Questions, questions…😎😎

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Connoisseur

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A205 C200 Cab; Porsche Macan; BMW i3s
I am thinking of replacing my electric car with a petrol or diesel one and have a few questions..

1. I have heard that petrol cars don’t refuel at home while you sleep? How often do you have to refuel elsewhere? Is this several time a year? Will the future bring a solution for refuelling at home?

2. Which parts will need servicing and how often? The salesman mentioned a box with gears in it. What is this ?

3. Can I accelerate and brake with one pedal as I do today with my electric car?

4. Do I get fuel back when I slow down or drive downhill ? I assume so but I need to ask to make sure?

5. The car I test drove today seemed to have a delay from the time I pressed the accelerator pedal until it began to accelerate. Is that normal?

6. I currently pay about 2-3p per mile to drive my electric car. I have hear petrol can cost 5 or more times as much so I reckon I will lose some money in the beginning. I drive about 20,000 miles a year. Let’s hope more people will start using petrol so prices go down.

7. Is it true that petrol is flammable? Should I empty the tank and store the petrol elsewhere while the car is in the garage ?

8. Is there an automatic system to prevent petrol from catching fire in an accident - how does it work?

9. I understand that the main ingredient in petrol is oil. Is it true that the extraction and refining of oil caused environmental problems as well as conflicts and wars that over the last 100 years may have cost millions of lives ? Is there a solution to this ?

10. I have heard that cars with internal combustion based engines are being barred from more and more cities around the world, as it is claimed that they tend to harm the environment and health of their citizens? is that true?

I may have more questions later but these are the most important ones to me at the moment. Thanks for all advice and help given…..

👀🙂
 
Good post. I know it’s meant in jest (or maybe half in jest!) but I have to take exception to point 9 as I’m in the exploration industry! Undoubtedly oil/fossil fuels have created political issues including conflict, but then it has largely given us a lot of what we take for granted in everyday life. Regarding the “Energy transition” it’s also worth noting this is very much not global. 60% of the global population exist in energy poverty, so despite what politicians say I believe fossil fuels will play an important part for decades to come. In fact I went to an energy summit just before lockdown and the UK government stated they had a 40 year transition plan to renewables. And that’s the UK - what about Africa? No way on earth will Mozambique, Namibia, Kenya....leave their oil and gas in the ground.
 
You should stay with electric until your hugely expensive battery stops working buddy...or catches fire ! :D
lol, one of my hugely expensive batteries is 6 years old with capacity circa 90% of original so only another 6 to 10 years before it packs up. It’s not a Tesla so no issues with🔥.
 
I am thinking of replacing my electric car with a petrol or diesel one and have a few questions..

I'd like to know why you have ICE cars listed ..... doesn't the EV manage to do everything you need?
 
So yes a touch of humour, with a side order of seriousness🙂 but let’s not be fooled, those London floods and UK Heatwaves are only likely to get worse until we do something more drastic imho. I will miss my old V8s, and V6 turbo, and my M274, but I prefer walking to swimming, and just go lobster red in the sun😉
I'd like to know why you have ICE cars listed ..... doesn't the EV manage to do everything you need?
so the ICE cars can’t do everything I need, hence the EV. Macan EV out in 2022, Mercedes EVs not far away. Then ICE cars won’t be able to do anything I need.
 
So yes a touch of humour, with a side order of seriousness🙂 but let’s not be fooled, those London floods and UK Heatwaves are only likely to get worse until we do something more drastic imho. I will miss my old V8s, and V6 turbo, and my M274, but I prefer walking to swimming, and just go lobster red in the sun😉

so the ICE cars can’t do everything I need, hence the EV. Macan EV out in 2022, Mercedes EVs not far away. Then ICE cars won’t be able to do anything I need.
Im afraid climate change is with us irrespective of anything we do. Climate change has been a phenomena since the Earth actually developed an atmosphere and climate. I absolutely believe we should do all we can to minimise resource usage and pollution, but we cannot (appreciably) influence climate change.

We are currently in an anti-glacial period. It was not that long ago that we had ice sheets in the midlands. In fact most of our geomorphology is glacier related - the hanging valleys of Wales for instance, or the corries, cwms or cirques (depending where you are). The ice sheets retreated long before the industrial revolution as we were already in a period of warming. The key to survival (as has always been the case) is adaptation, not trying to modify the global climate to try to maintain some kind of stability. The global climate has never been stable and never will be.
 
