The real story in this item is that fanatical, smug, well-off greenies who want the indulgence of owning cars that do inferior mileage and are hobbled by having to be off the road for hours at a time while they are re-charged, are being handed £43m of our cash in subsidies. Think how many old people that would help keep warm. The second seam of utter nonsense in the so-called story is that a Cleggeron called Hammond spouts platitudes that we can have “convenience without carbon”. Eh? What planet does he live on? These are cars that the public have shown that they absolutely do not want; the only “convenience” is that we have a government of nutcases who are providing a jacuzzi of cash to support the nonsense. As usual, the BBC reports the whole scam as though it’s a major breakthrough.
CAR CRASH
Bookmark the permalink.
You get the feeling that this is not going to catch on.
Mainly because the BBC seem to be so enthusiastic about it and as Robin points out that nobody really wants them anyhow.
As the BBC hates Britain, it comes as no surprise that there is no remorse whatsoever in their coverage of this story that these cars aren’t even made in the UK.
“Convenience without carbon”? Are these cars only able to accept electricity supplied by wind farms or nuclear power? (Ignoring altogether the environmental impacts of making and maintaining windmills and nuclear power stations.)
This morning on Today it was described as “manufacturers rushing to make these electric cars”. I’m not surprised, if they’re being bunged a subsidy of £5,000 per car to do so, but for some reason no connection between these two points was made. Not to mention £20,000,000 for installing the charging points.
OT , another new low for Farming Today – a programme devoted to how the awful coalitions’ swinging cuts, will deny wheelchair access to footpath users. No, honestly. Welcome to the paralel world of the bbc !
Personally, its an idea very much worth developing. Oil is going to run out in 150 years, so it is said. Electric cars aren’t very practical at the moment but they’re in the development stage.
The BBC does of course need to air both sides of the argument.
Is oil going to run out? The truth is there is plenty of oil that can still be recovered yet and in many cases wells that were dry were not really dry just that the technology to extract the remaining oil wasn’t there or the cost of doing it was excessive.
The other point is as oil gets more expensive cars become ever more fuel efficient, if car manufacturers wanted to they could produce even more fuel efficient vehicles right now.
The BBC continue to fail to point out the problems with electric cars, imagine being stuck in snow overnight, how on earth would they recovers hundreds or thousands of cars with no electricity in their batteries?
Charge your car up? OK if you park your car on your drive, but park it on the street the local thugs would simply keep cutting the charging cables.
The range issues we’ve discussed before, but the BBC FAIL to point out that an electric cars effective range is far less than the theoretical range, especially if you can’t charge your vehicle at all at the other end. No one drives an electric vehicle to the point where the battery is totally empty. A 100 range is really no more than 90, so that’s 10% gone before you take into consideration the degradation the battery will suffer over a few years. Rapid chargers also knock the crap out of the battery if used too often.
Get a power cut overnight and you’re stuffed.
Also what about commercial vehicles? Are they really suggesting HGV’s can be electric as well? I don’t think so.
These silly electric toys are fine for the lettuce munching drug using celebrities to show off to their friends.
If these celebs really want to make a contribution to reducing CO2, STOP FLYING or sell off a few of your homes.
There are schemes being proposed where recharge time would only occur at home, instead you wouldn’t own the battery in the car, instead you would hire it and trade it in and out at charge points.
My question is, are we putting increased pressure on an already suffering electricity network, where we can expect brown-outs if believed in the next 5 to 10 years.
The cost of electricity is rising faster than the cost of fuel with no sign of abating, I’ve done a check with an online calculator and it would cost me a lot more to run an electric car than a petrol.
Sliding a battery in and out of a vehicle is not that easy, sounds good to a drugged up beeboid but there are huge design issues.
Batteries have to be placed in the vehicle where they can balance out weight distribution and the centre of gravity. These packs can be very heavy, how long does it take to refill your car fuel tank? a couple of minutes at most, who wants to start fannying around having to fiddle with getting a battery pack out from underneath a car? When you’ve got your kids with you? In the rush hour? On a motorway? It’s just greenie nonsense.
This not like swapping out your mobile phone battery.
The other problem is you will be swapping these things out every 5 minutes.
Suppose you have a range of 100 miles and you’re driving from say London to Edinburgh, you might think that’s 4 battery changes, but that assumes again you drive to the limit each time, well that’s not going to happen not unless you put recharge points every 10 miles or so and that would be massively expensive. If you put recharge points say every 50 miles and your battery is down to say 40% and you come to a charge point, you’d have to stop as you’d not be able to reach the next one a further 50 miles away, then you’d be doing the same thing all the way back. It’s just madness to think that is practicable.
I’ll drive an electric car when they make one that does 100 mph, has a range of 500 miles and doesn’t look like Noddy designed it. I won’t hold my breath.
I have used an electric car Peugeot did one http://www.greencarsite.co.uk/4sale/00377%20PEUGEOT%20106%20ELECTRIC%20VEHICLE.htm
Lots of fascinating points here, all grist to the mill of BBC bias that they dont get the airing they deserve. I guess at least the BBC isn’t lobbying for battery powered tanks.
Don’t worry, it’s a fad and won’t last long, even the greenies that buy them will tire of them very quickly, and they’ll be seen in odd places, redesignated as chicken coops, or temporary eco-accommodation for the homeless, or converted to buggies by enterprising children, or even more obscure uses – like cut down and used as trailers for REAL vehicles.
These things are only ‘green’ bacause the majority do not live near a power station – but that will only out once more electric cars are sold.
