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Aren't we all driving autogas powered vehicles?
Just saw a newish Jag with some writing on the bumper saying the car produces no this that & the other, (unlike my filthy diesel)
What do autogas cars produce in the way of emissions?
My new hybrid was cheaper than it's diesel equivalent by £100 a month.
What do autogas cars produce in the way of emissions?
Check out the CO2 figures and compare for yourself. Cars running on LPG are generally just a bit worse than the same car on petrol for CO2 but better on particulates and carcinogens.
Hydrogen is the clean way to power cars but in reality the day of unfettered private car ownership is over. If car drivers were not massively subsidised by the general taxpayer then it would have gone already
in reality the day of unfettered private car ownership is over.
Perhaps not today, but I do also think those days are coming to an end.
Not just about 'new power sources' that the car companies want to sell us (remember when a diesel was the answer to low mpg and 'better'?).
I think many will look to a model of renting/ owning smaller/ car clubs etc. I think we will see more head to electric scooters.
It won't be everyone, but I can see it happening.
Hydrogen FTW.
Honestly, can't see the problem with sitting on top of a HBomb..
BMW had a great and thoughtful investment in Hydrogen a few years back, seemed a holistic approach to reducing all manner of nasties emmited. Not sure what happened to thier development work, hope they still continue to invest in it.
Hydrogen is the clean way to power cars but in reality the day of unfettered private car ownership is over. If car drivers were not massively subsidised by the general taxpayer then it would have gone already
In your private universe, perhaps. For the majority of people who [i]don't[/i] live in major conurbations, and who [i]don't[/i] have access to any public transport worth a damn, it'll be a cold day in hell before they're able to give up car ownership.
And please, don't trot out your tired old arguments about using bikes, that's just not going to work for a parent having to get children to a school that might be six or seven miles away, with no bus, no local shop to buy the family shopping, or work, that might be even further away, or for a pensioner who has no post office to get their pension from, or bank, because all the local branches have closed.
I have a friend who lives at least a mile from any local bus-stop, which means walking that distance either along a very narrow, winding and steep in places lane with no footpath or lighting, or across country again with zero lighting, and only two buses a day.
What he said^ plus, it all comes down to energy density. Diesel is more 'efficient' than petrol purely because it has more joules per litre. Autogas is cheaper than petrol, but having to have a heavy compressed gas cylinder on the vehicle plus extra fiddly bits negates the advantages. Hydrogen is a bugger to compress enough to make it viable and has a habit of leaking. Batteries are getting better but still don't have anywhere near the energy density of petrol and diesel, and are only economically viable due to MASSIVE subsiding by the government, in a complete lack of vehicle fuel duty plus grants at point of purchase. I reckon diesel and petrol will be around for a while yet, and viable replacements for the diesel powered goods transport that most of the world relies upon are only just emerging. Fact is, diesel is the cheapest way of converting chemical energy to kinetic energy that there is, pretty much (when government subsidies and levys are taken out of the equation, especially).
Count zero - as costs of motoring go up perhaps society will change? I am talking over a generation. Already cars are two expensive for many folk to run.
You know - things like investment in public transport and local shops becoming more viable? Huge commuttes becoming less viable?
Its already happening and will only accelerate. Private cars are a very wasteful way of transporting people
Yup we'll likely have a bit of biodiesel even if/when most transport is electric and fossil fuels are phased out.
too
tjagain - MemberCount zero - as costs of motoring go up perhaps society will change? I am talking over a generation. Already cars are two expensive for many folk to run.
You know - things like investment in public transport and local shops becoming more viable? Huge commuttes becoming less viable?
Its already happening and will only accelerate. Private cars are a very wasteful way of transporting people
It will. Self driving cars will fundamentally change the way people view cars and car ownership. Plus it will have a huge effect on public transport and delivery networks. There will always be people and places where cars are a basic necessity but once it becomes little more than a private taxi the idea of buying one outright will become more of a luxury.
