At some point in the not too distant future as electric vehicle use rises, demand for petrol and diesel fuels will fall to a level where it is no longer economically viable to extract and process oil to produce petroleum products. The concerns about plastics will presumably add further pressure. Falling demand can only lead to higher prices, which will in turn accelerate the move away.
Now to get to my point, is there any current or forseeable scope for military vehicles and aircraft to power them selves with anything other than fossil fuels? If the Middle East has been forced away from oil, who will produce the fuel for the war machine? Will Russia or the US look at Saudi Arabia and say "Nice country, I'll take it"?
If you suscribe to the alternatives being touted then your supposition has merit. For me they do not and 'fossil' fuels will be in use for longer then the idiots in government think.
Plus.....electric cars and the whole production process seems to be very wrong.
I have no idea and a very interesting topic - where is all the energy to power all the vehicles, that will be replacing the fossil fuel powered cars, going to come from?
Coal fired power stations! 🤣Originally Posted by Mr G Imp
Hell will freeze over before I own a totally electric vehicle. I’d seriously consider a hybrid though.
HA HA ! and lovely nuclear reactors..
It tends to be forgotten that oil is a very finite resource, and most of the major fields are known and currently exploited. Some - like the various North Sea fields - are mostly played-out already. What are left are mostly hard to retrieve, small or low quality. So like it or not, we will have to wean ourselves off at some point. Fuel is something of a red herring, we're already well on our way to making electric vehicles that challenge ICE-powered and it's still very early days. Power generation is going much the same way. Raw materials for plastics could be a bigger sticking point, though here again there are very compelling ecological reasons to wean ourselves off them. Sooner the better.
Apparently massive arrays in space (like the size of Africa) will grab solar radiation and microwave it down to earth. Electricity for peanuts.
I meant to patent it but was hungover that morning
The answer has to be nuclear, probably lots of small local powerplants, rather than huge ones. Far safer than continuing to heat the planet.
Can’t see military vehicles/planes charging overnight during any war. Could probably use something like bio-diesel or ethanol when fossil fuels really run out.
Another possibility is hydrogen and don’t think it can be ruled out yet as an alternative to EVs for us either.
Last edited by Kingstepper; 18th February 2020 at 03:07.
Bio-fuels need land to grow them on, so we'll need to cut down more forests to grow these environmentally-friendly fuels. Nuclear power has become the safest option for our future, counterintuitively.
Everything you need to know about global coal power plants.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-w...l-power-plants
There is still huge coal reserves and demand in China and India will continue to see growth. China is the worlds largest CO2 emitter and responsible for 48% of global coal consumption.
I think global demand has now peaked but with global consumption of energy ever demanding, unsure where the 40% shortfall if all coal power plants were phased out would come from.
Alternatives create their own damage to this planet sadly.
Electric vehicles are already doomed. Hydrogen is the long term answer. The cars are all ready for production. The problem is that manufacturing hydrogen on a global scale is itself a dirty process that nobody has yet managed to refine.
It’s crazy to think that there’s a future in fossil fuels. Our lives on this planet cannot sustain it. Consumers in the the most powerful economic areas are demanding cleaner products. Even India now make cleaner fridges for their domestic market because they also want to sell them to Europe.
I had an email from Killik’s this week about how it may be time to start pulling away from oil-based investments, and how the oil companies themselves are trying to change in the face of dwindling long term investor confidence in the sector.
Biotechnology is (part of) the solution. We’re working on biofuels from non-primary agricultural sources (i.e. waste, or even CO2 itself). I agree we need more nuclear power though.
Pretty much sums up why Hydrogen is a bit of a lame duck when it comes to personal transport but is probably the way to go for military and air travel use. The inefficiencies are astoundingly bad at present even in best case scenarios. Not something the armed forces really give a damn about given all the lovely tax money but for the average Joe the difference is significant.
Having lived with an electric car for 2 years I'd have another in a heartbeat if my use case and budget overlap a car (which at present they don't).
In our village there are 2! Electric charge points,so let's assume the other 50 or so cars looking to charge once they park...........they can't.
Electric only is not a viable solution whatsoever,and the wrong direction to be going,the infrastructure for electric charge points is astronomic and not cost effective.
