• Our booking engine at tickets.railforums.co.uk (powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Road pricing back on the agenda to replace loss of fuel and vehicle excise duty due to electric vehicles?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Bletchleyite

Veteran Member
Joined
20 Oct 2014
Messages
97,540
Location
"Marston Vale mafia"
Are there many cars with paddle shifters that aren't automatics? Every standard car I've seen with the paddle shifters is an automatic and looking up some of the high end road sports cars with paddle shifters, they are still automatics and the car can change gear itself.

Probably not, as having a fully automatic feature on such a car is just a matter of software.

In any case, the thing that makes driving a manual harder is clutch control, not choosing the gear. It's not really a safety issue if you choose to rev the nuts off your flappy paddle car because you aren't good at choosing a gear (all doing that will do is cost you money and make a bit of a noise), whereas stalling when you've just cut someone up on a 70mph dual carriageway (yes, I know) might actually kill someone.
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

miami

Established Member
Joined
3 Oct 2015
Messages
3,164
Location
UK
There clearly will be a significant fall in EV prices in the next 9 years, but there will also be a gradual rise in the cost of both acquiring ICE and owning engined cars. As has been mentioned above, their support networks will thin out, including fuelling points, maintenance, spares, and probably insurance

Very unlikely that the support network will thin problematically in that time. Some forecorts will be made smaller and space used for superchargers, but that will be related to demand. Maybe you'll lose the occasional petrol station in towns, but there will be another one just down the road.

There are 2 million new petrol (+diesel) cars sold each year, and 40k new electric cars. There's only so much production capacity globally on the key elements (especially batteries). Prices will probably come down, but increasing demand will dampen that.

The average age of a car in the uk is 8 years, so 50% of 33 million cars on the road were built before 2012. To have a majortiy of cars not being electric by 2030 would require pretty much all cars sold from next year to be electric.

Petrol (and manual) cars will phase out, but it's still likely that in 2030 the vast majority of cars will be petrol. Assuming the average age stays at 8 years, in 2028 50% of cars on the road will be on the road right now, 16 million. Even if that includes every one of the 164,000 electric cars on the road, that still leaves 16 million petrol cars.

Even if we went to 100% electric today, in 2028 there would be 16 million petrol and 16 million electric. In 2029 there would be 14 million petrol and 18 million electric. In 2030 it will be 12/20, so 38%.

If we reach 50% electric in just 4 years time by 2025, and 100% by 2030 -- meaning the number of new electric cars increasing 50 fold in the next 50 months -- we'd still be looking at 24 million petrol cars on the road in 2030, the 50% mark wouldn't be reached until the mid 2030s, and we wouldn't be below 10 million petrol cars (similar to seen in the 70s) by 2037.

In the late 30s and certainly early 40s then yes, the support network will collapse.
 

edwin_m

Veteran Member
Joined
21 Apr 2013
Messages
24,793
Location
Nottingham
Are there many cars with paddle shifters that aren't automatics? Every standard car I've seen with the paddle shifters is an automatic and looking up some of the high end road sports cars with paddle shifters, they are still automatics and the car can change gear itself.
By the definition of #116 all cars with paddle shifters are automatics. But I think you're asking if there are any such that can only be driven in an non-automatic mode where it's necessary to operate the shifters manually.

However someone who did their test on an automatic is clearly entitled to drive another automatic including one with paddle shifters. The main reason for a separate qualification to drive manual transmissions must be to ensure that anyone doing so is able to control the clutch properly, without which the vehicle is liable to stall or even to jump forward unexpectedly.

While manual IC vehicles are still around in significant numbers, this does mean that driving schools and parents of teenagers will tend to buy them instead of EVs.
 

JohnMcL7

Member
Joined
18 Apr 2018
Messages
862
By the definition of #116 all cars with paddle shifters are automatics. But I think you're asking if there are any such that can only be driven in an non-automatic mode where it's necessary to operate the shifters manually.

However someone who did their test on an automatic is clearly entitled to drive another automatic including one with paddle shifters. The main reason for a separate qualification to drive manual transmissions must be to ensure that anyone doing so is able to control the clutch properly, without which the vehicle is liable to stall or even to jump forward unexpectedly.

While manual IC vehicles are still around in significant numbers, this does mean that driving schools and parents of teenagers will tend to buy them instead of EVs.

The person I was replying to had said "but it would indeed seem to confirm "flappy paddles" as being automatic in the eyes of the law, even if that wasn't intentional as the law predates their existence." which I thought was odd because I can't see how you'd classify a car with paddle shifters as anything other than an automatic not just in the eyes of the law. I guess there's some extreme track cars that can only shift with paddle shifters that would still lack a clutch pedal and be classed as an automatic even though they can't shift themselves but if they even exist, they must be rare for road going cars.

