RE: All good things come to an end in 2035
Discussion
DonkeyApple said:
However, I’d wager that most public sector employees in London are people who were born in the vicinity whereas it is the private sector that has dragged hundreds of thousands of graduates from the regions. Incentivising these firms to relocated head count outwards and slowing down the growth in economic migration might be better.
There's some truth in that (though the last call we had with the FCA had some regional accents on it), but I'm thinking less about the migration, and more about the cash into the economy. As with a factory closure in a small town, or pitchfork wielding Cornishmen repelling tourists bearing covid, it's not just the number of direct jobs, there is wider economic stimulus. I'd move it all out to cut costs, boost regional economies and potentially attract some of the private sector industry that hangs on the coat tails of public sector power.On the investment side (rather than the spending side), I think this makes some fair points.
https://reaction.life/break-londons-domination-of-...
Max_Torque said:
Global battery develoment spending per annum is around 1 Billion.
...
Never in the history of mankind has this level of investment and development been focused so accutely on one particular problem.
...
Never in the history of mankind has this level of investment and development been focused so accutely on one particular problem.
Surely only one of those claims is correct. 1bn sounds like a laughably small number in context. Samsung alone has an r&d budget of $15bn, so does VW, Daimler is in the same ball park too...
Witchfinder said:
Thank you for proving my point. A 450kg battery gets you 300 miles. 45kg of fuel in a typical car gets you 450 miles, so an equivalent mass gets you about 4,500 miles. The graph suggests petrol is 45 times better, not 15 times better. On that basis of that graph, 45kg of petrol should carry you nearly 14,000 miles.
It doesn't, because combustion is about as inefficient as it gets.
Inefficient yet still vastly better than batteries. It doesn't, because combustion is about as inefficient as it gets.
Witchfinder said:
skyrover said:
Inefficient yet still vastly better than batteries.
Only blatantly not. Electric propulsion is vastly more clean, efficient, and effective.DonkeyApple said:
Absolutely. An electric motor blows an ICE away on all fronts. But the problem is the Victorian bricks that store the energy. They just aren’t as good as petrol yet.
I wonder if anyone’s ever thought that having the electriC motor is worth the compromise for energy storage.Or the fact that having 700 miles in the tank is overkill for 90% of people’s needs
jamoor said:
DonkeyApple said:
Absolutely. An electric motor blows an ICE away on all fronts. But the problem is the Victorian bricks that store the energy. They just aren’t as good as petrol yet.
I wonder if anyone’s ever thought that having the electriC motor is worth the compromise for energy storage.Or the fact that having 700 miles in the tank is overkill for 90% of people’s needs
That’s the cold hard reality that cannot be ignored. It’s not because an EV itself can’t be built more cheaply than a clunky old ICE car and it is manifestly not because a petrol engine is better than an electric motor. It is almost entirely because the whole thing is turned into a s
t show by the energy storage problems. 700 miles in the tank is indeed complete overkill for almost every journey but then most people don’t drive around with their tank full. Conversely, your 300 mile EV that’s also doing the UK 9 mile daily average is having to lug half a tonne or more of dead weight whether it has a 1% charge or a 100% charge.
When we finally have competent EVs even the most zealous will look back at these two tonne turds and wonder just what the juddering f
k people got boners about. They’re going to be the ‘mullets’ of the EV world. 
Personally, I can’t wait until the EV is freed from the shackles of w
k batteries. Not only will EVs become the de facto, irrefutable solution but the entire world will change once we get energy storage to match our human capabilities. Just think about how many things we could do or create today cannot work because of the size and weight of the chemical bricks needed to power them. It’s mind boggling just how big that event will be. kiseca said:
That's not a problem that doesn't exist now with fossil fuel cars. The solution is you travel to a fuel station and fill up there.
The advantage of electric over petrol is that far fewer people will need to make that trip to fill up.
The challenge is to either make that trip to a station a short one - 45 minutes is OK at a motorway service centre halfway through a long trip but not for the weekly fillup - or to make it possible to fill up wherever the car will be left at the end of its trip.
It won't affect me as have off street parking, though in my town pop 20000 there are 2 public charging stations, the next nearest are 9 miles away 6 charging points in a town of 120000 people. Currently no where near enough for EVs to become the norm.The advantage of electric over petrol is that far fewer people will need to make that trip to fill up.
