Phasing out of petrol & diesel vehicles

[John Mason]

Hi all, After listening to a discussion on local radio about the phasing out of petrol and diesel cars from 2035 and thus the demand for petrol do forum members think the government or any other body will make provisions for classic cars and fuel. If petrol is only produced in small quantities what will be the price?    This problem will not really effect me as I don’t think I will be around in 2035.

John Mason

[Chris KC]

Just because (if) new petrol / diesel cars aren't sold doesn't mean there won't still be old ones on the road. Even so, if we ever do reach that point I imagine a certain stigma will attach to running smelly old cars, and doubtless there will be more brainless scrappage schemes aimed at hauling them off the road ASAP. Petrol isn't like spare parts, only licensed traders will be able to store / dispense it. No doubt some will hang on to the bitter end, but they would only have value as long as there is one every couple of hundred miles or so. I have high hopes that western civilisation as we know it will be over by then anyway and we'll have other things to worry about.

[Jays]

It’s only phasing out new sales of IC cars by 2035. Existing cars will be around for a lot longer and the fuel as well. The only worry will be just what restrictions we will have imposed on us...banned from cities and towns etc.

[Tony Griffiths]

It ain't going to happen - this is virtue signalling by the Government and, if implemented, commercial suicide.
Never mind cars, what about the hundreds of thousands of trucks on the road - can they be replaced?
The thousands of standby diesel generators feeding the grid now in use and expanding?
The millions of small industrial generators used in industry?
The tens of thousands of diesel-powered cargo ships?
The thousands of commercial airliners, with passenger and aircraft numbers set to almost double by 2036?
The infrastructure and power stations required to electrify all transport? - it's calculated at hundreds of billions of pounds. Besides building hundreds of more coal-fired power station at home, China is building or planning more than 300 coal plants in places as widely spread as Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Egypt and the Philippines.
And all for what? The UK emits less than 1% of all man-made CO2 - and that's only 23% of the normal total of a gas that's just 0.04% of the atmosphere. And the next madness?(through promoted by a quango, not the Government) get rid of all gas boilers. Yes, that's a brilliant idea when the energy unit cost for electricity is four times that of gas and if you burn the gas to make electricty (rather than at the point of use) the efficiency loss through the transmission system is considerable. Interesting times, eh, St. Greta.

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I have high hopes that western civilisation as we know it will be over by then...

..and its replacement?

[Duncan Grimmond]

I got sick of asking the question that nobody would answer. How much of what comes out of the gas-fired power station reaches the three-pin hole in my wall?
At college in the late 1960s the Physics lecturer claimed that the losses over distance transmission meant that only 13% of the energy developed by coal-fired power stations got through to the (round pin, 15amp!) socket in the house.Has this changed?
Gas is much more easily and efficiently transported around the country with far lower losses.

All that aside, I think that we have to accept that the personal transport of the future is the bicycle.

[Austin in the Shed]

There was an article I the Daily Mirror last week re the phasing out of petrol and diesel vehicles 2035,Some think tank followed on about banning personal vehicle use/ownership as the next step in going "Carbon neutral". Next time I looked the article had gone,should have saved it.
Who remembers the furore about removing the lead from petrol.

[Derek Sheldon]

Worse comes to worse we have to resort to how it started and go to the nearest chemist and buy it over the counter in gallon cans.

[John Mason]

Yes I thought this thread would create some comments of an interesting nature. I somewhat agree with Tony about Diesel engines being about for much longer than 2035 because of the needs of industry and heavy transport needs. However petrol I think will be different from around 2030 who is going to buy a new petrol car so the demand for petrol will lessen well before 2035. But as I said before I will probably not be around.

John Mason

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Derek, It will then possibly revert to its original name “motor spirit”

John Mason

[dickie65]

I have some charming old books from the pioneer days of motoring which have a recipe for making your own motor spirt.
It give the componants and quantitys to buy from the local chemist.
In this day and age I am sure it would be possible to buy it all on line.

Most Austin Sevens will run on Paraffin when they are hot it used to be a done thing when paraffin was cheap and petrol was rationed.
Start it up with petrol then switch to paraffin and lay down a white smoke screen behind you.
I expect its a long time since anyone was done for Tax Evasion for this.

["Slack Alice" Simon]

In 2017 we drove 325 billion miles on the roads of the UK.

The review of the latest E mini says it does 5.5 mile per kilowatt/hour (of charge, I suppose)

How many power stations/solar panels/wind farms etc. will we need for 60 billion extra kilowatt hours?

Given the speed with which we fail to build airports/power stations/railways I doubt we will have the planning permissions in place, let alone the capacity, to go totally electric transport by (say) 2050.

Cheers

Simon