You’ll like this then Robin. Hammond went on Sky News shortly after and I caught a clip of him being asked if he would be giving up his ‘diesel Jaguar’ for one of these electric jobbies.
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/hammond-buy-an-electric-car-im-keeping-my-jag/
Enjoy watching him spin himself into circles.
I’m normally very anti-ecoloon, and can spot BBC bias a mile off. But, there’s one thing to admit if one is going to be truly objective, and that is that the oil,gas and coal WILL run out. So exploring other sources of energy is desirable and sensible.
However, in order to make electricity, we need fossil fuel powered power plants. (None of the greenies want nuclear.)
Windmills are intermittent, due to the nature of wind, and inefficient. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t solar power a lot of crap for anything bigger than a pocket calculator?
Nothing ever runs out. Its one of the myths the ecofacists push. The market pricing mechanism ensures that if something becomes “scarce” its price rises to ration it, to the point when the market finds alternatives which become cost effective and there is an incentive to find alternatives.
The whole renewable sustainable conservation bit is anti-Darwin anti-evolution anti-progress. It’s tosh. Were dinosoars “sustainable”?
Seems to be alot of ‘Peak Oilers’ commenting on this thread.
Just wanted to point out that your asserions that fossil fuels are about to run out is pure balony. We’ve just had massive new finds off Brazil, not to mention vast untapped reserves in the arctic. And don’t forget the massive shale gas revolution which has doubled reserves at a stroke. (cars can run on LPG too you know)
Stealing £43 millions from poor people to pay £5000 to every smug, rich, prius-driving greeny isn’t ‘desirable and sensible’ or ‘an idea worth developing’.
If/when fossil fuels become scare or too expensive, natural market forces will offer alternatives. No need for government meddling which will only serve to distort the market, stiffle innovation and squander vast amounts of taxpayer’s money.
Hippiepooter, if “oil *IS* going to run out in 150 years” as you say, then I’ll take £1,000 (at today’s prices!) on that please! 😉
The economic laws of supply and demand (aka the price mechanism), coupled with as yet unimagined oil extraction technologies, will mean oil will not run out.
There is still some who (controversially) debate on the source of oil, that maybe it is not a biological source at all, but rather geological in origin – see works of Thomas Gold (Wiki). Everlasting oil?
But even if oil was to be everlasting, like all other products of life, oil will be outcompeted by more fuel efficient and cost effective, and hence cheaper technologies in the future, but the electric battery will be the betamax of alternative energies – I give it 10 years! 😉
Will
I thought I read/heard/saw somewhere some years ago that oil would be all gone by the year 2000? Mind you, I was also informed that snow would be a thing of the past…
Hi, I’m reading Tom Bower’s ‘The Squeeze’ about the oil industry at the moment – that’s what gives me my credentials of ‘instant expert’ 😛
If I’ve remembered what I’ve read alright, the 150 year lifespan of oil is an oil industry one.
I never said priuses were sensible or desirable, just that thinking of other ways to obtain energy was.
I agree though, that market forces will sort it out. The greenies like to lecture us that oil will run out in between 50 and 150 years, so why the need to tax us to f@*%?
Personally, I can’t wait for the squealing about how the power grid crashes when everyone plugs in their EVs for the night.
Jeremy Clarkson summed it up beautifully on BBC1 this morning when he said “they don’t work”. What is the point of a car with an 80 mile range followed by a 10 hour recharge? I pity the poor “greenies” with their Priuses. Don’t they appreciate the huge amounts of pollution caused by the manufacture of the battery packs which, when they fail after about 7 years, cost more than the value of the car to replace.
I run an LPG car.
You get around 200 miles on a tank, and the network is extensive enough to locate a refill almost anywhere.
It’s not as convenient, but certainly works.
But it’s also not GHG free, which I wish the proponents of ‘leccy would stop trying to spin, from box-ticking idiot Ministers to slavish media propagandists.
About the only thing I can see a Leaf genuinely helping with is pollution levels in major urban centres. Not the major issue one is being fed.
And the last time I was exposed to such a rush of luvvie celeb ecocardom, dumb and dumber was sticking Stuart Rose in a 6litre Hydrogen Beemer or Arnie a Hummer to show how ‘practical’ it all could be to the average Fiesta driving audience facing a 2hr 100 mile roundtrip from their public-transport bereft eco-town to where they actually work.
As a little number to ‘get about town’ they seem a very viable option. If they catch on it will, at the end of the day, depend upon the cost benefits.
This £5000 government subsidy towards consumer purchases of selected electric cars sums up how ill-thought-out government policy is on this. Private car marques are going to welcome this with open arms, and who can blame them.
The pure electric car has no future, the battery issue will always be a problem. Try asking how much it is to replace the battery pack on and electric car. Typically it’s several thousands pound and the pack will need to be replaced after probably 5 years, so the car will probably be worth less than the cost of new batteries, not to mention the whole issue of disposal of the used battery pack.
Electric vehicles have been around for over 100 years and with the exception of milk floats, golf carts and dodgems no one has ever really taken them seriously for mass transport.
Other technologies are far more practical for long term development.
As I’ve posted here before the new VW Polo and Golf Bluemotion can do 80 mpg and produce less than 100 grams CO2 per KM.
I doubt if you take into consideration how electricity is produced an electric car is any more energy efficient.
Agreed. It will be a hydrogen fuel cell or something similar that will work in the end. Not something where millions of people have to plug in for hours when they get to work, and hours when they get home at night – all at the same time.