RE: All good things come to an end in 2035

[DailyHack]

Walshenham said:

My knee jerk reaction to this is the same “oh god no!” As most petrol heads.

Then I got to thinking. I don’t believe I have ever owned a car newer than ten years old. So this won’t truly effect me until 2045.

By which time, I shall be 57 years old, and probably happy enough to be driven around in an autonomous electric VW golf. I’ll keep a “classic” for the weekend, and pay the inevitable “dirty, dirty fuel burning car” taxes for the noise.

What does make me sad is the future of motoring for my as yet unborn son. I’ll need to make sure we get as much in as he is growing up, because it will likely be right on the tail end by the time he is driving age ??

+1 this - me to, all my cars have been 10 years+ old, doesn't/wont effect used cars so not really too fussed.

[Niffty951]

Hmmmm.

(Waits for numbers to be released on damage to the environment from required rapid battery production)

[cidered77]

Niffty951 said:

Hmmmm.

(Waits for numbers to be released on damage to the environment from required rapid battery production)

h
All the arguments about mining .. don't get it. We need to take stuff out of the ground to build many things - the rest of the car included!

EV is 85-90% thermally efficienct. ICE after 120 years, is what - 35% on a good day? 50% in F1? It's just better in that respect.

Not perfect, but at least has part of the distribution and storage challenges solved.... unlike hydrogen at the moment

[dbs2000]

cidered77 said:

h
All the arguments about mining .. don't get it. We need to take stuff out of the ground to build many things - the rest of the car included!

Let's not forget how insane the process of getting fuel to a fuel station is.

cidered77 said:

EV is 85-90% thermally efficienct. ICE after 120 years, is what - 35% on a good day? 50% in F1? It's just better in that respect.

Not perfect, but at least has part of the distribution and storage challenges solved.... unlike hydrogen at the moment

I think ICE is closer to 22% (with drive-train loss) and that's on a well built engine. It's Victorian and we need to move on. If we get solid state, thus reducing pack weight by 50% for the same range and super fast charging with it, there is no reason we can't have a relatively light weight fun car, just no noise sadly.

Edited by dbs2000 on Wednesday 5th February 13:50

[beresd]

How did my post on this subject that was posted BEFORE get canned and this hasn’t?!

[Robocop2]

Understanding the minds of politicians helps give a more balanced view of this unexpected government announcement. My experience over many years of dealing with local M.P’s and councillors, and attendance at countless committee meetings (I was in local government), showed me how most are preoccupied with two things: staying in power and making promises or proposing policies they think will have popular appeal to the voters. Tribal allegiance prevents a minority from speaking out against party policy, so hastily thought out proposals often emerge that later require revision, or rejection, in the light of wider consultation with those parties responsible for real-world implementation. Allied to the need for newly elected politicians to “make their mark”, I’m not at all surprised with the plan to stop the sale of all ICE cars in just 15 years.

There is an inevitability to the gradual demise of ICE cars but, as so many have already said, these proposals are likely to require substantial amendment in the coming years. Politicians are adept at quietly changing their policies without ever accepting they could possibly have ever been hasty and woefully misguided at the start. Forgive my cynicism, but at my age (an ancient 60 something who loves cars and driving as much as ever) I wouldn’t panic that everything is going to turn out quite as simply as Boris would have us believe.

[rick.e]

cidered77 said:

h
All the arguments about mining .. don't get it. We need to take stuff out of the ground to build many things - the rest of the car included!

I think the argument is that the steel and aluminium industries have cleaned up their acts over the years. Demand for, in particular lithium, cobalt and neodymium, has risen so quickly for the manufacture of everything from iphones, to electric cars, to wind turbines, that mining has grown out of control, unsafely, and in some cases illegally.

For example it must be a couple of hundred years since we banned children from going down mines in the UK, yet we seem to be content to support the use of children to mine horrifically toxic cobalt by hand, in the DRC, so we can have our Teslas and the latest I phone.

We are happy to have vast settlement lagoons in China poisoned for ever by neodymium for electric motors.

Watercourses in Tibet of all places, poisoned from Lithium processing, and lowering of water tables in Chile due to the vast amounts of water required for Lithium extraction, which takes water away from agriculture.

None of these problems are insurmountable, and there is no reason why these materials can't be mined with the same levels of due diligence as iron ore, at a price. Today, we aren't there, and Tesla owners really have no need to be smug about driving a "clean" vehicle.

[billhickman]

Where are the hydrogen powered cars ? It's clean and non polluting . What's happening with them ?

[321boost]

Is there actually any legislation legally binding these targets? Even the 2040 one? Is there any evidence of Norway style taxation of cars in the UK?

[rick.e]

billhickman said:

Where are the hydrogen powered cars ? It's clean and non polluting . What's happening with them ?

