Are Electric Cars the biggest con on the planet?
Discussion
I have deleted my initial message from this topic.
The "word police" deleted my initial op, its now (amended) on page 7
[footnote]Edited by whirlybird on Monday 8th August 13:06[/footnote
There seems to be a push to convert existing classics into EV, & Planet Friendly transport !!!
A company in London and I am sure in many other places can convert said classic for around £30,000 (FFS)
Now how about crunching these numbers !!! take a Mini, a rebuilt A- Series, I guess costs about £3000 + - ?
leaving £27,000 for lovely PETROL, and even at today's rip-off fuel prices would give you approximately 120,000 miles, with no fear of
Range Anxiety,
If anybody actually think they're saving the planet by buying a huge EV BMW X3 then I sorry, but simply cannot agree ( This is the clean version ) Discuss.
The "word police" deleted my initial op, its now (amended) on page 7
[footnote]Edited by whirlybird on Monday 8th August 13:06[/footnote
There seems to be a push to convert existing classics into EV, & Planet Friendly transport !!!
A company in London and I am sure in many other places can convert said classic for around £30,000 (FFS)
Now how about crunching these numbers !!! take a Mini, a rebuilt A- Series, I guess costs about £3000 + - ?
leaving £27,000 for lovely PETROL, and even at today's rip-off fuel prices would give you approximately 120,000 miles, with no fear of
Range Anxiety,
If anybody actually think they're saving the planet by buying a huge EV BMW X3 then I sorry, but simply cannot agree ( This is the clean version ) Discuss.
Edited by whirlybird on Monday 8th August 19:40
I cannot see how building an electric car can, or ever will, use less energy/fuel than an IC car.
The basic structure is roughly the same, but now fill the drivetrain with copper(Heavy and expensive) cables,
etc. Battery packs using even more energy to produce than they would ever return in motive power, + disposal at end of life
and if Mr Musks Mega factories did not use fossil fuel in there construction, how many wind turbines would need to be used to supply energy, And wind turbines need to be built in factories too, hence my initial thread > EV cars are the planets biggest con/lie .
The basic structure is roughly the same, but now fill the drivetrain with copper(Heavy and expensive) cables,
etc. Battery packs using even more energy to produce than they would ever return in motive power, + disposal at end of life
and if Mr Musks Mega factories did not use fossil fuel in there construction, how many wind turbines would need to be used to supply energy, And wind turbines need to be built in factories too, hence my initial thread > EV cars are the planets biggest con/lie .
In order to give a balanced view on my thread, can someone give the expected lifespan, of both core vehicle and battery pack, this I consider 2 separate structures to consider, possibly a third element to consider could/would be the 'electronics/computer hard and software', And who is going to buy a 10 year old Nissan Leaf. ???? It won't be me, for sure.
"Obviously most power still comes from power stations, but it's about improvement, not evangelism. BEV's will also help to make the most of wind and solar in the near future, a lot of which is currently wasted."
BUT, power stations, solar panels and wind turbines need energy to manufacture, so at what point does a wind turbine start to produce more energy than it took to build ?? I guess several years.
the core issue is energy use to produce energy efficient products, nobody has yet invented 'free energy"
Bit like Chicken and Egg, who built the first Lathe ??? because to make a Lathe you need a Lathe, see my point.
BUT, power stations, solar panels and wind turbines need energy to manufacture, so at what point does a wind turbine start to produce more energy than it took to build ?? I guess several years.
the core issue is energy use to produce energy efficient products, nobody has yet invented 'free energy"
Bit like Chicken and Egg, who built the first Lathe ??? because to make a Lathe you need a Lathe, see my point.
TheDeuce said:
The greenest form of power generation overall, including build costs and maintenance is actually nuclear. And it's safe enough at this point to be a sensible choice.
It's a tough sell though! BoJo was struggling to make a case for it even before he was caught out for having Christmas drinks...
Anyway as I keep saying, the fact you can point to what is being proposed and identify faults isn't useful or important. Nothing is perfect. It's far better to generate power centrally and deliver it into car in the form of electricity than it is to install a mini power plant inside every car - which is what ICE is. If, in addition to that, the power plants themselves can be improved in terms of efficiency, then everyone wins.
