Is it time to sell the petrol or diesel car and go electric

[AW8]

Yes I know....perhaps a little guilt of having driven an RX-8 & then a V8 X5 for many years.

When I first owned the above cars electric & hybrid technologies were not relevant to cars in same class as the X5 I owned.

Now there is the BMW X5 iperformance, although I have just taken a look at the BMW UK website and note the X5 iperformance has an electric only range of approx 19 miles.

Despite me highlighting the obvious emissions benefits of Plug in electric, Plug in hybrid & fossil/electric hybrid vehicles I personally feel that adequate electric only range is a key factor many consider prior to purchase.

Tesla offer in excess of 300 mile range on one charge & there are claims that a 50% charge using a supercharge charge location takes just 20 mins. This in vehicles that have adequate &/or excellent driving performance. There are also plans for more supercharging stations.

Can't see myself in a plug in only electric vehicle anytime soon, however,  for me, certain electric vehicles are becoming more practical & relevant.

[Nat]

What a load of rubbish. The Govt is clueless  and just want votes /  jobs for life.

The Swedes did a big research on electric cars and you need to keep them for 8 years , yes 8 years compared to a diesel before they pay off/become greener.
We cannot recycle fridges in this day and age and you are telling me we can recycle the batteries with all their toxic elements .............ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE.

COST ...............er don't know what the govt is on , but most of these electric cars are way outside most peoples budget.

COST.....replacement battery pack ? Last I read somewhere battery pack for a Tesla was around  the £25k mark .

We have no infrastructure. Are you telling me if you are driving Brighton to Newcastle you are going to park up half way through your journey and queue up for a charging point ? Get real. No one is going to do that.

Where do all you people think the electricity will come from ? We are already struggling for power . If everyone switched to everything electric the country would be in darkness.

Infrastructure takes years to build/supply ............we are not ready nor do we have the money .

The future is NOT electric, but whilst on the subject lets mention  wind turbines ; which are rubbish. Oh look its too windy = no power and maybe it fell over and broke. Oh look no wind = no power. + + They are horrendous blot on the landscape. The future for power generation is tidal, which is guaranteed 24/7 but no one is developing it as there are no backhanders .....oh sorry I meant subsidies for that .

The future is Hydrogen , because when you burn it you get plain old water out the back and it is available in unlimited quantities .

Then we have infrastructure..............the govt will tax petrol/diesel cars at £1 mio a year to get us off the road. I for one will tell them to f :rant:  off and will never stop driving my car/bike. I love driving and the govt does not represent me and history has proven they are mistaken every time. Also if everyone goes electric who will pay road tax to fix the roads ?

Electric cars = no soul . We don't just drive for speed . How it sounds and feels is all a big part of driving pleasure. There is a reason a Lambo didn't  come with a cd multichanger.

The entire thing is badly thought out and is total bollocks.
I will NOT be giving up my fossil fuel transportation until you prove and I believe you that a cleaner sustainable alternative is available at the right price and as of today and the near future that is clearly not the case and its is all emperors new clothes.

Cars are relatively clean these days and diesels should all have a particulate filter as a minimum.
Note that most of  the rest of the planet is merely trying to survive and those people don't give a stuff about any of this. If they have to burn a tyre to keep warm they will . The word Green doesn't even come into their vocabulary. Whats stops all this pollution coming our way ?
If you really want to clean up the planet, I suggest you introduce absolute global population control as we need to reduce the world population by  half. Of course no one is going to campaign for euthanasia so we will just continue to pay through the nose for  badly though out policy on some green campaigners pipe dream .

To put all of this in context.................the UK has a population of 65.5 mio people.
The World population is 7.5 Bio.

The UK is 0.87% of the world population , or if you prefer it in plain english .......absolutely f**k all difference.

Good luck to those who believe all the nonsense.

[weirdfish]

Blimey, at last, some good old fashioned common sense.
Whilst not everybody would agree with the above comments I have to applaud you for actually saying it how it is.
How is anyone supposed to move on in this world if they keep moving the goalposts.
They did the same with buy to lets, ( of which I have a few ), it was a far better way of getting a decent return on your money rather than leaving it in some god awful bank account, they realised this was a cash cow and slapped stamp duty on purchases and scrapped tax relief/claiming, on buy to let mortgages.
But that's another topic.

[IanP]

I would give that 6 out of 10 on the rant scale. Would have been 10 out of 10, but I agree with you. 

[Nat]

I guess the correct procedure is to say sorry.............

