Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

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Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by Mandrake »

GiveMeABreak: Thread split from Flywheel Topic:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=62053&p=602724#p602724


Bigjohn wrote: 07 Mar 2019, 16:33 So glad this subject was taken on board and sensibly debated, I was going well with one post until electric vehicles were mentioned, just my personal view but I much prefer Diesel, just wish all the rubbish was taken off them that stops them breathing properly, I drive long distances, with the stops required for the average electric car it would make the trip very long, they have a far higher carbon footprint, and no matter what fuels the national grid they still have to plug into it, they use lithium batteries which is mined under appalling conditions, just so people can dream they are green!!

Sorry John but the "electric cars have a higher carbon footprint" myth has been well and truly debunked many times by reputable sources including the national grid themselves. I won't go into the details here but if you do a bit of research online you'll find it to be the case.

Also Lithium is not "mined under appalling conditions", and is only about 2% of the total composition of a Lithium Ion battery anyway. It's not really any worse than mining for something like copper and Lithium is often a byproduct in copper mines. It's probably cobalt that you are thinking of which does have concerns regarding its mining and the regimes in the countries where it is mined, which together with the very high price of cobalt (lithium is cheap by comparison!) has lead to new battery chemistry's being developed for EV's that either minimise or eliminate Cobalt altogether, so ultimately I think we'll see common adoption of cobalt free batteries.

Range and charging speeds on long journey's are a legitimate complaint with affordable electric cars at the moment - I have no argument with that. Things are improving rapidly on both fronts though. Give it about another 5 years and ranges of 250-300 miles with charging times on the order of 20 minutes will be available in cars that the average punter can afford. It's only a matter of when, not if this happens.
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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by doctle »

Electric cars HAVE to have a high carbon footprint because they have been made and all the processes require electricity that's mostly generated by fossil fuels. I know there are plans to have no fossil fuel burning cars in the UK in a short time (2040?) and Ireland is jumping on the idea with great enthusiasm. The Irish electricity generating doesn't have spare capacity to charge 1m+ cars plus vans etc its all fantasy stuff paper exercises. Last summer we had almost 3 months of very warm dry weather there are wind turbines everywhere they were sitting looking unattractive and generating zilch. They are the main Irish renewable supply. Again I don't know about the UK or any other countries but the amount of charging points for EV's in Ireland is laughable. So we have no spare capacity and no charging infrastructure doesn't sound great for EV drivers.
I think there may be a future for hybrid cars with the engine being zero emission and running on bio fuel.
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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by Bigjohn »

Interesting points, Show me an electric car that can tow a caravan long distances and I may have a look, I would not buy, however it was said google it so I did, lots of points of view that would stand up to scrutinisation against the Electric Vehicle, below is just one, again as mentioned we just have not got the generating capability to run and charge a lot of Battery cars, the way fwds is Diesel electric, the principle is so simple, and proven, one country within the EU closed off streets that had been sensibly monitored for pollutants, they were closed over a wide area of traffic, the levels of pollution dropped miniscule, proving the vehicles on the whole are not responsible, however, town centers have an awful lot of lets say eating places incredibly more than 15 years ago, has anyone looked at the emissions given off? what you eat in 75% of cases has to be cooked, the grease and other pollutants are extracted to the outside world, just think about it. My personal view is we are being screwed over and money removed on a false basis!!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... iesel.html
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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by doctle »

Interesting article. My local town has 2 charging points for 6000 people. If you actually had an EV you need to be able to charge it at home. I often see ordinary cars parked in the charging spaces although I have seen EV's parked beside the charging points and not plugged in. I still think there is a long way to go before the electric car is viable. Cold turkey may sound great to the green party cyclist however in the real world people need transport. I live 10 miles from town there is no bus service It would be a 20 mile walk or cycle to get groceries. I suppose if I had an EV I could install a charging point at home. I can only imagine what would happen to the grid with 1 million electric cars connected to it as 1 million families begin making their tea all at the same time. I could use renewable power say the greens! Well Ireland is too far north to have useful power from PV panels and if you were given planning permission for a wind turbine (chicken dentures or rocking horses poo chances) it would cost a fortune
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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by doctle »

My apologies I thought I was posting in a thread about electric cars!
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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by Gibbo2286 »

If I were a bit younger I'd consider an EV.

