Rising Energy Costs and Electric Vehicles

[Higgy]

I dont Know Tony.... But that was a long time ago and we probably didn't know any Better.. But Now a day's with Computer forecasting and predicting Programs and a hell of a better understanding how the Motor vehicle has evolved and how we can put it to its most efficient use... You would have thought someone would of worked it out..... I have a Electric Car and i want to charge it up..... It could have, Should have been Better thought about..... You shouldn't have to rely on just Charging from home.......... Who has got 20,000 litre Diesel Tanks in their back garden So they can keep their Diesel Trucks/cars / vans Topped up.. No one because that's what Petrol/Diesel Stations are for........

 

[Shayne]

People laughed at the idea the car would replace horses but oil burning lamps were still very much in use when that ford bloke started up a production line I imagine so fuel could be bought just about any place you could buy bread .

 

[stuzbot]

Who has got 20,000 litre Diesel Tanks in their back garden So they can keep their Diesel Trucks/cars / vans Topped up....

Oddly enough, this just showed up in my YouTube feed....

Diesel. The green alternative:

* Cleaning rubbish from a beach
* Recycling waste plastic
* Helping indigenous farmers

How do you like them apples, Greta?

 

[GeekOKent]

The lifetime cost of driving a car - [Leaving Land Cruiser Club] came up.

"Total lifetime cost of car ownership (50 years) ranges between €599,082 for an Opel Corsa to €956,798 for a Mercedes GLC. The share of this cost born by society is 41% (€4674 per year) for the Opel Corsa, and 29% (€5273 per year) for the Mercedes GLC"

 

[Shayne]

On the lower scale no car = no job = can't afford to pay rent = no choice with regards to living circumstances .

Two kids with families of their own , both they and their partners actually look at electric cars wistfully . Both live in terraced houses with no parking .

When they have car trouble , one can sometimes catch a bus home if i drive her to work . The others must borrow the mrs truck or ask me to give them a lift .

I suppose they could pull their kids out of school and move closer to work , but then the rent goes up so much they'd be no better off .

 

[SteveJB]

Now please anyone correct me as I maybe using old information Lithium is dug up in Canada loaded onto bloody gert yuge boats shipped to China where they have little use for environmental policies so I understand and in China they turn the raw product into Lithium through some complex chemical processes and disposal of waste materials go to landfill and water sources from said processing plant it goes to another factory to be made into batteries the waste products from this facility more than likely will be going the same route as the previous processes then put into ISO containers on another big boat then shipped to various parts of the globe that can afford to purchase the raw materials to make the batteries to be made into various packs to power whatever disposable bits of fashionable rat sh17 is in vogue at any given time oh and vd cars that not only have explosive acceleration and possibilities think I will stop there before I get edited

 

[TonyP]

All valid points Steve and why I don't subscribe to the notion that EVs are the silver bullet. I think they are actually worse for the environment for the points you make. I'm no eco worrier and for me is purely a personal financial decision.

A point made in another thread is that we need better public transport for all and less cars on the road, including haulage.

When my kids were in school, they took a bus to school. One bus in the morning and one back. Often it never arrived and the next bus was a hour later and then a 15min walk to school, by which time they were late. As both the Mrs and I worked we could not just pop out and drop them off, so often resulted in use of taxis there and back. That cannot be the answer.

 

[stuzbot]

A wee while ago, someone was on the radio singing the praises of EVs --their lower running costs, cheap [or is it free?] road tax, etc. "How naive can you get?" --I thought handsomely. "Do people really think that, once everyone has switched to EVs, the road tax will still remain at those incentivising low levels?"

The government will still need to raise the cash to pay for the road infrastructure which, at the moment comes from tax on fossil fuels and from road tax. When no-one is using fossil fuels any more and everyone is paying tuppence a year road tax, do you really think the government will go "Whoops! --We didn't think that through, did we?" stick their hand in their own pocket, to make up the shortfall? Of course they won't. Some [probably 'Green'] justification will be found for slapping a load of tax on EV recharging costs and the road tax will be raised to what it used to be on fossil fuel vehicles, if not more.

