UK looks to ban on petrol car sales from 2030
 

There is a new initiative from the UK Government to distract everyone from the shambles in the Prime Ministers office by announcing that they are now looking to ban the sale of petrol and diesel engined cars from 2030 - moving it forward from 2040. The ban looks to include hybrid cars from 2035.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-54937277

However there is no mention of motorcycles. Previously the Motorcycle Action Group (MAG) managed to confirm that the 2040 ban did not extent to bikes - hopefully this will continue to be the case until such time as the technology and infrastructure is there.

https://www.mag-uk.org/mag-confirms-...r-motorcycles/

There remains the problem for the people on his forum that we are looking at the availability of refuelling points worldwide and for the “plug” to be of a consistent type.

As I see it UK government is looking for more and more trouble, it definitely wont last till 2030 anyway LOL

Are you referring to the year 2030 or the time 2030?

Ridiculous. What happens to all the current ICE vehicles? I assume they will be 'grandfathered' but for how long? How many mechanics and others will be unemployed?

Not to mention that your average working Joe or Jane who needs a private vehicle doesn't have $40,000+ to buy a new electric car! But I guess we'll all just switch to riding bicycles...
:rofl:

Well the textbook answers would be that ICE vehicles will continue to operate and be supported for as long as they continue to run, but will gradually disappear by natural attrition as no new ones are being sold. In the meantime garages and the like would transition over to supporting EVs and it will become harder to find petrol stations.

As for ownership, most cars these days go on PCH plans so users don't feel the upfront ownership costs. Although rentals would be higher due to the production cost of the vehicles the lower running costs offset that, and you may find govt subsidies being thrown in as well. Ultimately a lot of the lobbies that are supporting the EV trend would be more than happy to see people abandoning personal car ownership and making more use of cycles, buses, etc.

Bikes needn't expect to be exempt for long. Transport planners already view them as dirtier per passenger mile than public transport or shared cars. Better get used to electric bikes, because if the car market fully goes over to EV bikes will have to follow. Remember what I said about petrol stations becoming scarce?

Whether it actually happens is another matter. It's easy to make a law, but laws can be unmade and if the country isn't ready for the changes that law will bring in, there will be irresistible pressure for a U-turn, or at least postponement. And the main reason is likely to be the country's energy generation and distribution ability. Millions of cars and bikes on the road today would be plugging into the electricity grid, drawing heavy current. Users without private charging points would face huge problems of finding public ones. Even using overnight supplies, when business and domestic use is lowest, the demand for electricity to charge EVs would be immense. You won't build new power generation stations and distribution networks in 10 years, even if you increase the availability of charging points.

Assuming it does all go ahead, whatever the date, it would have a massive impact on adventure motorcycling. If the LWU series on electric Harleys proved one thing, it's that electric bikes are useless outside of a well developed urban environment. Can you imagine taking an electric bike through Central Asia or along the Road of Bones? You can carry spare petrol without too much difficulty, not so spare electricity. This would present a dilemma, should we ride electric bikes which may be the only supported means of transport in developed nations, but which would be unusable outside them; or should we cling on to petrol powered bikes that can travel the world, as they become harder to fuel at home, hit by emissions taxes and with parts becoming scarce as they are no longer made?

I think banning ICE vehicles from big city's is a good idea, i remember blowing my nose at night after a days work in London & it was black with diesel soot, but a nationwide ban is simply playing politics.

I feel many tree huggers fail to understand how electricity is generated (coal fired power stations) all they are doing is swapping one fossil fuel pollution for another, but it looks clean/green & keeps the ill informed thunberg millennial`s happy.

And besides, you think SE Asia or South America are going EV this century? nope.


Mezo.

And the solution is here

In the UK the coal fired power stations have been largely wound down. For long periods of time they are just sat there being maintained. We are moving to greener fuels gradually - gas is less polluting than coal, nuclear cleaner still and wind and solar the greenest of the lot. Realistically we need a fuel supply that can supply the base load and be turned up and down as required. The most likely source globally is, in the long term, geothermal - have a read here.

