I think all you’re really saying is that people buy different cars for all sorts of reasons, depending on their priorities.Originally Posted by RobDad
It’s not just ‘techies’ drive EVs, go to any rapid charge hub and you’ll see plenty of older people, indeed my 75+ year old in-laws drive a Zoe.
As for the YouTube reviews, most are to drive clicks, so you have to factor that in to how much credence you give them. A lady I work with loves her Puma, best car ever etc.
At the end of the day, the majority of EVs are. nothing special, they still look like ‘normal’ cars, and still have the form factor of cars that have an engine. That’s because they do, just an electric one.
My daughter loves her Puma, she’s now on her second one whilst another daughter loves her MG ZS EV and wouldn’t consider another ICE. She’s certainly no techie though, she’d struggle to work a pencil!
As Tooks says, it’s horses for courses; with an electric van, diesel cars and petrol bikes, I’ve a foot in every camp but the cars will be replaced by EVs at some point rather than the van being replaced with diesel.
The petrol bikes will stay but I have considered a Zero to add to the collection.
I guess it's not illogical to think EV's will soon have to be priced like or lower than 'normal' cars, since they're really nothing special and with fewer moving parts, engineering involved, should be cheaper...?
Living where I do I´m looking forward to some manufacturer bold enough to equip a car with it´s own solar panels...hell I could possibly drive for nearly free most of the year...now that´d be amazing, real futurey stuff.
Last edited by Passenger; 21st December 2023 at 10:14.
Fisker already did that. More of a range top up though given the generation capacity vs requirement.
Heck would be a free toppy up 300 days p.a. on average...the Ocean model, hmmm...pricey though, good they´ve started this direction-idea...cheers for bringing Fisker to my attention.
Last edited by Passenger; 21st December 2023 at 10:46.
As an engineer who appreciates efficiency and good design I guess that might make me Scotty. Combustion engines are shockingly inefficient, EVs are a warp jump forward in that respect, and have far less moving parts that waste energy or can go wrong.
I dislike touch screens and excessive digital displays so chose an EV with traditional speedometer and physical tactile buttons for most of the controls, which provides the best of both worlds for my tastes.
Anybody who assumes that I think that newer is better can't have read my posts elsewhere on this forum!
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
I chose an EV after taking a test drive in an electric and petrol version of the same car.
If I was a lot richer than I am I would definitely have some exotic ICE car for fun, but it would get used about 1% of the time. Given the state of the roads and traffic nowadays, who actually gets to drive for fun on a regular basis? Not many I’m sure. For me the quiet and comfort of my EV is far more important along with the 200 to 300 equivalent mpg.
If I want to drive for fun I’ll pay a couple of hundred quid and drive a few supercars around a circuit now and again.
I hadn’t thought of Scotty! All meant lightheartedly, sometimes this forum gets a bit heavy - it’s interesting to share thoughts and views. At the end of the day it’s nice to live in a time and a place where we have a choice of different cars/watches etc!
ICE engines are about 30% efficient.
Wind turbines are a similar or greater efficiency.
Combined cycle power plants are ~50% efficient at converting fossil fuels to electrickery. But then there is transportation and charging losses associated with EV charging.
Not an amazing difference from an efficiency point of view.
An actual analysis…….
https://www.reuters.com/business/aut...rs-2021-06-29/
"Bite my shiny metal ass."
- Bender Bending Rodríguez
I believe you're confusing 2 aspects.
ICE engines are at best 30% efficient on their own. But transporting brut, refining it, delivering it to station also have a significant energy cost that reduces very significantly the efficiency of the ICE engine.
Matthew was talking about the electric engine on its own, i.e. like once the fuel tank is full and the battery fully charged.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
I was.
EVs also make more efficient use of energy regardless of the way that the power is generated, according to the data sources illustrated in the diagram below.
It doesn't matter much how inefficient a wind turbine is as far as I can see as wind isn't going to run out any time soon, particularly around here. Wind power also has a front-loaded carbon footprint 99% less than coal-fired power plants and 98% less than natural gas (Bernstein Research).
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
I appreciate that, but I always think well-to-wheel.
Turbines have to be manufactured with all the parasitic energy that entails. Infrastructure, foundations, cables and transformers.
Natural gas for CCGT has to be water and hydrocarbon dewpointed and in case of LNG huge amounts of energy to liquefy and then there is the transportation costs.
Once electrickery is produced, the use is very efficient. The production may not be so.
But petrol is exactly the same: From crude oil to E10 or diesel is also an inefficient process that you are not taking into account as you focus solely on the production of electricity. It would be valid if electricity was produced from one of those 2 fuels only since the inefficiency would be the same for both ICE and EV, although taking your 50% efficiency from fossil fuels to electricity, and the 89% efficiency of the EV, we would still get 45% overall efficiency, far superior to your somewhat vastly optimistic 30% for ICE.
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
I've got the base level Tesla Model 3 and managed a 255 mile round trip today, arriving home with 2% battery left.
