New internal combustion car sales to be banned in UK in 15 years

[alan.chalkley]

Originally Posted by Captain Snooze

Yep, sure, I get that but if things go pear-ish shaped maybe we'll just get a high efficiency solar powered bus. Maybe long distance private transport will dwindle away. Who knows? I will ask one of our neighbourhood magpies tomorrow.

Try asking a kangaroo with a joey in her pouch , where is the nearest electric car charging station?
When things go pear shaped i use my bicycle.

[why?]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

Need to change the perspective away from the North American idea of distances and range when considering battery charge life in the UK.
The currant range of electric cars is 150 to 300 miles.
Great Briton is only 300 miles wide and 600 miles long. It is about the same size as Florida. This puts most of the country within reach with only 2 to 4 charges at current ranges.
[IMG]https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-10/25/11/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane02/sub-buzz-8112-1477408406-2.jpg?downsize=700:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto[/IMG]
The average American drives 30 miles a day. The average in the UK is 10 miles. People just simply live closer to their work places. They also have a much more effective public rail system that covers most of the country.
The USA has 838 vehicles per 1,000 people. The UK has 471. This is almost half as many vehicles per capita which is significant.
So, even considering variables such as people that travel to mainland Europe, traffic flow (it can be horrid) and charging infrastructure an all EV mandate is viable there even at todays levels. It will no doubt be much, much better in 15 years.

It isn't about range. Do these current batteries discharge over time? How long can they sit and not be used?


Companies like Toyota are spending billions on the next generation of batteries. I can only imagine how much cash VW is stuffing into it. If they get zero out of that money in 5 years how long are they going to keep spending? Supposedly Toyota says what they are working on will be able to charge extremely quickly, like 15 minutes or so. If that comes to pass then range anxiety will cease to be a thing. Toyota has mentioned as early as 2021 as a date they are aiming for to produce these solid state batteries for cars. If they even miss that by a year or two it will still totally change everything and these mandates will seem silly. The other important part is weight. If they can figure out how to make them weigh less that can also change the range. Technology can advance rapidly when companies spend this much money to change things. Governments only screw things up.



The UK isn't the USA. You don't need any vehicle in the UK, so the people that do have them use them differently. They can sit for weeks doing nothing. Do we even know if that is going to cause any issues? Are people going to have to worry if these batteries sit for a month or more? What about if they are used only once a week to go get groceries or run errands? Will the batteries wear down faster in that type of use case?


No one knows what will happen in a year, never mind 5 or 15.

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

Care to elaborate? I don’t see how this statement makes any sense.

It makes perfect sense. Companies are spending billions on making better electric vehicles. We will know far before 15 years whether or not they are going to make them the car of the future or just another has been that cannot work. Who knows when someone will make some amazing advance in materials or technology that makes everything we use completely useless. It only takes one amazing invention to make cars yesterday's horse. Work is being done on actual transporters. Who would use a car if you could just transport everywhere?

Originally Posted by soundman98

this doesn't make any sense.

see above.

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by Lantanafrs2

But there are enough powertrain recalls to make me wonder if they'll ever get it right. And notwithstanding recalls, how about throw out bearings, cvts that fail after 50k miles, 1000 dollar water pump replacements etc.

The recalls are not an issue with them "getting it right" with engine design or manufacturing. The actual number of failures that cause recalls can be surprisingly few but in this modern age of litigation the companies have to over react to avoid hassles.
Parts wear and have to be replaced. Some will be poorly made and wear early but that can happen with anything. The parts on an ICE take a lot of shit. The engine works by rapid explosions after all. The stress on the rest of the drivetrain can make even the slightest flaw appear.
There has never been nor will be a such thing as a "perfect" ICE that never wears or breaks.
Electric motors greatly reduce the number of moving parts which in turn greatly reduces the possible failure points. They also do away with the whole idea of operating by controlled explosions so don't have near the stress factors.
The $1,000 water pump replacement has nothing to do with the actual part but the cost of labour now. No surprise that businesses want to actually make money on their services and charge a rate that is in line with anything else. I recently came across a workorder from 1977 that detailed the costs to remove and replace the rear end in my 64 Impala. The total cost was $180! This sounds really cheap until you consider that I earned $133 a week at that time.


All in all it isn't nearly as bad as you seem to think.

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by why?

It isn't about range. Do these current batteries discharge over time? How long can they sit and not be used?

.

Sorry! I read your comment as a range issue. Yes, there are certainly other considerations but I don't know enough about EV battery life while sitting to intelligently discuss that.

