Quite a good article here https://www.theguardian.com/fo...en-are-electric-cars

Thanks Mike

Interesting article. It compares electrical energy generated in oil-fired power stations vs energy from petrol. As started above the proportion of fossil fuel generation in the UK is at about 40%, and falling. Obviously the mix varies across Europe. 

The resource and recycling issues around batteries are clearly important too, and complex!

Bruce

Bruce Woodhouse posted:

Thanks Mike

Interesting article. It compares electrical energy generated in oil-fired power stations vs energy from petrol. As started above the proportion of fossil fuel generation in the UK is at about 40%, and falling. Obviously the mix varies across Europe. 

I'm not sure where they get the data from & how they mangle the math,  but this morning the UK NG data is showing power from 'renewables' is only 18.5%,  whereas the fossil generators are CCGT 46.4% & coal 8%.      

Cheers Bruce,

Yes, and there is an interesting life cycle section at the bottom the article. Being a Civil Engineer, I found that interesting, as us engineers often look at life cycle costs and impacts. It found on average, that electric cars have 80% of the emmisions of a petrol car when accounting for production and use.over its life. I thought electric vechiles would have been more favourable than that. Obviously in a country with high sustainable power production, electric vehicles are cleary ahead. I ruled one out where we live due to travel distances and the lack of ability for towing, but as NZ is about 85% hydro, they will certainly become more popular in the cities.

Mike-B posted:

Bruce Woodhouse posted:

Thanks Mike

Interesting article. It compares electrical energy generated in oil-fired power stations vs energy from petrol. As started above the proportion of fossil fuel generation in the UK is at about 40%, and falling. Obviously the mix varies across Europe. 

I'm not sure where they get the data from & how they mangle the math,  but this morning the UK NG data is showing power from 'renewables' is only 18.5%,  whereas the fossil generators are CCGT 46.4% & coal 8%.      

The link was in the post to the UK stats for 2017. see again below. it is obviously seasonal-they also publish Quarterly stats.

https://assets.publishing.serv...otice_March_2018.pdf

Bruce

As an aside, I work in traffic engineering and manage both Roading and Shared Path (walking and cycling) projects. Improving cycleways in towns is a clear environmental winner all round and we are seeing big uptakes in walking and cycling with the paths we are building.

I’m also sure I could quite happily have that i3.

Mike Sullivan posted:

New age European eco warriors drive electric cars using electricity generated by fossils fuels ????

Nope, I buy eco-friendly electricity. I live in a country that have plenty of it.

Electric cars have the advantage that you can make electricity in many ways. Also if you build a completely digitized electric car (replacing mechanics, hydraulics with software) you can produce it cheap and it will have very low service cost. And it will not continously spread toxics, instead you have two sensitive but very isolated points in the cars lifecycle that should be guarded. Making new batteries and taking care of old. 

I have also seen polls that say increasingly the younger generations no longer see ownership of a car as a symbol of success and status. This opens up for new business models like on-demand.

jlarsson posted:

I have also seen polls that say increasingly the younger generations no longer see ownership of a car as a symbol of success and status. This opens up for new business models like on-demand.

I read a very interesting essay a couple of months ago that posited the idea that within 25/30 years private car ownership as we know it would be dead - in cities at least. Self-driving or "smart" cars would be available to pick up on every street, either as part of a subscription or as a PAYG scheme.

I guess it's a transportion equivalent of music streaming - rather than owning a car, your vehicle is always available, and you pay to "rent" the vehicle, as opposed to owning it outright.

I think it a pity that the writer of that essay didn't think about non-urban areas, because such a scheme wouldn't work very well in, say, the Scottish Highlands or rural France, so he may be overstating the case a little. And, despite what the polls say, we must never understimate human beings' craving for status or outward signs of success. For some - a dwindling minority perhaps - a flash Lambo, McLaren or Beemer will always hold appeal.

Kevin-W posted:

jlarsson posted:

I have also seen polls that say increasingly the younger generations no longer see ownership of a car as a symbol of success and status. This opens up for new business models like on-demand.

I read a very interesting essay a couple of months ago that posited the idea that within 25/30 years private car ownership as we know it would be dead - in cities at least. Self-driving or "smart" cars would be available to pick up on every street, either as part of a subscription or as a PAYG scheme.

I guess it's a transportion equivalent of music streaming - rather than owning a car, your vehicle is always available, and you pay to "rent" the vehicle, as opposed to owning it outright.

I think it a pity that the writer of that essay didn't think about non-urban areas, because such a scheme wouldn't work very well in, say, the Scottish Highlands or rural France, so he may be overstating the case a little. And, despite what the polls say, we must never understimate human beings' craving for status or outward signs of success. For some - a dwindling minority perhaps - a flash Lambo, McLaren or Beemer will always hold appeal.

