Well that's the end of Classic cars then, be totally useless if you cant drive them. Men will have to find a new hobby. I mean, come on electric cars totally soulless with no sound, glad I will not be around.
Last edited by hilly10; 26th July 2017 at 13:58.
Come on chaps... embrace the change !
Last month the UK managed (albeit for one day) to produce more than HALF of the country's electricity from renewable sources... and that's without really trying. I am expecting it to be perfectly feasible that the average home could generate enough self-produced power to also run a car (or two) in the next two decades.
I just hope that there is some incentive for manufacturers to make high-performance electric vehicles and that we don't all run around in Johnny Cabs in 2050.
There's a guy on SpeakEV who's had his 1970s 911 converted to run in electric. It's quicker, faster and better handling (better weight distribution) than it was and he recouped a lot of the cost by selling the redundant parts.
I know it's not as it came out of the factory but it's still a classic 911 with a new lease of life.
True, they're pretty quiet but a soundtrack could easily be added to give that "authentic" experience out on the open road, then switched off for round town or night time driving.
Okay... at the equator you get about a KW per sq.m. At the latitude of the UK it's about 0.6KW sq.m. That's best. So an average roof (assuming it's facing southish) is, what(?), 12m x 3m so that's 36sq.m. So that's 21.6KW. So multiply by 10 for hours of sunshine (very optimistic I agree for the amount of sunshine the UK gets on average) so that's 216KWh. Assume 80% nett efficiency for creation, storage, taking out again (very optimistic again) so that's about 170KWh. So your car is taking 85KWh. So your house has less than 90 KWh for everything else like lighting, cooking, heating, etc.... tbh I don't know if that's a feasible i.e. I don't know what the average total energy usage is per household in the UK. And, as pointed out, what about flats etc...?
An average 10,000 miles a year is 27 miles a day. Most electric cars do an average of 4 mpkwhr so that's 7kw per day for the car on average.
It's not just roofs that can be solar panels, walls, drives, road, car parks, footpaths etc can be too. In fact by replacing just the road surfaces will generate more than enough electricity for the country's requirements.
It may not all happen or all at once but the solutions are available already, it just takes the foresight and imagination to do it. Ultimately it will become cost effective even if it isn't at the moment.
Last edited by Dave+63; 26th July 2017 at 14:54.
Serious question. Is there enough lithium in the world to create millions and millions of electric cars? If not then how does this work?
As for my old 911, I will keep running it as long as petrol is available which I suspect will be way past 2040 given that planes will continue to use kerosene and oil will be needed to produce nylon, etc.
As for the energy required to charge all these cars - great if it comes from solar, nuclear, hydro, otherwise its a bit pointless.
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/avera...ty-consumption
...suggests an average UK person uses 1985kw per year in the home. That's based on today's useage where we still have many high power consuming devices. Flats, have roofs and flamable wall cladding could easily be replaced with solar panels. Workplaces, shops, bus stops ect can all generate power too, not just homes.
How will the Government recover all of the lost duty and VAT from the sale of fossil fuels when the majority of private car journeys are made using electricity?
Will we all need to have a separate metered electrical plug for car charging?
I believe we need to think wider and tackle the reasons why we are all forced to travel so much in the first place.
Perhaps some of the following are oversimplifications, but I consider that Planning policies are written to separate dwellings from commerce and industry (i.e. employment locations), Education policy forces longer and longer school runs (in the name of Parent choice), Health policy reduces local services and centralises specialties forcing longer trips for treatment, refuse that used to be picked up at the doorstep now has to be driven to a recycling centre, etc etc. I'm sure we could all think of examples ad infinitum. And all of this in an internet age where we can speak to the other side of the world at will, shop without leaving the sofa and be connected and contactable 24/7 - it's total madness.
Solve the real problem; take the load off the transport system (both private and public) and reduce consequent emissions. It should be straightforward but I guess sadly that vested interests will prevent that type of progress.
Picture this; it's 2040 and everyone is driving electric. Petrol has become a controlled substance since some nutter set fire to a school in 2030 (think Dumblaine and gun laws) and the riots of 2032 where police were bombarded with petrol bombs (think current acid attacks).
A public outcry ensued and the government passed the clean air bill. Petrol is only available to those licencesd to use it, must be kept locked away in secure cabinets when not in use, is strictly rationed and costs £100 a gallon.
Petrol cars can only be used at certain times and in certain designated places for which there is a huge pollution surcharge payable.
Still be driving the 911?
It's a scary thought but not beyond the bounds of possibility; I think I'll take my dirty, smelly bike out for a spin now while I still can!
