sb
Part of things
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As sb points out one of my big issues with current talk of emissions is the whole life cycle stuff hasn't had published research, or at least readily available published research. What is the environmental impact from a 15 year or 20 year life cycle of an EV car, compared to a current modern car, both will require the mining of materials which are horrendous in order to get the electronics etc. working, however an EV has that whole battery thing, but then it could theoretically be powered by renewable, or coal, or burning whale fat, or whatever. It would be good to know how these different things effect the whole life cycle of these cars and what the aim should be and the net benefit in relation to petrol, diesel etc. American and not particularly good but some basic parameters and ‘evidence” www.environment.ucla.edu/media/files/BatteryElectricVehicleLCA2012-rh-ptd.pdfInteresting article, for any real use here it needs some parameters changing but ultimately I wouldnt expect the UK to be that far off. It backs up my early point (also US based when I researched it) that an EV wins on total emissions including its construction, but I only briefly flicked through so I'm not sure what numbers they were using to assume those figures. Also the most interesting part for me is the section stating that an EV will not save you money at all over an ICE due to the investment cost. |
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Ooh... Design life, a fresh subject on its own. I work in the rail industry and the subject is prominent there. Historically a train was expected to have a 'life' of between 30-40 years(and have delivered that), It's pretty impressive. I live very close to the Cumbrian coast line, so see -and often just hear- a variety of DRS Class 37's running up anx down during the day. I'm not a train spotter by any means, but had enough interest to look up a couple of numbers, and raised an eyebrow at the discovery that they were all built in the 60's. Well impressed. |
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fad
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,781
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Ok I'm gonna chime in. I work in air quality. I also work in cities infrastructure for exactly this sort of thing, and know the challenges it poses. So to put a few things to rest: NO, log burners don't contribute more to particulates than combustion engined cars -but if everyone had one, yes it likely would. One thing that is so often missed is that particulates do not just come from combustion, they also come from brake dust, tyres, road surfaces, all sorts. NO - we cannot tap into lamp posts to charge cars. It doesn't work. Lamp posts are run on unmetered connections on a given load per column, and so the feeder pillars are specified accordingly and the cables run in etc to that specification (with the appropriate overheads, margins, and in line with the regulations at the time of installation). They simply could not cope with the additional draw of electric vehicles, and without metering on these circuits there is no way of limiting draw or anything. So, that's a none-starter. This graphic:  has gone from making me roll my eyes to flat p!ssing me off. It's so misleading that it is not even funny. There is so much wrong with it that it is difficult to know where to start: 1) Electricity production in power stations, for a given amount of energy, is far, far more efficient in every way than any internal combustion engine, full stop. It doesn't matter whether it is coal fired, gas turbine, nuclear,in terms of emissions, efficiency, or any other factor you want to benchmark it, there are no engines out there in the hands of the normal end-user that are better. Engines in cars are seldom operating at peak efficiency anyway, power stations are always at peak efficiency (or as close to as possible). So the energy you use in an EV was "produced" at peak efficiency, it is up to you how you spend it. Energy in combustion engines is produced on-demand and spent as it is produced, at whatever efficiency is has at that given moment. 2) Power stations have all sorts of rules and regulations applied to them to limit carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, particulates etc. What you get out of them is almost entirely steam and water vapour (yes, granted they are not 100% clean and there are issues with nuclear waste etc etc but lets not cloud the issue). Cars do not have anything close to this level of tech and emission regulation. Nor does the car owner do any CO2 offset or mitigation, which power station operates are obliged to do. 3) Power stations are not concentrated in city centres nor around houses. Their outlets are not at street level. You are not breathing in the particulates and gases from them directly from source. I'm going to stop there, because otherwise I'll go on all day. Stupid cartoon that has no meaning or place in any discussion about making our air cleaner. No - We don't have the infrastructure in place for everyone to own an EV YET. But we didn't have the infrastructure for everyone to own a car when they first came on the scene. Commerce is based on supply and demand. If there's a demand for EV infrastructure, it WILL come (and believe me it is coming thick and fast - the upgrades ARE happening). So, the issues with internal combustion: Gas emissions Particulate emissions Fossil fuels Exponential increase in car ownership and traffic density Be it petrol or diesel... The issue is there isn't a silver bullet that will fix everything. Those at the top, those "Eco loving do-gooder