This reminds me of a time I hired a Toyota Yaris 1.3 CVT (a DPF sensor had failed on my car the night before a 1000 mile round trip) and hilariously the car had paddle shifters fitted. With the CVT gearbox there were no gears so the paddle shifts would jump between predetermined points, the car's lack of power didn't really help but the paddle shifters were even worse taking around 5-10 seconds before it would suddenly lurch into a different ratio. It's completely baffling why the manufacturer thought of adding such a system given aside from it being useless the car wasn't in any way meant to be sporty and its CVT gave very smooth acceleration.

Going back to the topic I can't see how they can implement a road pricing system without a considerable amount of technology assuming they'd want variable pricing depending on where the vehicle as driven. While a datalogger and mobile connection would be viable for every vehicle sold new in ten years time there's a lot of privacy questions there if every vehicle is going to be tracked.
 
Last edited:

Domh245

Established Member
Joined
6 Apr 2013
Messages
8,426
Location
nowhere
Are modern EVs not driven using gearless AC motors on a variable frequency drive? I'd have assumed that they were.

They usually are AC motors driven by a VFD, but the output from that motor tends to go through a single speed gear set to increase the torque/lower the speed. They also have to fit a differential in there somehow, and move the output of the whole assembly out of the way of the motor, unless you start throwing money at it and throwing hollow shafts inside hollow shafts
 

packermac

Member
Joined
16 Sep 2019
Messages
543
Location
Swanage
If you cannot achieve some technical solution to make the electric used for vehicles be charged at near the cost of the tax on petrol and diesel then either VED at an eye watering level or road charging is really going to be the only way to fill that mammoth budget hole.
 

SynthD

Member
Joined
4 Apr 2020
Messages
1,137
Location
UK
To raise 34b from that 234b miles would mean a tax of 7p per mile.
Thank you for the maths - later adjusted to 10p - it’s hard to judge this without real numbers.

Technically it’s not possible to have a black box that just takes in information and leaks nothing back to the government. It will have to be an internet connection rather than broadcast like radio because there’s too much information to give out. That gets even harder if you want the box to be aware of payments made online. UDP is not suitable.

I don’t see the need to add complexity to this by taxing people charging their cars at home, especially as it’s from their own plugs not a lamppost. Keep it simple. That may mean a fixed set of times for premium rates just like rail peak times which partly covers school traffic.
 

Bletchleyite

Veteran Member
Joined
20 Oct 2014
Messages
97,540
Location
"Marston Vale mafia"
The person I was replying to had said "but it would indeed seem to confirm "flappy paddles" as being automatic in the eyes of the law, even if that wasn't intentional as the law predates their existence." which I thought was odd because I can't see how you'd classify a car with paddle shifters as anything other than an automatic not just in the eyes of the law.

Because the "man on the Clapham omnibus" definition of automatic transmission is one that changes gear for you, and a "flappy paddle" gearbox without that feature, while it would be legally an automatic due to the absence of a clutch, doesn't. In the bus world, such a gearbox would be called "semi-automatic", not "automatic", and they were, albeit with H gate shifters, very common in buses in and before the 1980s.
 

edwin_m

Veteran Member
Joined
21 Apr 2013
Messages
24,793
Location
Nottingham
Thank you for the maths - later adjusted to 10p - it’s hard to judge this without real numbers.

Technically it’s not possible to have a black box that just takes in information and leaks nothing back to the government. It will have to be an internet connection rather than broadcast like radio because there’s too much information to give out. That gets even harder if you want the box to be aware of payments made online. UDP is not suitable.
The information flow is mostly one way. The vehicle keeps an internal map/table of charging rates by time and place, data volume similar to a satnav, so it only needs to know about changes which could probably be broadcast as a continuous data stream on digital radio or similar some time ahead of when they started to apply. There would be some form of verification that all updates had been received before they came into effect, with perhaps the option to download the entire map over wifi if it got out of sync.

If payments were made separately over the internet then the same data channel could broadcast encrypted information on each one, which the relevant box would recognize and update its record of credit available. By reference to a GPS the credit would be deducted according to the agreed rates depending on distance travelled, time and place. So the only essential information transmission in the opposite direction would be a simple go/nogo, and even that could be done just by inhibiting the motor if that could be done securely.
 

Bald Rick

Veteran Member
Joined
28 Sep 2010
Messages
29,070
There are 2 million new petrol (+diesel) cars sold each year, and 40k new electric cars.
In the first 9 months of this year, there were nearly 70k pure EVs sold. It will be over 100k by year end.


The average age of a car in the uk is 8 years, so 50% of 33 million cars on the road were built before 2012

Slightly dodgy maths there. If the average (mean) age of a car in the U.K. is 8 years, that doesn’t mean that 50% of the cars on the road we’re built before 2012. Clearly you can’t get a car younger than 0 years old, but you can (and do) get plenty of cars over 16 years old.

