RE: All good things come to an end in 2035

[321boost]

Gooly said:

Bring it on - people imagine replacing their prized ICE motors with "soulless electric cars" but the reality is 99% of the cars on the road today are soulless appliances powered by needlessly polluting petrol and diesel engines. Majority of cars are a-b appliances that are objectively worse to drive because of their ICE engines. A Golf, Quashqai or whatever else is far nicer to drive with an electric motor than it is with a clattery, drive by wire, over-flywheeled, overly assisted heavily regulated ICE motor. The guberment aren't going to take away your E46 M3 or GT3 911 or V8 Jag or whatever else - I'm personally looking forward to the day that the 320ds and TDI Golfs of today are replaced by quiet, smooth, quick and clean electric vehicles. I've driven a few E-Golfs now and anyone who thinks they aren't fun in their own way, or aren't as good as a TDI whatever are having a laugh.

As mentioned already, electric isn't perfect - but lamppost charging, renewable sources, battery recycling in the form of home power banks, 15 years of future tech development and the prospect of further regulation of already stifled ICE stuff means this is a no-brainer. Viva la revolution - I won't be getting rid of my E36 but I will happily chop my E39 in for an electric equivalent when the time comes.

Also - when it comes to range anxiety and what ifs, fact is vast majority of the public's car useage consists of journeys of 7 miles or under. The case study of someone who commutes 200 miles a day etc are both the minority and only really relevant today, in 2020 - it is inevitable that the changing nature of work and workplaces (flexi, work from home, offices outside of town centres etc) and 15 years of battery, charging and infrastructure development will help counteract that. It's also not your god given right to pollute the atmosphere so you can cling onto 2.0 diesel commuter cars...

Edited by Gooly on Tuesday 4th February 15:51

Depends on you. A manual Clio is more fun to drive than a Nissan Leaf.

They will not take away your M3 but they will make it harder to run it. Then you will trailer it to track, the environmentalists will come after tracks next because they will be the pollution/CO2 hotspots. Every doom and gloom story is coming true. Soon something more interesting will be very expensive and I don’t fancy paying £7000 for a 1997 BMW 328 with 195k miles on it! Truly sad.

[otolith]

Kenny Powers said:

Interesting. Meanwhile, on Earth, what happens when you have nowhere to charge your car before you leave home, and nowhere to charge it when you get where you’re going?

Get a house with somewhere to charge

or

Go somewhere you can charge

or

Use a public charger

or

Use public transport

[321boost]

otolith said:

Kenny Powers said:

Interesting. Meanwhile, on Earth, what happens when you have nowhere to charge your car before you leave home, and nowhere to charge it when you get where you’re going?

Get a house with somewhere to charge

or

Go somewhere you can charge

or

Use a public charger

or

Use public transport

More like use public transport. End to the motoring enthusiast.

[Kenny Powers]

otolith said:

Kenny Powers said:

Interesting. Meanwhile, on Earth, what happens when you have nowhere to charge your car before you leave home, and nowhere to charge it when you get where you’re going?

Get a house with somewhere to charge

or

Go somewhere you can charge

or

Use a public charger

or

Use public transport

Thanks for the tips. And who's paying for all of this? You?

[Gooly]

Kenny Powers said:

Interesting. Meanwhile, on Earth, what happens when you have nowhere to charge your car before you leave home, and nowhere to charge it when you get where you’re going?

Lamppost chargers, provisions for overhead cables from flats to streets, fast chargers at service stations (how many people just fill up and go at MWay services and don't stop off for 10-20 minutes for a loo break, coffee, etc) potential developments with induction charging etc... plus the fact that how often will the normal person (the same normal person who lives in a flat without a driveway, like me) actually have to charge their car? 250 miles range, 20-40 minutes with current tech at a fast charger... more than doable. The only thing that stops me is A) entry price for electric cars currently and B) Living in London, I have easy access to a zipcar E-Golf on demand.

Beyond anything though, yes, some people will have to change their driving habits to suit. That's life (on Earth). Try explaining to future generations that you clung onto your 2026 320d ES Auto because you couldn't be bothered to take 20 extra minutes out of your week to charge up an electric car.