lefties trying to take away our everything" are trying to find the best way forward, while avoiding the ugly truth that the current situation is simply not sustainable. The cost to our health, the environment, and the fact that our diesel and petrol WILL run out at some point, is something inescapable. Yes, it was a blunder pushing diesel cars, but CO2 emission was flavour of the month at the time and so the blinkers went on and consideration was not given to wider implications. Not helping were the fudged and fiddled numbers by car manufacturers... So now we have super efficient engines that are churning out different gases that also affect our health. It is HUGELY naive to think that we can burn anything day in, day out, and it not affect our health. Anyone that things otherwise, frankly, is an idiot and shouldn't breed. So what is the solution? Well, put simply, hard choices and adjustments to what we are willing to accept. Combustion engines have to go - there's no way around it. Individual car ownership will have to go too - there just isn't enough "road" for everyone to sit in cars. There has to be levels of traffic management that we, as human drivers, are not capable of doing. A really good example here is the junction onto the A1 from the A19 North of Gosforth. Everyone is trying to get onto the A1. The traffic is heavy. The A1 at that junction at rush hour is always at a standstill. So people decide that rather than using the slip road, they will stop, try to cut across the hatched lines and block the slip road to get onto the A1 quicker. This leaves about 300 meters of sliproad almost empty. Everyone seems to do it, and when you use the whole sliproad and try to filter in at the end of it, people don't want to let you because they somehow think you have "cheated" or "jumped the queue". This behaviour I can't understand... It is absolutely ludicrous. If they would use the slip road and the traffic merge 1 to 1, it would continue to flow. But for reasons best known to the drivers, they can't do this. That's just how it is - people cause traffic jams as much as volume of traffic. It needs some algorithmic control and the ability to filter and adjust speeds without causing tailbacks, without stopping, and yes some bumper-to-bumper manoeuvring that we squashy fickle sacks of meat just can't do. Internal combustion is a dead technology, much like steam, and for similar reasons. I LOVE steam engines, properly love them, just like I love internal combustion engines, but the times are changing. Hard choices are ahead of us, and that's that. |
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Last Edit: Nov 22, 2017 10:28:56 GMT by fad
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fad
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,781
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Nov 22, 2017 10:19:36 GMT
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One other thing that springs to mind, is the argument about production of EV vs combustion. As we know, production changes when scaled. EV is small-scale at the moment. But irersponsible journalism and wrong assumptions need to be brought to task. For example, this picture:  Yep, I'm not disputing it, the figures are likely correct. However there are a few things wrong with JUST the picture... Scale of manufacture of the BMW vs the Tesla is MASSIVELY different. And the Tesla and the BMW are not like-for-like. They are made in different car plants, in different Countries, with different manufacturing techniques for a very different price tag and a different intended market. The source of the image is this article which is not much better: www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/1935817/electric-shock-tesla-cars-hong-kong-more-pollutingA key part of it is this: “Electric vehicles can work in places where there is a very low carbon intensity in electricity generation, but more than 68 per cent of electricity [on Hong Kong Island] comes from coal.” The crucial thing here is that we move away from fossil fuels. That is a key point in all of this. Once that link is phased out, silly graphics like this become even more meaningless. We are seeing, first hand, how a growing population and a growing reliance on convenience and the intensification of all industries is causing problems that are not going to go away. Frankly, the most irresponsible thing you can do today is breed - a sad truth and I am guilty of contributing to the problem as we are all. We are unwilling to accept a drop in convenience and standards, but yet need to preserve our limited resources and our environment as to do otherwise will result in, at worst, our extinction. But while we are spending more globally on dog grooming, trashy glossy magazines, watching 22 blokes kick a ball around a field and pointless blow-by-blow destruction of "high profile" careers (how many of us even knew what Harvey Weinstien looked like before it turned out that he was a bit of a letch?? WHY DOES IT NEED SUCH MEDIA ATTENTION???) than we spend on fusion energy research and renewable development, we're screwed as a species and, frankly, richly deserve it. |
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fad
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,781
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Nov 22, 2017 10:23:11 GMT
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Hydrogen fuel cells:
Nope. Energy density of hydrogen is not enough for our needs. It's a nice science project but absolutely not practical in real terms, sadly. Much like electrolysis and salt water powered motors. Energy density of a material (per volume or per weight) is absolutely key.
