So, is the petrol running out and stuff?

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Thats interesting, the main issue with that would be.. Who owns the battery?

IMO i can forsee it working two ways :

like gas cylinders, you pay a deposit for one that covers the cost, then you pay an exchange fee to swap it when you need to, recharge it when you can.

or you buy one outright and can only recharge it at home/recharge locations

So buy new car, select purchase option probably direct from manufacturer or a deposit but dont own way via a "fuel provider"

If you tend to stay local the you can just buy your own and recharge it, if you travel a lot you go the way you can exchange them.

 

[Glaucus]

Think about how much hydrogen would be needed if all of our cars ran on it... the heat/electricity from current renewable sources would not be sufficient to produce enough. As things stand, we would need the output of fossil fuel power plants. Whether these resources are running out is the topic of this thread.

No. We would need renewables and nuclear.
There is no need for fossil fuels.

 

[Glaucus]

Thats interesting, the main issue with that would be.. Who owns the battery?


Edit quote fail... That battery changing station....

I don't think tahrs an obstacle. It's more the standaisation aspect. But I think that will come. it'll just take a couple of generation of electrical cars.

Actually that gas bottle is a very good comparison. As you can buy or rent the bottles.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

Of course bioethanol is an option if we can come up with a way to grow crops in much higher efficiency of crop/land.

 

[Mercenary Keyboard Warrior]

I don't think tahrs an obstacle. It's more the standaisation aspect. But I think that will come. it'll just take a couple of generation of electrical cars.

Actually that gas bottle is a very good comparison. As you can buy or rent the bottles.

Im not so sure you can just buy gas bottle can you? I know calor for example you have to sign a refil agreement which states the bottle is still the property of Calor.
I believe if you by some 1:1000000 chance retain the documentation you can get a refund of the £30, if you do not have the paperwork you can't. I believe all the cylinders that people "own" are probably still the propery of calor although different suppliers may be different in their approach.

 

[lewism]

So...I started to become rather annoyed at all the massive 'Chelsea tractors' that I see pootling around the place doing 1-inch-to-the-gallon; mainly because I thought: "How can you justify using up 5 times the amount of petrol for the same journey than sensible people do? All so you can feel superior."

Selfish people are everywhere and I can't help being idealistic (naive) and thinking how much better our society would be if people stopped being egomaniacs. Anyway, I digress.
)

It's a terribly flawed argument. Using 3 tons of metal to make a Range Rover or 3 tons of metal to make 3 Honda Prius doesn't make a bolt of difference. 3 tons of metal will still be getting hauled out of the ground and used. Cars like Range Rovers, Ferrari's etc are taxed for being a niche product and producing higher levels of CO2, but in the grand scheme of things these cars don't really matter.

For example, you have a Ferrari that does 10mpg and produces say 200g/m of CO2 but in its lifetime the car will only do 20000 miles. Take a Corsa that does 30mpg and produces 100g/m of CO2 but the difference is that the corsa will more than likely do 100k+ miles.

Multiply the amount of small cars on the roads compared to range rovers, ferraris and every other poor mpg car and I would put money on them they pale in comparison to the number of 1 litre corsas.

 

[Glaucus]

Calor isn't the only supplier. There are many.

 

[Elixir]

No. We would need renewables and nuclear.
There is no need for fossil fuels.

Nuclear yes, but is that going to happen? The public and environmental groups are strongly against nuclear. Renewables can't realistically cover the gap.

This is what I meant by the whole new debate...

 

[Glaucus]

Nuclear yes, but is that going to happen? The public and environmental groups are strongly against nuclear. Renewables can't realistically cover the gap.

This is what I meant by the whole new debate...

Supplies will eventually have to be replaced by alternatives. There's no two ways about it.

I just wish we were on the ball like Germany. They already supply 2% of their electricity by pv solar.
With research into mass electrical storage.

 

[britboy4321]

Could be worse. I saw I guy doing 90+ in a Prius the other day. Talk about totally missing the point.

You aren't going to stop people buying powerful (and in the case of Chelsea Tractors stupid) cars if they have the money to afford them.