[RobM77]

otolith said:

Kenny Powers said:

Interesting. Meanwhile, on Earth, what happens when you have nowhere to charge your car before you leave home, and nowhere to charge it when you get where you’re going?

Get a house with somewhere to charge

or

Go somewhere you can charge

or

Use a public charger

or

Use public transport

This works well for someone with their own driveway and/or charging point who either drives a modest distance to work and back, or has a charger at work. The street parking charging issue is no doubt one that will need to be solved if we're all to move over to EVs.

There are lots of other "use cases" for cars which don't really translate over to EVs that well: for example when I go windsurfing or surfing I suffer about 20% less range (mpg in my case) due to stuff on the roof and obviously am usually parking up somewhere remote that has no charging point and will probably never get one. When I go motor racing my range (mpg in my case) halves due to towing, so a 300 mile EV becomes a 150 mile one; so if I had to be at the track for 7:30am to sign-on I would have a tricky journey with multiple stops to recharge, giving an unfeasibly long trip.

As for public transport - that doesn't apply to many people, for example those living in rural areas, and it doesn't apply to anyone who needs to carry big stuff around. In my 43 years on the planet I've only spent about 5 years living on a bus route; the only options for me growing up, and now, are a 2-3 mile walk to the nearest train station, for rather limited travel options.

All these problems can all be solved, but they need active work to solve them - ignoring them won't help. What worries me is that these issues will be ignored by the town dwelling wealthy Tories who make the decisions...

Edited by RobM77 on Tuesday 4th February 16:12

[otolith]

Kenny Powers said:

Thanks for the tips. And who's paying for all of this? You?

Nope. That would be you. Maybe start planning now, before the rush?

[Gooly]

321boost said:

Depends on you. A manual Clio is more fun to drive than a Nissan Leaf.

They will not take away your M3 but they will make it harder to run it. Then you will trailer it to track, the environmentalists will come after tracks next because they will be the pollution/CO2 hotspots. Every doom and gloom story is coming true. Soon something more interesting will be very expensive and I don’t fancy paying £7000 for a 1997 BMW 328 with 195k miles on it! Truly sad.

And yet it already is. The golden age of ICE is long gone (since late 00's IMO), and the best examples from that age are already rising beyond the reach of normal budgets. Regulatory environment will make it harder to run ICE cars. I doubt it will become impossible though. I think you should ask yourself why you feel entitled to be able to take an ICE M3 to a trackday in 2035 without paying more and going through more hassle - it is like someone from 1966 complaining that they will soon lose their right to drink and drive at their convenience.

[BlackTails]

otolith said:

Kenny Powers said:

Interesting. Meanwhile, on Earth, what happens when you have nowhere to charge your car before you leave home, and nowhere to charge it when you get where you’re going?

Get a house with somewhere to charge

or

Go somewhere you can charge

or

Use a public charger

or

Use public transport

Those aren't really serious answers though, are they?

If the Govt was to announce that mobile phone signals are bad, and so all the masts would be turned off, I doubt many people would respond to a complaint by saying use a public phone box/go the the library/something equally disproportionate and backward.

I struggle to understand how the UK could produce enough electricity to charge the number of petrol vehicles currently in use. Which suggests that this may instead be a social engineering effort to remove personal motorised transport in favour of something else.

And if so, it remains to be seen how the govt will replace the tax take generated by petrol and diesel cars.

[otolith]

RobM77 said:

This works well for someone with their own driveway and/or charging point who either drives a modest distance to work and back, or has a charger at work. The street parking charging issue is no doubt one that will need to be solved if we're all to move over to EVs.

There are also lots of "use cases" for cars which don't really translate over to EVs that well: for example when I go windsurfing or surfing I suffer about 20% less range (mpg in my case) due to stuff on the roof and obviously am usually parking up somewhere remote that has no charging point and will probably never get one. When I go motor racing my range (mpg in my case) halves due to towing, so a 300 mile EV becomes a 150 mile one; so if I had to be at the track for 7:30am to sign-on I would have a tricky journey with multiple stops to recharge giving an unfeasibly long trip.

As for public transport - that doesn't apply to many people, for example those living in rural areas, and it doesn't apply to anyone who needs to carry big stuff around.

All these problems can all be solved, but they need active work to solve them - ignoring them won't help. What worries me is that these issues will be ignored by the town dwelling wealthy Tories who make the decisions...