???? Does Chernobyl come to mind ????, No power , no EV cars going anywhere !!!!!It's a tough sell though! BoJo was struggling to make a case for it even before he was caught out for having Christmas drinks...
Anyway as I keep saying, the fact you can point to what is being proposed and identify faults isn't useful or important. Nothing is perfect. It's far better to generate power centrally and deliver it into car in the form of electricity than it is to install a mini power plant inside every car - which is what ICE is. If, in addition to that, the power plants themselves can be improved in terms of efficiency, then everyone wins.
If I lunch an IC motor, off to the dealer/scrappy/ebay and off we go, happy days.
Having had a fantastic Eco day out , paddle boarding on the River Bur, Norfolk.
I return to my thread ,to find that 'Free Speech" is not encouraged, my original post being Not Obeying PH Rules !!!!!!
As the OP, I still think EV cars are a con, and there existence does not help the planet anymore than killing cows would to stop methane, there I've said it again.
I return to my thread ,to find that 'Free Speech" is not encouraged, my original post being Not Obeying PH Rules !!!!!!
As the OP, I still think EV cars are a con, and there existence does not help the planet anymore than killing cows would to stop methane, there I've said it again.
There seems to be a push to convert existing classics into EV, "Planet Friendly transport"
A company in London and I'm sure in many other places can convert said classic for around £30,000 (FFS)
Now how about crunching these numbers !!! take a Mini, a rebuilt A- Series, I guess costs about £3000 + - ?
leaving £27,000 for lovely PETROL, and even at today's rip-off fuel prices would give you approximately 120,000 miles, with no fear of
Range Anxiety,
If anybody actually thinks there saving the planet by buying a huge EV BMW X3, I'm sorry I cant agree. discuss !!!
This is my OP thread, with the words 'the word police' omitted.
Having now run to 7 pages I think my comments were valid, or there wouldn't be so much discussion Job Done !!!
GT9,
now the report you suggested reading was supplied by Riccardo,
One of my selection off current vehicles is a 1935 Austin 7, so it's a 87 years old, daily driver, carries 4 average adults at 45mph ( ideal for town driving) and returns 40 mpg, and has a competition Riccardo cylinder head. How much more eco friendly can I get ???
But the V8 Vantage I'm planning on getting next month may well ruin all the eco credentials the Austin has banked so far, oh well *hit happens.
now the report you suggested reading was supplied by Riccardo,
One of my selection off current vehicles is a 1935 Austin 7, so it's a 87 years old, daily driver, carries 4 average adults at 45mph ( ideal for town driving) and returns 40 mpg, and has a competition Riccardo cylinder head. How much more eco friendly can I get ???
But the V8 Vantage I'm planning on getting next month may well ruin all the eco credentials the Austin has banked so far, oh well *hit happens.
Discombobulate.
As a wordsmith & domiciled in the Cotswolds I may suggest that in the last couple of weeks your world
would have been greatly enhanced by the 1000+ Austin 7s that flocked to Moreton in the Marsh for the models 100th anniversary Rally.
A car built in 1922 and still giving reliable service and no doubt pleasure to the spectator waiting at the local Tesco Charging point in there EV
X3 BMW thats' "run out of juice". Or a trip to Prescott where Austin 7's "threw" themselves, against the force of gravity, (invented by one Sir Isaac Newton many years ago) was a site to behold !!!. Only time will tell, but I bet in 100 years, not even Tesla will be holding Anniversary Rallys,Time does not always equal progress, in the mid 70's I could travel to New York in 3 hours, not any more !!!.
As a wordsmith & domiciled in the Cotswolds I may suggest that in the last couple of weeks your world
would have been greatly enhanced by the 1000+ Austin 7s that flocked to Moreton in the Marsh for the models 100th anniversary Rally.
