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Campaigning with electric cars.
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fab100 View Drop Down
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    Posted: 01 Dec 17 at 12:38pm
Originally posted by Old Timer

Would it be fair to say you are on the fence on the issue then?

Hopefully both analytical and objective as to the big picture, that's all. I have no romantic affiliation to the internal combustion engine nor objection to electric cars per se. If someone wants to give me a BMW i8, I'd struggle along with it, although it'd probably not tow an RS100 to an open meeting.

My youth was misspent trying to think of ways to make a Mirror dinghy go faster around a race-course or generally mucking about on the water, not playing with cars. Did not even start driving until my twenties.

But are any of my assertions incorrect as opposed to uncomfortable but true?


Edited by fab100 - 01 Dec 17 at 12:41pm
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Posts: 1312 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Do Different Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Dec 17 at 12:53pm
I can't see where you're so far of the truth 100, at least as to the short to medium term. To my mind a lot of the information out there is very selective and meat (quorn) & drink to Guardian readers but conveniently ignores a lot of the issues you raise plus rare earth metal mining for one, ...............

edit + (to medium) 


Edited by Do Different - 01 Dec 17 at 12:54pm
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Dec 17 at 1:12pm
Originally posted by johnr

It is pretty funny listening to someone with an electric car tell you how green they are because all their electricity comes from renewables. In their mind the grid has a special cable to their house with only green energy flowing. Obviously when the wind is not blowing in their part of the country there is another wind turbine creating their energy 500 miles way with no transmission losses.
Do they really believe that?

Or is the point that electric cars have the potential to be fuelled by more environmentally sensitive  sources , whereas, combustion will always run on oil. Some days this will be 50% renewable, sometime 5%. On average it is 30%, and that's 30% better than a combustion engine. In the future it could be 100%.



Edited by mozzy - 01 Dec 17 at 1:41pm
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Dec 17 at 1:37pm
Originally posted by fab100

Originally posted by Jack Sparrow

The one sport where I would have immediately thought that the ground swell of support for a environmentally conscious transport future would be inherent, I would have thought, would be sailing. I'm drawn to it precisely 'because' of its use of the natural elements as a form of propulsion. But from what I can see here I've read the landscape completely wrong. Or have I?

So am I, but perhaps because of that, my view of the direction of travel (sorry) towards environmentally conscious transport is that it is misguided. 

Misguided because the electricity for battery operated cars is still mostly going to come from hydro-carbons for the foreseeable future. Misguided because no economy has the electricity generating capacity to power everyone's vehicles. Misguided because no one has yet come up with a truly decent* battery technology or solar power array. Misguided because wind-farms^ are a flippin' awful idea when there is no easy way to store the output and also, when the country needs energy most, winter and summer, that weather usually coincides with their being no wind. Misleading because, if we did all switch to electric cars, the government would have to find a way to tax that energy usage to generate the same revenue as it does today from petrol and diesel.

Not sure a land-yacht would get me up the hill on the way to Frensham though.

* which I would define as giving a max 4 year cost payback (not 15-20 years) without any subsidies and does not scar the earth thru industrial mining of rare materials

^ Windfarms that, through inflated energy prices and subsidies transfer wealth from the poor to the land-owning rich. And chop up birds, bats etc and are also blots on the landscape. I'll further bet that, when they become recognised irrelevancies their operators will be special-pleading for subsidies to take them down and dispose of them.

I think we should look at ways to solve the intermittent production issues rather than ignore the potential. Part of this is storage, and part of it is better integration with global electricity networks. 

I also think relying on an energy source where we have to import large amounts of commodity from unstable or hostile nations is also misguided. 

Soon the majority of wind power will be based offshore, where the landowner is the state. 

Turbines may in your view be a blot on the landscape. Personally I find them vastly favourable to cooling towers and refinery chimneys.  


