Envoy
Established Member
- Joined
- 29 Aug 2014
- Messages
- 2,478
Many thanks everyone for your contributions to my thread thus far. It has certainly generated a lot of interest.
In the grand scheme of new vehicle running costs the cost of fuel can be marginal - I do 7,000 a year at about 35 mpg - £1200. To many that's less than the annual insurance costs.
Add in maintenance, finance costs, depreciation at 50-75% of value over 3 years etc and costs soon add up.
Parking a car in local city centre is a minimum of £8 a day, compared to a rail fare less than half that. Electric will make little difference. ...
... I have heard insurance in particular can be very high due to significant chance of right off on new vehicles due to damage to battery packs following collision.
Side swipe a Tesla, even at quite low speed and chances are the battery will be damaged as it sits full width under the car.
EV parking in my local city is free, with a free permit. EV parking at roadside meters in Westminster costs the 10-minute (minimum) rate, under £1, for I think up to 6 hours
More electric cars won't do anything for congestion
Also, for non self driving, they need charging points in virtually all car parking spaces, so that will reduce the number of places available as a charging point parking space is much bigger than a normal parking space - that means more cars driving around town centres trying to find parking spaces.
No, it doesn't, because your self-driving car will drop you right at your central London destination then will drive off into the suburbs, alone, to find a cheap parking location, then will return on demand. No need for any city centre parking then.
Town/city centre parking costs will rise as will road use charges. It will be encumbent on local/national authorities to use these tools to 'encourage' car users to do what is best for everybody, not just the motorist/ private vehicle passenger.I did say "non self driving" in the sentence you replied to. I simply don't believe self driving will become a widespread reality. Maybe one or two big cities will be set up for it, but it won't be widespread in my lifetime.
But to reply to the point you made, what about the congestion of all these driverless cars driving out to out of town car parks to sit and wait or recharge - that's more road use than just a driver driving into town and parking for the day. Surely that makes congestion worse.
Town/city centre parking costs will rise as will road use charges. It will be encumbent on local/national authorities to use these tools to 'encourage' car users to do what is best for everybody, not just the motorist/ private vehicle passenger.
IT and the internet should have made more remote working easier and more efficient
Maybe, but the really big additions SD cars will make to congestion are : (1) The additional number of users without driving licences (eg children, teens, elderly, banned etc, currently using trains and buses); and (2) the fact that unoccupied SD cars will be sent off to park in the suburbs (possible back home) instead of being parked at the owner's actual destination (as Bletchleyite said - he seemed to count it as an advantage) and recalled when needed again, thus doubling traffic at a stoke. Or simply ordered to drive in circles around the city centre one-way system for an hour or two while the owner does his business there.And should self driving ever happen, the congestion will be even worse as they'll be constantly stop/starting in busy places like town centres .....
I don't see any underused infrastructure (apart from rail). Every town that I see, large and small. has a road traffic over-load. I live near a small country town and the traffic jams in town are a constant issue and topic. You wonder what all those people in cars are doing and where they are going, because if you go into a shop they are not busy and the owners complain of lack of trade.Or we could just stop being so London-Centric (and a couple of other big cities) and spread the employment/education/living around the country ............ [It would be better to] regenerate all the smaller cities and towns which are currently dying a slow death, as they all have infrastructure which is mostly used well below capacity.
A while ago I did a trip up the A5, and in Betwys-y-Coed there was a traffic jam, the road was full of stationary cars both ways. Now I hardly saw a single car along the road out in the country either side of the village, so the vast majority of those cars must have been driving about within the village - yet it is only about half a mile long from one end to the other. And they were not tourists - this was winter.
Nevetheless that is what I saw, and frequently see as I drive up to Holyhead that way several times a year, although that day was particularly bad. Most of those cars were definitely only driving within the village; as we moved on the cars in front of me peeled off one-by-one into a parking place or side road. The last one ahead of me pulled into the Swallow Falls Hotel and the road in front of me was then empty.I think you have a false impression there - most people stopping in Betws park up and leave their car, it is as you say tiny.
Nevetheless that is what I saw, and frequently see as I drive up to Holyhead that way several times a year, although that day was particularly bad. Most of those cars were definitely only driving within the village; as we moved on the cars in front of me peeled off one-by-one into a parking place or side road. The last one ahead of me pulled into the Swallow Falls Hotel and the road in front of me was then empty.
