Diesel cars and vans

[cromwell]

Are to be banned in the UK from 2040.

Random thoughts are:- 2040 is a long time off. As someone said on the Guardian website, someone else can explain why the target wasn't met after the person who set it has retired!

OK, cars and vans. Buses? Lorries? Tractors? Trains? Ships? All of which use diesel engines and none of which are mentioned.

Also will we need a lot more power stations?

[AliasAggers]

Are to be banned in the UK from 2040.

Random thoughts are:- 2040 is a long time off. As someone said on the Guardian website, someone else can explain why the target wasn't met after the person who set it has retired!

OK, cars and vans. Buses? Lorries? Tractors? Trains? Ships? All of which use diesel engines and none of which are mentioned.

Also will we need a lot more power stations?

What we really need is less travelling. Is it all really necessary ?
We managed quite happily years ago without all these cars, vans, planes and ships.

[Workingman]

From what I have read it is diesel and petrol cars and vans by 2040.

However, with well built cars lasting about ten years, and with owners wanting some form of scrap value from their older vehicles, sales could start to drop off as early as 2026-7. There will certainly be no incentive to buy diesel or petrol vehicles from the early 2030s onwards.

Is that enough time to get everyone to go electric? And if we do, are those vehicles actually greener and will the infrastructure to support them, certainly from an electricity supply point of view, be in place? I am not so sure.

I also think that Aggers makes a good point and could be onto something - do we really need to be making so many journeys, and certainly those with only one person in each *pod*?

There is a lot more to the transport and pollution problem than this incentive makes out.

[JoM]

Just thinking of the practicalities. A neighbour has an electric car and has a charging point installed on the side of the house. They're a couple with one car so that works fine for them. Then I look at N&R across the road. One 'family' 4x4, son's car, daughter's car, husband's work van, son's work van (and often the son's girlfriend's car). Luckily for them all will fit on the drive so all would be close enough to a charging point or however many were fitted.
Problem is, a lot of people in this country only have on street parking and can't even park close to their homes so how would that work out when it came to charging a car? Are the batteries removable?

Also, if you're reliant on the car charging on the drive, is there anything to stop idiots going around and disconnecting the car from the charger? Does it lock in someway I wonder?

Oh, forgot to say that's a good point Aggers - there are far too many cars on the roads, often making unnecessary journeys.

[TheOstrich]

Interesting points, Jo. Master O is lucky if he can find street parking within 1/2 mile of his Sarf London flat - there's no home parking space attached to it. I've counselled him to consider flogging the car and just relying on public transport, at which point he reminds me his local stations are all "Southern" ...

They will have to make huge innovative strides in technology within the next 10 years or so before they can even contemplate rolling out electric vehicles en masse.

How long does it take to charge a car at the moment? How many miles can you cover before recharging? Where are the charging points? What's the weight of the batteries?

I suspect at the end of the day we'll have a good old British compromise, just like we've seen recently on the railways. Abandon plans to electrify Great Western beyond Chipp'num and Cardiff, and order a shed-load of bi-mode units which will happily work using either electric wires or diesel engines.

I also concur with Aggers about cutting way back on passenger aircraft and cruise liners. Personally, I'd ban them all. So, no need for Heathrow 3; in fact, Heathrow 1 and 2 should be dug up and reverted to farmland ...

[AliasAggers]

I also concur with Aggers about cutting way back on passenger aircraft and cruise liners. Personally, I'd ban them all. So, no need for Heathrow 3; in fact, Heathrow 1 and 2 should be dug up and reverted to farmland ...

At last I have found someone who agrees with my opinions concerning the unnecessary excess of
travelling which has become the norm in recent years. It nice to know that I'm not the only one.

[Workingman]

The boss of Aston Martin hit the nail on the head when he said that as a statement (from government) it was fine, but as a policy it was absurd. It appears that the initial media enthusiasm is now looking a bit thin as those who know something about transport policy and infrastructure air their doubts.

Aggers, I think that you will find that many of us are singing from your hymn sheet (Jo and I as well as Ossie) and that the number is growing. We might as well do it voluntarily or it will be forced upon us.

