Electric cars.

[Northern_Brewer]

look at the wording and the dates - new chargers after 24th november.... how many chargers have opened in the past month?

UK is adding over 1000 per month, of which a bit over half are >8kW.
More relevant is that all existing chargers over 50kW now have to offer contactless, as of November 2024, there were 14,098 such chargers [for comparison, there's about 8,000 petrol stations in the UK]. And in reality, once a network has developed a contactless solution for their faster chargers, they might as well extend it to their slower ones as well, it's not like all slower chargers will remain without contactless.

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

so when we all have these lekky thingys, how do the not so well off put a fiver or tenner of juce in

A fiver gets my EV a full charge at home. Circa 300 miles.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Reposting this in case you missed it NB you are normally like a rat up a drainpipe to prove me wrong when i post stuff in this thread and its been over an hour since i posted it -

Why do they lump vans in with cars cars are not commercial vehicles the reason why is to make cars look like the biggest polluter which as i said above they are not

But they are.

If my figures below are correct - No they are not!

There are 5 million vans on our roads 40 million cars (12.5% are vans) this reduces the car/van figure to 35.5% and increases the medium freight/heavy freight vehicles (commercial vehicles) to 37.5% so i was correct when i said cars are not the biggest polluter.

As i said earlier they reason they lumped cars and vans together is to make cars look like the biggest polluter and not commercial vehicle because they know what backlash they would have got if they told truck manufacturers they needed to stop selling diesel trucks by 2030.

There are also 1.1 million BEV on our roads this is an old chart so doesn't take that into account.

 

[Rodcx500z]

'

 

[AlBrew]

If my figures below are correct - No they are not!

There are 5 million vans on our roads 40 million cars (12.5% are vans) this reduces the car/van figure to 35.5% and increases the medium freight/heavy freight vehicles (commercial vehicles) to 37.5% so i was correct when i said cars are not the biggest polluter.

As i said earlier they reason they lumped cars and vans together is to make cars look like the biggest polluter and not commercial vehicle because they know what backlash they would have got if they told truck manufacturers they needed to stop selling diesel trucks by 2030.

There are also 1.1 million BEV on our roads this is an old chart so doesn't take that into account.


View attachment 107548

Can you post the source of the chart? Just want to see if there's a breakdown of the listings in each category, might make it easier to see what's going on.

Is it:
Heavy Freight = artics only
Medium Freight = box vans to something smaller than an artic
Van = anything from a corsa van to a merc sprinter twin wheel

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Is it:
Heavy Freight = artics only
Medium Freight = box vans to something smaller than an artic
Van = anything from a corsa van to a merc sprinter twin wheel

I don't have the source of the chart it was something i found in google images.

As i said they lumped vans which are classed as "Light Goods Vehicles" in with cars they are not the same a van is a two axle vehicle with a maximum gross weight of 3.5 ton and has no side windows (see chart below)

There are 5 million vans on our roads 40 million cars (12.5% are vans) this reduces the car/van figure to 35.5% and increases the medium freight/heavy freight vehicles (commercial vehicles) to 37.5% so i was correct when i said cars are not the biggest polluter.

 

[AlBrew]

OK, maybe this is a better way of looking at it, assuming we are looking at the quickest wins/largest contributors/low hanging fruit;

Firstly.

Domestic transport is the biggest contributor.

Then.

Half of that domestic transport emissions over half comes from cars and taxis.

The above, combined with the fact that the technology already exists (EV's), makes me think that going after the cars and taxis first was the correct decision based upon achievable impact in reduction.

Was your chart a distribution of the no. of vehicles? If so it didn't say anything about the emmissions.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/stati...eenhouse-gas-emissions-from-transport-in-2022

 

[AlBrew]

Found it, it is a total global emmissions chart, not a UK one.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure...ransportation-sector-worldwide_fig1_380727365

As i said earlier they reason they lumped cars and vans together is to make cars look like the biggest polluter and not commercial vehicle because they know what backlash they would have got if they told truck manufacturers they needed to stop selling diesel trucks by 2030.