Macan EV out in 2022, Mercedes EVs not far away. Then ICE cars won’t be able to do anything I need.

Which goes back to my whinge of a while back .... nice EVs are nice but expensive. Macan EV is for the minority .... I wonder if Posrche will turbocharge it it like they did with the Taycan.

And once the numbers go up we have to concern ourselves about electricity supply and costs and vulnerability. And if it impacts on electricity supply costs generally then that will affect non-EV owners.
 
Which goes back to my whinge of a while back .... nice EVs are nice but expensive. Macan EV is for the minority .... I wonder if Posrche will turbocharge it it like they did with the Taycan.

And once the numbers go up we have to concern ourselves about electricity supply and costs and vulnerability. And if it impacts on electricity supply costs generally then that will affect non-EV owners.
Macan EV Turbo? Now that would be good😎

UK Energy suppliers and National Grid have said many times that EV adoption will not impact supply at all. Competition should manage prices, though that is up to the Govt so quiet word with MPs needed. Nice cars in general are always expensive, nice EVs were never going to be different, just look at the big Merc EVs🙁

Big changes in any sector will cause issues, let’s hope the motoring ones are manageable eh.
 
Macan EV Turbo? Now that would be good😎

UK Energy suppliers and National Grid have said many times that EV adoption will not impact supply at all. Competition should manage prices, though that is up to the Govt so quiet word with MPs needed. Nice cars in general are always expensive, nice EVs were never going to be different, just look at the big Merc EVs🙁

They have a habit of saying everything is OK. At the same time energy suppliers haven't independently been falling over themselves to invest in substantial new plant.

And as things stand our supply security has changed significantly from having a huge contingency of *reliable* plant to a significantly reduced contingency of 'reliable' plant and a rather a lot of less reliable plant.

So in addition to having EVs turn up in quantity - we have older reliable plant being decomissioned - and a proposed switch from gas to electricity for heating. Hmmmmm .... do households spend more on gas than electricity ... yes .... but hang on surely gas is more expenive per kWh .... hmmmm no it's a lot cheaper ..... so do the maths on that little gem.

Yes we have some new reliable plant being comissioned .... but how long is that taking and what are our needs.

So after having had 40 years of a very very secure energy supply in the UK we have been transitioning unwittingly to a much lower security supply and *forcing* substantial increases in demand. We haven't seen the system collapse. But a combination of the wrong weather and a small % loss of reliable plant to unplanned outage could hit us as things stand. Add in a substantial change to EVs and a change to consumption for domestic heating and we have a perfect storm in the making.

But hey .... it's all OK because when you add all those renewables at peak output and imagine that's what they do all the time then the numbers look rather good.

Worse - we're getting into a situation where the grid itself is electro-mechanically less resilient to a major outage as we lose the old reliable plant.

Thing is that the current state of the supply setup has become the new normal. So unless we have a catstrophic failure the culture of the industry is to accept taht what we have just works. The people who set up the original oversupply situation with a huge level of resilience and contingency have retired and gone many years ago.

The public should be concerned.
 
Im afraid climate change is with us irrespective of anything we do. Climate change has been a phenomena since the Earth actually developed an atmosphere and climate. I absolutely believe we should do all we can to minimise resource usage and pollution, but we cannot (appreciably) influence climate change.

We are currently in an anti-glacial period. It was not that long ago that we had ice sheets in the midlands. In fact most of our geomorphology is glacier related - the hanging valleys of Wales for instance, or the corries, cwms or cirques (depending where you are). The ice sheets retreated long before the industrial revolution as we were already in a period of warming. The key to survival (as has always been the case) is adaptation, not trying to modify the global climate to try to maintain some kind of stability. The global climate has never been stable and never will be.
Have to disagree with the notion than Man cannot appreciably influence the climate…..and so do an awful lot of scientists and climatologists. Certainly the planet was in a warming phase, but we have 100% aggravated it significantly.
 
We have obviously put poisons into the atmosphere over the years , none of which are good, but the only reason to sort it out is to keep ourselves healthy. The 'Earth' really does not give a fruck .

Long after all of our great grand children are dead it will still be spinning around. If the earth were a conscious being it would not even notice we were here , a bit like a fly on an Elephants a$$.

