Soldato
- Joined
- 25 Nov 2005
- Posts
- 12,611
So it's not the horrific bogeyman some claim it is ? what a shock
London pollution & ULEZ
- Thread starter jonneymendoza
- Start date
It’s the smaller diesel engines that were sold as bottom of the rung company cars then gobbled up on the used approved market, which is why there’s a fair few owners.
The car is ancient, was a hand-me-down or sorts, and realistically we need something that suits the family needs a bit better. My wife is 6ft and I'm 6ft4... so maybe something with slightly higher seats to stop our backs from falling apart would be nice!
As a result the ULEZ zone is a useful thing for us - but it's caused a right old stink in our neighbourhood.
It just seems a non issue. Here's Manchester for instance.
www.iqair.com
Manchester Air Quality Index (AQI) and United Kingdom Air Pollution | IQAir
Manchester Air Quality Index (AQI) is now Good. Get real-time, historical and forecast PM2.5 and weather data. Read the air pollution in Manchester, United Kingdom with AirVisual.
www.iqair.com
Soldato
Depends on where your going to!
Example, a bus stops right outside my other halves house, and it's a 20 min walk to the nearest tube station. So if we're going from SW into central it's quicker to get a bus to Trafalgar Square sometimes.
Dunno I cycle to work and traffic and bike numbers are still way down compared to pre-covid. Used to have so many bike at a set of busy lights they would spread out and have a queue back down the cycle lane, almost never happens now.
With cycling the biggest polluters where the busses and lorries. The newer hybrid busses seem to be fine now, way less polluting.
With cycling the biggest polluters where the busses and lorries. The newer hybrid busses seem to be fine now, way less polluting.
I feel the same way at those who push back against LTNs/who are pro rat running. These people couldn't care less about the down sides of their choice of transport on those who are outside of their vehicle.
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time to grow up and buy a car then? only kidding mate but does sound like its time to upgrade.
if you are not running a classic or modded car and got to pay the ULEZ, its probably time to upgrade.
Caporegime
Outer London and the regions around them have horrendous public transport.
Soldato
Outer London but within the M25 it's variable. I've lived in Ealing and Croydon in this category and both have excellent public transport (unless the Tram tips over). I can't comment on other boroughs.
Caporegime
The problem with a lot of these environmental policies is they assume people have an endless money tree.Politicians from most of the parties, come from wealth or are wealthy themselves compared to the average person so actually have no clue badly wealth is divided in the UK:
Britain and the US are poor societies with some very rich people
When it comes to average household incomes, the UK may soon need to ask migrant labourers to take a pay cut
www.ft.com
As much as the Tories pretend they don't support this,Boris Johnson did and lo and behold,make sure there are loopholes for those who have money.
It wouldn't matter so much,if the UK actually invested in public transport,and stopped making everything car centric the last couple of decades. Instead they want to push people off ICE cars onto EVs which only the well off can afford(unless you go into more debt),create loopholes for classic cars which better off people are more likely to own,or foreign owned public transport which is simply overpriced and rubbish. Then if you have the money you can pay if you don't meet the criteria.
You just have to look at other countries in Europe which have better,and more affordable public transport despite different parties being in power.
The only answer in the UK is to just charge more for everything whilst everything doesn't really improve.
Its absolutely atrocious in the areas between outer London and the home counties. Literally everyone I know uses a car.
These zones are creeping outwards,and give it a few years and I expect even the areas around London will get similar zones. The Tories might pretend to moan,but Boris Johnson was onboard with ULEZ,and they will get quietly be onboard if they can make more money out of it.
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EVs generate a lot less brake dust (I barely use my brakes unless someone does something stupid in front of me).
Rubber from tyres I agree with, they are a) pretty heavy and so increase wear and b) lots of torque, so spinning the wheels is far too easy!
All those little costs add up over the years. How much is a clutch replacement? Timing belt/chain? DMF? Oil and filters every year? Not only does an ICE require significant ongoing maintenance to keep it running efficiently, if you fail to do some of those things (e.g. the timing belt), the failure can be catastrophic.