I don't see any underused infrastructure (apart from rail). Every town that I see, large and small. has a road traffic over-load.
Or we could just stop being so London-Centric (and a couple of other big cities) and spread the employment/education/living around the country more evenly so people don't have to commute long distances into a tiny number of heavily congested city centres. ...
... There was a time, not that long ago, where people could live in towns and smaller cities and get pretty decent jobs there - there were "proper" bank branches, local/regional offices of national firms, etc even in smaller towns. Nowadays, if you want a decent job, you have to relocate to London or Manchester (others) and suffer a miserable commute along with high living costs. ...
... Rather than using electric and/or self driving cars to perpetuate this concentration, surely it would be better to reverse the "brain flight" to London and regenerate all the smaller cities and towns which are currently dying a slow death, as they all have infrastructure which is mostly used well below capacity. ...
... IT and the internet should have made more remote working easier and more efficient, yet despite it, we're all still suffering an expensive/miserable commute. It's counter-intuitive and needs to change if living conditions are ever going to improve.
I even reads like you are fighting against electric cars.
A time will come when the supplier will have to refuse permission for chargers, if the demand is already high on a feeder cable, this in turn will have an adverse effect on house prices. Imagine, your street has reached capacity, no more EV chargers are being allowed to be connected. Your house is identical to that of your neighbours house, yet they have an EV charger, you don't, and cannot have one. Instantly your house is less desirable, because everyone wants an electric vehicle, it's not your fault you can't have a charger, but you're the one who see's your house price fall!
Not at all, I just don't see how they're going to cause any significant changes in congestion and/or rail usage which is what this thread is about. Driver-driven EVs are just a like for like replacement for cars, but bring with them their own set of problems (i.e. fewer parking places, charging infrastructure etc).
Personally, I think that hybrids will replace wholly IC cars. I just don't see a future for wholly electric cars for lots of reasons. Hybrids make sense - the best of both worlds.
Driverless is a completely different matter altogether.
We've been told that it could be years before the wiring is replaced and that it would involve digging up virtually every road and pavement at our end of the village.
Where does the energy come from then?Maybe I am being simplistic but I cannot understand why an EV cannot self-charge itself via a generator or mechanism connected to the wheels. Surely there has to be some (F1) technology out there to do that. Or does that occur at the moment but only to increase the range slightly?
It's worth noting that this is nowhere near as disruptive as it might sound. My area has just had fibre installed (it's lovely and quick and half the price of BT FTTC), and while it has indeed nominally involved what you say, it has all been done in shallow, narrow troughs with very little disruption - they've even just put it under the grass where there was some. The fill-in looks a little unsightly for now but that'll go over time as resurfacing is done.
I think this is going to be the "modus operandi" for rolling high speed access out over the next 10 years or so.
Talking of chargers, though, why would you need a 3 hour fast charger at home? Plug it in when you go to bed, unplug it in the morning when you leave. That'll give you a good 6-8 hours at least, and if it doesn't on a regular basis you seriously need to reconsider your lifestyle as you're then on an unhealthily low amount of sleep.
Unfortunately, even for EVs, nobody has a design for a perpetual motion machine. Like modern Electric locos/EMUs, EVs have the ability to use the braking effect of their motors when decelerating. This is done by diverting the current generated when the motor is mechanically rotated through converter back into the supply for electric trains or through a charging circuit and into the battery for EVs. Usually with EVs, this happens when the foot is lifted from the accelerator and the car gradually slows down. There are also conventional brakes operated with a pedal fitted to the vehicle because:Maybe I am being simplistic but I cannot understand why an EV cannot self-charge itself via a generator or mechanism connected to the wheels. Surely there has to be some (F1) technology out there to do that. Or does that occur at the moment but only to increase the range slightly?
Where does the energy come from then?
Unfortunately, Virgin chose not to install their fibre wiring network round here, so we're stuck with the BT copper wiring for the foreseeable future.
When I was a lad, I had a push bike that used to have lights that ran via a dynamo off the wheels. So when I was peddling and moving, the lights would be on but when I stopped the lights would go off.