Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

Grumpy_chap

shinytop said:

The Times is reporting that the EU ICE ban is being binned for another 5 years.  Are we now an outlier?

"The EU is set to push back its ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by five years to 2040, piling pressure on the UK to rethink the automotive sector’s net-zero commitments.

Senior industry leaders have confirmed that Brussels will revise its 2035 ban on the sale of cars powered by internal combustion engines, although the timing of the announcement is yet to be confirmed."

Maybe that is a reason to bring the UK end of ICE forwards so that we develop a leading EV industry and can achieve amazing success selling our proven products across EU where their manufacturers have stuck with the past...

orrery

shinytop said:

The Times is reporting that the EU ICE ban is being binned for another 5 years.  Are we now an outlier?

...

The Tory press are wading in today, applying pressure to Labour, saying that the Conservatives will can the whole net zero thing and cancel the 2030 deadline for petrol and diesel cars.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c36z84ej6e0o

Not that there is a deadline in 2030, as almost anything will be allowed until 2035 - there were reports that the government had extended standard "self-charging" hybrids until 2035. The EU are talking about 2040.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to have a deadline before the EU - the manufacturers can divert production to UK spec cars in time for the 2030/2035 (whatever) UK deadline and then catch up on EU cars after.

shinytop

orrery said:

shinytop said:

The Times is reporting that the EU ICE ban is being binned for another 5 years.  Are we now an outlier?

...

The Tory press are wading in today, applying pressure to Labour, saying that the Conservatives will can the whole net zero thing and cancel the 2030 deadline for petrol and diesel cars.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c36z84ej6e0o

Not that there is a deadline in 2030, as almost anything will be allowed until 2035 - there were reports that the government had extended standard "self-charging" hybrids until 2035. The EU are talking about 2040.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to have a deadline before the EU - the manufacturers can divert production to UK spec cars in time for the 2030/2035 (whatever) UK deadline and then catch up on EU cars after.

Whether or not you agree with the UK's current ZEV plan, the sensible option is to align with the EU.  Which is what we'd be doing but for the madness of Brexit.  A viable European car industry is a good thing for the UK.       

zeupater

shinytop said:

orrery said:

shinytop said:

The Times is reporting that the EU ICE ban is being binned for another 5 years.  Are we now an outlier?

...

The Tory press are wading in today, applying pressure to Labour, saying that the Conservatives will can the whole net zero thing and cancel the 2030 deadline for petrol and diesel cars.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c36z84ej6e0o

Not that there is a deadline in 2030, as almost anything will be allowed until 2035 - there were reports that the government had extended standard "self-charging" hybrids until 2035. The EU are talking about 2040.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to have a deadline before the EU - the manufacturers can divert production to UK spec cars in time for the 2030/2035 (whatever) UK deadline and then catch up on EU cars after.

Whether or not you agree with the UK's current ZEV plan, the sensible option is to align with the EU.  Which is what we'd be doing but for the madness of Brexit.  A viable European car industry is a good thing for the UK.       

Hi

.... however it's looked at there's an underlying common theme, one where a position of initial industrial & technological support effectively becomes overtaken by overwhelming centralised interference and control to forward various political positions ....

The UK had a pretty successful automotive industry before centralised support was deemed necessary, the issue with that was that there was a complete mismatch between strategy & necessity leading to gross inefficiencies, waste & ultimate demise as opposed to efficiency gains through rationalisation, standardisation & the benefits of economies of scale which that would have generated (as evidenced elsewhere !) ... 

It's been pretty obvious for some decades that the EU's industrial strategy has been driven by the industries themselves in the knowledge that there would be a high degree of supranational market protectionism .... the problem is that this leads to massive product self-confidence and unrealistic margin aspiration within the sector resulting in what effectively became a total transfer of technology and process knowledge to what would effectively become a global competitor in a global market without the protectionism that actually hid existing inherent inefficiencies ....  (see where this would eventually end up !)

