Would it be crazy to buy a new petrol or diesel car now

[chaparral]

What if you drive home with an almost flat EV and all the charging points are occupied? You're screwed. People aren't going to walk out in the middle of the night to unplug their cars when they are charged.

I would be screwed anyway as I have on street parking

Surely with most people having on street parking this is going to really to stop many people from being about to buy a completely electric car and they will need a hybrid that has a petrol or diesel engine in it

 

[Conscript]

Why are some people seemingly so desperate for EVs to fail? Any discussion inevitably turns to people bringing up any disadvantage they can think of to dismiss their viability entirely.

What about people with no driveways? What about if there's no chargers available? What if I occasionally need to drive 1000 miles non stop? These are all valid limitations granted, but not insurmountable given inevitable improvements in infrastructure and battery tech, and I'm not sure why people are so dismissive of EV.

Theres also no suggestion that EVs will mean the immediate extinction of ICE vehicles. Don't have a driveway to charge on? Then continue using a petrol or diesel. If eventually charging infrastructure and tech advances to the point where charging stations are as ubiquitous as petrol stations, and batteries can be charged in shorter periods of time, then EVs will become more viable for more people.

 

[a1ex2001]

Why are some people seemingly so desperate for EVs to fail? Any discussion inevitably turns to people bringing up any disadvantage they can think of to dismiss their viability entirely.

What about people with no driveways? What about if there's no chargers available? What if I occasionally need to drive 1000 miles non stop? These are all valid limitations granted, but not insurmountable given inevitable improvements in infrastructure and battery tech, and I'm not sure why people are so dismissive of EV.

Theres also no suggestion that EVs will mean the immediate extinction of ICE vehicles. Don't have a driveway to charge on? Then continue using a petrol or diesel. If eventually charging infrastructure and tech advances to the point where charging stations are as ubiquitous as petrol stations, and batteries can be charged in shorter periods of time, then EVs will become more viable for more people.

Totally agree full conversion to electric isn’t happening anytime soon but huge numbers of vehicles could be swapped out for me the plugin hybrid is the realistic medium term car as anyone can reap the benefits.

 

[pc-guy]

They need fuel cell powered cars. They got some buses but the technology has had little to no attention as of late.

I read some where a while back someone potentially cracked the cathode membrane degrading issue which is the most prohibitive cost thing as otherwise the entire fuel cell need replacing. Also recently someone has suggested that compressed H2 can be delivered via petrol stations as if you are filling petrol or diesel, fuelling an EV with H2 to power the fuel cell in minutes. The concept is that the fuel cell would be doing the bulk of power source while a smaller battery reserve is there to keep you going until you can find a fuelling point. This means weight saving and much like the PHEV concept but with ICE.

Also I t doesn’t require holistic infrastructure change like putting in huge amount of cabling and increase national electricity output by multiple folds to meet increased demand as well as being potentially more sustainable and more environmentally friendly as less battery is needed.

I don’t know how efficient these fuel cells can be but wonder why not use them for power generation to the grid as well but at local and district level.

 

[Nasher]

It takes way more energy to harvest the hydrogen than you get back from burning it. But long term it probably is going to be what we eventually move to. Probably not this century though.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

There are two fundamental flaws in your argument.

Where do you get the H2 from? The ‘cleanest’ way of getting it is from splitting water but that takes a huge amount of electricity, several orders of magnitude more than just using an EV. The other main source is from fossil fuel production, something I think we can all agree isn’t the best idea.

The other issue is that you say not much new infrastructure is needed which is opposite of reality. Sure there are lots of filling stations about for fossil fuels but hardly any of it can be reused. They also can’t build the tanks next to the fossil tanks for safety reasons meaning you need a huge site. The H2 also has to be stored at insane pressure making storage and transport very difficult. It costs £millions to retrofit a filling station with a single H2 pump.

Compare that to adding rapid chargers (which only cost £thousands) to the existing energy grid which can be powered from any source including fossil. Standard chargers only cost £hundreds and have almost zero running costs unlike a hydrogen station (expensive to maintain, staff and transport the fuel to).

HEVs are a good technology but they just don’t make much sense for passenger cars which on average move less than 30 miles a day and spend 90% of their life parked. Aircraft, ships, HGVs and static generation make far more sense.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I honestly think supermarkets will cash in on the charging phase once it becomes main stream.
Just as now they have petrol stations they can add charging (reverse/forward park) as you car dictates into spots with charging points, plug in and for many your car will be charged when you do you weekly shop. They can offer small savings, equivalent to the 5p a litre etc.
For a hell of a lot of people this would be enough. Lets say 14k miles per year, thats under 300 a week, once many cars are 400 miles+ then honestly for many that will be enough

Very limited impact for them to do so, great marketing opportunity.

Also they were talking of making street lights charging points for residential streets, again just requires the crititcal mass I assume

 

[gord]

Great, now I'm thinking I shouldn't sell the Z4M..

 

[Simon]

Why...?

They have always been a car to hold value. Why all of a sudden this this reality, I’m hoping the M3 does the same but may not be low enough volume or special enough.