Sure, that is my guess. Building a software-based car needs much less expertise (given you buy the software) which will level the playing field allowing the likes of china in, the software will always keep the car in trim and adjusted and we will se no-name.cars (like all those low-cost no-name PC:s we had for a while) cheaply produced in asia combining highly standardised components (given drivers is available). On top of that you will have more expensive brand cars from Apple, Microsoft etc.

And of course you can buy your own car if you need it, and as Steve Jobs said ”there will always be a need for trucks”.

Look at what happened to recording studios for top-40 music. In 1990 they were still using large electromevhanical multi-tracks (some analog, some digital), mixing desks, fx-boxes. 15 years later you had everything in the box (the computer), all software.

Or compare a Devialet-amp which is all software and replace typically six naim black-boxes and does it with 90% efficiency. No, it doesnt give you the naim-sound but maybe someday there will be a naim-brand plugin for the Devialet :-)

jan - software activist!

I think the concept is likely one day, and maybe 20-30 years ttime might see that for town transport, but as you say rural areas have more complex requirements. Hiwever, reflecting on that I suppose you won’t go and pick up a driverless car, instead you’ll call it, so that would work anywhere, provided one is available and located sufficiently near. 

As for status, I’ve never understood people feeling that the size or cost of a car (or watch etc) is something they want others to recognise in order to enhance status - that actually indicates an inferiority complex! For me, if I have something expensive I’d rather hide it or disguise it.

And althiugh I know others do, I don’t ascribe status to others  on the basis of their car, maybe rather the reverse as I may laugh at the person with nothing better to do than to wash and polish his shiny car every Sunday, and I may make mental character judgements many of which people might  not like to realise are the thoughts promoted by their  choice of car: the Chelsea Taxi response has been mentioned on this thread already, then there are BMW owners, Renault Kangoo owners,, hood-down-whatever-the-weather convertible owners, supermini GTi owners, Mondeo owners, etc - though other types of car may cause me to recognise that someone has good taste...????

This week we've observed two different cars being driven locally; both are tuned versions of shopping cars, one an Abarth 500 the other a Focus ST. And both have huge exhausts coupled with engine mgmt changes that for some reason cause the drivers to accelerate hard [in busy built-up areas] then lift off causing overrun exhaust blowbacks and a bit of crackling & popping. Once is a bit stupid, watching it happen from when the car looms into view from one direction and disappears in the other indicates that an utter pillock is at the wheel. But it generates a smile and a laugh at it all as they kangaroo up the road spitting and farting. 

winkyincanada posted:

Don Atkinson posted:

winkyincanada posted:

Don Atkinson posted:

winkyincanada posted:

 

 

Well naturally you would. Your view gives you the ability to act as you please, without consideration of the consequences to others. And that's OK by you, because it's within the "rules".

Winky, you really must keep up.

My view is clearly stated, “if the rules allow.......do so responsibly, in consideration of others......”

Your view is clearly stated “We (ie you and yours) can act within the rules and still be sel-centred, selfish, short-sighted and cruel...........” etc. 

Please don’t get these opposing points of view confuseD.

Saying it doesn't make it so. You're missing the nuance. These things aren't necessarily opposing points at all. They are two overlapping, complementary and parallel guides as to how we behave. Everything we do has consequences for others. Playing by the "rules" doesn't change this in the slightest. Each of us is guided by our values and by our empathy. We can play by the rules and still act egregiously towards others. We perhaps don't consider our choice to drive vast distances to be unreasonable because it's within the rules. The consequences to others is abstract and in the future, so we don't consider our choice to be selfish at all. We pay for our cars and our petrol/diesel so it our business, and ours alone. Until the rules are changed we will conveniently ignore the real consequences of our actions. Because we assume too much of "the rules" in guiding our actions.

We can all claim we act "responsibly, in consideration of others" but we all know this is only partially true. We all make selfish choices all the time. How we reconcile that with our values varies.

(Why have all your family and friends moved so far away from you? Maybe they don't like you much.)

well done winky.

Looks like you've decided after all to align yourself with my view (and actions) that regardless of the rules, you need to be considerate etc But as you say, actions speak louder than words.

What a pity you couldn't refrain from making that comment in parenthesis.

I've decided nothing of the sort. You're interpreting what I say completely opposite to my intent. What I'm saying is that we can all choose to be selfish ar$h0le$ and still be within the rules. Not that acting within the rules confers some sort of moral authority, provided we are "considerate" (whatever that means). I'm saying that someone can choose an extremely selfish lifestyle, basically stealing from the future, and still not be doing anything illegal. Yes, we all do it, some of us more than others.