[AliasAggers]

I think that one thing that would be a good start, would be to make it obligatory for fit children to be
sent to their nearest school. rather than giving parents a choice .This used to be so in my schooldays.
If this was done It would be healthier for the children, not only because of the exercise involved, but
because it is known that the air quality is better in the street than inside most cars. This would greatly
reduce the volume of traffic caused by the 'School Run',

A further helpful measure would be, in some way, to give companies some sort of incentive to employ
workers living nearer their place of work.

A greatly enlarged and improved bus service, specially programmed to ferry workers to and from their
places of employment, would also be of great help in reducing the vast number of cars currently in use
on work days, with the consequential vast amount of air pollution.

Something certainly needs to be done a.s.a.p.

[victor]

When i lived and worked in Yeovil (8,000 + work force) the issue of busses to take workers to & from work was mooted.Thereby reducing the number of workers cars coming into the workplace
As a great number of workers lived in out lying villages and people worked a 3 shift pattern where did the busses have to start their pick ups ,furthest away? so how much earlier would those concerned have to be up for a 6 A.M. start,where would the busses start their drop offs with people going home? ,closest villages ? in which case those the furthest away would be last home having been the first to be picked up.This obviously would be the problem with all 3 shift patterns. Totally impractical,never got off the ground.

[Suff]

I started this earlier but "events" took over.

Also will we need a lot more power stations?

No Crommers they'll need a LOT more power stations..

They are still decommissioning coal and coal is still 9.5% of the grid at peak consumption. So they need to replace that 9.5% AND add in at least 50% to 100% more power on the grid. Solar does not work at night and gives minimal input in winter. In Winter you need heaters going all the time which will drain the car batteries in triple time, meaning more frequent top ups.

I can see this being fudged by a big shift into LPG, although as we now import gas and LPG, we're not helping in the balance of trade situation there. If we add in that there are no cars, let alone trucks or busses, which can drive more than 300 miles on one charge and it will take a minimum of 45 minutes to sufficiently charge a depleted car, to complete a 500 mile journey, people will need to factor in long breaks in their journeys and we'll need hundreds of thousands, if not millions of, new charging points. A network which simply does not exist today. How this will also play with the 8h long distance truck/bus driving threshold, I have no idea.

2040 may seem like a long time away but Hinckley Point C is estimated to take 18 years to build and it has not even started yet. Also to hit 2040 with fuel free cars, will require a ramp up of car production from at least 2032 or 2035 at the very latest. Tesla has taken 5 years to get things to volume consumer level and they are still premium cars, not budget.

It is good to have aspirations and I do laud this, but the reality is something else. However when these aspirations are set out, I would prefer to see a clearly documented trail of how we shift the hydrocarbon energy budget, for transport, onto EV or other power sources than petrol or diesel.

For instance, If we look at the UK government's energy breakdown for 2016, we see on page 7 (page 8 of the pdf), that transport is some 55m tonnes of oil equivalent energy. OK some of this is already electric based (trains), but the bulk is hydrocarbon fuel based.

Skip forward to page 9 (10 on the pdf) and we see that electricity is just over 20m tonnes oil equivalent and petroleum products are around 65m.

Let us take a simple figure and say transport is 45m tonnes oil equivalent of energy and electricity is 25m. We know that the grid is often at, or near, peak consumption, especially on winter days.

By my calculations from that sheet, we'd need to, at least, triple UK generating capacity, assuming that we need a buffer. In the pipeline? Removal of our coal power stations which are the fastest responding and highest power density stations and replacing some of that power with non persistent renewables.

Quite simply, they would have to build about 10 Hinckley Point C stations around the country to even approach the problem.

Charging Jo, yep a big issue. Most people would have to charge at public charging stations, during the day and at peak electric usage, rather than at night. Negating the benefits of overnight low usage periods. Batteries can be removed, by a garage, but are also pretty damned heavy too.

They may well drive Diesel and Petrol off the roads. But they'll replace it, mainly, with LPG and that can be retrofitted. Electric simply is not mature enough and still won't be in 2040.