SPAM random annoying things

[DaGaffer]

Electric tractors ploughing fields in pre-programmed patterns, no operator required. Electric lorries driving along motorways and trunk roads, modular battery systems in the trailer replaced at the end of each shift, no driver required.

Honestly, people are right to highlight problems, but the solutions are already there - they just need further development. 250 years back it took a week to get a cartload of salt from Northwich to Worsley, so people started building canals, reducing the trip to a couple of days. Then came the railways, which almost overnight destroyed the canal economy. Cyclists got sick and tired of shit roads and began to campaign for better surfaces, which prompted the introduction of tarmacadam-style coatings. 50 years ago our roads were a serious bottleneck to the motorist, so we built a system of motorways. And soon, cars will be driving themselves. They'll be parking themselves too, and organising their own charging while you're doing whatever it is you do.

Remember life before the internet? While studying at college, if I wanted to know something, I had to go to the library and spend hours finding the answer. Now I just ask my phone - I don't even need to pick it up or press any buttons. It just tells me. And that's in less than 20 years.

There are still some really big energy density questions to be answered before you make wholesale changes to things like lorries (and even more so, ships). To be honest, simply replacing ICE with electric alternatives is probably the wrong approach anyway; the return of railways carrying the bulk of freight may make a lot more sense in an electric world (I don't know if this is true by the way, but offering electric transport that can be powered directly would seem to be more efficient than lugging batteries around if you don't need to). Someone needs to be crunching some numbers on this stuff, because to get say, a workable rail network carrying the bulk of freight by 2040, you'd need to be starting the capital investment now; the planning process alone can take decades (and this is a key difference between now and your historic examples; back then it was easier to get things done politically).

The ship thing is a real issue; other than nuclear, there simply isn't an alternative to diesel right now, and it may be you can't get rid of diesel for the foreseeable future but introduce partial electric power for in-shore/port operations (I read somewhere that just one bulk carrier ship in somewhere like Portsmouth pumps out more CO2 and N0x than all the vehicles in the city combined). I think some high end yachts have hybrid drives for this purpose.

 

[Hawkwind]

Yes. But this is partly their response to being repeatedly being defeated in court over inaction over air pollution that's killing thousands a year.

Their response is a plan to ban the sale of internal combustion engines in a timescale that they'll already be gone in - I.e. "fuck you - we're gonna do nothing and make the public think we're doing something"...

Along with every government for the last 25 years. Air quality in London did not start with a con government. Don't understand why your blaming only this one.

 

[Tom]

Not going to happen. One of two things will:

- EV's/Hydrogen comes on that far anyway that so few people are buying ICE powered cars, banning them will be pointless.

Nobody is going to buy a hydrogen car. Give it up, it's a stupid system that won't ever work for the masses.

- These lauded advances in batteries don't appear, and we are stuck with useless cars that can only go 150 miles before needing charged again. Banning them will bring the country to it's knees, so won't happen.

Except they have been appearing for about 20 years now. When I started in this business a good camera battery was maybe 5Ah, now the same sized battery at less than half the weight is 10Ah. It's the same with phones, my Motorola Flare lasted half a day with a battery the size of a box of cigs, my phone these days lasts 2 days with a battery the size of a large book of matches.

Plus the costs to get all the infrastructure in place (charging points, electricity generation etc) are going to be scary, and I suspect I know who will be paying for it.

Most of it is already there, underground. It supplys streetlights, signs, buildings, etc. It's called the National Grid.

However given how much I trust politicians when they make pronouncements 5 years away, I'll take anything promised 23 years away with an enormous pinch of salt. In the meantime I'll stick to petrol and let the sandal wearers dick about with their glorified golf buggies.

You stick to petrol mate, you'll stick to petrol right up to the day when someone in a Nissan Leaf mk4 leaves you sitting in a cloud of dust at the traffic light grand prix. You'll feel your penis shrivel up in embarrassment and drive straight to the nearest electric car dealership.

 

[old.user4556]

I'm with Tom - I don't see Hydrogen taking off. Extraction and storage is just ridiculous.

Also agree re performance, immediate maximum torque and very swift 0-60 even for non performance models is already impressive on today's cars:

 

[Scouse]

The story is about replacing cars - which is a good start and totally achieveable if Toyota's insta-charge battery tec is a thing.

Carbon nanotubules prolly. Can be charged almost instantly - which takes away my *only* objection to the removal of ICE for commuter vehicles.

Lorries I don't know enough about the incoming tec - but the batteries may be massively different - more energy dense and lighter - because they won't be li-ion...

 

[old.user4556]

The story is about replacing cars - which is a good start and totally achieveable if Toyota's insta-charge battery tec is a thing.

