Electric vehicle discussion

[TomcatViP]

Until the recycling of millions of used EV batteries is solved and achievable within the next decade, we are simply moving the potential ecological damage somewhere else.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56574779

This is true but not absolutely correct. Batteries solid store waste, in the sense that a disposed battery is a self contained pollution that won't spread unless damaged or exposed to elements (corrosion).
You have to put that in front of diesel emmissions that are impossible to contain and spread even through biological tissues.
EV are a significant step forward.

 

[Foo Fighter]

Not really, it's an evolutionary dead end. Hybrid on the other hand has potential to allow much more progress with less outlay and faster. eco fuels for ICE car and vehicles have the potential to be part of the cleanup rather than the problem. Why not? diversification strengthens our opportunities to be globally better. The grasslands that cows and sheep graze on, pull in more carbon than the livestock emit. We can affordably pay the unemployed and folk living in poorer nations to clean our oceans and create employment rather than put billions into the hands of the vested interest folk. Cleaning up should be an opportunity, NOT a stick to beat us with.

If the poorer people in poorer nations can get decent employment, they can get better health and education meaning the cycle of betterment increases rather than goes backwards with millions relying on food and health assistance. How many here would want the UNICEF and other organisations to remain in place when we can have a situation where the people themselves are able to regain dignity while being better off and healthier?

Oops, I seem to have knocked my box over, do excuse me.

 

[shin_getter]

I think, on the public information side, the path to the end of ICE is shown when Tesla did their battery day presentation road mapping a -50% cost battery pack in 5 years and received little push back, followed by VW basically making the same presentation a few month later. The advantage in total lifespan costs today will covert into superior production cost for 300mile vehicles at -50% battery pack prices.

Produced fuel takes so many steps and a long complex supply chain, that never were never cost competitive in the fossil fuel era. Integrated hybrid propulsion is a goldberg machine and only provide advantage in cost/range on a increasing higher end.
----------
The real superiority of electrical power is in less measure characteristics and it takes a bit more time to make full utilization of this. The first wave of electrification with the building of the power grid did not get it's potential exploited remotely fast at all, and there was very little the cost advantage of building power stations, high voltage wires to cover the country compared to using engines at point of use, while using existing solid and liquid transport networks. A conservative at 1890 can point to those new, expensive centralized systems "controlled by a clique of rich" pushed by loons like Tesla with new hazards of electrocution and fires across the entire surface of the country and recoil in horror. We can even use some arguments here where the old energy system of horses, local coal, wood and oil gets replaced by a single system only means end of development.

Electrical power's advantage is in flexibility, efficiency, scalability and cost ultimately won out the first wave of electrification with energy provided "on demand" everywhere instead of all the complexity of running transmission belts, shafts and axels or having literal pipes everywhere. The advantage of those "soft capabilities" is hard to measure and hard to exploit but has deep learning curve of providing value that makes the value proposition very different before and after adaption.

Why didn't electricity immediately change manufacturing?

The internet shows, as with electricity, that real technological change takes time and imagination.

www.bbc.com

------------
Superiority in "soft capabilities" (home charging, low noise, vehicle handling, reduced internal space constraints) have already caused significant adaptation of electric vehicles before cost parity in key measured specs.

So what it is with the new F-150? Vehicle to grid, vehicle to load, energy arbitrage are all advantages possible because of battery technology. As such capabilities become more common and standardized, an entire new ecosystem of capabilities built on this can exist.

After starting this I think one thing that ought to have some government intervention is standardized electrical interface for range extenders (charge on the move) on top of other standards. With standard interface for such subsystems one, flexibility can be maximized to fit different needs: one can add a engine, another battery, or other energy system as needed. Imagine things like fold out solar package for traversing the desert.

With electrical architecture proliferation, I'd expect space beamed power to be a thing within a few decades (though probably in the solar/cloud obscuring band at start) and the idea of range anxiety gets flipped.
----------------

We also have not remotely reached the developmental endpoint on skateboard architecture. I'd expect future vehicles, as battery prices go down and thus aero not as important, to have MAXIMUM internal volume as we can already see in some designs already.

