No point quoting 50 year old tales ... I was talking about the late 70s
The 70s was 50 years ago...
Its perfectly possible to have decent rural public transport.
Well, yes, to a point. I bet you couldn't have gone anywhere you wanted on a bus. I mean, I worked on various farms when I was younger, it wouldn't be reasonable to expect every point of countryside to be accessible by bus. But certainly we could do a lot better than we do now, and we should - which was my point. Improve the busses and trains THEN work on the disincentives.
The Welsh Government are sort of doing this. They're deliberately not fixing the massive traffic black spot in South Wales, which is an indirect disincentive, and putting on more trains instead. I hope it works.
Improve the busses and trains THEN work on the disincentives.
You can put on the best buses and trains in the world - hell they can even be free! - and people will still drive. You HAVE to make it more difficult / expensive / inconvenient to drive before you can do much to improve anything else.
Buses are crap because they're stuck in traffic. If you're going to be stuck in traffic, you'd prefer to be there on your own in a comfy car with your own music and no smelly people, so you drive. Which makes the problem worse and you can't fix the buses until you've made life considerably worse for drivers - be that in terms of parking charges, onerous one-way systems, bus priority lanes and junctions or a combination of those measures, you have to come at the problem from both sides.
Same with cycling - if you make it easy and convenient for people to cycle, they will do so provided that it's more convenient than driving. So you have to do something to make the driving less convenient first. LTNs, School Streets, remove a car lane and replace it with a bike lane, or taxes, fuel pricing, pay-per-mile, parking charges etc or a combination of those. Most people aren't going to cycle until you've done something to reduce or eliminate the traffic because that is always the #1 reason people give for not riding in the first place.
Partly true. With our current energy mix, the carbon emissions of ICE vehicles is still many fold that of any electric vehicle charged at any time of day.
By 2030 (assuming the Tories are kicked out) all electric vehicle charging will use renewable energy only.
Needs a lot of work going into grid upgrades and resilience though (again, will happen if Tories are moved on).
Even sooner than 2030 it will be possible for all electric cars to be charged at off peak times without using fossil fuels.
Genuinely interested, do you have a source for this? One of the key things putting me off an EV is the spurious carbon emission claims. It is currently very rare for the marginal gereation of the UK grid to be renewable. So if I choose to put say 10kwh into an EV, that additional 10kwh gets generated by burning more gas, not by solar panels or wind turbines managing to squeeze out an extra 10kwh. Even when the UK grid is being powered 50% by renewables, generating extra power must be done 100% by burning more gas.
So charging an EV is (almost) never done using renewable power. Even if you have a green electricity provider, that just meant that some notional allocation of who bought what power got shifted about. Charging your EV caused additional power to be generated by burning gas.
I even have solar panels, but if I use the power they generate to charge an EV, it means less going to the grid, so more gas must be burned to make up the shortfall.
With all the extra wind and solar coming online, and flexible EV charging helping to align demand with times of excess generation I see how this problem will resolve itself over time, but I have never seen any thoughtful estimates of how long it will take. Months? years? decades?
Molgrips - quoting out of context. He was describing a time when no one had cars ie the 30s - not the 70s. This village was a commuter village in the late 70s.; Perfectly applicable today.
I bet you couldn’t have gone anywhere you wanted on a bus
Actually I could as there was a bus route in every direction from this village. I could go south to Milngavie / glasgow. North to the villages further out and on to stirling which is a hub or along the east west road. It was a perfectly adequate service half hourly buses in each possible direction
Fueled - you are right but folk will deny it. Electric cars can only increase fossil fuel burning as renewables are usually maxed out. Its less that if they were ICE but its far more than zero
Months? years? decades?
Never as we will still have winter high pressure events where there are minimal renewables and high demand
Months? years? decades?
Your possible next government is proposing 100% renewables by 2030... so 5 years is an option... but we have to chose it.
But even if you're using electricity from our current energy mix, and without doing the sensible thing and setting your car to charge at times in the night when gas isn't being used, the carbon emissions are still *far* lower than burning diesel or petrol in an ICE.
One of the key things putting me off an EV is the spurious carbon emission claims. It is currently very rare for the marginal gereation of the UK grid to be renewable. So if I choose to put say 10kwh into an EV, that additional 10kwh gets generated by burning more gas, not by solar panels or wind turbines managing to squeeze out an extra 10kwh. Even when the UK grid is being powered 50% by renewables, generating extra power must be done 100% by burning more gas.
AFAIU this is a spurious argument as even if we accept the premise that EVs are 100% charged via gas the efficiency of the gas to wheel is higher than petrol/diesel to wheel in terms of CO2 output.
Beyond that a high proportion of EV charging is done overnight and this will be significantly provided by wind turbines even now.
Actually I could as there was a bus route in every direction from this village.