Edited by mozzy - 01 Dec 17 at 1:45pm
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Posts: 1810 		Post Options Post Options   Quote craiggo Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Dec 17 at 2:21pm
I certainly think we need to develop the way we generate electricity. It's blatantly obvious that our demands are only ever going to increase, and raping the planet to create that energy is either not sustainable for the planet or for human life. At some point we need to properly get behind a means to use non destructive techniques to generate electric.

The problem is (and trust me I am anything but a lefty communist) the rampaging capitalism in the world means that short-term payback, one-page business cases etc. Mean that we are taking the easy option time after time. This type of development is not helped by NIMBYism and general resistance to change.
If successive governments repeatedly fail to take stock of long term proposals (generally because it doesn't fit within their 4yr term) then what chance do we have?



Edited by craiggo - 01 Dec 17 at 2:24pm
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Posts: 1312 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Do Different Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Dec 17 at 2:44pm
Exactly @ 2.21pm. 
I certainly agree burning fossil fuels is not sustainable in the long term, in fact if you look over our time on the planet (for large scale deep resources) it has only been a a blip on the timeline. It has though by effectively providing a cheap source of energy as opposed to man or animal power driven massive expansion of human activity.
I suppose in the final analysis, pretty much all energy on earth comes from or has come from the sun. I don't know enough about nuclear to include or exclude.
So yes Solar, absolutely why not. My beef is when something is sold as a silver bullet when there is still much development work to be done and realistic long term cost (cost as in cost not price) benefit audits thought through.     
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Posts: 6662 		Post Options Post Options   Quote JimC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Dec 17 at 3:27pm
Originally posted by mozzy

whereas, combustion will always run on oil.

Burning fossil fuels is a pretty damn silly idea, no matter what your views on the extent to which climate changes are natural or artificial, but there seems to be no especial reason why IC engine fuel *has* to be sourced from fossil fuels. All (all!) that's required is a more efficient means of alkane synthesis than we have at the moment, and you can bet your ass the big chemical companies are looking for it. If someone finds an efficient means of synthesising octane from atmospheric CO2 then the objections to IC engines largely disappear, and so do an awful lot of energy storage and transmission problems. It will require a big technological breakthrough, but there have been plenty of those in my lifetime: its not impossible.
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Post Options Post Options   Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Dec 17 at 3:42pm
Very true. 

Maybe I exaggerated. The point being that electric cars whilst directly fuelled by electricity they can be indirectly fuelled by anything that produces electricity.  You'd be naive to believe your electric car was burning all clean energy, but there's a good chance that even today a good percentage is clean, and that percentage is rising, and could one day be 100%. 

IC cars are much more directly linked to their fuel source. As such, you'd be waiting for a 'all or nothing' breakthrough to make them really clean. And even then you're at the mercy of the market for the clean fuel. 

Plus, with combustion, you always have the fumes to dispose of. The effect on air quality is unequivocal (regardless of climate change etc). 

Yes, the ultimate cleanliness of eclectic cars will always be linked to the grid's energy mix, but even if they are charged on fossil fuels, at least that 'dirty' energy conversion is done at a site where waste can be treated appropriately, rather than exhausted where the cars are (and people go).  


Edited by mozzy - 01 Dec 17 at 3:52pm
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Posts: 82 		Post Options Post Options   Quote Wiclif Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Dec 17 at 6:29pm
The only sensible reliably green idea that I have seen came from an Irish application to team up a wind farm ( which could just as easily be a solar farm) with a hydro electric scheme.

Then you use the wind farm for power when appropriate and any surplus power is used to pump water uphill. This water drives the hydro electric scheme when the wind farm system is not working due to the weather conditions
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Posts: 6662 		Post Options Post Options   Quote JimC Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 01 Dec 17 at 6:37pm
Originally posted by Wiclif

This water drives the hydro electric scheme when the wind farm system is not working due to the weather conditions

Pump storage. Its common enough. Norway has quite a lot I believe and there are a few schemes in Britain. It does require the right geography though.
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