Oh as an aside, a friend in the fire service said that if there's a fire they won't go near them, just secure the area. I can see the point
According to my mate with a Tesla - he’s a Elon fanboy, won’t have a word said against him - there are markings under the car warning fire-bods not to stick their axe through certain bits . Not sure if true, but makes sense. Personally, I think battery-powered cars are a complete dead end.
I think they are just another example of companies popped up and selling everyone the green dream, and making a load of short term money on it. No different to the whole Solar Panel con of a few years back. That whole industry collapsed once the government stopped giving people feed in tariffs and electric cars are the same. There’s nothing at all green about them. The batteries aren’t environmentally friendly, they are expensive or impossible to recycle and dispose of safely. Then because of their cost, after 8 years a 40k motor is essentially scrap cos it has zero resale value. So all the material and energy cost and pollution results in having to manufacture the owner another vehicle. an old bus might be polluting when it’s driven, but it lasts 40 years, in that time going on the current example the planets resources would need to provide for about 6 vehicles. Utter madness. Then factor in the cost of the electricity production. electric cars are utter madness.
Totally agree ^ My experience is that the owners are a bit strange. Often these are second cars. A bit of a play thing. Most normal every day customers buy a 1.4 Petrol or a 2.0 diesel.
The Ampera actually has a place where the fire brigade do put an axe to safely cut the power in a hurry.
Nobody appears to have given any thought as to where all this electricity’s going to come from... Wait till they start banning gas boilers. Have you ever heard anything so stupid in your life?
wow. a lot of negativity here.. ! We have 4 vehicles currently; one diesel, one petrol and two electric. Solar panels on our roof charge the electrics so the running cost for those is zero. If we did need to use grid power to charge the vehicles our supplier is "bulb" who are 100% renewable ie solar wind hydro. Yes there are a whole bunch of issue to overcome and yes if you charge your elec car on power generated from burning fossil fuels its actually worse than just running and efficient ICE, but we're just at the start of this change over; range, costs, re-charge time etc will all improve dramatically over the next few years, and renewables are now a cheaper way to generate power vs. traditional fossil fuel power station. .. however, agree 100% that vauxhall is a pile of junk i wouldn't touch with a (insulated) barge pole
"Offshore wind could generate 11 times more electricity than the world needs" Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidr...r-the-world-say-former-skeptics/#4d307448265f just saying..
Er, no. Take a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics "Worldwide growth of photovoltaics has been close to exponential between 1992 and 2018." And as this industry grows, so prices have fallen: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/06/03/solar-costs-have-fallen-82-since-2010/ Cheapest model S tesla on autotrader right now has 120k miles, is 7 years old and is up for £30k. I wouldn't call that scrap value. Try and buy a used/ second hand tesla cell - they go for 900-1000 each on ebay right now. Degredation? "Average Model S owner is experiencing a loss of only 2.3 miles of range for every 10,000 miles driven." source: https://insideevs.com/news/334057/bmw-i3-long-term-battery-capacity-report-better-than-expected/
While I am not a fan, the Tesla approach to battery thermal management is definitely one that makes sense , and gives the vehicle a reasonable lifetime on its first battery. If you start with an EV with a long range, and it loses 10% after 100k miles, it makes sense. But buying a Nissan Leaf is stupid, where the battery range in the first place is feeble, then losing half of it in a few years because they cheaped out on battery thermal management. Finding grid capacity to recharge EVs at competitive speed is also going to be a challenge. I have seen the joke picture of a Tesla Supercharger bolted to a trailer with a 500kW diesel generator behind it to run it ... However, if you slap the Tesla battery module in an environment like a Nissan Leaf, it will die rapidly without the intelligent use of aircon for heating and cooling the battery pack. Its interesting that Airbus have dropped research into electric/battery aircraft and instead are looking at hydrogen..
Electric cars are great but don’t fool yourself that they are environmentally friendly. Environmentally what they are good at is reducing pollution in local areas.
Good article posted on topgear web site yesterday, reminded me of some of the er.. discussion points on this thread. Worth a read, especially in the context of the (brought forward) 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel powered cars: https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/heres-what-2030-petrol-and-diesel-car-ban-means
this is where the headlines are always misleading They are not banning petrol or diesel cars they are only banning cars that only have petrol or Diesel engine I expect most cars will be Hybrids there are already big petrol engined 4x4s with a tiny electric motor that hardly works but it means you get cheep tax or a self charging hybrid that uses the engine to charge the batteries?
I see Mercedes do a eSprinter with a massive 100 mile range. Chocolate teapot springs to mind £42k plus vat https://van-showroom.mercedes-benz.co.uk/vehicle-detail/W1V9106332P294389
May not be scrap value but approximately £9k/year loss on a car Has anyone yet come up with a solution to what is going to happen to the battery after final use?
Been saying for a while, hydrogen needs more development cos if they can get it right that's got to be the future.
Each wind turbine takes roughly 160 tonnes of steel - each tonne of steal takes roughly 3/4 of a tonne of coal to produce, so lets call it 100 tonnes of fossil fuel just to make one - not including shipping and assembly. They reckon that just to stay apace with the worlds increased need for power, not cater to the underlying need, they would need to build 350,000 turbines per year worldwide. That is a lot of fossil fuels. And this is before we move transport enmasse over to electric power. On shore turbine life is around 20 years before major refurb - I doubt offshore ones would last this long - add to that cabling and maintenance. These things are far from 'green'. Been saying it for a while - Nuclear is actually the only option, as is people being compelled to be less wasteful. I do think things like transparent solar might be beneficial in urban areas, as would wave power - but again, each needs a shed load of fossil fuels to implement.
Once they’re done in cars they’re good for home electricity storage with PVs. Once in a house they don’t deep cycle as much as in a car and it doesn’t matter if they only have 75% capacity as the PV panels keep them topped up. And Mr Musk has already worked this out with his Powerwall!