The challenge is to either make that trip to a station a short one - 45 minutes is OK at a motorway service centre halfway through a long trip but not for the weekly fillup - or to make it possible to fill up wherever the car will be left at the end of its trip.
DonkeyApple said:
Does it matter what anyone has ever thought when the reality is plain to see? A person can buy a petrol car brand new for less than half the cheapest EV and have absolutely zero usage restrictions.
That’s the cold hard reality that cannot be ignored. It’s not because an EV itself can’t be built more cheaply than a clunky old ICE car and it is manifestly not because a petrol engine is better than an electric motor. It is almost entirely because the whole thing is turned into a st show by the energy storage problems.
700 miles in the tank is indeed complete overkill for almost every journey but then most people don’t drive around with their tank full. Conversely, your 300 mile EV that’s also doing the UK 9 mile daily average is having to lug half a tonne or more of dead weight whether it has a 1% charge or a 100% charge.
When we finally have competent EVs even the most zealous will look back at these two tonne turds and wonder just what the juddering fk people got boners about. They’re going to be the ‘mullets’ of the EV world.
Personally, I can’t wait until the EV is freed from the shackles of wk batteries. Not only will EVs become the de facto, irrefutable solution but the entire world will change once we get energy storage to match our human capabilities. Just think about how many things we could do or create today cannot work because of the size and weight of the chemical bricks needed to power them. It’s mind boggling just how big that event will be.
That’s a bit like saying those people that used to have to get out of the car with a handle to start it will be mullets. That’s the cold hard reality that cannot be ignored. It’s not because an EV itself can’t be built more cheaply than a clunky old ICE car and it is manifestly not because a petrol engine is better than an electric motor. It is almost entirely because the whole thing is turned into a s
t show by the energy storage problems. 700 miles in the tank is indeed complete overkill for almost every journey but then most people don’t drive around with their tank full. Conversely, your 300 mile EV that’s also doing the UK 9 mile daily average is having to lug half a tonne or more of dead weight whether it has a 1% charge or a 100% charge.
When we finally have competent EVs even the most zealous will look back at these two tonne turds and wonder just what the juddering f
k people got boners about. They’re going to be the ‘mullets’ of the EV world. Personally, I can’t wait until the EV is freed from the shackles of w
k batteries. Not only will EVs become the de facto, irrefutable solution but the entire world will change once we get energy storage to match our human capabilities. Just think about how many things we could do or create today cannot work because of the size and weight of the chemical bricks needed to power them. It’s mind boggling just how big that event will be. jamoor said:
That’s a bit like saying those people that used to have to get out of the car with a handle to start it will be mullets.
No it isn’t as there wasn’t a pre existing solution that worked better than hand cranking. It’s merely a simple fact that chemical batteries retard the superiority of the electric motor as a means of propulsion for the masses. Solve that one single problem and we have, instantly, a vastly superior package to the ICE. The only question is how long that will take.
Having to create an entirely new, replacement refuelling infrastructure simply because batteries just aren’t good enough at what we need them to do is nothing other than barking mad and there will come a day when we look back with our new energy storage solution and realise the farce.
Edited by DonkeyApple on Tuesday 25th August 23:42
MalcXFR said:
Still the problem of where to charge if you live in a flat or terrace house with no off street parking as you can't always park outside your own house no matter how good the batteries become.
However, by definition these places where built before car transport so tend to be close to public transport or local jobs (originally). So if you absolutely need a car, and charging at public sites won’t work for you, don’t buy one of these places. The market will sort it out by presumably increasing the value of off street parking spaces vs places without them. We accept that houses in better school districts have a price premium for a similar situation.In urban Japan, you need a certificate that you have off street parking before you can have a car. I can see something similar happening in inner London.
jamoor said:
DonkeyApple said:
Absolutely. An electric motor blows an ICE away on all fronts. But the problem is the Victorian bricks that store the energy. They just aren’t as good as petrol yet.
I wonder if anyone’s ever thought that having the electriC motor is worth the compromise for energy storage.Or the fact that having 700 miles in the tank is overkill for 90% of people’s needs
Life is not predictable and people do not live their lives based on what they consider "average". They aspire to things, ergo they wan the capability to travel long distances in short order, even if they do not often do so.
skyrover said:
It's more down to the flexibility petrol offers.