Main difference today was I was averaging only 68 MPH on the motorway due to congestion - usually I drive at 'not 70' and range drops to around 220 miles or so.
Had the wipers on, heated seats/steering wheel and also Talksport radio.
I did have a recent system update download - maybe that's added some efficiency?
Unless we are missing something I am not aware of here, I am with you on calculations.
I still don't think we have found the most efficient energy source, and are fooling ourselves on how cheap it is to 'fill up' (with a massive pavement ramp from our house socket)
And motor vehicles are the thin end of the wedge.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Exactly!
I jump about on youtube!.
Came across this....."search" if curious, if too difficult......keep doing what your doing.
"China is throwing away fields of electric cars-letting them rot!".
Look at the bicycles too!!!.
So don’t invest in China then?
Thanks for the heads up.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Probably doing the same with ICE too but it’s not such a big story.
It’s also just an anti EV spin on a ride sharing company that has ditched the idea as unsurprisingly people aren’t fond of car sharing.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210708...arded-hangzhou
The good news is that the batteries in particular are eminently recyclable, a pioneering plant in the US is showing how it’s done.
https://youtu.be/s2xrarUWVRQ?si=S2MNTkTyA_hVn-Jd
Hmm looking at that video, the recycling plant for lithium and cobalt isnt even built yet, and looking at the Q3 results they lost 206,2 million dollars so far this year? Probably just another fraud riding the ESG wave which is fading fast...
https://s27.q4cdn.com/432858399/file...d5c56a92f0.pdf
BEVs is going to be a parenthesis in history tbh, battery technology is very poor, the cars are too heavy and expensive, and they when they spontaneously combust (especially aboard ships), you can't put the fires out...
Petrol and diesel is here to stay, combined with maybe small BEVs in cities, PHEVs and maybe hydrogen will go somewhere but who knows.
Come on…really. Thought wed got past the spontaneously combusting batteries
Yes, about four or five years ago.
It’s the same old garbage rearing it’s ugly head again.
Last edited by Dave+63; 30th December 2023 at 17:58.
Well, the video I linked was intended to show that the tech to recycle batteries exists, and it’s a developing market. The recycled raw materials were literally shown in the video, ready to be used in other products and batteries.
Battery recycling is not just an EV issue, it’s an ‘everything with a battery in it issue’. An EV battery is around 6-10k smartphones, global manufacture of smartphones is around 1.3Bn units per annum… Then there’s laptops, tablets, disposable and recyclable AAs etc, car 12v batteries, industrial batteries and so on. At one point it was cheaper to dig up more bauxite to make new aluminium cans than it was to recycle, but that has changed with demand and scaling, and so it will with batteries.
ICE passenger vehicles are long term dead simply because fossil fuels are dead, if even oil producing countries agree we need to ‘transition away from dependency on oil’ then the direction seems pretty clear, the world is slowly but surely starting to wake up.
https://unfccc.int/news/cop28-agreem...ossil-fuel-era
Does oil have a future? Of course, modern life depends on it for all sorts of things, it’s far too valuable to burn in a passenger car.
There are arguments against any change starting with 'but China', but they’re also changing and getting a head start in the renewables revolution. ‘But synthetic fuels’ is another argument to kick the can down the road, but it’s all just an admission that the tide has turned and we should instead somehow focus on becoming Cuba.
Unfortunately, this is what happens when practically the entire world is run by old men…
But Mumbai
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
Exactly!
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Sure, the rest of the world should do nothing because some countries can’t?
Is that really a serious argument?
None of these things are that difficult to achieve compared to the alternative of dealing with the ‘do nothing’ option.
Nope
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
The small stuff (people running EV's) will have little effect until the big stuff is addressed. It's no reason to do nothing but I used it to indicate the unbelievably massive void between what is currently happening against some of the aspirations, nothing more.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
You seen it first hand?
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Millions of people doing ‘small stuff’ becomes ‘big stuff’, that’s the point.
But proportionally it does not quite add up that way - I get the principle but the reality is a long, long way off. I also agree that there has to be a start somewhere, by somebody.
Last edited by Chris_in_the_UK; 30th December 2023 at 19:07.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Someone should do something, just not you, right?
It's amusing to see some of the folks talking about environmental obligations are the same people who post about recently installed wood fire burners which are something like 500 times worse for the environment than gas boilers!
I've seen, first hand, massive change in transportation in a few short years in Bogota from choking levels of pollution through to emissions standards cleaning up the air and now an exponential growth in the take up of EVs. Once something becomes affordable and the norm it really takes off in a city. Richer countries need to drive forward innovation to improve technology and reduce costs. I know the Indian subcontinent fairly well and don't think that the larger cities from Kolkata to Karachi will be that far behind, particularly when to comes to the electric two-wheeler segment.
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
No, never suggested that? An EV does not fit with our needs currently, when it does I will consider it a bit more seriously.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Well last year there were 2150 vehicles competing for every 1km of road in Mumbai - an increase from the year before - last year 130,000 EV's were registered so there is a way to go.
I am not anti-EV in any way, please do not think I am. I still do not think that the small people are the immediate solution, that's all.
