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Still Lead in the Old Pencil


cuthound

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And yet the daft thing is cars are getting bigger and bigger and wider and wider while the road lanes with all the hazard lines and obstacles get narrower and narrower. Huge 2 ton SUV's and big luxury cars with enormously great fat wheels and tyres and huge brakes polluting the atmosphere not to mention the horrid sort of rushing noise these fat tyres make, and their huge stupid engines to haul them along. never mind there size clogging up parking spaces.  The current Mini is now as big as an old Fraud Siera was !!! absurd. The  ridiculous thing too is that the majority of these huge brutes only usually have one little  person in them, the dwiver, usually fat and obese like their cars trying to look important. In that case because of the obesity problem and only the one person in them these brutish vehicles could be narrowed up by half if  an enlaged driver seat was plonked bang in the middle with steering wheel and controls in the centre also too to accomodate these drivers.  These 2 ton dreadfuls must create an awaful lot of pollution to manufacture as well as when they're being aimed-driven. Also I don't like the bulbous protruding aggressive looking fronts of modern cars, they look horrible in the rear view mirror.  As for getting blinded by headlamps during the daytime, thats another matter. :)

Ah! git it. These drivers should be forced by law to own a 3 wheeled Messershmit they will need to be levered  bruitily into them though. A need to start making them again.

Edited by bizzard
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53 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

That I understand, but shifting pollution to somewhere else isn't dealing with the whole problem, it is just benefiting a few city dwellers (arguably only slightly).

 

By the way, all cars emit particulates, including electric cars - tyre and brake dust accounts for half of urban particulate pollution. Even Peterboat doesn't claim that BEVs don't need tyres or brakes.   

Which is why I say ban the lot of them from city centres and provide free public transport.

Good, logical, joined up thinking. Please keep this up, and go to the Brexit thread forthwith :)

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1 hour ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

That I understand, but shifting pollution to somewhere else isn't dealing with the whole problem, it is just benefiting a few city dwellers (arguably only slightly).

 

By the way, all cars emit particulates, including electric cars - tyre and brake dust accounts for half of urban particulate pollution. Even Peterboat doesn't claim that BEVs don't need tyres or brakes.   

Which is why I say ban the lot of them from city centres and provide free public transport.

Except that the well-to-wheel efficiency of BEV (including generation and transmission losses) is about double that of IC vehicles, so they not only move the pollution out of the hotspots like cities they roughly halve the total C02 emissions, which benefits everybody -- and NOx/particulate emissions are way smaller. They also emit less then half the brake dust because of regenerative braking.

 

Public transport is still far better (if it exists where you are), but if you're going to keep cars BEV are much less polluting than IC. Yes you do have to factor in the manufacturing costs and pollution resulting from this, but this isn't zero for IC vehicles -- so you might say "keep the old IC vehicle instead of buying a new BEV" to avoid this, but then the pollutants per mile are far higher.

 

BEV aren't perfect, but right now they're probably the least bad solution to a difficult problem.

 

As Bizzard points out, breaking the stupid fashion addiction to huge heavy Chelsea tractors (by people who don't need them, meaning >95% of those who drive them) would also help, it's been estimated that these alone are increasing pollution from cars by up to a quarter compared to the more sensible cars people used to drive.

Edited by IanD
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40 minutes ago, The Welsh Cruiser said:

Good, logical, joined up thinking. Please keep this up, and go to the Brexit thread forthwith :)

 

But is it? 

 

If all vehicles are banned from city centres and public transport is free, what does the public transport run on? And how does all the tat get into the shops for you to buy? And how do town centre residents get their boilers and washing machines etc fixed? There is no way I could do it by public transport...

 

 

 

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6 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

But is it? 

 

If all vehicles are banned from city centres and public transport is free, what does the public transport run on? And how does all the tat get into the shops for you to buy? And how do town centre residents get their boilers and washing machines etc fixed? There is no way I could do it by public transport...

 

 

 

Public transport is far less polluting per passenger than cars, but also less convenient. Delivery vehicles in low-emissions zones would have to be electric, or pay a high toll. People who need vans for their trade would have to be still permitted to drive them, but presumably encouraged (by taxation or high fuel prices) to use electric ones. Which they'd have to buy, but that would just have to be part of the cost of doing business -- nobody would have the right to spew out clouds of black diesel smoke because it's cheaper for them than buying a new van.

 

Welcome to the brave new low-emissions world where people have to take responsibility for the pollution they cause, and are charged for it... ?

