Vocal Voices

From the RAC.

Not a bit surprised reading all tht I said years ago that to run an electrioc car would produce more polution because of us using the electric to charge it, all electric being supplied by fossil fuels??

Manxie xx

Great article; this is stuff you never get on TV, where the electric car is presented as being unquestionably wonderful.

What struck me was this bit.
"Hydrogen might have a strong future in Japan, but only through large-scale investment from the government".

Well yes, but in this country electric cars are similarly only going to be a realistic option if the government invests massively in charging points and builds God knows how many extra power stations to handle the increase in demand!

A hydrogen cell powered vehicle can today to nearly 500 miles on one "tank" and takes only a few minutes to refill. No electric car can match that range and they take a lot longer to refuel; and the more powerful the battery, the longer it takes to recharge.

I can't help thinking that the Japanese with their push for hydrogen might have got this right, and we might have got it wrong.

The problem is that there is really no answer to this problem, other than finding some way to reduce the vast increase
in travelling that I have witnessed in my lifetime. In my schooldays there were only two houses with a car in our street
of fifty houses, and when I started work at a factory employing about 120 people, there were only three cars parked on
the road outside, two of which were the directors. Maybe there should be an incentive for workers to find employment
within walking or cycling distance of their homes. The number of cars on the roads now is just ridiculous, in my opinion,
and if it goes on growing like this, life on Earth will become unbearable. I feel sorry for future generations.

The irony is that we have as much of a problem with the EV zealots as we do with the climate deniers.

They look at a very small number, such as we cope with very well today, and the future is so simple... What they do not have is the imagination to see what will be necessary to replace the 32 million cars we currently have on the roads, no matter how long the transition is to take. The cost of the infrastructure, in money, time and (ever decreasing) natural resources will cripple any economy and the planet

But EVs are green, so it must be done.

When it comes to hydrogen it is a no-no. It goes BANG!, you see.

Forget that for a couple of hundred quid you could convert your car to riun on it, or that for a few thousand £ existing filling stations could install the necessary equipment. Of course it is expensive to crack water, well it is if you use conventional electricity, but if we use all the 'free' stuff from wind and solar and dedicate it all to producing hydrogen we could use nuclear and gas for baseload.

Pffft.

Aggers, I see the problem, as well, but like you I can offer no solution.

Cromwell, it's all true that Hydrogen is a more convenient fuel than electricity. Except for a few issues.

Hydrogen is such a small atom that it leaks in gas form. There are three ways to keep Hydrogen from leaking.

Freeze/compress it until it is a liquid.
Break down the source liquid as needed.
Use a material which will keep it in.

In the first instance freezing or compressing into a liquid form is only OK where you can keep it in massively strong containers. Not really working for a car.
There exists technology today to create Hydrogen where needed but it has only really ever been used as a battery for small electrical
Finally the only material fine enough to keep Hydrogen in is Graphene and we are a decade (or two or three), away from Graphene seal production.

Then comes the next fun thing. Where do they get Hydrogen from in the first place??? I've worked for the largest hydrogen producer in the world but did still have to look it up.
Mainly they use very high temp steam to break down Natural Gas or Methane to get Hydrogen. Of course they need heat to create the steam so they use.... Natural Gas to heat it... By-product? Carbon Dioxide from both the heating and the splitting of the Hydrogen.

There are other methods which produce no CO2, but they require more heat and produce significantly less Hydrogen.

Next one is to get it from water. Electrolysis is one. It uses more electricity to produce than it gives in Hydrogen energy. If you add a catalyst, it gives you more but you are still pumping huge amounts of energy at separating the hydrogen just to burn it for a 10% return on the whole cycle.

There are biological routes using algae and several other possibilities, but the above are the one's possible on a really large scale.

When you look at the list above, you realise that it would simply be cheaper/easier/better/cleaner, to either use the electricity to run cars or run cars on LNG. That is without even thinking about the sheer volume of fuel we ship around the world and each country and the required complete re-fit of the entire tanker and garage storage infrastructure.

It is like electricity. Totally clean to use once you have got there. But incredibly dirty to get the fuel to use.

We are suffering from a total inability to see the whole picture or to plan for a realistic scenario.

The only positive thing I will say about EV is that it is driving Battery Technology at a pace only seen during large scale wars and that can only be a good thing. Because we waste so much power because we can't use it at the time it is being generated. One day we will have enough storage capacity to ensure we don't lose any of it. But I doubt in my lifetime.

