Air Pollution - Will They Act Now?

[francovendee]

An EV would suit me fine, even better solar power as well. Just put off by the cost. I know you can get a Nissan Leaf second hand reasonably cheap, but that would mean taking a bit of a hit on the money I spent on my present car. Plus I want to put a 16ft canoe on the roof.
I've wondered about solar panels a lot, but my roofs face east and west (there is a house on a new estate nearby with panels facing west, those were installed at the time of the build, I wonder how good they are).

Certainly not sure about used EV's. I have a friend who bought a new Nissan Leaf and was delighted with it when he first got it. After 2 years he noticed the usable range had really dropped so he sold it. Someone buying it would already have a car that is losing range and I'd guess it would continue to worsen.
He told me he'll buy another, not just yet. I feel the same way, I like the idea of EV's but it's too soon to put my money into one.
I wonder if EV's where you rent the battery (Renault?) may be the way to go.
I'm glad some people are pleased to be guinea pigs while the network and cars are improved.

[francovendee]

It would be nice to think that the need for the private car will be reduced (autonomous vehicles, car clubs, active travel). However these EVs will surely still be the cause of toxic particles from brakes and tyres?

Tyres yes but those are not quite as bad as brakes. Brake particles are reduced on cars with regenerative braking, basically using motors as a dynamo to put some energy back into the batteries.

For those on terraced streets who must have a car perhaps the installation of sunken channels is an option, in a similar way to the possibility of installing dropped kerbs, at a cost.

Many older terraced streets still have their sunken channels to take drainpipe water to the street gutter. Some even have metal covers with slots in, making it easy to thread a mains wire through. I suspect most anti electric arguers haven't lived in one much.

Some down our street have those drains, long since covered over in our street though. You would struggle to get a cable into them. TBH you could easily charge with an overhead arrangement from a window in our street. The issue then is an open window and no guarantee you've got a parking space anywhere near your house.

If anyone thinks it's practical they obviously haven't lived in a terraced street recently. It's a car based warzone at times. Although at our end of the street we've got the parking version of nuclear deterrent, our neighbour. He's had a few arguments and made a few points so interlopers from other streets no longer do that at our end. It means we usually get near to our house if on the other side or round the bend a little.

I remember the downsides of living in a terraced house. We loved the house but parking was a nightmare. We had to pay for a residents parking permit which didn't ensure a place to park, merely to stay more then 2 hours.
On Saturday, which was market day, if you moved your car you'd have to park streets away until the evening to find a space, if you were lucky!
I've seen a heated argument between neighbours over parking spaces.
In spite of this drawback I liked where living there, just not with a car.

[paddler]

My son has just moved from a flat with permit parking. It just made it difficult to visit. His car got scratched and a snotty note left just because someone wanted the spot he parked in.
Now he's in a house with two parking spaces behind on a new estate, but even that isn't ideal although far better. His parking spaces don't abut his property so he couldn't run a power lead to his car, if he ever wanted to and the builders (Taylor Whimpey in his case) haven't provided power or even duct for the future as far as I can see. So short sighted, you'd have thought the government would have at least made them do that.

[kwackers]

Certainly not sure about used EV's. I have a friend who bought a new Nissan Leaf and was delighted with it when he first got it. After 2 years he noticed the usable range had really dropped so he sold it. Someone buying it would already have a car that is losing range and I'd guess it would continue to worsen.
He told me he'll buy another, not just yet. I feel the same way, I like the idea of EV's but it's too soon to put my money into one.
I wonder if EV's where you rent the battery (Renault?) may be the way to go.
I'm glad some people are pleased to be guinea pigs while the network and cars are improved.

If the range really had dropped so much why did he not just go back to the dealer and get it fixed?
A single duff cell can take out a whole module resulting in a fairly large drop, but even out of warranty there are a growing number of places that can find and fix such a module in a few hours for not much more than the cost of a cam-belt on an IC engine.