With electrification I'd expect personal vehicles to converge towards RVs in terms of habitability and customization. There is no need for a whole host of mass produced integrated system when you can just plug whatever you want into it. This will really kick off when level 3 self drive or at least reliable collision avoidance tech becomes available, so that safety, the last hard constraint, stop having much effect on design.

 

[Volkodav]

Not really, it's an evolutionary dead end. Hybrid on the other hand has potential to allow much more progress with less outlay and faster. eco fuels for ICE car and vehicles have the potential to be part of the cleanup rather than the problem. Why not? diversification strengthens our opportunities to be globally better. The grasslands that cows and sheep graze on, pull in more carbon than the livestock emit. We can affordably pay the unemployed and folk living in poorer nations to clean our oceans and create employment rather than put billions into the hands of the vested interest folk. Cleaning up should be an opportunity, NOT a stick to beat us with.

If the poorer people in poorer nations can get decent employment, they can get better health and education meaning the cycle of betterment increases rather than goes backwards with millions relying on food and health assistance. How many here would want the UNICEF and other organisations to remain in place when we can have a situation where the people themselves are able to regain dignity while being better off and healthier?

Oops, I seem to have knocked my box over, do excuse me.

How is hybrid better?

If you follow the logic that ICE pollutes and that batteries also pollute then how can hybrid be better, it must, by definition be worse than one of the options even if better than the other. That is, if ICE pollutes more then a hybrid would pollute more than an electric car, if batteries pollute more, then a hybrid must pollute more than an ICE car.

The other factor is added complexity and weight associated with two systems in one car, more complexity equals more to go wrong, higher maintenance, lower reliability, greater weight equals lower efficiency.

 

[TomcatViP]

After starting this I think one thing that ought to have some government intervention is standardized electrical interface for range extenders (charge on the move) on top of other standards

I did had this in mind half a decade ago when I was looking for investors.
The problem was there was then no long term forsight on this problem. Now ppl have a more accute understanding of the complex market exchanges related to the electrification of an entire fleet of transport means.
Costs variation is the number one problem. Yes.

 

[Archibald]

A very informative thread so far, hopefully it won't get derailed. I'm good at the space program but loosy at the ecological transition. Did not realized (for example) that beyond the battery-vs-gasoline debate, there is also the fact that electric-drives are more energy efficient than IC engines - they use raw energy much more efficiently. One point for EVs there.
I had doubts about battery/ EV range that's why I pushed for ammonia-methanol-hybrids; but it seems that Musk, lithium and Tesla have changed the game for good; advantages to EV now against modified IC (let's say: IC-hybrid, IC-methanol, or IC-ammonia).

 

[Lc89]

Do you have any idea how much horses and the first industries polluted at the beginning of the industrial revolution?

 

[Hood]

Do you have any idea how much horses and the first industries polluted at the beginning of the industrial revolution?

They didn't call it the 'Black Country' for nowt.

It took nearly a hundred years before the Public Health (London) Act, 1891 materialised (only covering London though and ignoring the industrial northern heartlands entirely) and then another 60 years before the Clean Air Act, 1956 (after the 1952 Great Smog in London that killed an estimated 12,000 people in total), and another 40 years before the Environmental Protection Act, 1990.
Thankfully the legislative processes work a little quicker today.

 

[Foo Fighter]

Not really, it's an evolutionary dead end. Hybrid on the other hand has potential to allow much more progress with less outlay and faster. eco fuels for ICE car and vehicles have the potential to be part of the cleanup rather than the problem. Why not? diversification strengthens our opportunities to be globally better. The grasslands that cows and sheep graze on, pull in more carbon than the livestock emit. We can affordably pay the unemployed and folk living in poorer nations to clean our oceans and create employment rather than put billions into the hands of the vested interest folk. Cleaning up should be an opportunity, NOT a stick to beat us with.

If the poorer people in poorer nations can get decent employment, they can get better health and education meaning the cycle of betterment increases rather than goes backwards with millions relying on food and health assistance. How many here would want the UNICEF and other organisations to remain in place when we can have a situation where the people themselves are able to regain dignity while being better off and healthier?

Oops, I seem to have knocked my box over, do excuse me.