Ok but this is not logically possible in every location. You will never be able to get everywhere by bus. It's geographically dependent.
There will always be a need for some cars. We must not penalise those for whom it is unavoidable.
Doesn't have to be 100% does it. Even 25% would be a phenomenal difference.
And FWIW the village i grew up in had bus routes along 4 or 5 of the 7 major routes out of it. 2 heading into the nearest city (with probably 15+ buses an hour) and buses to the villages North and East on a "useful" timetable. The largest of those villages also had direct buses from the nearest city, and through buses heading up to the coast, or further into the countryside. Want to go west, you had to go into town and out. But no one wanted to go west, because there wasn't much there.
Now there are 8-10 buses an hour heading south into the city on one route. And they go to one or two an hour before 7am and after 7pm.
Useful isn't it.
(and i'm 20 years younger than TJ, so not anywhere near as long ago.)
Electric cars can only increase fossil fuel burning as renewables are usually maxed out
It's more complicated than you seem to understand, but even then I think you mean 'EVs can increase fossil fuel burning for electricity generation' because you aren't putting fossil fuels in the EV.
the carbon emissions are still *far* lower than burning diesel or petrol in an ICE
I had a look at this.
A gas power station emits 0.354 kg of CO2e per kwh.
A very efficient EV consumes 0.25 kwh per mile.
EV-DATABASE.ORG So an EV charged by a gas power plant emits 0.0885 kg CO2e per mile.
A sensible ford focus mild hybrid emits 0.118 - 0.126 kg CO2e per mile. A bonkers ST non-hybrid is 0.182
https://www.ford.co.uk/content/dam/guxeu/uk/documents/price-list/cars/PL-New_Focus.pdf
So the EV is about 75% of the CO2e emissions per mile of a petrol hybrid.
There is no end of nuance, loss in transmitting over the grid, extraction of gas, refining of petrol, etc etc. But is isn't *far* lower at all.
Yeah, hybrids offer emission benefits over the pure ICE vehicles that most of us use. They’re also a good idea… but still don’t offer what pure electrics can, even if using only electricity generated from gas, which isn’t even possible never mind the ideal charging scenerio.
Charging an EV now, without limiting your charging times to those where gas isn’t in use, results in about a third of the emission of using a non-hybrid ICE. That’s the worst scenario. You can manage much better, right now, with our current energy generation mix. As that mix changes the benefits will keep going up.
Anyway, enough of this cherry picking anti-EV nonsense. I don’t have one, and I‘m likely never to have one. The future needs fewer cars, and fewer car journeys, but the switching of new cars to EV only will also contribute greatly to reducing emissions.
AFAIU this is a spurious argument
Which bit of the argument is spurious?
as even if we accept the premise that EVs are 100% charged via gas the efficiency of the gas to wheel is higher than petrol/diesel to wheel in terms of CO2 output.
The difference is small, see above.
Beyond that a high proportion of EV charging is done overnight and this will be significantly provided by wind turbines even now.
Even if a significant proportion of overnight power is provided via wind, once the wind is maxed out then any additional demand from chagring EVs must be served by burning gas.
It's a complete piss take that EVs were exempt from the luxury tax in the first place. I get a zero rated band for EVs to encourage uptake but the expensive ones are still luxury so should have attracted the tax IMO.
Someone earlier mentioned Golfs (or equivalent ) as coming into the luxury tax range. The tops ones do yes, which are luxury so shouldn't be much of a suprise. The standard to middle don't unless you load them with luxury extras. Plenty of people would consider any Golf a luxury!
I really hope this is being implemented as an alteration of the rate paid by vehicles in the (currently zero rated) tax band most EVs are in. I.e. every EV owner has to pay not just those buying new from now.
Your possible next government is proposing 100% renewables by 2030
This means 100% of capaqcity not of generation. 100% generation is impossible due to winter high pressure events and the drop in wind generation
It’s more complicated than you seem to understand,
No - I understand it perfectly well thanks. EVs mean an increase in electricity usage which means an increase in electricity generated by fossil fuels. Its that simple. Renewables are maxed out most of the time so increased electricity consumption means increased fossil fuel burning.
“most of the time”
You know the answer then.
1) increase the amount of renewable energy generated to reduce amount of time where gas is in use
2) charge when energy demand is lower
Within the next few years we’ll be at the point where we often need to store energy from renewables when supply is greater than demand. We get that some nights already. Car batteries are an ideal place to put some of that off peak surplus.
Where I live in the country in Scotland (due basically the only available property to rent in our price range when we moved for work) it's a 2.5mile walk to the nearest bus and then the service is fairly limited and impossible on an evening. I do use it when I can and my son does for school, but more often it's easier and quicker to ebike the 7 miles to town if the weather is ok. My wife has the car for her work.