The days of the EU being able to hide it's social & expansive cost nature through continually reinventing it's geopolitical industrial structure is quickly running out of road .... regions which have massively benefited from development grants are now losing out to areas that are now considered more deserving of investment and thus are starting to suffer the same kind of industrial decline that happened elsewhere to enable their own growth ... the problem remains that the automotive industry operates in a sector which is market led, but the EU (&UK) seems to be continually attempting to control the means of production through diktat .... 

... it doesn't matter what the consumer wants, just keep to the centralised plan to build expensive tractors and look to keep paddling the barbed wire canoe no matter how much it's leaking seems to be the only current strategy ... meanwhile, in other markets, ZEV manufacturers are growing global share to a point where the future of the european automotive brands increasingly looks pretty bleak, even in their 'protected' home market .... the sector's future viability depends more on product, cost and delivering to individual consumer preference than centralised policy decisions, the problem therefore seems to be with the overreach of the 'administrators' that  believe that they always know better .... wouldn't it simply be a better proposition to shape the initial market (done !!) then take a light-hands approach and let market conditions, driven by consumer preferences, take their course - just think of how much less we'd all be paying in tax ....  

HTH - Z  ... 

NigeWick

IMHO, as soon as battery vehicles with a decent range & rapid charging speed become the cheapest to buy, it won't matter what government targets are.

Heedtheadvice

The two former are already here and widespread,  the problem is the latter with the best range cars generally being very expensive ( new) and then also missing out on the subsidy and having an annual tax hike! That cost is very significant overall.

Most of the cheaper good range models are either too small ( or too big) for some customers or Far East imports which, rightly or wrongly, do not have a good reputation for reliability, or just off putting for some.

There are exceptions of course. I have taken the plunge with  Kia Niro but it was at the top of my budget and the max size I would consider. Mrs H turns up her nose at anything approaching a Chelsea Tractor for normal road and town driving.

shinytop

zeupater said:

shinytop said:

orrery said:

shinytop said:

The Times is reporting that the EU ICE ban is being binned for another 5 years.  Are we now an outlier?

...

The Tory press are wading in today, applying pressure to Labour, saying that the Conservatives will can the whole net zero thing and cancel the 2030 deadline for petrol and diesel cars.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c36z84ej6e0o

Not that there is a deadline in 2030, as almost anything will be allowed until 2035 - there were reports that the government had extended standard "self-charging" hybrids until 2035. The EU are talking about 2040.

I think it is perfectly reasonable to have a deadline before the EU - the manufacturers can divert production to UK spec cars in time for the 2030/2035 (whatever) UK deadline and then catch up on EU cars after.

Whether or not you agree with the UK's current ZEV plan, the sensible option is to align with the EU.  Which is what we'd be doing but for the madness of Brexit.  A viable European car industry is a good thing for the UK.       

 wouldn't it simply be a better proposition to shape the initial market (done !!) then take a light-hands approach and let market conditions, driven by consumer preferences, take their course - just think of how much less we'd all be paying in tax ....  

HTH - Z  ... 

Much better!  But also stop being fixated on BEVs as the only way to reduce emissions.  For example, sustainable fuels can (and will) be part of the solution. 

The aim should be to reduce emissions as far and as quickly as possible, not to increase the market share of BEVs.  

Martyn1981

I don't think sustainable fuels have a future for road transport, possibly long distance shipping and flights, but just too expensive for road vehicles.

In the US, they have corn-ethanol, which makes up about 10% of (gasoline) petrol at the pumps. It's estimated that the carbon emissions from farming and processing the corn-ethanol is equivalent to about 80-120% of the emissions from burning FF petrol.

Also, for the same land area, PV providing leccy for BEV's provides about 40-70x* as many miles v's an ICEV on corn-ethanol.

Synthetic fuels may be a bit better, possibly incorporating CO2 emissions from harder to solve areas, like cement production, but it's still very energy intensive (and ultimately expensive) compared to RE and BEV's.

Plus of course, BEV's are just simply better vehicles, and don't have the tailpipe emissions/pollution of ICEV's running on FF's, bio-fuels, or synthetic fuels.

*I think the comparable numbers for UK PV + BEV's, v's bio-diesel is about 30x more road miles.