So when you reference "they" 3 times I assume you meant the guys who wrote

"Implementing Cycle Tourism in South Asia: Study on Cox's Bazar to Understand Tourist Perspective & the Scopes of Sustainable Transportation"

Sorry I couldn't resist

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Half of that domestic transport emissions comes from cars and taxis.

No one is disputing that what annoys me is they put cars and vans in the same category and called it 48% and as I showed below when you put vans in with goods vehicles where they should have been it changes things a lot.

My whole point being they are not giving commercial vehicle manufacturers a cut off date of 2030 to stop selling ice wagons because they know the backlash they would get so they hit car drivers who will do nothing other than moan.

There are 5 million vans on our roads 40 million cars (12.5% are vans) this reduces the car/van figure to 35.5% and increases the medium freight/heavy freight vehicles (goods vehicles) to 37.5% so i was correct when i said cars are not the biggest polluter.

 

[AlBrew]

No one is disputing that what annoys me is they put cars and vans in the same category

Who are they?

According to this, the UK government believe that cars and vans are a separate thing.

Cars 53%
Light vans 16%
Heavy goods vehicles 17%

There are 5 million vans on our roads 40 million cars (12.5% are vans) this reduces the car/van figure to 35.5% and increases the medium freight/heavy freight vehicles (commercial vehicles) to 37.5% so i was correct when i said cars are not the biggest polluter.

Are your sums based upon the UK numbers from the government report or on the South Asian study into the impacts of cycling on Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh or something else I'm missing?

 

[AlBrew]

Ah, according to my Google search, they only have one car there anyway....

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Who are they

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/electric-cars.100585/post-1309810

 

[old dog new tricks]

Think the point was missed re hydrogen the point was raised on what to do with you excess energy renewables generate that can not be put into the grid or existing storage technology. The second part was the fees paid to turn off turbines this is paid if they generate no energy so using this will not incur more costs but will actually deliver something rather than the current set up.
I am not suggesting roll out hydrogen to every home but creation of green hydrogen storage and transportation is all existing technology and available. To run a gas turbine with hydrogen is not a technical challenge I would agree if diverting energy to make hydrogen is not cost effective but neither is turning off turbines getting no energy and still paying for that

 

[Chippy_Tea]

 

[hoppyscotty]

Think the point was missed re hydrogen the point was raised on what to do with you excess energy renewables generate that can not be put into the grid or existing storage technology. The second part was the fees paid to turn off turbines this is paid if they generate no energy so using this will not incur more costs but will actually deliver something rather than the current set up.
I am not suggesting roll out hydrogen to every home but creation of green hydrogen storage and transportation is all existing technology and available. To run a gas turbine with hydrogen is not a technical challenge I would agree if diverting energy to make hydrogen is not cost effective but neither is turning off turbines getting no energy and still paying for that

There are significant technical challenges with Hydrogen. I'm not saying there is a not a place for hydrogen in the portfolio of technologies...look at what JCB are doing, so it can work in some cases but will largely be localised in terms of the generation of the hydrogen and its use because pushing hydrogen through long pipelines or via trucks to cover large distances is not feasible and horrendously expensive. But lets say you have a local hydrogen generation plant to utilise renewable overproduction and the vehicles come to that plant to re-fuel then that is entirely feasible, like having such a plant at a bus depot and having busses run on hydrogen for example.

The issue with aircraft, especially longer range aircraft, is energy density. Hydrogen has lower energy density and just takes up too much volume displacing paying passengers.

Far better off to utilise that excess electricity to make synthetic fuel that can be transported across large areas via the existing oil and petrol distribution networks and equipment (probably with some minor modifications). Porsche are already demonstrating this incredibly successfully. It's got far more promise than hydrogen for most applications - especially for domestic vehicle transportation. Synthetic and sustainable fuels are already in mass usage anyway...most of the fuel you put in your car is already blended with some element of biofuel, especially the higher octane fuels, as is most aviation fuel, so we're already part way there. Aircraft are already certified to operate on blends of jet fuel and synthetic/sustainable aviation fuel and all the way upto 100% synthetic/sustainable fuel...we just need the capacity to create sufficient volume to transition all the planets ICE vehicles over and we have sustainable net zero transportation. But with the best will in the world and limitless money that isn't going to happen in the next 50 years because the amount of electricity needed to create that fuel is astronomical and it will take 50 years to physically build the additional global electrical generating capacity needed.

