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#Korentrance

we leave the eu and form a new trading bloc with NK.

Brexit multi-lateral free trade bloc:
UK,
Narnia,
Atlantis,
Erewhon,
Lilliput,
MiddleEarth,
Xanadu,
Oz,
El Dorado, (need somewhere with good weather for the kippy pensioners to spend their Winters).

El Dorado

some say it's a myth but i've seen it with my own eyes, every time i pulled a sickie off school and was forced to watch terrible daytime tv with my nan.

Up there with 'Triangle',

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_(1981_TV_series)

Erehwon.

Obvs really.

Yeah,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon

Fake news.

Sales of New Petrol and diesel cars banned from 2040!

Just heard on R4

yup. not soon enough though.

It sounds soon but most of us will be dead by then.

this is just the tories kicking the problem 20 years down the road safe in the knowledge that

a) we'll all be dead by then

b) the people proposing this will all be dead by then in which case there'll be no one to hold to account when it fucks out

c) we'll have reverted back to a feudal society where the underclass are forced to bear their betters about on palanquins made from snowy owls and the bones of God Emperor Rees Mogg's vanquished foes

in the meantime, they can conveniently put any efforts that might realistically address meeting any emissions targets on the back burner.

also, this is a thoroughly regressive policy that'll kick the 99% in the teeth far more than those that can easily afford expensive electric vehicles.

Prices ARE going down for e-vehicles, though they are out of my reach atm but

• environmental costs of mining and shipping of batteries
  
• costs of replacement of batteries (they haven't really improved much the past decade in capacity/wear)
  -ensuring leccy is also green
  -cost of scrapping perfectly good cars (I get another 5 easily out of my 10 year old clunker)
  
• CO2 lifecycle analysis
  
  

all need to be taken into account. It can be a ambitious necessary goal or a mostly fuck-up, depending on implementation...

Yeah, this totally sounds like a better policy than actually improving our public transport, freight network and cycle infrastructure to get people out of cars altogether .

costs of replacement of batteries (they haven't really improved much the past decade in capacity/wear)

Batteries can be recycled.

There are large parts of the world where public transport is unlikely ever to be good enough to replace car ownership, specifically rural areas.

2040 is also the same target the French have set. Given the amount of time it takes for the car fleet to be renewed, it's not an unreasonable time frame. They're also maybe being conservative about when EVs will reach price parity with combustion engines.

BNEF (full disclosure, I worked there a long time ago) has published an forecast of costs which is downloadable if you give them some details https://about.bnef.com/blog/electric-cars-reach-price-parity-2025/

They're projecting 2025 for price parity, based on the experience curve seen in other technology sectors - the cost of semiconductors, solar PV wafers, and wind turbine nacelles have all fallen along a similar trajectory. Here's an explanation of the experience curve from the Economist: http://www.economist.com/node/14298944

BNEF's application of the experience curve to solar wafers and wind nacelles was novel, and allowed them to make quite bullish predictions that in the end proved to be quite accurate. I suspect that it will also work with electric battery costs, but one of the reasons I left was because they didn't realise that the economics of car fleet renewal were much more complicated - as greenhell notes, it's much harder for poorer people to change their cars. (I was working on transport fuels for them). Anyway, they've projected 300mn EVs on the road by 2035: https://about.bnef.com/blog/electric-vehicles-accelerate-54-new-car-sales-2040/

By contrast, Exxon and BP are projecting roughly 100mn EVs on the road by 2035 (although those forecasts predate the France/UK policy change). That's more in line with industry thinking about the pace of fleet renewal. But maybe they're wrong and BNEF is right, I guess we'll find out as the years go by.

PS there are new business models emerging around the batteries. For eg, you don't own the battery in a Tesla Nissan, they do. When the discharge rate falls too low to be able to provide the torque the engine needs, they'll swap it out for a new one. The old battery is still perfectly good for use in the home, though - you can use it to store renewably generated power during th day and discharge it at night.
Edit - this is actually something Nissan is doing, not Tesla.

Of course, but this also incurs a cost in CO2

I am assuming the main goal of the government is cutting down on greenhouse gases, so the whole picture needs to be examined.

Petrol/diesel cars don't need replacements of a big engine parts every 2-3 years, but if your battery goes that's it. I'm not against it, just wondering how they did the numbers, and the current gov is a bit number allergic ;)

See the bit I wrote about Tesla's Nissan's approach to batteries. Also, the French have the same policy.

I'd say the main goal is cutting down emissions in heavily congested areas

Also, isn't it a ban on new cars only. So people are free to keep their current cars / buy second hand etc?

Petrol/diesel cars don't need replacements of a big engine parts every 2-3 years

• Engine oil
  
• Oil filter
  
• Engine air filter
  
• Fuel filter
  
• Coolant
  
• Spark/glow plugs
  
  

Plus all the hoses, relays and sensors that EVs don't have which may or may not need replacing.

you don't own the battery in a Tesla, they do.

[citation needed]

Renault offer both lease and purchase for the battery in France, but only lease in UK. Nissan's Leaf started leased-battery, then added a purchase option. I've never read anything about Tesla's car batteries being leased anywhere that wasn't an anti-EV FUD site.

Time we went back to steam, then. All a steam engine needs is a heat source and water and doesn't care what's generating the heat (coal, wood, hydrogen, uranium). Modern designs minimise the water waste and it should be possible to design good engines where the heat source is replacable.

Problem with the internal combustion engine is that its design and performance is so closely tied to the chemical properties of the fuel.

you dropped your goggles, top hat and dirigible.

It's OK, he has a couple of footmen running along behind who will pick them up, clean them and hand them to him when he stops.

I blame the Tweed Run.

You could use a battery and a DC immersion heater.

Solar panels to charge the battery, obviously.