Geothermal produced electricity could produce the base load power we need - rendering gas, coal and nuclear systems redundant due to their high cost and allowing the production of hydrogen to power vehicles off grid when the power isn’t needed. Solar and wind can be used remotely for places off the grid but obviously can’t do base load.

The thing about geothermal is that it is available everywhere - some places like Iceland it is very close to the surface but it is available everywhere if you drill deep enough. So yes, SE Asia and South America will embrace EV - China makes a large percentage of the world’s solar panels and wind turbines already so don’t be surprised when they leave those countries clinging to outdated technology behind - people still use the horse and cart, but more as a novelty than a serious means of transport. Europe is moving onward to embrace the change - America’s new president is committed to spending very large sums of money on green technology - SE Asia and South America will be coming along as well.

In Norway where Im from the governments goal is that all new cars sold from 2025 should be electric or hydrogen fueled.
In October 2020 the proportion of electric cars among cars sold brand new was already 61,5 %.

That's remarkable. I was last in Norway around 2008, and I don't remember seeing any electric cars at all. (Probably there were a few here and there, but I was trying to pay attention to all those smooth, curvaceous roads.) I guess a lot of the impetus has been high taxes on non-electric cars, along with fuel. Still remarkable.

No in 2008 it probably wasnt many electric cars here...

Yep - very little import fees and taxes on electric cars compared to conventional cars and also electric cars can drive in the bus and taxi lanes which normal cars cant. A huge advantage in rush hours that is! And also much less tolls on toll roads. So there are huge incentives for the transition to electric cars here in Norway.

As Jay said, power generation is fast moving away from fossil fuels. Britain operated for 60% of the year 2020 to date without coal fired power. Yes, EVs transfer pollution from the exhaust pipe to the power station but it's a lot more efficient (like 70% rather than 30%) plus there is a lot more green/renewable power these days. For cities I have to admit it's a no-brainer and I can see in the not too distant future in developed countries many cities will become EV-only zones, by law or by heavy tolls. This will give us problems as overlanders who will need petrol powered flexibility, but it's something we're just going to have to get used to I feel.

As for the Millennial tree huggers and Thunbergs of this world, given that our generation has basically plundered the world's fossil fuel resources, melted the ice caps, deforested most of the Amazon and set in motion a set of climate change events that will affect the world for the next century, I think they have the right to be concerned.

The conversion from horse and buggy to ICE started slow--no auto dealers, no mechanics, no fueling stations, no good roads. Once those began to develop, horses became something almost never seen in towns, and not used in serious agriculture for the first time in recorded history. Most people in the US do not commute more than 40 miles a day, few travel 20 miles one way to shop. A couple of years ago the HU calendar had a picture on a lady biker showing her bike to a young child next to a group of yurts. If you looked carefully, there was an electric wire running to the yurts. Sorry, but getting an ICE bike/car fixed will soon be as easy as getting your buggy fixed. Post from an old, very not up to date on the virtual world, geezer.

IMO electrics is dead end route, most likely hydrogen will win in long run but for now I enjoy my diesel car and gasoline motorcycle. What politics say never was right and this time is no different.

There will also be a £30 billion shortfall in fuel duty.

So they're intending on covering that with a road toll system..

And that will be determined by having EVERY vehicle compulsorily fitted with a GPS/engine management tracker. Along with that will probably come compulsory dash cams.

Which means all fun will be totally banned too.
Insurance companies will blacklist you for wiping your nose.

At least I'll have memories of travel freedom.

And you watch the cost of electric rise, ever so slowly at first, then more, every country in the world relies on that fuel duty.

They will use the excuse they need to raise the cost of electric in the short term to cover the building of the infrastructure (new power stations) & the prices will never go back down, they never do go down.

And yes i`m cynical. :innocent:

Mezo.

I'm with you on that one. I've even wondered whether the looming shortfall in UK electricity generating capacity coming at just the point when we're being forced into dumping internal combustion vehicles is intended to 'generate' a build new power stations taxation crisis. If nothing else it would be a means to swerve around the anti nuclear lobby. For all the green paint that's been daubed on windmills and solar farms (in the UK :rofl:) sitting freezing in the dark with your car battery flat will cause a rapid reappraisal of priorities.

