The Labour Government

Johnny Mars Bar said:
Off the top of my head I’d say EVs making sense to about 20% of new car buyers probably sounds about right.

If you have a driveway you can install a charger on and mostly do short journeys they’re ideal.

If you have to rely on public chargers they make no sense at all.

My view is it makes more environmental sense to maintain existing cars rather than dig up millions of tons of lithium and cobalt to make EVs that have a shelf life of 10 years.

I drive a classic Defender, and I fully expect it to outlive me. That’s sustainability.

And we need to invest more in sustainable fuels. Synthetic petrol is a thing, it just needs more development to be commercially viable.
Click to expand...
Transport is the only sector where Co2 emissions are not really any different to what they were 30 years ago and that's because modern car technology is better but the number of cars on the road has increased massively. These changes have to be accumulative so thinking of your own situation doesn't work.

The keep your old car argument therefore makes no sense. If everybody did this, ie, if all 30 million cars on the road today were replaced by folk clinging onto their classic Defenders then most of us would be dead from the fumes and the Co2 problem would be unimaginably worse.

Production processes nowadays are FAR more efficient than the processes that made your car and meanwhile your car is spitting out more poison such as NOx and far more Co2 than a modern equivalent ever would over any period. It'll probably also be a pig for MPG so you'll be contributing even more through the need to put more petrol in which has to be drilled, refined and transported here.

There is just no world where this can be better than buying an EV, it's impossible. An EV has less moving parts so less production intensity. The worst part of an EV is indeed the battery but EV batteries are completely reusable in other sectors and the battery chemistry is improving, there is no cobalt for example in my Tesla LFP battery.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
inbetween said:
Transport is the only sector where Co2 emissions are not really any different to what they were 30 years ago and that's because modern car technology is better but the number of cars on the road has increased massively. These changes have to be accumulative so thinking of your own situation doesn't work.

The keep your old car argument therefore makes no sense. If everybody did this, ie, if all 30 million cars on the road today were replaced by folk clinging onto their classic Defenders then most of us would be dead from the fumes and the Co2 problem would be unimaginably worse.

Production processes nowadays are FAR more efficient than the processes that made your car and meanwhile your car is spitting out more poison such as NOx and far more Co2 than a modern equivalent ever would over any period. It'll probably also be a pig for MPG so you'll be contributing even more through the need to put more petrol in which has to be drilled, refined and transported here.

There is just no world where this can be better than buying an EV, it's impossible. An EV has less moving parts so less production intensity. The worst part of an EV is indeed the battery but EV batteries are completely reusable in other sectors and the battery chemistry is improving, there is no cobalt for example in my Tesla LFP battery.
Click to expand...
Worth a watch.
 
Johnny Mars Bar said:
Off the top of my head I’d say EVs making sense to about 20% of new car buyers probably sounds about right.

If you have a driveway you can install a charger on and mostly do short journeys they’re ideal.

If you have to rely on public chargers they make no sense at all.

My view is it makes more environmental sense to maintain existing cars rather than dig up millions of tons of lithium and cobalt to make EVs that have a shelf life of 10 years.

I drive a classic Defender, and I fully expect it to outlive me. That’s sustainability.

And we need to invest more in sustainable fuels. Synthetic petrol is a thing, it just needs more development to be commercially viable.
Click to expand...

The proportion of people who have a driveway and only make short journeys, would be MUCH higher than 20%.

The vast majority will only occasionally make a journey beyond the range of a new EV, and well over half of households have driveways. The stats are all over the place on driveways/designated parking, but vary from about 55% to over 70%.

However, many of the places where driveways aren't common, are the very inner city areas, where car ownership is significantly lower - some London boroughs, it's as low as just a quarter of households (and even then is more likely to be a single car). Outside of cities, there's a correlation between wealth and driveways, and wealth and car ownership.

Ultimately, you're probably looking at 60%-70% of new car buyers fitting your "ideal" of access to a charger and mostly short journeys. I'd agree that there's more complexity beyond that ideal, but a significant majority of new car buyers will fit the profile.
 
BobKowalski said:
They are free, so not a bad start or end point. Stepping in to ensure kids start the day with a meal is an excellent proposal.
Click to expand...

