It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
He opens his mouth and makes promises he can't keep and now our major car companies will need factories overseas. Jaguar were already looking at a factory in Poland.
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
Or all cars will be fitted with a GPS location box and we'll get a distance bill in the post.
Maybe we should get rid of personal transport all together and just call up a self driving electric pod that returns to a charging station and/or out of town park and ride where we then pick up a long distance pod (Which could run on existing rail network or overhead electrified motorway). The only time you'd pick up a car is for rural transport
There is also 5% VAT on electricity, so if we do use more electricity to charge battery powered cars they will get a little bit of it back there.
@Fretwired raised a good point about the effect on manufacturing. The blanket ban is not a good idea. They should probably go back to the increasing duty idea that Labour had while they were in power. At the time, it wasn't a good idea because there weren't viable alternatives, but now the alternative technology is maturing then that would be a better approach.
Announce that there will be a 1p a litre rise in diesel duty every year for the next 23 years until 2040, and a 1p rise in petrol duty every other year, and you achieve the emissions reductions without needing the blanket bans, and all the idiot regulation. Apart from those who need them for towing, sales of new diesel cars would basically stop which would start to make air in cities slightly less bad within months, and it the effect would get better over time. Jaguar, or any other manufacturer, could still test new cars after 2040 and enthusiasts could still build kit cars in their garages but all the normal traffic on the roads would be clean in terms of tail pipe emissions.
While petrol is less bad than diesel it's still not good. In the short term, petrol hybrids are probably the way forwards for people who do a lot of city driving. The engine cuts out when stationary, and they will run on electric in slow speed traffic jams.
Fear not - they've got a cunning plan!
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jul/24/household-batteries-will-be-key-to-uks-new-energy-strategy
America has the capability to produce massive amounts of electricity via solar, a State like Texas will be as solar rich as it is oil rich. Once electric cars have well and truly took off with a population of 370 million I would expect the same to happen over here but we might well have to buy our electric from solar rich continents like South America.
The implications are enormous as although we still need oil for other things the new currency will be solar \ electricity production. Exciting times ahead with cleaner cities, better quality air to breath. Not getting covered in oil when fixing the car
Simple explanation here https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/06/03/worstall_on_wednesday_elon_musk_spacex/
So remember, he's not the Messiah.
....he's a naughty boy?
He's sitting on 375,000 x $1000 deposits for the Model 3 Tesla at the moment
With the current state of the technology an electric car is very much a second car for local(ish) journeys.
https://www.ft.com/content/db4f4c4e-fd9b-11e5-b3f6-11d5706b613b
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
Good sunlight is about 1000W (1kW) per square meter. Let's say you have 2m x 2m on top of the car where you can mount panels that's 4m2 so 4kW of sunlight. Even if we allow for really good solar panels with an efficiency of 25% (better than anything on the market now) you would only generate 1kW of electricity. I think the current Tesla has a battery of 60kWh. At one kW you would need 60 hours to recharge. Allowing 12 hours of decent sunlight per day, that would be 5 days. Doesn't work when you can discharge it in 3 hours.
The solar manufacturer Hanergy recently revealed four models of electric cars that incorporate the company's thin-film solar modules into the bodies of the vehicles, allowing them to be "zero charge" cars, at least for short and medium length journeys. Hanergy Holding Group, which is a leading thin-film solar company, unveiled its solar-powered concept cars in Beijing on July 2nd, and said that these vehicles could be commercialized as soon as three years from now.
Hanergy's thin-film solar achievements are already at the bleeding edge of solar efficiency, with the company's gallium arsenide (GaAs) dual-junction solar cells recently hitting a record conversion rate of 31.6%, and by covering the bodies of these concept electric cars with its thin-film solar modules, the company hopes to bypass "the bottleneck of poor practicality of previous solar-powered vehicles."
According to Hanergy, the thin-film solar cells on the electric cars are able to generate 8 to 10 kWh of electricity daily from exposure to "five to six hours of sunlight," which can power the vehicles about 80 kilometers (~50 miles) per day, without needing to plug in to a charger at all. The solar cells cover between 3.5 and 7.5 square meters of the vehicles, depending on the model, and the vehicles incorporate "ultrasonic cleaning technology for maintenance of the solar cells."
https://www.treehugger.com/cars/hanergys-solar-powered-electric-cars-can-charge-themselves.html
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
I thought that it was in the region of 200 watts and that with current efficiency we get 120 - 150 watts max?