I have it on good authority from within the technology side of the industry that the batteries in electric cars will last no more than 6-8 years max! And as they are built and fitted to be an intrinsic part of the vehicles, they CANNOT be replaced. Cars will therefore be scrapped.
Space, the final frontier, will become the necessary dumping ground for the lithium used to build these things.
Jim
I think it is extraordinarily unlikely that the electricity generation system will be adequate by 2040. It's only 23 years away and that's not enough time to upgrade electricity generation to cope with all this new demand at present build rates. Can you image the outcry if build rates of nuclear (and it will need to be nuclear) is increased. Plus the country can't afford it, it seems.
So what will happen? Ever-slipping schedules? Probably. Or a crunch point where economic failure is precipitated by politically correct adherence to arbitrary time frames? Time will tell. It certainly does not bode well for the UK's long term economic competitiveness.
And just because France is planning it on the same time scale and Norway is planning on doing it much sooner (despite, somewhat hypocritically, depending on oil sales for much of its economy) doesn't mean it's necessarily sane or economically achievable.
Taking into account the need to scrap even the newest technology batteries (and possible entire cars, economically speaking) one wonders if internal combustion engines running on biofuels will eventually work out to be the more economically efficient and least polluting overall type of vehicular propulsion.
Battery technology will no doubt continue to improve in the next 23 years but I wonder how much can be expected. I am willing to bet that what we end up with 23 years from now will not be purely battery-powered cars. Some other solution, not yet thought of, will make batteries (on their own) seem obsolete.
Gonna be some surge in electricity demand about 5.30-6.30 when most people get in from work!
I plug mine in when I get home but the onboard timer starts the charge such that it's finished around 7.00am. It therefore starts drawing current after midnight!
I did wonder, when will the government realise that tax revenues from fuel will go down and will then start ramping up tax on electricity
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It is worth noting that the vast majority of homes don't have physical access to charge a car at home. Electric cars will be dependent on whatever 'petrol stations' turn into or possibly on on-the-move inductive charging (this is of course assuming that battery tech as we currently think of it is still in use in 23 years time, which is far from a certainty). This in turn means that charging times will have to get a lot quicker than they at present. And hopefully batteries (if they are still in use by then) will have a much longer useable lifetime than at present.
As I said in #69, I suspect that we will not in fact end up with battery-powered cars as we currently think of them. An innovation that is not yet thought of will supersede them (and very likely catch the government on the hop, just after it has enforced, at vast expense, national charging infrastructure for pure-battery cars ;-) ).
Last edited by markrlondon; 26th July 2017 at 18:38.
How long do you think batteries should last? Even the current small batteries are doing 150k plus miles without showing significant degradation.
A tesla battery should be good for at least half a million miles and even then they're not worn out, they just go less miles between charges.
I'm just imagining you and Velorum sat side by side in the home leering at the Martin bent over in front of you!
This is socioeconomic engineering on a grand scale, mainly economic, cars are at saturation point, the government has to do something to keep production going, I drive a current euro 6 car, it is very clean , most of the PR is about older cars and lorries yet they omit to mention that, there are retrofitable exhaust scrubbers available now, why are they not making them mandatory (instant fix)aircraft produce far more pollution than cars per passenger mile, why are they not picking on them?
I have no doubt that in 23 years time technology would have moved on to a point where battery life, range worries and cost will be forgotten.
Go back 23 years to 1994 and have a general look at technology back then. Very different i know but injections systems although widely used in performance vehicles were still relatively in their infancy on normal production vehicles.
Early systems were " chuck it all in " systems, nowadays we have systems that intergrate with load, timing, sequential to firing order with the ultimate goal to squeezes emmisions low whilst keeping the engine as efficient and as powerful as possible.
My son runs a Ford Fiesta 1.0ltr which belts out 140bhp, these kind of figures were only possible on engine much larger going back then.
So whilst engines and the way they run have essential stayed the same for years technology has improved them no end.
I think thats how battery tech will follow.
The only thing which is not clear is how they intend to get the energy in to millions of batteries cleanly and in a way that will produce less pollution than we currently have.
By 2040 I suspect the notion of owning your own car for every day use will be somewhat antiquated anyhow.
Just book a self-driving one from your phone app, it arrives when you need, takes you where you want to go, then heads off to collect someone else. The technology is almost here now.
Cars as we know them will be for the enthusiast, and for weekend pleasure.
Frankly, given that most driving is far from fun, and just a commute, I say bring it on. And I speak as a lifelong car nut.
I'm going to add to what I said above. This is an area I have been following with interest for years now.