The trouble at the moment is that the cost of electricity is based on essentially tax free domestic use and car charging is piggybacking onto that. It'd be a brave politician who'd say 'your car charging electricity is going to cost ten times as much from Monday and we'll be round to fit the new meter shortly'.

On the other hand, given that 'a week is a long time in politics', the current crew could just be kicking the can down the road. Experience tells me that cock up beats conspiracy virtually every time.

Know that I'm beating a dead(literally speaking) horse, but coal was replaced by oil which is being replaced by electric. Based on a quick google search,in the UK there used to be 1,191,000 people mining coal, there are 2,000 as of 2015. Coal production is at a 300 year low. I saw a video recently-- sorry, poor memory can't remember where-- showing a biker running low on juice, went to a vending machine, changed out his batteries, and moved on. I grew up on a farm that had horses for fun, not actual work. I do not miss mucking out the stables. I will miss the old days, but its move on or get run over.

If only the UK could join a trading bloc like everyone else seems to want to - that would be a real boost to the economy rather than, say, leaving one which to date is reckoned to be around £200 billion.

In reality the cost of the roads will get picked up by someone and who better than the people that are using them thereby linking damage to the actual useage. That way a heavy goods vehicle that does 100,000 miles a year pays more one doing 20,000 miles and a car doing 10,000 miles pays more than a motorcycle doing the same mileage. Radical I know, but it may just work. Well until the road transport lobby start whining - the answer to whom should be "you want to keep your costs down, well plan to be efficient and don't drive as far".

UK doesn't mine coal anymore simply imports it, 6.5 million metric tons last year.

Mezo.

In Boris's inverted political universe it's far more likely to be the other way round - HGVs doing 100k /yr are essential to the economic welfare of the country / support gazillions of jobs / etc etc so get a 'time for technology to catch up' deferral and tax break. Private cars doing mainly the school run and drive to work commute will be hit by a combination of 'get off your a*se and get some exercise' and 'work from home' taxation, and leisure vehicles (like motorcycles) will be shamed off the road by nudge theory moral outrage and 'you're killing the planet' surcharges.

Have an accident on your bike soon and it won't be settled by who was in the right / in the wrong but by who had the best reason to be on the road. 'He pulled out in front of me your honour'. 'Yes but he was transporting vaccines to a care home in his electric truck. You were riding to Tesco / Starbucks when you could have arranged a home delivery.'


:rofl: for now but ...

In 1913, coal use in UK was 292 million tonnes, in 2016,it was 20 million. Took over 100 years to almost disappear. New ways have been found to power the UK, it sure looks likely new ways to power transportation will happen, sooner more likely than later. Just because electricity may well replace gas, it doesn't mean that adventure, long distance biking will end. It just means that new sources of power will be established. 100 years ago finding petro in rural Brazil, Congo, Louisiana was a chore, soon finding charging stations in those areas will be easy. Today, it is 96 miles from Roswell NM to Vaughn NM, major highway, no gas stations. There is a rest area midway that has electric power. Best not to panic that bike travel will end forever.

Well that trip is easy as if you run out of fuel then any passing alien will give you a lift.

Yeah like importing wood pellets from the USA to again burn, growing straw in the fields of the UK to again burn & still most of the UK's electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels (oil, gas & coal) nothing has changed over the decades & never will until they take a leaf out of the French books & build multiple nuclear power stations.

And remember UK also imports electricity from Ireland, Netherlands & France because it doesn't have the capacity to fully meet its own electricity requirements, and they want you all to go out & buy EV`s ? really?

Its a crock of political BS IMHO.

Mezo.

I think you are somewhat behind the current situation on a number of things. We don’t grow straw - we grow wheat and straw is a byproduct that is then used as a fuel - of course you could take the view that we grow straw in which case wheat is the byproduct.

We don’t burn very much coal nowadays but we do burn gas - this is a change over to decades as we used to burn loads of coal but now very little and no oil at all. Gas is used more than it used to (40.6% of all electricity comes from gas). We are expanding the amount of off-shore wind generation than we have now (13GW) by a factor of four to 50+GW. Nuclear is also on stream at 17%. The intention is that we will be carbon neutral by 2050 at the latest. So the total fossil fuel used in electricity generation is 42.7% - which is, as far as I am aware, less than half.

