And on the subject of fuel cells

[Suff]

Sandy Munro on looking at the Toyota fuel cell design.

Remember Toyota, today, is still the only automotive company that has gone beyond a concept fuel cell vehicle and into any volume of manufacturing at all.

Food for thought.

You can watch the whole thing if you want but you do need to put up with Steven Mark Ryan going on about stuff he predicted 3 years ago or more. If you don't like him just watch until he appears and shut him off.

Oh, btw, he's made $1.9m on his Tesla share investments so he has some room to witter on about his beliefs. If Tesla shares go where he thinks, he will have made more than $20m.

[Workingman]

Two threads and zero replies, except for this one, and 29 views in total.

Nobody is interested in the views of a convicted felon or a zealot of EV vehicles or somebody's dealings in the stock market, Tesla or otherwise; most live in the real world.

Get over it.

[Suff]

No, actually everyone else needs to get over it and get with it.

This is not just coming it is here and you all need to get used to it.

[cromwell]

The technology of the fuel cell is fascinating- oxygen + hydrogen = electricity; but as we have a generation of politicians who know nothing about anything imo they can be manoeuvred into taking decisions that are based more on money than sense.

[Suff]

Regardless of what the politicians want, they signed up to the 90g Co2 per. Km driven and we also set a target of no fossil fuelled vehicles by 2035 and only hybrids with fossil fuel engines from 2030. I expect that to morph into only plug in hybrids by the time we get there.

These two moves have completely changed the automotive market in the UK and Europe and the response of the vehicle manufacturers is overwhelmingly battery EV.

Let me put this into perspective so it is easy to understand. Tesla has set a target of 20m vehicles sold every year by 2030. Look at every VW you see and every Toyota you see and every BMW you see on the road. That is the volume of all electric cars that will be sold by just One company in 2030. 7.5 years away.

If you think that the rest will not respond with electric cars of their own you are kidding yourself.

Is Tesla going to make it? They need 50% exponential growth to do that.

What is their current exponential growth?

78%.

Are they going faster or slower?

They sold their 3 millionth car this week. It took 12 years for Fremont to produce 2m cars. 3 years for Shanghai to produce 1m and Shanghai will hit 2m before the end of next year. Texas and Berlin are sized to produce more than Shanghai.

This is real, it is here and our world is changing. Hydrogen? The infrastructure will take 50 years to put in place. Whereas we already have a massive grid and we are already upgrading it.

You think it doesn't matter? Would you buy a vehicle in 5 years time if you knew it was going to lose 75% of its value in 3 years and have no resale market? At least Norway has the whole of LHD Europe to punt their FF vehicles to after 2025. We have Ireland or a Very long ship journey.

Norway is the bellwether. By 2020 50% of all vehicle sales were EV of one type or another. By 2022, 85% of all vehicle sales shifted to Battery EV. 3 years before the cut off.

2 years ago Norway was rolling out chargers as fast as they could, most being 7.5kw to 22kw. In the past 2 years the number of charge points have ramped dramatically and the base for new charge points is 50kw with 125kw being the base for fast food area chargers.

It is neither impossible, nor difficult, once the inevitable is there.

The largest single chunk of EV sales in Norway are Tesla. For one simple reason. They are available to buy. The rest are playing games witness the VW CEO being sacked for saying things the Porsche family don't like.

Understanding this is vitally important. Not just about cars and buying cars. Do you have a private pension? Are their stock portfolios stuffed with GM, FCA, VW, Toyota, SHELL, BP? Consider the impact when a chunk of these go under.

Ignorance may be bliss; but reality is brutally darwinian.

Anyway, enough. There are none so deaf as those who do not want to hear.

[cromwell]

I'm not intrinsically against EVs Suff. I am concerned about the pace of change though. Our politicians have struck poses and signaled their virtue, they are good at that.
What they are less good at is delivering.
As an example in 2015 Amber Rudd, then energy secretary, announced plans to close coal fired power stations by 2025.
So, ok. But she also said "Energy security comes first and I am determined to ensure that the UK has secure, affordable and clean energy supplies that hard working families and businesses can rely on. "
You see? The difference between promise and delivery. I know we are heading towards a future minus petrol cars. What worries me is the gap between words and actions.

[Suff]

This is why I follow this closely. The biggest game changer for EV is the 95g CO2 rule (sorry got that wrong before). This is a fleet average. The response in the car industry was not the Hydrogen they have been wittering on about for decades. It was electric. Most of it smoke and mirrors but it allowed them to lie to the governments and us all.

The long term plan is electric to avoid hundreds of billions in fines. Just that one law.

Removing ff is just a reinforcement.

If you follow the industry you would know that Honda fleet average emissions was 135g per km. Hybrids and covid got them under the 95g bar.

Brexit had another impact too. Fiat was selling their most polluting cars in the UK and their most efficient cars in Italy. Now they have to meet that fleet average in the UK alone, no allocating Italian EV sales to cover huge Co2 emitting in the UK.

The result. More EV. Why? Because nobody has a diesel family car which does 90mpg or a petrol that does 85mpg.

I know, booooring. Why understand the numbers when you can suspect the government of duplicity and failure to execute.

The die is cast. EV is the future. The very Near future and that is all we should need to know.