Petrol and diesel set to be the new bog roll. Road Warriors unite! 🚙

My EV should roll up on Friday…slightly too late for max smugness but ill take what i can get 🙂

Ah assuming the next Crisis isn’t a power blackout.

re there’s also petrol and food shortages in europe, it’s not happening here in Denmark 😉

Yep it’s absolutely hell here in Spain,even the Iceland was rammed full of English food.

it’s not happening here in Denmark

Perhaps spending Christmas with the Danish inlaws isn’t such a bad idea after all!

I see a lot of benefits to EV’s, but on the other hand, it seems like they are just another excuse for the car industry to tell us all we need to buy new cars; we must buy our way out of the climate crisis by acquiring expensive consumer goods many of which are ludicrous adult Tonka toys called SUVs.

We shouldn’t kid ourselves that the lifetime carbon costs of these items are not massive particularly the batteries that don’t recycle.

Just called at Tesco on our way home from work to do our usual food shop.
No one queuing for fuel although they had diesel and unleaded for sale.
Just been on local TV news and it the same throughout the town

“Tat” doesn’t really need reliable timely supply chains. Food and fuel does.

True but the cost of shipping is so high now that it makes them uneconomic to make.

@I_scoff_cake pretty much sums up.my view on EASTER. Another way to get us to buy yet another new thing, and making stuff is not good for the environment. People spending all day sat in an electric vehicle jam aren’t saving the environment, they are just doing marginally less damage than they might have done had they bought a brand new petrol car, but loads more than by not driving the 300 yards of the school run in the first place and just keeping the old car going for those days when there really is absolutely no alternative to driving. But no one would make any money out of the night they did that, selling new cars makes lots of people lots of money so keep buying new things…
.
If this week has shown us anything it’s how much we have to rely on cars. (Scotrail are on strike again this weekend for example) Only a minority of the country is within sensible distance of a railway, vast swathes of rural Britain have no public transport at all.

Business partner is also nearly empty and so we may have to shut production

Out of curiosity, why would that be ?

That’s meant to say EVs, no idea where EASTER came from🤷‍♂️
Basically we need to drive less, probably a lot less, not buy a new car.

pretty much sums up.my view on EASTER. Another way to get us to buy yet another new thing,

I don’t think chocolate eggs are all that new.

No one said that EVs are pollution-free, but they don’t tend to dump it in areas where people live.

Charge off solar, or when it’s windy, and the only pollution is tyre dust (which I admit is still a problem).

I daresay the situation would be better if we collectively broke the legs of people who sit in their cars with the engine idling while they eat/sleep/make phone calls.

Batteries are almost completely recyclable, as is the steel, aluminium, copper and rare earth elements that the cars are made from. We’re moving away from growing cows to stick to seats. EV batteries no longer contain cobalt.

Batteries are almost completely recyclable

Do you have a source for that claim?

@reluctantjumper Asda Pentwyn had fuel and no queues as of about an hour ago according to our FB.

Without wishing to derail the thread…

Basically we need to drive less, probably a lot less, not buy a new car.

We need to drive a lot less AND buy a new car, but only when our current one wears out.

i_scoff_cake
Free Member

Do you have a source for that claim?

Tesla say that the only parts of their battery packs that aren’t recycled are the module casings- 100% of the batteries themselves are either reused or recycled.

Reuse is a big deal- most of the individual cells will be perfectly usable at the end of the car’s life, even if no longer at their best, so it makes little sense to recycle them. So frinstance, Tesla powerwalls and megapacks have included ex-tesla car cells, Renault does the same with Powervault. Nissan have done a load of distributed grid and offgrid storage stuff.

And there’s loads of other simpler products out there using second-life lipo cells- if you’ve bought a cheap chinese torch or bike light or similar there’s a pretty good chance it had a repurposed cell in.

I was starting to get a bit concerned about the fuel situation locally, I had half a tank this morning, about 170 miles range, but I drive 155 miles a week just commuting to work and back, without adding another sixty miles or so on Friday evening driving to Bristol for a gig I’ve had tickets for since forever. I heard from a driver at work that Sainsbury’s had a delivery yesterday, but they were closed by six o’clock when I went to check from work!
There’s another filling station a short distance from them, that I more or less pass every morning, and they had no fuel the last few days, but I thought I’d check this morning, and they’d had a delivery, so I was able to fill up. That was 6.15, so the early bird, etc. there are others around Melksham and Westbury that I pass that haven’t had any fuel all week, AFAIK.
Still, getting up at stupid o’clock does have the occasional fringe benefit…

but I drive 155 miles a week just commuting to work and back

You could try riding 🙂

My EV should roll up on Friday…slightly too late for max smugness but ill take what i can get 🙂

Ah assuming the next Crisis isn’t a power blackout.