There’s also the point that newer cars tend to be actually on the road, ie used more, on average, than older cars. Fleet drivers have new cars for a reason. I’m sure many of us know of an aged relative with a car that’s well over a decade old that does a couple of thousand miles a year. (I’m guilty of that myself). Many others will know of drivers who average 40k-50k miles a year and effectively scrap their their car after 4-5 years.

Whilst I have no evidence other than a quick back of envelope calc, I suspect that the % of mileage done by cars more than 8 years old is around than 30%. That’s consistent with what you see on any given motorway.
 

ainsworth74

Forum Staff
Staff Member
Global Moderator
Joined
16 Nov 2009
Messages
27,542
Location
Redcar
Whilst I have no evidence other than a quick back of envelope calc, I suspect that the % of mileage done by cars more than 8 years old is around than 30%. That’s consistent with what you see on any given motorway.

Or just the road in general. I don't do much motorway driving (though I do a fair bit of dual carriageway A road driving) and whilst I don't spend a lot of time looking at other drivers numbers plates (what with being, ya know, driving), when I do have a look, in traffic or similar, the number of cars that have a plate older than a maybe a 14/64 is pretty small. The number that are around the age of mine (08 plate) or older is even smaller.
 

Islineclear3_1

Established Member
Joined
24 Apr 2014
Messages
5,811
Location
PTSO or platform depending on the weather
But if someone is driving into a large city in the rush hour along the route of a railway, why not penalise them heavily?

Because it wouldn't be fair on somebody who has no choice to take the car because public transport can't be relied upon. Also, somebody who might work irregular hours, have to be in places quickly by certain times and can't get on a bus because it is "full" with 20 people on board or school kids.

A good example would be for someone who lives in the sticks, needs to leave for work at 05.00hrs and there are no trains due to a tree on the line or landslide. How else are they supposed to get to work? Why should that person be penalised for taking their car instead?

Why should the car driver be heavily penalised when they already pay VED and tax on fuel?

Once again, the car user gets clobbered....

And if you live outside London, bus fares can be very expensive and taking the car would be cheaper

The Government took the decision to spend massively on furlough schemes etc. and increase national debt. - perhaps they should look to themselves to raise the extra tax revenues
 

ainsworth74

Forum Staff
Staff Member
Global Moderator
Joined
16 Nov 2009
Messages
27,542
Location
Redcar
Why should the car driver be heavily penalised when they already pay VED and tax on fuel?
Because in the near future they won't be paying either of those things and unless we want to either cut £40bn from the budget or find a different new tax or raise a different tax road pricing seems like a way of making up for that shortfall in revenue.

Once again, the car user gets clobbered....
Have to say, as a car driver, I think we get a pretty decent deal overall...
 
Last edited:

cactustwirly

Established Member
Joined
10 Apr 2013
Messages
7,447
Location
UK
Because in the near future they won't be paying either of those things and unless we want to either cut £40bn from the budget or find a different new tax or raise a different tax road pricing seems like a way of making up for that shortfall in revenue.


Have to say, as a car driver, I think we get a pretty decent deal overall...

That is a big assumption to make, personally I think electric vehicles are flawed and are too impractical for most people.
The future is in hydrogen powered vehicles instead.
It's a long way off as ICE vehicles will still be with us until atleast 2045

In the first 9 months of this year, there were nearly 70k pure EVs sold. It will be over 100k by year end.




Slightly dodgy maths there. If the average (mean) age of a car in the U.K. is 8 years, that doesn’t mean that 50% of the cars on the road we’re built before 2012. Clearly you can’t get a car younger than 0 years old, but you can (and do) get plenty of cars over 16 years old.

There’s also the point that newer cars tend to be actually on the road, ie used more, on average, than older cars. Fleet drivers have new cars for a reason. I’m sure many of us know of an aged relative with a car that’s well over a decade old that does a couple of thousand miles a year. (I’m guilty of that myself). Many others will know of drivers who average 40k-50k miles a year and effectively scrap their their car after 4-5 years.

Whilst I have no evidence other than a quick back of envelope calc, I suspect that the % of mileage done by cars more than 8 years old is around than 30%. That’s consistent with what you see on any given motorway.

A lot of the vehicles I see are more than 10 years old. Mine is actually over 17 years old.
Only a handful of vehicles in my works car park are actually less than 5 years old, with the majority being over 10.
 

Bald Rick

Veteran Member
Joined
28 Sep 2010
Messages
29,070
That is a big assumption to make, personally I think electric vehicles are flawed and are too impractical for most people.
The future is in hydrogen powered vehicles instead.
Do some research, particularly into how many battery vehicles are coming to market in the next couple of years, and how many hydrogen. And how much R&D is spent on battery vehicles compared to Hydrogen.


A lot of the vehicles I see are more than 10 years old.

I’m sure you do. But you’ll see many more that are less than 10 years old.


What concerns me is that batteries can only be recharged so many times and can't be recycled. Are we going to be storing up problems for future generations as spent batteries get dumped/sent to landfill?