Life is not predictable and people do not live their lives based on what they consider "average". They aspire to things, ergo they wan the capability to travel long distances in short order, even if they do not often do so.
Flexibility does play a key part. There is a big debate we could have in regards to within that caragory how much is perceived and how much is real but it remain a factor. Life is not predictable and people do not live their lives based on what they consider "average". They aspire to things, ergo they wan the capability to travel long distances in short order, even if they do not often do so.
In reality the vast majority of humans are remarkably predictable and live almost their whole life within the confines of a very small set of movements. I think if you were Google and able to sit there watching the every movement of each individual person you would get a real shock as to just how few people travel about in any form of unpredicatable or variable way. I think you’d see that most people wake at the same time every day, go to the exact same places and any random deviations are few and far inbetween and planned well in advance.
I suspect that our enjoyment of cars that brings us all here also suggests that we have anomalous movement patterns compared to the majority who simply go to the same office, same school, same shops, same places at the same time every day.
The electric car, even with its clunky old battery tech retarding it so heavily, would work perfectly for the vast majority of people in this country today. Pretty much every single generic utility box on the road today would incur no restrictions if it were an EV.
It really does boil down to cost. To highlight this we are almost certain to see a big spike in EVs being bought through company schemes over the next 12 months, adjusted for C19. The reason being not that thousands of fleet car owners suddenly will switch from driving enormous and random miles but because of the very significant BIK reductions that will mean they can get a better badge for their buck.
If we consider the electric motor versus the petrol of Diesel engine, as a means of propulsion the ICE is dead in the water. There isn’t a viable metric where the ICE can outcompete the electric motor.
The electric motor is smaller, lighter, more powerful, simpler, more durable, more flexible, more controlable, cheaper, more efficient than one of our beloved petrol engines.
The first EV was built in the 1830s. It was hindered by the absence of rechargeable batteries. Gaston Planté Invented the rechargeable battery in 1859.
The electric motor has been around far longer than the petrol engine. The electric motor has always been the first choice for propulsion at this level but it has always lost out to the inferior petrol engine because petrol is the superior means to store energy to chemical batteries.
This was the case 140 years ago and despite the absolutely rediculois amount of work and infrastructure to create petrol and to move it around and despite the enormous costs and also taxes we are still in the farcical position in 2020 where the petrol engine remains superior to the electric motor because the batteries for EVs are such rubbish.
Just think of the technological achievements of mankind. The utterly phenomenal achievements, especially in the 21st century and yet we are still reliant and crippled as a species by having to use chemical energy storage the same as we had to 160 years ago. It is actually insane to appreciate that what killed off the EV 120 years ago is the exact same reason why today in 2020 the petrol engine for all its ghastly failings and comical inefficiency, along with petrol to power it and the insanity of converting crude oil and shipping around remains the economically and efficiently superior means to propel a personal vehicle.
They can big up modern batteries as much as they like and talk about the enormous, meteoric improvements of the last 30 years but the reality is that those improvements have come from such a crushingly low base that we are still living today in a world where batteries are really, really rubbish. Laughably so when you consider just how far forward our technological evolution has screamed and how batteries have done next to nothing since a Frenchman invented then 160 years ago. When you look at a modern car the technology being utilised in every book and cranny is quite staggering. They are breathtaking showcases of how mundane these enormous technological breakthroughs have become and how many of them there are. And then you look at the means via which the energy to propel it is stored and nothing has changed in over 130 years!! Whether it’s petrol, diesel or electricity it is all a pile of crap. But batteries are so utterly, infeasibly, laughably crap that in 2020 we still have to dig stuff out of the ground, process it, ship it, then repeatedly top up little tanks with it, for this liquid to then be burnt in an unbelievably inefficient, archaic mechanical machine that haemorrhages efficiency to get a vehicle to move forward because our batteries not only can’t compete against such a rediculois means of energy storage but in reality are so much worse than petrol that they even cripple the absolutely walloping superiority of the electric motor over the petrol engine.
As a society it has simply never been more important to break free from the shackles of the chemical energy storage and create a means to store energy efficiently and practically.