My gut feel is that if the worst we're going to face is having to adopt EVs against our will and resolve some first world problems like not being able to travel hundreds of miles for our hobbies, we'll be getting off fairly lightly. I mean, it's a bummer and all, but on the spectrum of sacrifices we are possibly looking at having imposed upon us to address the climate change issue, maybe this is not going to be our biggest whinge.

[Pica-Pica]

W12AAM said:

By the time we reach 2035; Most or all of the politicians who've "promised this" will be dead or retired and a new government will be in.., so they wont have to say sorry, we got it wrong.

I suggest you check the cabinet office list, a fair number will be under retirement age in 2035. Whether they will still be in office is another matter.

[Gooly]

otolith said:

My gut feel is that if the worst we're going to face is having to adopt EVs against our will and resolve some first world problems like not being able to travel hundreds of miles for our hobbies, we'll be getting off fairly lightly. I mean, it's a bummer and all, but on the spectrum of sacrifices we are possibly looking at having imposed upon us to address the climate change issue, maybe this is not going to be our biggest whinge.

This, and I sincerely hope that 20 years down the line, the views expressed on this thread are not viewed as representative when future generations look to hold today's folk to account for the situation that they inherited.

[otolith]

BlackTails said:

otolith said:

Kenny Powers said:

Interesting. Meanwhile, on Earth, what happens when you have nowhere to charge your car before you leave home, and nowhere to charge it when you get where you’re going?

Get a house with somewhere to charge

or

Go somewhere you can charge

or

Use a public charger

or

Use public transport

Those aren't really serious answers though, are they?

If the Govt was to announce that mobile phone signals are bad, and so all the masts would be turned off, I doubt many people would respond to a complaint by saying use a public phone box/go the the library/something equally disproportionate and backward.

I struggle to understand how the UK could produce enough electricity to charge the number of petrol vehicles currently in use. Which suggests that this may instead be a social engineering effort to remove personal motorised transport in favour of something else.

And if so, it remains to be seen how the govt will replace the tax take generated by petrol and diesel cars.

They're blunt answers, but yes. This change is going to happen, and we might not be able to continue living in exactly the same way we do now. If we can't work around the need for charging a car, we will have to change our lifestyle so that we can charge it, or don't need a car.

If there was a good reason we couldn't have mobile phones anymore, we'd cope. It would be a pain in the arse, but we'd cope. We're a very adaptable species.

[SpeckledJim]

rxe said:

Inky81 said:

You can still buy hay, you can still get a vet, you can still get a blacksmith. The market has shrunk but those involved are all now enthusiasts, not the general population.

How does an enthusiast refine petrol?
How does an enthusiast create 10W-60 oil?

He'll just buy it.

Unless ICE cars are actually banned (I mean banned from driving old ones, not banned from buying new ones) then there will still be ICE cars on the road for a hundred years.

There will still be petrol stations. But instead of one every couple of miles, there might be a one or two per town. I drive past about 10 petrol stations on my commute. I only ever use one of them, but they all make a living. Divide the number of ICE cars by 10, and perhaps we only need one regular petrol station.

[pbe624]

Meanwhile on the other side of the world...

"Japan now plans to build as many as 22 new coal-burning power plants — one of the dirtiest sources of electricity — at 17 different sites in the next five years, just at a time when the world needs to slash carbon dioxide emissions to fight global warming.
“Why coal, why now?” said Ms. Kanno, a homemaker in Yokosuka, the site for two of the coal-burning units that will be built just several hundred feet from her home. “It’s the worst possible thing they could build.”
Together the 22 power plants would emit almost as much carbon dioxide annually as all the passenger cars sold each year in the United States. The construction stands in contrast with Japan’s effort to portray this summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo as one of the greenest ever." (NYTimes 4/2/2020)...

It always seems to me that the 'guilt' complex in Europe is being used to push down ever stricter regulation without thinking of the actual big polluters across the globe... .

On another point mentioned earlier, here in Brussels, 82% of the underground electricity network cannot support car charging poles, meaning that all these electricity cables need to be replaced to avoid meltdown. There goes the 'charge at home and in your street' theory , combined with the fact that there is not enough 'green' electricity to charge all those EVs.