We do import electricity. So do France (from the UK amongst others). Ireland also imports from the UK. As do the Netherlands. This is because it is an international market that works together.

Now when it comes to EV there is an odd situation as, whilst they are plugged in to suck up juice to charge them up people leave them plugged into the network once they are charged up - in this way they actually add capacity to the network and the system allows the batteries in the car to feed back into the network. So they smooth out the demand on power plants - this is particularly useful with wind generation as that can fluctuate more than other technologies.

Which brings me back to the technology that is likely to be the ultimate answer - geothermal electricity generation. The electricity can be used directly or as a stepping stone to hydrogen production - a technology that has the potential to replace petrol and diesel once it has matured.

As far as being a crock of political BS if you are right and climate change is not real then we will have made sure that we don’t waste a finite resource and we will have stopped polluting the air we breathe. If Greta is right then we will have stopped messing up the environment. Either way, it is the right thing to do.

Problem is both times they offered a ride to Jupiter, real bitch getting a ride back(at least that's what I told my wife happened).

You did the right thing there, you can wait for ages before anyone is coming back this way. Also, the service at the McDonalds there is really poor - fortunately Starbucks is far better.

Sooner than you think....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47715415

I don't particularly care what the EcoGoblin or "right-On" governments want to achieve.

I want to get from A to B in as least time as possible with the least amount of hassle.

For the Electric Revolution to happen the following has to happen:


1. The Technology has to half in Price. I'm not paying £20K or more for a battery driven bike, especially as batteries wear out, and are half the cost of the Motorcycle. Battery replacements have to be in the pennies to make this affordable.

2. Charging points have to be ubiquitous, they MUST be as easy to find as a petrol station.

3. Range must get close to the least worthy of touring motorcycles i.e. 150 miles. Current models claim 200 mile ranges but those testing are finding this is not realistic. 100 miles max is the best honest review I can find.

4. Charging must take minutes. Not 40 minutes but 5.


I can't remember where it was, but an experiment was taking place in a S.E. Asia country that gave me some hope.
They had pluggable, replaceable battery units.
At the roadside there were Amazon type lockers. You removed a battery unit from your bike, plugged it into a spare slot and you got a fully charged unit from the "locker".

Before the Model T, most workers could not afford a car. Ford made it possible for more and more workers to afford a car.
Range for early cars was low, now you can get a Prius that get 50 mpg. When autos started to be sold, few towns had a gas station/auto mechanic(now we have "auto techs") If batteries can be rented at a charging station, charging times will be zero. When I was younger (40 years ago) my home town still had rings set into the sidewalks so you could hook up you wagon--no kidding. They weren't being used, but they were still there.

Here in OZ we have "SWAP'n'GO" BBQ Gas Bottles at every petrol station & at hardware stores, no waiting to have your bottle filled just swap & go.

That would be the way to go with bikes as well (SWAP'n'GO batteries) who`s going to trademark that first then? :thumbup1:

Mezo.

I can't see a roadside battery exchange scheme working. Quite aside from there being no "universal" battery shape and capacity to work from, I think you'd run into resistance from people who'd just bought expensive new full capacity batteries and didn't want to swap them for some roadside POS that only held 50% of the charge.

I think that the point is that you never actually own the battery packs - you are leasing them. So no-one will actually get new batteries themselves but they may pick up new ones in the normal churn that will develop.

For it to get started I would guess that you need to get the agreement / co-operation of:

• At least one high volume vehicle manufacturer - would Ford start to use the Toyota standard voluntarily? Unlikely but if there was a standard set by a selection of manufacturers they. Would be backed into a corner by the market
• A couple of battery manufacturers - spreads the risk
• A couple of finance companies - too much money to get everything set up for an individual company I suspect
• Regional power companies - need to work alongside the power supply side to get the power and to allow the power companies to use the battery banks as strategic power banks to smooth power supply

For it to get traction then the battery technology needs to be stable or the batteries easily recycleable - as things are at the moment the technology is rushing forward so fast that no-one wants to commit. The benefit to going down the lease route is that as technology continues to develop as long as the voltage is consistent at and the size, shape and contacts are fixed then it doesn’t matter what is in the battery pack as far as technology goes as long as it meets the accepted minimum power.