Hyundai have one on the market, but the choice is between making hydrogen from methane, releasing CO2 in the process, or by electrolysis which is inefficient and therefore expensive. The "wire to wheel" efficiency of a battery car is over 90%. For hydrogen it's below 50%.

[321boost]

billhickman said:

Where are the hydrogen powered cars ? It's clean and non polluting . What's happening with them ?

If it’s a hydrogen combustion engine you’re talking about then they’re more expensive to make. They need to be tougher. It would be great if they came out with a hydrogen combustion engine for cheap.

[otolith]

I'm sure that everybody is just as concerned about the environmental and human rights issues around the platinum in their catalytic converters (and in hydrogen fuel cells) as they are about the cobalt in other people's EV batteries - and of course in their own mobile phones.

report said:

In April 2018, German NGO Bread for the World published a report (in German) on the human rights and environmental issues in platinum mining in South Africa, pointing to hazardous working conditions, forced displacements and the pollution of drinking water. The study highlights the supply chain responsibilities of German companies such as BASF, Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen, which directly import the metal from South African mines and/or purchase platinum-coated catalytic converters. Bread for the World acknowledged that all four companies increasingly look at the entire supply chain and deal with problems in raw material sourcing. However, there has not been much improvement on the ground according to this study. The Resource Centre invited the companies to respond; responses available here (in German).

https://www.business-humanrights.org/sites/default/files/BHRRC_AutomotiveSector_OCT2018.pdf

?

[otolith]

321boost said:

billhickman said:

Where are the hydrogen powered cars ? It's clean and non polluting . What's happening with them ?

If it’s a hydrogen combustion engine you’re talking about then they’re more expensive to make. They need to be tougher. It would be great if they came out with a hydrogen combustion engine for cheap.

Using electricity to make hydrogen and then compressing and transporting it means you waste half the energy you started off with. Doing that and then putting it through a fuel cell stack at 50% efficiency is fairly dumb. Doing that and putting it through an ICE at 20%-30% real world efficiency is moronic.

[SpeedynClio]

Well, here's a taste of Paradise, Take a look at what it could look like...with all the New cars Now'' 2035.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Taf7o9sOFkc

[jamoor]

SpeedynClio said:

Well, here's a taste of Paradise, Take a look at what it could look like...with all the New cars Now'' 2035.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Taf7o9sOFkc

It’s funny how times change. I don’t think the government would be able to get away with a scrappage scheme today.

[cidered77]

rick.e said:

None of these problems are insurmountable, and there is no reason why these materials can't be mined with the same levels of due diligence as iron ore, at a price. Today, we aren't there, and Tesla owners really have no need to be smug about driving a "clean" vehicle.

... can't disagree with any of that.

For me, of course manufacturing a massively complicated 2 ton object so that human's can replace their existing massively complex object leased 3 years ago is of course grossly wasteful.

But if we are going to do that - because humans are humans - best pick a technology that is 90% efficient when the final product is completed. I can't believe the energy expended to produce is hugely different (although if there is objective truth out there proving otherwise then fair enough) and the murky unregulated parts of mining can be cleaned up, as you say.

[otolith]

cidered77 said:

For me, of course manufacturing a massively complicated 2 ton object so that human's can replace their existing massively complex object leased 3 years ago is of course grossly wasteful.

It's not really replacing that at a fleet level though, is it? because the 3 year old car is staying in service, just with a different owner. It's replacing a 10-15 year old car somewhere which is going to the scrappy.

[Dave Hedgehog]

billhickman said:

Where are the hydrogen powered cars ? It's clean and non polluting . What's happening with them ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ajq46qHp0c


and hydrogen currently is very very polluting

[TyrannosauRoss Lex]

otolith said:

cidered77 said:

For me, of course manufacturing a massively complicated 2 ton object so that human's can replace their existing massively complex object leased 3 years ago is of course grossly wasteful.

It's not really replacing that at a fleet level though, is it? because the 3 year old car is staying in service, just with a different owner. It's replacing a 10-15 year old car somewhere which is going to the scrappy.

This

[rick.e]

otolith said:

321boost said:

billhickman said:

Where are the hydrogen powered cars ? It's clean and non polluting . What's happening with them ?

If it’s a hydrogen combustion engine you’re talking about then they’re more expensive to make. They need to be tougher. It would be great if they came out with a hydrogen combustion engine for cheap.

Using electricity to make hydrogen and then compressing and transporting it means you waste half the energy you started off with. Doing that and then putting it through a fuel cell stack at 50% efficiency is fairly dumb. Doing that and putting it through an ICE at 20%-30% real world efficiency is moronic.

The vast majority of hydrogen, and the cheapest, is made by steam reformation of methane, during which the CO2 componet is released. So it would actually be more efficient just to burn the methane in the engine, saving the energy of reformation. But that doesn't solve the CO2 problem. As you say, producing hydrogen by whatever means, only to burn it in an ICE, would be an incredibly stupid thing to do.