I'm surprised you don't know what "considerate" means. Amongst other things it means to chosing not to be selfish ar$holes and not claiming moral authority. it also precludes an extremely selfish lifestyle, or stealing from the future .I do agree with your comment which basically amounts to none of us being perfect in this respect.

it still looks to me as if you have now chosen to align yourself with my views and (with some success) my actions.

Don Atkinson posted:

I'm surprised you don't know what "considerate" means. Amongst other things it means to chosing not to be selfish ar$holes and not claiming moral authority. it also precludes an extremely selfish lifestyle, or stealing from the future .I do agree with your comment which basically amounts to none of us being perfect in this respect.

it still looks to me as if you have now chosen to align yourself with my views and (with some success) my actions.

 

"Considerate" is in quotes because of the relative nature of the word. One person's "considerate" can fall well outside another's understanding of what that word means. I truly don't wish to align with your actions of maintaining two homes in two countries, and of routinely flying and driving (what I consider to be) vast distances. May my "success" in that regard be non-existent.

ChrisR_EPL posted:

This week we've observed two different cars being driven locally; both are tuned versions of shopping cars, one an Abarth 500 the other a Focus ST. And both have huge exhausts coupled with engine mgmt changes that for some reason cause the drivers to accelerate hard [in busy built-up areas] then lift off causing overrun exhaust blowbacks and a bit of crackling & popping. Once is a bit stupid, watching it happen from when the car looms into view from one direction and disappears in the other indicates that an utter pillock is at the wheel. But it generates a smile and a laugh at it all as they kangaroo up the road spitting and farting. 

LOL it's called poor tuning - probably one of these add on boxes off the internet.   A properly tuned car doesn't do it.

I’ve never understood people, typically ‘boy racer’ types, who max out their cars and fit super-loud exhausts, then go racing around. Motorcyclists do it too. If I am speeding the last thing I want is for my vehicle to call attention to itself, notifying police a mile ahead that there’s a speeding car approaching!  

But maybe the sound of an exhaust reflects a person’s personality, as per the examples given by ChrisR_EPL ...

Innocent Bystander posted:

I’ve never understood people, typically ‘boy racer’ types, who max out their cars and fit super-loud exhausts, then go racing around. Motorcyclists do it too. If I am speeding the last thing I want is for my vehicle to call attention to itself, notifying police a mile ahead that there’s a speeding car approaching!  

But maybe the sound of an exhaust reflects a person’s personality, as per the examples given by ChrisR_EPL ...

I think you've captured it in the expression boy racer.  It is adolescent behaviour.  If and when they mature they will look back at such antics with some embarrassment.   

MDS posted:

Innocent Bystander posted:

I’ve never understood people, typically ‘boy racer’ types, who max out their cars and fit super-loud exhausts, then go racing around. Motorcyclists do it too. If I am speeding the last thing I want is for my vehicle to call attention to itself, notifying police a mile ahead that there’s a speeding car approaching!  

But maybe the sound of an exhaust reflects a person’s personality, as per the examples given by ChrisR_EPL ...

I think you've captured it in the expression boy racer.  It is adolescent behaviour.  If and when they mature they will look back at such antics with some embarrassment.   

Exactly. The folly of youth. A tad embarrassing looking back now but great fun at the time. Loved my RS Turbo 

I have a work colleague with a Lotus who took me for a spin. The exhausts were loud enough to set car alarms off in the car park when he gunned the engine and that was an £80k car, he's nearing 60 but still posts videos on Youtube as he goes through tunnels with the windows down to capture the full V6 aural assault. Once a boy racer.....

As an ex-Mini tuner of some local repute, I quickly discovered that adding a large-bore loud exhaust was an excellent way of deducting some 10hp or so from the engines's power output. And when you've only got 50 to start with, that's quite a chunk (note - a standard 850 Mini produced only 15hp at the wheels).

tonym posted:

As an ex-Mini tuner of some local repute, I quickly discovered that adding a large-bore loud exhaust was an excellent way of deducting some 10hp or so from the engines's power output. And when you've only got 50 to start with, that's quite a chunk (note - a standard 850 Mini produced only 15hp at the wheels).

They're good for turbocharged engines though of which the current Focus ST is equipped.   Pulse tuning isn't required here.  One downside is the pressure differential can cause the turbo seals to leak oil into the exhaust downpipe so when you boot it again you get a nice puff of smoke.

I've got 315 at the wheels

james n posted:

 

Exactly. The folly of youth. A tad embarrassing looking back now but great fun at the time. Loved my RS Turbo 

Not for me!  Briefly a Hillman Hunter 1725, then an Audi 100S Coupé - Escort and Capri beater with style! Never a British junk heap again.