Many EVs come with battery guarantees that will last a typical car life. Plenty of examples of Teslas with well over 100,000 miles+ on the clock.

The batteries can be recycled too. Many end up in Grid battery storage.
 

37424

Member
Joined
10 Apr 2020
Messages
1,064
Location
Leeds
That is a big assumption to make, personally I think electric vehicles are flawed and are too impractical for most people.
The future is in hydrogen powered vehicles instead.
It's a long way off as ICE vehicles will still be with us until atleast 2045



A lot of the vehicles I see are more than 10 years old. Mine is actually over 17 years old.
Only a handful of vehicles in my works car park are actually less than 5 years old, with the majority being over 10.
I think it depends where you live, In the North the weather tends to kill them quickly when I take a trip south its seems to me that I tend to see more older cars including ones I haven't seen for years.

I think there will be a massive move to hybrid and electric in the next 5 years and by the mid 2020's you will be left with a few small hatchbacks purely petrol powered, and a few of the larger SUV's still with a Diesel option, don't forget the manufacturers are under pressure to move to cleaner vehicles. To me electric is becoming a No Brainer and my next car will likely be electric, I also think that once the supermarkets decide its no longer worth selling Petrol/Diesel we will get a significant rise in fuel prices.
 

The Ham

Established Member
Joined
6 Jul 2012
Messages
10,283
I think it depends where you live, In the North the weather tends to kill them quickly when I take a trip south its seems to me that I tend to see more older cars including ones I haven't seen for years.

I think there will be a massive move to hybrid and electric in the next 5 years and by the mid 2020's you will be left with a few small hatchbacks purely petrol powered, and a few of the larger SUV's still with a Diesel option, don't forget the manufacturers are under pressure to move to cleaner vehicles. To me electric is becoming a No Brainer and my next car will likely be electric, I also think that once the supermarkets decide its no longer worth selling Petrol/Diesel we will get a significant rise in fuel prices.

Location has a big bearing, if you look at the South East there's likely to be a fair few new cars, however if you look at Cornwall a lot of the locals will own older vehicles.

However within that there's going to be exceptions, look at a poorer area of a city and you'll find more older vehicles (especially where there's fewer jobs where there's company vehicles), however with second hard costs of vehicles being higher in Cornwall you often find the that the cost saving from buying a car that's as few years old is much smaller and so it's more attractive for those who can afford it to buy a new car.

That is a big assumption to make, personally I think electric vehicles are flawed and are too impractical for most people.
The future is in hydrogen powered vehicles instead.
It's a long way off as ICE vehicles will still be with us until atleast 2045

As a family we make regular long distance journeys to visit family, even being cautious and applying a 80% rate to the battery and then the fast charge then topping up 80% of that we could make a 210 mile trip (4-5 hours) with one stop on a car with a started range of 170 miles. As such it's allowed for the battery to degrade quite a bit but still be within the limits of the battery warranty.

Now before children we did often do that without a stop (which isn't ideal, but doable), however even then we've done the trip with other adults of a similar age to us and there was a need for two stops.

To be forced to stop for up to 30 minutes on that sort of trip probably isn't a deal breaker, as to fill up without paying 10p/l more at service stations rather than supermarkets fairly easily adds nearly that to your journey time anyway. As often you'll need to add 7 minutes of driving to the petrol station, 5 minutes to fill up, 7 minutes of driving back to the trunk road and that's 19 minutes.

To recharge at a services, 2 minutes to the charging point, 15 minutes charge, 2 minutes back to the trunk road and that's 19 minutes.

However, even then that's only looking at fairly infrequent trips. Day to day the car wouldn't need to be refueled, even without going out of your way to do that it's going to add 5 minutes a time.

For many that's not too much of a problem, however unless you've got pay at pump it makes it fairly hard for a parent with small children in the car to do. Remove the need to refuel and it makes their life easier.

24 hour full recharge from a plug socket for some of the larger range cars likewise isn't a problem. Let's take for example our trip to see family, we buy a car with a 300 mile range and get there with no stops and 10 miles left late Friday night (circa 12 midnight). Well overnight is going to get about 8 hours of charge (probably more) yes will use it a bit the next day, but then it'll have at least 10 hours of charge and likewise the same again the following night. It's already had time to charge 28 hours, as a bare minimum before we then head back Sunday afternoon, which then should be enough to get us home. If not then we just have to stop for 5 minutes for a short top up and a wee break.

There may well be some who do more long distance travel than that, however even with those sorts of trips about 8 times a year and we're thinking that the benefits outweigh the small inconvenience that we are likely to see.

I've also seen arguments like, I but a £1,000 car and so will never be able to afford an EV. Well chances are 20 years ago they'd have thought that they'd not be able to get a car with ABS and Aircon, now you'd be hard pushed to find a car without them fitted (if they're not working that's a different matter).

