Ban on new petrol and diesel cars in UK from 2030 under PM's green plan

[Cheyne_brewer]

Fuel cells must be the way forward as the prospect of long breaks in long journeys to recharge will not be sustainable.

New battery technology is required to open up the market, to massively increase energy density, reduce weight, increase charge rates and increase longevity. A fuel cell would make all this mostly irrelevant.

Until fossil fuels are banned, you are only ever concentrating the pollution into the power stations themselves rather than distributing or more evenly as at present.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Sigh - how about reading the thread first?

Fuel cells must be the way forward as the prospect of long breaks in long journeys to recharge will not be sustainable.

As has been mentioned many times already - over 85% of people never going to travel more in one day than the typical range of modern electric cars. So as long as they can work out a way to charge at home, at work or hypothetically by the car self-driving to a charging point overnight, then that >85% of people are never going to need a "garage" trip at all. Admittedly not all of them will be able to do that, but a very large majority will.

So then the people who need to drive >200 miles in a day have a choice just within EVs- buy a longer range EV (eg there's now mainstream models with listed ranges of 336 miles - even if you knock 20% off that in the real world, it's still 270 miles) or coordinate charging with the breaks that you are surely taking on drives of 4+ hours given that current technology can give you 80% top up in 30-40 minutes - and how many people drive more than 400 miles in a day? That's the distance from London to Edinburgh.

Or that person can choose a different technology such as hydrogen fuel cells. Which are ~3x less energy efficient than EVs, and lack the economies of scale that EVs have, so will always be far more expensive. They will have a role, but they will be the equivalent of using LPG rather than natural gas for home heating/cooking - you only use the more expensive option if you really, really have to.

New battery technology is required to open up the market, to massively increase energy density, reduce weight, increase charge rates and increase longevity. A fuel cell would make all this mostly irrelevant.

EVs are far far further along that curve than hydrogen - as I've mentioned several times, a member of my family leased a Leaf purely because the numbers stacked up versus a petrol car. For the vasy majority of people they're good enough from a technical point of view - things like battery life are just not really relevant any more.

Until fossil fuels are banned, you are only ever concentrating the pollution into the power stations themselves rather than distributing or more evenly as at present.

Latest data we have for UK electricity is Q2 2020, when it was 44.6% renewable, 17.6% nuclear, 34.4% and 3.4% other (including 0.5% coal). Way less emissions than lots of little petrol and diesel engines. And as mentioned above, you'll get 2-3 times the emissions powering hydrogen cars versus electrics.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Fuel cells must be the way forward as the prospect of long breaks in long journeys to recharge will not be sustainable.

As Northern brewer has already said please read the full thread.

You obviously missed the battery swap stations in post #206

And here is couple of reasons why hydrogen has not taken off as many expected.

 

[marshbrewer]

As has been mentioned many times already - over 85% of people never going to travel more in one day than the typical range of modern electric cars.

I'd be interested where this statistic comes from.

 

[BeerCat]

I suggest we find a way of storing our farts to power cars with.

 

[BeerCat]

So the rich bloke who has the money to buy the latest most efficient car and who can afford to put solar panels on his roof and charge his car on his drive gets almost free travel and the plebs queue up at the only lamppost in the street that has a charger.

My tongue was slightly in my cheek when i posted but i am sure you get my drift.

I do and you are not wrong!

 

[Cheyne_brewer]

As Northern brewer has already said please read the full thread.

You obviously missed the battery swap stations in post #206

And here is couple of reasons why hydrogen has not taken off as many expected.

Guilty as charged m'lud, I admit I haven't followed the thread in its entirety. However, there are a large number of fleet drivers out there - service engineers, sales reps etc. who would out-range at least the lower priced EVs.

 

[Justin Dean]

Where does electricity come from, need to look at the whole equation.

 

[Justin Dean]

Top 3 in the UK. Gas,then nuclear, then wind.

 

[Justin Dean]

Sigh - how about reading the thread first?



As has been mentioned many times already - over 85% of people never going to travel more in one day than the typical range of modern electric cars. So as long as they can work out a way to charge at home, at work or hypothetically by the car self-driving to a charging point overnight, then that >85% of people are never going to need a "garage" trip at all. Admittedly not all of them will be able to do that, but a very large majority will.