I’ve been waving the flag for nuclear for the last twenty years,battery cars need to make a giant leap in technology before they are of any use for distance driving.A great many people won’t be able to charge cars at home.Tough decisions need to be taken by world leaders imho.
We could use less land for meat production.
In 20 years or so many people won't own a private car. It currently makes little sense to have our second most valuable asset stood outside the house, or workplace for 95% of our day. Driverless e-powered cars will bring down the cost of getting a taxi, so will likely be cheaper for most to use a cab for most of their regular journeys.
So what I think we'll see in the future are large uber/tesla owned charging station come taxi ranks.
A lot of us pay from £200-£800 per month on owning a private car. Uber could go down a subscription route where we pay a similar sum for unlimited monthly travel.
I also think we'll see a universal battery that you can swap out at a fuel station that will give you a 100 miles or so, to get your journey complete so you can either do a full charge at work or home.
One thing is for certain, batteries will get more efficient, and incrementally smaller every year.
Boys will still need their toys.
In 20 years or so there'll probably need to be more private boats.
This is so far off the mark. I’m a taxi driver so I know the costs of running a taxi and it’s about £400 a week. Electric cars are more expensive than ICE cars to buy so the money saved running them is lost in the cost of purchasing them. There isn’t the space in town centres for these large taxi ranks/charging stations.
I work in Bridgend, South Wales. It’s not a particularly big town, but our fleet alone (not counting other taxi companies) consists of about 120 cars. Where are all these going to get charged if they are owned by one company?
As a kid obsessed with sci-fi, I always imagined future wars against Death Stars and the cyclons etc. Looks like the reality will be like a crap episode of robot wars vs a milk float
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Cool!! :0)
Living in rural Norfolk, what is this ‘Uber’ you speak of? - up here, no pavements, no streetlights, no public transport across vast areas means no car, you’re stuck indoors! - can’t see private cars disappearing outside of main cities for a long time
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Not quite - look up Brazil's pre-salts deposits for example. Also, improvements in technology is allowing many previously unviable deposits to be successfully exploited.
Your last sentence goes without saying tbh,we've all seen how battery tech has gone with mobile phones,so pretty much a given.
The miles I cover daily/weekly and annually would be fine for me having an electric car,for any great distance I'd hire a car.
The issue is the charging of a lot of electric cars,I don't think we have one at the airport!.
Last edited by P9CLY; 18th February 2020 at 14:44.
They're pretty efficient already TBH, can't see that changing much.
We'll see in a couple of decades. Charging stations don't need to be in a central location, out of town will do. One of the largest running costs of a taxi is the driver, the other is the fossil fuel. Take those out of the equation and costs start to tumble. And of course e-cars are more expensive today than a petrol car, at one time a quartz watch was much more expensive than an automatic counter part.
Things I'm certain of:
Driverless cars will be common place
Electric cars will become cheaper than petrol cars
Battery technology will continue to improve
At some point as the sale of EVs takes off, we might start to see a precipitous decline in the number of petrol stations as they become unprofitable. This could be far worse than the current situation with the relative lack of charging points for EVs, since with an EV if you really get stuck all you need is access to a normal 3 pin household socket (and lots of time!).
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As I understand it battery technology is not improving at all, it has reached a point where it is what it is. What is improving is the use of the available power with better motors lights etc and less power hungry applications. As such we are not really progressing into a world where this is a viable option for every one.
As to the finite resource of fossil fuels...well this is still theoretical though it is touted as fact. I believe people need to look after what they have and not look to change for new all the time this is where a massive part of the problem lays.
We live on an infinite planet?
I've a PHEV (Golf GTE) so have dipped a toe in the water. I've wrestled with this hydrogen vs battery debate recently as well.
It was an interesting video but comparing efficiencies (today) is a bit meh, hard to predict what they will be ultimately and probably doesn't make a hill of beans difference, needs must.
Possibly a solution is a hybrid battery/hydrogen fuel cell car? The hydrogen will presumably cost more (like fossil fuels today) but will give greater flexibility on range.
TBH trying to work out costs is impossible as fuel duty hasn't kicked in on electricity yet and I'm sure it will, to replace petrol and fuel oil duty.
No. Clearly.
Yet the fossil fuels re running out is a theory. The scare is that they are running out soon, as in our life times so we must all panic and do some thing. it is not known when and if the lack of fuel will actually be an issue.