Ok, Morris Minor (split screen); Hillman Minx (I think !); Singer Gazzell; Land Rover (Trucial States and Oman - no roads so pretty well essential) Hillman Hunter 1725 Estate; Range Rover; Mercedes 123; Mercedes 420 S; Mercedes E Class Estate;

Not a single Boy Racer in sight. And based on the Teslar S and BMW i3 at work, not a single e-car on the horizon.

Thought you guys would enjoy this Dieselgate article from the Wall Street Journal running Jan 5, 2019.   This thread had been giving me a complex!  Now I don't have to feel so guilty about my Cayenne Diesel.

The Lessons of ‘Dieselgate’

Insane amounts of political capital were spent trying to wring meaningless CO2 reductions from cars.

Angela Merkel had a bad 2018. Outsiders heard the word “migrants” during her party’s many electoral defeats. But a more urgent concern for millions of German voters was the fate of diesel cars they bought because they were told it was good for climate change.

In May, Hamburg became the first city to ban all but the most recent diesel models from its downtown. Well, parts of its downtown anyway—those parts suspiciously close to air-quality monitoring stations.

Other large cities such as Cologne, Bonn and Düsseldorf have rolled out more-stringent bans or must soon do so thanks to environmental lawsuits. Stuttgart, home of Daimler and Porsche, will impose a citywide ban. Starting next month, Frankfurt—the nation’s financial capital—is under orders to outlaw a quarter of the vehicles registered to city residents. Even a stretch of the autobahn near Essen will be closed to diesels.

In typical fashion, Ms. Merkel dithered forcefully through several party elections, hinting that the snafu would be fixed at the expense of German auto makers, not taxpayers or car owners. Voters were not fooled. Now Ms. Merkel is a lame duck. Meanwhile, the travails of the German car industry are cited, most recently by the Bundesbank, as a factor in Europe’s sudden and ominous economic slowdown.

The air-quality lawsuits were the work of a small group known in English as Environment Action Germany, which goes by the German acronym DUH, and is funded mainly by donations from Germany’s central and regional governments (and Toyota).

It doesn’t help that DUH was itself once a proselytizer for “clean diesel,” even pushing the technology on U.S. environmental groups as a quicker way to bring down carbon-dioxide emissions than waiting for electric cars to catch on.

Diesel does deliver a tad less CO2 per mile than gasoline but produces more smog and particulates, a detractor that turned out not to be fixable. Remember theVolkswagen scandal of 2015, when U.S. regulators ended the charade by discovering that emissions from imported VWs were 400% worse than advertised?

To this day, though, nobody in Europe is willing to acknowledge the biggest flaw in the continent’s now-defunct regulatory fetish for diesel.

However you slice it, cars just aren’t that big a part of an ostensible CO2 problem. Personal cars sit idle 95% of the time. Planes, trains, ships, trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles account for well over half the emissions associated with the transport sector globally. And the transport sector itself accounts for only 14% of all emissions.

Now for the knee-jerk response from groups like Union of Concerned Scientists: Yes, but road-vehicle emissions are a significant share of total emissions in the U.S. and Europe.

This is a perfect example of the politics of the meaningless gesture, the dominant motif in climate policy. The planet doesn’t care where the emissions happen. The U.S. and Europe could ban driving altogether and it wouldn’t make a sizable difference. For real leverage over CO2, the target has to be heavy industry, electricity generation, and home heating and cooking.

So why the car obsession? It’s a mental legacy of the air-pollution fights of the 1970s. To many voters, the car remains a sinful object. Eco groups, for purposes of self-promotion, can’t go wrong by portraying themselves as fighting against the automobile. Yet they get virtually nowhere on the alleged problem of CO2 by doing so.

Result: Insane amounts of political capital are spent trying to wring meaningless reductions from cars rather than spending it where it might do some good (such as reviving nuclear power). A case in point is a new European standard, announced two weeks ago, that would require emission cuts of 37.5% from new autos by 2030.

This target, it’s already clear, will be met by car makers subsidizing consumers to buy electric cars to offset profitable petrol and diesel cars. Europeans pretend these electric cars will be charged with wind and solar power. They won’t be. Germany already is clearing a forest to open a new coal mine to supplement its heavily subsidized but inadequate wind and solar power.

Europe’s diesel folly ranks as a colossal policy screw-up. Even today preferential taxes, a legacy of the push for diesel, continue to incentivize Europeans to buy such vehicles. The problem isn’t just Western governments reaching the limits of their competence (though that’s a factor that bears careful consideration). A whole generation of green activists and politicians probably will have to die away before rational priorities for limiting CO2 emissions will be discussable. When that day comes, you’ll know it because nobody will be lying to you that putting a Tesla in your driveway is the solution to climate change.

@skip - I fail to see why this would make you feel less bad about driving a diesel vehicle. 

Also - I still don't understand why VW AG thought they would get away with cheating on the emissions tests.