Hi. In cities electric makes sense but not where I live. The only place I could get a re-charge is the supermarket when I do the weekly shop (which I push back to once every fortnight if I can). I don’t have parking outside my home so no chance of home charger.

Not sure why everyone has become so anti diesel, from a CO2 point of view it is better than petrol (there’s more energy in diesel than petrol so more miles/gallon, less fuel in less CO2 out). As for other emitions the “add blue” system takes most out. In fact most HGV’s pump cleaner air out than they take in!

Not to say we don’t have to end fossil fuels, just not sure battery is the way to go long term. For instance there is a lot of polution connected with mining the raw materials and no one is quite sure how to recycle  it at the end. Battery lorries are not viable. The truck would be fully loaded before you put anything on it.

Hydrogen has possibilities but also problems. JCB near me has started  to make diggers powered that way but there’s a lot of development yet to do. And a lot more wind & solar farms if we’re going to have green hydrogen.

Should keep you all thinking for some time!      Bob

Some quite impressive stuff linked from that page, Jason … thanks

MichaelG.

Not that strange, you can run diesels in the ULEZ zones without having to pay provided they meet the right figures.

On 3 October 2024 at 05:49 old fool Said:

… I don’t have parking outside my home so no chance of home charger.

A real problem, and not enough is being done about it yet.   The answer is charge points located in car parks and streetside (in lampposts!).   Where do you park now?

 

Not sure why everyone has become so anti diesel, from a CO2 point of view it is better than petrol (there’s more energy in diesel than petrol so more miles/gallon, less fuel in less CO2 out). As for other emitions the “add blue” system takes most out. In fact most HGV’s pump cleaner air out than they take in!

Wishful thinking I’m afraid.  The government pushed hard for motorists to go diesel a few decades ago precisely because it’s arguably better than petrol.   Unfortunately, diesel engines, especially small ones, emit micro-particulates and other nasties that cause serious trouble in towns.  Additives help a little, but diesel vehicles are unwelcome in confined spaces.   HGVs do not “pump cleaner air out than they take in!”

Not to say we don’t have to end fossil fuels, just not sure battery is the way to go long term. For instance there is a lot of polution connected with mining the raw materials and no one is quite sure how to recycle  it at the end.

Not so – electric cars are highly recyclable.   The pollution caused by extracting raw materials is no worse than the pollution caused by making IC vehicles.  But I agree, batteries aren’t suitable for everything.

 

Battery lorries are not viable. The truck would be fully loaded before you put anything on it.

Nope, depends on the load and range required.   True, a battery HGV shifting steel girders across Australia doesn’t make sense, but there are plenty of short-range deliveries inside the UK that electric will do cheaper and cleaner.

…

Bob

Thinking outside the box opens up many other possibilities.   For example, a great deal of British shopping is organised around deliveries from large central ‘fulfilment centres’, each serving a local area with vans.  At the moment Fulfilment Centres are stocked mostly with HGVs, but there’s a business case for feeding them by rail, in containers, straight from the ports.   Saves a lot of money where this can be done – one driver pulling a train of 30 containers, compared with 30 drivers and 30 HGVs.

HGVs are on my priority ‘keep fueled’ list, and I’m sure they will be important for several decades yet. Their ‘go anywhere’ flexibility is useful. Not a protected species though! As soon as useful alternatives appear, they’ll be used.

Dave

With all forms of electricity generation producing Co2 stopping in the future, 2030 ? where will our electricity come from on a still, dark night ? Will those with smart meters that work be cut off during such periods to reduce the load ? Just curious ! Noel.

On 3 October 2024 at 13:21 JasonB Said:

Tidal, letting water out of a welsh lake, Charging your own powerwall from your solar during the day to use at night, etc

Definitely all those plus nuclear, international HVDC inter-connectors and the possible plan to install a huge (currently barren) site for solar and wind generation (along with some form of energy storage) in Morocco with the accompanying HVDC connection to the UK.

Vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-load may well provide/replace the odd GW, too?

iI’ve not seen, anywhere, that gas generation is to cease in 2030 (likely just another story from conspiracy-theory merchants?).

It is known that we hope to be able to run without gas generation for periods from 2025.  This could occur at the present time – if the grid did not require spinning reserve (for restarts after a serious black-out).

I would expect combined cycle gas plants may well be turned off, but kept in reserve/stand-by for prolonged periods of low renewables.  Maybe even some open circuit gas generators to be retained (these are able to generate, from a cold start, within about ten minutes).

Ad blue takes out NOX, not particulates.

On 3 October 2024 at 15:10 duncan webster 1 Said:

Ad blue takes out NOX, not particulates.

Diesel engined vehicles have had particulate filters for longer than they’ve had catalysts. The vehicles that people seem to get het up about have been out of production for a couple of decades…

Going back up-thread a bit…

Dave –

.A real problem, and not enough is being done about it yet. The answer is charge points located in car parks and streetside (in lampposts!). Where do you park now?

In response to Old Fool saying he can’t charge an electric car at home.

No, your street-lamps suggestion is just not practical. I too live in a street with no private parking. It is one-way, finding somewhere to park is always a lottery, and it has only three or four lamp-posts.

That situation, with homes built before widespread ownership of cars, or even before cars, is very, very common.

Or more modern homes as near my previous one, built in the 1970s I think but on a steep hillside so residents had to park somewhere in the street or a nearby unallocated car-park, and trudge up or down steep steps to the front door.

There are even modern housing estates built like it, from a misguided idea a few decades ago to persuade people to do without cars because all their housing, work, education, health and shopping services will be within housing-estates dressed up as pseudo-villages, compact enough for Shanks’ Pony or the Safety Bicycle. Or lots of omnibuses.

So even if technically practical, putting chargers on street-lamps to compensate for lack of domestic drives, will remove several parking spaces from each street, and anyway, how on Earth are the residents supposed to share the time on them?

Oh – and there are also many who live in rural villages that have the same lack of private parking, and sometimes no available parking next to the house at all, and no lamp-posts.

.

There is also a dearth of public car-parks in which to accommodate two or three chargers, and those in towns are commonly very expensive to use.

The blunt truth is that very many motorists owning electric cars can only ever be reliant on public chargers, just as they are on liquid-fuel pumps, but far less conveniently. That’s if they can afford the cars anyway, of course.

Shell is in on the act:

https://ubitricity.com/en/charging-solutions/ac-lamppost/

… I hope the local dogs are suitably cautious !
MichaelG.

If we stop burning oil what do we do with it, as it will become waste for the oil industry?