MalcXFR said:
It won't affect me as have off street parking, though in my town pop 20000 there are 2 public charging stations, the next nearest are 9 miles away 6 charging points in a town of 120000 people. Currently no where near enough for EVs to become the norm.
It wasn't any easier to get petrol in the times before it was the norm for every household to have a car. The supply kept up to meet the demand, as it will now.The charging stations you have right now are likely sufficient for the volumes of EVs in the locality, and if not, it won't be long before they are.
It's a business opportunity and someone will cash in on it soon enough if the government don't, just like they did with petrol stations.
skyrover said:
jamoor said:
DonkeyApple said:
Absolutely. An electric motor blows an ICE away on all fronts. But the problem is the Victorian bricks that store the energy. They just aren’t as good as petrol yet.
I wonder if anyone’s ever thought that having the electriC motor is worth the compromise for energy storage.Or the fact that having 700 miles in the tank is overkill for 90% of people’s needs
Life is not predictable and people do not live their lives based on what they consider "average". They aspire to things, ergo they wan the capability to travel long distances in short order, even if they do not often do so.
kiseca said:
skyrover said:
jamoor said:
DonkeyApple said:
Absolutely. An electric motor blows an ICE away on all fronts. But the problem is the Victorian bricks that store the energy. They just aren’t as good as petrol yet.
I wonder if anyone’s ever thought that having the electriC motor is worth the compromise for energy storage.Or the fact that having 700 miles in the tank is overkill for 90% of people’s needs
Life is not predictable and people do not live their lives based on what they consider "average". They aspire to things, ergo they wan the capability to travel long distances in short order, even if they do not often do so.
DonkeyApple said:
That’s the cold hard reality that cannot be ignored. It’s not because an EV itself can’t be built more cheaply than a clunky old ICE car and it is manifestly not because a petrol engine is better than an electric motor. It is almost entirely because the whole thing is turned into a st show by the energy storage problems.
The problem cost problem is nothing to do with batteries. Every OE study i have been part of suggests that the BOM cost for a PassCar EV is around 70% of that of an equivalent ICE version when built in the same volumes. Unfortunately, we have had about 100 years head start in putting in place the manufacturing and logistics support for ICE vehicles, and only about 15 for EV's. It's chicken and egg to some degree,ie until we sell lots they will be more expensive, but as they are more expensive then we can't sell lots!t show by the energy storage problems. The other fact that must ALWAYS be remembered is that fossil fuels rule because they are the recipient of the greatest ever industrial subsidies in mankinds history. From proping up state owned coal mines, to giving private companies billions, the fossil fuel industry has received such vast sums of money it's practically impossible to add them all up!
If similar amount of money was available to subsidise renewables our world would look rather different, rather faster i suspect.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/2...
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF...
^^^ in Europe in 2016, energy subsidies (inc renewables) totalled EUR 169 bn. In the UK in 2016, fossil fuel subsidies alone were EUR 12 bn. I can't find a figure for the overal running total of fossil fuel subsidies, but it much be a very. very, very large number indeed!
Things are changing. Germany now spend more on renewable energy subsidies than fossil fuel ones, but fossil fuels have had years of subsides to prop them up. For example, North Sea oil started flowing in 1975, and has received absolutely staggering levels of financial assistance. And our government is not above a little bit of weasly worded semantics in order to "hide" some of these benefits to the oil & gas industry:
https://theferret.scot/north-sea-oil-250-billion-t...
https://neweconomics.org/2016/07/the-looking-glass...
This, broadly speaking is why, as a consumer, you can drive your car to a petrol station, and pour in 10 gallons of highly inflamable liquid that has been extracted from 1,000's of feet below sea level, using complex, vastly expensive facilities located in far flung inhospitible locations, after that liquid has been shipped, piped and trucked hundreds of miles to you location, and after an enourmous amount of energy and resource has been applied to refine that fuel. You can then irrecoverably burn that fuel, in your highly complex, very expensively engineered car, and release an enourmous amount of pollution and carbon dioxide out into the environment, broadly without penalty.
