Hydrogen Vehicles

[francovendee]

When I worked for a living our MD would take all us managers off site for what he called a 'Blue Sky meeting' where new ideas for the business was encouraged from the attendees . What came from this was in fact very little in benefit to the company. Sometimes (read often) ideas weren't properly costed and got abandoned, sometimes after incurring some costs.
I guess I suffer from a lack of vision, but I am a realist and not a dreamer who doesn't question the difficult details and I like answers before supporting a change.
Electric cars will be the only ones on the road eventually, but there's a lot of things to put in place before they are.

[kwackers]

Coming back to this thread the only thing that's clear is some folk are so entrenched in later life and blinkered views that it makes me realise why evolution never saw fit to prolong our life beyond what it is.
There's a sweet point for experience vs stagnation and I reckon the current average life span is possibly about right (or perhaps a bit too long...)

It does make me think the reason there are no aliens around is that they "solved" death and then their societies stagnated and died.

As for someone in their 40's never owning an EV - seriously I've never heard something so daft.
Most EV's at the moment have a 12 month plus waiting list and some you can't even put your name down because they've closed the order books.
In the meantime they're struggling to give IC cars away.
BMW have just announced they're bringing forward their electric car plans by two years, IC engine plants are shutting down, battery production is ramping up.

The worlds changing, get onboard or watch it go past. The choice is yours.

[kwackers]

Electric cars will be the only ones on the road eventually, but there's a lot of things to put in place before they are.

Not as much as you think.
Chargers are trivial bits of tech, cables are everywhere. As I worked out earlier the average pull for a 10,000 mile a year EV is just 200 watt hours.
Once you factor in the churn in cars (most new cars are bought on 3-4 year rentals) it doesn't take a genius to realise just how quickly the current car fleet can change from IC to EV and the only thing holding it back at the moment is they can't make enough.

I honestly think people don't realise just how much is happening out there with regards EV's.

[squeaker]

I can't do the maths but I imagine those fag packet figures are for midday in full (summer) sun?
I would suggest that it could be a help but nothing more.
It has to be worth the faff of plugging the thing in etc, for what you suggest is but a fraction of it's requirement.

Just for fun I've done a rough calc for MickF's Plymouth ToysRUs roof (based on a couple of small PV installations I monitor). Roughly 0.7MWh generated per day, averaged over a year. So in March/April (or Sept/Oct) you could half-charge maybe 25 'typical' EVs (say 30kWh batteries, and allowing a bit for charging efficiency) - could top up a hell of a lot more e-bikes though

[francovendee]

Cables everywhere? By this I'm assuming power cables to properties?
Nobody yet has answered how everyone gets to plug a car in where and when they need to. Is this coming? If so when? Are we to have festoons of charging points along every street?
We still have many water leaks that the water companies promised to fix decades ago and haven't. Unless government decide to invest in street charging it'll be over to private enterprise and they'll pick off the easy ones first, the rest will take years.
I'm quite happy to watch the world go by until the infrastructure is in place and running an electric car is at least, if not more trouble free than an i.c. car. Only then would I part with my cash.

[reohn2]

......Electric cars will be the only ones on the road eventually, but there's a lot of things to put in place before they are.

Imagine the step change from horse and cart to the horseless carriage
The change from IC powered vehicles to EV needn't be anywhere near as radical that,but ifwe don't make a serious move in that direction,especially in cities,we choke.
People on here keep mentioning it needing to be economically viable,but take into account of the total cost of society continuing as it is.
Health issues alone as a result of air pollution are costing the NHS a fortune.
That said EV use won't ever be total in the medium term IMO there'll still be a minority of IC vehicles about but they'll be exiled from towns and cities.
That's if as a society we've any sense,as it is we're driving down a dead end street at an ever increasing pace.

[merseymouth]

Hi Reohn2, The "Step Change" that I can envisage for our cities is for people to do just that - WALK! The marrow bone coach is certainly appropriate in most places such as London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds et al.
Of course rural areas will still need individual transport modules, no question. But investment in more, better public transport will not only help locals but give a fillip to tourism.
But the folk in charge will have to have better joined up thinking than that shown in recent times? HS2 should get the chop pronto, such a short distance High Speed Service is a very expensive joke, a vanity project.
The electrification of the service would certainly pay, chiefly with catary, but also duel mode.
But additional thought would have to be applied to the rapid removal of stricken rolling stock, as a single axle failure shut down a major part of Merseyrail last Thursday!
The genius who came up with "Smart Motorways" as a way to increase capacity should be made to sit in a Lada on a converted hard shoulder in a fog . Well, I won't be here to suffer the idiots much longer. Carpe Diem. MM

[reohn2]

MM
Quality,reliable,frequent,affordable,clean,green public transport is an absolute must for modern towns and cities.
And also should be run as a service,not as a business,but as long as the rightwing mess of the past decade of the worst government in living memory is allowed to continue,there'll only ever be slooowwww progress toward that end.
And I agree HS2 is a white elphant vanity job to line the pockets of Tory supporters.

[merseymouth]

Hi Reohn2, Reading you post makes me wonder if I'm a Closet Marxist? But many of us former SDP members have no truck with the mess that we find ourselves in, not of our making!
The inappropriate use of tools ruins any job and transportation should be viewed in the same light? "Lifestyle" marketing of lardy motors ill suited for the task in hand is pathetic, envy fueled purchases. Austerity hasn't hit that group hard enough. IGICB MM

[francovendee]

......Electric cars will be the only ones on the road eventually, but there's a lot of things to put in place before they are.