Carbon nanotubules prolly. Can be charged almost instantly - which takes away my *only* objection to the removal of ICE for commuter vehicles.

Lorries I don't know enough about the incoming tec - but the batteries may be massively different - more energy dense and lighter - because they won't be li-ion...

I'm the same - once quick (within minutes) recharging is reliable and rolled out, then I'm absolutely all for it.

Selfishly, I'll be interested to see how Transport Scotland deal with the charging infrastructure since transport is fully devolved in Scotland but the Grid isn't.

 

[Bodhi]

Nobody is going to buy a hydrogen car. Give it up, it's a stupid system that won't ever work for the masses.



Except they have been appearing for about 20 years now. When I started in this business a good camera battery was maybe 5Ah, now the same sized battery at less than half the weight is 10Ah. It's the same with phones, my Motorola Flare lasted half a day with a battery the size of a box of cigs, my phone these days lasts 2 days with a battery the size of a large book of matches.



Most of it is already there, underground. It supplys streetlights, signs, buildings, etc. It's called the National Grid.



You stick to petrol mate, you'll stick to petrol right up to the day when someone in a Nissan Leaf mk4 leaves you sitting in a cloud of dust at the traffic light grand prix. You'll feel your penis shrivel up in embarrassment and drive straight to the nearest electric car dealership.

Hydrogen - we'll see - there is still plenty of development in this area (especially in Japan), and to me it would be a bit daft to go all in on one technology, especially one that hasn't developed anywhere nearly as quickly as the tech it's powering (Battery advances are still glacial compared to other tech, and current Li-Ion batteries are less energy dense than a Ham Sandwich) - you can probably thank efficient chipset and screen design for any improvements in phone battery life.

I'm intrigued at this concept the Infrastructure is there already. So I can rapid charge a Leaf off the existing wiring in my house can I? If you call 9 hours rapid then yes, but considering it took me 5 minutes fll up with fuel this morning, I'd say that's pretty shit. So then you get into installing dedicated chargers. Great if you have a driveway, a bit shit if, like us, you don't.

Trust me, my sister is on her 2nd Leaf, and her husband has an i3. They seem OK for pottering around, but still far too compromised to entertain as a realistic proposition. Range is a little better than the original Leaf, as long as you don't go above 55mph, but they still had to buy the i3 REX to guarantee the ability to get more than 50 miles away and make it back, as decent charging infrastructure is still thin on the ground. The i3 is reasonably nippy up to about 40mph, but they're both fairly pathetic above that, so I suspect my penis will stay fairly unshrivelled for the forseeable - and my car will continue to run on petrol until a better energy store is found.

 

[Scouse]

Ah @Bodhi - refusing to see the arguments put forward again I see

 

[Scouse]

Along with every government for the last 25 years. Air quality in London did not start with a con government. Don't understand why your blaming only this one.

Yes, but A) it's not just London and b) this conservative government - which has been in power for seven years (when the evidence has totally solidified) - has been repeatedly taken to court in an attempt to force it to solve the issue of 40,000 premature deaths a year but has instead callously come up with a literal smokescreen...

 

[Tom]

I'm intrigued at this concept the Infrastructure is there already. So I can rapid charge a Leaf off the existing wiring in my house can I? If you call 9 hours rapid then yes, but considering it took me 5 minutes fll up with fuel this morning, I'd say that's pretty shit. So then you get into installing dedicated chargers. Great if you have a driveway, a bit shit if, like us, you don't.

Your home is rated for 13A. But the supply to your home is rated for much, much more than that. Go and look at the cable that feeds your consumer unit - it will be at least 100A. So yes, you'll be able to charge at significantly higher speeds than you think. And if you don't have a driveway you'll just plug into a streetlight, because the cables are already there, under the pavement. And if that isn't possible then your self-driving car will simply wander off to charge itself.

Trust me, my sister is on her 2nd Leaf, and her husband has an i3. They seem OK for pottering around, but still far too compromised to entertain as a realistic proposition. Range is a little better than the original Leaf, as long as you don't go above 55mph, but they still had to buy the i3 REX to guarantee the ability to get more than 50 miles away and make it back, as decent charging infrastructure is still thin on the ground. The i3 is reasonably nippy up to about 40mph, but they're both fairly pathetic above that, so I suspect my penis will stay fairly unshrivelled for the forseeable - and my car will continue to run on petrol until a better energy store is found.

Honestly, you're like someone who rides a horse looking at a Model T Ford, telling everyone how your horse can get up a steep hill, how it can fuel itself in any field, and how these modern contraptions will never catch on because there are no petrol stations and no stables to put them in.