To say it is time that we stopped this, well, it REALLY is time with stopped doing this! :-)
Max_Torque said:
The problem cost problem is nothing to do with batteries. Every OE study i have been part of suggests that the BOM cost for a PassCar EV is around 70% of that of an equivalent ICE version when built in the same volumes. Unfortunately, we have had about 100 years head start in putting in place the manufacturing and logistics support for ICE vehicles, and only about 15 for EV's. It's chicken and egg to some degree,ie until we sell lots they will be more expensive, but as they are more expensive then we can't sell lots!
The other fact that must ALWAYS be remembered is that fossil fuels rule because they are the recipient of the greatest ever industrial subsidies in mankinds history. From proping up state owned coal mines, to giving private companies billions, the fossil fuel industry has received such vast sums of money it's practically impossible to add them all up!
If similar amount of money was available to subsidise renewables our world would look rather different, rather faster i suspect.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/2...
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF...
^^^ in Europe in 2016, energy subsidies (inc renewables) totalled EUR 169 bn. In the UK in 2016, fossil fuel subsidies alone were EUR 12 bn. I can't find a figure for the overal running total of fossil fuel subsidies, but it much be a very. very, very large number indeed!
Things are changing. Germany now spend more on renewable energy subsidies than fossil fuel ones, but fossil fuels have had years of subsides to prop them up. For example, North Sea oil started flowing in 1975, and has received absolutely staggering levels of financial assistance. And our government is not above a little bit of weasly worded semantics in order to "hide" some of these benefits to the oil & gas industry:
https://theferret.scot/north-sea-oil-250-billion-t...
https://neweconomics.org/2016/07/the-looking-glass...
This, broadly speaking is why, as a consumer, you can drive your car to a petrol station, and pour in 10 gallons of highly inflamable liquid that has been extracted from 1,000's of feet below sea level, using complex, vastly expensive facilities located in far flung inhospitible locations, after that liquid has been shipped, piped and trucked hundreds of miles to you location, and after an enourmous amount of energy and resource has been applied to refine that fuel. You can then irrecoverably burn that fuel, in your highly complex, very expensively engineered car, and release an enourmous amount of pollution and carbon dioxide out into the environment, broadly without penalty.
To say it is time that we stopped this, well, it REALLY is time with stopped doing this! :-)
The other fact that must ALWAYS be remembered is that fossil fuels rule because they are the recipient of the greatest ever industrial subsidies in mankinds history. From proping up state owned coal mines, to giving private companies billions, the fossil fuel industry has received such vast sums of money it's practically impossible to add them all up!
If similar amount of money was available to subsidise renewables our world would look rather different, rather faster i suspect.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/2...
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF...
^^^ in Europe in 2016, energy subsidies (inc renewables) totalled EUR 169 bn. In the UK in 2016, fossil fuel subsidies alone were EUR 12 bn. I can't find a figure for the overal running total of fossil fuel subsidies, but it much be a very. very, very large number indeed!
Things are changing. Germany now spend more on renewable energy subsidies than fossil fuel ones, but fossil fuels have had years of subsides to prop them up. For example, North Sea oil started flowing in 1975, and has received absolutely staggering levels of financial assistance. And our government is not above a little bit of weasly worded semantics in order to "hide" some of these benefits to the oil & gas industry:
https://theferret.scot/north-sea-oil-250-billion-t...
https://neweconomics.org/2016/07/the-looking-glass...
This, broadly speaking is why, as a consumer, you can drive your car to a petrol station, and pour in 10 gallons of highly inflamable liquid that has been extracted from 1,000's of feet below sea level, using complex, vastly expensive facilities located in far flung inhospitible locations, after that liquid has been shipped, piped and trucked hundreds of miles to you location, and after an enourmous amount of energy and resource has been applied to refine that fuel. You can then irrecoverably burn that fuel, in your highly complex, very expensively engineered car, and release an enourmous amount of pollution and carbon dioxide out into the environment, broadly without penalty.
To say it is time that we stopped this, well, it REALLY is time with stopped doing this! :-)
If by fossil fuel subsidy you mean "we pay collosal amounts of tax to use fossil fuels but not as much as we might if the tax rates were even higher" then yeah the industry, or rather us consumers are subsidised.
Nothing compared to the sausage roll industry though. The last time I bought one I wasn't charged 100 billion in taxes! The subsides the sausage roll industry receive are incalculable!
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff