What I know is that ethanol and methanol are not fossil fuels; on the contrary they are plant derived and renewable so there is no reason for banning them. What should we do if (or when) fossil gas and petrol become unobtainable? Fit high compression pistons and bigger fuel injectors so we can run on alcohol, of course. The people who have been moaning about ethanol in petrol for years had better change their minds.
There seems little point ending the use of petrol by replacing it with ethanol. Current ICE engines are not cmpatabile with higher percentages of ethanol. Running vehicles on ethanol rather than petrol can increase ground-level ozone pollution, according to a study of fuel use in São Paulo, Brazil. Ozone (O3) is a major urban pollutant that can cause severe respiratory problems. The savior -at least in the mid term- for petrol engines will be the totat lack of infrastructure to generate sufficient electricity to replace them.
A friend of mine asked me to ask another friend (who drives an I3) about costs: The main things you need to know are: Your car's battery capacity (measured in kilowatt-hours, abbreviated to kWh); How many miles you will be able to drive per kWh; How much each kilowatt of electricity costs. You'll also need to know how many kW your charger can deliver, so you can work out how long your car takes to charge. I'll get to that. I'll do some quick-and-dirty sums as an example. Let's assume that your Ioniq has a 30kWh battery, it will do 4 miles per kWh, and you'll be paying 15p per kW of electricity to charge at home. So you can estimate a range of 120 miles between charges, and a full charge at home would cost you £4.50. (That's £3.75 per 100 miles, which is basically the Newsround figure you saw). However, public chargers are probably more like 30p per kW. So you can immediately see that public charging is twice as dear as charging at home. (For comparison, I looked up the petrol version of the Ioniq and found a review that said they averaged 60mpg while they were testing it. If petrol is £1.29 per litre that comes out at £9.77 per 100 miles.) Charging speed is also a thing. You can charge an electric car slowly off a regular household mains socket, or you can spend out to get a faster charger installed at home. The amount of electricity you put in the car remains the same, it's just how fast you can get it in. Again, some sums. UK mains voltage is about 230V. The maximum current you can get out of a wall socket is 13 amps, BUT you don't want to be drawing 13A for a sustained period of time, for heat reasons. So your car will come with a charger that can draw 10A, to give a bit of margin so you don't set anything on fire. 230V * 10A is 2300 watts, or 2.3kW. So if the car has a 30 kilowatt-hour battery (and if we pretend the charger is 100% efficient) we can work out how long your car will take to charge. 30 kWh / 2.3 kW = 13 hours. 13 hours (more like 14 or 15 in practice, because no charger ever gets 100% efficiency) is a long old time to be waiting for your car to charge. So you might want to get a 7kW charger installed. That will charge the car in 4-5 hours instead, which is much more practical. 7kW at 230V is a load of about 30A, which is about the same as a domestic cooker or something. (I am not an electrician). Motorway service stations have chargers that are faster still and will fill the car up in 45 minutes, so don't worry about being stuck for ages during a longer journey.
Show me a new build house with enough parking on the drive for a normal family, let alone if you end up with two teenagers, both with their own cars! Now envisage all the cables and extension leads running everywhere charging them overnight. Now imagine the unscrupulous toe rags who will vandalise the cables etc. Personal electric transport is not the answer and has not been thought through. Cheap, subsidised, regular public transport wherever possible, that moves large quantities of people on a single vehicle is the only realistic option. But it will cost and I don't think people will currently be prepared to have a huge hike in their taxes to make it happen. At the end of the day, the pollution made by cars is a fraction of that caused by planes and ships! We need big solutions to a big problem and encouraging everyone to switch to electric cars is just a pantomime.
also what would be the pollution/ effects of mining enough of what ever the batteries are made out of, let alone the creation of enough lecky to replace the estimated 1.5 billion ice powered vehicles currently in use on the planet be? where are all these batteries coming from? are the resources perhaps in 3rd world countries....
You need to do the calculations less tax - as the government will only swap the fuel tax burden over if electric takes off...
Children mine the cobalt and die young, thus helping to slow down the population explosion and save the planet...
There were plenty of places here a couple of days ago - never seen them so empty, what are people so worried about
you know dude.... you know stuff... my bet would be, a lil longer than what it takes to fill up with petrol or diesel..this in itself must have an environmental impact.... for instance, the need to consume mass produced service station food if you forget to bring your home grown salad with you... obviously every greeny grows their own food in a bid to combat climate change.. right? or is that a lil more inconvenient than telling others how to live/banning fossil fuel?
Agree. Have you noticed how the new/refurbished service stations along the A303 are layed out so they could easily adapt the pumps to join the two or three charging points there already. Oh, and they've handily built a Starbucks and a small M&S or other such outlets next to them so you can spend your cash whilst waiting an hour for your car to charge to get you home!
why are the stats for an 80% charge? does 80% give you more mpkw? (saving on the weight of that extra lecky maybe?) or are they trying to confuse us as to how long a full charge is? bet the last 20% takes like 3 days.....
They were talking about that on top gear the other night weren’t they. But there’s only two chargers in the uk capable of doing it. 800v or something from memory. It’s the new Porsche isn’t it
