Who needs or wants electric?.......

[Towpack]

While surfing Utube for nothing in particular I came across this old "music"video , shot back in the pre chicane days of the straight The video (and some audio) quality is rubbish but, for some reason, it gives me a nice warm feeling inside. Long live the ICE!

Mulsanne 88

 

[Shayne]

Like an LP record fills a room with something more than its content .

So much good will be lost to future generations because they never got to experience it . Saddest part is that they themselves are driving it and calling it progress .

 

[frank rabbets]

Reminds me of the M1 before the 70mph speed limit.

 

[Shayne]

no abs , power steering , traction control , airbags , just man and machine . So many people died they never built another motorway

did they ?

 

[Grimbo]

All these guys pushing EV's and their performance 0 to 60 or 100 ....miss a huge point as far as I'm concerned .... no noise , no smell , no character .... no soul

The smell of 2 stroke takes me back , the noise of my TR7 V8 on quad 48 webbers , or the sound and smell of my Manta 400 on a stage all take me back or if at a modern historic event stir the soul .
The smell and character of my Halftrack or Jeep combined with their history give them character .... my 80 series going somewhere it shouldn't have but did or pulling like a train on a cold morning...
Been lucky enough to fly a Spit , be in a Shackleton with all 4 turning and burning.... fly a Piper Cub.... all of these and those above have several things in common in that they all have a different distinctive smell , and more importantly an individual character.... and without I think being too emotive.... a soul , a beating heart of an engine .
Sometimes we might have 4 identical 1940's vehicles but every single one will require a different amount of choke or whatever to get started....
Even to me modern cars while stunningly reliable ( if you don't by a Landrover ) are beginning to become bland which is why few tempt my to buy them .

Vehicles having a soul ? Many stories abound especially in conflict of an aircraft or vehicle doing what the engineers would say was impossible.... the plane that cleared the trees on take off despite the fact the bloke with a slide rule saying at that temp , with that fuel load, with those engines at max power it would impact the row of trees halfway up... he flew home with twigs in the undercarriage but he took off.... the ships that made it to port despite that all the calculations would prove it sunk.... we've all driven , owned or been in/on a vehicle that has defied logic.....

Thing is you know that an EV will do exactly what the computer say's and predicts , it will be exactly the same as the next one , it will sound exactly like the next EV ... it's a method of getting from A to B... you won't love it or polish it , you won't "talk " to it , coax it to do the impossible... and when the battery dies you will throw it away in exactly the same way as you do a kitchen appliance

You can stuff EV's as far as I'm concerned.... they are the Emperors new clothes and far from being the future they are already set to become a thing of the past ... they simply won't work for most of the population that can't park outside their own home and no government will ever invest in the infrastructure to make them work.... for the last 5 years it should have been a requirement by law that every new home was EV ready.... this still isn't the case ... I know loads of top Technicians in many different vehicle franchises and none of them would buy an EV or even think they are the future

 

[Grimbo]

Shayne "Like an LP record fills a room with something more than its content ."
I grew up in a house that had LP records of Murray Walker and his Farther commenting on the TT Races with the motorbike sounds.... "and here comes Mike Hailwood on the MV Augusta " ;-) followed by the sound of an MV on full chat ....glorious .
Who remembers you knew exactly what mate had just turned up or driven past without even looking cause all cars sounded different ?

 

[BobMurphy]

I grew up in a house that had LP records of Murray Walker and his Farther commenting on the TT Races with the motorbike sounds.... "and here comes Mike Hailwood on the MV Augusta " ;-) followed by the sound of an MV on full chat ....glorious .

Or Dickie Dale on the Guzzi V8

I still have those "BBC Sound stories LPs".

Bob.

 

[Shayne]

Should have called the thread nostalgia

The TT bikes and commentator i could hear live from my bed and i didn't have a radio .

A clout around the ear when i was a kid for something so insignificant i can't remember cost me 50% of my hearing in both ears , so my memories aren't as acutely audible as yours Grimbo , but it brings to mind what was apparently the distinctive sound of my cowboy boot walk

Pitch black in the dead of night i hear my name being called from a distance , it was a mate i hadn't seen for maybe 7 years heard my walk .

My brother set upon by 4 lads using some sort of telescopic clubs/truncheons bleeding profusely from his head was set to go down when he heard my boots come around the corner

lyrics those were the days - Google Search

 

[chapel gate]

we will simply be regarded as archaic old gits im afraid, but thats just the way it goes. its there loss not ours.

i reasonable regularly take our six year old and another young family member to high edge raceway banger racing. they have V8s, stock cars, formula fords, street bangers, bangers etc. its freezing cold and blows a gale. its a complete dump but they love it! the noise, the smell of petrol fumes and burning rubber. the sensible attitude to health and safety, the fact that when you stand behind one of the bends of the track you run for cover when theres a massive pile up against the concrete barrier.
you can climb down the embankment and watch the drivers and there family members and mates desperately trying to pull out the bodywork of there car with the hiab of there 7.5 tonner so that its "road worthy" for the next race. filling bust leaky radiators with water hoping the engine will make it through the next race...

my boy wants to have a bash at carting. i spent a saturday showing him the three carting tracks in stoke on trent. one was entirely E carts. it was by far was the slickest and had the best facilities, but the racing was crap, well the racing its self wasnt crap, but it was just missing soul for want of a better word. the racing was silent other than a rather irritating squeal of tyres on ply wood. the only aroma to fill the air was that of pizza and beer.

his preferred venue was the more familiar set up we are used to. a run down old warehouse with dodgy burgers and worn out smelly overalls, but complemented with the smell, noise and engagement that stimulates the basic senses of a human being.
fight or flight emotions and feelings that are slowly, or not so slowly, being lost on a new generation.

