Diesel scrappage scheme

[culpz]

Devil2575 said:

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.

Such assertiveness. Such power.

[culpz]

Devil2575 said:

rather than simply repeating yourself how about addressing some of the challemges 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. Everyone has already read your comments but they haven't actually addressed the points raised.

You don't have any points i want to hear again thanks. So, i'll kindly pass. Thanks for the offer though.

[Devil2575]

DonkeyApple said:

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.

Interesting stat, where does that come from. I kind of though that was the case but didn't have any data to back it up.

[Guvernator]

culpz said:

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.

Not sure why you think so much time and energy has been spent? Yes electricity has been around for yonks as has battery tech but it's been pretty stagnant since it was first developed as there hasn't been a massive need to develop it.

However in the last 10-15 years it's really become a thing as so much stuff now depends on batteries, phones, laptops, tablets and a zillion other mobile devices so it's not just cars. In order for us to progress, someone needs to come up with a more efficient way of storing\transferring electricity. It really is one of the big hurdles of our modern age and therefore it is getting serious money being pumped into it.

A quick Google shows that this year alone, VW are pumping $4b into battery tech, Dyson are pumping 1.4$ and that's just the first couple to come up. There is a even a Department of Energy consortium called Beyond Lithium Ion so there is great weight being brought to bear on this problem. With this much riding on it and so much being invested into it, I just can't see it being a problem we won't crack in the not too distant future.

Again I ask if EV is not the answer what is? Can you name one other alternative energy technology right now which is currently getting as much attention or investment? If you can't, where is this alternative tech going to come from? It can't just pop out of thin air because you think it should, someone needs to spend real time and money coming up with an alternative. The money being invested in bio-fuels, hydrogen or any other alternative tech is a mere drop in the ocean compared to the investment in EV and I just don't see anything else which can compete right now. Almost everyone in the industry is betting the house on EV, can you say why they all seem to be doing it wrong and you are right?

[300bhp/ton]

Devil2575 said:

This is a silly argument. Yes they have been around for a long time, but that tells you nothing about the rate of technological developement now. No one was spending any money on them up until the last couple of decades as fossil fuel has been relatively cheap and plentiful.

Logically it's no more silly than the claim the IC engine is over 100 years and dead with nobody doing any research on them anymore. Which was the point I was countering....

You can't have it both ways. Either both arguments are valid, or neither. Not just one of them.

[300bhp/ton]

Guvernator said:

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

I actually posted a link to alternative technology earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Braz...

Not as a finite solution, but as a completely different direction with it's own challenges and possibilities. Just as EV's and batteries are not a finite solution either.

Remember the world is a far bigger place than just the United Kingdom, or even Europe.

[DonkeyApple]

Devil2575 said:

DonkeyApple said:

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.

Interesting stat, where does that come from. I kind of though that was the case but didn't have any data to back it up.

http://www.racfoundation.org/assets/rac_foundation/content/downloadables/car-and-the-commute-web-version.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...


Plus, a simple calc to take into account all the people who don't own a car and you get to around 90% of the population

Useful reads for anyone interested as where we each live and how we live naturally skews our view away from the actual reality that almost everyone has access to an electricity socket and almost everyone does a daily mileage easily covered by an existing EV product. And for the few that fall outside of that there are simple social solutions that already exist that would work for them. In reality, the only true barrier to EVs is that they are much more expensive to buy than ICE cars and that is primarily a function of the cost of the batteries. If batteries cost next to nothing then EVs would be so much cheaper than ICE that the masses would be clambering for them and charging points would be slung in absolutely everywhere and enterprises would spring up to take commercial advantage of the small gaps where an EV fails versus an ICE.

[300bhp/ton]

DonkeyApple said:

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.

Your numbers don't agree with the posted figures earlier. And I do not believe 90% of the people drive less than 10 miles, unless you a fiddling the figures. And I'm sorry to inform you on this. But the world, nor the solar system actually revolve around Britain.

Now I'm British and proud of it, but I'm not delusional. I also fully understand that on a global scale the UK has a somewhat minor influence on the motor industry, seeing as all the big players are not from the UK, nor are most of the vehicles built or sold in the UK.

[culpz]

Guvernator said:

Not sure why you think so much time and energy has been spent? Yes electricity has been around for yonks as has battery tech but it's been pretty stagnant since it was first developed as there hasn't been a massive need to develop it.

However in the last 10-15 years it's really become a thing as so much stuff now depends on batteries, phones, laptops, tablets and a zillion other mobile devices so it's not just cars. In order for us to progress, someone needs to come up with a more efficient way of storing\transferring electricity. It really is one of the big hurdles of our modern age and therefore it is getting serious money being pumped into it.

A quick Google shows that this year alone, VW are pumping $4b into battery tech, Dyson are pumping 1.4$ and that's just the first couple to come up. There is a even a Department of Energy consortium called Beyond Lithium Ion so there is great weight being brought to bear on this problem. With this much riding on it and so much being invested into it, I just can't see it being a problem we won't crack in the not too distant future.

