Exit Polls

Sorry folks, but I'm not convinced that leccy cars are saviour of the planet, in fact I'd rate them as more damaging than diesel or petrol. Firstly the batteries have to be produced from raw products that are gathered from around the world.

Then there is their limited range in comparison with a diesel/petrol so they need to be "tanked" more often & where does this electric come from, not wind power as it's inefficient & unreliable, so you're back to coal/gas fired power stations or as most of UK's leccy comes from German & French sources you're looking at nuclear powered stations.

The electric motor is nowhere near as powerful as a diesel/petrol so the vehicle construction needs to be lightweight & strong so again you're looking at raised production costs for alloys & special materials whose production draws heavily on standard sources.

Nah, I'm one of your diesel gorillas me, so I'll be keeping my nasty, smelly, atmosphere polluting truck for the foreseeable future thank you very much!
 
DaveinGermany said:
Sorry folks, but I'm not convinced that leccy cars are saviour of the planet, in fact I'd rate them as more damaging than diesel or petrol. Firstly the batteries have to be produced from raw products that are gathered from around the world.

Then there is their limited range in comparison with a diesel/petrol so they need to be "tanked" more often & where does this electric come from, not wind power as it's inefficient & unreliable, so you're back to coal/gas fired power stations or as most of UK's leccy comes from German & French sources you're looking at nuclear powered stations.

The electric motor is nowhere near as powerful as a diesel/petrol so the vehicle construction needs to be lightweight & strong so again you're looking at raised production costs for alloys & special materials whose production draws heavily on standard sources.

Nah, I'm one of your diesel gorillas me, so I'll be keeping my nasty, smelly, atmosphere polluting truck for the foreseeable future thank you very much!
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i once saw an old person stranded when their electric scooter ran out of juice..

i knew there and then an electric car is not ever going to be an option
 
When folk buy electric cars they do so because they have been bamboozled by the 'green' agenda.

They are salving their own consciences, deferring the consequences(if you believe the green agenda stuff)...and perhaps there is just a bit of 'humble bragging ' going on there too.
When will we see electric lorries delivering our bread and groceries...the answer to that is not while I am alive and breathing on this planet.
The green agenda is something dreamed up to make people pay more for resources.
There are some who would like to see the likes of you and me back in donkey carts...and then they would be quick to tell us that Donkey farts pollute the atmosphere, cause a hole in the ozone layer and the donkey muck clogs the drains and causes flooding in winter.
 
accyman said:
if government and environmentalists really did care about the planet they would be pushing hydrogen cars forward and investing in technology for them not electric cars
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In all honesty I can't see that being the answer either.

Hill Walker said:
Where do you plan to get the hydrogen from?
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That would be my main question too.

I'm aware of grumblings here in Krautieland that they want to make the Country electric dominated by 2030. More pie in the sky to my mind as these guys quite succinctly explain.

Germany's plan for 100% electric cars may actually increase carbon emissions

That said though, I did notice while trundling round Bayern happily belching out clouds of diesel fumes from my owd jallopy a marked increase of "Tesla" elecy cars out & about (smug virtue signalling B'stards that they are).

Starting in at around £62,000 upto £130,000 (I could buy our thing three times over just at the starting price! :eek:) then only being able to travel for 250-300 miles (400-480 kms) before the thing is dead & in need of recharging & however long that takes.

No, neither use nor ornament in a Land the size of Germany, mind you travelling from here in Osnabruck down to the M.i.L's in Munich, about 680 kms would be spread over 2 days travelling ...... like they say, every cloud & all that! :s_aim1:
 
st06nc2 said:
Down here in Sheffield there is quiete a few petrol stations with hydrogen fuel pumps
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To clarify, there are no natural sources of Hydrogen on the planet so you have to extract it from something that contains it.

1) You could do on an industrial scale what you may have done at school, namely pass electricity through water. From one electrode you get Oxygen from the other you get Hydrogen but there are a couple of snags. Firstly its inefficient most of what you get is hot water so I suppose you could try to offset the cost by running a district heating business but to be non-seasonal it will have to be pretty far north. Secondly you have to use nearly clean water, completely clean is no good, its not conductive, cannot use sea water because the salt will break down into sulphuric acid and Chlorine, so another expense.

2) You could do what the only big Hydrogen plant in Europe does. First get a source of natural gas, either Methane and/or Ethane, use some of the gas to heat steam to 900 centigrade and mix it with some more of the natural gas in a retort at 900 C with some catalysts and pipe the output into a separation plant. In the separation plant you use more energy to seperate the hydrogen from the carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, water and a few other things that the process produced. Naturally you then have to find a use for the carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide you were trying to avoid in the first place.

So I ask again where are you going to get the Hydrogen? The engine is great but the fuel (production of) is about as bad as you can get, not really a surprise the original suggestion came from the Texas oil industry as a way of staying in business with petrol and diesel becoming ‘un-friendly’.
 
