Indeed, eventually all fossil fuel usage will need to be phased out - but currently transportation and electricity generation account for more than 50% of the total, so massively reducing those will make a significant difference.
I still have no idea what your overall point is though. Is it that there are in fact some issues with a complete, root-and-branch replacement of the entire world’s energy currency (who’d have thought it?) so we should just carry on as before because it’s easy?
We should carry on until such point that there can be a seamless transfer and not penalising people. What we have at the moment is a complete and utter mess. With people with ordinary cars being priced off the road to have to invest in shoddy half way house technology and it doesn’t look like it’s getting better anytime soon. I don’t remember reading that horses were priced off the road when petrol engined vehicles were introduced, despite the fact that all towns were awash with horse ‘dooings’. One of the things I remember my grandparents telling me, about is how clean streets are now compared to when they were little and 3 of my grandparents were from small rural villages across the UK.
The same can be said of electricity generation. Proper generation methods got rid of before the new nonsense was anywhere near close to being anything like useful, is mental. Why was this done because the “greens” started whingeing and the politicians saw a way to fleece people.
How much money has been given to companies to build windmills? Why weren’t these companies told to get the money the old fashioned way, by selling shares in their business, rather than being given money hand over fist. If their business model was sound they’d get the return.
I just feel we’ve been dragged into the whole climate thing on a wave of emotion rather than rational thinking, do anything on an emotional footing and it doesn’t go well.
Right, and just let the Earth overheat past the point of no return in the meantime. Great plan.
See, emotion.
This is why we are in the mess we are in … emotion. People have got overly emotional and allowed this to cloud things. Doesn’t mean something doesn’t need to be done, but setting ridiculous targets is not the way, as it leads as this has to poor technology, lack of real investment and over taxation.
The solution to this is not Joe Smith knee jerk buying an electric car or having a windmill in his back garden or letting kids bunk off school, like they did last week or giving people money to build things.
Where’s the emotion?
I’m using cold, hard logic. People won’t switch away from fossil fuels unless incentivised to do so, and taxation and subsidy is all part of that.
Setting difficult targets drives innovation.
Only 10 years after Luna 1 and 8 years after Gagarin and Shepherd we landed on the moon… All because someone said “let’s go to the moon”. A literally and figuratively astronomical target.
Battery tech innovation has accelerated incredibly since EV became a thing and then “the way”.
If we don’t set targets we’ll never get there.
Where’s the incentive? Increased taxation on one thing? Reduced taxation on something else?
Only for the reduced taxation to be increased to make up the shortfall later, despite people playing the game they want people to play?
Congestion charges and road tax will be switched to the new things and increased based on the size of battery, charge time or some other factor associated with new style vehicles. Cheaper electricity charges overnight will go. Now free or low cost charging points will rise to replace the money lost via petrol/diesel. All of these will come in sooner rather than later. Conned at both ends as they fuel people’s fears and play on them, because of the emotions politicians etc stoke up.
I’ve always suspected that the moon landing only happened because of Kennedy’s death. If he’s lived he could have been replaced as President and the funding cut. Again an emotional response based around the way Kennedy died. Not saying it wouldn’t have happened due to wanting to outdo the Russians, but not in the 7 or so year timeframe set in Kennedy’s speech and accelerated by the events in Dallas on 22nd November 62. The Russians as I recall lost interest in a manned moon landing in 67 or 68.
So to say that this climate change is a driver for change, I don’t think so. If it were people would have happily invested in the technology and reaped the returns, and it would have happened without taxpayers money being wasted to provide people with money for something they should have been sought by investment via their shareholders. Without taxpayers money being chucked around left, right and centre do you honestly think we’d have land and seascapes blighted by windmills and in some places loads of solar panels. If we are getting electricity via “renewable” sources, bills should be a fraction of what they are, but they’re not. The only renewable parts of this energy are windmills and solar panels, given they have a finite life and have to be replaced, (especially windmills being mechanical and those in the sea exposed to salt water,) more frequently I would suggest than a coal, gas, oil or wood fired power station. We had two power stations near to us that were operational 30 and 44 years. How many of these clumps of windmills will be operating for those lengths of time without needing to be replaced. The public are being conned and are too blinded by the emotion of climatic change (pushed by the media), which happens anyway.
Yes, exactly.
Still have no idea what the problem is here…
The government have to (a) raise a certain level of tax and (b) encourage the use of electric vehicles. By skewing the tax to encourage adoption of electric vehicles, early adopters will save money in the short-term. As electric vehicle ownership increases, clearly the tax on them will have to increase to balance out the tax revenues. Perhaps it will be across the board, or perhaps it will be in such a way as to encourage the use of more efficient models - after all, electric vehicles are currently very heavy so perhaps the next generation will benefit from tax breaks for the lighter versions - who knows.
Your logic seems to be the same as those people who bought a diesel car 15 years ago, enjoyed motoring at significantly reduced cost for over a decade and now think that the government somehow owes them money for “conning them” into buying a diesel, conveniently ignoring the thousands of pounds they saved by doing so that isn’t going anywhere.
I’m done. There’s no way being that obtuse is accidental.
Read above - our electric car is a better car and it costs less to run. I use the savings to run my V8 
That is demonstrable nonsense. It’s moving cars into the realm of consumer electronics. They get better all the time and they get cheaper all the time.