Bad day at work and its the hot topic of discussion atm. What surprises me is the amount of people that believe all this rubbish. Clearly people can't think for themselves. Needless to say as some of you rightly pointed out I clearly disagree. It was very old rantonians , so for that my apologies .

I would like to add that I am not against making things cleaner / better / healthier , but we have to be told the truth instead of being lied to all the time. I also 100% resent all these taxes. I already pay a huge sum of money in tax and I am against things like allowing electric cars to pay no tax. They should contribute as they use the infrastructure. Where does all our money go ? We pay billions .

So to answer the original question, NO I will not be selling my diesel X5  or any of my other cars/bikes.

Have a great weekend.

[AW8]

Nat,

You make a lot of valid points.....especially re lacking UK infrastructure & highighting global variations in attitude towards emissions. Clearly having a sense of perspective of the bigger picture is sensible.

I am not aware of battery pack replacement costs for all makes and models, however, I would not object to a 20 min 50% charge after 315 miles driving (on single charge).

I am very mindful that as the UK deliberates greener vehicles, other counties continue to build economies doing what we did decades ago.....Churning smoke into the sky & rubbing their hands together.

The hydrogen comments are of interest. I remember discussions re same in the past. Some claimed it was the future and others spoke of airship tragedies of old.

I should clarify that I am not currently looking to switch to plug in only motoring, however, many argue that global changes are needed if global emissions are a genuine global problem that presents genuine global risks.

[X5Sport]

Hydrogen fuel cells are probably the most likely future.  BUT you still need significant amounts of electricity to 'split' the water molecule.  Converting fuel stations is arguably fairly straightforward.  It's just a case of changing the tank types, pipes and pumps but these are all expensive and need regular checks due to the system being under (very?) high pressure.  I assume we aren't taking cryogenics at the fuel stations as that also needs significant electrically powered refrigeration systems.

Hydrogen tankers are a frequent sight on the road around here (the A1 being close by) but are they cryogenic in order to get enough fuel round stations - may not matter - and a fuel spill will now be a challenge all its own!

Lithium Batteries currently cost 5 times their manufacturing costs to recycle.  That will get better over time, but.... and like oil there is a finite amount of the stuff with large quantities in politically 'iffy' places.

Electric cars need to be kept for 8-years to break even but at present their efficiency falls below what most owners would accept after just 10 years.  Batteries can only be recharged a limited number of times and the laws of Chemistry & Physics determine that limit.

With the infrastructure not being in place, and that also means non-existent power stations, at a local or national level then each house will need to provide their own.  And if it isn't sunny or windy then you need a fixed battery to provide the 7kW (32A) charging for perhaps several hours, especially in multi-car households.

[Nat]

You are right about the large amount of energy required to make hydrogen.
That's where my argument for tidal generating power makes the most sense.
Take the river Thames..........you could have a generator box spaced 10 m apart from the next one all the way along the river, both sides under the water line.............no blot on the landscape and they are made of non metalic, non corrosive element and the workings are hermetically sealed. We could have these all along the coast too , all of them out of sight producing power 24/7/365.
As for hydrogen transportation issues , the world had the same issues when we started using petrol.
We could have hydrogen fuel cell. I.E you pull up to the station , open the boot, unplug the empty cylinder, plug in a full one and drive off. The cells are filled at the factory and just transported to filling stations. A bit like a gas bottle.
Then of course we can make all our ships, aeroplanes and trains run on hydrogen , as lets face it , I cant see an electric ship anytime soon nor an electric plane either.
As someone pointed out, I do break up most long journeys , if nothing else to have a toilet break, so stopping for 20 mins in itself is not an issue. The issue will be finding a charging post and as per every other item for sale in a motorway service station the price of their charge point will bbe 50 times higer than anywhere else , but thats another story.
The first step in making out country green and efficient at a decent cost is to re-nationalise all of our infrastructure. Its all foreign owned and we are ripped off to subsidize their own countries. There was an article about that in todays this is money  , saying how  the rail companies are  foreign owned and we are over charged (  ripped off ) and it is used to subsidize their railway system and it is set to rise a lot again.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news ... ngers.html

As you can see it appears we have digressed but its all linked...............and sadly we have a load of incompetent people setting our policies and how our country is run.

I wish someone would explain to me why we sell absolutely everything to other people who run  it for us at a huge cost . Its mad.

Probably doesn't help I have just come back from watching Dunkirk.

[IanP]

I am surprised that LPG vehicles haven't been pushed more. They are fairly clean burning and the infrastructure for fueling is all in place (ie garages). If integrated from new then the systems would be quite discreet. I think Saab did one model some time back. Guess thst there aren't the vested interests in the government to invest in this.