I think that the issue of waste and needless pollution should be a first issue taught in schools and addressed.
If we carry on as we are, how can they not run out?
That hybrid seems decent idea!
Other possibilities are ethanol/methanol fuel cells. Obviously transport and refuelling very similar to ICE vehicles. https://www.greencarcongress.com/201...blueworld.html
Last edited by Kingstepper; 18th February 2020 at 18:10.
So you know the quantity available?
And this will work in small villages and rural areas? We don't all live in cities.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
I know beyond any doubt that it is below infinity. How is it possible for you to not know this bleeding obvious fact?
Buy a horse
Rude.
The only facts are.
1:- No one knows what will be.
2:- We all have an opinion......and that's all it will ever be.
3:- Man WILL only do whatever if mega money is the 1st box ticked,anything else is secondary.
4:- The amount of people who care and do their bit for the environment isn't anywhere near enough to make an impact........Now,and as I see it not much different in the next decade.
What's rude? Why are you being (I assume) deliberately obtuse about this?
Maybe we'll be the fossil fuel of the future.
Ok, i will try again. To state that you know a level is without a doubt below infinity is offering nothing to a discussion, it is a pointless stand to take.
It is not known what levels there are and it is there fore not known what the time frame is before an issue arises so we could say that this is a Shrödingers cat of the fuel argument. Yet there is a common misconception that this is an issue we must address with the utmost urgency, well if you take the governments stand.
I suspect there is an underlying agenda that drives this argument but as politicians are involved, a number of which seem to be none to clever we will never know.
At no point can my answers be defined as obtuse. To put a differing view is a valid form of discussion.
I'm actually thinking about buying an electric car. Range has improved - I don't know if that is better battery technology, motor technology, regenerative tech or something else, but for small cars like a Leaf, Corsa or Zoe to be able to do c 250 miles on a charge in optimum conditions sounds good and like progress.
I agree, the charging network must improve. There needs to be consistency in the network (I've read or needing multiple cards/passwords/accounts and excessive charge costs equivalent or worse than petrol costs) but as soon as one or two big players get in there, I'd expect to see consolidation and better competition.
I won't buy the car, just PCP over 2 years and look at where the market is.... And decide from there what to do next and if things have improved in terms of tech and network.
Probably just stick with diesel then.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Puzzled which part of "hard to retrieve ... or low quality" was unclear? Notwithstanding that the real question should anyway be "should we?", not "can we?"...
A robot milk float, earlier:
https://youtu.be/nODsrmsuPb8
You misunderstand it. Lead/Acid dates to the 1850s, Li-ion went live in 1991 - i.e. the technology is in its infancy, think hybrid Lithium ultracapacitors as a pointer to one of many ways this technology will continue to improve. There is a great deal else that will see many of us in our graves before battery technology development ceases. All technologies have a finite life, and are replaced of course, and batteries are a limited concept, but they are in their infancy nonetheless. Of equal importance is the fact that there are unquestionably huge improvements to be made to charging infrastructure too, of course...
I have to pause momentarily to note that this is gibbering nonsense. Never mind that continuing use of fossil fuels at rates commensurate with our present near-exponential population increase will cause eventual global ecosystem collapse.
FFS. There you go again... We've already used the majority, populations are increasing fast, and those populations are becoming wealthier = ever-faster usage rates of a finite resource. Even if we can't predict the day and hour, we will be UTTER morons not to plan for its replacement ASAP!
You are missing the fact that the resource is not just buried energy, it is also the environment in which it is used which must bear the brunt of the pollution produced. That environment is already massively compromised, and becoming more so with every passing day.
Rubbish. Literally $Trillions have been spent searching for oil and gas - it is very well-known where it is to be found. It only forms in very particular conditions, and those conditions did not exist very often in Earth's history, they can only occur in continental rocks, and only be preserved in regions not subjected to orogenic uplift, tectonic subduction, etc. etc.
You were the one suggesting that fossil fuels are (in some way which is impossible to understand) "not finite". I would suggest you Google "infinite".
I think I've been extremely patient with you, and not rude at all. I can't imagine why you think Schrodinger's cat has anything at all to do with our fossil fuel reserves. This is not quantum physics.
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