Honda leaving - possible alternatives?

[ANGELFIRE1]

12 minutes ago, Crosser said:

Just one small point about charging these here electric vehicles....

All the banter seems to assume that everyone has a drive/garage.

 

Now what happens if you happen to live on the top floor of a 17 storey block of flats?

 

That's gonna be one long cable, and hopefully nobody will interfere with it(possibly rendering it dangerous).

Even dafter than the cable situation, if we were to suffer a couple of weeks subzero temps our electric usage would put our lecky use severely into the red and might even require lecky cuts. Imagine if we all went insane and bought Lecky cars, where the heck would the electricity come from to charge them all up, the far fabled electric tree. Like I posted, it has not been thought through to any degree by the barm pots who would like to implement it. The lunatics have taken over the asylum, while we pay them for doing it.

[tinfoilhat]

2 minutes ago, ANGELFIRE1 said:

Even dafter than the cable situation, if we were to suffer a couple of weeks subzero temps our electric usage would put our lecky use severely into the red and might even require lecky cuts. Imagine if we all went insane and bought Lecky cars, where the heck would the electricity come from to charge them all up, the far fabled electric tree. Like I posted, it has not been thought through to any degree by the barm pots who would like to implement it. The lunatics have taken over the asylum, while we pay them for doing it.

Does carbon emissions or clean air mean anything to you at all?

[Crosser]

32 minutes ago, tinfoilhat said:

Does carbon emissions or clean air mean anything to you at all?

For goodness sake, does "Practical Application" mean anything to YOU?

Yes we'd all live zero carbon  lives etc etc BUT! nobody is going to do it if it's difficult.

 

Or if their electricity is going to be stolen by the "scrotes up the street" while they are asleep 17 stories up.

Would you even "risk it"?

 

No, of course not.

 

Now lets have some realistic ideas

 

[tinfoilhat]

Calm down treacle you’ll do yourself a mischief.

 

Not everyone lives in 17 story flats. I don’t, there are none in my locale. But you raise a fair point, charging infrastructure does need investment. Although I do recall a car being charged from a terraced house in London. Cable came out the letterbox, down the path and across the pavement and into the car! Zero ****s appeared to have been given!

 

That said, maybe smaller petrol engine use should be encouraged. They’re being produced by most brands now and should at least help improve city centre air quality.  Hybrids don’t need a cable at all do they?

[Resident]

4 hours ago, tinfoilhat said:

Does carbon emissions or clean air mean anything to you at all?

Let's get this straight shall we? 

 

Ignoring the environmental impact of raw materials mining for batteries & disposal at EOL, that's another argument. 

 

Electric vehicles are NOT carbon neutral nor are they zero emissions. They simply displace their environmental impact to the power stations, many of which are still very much fossil fuel based. 

 

It takes FAR MORE electricity to charge a battery even with modern tech than the battery is able to produce. 

[tinfoilhat]

26 minutes ago, Resident said:

Let's get this straight shall we? 

 

Ignoring the environmental impact of raw materials mining for batteries & disposal at EOL, that's another argument. 

 

Electric vehicles are NOT carbon neutral nor are they zero emissions. They simply displace their environmental impact to the power stations, many of which are still very much fossil fuel based. 

 

It takes FAR MORE electricity to charge a battery even with modern tech than the battery is able to produce. 

Not disputing any of that. Short of sitting alone in a darkened room, what are the answers? As far as short term reduction of air pollution electric is the best of a bad lot, certainly compared with diesel.

[ads36]

12 hours ago, tinfoilhat said:

...As far as short term reduction of air pollution electric is the best of a bad lot, certainly compared with diesel.

Bikes and public transport are even better.

 

(let’s remember that loads of car journeys are made by one person travelling a few miles or less : if we really cared about air pollution, we could make a massive improvement, more or less overnight)

[tinfoilhat]

Just now, ads36 said:

Bikes and public transport are even better.

 

(let’s remember that loads of car journeys are made by one person travelling a few miles or less : if we really cared about air pollution, we could make a massive improvement, more or less overnight)

I think you'll struggle to make that happen. 

[Top Cats Hat]

12 hours ago, Resident said:

Electric vehicles are NOT carbon neutral nor are they zero emissions. They simply displace their environmental impact to the power stations, many of which are still very much fossil fuel based. 

 

It takes FAR MORE electricity to charge a battery even with modern tech than the battery is able to produce. 

First of all no system is 100% efficient so even a petrol or diesel car will produce less work than the calorific value of the fuel put into its tank.

 

Secondly either last year or the year before we had the first day ever since the industrial revolution when no coal was burned to produce electricity. We have had many more days like that since and will have many more in the future as fossil fuel burning is phased out.

 

There are no real, credible arguments against electric cars unless you believe protecting the vested interests of the oil industry is something worth doing.

 

 

[ads36]

2 hours ago, Top Cats Hat said:

There are no real, credible arguments against electric cars

First, it's quite possible that our next car will be electric.

 

But that snippet is a fair challenge!

 

In sort of the same way that shale gas keeps us tied to fossil fuels, when we know we need to leave them in the ground, electric cars keep us tied to car dependency when we know they're bad for us (expense, isolation, physical danger, congestion, physical inactivity, pavement parking, etc.).