Looks like someone in Whitehall has been doing the sums too. This will be er... "interesting" if the try and go ahead with it:

All cars could be fitted with black box trackers under new tax plans

Telematics tracking devices could be used to charge drivers under pay-per-mile road pricing

www.nationalworld.com

Trouble is; successive British governments keep introducing oppressive new laws like this, where [beforehand] I think "Surely no-one is going to stand for this!" and then the Great British public meekly rolls over and takes it. Say what you like about the French but those feckers will start burning the place down if their government even looks at them in a funny way.

Well, the day I'm ordered to put a black box in my car is the day I either stop driving, or get into civil disobedience. Hopefully a few million other people will do likewise. Mind you, I'm sure, even as I write this, some Whitehall mandarins are formulating their propaganda campaign which equates not wanting a black box in your car with being a foaming mouthed supporter of terrorism and a paedo.

 

[Higgy]

Have to Agree on your Bit about the French,... They Dont F%&k about, I think they still Call us The Nation of Cowards..... We never stick together as a Nation Anymore... Maybe we are too Divided now.... We could make the Government do U turns on a lot of their stupid Decisions if we all stuck Together.... But alas its too Late as usual....

 

[TonyP]

The problem is there will be many supporters for this and the neigh sayers will be branded as heretics.

One thing for sure is that this is coming, has been for years. Once the black boxes are in, automatic speeding fines etc will follow quickly. Oh, you have driven at 75mph, boom 3 points and £100, oh you accelerated too hard boom, another one etc etc etc.

 

[Rob Cowell]

Loads of cars already have black boxes fitted, the manufacturers are just twitchy about how well they publicise it. BMW presented at a tech conference I was at at least 7 years ago about their telematics informing the local dealer about when you had a bulb out so they could pop round to your place of work and replace it for you. The tech was there, installed, working. It was about the ethics or enabling it and how customers would react. Everyone's phone is tracking them, it's not about opting in, it's just triangultion from the cell towers. The mobile companies sell the data, it's really useful knowing where people walk when you want to open a new retail outlet for example.

Personally I think variable road charging, where you pay more to use congested roads is the way to go. And if you get pinged for exceding the speed limit then good. I'll not be getting my poster paints and an old sheet out for that protest.

 

[stuzbot]

Personally I think variable road charging, where you pay more to use congested roads is the way to go.

Except that you know it'll work out that you pay more than you do at present. These 'fairer systems' always somehow end up with everyone paying a bit more. Although now you get an itemised bill for the privilege.

And if you get pinged for exceding the speed limit then good...

Where would you set the bar? I'm with you all the way with regards the fuckwitts who race through residential areas. But have you never exceeded the speed limit a bit on an empty road? Never cruised along at 80 on the motorway? Like I said. where are you going to set the bar? 1mph over? 5 mph over? Or would you have a sliding scale of fines £xxx x 'miles over limit'.

Personally I think speed limits are a blunt instrument. What's important is to drive safely for the road conditions. In a built up area with lots of kids about, that might mean doing 20mph in a 30 zone. Or if it's lashing with rain, visibility is poor and the roads are slippy, doing 30 or 40 in a national speed limit zone.

Conversely, I don't see any harm in doing 80 on a relatively free moving stretch of motorway ,as long as road conditions are good and you're leaving a suitable gap between you and other traffic. In fact, a lot of the time, if you're not doing 80 or 90 on the motorway, you're the only non-truck who isn't.

There's more to bad and dangerous driving than simply exceeding the speed limit. Personally I'd bring back the death penalty for people who don't indicate. But I don't suppose these proposed black boxes will be monitoring whether or not you indicated before you suddenly pulled out in front of someone... or turned, without indicating into the side road I was about to pull out of but had waited to let you go past [That particular crime against humanity should combine the death penalty, with being kicked repeatedly in the knackers, all the way to the scaffold!]