Diesel is more 'efficient' than petrol purely because it has more joules per litre
That's one of the reasons but not the only one.
LPG just isn't enough of an improvement to bother with.
LPG just isn't enough of an improvement to bother with.
LPG is pretty decent, but obviously was still born in terms of investment. It has a super high octane rating (108 ron iirc) so it could have been ideal for todays small turbo petrol engines. But looks like ev's are the future.
Compare the weight and space requirements for an Lpg pressure vessel and a plastic petrol tank and you'll realise why it really isn't. For a start you can only fill an Lpg tank to around 66% capacity, IIRC.could have been ideal for todays small turbo petrol engines.
Its the only meaningful reason that makes any real sense. 33% more energy per litre is not to be sneezed at; and fits nicely with the approx 30% more mpg that you can expect from equivalent diesels compared to petrols.That's one of the reasons but not the only one.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are indeed a great solution - it would use current infrastructure namely go to 'petrol' station, full with Hydrogen, drive. They have all the advantages of a EV (load of torque, silent, no gears needed, needs little or no maintenance for the drivetrain) Tax revenue would be secure.
None of that makes any difference because it currently takes more energy to refine hydrogen than can be released by its use, even more than current EVs all you're just creating the pollution in a more tax efficient way (maybe the lack of batteries would off-set the greater cost of creating the energy).
Either we fix that, or we find a better way to create the power needed to refine the hydrogen - I've just been reading about a plan to build a tidal lagoon in Cardiff - as Day Cardiff, it's massive a goes from Cardiff to Newport. It'll cost £8bn and be enough to power all of Wales, which is a lot, but Hinckley C will cost £20bn. One of those for home use and the slightly smaller in Swansea to power vehicles - Wales is sorted at least. That would be so cool.
Hydrogen is a dead end. It's an awkward inconvenient energy storage device -essentially a means to store electricity generated elsewhere. We have those already, they're called batteries and they're getting really quite good. Also if you burn hydrogen in an IC engine you still generate all sorts of crap from the nitrogen lantent in the atmosphere. Toyota's hydrogen car is a nice technology demonstrator for fuel cells, but the prospect of carting around a cryogenic fuel and the fuel cell all to avoid using batteries doesn't appeal, to me at least.
v8ninety - Member
could have been ideal for todays small turbo petrol engines.Compare the weight and space requirements for an Lpg pressure vessel and a plastic petrol tank and you'll realise why it really isn't. For a start you can only fill an Lpg tank to around 66% capacity, IIRC.
Well I removed a prins system from one of my cars so I know exactly how much they weigh. Any car that has space for a spare wheel has space for an lpg tank and that's just a bodge. If they were integrated into the design of the vehicle they could be placed anywhere within reason.
As for the weight it's probably not much different to the weight of a 1.0 petrol vs a 2.0 diesel engine. All moot because what I was referring to was the higher states of tune it would potnetially allow you to run.
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are indeed a great solution - it would use current infrastructure namely go to 'petrol' station, full with Hydrogen, drive.
Unfortunatly not . Hydrogen would just escape from the tanks etc. A whole new complex and expensive set up would be needed
Fuel cell cars work well but hydrogen storage needs to be sorted first and thre is no foreseeable way of doing this on a mass distributed scale
I was going to quote Iceland and its wonderful hydrogen based transport structure but I Googled it first . http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4664
Try the Unst project! Its not well represented on the web but the entire island is powered by a wind turbine / hydrogen maker / storage tank / fuell cell including a fuel cell car.
Unfortunatly not . Hydrogen would just escape from the tanks etc. A whole new complex and expensive set up would be needed
Oh no I get that, I didn't expect them to just switch the unleaded for hydrogen in the tanks but from a consumer and taxation point of view it's all very familiar. You fill your tank, you drive till it's empty and most importantly I think unlike EVs the Gov won't have to work out a new 'stealth' tax to to recoup the lost duty - just put it on the hydrogen.