How is hybrid better?

If you follow the logic that ICE pollutes and that batteries also pollute then how can hybrid be better, it must, by definition be worse than one of the options even if better than the other. That is, if ICE pollutes more then a hybrid would pollute more than an electric car, if batteries pollute more, then a hybrid must pollute more than an ICE car.

The other factor is added complexity and weight associated with two systems in one car, more complexity equals more to go wrong, higher maintenance, lower reliability, greater weight equals lower efficiency.

Technically, a fuel cell vehicle is a hybrid rather than a pure battery electric variety, it uses fewer battery cells to do the same job. Personally speaking, I am happier using low or no emissions liquid fuels in an ICE vehicle due to less reliance on batteries, a they need to be disposed of and b these battery electric cars are HEAVY with the penalty on fuel use that moving and stopping extra mass entails. Something that is also affected is safety. With the extra mass involved, the vehicles need to be stronger to keep occupant safety within tolerable levels. For me the whole cost of battery electric vehicles is an unacceptable compromise leading to more damage to the environment. Sorry if I did not get myself across better.

JCB unveils hydrogen-fuelled combustion engine technology | Autocar

JCB boss Lord Anthony Bamford says CO2-free piston engine could be a cheaper and quicker way to meet emissions targets

www.autocar.co.uk

Porsche begins synthetic fuel production in Chile | Autocar

Pilot plant will produce 28,500 gallons of sustainable fuel for combustion-engined race cars

www.autocar.co.uk

 

[Volkodav]

Do you have any idea how much horses and the first industries polluted at the beginning of the industrial revolution?

They didn't call it the 'Black Country' for nowt.

It took nearly a hundred years before the Public Health (London) Act, 1891 materialised (only covering London though and ignoring the industrial northern heartlands entirely) and then another 60 years before the Clean Air Act, 1956 (after the 1952 Great Smog in London that killed an estimated 12,000 people in total), and another 40 years before the Environmental Protection Act, 1990.
Thankfully the legislative processes work a little quicker today.

As I understand it there is basically a dead strip across the North Atlantic ocean floor along the main shipping route between the UK and New York from coal burning ships where the coal dust they produced slowly settled. Considering the pollution, sanitation etc. that has been introduced over the last century or more, in response to human effect on the environment, it always amazes me that these days there is so much denial.

 

[dannydale]

Do you have any idea how much horses and the first industries polluted at the beginning of the industrial revolution?

What do you think gave us the impetus to find less polluting ways of doing things?

 

[dannydale]

blasphemously

The real blasphemy is people like Zuckerberg and Bezos, but now we're chasing rabbits. They actually do want to reshape the world to one in which everyone is fighting everyone else.

Name me one thing Warren Buffet has done or funded that you consider against your religion. Just one!

What's so blasphemous about environmentalism anyway?

 

[dannydale]

Electric cars are also heavily subsidized. Without subsidies they are like Tony Stark without his armor. Please don't even try to talk about global warming as I read in previous comments. Really, don't do it.

Electric cars are on the verge of being economically viable without subsidies. They got to that point because subsidies allowed the industry to ramp up supply, by creating demand.
And why shouldn't we talk about global warming? Electrification is an excellent method for lowering CO2 emissions, mainly because electric powertrains are vastly more efficient than ICEs.

Because I hate vulgar and radical Greenpeace-style environmentalism. Is it so hard to understand? Tom Clancy had foreseen all this in "Rainbow six".

So in a nutshell you are opposed to electric cars and emissions reductions because people you don't like / fear are in favour of them?

Ok forget about global warming etc. what about smog, exhaust particulates etc. known carcinogens that cause very nasty cancers? What about the fact that we need oil for chemicals and materials that we cant survive without these days, shouldn't we be conserving it for that instead of just burning it?

By the way I am a complete petrol head, love cars ,love driving fast, pride myself in having one of the fastest cars where I live, one lucky bloke has a lambo, but there's another with a faster car than mine, a Tesla 3. Reality is is, if I want to keep driving fast cars I will need to go electric within the next several years.

Sure, and they also want to eliminate cattle farms. Those too are victims of environmental fury.

