Electric cars - how 'green' are they?

hotpot

aord43 said:

hotpot said:

Another thing, who is going to buy a fossil fuel car within ten years of the deadline! they will become worthless, no dealer will want to part ex one unless there is a clunker bill.

Also will petrol stations still be open in the numbers we have today running up to the deadline!

the deadline is only for new cars.  Second-hand cars will not suddenly become unusable.

They will be if they ramp up the cost of fuel to persuade you to change over to EV

aord43 said:

hotpot said:

Another thing, who is going to buy a fossil fuel car within ten years of the deadline! they will become worthless, no dealer will want to part ex one unless there is a clunker bill.

Also will petrol stations still be open in the numbers we have today running up to the deadline!

the deadline is only for new cars.  Second-hand cars will not suddenly become unusable.

  Yeah I know but say in the last 10 years of that deadline the government ramps up the price of fossil fuels to persuade you go electric & puts a clunker bill in place with a date limit to get rid of your old car. then how much traffic will there be for the existing petrol stations! No more mass produced  petrol/diesel cars being made & most people will want to jump ship before the clunker bill finishes and saddles them with a junker or they're priced off the road.

Evilmags

H2 is a pain in the arse to store. It is so small that most metals can't hold it for more than a week. It is also very explosive and odourless. If oil burning was not forced upon people by pricing and bullshit greenery we would not have pollution at current levels anyway. The answer to this problem is not more laws amd regulations. 

Fretwired

And the odd mad inventor .. watch till you get to the car ..

gubble

If a may look at this from an alternative angle.....

As a planet the plan really should be to move most of our vehicles away from being ICE's. Traditional cars being used as expensive playthings / hobbies with heavy financial penalties.

What's going to happen to the countries who make most of their money from exporting oil ? If oil production suddenly goes down significantly due to lack of demanding or it simply running out (it will one day) could we end up with places like the UAE becoming third world countries and having massive humanitarian problems ?

I could be being really stupid but is this a hidden cost that has not yet been factored in?

Another thought I've had is what's going to happen to aeroplanes and ships? They run on oil based fuels - are there any plans to make these run on alternative fuels?

chillidoggy

Last time I checked there were no charging stations hanging from skyhooks, so I guess it's a non-starter where planes are concerned.

Fretwired

gubble said:

If a may look at this from an alternative angle.....

As a planet the plan really should be to move most of our vehicles away from being ICE's. Traditional cars being used as expensive playthings / hobbies with heavy financial penalties.

What's going to happen to the countries who make most of their money from exporting oil ? If oil production suddenly goes down significantly due to lack of demanding or it simply running out (it will one day) could we end up with places like the UAE becoming third world countries and having massive humanitarian problems ?

I could be being really stupid but is this a hidden cost that has not yet been factored in?

Another thought I've had is what's going to happen to aeroplanes and ships? They run on oil based fuels - are there any plans to make these run on alternative fuels?

I'm pretty sure the USS Enterprise was a nuclear powered ship ... :-)

Ships and planes can be run on electricity - both Airbus and Boeing are investing heavily in green tech ..

As for the Arabs oil will still be needed for some things and a number of states are looking at using large solar farms to generate electricity which can be sold to Europe.

Fretwired

Evilmags said:

H2 is a pain in the arse to store. It is so small that most metals can't hold it for more than a week. It is also very explosive and odourless. If oil burning was not forced upon people by pricing and bullshit greenery we would not have pollution at current levels anyway. The answer to this problem is not more laws amd regulations. 

Not really .. there are new technologies for storing the stuff.

aord43

Also home infrastructure.  At the moment the distribution networks can cope with a few cars per street but if everyone has them it's going to overload the network.  Those cars take a lot of juice!

chillidoggy

Evilmags said:

Elon Musk os a con man and confidence trickster. Analyse how much tax payers money he has swallowed in his post pay pal career. Vast subsidies on practically every pie his finger is in. He is a classic rent seeker of the highest order and people unable to see through that need to read a bit more widely. He's just getting rich and powerful at the expense of normal people by getting the state to steal on their behalf. 

Just admit it Mags, you don't do jealousy very well.

Funkfingers

It is a good thing that environmental protection legislation did not exist in bygone centuries. Otherwise, canals would have been banned because they generated so much horse shit.

There's yer answer. Horse-drawn narrow boats. 

exocet

aord43 said:

Also home infrastructure.  At the moment the distribution networks can cope with a few cars per street but if everyone has them it's going to overload the network.  Those cars take a lot of juice!