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Hydrogen is in the air, all we need to do is to find a way of harnessing it, would lead to cleaner air and a new source of fuel
 
st06nc2 said:
Hydrogen is in the air, all we need to do is to find a way of harnessing it, would lead to cleaner air and a new source of fuel
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Sorry but that is not the case. Air from sea level up to 10km is Nitrogen (78%), Oxygen (20%), Argon (1%), Carbon dioxide (0.04%), water (0.001% - 5%), Neon, Helium and Methane (all less than 0.002%). To find any Hydrogen at all you have to get up to 700km above sea level where small quantities are exchanged with the solar wind (and you have to keep ducking to avoid passing satellites). Hydrogen is far to reactive to exist freely in the air at sea level.
 
Hill Walker said:
Sorry but that is not the case. Air from sea level up to 10km is Nitrogen (78%), Oxygen (20%), Argon (1%), Carbon dioxide (0.04%), water (0.001% - 5%), Neon, Helium and Methane (all less than 0.002%). To find any Hydrogen at all you have to get up to 700km above sea level where small quantities are exchanged with the solar wind (and you have to keep ducking to avoid passing satellites). Hydrogen is far to reactive to exist freely in the air at sea level.
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Here are 10 gases that make up clean air: In order of highest to lowest concentration they are Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, Carbon dioxide, Neon, Helium, Methane (CH4), Krypton, Hydrogen, and Xenon. There is small quantities of hydrogen in the air at sea level, 1 out of 2,000,000 atoms/molecules of air is hydrogen
 
DaveinGermany said:
Starting in at around £62,000 upto £130,000 (I could buy our thing three times over just at the starting price! :eek:)
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if i,d that sort of money to spend keighley would have a red ferrari on the road and be parked up down livingstone road every fortnight and sod the fuel consuption.
 
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st06nc2 said:
Here are 10 gases that make up clean air: In order of highest to lowest concentration they are Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon, Carbon dioxide, Neon, Helium, Methane (CH4), Krypton, Hydrogen, and Xenon. There is small quantities of hydrogen in the air at sea level, 1 out of 2,000,000 atoms/molecules of air is hydrogen
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Nobody in their right mind would consider a resource at 0.000005% availability as a recoverable asset. Recovery costs would probably be in excess of £100,000/litre.
 
Hill Walker said:
Nobody in their right mind would consider a resource at 0.000005% availability as a recoverable asset. Recovery costs would probably be in excess of £100,000/litre.
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Actually a quick calculation suggests the cost would be of the order of £1,600,000/litre and that assumes you have a market for all the liquid Nitrogen, Oxygen ... Neon etc you would produce allong the way. Its in the same ball park as considering recovering Gold from the Gold dust in the air.
 
I am pretty sure that over the years some clever folk have formulated fuels that are more environmentally friendly and the rich oil producing countries have got wind of it and put a stop to it.

We have a country that is surrounded by the sea...we have tides twice a day...regular as clockwork, but yet we blight our countryside with ugly inefficient wind turbines that blight the lives of those who live in the vicinty(a constant low hum, disrupted electrical signals etc).
Now I know that the job of engineering the mechanics to enable tidal power would present some difficulties...but surely these can be overcome knowing that this is truly environmentally friendly...and is a constant source of power....where wind turbines are not. The wind does not always blow...it does not always blow from the right direction and if it is too windy the damn things have to be turned off.
Very effective - NOT!
 
Margaret Pilkington said:
I am pretty sure that over the years some clever folk have formulated fuels that are more environmentally friendly and the rich oil producing countries have got wind of it and put a stop to it.

We have a country that is surrounded by the sea...we have tides twice a day...regular as clockwork, but yet we blight our countryside with ugly inefficient wind turbines that blight the lives of those who live in the vicinty(a constant low hum, disrupted electrical signals etc).
Now I know that the job of engineering the mechanics to enable tidal power would present some difficulties...but surely these can be overcome knowing that this is truly environmentally friendly...and is a constant source of power....where wind turbines are not. The wind does not always blow...it does not always blow from the right direction and if it is too windy the damn things have to be turned off.
Very effective - NOT!
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Margaret, you are quite right about extracting energy from the sea. It is a formidable engineering challenge and one that might have been a much better use of the £70B or so that is being spent on HS2. What is needed is a properly financed and directed research program extending over quite a few years, not the current situation where it is left to under-financed entropeneurs working on their own pet schemes. The big money is going into wind farms and the like simply because its an easy technology with safe returns.

In fact the whole energy situation is riddled with un-coordinated fads and fancies on a grand scale with lots of ridiculous undesirable side effects.
 
You can run cars on poo, and coffee and used fat, there is a lot of better possibilities than electric, at least with used fat your car will smell of chips or chicken as your driving
 
Yes, I understand it is easy technology with safe returns, but that is not the remit.
The remit is to produce environmentally friendly energy that is renewable...and of course it is not a bit of good if this energy is as unreliable as the wind.
I am of the opinion that the roll out of smart meters is just so that energy companies can terminate a supply remotely if the need should arise....like when the time comes that there is just not enough to go around.
I am also very incomfortable with the fact that our energy supplies lay in the hands of foreigners.
Our energy companies should always be in British hands.
 
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