The deepest hole we have dug ? about 12 K's , an abandoned Russian project , the deepest working mines ? about 4K's down. The thickness of the Earths mantel ? about 2500 K's

We have to do something , but bankrupting ourselves in the process is not the answer. I am sure many on here are more well travelled than myself but I have worked in Africa and China and been to India.

Zero carbon ? ever ? It's not looking good from what I saw.
 
Have to disagree with the notion than Man cannot appreciably influence the climate…..and so do an awful lot of scientists and climatologists. Certainly the planet was in a warming phase, but we have 100% aggravated it significantly.
For every scientist that believe humans are responsible for climate change (or significantly so) there are just as many that don’t - it’s a hotly contested topic! It doesn’t help that politicians and various other agents with a vested interest are involved. In my field (Geology) I would say probably most think human impact is less significant. But then we’re typically looking at much longer time periods, not just the period since the industrial revolution which in geological terms (or even global climate change terms) is not even a blink. And looking at geological time we’re emerging from a very cold period irrespective of human activity. There have also been periods with way more CO2 in the atmosphere. Periods of increased volcanic activity are thought to be responsible, and of course humans would have no control over that.
 
Periods of increased volcanic activity are thought to be responsible, and of course humans would have no control over that.

Well we've had a huge amount of natural carbon capture take place over an extended period which has built up the coal and oil reserves that we have then released in a geological blink of an eye.
 
Drove from Swansea to home (Moray) in one day 635 miles with one stop for lunch etc 3 weeks ago. That would have been a challenge in an EV
 
We should definitely design transport policy based on that.
Definitely not, just pointing out that there are occasions where EVs are just not practicable yet more so at the extremes of the country where populations are low and distances can be large.
 
Certainly the planet was in a warming phase, but we have 100% aggravated it significantly.
Best to be accurate in apportioning 'climate change' blame and substitute 'we' for China, the worlds largest emitter of anthropogenic greenhouse gases by some margin.

Perversely China is also the worlds largest investor in renewables. Making a buck at both ends to the detriment of everyone else.
 
For every scientist that believe humans are responsible for climate change (or significantly so) there are just as many that don’t - it’s a hotly contested topic! It doesn’t help that politicians and various other agents with a vested interest are involved. In my field (Geology) I would say probably most think human impact is less significant. But then we’re typically looking at much longer time periods, not just the period since the industrial revolution which in geological terms (or even global climate change terms) is not even a blink. And looking at geological time we’re emerging from a very cold period irrespective of human activity. There have also been periods with way more CO2 in the atmosphere. Periods of increased volcanic activity are thought to be responsible, and of course humans would have no control over that.
Geological timescales indeed....we are 20000 years from the last glaciation cycle and about 60000 from the next one.

1627503819430.png

This increase isn't happening in geological timescales - it's happening in human ones. One can attribute it to the industrialisation of the world and the ever increasing population, or perhaps simply to the lack of Pirates, as there is a clear connection of you look for it in the data....


This report from NOAA, Which emits more carbon dioxide: volcanoes or human activities? | NOAA Climate.gov is saying that human activity generates 60x the CO2 as volcanic activity does in any given year. Of course, there are the occasional blips like the Yellowstone caldera popping (yes, an understatement).

I used to be a human driven climate change sceptic too, but I changed my view when faced with the balance of evidence. Given your occupation, I can see why you don't want to accept that Man is making things worse - you have to make a living and you have to sleep at night, so I'm not having a pop here. Very few are in a position to claim the moral high ground.

I absolutely get that the climate is shifting all the time, but the key point is that Man now has the power to make it better or worse. Whether we have the will to do anything significant to try and help is another matter entirely, and as has been said by others and myself often enough, the planet will be fine, but we might not. It wouldn't have supported us in the past and it may well not in the future - hard to see how we could survive a full-on ice age for example, certainly at the population levels we have now, but I can't see us lasting that long anyway. Mars here we come, if the oft-maligned purveyor of EVs can achieve his goal of getting a human colony on Mars. Of course, we'll screw up the climate there too, but at least it'll be more favourable to support us than it is at the moment.

Ultimately though, there is one single issue, and that is far too many people. Glad I don't have all that much longer to live and equally glad I decided long ago not to have any offspring.


I'm still wondering which will see us off first, self destruction in one of many possible ways, a large volcanic event like Yellowstone or perhaps just another dinosaur killer. I doubt I'll live long enough to see which one but it would be interesting.
 
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