[X5Sport]

LPG is 'cleaner' than both diesel and petrol so I can only guess that the drive to diesel throughout the 90s and 00s meant it wasn't cost effective to bring in LPG even though in the EU it is the greatest used of all the alternative fuels (still only around 3% though).  Did the petrol industry kick too and get it buried.  We know the oil lobby has some serious clout.

Biofuels might have helped but most modern diesels can't use it and Ethanol has limited support in the petrol arena because of the amount of land needed to grow enough crops from which to create it.  Ethanol also destroys many older petrol cars because of the high water content rotting out tanks and pipes.

How many usable patents have been bought and buried by the oil companies, and how many emissions improvement technologies have been ignored or buried by the automotive industry because they cost a little more to use so the manufacturers profits suffer?  Successive Governments worldwide have ignored the true emissions levels because it embarrasses them when it becomes obvious that the real carbon footprints are significantly higher than is believed or published!

[Dan1502]

I might not recall it correctly but read something which I think suggested that using loads of energy to produce hydrogen to then use that to produce electricity and all that is involved in terms of infrastructure being daft and potentially in the interests of the oil companies who could switch to hydrogen and utilise existing service station locations to sell it at a profit and also governments who could continue to apply fuel tax.  The argument was that battery technology is improving rapidly and though infrastructure might be required out and about, everyone has it at home and, well, it's everywhere really and transport isn't required but it's hard to differentiate it from general use to tax it etc etc.

[X5Sport]

I agree that every house has electricity (well typically at least) however every house will need a separate 7kW (or more) power spur putting in to allow for faster charging.  That's a 32A minimum feed point at a convenient place for the car owner.  Many families have two cars, so that is either a single 70A feed to cope with dual chargers or two single feed spurs.  The average family home has a 100A feed.  You turn a TV on, add an electric oven, Mum turns the tumble dryer on, Dad cuts the grass with an electric mower and someone wants a cup of tea from an electric kettle......and it all goes dark!

Houses converted to flats often still have a single 100A main feed.  Now you might have the situation where four people in that house all have electric cars.....

Battery tech is improving but you still need to charge a large battery.  A Nissan Leaf has a 30kW/h battery so even with 100% charging efficiency it's going to take at least 4 hours of use on a 7kW/h charger.  Fine for single car households, but not for multi-car houses.

I am still seriously thinking that my next car may well be electric, but long term it isn't the answer.  We don't have enough Lithium in the planet!

[Horizon]

I was reading an article yesterday that said the government received 57.9 pence
per  litre in tax on fuel in the UK !!!
If we all started using electric cars tomorrow, the government would pay a £5000 subsidy towards each car.
So 5k  cost
That's per car, plus a loss in fuel tax, and road fund licence . Is it the government or the oil companies that should be worried ??????

[A Blair]

I have a Nissan Leaf in the stable. Chrome trim, 6kw charger and a solar panel on the rear wing.
24kw 2year old. 14k on the clock.
The original cost was iro 30k
Gov gave me £5k
Nissan iro £4k and I put a deposit in.
The settlement is £12.7k Dealer retail is far less.
Its a hoot to race away at the lights up to 30 and very refined. I am giving it back August 21st. Blindfolded inside you would be clueless as to what it is. 2 tonne of white goods around the bends is no fun. Partner loves the convenience of it all.
Anyone who thinks they are cleaner is kidding themselves. All it does is move the emissions from the back of the car to the power station. Add in the battery recycle after say 10years?  cleaner. I think not.
Cleaner is:
solar panels on the roof.
wind turbine, heat recovery, heat pump etc. Nothing car related.
I bought the X5 and I can afford to scrap it. The cost of the car at £4.5k plus the LPG conversion its currently undergoing is nothing like the depreciation of an electric car. Plus its great to drive.
2040 might be end of ICE sales but I think you can add 20 year for banger removal.

Crude oil is not just for fuel. Plastics, cleaners and  lube. LPG and NLG for the winter is just part of the story.
Hydrogen is one of the none Hydrocarbon products.

To answer your question. Not just yet. 

[lezmtaylor]

1. Congratulations Jason( you kept that quiet), beautiful baby, got my wife quite broody. Mind you we both are mid 70;s, so barring some sort of miracle there is no chance.
2. I've been banging on about lpg for years, it's so clean burning, emissions almost  non toxic, engine friendly, cheap to run (after pay off period) , etc.


Lez