Well cows do fart an awful lot but its likely more related to the land clearing associated with cattle, i.e. burning forests, creating smoke that drifts across countries and again, deposits particulates that cause nasty diseases.

Cultured meat will be perfected sooner or later anyway, pretty much.

 

[Arjen]

Name me one thing Warren Buffet has done or funded that you consider against your religion. Just one!

Errr... he plays the ukelele?

 

[Fluff]

Not really, it's an evolutionary dead end. Hybrid on the other hand has potential to allow much more progress with less outlay and faster. eco fuels for ICE car and vehicles have the potential to be part of the cleanup rather than the problem. Why not? diversification strengthens our opportunities to be globally better. The grasslands that cows and sheep graze on, pull in more carbon than the livestock emit. We can affordably pay the unemployed and folk living in poorer nations to clean our oceans and create employment rather than put billions into the hands of the vested interest folk. Cleaning up should be an opportunity, NOT a stick to beat us with.

If the poorer people in poorer nations can get decent employment, they can get better health and education meaning the cycle of betterment increases rather than goes backwards with millions relying on food and health assistance. How many here would want the UNICEF and other organisations to remain in place when we can have a situation where the people themselves are able to regain dignity while being better off and healthier?

Oops, I seem to have knocked my box over, do excuse me.

How is hybrid better?

If you follow the logic that ICE pollutes and that batteries also pollute then how can hybrid be better, it must, by definition be worse than one of the options even if better than the other. That is, if ICE pollutes more then a hybrid would pollute more than an electric car, if batteries pollute more, then a hybrid must pollute more than an ICE car.

The other factor is added complexity and weight associated with two systems in one car, more complexity equals more to go wrong, higher maintenance, lower reliability, greater weight equals lower efficiency.

Technically, a fuel cell vehicle is a hybrid rather than a pure battery electric variety, it uses fewer battery cells to do the same job. Personally speaking, I am happier using low or no emissions liquid fuels in an ICE vehicle due to less reliance on batteries, a they need to be disposed of and b these battery electric cars are HEAVY with the penalty on fuel use that moving and stopping extra mass entails. Something that is also affected is safety. With the extra mass involved, the vehicles need to be stronger to keep occupant safety within tolerable levels. For me the whole cost of battery electric vehicles is an unacceptable compromise leading to more damage to the environment. Sorry if I did not get myself across better.

JCB unveils hydrogen-fuelled combustion engine technology | Autocar

JCB boss Lord Anthony Bamford says CO2-free piston engine could be a cheaper and quicker way to meet emissions targets

www.autocar.co.uk

Porsche begins synthetic fuel production in Chile | Autocar

Pilot plant will produce 28,500 gallons of sustainable fuel for combustion-engined race cars

www.autocar.co.uk

I have an EV, and no I dont hug trees!

For cars, I think batteries will win, at least for the next 20 years, for trucks Hydrogen probably wins, as they have the space and weight to absorb the tanks.

EV's are heavy, as battery energy density increases, and they produce more normal EV's, rather than porsche equivalents, the weight issue will reduce, and also you wont be running fuel tankers etc to deliver the fuel. Once everyone that has a house & drive fits solar panels, then people will really see the advantages. Charging stations in UK are increasing, especially large ones, on the motorway network, and as most new cars are company purchased, the benefit in kind (tax) for the driver is pushing everyone to look hard at electric.

Personally I looked at Hybrid, but I consider it a dead end, part steam engine part horse, the complexity and parts count is horrendous, the electric range pathetic for nearly all of them.

And if you havent tried an EV, please do, the performance is astounding, and you soon forget about visiting filling stations, and checking prices etc. And the best bit, your wheels dont get dirty, as normally you never use your friction brakes. So another environmental benefit.

 

[Lc89]

blasphemously

The real blasphemy is people like Zuckerberg and Bezos, but now we're chasing rabbits. They actually do want to reshape the world to one in which everyone is fighting everyone else.

Name me one thing Warren Buffet has done or funded that you consider against your religion. Just one!

What's so blasphemous about environmentalism anyway?

Patrick Moore has disassociated himself from Greenpeace.