Range isn't everything.
Please do some research before parroting the nonsense that other certain posters delight in spouting constantly - depending on the design of the battery you can repair/replace individual battery modules or cells, there are quite a few videos on Youtube of people doing it.
I'll concede it's not very commonly done at the moment, but then there isn't really the market for it right now - I doubt there was a garage on every industrial estate back in 1908 when the Model T came out either. Give it a few years and as EVs become more common & older, indy garages will start to pop up specialising in battery repairs.
Oh absolutely, not disagreeing with you there. Problem is, lot of that fear is caused by people's misconceptions, either from unrealistically representing their own use case (everyone knows a guy who claims they wont buy an EV just in case he needs to tow his caravan non-stop from Lands End to John'O'Groats in the middle of winter), misinformation spread by luddites or those with an agenda, or simply a fear of change.
240 miles is still at the upper end of brand new cars today
As above - you can replace the battery or individual cells if needed. How much will an equivalent ICE cost in maintenance over that time?
Both.
How many kWh do you think the average home battery is for a solar system?
How many kWh is a 10 year old Leaf battery?
Here's a hint, even if the Leaf battery was down to 50% capacity, it would still be big enough!
And there are plenty of old Leafs and Zoes on the road still, I doubt they are all still on the original owner.
Already responded to this point.
You realise the phrase is "Reduce Reuse Recycle"? The order is important as it is by the increase in energy/resources required.
Reducing the amount of resources required in the first place is obviously the best option, but until viable alternatives are in place, people are always going to want/need cars.
Reusing an EV battery (either as a used car, or in a home battery), is a far more economical option than melting down an engine and remanufacturing it into something else.
I'm not trying to claim EVs are perfect - far from it, and for some people they may never be ideal, but some of the arguments put forward against them are either so convoluted it's laughable, or outright lies which can be disproven with little to no effort.
You can only reuse depleted batteries so much before they die completely or become a fire hazard, then you have to do something with them. Currently there is no clean solution. This isn't being factored in to the lifecycle of EVs but it should be.
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Caporegime
I'm in Zone 6, and the new border is just outside out estate, but we have a 19 reg Diesel any way.
The people local who have been vocally anti this highlight that it is poorer people with older cars that will get shafted, public transport this far out ain't great.
The people local who have been vocally anti this highlight that it is poorer people with older cars that will get shafted, public transport this far out ain't great.
Caporegime
The bigger issue,is as time progresses it will get tougher and tougher. So eventually you will need to move to an EV of some sort. Not a problem if public transport is OK. But the problem UK public transport isn't great.The Tories didn't care and New Labour didn't do enough IMHO. I have experienced how terrible it is - better to walk a few miles as you get to places quicker than a bus,and this was in an area which was quite urbanised.
I really hope Starmer actually enacts a proper plan for public transport in the UK. Not sure how with record levels of national and personal debt,how most of the population can afford EVs especially with interest rate rises. UK car financing debt is already at £40 billion:
UK car finance debt soars to £40bn
Finance debt for new and used cars has risen to £40 billion per year, prompting concerns that consumers may default on agreements amid soaring living costs.
www.am-online.com
People keep talking about government subsidies for new cars - that means printing even more money,more deficit spending and more inflation. Surely its time we really tried and do something to fix public transport?
A lot of the EVs seem unnecessarily overpriced,complicated and almost disposable in nature,almost like car companies are using them to pad their profits. Just throwing money at these companies which lied about Diesels is not a good idea IMHO. It's a temporary fix as EVs can't be subsidised for ever.
It's the same as throwing lots of money at energy companies/providers instead of fixing the reasons why we need to do this.
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Electric cars demonstrating zero emissions.
Ameland rescue: Crew jump off ship ablaze with cargo of 3,000 cars
One person died as fire took hold of the ship as it burned off the Dutch island of Ameland.
www.bbc.co.uk
Permabanned
Soldato
It's a common view outside of the M25. Never understood why. 25% of GDP and a great global city but I know plenty of yokels back in the sticks who "wouldn't go up that London it's full of townies [or worse]".
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