 

[Rob Cowell]

Except that you know it'll work out that you pay more than you do at present.

As a driver of a car that occasioanlly does 25mpg on diesel, my guess is it would likely not cost me more. But I would temper my view if it looked like seriously impacting those who could least afford it. I think the whole picture is to penalise congestion and reward mass transit alternatives.

Where would you set the bar?

At the speed limit. There is zero reason to exceed it, ever. I'm sure there are niche cases someone will cite where doing 35 in a 30 allowed them to avoid something, and the clever trick to this is to drive defensively almost as if the vehicle you are in cannot reach a speed necessary for some evasive action. Once the black box knows the speed llimit, and that's mature, existing technology, just use it to control the speed the car can achieve. Again, mature, existing technology. Then implement variable speed limits on more roads, this could include allowing higher speeds, although I concede it probably won't.

This is all boring, and nanny state. And and also ridiculously liberal compared to how we control the ownership and use of other deadly weapons.

But if the majority vote against something like this I'll support their democratic view through my abstinence from civil disobedience.

 

[stuzbot]

At the speed limit. There is zero reason to exceed it, ever.

The speed limits were introduced when most cars still had drum brakes all round and ABS was unheard of. In addition, tyre technology has also improved greatly in the intervening years. So, while 70moh might have been considered the limit of safe driving 'back in the day' when the limits were introduced, they've not kept pace with advances in safety & technology.

I still say how you drive, is more important than what speed you drive. I'd rather share the road with a careful driver who drives in accordance with the road conditions, but may occasionally exceed the speed limits if said conditions make it safe to do so, than someone who sticks rigidly to the speed limits but doesn't indicate when changing lanes, or pay attention to what's going on around them.

Anyway, we're drifting off-topic here. So let's just agree to disagree, as regards strictly enforced speed limits.

 

[TonyP]

The speed limit is the speed limit, however there are variances in speedometer accuracy hence why going over is tolerated by a certain percentage.

 

[Rob Cowell]

Personally I can't see how we decouple speed and "how you drive". Of course there are other facets of driving quality, but I'd argue the others are less important individually, and much harder to empirically measure, and so much harder to be sure you are complying with. Bit of git when you get a ticket because the algorithm worked out you were driving at 8 and the quality limit is 7.

Speed limits were introduced before petrol engines. They have been adapted over time. Whilst we do now have ABS and disc brakes we also have a lot more cars. It's why limits have often been reduced, to ease congestion. And are dynamically reduced, where conditions increase risk. I think there are times and places where limits could be increased with little risk. And variable limits controlling car maximum speeds would allow this. Whether there are sufficient societal benefits to encourage a legislation change to allow that remains to be seen.

 

[Shayne]

The rich will drive and the poor will walk , thats all there is to it . And those voting for it do so oblivious to the consequence for themselves because they have no idea about the cost of living while sponging off parents .

 

[chadr]

The rich will drive and the poor will walk , thats all there is to it . And those voting for it do so oblivious to the consequence for themselves because they have no idea about the cost of living while sponging off parents .

First sentence: Twas ever thus.

Not sure about the next bit though - I'd vote for a fairer system, even if it did mean it cost me (a bit) more. It's been a long time since I sponged off my parents, or anybody else for that matter.

 

[Shayne]

Whats a fairer system ?

 

[wobbly]

I'm looking at a solar/battery/EV charger setup at the moment, like the idea of not being reliant on the grid

I will still charge the batteries overnight if solar doesn't hack it, but there is a EV deal available for 8p a unit overnight, currently about 5p, so I'm planning on topping the batteries up from that as well!

My daytime rate is about 22p a unit, going up to 34p in April, so the maths of solar is looking good at the moment.

I run 3 vehicles, happy for two to be EV's and one diesel to allow for total lack of electric available for car charging.

I don't think we can carry on with internal combustion for much longer though, we will be the last generation to think its ok.