[WolfpackS2k]

One can approach this as a chicken egg situation (though I don't think it is). Better EV infrastructure is currently needed because the battery tech is (laughably) far behind where it needs to be for mainstream acceptance. With current battery tech EVs will remain a tiny blip of the market, mostly continuing as novelty items for the wealthy. EVs won't take over much market share until there is a huge leap forward in battery tech (Not a refinement of current Li batteries - will be different base materials altogether).

Remember how shitty an automated manual transmission was in 2005? That's how people will view current battery tech in 15 years. The UK's governance of technology (for 2035) is probably wishful thinking, but they get high marks for dreaming.

CO2 concern is humorous at best, though its comical to see how many people get all hot and bothered about it (pun intended). Watching Australia muck things up over the last decade or so has been highly entertaining, though I feel sorry for their population.

[mav1178]

Originally Posted by alan.chalkley

Here down under where most of our land does not have sealed roads , we might as well go back to riding horses , rather than waiting for solar panels to charge electric cars.

Again, the analogy that Tcoat made about UK vs US applies to your statement.

Why are you comparing a country the size of the US to a country that is almost the same size as New Zealand?

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

Um, EVs have water pumps too...

You mean one of these Telsa water pumps? Yeah, I have a similar pump for my Harrop Supercharger. It is electric, which means it is external and would be super easy to fix. Failures and leaks could happen, but for the Q5, this meant putting the car in a service position, removing the supercharger, the belts and a number of other hoses.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by Captain Snooze

I am going full on, high boost turbo pessimistic pedant mode. I hope you're sitting down.
Deep breath, here we go.

Yes we can. This ball of rock we live on doesn't care if we radically reduce the population of just about every living thing on it.


I am reminded of Tragedy of the Commons.
"The tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

There is a lot that we can do. We could simply dump trash in our neighborhoods and graffiti everything. We could use illegal pesticides on our crops and cause everyone to get cancer. We could close all the hospitals and let people just deal with there own illnesses and injuries. We could end all laws and allow whoever chooses to kill, rape and steal as they please. We could start fires for fun and burn cities. "This ball of rock we live on doesn't care if we radically reduce the population of just about every living thing on it."

The wife and I don't have or want kids, so we aren't invested in future progeny like others are, yet we still care because that is our nature.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by why?

It isn't about range. Do these current batteries discharge over time? How long can they sit and not be used?

The UK isn't the USA. You don't need any vehicle in the UK, so the people that do have them use them differently. They can sit for weeks doing nothing. Do we even know if that is going to cause any issues? Are people going to have to worry if these batteries sit for a month or more? What about if they are used only once a week to go get groceries or run errands? Will the batteries wear down faster in that type of use case?

No one knows what will happen in a year, never mind 5 or 15.

It makes perfect sense. Companies are spending billions on making better electric vehicles. We will know far before 15 years whether or not they are going to make them the car of the future or just another has been that cannot work. Who knows when someone will make some amazing advance in materials or technology that makes everything we use completely useless. It only takes one amazing invention to make cars yesterday's horse. Work is being done on actual transporters. Who would use a car if you could just transport everywhere?

I have a Lithium-Iron Shorai battery (5lbs) on my Ducati. I can leave the bike sitting for 4-6 months, and it starts right up every time--no battery tender. I've had the battery since 2014. Read up; this isn't an issue:

https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/...self_discharge

Transporters like Star Trek? Ok, back to reality.

We already know they are the car of the future. They already are at the current battery levels. It'll only get better.

[serialk11r]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

You mean one of these Telsa water pumps? Yeah, I have a similar pump for my Harrop Supercharger. It is electric, which means it is external and would be super easy to fix. Failures and leaks could happen, but for the Q5, this meant putting the car in a service position, removing the supercharger, the belts and a number of other hoses.

Well Audi needs to get with the program and go with electric pumps already like Toyota and BMW!

Any electric pump replacement on a Tesla is still going to be some sizeable chunk of cash, since the service people are going to have to disconnect hoses, top up the coolant, bleed it, etc.

Again, I think when they figure out the next gen 2x capacity battery I think gas engines will nearly go extinct, but not for maintenance cost reasons. I don't think all those people driving old Hondas and Toyotas are worried about maintenance cost.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by WolfpackS2k

One can approach this as a chicken egg situation (though I don't think it is). Better EV infrastructure is currently needed because the battery tech is (laughably) far behind where it needs to be for mainstream acceptance. With current battery tech EVs will remain a tiny blip of the market, mostly continuing as novelty items for the wealthy. EVs won't take over much market share until there is a huge leap forward in battery tech (Not a refinement of current Li batteries - will be different base materials altogether).

Remember how shitty an automated manual transmission was in 2005? That's how people will view current battery tech in 15 years. The UK's governance of technology (for 2035) is probably wishful thinking, but they get high marks for dreaming.