Of course there's challenges, but if you told someboby you wanted to create the current system that takes crude from the Middle East and produce millions of litres of petrol available in every corner of the earth, If they didn't know it existed already they lad say it couldn't be done. There are some advantages - for example Hydrogen is the most abundant chemical on earth, so you can pretty much create it wherever you like.
Count zero - as costs of motoring go up perhaps society will change? I am talking over a generation. Already cars are two expensive for many folk to run.
I see society moving in a direction that will overall encourage/necessitate people to travel more and independently at that. Many businesses and services are centralising and closing premises outside of cities. So unless you're in one then everything is moving further away. Modern society is built around readily available, personal transport and to try and deconstruct that now would be next to impossible.
Here in the south west I couldn't afford [i]not[/i] to drive. Buses here are useless because they've not been up to the job for years so nobody uses them and so services get cut, it's a vicious circle.
15 years ago my small town had a tax office, maternity unit, dwp office and other stuff, now the hospital, police station and library are to shut along with half the banks. People are going to need to travel more not less.
The trouble is that it takes more energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen than you get back from them as fuel . The Iceland idea was based on them being able to use the abundance of cheap electricity that they can produce from GeoThermal and Hydro sources . Perhaps easier just to power electric cars with that electricity now .
lazlowoodbine
I think that is a dying trend and is not being replicated in other countries. Remote / internet working, self driving cars, flexible public transport etc will come. Its just too wasteful in energy terms to move people around the way we do now. The energy cost is simply too high and will only get higher.
Ramseyneil - but if you use wind turbines to produce the electricity you are only using the hydrogen as a storage medium yes its inefficient but are the loses that important when yo have virtually free power? Are the losses more than the losses in electricity transmission? Unst proves it works on a small scale
Home working and better mobile connectivity is already reducing the need for commuting. The trend will continue at an increased pace.
Office space is an expensive luxury.
An awful lot of people don't work in offices though. There is a lot of physical labour to be done.
I think it was an economist who said something along the lines of; Society is not going to get anywhere cutting each others hair.
Basically, services and admin work will not feed people.
lazlowoodbine - MemberI see society moving in a direction that will overall encourage/necessitate people to travel more and independently at that. Many businesses and services are centralising and closing premises outside of cities. So unless you're in one then everything is moving further away. Modern society is built around readily available, personal transport and to try and deconstruct that now would be next to impossible.
Here in the south west I couldn't afford not to drive. Buses here are useless because they've not been up to the job for years so nobody uses them and so services get cut, it's a vicious circle.
15 years ago my small town had a tax office, maternity unit, dwp office and other stuff, now the hospital, police station and library are to shut along with half the banks. People are going to need to travel more not less.
The problems you are predicting are going to become less and less relevant. Online banking is eliminating the need for physical banks (and crypto currencies will probably eliminate the need for money). Taxes, again, online. Drones and/or autonomous delivery vehicles are probably going to do away with supermarket shopping, and a large chunk of retail in general.
And once there's a system for delivering parcels by just placing them in the autonomous delivery truck that just dropped off your groceries why the hell do you need a post office? Tax your car? Online. Banking? Online. Letters? Emails.
As there won't be a hospital within 30 miles then I'll just go on-line when I have an arterial bleed then..
Seriously, I can see the way that many admin type things can be done without physical interaction but this plugged-in utopia just won't cut it in real life.
An awful lot of people don't work in offices though.
Believe it or not, we know this.
But point stands, an awful lot of people DO work in offices.
lazlowoodbine - MemberAs there won't be a hospital within 30 miles then I'll just go on-line when I have an arterial bleed then..
How often do you have arterial bleeds?
When yo have an arterial bleed you get an ambulance as you would now.
Fair point on the arterial bleed, bad example.
OK seeing a GP, another process that on many occasions could be replaced (and improved) by an app to collect stats and an occasional video conference.