A car built in 1922 and still giving reliable service and no doubt pleasure to the spectator waiting at the local Tesco Charging point in there EV
X3 BMW thats' "run out of juice". Or a trip to Prescott where Austin 7's "threw" themselves, against the force of gravity, (invented by one Sir Isaac Newton many years ago) was a site to behold !!!. Only time will tell, but I bet in 100 years, not even Tesla will be holding Anniversary Rallys,Time does not always equal progress, in the mid 70's I could travel to New York in 3 hours, not any more !!!.
s1962a said:
Once EV batteries start failing and are replaced, there will most likely be a secondary market refurbishing the cells in the battery packs for house/solar purposes, probably with new technologies to manage these 'old' cells.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNGg0P7B5fIWhat, like this !!!!
I'm aware that I poked a hornets nest with my initial posting, but this is a genuine question, so your stuck on the M25 in a huge traffic jam on a really hot day, what power would be used to run the air-con ? for 1 hour, if the average MPKw is about 4 miles ??? according to statistics, how many miles is lost standing still ?
Domestic. When the snowstorm swept over western Sweden on Wednesday and the night before Thursday, electric car drivers chose to abandon their cars on the E6, reports P4 Gothenburg.
Like the article p & aring; Facebook
– We will have to salvage a lot of electric cars from the E6 that have been there during the night, says the Swedish Transport Administration's road traffic manager Mikael Salo to P4 on Thursday morning.
The problem is that the electric cars' batteries simply runs out when they have to stand still for a long time, because the batteries are used to heat the car.
– We have a lot of abandoned electric cars where the rescue service has taken care of drivers and passengers. We will have to move them out of the way, said Mikael Salo.
At least with a petrol car you could build a small fire and keep roasty toasty
Like the article p & aring; Facebook
– We will have to salvage a lot of electric cars from the E6 that have been there during the night, says the Swedish Transport Administration's road traffic manager Mikael Salo to P4 on Thursday morning.
The problem is that the electric cars' batteries simply runs out when they have to stand still for a long time, because the batteries are used to heat the car.
– We have a lot of abandoned electric cars where the rescue service has taken care of drivers and passengers. We will have to move them out of the way, said Mikael Salo.
At least with a petrol car you could build a small fire and keep roasty toasty
Traffic said:
I think we will see fractional ownership schemes quite soon in the UK, also perhaps Pay Per Hour EV car hire also.
There are loads of great solutions waiting around the corner.
My london based brother in law, uses a pay by hour Hybrid to visit us in Norfolk , as its 200 mile round trip there is little chance he would get here and back safely and at night in a pure EV, hence my OP. He usually uses a Golf that not only has a standard ICE but E/motor, so my thoughts on how can building these cars using more energy to produce than in ICE form only ,negates any benefit to the planet for probably several years !!!There are loads of great solutions waiting around the corner.
GT9 said:
You are not wrong making the statement.
There is nothing anyone can do that will bring about an immediate benefit, apart from stop driving.
But I think you are still fixated on the comparison of producing one type of car vs another while ignoring existing tailpipe output.
I don't know how to make this more clear, the current carbon footprint for passengers cars it mostly determined by how much fuel existing cars are consuming, not the production of new cars.
To put this into some sort of perspective, an average petrol car produces about 9 tons of carbon during manufacture.
We are buying say 1.6 million new cars every year in th UK, so the production footprint for those new cars is about 15 million tons.
Covid has skewed the numbers a bit, but around 60 million tons is being produced from the exhausts of cars already on the road in the UK, every year.
So we are trying to address a situation where about 75 million tons of carbon is being produced every year, 80% from cars already on the road.
Currently, an EV will produce around 14 tons during manufacture, so even if we were buying 1 million EVs every year, instead of 1 million petrol cars, the marginal production footprint increase would be about 5 million tons.
What you have to bear in mind though is that for every 1 million EVs that are purchased, approximately the same number of ICEs reach end of life and are removed from the roads. Being old and knackered, these are more likely worse polluters than an average new ICE, and will each have an ongoing tailpipe footprint of about 3 tons.