UK crops for bio-fuels use about 133k hectares (golf courses ~125k hectares). About 48k hectares for biodiesel/bioethanol to contribute to road fuels. Apparently a hectare of land in the UK, for a PV farm, should generate ~480MWh pa. So 48,000 would generate ~23,040,000MWh or ~23TWh, approx 7.25% of UK total leccy demand. That's probably around 50% of the whole leccy demand of a UK BEV road fleet.


Edit - Just to say, I didn't mention HFCV's as they have already failed to compete economically, and require a vastly greater amount of RE leccy input than BEV's.

zeupater

Martyn1981 said:

I don't think sustainable fuels have a future for road transport, possibly long distance shipping and flights, but just too expensive for road vehicles.

In the US, they have corn-ethanol, which makes up about 10% of (gasoline) petrol at the pumps. It's estimated that the carbon emissions from farming and processing the corn-ethanol is equivalent to about 80-120% of the emissions from burning FF petrol.

Also, for the same land area, PV providing leccy for BEV's provides about 40-70x* as many miles v's an ICEV on corn-ethanol.

Synthetic fuels may be a bit better, possibly incorporating CO2 emissions from harder to solve areas, like cement production, but it's still very energy intensive (and ultimately expensive) compared to RE and BEV's.

Plus of course, BEV's are just simply better vehicles, and don't have the tailpipe emissions/pollution of ICEV's running on FF's, bio-fuels, or synthetic fuels.

*I think the comparable numbers for UK PV + BEV's, v's bio-diesel is about 30x more road miles.

UK crops for bio-fuels use about 133k hectares (golf courses ~125k hectares). About 48k hectares for biodiesel/bioethanol to contribute to road fuels. Apparently a hectare of land in the UK, for a PV farm, should generate ~480MWh pa. So 48,000 would generate ~23,040,000MWh or ~23TWh, approx 7.25% of UK total leccy demand. That's probably around 50% of the whole leccy demand of a UK BEV road fleet.


Edit - Just to say, I didn't mention HFCV's as they have already failed to compete economically, and require a vastly greater amount of RE leccy input than BEV's.

Hi

Regarding the emissions comparison ... we continually see this flawed logic raised, effectively it relies on totally misrepresenting what the narrative should be - atmospheric CO2 reductions.and/or sustainability ...

The argument invariably concentrates on the differential in energy density and seeks to portray this as a negative, proving that the biofuel effect on global CO2 ppm is actually worse than FF .... whether that is intentional or simply miscomprehension really depends on either the understanding or underlying ideology of the person/group communicating/pushing the nonsense.

In reality - even if considering bio-fuel energy CO2 emissions as being at the top end of the range posed (120% of comparative FF by unit mass), the logical atmospheric long term comparison at combustion stage should be ... FF (-0+100)=+100 vs biofuel (-120+120)=0 ..... one being less efficient but sustainable in terms of repeatability and net-zero impact, the other, well, that's where the truth becomes a little scarce ... 

The real quandary around biofuels is related to what you want to do with the biomass ... "eat it" ..or.. "heat with it", so it really comes down to the same economic-political argument that is currently used within societal engineering, but rather than being a personal choice between heating & eating based on available funds, it would simply be a centralised political decision based on available resource, that being land .... if this is the case then those arguing the social benefits of addressing both in a common way as being positive must be more than just a little conflicted ...

.... mis/disinformation leading to centralised decision making, control of production & the means of production    .... what kind of future would the mass adoption of bio-fuels logically lead us to unless there's also a master-plan to centralise the control of  population ...some may consider it as dystopian ...    ...   

Keep it simple, don't let centralised control by those with an obvious agenda take hold ... shape the path when necessary then stand back and let market forces take their natural time .... if it's good and seen as desirable then informed people will make up their own mind ...

HTH - Z 

michaels

If you assume that it is biofuels that are burned to grow the biofuels but in reality it is almost certainly just plain ol diesel in the tractors and combines.

If you need a medium that allows you to store PV then there is hydrogen to convert to ammonia or whatever - more efficient than biofuels?