Well you could quite easily legislate against them ...


Besides .. for 1 person journeys .. we should all really be on mopeds. They do a squillion miles per gallon. But you don't like them yea? Well, some people don't like small cars .. whats the difference???

 

[joeyjojo]

GD isn't capable of a sensible debate. Keep it in SC.

 

[Elixir]

Supplies will eventually have to be replaced by alternatives. There's no two ways about it.

I just wish we were on the ball like Germany. They already supply 2% of their electricity by pv solar.
With research into mass electrical storage.

We simply cannot supply our country with electricity via solar polar. Scotland are doing a commendable job with their hydroelectric contribution, but when it comes down to it the gap must be filled with a less "ideal" source.

Personally I think this should be nuclear. The technology has advanced exponentially since Chernobyl and is safe. The incident in Japan was due to a natural disaster that obviously will not happen in the UK, hence why I think we should invest heavily.

 

[tintin82]

Petrol will never run out 'and stuff'. Petrol is derived from oil and oil is the result of a natural process. It will always be there, just always more difficult / costly to extract.

 

[joeyjojo]

We simply cannot supply our country with electricity via solar polar.

I assume you mean "power". A quick back of the envelope calculation says this is utterly wrong. Where has this idea come from?

The UK consumed 1.25 exajoules in 2006 (source).
Scotland receives 700-1100 kWh/m^2 of solar radiation during a year (source). Take an average to be 900.
Assume solar panels 10% efficient. Ad that there is some way to store energy for night time (impossible at present).
(1.25 exajoules) / (0.1 * 900 kilowatt hours per meter squared) = 3,858,024,690 meters squared of solar panels.
The land area of the UK is 243,610,000,000 metres squared (source).
So this is a land area of 1.58%.

I.e. cover 1.58% of the UK in solar panels and find a way of storing the energy for night time, and problem solved.

 

[Chris.]

I Laughed literally the whole way through that...

"Them communists in Canada are sitting on 1000 years worth..."

 

[jumpy]

lol 4x4 haters gonna hate ...good luck to ya, I'll keep my land rover thanks, it would have been a v8 as they have generally done far less mileage, but it would have been beyond my current budget to run, so I have a 300tdi instead.

It's 14 years old and I'm keeping it, so you guys carry on being weighted down with that chip for all the difference it makes to me and my low annual mileage. And judging by some of the comments, I'll enjoy driving it for as long as possible, because if mopeds are the answer, I'd rather walk. 2-stroke engines the 'lubricating oil burning as part of normal engine running' saviour of the planet

People who think buying a rangie or other land rover is so we can 'lord it over other drivers' need a reality check - I have the advantage of better road visibility; if I'm not paying attention to you it's because I'm watching the road, silly
I don't 'off-road' in mine, but it's used to take up to 7 people and lots of stuff places, towing and even the occasional recovery of grateful car drivers, but I don't have to justify myself, any more than some of the petrol-heads here have to justify their sports coupés or mad jap cars. I own it because I like it.

 

[Rotty]

when I was at school 30 yrs ago there was 20yrs of oil left

it will see me out so at least I won't have to drive crap electric cars

 

[drunkenmaster]

I assume you mean "power". A quick back of the envelope calculation says this is utterly wrong. Where has this idea come from?

The UK consumed 1.25 exajoules in 2006 (source).
Scotland receives 700-1100 kWh/m^2 of solar radiation during a year (source). Take an average to be 900.
Assume solar panels 10% efficient. Ad that there is some way to store energy for night time (impossible at present).
(1.25 exajoules) / (0.1 * 900 kilowatt hours per meter squared) = 3,858,024,690 meters squared of solar panels.
The land area of the UK is 243,610,000,000 metres squared (source).
So this is a land area of 1.58%.

I.e. cover 1.58% of the UK in solar panels and find a way of storing the energy for night time, and problem solved.