What is still not really (accurately) known is the overall “green” life comparison (construction to scrapping) for EV vehicles versus “fossil fuel” vehicles. Both parties will of course claim that their’s is better.
Less to run = certainly at the moment, but governments will have to somehow recoup fossil fuel tax income / free VED, etc, at some stage in the future.
There also seem to be knock-on effects for our ever-increasing demand for lithium ion batteries.
As I’ve said, environmental concerns remain secondary (plus I’m primarily concerned with local emissions for which EVs are undoubtedly better).
You’re right on the VED - at some point the government will adjust the regime but it will always remain cheaper to drive provided the price of fuel per mile driven > price of electricity per mile driven. As I’m shortly to generate my own the marginal cost per mile will be far, far less.
although there will always be that once a year/month/week long journey requirement - most journeys completed in are under 30 miles (the average distance to commute in a car is 18 miles) and so a 400mile range is not required on a daily basis as so few journeys are ever than long.
i still stand-by the need for a cultural change towards duration and capacity.
in the late 90s/early 00s there was the Nokia phone, typically the 3210 or 3310 but other options existed.
this lasted 3+ days, in some cases a whole week. That was a design requirement as culturally we were not used to charging anything daily.
then the iPhone came along and suddenly all the new features arrived but with a small inconvenience of needing to charge it daily. fast forward 15 years or so no one bats an eyelid at daily charging devices.
drivers need to stop worrying about getting 400miles in one go and realise they realistically only ever need 100mile range for 99% of the journeys they complete.
looking at my car use this year (i have an app for it) there have only been two days where journeys were more than 40 miles, one 42 miles (so an 84 mile round trip) and another 86 miles (so a 172mile round trip).
so providing there is a suitable recharging method upon arrival i could easily have a Electrical vehicle with the only penalty of having to ensure it is charged daily (if only commuting i can get away with every other day)
i don’t have a solid counter-argument to 400miles range in one go other than ask “when was the last time you drove 400miles in one go…and how often do you complete that journey”?
And how long did you stop for en-route anyway?
For what it’s worth, I think that we’ve got electric cars a bit back-to-front anyway.
Batteries are heavy (making for less-efficient vehicles), expensive and environmentally a little dubious.
Much better for the time being to make short-range BEVs with a petrol-powered range extender, so that people can still do 90% of their journeys on battery power alone, and probably in a vehicle that has lower CO2 lifetime emissions than a long-range BEV, at a lower cost and without “range anxiety”.
Meanwhile, the battery manufacturers can work on getting charge times lower and lower until it’s feasible to stop a medium range vehicle and “fill up” with electricity just like you would an ICE vehicle.
@drillbitch If it’s that good why have a V8 whatever? What is the failing that requires you to have a V8 as well?
Consumer electronics have only moved into the realm where you have to replace something as it can’t be repaired and in-built obsolesce so you have to buy something new. A few years ago our tele stopped working. It was cheaper to buy new than replace the component, which I found then and still do find a mental situation. It ended up down the tip. Is this what people will do with cars? My car’s 15 years old and runs well with the same main engine, will a battery car last that long or will the battery (engine) fail long before then? Forcing people into buying a new car as I will guarantee they won’t keep making batteries for all models and something will change. A bloke I knew said when he did his apprenticeship with British Gas, they had to carry components for boilers for IIRC 20 years, but that doesn’t happen anymore.
@MikeJenvey That doesn’t matter as it’s in Chile or any other place in the world, that isn’t in somewhere full of people munching quinoa and lentils washed down with whichever overpriced ethically sourced liquid is en vogue.
@steve679 It’s not about doing a 400 mile trip in one go, it’s about the convenience of filling up, knowing that I can drive in all conditions for 400 miles. It will be interesting to see how battery cars fare getting caught in the jams that occur when there is an accident or when it floods or heavy snow causes people to be stuck for hours, radio running, heating on, slowly but surely draining their batteries. Will the AA or RAC have a “gallon” of electricity in the back of the van? When it comes to charging a vehicle at home, fine if you have a drive, but what about those homes in many parts of the country without one and will have to trail charging leads across footpaths. It’s bad enough with people moaning about kerbing and obstacles that creates, with most houses being at least 2 car houses (we could be a 5 car house if all the kids were at home), imagine a road with 2 charging leads coming from each house, lain across footpaths, someone trips over one, who is liable? Better make sure you’re insured for personal injury. Not sure this has been mentioned anywhere in the media.
While people are getting caught up in the emotional hype of climatic change, the real day to day practicalities of the solutions are over looked, as they make things difficult and less attractive.
@Giminion I don’t see it as being obtuse more not just falling in with what people expect you to say, believe or do. WRT Apollo, I don’t think it would have happened in the specific timeframe if Kennedy not been assassinated and the move to electric cars is connected to the current climate hype, which has needed media stoking it and luvvie celebs and politicians jumping on it to be popular and these groups being the most hypocritical of everyone. Given they drive and fly all over the world, while telling ordinary folk they should change how and what things they do.
If you take powered flight, would we have even got to the point where even getting into orbit was a possibility in the time it was if it wasn’t for the misery of two world wars. It’s more causal effect, than anything else. The NASA moon programme spawned all manner of other things, so would we even be where we are in terms of electronics and other things?
Your entire last paragraph proves my point.
in the town i live in walking around my neighbourhood i can easily find half a dozen council fitted electric hookups outside homes for owners to charge their car on the roadside.
not perfect, but there are solutions to the problems you describe.