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Nov 22, 2017 10:48:09 GMT
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Ooh... Design life, a fresh subject on its own. I work in the rail industry and the subject is prominent there. Historically a train was expected to have a 'life' of between 30-40 years(and have delivered that), but there's a feeling that the new stock is possibly nearer to 20-25 years. For the leasing companies this creates an interesting challenge, previous planning assumed guaranteed income and recovery on investment over those extended periods. It's worth pointing out, for those that don't know, that 30-40 years for a train was always dependent on a mid-life refurbishment and normally only frames and bodies were actually specified to last the full term. Therefore, pretty much everything else on the vehicle is fair game and indeed, lots of "bits", e.g., gangways only have a specified life of 15 years, thus assuming replacement. Couple that with new train control systems, more efficient propulsion types and obsolescence, and you can soon be replacing bogies along with entire traction and safety system packages as well. Of course, factors like higher speeds and regular heavy passenger loadings all play a part in the life of things, and certainly these are increasing. Interesting though for the leasing companies (bless their cotton socks), is that, in general, the overall basic cost per carriage has remained pretty static for a good few years, and this will likely decrease as China makes its presence felt on the wider market, which it already has done in SE Asia. The huge figures bandied around there days for train purchases normally also include manufacturer maintenance agreements as well, a whole different ball-game. To pick up your point of achieving "life", the Philippine National Railway GE locos are just going through a mid-life at thirty years! Anyway, my point is (I think!) is that it's difficult to compare the longevity of road and rail vehicles. How many cars are stripped back to their shells and rebuilt as a matter of course. Apart from, as you rightly allude to, those on here!  |
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Nov 22, 2017 10:53:02 GMT
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I AM NOT GOING TO GET INVOLVED AGAIN I AM NOT GOING TO GET INVOLVED AGAIN I AM NOT GOING TO GET INVOLVED AGAIN I AM NOT GOING TO GET INVOLVED AGAIN  |
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Nov 22, 2017 11:30:32 GMT
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It needs some algorithmic control and the ability to filter and adjust speeds without causing tailbacks, without stopping, and yes some bumper-to-bumper manoeuvring that we squashy fickle sacks of meat just can't do. All other issues aside, and it's been an interesting thread, I'll just chime in on this point from a standpoint I know. One of the (currently) accepted ways of alleviating traffic in cities is mass transit, an area where I've spent much of my last 26 years around the world. Now, to really make a difference in terms of shifting folk from cars to transit, you need to move a lot of them, consistently. To achieve this, you can either have hugely long trains operating at fairly high intervals, with associated city infrastructure costs (station lengths, etc), or you have shorter ones but fire them around as close together as you can. The latter also has the advantage for the punter of a turn-up-and-go service. Now, if you are operating at, say, 6 minute headways (time between trains) then the human driver can just about manage this, but once you start to bring this down, three minutes, two minutes or ninety seconds. Forget it because, despite training, we're all different and so are driving styles. Once a train on a high frequency system starts to fall behind, it's faced with busier platforms (it's amazing how many punters a minute arrive at a busy station), taking longer to load/tip, falling further behind and pretty soon, your lovely headways have gone to hell in a handcart. 30 seconds over six minutes is liveable with, the same on 90 seconds isn't. A bit like fad's A! junction, someone starts it and it just deteriorates. Put it this way, the automated system I opened in Copenhagen, with 90 second headways was, then, achieving 99% punctuality. Anyway, the mass transit industry recognised the human issue a long time ago and automated lines are now the norm, even retrofitting older lines having extensions built with modern train control systems, to take the human out of the equation and operate consistently. And before I'm tarred by anyone as a car hater, the reason I got into the industry is I like the idea of getting cars off the road, so there's more room for mine! |
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Nov 22, 2017 12:49:44 GMT
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Surprised no-ones mentioned Mazdas Skyactiv-X HCCI (homogenous charge compression ignition) or Koenigseggs freevalve camless pneumatic valve actuation tech yet. Both would seem to point to the post-diesel future for the combustion engine.
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Nov 22, 2017 13:17:45 GMT
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Pneumatic valve operation has been used in racing engines for years.
Current F1 engines have adopted a pre ignition setup which allows a more efficient combustion and a more complete burn.
It's quite a smart idea.
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Nov 22, 2017 13:39:36 GMT
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Yep, the pre-ignition setup you mention is HCCI (or at least that's my understanding), but we're finally seeing systems that are simple and robust enough to work in production cars. Mercedes and others having being experimenting with trying to make it work in a production engine for ages, but Mazda seems to have finally cracked it, and the Koenigsegg has pneumatic operation on its latest car now and has sold the tech to Qoros - which is one of those massive chinese companies that makes loads of cars, but unheard of in the west.