Edited by IanD
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4 minutes ago, IanD said:

Public transport is far less polluting per passenger than cars, but also less convenient. Delivery vehicles in low-emissions zones would have to be electric, or pay a high toll. People who need vans for their trade would have to be still permitted to drive them, but presumably encouraged (by taxation or high fuel prices) to use electric ones. Which they'd have to buy, but that would just have to be part of the cost of doing business -- nobody would have the right to spew out clouds of black diesel smoke because it's cheaper for them than buying a new van.

 

Welcome to the brave new low-emissions world where people have to take responsibility for the pollution they cause, and are charged for it... ?

 

 

But I was responding to MachPoint's assertion that ALL VEHICLES should be banned from city centres. Not just the easy ones. 

 

 

"By the way, all cars emit particulates, including electric cars - tyre and brake dust accounts for half of urban particulate pollution. Even Peterboat doesn't claim that BEVs don't need tyres or brakes.   

Which is why I say ban the lot of them from city centres and provide free public transport."

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

 

But I was responding to MachPoint's assertion that ALL VEHICLES should be banned from city centres. Not just the easy ones. 

 

 

"By the way, all cars emit particulates, including electric cars - tyre and brake dust accounts for half of urban particulate pollution. Even Peterboat doesn't claim that BEVs don't need tyres or brakes.   

Which is why I say ban the lot of them from city centres and provide free public transport."

 

 

Wrong end of the stick there, sorry about that. Nothing wrong with free public transport (works elsewhere) though, and banning non-essential vehicles (or charging them a fortune to put towards public transport) wouldn't be such a bad idea, but getting rid of all of them seems unrealistic.

 

Of course free public transport has to be paid for, but then if almost everybody uses it who would object?

Edited by IanD
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3 hours ago, Machpoint005 said:

I don't dispute that for a moment, but a great deal of the world's energy is fossil-fuel derived and banning ICE cars from city centres makes no difference.

But energy generated centrally on a large scale is much cleaner than lots individual ice cars, and much easier to monitor and reduce emissions from than millions of private cars. 

 

51 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

Don't they have legs?

They could save a fortune on "going to the gym" too!

I know several people who get their cars out to drive half a mile to school! Why????? Our 4 year old had been walking 1.3 miles to pre school since just over 2. Children need and enjoy the exercise and fresh air. The unnecessary congestion and traffic as a result of short school runs really annoys me. 

 

On 29/10/2019 at 09:31, Dr Bob said:

I would punt at some other technology coming through in the next 5-10 years that would replace both. I am sure there is a breakthrough not far away.

I've been hearing that for ages. I would think with the amount of money and time invested in research something would have come to light by now. I'm not saying  any of the Li technologies are perfect, far from it - I just can't see any other technology replacing it within the next 20-30 years at least. 

 

On 29/10/2019 at 09:37, Machpoint005 said:

 

More relevantly to this forum - lead-acid batteries are still the right device for the job in a boating context, and I can't see being supplanted any time soon.

I'm not sure that's actually the case. I suspect in 5-10 years most (if not all) new boats will have Li batteries (at least from the top builders). The additional cost of an integrated Li solution when designing from scratch is relatively low compared to the cost of a completed boat from one of the top builders. I suspect the reason it's not common now is the reluctance of the boat building industry to adopt new technology.

 

On 29/10/2019 at 09:37, cuthound said:

 

Li recycling is currently very labour intensive, hence costly, which is why it is currently low.

 

But that's likely to improve dramatically when large numbers of Li batteries need recycling. I know there's quite a few small Li batteries from phones etc, but they're on a different scale to the larger capacity ev batteries that will need recycling in 10-15 years or so. I'm sure automated processes will be developed as and when demand increases. 

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1 hour ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

That I understand, but shifting pollution to somewhere else isn't dealing with the whole problem, it is just benefiting a few city dwellers (arguably only slightly).

 

By the way, all cars emit particulates, including electric cars - tyre and brake dust accounts for half of urban particulate pollution. Even Peterboat doesn't claim that BEVs don't need tyres or brakes.   

Which is why I say ban the lot of them from city centres and provide free public transport.

I don't Ian, however they have regeneration braking which reduces massively the amount of particulates, typically brakes will do 35k on ICE car and up to 100k on electric and 75k on hybrids. Tyres I would think are about the same,  however no NOX, SOX and carcinogenic particles so it's a big win for electric especially if it's clean electric. 

However Ian I know life is a compromise and you can't really go around scraping good cars but it's to be expected that they will be banned from certain areas 

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18 minutes ago, WotEver said:

Why do I keep seeing TV ads for ‘self-charging hybrids’?  Surely by definition any hybrid is self-charging?

I have 2 of them, the reality is that at times it does use the engine whilst under light load to charge the battery which will increase fuel consumption, life unfortunately isn't all about going down hills! So maybe it's better to plug them in? My electric truck on regeneration nearly stops when I take my foot off the accelerator ! I hardly have to use brakes 

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38 minutes ago, WotEver said:

Why do I keep seeing TV ads for ‘self-charging hybrids’?  Surely by definition any hybrid is self-charging?