So then the people who need to drive >200 miles in a day have a choice just within EVs- buy a longer range EV (eg there's now mainstream models with listed ranges of 336 miles - even if you knock 20% off that in the real world, it's still 270 miles) or coordinate charging with the breaks that you are surely taking on drives of 4+ hours given that current technology can give you 80% top up in 30-40 minutes - and how many people drive more than 400 miles in a day? That's the distance from London to Edinburgh.

Or that person can choose a different technology such as hydrogen fuel cells. Which are ~3x less energy efficient than EVs, and lack the economies of scale that EVs have, so will always be far more expensive. They will have a role, but they will be the equivalent of using LPG rather than natural gas for home heating/cooking - you only use the more expensive option if you really, really have to.



EVs are far far further along that curve than hydrogen - as I've mentioned several times, a member of my family leased a Leaf purely because the numbers stacked up versus a petrol car. For the vasy majority of people they're good enough from a technical point of view - things like battery life are just not really relevant any more.



Latest data we have for UK electricity is Q2 2020, when it was 44.6% renewable, 17.6% nuclear, 34.4% and 3.4% other (including 0.5% coal). Way less emissions than lots of little petrol and diesel engines. And as mentioned above, you'll get 2-3 times the emissions powering hydrogen cars versus electrics.

"over 85% of people never going to travel more in one day than the typical range of modern electric cars" Hogwash.

 

[Appleyard]

Top 3 in the UK. Gas,then nuclear, then wind.

Try these interesting things:

G. B. National Grid status (I like this one; hover over the dials for an explanation of what they indicate)
https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/live

 

[Justin Dean]

Thank you. I read a goverment paper showing average annual figures for 2019. Not one day. You may be right for 2020 figures.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

over 85% of people never going to travel more in one day than the typical range of modern electric cars" Hogwash

I would have thought that was fairly accurate.

https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/average-car-mileage-uk

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I'd be interested where this statistic comes from.

It was in a paper from a US group, I can't find it just now, I'll try and find it again. But it feels plausible - for every salesman doing 40,000 miles a year (still less than 210 miles per day based on 4 days a week, 48 weeks a year), there's lots of elderly folk and mummobiles and short-range commuters.Even the average company car only does about 18k/year (375 miles per week)

Here's another one in Nature Energy in 2016 looking at a different question - allowing for temperature, driving style etc as measured by GPS and surveys, 87% of all vehicle-days in various places in the US could be done using a 2013 Leaf with a 19.2kWh battery and a typical range of 74 miles. Obviously the current state of the art has moved on a lot since then.

 

[Justin Dean]

You said never...that is not true mate.

 

[Justin Dean]

Do not get me wrong. My next car will be electric. The plastics is still plastic etc. It not all brilliant. In the meantime fill me up with petrol.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

You said never...that is not true mate.

And again i agree with him the average petrol car mileage for a year works out at 20 miles a day (from the site in my last post) the average miles for an EV on 1 full charge is 181 miles what % of the population do you think regularly drive over 181 miles a day? (excluding vans, wagons etc)

 

[Justin Dean]

Most days not of course but occasionally more and that is the point. When you need it then what now. I agree it is just a matter of planning but it it will add tine to your journey. 2030 will be different.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Most days not of course but occasionally more and that is the point. When you need it then what now. I agree it is just a matter of planning but it it will add tine to your journey. 2030 will be different.

The way i look at EV's today is you'll get over two hours driving before the battery gets to the point where you may need to start looking for charging points, after that length of time you would probably want a quick break so a convenient time to charge it, it isn't going to add that much extra time to your journey.

 

[Justin Dean]

At 70 mph its going to take you over two hours to drain the battery to where you may start to get anxious about how much charge you have left, i imagine most of us would want to have a break after that so charging although a little inconvenient isn't going to add much extra time to your journey.

The range depends on the car. How long does it take to charge? Lets say touring holiday in uk. Plug in at in n unlikely. So go to supermarket car park charge there have a coffee then what....2030 technology will be better but here and now it is more challenging on time