 

[Shayne]

Not archaic , just more accepting of our primal instinct which will not be denied no matter how many times they re-write history to fit whatever fallacy they want to believe today .

To deny by law that which makes us human is to create the impossible .

 

[Juddian]

Another old git here, not following the trend of the day.

I was a banger racer in my misspent youth, great fun, later on after i'd given up on that (no longer affordable with kids mortgage etc) and become a family man, it wasn't my 3 lads who loved the banger racing so much as my daughter, the youngest, she loved nothing more than getting filthy and enjoying the sound and crashes and the inevitable burger chips and ice cream, no surprise she's a petrol head with no fewer than 3 Honda Civics in her own car stable, she's also ridiculously old fashioned in many other ways certainly compared with her peers, long may individuality last, not wanted nor approved of by the state clone machine so ever more important they grow in number and stature.

When she was 4 there was a steam rally at Crick, by then the wife had left me for pastures new but i always saw my kids at weekends, anyway my eldest lad and daughter were with me this Sunday and we went there.
At said fair there were couple of decent chaps with steam engines allowing kids to ride on the engine itself or trailer around the village, Wiggy couldn't get on there quick enough together with her brother, she sat on the engine rear wheelarch beside the coal and got suitably plastered in coal dust, to be fair her mum wanted the best for the kids so no complaints.
Standing beside the engine was a little lad of about 7 or 8 looking up longingly at the other kids, i was going to lift him up as well and hand him up to the driver who was seating the kids where he could...some of the saddest words i've heard from a little lad was no he couldn't get on because he would get his clothes dirty...a once in a lifetime ride (wouldn't be allowed now) which he daren't take because someone responsible for him had a thing about dirt, his sad little face as the engine drove off was something else.

My own perspective on life now, i want as little to do with the modern world and modern attitudes as i can manage to avoid for as long as possible.
I won't ever have a battery car, not because i have anything against them or those who have them they just arn't for me, can easily see me having a Toyota Hybrid in retirement mind, mostly because it will cope with local running and carefull bought can have free VED...VED is becoming a serious issue now, our Forester cost £615 to tax beginning of the month, will be nearly £700 next year, they're determined to price us off the road, leaving the Zil lanes clear for those who are more equal.

 

[Rob Cowell]

for the last 5 years it should have been a requirement by law that every new home was EV ready.... this still isn't the case ...

It is the case. Building Regs changed last year, you have to have EV charging provision. Although still no requirement for new housing developments to have pavements. All we are doing is changing the way we power congestion.

 

[Grimbo]

^^^^^^^^
Interesting..... I fix a few plant machines on some developments and have never seen them.....
I wonder if it's a bit like the social housing element of most new developments....the developer finds a reason not to build them either because they have "run out of money" or some other spurious reason and planning enforcement are so skint they won't take the developers on in court .
EV's have been with us for years now yet only last year did they change the regs , they still don't make it compulsory to have rain water harvesting or solar on every new build.... yet we are supposedly heading to environmental disaster....

 

[flint]

Lack of electricity looks to be a major problem if uptake increases too fast. To replace fossil, present generation would have to at least double to cope.

 

[BobMurphy]

The limitation seems to be in the power transmission (if you watched the Guy Martin programme).

The North Sea wind farms can produce more power than the grid can handle.

More pylons anyone ?

Bob.

 

[Towpack]

As battery tech improves and capacity and charge rates increase, the demand for the fastest, 22Kw chargers will increase. These require a 3 phase supply which you can have installed at a cost but the fact is the distribution grid at a local level would not be able to cope in many areas. I was listening to a discussion on the radio on this subject some time ago and the "expert" they had on was saying there could be a situation where a local spur will only support X number of 3 phase chargers and if numerous residents in your street have beaten you to it, you will not be able to have one.

 

[Shayne]

In my view so long as the solution is thought to lie in the concept of giving millions and billions to small obscure companies promoting grand designs there will be no answer .

Rip out old boilers and every home could house a battery , every chimney could host a windmill , and every home/building could be a power station .

It doesn't have to be perfect , if it reduces demand on the grid by only 10% UK wide then its value will sooner or later run into trillions .

I'm very sure there is a Fred Dibnah of electricity out there somewhere who could push that figure up to 90+% , but then he'd likely wind up in Princess Diana's tunnel because the movers and shakers can't have Nuclear profits running at half chat .

 

[hopeless wanderer]

When discussing the future and Toyota's decision to go for hybrid and Hydrogen the Japanese chap said in order for everyone to run a electric car Japan would have to increase it's electricity generation capacity by as much as sevenfold. Even now they are telling people to not charge their cars during peak demand periods in some places.
I'd have one but only a little one i could charge from my own off grid solar.

 

[Shayne]

Guess which one is ULEZ compliant , or at least it will be next year .

 

[AdventureWagon]

Our second car (Mitsubishi Lancer) only does short trips and not many of them, so an EV could work there. However the Lancer works perfectly, is fully paid off, and I don't have $60k to burn. For 3000km/yr it would never be worth it. If I had to replace it I'd get a cheap 20yr old car from Gumtree.

The 90 series is used for long trips towing so that will be staying ICE for the foreseeable future. I'd replace it with another old Prado if needed, diesel next time though.