Aggers, whilst I do agree with you that we live in a time of great waste, we also live in a time when we benefit from our advancements. I was watching the film "The Circle" this week and there is a line in there which rings totally true to my view of the world. Mae Holland (Emma Watson), is talking about the abuse of the modern technology and social connectivity, by unscrupulous people to make money and gain power. What she says is simple. Just because what we have today is either not good enough, or not "right", does not mean we should stop and go backwards to where we were before. We should move forward to where we want/need to be in the future and MAKE it good enough and "right".

At the onset of WW1 90% of the people in the UK had never travelled more than 10 miles from where they were born. People still had 10 child families and a fairly rigid class system still presided over the UK where what you were born was, most likely, what you would live, aspire to and die. Whilst I grew up middle class and have, essentially, stayed middle class, I would certainly not ever want the UK to return to a time like that.

We stand at a crossroads in time. Innovate or die. Currently our entire civilisation stands on a bedrock of fossil fuels. A bedrock which is eroding very quickly and will, eventually collapse. We MUST transition from fossil fuels to another fuel source or the fall of Rome will be less than a tiny blip on the graph compared to the fall our Civilisation will make. Our farming, transport and fuel production which supports this 7.6bn human population relies almost totally on fossil fuels. Without that our current world population is going to falter and wane. We will be catapulted right back to the beginning of the 20th century in the very best case and possibly even further back. A society at that stage cannot support the weight of population it currently has. The only possible outcome is true global war. The survivors of that won't like what they inherit much.

However let us consider the options. Renewable fuels, Nuclear, space based solar to earth based reception farms. Water, wind, solar, geothermal. All in use. Oil used only for lubrication and manufacturing.

This requires massive Advances in battery technology, computing, automation and autonomous systems such as self driving vehicles, essentially as our installations will be as human free as possible requiring automation and robotics.

This technology will donate lowered power costs, self driving vehicles/busses/tax's. Once you remove the human element from the transport angle, it's possible to have "dial a ride" instead of busses. Especially if there are public charging stations which people can plug these vehicles into. How about driving you car to the train station and then it driving itself home, parking itself in the garage and plugging itself in to charge. Parking fees? What parking fees.

How about dial a ride car sharing schem where you drive to the pick up point and then your own car drives home, then comes back and picks you up. The Dial a Ride brings several people into work then goes away and provides service for someone else.

As for the current moves in Drone Air Taxi's??? This will be an expensive reality in a decade but will be a cost effective reality in 30 years. Driving into a city on roads will, eventually, become a thing of the past. On demand autonomous transport is the future.

This Year Yamaha demo'd a self riding motorcycle!!

We need to drive our Politicians FORWARD with ever increasing pace. I grew up with the fanciful notion that we'd all have flying cars which flew us to work/shops/etc by the year 2000. In the last 5 years I have seen the first baby steps of that reality. I hope I live to see more of it but I suspect it will only be horribly emerging technology by the time I die. My Grandchildren will, however, live in that world the books of the 1960's and 1970's predicted.

Do I want us to stop pushing forward? No I don't. But I do want politicians to WAKE UP and realise that Global Warming and CO2 are an OPPORTUNITY. After all, a Politician should never fail to take advantage of a good oncoming disaster. But the Politician should do the right thing, the honourable thing, the responsible thing. Right now the only thing they are doing is job protection and sound bites.....

Suff wrote: Just because what we have today is either not good enough, or not "right", does not mean we should stop and go backwards
to where we were before. We should move forward to where we want/need to be in the future and MAKE it good enough and "right".
.....

I must agree that that makes sense, Suff, but at the same time I'm aware that a feeling that one wishes to return to the
happy period of one's childhood, although not practical, is nevertheless a pleasing experience. A sign of old age, no doubt.

AliasAggers wrote:I must agree that that makes sense, Suff, but at the same time I'm aware that a feeling that one wishes to return to the
happy period of one's childhood, although not practical, is nevertheless a pleasing experience. A sign of old age, no doubt.

There are many things from my childhood I would love to go back to Aggers. Sadly it is not possible.

The freedom of personal transport, flights, trains, global interconnection; are not something I would roll back. Just mitigate the consequences of such a large amount of consumption.

There are many things in this modern world that are much better than when I was a child. There are, however, a great number of things which, from my viewpoint, are MUCH worse.