Imagine the step change from horse and cart to the horseless carriage
The change from IC powered vehicles to EV needn't be anywhere near as radical that,but ifwe don't make a serious move in that direction,especially in cities,we choke.
People on here keep mentioning it needing to be economically viable,but take into account of the total cost of society continuing as it is.
Health issues alone as a result of air pollution are costing the NHS a fortune.
That said EV use won't ever be total in the medium term IMO there'll still be a minority of IC vehicles about but they'll be exiled from towns and cities.
That's if as a society we've any sense,as it is we're driving down a dead end street at an ever increasing pace.

I can't fault anything in your post. Doing nothing isn't an option. I wish governments would really get behind the technology, not just words and raising taxes on cars but real investment, something we'd all benefit from, unlike HS2.
In the end it will be driven by the profitability of private enterprise and they'll pick and choose where the infrastructure is likely to turn a profit.
We could be seeing the beginning of the end for private car ownership for city dwellers but out in the country cars of some kind will continue to be needed.
Strangely enough to ban IC vehicles would have been fairly easy when I was a boy. You lived, worked, went to school and did your shopping locally. Not having a car was the norm. Unfortunately the technology wasn't around then.

[kwackers]

Nobody yet has answered how everyone gets to plug a car in where and when they need to. Is this coming? If so when? Are we to have festoons of charging points along every street?

I've already answered it - several times.
There aren't any petrol stations on every street so why do we need charging stations?

Simply making sure you can plug them in at your destination is more than enough. Folk already drive out of their way to fill up why is that easier than plugging in at your local supermarket / town centre or shopping centre car park?
As EV use increases so there's a corresponding increase in the number of charging points available. Currently their growth is exponential.

That of course doesn't preclude charging points stuck on lamposts or kerbs and if people start trailing cables (and obviously some will) then that's up to the local council to make alternative arrangements and stop them.

As I said it just requires a simple mental adjustment to how one uses one's car, if in the worse case you have to drive to an "Electricity Station" and have a coffee whilst it fills then life really hasn't changed that much.

[roubaixtuesday]

Currently available charging technology allows a 300 mile range charge in 20 minutes.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/10/to ... the-world/

That's for an expensive car, and not as fast as petrol, but surely fast enough that it portends removal of charging as a major issue.

I was recently in a Tesla (a taxi). They are bloody quick.

[PDQ Mobile]

Its not lack of vision, its realism developed over 40 years designing making and delivering machines and equipment that works and keeps on working reliably all over the world in mines, quarries, power stations, chemical plants, loading terminals, supermarkets, ships, aircraft, shopping centres, printing works etc etc. Its all very well to be an armchair or keyboard dreamer but actually delivering practical solutions successfully is somewhat harder and not to be underestimated. All this and the political will and the money are additional hurdles too. Are we there yet? No....

Al

Some of it is lack of vision though.
And some of it is vested and shareholder interest.
Notable being the lack of electrification and investment in our railways.
It could have all been so different.
When copper was still cheap for example.

Electrifying the Great Western was for a long time calculated to be totally uneconomical. But, when they recently started they realised too late that it was still extremely difficult and totally uneconomic. Someone underestimated the task and got the sums wrong. Vested interests are always a barrier but now its publicly funded raitrack fouling up and we are all paying. Our society is driven by economics not by the spirit that dug the channel tunnel, produced Concorde, sequenced the genome and made it universally available foc, or put men on the moon. The Lunatic Express is an early example...but thats still a basket case. In our tiny island electric vehicles will have a role but when one thinks of crossing the Mojave Desert or the Steppes in a vehicle, or even driving down to the Med what, with human needs and nature in mind, will still be capable of doing that? Steak and Kidney flying high.

Al

The lack of vision was long ago.
That is the nature of visions, looking forward and making assessments.
And not being swayed by sort term profiteering.

The present plight can be arguably traced back to Beeching and Marples and earlier.

Beeching lacked the vision and Marples fled the country accused of fraud.
Plus ça change.
....
The Change from Steam to Diesel.
https://h2g2.com/entry/A87761910

[al_yrpal]

So hard to have vision, especially when a game changer comes along. PTFE was going to revolutionise the world...it didnt. Easy to be mislead on our tiny little scrap of the earths surface.

Al

[PDQ Mobile]

So hard to have vision, especially when a game changer comes along. PTFE was going to revolutionise the world...it didnt. Easy to be mislead on our tiny little scrap of the earths surface.

Al

Of course it's hard to see into the future, but we do pay clever and knowledgable people good money to have a go.

In the case of Beeching and Marples vested interests conflicted with any vision and the national interest in a way that was negligent and probably corrupt.
And that was my original point.

Other European nations managed to do a bit better.

If we had electrified the whole rail network 40 or 50 years ago the savings would now be enormous.
It is after all broadly only installing pylons and wires and there are always savings of scale.

Now our cities would be less polluted and more freight would be on the rails and off the roads.

Indeed the decision to go with diesel for railways and nuclear for leccy generation practically coincided, so the decision to go to diesel for rail looks even more suspect in that context.