I was looking at an 8 year old Leaf for someone the other day, 75k on the clock and 11 bars on the battery. Leaf-spy showed the battery to be 84% which seems fairly typical for a Leaf of that age and mileage.
The early Leaf had small batteries (24KWh) so they do get hammered, charged almost daily and worse they're not liquid cooled.

Cars now come with minimum guarantee's on the battery. 7-8 years 80-100k miles is fairly typical for a guaranteed minimum state of 75%+
Depending on how long you think you'd keep it then it's worth making sure the range minus the stated minimum is still within your needs.

The good news is modern EV's have even better battery technology, the batteries are also bigger which means they get less hammering, the BMS are better and they're nearly all liquid cooled now too which helps longevity. Pretty much the reason the manufacturers are happy to hand out long warranties on them.
Tesla's show the way forward here, their cars report the health back and it's looking like even with mileages approaching 200k and nearly 10 years old lots of them are still in the mid 90%'s.

Battery rental has died a death.
Renault was one of the last but I think it's pretty much stopped now. I don't think they'll swap the battery until it's dropped below 75% so it's a fairly rare event, in the meantime you're paying £60+ a month to rent it.
On top of that they're not that easy to shift second hand. Who wants a 'cheap' car that means they have to find £60 a month for the rest of its life?
Even if the battery dropped under 75% as long as it still had the range you needed then you may as well continue using it, worst case part swap the battery for a newer one.
IMO you'd be better sticking £60 a month into a savings account.

[francovendee]

He took the Leaf back a number of times and had the car checked. Each time he was told the battery was within spec.
He's an engineer so I'm sure he could argue his case. Maybe the 75% just wasn't acceptable after only 2 years?
If they'd offered him a replacement battery he said he might have kept the car.
It may have been an earlier leaf with a smaller battery as you mentioned, I don't know.
He sold it while he could get a good price for it. Sold privately and within hours of placing the ad.
I wasn't aware of the downside to battery rental, on paper it seemed to make sense but £60 a month for an old car does seem steep.

I listen to what EV owners think of their cars and so far I only know 2. Neither felt the battery offered what they'd been told and hoped for.
I ignore any form of on-line review as I find they are biased one way or another.
As more people I know buy them I'll get a better idea of how good/bad owners think they are.

EV's are coming but it's too early for me and many others yet. I'll wait until the expected improved batteries materialise.
Let the trailblazers risk their money and we can learn from their experiences.
The only downside is I never buy new so what I can afford won't be as good as the current cars on the market. This isn't about EV's and the same when ever I've bought a car.

The recent case of a coroner citing one cause of a child's death as traffic pollution where she lived it should spur a ban of all ic engine vehicles in large cities.

Nothing to do with the above but I'm trying to find an article by a senior Honda executive where he questions how 'green' EV's are.
If I find it again I'll post the link. Maybe Honda aren't leaders of the pack for EV manufacture?

[Psamathe]

......
Nothing to do with the above but I'm trying to find an article by a senior Honda executive where he questions how 'green' EV's are.
If I find it again I'll post the link. Maybe Honda aren't leaders of the pack for EV manufacture?

Not from Honda, but other research

... In addition, electric vehicles (EVs) were found to be 24% heavier than equivalent internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). As a result, total PM10 emissions from EVs were found to be equal to those of modern ICEVs. PM2.5 emissions were only 1–3% lower for EVs compared to modern ICEVs. Therefore, it could be concluded that the increased popularity of electric vehicles will likely not have a great effect on PM levels. Non-exhaust emissions already account for over 90% of PM10 and 85% of PM2.5 emissions from traffic. These proportions will continue to increase as exhaust standards improve and average vehicle weight increases.

Ian

[kwackers]

I listen to what EV owners think of their cars and so far I only know 2. Neither felt the battery offered what they'd been told and hoped for.

IMO people don't do enough research (or drive properly).