 

[Foo Fighter]

The problem with these eco warriors and their idea's is that they are almost always closed off to anything other than THEIR particular message and it is ridiculous to do so. Look at the proper low/no emission fuels and the cost for the same gain is much lower and people like myself can continue to keep out low total life impact vehicles for a while longer. Try an EV? Seriously? I cannot afford an EV because I, like many of us, cannot afford a new car of any kind, not even a Dacia. The eco warriors are happy however to force their views on all of us because of their evangelism and conviction that they have the only solution. Just take a look around, there are a LOT of solutions and views, not all of them will be ruinous while cleansing our planet.

Just an adenda, ,any forcing their views on us have a vested and financial interest in doing so, we need to cut them OUT of the path we follow and have independent management so the very best can be achieved.

 

[Fluff]

Until the recycling of millions of used EV batteries is solved and achievable within the next decade, we are simply moving the potential ecological damage somewhere else.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56574779

Thats a terrible article, it makes them sound like unexploded bombs! Once discharged the risk of fire - (not explosion) is massively reduced, and so far there are less battery car fires, than petrol, per 100K vehicles, the EV is far safer.

And only 5% recycled, because we dont need to recycle them yet. Most EV batteries will get a second life as a fixed energy store, either in your own home, or in an container somewhere, balancing the grid, because of solar and wind energy.

Just as petrol cars used to be scrapped as is, and nowerdays they are dismantled, tyres seperated from steel etc, fluids drained, the recycling of batteries will develop, lots of people are involved.

Also please remember that early cars were steam, and electric - with good old Lead acid batteries, this newfangled petrol stuff will never catch on!

 

[Orionblamblam]

I'm poor and have far to go. I need a car that's passably reliable, can go 600 miles per day, and costs no more than $8000 or so. The world is *full* of used cars that can do this for me. How many of them are electric?

 

[Orionblamblam]

However, I keep repeating that no one can force another person to buy something they don't want. And that the only green cars are those parked.

How do you feel about less car-centric urban design, then?

You mean cities where millions of people are essentially trapped? Yeah, no. People want to live in such, great. Just make sure that those folks are not allowed to create laws for people who *don't* want to be wholly dependent upon government services for *everything,* and who may wish to travel at a moments notice either for entertainment, business or escape in the event of disaster.

Imagine such a city in the event of a coming major hurricane, or an EMP attack, a conventional blackout, a trucking strike. For the vast majority of the population there would be no escape except to walk.

 

[Fluff]

I'm poor and have far to go. I need a car that's passably reliable, can go 600 miles per day, and costs no more than $8000 or so. The world is *full* of used cars that can do this for me. How many of them are electric?

cheapest EV on UK autotrader, is £4400 - for a renault

Those 600 miles will cost alot less in electricity, even from the grid, than the petrol will.

I'm afraid that life will get difficult for petrol car owners, over the next 5 years, stations will close, or be converted to EV stations, prices will go up, used car values will go down.

We are at a cusp.

 

[Orionblamblam]

I'm poor and have far to go. I need a car that's passably reliable, can go 600 miles per day, and costs no more than $8000 or so. The world is *full* of used cars that can do this for me. How many of them are electric?

cheapest EV on UK autotrader, is £4400 - for a renault

Great. What's the range? And what do you have for a teenager with their first job at McDonalds who can just barely afford a $750 car?

I'm afraid that life will get difficult for petrol car owners, over the next 5 years, stations will close, or be converted to EV stations, prices will go up, used car values will go down.

"That's a nice economy/standard of living you have there. Shame if anything were to happen to it..."

 

[Arjen]

Patrick Moore has disassociated himself from Greenpeace.

You must hate David Attenborough.

 

[Fluff]

I'm poor and have far to go. I need a car that's passably reliable, can go 600 miles per day, and costs no more than $8000 or so. The world is *full* of used cars that can do this for me. How many of them are electric?

cheapest EV on UK autotrader, is £4400 - for a renault

Great. What's the range? And what do you have for a teenager with their first job at McDonalds who can just barely afford a $750 car?

I'm afraid that life will get difficult for petrol car owners, over the next 5 years, stations will close, or be converted to EV stations, prices will go up, used car values will go down.

