BBC Top Story. Diesel & Petrol cars banned from 2040

Cornucopia

parking_question_chap wrote: »

Yeah, dont get me wrong. I would love to be able to enter a destination into my own car then have a nap. Just dont think it will happen.

I think it will happen. But I think it will take more time, and there will be tragic accidents (and people will complain that a person could have prevented them, conveniently forgetting all the other accidents that people cause).

Possibly the most dangerous time will be when there are a mix of driven and driverless vehicles sharing the roads.

almillar

But outright banning products from being sold is ridiculous. Whatever happened to us living in a free market?

Agreed, I don't like the ban. But petrol cars may stop being economically viable vs electric before that anyway, and market forces will make them stop production before any ban matters. Niche producers should be allowed to make them. No point in an A-B car being petrol in the future, but can't we have a place for sports cars etc?!

oh we now need 100GW extra power. The grid only does around 60GW now in total. These figures may look high and worse case but we are going to need at least an additional 25-30GW of capacity for normal demand. I must remember to dig this thread up in 2041 - if I don't its because we have run out of electricity.

Disagree. Not every electric car, will use its full capacity, every day, and charge at the same time. The charger speed was just the tip of the iceberg. You can't just add everything up and come up with worst case. In that case, we need a pump for every single ICE car on the road! Your only solution looks to be more power stations, there are so many other solutions.

So - perhaps 50 million in another 23 years

Ah right. So when does the petrol run out for all these extra cars? Maybe they're onto something with moving away from fossil fuels after all.
I'll say it again, smart charging. It's not here yet, but if the electric companies actually felt the need, they could do it. EG you plug your half empty car into your home charger when you get home - demand is high - instead of 7kW, you get 1kW. No problem, the car will still be full by the morning, and supply can ramp up overnight anyway. Or maybe you've got solar panels and a battery - the car can charge off that (filled in the sun during the day) instead of the grid. It's not rocket science.

n217970

almillar wrote: »

Disagree. Not every electric car, will use its full capacity, every day, and charge at the same time.

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.

unholyangel

parking_question_chap wrote: »

Though there will be the cost of the battery replacement to factor in.

I also dissagree with the labour issue. Whilst computers are really beneficial to automation problems will always arise where you have the need for thought outside of what the computer knows.

That is one of the reasons we still have pilots on planes, the auto pilot is perfectly able to complete the whole journey by itself. But there will be times that the computer will either fail, or be faced with a set of data that it just cannot deal with. This is where you need human input to be able to make judgement calls and regain control of the situation.

Whilst its good for films and media clickbait, driverless cars are never going to become a reality imo.

This is the thing with "robots" though. They don't need to be flawless. They just need to be less flawed than humans.

However, while it might get you your taxi cheaper (not by much though given someone is going to have to buy the vehicle, keep it maintained, make a profit off it etc), it will put people out of work. Which will decrease our tax revenue, increase the amount paid in benefits and decrease economic activity as those people no longer have disposable income to buy from other industries (and therefore, support the jobs in those industries).

All of our jobs rely on other people being in work and having the money to buy whatever goods/services our companies produce. Its why I'll support companies who offer decent employment terms/wages to their employees over ones who would prefer not to employ people/only employs them on low pay & as little rights as possible. The latter may offer a cheaper price on the face of it, but the overall cost is higher.

Aylesbury_Duck

Herzlos wrote: »

But they won't - most people won't need to recharge every day and can use smart chargers to shift the load around. Half of the cars on the road don't stop at a petrol station at 5:30pm on the way home.

When you plug an EV in, you can normally set when you want it charged by, so most will charge at some point overnight. Most will probably only need charged once or twice a week.

We'll need to provide some new infrastructure, but it certainly won't be unmanageable.

Exactly. The technology to adapt to load on the grid already exists. There are appliances like fridges/freezers that don't need to be continually powered and where very cheap adaptations can measure load on the grid and when that load is high, temporarily stop powering the appliance until the load reduces or the appliance's temperature rises above a set point. The charging could work in the same way, where you can "plug in and forget" and the sensible charger manages the load accordingly.

Strider590

Re: Self driving cars... No, won't happen.

A self driving car has to follow the highway code to the letter, not the "my way code" but the actual highway code. Try it for yourself, see how many people you p*ss off on your way home and see how many more near misses you have.

For a start, 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.

50Twuncle

Aylesbury_Duck wrote: »

Exactly. The technology to adapt to load on the grid already exists. There are appliances like fridges/freezers that don't need to be continually powered and where very cheap adaptations can measure load on the grid and when that load is high, temporarily stop powering the appliance until the load reduces or the appliance's temperature rises above a set point. The charging could work in the same way, where you can "plug in and forget" and the sensible charger manages the load accordingly.

Thermostats - They already exist and have done for 100years +

[Deleted User]

When it comes to demand for charging everyone's making arguments based on diversity and averages, but electricity can't be stored, so the grid has to be capable of meeting peak demand, not the mean. It's no good if the system falls over because everyone wants their car charged the night before a bank holiday.

[Deleted User]

50Twuncle wrote: »

Thermostats - They already exist and have done for 100years +

Freezers already have thermostats, what AD is talking about is the proposal for smart freezers that are capable of deferring demand at peak times.

n217970

Strider590 wrote: »

For a start, 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.

Rubbish, there will be plenty of other driverless cars in lane 1 which will let it merge in.

The bigger issue with driverless cars will be people like me will be sat at a junction and see said car coming along with priority and think "f*** it, it'll brake".