However it also doesn't take into account the fuel costs for petrol/diesel vs EV, which is likely to be about 8p/mile cheaper for EV. That means over 3 years doing 6,000 miles a year that's another £1,500, add in 3 years of VED and chances are that's another £500. Could you get an EV for £3,000? Not yet (cheapest appears to be £5,000 on a very quick check on one site and that's less than 10 years old and less than 75,000 miles, matching that on an ICE car for £1,000 is possible but more likely to bea higher milage car). However the gap isn't as big as it would at first appear.

However chances are there's not going to be quite so much to fix (unless you need to replace the battery which would be very expensive) and so there's likely to be other savings to be had and/or you could keep the car for longer (so as to spread the purchase costs over a longer period and could reduce the risk of buying a dud which you move on from aftera year or two which are more costly).

Also, chances are that the EV's are attracting a premium cost at the moment as there are so few of them of that age about, so over time the costs would likely reduce.

If I was looking at milage charging I'd start off at 1p per mile for each fuel type paid at the MOT (£100 for 10,000 miles), I'd also increase at inflation plus 1% fuel duty so that the cost of fuel encouraged lower milage use. Then start to ramp it up, with EV's rising in cost more slowly than petrol, aiming for 12p/mile for petrol/diesel by 2040 (before rising to 30p/mile by 2080 - by which point it'll only be classic cars where they are likely to only be doing low milage anyway) plug in Hybrids reaching that much but 2060 (before reaching 30p/mile by 2100) and EV's reaching 10p per mile by 2070 (all prices excluding inflation).

However, for those who are willing to have monitoring boxes in their vehicles then there would be reductions for using their vehicles on roads with low volumes of congestion (although using roads which are classed as residential streets when a more suitable through route was available wouldn't attract such a discount). This would mean that those who lived in less urban areas would be able to get around more cheaply until they reached an urban area. Such boxes could also remove the charges from travel undertaken in private roads.

It would mean that you'd know that a trip would cost you £4 based on milage only but you may see that fall to £3 or maybe even £1 if congestion was low or was done mostly on lightly used rural roads where there's no alternative route (for instance the last mile back to your home along the only road to get there could be free if it's in a rural setting).

You would probably still see some congestion charges for major urban areas, but those could be more easily added to your annual charge rather than needing a charge to be paid on that day, making charges of £2 to £10 reasonable to include rather than needing to start at £10 due to the admin involved.

With the increase in the ability to WFH or may well be that people are able to reduce some of their costs, so even paying £100/year in milage costs from (say) 2025 may still be that they pay less in travel costs than they did before.

Yes there's likely to be some who can't WFH, so would be a little worse off. However if they found one or two journeys a week where they walked/cycled locally rather than drove, saving 20p each week in fuel costs (the equivalent of about 2 miles) then it would reduce the impact of the rise by £10. Whilst that may not save them much more going forwards it could encourage them to consider moving to be closer to work out at least moving so that public transport becomes an option (at least for one half of a couple).

With regards charging a car in am area where there's limited on street parking and little/no off street parking, most of those are likely to be in urban areas. If not then chances are the land costs of buying a field and adding some public chargers to it for a number of houses to share (ideally those which at charges of you use the charger for more than a given time, but long enough that most cars could add 100 miles to the range or reduces to a very low charge rate so that there's little advantage to remaining plugged in) would likely be fairly low and could make it easier to park near your house when you didn't need to charge your car. Unless your doing more than 20 miles a day (range of 120 miles) or 40 miles a day (range of 230 miles) then chances are you'd only need to charge once a week anyway so a street of 20 houses may only need 2 charging points, even if every house had 2 cars (at least 3 charging slots each weekday evening and at least 20 over the weekend, with a few people being able to charge during the day time - such as parents at home with children, shift workers, those who have at least 1 day off Monday to Friday, the retired, etc.).

One parking charger, with a reasonable cable length could cover at least 3 parking bays (parallel to the kerb parking), maybe even 8 if if cars can park nose to nose like in a car park.

You could therefore have a field 23m x 32m with parking for 16 cars with 2 charges (including a 1m walkway between the 2.5m x 5m parking bays, where most shop parking spaces are 2.4m x 4.8m). That would be enough for a street of 20 homes, but then that street would have fewer cars parked on it making it a much nicer place to live (maybe being able to add cycle storage on street so there's a secure dry place outside of the houses to store bikes, or even being able to add a micro park with some seating to green up the area making the houses worth more than they otherwise would be and offsetting at least some of the cost of buying the land for the charging of cars).

In urban areas is being in residents permit schemes and use at least 50% of the revenue to subsidise public transport so that people didn't need to own a car, in doing so removing the need for so much on street parking, and making it easier for those who still need a car.

For the first few years there would be a flat charge regardless of numbers of cars, however after improvements to public transport have been brought in then the second car for a household would attract an extra charge and a third car would see a higher charge again and so on (say £100, £250, £750 and £3,000 for the fourth or more cars). In doing so the cost for one car wouldn't be too much for most people, a second car wouldn't add too much but a third car starts to look quite expensive and almost no one would look to have more than 3 cars (although people may still do so by parking in carparks a short distance away).