Again I ask if EV is not the answer what is? Can you name one other alternative energy technology right now which is currently getting as much attention or investment? If you can't, where is this alternative tech going to come from? It can't just pop out of thin air because you think it should, someone needs to spend real time and money coming up with an alternative. The money being invested in bio-fuels, hydrogen or any other alternative tech is a mere drop in the ocean compared to the investment in EV and I just don't see anything else which can compete right now. Almost everyone in the industry is betting the house on EV, can you say why they all seem to be doing it wrong and you are right?

I'm not going over the same stuff as i have done previously. I'm not avoiding the conversion, as a certain someone will probably be on hand to tell you, i'm just a bit bored now of going over the same points already made. There's nothing to say that i haven't already.

I'm not the only one who doesn't believe EV's are going to take off and become the future. Don't make it seem so obvious that this is clearly the way forward because it simply isn't. My doubt purely stems from progress of electric cars, or lack of.

[anonymous-user]

DonkeyApple said:

In reality, the only true barrier to EVs is that they are much more expensive to buy than ICE cars and that is primarily a function of the cost of the batteries. If batteries cost next to nothing then EVs would be so much cheaper than ICE that the masses would be clambering for them and charging points would be slung in absolutely everywhere and enterprises would spring up to take commercial advantage of the small gaps where an EV fails versus an ICE.

And the fact that you have to plan every journey, pure EV isn't realistic until people can charge in under 5 mins and have a sensible range. With the i3 I could not use it as a business tool, maybe the Rex, but even that is pushing it. And of course, all these charging points would have to be paid for, the electricity supplies allocated (which if you have ever dealt with UKPN and the like take a long time and a lot of money) and ultimately taxed. Then the small matter of recycling, with the whole road network using EV, the extra precautions for the emergency services and a ton of other incidentals which the modern ICE has manage to cover through its evolution over the years.

[heebeegeetee]

I think it's valid that the vast majority of cars spends the vast majority of their time stationary. Most cars are stationary outside a place of work or the home for the majority of the car's life.

I don't think that's a bad place to start when factoring in how ev are going to fit in within the structure of our lifestyles.

[Guvernator]

culpz said:

I'm not going over the same stuff as i have done previously. I'm not avoiding the conversion, as a certain someone will probably be on hand to tell you, i'm just a bit bored now of going over the same points already made. There's nothing to say that i haven't already.

I'm not the only one who doesn't believe EV's are going to take off and become the future. Don't make it seem so obvious that this is clearly the way forward because it simply isn't. My doubt purely stems from progress of electric cars, or lack of.

I'm not going over the same stuff, just asking what you or anyone else thinks the alternative is given the massive move by the industry towards EV. No one has answered that very simple question yet. Yes the world is not just Britain but given the fact that nearly every major player in America, Europe and Asia is investing in EV tech and either have brought out or are due to bring out an EV car in the next year or two, I think it's safe to assume we know where the majority of the car industry thinks it's headed.

And no pointing to a random link about bio fuel being used in Brazil isn't an answer. Where is the bio fuel car I can buy right now, today that is being produced in the thousands by a major manufacture? The answer, there isn't one but I can count at least 10 EV cars available to buy today off the top of my head.

[300bhp/ton]

Devil2575 said:

DonkeyApple said:

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.

Interesting stat, where does that come from. I kind of though that was the case but didn't have any data to back it up.

Looking it up, it seems in 2015 the total miles driven in the UK where 316.7 billion miles. A stat I found earlier said there where 34 million licensed vehicles in the UK.

I think that works out at 9315 miles per vehicle per year on average.

Which is 25.5 miles a day per vehicle on average.

Of course this isn't per person. And of course not every car that is licensed will actually be used. So the average mileage per vehicle per day must be higher than 25.5 miles a day.

The population estimate for 2015 is 65 million.

But even assuming every single person drives, that makes a straight average mileage of 13.5 miles per day per person. The reality is half or more of the population.

There is an estimate of 32 million licensed drivers in 2015.

Total miles by number of licence holders = 9897 miles a year or 27.2 mile per person per day.

However it is quite reasonable to expect than many licence holders do not actually drive or drive regularly.


The up shot is, that 90% number is complete BS. And there is a very good number of people doing fairly high milage a day. Or put it this way, there are millions and millions of people in the UK doing above average, i.e. a lot of miles a day.

Stats pulled from various sources:
https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid=chrome-ins...

Assuming 365 days a year, not working days.

[otolith]

300bhp/ton said:

I actually posted a link to alternative technology earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Braz...

Not as a finite solution, but as a completely different direction with it's own challenges and possibilities. Just as EV's and batteries are not a finite solution either.

Remember the world is a far bigger place than just the United Kingdom, or even Europe.

There's a detailed examination of Brazilian and US ethanol production here;

http://bioscience.oxfordjournals.org/content/55/7/...

