Why is the LEC website green?

[Rambo]

"The Prime Minister will use a speech on Tuesday to announce the creation of a taskforce to accelerate the building of schools, hospitals, roads and even prisons"

Maybe the energy minister needs to remind him we need to invest in power stations too

[dapinky]

All of this is an interesting set of arguements.... but will have little practical effect on me.

At my age, I possibly have 30 odd years of driving left in me (although my dad has finally hung up his string-backed gloves at age 96..... so that could be an extra 10 years).

Either way, I have only ever bought 1 brand new car, and will probably never do so again (a 2 year old vehicle makes far more economic sense to me). As such, I am unlikely to have the most up-to-date technology, and that is fine with me....... but may make a difference with EVs development rates (especially battery development).

My driving gets broken into 2 distinct 'types' - local driving (shopping etc) with a journey of <20 miles, often only 2 miles from home - so could be done by taxi (can't carry that much shopping to walk it!) at least one way.

The second type is 'long distance' stuff - when the nearest family is nearly 3 hours away, and MIL is 5 hours away, and EV wouldn't cut it with present range and infrastructure. I could get there okay with a full charge at home (as long as there are no appreciable delays....M5.... yeah, right!), but I couldn't do a day round-trip as I wouldn't be able to guarantee getting a charge at the far end, or on the way....... and running out of battery during the last 45 miles home in rural Pembrokeshire isn't an ideal situation (there are zero charging points between my house and Carmarthen... except for Tesco 1.5 miles from home).

'Leisure' driving is most of my going-out these days.... I have no work commute to worry about. It tends to be either a tootle round the countryside with the roof down (or in the van if it's poor weather), or a longer trip away in the van (or a car!) so an EV wouldn't be my choice for either (with the current offerings).

Because I don't buy cars frequently, and tend to keep them going for a long while, a second-hand vehicle is the most environmentally friendly option for me, and I have little desire to contribute to the further destruction of the planet (except I know that fossil fuel is limited, so it is a poor arguement).

My decision to abandon ICE will depend purely on the future legislation and availability of fossil fuel/parts.

[Simon_P]

Maybe the energy minister needs to remind him we need to invest in power stations too

He's trying to but the money is coming from the Chinese and it is up to the French government if it is built or not.

Dapinky, yes, back to my earlier point why would you even own a car you don't have to think far back to realise that we will be fine without.

(except I know that fossil fuel is limited, so it is a poor arguement)

Think liquid synthetic gas, made from processing rubbish rather than fossil fuel... And then realise how ill informed and short sighted our politicians are killing off the IC engine.

[Bern]

Have you bought the battery Bern ? Or is it leased ? Interested to know the purchase cost vs rental cost

We have leased the battery, though if you are buying a new Zoe that's no longer an option.

At the time I did a like-for like comparison between leased and owned battery models, and it looked like you could buy a leased battery car and 3 years of lease before you matched the price of the owned battery Zoes.

But most of the Zoes in our prices range were leased battery!

With the battery lease you also get breakdown cover, which came in very useful when we had to get it back the dealer in Bristol (20 miles) and it was telling us it couldn't be driven! The dealer wouldn't collect it, but within an hour of calling the battery lease division they had collected the car, and later that day a courtesy car appeared! Turns out it was a problem with the battery-battery charger (charging the 12V battery from the main battery), I think it was a 12 hour job, but it took them 3 weeks because they couldn't get the part!! And luckily we were still within the manufacturers warranty, I've since taken out the extended warranty.

You were OK until that point. A few years ago I attended a lecture on UK energy policy. At the time the lights out scenario was clear and the UK Govenment appointed energy Tzar was saying that we already needed to have started building our nuclear power stations - since then we have failed to borrow money from the Chinese to get the French to build them - we previously led the world in Nuclear power station design. We are well in the fingers crossed zone, and the 6th highest importer of electricity.

It was one of those articles that popped up on my phone!

Wasn't Winscale the World's first commercial nuclear power station, not that it worked out too well?!

[Saltire]

Wasn't Winscale the World's first commercial nuclear power station, not that it worked out too well?!

Sort of. The power station - the first to produce domestic electricity - was called Calder Hall. Later referred to as both Windscale and Seascale before the current name of Sellafield. The site now handles nuclear waste reprocessing for both the UK and other countries. At the time I worked there, it was owned by a consortium of US, French and British companies, but is now back in public control as an NDPB.

And forget about electric cars; what you really need is one of these.

[Rambo]

I like the concept of the car. Quite forward thinking for 1958 I'd have called the car the Plutonium or 239 for short

[CallMeLegend]

Goodness knows where all this Li is going to come from

Good question (but not said in a patronising, Nick Hancock tone of voice):

1 billion cars in the world (and rising).
There is about 50kg of lithium in a car battery.
So we would need 1E9 × 50 / 1000 = 50 million Tonnes to convert all cars to electric.

Those numbers are way off.

The real amount of Lithium in a current technology electric vehicle battery is around 0.09kg of Lithium per kwh, so a Tesla P100 would have around 9kg of Lithium, my BMW i3s has about 3.8kg.

That is all changing though as Lithium free batteries are only just around the corner.

[Sandraux10]

There has been talk of induction charging, with relevant cabling in the road. Not totally sure how it would work exactly, but would certainly help with on street charging needs.

But surely infrastructure has always followed. The creation of a network of petrol stations only came about as car numbers increased, the road network was built and people travelled further afield déménagement Toulon. The difference today is that the road network already exists, so installation of charging points will gradually increase as the number of electric cars increase. Surely nobody will take a gamble to put chargers in all petrol stations when there is no guarantee that electricity is the fuel for the future. What about the hydrogen cell for example?

You are quite right. And you knew how to project yourself into the future. Thank you