Each house would, for free, get a book of 25 free day parking tickets, with an extra 25 being charged at £250 and with 4 hour parking available for free for each car per day for shorter term visitors (that's enough for most evening visitors, as it's 7pm to 11pm), with no limit between 12pm and 4am (so an overnight stay could be from 8pm to 8am without incurring a charge, but not on two consecutive days without using a pass).

Overall car use per person needs to fall at the population increases otherwise we're going to need to build more roads (which would likely need extra taxes being paid by us all to cover the cost of maintaining them all).

In theory is there was no need to maintain roads (say everything was possible by bike or walking) then our council taxes could be lower and we wouldn't be paying a lot of taxes/duty for the use of our cars and so we'd also save money there too. Likewise housing wouldn't need as much land (most houses are at least 8m apart just so that cars can get between them, often they are more than that to allow for the parking of cars, if that side could be used for other things, such as front gardens, play equipment, public open space, etc. with a 3m footway/cycleway) reducing the cost of building houses (as a lot of the cost of houses in down to the land costs). Of course life isn't that simple and we do still need vehicle access to near our houses, but it does highlight how much effort, cost and land we apply to something which most use for less than a few hours a day.
 
Last edited:

py_megapixel

Established Member
Joined
5 Nov 2018
Messages
6,645
Location
Northern England
That is a big assumption to make, personally I think electric vehicles are flawed and are too impractical for most people.
The future is in hydrogen powered vehicles instead.
Hydrogen is somewhat impractical also.
Hydrogen production is far from efficient...

Also could you elaborate what you mean by "flawed and impractical"?

Personally my opinion is that, for all but completely rural areas, the future would ideally be "active transport" for short journeys and public transport for longer journeys, accompanied possibly with a system of driverless taxis to cover journeys where there is an important reason to use a private vehicle.

But given that even on this forum, with an extremely heavy focus on public transport, many members still seem to have a lot of resistance to the idea of using public funds to improve public transport and cycling/walking routes, I doubt this will ever happen.
 

Bletchleyite

Veteran Member
Joined
20 Oct 2014
Messages
97,540
Location
"Marston Vale mafia"
What concerns me is that batteries can only be recharged so many times and can't be recycled.

That isn't entirely true and will improve further.


Electric cars aren't the future any more, they're the present. Every mainstream manufacturer is working on electrifying its range, and with the UK government now set to ban sales of new petrol, diesel and plug-in hybrid cars by 2035, it won't be long before battery-powered vehicles are the norm.

Electric cars are known to improve air quality and help reduce emissions – especially when powered by predominantly renewable mains electricity. However, there's an elephant in the room, or rather, under the floor: lithium-ion batteries. Modern electric cars all use variations of lithium-ion batteries, which typically last at least 10 years before losing enough performance that some might consider replacing them.

The good news is that these batteries are already highly recyclable. Anwar Sattar, lead engineer at Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), states that “technically, over 90% of the cell can be recovered, but since recycling involves the reuse of the recovered material, it becomes a commercial activity and companies will only recycle those parts that give them a positive financial return.”

Lithium-ion batteries are covered by the Battery Directive, which stipulates that at least 50% of the battery in its entirely must be recycled. This is easily achievable. The packs are dismantled manually and the plastics and wiring that make up the bulk of the pack around the cell can be recycled along with other similar plastics.
 

cactustwirly

Established Member
Joined
10 Apr 2013
Messages
7,447
Location
UK
Hydrogen is somewhat impractical also.
Hydrogen production is far from efficient...

Also could you elaborate what you mean by "flawed and impractical"?

Personally my opinion is that, for all but completely rural areas, the future would ideally be "active transport" for short journeys and public transport for longer journeys, accompanied possibly with a system of driverless taxis to cover journeys where there is an important reason to use a private vehicle.

But given that even on this forum, with an extremely heavy focus on public transport, many members still seem to have a lot of resistance to the idea of using public funds to improve public transport and cycling/walking routes, I doubt this will ever happen.

Electric vehicles are compromised by the weight of the batteries making them very heavy, so they're not particularly nice to drive.
Plus they're limited by range, and the batteries degrade over time (a 10 year old Nissan Leaf is worthless as the old batteries are unusable, and new ones exceed the value of the car)

Plus the lithium mines for the batteries are not environmentally friendly at all.
 

The Ham

Established Member
Joined
6 Jul 2012
Messages
10,283
Personally my opinion is that, for all but completely rural areas, the future would ideally be "active transport" for short journeys and public transport for longer journeys, accompanied possibly with a system of driverless taxis to cover journeys where there is an important reason to use a private vehicle.

Whilst I agree that this would be ideal it's still a long way off from even being the case for half of our travel. As 20% of our travel is by modes other than by car.