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fad
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,781
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Nov 22, 2017 17:22:33 GMT
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. Not sure who brought this up a while ago but it stuck in my mind. When cars took over from horses as the main mode of transport,horse did not disappear. They became a hobby, pastime and a whole new industry for people that loved horses. That is quite possibly what will happen to our beloved IC powered cars/ trucks etc. . That was me last time this topic came up. |
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Nov 22, 2017 17:41:47 GMT
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Last Edit: Nov 22, 2017 17:58:06 GMT by rattlecan
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fad
Posted a lot
Posts: 1,781
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Nov 22, 2017 18:03:12 GMT
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Mars has no gravitational field nor volcanic activity (indicator of an active core). Its why its atmosphere has been stripped. I wonder how the long term plan would work? |
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Nov 22, 2017 18:13:58 GMT
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Not one cool diesel car pic yet on this thread Well mines going nowhere ...unless the government come and seize it   |
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Last Edit: Nov 22, 2017 18:18:49 GMT by Mercdan68
Fraud owners club member
2003 W211 Mercedes E class
1989 Sierra sapphire
1998 ex bt fiesta van
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mgmrw
Part of things
Posts: 701
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Nov 22, 2017 20:33:20 GMT
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^^^^ lahhhvli. Bit of me that is. Looked at one years back, 2litre petrol.
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slater
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 6,390
Club RR Member Number: 78
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Nov 22, 2017 23:52:57 GMT
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Sorry but you don't understand. You may well be able to draw enough current from each post to charge one car but you won't be able to draw enough from every post in the street to charge all the cars in the street. (In my street i'd hazard a guess at 10 cars per lamp) ofcourse you won't find the company marketing these things making such a point will you ;-) Christ on a bike, if I lived on a street with ten cars per lamppost I would move. In fact if I lived on a street with more than ten cars on it, full stop, I’d move. Cities for you. Every inch of roadside has a car parked on it after 7pm |
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Christ on a bike, if I lived on a street with ten cars per lamppost I would move. In fact if I lived on a street with more than ten cars on it, full stop, I’d move. Cities for you. Every inch of roadside has a car parked on it after 7pm I've got four on my drive now, so that only leaves six for the rest of the street! I've got a 2007 Skoda Fabia as my daily, it's a little 3-pot tdi, about 1.3 litres or so. On my 3.5 mile commute to work in a morning I regularly see 34mpg average fuel consumption according to the dashboard. For my drive home, same route but at a different time of day it'll struggle to hit 30mpg at times. Worst I've seen in a while was last week when it was 21.9 by the time I'd got home. The biggest problem with that particular journey was being stationary for long periods of time due to traffic blockages. I'm going to my caravan in mid-Wales this weekend, and I'll be really narked if I get less than 59mpg there and back. The short to medium term solution to air quality in my eyes is more efficient road design that keeps cars moving. The reason for the traffic jams I experienced were due to road improvement roadworks, ironically! A notoriously tricky junction is being changed hugely and should improve flow of traffic and therefore the mpg of people's cars, no matter what they're powered by. Sort out traffic light phasing (including pedestrian controlled crossings) and roads will work better. |
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1968 Cal Look Beetle - 2007cc motor - 14.45@93mph in full street trim
1970-ish Karmann Beetle cabriolet - project soon to be re-started.
1986 Scirocco - big plans, one day!
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get a bike yer pazy curse word! 3.5 miles is even walkable.
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ChasR
RR Helper
motivation
Posts: 10,309
Club RR Member Number: 170
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TBH I'd cycle to work. It's about a 30-40 min cycle when I checked - 7 miles each way. The issues? The roads. I know people have said to me "I'd do it" with the same peeples going cycling in quiet villages on weekends. But, as adam73bgt can vouch for the traffic and the drivers themselves are crazy driving into work. From where I am it's all country roads too. While I enjoy cycling I also enjoy not being almost taken off the road because some bloke was massively committed to doing an overtake while another car was trying to overtake me; all so he could drive into work like a pleb and even on site like one. I do miss being 2 miles from work and with dedicated cycle routes or failing that an alternative. For people wondering I'd had to cycle down the A425 Banbury Road near Gaydon during the peak of rush hour. |
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Last Edit: Nov 23, 2017 8:40:59 GMT by ChasR
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