Hydrogen Vehicles

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PH
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by PH »

PDQ Mobile wrote:These last Tory Govts have been more short term in their thinking than many others,and that really is saying something!
Self serving and dogmatic.
Visionless and greedy.

Indeed, in the case of the Midland Mainline from London to Sheffield, the electrification has been more stop/start than the trains. Grayling cancelled the last phase which had already been costed and £Millions spent on bridge work. Ending the electrification in Kettering (recently extended to Mkt Harborough) claiming that new bi-mode train technology would offer seamless transfer from diesel power to electric and this meant there was no longer the need to electrify every line to achieve improvements to journeys.
The £Millions spent were not without some benefit, locally a couple of good stretches of road were closed to motor traffic for over a year and popular with cyclists :)
reohn2
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by reohn2 »

PDQ Mobile wrote: ......The thread diversion (sorry Mick) started because of the word "vision".

Vision is not short term gain and profit for shareholders and bigwigs, but rather (especially in this instance) an attempt to see into the future in a way that will benefit all of the next generation(s)of our society.........


Vision which is sadly lacking by those on this thread of a more right wing persuasion :roll:

Some people seem to be under* the impression that the country is a profit making business :roll:


*nearly said labour :shock:
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"All we are not stares back at what we are"
W H Auden
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Mick F
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by Mick F »

The problem always comes down to money.
How you spend it and how you invest it are the nub of the issue.

Personally, I'd invest in health, education, and railways. Good police force and good armed forces too.

I'd scrap the whole idea of HS2 or extra runways or extra motorways and bypasses, and I'd scrap or severely downsize the nuclear deterrent as well.


Back on track - pardon the pun! :D
I was chatting yesterday - not down the pub! - about conversion to EVs from fossil fuels.
One thing we haven't considered, is that if the petrol and diesel cars are priced off the road, what do you do with them?
Yes, the metal and some of the plastics can be recycled, but not all. One main problem, is that the seats for instance, are at this moment, non-recycleable.
Plastic front wings were popular designs to lighten the car. Our Clio had plastic front wings, but they too aren't recycleable so that's why later car designers have gone back to steel.

Have you ever scrapped a car?
It costs money! The scrapyards in the old days, used to pay YOU, but not any more.

Better idea therefore, is to allow the fossil fuel cars to run their lives fully to their natural ends.
Mick F. Cornwall
kwackers
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by kwackers »

Mick F wrote:Better idea therefore, is to allow the fossil fuel cars to run their lives fully to their natural ends.

Why do you think they wont?
There'll definitely be a point where IC cars will be logistically hard to run but with an average age of 8 years the majority will have died a natural death by then anyway regardless of EV use.
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Mick F
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by Mick F »

Why?
Because I said up thread that we should price them off the roads.

We can't. We'd be better off letting them die slowly and naturally and bring on EVs slowly.
Mick F. Cornwall
kwackers
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by kwackers »

Mick F wrote:We can't. We'd be better off letting them die slowly and naturally and bring on EVs slowly.

I think that's exactly what will happen.

We can't make enough EV's to satisfy demand - hence why they're not that easy to get hold of.
I think demand will outstrip production for a few years yet. There's a feedback mechanism in that if production starts to exceed demand prices will fall and demand will rise.
Eventually at some point over the next few years the number of models will increase such there'll be one for everyone and we'll hit price parity, throw in battery improvements and at this point assuming you can get one then you'd need to be a bit soft in the head not to unless you have a very specific use case to buy IC.

Up until then though folk will continue buying IC cars, usually on 3, 4 or 5 year leases or HP.
So imo a reasonable number of IC cars will still have been bought in 5(?) years time, and in 10 years time when they're entering the second hand market they'll still be worth buying if your mileage isn't too high mainly because they'll be cheap-as-chips which will counter their running costs.

It's a long winded way of saying EV sales have inbuilt sales restrictions that will improve but not as fast as folk might like whilst IC's will continue to sell for a bit and whilst crashing price wise second hand they would be priced to make economic sense for some folk for a number of years yet.

And as long as there are some IC's on the road there'll be petrol stations - albeit slowly getting spaced further and further apart.
Ben@Forest
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by Ben@Forest »

kwackers wrote:And as long as there are some IC's on the road there'll be petrol stations - albeit slowly getting spaced further and further apart.


Assuming diesel powered lorries and vans (which are always conveniently forgotten in the discussions about EV and emissions) will continue to be required for longer then l guess filling stations with a petrol pump will still be available for a long time yet

It does make you wonder about refuelling classic cars eventually though, assuming they are still allowed!
kwackers
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by kwackers »

Ben@Forest wrote:
kwackers wrote:And as long as there are some IC's on the road there'll be petrol stations - albeit slowly getting spaced further and further apart.


Assuming diesel powered lorries and vans (which are always conveniently forgotten in the discussions about EV and emissions) will continue to be required for longer then l guess filling stations with a petrol pump will still be available for a long time yet

It does make you wonder about refuelling classic cars eventually though, assuming they are still allowed!

I'm assuming that lorries (less so vans) will fill up at your standard 'lorry parks' - given most can do around 1000 miles between fill ups they don't really need much in the way of filling infrastructure.

There are a couple of electric lorries around, their main problem isn't charging, it's the weight of the batteries which is taken from the overall gross weight (and of course the not insubstantial cost of that much battery).
At some point assuming batteries get more power dense and cheaper then we could conceivably have electric lorries although imo a better solution is moving freight onto rail and relying on short range vans to take up the local deliveries.
(Every time I see an artic unloading a palette at the small local Spar near me I despair).

