Will electric vehicles become the 'dieselgate' of 2050?

[Tonibe63]

There is no doubt about it .... the World's appetite for diesel vehicles is on it's @rse but is electric really the answer or will it prove to be another unsustainable industry with a massive environmental disaster in 30 years time?
Asking a mate about how they make the batteries and how do they recycle them his reply was "I haven't got a clue but I don't visit feul stations and the tax is cheap", ask him if the World can generate enough electric for us all to run electric vehicles and how will we generate it the answer is "not my problem".
My Brother in law put a new boiler in about 3 years ago which is fired by wood pellets and he openly admits that without the Government 'green' subsidies it wasn't financially viable but now some Councils are banning wood burning stoves.
So to my cynical mind it is just a matter of which way the political/economical wind is blowing. With vehicles it is just a way of tying the population into monthly battery/vehicle rental costs whilst easing the drivers short sighted responsibility for pollution whilst keeping industry turning out whichever type of vehicle is environmentally fashionable ....... aslong as it pays money.
I'm not posting this to spark argument but honestly interested in the whole sustainability and environmental impact of what we are being force fed.
And yes I am aware that I will probably be dead by 2050

[Zookman]

The only electric personal transport that interest me currently, are my two ebikes. At present, electric cars & motorcycles aren't anywhere near where i want them to be before i take an interest in them. I doubt they ever will be in my limited driving future.

[qcnr]

Look at Norway. Nearly 50% of new vehicle sales this year are electric. Consider your vehicle use, how often do you need 500km range?
Personally the effects of vehicle electrification aren't felt yet. Consider the energy used by ICE vehicles now, and replace that same amount with
electricity. It won't work with the current infrastructure.
Also the only real benefit from electric vehicles is 0 pollution during use. Pollution for production is about the same as a ICE vehicle.
To be honest they don't interest me either as a 1 vehicle family. But as a day to day commuter only, probably great, but not better than a motorbike.

[bowber]

While I'm quite enthusiastic at the possibilities with electric I don't really think they are the single answer for all personal vehicles.
Other fuel sources for ICE vehicles are being investigated and compressed air is also another option for local travel (not sure about it's crash-ability though)
At the moment where I live a hybrid would be the sensible option but for local trips electric makes sense until everyone on the street gets one and all plug them in at the same time! There was a small article last year about the post offices in the London area looking into electric but they concluded there wasn't the infrastructure to charge them overnight.

Steve

[Petethefeet]

We looked at a small electric car for the wife a few years back, would have been a Renault Zoe but having spoken to a honest sales man...... He did say the range reduced over the first 3 years or so from the initial 150 -180 miles to 100miles if you were lucky. They also were £5K plus more than a similar ICE car so we stuck with a small Fiat, but that is another story.
Re. the electrical supply. We are building thousands of new houses not one of them has solar panels on the roof as part of the planning conditions, that is short sighted. If the panels were install by the hundred if not thousand they would be far cheaper.

[prg4967]

Re. the electrical supply. We are building thousands of new houses not one of them has solar panels on the roof as part of the planning conditions, that is short sighted. If the panels were install by the hundred if not thousand they would be far cheaper.

I was having this conversation today...why don’t they do this, it makes so much sense...



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[qcnr]

Cost.
Builders don't want the extra cost as that will affect profits.
It may push the price of new houses up enough to deter buyers.

[Trev]

After having a PHEV Volvo for three years I now have an all electric BMW i3 and it's great, does for about 85% of my driving requirements. Range is 110-120 miles, performance is an absolute hoot and it's super easy to drive. Also it's not needed a service yet even though I've now had it 14 months and 14k miles.

So difficutl to know what to believe aboit ICE v EV in terms of overall emissions but zero particulates in use is, for me, very attractive plus it's not like we're going to have much choice, it will be EV or shank's pony in a few years time.

[OB1]

I guess you could call me an environmentalist: I want to do all that I can to save or conserve energy and protect our planet for future generations... I know, it all sounds a bit tree huggy, but that's the way I feel. Not because of the need to give my children a better place to live... because I don't have any. Just because I look at the mess that is and has been done to the planet and I want to improve it all.

It was about 9 or 10 years ago, when I bought my first Tiger and read in MCN that they could get pretty good MPG figures, that I changed my riding style from seeing how fast I could get from A to B to seeing how little fuel I could use to get from A to B. The best I managed on the Tiger was around 63 mpg which was incredible to me as my previous bike, a 1050 Speed Triple, would be running on fumes after around 80 or 90 miles. To have a bike that would do nearly three times that on the same amount of fuel was amazing. Now I have a CRF250 Rally which achieves over 80 mpg regularly.

Last year, I got to ride some electric bikes for the first time and it was quite a revelation. There's a thread somewhere in the Bikes section of the forum where I wrote about them. This bikes are quick and agile as well as being quite and non-polluting when in use. Initial cost and range will improve given time and the infrastructure will be built.

I agree that the big problem is in the production and disposal of the batteries which use rare materials during the manufacturing process and will cause an issue during disposal. The issue that is tackled by electric vehicles is that it gets rid of the pollution in towns and cities where petrol and diesel do the most harm to people.

If anyone else has a memory like mine, they'll remember an episode of Tomorrow's World where they were talking about this new technology of unleaded fuels making inner cities less polluted... the trouble with catalytic converters is that they have to get to a certain temperature to start working and the average journey wasn't long enough, resulting in the vehicle putting out even more pollutants.

Anyway... all this rambling is to say that electric vehicles are probably just a stepping stone to something even more environmentally friendly such as hydrogen powered vehicles... we'll just have to wait and see.

[HarveyCamm]

The Americans are a step ahead on new homes

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/15/califor ... s-big.html

I'd support new homes having to be fitted with panels but as the UK has abolished any new domestic feed in tariff system it's not the homeowners who would benefit financially from creating electricity on their roof. Maybe if the builders retained ownership of the PV system they could offset their installation costs with earning from the generation - society gains and we won't necessarily be paying more for a new home