My IC car was on it's last legs (from my POV at least), my missus "was" doing a moderately large number of miles shifting her goods around and a 15 year old car whose MOT has been recommending some structural work did IMO need replacing. I'd have preferred it to have waited another 3 or 4 years but...

So a realistic view for me was I needed a car that could manage 120 miles - that would cover my missus on the longest of the trips she ever does with some error margin.
Ideally I'd have liked an EV with a WLTP of 200 miles, that would guarantee 140 miles in the winter and 160 in the summer.
In the end I opted for the vastly cheaper option of 163 WLTP miles which means it'll currently do what I need but there's not much scope for any battery degradation so I may need to reconsider in a few years.


From my personal experience what I've found is during the summer I was averaging 180 miles, mainly by keeping my motorway speeds to between 60-65 and actually looking ahead and avoiding unnecessary braking/accelerating (but then I've always been good at stretching the miles in my cars).
When the temp has been zero or below I've averaged 130 miles.
So all in all it's been a pretty good experience for me and actually surpassed what I'd hoped.

However.
I know people with the same car who get somewhat lower figures than that.
Now obviously I've no idea how they drive but I'm willing to bet they're banging along at 70-80 on the motorways and doing the usual braking/accelerating that goes along with that plus leaving their braking on normal roads to the last minute.
Some folk think that regen is the be all and end all in efficiency, they don't seem to realise that it's better than mechanical brakes but it's nowhere near as good as not braking or easing off the accelerator much further back.

The upshot of all that is if you buy the car blind expecting 163 miles range whilst hammering around the streets in the depths of winter than yes, you'll be disappointed.
But go into it with your eyes open, drive sensibly and you should be fairly happy.

[kwackers]

Not from Honda, but other research

... In addition, electric vehicles (EVs) were found to be 24% heavier than equivalent internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). As a result, total PM10 emissions from EVs were found to be equal to those of modern ICEVs. PM2.5 emissions were only 1–3% lower for EVs compared to modern ICEVs. Therefore, it could be concluded that the increased popularity of electric vehicles will likely not have a great effect on PM levels. Non-exhaust emissions already account for over 90% of PM10 and 85% of PM2.5 emissions from traffic. These proportions will continue to increase as exhaust standards improve and average vehicle weight increases.

Ian

I'm pretty sure that research has been roundly discredited

From what I remember the way the weight calculations were done didn't compare like with like, they were skewed because most EV's at the time tended to be larger vehicles and they were being compared to "average" cars.
For example my car is 60Kg heavier than the IC version so unless the IC version only weighed 240Kg...

I also seem to remember the particulate calculations where laughable.
If you did the maths you'd find that an EV would need to lose over 200Kg of rubber from its tyres every 20,000 miles and given the average tyre lifetime is 20,000 miles and the all in weight of the tyres is around 32kg that's pretty impressive. In practice a tyre only looses a hundred grams or so over it's lifetime.
In comparison diesels emit vastly more particulate something that was even more true back in 2016 when that paper was written.
(I even think the numbers it used predate diesel-gate in which case they're an order of magnitude or more out in the real world).

There's nothing new in studies like these, the latest attempt by the fossil fuel industry to discredit EV's is "Astongate".
Figures fondled, best case on one vehicle vs worst case on the other, often ignoring things like shipping oil around the world, oil spills or the energy cost of extraction or refining.
(Amazing how many people throw "cobalt" into the mix without realising the biggest market for cobalt is refining fossil fuels).

[Tangled Metal]

We've got a very reliable seat in terms of performance but the heater and blower keeps failing. It's supposedly a £8 switch causing the issues but it's a day plus to take the dashboard etc out to access. More than car is worth. You try driving around in winter without the means to demist without windows open!!

We have a converted panel van as a camper/dayvan. Only used for longer runsb or where shopping runs tie in with days out.

