon as one of these companies cracks the ability to be able to mass produce one of these new batteries, a lot of the current concerns around EV cars will go away. I really reckon it's a matter of when not if and I don't think that time is too far off either.

Twice the capacity and half the charging time is still a long way off replacing IC engines. Let's use the Leaf as an example, that would mean a 200 mile range and still a couple of hours charging.

I suspect the real solution is not in battery technology, but electricity generation. If there was some device that could be safely installed in a vehicle that could produce electricity for a good period of time, then that would solve the basic issues.

And I know people like to harp on about this currently non existent battery tech as though it will be available in the January sales... but it could be decades or centuries away or never.

And there is a fundamental problem. Running an electric car will always require large amounts of electricity. And electric motors will only get so efficient. So there are probably few gains to be had here, although some.

This means you will always need a 'large' amount of power stored on board for a battery vehicle. The more you hold, the more you must transfer to the vehicle. I would imagine this has real finite limitations. And the power levels you'd end up talking about for charing would get to highly dangerous levels. If cars ran on rails with overhead power, it'd be less of an issue. We know electric motors can perform extremely well as passenger trains can do 200mph using it.

But if you need to transfer vast amounts of electricity quickly, everyone will need 3 phase or better electrics and then some.

Think about it like filling up a large tank with water. If you make the tank twice as big, you'd need twice the flow rate to fill it in the same time. To fill it twice as quickly you'd need 4 times the flow rate. But you can only flow so much water through a certain size pipe and at a certain pressure. The bigger the pipes get and the higher the pressure, then the more dangerous it becomes.



I do agree with one of the comments above. More people could probably make use of current EV tech, with only minor inconveniences. And maybe for city centres it is a way to go. But the trouble is, people don't just drive in city centres. So it will never be the ultimate solution.

300, 90% of people living in the U.K. drive less than 10 miles a day. Even the sttest EV currently on sale will cater for the needs of the masses. And the Grid can easily top up those batteries over night.

Painting a picture of millions upon millions of people in the UK driving 300 miles a day and needing to fully recharge every day is a failure to recognise actual reality.

[culpz]

Devil2575 said:

Yes, I have a perfectly fine car that suits my needs, I own outright and costs me feck all to run (I cycle to work 4 days a week) but to prove a point to you I'm going to go and buy one (Actually I'd lease one). Don't be such a stupid idiot.

You'd have to be a complete and utter imbecile to not think that this was not a reasonable position for me to take...oh hang on, you are an imbecile.

Now fk off.

All this anger and rage could be saved for when you finally get behind the wheel of your proud new Nissan Leaf.

It's the future you know?

[Devil2575]

culpz said:

All this anger and rage could be saved for when you finally get behind the wheel of your proud new Nissan Leaf.

It's the future you know?

I'm not angry.

However when I change my car I will be considering an EV.

[culpz]

Guvernator said:

Ok so lets discuss that opinion. An electric vehicle is not just the battery tech but the actual use of electricity as an energy input source to drive an electric motor. Currently that electricity is provided by Li-On batteries but in the future it could be some other sort of battery tech, they could put a mini nuclear reactor in it or it might be some magic fairy dust that will be invented at some point. The point is I think the primary source of power will be electrical no matter how that electricity is stored\produced as that is what the industry is heavily investing in.

If you are convinced it's not going to be electricity powering our future cars, what do you think it's going to be? What other technology can you see being developed right now that will mean that at some point in the not too distant future, all manufacturers will just write-off the massive amounts already invested in electric powered cars and switch to something else?

Edited by Guvernator on Wednesday 7th December 11:17

I wish to refrain from repeating myself to be honest. Read back my comments with my little back and forth with Mr Happy if you must.

I believe that so much time and energy (excuse the pun) has already been put into electric technology over the years but it just hasn't progressed enough for it to be the future in my eyes. With that current rate of progress so far, i can't really see it dramatically improving to be officially rolled out as an official replacement for the IC engine. That's all i said. Nothing more. nothing less.

I'm happy to be proved wrong. As, i said earlier, i couldn't care what technology becomes the new replacement as long as it's efficient enough as what we have currently. The answer is, i don't know, but i'm just not convinced with EV's.

[culpz]

Devil2575 said:

I'm not angry.

However when I change my car I will be considering an EV.

God you're funny. Do stick around.

[Devil2575]

culpz said:

God you're funny. Do stick around.

You're not. Please leave.

It's like talking to a child who doesn't listen and then throws around insults when people don't agree with you.

[Devil2575]

culpz said:

I wish to refrain from repeating myself to be honest.

Rather than simply repeating yourself how about addressing some of the challenges to this opinion that have been raised, because you have yet to do so. If your only contribution to the debate is to keep repeating the same lines then you are adding nothing.