The question now, for many on the HUBB, is whether the battery packs would fit into a motorbike...... if they do then the long distances between battery stations becomes academic as you just rent a spare set or two for the times you need them

Go to any retail establishment that sells batteries, it doesn't matter who makes the batteries, they are all the same size--AA,AAA,D,C(and have the same charge). In the USA all electrical outlets and plugs are the same, differing only when the charge is more(120, 240, 480). Any retailer who would sell undercharged batteries would be looking at legal trouble. The different car companies will need to standardize plugs, batteries,etc, the same as most other companies do with their products right now. All DVD's fit into the same players, they are not different sizes for different companies.

I had the same misgivings the first time I was told I could exchange, but not refill, a propane tank. I discovered that since I never actually owned the tank itself, I didn't care if I got a ratty old beat-up one--I just took it in and exchanged it whenever it was empty. Sometimes the replacements were new and pristine and sometimes old and beat-up (within legal limits, e.g., no rust, fittings intact, etc.).

If I'd really cared, I could easily have hung onto one of the nice, shiny new ones and figured out a way to fill it myself. You could do that in a battery exchange program too, but you'd probably relent when you realized how inconvenient it was.

The trouble is energy density. The best current batteries hold a third to a fifth of the same wheel output you'd get for petrol (a tenth of the energy density but converted more efficiently to movement).

You either have an assembly that weighs the same as two passengers to swap out or reduce range or speed. The result is a poorer method of transport. If it was better they wouldn't have to force us to have it.

I find the idea we cannot lose by doing this odd. We switch to these poorly performing vehicles but the USA keeps their V-8's and China burns brown coal to make all our batteries for us. We are basically stepping back from the free for all high density energy grab. Either some future generation loses out because the world ends anyway or we are poorer for not grabbing our share.

Andy

The fundimental problem is the world is overpopulated , and there is no real solution , all we are doing is putting sticking plasters over the problem !

I entirely agree. Money has a habit of regulating this kind of thing and people who have handed in a factory fresh battery pack with a (say) 250 mile range are going to complain loudly when the off the shelf replacement only does 150 miles. They'll be paying the same amount for that one as the next person who gets the recharged 250 mile battery. No doubt there would be all kinds of 'Honest John' battery quality schemes thought up but the economics of battery swapping would make them worthless. Unless the replacements are priced by range the good ones will be removed from the market by people keeping them. What are you going to do when you want to sell the car - include whatever luck of the draw battery happens to be in it or drive around until you get a good one. Someone who ever only home charges is going to pay a premium for a good battery.

Comparisons with propane cylinder exchange don't work for me because propane is sold by weight and as long as the cylinder doesn't leak you get the contents you pay for. With batteries the packaging may look the same but who knows what's in there. There's no easy way of telling without some sort of capacity meter. It'd be a bit like going in for replacement tyres and not knowing whether you were going to end up with brand new or barely legal part worns.

The theory doesn't seem impossible.

You have a 30+ kg battery so some sort of mechanical handling is probably needed.
This solves the problem of electrical and possibly water cooling connections, you can't expect Joe public to whip out the spanners.
The handling kit will be expensive so getting the flat battery into storage and on charge means better utilisation.
This is all just industrial machinery, nothing difficult in the design.
The racked battery can be monitored so you could buy by charge level, maybe even a premium if you want a 200 miler, discount if you'll take 20 miles to get you home.
Roll up, tell it how many miles you need, do card stuff while the robot picks and fits a suitable module, wait for the green light on what you are returning.

If you want man handling you need multiple batteries per vehicle (which makes bikes easier and lets you carry extra as luggage) but the same rack, charge and monitor.

The challenges are:

1.Standardise the battery and installation. Its tougher than a filler cap and length of hose on a pump. Certain brands are going to want their own features, so at best a VHS vs Betamax thing at worst the dealers and trying to get them to understand their own product like we did with laptop batteries.

2. Install the handling equipment. It probably wants to be under most cars and sharing with petrol sites raises safety concerns. Planning permission and safety regs need inventing. There needs to be security they have value.