The seat needs replacing because of seat designer idiocy over the heater n switch. That needs a car capable of doing a 3 days commuting of 36 miles round trip? Mostly at up to 40mph due to blind bends and later on speed limit. I'd mostly do cycle/train commuting mostly but car b would get used too. Shopping runs at 16 or 25 mile return trips mostly at up to 40mph or 65mph on the longer run. My aim would be to charge from solar during the day which means a day or so n not getting used. No idea how quickly it charges from domestic use, would a day be enough during daylight? What about winter?

My issue is cost to buy. We have a £5k car budget and rarely like to go on above it. For that we'll get a very small ev which probably needs new batteries. So I think I'll be out until the used ev sector becomes bigger and they're comparable in performance to ice cars at that price bracket. By that I mean you get a very useable, medium sized family car without a big expense looming.

[Stevek76]

(or drive properly).

A reason particulate reductions from regen braking is probably overselling things. That would require people to actually drive sensibly. Most would rather keep accelerating at 30mph right up to the lights and then slam the anchors on, probably just having pulled a MGIF.

And yes, the tyre study was wrong, but they're not miracle workers with particulates either, defra projections from 2016 were that we're now already at the point where only 10-20% of particulate emissions are from an exhaust, the rest is tyre/brakes and road abrasion or re-suspension of those.

People get prickly about EVs as they're (or for added hype CAVs) far too easily seized upon by politicians as some sort of silver bullet for urban transport problems where they get to the avoid the awkward part of actually just reducing the number of trips where people unnecessarily bring along a big metal box with a three piece suite in it.

EVs will get rid of NOx and reduce PMs a bit but they will still externalise large costs on society in the form of congestion, collision casualties, noise pollution, severance and car dependency.

[kwackers]

People get prickly about EVs as they're (or for added hype CAVs) far too easily seized upon by politicians as some sort of silver bullet for urban transport problems where they get to the avoid the awkward part of actually just reducing the number of trips where people unnecessarily bring along a big metal box with a three piece suite in it.

EVs will get rid of NOx and reduce PMs a bit but they will still externalise large costs on society in the form of congestion, collision casualties, noise pollution, severance and car dependency.

I'd ban all cars tomorrow if it were possible, I'm certainly not prickly about EV's but I will defend them against misinformation (and there's a *lot* of that around right now).

The basic problem is we've built a society based on personal transport and regardless of what idealistic views we have it isn't going to go away anytime soon.
Once you accept that's the realistic position then EV's are at the very least a sticking plaster until someone actually comes up with a plan.

[Tangled Metal]

We've also built a society based on not working local too. If people lived and worked locally you've just taken away a lot of journeys I reckon.

We're moving even further from work. My partner's new normal is home working all week instead of 3 days with 2 at work site. I'm working different times which avoids peak travel time so this move means taking train and bike leaving car behind as much as possible. We're moving two stops down the train line from where we live now. We'd not have moved there without the train line being there. It means we're dropping down a car to just have our campervan and use that as little as possible.

I think it's not about changing car types but more about using them less where real impact is possible. That's not against EVs just against personal vehicular journeys. I'd rather not use a car full stop.

[Stevek76]

The basic problem is we've built a society based on personal transport and regardless of what idealistic views we have it isn't going to go away anytime soon.
Once you accept that's the realistic position then EV's are at the very least a sticking plaster until someone actually comes up with a plan.

I meant people like me get prickly.

Also I'd suggest reasonably radical measures on active travel aren't idealistic, look at oslo or paris. A perfectly feasible plan for urban areas already exists. Even here some of the summer's schemes, particularly some london boroughs, have shown how rapidly space can be reclaimed. Filtering streets is cheap and fast, light protection for cycle lanes that can be subsequently upgraded is also fast and effective. The main problem is not getting cold feet and pulling them out after a few weeks because of a noisy minority (looking at RBKC/wandsworth here). Once those are in parking controls are a very easy and effective lever. Roll out resident parking if it isn't already and start cranking up prices and limiting availability, 2nd and particularly 3rd permits should be ££££s or not available. Workplace parking zones are another easy option, english councils have had this power, along with congestion charges, since 2000, only nottingham has ever used it (and did fairly well from it). There's plenty of plan about, what's lacking is funding from the top & political will at all levels. You could revolutionise urban transport in a term or two with the right resources and drive.

