van ordinaire wrote: ↑22 Oct 2018, 20:28
My concern is not so much where these buses are built but they are built at all, to replace perfectly serviceable buses, to the detriment of the environment because clean air is a vote catcher.
So the air isn't part of the environment ?
Take a holiday in Beijing in China and see for yourself. Don't forget to take a face mask with you though, otherwise you'll be the only one there not wearing one during peak smog times of the day.
Here's an example of a smoggy Beijing day:
If a bus is belching out visible clouds of diesel soot, as most of the buses around here do, they're anything but perfectly serviceable in my opinion. I've always hated the smell of diesel fumes, the sooner they go the better as far as I'm concerned. It boggles my mind that the MOT man is cracking down on visible smoke from diesel cars yet diesel buses seem to get a free pass to belch out all this crap...
When WILL people realise that the greatest ecological impact a vehicle makes during its life is making it in the first place - & the shorter that life is, the greater the real cost is of the manufacture.
And ? Manufacturing internal combustion engine cars has just as much environmental impact at a raw materials level as manufacturing an EV. You don't think all that platinum etc in a catalytic converter just falls out of the sky into the factory ?
Platinum and other metals in a catalytic converter are exceptionally expensive and rare, yet still find their way into the exhaust system of every ICE car on the road today, and generally just end up in the scrap yard when the exhaust system or car is scrapped.
Then you have the ongoing environmental impact of pumping oil out of the ground, shipping it, refining it, shipping it again (all very energy intensive processes) and then finally burning it, releasing by products into the atmosphere.
A battery in an EV might only last say 10 years, but the battery can be recycled for raw materials to make new batteries and the rest of the car should still be working well by that age and amenable to a re-manufactured battery. I don't see anyone trying to collect and recycle the fumes from an ICE vehicle, and try to convert them back into oil to pump back under the ground...
As for ascribing some philanthropic motive to the Chinese being first, I think that's naive in the extreme. They have been shown to have as much interest in the environment as they do human rights - or health & safety; that was how they were able to move so fast - simply to exploit a situation!
The Chinese aren't philanthropic - they are switching to EV's in mass for reasons of self interest - because they have one of the worlds worst pollution problems. They also see an opportunity to get in ahead of the EV game while US/European car makers drag their heels, and would rather manufacture EV's locally than import them from other countries.
If you're upset at the UK buying Chinese made Electric buses maybe persuade your local representative that we should be making electric buses of our own, within the UK...