Greets from the continent.
F

[nickfrog]

RobM77 said:

You really are spectacularly missing the point here. Nobody's suggesting that anyone maxes out their car on the public road, whether its a Yeti or an M5. What I'm saying is that certain cars have tangible advantages when they upscale certain elements. With space for example, my 5 series is quieter than my old 3 series, I can also fit considerably more in it, more on it, and more towed behind it. The same is true of a 3 series vs a 1 series. A Golf R for example accelerates faster than a Golf 1.4TSi, something you can do legally most of the time if you're so inclined. Where does more ride height get you? Nowhere - that's the point being made.

You are spectacularly missing the point that what is important to you may not be to someone else. As patiently explained, the height gets me places lower cars can't get and lets me load 2 mountain bikes upright where estates can't. I don't need performance or lateral G on the road, I have far far more than enough for humble road use where I find unnecessary to accelerate any quicker than my 9.5s to 60.
You are spectacularly missing the point that the guy you support wants to ban 119g 1250kgs cars as HE finds them unnecessary while he drives a 1900kgs 330g car that I find unnecessary and won't even do the job that a light SUV does. The difference being that one is almost 3 times more efficient than the other, despite the difference in height and that I don't want his car banned. Do you agree with him that SUVs should be banned and his car not banned?

[Kenny Powers]

SUVs really are the Godwin's law of PistonHeads

[ate one too]

Fact: All of the UK's industry and transport produces just 1% of the planet's carbon emissions.

Yes I know we are trying to lead the way but ... banning the sale of new ICE and hybrid cars in 15 years' time is just a token gesture.

Fact: The carbon footprint of the last football world cup was ten times bigger than one season of F1.

Ban football from 2035 ... there's a better idea

Edited by ate one too on Tuesday 4th February 16:35

[321boost]

Gooly said:

321boost said:

Depends on you. A manual Clio is more fun to drive than a Nissan Leaf.

They will not take away your M3 but they will make it harder to run it. Then you will trailer it to track, the environmentalists will come after tracks next because they will be the pollution/CO2 hotspots. Every doom and gloom story is coming true. Soon something more interesting will be very expensive and I don’t fancy paying £7000 for a 1997 BMW 328 with 195k miles on it! Truly sad.

And yet it already is. The golden age of ICE is long gone (since late 00's IMO), and the best examples from that age are already rising beyond the reach of normal budgets. Regulatory environment will make it harder to run ICE cars. I doubt it will become impossible though. I think you should ask yourself why you feel entitled to be able to take an ICE M3 to a trackday in 2035 without paying more and going through more hassle - it is like someone from 1966 complaining that they will soon lose their right to drink and drive at their convenience.

That’s just your opinion. I have nothing to moan about new cars. I like both classics and the new ones. To me enthusiast cars are still out there.

I’m not going to bother answering why I feel entitled because I don’t have an answer. Using your example, I would ask why you still drink at all if you know that alcohol can and does cause disruption and cost police resource on a night out. If it’s done in excess it can cause harm to your body too and costs NHS more money, so why not just ban that to 0% too or excessively raise the prices so that only the most well off can afford it. Why should anyone less well off feel entitled to drink in 2035 eh?

Question for you, are in support of all of this (2035 ban etc)?

Edited by 321boost on Tuesday 4th February 16:37

Edited by 321boost on Tuesday 4th February 16:41

[rxe]

SpeckledJim said:

He'll just buy it.

Unless ICE cars are actually banned (I mean banned from driving old ones, not banned from buying new ones) then there will still be ICE cars on the road for a hundred years.

There will still be petrol stations. But instead of one every couple of miles, there might be a one or two per town. I drive past about 10 petrol stations on my commute. I only ever use one of them, but they all make a living. Divide the number of ICE cars by 10, and perhaps we only need one regular petrol station.

There's a tipping point though.

Sure, on simple maths, 10% of the cars = 10% of the stations. But at that point, a whole load of people who have a hobby they enjoy just give up. Now, you're at 5% of cars. Running a classic becomes really effing hard now, and the volumes of petrol sold mean that each litre is hugely expensive - petrol will be a "specialty chemical" and cost about £500 quid a tank. At this point everyone gives up.

I just think everyone going "classics will be fine" are deluding themselves. They won't be for very long after this date.