So we've basically removed 3 million tons of tail pipe pollution and replaced it with 5 million tons of additional production footprint by choosing EV. A marginal difference of just 2 million tons on top of 75 million tons or so.
In practice, because we are nowhere near 1 million new EVs per annum, the marginal difference today is far less. And what will happen as volumes increase is that the 5 ton production difference between an EV and an ICE will start to reduce and eventually the EV will be on parity with the ICE.
So this is all about putting us on a trajectory so that when 2050 comes around we should hopefully find ourselves in a far improved situation. It's only towards the later part of the next 2 or 3 decades where the footprint will start to reduce more noticeably.
In the short term, nothing much will change (in terms of carbon output).
GT9, I appreciate your concise explanation of the differing carbon footprint of ICE to EV car production, what prompted the reason for my OP was the outrageous cost to convert "Old Classics" into EV cars, probably the worst of decision a classic car owner could make, you lose the purity of said classic, and end up with a bill that would buy a LEAF anyway. I had no idea this thread would run to 12 + pages, but at least it has produced lively discussion. There is nothing anyone can do that will bring about an immediate benefit, apart from stop driving.
But I think you are still fixated on the comparison of producing one type of car vs another while ignoring existing tailpipe output.
I don't know how to make this more clear, the current carbon footprint for passengers cars it mostly determined by how much fuel existing cars are consuming, not the production of new cars.
To put this into some sort of perspective, an average petrol car produces about 9 tons of carbon during manufacture.
We are buying say 1.6 million new cars every year in th UK, so the production footprint for those new cars is about 15 million tons.
Covid has skewed the numbers a bit, but around 60 million tons is being produced from the exhausts of cars already on the road in the UK, every year.
So we are trying to address a situation where about 75 million tons of carbon is being produced every year, 80% from cars already on the road.
Currently, an EV will produce around 14 tons during manufacture, so even if we were buying 1 million EVs every year, instead of 1 million petrol cars, the marginal production footprint increase would be about 5 million tons.
What you have to bear in mind though is that for every 1 million EVs that are purchased, approximately the same number of ICEs reach end of life and are removed from the roads. Being old and knackered, these are more likely worse polluters than an average new ICE, and will each have an ongoing tailpipe footprint of about 3 tons.
So we've basically removed 3 million tons of tail pipe pollution and replaced it with 5 million tons of additional production footprint by choosing EV. A marginal difference of just 2 million tons on top of 75 million tons or so.
In practice, because we are nowhere near 1 million new EVs per annum, the marginal difference today is far less. And what will happen as volumes increase is that the 5 ton production difference between an EV and an ICE will start to reduce and eventually the EV will be on parity with the ICE.
So this is all about putting us on a trajectory so that when 2050 comes around we should hopefully find ourselves in a far improved situation. It's only towards the later part of the next 2 or 3 decades where the footprint will start to reduce more noticeably.
In the short term, nothing much will change (in terms of carbon output).
He's a treasure isn't he? Hoping he bothers to respond as the thought process behind that statement should make interesting reading.
I'm finding the whole EV thing a very interesting psychology experiment personally.
Aha, Mr Swoll,
I judge by your garage, and previous cars in your stable
that if you were to be cut open then your veins would carry electricity.
Don't get me wrong ,I think Audi make beautiful looking vehicles, but the one that really looks good, costs in excess of
£100.000, (e-tron GT Quattro) so it looks like only wealthy people can live in a green and pleasant land, while us lowly plebs still using diluted dinosaur crap to power our cars
have to endure famine,floods and pestilence.
I'm finding the whole EV thing a very interesting psychology experiment personally.
Aha, Mr Swoll,
I judge by your garage, and previous cars in your stable
that if you were to be cut open then your veins would carry electricity.
Don't get me wrong ,I think Audi make beautiful looking vehicles, but the one that really looks good, costs in excess of
£100.000, (e-tron GT Quattro) so it looks like only wealthy people can live in a green and pleasant land, while us lowly plebs still using diluted dinosaur crap to power our cars
have to endure famine,floods and pestilence.
Edited by whirlybird on Tuesday 9th August 16:36
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