3. Fund a reserve stock of batteries (once working these help balance the loads on the generator system) but if you don't want a bad service killing the technology you have to feed the supply of spares ahead of demand. Whoever does the work will be undercut by a budget version the second the technology is stable, so non-ideological investors will be wary.

Compare this to building a railway line across London or London to Birmingham, something the Victorians did, and then convince me it can be up and running in 12 years :rofl:

Andy

The problems with standardization get ironed out by all industries in time(usually not long). All light bulbs fit standardized plugs. I have not yet found a home appliance that can't use the same extension cords. Most TV's can use the same universal remote. Clothes and shoes use universal sizes, size 10 shoes are the same size--universal clothing sizes began with the Civil War when the government needed to buy 100,000 pairs of size 8 shoes. You may need a different size because it is wider, higher with different companies. Be not afraid, the monsters usually do not bite.

Fascinating discussion, with input from plenty of you who know a lot more than I do.

My understanding, such as it is, is not technical--aside from limited experience with gas cylinder replacement schemes (at home and in West Africa), I'm looking at the increasing use of battery-powered cars by my neighbors. They're not as widespread as in Norway, but still there are perfectly rational people paying a (subsidized) premium for electric vehicles despite the paucity of fast-charging stations and the inconvenience of running extension cords out windows overnight. Something's happening here, and the fact that I don't understand it doesn't alter the fact that it's moving quickly.

I'm not alarmed by the subsidies. My government has been subsidizing gas and oil for a long, long time--directly and indirectly, including by taking land out of food production in order to produce inefficient ethanol, by endless medical and environmental amelioration schemes, and by sacrificing money and lives overseas to protect supply chains. I expect this will continue in slightly different forms past the end of my lifetime.

In the end, most posting here are vastly privileged in being free to complain loudly and bitterly about changes which nonetheless don't much affect our ability to live at a comfortable standard. We'll be ok, more or less.

Harry Metcalfe`s take on this very subject, this was uploaded on his channel last night & if anyone follows Harry you will know he has a very nice Dakar bike collection also.



Mezo.

Do you think this law will really come into force? I can't even imagine that in less than 10 years there will be no more petrol cars in the UK...I stopped using my car a long time ago. I ride my electric bike to the supermarket or to my office. I only use the car in the most extreme cases. After I chose the bike thanks to ponfish.com I have improved my health and feel much better. In addition, I effortlessly lost 5 kg in a month! I hope all my family members will soon follow my example because my wife does not want to give up her car yet.

Not sure that’s what it’s saying. As I read it you won’t be able to buy a new petrol car after 1st Jan 2030 (or whatever the Brexit slippage style actual date happens to be) but if you’d just bought a new one on Dec 31st 2029 you’d want to get your 10 or 15 yrs out of it. So 2045. Or whatever date delaying tactics manages to extend it by.

In reality it’ll be other factors - economics mostly - that’ll determine how quickly I.c. vehicles decline. Can you get fuel in a diminishing and ever more expensive distribution network and do you want to pay / are you banned from driving in ‘low pollution zones’. One thing I think is that we’’re probably getting towards the end of i.c. engine development already. If you can’t sell them after 2030 you can probably make do with tarting up existing designs from about now on. Unless of course other countries decide 2130 is their date.

No, but that isn't the law.

You will no longer be able to sell a new petrol car for general use*

It will happen sooner because the industry has stopped designing new IC vehicles. Electric offers a huge sales opportunity because this perception is there. You have the market for people who feel the urge for a new vehicle. You add the FOMO factor and that clocks up greater demand. You get to reset expectations on pricing and equipment level because there is limited comparison. You get to move to the "Apple" rental model that guarantees constant income because of the fear of battery failure or the need to change them to avoid hours waiting for charging.

Petrol will still be for sale in 2030. Question is, will it be like photographic film in 2010, for sale in Sainsburys if you look hard enough, or 2020, specialist shops only?

*There are vehicles that are metal boxes on wheels that are not legally cars. Some of these will be exempt. Insanity like the MOD testing battery powered tanks is just noise.