Wake up Bodhi, the future is here.

 

[Bodhi]

Your home is rated for 13A. But the supply to your home is rated for much, much more than that. Go and look at the cable that feeds your consumer unit - it will be at least 100A. So yes, you'll be able to charge at significantly higher speeds than you think. And if you don't have a driveway you'll just plug into a streetlight, because the cables are already there, under the pavement. And if that isn't possible then your self-driving car will simply wander off to charge itself.



Honestly, you're like someone who rides a horse looking at a Model T Ford, telling everyone how your horse can get up a steep hill, how it can fuel itself in any field, and how these modern contraptions will never catch on because there are no petrol stations and no stables to put them in.

Wake up Bodhi, the future is here.

And as I said, from fairly direct experience of the "future", I would say it's still a long way from being practical. And even if it does become practical, it doesn't sound particularly interesting - summoning an autonomous pod to whisk you to where you're goinzzzzzzzzzzz. Sorry I bored myself senseless again.

 

[Bodhi]

Ah @Scouse , still relying on largely made up statistics to prove his point again I see. Plus ca change.....

 

[Scouse]

Actually - I think we must have lost something when we have up horses for cars.

Cleaner air, connection with a living thing and you could get on your horse absolutely wankered and it would get you home!

Self driving cars will at least bring that part back

 

[Scouse]

Ah @Scouse , still relying on largely made up statistics to prove his point again I see. Plus ca change.....

What statistics? Other than the widely-reported premature 40,000 deaths?

Should I not be quoting that for some reason? Ah yes. I forget. You're like Trump - any facts you don't like which would overwhelm your argument are dismissed as 'fake news' and 'made up'.

I'm not falling for that old shite. It's been accepted in court and the government has fallen foul of it. If it's good enough for our courts it's good enough for me.

As for being bored by electric cars - again, you're just a dinosaur - yes, cars can be fun but we stand to gain more than we lose from the (inevitable) end of the internal combustion engine. I can get much more exciting kicks elsewhere in my life than I can driving around like a twat in a 3.5d beemer - and thankfully I never fell into the cars-as-social-status trap that so many lame-ass idiots have. So the gaining of clean air and the freeing me from actually having to be a conscious participent in tedious journeys when I can think of myriad more interesting things to do whilst sat in a car is something I welcome with open arms.

The loss of the sound of a V6? I'll get over it

 

[Raven]

But you plain refuse to cut your current mileage

Also, you could be a leaf now if you really wanted to...Or maybe sir might be interested in a Zoe?

 

[Job]

We cant have everyone fast charging cars at home..the grid would fall over, sharing the load in a local charge net might help, it'll need a lot of...hey, how about fucking trains off and using their huge electrical network.
Its very do able by limiting charge rates and spreading out charge times, upgrading is no big deal anyway..just like the internet, probably a lot of roadworks for a few years.
As spare battery that you charge from solar panels in the day or a Tesla sytle home battery that can charge your car overnight.
Maybe every house with a wind turbine...or even your own gas powered electricity producing boiler..you can buy them now.

 

[Bodhi]

Actually - I think we must have lost something when we have up horses for cars.

Cleaner air, connection with a living thing and you could get on your horse absolutely wankered and it would get you home!

Self driving cars will at least bring that part back

Air quality has massively improved in London since we were all riding round on horses, disease and overall hygeine have massively improved as the streets aren't covered in shit, and we already have a way of getting home absolutely wankered - it's called a taxi. There are even applications now that even drunken retards can use to call one up, so I don't think we lost much at all.

In fact despite all the wailing and moaning, Air Quality in London has never been so good. It could be improved, sure, but a propertional response to the problem would be more welcome - the impact of the good old private motor car is dwarfed by Taxis, Public Transport, Commerical traffic and those wood burning stoves people in Islington love, so not entirely sure what banning ICE will achieve. Old diesels? Yes, sure. Euro 6 and above? Utterly pointless.

And yes, I do cringe whenever anyone mentions the 40,000 deaths a year figure, as a) it's a guess. b) The error bars are huge on it c) when the say premature they are talking hours rather than anything significant. Also, being a statiscal analysis, it doesn't really prove much on it's own. However if it was anywhere near accurate I'd expect life Expectancy in London to be signaificantly worse than anywhere else, yet it's growing in London faster than any other part of England and Wales! In fact the areas where it is growing the slowest, the East and the South West have pretty much the cleanest air.

Life Expectancy at Birth and at Age 65 by Local Areas in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics

Still, please feel free to carry on with the Ad Hominems, they make you look awesome!