A very good friend of mine is very senior in the car industry and we chatted about this a couple of months ago when we last met up.
The industry is already planning for this / a future where cars are not owned by individuals but a shared resource where you pay per mile or have a contract that allows you up to a certain number of miles per annum - essentially it's like a rolling no subscription for an agreed service.
Interestingly he also said that the expectation is that the cost of cars will fall dramatically in real terms as construction and servicing costs reduce due to the technology becoming standardised and cheaper.
Performance figures will be irrelevant as you won't do the driving, and the cats will travel at higher overall speeds much closer together than today. Road use will be far more efficient and traffic jams will become a thing of the past.
He is convinced that today's children see technology very differently to us, and they will be far less concerned about the driving experience providing they can be online and socialising during no thr journey. Their priorities will be vastly different. They will see cars as functional items, rarely status symbols for the vast majority of the time.
Planners will live the fact that new houses and apartments won't need to be built with parking, and corporations will live the fact they can have you doing something else during your travel time - paying to watch a movie, do some training or work, or buy stuff from Apple or Amazon.
It all makes sense really, and doesn't need any leap in technology, just following current developments to a logical conclusion.
Last edited by TheFlyingBanana; 27th July 2017 at 14:18.
I'm inclined to agree, car (and possibly bike) can be chosen depending on number of travellers, journey distance and luggage/load requirements.
Expect to see lots of Twizy size vehicles for commuting!
According to Autocar hybrids will be exempt from this ban which makes sense to me.
Does anyone know anything about hydrogen fuel cells?
Just that shell petrol stations are starting to introduce hydrogen refuelling
Very good point. We'll certainly have autonomous cars by then - with current tech, it's only really cost/legislation that's preventing them at the moment.
The non-ownership model could well be the future. Why pay for something to sit on your drive most of the time, anyway? Autonomous Ubers make a lot of sense - and probably the real future of public transport.
Yes I notice this very important fact has been completely ignored in all the ridiculous headlining. A more sensible system would be a hybrid vehicle offering the best of both worlds. The way things are progressing (and I use that word intentionally) I reckon a hybrid vehicle will be hitting 200mpg, or more, within the next 25 years.
.....and a mild hybrid, i.e. A petrol or diesel car with an electric assistance motor, would fall into this banding. It would be relatively easy to integrate this in the next 23 years!
Forgetting that for a moment, and assuming a shift towards electric cars....
But my question would be WHERE will the government recoup the huge losses in revenue on fuel duty and VAT on new car sales (which will plummet as people will look at "sharing" a charge) plus all the small garages that make a living from servicing older cars that will no longer be around, job losses throughout the motor industry directly or indirectly from this, like the oil industry for example?
That's why I think a mild hybrid is the likely solution.
The current government will be the ones in the care homes staring at matron, these are promises that they will not have to keep!
Most hydrogen is produced from methane (natural gas) so not limitless. It can be produced from the electrolysis of water which is the reverse of the fuel cell and very inefficient. Unless other cost-efficient methods of production can be found and developed is probably a dead end.
Transport and storage will also be expensive.
Road use could be taxed, shouldn't be difficult. As for job losses, that's progress. People have 25 years to adjust - maybe not a career for the future though.
We may have flux capacitors before 2040. Travel 100 years into the future and bring back future technology to solve today's problems.
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
If you could travel into the future, why bother coming back ?
Yep.... that's my thoughts as well. It seems the worlds been getting a crappier place every year for the last xxx years. There's nothing to convince me that things will be better in 100 years time: world population of c. 20 billion people, no green spaces left, 90% of the natural wildlife gone, war/famine/no drinking water, factory created food that tastes like poo, etc, etc.
Yes, I'm sure the car industry knows which way the wind in blowing. It's not that long ago that both autonomous vehicles and decent EVs appeared to be a pipe-dream, but clearly they're now very real. Combine this with Uber-type tech - which really just coordinates mutliple taxis better than humans - and you've got the potential to move people around really quite efficiently. It's pretty easy to see how peak/off-peak pricing, pay-per-mile, and multiple/single occupancy can work, along with hub & spoke and express/local services for longer journeys. There's even room for "premium" services to satisfy the aspirational/oestentatious, but as you point out, if I was just nipping to the supermarket, I wouldn't really be too bothered what it looks like, as long as it's quick and comforable.
The personal car as an everyday status symbol, or even a "thing" in general is probably going to decline in the long run, becoming a niche product/special interest item.
As you say, there's nothing radical there, it's just a case of integrating current technologies.
There would also be no need for public transport, certainly above ground. I think underground networks will probably remain.