Even if we see a 30% fall in car use due to WFH (and we're currently at a 10% fall) and other modes remained unchanged we'd get to about 25% of travel by other modes.

Therefore to get to 50% by non car modes we'd need to see either bigger falls in car use, significant increases in use of other modes or both.

Increasing cycling miles by a factor of 2.5 would be entirely possible, as we'd still be cycling half the amount per person than was the case in 1950. Yes I know we live in a very different way than we did then, but then that's taken into account by that I'm not aiming for the same amount of cycling, it should also be noted that cycling should be easier for to lighter cycles, better gears, electric cycles, better water proof clothing, etc. As such it's likely that it's due to the amount of traffic on the roads which is putting people off cycling. Which means we'd need to do something significant to change traffic volumes, but it's hard to do that without people saying "what about the disabled/the old/rural/[insert other minor group of people]?"

The problem is that those in rural areas are 15% of the population (includes anyone like me who lives in a village of 9,000 with a railway station and a bus service as rural by the standard which gets you to 15% of the population is those in a settlement of less than 10,000).

Something like 6% of the population have a disability, however not all of those are unable to use public transport or even cycle, in fact there's some who are unable to use their legs who find hand cycles provide them a level of freedom that they otherwise wouldn't have.

Then there's a further 15% of the population who are over 70 (again just being that old doesn't mean that you're unable to walk, cycle or use public transport).

Therefore at the most, even allowing for all of the above to be driving we'd only need about 1/3 of our travel to be undertaken by cars, so there's a lot of scope (up to 45% of travel) to reduce car use.
 

Domh245

Established Member
Joined
6 Apr 2013
Messages
8,426
Location
nowhere
Electric vehicles are compromised by the weight of the batteries making them very heavy, so they're not particularly nice to drive.
Plus they're limited by range, and the batteries degrade over time (a 10 year old Nissan Leaf is worthless as the old batteries are unusable, and new ones exceed the value of the car)

Plus the lithium mines for the batteries are not environmentally friendly at all.

HEVs aren't exactly light either - the fuel cells have a fair bit of weight and the hydrogen storage necessary for anything approaching a suitably energy density requires very thick (read: heavy) walls. They also require batteries with all the negatives that come with those

The private vehicle is going to BEV. Some larger SUVs and trucks may go to Hydrogen
 

Bald Rick

Veteran Member
Joined
28 Sep 2010
Messages
29,070
Electric vehicles are compromised by the weight of the batteries making them very heavy, so they're not particularly nice to drive.
How many have you driven? Everyone I know with an EV, and I mean everyone, loves them.


Plus the lithium mines for the batteries are not environmentally friendly at all.
Better not buy a laptop, mobile phone, or anything else with a battery in it then. In other news, mines for copper ore, iron ore, bauxite, coal, etc etc are not environmentally friendly. Why is Lithium any different?

Plus they're limited by range, and the batteries degrade over time (a 10 year old Nissan Leaf is worthless as the old batteries are unusable, and new ones exceed the value of the car)

All cars are limited by range. Some more than others.

You can’t buy a 10 year old Nissan lead, as they weren’t launched in the U.K. until 2011.

You can, however, buy a perfectly serviceable 8-9 year old Nissan Leaf, but it will cost you about £6k. Hid £6k is worthless to you, would you mind leaving that much in an envelope on my doorstep?
 
Last edited:

The Ham

Established Member
Joined
6 Jul 2012
Messages
10,283
Electric vehicles are compromised by the weight of the batteries making them very heavy, so they're not particularly nice to drive.
Plus they're limited by range, and the batteries degrade over time (a 10 year old Nissan Leaf is worthless as the old batteries are unusable, and new ones exceed the value of the car)

Plus the lithium mines for the batteries are not environmentally friendly at all.

It's fairly rare to find a electric car where the battery has been so badly degraded that it's unable to achieve 70% of the previous range.

Even if you did then there's still going to be a good number of people who would find it useful as a second car which never goes more than 50 miles in a day.

However given that 70% is the level which some companies would change an up to 10 year old battery out under warranty I'd expect that the likelihood of even funding an 15 year old car with such a degraded battery would still be fairly low.

Again, it's still not going to be worthless, as a new battery, even at £4,000 would then give you 10 years of near trouble free motoring, as there's little else critical to the car to go wrong, other than tyres, brakes, wipers, lights, etc. all of which would be things which you replace with any other car anyway. However if you're doing 5,000 miles a year and saving 8p per mile in fuel costs then it'll pay for itself over that 10 year period (5,000 miles a year is what you'd do of you work full time and drive 11 miles each way for work, much less than that and an E-bike could be better).

Electric cars are fairly heavy, but as someone who designs roads I can tell you that when I'm working out the strength of the road cars, vans and minibuses don't come into my thinking in that design. Whilst it would have an impact on the maintenance of the surface course, it's only a small factor.