 

[Bodhi]

Looks like the plan has hit a few snags already:

Diesel and petrol car ban: Plan for 2040 unravels as 10 new power stations needed to cope with electric revolution

But the Infrastructure is already there! Unless you listen to....you know....the National Grid.

If we need 10 more power stations, and Hinkley will take about 15 years from conception to being operational, I suggest we get started.

 

[Job]

Those atm useless wind turbines and solar panels would be perfect for charging cars.
They are a massive supply of electricity..barely used.
Shit every stret should have one if they were actually doing something.

 

[Scouse]

@Bodhi old bean - your argument continues to ignore what's been put before, is full of holes and is generally self-justifing.

Firstly, as said recently, it's not just London - it's UK air quality in all our major cities (so your life expectancy comparison is just cack*). Secondly - Euro6? - the fact that all of the diesel producer's engines exceed (by orders of magnitude) legally mandated levels of pollutants in real-world tests renders these bullshit standards meaningless. Thirdly, the point you've brought up in the Torygraph (and you've made before) about battery tech is irrelevant as we're talking about new tech (toyota's, for a start) not li-ion. Fourth - the power station imperative - yep, we're going to have to do that anyway - but even if you had to bring on gas fired powerstations to replace the emissions from ICE then you'd still make a net gain on almost every emissions standard as they're a) orders of magnitude more efficient at generating the power from a given fossil fuel and b) don't produce the particulates and certainly not right outside schools.

On almost every level other than "Bodhi has to lose his beemer and cry over the V6 noise loss" electric cars will be more beneficial to mankind - and just as convenient when they sort the charging tec out.

Progress!

But hey, like I said - you're already missing the obvious arguments that have been made recently. So meh to arguing this with you



Edit: Your life expectancy comparison is cack for about a bazillion different reasons. The obvious one being more than particulate emissions have an effect on life expectancy. But the fact that that was *so* obvious and you still posted it shows that you're not thinking rationally about this...

 

[caLLous]

Looks like the plan has hit a few snags already:

Diesel and petrol car ban: Plan for 2040 unravels as 10 new power stations needed to cope with electric revolution

But the Infrastructure is already there! Unless you listen to....you know....the National Grid.

If we need 10 more power stations, and Hinkley will take about 15 years from conception to being operational, I suggest we get started.

You were talking about the "customer facing" end of the infrastructure a minute ago and you were told that it's for the most part already in place. It stands to reason that, if everybody starts using more electricity, more electricity will need to be either generated or imported. That's obvious... isn't it?

 

[Raven]

ZOE | Electric | Renault UK

Here you go, they even fit the stupid charger thing to the wall of your house, I bet it's an absolute riot to drive too.

A claimed 250 mile range, sorted.

What are people waiting for?!

 

[Job]

250 mile range

Real world 170 summer
140 winter.
Does 250 if you put 100psi in the tyres and drive all.day on the motorway at 50 with a tailwind.

 

[old.user4556]

ZOE | Electric | Renault UK

Here you go, they even fit the stupid charger thing to the wall of your house, I bet it's an absolute riot to drive too.

A claimed 250 mile range, sorted.

What are people waiting for?!

I think things like these are going to be more in favour to start with prior to full electric:

The Audi A3 Sportback e-tron

Volkswagen Golf GTE | New 2017 Range : Volkswagen UK

Model 3 | Tesla UK

 

[Job]

Of course after the first few go up in flames in the garage or after minor bumps...then we'll see how keen people are.

I was surprised to see that electric cars were very popular before the combustion engine took off.
This is actually the second coming for the electric car.

History of the electric vehicle - Wikipedia

 

[old.user4556]

Of course after the first few go up in flames in the garage or after minor bumps...then we'll see how keen people are.

Because ICE cars have never gone up in flames. What a fucking retarded thing to say, even by your standards Job.

 

[Job]

They willl go up in flames..because batteries do that now and then, the fire brigade are very concerned about electric vehicles.

 

[Job]

Incredible..high end electric vehicles..city cars..charge points..swappsble battery packs...all.in the 1900s.

History of the electric vehicle - Wikipedia

 

[Scouse]

250 mile range

Who gives a fuck if it takes seconds to recharge?

My only objection to the tech is range and slow charging. Toyota have said they've fixed that - battery tech that's not li-ion has been on the cards for a while.

If you fix that there's literally nobody on the planet who's not a complete loon who can objectively weigh up the pros and cons and say "nah, we'll keep diesel, thanks. Fuck your kids lungs..."

 

[Moriath]

Actually - I think we must have lost something when we have up horses for cars.

Cleaner air, connection with a living thing and you could get on your horse absolutely wankered and it would get you home!

Self driving cars will at least bring that part back

I am allergic to horses. No good for me