I have had solar panels installed and they're doing very well, I could for about four grand have a Tesla Powerwall added and for a few more pounds a home charging point.

The cost of the solar panels and the powerwall are small compared with the initial cost of the actual car.

An EV with a 250 mile range and the above set up would do all I need for transport.

https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/powerwall?redirect=no
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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by GiveMeABreak »

doctle wrote: 08 Mar 2019, 09:28 My apologies I thought I was posting in a thread about electric cars!
No problems - we all do it, but I suspect there will be a few more posts on the matter as it is a controversial subject, so deserves a separate topic :)
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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by GiveMeABreak »

I still don't accept the 'green' credentials of lithium mining - up to 500,000 gallons of water required per ton of Lithium - a lot of this being diverted away from the indigenous populations, drying up once fertile areas, as one example. Not to mention the air pollution in the process.

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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

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doctle wrote: 07 Mar 2019, 21:59 Electric cars HAVE to have a high carbon footprint because they have been made and all the processes require electricity that's mostly generated by fossil fuels. I know there are plans to have no fossil fuel burning cars in the UK in a short time (2040?) and Ireland is jumping on the idea with great enthusiasm.
So Electric cars have a high carbon footprint because they have to be made and those processes have a carbon footprint, and yet ICE vehicles somehow don't ?

ICE cars have to be made using carbon intensive processes as well ? They don't just get delivered by Santa from the north pole... Sorry, your argument makes zero sense. :roll:

Making any new car has a high carbon footprint. That's why I've always been in favour of letting cars age gracefully and go off the road naturally when they reach the end of their useful life, rather than forcing still perfectly good cars off the road early to meet a specific emissions target, as prematurely constructing a new car to replace it (whether ICE or EV) is carbon and energy/materials intensive and wasteful.

You have also completely misunderstood the UK's 2040 deadline, and you're not alone as a large number of people seem to be confused about this, not helped by misleading and inaccurate coverage in the press. The 2040 deadline is not getting existing ICE vehicles of the road by then, it only affects sales of new vehicles. Vehicles already on the road when the 2040 deadline comes around are not affected.

Furthermore it's not a complete ban of any vehicle with an internal combustion engine in it, it only stipulates that pure ICE vehicles - eg those with only a petrol or diesel engine will no longer be allowed to be sold new. However it does not ban hybrid vehicles which have at least a minimum amount of electric only range. I don't recall what the requirement is, but I think it's about 60 miles of electric range. And of course the emissions restrictions will no doubt be stricter by then.

Considering it's 20 years away the 2040 deadline is actually a pretty soft and toothless deadline (I said this right back when it was first announced) as it only affects new sales, (I agree with this bit) and it's easy to circumvent by making a hybrid vehicle which most manufacturers are already doing, albeit with not quite enough electric only range.

Completely separate to this 2040 deadline for the sale of new vehicles there are regional "low emissions zones" popping up in places like London, Glasgow and so on. They don't ban ICE vehicles completely but only ban older ICE vehicles. (Petrol's before 2005 and Diesels before 2011 from memory) Some of those are coming into effect quite soon, like Glasgow in 2022, which will stop me from driving my Xantia into Glasgow...
The Irish electricity generating doesn't have spare capacity to charge 1m+ cars plus vans etc its all fantasy stuff paper exercises. Last summer we had almost 3 months of very warm dry weather there are wind turbines everywhere they were sitting looking unattractive and generating zilch. They are the main Irish renewable supply. Again I don't know about the UK or any other countries but the amount of charging points for EV's in Ireland is laughable. So we have no spare capacity and no charging infrastructure doesn't sound great for EV drivers.
I think there may be a future for hybrid cars with the engine being zero emission and running on bio fuel.