The reality will be that getting these sort of cars will be impossible and we will be like the old boys with ‘old bangers’ etc to today’s youngsters who will be driving their icars

 

[Nasher]

One thing is for certain, it won't be any cheaper to run an EV in the future than it is to run a petrol car now. The government will make sure of that.

 

[pc-guy]

Hydrogen can be produced a number of ways on industrial scale. Electrolysis is just one of them and doesn’t have to be the only way. Surplus electricity generation over night can be used to turn water into hydrogen and act as some kind of energy store. This is much less harmful than use battery.

Steam Reforming natural gas or waste material from oil industry is another. Reforming it from biomass production or ethanol is probably the most sustainable and cleanest whilst there are also options to get hydrogen from biomass decay.

When I typed the initial post I didn’t realise there are 3 models hydrogen fuel cells available to buy and Swindon has a trial in the city running some kind of hydrogen fuel cell community. They do have a district fuel cell electricity generator and an infrastructure that supports fuelling of cars

In terms of hydrogen storage at the gas station, sure it will need a high pressure vessels but it can be installed under the ground like all the other fuel tanks and it can be fed like all other fuel as well - pumped. People transport liquid nitrogen and hydrogen for labs and hospitals all the time so it is perfectly viable.

 

[Nasher]

It's not just the pressure. From what I've heard hydrogen slowly leaks away no matter what you do, it can even seep in to metals and weaken them over time.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

I never said it wasn’t possible, viable is a whole other debate when BEV Has basically already won for passenger cars. It’s viable the the masses with current tech and costs are falling rapidly.

Cheaper and easier to produce, cheaper and easier to fuel, cheaper and easier to maintain, cheaper and much easier to install infrastructure.

The only major barrier is a getting charge points installed in residential streets with no off street parking as they are needed. It’s largely a demand, planning and paperwork problem, actually installing them is cheap and simple.

It's not just the pressure. From what I've heard hydrogen slowly leaks away no matter what you do, it can even seep in to metals and weaken them over time.

Same thing happens with petrol, a huge amount of it evaporates before it makes it to your vehicle.

 

[pc-guy]

Trying to build all those batteries to turn all the developed worlds vehicles into EV would be ridiculous. The mining process alone would probably turn the planet toxic.

 

[chrcoluk]

petrol for sure, electric too soon for mainstream.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Trying to build all those batteries to turn all the developed worlds vehicles into EV would be ridiculous. The mining process alone would probably turn the planet toxic.

Citation needed....

Lets not forget the damage incidents like deep water horizon caused to the local environment, these are also a 'drop in the ocean' compared how the proliferation of fossil fuels has contributed to climate change. Your statement makes it sound like we are ditching something clean instead of something which we KNOW is turning the planet toxic for life as we know it.

Personal transportation is damaging to the environment both local and global, it doesn't matter which method you choose. But as it stands one is very damaging to the local environment, the other isn't. Both are damaging to the global environment, ICE is still more damaging than BEV over its entire life cycle.

 

[pc-guy]

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/lithium-batteries-environment-impact

This article has a pretty well rounded view of the process. Lithium ion mineral and cobalt extraction involves pretty toxic stuff and when leaked (often happens) contaminates the land and environment especially if they are into the water ways. The sort of contamination is not on that same scale as deep water horizon which may cover an area of a state but this kind will affect an entire ecosystem of an entire habitat along the water course and wipe them out along with the impact of human life’s associated with that water course.

Then there is the issue of what happens to the batteries when they are done. Currently most are landfill or burned - so leaked into ground into aquifers and end up everywhere around the world or burning and become part of the gaseous pollution that it is.

 

[Randomface74]

Use up the existing stock.
Buy used, or keep your car longer.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

As I said both are damaging, but BEV is still less so over its lifetime. It is more damaging to produce but far less damaging to use and is getting less damaging over time as the grid moves away from fossil fuels. The UCS estimate total emissions from EV's are about half that of ICE once.

https://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life-cycle-ev-emissions

DWH is just one incident, have you seen the Niger Delta recently? Over 38 years 3.1 million barrels of oil have been spilled there from 12,000 incidents. That's 493 million litres or the equivalent of 40 million litres annually. Most people just don't know about it because its not in the 'west'.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6257162/
https://www.theguardian.com/global-...6/niger-delta-oil-spills-linked-infant-deaths
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/26/africa/nigeria-oil-spill-inquiry-intl/index.html


Li-Ion can also be recycled, most people just don't and it ends up in landfill. The advantage of large format cells used in cars is that they are easy to disassemble compared to consumer electronics, they can be re-used in storage solutions before they can be recycled. Recycling needs to get more common though and I accept almost none are are currently but hardly any cars have come to the end of their life yet. Where they have the cells have mostly been re-used but action does need to be taken shortly to ensure that they are not just thrown away and it's something where better regulation can help. There is a lot of focus on plastic right now but consumer electronics need to be easier to disassemble and recycle at the end of their life, people then need to actually do it!

 

[Bug One]

Buy a 2016 diesel, from before they changed the tax bands. So you can get one that's either free or £20 a year tax. I reckon those will hold their value well.

Oh, and my EV has held it's value really well. I could sell it now (2 years later) for the same as I bought it for.