"That's a nice economy/standard of living you have there. Shame if anything were to happen to it..."

probably 100 miles, so some patience will be required.

The teen will get a petrol car, he's not going far, in five years he will have a better choice.

The station thing is going to happen, I warn people, so they can think ahead, worst thing anyone can do today is buy a new petrol car, total waste of cash, will be worthless in 5 years time.

Petrol owners will end up where they started, at chemists, buying specially ordered petrol....

The other alternative, if you truly love your old car, is to convert it to electric, takes you off the grid, and usually improves the 0-60 quite a bit too.

 

[Archibald]

Patrick Moore has disassociated himself from Greenpeace.

You must hate David Attenborough.

We spared no expense...

 

[Archibald]

Name me one thing Warren Buffet has done or funded that you consider against your religion. Just one!

If you believe, some years ago a French Buffet - with the name of Marie George - was the leader of the French communist party (yes, it it still exists, even if its electors and its Congresses are hold in one of the last phone booths in existence in Paris - they have lobbied France Télécom not to delete them).

 

[Orionblamblam]

probably 100 miles, so some patience will be required.

Insufficient. Minimum acceptable: 250 miles on one fill/charge; minimum range 500 miles per day. Time required to refill or recharge cannot exceed 15 minutes.

The teen will get a petrol car, he's not going far,

He has to drive 75 miles to school, then fifty miles to work, then 100 miles home. Bonus: add another 60 miles to pick up/drop off girlfriend.

The other alternative, if you truly love your old car, is to convert it to electric, takes you off the grid, and usually improves the 0-60 quite a bit too.

I have a PayPal account. Will you be donating the $10,000 required to do these modifications all at once or in installments? I cannot afford to do this. You want to mandate it, therefore it is your financial responsibility to get it done.

 

[Fluff]

probably 100 miles, so some patience will be required.

Insufficient. Minimum acceptable: 250 miles on one fill/charge; minimum range 500 miles per day. Time required to refill or recharge cannot exceed 15 minutes.

The teen will get a petrol car, he's not going far,

He has to drive 75 miles to school, then fifty miles to work, then 100 miles home. Bonus: add another 60 miles to pick up/drop off girlfriend.

The other alternative, if you truly love your old car, is to convert it to electric, takes you off the grid, and usually improves the 0-60 quite a bit too.

I have a PayPal account. Will you be donating the $10,000 required to do these modifications all at once or in installments? I cannot afford to do this. You want to mandate it, therefore it is your financial responsibility to get it done.

I'll just need the name of your first pet....

 

[gtg947h]

The problem I'm seeing with current pedestrian-focused urban design, such as the '15 minute city' (everything you need walkable within 15 minutes), is a tendency to forget, or in some cases outright dismiss, the needs of people who can't get everywhere on foot. I'd be happy to see pedestrian-focused urban design with accessible mass transit, but that needs to come with an understanding that for some people reliable and safe walking distance is measured in the very low tens of metres, and that for those of us who are wheelchair users any steps or any slope over 1 in 10 is a no go zone. In practise that means some form of vehicle access is needed pretty much everywhere. It doesn't need to be general access, you could restrict it to accessible electric taxis, but it needs to be there or you start shutting disabled people out of cities.

"Everything you need within a 15 minute walk" sounds great... unless you don't like living in a city, work somewhere not conducive to being in the middle of a city (i.e. in large-scale industry, manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, defense, etc, so basically anything that's not gig work, personal services, or an office job), do things that aren't available in a city, have need to go places not within that 15 minute walk, need to carry/move large things, like to shop less than four times a week for groceries...

Frankly the idea of living in such a place holds very little appeal. A better alternative, IMHO, is to run paths throughout your town so people can use bikes, golf carts, or walking to get places when they feel like it, or for recreation, without forcing everyone into an urban lifestyle.

I lived in a pretty walkable part of Atlanta, with no car, for part of college. It only worked because I could take advantage of the closed bubble of a college campus and could call Mom & Dad to come pick me up if I needed to go anywhere MARTA couldn't get. Later, we stayed with my wife's cousin in Brooklyn for a couple days, in her shoebox-sized apartment (with rent higher than my mortgage). No thank you. I'll stick to the outskirts of suburbia and find me an EV to commute in.