Of course some people will still need to travel or more likely all people will still need to travel but not as much as they do now.
But does it really matters what powers the transport we each need as long as its clean? Theres no excuse for dumping poison into the air and I suspect China will drive this change now the West has gone mad.
The working from home one is interesting. Some of my work I could do from home home technically but I live in a very small house like many. I don't have the room. I would need a separate office space due to distractions. Not keen on a shared office space with a load of fandoms either.
I had a previous Octavia converted to LPG 10 years ago.
Worked well in general. Was certainly cheaper, and broke-even after a year or so.
Pumps were a bit of a pain to find and mpg was slightly down so effective range was 250 miles. But you could still use your main tank.
It had a couple of issues, filling up was a but awkward - some of the pumps were a bit Dr Who and very tricky. It took your spare tyre space too, although in this day and age you don't often get them.
TheBrick - Member
The working from home one is interesting. Some of my work I could do from home home technically but I live in a very small house like many. I don't have the room. I would need a separate office space due to distractions. Not keen on a shared office space with a load of fandoms either.
I've been banging the drum for 'remote working' over office working for years and of course there are challenges for everyone, including employees of course.
It wouldn't be an overnight thing - but consider this, your home is probably small because homes are expensive in the UK. A 'spare' room is a laughable idea to most people under 50.
But if you could work from home and didn't need to commute to an office you could move somewhere where the homes were cheaper and get more for your money.
Add another million or so remote workers into the mix and the UK housing market shifts like never before so even if you didn't want to move out of town it would still be cheaper as demand would be lower.
I have to say to me it seem like hydrogen is the best fit for a long term solution.
Accepting its inefficient to produce, once we move it to scale production its going to get better, and the way seems to me, the big oil producing Middle East can switch to solar plant hydrogen production, and ship it round the world using the same model as currently for oil.
Local production can also be made to work, as the big issue with solar and wind in places like the UK, is its not always windy/sunny when the power is required, so needs to be stored some how, so, produce hydrogen to power cars/lorries etc.
Battery power seems like a poor solution on many fronts.
1 They take a lot longer to charge than to fill a tank
2 Range isn't approaching current technologies, albeit getting better, perhaps works for social and commuting use, but not really great for industry
3 batteries are heavy
4 batteries are expensive to produce, using scarce difficult and polluting to extract materials
5 batteries have an intrinsic lifespan as anyone with a modern phone will know.
Hydrogen is a great solution, IF transport and storage can be cracked. There's huge areas of the world that could produce near limitless amounts.
However any technology that allows the storage and transportation of large amounts of potential energy would also work. Liquid flow batteries I reckon would also be a winner.
even if you didn't want to move out of town it would still be cheaper as demand would be lower
But being as I have only just managed to buy a drop in price would mean I would be stuck in the house due to negative equity.
Also in your first example of moving to a cheaper area that relies on my partner's ability to move to that area and the big one, lots of areas are cheaper because of commuting and work issues. Remove those issues and they are no long that much cheaper. It's not as simple as you propose. Add in the hysteresis of moving due to fees etc and savings have to be significant.
It's more of a long term trend. IT'll take time for people to adjust to the idea - a generation maybe.
molgrips - MemberIt's more of a long term trend. IT'll take time for people to adjust to the idea - a generation maybe.
This. Its not that long ago all children walked to their local school and these long commutes were rare. In Fife there is this ridiculous situation ( I am sure in other areas as well) where rural workers live in the towns and commute to rural locations having been priced out of the housing in the areas where they work and city workers commute from rural areas.
Its a massive adjustment but its coming like it or not. Its simply usustainable in energy costs to move people around the way we do now.
+1 for hydrogen.
By going to batteries we're swapping one mineral resource we're greedily using up (and that would be quite useful to have for other stuff), for another.
Its simply usustainable in energy costs to move people around the way we do now.
And time costs. The amount of wasted human effort is staggering. At a detriment to both working and personal lives.