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"Are Electric Cars the future of Low Carbon Transport?"

(671 posts)
  • Started 14 years ago by chdot
  • Latest reply from fimm
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  1. steveo
    Member

    Inevitable really, they need to cover the cost of lost ICE VED and we know emissions aren't the only societal cost of cars.

    Not that VED really makes much difference, the cost is too low to really influence buying decisions, people looking at a £60k vehicle aren't going to be swayed by a few hundred quid a year.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  2. acsimpson
    Member

    @Steveo, Good point. The VAT on a £60K car is £10K. Even if VED was £200 a year that would still be 50 years worth of VED.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  3. chdot
    Admin

    Hannah Fry discovers why innovations in meat packing almost derailed the electric car revolution and how a breakthrough in camcorder batteries led to Elon Musk’s electric empire, as well as demonstrating how not to drive a multimillion dollar prototype car of the future.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001f7y1

    Posted 1 year ago #
  4. LaidBack
    Member

    Nothing really to worry about. Policy here is to have less vehicles so car parks can simply take out 30% of parking space to spread the load surely... :-)
    With squeeze on budgets who knows what will happen!

    Story extract from DM.

    Multi-storey and underground car parks could collapse under the weight of electric vehicles, engineers have warned.

    Electric cars, which are roughly twice as heavy as standard models, could cause ‘catastrophic’ damage, according to the British Parking Association (BPA), which wants local authorities to conduct urgent structural surveys.

    Most of the nation’s 6,000 multi-storey and underground facilities were built according to guidance based on the weight of popular cars of 1976, including the Mk 3 Ford Cortina.

    But the electric cars currently on the UK market are far bulkier. For instance, the best-selling Tesla Model 3 weighs 2.2 tons fully loaded, making it more than 50 per cent heavier than a 1.4-tonne Cortina.

    Structural engineer Chris Whapples, a member of the BPA which represents car-park owners, said: ‘If a vehicle is heavier than the car park was originally designed for, the effects could be catastrophic. We’ve not had an incident yet, but I suspect it is only a matter of time.

    ‘We have recommended that a loading check is performed on all older car parks. And the industry is responding.’

    Electric vehicles are heavier predominantly because of the batteries used to power them, and the reinforced framework and suspension needed to accommodate them.

    ‘All the internal components make these batteries very, very heavy,’ said Mr Whapples. ‘Nowadays, the battery forms the underfloor of most EVs. It’s contained over virtually the entire footprint of the vehicle, from axle to axle.’

    Electric cars have soared in popularity in recent years. Today there are an estimated 620,000 on the road in the UK, and 440,000 plug-in hybrids which use both petrol and electric.

    One in ten new cars sold in 2021 was electric, while a further seven per cent were hybrid.

    Sales are expected to outstrip diesel motors by the end of this year, a rise fuelled by environmental concerns but also the rise in diesel costs, city-centre congestion charging and the Ultra Low Emission Zone in London.

    Most of the nation’s 6,000 multi-storey and underground facilities were built according to guidance based on the weight of popular cars of 1976

    But Mr Whapples said that the accumulating risks to infrastructure like car parks and bridges remain unacknowledged.

    ‘When you start to see the weights of the vehicles that are coming out of the factories, you start to question whether existing standards are adequate,’ he added.

    The Institute of Structural Engineers is set to update its design recommendations for multi-storey and underground car parks in January, to recommend larger parking bays and an ability to withstand increased loads.

    This will affect only new buildings, however – and strengthening existing car parks could prove prohibitively expensive.

    In the meantime, Mr Whapples suggests that some car parks could end up restricting vehicles from entering, based on their weight.

    Ben Nelmes, CEO of green motoring consultancy New AutoMotive, has disputed the claims made by the BPA as 'bizarre and misleading'.

    He said: 'The best-selling petrol/diesel cars in the UK range from the Nissan Qashqai to the VW Golf 8 and the Kia Sportage which weigh between 1.4 and 1.7 tonnes. The best-selling electric car, the Tesla Model Y, weighs 1.6 tonnes and the electric Mini weighs the same as a Mini Cooper at 1.3 tonnes.

    'Both electric models are within or under the weight range of the most popular petrol/diesel cars and yet the BPA continues to focus on the weight of the batteries inside electric cars as being the cause for concern - while coincidentally forgetting to flag that batteries are getting lighter and lighter.

    'Perhaps the BPA should be more worried about a rise in SUVs such as the Land Rover Discovery, introduced into the UK in 1989, and which weighs 2.4 tonnes.

