Organisations unable to ever fully adopt electric vehicles

[DickyC]

The emergency services and armed forces cannot go fully electric. There, I've said it. A lengthy emergency or terrorist attack on the electricity supply would make the use of fully electric vehicles unworkable to the point of being absurd.

I wonder if the drive towards fully electric vehicles is a political move, not to save the planet, but to artificially stimulate the economy. The, as it turned out, pointless drive to diesels a few years ago is an example.

[SSBB]

In a prolonged and complete shutdown of the UK electricity grid, the least of our worries will be emergency service vehicle propulsion.

I’m not sure how armed services propulsion is really relevant to the average motorist in the UK.

I don’t think the ideas in this post have been thought through well at all.

[sociopath]

SSBB said:

In a prolonged and complete shutdown of the UK electricity grid, the least of our worries will be emergency service vehicle propulsion.

I’m not sure how armed services propulsion is really relevant to the average motorist in the UK.

I don’t think the ideas in this post have been thought through well at all.

A personal agenda driven interpretation of a completely unlikely scenario you mean?

[Amateurish]

DickyC said:

I wonder if the drive towards fully electric vehicles is a political move, not to save the planet, but to artificially stimulate the economy. The, as it turned out, pointless drive to diesels a few years ago is an example.

I'm sure you're correct, that's probably why it's only the UK government that is promoting EVs globally.

[essayer]

If only there were some way to convert stored energy, such as diesel, into electricity

[DickyC]

SSBB said:

In a prolonged and complete shutdown of the UK electricity grid, the least of our worries will be emergency service vehicle propulsion.

I’m not sure how armed services propulsion is really relevant to the average motorist in the UK.

I don’t think the ideas in this post have been thought through well at all.

Reductio ad absurdum tells us that if no electric vehicles can move due to major power failure, the owner of the sole remaining petrol engined Bedford van is king.

[Dingu]

DickyC said:

The emergency services and armed forces cannot go fully electric. There, I've said it. A lengthy emergency or terrorist attack on the electricity supply would make the use of fully electric vehicles unworkable to the point of being absurd.

I wonder if the drive towards fully electric vehicles is a political move, not to save the planet, but to artificially stimulate the economy. The, as it turned out, pointless drive to diesels a few years ago is an example.

As mentioned there are options to have as backups. What do you think happens to a hospital in a power cut? All the patients die?

How are you going to power ICE vehicles in 1000 years? Amuse me.

[DickyC]

Dingu said:

DickyC said:

The emergency services and armed forces cannot go fully electric. There, I've said it. A lengthy emergency or terrorist attack on the electricity supply would make the use of fully electric vehicles unworkable to the point of being absurd.

I wonder if the drive towards fully electric vehicles is a political move, not to save the planet, but to artificially stimulate the economy. The, as it turned out, pointless drive to diesels a few years ago is an example.

As mentioned there are options to have as backups. What do you think happens to a hospital in a power cut? All the patients die?

How are you going to power ICE vehicles in 1000 years? Amuse me.

You seem to be agreeing with me and yet you're asking me to provide counter arguments.

[Dingu]

DickyC said:

Dingu said:

DickyC said:

The emergency services and armed forces cannot go fully electric. There, I've said it. A lengthy emergency or terrorist attack on the electricity supply would make the use of fully electric vehicles unworkable to the point of being absurd.

I wonder if the drive towards fully electric vehicles is a political move, not to save the planet, but to artificially stimulate the economy. The, as it turned out, pointless drive to diesels a few years ago is an example.

As mentioned there are options to have as backups. What do you think happens to a hospital in a power cut? All the patients die?

How are you going to power ICE vehicles in 1000 years? Amuse me.

You seem to be agreeing with me and yet you're asking me to provide counter arguments.

I’m not agreeing with you. You said they couldn’t use fully electric vehicles. That’s clearly untrue. If you said they can’t use fully electric vehicles without having a back up non grid charging system then I agree, but you didn’t say that.

[DickyC]

Dingu said:

I’m not agreeing with you. You said they couldn’t use fully electric vehicles. That’s clearly untrue. If you said they can’t use fully electric vehicles without having a back up non grid charging system then I agree, but you didn’t say that.

I said they "can't fully adopt electric vehicles" not "they can't adopt fully electric vehicles."

It's in the title.

[bristolracer]

Not everything has to go electric

Just a significant amount of personal and commercial transport, there will always be exceptions.

Half the developing world will still be using ICE for many years after we have gone electric.

[S6PNJ]

DickyC said:

I said they "can't fully adopt electric vehicles" not "they can't adopt fully electric vehicles."

The military have managed deployed ops (away from any 'local' power source) for many years. If they need power to charge an electric vehicle or a fleet of them, they'll simply rock up with a FEPS (Field Electrical Power Source - a big diesel genny probably able to run on AVTUR as well at a guess) and create their own charging point.

[Dingu]

DickyC said:

I said they "can't fully adopt electric vehicles" not "they can't adopt fully electric vehicles."