Nothing is free.

Hence the worry from the teachers unions that the funding is not in place as things stand.
 
Kompany Car said:
Erm buying mainstream new cars and treating them as an appreciating asset might be more correct. The guy in the big house over the back from me with his DB6 in the garage might think differently.
Click to expand...

I drive a classic Land Rover, also an appreciating asset.

Which brings with it it its own problems when it comes to insurance valuations and security of course.

Modern mainstream plastic shite are designed to be disposable appliances though. Three years on a PCP, hand it back, get the next touch screen washing machine.

Nothing sums this up more than those hateful Tesla things. About as interesting as a dishwasher - and these days my dishwasher is probably worth more than one of them [emoji23]
 
bluenova said:
The proportion of people who have a driveway and only make short journeys, would be MUCH higher than 20%.

The vast majority will only occasionally make a journey beyond the range of a new EV, and well over half of households have driveways. The stats are all over the place on driveways/designated parking, but vary from about 55% to over 70%.

However, many of the places where driveways aren't common, are the very inner city areas, where car ownership is significantly lower - some London boroughs, it's as low as just a quarter of households (and even then is more likely to be a single car). Outside of cities, there's a correlation between wealth and driveways, and wealth and car ownership.

Ultimately, you're probably looking at 60%-70% of new car buyers fitting your "ideal" of access to a charger and mostly short journeys. I'd agree that there's more complexity beyond that ideal, but a significant majority of new car buyers will fit the profile.
Click to expand...

I would imagine people living in or close to cities are the ideal market for EVs though.

I am a bit of a petrol head but I’m not against electric cars. The new Renault 5 looks fantastic, and I also like the Fiat 500.

They are the perfect solution for some people, some of the time. I.e like I said, if you can use a private charger overnight, and only do short journeys.

That isn’t the universal answer in a country where only half the houses have a driveway and public chargers are slow, and more expensive than petrol.

And despite what the Tesla fanboy above said, I do not buy the argument that digging up millions of tons of precious metals and minerals, shipping them round the world on oil tankers to be made into batteries in the far east, to be then shipped around the world again on oil tankers to be put into cars in America and Europe, to be then shipped around the world again, to then be plugged into electric chargers powered by fossil fuels anyway, to then be scrapped after less than 10 years or written off as insurance companies don’t want to touch them for even minor repairs, is somehow a better solution than maintaining existing vehicles and building things to last properly.

The whole argument is a nonsense and nobody is going to gaslight me into thinking otherwise.

What we need to do is invest in sustainable and synthetic fuels that can be put into existing vehicles - and also invest more in public transport and cycling infrastructure.
 
ganganvince said:
Worth a watch.
Click to expand...

Wowser, let's see an equivalent documentary on petrol shall we? The whole point of EV's is not that they're perfect but rather that they're better. We're never going to achieve actual net zero because it's impossible, the only way to do that is to ban driving entirely. EV's are the only currently feasible technology on the horizon which avoids this unless of course we have a different plan to just ignore the Co2 problem.

If we completely ignore the production process then your average petrol car will emit around 5t of Co2 per year but there are 32m petrol cars in the UK. That's 160,000,000t Co2 potentially emitted per year. That's 20-30% of total UK Co2 emissions! 20-30% of UK Co2 emissions are gone if we change to EV's, how is this not better?

I won't even consider the other benefits such as our children not needing to breath in CO, NOx or cancer causing Benzene. We can talk of battery production but then similarly there is the oil and petrol production process which is FAR worse.

co2-by-source.png
 
Last edited by a moderator:
inbetween said:
Wowser, let's see an equivalent documentary on petrol shall we? The whole point of EV's is not that they're perfect but rather that they're better. We're never going to achieve actual net zero because it's impossible, the only way to do that is ban driving entirely. The whole point of EV's is they're better and not that they're perfect.

If we completely ignore the production process then your average petrol car will emit around 5t of Co2 per year but there are 32m petrol cars in the UK. That's 160,000,000mt Co2 potentially emitted per year. That's 20-30% of total UK Co2 emissions! 20-30% of UK Co2 emissions are potentially gone if we change to EV's, how is this not better?