Anyway, the main issue with electric cars isn't getting them going, rather it's trying to get them to go without shredding the tyres.
 

edwin_m

Veteran Member
Joined
21 Apr 2013
Messages
24,793
Location
Nottingham
Electric cars are fairly heavy, but as someone who designs roads I can tell you that when I'm working out the strength of the road cars, vans and minibuses don't come into my thinking in that design. Whilst it would have an impact on the maintenance of the surface course, it's only a small factor.

Anyway, the main issue with electric cars isn't getting them going, rather it's trying to get them to go without shredding the tyres.
Anyone know how the tyre life (and therefore the tyre particulate emissions) compare between an equivalent IC and EV?
 

CBlue

Member
Joined
30 Mar 2020
Messages
799
Location
East Angular
Once again, the car user gets clobbered....

And if you live outside London, bus fares can be very expensive and taking the car would be cheaper

The Government took the decision to spend massively on furlough schemes etc. and increase national debt. - perhaps they should look to themselves to raise the extra tax revenues

I'm not quite sure how car users get "clobbered" as it is through any government taxation?

I recently replaced a 15 year old Fiesta (35-40mpg, £120 a year VED) with a 5 year old Skoda (50-55 mpg, £20 a year VED). Insurance costs (£27 a month) were the same for both and my commute is about 20 miles of motorway from one side of Cambridge city to the other, costing around £30 a week in fuel.

My £20 a year VED isn't remotely covering any road maintenance costs. For example, Hertfordshire CC's website says £20 is the cost for resurfacing about a metre squared of road, and that's probably the cheapest option available to them.
I've only found my fuel bills increase by a small amount even after the price rose beyond £1 a litre thanks to the newer car being quite a bit more efficient.



However, it's still far more expensive than taking the bus. A monthly bus ticket for me (Stagecoach Cambs Megarider Plus) is £96.00 - it's cheaper to travel on the bus than pay my monthly fuel bill. Add on purchase cost of a car, depreciation, insurance, and any servicing costs and the finances heavily stack in favour of my local half-hourly bus service.

The only reasons I don't use it to commute is that the service doesn't run early enough for my start time at work, and I'm fortunate enough to be able to afford to run the car. It would also take me an hour to travel each day as opposed to 25 minutes by car thanks to a change of buses in the city centre.
 

Bald Rick

Veteran Member
Joined
28 Sep 2010
Messages
29,070
The average age of a car in the uk is 8 years, so 50% of 33 million cars on the road were built before 2012.

Slightly dodgy maths there. If the average (mean) age of a car in the U.K. is 8 years, that doesn’t mean that 50% of the cars on the road we’re built before 2012. Clearly you can’t get a car younger than 0 years old, but you can (and do) get plenty of cars over 16 years old.
There’s also the point that newer cars tend to be actually on the road, ie used more, on average, than older cars. Fleet drivers have new cars for a reason. I’m sure many of us know of an aged relative with a car that’s well over a decade old that does a couple of thousand miles a year. (I’m guilty of that myself). Many others will know of drivers who average 40k-50k miles a year and effectively scrap their their car after 4-5 years.

Whilst I have no evidence other than a quick back of envelope calc, I suspect that the % of mileage done by cars more than 8 years old is around than 30%. That’s consistent with what you see on any given motorway.

Or just the road in general. I don't do much motorway driving (though I do a fair bit of dual carriageway A road driving) and whilst I don't spend a lot of time looking at other drivers numbers plates (what with being, ya know, driving), when I do have a look, in traffic or similar, the number of cars that have a plate older than a maybe a 14/64 is pretty small. The number that are around the age of mine (08 plate) or older is even smaller.

Quoting myself here (sorry), but the statement that 50% of cars on the road are 8 years or older piqued my interest... so I’ve gone out and done a survey this afternoon.

2 separate samples, in different parts of town. Over 100 cars or car sized vans in each sample. My cut off point was the 62 plate and older, ie a 13 plate was on the ‘new’ side of the dividing line. I only counted cars actually being driven, ie not those parked.

And the results are in...

65% of cars / vans were 13 plate or newer, 35% were 62 plate or older.

Of course one small sample in one town on a Saturday afternoon does not make solid evidence. But it is indicative. With extrapolation, it suggests that the median age of cars on the road is are 6-6.5 years old.
 

Harpers Tate

Established Member
Joined
10 May 2013
Messages
1,679
Referring back to the thing about life-expired batteries on old Leafs (being the first, and therefore oldest available used EVs) - I saw just the other day a YouTube video about refreshing a 1st gen 9-year old Leaf. It refused to start, with no available power from the traction battery.
Long story short: some diagnostics later and it was discovered that one of the bank of batteries that made up the pack had failed. Two hours labour to remove the pack, pull out the bad component and replace it with one new one (cost £1000) and the thing was good to go for 85 miles, which is representative of the car when it was new. That had apparently been the only major expense on the vehicle since new.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top