I don't know what the situation in Ireland is but here in the UK things look promising. The national grid have already released multiple reports saying provided that the charging load is time shifted to the off-peak hours the existing national grid and generation can cope with the entire UK vehicle population being electric. Today.

Off peak demand is something like 20GW less than on-peak, which is enough to absorb the charging needs. How will that time shifting occur ? That remains to be seen. There are basically two options - managing individual charge points from a central location so that they can be commanded to delay charging until later in the evening. So you get home, plug in at 6pm but (unless you override it) a signal from the national grid tells your car not to start charging until say 8pm, dependent on the load in the area. This may be combined with incentives like cheaper off peak charging - even today it's already possible to use Economy 7 to charge an EV at half the price if you have a charge timer either in the car or the wall charger that can delay charging until the Economy 7 rate kicks in. (No economy 7 rate for petrol or diesel sorry!)

Another option is massive grid scale storage so that excess generation at night can be put into storage and released during daytime peak hours. In that case as long as some upgrades are done to last mile (residential) distribution circuits delaying charging wouldn't be necessary. Grid scale storage is already needed to make best use of renewables anyway, so I think over the next 10 years we'll start to see some really big grid storage projects go online.

The country is not going to go EV over night, it's going to take well over 20 years for an overall transition to occur from most people driving ICE to most people driving EV, that's plenty of time for things to be put into place for charging.
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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by white exec »

The priority has to be cleaning up the air in cities, and so electric city transport (buses, taxis, deliveries, cars, bikes...) needs to go ahead with urgency. The towing of caravans, and cross-country HGV hauls, can continue with ICE in paralllel with this for a while longer. Building sites (surely powerable from local grid?) and heating systems can be tackled separately.
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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by GiveMeABreak »

Well. we'll also need some more Nuke-power stations to power all these things up, and the rate at which they are failing due to the cracked bricks and reducing operating life is already going to leave us short for what we already need.
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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by Homer »

Mandrake wrote: 08 Mar 2019, 11:32
Completely separate to this 2040 deadline for the sale of new vehicles there are regional "low emissions zones" popping up in places like London, Glasgow and so on. They don't ban ICE vehicles completely but only ban older ICE vehicles. (Petrol's before 2005 and Diesels before 2011 from memory) Some of those are coming into effect quite soon, like Glasgow in 2022, which will stop me from driving my Xantia into Glasgow...


The UK is quite a way behind on this, as a regular visitor to Europe our car has emission stickers for French and German cities. Many already ban anything under Euro V and an some days ban all internal combustion engines completely.
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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by doctle »

In Ireland power is generated using Russian gas, Middle eastern oil, Columbian and Polish coal with a little bit of wind generated power and some imported nuclear power from the UK. There is no energy security here and apart from the UK we depend on strange people and unstable despots for our energy. The prices can be hiked or the supply cut or limited for many reasons and there's nothing we could do except pay up.
The smart meters for charging cars does seem plausible however that's more infrastructure that's not here yet, more expense that is passed on to the customer here and to be honest it will be half assed if and when it arrives.
Last edited by doctle on 08 Mar 2019, 23:12, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by white exec »

No hope then.
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Re: Electric, Petrol, Diesel, Hybrid Debate

Post by doctle »

white exec wrote: 08 Mar 2019, 23:11 No hope then.

Yes there is! It's not going to come from windmills or becoming vegan to get rid of cows. PSA have really lowered diesel emissions and I believe that within 10 years there will be hybrid cars with small zero emission engines running on bio fuel. Algae, for example can be created easily and it can be made into very good bio diesel. It doesn't require arable land to be given over to crops like rape seed to make fuel either. There's also hydrogen fuel cell technology coming along and if and when the pointy headed chaps can make hydrogen without using massive amounts of power it could be a game changer.
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