As for classics, they'll never be banned. There's little point with almost no gain.
What I'd expect is petrol to be sold at the sort of places where you buy calor gas, paraffin etc. Won't be cheap though but since classic cars are a hobby and folk aren't usually stingy when it comes to hobbies it probably wont matter so much.
Hobbs1951
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by Hobbs1951 »

This thread seems (to me) to suffer from a certain amount of myopia: personal transport irrespective of the means of propulsion will not reduce congestion, road incidents or deaths.

We need to get people out of their cars and using other means of transport whether a bus, train or cycle or foot !

And, notwithstanding the above, where will all the power come from to charge these electric cars ? Someone mentioned lorries (ha!) and batteries: Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW) is not the issue per se it is payload - for an EV truck to maintain a similiar payload to a conventional truck GVWs will have to rise = bigger trucks.

I would also put forward the argument that cars should be more expensive not less so; the majority of cars are purchased by consumers on sub-vented rate finance contracts (PCPs and latterly PCHs), these schemes reduce the effective capital cost and make the cars artificially affordable to people who could not afford to acquire the car of a one third deposit was required with a (maximum) two year payment profile.

This is a complex issue, with many facets.

John.
francovendee
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by francovendee »

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2197211-electric-cars-wont-shrink-emissions-enough-we-must-cut-travel-too/

I think this makes interesting reading and I rather like the ideas put forward.
kwackers
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by kwackers »

Hobbs1951 wrote:This thread seems (to me) to suffer from a certain amount of myopia: personal transport irrespective of the means of propulsion will not reduce congestion, road incidents or deaths.

We need to get people out of their cars and using other means of transport whether a bus, train or cycle or foot !

I'm not sure anyone doubts that and I certainly don't suffer from myopia.

But there are multiple issues and the particular issue we're discussing is really what the next generation of fuel is going to be.
Switching fuels is a relatively trivial thing and all those plugged in batteries will help rather than hinder a drive to renewables.

Getting people out of cars, well I'm a lot less sure how you'd do that...
francovendee
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by francovendee »

kwackers wrote:
Hobbs1951 wrote:This thread seems (to me) to suffer from a certain amount of myopia: personal transport irrespective of the means of propulsion will not reduce congestion, road incidents or deaths.

We need to get people out of their cars and using other means of transport whether a bus, train or cycle or foot !

I'm not sure anyone doubts that and I certainly don't suffer from myopia.

But there are multiple issues and the particular issue we're discussing is really what the next generation of fuel is going to be.
Switching fuels is a relatively trivial thing and all those plugged in batteries will help rather than hinder a drive to renewables.

Getting people out of cars, well I'm a lot less sure how you'd do that...


Getting people out of their cars can only be done by passing unpopular laws and having a viable alternative available. Something only a strong government could achieve and unlikely to happen unfortunately.
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Mick F
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by Mick F »

Mick F wrote:The works have started in Tavistock.
Bovis Homes are building an estate of houses as you reach Tavy from the west on the A390.
Just here on the right.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@50.54047 ... 312!8i6656

Part of the agreement to build these houses, is to build a relief road and a new railway station and reopen the line to Bere Alston where it will join the existing Tamar Valley Line to Plymouth.

I very much doubt that this will be electrified. I would like to see the line opened as an electric tram line, but I doubt anything like that would be considered. It'll be diesel DMUs just like the TVL.

Read this. At present, I can't find anything better online.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tavistock_railway_station

PS
Old BBC News item.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-28943931

Done more searching and found a site.
http://apps.westdevon.gov.uk/planningse ... ils/134353
Apart from all the bumf and info, this bit is interesting.

Private money for public good?

It was a PDF so I saved it as a JPEG. Hopefully it'll be readable.
Rail Contribution.jpg
Mick F. Cornwall
Ben@Forest
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by Ben@Forest »

kwackers wrote:I'm assuming that lorries (less so vans) will fill up at your standard 'lorry parks' - given most can do around 1000 miles between fill ups they don't really need much in the way of filling infrastructure.


Technically yes, but (having talked about this before with my cousin, a former HGV driver and then a transport manager) it depends massively on load, tank capacity and terrain. And sometimes, acccording to the load, it is better not to fill the tanks and it's always best not to get too close to empty. So 1,000 miles, maybe but often, not.

As to classic cars l suspect the authorities will always want petrol easily dispensed straight into the tank, if storing petrol in the shed at home becomes an 'easier' option and a couple of accidents occur then government policy will be blamed for encouraging bad practice.
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RickH
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Re: Hydrogen Vehicles

Post by RickH »

Ben@Forest wrote:As to classic cars l suspect the authorities will always want petrol easily dispensed straight into the tank, if storing petrol in the shed at home becomes an 'easier' option and a couple of accidents occur then government policy will be blamed for encouraging bad practice.

The other solution, at least for some, is an electric conversion. Jaguar &, more recently, Aston Martin have done official conversions, both fully reversible. I've seen examples of an eclectic mix of other older cars (some classics, some maybe a bit less so) done by 3rd parties - VW Beetle , Morris Minors , Porsche 911, Mk1 Range Rover, Volvo 240 Estate are ones I can remember.
Former member of the Cult of the Polystyrene Head Carbuncle.
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