    'We can have confidence that the UK's parking garages will withstand electric cars. It is the BPA's arguments that are at risk of collapse.'

    Posted 1 year ago #
  5. chdot
    Admin

  6. chdot
    Admin

  7. chdot
    Admin

    Tesla shares continue slide with shrinking demand and logistics snags

    Company has lost more than 65% in value since last year, although it is still world’s most valuable automaker

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jan/03/tesla-shares-price-value-decline-elon-musk

    Posted 1 year ago #
  8. Morningsider
    Member

    I see the Scottish Government has changed the policy set out in the 2020 Update to the Climate Change Plan 2018 – 2032:

    We will phase out the need for new petrol and diesel
    cars and vans by 2030
    to:

    Phase out the need for new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2032

    In the Draft Energy Strategy and Just Transition Plan published yesterday (10 January 2023).

    Posted 1 year ago #
  9. gembo
    Member

    I do add two years to everything now Cause Covid

    Posted 1 year ago #
  10. Baldcyclist
    Member

    I love the language, "phase out the need for".

    Doesn't sound like compulsion to stop producing/selling petrol/diesel cars. Is there stronger language in an 'aspirational' document somewhere.

    So long as people have choice, and there is an excess to pay for electric cars - as well as higher running costs if you can't charge at home - why would they choose to buy them?

    People who can afford the electric car premium, and can charge at home cheaply which will pay back the premium quickly (*and then some) will continue to buy.

    *charge the car at night on cheap Octopus rate of 12p p/kwh (https://octopus.energy/blog/go-faqs/), and when you are not using car use it to power your house during the day when not in use (many electric cars now offer free battery storage which could ofset the cost of the car against the cost of a battery storage system).

    Posted 1 year ago #
  11. Morningsider
    Member

    Apparently the change to 2032 was "a mistake" and its has been changed back to 2030.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  12. chdot
    Admin

  13. chdot
    Admin

    The proposed lithium-ion battery plant would not use Chinese or Russian materials, a decision that leverages Australia’s deep mineral deposits and limits supply chain risks.

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/25/australian-startup-recharge-bids-for-britishvolt-with-a-view-to-reviving-uk-battery-plant

    Posted 1 year ago #
  14. ejstubbs
    Member

    The US’s transition to electric vehicles could require three times as much lithium as is currently produced for the entire global market, causing needless water shortages, Indigenous land grabs, and ecosystem destruction inside and outside its borders, new research finds.

    It warns that unless the US’s dependence on cars in towns and cities falls drastically, the transition to lithium battery-powered electric vehicles by 2050 will deepen global environmental and social inequalities linked to mining – and may even jeopardize the 1.5C global heating target.

    But ambitious policies investing in mass transit, walkable towns and cities, and robust battery recycling in the US would slash the amount of extra lithium required in 2050 by more than 90%.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/24/us-electric-vehicles-lithium-consequences-research

    Posted 1 year ago #
  15. Arellcat
    Moderator

    Wyoming doesn't think EVs are the future.

    But this is partly fingers-in-pies for the state legislators, and partly call-my-bluff because Wyoming has a very dispersed population with people living miles from substations and, worse, a completely antiquated electricity grid that would need a lot of investment. Especially investment to charge EVs of the kind that all y'all Wyomingites need for commuting hundreds of miles and hauling trailers full of stuff, which is apparently what they do. Some won't even buy an EV as a second vehicle.

    And some in Wyoming think that CO2 is both a warming GHG and a cooling GHG so is globally climate neutral, and so climate change is bunk. And! - that oil and gas reserves are, geological processly speaking, in fact continuing to increase, therefore EVs are being pushed by legislators on completely false pretences.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  16. chdot
    Admin

    The British car industry, which supports a lot of jobs, is highly anxious that it will be a casualty of the end of the combustion engine without a supply of domestically produced batteries to put into electrical vehicles. Gigafactories are essential for the volume manufacturing of EVs. For all the rhetoric about being in the vanguard of the “green industrial revolution”, the UK only has one battery factory compared with an estimated 100 in China. The hope of establishing a second crumbled when Britishvolt, a venture near Blyth, Northumberland, collapsed into insolvency last month.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/05/global-race-dominate-green-technology-britain-still-tying-its-shoelaces

    Edinburgh had a car industry once -

    http://www.grantonhistory.org/industry/madelvic.htm

    Posted 1 year ago #
  17. steveo
    Member

    I've not really been following the giga factory but given the demand for batteries how has the company managed fold so quickly?

