Electric vehicles

[John Mason]

They should have consulted me on Diesel engines I would have put then right. The whole problem I think is caused by the fact that the worlds population is to large for our planet to sustain but how do we control that.

John Mason

[David.H]

That is indeed the elephant in the room that seems to have escaped most pundits notice! Saint David Attenborough even mentioned it in passing in one of his programmes a few years back, but it seems to have slipped his memory recently.........

[Tony Griffiths]

"Ten years ago we were browbeaten into driving diesel cars.."
Not me - happily I found them by accident. Decades ago I made the mistake of buying, very second-hand, a pathetic Mk.1 Diesel Golf. Fed up with the lack of go (though it handles superbly) I fitted a turbocharger kit, one of the first in the nascent "bolt-on-power" scene. Wow! What torque! What Go! - it was like driving a miniature V8. And so, ever since then, for me, it's been a car that can double at weekends earning pocket money pulling out tree stumps i.e. a turbo diesel. Astounding economy, too, as we all know, i.e. 800 miles on a single tank across Europe in a 2-litre estate. So, the famous quip of that great designer George Lanchester "All cars do 25 m.p.g." no longer applies (although my 7 does exactly that in town).

[Alan]

Tony, I don’t disagree. However, they aren’t exactly as environmentally friendly as we were led to believe, are they?

[Dave Mann]

Cycling to the post office this morning in the first frost of winter I passed quite a few parked cars with their motors running to defrost the windscreen, then later at the supermarket the husband stays in the car with it's motor running to keep it warm while the wife does the shopping. Obviously a lot of people don't know or care about global warming. How do electric cars do for demisting/heating?

[Reckless Rat]

Everything is relative. I would guess that the amount of energy used in making cars of whatever fuel is quite considerable, especially hybrids and electric using up valuable and rare earths.

I still run a large but quite economical diesel car. It is 18 years old. If I'd still been working I would have changed it for a new one every 3 years (because I could afford it when I was working) so I have saved the planet the energy necessary to build 5 cars in the time I have owned it. OK, I accept that there are some pollution issues with earlier diesels (mine is EURO4) but in the 18 years it has covered a paltry 275,000km or 171,000miles. That's a reasonable average of just under 10k miles a year. Its fuel consumption is on average 50mpg as it is mainly used on long motorway runs. It has only had two sets of brake pads in its lifetime because I don't need to brake much. It is reasonably heavy on tyres but it will do 30K km on a set. The argument is still ongoing regarding diesel v petrol. Whilst diesel combustion does creat Nitrous oxides and soot, research has proven that this can be virtually eliminated, and a diesel vehicle creates much less CO² than a petrol motor.

I think I will continue to use my (current anti diesel speak) gas guzzling diesel polluter for as long as I can and bollocks to the environmentalists. It will make sod all difference in my view.

When Vesuvius finally erupts it will pump out more CO² than every car ever owned in the space of a few days.

[Colin Reed]

HI All,
My Concern over Electric Cars Is for First Responders in an accident if the Battery catches fire it can take 24 hours to put out,
secondly if jaws of life are used you have to be Dame Careful not to Cut the wrong Wires as there are very high voltages involved
The greenies  never like to mention these problems

Colin 
NZ

[Austin in the Shed]

They should have consulted me on Diesel engines I would have put then right.  The whole problem I think is caused by the fact that the worlds population is to large for our planet to sustain but how do we control that.

John Mason

World current population c7 billion estimated to be 10 billion by the end of the century.This is assuming we have no deadly pandemic,major volcanic eruption , A I  takeover or meteor strike.

[Tony Griffiths]

Tony, I don’t disagree. However, they aren’t exactly as environmentally friendly as we were led to believe, are they?

I think it's something of an open question and I tend to the opinion (along with the technical director of Jaguar Land Rover) that a modern diesel is hardly any more, and in some cases, less pollution that a petrol car - the various figures do seem to balance out. Still, it's a moot point...
In the UK the push to diesel was, as we know, by altering road tax rates based on CO2 emissions, the idea, of course, being to lower them by using diesel fuel which, by volume, contains around 15% more energy than petrol. The obsession with CO2, a trace gas that makes up just 0.04% of the atmosphere - and of which termites produce more annually than we do -  seems at best misguided. But, hounded by the Green Blob and desperate to jump on the "Environmental bandwagon", politicians all signed themselves up to demonising the gas - now called, conveniently, "carbon". And how far have we gone on this ludicrous journey? Last week, on the BBC (where else?) the words "Carbon pollution" were used. Pollution? By a trace gas that's necessary for plant growth? And to finish with joke : 12,000 years ago, as the ice sheets started to retreat from the British Isles, there was a moment to stop people driving 4-bullock carts. "Drive a 1-Bullock" was the cry. "You know it makes sense. Stop the ice melting." But they would listen? No, and the ice melted and melted and melted and the Dogger Bank went underwater and the cry for Brexit started - but not let's get started on that!

[Andy Bennett]

Tony
I do think that, in following the science, rather than politicians like Trump signing out of climate agreements to save his job, we do have a global acceptance of the link between CO2 levels and global temperatures/climate change (accepting that there are lots of different types of pollution with differing impacts).

The actual percentage isn't relevant, calling it a trace gas to suggest it is irrelevant is daft, its the change that matters and CO2 has increased by about 50% since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Temperature graphs map CO2 levels. We don't need to increase CO2 levels to grow plants, the earth has managed to grow plants without us messing around. What we need is a stable level and what we are doing at the moment as humans is adding rapidly to the levels. The result is not good. That is one thing science does agree on, even f it is as they say an inconvenient truth to many politicians.
Perhaps we should get back to Austin 7s...
Andy