TLDR: "The use of ethanol as a substitute for gasoline proved to be neither a sustainable nor an environmentally friendly option, considering ecological footprint values, and both net energy and CO2 offset considerations seemed relatively unimportant compared to the ecological footprint. As revealed by the ecological footprint approach, the direct and indirect environmental impacts of growing, harvesting, and converting biomass to ethanol far exceed any value in developing this alternative energy resource on a large scale."

I think the next generation of biofuels may be more efficient, but they've been promised for a while. If we can develop biofuels with a smaller footprint, which don't push up food prices or require tropical deforestation, they may be an option from a CO2 reduction point of view, but we aren't going to be able to burn them in ICEs because of the same local air quality issues affecting diesels. We might be able to run fuel cell vehicles on them - my gut feeling there is that you are probably going to end up paying a large premium to have an electric car which can be refilled quickly but needs to be taken to a filling station rather than one which can be refilled slowly anywhere it's parked. I think that if the infrastructure for electric charging gets there first, that would probably be a non-starter.

[300bhp/ton]

heebeegeetee said:

I think it's valid that the vast majority of cars spends the vast majority of their time stationary. Most cars are stationary outside a place of work or the home for the majority of the car's life.

I don't think that's a bad place to start when factoring in how ev are going to fit in within the structure of our lifestyles.

And were do you think people park for work? And do you think it's a) possible or practical to have a charging point located there, b) enough of them for all the cars, c) how will pay to put these charing points in place.

[otolith]

300bhp/ton said:

Looking it up, it seems in 2015 the total miles driven in the UK where 316.7 billion miles.

That's for all vehicles. The source of that figure breaks it down by vehicle type.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploa...

The relevant number for cars is 247.7 billion vehicle miles.

[MarshPhantom]

Regiment said:

treetops said:

Was talked about tonight on R4.

Possibility it may happen, sounds to me like the end of the diesel and values may well plummet as will their popularity.

Thoughts?

Thoughts are that it's too late with all these disgusting diesel cars creating all this smog.

I'd have thought buses, vans and HGVs were the real problem.

[DonkeyApple]

yonex said:

DonkeyApple said:

In reality, the only true barrier to EVs is that they are much more expensive to buy than ICE cars and that is primarily a function of the cost of the batteries. If batteries cost next to nothing then EVs would be so much cheaper than ICE that the masses would be clambering for them and charging points would be slung in absolutely everywhere and enterprises would spring up to take commercial advantage of the small gaps where an EV fails versus an ICE.

And the fact that you have to plan every journey, pure EV isn't realistic until people can charge in under 5 mins and have a sensible range. With the i3 I could not use it as a business tool, maybe the Rex, but even that is pushing it. And of course, all these charging points would have to be paid for, the electricity supplies allocated (which if you have ever dealt with UKPN and the like take a long time and a lot of money) and ultimately taxed. Then the small matter of recycling, with the whole road network using EV, the extra precautions for the emergency services and a ton of other incidentals which the modern ICE has manage to cover through its evolution over the years.

You are taking your personal situation though and extrapolating on the assumption that the majority of people are the same as you.

If I did the same and included all my peers then I would reach the conclusion that no one even needs a car but that would also be equally incorrect.

What the facts do show is that the people who currently do daily mileage that is beyond the bounds of an existing EV are a tiny percentage and far from the norm.

We also know that almost no one lives more than a few feet from electricity. The fact that it would take time and money to install chargers is moot. We piss billions away on all sorts the point is that it is easily doable if needs be.

Recycling? Batteries? Well it's only currently cost ineffective due to cells being separate. The process is cheap it's the collection cost that's the problem. Massive blocks of thousands of cells changes that somewhat.

Incidentals? Well they are incidentals not terminal issues. Nothing more debt and spending can't deal with. And the same people who like legislating for things like EVs are the same people who like stting on the poor, instigating massive development programs and pissing away billions of GBP of money they don't actually have.

[otolith]

300bhp/ton said:

And were do you think people park for work? And do you think it's a) possible or practical to have a charging point located there, b) enough of them for all the cars, c) how will pay to put these charing points in place.

a) In many cases, yes. Look at the system used in Norway.

b) They don't all need to be on charge all the time. Just enough on average to cover a day's use.

c) Investors who see a business opportunity, and subsequently the users of the charging points.

[Devil2575]

300bhp/ton said:

Devil2575 said:

This is a silly argument. Yes they have been around for a long time, but that tells you nothing about the rate of technological developement now. No one was spending any money on them up until the last couple of decades as fossil fuel has been relatively cheap and plentiful.

Logically it's no more silly than the claim the IC engine is over 100 years and dead with nobody doing any research on them anymore. Which was the point I was countering....

You can't have it both ways. Either both arguments are valid, or neither. Not just one of them.

The Internal combustion engine is old technology that has been stretched to it's limits.

Battery technology has been around for a long time but for the vast majority of it's life has seen little or no developement because there has been no requirment.

How long a certain type of technology has been in existance is not always a good measure of how well developed it has been.