Andy

Imho it isn`t about fueled or electric powered cars and motorcycles or about people who urge for a new vehicle or a about a new field of sales and profits.

It`s more about a better, easier, sustainable and comfortable way of locomotion as that polluting one we are now practising since a century. Banning petrol cars in Uk (and in others coutries as well, e.g. Norway in 2025!) generates the chance of a new thinking and programming for new possibilities in mobility.

Using new electric technologies only to substitute fosile fuel and to keep old mobility habits cannot be the final goal.

Hmm. ‘Better, easier, sustainable, comfortable’ ? They sound like the sort of terms a politician would use to sell us a vision of something we didn’t want, a kind of restrictive iron fist wrapped up in a moral altruism velvet glove. I suspect most people weigh up i.c.vs electric more on the basis of cost and personal convenience.

At the moment electric vehicles are neither cheaper (to buy anyway) or more convenient (other than via artificial restrictions placed on i.c. vehicles by low emission zones and the rest), so even with the slightly sanctimonious aura surrounding them uptake is still sluggish. People see the grass roots level drawbacks even if they talk about ‘saving’ everything in sight - the planet, children, health, bees, or whatever you can think of.

We’re being sold these things using the language of a religious crusade - ‘fight the good fight, drive a Tesla. Forward towards sun filled pollution free uplands’. I’ve nothing against technology moving on but see what’s happening for what it is; I’ve yet to see any downsides to electric vehicles being discussed other than a few nebulous concerns about power station capacity and battery raw material supplies. We’re being sold electric motors as the perfect solution without any talk of the technology’s problems. If you say ‘what downsides’ that’s it exactly. Petrol vehicles were seen as the perfect solution to foot deep layers of horse dung in cities. It took decades before we realised they were worse than the horses they replaced. I suspect we’ll probably buy a battery car in the next few years but it’ll be because we can see which way the wind is blowing. It won’t be as a salve to middle class existential angst.

So which words would you use or like to hear to describe chraracteristics of a new form of traffic?

It´s easy to complain in a philosophical way about the wording and to use it as a argumentation against everything which points on the question: Is the classic mobilty we do the one we should do in the upcoming decades if we have a technology that can support new ways with benefits?

How do you know what people want if you prevent a possible change even in thinking about? If somebody tells me that something is impossible or that people in general don`t want something, than this is only a reflection of his borders of imagination but not mine.

I just said and queried when electric technology offers a lot of chances to change or upgrade the existing concept of mobility, why shouldn`t we try to think about?

I have gone through and I have adopted a bunch of new technologies in my life. Simultaneously I selfprogressed and I learned that archaic and usual thought patterns and new technology simmilar behave as antimatter to matter - they neutralize.

So where will be my personal benefit if I press a pedal of an electric car instead of a fueled one? Tesla tried to give me one as they started the first movement forward with their kind of (momently unsucessfull) autonomic driving.

Well cheaper would do as a start. It's just that glossing over the obvious practical disadvantages of electric vehicles by an appeal to higher ideals only gets you so far. We have local elections coming up here shortly and the literature flooding through my door is full of high minded idealistic intent. They're all trying to paint themselves as the moral party candidate (and usually the oposition as some kind of corrupt failures only interested in lining their own pockets). What virtually none of them are saying is what they're actually going to do - mainly because it then gives the press a standard to hold them to.

In practical terms electric vehicles are (currently anyway) inferior to the technology they're aiming to replace - less range, they take ages to recharge and a whole load of other stuff. Using my previous horse analogy it would be as if they were replaced not by cars but by donkeys or ponies on the basis they produced less effluent. So how do you sell a technology that in practical terms is a backward step? You push other attributes and ignore the inconvenient ones. In this case you cover battery cars with a glossy cloak of climate change / polution activism and paint petrol ones as the cause of the problem. If electric vehicles had to stand on their own technical feet and compete directly against i.c. powered ones they currently wouldn't be bought by many people. It's not mature enough and most people are happy with the way things are. E.v's are only making headway because the playing field is being tilted substantially in their direction to force the issue.