Just now I'm at down at my mam's house in a village in the NE without a car. She's in the hospital 15 miles away and I'm struggling to find a way to get there that doesn't take 2 hours and a few buses for visiting. When I was a kid here the buses were ace, now they're virtually impossible. No wonder every house has 3 cars outside them.
Oddly enough 60million people can't all live in cities with excellent public transport options and walk to work.
Unbelievably many people even need cars for actually doing their work, we used to have two cars as we were both essential users for work, though in their wisdom councils seem to have forgotten that and changed it, but still it's essential to have a car to do your job as there are no/or not enough pool cars.
In the mid 90s we had a car strike at the authority I worked at as they were going to remove the essential car users status. We all got buses to our site visits for what seems like a month , that was more or less possible then with lots of walking at either end and between buses, but took a while day to do one thing, but nowadays in the same area it would be actually impossible.
Sorry, a bit of a rant as I'm sitting here wondering how to visit my mam in hospital after a fall and with Alzheimer's with out it taking dawn til dusk on buses and wishing I'd brought my ebike down in the train so I could have done it in an hour each way 🙄😩🤬😤
Why not molgrips? Where is this extra electricity coming from? Winter high pressure event remember? Minimal wind generation for many days or even weeks.
increase the amount of renewable energy generated to reduce amount of time where gas is in usE
Winter high pressure event. Minimal wind generation for days or even weeks
There is no storage solution on the scale needed.
I'm not even bothering with this TJ because it's pointless, you don't engage or even listen you just repeat the same stuff over and over again. We have had this discussion before.
Someone earlier mentioned Golfs (or equivalent ) as coming into the luxury tax range. The tops ones do yes, which are luxury so shouldn’t be much of a suprise. The standard to middle don’t unless you load them with luxury extras. Plenty of people would consider any Golf a luxury!
Exactly the same luxury car tax as a Rolls Royce then. Do you recon a Rolls Royce owner would consider a Golf luxurious?
This is up there with Buck House paying less Council Tax than a band D in Liverpool. Please don’t normalise absurdity.
Molgrips - I completely see how in the future, regular excess renewables, flexible charging and vehicle to grid discharging will make EVs an environmental no-brainer. But it isn't there yet and I have not seen any thoughtful projection of when it might be.
TJ - I'm not so het up about weeks of still weather in winter when renewable generation is rubbish. I get that this happens, and when it does we will have to burn gas. An EV powered by renewables for 10 or 11 months of the year would still be a big win. The point I'm making is that there is still far to go before we get anywhere near that.
Molgrips - because you have never answered this question. Thats why. You just like to ignore the fact that increased electricity consumption means an increase in fossil fuel burning. Wind can never be a complete solution because of variability in generation. there is no storage solution on anywhere like the scale needed yet or on the horizon. tidal is a long way off due to lack of investment, nuclear takes too long to get on line.
the amount of fossil fuel burned to charge your EV will vary from minimal to most of it depending on conditions. thats just the reality .
With our current energy mix, the carbon emissions of ICE vehicles is still many fold that of any electric vehicle charged at any time of day.
I am sure that there are a large number of ICE vehicles that chuck cleaner air out the back than they breath in at the front
The point about EVs is that the demand is flexible. When they are plugged in, charging can be started and stopped whenever the wholesale price is low - and this happens when renewable supply is high. When I plug my car in it creates a charge schedule based on the weather forecast.
This is how come the electricity going into people's cars isn't 100% fossil fuel based.
the amount of fossil fuel burned to charge your EV will vary from minimal to most of it depending on conditions. thats just the reality .
Yes, that is correct. Your earlier assertion that ALL the energy put into my EV is from fossil fuels is not.
Molgrips - do you know of data showing how often renewables plus nuclear is providing over, say, 90% of UK power generation? I get that gas and biomass can't just be turned off.
I get that it will happen more in the future, but I understand is very rare now, and therefore the vast majority of EV charging happens at a time when the marginal power generations is from gas.
If it isn't that simple, please could you give a hint as to what I am missing? Happy to read an article or something.
People have posted the data before showing energy mix.
GRID.IAMKATE.COM That's apparently a live tracker.
Mert - I'm very familiar with that. The point is that just because the electricity currently being generated is 50% renewable, it absolutely does not mean that if we needed to generate an additional 10kw, it would also be 50% renewable.
Solar and wind generate whatever they generate based on how sunny and windy it is, nuclear runs fairly constantly, the rest is gas and biomass.
So if we need an extra 10kw, it will be gas and biomass. It's a simplification but is broadly true.
The point is that just because the electricity currently being generated is 50% renewable, it absolutely does not mean that if we needed to generate an additional 10kw, it would also be 50% renewable
Right, but my point is that you don't say 'I need to charge my car now, so give me power' and it turns up a gas power station. I plug it in and say 'I want it at 80% by 7am' and it chooses when to charge. So whenever the wind picks up, I get charge.