This occurred to me the other day. Media reports of a power shortage when we’re all driving EVs…. cue everyone deciding to plug in at the same time to top up…

Tesla say that the only parts of their battery packs that aren’t recycled are the module casings- 100% of the batteries themselves are either reused or recycled.

That’s 100% of the ones they scrap themselves and with these things the devil is always in the details. For example, it looks like a significant portion of the metals are downcycled, and certainly, it’s very energy-intensive.

Yeah!!!!! local Tesco has fuel and no queues, MrsRNP back in motion again.

I’ve used 70 miles worth today travelling to my Uncle’s funeral and back. As I got closer to home, there are 7 petrol stations in my immediate area, on the outskirts of Guildford and no unleaded or diesel at any of them.

I have 40 miles to do tomorrow to work and back, and 80 miles left on the trip computer. It’s starting to get a bit tight.

This occurred to me the other day. Media reports of a power shortage when we’re all driving EVs…. cue everyone deciding to plug in at the same time to top up…

At least with EV you have alternative ways of (slowly) charging via either home renewable’s or by ICE powered generator. DIY crude oil cracking is a little trickier.

At least with EV you have alternative ways of (slowly) charging via either home renewable’s or by ICE powered generator. DIY crude oil cracking is a little trickier.

True. But I was more thinking of the impact on the grid. A marginal situation could quickly become an outage if everyone plugged-in at the same time. Preventing that will be one of the purposes of the proposed connected charging systems I guess.

The ones on the way into Aldershot from the A331 looked fine yesterday if that helps? Don’t know which side of Guildford your outskirts are 😁

I daresay the situation would be better if we collectively broke the legs of people who sit in their cars with the engine idling while they eat/sleep/make phone calls.

This I very much agree with. Happily burning fuel while doing absolutely **** all is beyond me.

Needs to be stopped.

idiotdogbrain

cheers, I’ve heard that elsewhere too but it’s a 20 mile round trip in the opposite direction to work so if I went it would have to work out. I’m hoping I’ll find somewhere on my way back tonight even if I have to queue. Quite exciting in a completely mundane and avoidable jeopardy sort of way.

Just to add to it. Did 8 extra miles last night. The wife’s car is in for service today but we needed to drop off last night and put the keys in their drop box. So we both drove over, parked the car at the garage, put keys through the letter box……and then ‘Oh! I put the light on to find the service book for them, and I’ve forgotten to turn it off’. Another 4 mile round trip with the spare key and as I was already in my pyjama’s with a hoodie over the top I just couldn’t be arsed to put kit on and get a bike out for those 4 miles.

Which inevitably will see me run out of fuel later 3.5 miles from an open garage.

Batteries are almost completely recyclable

Do you have a source for that claim?

This outfit will recycle them to extract the rare earth elements

https://www.cawleys.co.uk/services/lithium-batteries/

And the main metals are just aluminium and steels so can be dealt with like any other metal recycling.

This is interesting, there’s a piece in it showing how before recycling the batteries, they extract the remaining electricity from them and use it to charge their cars.

Running low so drove around the 6 most local stations at 5pm last night and every single one was shut.
I hope this won’t affect my middle class status by not being able to get to the organic farm shop for fruit and veg on Saturday.

cue everyone deciding to plug in at the same time to top up…

One of the reasons for smart meters and a future smart grid is to manage demand, so theoretically it’s possible to prevent this – in such times charging could be throttled or managed or dynamic pricing used to control it.

I see a lot of benefits to EV’s, but on the other hand, it seems like they are just another excuse for the car industry to tell us all we need to buy new cars; we must buy our way out of the climate crisis by acquiring expensive consumer goods many of which are ludicrous adult Tonka toys called SUVs.

Yep…a great commercial opportunity just like the big switch to Diesel…but I suspect it will ultimately end up causing more problems than it solves just like the jump to diesel did. BEV’s will not be any better than fossil fuel cars. Politically or environmentally.

Currently about 30% of our fossil fuel supply comes from politically unstable countries and we’ve shown we are prepared to go to war over our our energy supply security admit causes alot of geo political and economic problems as its a comodity.

If we all jumped into EV’s then we would be 70% reliant on China as they produce the overwhelming majority of batteries. Do we want to hand over that much power to China politically? Its storing up serious future political ding-dongs. Also it will take the rest of the world decades to catch up with China’s manufacturing and production dominance if it is indeed possible.