Gas stations aren't going away for a while. Yeah, maybe in 10 years the majority of new vehicles will be electric, but that still leaves a whole bunch of gas cars on the road, being driven by people who can't afford to buy new. Sure, we could let them eat cake and just cut off gasoline sales... and whatever politician was dumb enough to do that would face the mob outside the door in short order.

 

[Fluff]

I dont think petrol will be cut off by politicians, in Europe EV's are really growing, but as I said, a lot of new sales are company cars, which then become the private buyers after 3-4 years. If the supply of new petrol cars dries up, private buyers wont have a lot of choice.

We expect to see incentives on the EV, disincentives on petrol, like access to city centres, slow rises on fuel taxes etc. The pressure will be brought to bear. Of course there will be the odd 'hold-out' brewing his own petrol from pine cones(no one on this forum of course) but the majority will change as they come due for a 'new' car, not necessarily brand new.

Is anyone working on a self-driving large RV - be great to see 2000AD come good, with people literally living on the road.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Is anyone working on a self-driving large RV - be great to see 2000AD come good, with people literally living on the road.

The possibilities for crime in such a world would be *fantastic.* Instead of hacking someones laptop, you could hack their home, drive them where you want them, hold them for ransom. Cars going down the road with diesel engines could wield electromagnetic pulse generators that blow out the computers in self driving cars, leading to high speed wrecks of *great* entertainment value on YouTube. Foreign actors could take control of regional road networks and cause massive gridlock, or mass casualty events, or simply turn a million cars into inert bricks. Blow out a power grid somewhere and not only do the lights go out... so do the cars. And the ambulances. And the fire trucks. And the trucks bringing in food and replacement parts for the power grid.
It.
Will.
Be.
GLORIOUS.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjpkoPEn0cI

 

[Fluff]

Is anyone working on a self-driving large RV - be great to see 2000AD come good, with people literally living on the road.

The possibilities for crime in such a world would be *fantastic.* Instead of hacking someones laptop, you could hack their home, drive them where you want them, hold them for ransom. Cars going down the road with diesel engines could wield electromagnetic pulse generators that blow out the computers in self driving cars, leading to high speed wrecks of *great* entertainment value on YouTube. Foreign actors could take control of regional road networks and cause massive gridlock, or mass casualty events, or simply turn a million cars into inert bricks. Blow out a power grid somewhere and not only do the lights go out... so do the cars. And the ambulances. And the fire trucks. And the trucks bringing in food and replacement parts for the power grid.
It.
Will.
Be.
GLORIOUS.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjpkoPEn0cI

I'm surprised the 'kids' havent discovered the fun of automatic city braking.......

 

[Foo Fighter]

A lot of people think that the rest of us will accept the so called 'inevitable' and give up our independence for their battery/electric utopia, thing is, they do not seem to understand human nature. The value of simple petrol cars that can run on the clean fuels that will be available will INCREASE as the demand to remain out of the grasp/control of eco fanatics with a one level response, "Do as we say, we think it's the only way". Oh dear, forgot that we are all free to seek our own solutions or are they hoping the government will just enforce us into their wildly optimistic view of a battery electric sunset, complete with lei and hula hoops.

Think small, achieve small and be, very small.

 

[Orionblamblam]

Think small, achieve small and be, very small.

That will be the likeliest outcome of current trends. There are seven and a half billion people trying to achieve the quality of life of three quarters of a billion westerners, and the only way they have a hope in hell of doing so is with a *vast* expansion of energy generation. While at the same time the west is throttling energy generation and hoping to basically shut off the spigot. Build all the wind turbines and solar panels you like - and I certainly support that - if you think you can replace every car truck boat and airplane with batteries *and* shut down all the coal and gas powerplants and not build new nuclear plants, you're outta your friggen' mind.

Packing everyone into dense cities with little to no personal transportation, no ability to just pick up and go at a moments notice by picking a direction and heading for the horizon, is the wave of the authoritarian, energy-limited future.