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
I don’t think you are anti-EV, it’s an interesting discussion, but the reality is there is no immediate solution to all this, and it will require billions of people making small changes.
Agree with your earlier comment on the somebody needing to start somewhere, making a more sustainable dent in the 668 million car miles driven every day (out of 887 million by all motor vehicles) just in the UK seems like a good place to start to me.
I get that other countries have even bigger challenges, but carrying on as we are doesn’t seem to do much to start addressing the problem either, especially when we can relatively painlessly.
It doesn’t dominate my life or thinking, but with a young child I think it’s important to at least give it consideration and do what you can where you can.
Last edited by Tooks; 30th December 2023 at 19:44.
Who are the small people ??
You, me and the public who own/drive cars
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
Yeh I'm one of those Ryan, it’s been discussed on here before.
Before having a wood stove installed i reasoned that the impact i made by having one was far less than my previous property where i only had gas central heating.
During the summer months i now have solar panels and from April to September i barely have any expense in heating my water through the immersion as the excess is sent straight to that. Most people with gas boilers choose to heat their water via that way as gas is far cheaper than running the immersion. I now don't have a gas boiler, my village has no gas and so the heating is purely done via an electric boiler. I use octopus who claim to have 100% renewables.
Summer months again my solar panels run most of the house as we’re generally not there during the day.
I have an electric car which does less that 500 a month which equates to about 2 charges.
I fire my wood stove up in the evenings only from about 6pm until about 10pm until we go to bed (temperature dependant) . I only use less than 20% moisture logs as before i take delivery i check them with a meter. Its also the lastest heats approved stove.
So it would be really good to hear how my footprint compares to someone who uses a boiler to heat their water all year round, to heat their homes 4-6 months a year and drives a family sized petrol or diesel engine.
Got to be honest here I have two EVs right now and I’d have a wood burner tomorrow and not GAF.
Hey I'm not having a go, just trying to highlight that people come up with eco arguments for and against lifestyle choices whilst not exactly eating their own dog food. I like flying business class for example. Do I know that's bad for the environment? Yes. Enought to not do it? Nope.
But then some guy living with just his missus in a 5 bed house has a pop, or someone with a hefty ICE engine, someone who has 5 kids, someone who owns more than one watch that has gone through an intensive industrial process to make, someone who goes on a cruise, someone who has 5 pet dogs, someone who.....
You get my drift. Basically the best thing we could do for the environment is to not breed and use resources any more but that's not practical and it is about finding a balance, yet folks will always point out the negative eco credentials of things they have no interest in whilst defending/justifying the negative eco impact of their own interests.
So you doing twice as much as most people then!
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks long into you.........
After the BS and the depreciation I might just keep it. Apart from getting the old one washed and going to collect kebabs in the new one we haven’t used either but it’s one job off the list and it’s given her one less thing to complain about.
Fossil fuel use is not decreasing, it's increasing, and will continue to do so as developing economies climb out of the poverty ladder and strive upwards.... The talk of "peak demand" and stuff like that is just something politicians and idiots like Greta Thunberg regurgitate as it is currently trending and popular.
Meanwhile:
The IEA is leading the bearish chorus. In their most recent World Energy Outlook 2023,
published in October, the IEA lays out its “Announced Pledges Scenario” for global energy
demand. Between 2022 and 2030, the IEA estimates demand (which it oddly calls Total
Energy Supply [TES]) will fall by 1%. By 2040, it will fall by 3.2%. These numbers are not
possible given our understanding of global energy consumption. Our models tell us the IEA
uses fundamentally flawed mythologies that introduce a systematic downward bias. Their
bias has been apparent since at least 2010. Over that time, the IEA has chronically underestimated
global oil demand in twelve of the fourteen years (including COVID-impacted
2020). Excluding 2020, the IEA increased demand by an incredible 800,000 b/d on average
from its initial expectation. If the IEA’s error were a country, it would be the world’s 21st
largest oil consumer.
Quoted from Goehring & Rozencwajgs latest Q3 commentary. I would recommend anyone with a serious interest in energy and how the world actually works, to read their publishings. God knows its been super profitable for me to invest according to reality, and not dreams...
https://www.gorozen.com/
Listen, BEVs is a vanity/luxury purchase that idiots in the middle classes buy to make themselves feel better. Now that the subsidies are drying up the electric car market is dying... Noone actually wants them, cause they make no sense.
You lost me there - how exactly is it a vanity purchase and how do they make no sense? They seem to work fine for lots of people, quiet and easy to drive with enough range to be used exactly as we used an ICE car. Just because other countries are keen we all live in a Bladerunner world doesn’t mean as individuals we can’t make different choices? - I really find the anti EV thing hilarious, it seems to irritate some people and I genuinely have no idea why? If we just keep on driving gas guzzlers how is that better? In my 50 plus years on this planet it’s fairly obvious it’s going down the pan environmentally, yet some people just whine about any attempts at positive change? Very odd imho.
Wow. Just wow.
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