And from an environmental point of view China is the biggest polluter…how many new coal fired power stations will be built to satisfy our demand for EV’s and other energy solutions that require big batteries? Like big battery energy storage plants to store excess renewable energy?

We’ll be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. And it wont do anything at all for climate change.

We have an opportunity to separate the linkage between geo politics and energy supply security if we don’t put all our eggs in the battery basket. And at the same time will do alot better for the environment and climate change.

The highway code states: You must not leave a vehicles engine running unnecessarily while a vehicle is stationary on a public road.

I am one of those dreadful people that goes around berating people for doing this. It happens a lot in our local rural car parks and beauty spots. People going to eat their picnic while enjoy the gorgeous countryside view. Yet polluting the very area they are there to admire.
Responses come in many forms from full on abuse (been called some nasty names and felt threatened) to apologies, drivers genuinely not realising they were going against the rules of the highway code and polluting.

Anyway – no trouble getting fuel yesterday, no queue, Much Wenlock.

One of the reasons for smart meters and a future smart grid is to manage demand, so theoretically it’s possible to prevent this – in such times charging could be throttled or managed or dynamic pricing used to control it.

And again, if the Government had even the slightest clue about planning ahead, they’d have been doing a programme of full-scale grid renewal tying in renewable energy sources, a degree of self-sufficiency (such as solar panels on all new builds) and mains upgrading in order to fit in EV charging (ideally off-street because what is happening at the moment is a rush by councils and various private companies to install these things and they’re going in all over pavements which is a nightmare for pedestrians, especially wheelchair users, the blind and so on).

I sat through a transport decarbonisation meeting yesterday with councils and local transport leaders all proudly stating how many EV chargers they were installing. Very little discussion about active travel or modal shift. Only one councillor actually stood up and said “all we’re doing is swapping a gridlock of dirty vehicles for a gridlock of clean ones”. He also pointed out that a lot of the older housing stock in the area he was responsible for simply didn’t have a mains supply that would accept lots of EV chargers.

Does anyone know how it is around SE Oxford / Thame (e.g. Asda Wheatley, I’d never normally go to the M40 services).

Supposed to be spending the weekend there, but don’t fancy 20% of my trip being “fuel hunt to get home again” on Sunday PM.

The social meeeedya balloon has just gone up with a picture of a fuel tanker arriving at the garage down the road thats been shut for 3-4 days. I expect the queue will already have brought the entire area to a standstill

I posted this on the Brexit thread but I feel its worth sharing here

The government tell us that the fuel crisis is easing…

I went to 7 petrol stations this morning and there was no fuel at any of them.

Was then hit by a van whilst stationary at a roundabout. Great start to the day!

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) September 30, 2021

Does anyone know how it is around SE Oxford / Thame (e.g. Asda Wheatley, I’d never normally go to the M40 services

My local supermarkets and garages in MK all had big queues but BP in Roade just off M1 had no queues but only premium & limited to £30

Surely there can’t be that many more cars that haven’t presently got a full tank?

And thanks for posting that @kimbers. Thats perked me right up on a wet, grey morning 🙂

Surely there can’t be that many more cars that haven’t presently got a full tank?

There will be loads.
– The people who had enough fuel to avoid the panic buying are now running low
– The panic buyers will have now used some fuel since the weekend so will be going back to top up as their panic buying behaviour will not have changed and many petrol stations are still shut

Does anyone know how it is around SE Oxford / Thame (e.g. Asda Wheatley, I’d never normally go to the M40 services).

Supposed to be spending the weekend there, but don’t fancy 20% of my trip being “fuel hunt to get home again” on Sunday PM.

Pretty dire.
Asda Wheatley was closed last I heard as they were out of fuel. Traffic was gridlock in Thame heading along to the BP garage earlier today, the Esso on the Long Crendon road was pretty bad as well by all accounts.
The services have had fuel but been crazy busy, also it’s hit and miss if they’ll have the fuel you want. Most seem to be out of diesel.
I’m local to the area and have no fuel in the bike and next to none in the car. Not quite sure how I’ll be getting to work when I’m back in tomorrow.

Not sure if it’s just certain areas that are affected,but I filled up this morning at Formby Tesco’s,drove straight to the pump,no queue all pumps available.
Monday afternoon I was driving through Ormskirk & they were queuing onto the main road.
Hopefully all the panickers will be sitting with enough fuel to keep them from going near a Petrol station for a few weeks / months.
What are they going to panic buy next,something Christmas related?