Tidgy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12138420

so from london to edi in 4 days from now on. considering you can do it in a day now, seems like a mega step backwards to me.

arn't people just gonna say sod it and go via plane (which is pretty common anyway)

is a plane jurney worse than a car jurney pollution wise?

what would scooby do

Use the train fools..

EddScott

Which costs more than flying!!

Plane from Cardiff to Glasgow - £80 inc taxes etc

Train from Cardiff to Glasgow - £120

Plane took 2 hours, train would take 7-9 hours minimum.

It was even a bit cheaper to drive my 4.0L Jeep Cherokee back from Glasgow than take the train.


Which is a shame really because I love trains

what would scooby do

Isn't this about the ecomentals rather than cost ?

boxst

I was thinking about this whilst sitting in a traffic jam in london with my lights, radio and air conditioning on (as I wanted to get rid of the condensation on the windows). I was stuck for over half an hour and couldn't switch off the engine as it was moving every couple of minutes.

If I had an electric car I would be seriously worried and until batteries have both a long charge life and a fast-charge mechanism I can never see it taking off.

Steve

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

F**k that: I can drive from Alicante to Birmingham in 23hours including tea breaks, driver change, fuel/red bull stops and tunnel crossing.

Thats 1400miles give or take a few.

Why would anyoe want to use an EV for long journeys. Utterly stupid idea. And doesn't solve the polution issue one jot as it just moves it to the power station (be it nuclear or fossil fuel).


Flight from ALC to BHX is about £80 - and two and half hours (well, three hours after BHX's ground crew f**k it up again) . Imagine doing the same jaunt in an EV

Dedrater

Hang on, the government were telling us last year we are entering into a power crisis, most of our nuclear plants are being decommissioned as I type, our renewable energy production is terrible, but, they are giving subsidy of £5000 for each electric car, that will, most probably, be using electric generated by the 60 or so fossil fuel plants.

WTF is all I have to say about that.

stilover

Isn't it Honda that have the Hydrogen car?

Think that is more a realistic option than electric cars.

The only problem (at the moment) is producing enough hydrogen is sufficent quantities to make it viable.

speedking

Surely the way to go for this type of journey is to have 'filling stations' as we do now where your discharged battery can be swapped out for a fully charged one. Standardised design should see that available across a range of cars, the swap should take no longer than a fill up now.

The cost charging mechanism would have to be considered, maybe an annual lease cost.

I would imagine that a huge storage area would be required because of the number of batteries that would have to be kept in stock, requiring a 10 hour charge cycle.

The other problem with EVs is that the battery will need replacing in 5? or 10? years time by when a new one will cost more than the car. Your expensive asset will be effectively wortless until the battery is renewed. Second hand values will be weird.

Tidgy

myself, i think the key is the battery, when one will last a full 12 hours of driving, and fully charge in 4 hours then its a total flop as said above

stilover

But what if you can't get it charged? If where you are, there are no charging points? Or there are, but they're all busy?

Tidgy

ture very true, although if they become the nrom you may find all parking spaces come with a charging point

stilover

And can you honestly see that happening? In Britain?

Adrian F

what about the cost of all those charging points, more road tax?

pacenote

would be handy for the pikey's to plug their caravans in...

I did notice the car was left hand drive so obviously the manufacturers don't think so.

Terminator X

iTrader: (7)

OK for local journeys but FFS what a way to travel leccy cars have a long way to go yet ...

TX.

PS

The cynic in me says we already have better technology, it's just buried by the oil / car companies until such time as fuel becomes so expensive that Joe Public start walking.

zip106

What about the energy needed to actually charge the car?

More coal, more **** in the atmosphere.
Not to mention the cost of the cars themselves and the pollution from the manufacturing process.

Is it the Nissan Leaf that will cost £28k but £23k with the government grant?

You've got to be a serious Environmentalist to want one that much.

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Really should push for hydrogen more.

BMW's Hydrogen vehicles (which they've had running for over a decade now), as well as Honda have a proven examples of alternate fuel vehicle working that keep the "fill up and go" ability of a fossil fuel combustion engine.

Hydrogen can run in a combustion engine, and be dual fuel. And when fuelcells become more viable/reliable, its a straight swap. Out with the engine, in with the fuel cell.

Just more work needs to be done on being able to store it efficiently (currently storage/fuel tanks need to vent to maintain it in liquid form).