Very true...we'll have similar challenges when it comes to heating our homes with electricity once gas becomes too scarce / only obtainable from undesirable sources. Although i was reading recently about a project to create an off shore wind farm (think it was Norway) that produces H2 via electrolysis. There is there a process to react it with Carbon to provide more familiar gaseous products...methane, butane etc that can be stored / distributed via existing infrastructure. 

Danny1969

The first electric cars had a range of 20 miles, the best one's today have a range of around 300 miles. In another 10 years I would expect that range to increase to 450, maybe 500 miles. There's not many people want to do more miles than that in one day except maybe lorry drivers. 
With any new tech it's the people who push the hardest and earliest who win out, Tesla will win purely because they have built the car factory, he has built the battery factory and the third generation car is about to be released. Tesla have the Supercharger infrastructure in place, as a car firm they are already bigger than Mitsubishi motors. Hydrogen cells might be better but Toyota have had little luck as there's no existing infrastructure to fuel the cars and fire regs hamper building them. 

crunchman

Danny1969 said:

The first electric cars had a range of 20 miles, the best one's today have a range of around 300 miles. In another 10 years I would expect that range to increase to 450, maybe 500 miles. There's not many people want to do more miles than that in one day except maybe lorry drivers. 
With any new tech it's the people who push the hardest and earliest who win out, Tesla will win purely because they have built the car factory, he has built the battery factory and the third generation car is about to be released. Tesla have the Supercharger infrastructure in place, as a car firm they are already bigger than Mitsubishi motors. Hydrogen cells might be better but Toyota have had little luck as there's no existing infrastructure to fuel the cars and fire regs hamper building them. 

That doesn't solve the problem of the renewable energy to charge them being available at the wrong times.  Hydrogen does solve that - look at the example @exocet gave.

As far as infrastructure to fuel hydrogen cars, building hydrogen fuel stations (or converting existing petrol ones) would probably work out a lot cheaper than all the upgrades to the grid, and the generation infrastructure.  There would need to be a ridiculous over capacity 80% of the time to allow for charging electric cars at the wrong time of day when people get home from work.

exocet

This is the sort of thing I was referring to.

https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/3/2/cgb0bbx2uyubc858ubthhxegtd41n0

ronnyb

So not much future for my Euro 3, 2003 VW Golf 1.9 diesel, genuine 42k then. And it's not that long ago the experts were saying that diesels were better for the environment than petrol.    

Sporky

The problem with hydrogen is that it has very low energy density, so you need a huge, heavy tank to get decent range.

The problem with electricity, on the other has, is that you can't get it into a battery terribly quickly.

And that problem with renewables is that they're not a constant or turn-on-and-off-able supply.

Thus there isn't a single answer. Renewables will work well once there's a good storage option. Electric cars work well for moderate distances, but need long refills between long hops. Hydrogen cars will only ever do relatively short hops between quick refills.

Petrol and diesel will phase out, at least as mass market propulsion.

nickb_boy

It's probably been touched on in articles above but on a side note, what other tax initiatives are we likely to be hit with in order to regain the 60-80p per litre the government are currently taking from fuel sales?  Surely that's a fair chunk of change they need to recover.

Evilmags

nickb_boy said:

It's probably been touched on in articles above but on a side note, what other tax initiatives are we likely to be hit with in order to regain the 60-80p per litre the government are currently taking from fuel sales?  Surely that's a fair chunk of change they need to recover.

Look at an electricity bill break down. A lot of tax in there. 

Nitefly

exocet said:

This is the sort of thing I was referring to.

https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/3/2/cgb0bbx2uyubc858ubthhxegtd41n0

@exocet that was very interesting, and I can see how it would benefit grid supplies.  Is there any info as to how it could be applied to power for vehicles?

crunchman

Sporky said:

The problem with hydrogen is that it has very low energy density, so you need a huge, heavy tank to get decent range.

The problem with electricity, on the other has, is that you can't get it into a battery terribly quickly.

And that problem with renewables is that they're not a constant or turn-on-and-off-able supply.

Thus there isn't a single answer. Renewables will work well once there's a good storage option. Electric cars work well for moderate distances, but need long refills between long hops. Hydrogen cars will only ever do relatively short hops between quick refills.

Petrol and diesel will phase out, at least as mass market propulsion.

You might need to read up on this.  The quoted range on the Toyota Mirai is 312 miles.  That's close to what you get from most ICE cars.