    Posted 1 year ago #
  18. chdot
    Admin

    (As i understand it)

    Couldn’t get enough Gov grants or commercial investment.

    New company with no track record.

    Only got to site clearance stage.

    (?)

    Posted 1 year ago #
  19. steveo
    Member

    Was there actually a viable business plan or were they just hunting around to leach money from the government? I should probably go have a read myself.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  20. chdot
    Admin

  21. Baldcyclist
    Member

    I'm not sure the findings are a surpise, the cars still involve petrol and heavy feet.

    Would be interesting to see the comparison between heavy foot petrol car and heavy foot hybrid car, suspect there is still a marked reduction of CO2 when compared in real world even if much less than the 'advertised perfect rolling road light foot conditions'.

    Any product which depends on a user mimicing perfect conditions won't meet the 'labratory' finding. Duracell batteries never last as long as you would imagine for example.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  22. neddie
    Member

    "heavy feet"

    Perhaps governments should mandate a maximum power output (just like they do for e-bikes).

    For cars, 50hp (36kW) should be enough for anyone. Why is a sub-3-second 0-60 time even needed, eg Teslas? - this just creates additional danger in cities by morons who can't control such acceleration.

    A power limit would also help encourage vehicle size- and weight reduction as well as preventing extreme speeding e.g. 200mph seen on the M11

    Posted 1 year ago #
  23. chdot
    Admin

  24. chdot
    Admin

    The UK will need 10 high-volume battery manufacturing facilities, or gigafactories, by 2040 according to British research body The Faraday Institution. It currently has one, a Chinese-owned battery plant next to the Nissan factory in Sunderland, and lags behind many European nations.

    The future of car manufacturing is tightly linked to battery production, as automotive brands look to bring the production facilities together. China is the world’s dominant EV battery maker.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/27/australian-startup-recharge-finalises-deal-to-take-over-uk-battery-maker-britishvolt

    Posted 1 year ago #
  25. Morningsider
    Member

    As far as I can tell, "companies" such as Britshvolt and their likely successors exist solely to extract grant funding from gullible government agencies and desperate local authorities. I doubt any serious battery manufacturers are really looking to build "giga-factories" in Britain.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  26. neddie
    Member

    I guess it's the Delorean story all over again? Still, at least Delorean produced a time machine...

    Posted 1 year ago #
  27. neddie
    Member

    Won't someone think of the poor people, how will they afford their EVs?

    https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2023/02/uk-drivers-at-risk-of-losing-9bn-on-electric-vehicle-savings

    So much wrong with this (presumably motor industry press release) article it's hard to know where to begin...

    "Recent modelling by the RAC Foundation found that the reduction in total carbon emissions from cars necessary to meet the UK’s climate change goals could be achieved without drivers travelling less overall"

    Aye, but EVs are claimed to be 3x cheaper to run. Jevon's paradox says that that almost certainly means people will end up driving more. A lot more!

    The motor industry tying themselves up in knots to get more subsidies out of a gulliable and compliant government, indeed...

    Posted 1 year ago #
  28. Morningsider
    Member

    If the current SNP leadership contest tells us anything, it is that the motoring lobby don't even need to try. The "need" for ever more roads and motoring as a driver of "growth" is hard-wired into Scottish politicians.

    Imagine looking at all the issues facing Scotland, then someone saying "We have £6,000,000,000 for capital investment, what do you want to spend it on?" and deciding that dualling the A96 and A9 is your priority. Not tens of thousands of passivhaus standard council homes, or new schools and nurseries, or a nationwide roll-out of bus and cycle infrastructure. Or if you really care about road safety - a nationwide programme of road improvements focused on vulnerable road users. Funny that spending on "road safety" only seems to become an issue when it is attached to dualling trunk roads, rather than children being run over while walking to school.

    Posted 1 year ago #
  29. neddie
    Member

    Morningsider for FM!

    Posted 1 year ago #
  30. neddie
    Member

    Thursday night’s Question Time from Cardiff was equally depressing - discussions on the Welsh moratorium on road building…

    Not a single participant, neither the panel nor audience, questioned the “received wisdom” that stopping building roads would “harm economic growth”!

    Only Fiona Bruce herself hinted at induced-demand and that building more roads would lead to more driving. No one but no one said that traffic jams would be the same or worse after new roads were built

    And some of the audience and panel were implying that there wouldn’t be any roads at all, that they were somehow going to take all the roads away and rural people wouldn’t be able to leave or get a job!

    So if you want to get yersel depressed, it’s well worth a watch

    Posted 1 year ago #

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