RodTungsten
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Let’s go CGS and bring back the erg…. ( what have we started?)
Electric Cars Still Struggling.
- Thread starter philw696
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MarkMas
Chief pedant
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It is about 300km from https://what3words.com/useless.electric.cars to the nearest EV charging station.
gb-gta
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Before too long it seems the issue won’t be EV’s, we’ll have sod all to eat!
If you have 10 minutes this insight by petrolhead and farmer Harry Metcalfe is interesting, with governments assuming we will all be in EV’s by 2035 and all have no gas boilers, hence farming is already now a main sector to mess with….
The interesting bit relating to food policy starts just after 8 mins in.
If you have 10 minutes this insight by petrolhead and farmer Harry Metcalfe is interesting, with governments assuming we will all be in EV’s by 2035 and all have no gas boilers, hence farming is already now a main sector to mess with….
The interesting bit relating to food policy starts just after 8 mins in.
safrane
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On Friday I took my XC90 in for a service at the supplying dealer in Kendal as I was due to visit my Mother, who lives the NW (two birds and stones etc). I asked for a courtesy car and was given one of thier EX30 EV.
It came with 80% charge and an indicated range of 245 miles. My planned trip was half of that. However brisk driving with aircon on and a short detour to Boland Bridge for dinner and the battery was at 12% when I went back the next day... this was after adding 15% at the rapid charger in Lancaster.
Makes me far less likely to trade up to the EX90 they have been pushing to me for the last 2 1/2 years.
It came with 80% charge and an indicated range of 245 miles. My planned trip was half of that. However brisk driving with aircon on and a short detour to Boland Bridge for dinner and the battery was at 12% when I went back the next day... this was after adding 15% at the rapid charger in Lancaster.
Makes me far less likely to trade up to the EX90 they have been pushing to me for the last 2 1/2 years.
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Andyk
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I think we probably all agree EV isn’t the future and I am sure something else will be along but there are companies going fully electric soon…or so they say. Had an interesting conversation with the boss of the company who makes the cylinder heads for Jaguar. Their contract ends in 2033 when Jaguar will be fully electric. That was until they had had their contract extended to provide cylinder heads until 2055. Maybe not all is as it seems.
zagatoes30
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Even the most ardent EV mainstream manufacturers, not including Tesla they seem to be ploughing their own field, seem to be thinking about alternatives number have rescinded or postponed their all EV conversion dates
zagatoes30
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I think we will end up with a mix of EV, Hybrids, synthetic ICEs plus other new players for a time and then eventually one may push the others out over time.
davy83
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I am not asure we all agree that the EV is not the future? EV's are a part of the future already, and EV sales grew by 35% to 14.2 million cars in 2023, and there appears no reason why not, its not like it turns out to be bad idea, because it's not, they make great cars. The future being a mix is likely given some work on hydrogen fuel cells and direct hydrogen combustion. But if we plan to stop the planet from cooking us all and destroying everything we know with extreme weather, we need to stop burning carbon fuels, so we do not really have a choice (or at least our children and grand children don't) so hybrids are a stop gap not a solution, same as plant based fuel.
zagatoes30
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But the majority of electricity across the world is still generated from fossil fuels, some countries are better than others but we are along way from being free of using them regardless of the energy we actually use and that is before we take in account the battery materials.
Unless we fundamentally change our use habits we will continue to need these sources regardless of the power type at point of use.
As a point the increase in power consumption by data centres is massive, Ireland is currently close to 20% of power used is by them with AI estimated to increase this requirement - do we really need to store everything
3hcp
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France is the outlier here as they invested heavily in nuclear in the 1970s that’s why their trains work so well. People think they are saving the planet by driving electric but the table above shows the true picture.personally I think EVs make perfect city cars but in the real world you need an ICE as well.
Harry described it well in this video
Andyk
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I think they will always be around but not to the level that most are expecting. For starters in cities where people don’t have drive ways it will not be the answer as the infrastructure isn’t there and I can’t see how it could be. Add the fact if every household had an electric car could the grid actually cope. I don’t disagree we need to stop carbon fuels so certainly now disagreeing just don’t see electric as savour of the planet. Add the fact that the electric being put into these cars come from fossil fuel power stations and it doesn’t sound as good as they tell you it is. OK wind turbines etc will need to replace these type of power stations eventually.
MrRMB
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In Norway, with really high EV adoption due to generous subsidies, drivers are hanging on to older diesel cars for winter and long distance work. My take on it all is that we need to stop ramming EVs down people's throats, accept that a mix will suit most and finally that scrapping millions of usable vehicles, whose carbon footprint has happened and tend to do lower miles, to replace them with mostly Chinese Evs, made with debatable environmental concern could be throwing the baby out with the bathwater and likely as not increase emissions.
urquattrogus
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I'm more worried about the amount of electricity AI uses and the environmental implications.
zagatoes30
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And in most cases AI has dubious responses and is used for the wrong reasons. One of my team members asks AI to write his email responses, he was spending so much time asking AI to respond, then changing wording so that I didn't think it was AI - all to save him thinking - we had one of those Manager - Team Member discussions and its stopped
gb-gta
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Those massive data centres do use a large amount of power, and that’s before AI kicks in.
Globally, apparently approx 500Twh at the moment and going up fast. 2% of all global power consumption. Because Ireland has so many of these places now apparently they are quickly heading for over 30% of all power used there by themselves!
Globally EV’s use approx 150Twh for comparison, but also going up of course, they reckon to 1800Twh by 2040.
But data centres will probably be much more by then as they are predicted to be 1000Twh by 2026!
Maybe if governments and corporations didn’t want to harvest data about everything you do/buy/look at/where you go and have been etc etc, the power could be used for useful things….
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urquattrogus
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Interesting numbers; it's just my fear that normal people and other groups such as Farmers will be aggressively forced into the Net Zero agenda whilst this sort of thing, Data Centres and AI, gets left unchecked in the background because it suits big tech and governments.