It's in the title.

But they can fully adopt electric vehicles. Just need an alternative way of charging as back up. Similarly to how a hospital fully uses electricity to power critical equipment but has back up options.

[MB140]

Dingu said:

As mentioned there are options to have as backups. What do you think happens to a hospital in a power cut? All the patients die?

How are you going to power ICE vehicles in 1000 years? Amuse me.

Erm, I don’t know. Maybe that fully synthetic fuel they have been making for quite a while. Didn’t the Germans mass produce synthetic fuel during WW2 (one of the reasons there superior engine to the merlin actually produced less power, but still a viable option for a normal mode of transport such as a car).

[disago]

DickyC said:

A lengthy emergency or terrorist attack

I saw that movie!!

Real life will be way more boring, it’ll be entirely avoidable under-investment eating safety margins slowly over the years, tipped over the edge by a human messing up one day. Operational error is all but guaranteed.

DickyC said:

would make the use of fully electric vehicles unworkable.

Petrol, diesel, hydrogen and lpg too! The massive electric pumps in the refineries, and the wee ones on the petrol forecourts need to be working

DickyC said:

I wonder if the drive towards fully electric vehicles is a political move

Oh, here we go. You’ve had too much internet. You’re drunk on the stuff. Go for a walk :-)

[Dingu]

MB140 said:

Dingu said:

As mentioned there are options to have as backups. What do you think happens to a hospital in a power cut? All the patients die?

How are you going to power ICE vehicles in 1000 years? Amuse me.

Erm, I don’t know. Maybe that fully synthetic fuel they have been making for quite a while. Didn’t the Germans mass produce synthetic fuel during WW2 (one of the reasons there superior engine to the merlin actually produced less power, but still a viable option for a normal mode of transport such as a car).

Even more complex than hydrogen as a fuel. Viable if you ignore the scale of the volume required and therefore energy requirements I agree.

[DonkeyApple]

DickyC said:

The emergency services and armed forces cannot go fully electric. There, I've said it. A lengthy emergency or terrorist attack on the electricity supply would make the use of fully electric vehicles unworkable to the point of being absurd.

I wonder if the drive towards fully electric vehicles is a political move, not to save the planet, but to artificially stimulate the economy. The, as it turned out, pointless drive to diesels a few years ago is an example.

Been a while since I've seen a manual fuel pump though.

The reality is that from a security perspective the best long term solution is to maintain a basic fossil fuel network as part of a blended solution. However, the switch to private EVs is going to take 20 to 30 years minimum so we're going to have to see how energy storage evolves over the next decade. It's only from that position can a logical decision be made as to how we are to proceed.

[MB140]

Dingu said:

MB140 said:

Dingu said:

As mentioned there are options to have as backups. What do you think happens to a hospital in a power cut? All the patients die?

How are you going to power ICE vehicles in 1000 years? Amuse me.

Erm, I don’t know. Maybe that fully synthetic fuel they have been making for quite a while. Didn’t the Germans mass produce synthetic fuel during WW2 (one of the reasons there superior engine to the merlin actually produced less power, but still a viable option for a normal mode of transport such as a car).

Even more complex than hydrogen as a fuel. Viable if you ignore the scale of the volume required and therefore energy requirements I agree.

Yes but in 1000 years time as you asked, how many ICE cars will still be left on this planet requiring fully synthetic fuel. The economics of scale won’t matter. Also by then they will probably have found a way of producing petrol via a replicator like Star Trek, but I do see your point.

Bit like people running diesel generators to generate electricity to charge there electric cars.

[DonkeyApple]

bristolracer said:

Not everything has to go electric

Just a significant amount of personal and commercial transport, there will always be exceptions.

Half the developing world will still be using ICE for many years after we have gone electric.

The reality is that we probably won't even need to legally enforce 2035 for private vehicles as by then an EV will be cheaper to buy than an ICE so 95% of users will simply swap over. And as you observe, it's only a handful of countries that are moving to EV ahead of them being the cheaper option. It'll take a step change in the ability to store electricity before any of the other countries will get the process underway.

[DonkeyApple]

MB140 said:

Erm, I don’t know. Maybe that fully synthetic fuel they have been making for quite a while. Didn’t the Germans mass produce synthetic fuel during WW2 (one of the reasons there superior engine to the merlin actually produced less power, but still a viable option for a normal mode of transport such as a car).

They used the Bergius process which creates an eventual liquid fuel from coal. It should also be noted that they held the largest coal reserves in Europe, set up multiple plants throughout Poland, had no choice to use synthetic fuels as they had no robust oil access and yet they still produced the square root of fk all.

For the purpose of killing people the simple reality is that diesel is by far and away the best fuel and the military will stick with it.

The key lies in that we are only aiming for carbon neutrality by 2050 not the actual stopping of production of CO2. Plus, we achieved almost all our CO2 reductions to date by moving it overseas so when it comes to killing people we just need to stick to our long standing policy of doing that in other countries where they will get the fines, not us.