Car dependency in small towns and suburbia is a trickier nut to crack, probably will need to CPO the odd bit of garden to fix the worst housing estates.

Also sacking most of the NIC and much of the treasury is probably a good start given the latest mostly treasury written abomination on rail that the NIC stuck their names to the other day. Oh, and not building £27bn of trunk road schemes would probably help.

[kwackers]

Also I'd suggest reasonably radical measures on active travel aren't idealistic, look at oslo or paris. A perfectly feasible plan for urban areas already exists. Even here some of the summer's schemes, particularly some london boroughs, have shown how rapidly space can be reclaimed. Filtering streets is cheap and fast, light protection for cycle lanes that can be subsequently upgraded is also fast and effective. The main problem is not getting cold feet and pulling them out after a few weeks because of a noisy minority (looking at RBKC/wandsworth here). Once those are in parking controls are a very easy and effective lever. Roll out resident parking if it isn't already and start cranking up prices and limiting availability, 2nd and particularly 3rd permits should be ££££s or not available. Workplace parking zones are another easy option, english councils have had this power, along with congestion charges, since 2000, only nottingham has ever used it (and did fairly well from it). There's plenty of plan about, what's lacking is funding from the top & political will at all levels. You could revolutionise urban transport in a term or two with the right resources and drive.

Car dependency in small towns and suburbia is a trickier nut to crack, probably will need to CPO the odd bit of garden to fix the worst housing estates.

Also sacking most of the NIC and much of the treasury is probably a good start given the latest mostly treasury written abomination on rail that the NIC stuck their names to the other day. Oh, and not building £27bn of trunk road schemes would probably help.

Banning cars from city centres would be a start.
But I look at Manchester where they're trying to introduce a clean air zone and you'll struggle to find anyone that supports it.
Again misinformation abounds, people make up statistics and downright untruths to push their personal pro-car agenda and then stick them into memes that any f'wit can share and the damage is deep and long lasting.

With regards to bicycle adoption the biggest part of the problem IMO is the attitude of motorists, you don't have to cycle for long on the roads before someone will risk your life to save a few seconds.
To some extent I could actually live with that because I believed that PC Plod would at least have my back but when some woman took me out on my morning commute at a set of lights by attempting to drive 'through' me the police weren't only a waste of space they were IMO criminally negligent.

Not only did they dismiss any possibility of charges whilst I was lying in an ambulance and had only spoken to the driver but they refused to look at my camera footage until I made an official complaint and after reviewing it they decided that I'd ridden into her blindspot! A car that was behind me (and had always been so) that knocked me off trying to get past!

When I tried to up the complaint by pointing out I was complaining about the police and not their decision the superintendent simply stopped responding to my emails.
(All of this makes sense when you learn that the woman was 'ex-police'. But it leaves a really sour taste and tbh if I saw a Cheshire copper being given a kicking I'd walk right past and see nothing).

[atoz]

Don't hold your breath with politicians waiting for them to do something on this issue. Boris has only now noticed the environment when it's become apparent Labour are losing interest in it. As for the much trumpeted cycling policies, I suspect the reason they are being pushed is that they are cheap i.e very little new investment required. Sorting out the disaster which is our public transport is ideologically unacceptable to a true blue Tory. I mean, that might involve public ownership- oh wait a minute, that's already happened to our ahem world class rail network. Maybe it may all happen by accident then..

As for politicians leading by example:

Corbyn: bike
Starmer: Chelsea tractor

Sorry to take the role of Christmas Grinch, but a few cycle routes do not a summer make. I realise many CUK members won't want to hear that though..