 

[1635yankee]

The rest of the world is going electric, Ford, and America, either gets with the program, or loses its foreign markets within the next decade

It's stupid. They shouldn't do it.

Explain why it's stupid. Do so without referencing any car sites.

In any case, most of the industrialized world is trying hard to eliminate fossil fuel use for some excellent reasons, not least of which is the trillions (as in 1,000,000,000,000) of dollars in increases to weather-related damages expected by those bastions of left-wing lunacy, insurance companies.

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As an aside, roads and suburbs are pretty much exclusively the result of massive government expenditures. Those suburbs and roads that all the "freedom-loving petrol heads" love are, at their base, completely socialist constructs.

 

[Lc89]

The rest of the world is going electric, Ford, and America, either gets with the program, or loses its foreign markets within the next decade

It's stupid. They shouldn't do it.

Explain why it's stupid. Do so without referencing any car sites.

In any case, most of the industrialized world is trying hard to eliminate fossil fuel use for some excellent reasons, not least of which is the trillions (as in 1,000,000,000,000) of dollars in increases to weather-related damages expected by those bastions of left-wing lunacy, insurance companies.

Because they can't force people to buy what they don't want or need. And above all, in addition to the practical and logistical problems of these moves, even the non-help that will be given to the environment, with the minerals extracted from the quarries, will make countries dependent on China, and everyone to save the earth. In this scenario, there will be nothing to save.

 

[Orionblamblam]

The rest of the world is going electric, Ford, and America, either gets with the program, or loses its foreign markets within the next decade

It's stupid. They shouldn't do it.

Explain why it's stupid. Do so without referencing any car sites.

Total fossil fuel use: 120,000 terawatt hours, and climbing.
Total solar power generation: 562 terawatt hours, and climbing.

To equal fossil fuels, you'd need to expand solar power by a factor of 213. By the time you do so (handwave twenty years for solar to produce as much as fossil fuels does today), fossil fuels would have *still* expanded in utilization greatly.

most of the industrialized world is trying hard to eliminate fossil fuel use

But then...

 

[DWG]

"Everything you need within a 15 minute walk" sounds great... unless you don't like living in a city, work somewhere not conducive to being in the middle of a city (i.e. in large-scale industry, manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, defense, etc, so basically anything that's not gig work, personal services, or an office job), do things that aren't available in a city, have need to go places not within that 15 minute walk, need to carry/move large things, like to shop less than four times a week for groceries...

Frankly the idea of living in such a place holds very little appeal. A better alternative, IMHO, is to run paths throughout your town so people can use bikes, golf carts, or walking to get places when they feel like it, or for recreation, without forcing everyone into an urban lifestyle.

Congratulations, you just reinvented the 15 minute city.

These plans aren't meant to attract people into cities, they're meant to make living in existing cities and towns greener by making neighbourhoods largely self contained, so you don't need to drive miles to a supermarket, you can pick up stuff on the walk home from where you got off the mass transit systems that connect the different dormitory neighbourhoods with where people work. They might like people to have smaller commutes, but they do recognise the people will still need to travel in and out. There are problems with the ones I've looked at, but they aren't totally woo-woo.

 

[drejr]

The teen will get a petrol car, he's not going far,

He has to drive 75 miles to school, then fifty miles to work, then 100 miles home. Bonus: add another 60 miles to pick up/drop off girlfriend.

I think we've just figured out why people move to cities.

 

[Orionblamblam]

The teen will get a petrol car, he's not going far,

He has to drive 75 miles to school, then fifty miles to work, then 100 miles home. Bonus: add another 60 miles to pick up/drop off girlfriend.

I think we've just figured out why people move to cities.

Why? Sixty miles to go on a date is less than an hours travel time in a civilized non-urban area. In a city, an hours travel time might be a matter of a few dozen blocks navigating puddles of human waste, domestic terrorists setting up "autonomous zones," gangs of muggers and knockout game aficionados, drug and booze fueled crazies.

Heck, thanks to the Kung Flu, a lot of things such as schooling have been shown to be practical to carry out at a distance. A lot of jobs that people bave done in cities can be carried out quite effectively in small towns. Sure, things are more spread out... but that's a feature, not a bug.