BBC Top Story. Diesel & Petrol cars banned from 2040

Johno100

50Twuncle wrote: »

We will all have to get used to slow journeys - saving fuel (be it petrol or electricity) - in future
Gone will be the days of just getting into the car and driving for the sake of driving - the only jourmeys that will be allowed, under the new regime will be official journeys where there is no alternative (such as via web based conference calls) and even then, we will need clearance at the highest level !!
You think that this is far fetched ?

In a word - Yes.

Cornucopia

n217970 wrote: »

Imagine the congestion on the industrial estate I work on as everyone leaves at 5pm for the day - 600 uber cars all trying to get into (and out) of the estate in a 10 minute period! Wonder what all 600 will do once the evening rush hour is over....

You think you're getting one each?

There will be automated car sharing and also car conveys, whereby the individual cars link together in virtual chains to improve fuel economy and lessen the impact on other traffic.

n217970

50Twuncle wrote: »

I mean - who will buy a new IC car from, say 2030 - knowing that it's second hand / third hand etc value will be tiny ?

I intend to buy a car with the biggest V8 petrol I can find in December 2039 with no intention of ever caring about its used value. I will use it solely to annoy people.

Herzlos

n217970 wrote: »

I intend to buy a car with the biggest V8 petrol I can find in December 2039 with no intention of ever caring about its used value. I will use it solely to annoy people.

You can barely buy a petrol V8 now, you'll have no chance by 2039 unless one of the boutique manufacturers does a one off run of them.

Maybe a kit car.

There's still 23 years of advancing emissions standards to keep up with.

n217970

Herzlos wrote: »

You can barely buy a petrol V8 now, you'll have no chance by 2039 unless one of the boutique manufacturers does a one off run of them.

Maybe a kit car.

There's still 23 years of advancing emissions standards to keep up with.

The Americans will still be knocking them out - I think its in the constitution or something.

henry24

Herzlos wrote: »

ROSPA recommends a 15 minute break every 2 hours to limit fatigue and improve driving safety. That's only 140 miles at motorway speeds. So even at the best case you're well within the guidelines.

Strange one that when the government says lorry drivers can drive for 4.5 hours without a break or they could work for 10.5 hours and then drive for 4.5 to make a 15 hour day.

almillar

And that is why I said 25-30Gw of power. Every car at 7kw at the same time would be over 200Gw - around 10 - 15% of that figure being charged at the same time does not seem unlikely.

OK, so what impact will the smart charging, addition of local generation, and small scale/large scale storage have? How much extra capacity does that leave us needing? My point is that the people that generate and distribute the energy don't seem bothered, so why should we be?

but electricity can't be stored

Let me introduce you to a wonderful invention called the BATTERY. They're everywhere, I'm surprised you haven't heard of them. They're on the grid already.

at a merge point a driverless is going to use lane 2 if lane 1 is backed up, it will attempt to merge in turn and then it'll either get forced into oncoming traffic OR end up sitting there for several hours.

Strider certainly won't be letting them in!

What is not being faced by the electric vehicle industry and its proponents, is the actual materials used in Nickel-Metal-Hydride (NiMH) batteries

With the exception of Toyota/Lexus, they're all using Lithium Ion, as far as I know, so don't worry about that.
'What about the lithium then?' is your next question - there's no shortage, and there's loads of materials in ICE cars that electric cars don't use, so it's just different stuff being dug up. It doesn't seem to be any more rare than stuff used in ICE cars.

What happens after some of these materials become unobtainable?

You do know what's going to happen to the fossil fuels, don't you? How much of that gets recycled?!

The policy will have changed umpteen times by 2040.

Yes. They've placed a dark cloud over the car industry, and got us plebs talking about it. Who wants to take bets on when someone is going to post, looking for a new car, worried that their ICE car will lose value because it's getting banned?!!

What's the free market got to do with it?

Electric cars ARE cheaper to run. There are GETTING cheaper to buy. There will be a point, when you go to buy a car, where you'll have to pay MORE to have a noisy polluting fire box running under your bonnet. That's market forces pushing you towards an electric car. If we all swallowed all the hype, the car industry could give up making ICE cars long before any ban would come into force. THAT's the free market.

Extraction of the minerals required to make these batteries have a huge effect on the planet. Many tons of material to extract a eggcup of the materials. Are those machines electric?

Same thing, but for ICE cars, and different materials. It's still one car being produced.

When they say ban petrol and diesel, i wonder by that time if hybrid's will be OK?

From what I heard, it has been lost in the details of the announcement that hybrids are still allowed. So a Polo with a petrol engine and a bit of a battery and some regen would be OK (and wouldn't need a charger).

Nephews got the Honda hybrid, an odd one that cannot move under battery power alone? 48mpg. Surely they didnt need to add a motor to do that?

I agree. But come back in, say, 22 years if he's still running it!

Someone also mentioned not everyone fills up at 5:30 on their way home. No not everyone but enough every single day for there to be a decent sized queue every morning and evening at my local petrol station.

You don't have to queue to charge in the comfort of your own driveway.

A BMW i3 will accelerate as fast as an m3. Is quick.

It's quick, it's great (I'd love one) but it's not M3 quick. The fully electric one does 0-60 in 7.2 secs, the Range Extender is slightly slower. Any M3 from this century will have that licked.

You think that this is far fetched ?

Yes, but I think my tinfoil hat might have fallen off.

The rare earth minerals needed to produce the magnets are, as the name suggests, rare and therefore finite. Not only that but extracting them from the Earth is incredibly destructive to the environment

See also: crude oil.

Car_54

almillar wrote: »

Electric cars ARE cheaper to run. There are GETTING cheaper to buy. There will be a point, when you go to buy a car, where you'll have to pay MORE to have a noisy polluting fire box running under your bonnet. That's market forces pushing you towards an electric car. If we all swallowed all the hype, the car industry could give up making ICE cars long before any ban would come into force. THAT's the free market.

But it's not free -it is massively distorted by the heavy taxes on fuel, and to an extent by The differential rates of VED.

As others have already said, the tax regime is bound to change to recoup the lost revenue from fuel.

Herzlos

n217970 wrote: »

The Americans will still be knocking them out - I think its in the constitution or something.

I'm not so sure. Even the Mustang is available in a 2.2l inline 4 "Ecoboost" guise now. I reckon they'll probably have dropped the V8 in all but a symbolic guise in the next 20 years as everyone will buy the cheaper & faster petrol/electic hybrid.

Jackmydad

I find it difficult to get excited about electric cars full stop. To me at least they have all the charisma of an electric fork lift or a milk float.
I'm sure they do everything very efficiently, are quiet and might be less polluting (depending where the juice comes from). But I don't care what the performance figures are, I can't get excited.

They certainly ain't a '67 396 engined Chevy Camaro, or a 1930 4.5 litre Blower Bentley.

Mind you modern cars have become more and more boring to my mind as they have become more computer designed, less polluting, and safer for when the idiots run into each other.
Worthy those things may be. But somehow it makes the products sort of dull.
I'm not talking about performance incidentally. You can't use that legally on the road anyway.
Just that visceral feeling of something actually being exciting.
Probably me being a dinosaur.