Unsure when the VED rules changed last but there was some point where I had to pay the ‘luxury car tax’ VED amount for my Model S in 2018-2022. Like folks say, a small fraction of TCO. And I got all my supercharging at no cost back then.
Sadly for irate motorists, VED doesn’t directly pay for roads and road maintenance. It’s just swallowed up in the government coffers. With the real terms drop of ~40% in central government contributions to councils since the coalition more of the road budget is coming out of council tax.
Shame they didn’t also address the long-abandoned fuel escalator and ongoing subsidy of big oil.
this change in VED and rollback of reforms are more signs of this being an election year. No problem, I’ll remember the brand of government that has put us where we are now.
I plug it in and say ‘I want it at 80% by 7am’ and it chooses when to charge. So whenever the wind picks up, I get charge.
The trouble is its not a few hours that there is no spare renewables - it can be days or weeks,
I plug it in and say ‘I want it at 80% by 7am’ and it chooses when to charge. So whenever the wind picks up, I get charge.
But as I understand it, it is incredibly rare for there to be so much wind that it is not necessary to top it up by gas. Like a handful of times per year. Definitely not every night, even for a few seconds.
Even if you charge you car right now, at peak demand time (because you're an idiot) the carbon emissions running your car is far lower than using a straight ICE engine, or even the most efficient lightweight hybrid. Do what molgrips does, and the carbon emissions are lower still. In the next few years they'll improve year on year. Makes a new car purchase a no brainer... buy electric if you want lower emissions in use. I won't be buying one though... I'm no evangelist... I'll be on old ICE cars all my life I suspect... that doesn't change the truth. Using electric cars results in lower emissions than using ICE cars, even given our current energy mix, even if you don't charge it in a sensible fashion. It's all going to get better in the near future for electric cars as well, something we ICE cars users need to acknowledge.
the carbon emissions running your car is far lower than using an straight ICE engine, or the most efficient lightweight hybrid.
I did some very rough maths on the last page which I am happy to have holes picked in. It's only about 25% lower.
PROTONSFORBREAKFAST.WORDPRESS.COM It’s only about 25% lower.
Hmm... "only" 25% if pretending all the energy comes from gas, and cherry picking the best possible hybrid ... that's the worst and best possible situations compared, a very disingenuous comparison, and still you're looking at a 25% saving ... using real world average electric and ICE vehicles, and real charging and generation scenerios, gets you to a 60% plus saving in the UK (already higher than 70% across many European countries)... and that's before we improve the grid and increase renewable production.
If I was buying a new car, and interested in emissions, a worst case day one scenario of saving 25% emission would still be a no brainier... even if that was all that was likely (and it is not). As I said though, I expect never to own an electric car myself... but I'm not joining in with the disinformation to try and make myself feel better. I'll just do what everyone should do... use my old car as little as possible.
Exactly the same luxury car tax as a Rolls Royce then. Do you recon a Rolls Royce owner would consider a Golf luxurious?
This is up there with Buck House paying less Council Tax than a band D in Liverpool. Please don’t normalise absurdity.
No, stuff like RR etc should be charged even more. A percentage of list price tax instead of a fixed amount would have been more appropriate. You could call it super VAT if you like. Though if you can afford a RR or similar the likelihood is even £10,000 more is tax won't be a sticking point. The other thing to consider there is that vehicles like that make a tiny fraction of new vehicles. Probably rate in the small percent of total sales of the current BMW/Audi/Merc knob tank.
a very disingenuous comparison,
My whole point is that at present it is entirely correct and reasonable to assume that the energy will be produced by burning gas.
FWIW I took the numbers for the most efficient type of gas power station listed, so that is in favour of the EV.
Ford focus was just the first car that came to mind, not cherry picked.
Even when burning only gas, there's still a significant saving in emissions. Savings that increase with variable loading and demand balancing, and will increase further as more renewables come online (here in the UK and via interconnects to Norway etc). If one accepts 25% as a current day situation (I don't, it's poppycock) then that is still a strong argument for making your new car an electric car
I wonder how many people would live in rural communities if they weren’t being subsidised by city dwellers?
I wonder where our food would come from if people didn't live in rural communities.
will increase further as more renewables come online
Completely agree with that, it will be a no-brainer one day.
that is still a strong argument for making your new car an electric car
Fair, I can't argue that emissions per mile are indeed lower and even 25% is not to be sniffed at. Especially applicable for high annual mileage.
If one accepts 25% as a current day situation (I don’t, it’s poppycock)
Still keen to hear a rebuttal about the gas thing rather than just being told "it isn't that simple". Like I said, happy to read an article.
I wonder where our food would come from if people didn’t live in rural communities.
Farms. Most people who live in rural communities aren’t involved in farming or food production.
Suburbia and rural communities are massively subsidised.