 

[old dog new tricks]

I do disagree with anything you have said about fully accept hydrogen has technical drawbacks BUT for use in a gas power station it has massive potential. This infrastructure is already built and ready to work immediately yes transportation is not perfect but it's doable in the short term. As you say we are decades away from the other solutions to ignore existing technology as we are doing just now and wasting potential energy is farcical and costing us all money.

On a worrying note it now seems Millabonkers is looking at making heat pumps mandatory ! Yet more poorly thought out solutions

 

[hoppyscotty]

Yep..its all about what do we do with that excess electricity renewables generate when demand is lower...we either create hydrogen or synthetic fuels..not sure out of those two is more efficient form an actual production point of view, but the difference comes with the logistics of getting the fuel to the point of combustion and if those distances are large then the synthetic fuel is far more convenient and cheaper. But if you can generate the fuel on the site at which you are combusting it, or delivering it to vehicles that will combust it, then you want to go for the most efficient method.

I'm not sure on heat pumps...they clearly work in terms of the technology...they're just fridges really, but rely alot on the skill and diligence of those who install it...and British tradespeople will often do a crap job...most homes have gas boilers that are sized way too large because the average tradesperson who installs them can't be bothered to do a proper job of surveying the site and doing the calculations to correctly size the equipment.

Been watching alot on heat pump installations by people who do know what they're doing and they're far more complicated than gas boilers. I guess they make perfect sense if you have underfloor heating throughout and battery solar too, but in most installations they have to fit many more radiators in the home, which is fine if you have a large enough house for them and don't mind a big radiator on every wall. And yes though you can run them hotter to utilise fewer radiators or microbore pipework, then you're trading that in for efficiency - so again unless you have battery solar then it will cost you in more electricity. I see no reason to even consider them until the point at which your gas boiler breaks down assuming you have a relatively new efficient gas boiler...and in my case, when that happens I'll be too old to be buying un-ripe banana's let alone investing in an expensive heat pump system and battery solar (a £30k+ investment) and expecting a return before I pop my clogs.

 

[Rodcx500z]

Milliband is a complete idiot who is obsessed with a green world, he should be in prison for wasting billions of hard earned tax payers money, anyway i don't feckin care i do not feel guilty for all this climate sh--e because i was not brought up in a world full of plastic bottles or any of the rubbish that has caused this, i used to see everyday while walking to school washing lines full of nappie's blowing in the wind, empty milk bottles on doorsteps waiting to be collected, and there was none of all the fancy labeled chemical cleaning products in plastic bottles, fish and chips was served in paper not a feckin polystyrene tray with a plastic fork, right i feel better now

 

[Rodcx500z]

most homes have gas boilers that are sized way too large because the average tradesperson who installs them can't be bothered to do a proper job of surveying the site and doing the calculations to correctly size the equipment.

You are bang on there about gas boilers, we have got a Worcester Bosch 4000 30Kw, the average house in the UK needs no more than 15Kw or less, so why 30Kw have you tried sorceing anything less than 25Kw, having said that this thing will moderate down to 3Kw if i listen to it when it fires i can hear it moderating down as it heats up according to the manual it is 92% efficent

 

[jof]

You are bang on there about gas boilers, we have got a Worcester Bosch 4000 30Kw, the average house in the UK needs no more than 15Kw or less, so why 30Kw have you tried sorceing anything less than 25Kw, having said that this thing will moderate down to 3Kw if i listen to it when it fires i can hear it moderating down as it heats up according to the manual it is 92% efficent

You could use a lower power boiler if all the houses went back to a traditional hot water tank.
But in these days of mains pressure heat on demand hot water you will need all that heating power just to get a decent shower & I doubt you'd get a bath on demand - I think you need an over complex mains pressure hot water cylinder (like a megaflow).

I do worry that on a lot of these things the added complexity & reduced lifespan slashes any cost savings due to increased efficiency.
This is where Chinese EVs could wipe the floor if they can establish a track record for high reliability with simple low cost cars.
All this super tech being built in is just more to go wrong or become outdated and usable after a few years.