So-called "self-charging" hybrids usually means "non-plug-in mild hybrids" with short range on batteries. I used to have one (Mercedes E300) and it used a bit less fuel than a diesel but was basically a tax fiddle, the added weight meant it got nowhere near the official consumption.

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56 minutes ago, IanD said:

So-called "self-charging" hybrids usually means "non-plug-in mild hybrids" with short range on batteries. I used to have one (Mercedes E300) and it used a bit less fuel than a diesel but was basically a tax fiddle, the added weight meant it got nowhere near the official consumption.

I think it helps if the car was always designed to be only a hybrid like our 2 Hondas they just use the electric motor to help in acceleration which really helps fuel consumption, I have turned off the battery and it makes a big difference both in pleasure and cost ?

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Although the Monstrous Chelsie tractors are heavier many of the so called prestige cars are even wider ie Audi A6 A7. Certain Mercedes, BMW's, Porche, Jaguars ect ect as wide as buses. These are an even bigger nuisance in some ways, like in parking bays at supermarkets, the blooming things holding up traffic behind them creeping up to and trying to judge getting through width restrictions and trying to pass parked vehicles on narrow and not so narrow roads. Narrow lanes can be murder too when any of these prestige brutes come the other way usually in the middle of of the lane in case they scratch the paint on a hedge, but more often they]re unable to judge the beasts width properly. Like some folk trying to get wide beam boats into a lock even with bow thrusters.   I might buy a Hummer, that'll teach em.  The only Prestige thing I've got is a pressure cooker and thats too fat to go in the cupboard.

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14 hours ago, Tom and Bex said:

But that's likely to improve dramatically when large numbers of Li batteries need recycling. I know there's quite a few small Li batteries from phones etc, but they're on a different scale to the larger capacity ev batteries that will need recycling in 10-15 years or so. I'm sure automated processes will be developed as and when demand increases. 

 

Will it though?

 

LA batteries only contain plastic, acid and lead, can be crushed and thus make automated recycling easier.

 

Li's containment components, cobalt, nickel, lithium, plastic, steel and often electronic components for balancing and internal BMS. They cannot be crushed without risk of fire.

 

This is why they need human intervention. As we have seen in this country with paper and plastics, if it costs too much to recycle we export it, adding to the already large carbon footprint.

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16 hours ago, IanD said:

As Bizzard points out, breaking the stupid fashion addiction to huge heavy Chelsea tractors (by people who don't need them, meaning >95% of those who drive them) would also help, it's been estimated that these alone are increasing pollution from cars by up to a quarter compared to the more sensible cars people used to drive.

 

This, absolutely. I cannot see the point of a SUV unless you need to do any half-serious off-roading, and even then a 4x4 version of a proper estate car is easily capable of doing the job (and is probably better at it than a fashion-statement pretend SUV with 2-wheel drive).

Many of the gains in fuel economy have been eaten up by tall and huge cars with the aerodynamics of a brick.

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19 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

This, absolutely. I cannot see the point of a SUV unless you need to do any half-serious off-roading, and even then a 4x4 version of a proper estate car is easily capable of doing the job (and is probably better at it than a fashion-statement pretend SUV with 2-wheel drive).

Many of the gains in fuel economy have been eaten up by tall and huge cars with the aerodynamics of a brick.

The  original Toyota Rav 4 used to be quite a nice smallish neat 4x4 but now the current ones have become a horrid big wide splodge too.

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You're missing the point, guys -- the Jimny and Riva (and Defender) are for people who *need* 4WD to get into inaccessible places. The Chelsea tractors are for people who never go off-road in their lives but want a fashionable tank for the school run, maybe because it makes them feel safer (which they're not). Never the twain shall meet...

Edited by IanD
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My 4x4 Yeti easily gets 50mpg on a run and my Midget around 38mpg.
And I have a 4x4 to fit in with my hobbies of car rally safety work, caravanning and photographing things in the forests locally for NRW, plus I can give something back to the community by being a member of 4x4 Response Wales.
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I am also a Director of the local Car Share CIC and we now own an electric Zoe which seems to be getting used quite often, mostly on journeys of less than 100 miles, I suspect because recharging points are not that plentiful in Mid Wales.

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13 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

I'm no critic of the Yeti, but can it do anything the 4x4 Octavia Scout (with the same powertrain) can't do?

 

Yes, it can get into shorter parking spaces etc, Octavia is 4.667 m long, the Yeti is is 4.22m long.

 

(My garage is 4.3 m long, so I have a Yeti as it is the most commodious car that will fit into the garage).

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