I won't even consider the other benefits such as our children not needing to breath in CO, NOx or cancer causing Benzene. We can talk of battery production but then similarly there is the petrol production process which is FAR worse.

co2-by-source.png
Click to expand...
It’s a no-brainer to turn to EVs, problem is that they are out of reach to so many people due to cost.

I’d get a second hand one but not sure about how long those batteries would last, and as long as it’s not one of Musk’s Swazticars.
 
The Future’s Blue! said:
It’s a no-brainer to turn to EVs, problem is that they are out of reach to so many people due to cost.

I’d get a second hand one but not sure about how long those batteries would last, and as long as it’s not one of Musk’s Swazticars.
Click to expand...
I agree they are out of reach currently but what was car ownership like in the 1920's? It took 50 years for 50% of people to own a car primarily because initially they weren't affordable. It will take time and scale to make things cheaper.

EV cost is totally reliant on the battery cost and if the battery gets 50% cheaper then the car itself becomes 50% cheaper. This is why the entire world is working on battery technology whereas nobody is really working on better petrol engines. The German car makers had to cheat emissions tests because they're at the limit of what can be done.

On longevity, I have had my Tesla for 3 years and the car tells me that my battery has degraded by 5% in that period but the speed of degradation has flattened so it won't get any worse whilst I have it. I have never heard of a single person who has had a battery fail, they're guaranteed for 8 years anyway and there are some that have done over 300,000 miles on one. As the battery chemistry improves this will get even better.
 
Johnny Mars Bar said:
I would imagine people living in or close to cities are the ideal market for EVs though.

I am a bit of a petrol head but I’m not against electric cars. The new Renault 5 looks fantastic, and I also like the Fiat 500.

They are the perfect solution for some people, some of the time. I.e like I said, if you can use a private charger overnight, and only do short journeys.

That isn’t the universal answer in a country where only half the houses have a driveway and public chargers are slow, and more expensive than petrol.

And despite what the Tesla fanboy above said, I do not buy the argument that digging up millions of tons of precious metals and minerals, shipping them round the world on oil tankers to be made into batteries in the far east, to be then shipped around the world again on oil tankers to be put into cars in America and Europe, to be then shipped around the world again, to then be plugged into electric chargers powered by fossil fuels anyway, to then be scrapped after less than 10 years or written off as insurance companies don’t want to touch them for even minor repairs, is somehow a better solution than maintaining existing vehicles and building things to last properly.

The whole argument is a nonsense and nobody is going to gaslight me into thinking otherwise.

What we need to do is invest in sustainable and synthetic fuels that can be put into existing vehicles - and also invest more in public transport and cycling infrastructure.
Click to expand...

Well over half the public could have their own charger (including the vast majority of 2 or 3 car households), and people living in or close to cities are the least likely to use cars. Remember that the average range for a new EV is close to 300 miles. Most of the people who regularly do "short" journeys are those in the suburbs or even in the countryside, not those close to or in cities.

Not sure if you've ever lived in London, but you have to go miles from the centre (and through maybe 4-5 million) people till you get to a point where people regularly drive cars. I lived in Hackney, Haringey and Lambeth, and car ownership was not only ridiculously low compared to areas around Manchester, but car usage was low even for those who had them.

EDIT: isn't there a thread on EVs already?
 
blueinsa said:
So you will understand that nothing is free or guaranteed and that as of now, funding isn’t in place for it yes?
Click to expand...

That's not really what the article says either. It says that some of the pilot schools say they need more money to run it, but then, that's probably expected.

The pilot involves multiple different models, with varying formats, staff levels, food offerings etc., some of which are apparently 75% less costly per pupil. If the point of the pilot is to find the most cost effective, and successful models to role out, then it would be unusual if there wasn't feedback from the schools which were struggling on the budget provided. "Breakfast club running smoothly" might have been "news" forty years ago, but today the negative will always be the first thing highlighted.

Given it's also one of the more high profile manifesto pledges, there's almost no chance that funding isn't ringfenced and in place for it, even with the pressures from the Treasury (and nothing in the article suggests it's not got funding allocated).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top