Well aside from the fact we can't store that power, which does mean its impossible you've missed out a bunch of things like, power consumption is going up so we'd already need a lot more than you guessed. LIkewise, you need access to the panels for repairs, cleaning and the like, so you've just doubled the required landmass for gaps between them, and you need roads for access to them, you need the electrical stations to route the energy around the place, which all adds space so you're now talking about 4-5% of the UK landmass, to keep up with current power trends and the space you need around the panels for various reasons.

Then you've got the killer, expensive panels, we can't afford that many, production, all the current and planned solar panel production couldn't make a dent in the amount required for the uk, it would take decades to produce that many, ignoring all the ones that will break/fail and the worlds demand for them, nor the materials required to make them which will get more and more expensive as demand increases.

Solar is completely and utterly unviable right now, largely due to inefficiency meaning the sheer volume of panels required and the space to use them is completely unrealistic.

Think about all the literally millions and millions spent simply fighting local councils, and local farmers, where ever we try to build them. Giving up a huge amount of useful land in the right place won't happen either.

Anyway, oil won't even come close to running out before cars will be forced to stop using it. The second we hit the point that not every station can be filled up all the time prices will steadily rise, way way faster than now, to the point where in months no one would be able to afford to fill up their car. Who knows when that will happen, theres nothing particularly great about the idea of finding a way to produce more oil or produce it quicker? We pull too much out of the ground and burn to much rubbish as it stands, finding a way to produce oil from scratch to help increase the amount we burn daily isn't feasable as it is.

Our growth in power usage HAS to come from other renewable sources. If in 20 years the planet uses 5 times the amount of power, what will the planet be like if we burn 5 times as much coal and oil, horrific basically.

 

[Elixir]

I assume you mean "power".

I did indeed, however solar polar sounds much better.

A quick back of the envelope calculation says this is utterly wrong. Where has this idea come from?

The UK consumed 1.25 exajoules in 2006 (source).
Scotland receives 700-1100 kWh/m^2 of solar radiation during a year (source). Take an average to be 900.
Assume solar panels 10% efficient. Ad that there is some way to store energy for night time (impossible at present).
(1.25 exajoules) / (0.1 * 900 kilowatt hours per meter squared) = 3,858,024,690 meters squared of solar panels.
The land area of the UK is 243,610,000,000 metres squared (source).
So this is a land area of 1.58%.

I.e. cover 1.58% of the UK in solar panels and find a way of storing the energy for night time, and problem solved.

How do we decide which 1.58% of the UK to cover? It's a small percentage, but it's several million square metres. Just going to stick it in the countryside somewhere? Stick them all over houses? Plus storage/demand issues which drunkenmaster has covered more than I can be bothered to at this time in the morning.

 

[Edrof]

lol 4x4 haters gonna hate ...good luck to ya, I'll keep my land rover thanks, it would have been a v8 as they have generally done far less mileage, but it would have been beyond my current budget to run, so I have a 300tdi instead.

It's 14 years old and I'm keeping it, so you guys carry on being weighted down with that chip for all the difference it makes to me and my low annual mileage. And judging by some of the comments, I'll enjoy driving it for as long as possible, because if mopeds are the answer, I'd rather walk. 2-stroke engines the 'lubricating oil burning as part of normal engine running' saviour of the planet

People who think buying a rangie or other land rover is so we can 'lord it over other drivers' need a reality check - I have the advantage of better road visibility; if I'm not paying attention to you it's because I'm watching the road, silly
I don't 'off-road' in mine, but it's used to take up to 7 people and lots of stuff places, towing and even the occasional recovery of grateful car drivers, but I don't have to justify myself, any more than some of the petrol-heads here have to justify their sports coupés or mad jap cars. I own it because I like it.

Yup, that's all fine with me. I have nothing against people buying products that are used as their purpose intends. I've just edited the OP as it didn't come out how I meant it to. I added this:

Just wanted to edit this OP to say that I didn't really mean this to be about 4x4 hatred - I just wrote it quickly (and badly!) and didn't read it back before posting. I meant it to be more of a "So I dislike gas-guzzlers because it's reported in the media that we're running out of petrol and so they seem very selfish. But is the media just scare-mongering as usual and should 4x4s be given a break?"