Would you have an electric car if you had the money for a new car and were in the market for one?

[Horse]

If the government was serious about Net Zero any time soon they'd be building nuclear power stations and lots of them. They're not, so they aren't.

Wasn't there something in the news recently (or budget) about building mini-reactors?

That's not true and it wasn't true the last few times you said it either.

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/jo ... ctric-cars

Ooh. Didn't know this:

Fully Charged’s video Volts for Oil estimates that refining 1 gallon of petrol would use around 4.5kWh of electricity

[Cousin Jack]

Patience my friends, the demise of IC has already been deferred to 2035. Wait a bit and it will go back further, and it really is not dependent on technology.

Come the evil day when new IC cars are about to be banned a LOT of politicians are going to wake up to the fact that a MASSIVE number of their electorate rely upon cheap and relatively reliable cars. IC cars. And most of them live in streets with no garages or driveways. The PM who condemns them to catching the bus is gong to be a bit unpopular.

When the market is flooded with cheap and relatively reliable EVs, and the infrastructure is available EVERYWHERE to charge them relatively cheaply and conveniently, THAT will be the time to ban ICs. Perhaps.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Fully Charged’s video Volts for Oil estimates that refining 1 gallon of petrol would use around 4.5kWh of electricity

yeah that's a really interesting number...I wonder if it's just "refine" or "refine and get it into your tank" as well.

4.5kWh would get a leccy car maybe 10-20 miles, depending on a number of factors. That gallon of fuel would get a petrol car around 20-40 miles. But if you have to consider transporting the fuel to your tank in teh first place, you can see that the energy saved by not making and distributing petrol is nearly enough to power EVs before you even consider anything else.

Electricity does of course incur transport and storage losses/inefficiencies, but it's orders of magnitude better than fossil fuels in that regard.

[Slenver]

The dire trade-in price on EVs

This is bad but only from certain perspectives. I imagine the percentage of new car buyers who pay cash upfront is diminishingly tiny.

Most people buy 2nd hand, so they're quids in, surely?

It's also very short-term and contextual... EV sales rose rapidly, then slowed, and the 2nd hand market has reflected this. It's not a long-term rule that all EVs will always lose value quickly. Something similar (though less extreme maybe) happened with ICE cars too, with all the covids and lack of chips etc.

[Mussels]

And the biggest issue, which is going to stop everybody getting an EV is that there won't be enough electricity. The people who want us all to buy EVs are the same people who are going to shut down all the fossil fuel power stations. Good luck charging your EV on unreliables. If the government was serious about Net Zero any time soon they'd be building nuclear power stations and lots of them. They're not, so they aren't.

That's not true and it wasn't true the last few times you said it either.

https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/jo ... ctric-cars

Is that the same National Grid that's refusing to connect up renewable energy farms as it doesn't have capacity?
Is the National Grid not responsible for fixing local issues where EVs are messing up load balancing across phases?

Opinions other than National Grid marketing are available.
https://eandt.theiet.org/2021/07/28/ris ... d-mps-warn

[Yorick]

Just seen this story and can't work out why he's been arrested if he called for help???

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-68557652

[Mr. Dazzle]

Just seen this story and can't work out why he's been arrested if he called for help???

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-68557652

We were talking about this at work on the day it happened. It'd be very hard to get a car which is genuinely run away (EV or ICE), the brakes have to have a direct mechanical link (by law) and they'll always win the fight, so to speak. Might be hard if you lose brake boost though.

They might have been making it up/pissed/other, hence the arrest?

[Cousin Jack]

Just seen this story and can't work out why he's been arrested if he called for help???

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-68557652

We were talking about this at work on the day it happened. It'd be very hard to get a car which is genuinely run away (EV or ICE), the brakes have to have a direct mechanical link (by law) and they'll always win the fight, so to speak. Might be hard if you lose brake boost though.

They might have been making it up/pissed/other, hence the arrest?

Most modern cars the engine will piss all overmechhanical brakes. No servo and you are fcuked.

[Mussels]

Just seen this story and can't work out why he's been arrested if he called for help???

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-68557652

We were talking about this at work on the day it happened. It'd be very hard to get a car which is genuinely run away (EV or ICE), the brakes have to have a direct mechanical link (by law) and they'll always win the fight, so to speak. Might be hard if you lose brake boost though.

They might have been making it up/pissed/other, hence the arrest?

Most modern cars the engine will piss all overmechhanical brakes. No servo and you are fcuked.

I found that very clearly the first time I tried being towed in a car with servo assisted brakes, the brakes were pretty useless.
It does worry me about my car with it's electric handbrake and automatic gearbox, I don't have much in the way of emergency braking that I have control of.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Just seen this story and can't work out why he's been arrested if he called for help???

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-68557652

We were talking about this at work on the day it happened. It'd be very hard to get a car which is genuinely run away (EV or ICE), the brakes have to have a direct mechanical link (by law) and they'll always win the fight, so to speak. Might be hard if you lose brake boost though.

They might have been making it up/pissed/other, hence the arrest?

Most modern cars the engine will piss all overmechhanical brakes. No servo and you are fcuked.