So yes, sell me an electric vehicle but don't kid me that as a means of personal transport it's better than what it's replacing. As things stand now (and without being nudged by the prospect of an i.c. ban) it patently isn't. When I buy one it'll be because it inhabits the bottom of my personal cost vs convenience curve. Driving along surrounded by a miasma of feel good morality but knowing I'm paying over the odds for something that can't do what the old petrol car could isn't a route I see myself going down any time soon. Yes, ev's do have the potential for opening up areas such as self drive that might be tricky with i.c.vehicles but we're nowhere near that stage yet (and no doubt when we are there will be another bunch of politicians promises about how it's safer, more dependable, easier than diy'ing it etc). Technology does move on and there's no doubt e.v's time is about to come, but I can't think of anything else comparable that's been given a bigger social subsidy push than this.

The thing with petrol engined vehicles is they sold precisely because the advantages were obvious to all. There was no legislation needed, beyond making them legal. No need for big stables, they didn't die or break legs, you didn't have to employ grooms or feed them whether you used them or not, they could go faster and further, they didn't get tired, etc etc. The case for EVs is completely different. We have a mode of transport that has evolved to a very sophisticated state and we are being commended to abandon that and adopt a solution that costs more to buy, has inferior range, takes longer to refuel and has unknown durability. Whether it is ever better depends very much on quantum leaps in electrical storage systems, and major expansion of the country's electricity generating and storage systems (nothing nebulous, the sums have been done). Bikes look to be exempt, fortunately, though if the changeover does go ahead we as petrol users will find petrol stations becoming more scarce.

As we approach the cutoff date I'll be interested to see what happens. Lithium is a finite resource and everyone talks about expanding the charging grid with little thought about who's going to pay for it. Laws can be changed as quickly as they are made.

Bikes may in theory be exempt but for all practical purposes a lack of petrol stations may render them obsolete.

I suspect that there will be two technologies that emerge from this in much the same way that we currently have petrol and diesel - battery and fuel cell. Fuel cells can be refilled easily and power the electric motors and the generation of hydrogen can smooth out the variability of demand for electricity so making it more efficient.

Another changes that there may be is a new world economic order emerge as those countries that can generate electricity from renewables such as solar, wind, hydro and tidal start to export their hydrogen / electricity. Whether geothermal comes into play is another factor that may level the playing fields across the world.

Heart the same argumentation about pricing and philosophy when first mobile communications companies startet selling phones end of 80s. Didn´t bother me back then and regardless of mass meanings around I bought shares as much I could afford. Did the same with Apple a couple years later...

You know there are allways years that are questioning and there are years that are giving answers. Will be repeated by electric vehicles and their new forms of mobility. Same question of time as in the end of 80s.

I think the main issue here is the gap between looking at roads and vehicles as a practical infrastructure to move people and goods, or as something we actually have feelings about. If we take a practical, economical, society based view, it should be clear that we should find a way to move people and goods in the way that best balances time, cost, environmental impact, and safety. Since most travel is short distance (and long distance travel is better done on public transport if looking at the same parameters), this means that mostly electric, self-driving vehicles should be the norm. What about cyclists, motorcyclists, veteran car enthusiasts, or other people who love to use the roads for recreation? No room for us. The road is for transport.

Obviously, we don't want this. But rather than fighting every little piece of progress (which is a fight we'll lose) we should make sure that we don't lose the big fight, that we're still able to use the road network as a means of experiencing personal freedom.

When the first IC vehicles came out there were a lot of hurdles to cross. There were no fuel stations anywhere--the best you could hope for was somewhere that sold kerosene in bulk(good luck with that! The roads both in the city and in the country were made for horse/wagon transport. Outside the cities roads were basically mud paths, easier for a team of horses than a low powered car. A real problem in cold/snowy weather. They were impossibly expensive--all were hand made, only the rich and well to do could buy one.. Ford designed and priced his cars so that his workers could save up and buy one. There were no mechanics anywhere--you had better be a good mechanic or the car was useless. The first person to ride a bicycle from Ruidoso NM to Socorro NM, over 100 miles, took several days-made headline news, maybe this new and exciting thing was the wave of the future!!
Thank goodness my family kept to horses--those new fangled, smokey, noisy, complicated, impossible to fuel inventions of the devil will never last.:)