CO2 concern is humorous at best, though its comical to see how many people get all hot and bothered about it (pun intended). Watching Australia muck things up over the last decade or so has been highly entertaining, though I feel sorry for their population.

The biggest problem with mainstream acceptance is range anxiety, which is largely just that, anxiety and not an actual issue for the majority of people, and the other problem is the infrastructure. One of the biggest hurdles in the infrastructure is overnight charging, since many people rent homes or live in apartments, so they would be reliant on chargers/superchargers, and we just don't have enough superchargers for mass adoption. Current tech is V3 superchargers. If battery technology didn't improve, but those superchargers were everywhere then it wouldn't really be an issue. It only gets better in time.

Climate change deniers are like ostriches with their head in the sand. What is amazing is how fast the world was able to react to the destruction of the ozone layer in a bipartisan way and make real changes, but many choose not to see the damage of releasing 6.8 billion metric tons or 6.8 gigatons (15.1 trillion pounds) of CO2 into the atmosphere each year (in the US alone). The world does over 25 gigatons. Smog is visible in areas like LA, and that is at a time where cars have catalytic converters. Imagine if we didn't have those. Imagine if the smog was twice as bad, four times as bad, twenty times as bad. LA already has air warnings for outdoor exercising and recreation and people die because of it, so the issue of emissions is already real. Even republicans in office are starting to acknowledge climate change (maybe big oil isn't paying them enough, or they are starting to look like fools in the face of the evidence or their inaction or in light of the actions they need to take which may be in contrast to what they deny).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation...CA4)_2017/2018

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicato...-gas-emissions

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/...701-story.html

[nextcar]

Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0

. Imagine if the smog was twice as bad, four times as bad, twenty times as bad. LA already has air warnings for outdoor exercising and recreation and people die because of it, so the issue of emissions is already real.

Some of us old farts don't have to imagine...

In the 1970's, you could not see across the LA basin. The valley air was brown and visibility was a couple miles on a GOOD day.

Truth is this is not so much a partisan problem anymore; rather a global one. I have been in manufacturing cities in China that are worse than LA ever was. I had a flight cancelled because of air pollution being so bad visibility was in the 100s of feet. And China manufacturing is not the only problem either... the amount of methane gas released by industrialized cattle farming is astonishing.

What am I rambling on about? Electric cars may help, but I doubt they are anywhere near sufficient, and the problem is far bigger than American politics.... As you correctly point out it took a global ban (not bipartisan) on the aerosols responsible for ozone damage to effect change, and even then there were violations in the name of profit.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by serialk11r

Well Audi needs to get with the program and go with electric pumps already like Toyota and BMW!

Any electric pump replacement on a Tesla is still going to be some sizeable chunk of cash, since the service people are going to have to disconnect hoses, top up the coolant, bleed it, etc.

Again, I think when they figure out the next gen 2x capacity battery I think gas engines will nearly go extinct, but not for maintenance cost reasons. I don't think all those people driving old Hondas and Toyotas are worried about maintenance cost.

For an external pump, and due to the ease of access, I would just do it myself. I don't believe any special tools would be needed, but again, the failure rate is far less.

If range anxiety exists on the EVs then maintenance/failure anxiety exists on ICEs. This is one of the chief reasons why people trade up a vehicle that is close to being out of warranty or why they lease vehicles. Besides the engines, the more complicated transmissions can fail and other parts wear out more like the brakes; on an EV, the regen greatly improves the life of the brakes.

[Irace86.2.0]

Originally Posted by nextcar

Some of us old farts don't have to imagine...

In the 1970's, you could not see across the LA basin. The valley air was brown and visibility was a couple miles on a GOOD day.

Truth is this is not so much a partisan problem anymore; rather a global one. I have been in manufacturing cities in China that are worse than LA ever was. I had a flight cancelled because of air pollution being so bad visibility was in the 100s of feet. And China manufacturing is not the only problem either... the amount of methane gas released by industrialized cattle farming is astonishing.

What am I rambling on about? Electric cars may help, but I doubt they are anywhere near sufficient, and the problem is far bigger than American politics.... As you correctly point out it took a global ban (not bipartisan) on the aerosols responsible for ozone damage to effect change, and even then there were violations in the name of profit.

Thanks for sharing your experiences.

Car emissions are a huge slice of the pie, especially in local smog, as it pertains to areas like LA. Less than 5% of greenhouse emissions come from animal farming, but I agree that it is a part of the issue. Unfortunately, the US is a big producer of greenhouse gases, but our administration isn't taking the issue very seriously. As Musk has said, China's goals are more aggressive than the US, which they should be because if they matched our per capita then we are all screwed, but we are the worst, so we need to get it together.



https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/cc/inventory/background/co2.htm





https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/ove...eenhouse-gases



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenh...sions_by_China