Not if you press hard enough

Peak brake equivalent power gets beyond 2000bhp in a supercar, still more than 1000bhp in a 'normal' car.

Might not be easy without the servo but the lorry you're rapidly approaching should give you some incentive.

[Saga Lout]

...

Electricity does of course incur transport and storage losses/inefficiencies, but it's orders of magnitude better than fossil fuels in that regard.

You're probably right about the delivery of electricity, but are you seriously trying to tell us that storing electricity is easier than storing coal, gas, petrol and diesel? Or were you hoping nobody would notice that you'd slipped "storage" in there?

[Mr. Dazzle]

I didn't say easier.

Piling is up coal is of course very easy, building grid scale electricity storage is not, which is why we did one centuries before the other.

Moving all that coal about and then moving it again to where you need it etc. adds in loads of loss. So just storing your big pile is inefficient, even if a pile doesn't actually lose any energy by being a pile. Petrol is worse in practice because the storage is more complicated than a pile and there's a lot more distribution involved. It's not very efficient to store.

Batteries on the other hand lose energy just sat there, but you more than make up the loss in practice by not having to shift electricity by the tonne.

[Sadlonelygit]

Cant be arsed to read through 140 pages, but has anyone concluded why hydrogen fuel cells arent being pushed as the saviour of the planet.
I appreciate that the hfc car doesnt have the headline grabbing ooooomph power of a Tesla, but at 7am in Chelsea you dont need ludicrous mode.
A friend of mine works at a refinery in the south of England and they are busy building a hydrogen plant, so perhaps the answer lies in once the oil companies have cornered the market, then hfc will become popular!
When I first saw one (40+ years ago) I thought it was a brilliant idea, still do, I just dont see why nearly all the car manufacturers shun it.
Mr D, over to you!

[Horse]

Had my gas boiler repaired recently. Guy said that new boilers will have to use 10% hydrogen in with the natural gas.

[Mussels]

We were talking about this at work on the day it happened. It'd be very hard to get a car which is genuinely run away (EV or ICE), the brakes have to have a direct mechanical link (by law) and they'll always win the fight, so to speak. Might be hard if you lose brake boost though.

They might have been making it up/pissed/other, hence the arrest?

Most modern cars the engine will piss all overmechhanical brakes. No servo and you are fcuked.

Not if you press hard enough

Peak brake equivalent power gets beyond 2000bhp in a supercar, still more than 1000bhp in a 'normal' car.

Might not be easy without the servo but the lorry you're rapidly approaching should give you some incentive.

You might be right but I don't understand. I've had cars with and without servo assistance, in the latter with the engine off I struggled to stop the car in a slow roll even when pushing as hard as i could.

[Cousin Jack]

I used to live on a slope. Parked the car well back for some reason, and later went to move it forward 2 car lengths and a bit sideways. Being lazy I didn't start it, just put it in neutral and let it roll. I very nearly crashed into the garage door, steering was nigh impossible and brakes took a mahoosive pedal pressure. This was a Lexus IS200, so quite a small car.
My current Lexus IS300h will take off normally with the 'handbrake' full on. Warning lights and loud alarm ding tell me something is wrong, but you cannot 'feel' the difference.

[Mr. Dazzle]

You might be right but I don't understand. I've had cars with and without servo assistance, in the latter with the engine off I struggled to stop the car in a slow roll even when pushing as hard as i could.

Yeah it won't be easy but for obvious reasons cars are designed so that they can't run away, brakes of course being the ultimate final resort.

This runaway Jag story just smells so fishy. So many things would have to go wrong for the car to run away and then for you to not be able to "overpower" it.

Doubly so in a leccy car where the brake boost and the drive motors are independent systems.

[Horse]

This runaway Jag story just smells so fishy. So many things would have to go wrong for the car to run away and then for you to not be able to "overpower" it.

Doubly so in a leccy car where the brake boost and the drive motors are independent systems.

It has hints of the story of the bloke out for a blast on his bike, but got stopped.

"Why were you going so fast?" Well, officer, the bike was backfiring through the carbs every time I closed the throttle. I was scared it would set the bike alight, so I had to keep the throttle wide open.

"So how come the bike didn't ignite when you stopped?" Well, officer, I was so shocked when I saw you, I wet myself and put the fire out.

If this Jag could overpower its own brakes, it seems odd that plod could stop it. Seemingly with minimal damage.

[Yorick]

When I took the car for its ITV (MOT) they told me to turn the engine off for the brake test. Then gradually increase brake pressure to match a marker on the screen outside.

[gremlin]

These story are always a bit fishy. There was the 'hero' lorry driver a few years back who's throttle jammed open, blah, blah. Turns out he was a bit of a fantasist who just wanted the attention.

If the throttle 'jammed open' on my trusty Toyota*, I'd shove the bloody thing into N and let it coast and slow down. Or use the brakes. Or if push came to shove, turn the engine off. Better to coast with no power steering than to crash full-pelt into something.


*Which it wouldn't, coz it's a Toyota and thus works just fine. JLR on the other hand....