Ready steady Queue

[zipdip]

Well have to say Morrisons are true to their word,they said we have no shortage of fuel and they have not put the price up,I was at my local one this morning at 6am and drove straight onto a pump,they seem to have conned off the self service and pay pumps,but the rest are working,did some calculation of what the mileage I would do over the next two weeks,so this morning I have to take a old lady shopping so thats about 30mile round trip,then a small amount of food shopping around Thursday thats about 10 miles,then a run to Cockfosters north London and then on to Welling back to Cockfosters then home on Saturday about 200miles round trip and then next Monday a run to the Norfolk coast for a few days thats about 160 mile round trip thats 400 miles in total so a full tank will give me a margin to spare,so no filling up for two weeks .

 

[Darrell]

There is an Asda filling station just down the road from Mercedes Colindale. At 6.25 this morning there was a kilometre of traffic queuing to buy fuel.

 

[Deleted member 113659]

Our Tesco filling station was back to its quiet self Sat & Sun. Panic over around these parts.

 

[Rich764089]

There is an Asda filling station just down the road from Mercedes Colindale. At 6.25 this morning there was a kilometre of traffic queuing to buy fuel.

You've gotta be kidding, that's ridiculous. If the queue is more than about 10 cars, there's no way I'd wait. Patience is a virtue. And I do not possess it.
Clearly other people's need is much greater than mine.

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

Well, at least we’ve proved that PR can work.

The Road haulage Lobby have got their visas for cheap foreign workers, even though there was never any real shortage of fuel delivery drivers.

The trick was n harnessing public greed and self interest.

Europe’s laughing at us - classic Schadenfreude - but might regret it “if” there’s the long overdue backlash against long distance imported goods, from Evian to Polish chocolate. (None of which have anything to do with the British shortage of drivers)

 

[Rich764089]

Europe’s laughing at us

And let them laugh. I'd rather be laughed at than part of that poisonous political union. EU showed their true colours with the likes of the vaccine debacle.
But this isn't a politics thread, so I'm out

 

[st13phil]

Well, at least we’ve proved that PR can work.

The Road haulage Lobby have got their visas for cheap foreign workers, even though there was never any real shortage of fuel delivery drivers.

The trick was n harnessing public greed and self interest.

Hole in one, but the trick also needed the connivance of a media that is resolute in its “EU Good, U.K. Bad” attitude, and that hates the current government.

 

[grober]

If only there was an individual energy source you could personally access in your garage /driveway [if you are lucky enough to have one] to " refuel " your car every day if you wanted without being subject to the hysteria of the vagaries of fossil fuel supply.
Filling your boot with multiple plastic cans of highly inflammable liquid gives the term "range anxiety" an entirely new meaning

 

[ChrisHGTV]

If only there was an individual energy source you could personally access in your garage /driveway [if you are lucky enough to have one] to " refuel " your car every day if you wanted without being subject to the hysteria of the vagaries of fossil fuel supply.

Yes but i think you could easily transpose fossil fuels for electricity. And don't forget a lot of our electricity comes from fossil fuels, and we also import substantial amounts. The only way around it is to be self sufficient in energy, and that we are not so there will always be risk in the chain somewhere.

 

[Rich764089]

If only there was an individual energy source you could personally access in your garage /driveway [if you are lucky enough to have one] to " refuel " your car every day if you wanted without being subject to the hysteria of the vagaries of fossil fuel supply.

Indeed. Works well for those fortunate enough to be able to afford an EV, and have a lifestyle/ use case that an EV car is compatible with.

EDIT: can anyone signpost proper calculations on what it would look like if we all have EV? e.g. would we only be allowed to boil the kettle at certain times, due to strain on national grid?

 

[grober]

At a more grass roots level ICE car manufacturers have steady reduced the effective range of many of their cars by reducing their fuel tank capacity- thus necessitating more frequent top ups/fills- [ I think its a weight reduction thing for emissions? ] they dont tell you that in the brochures

 

[Rich764089]

At a more grass roots level ICE car manufacturers have steady reduced the effective range of many of their cars by reducing their fuel tank capacity- thus necessitating more frequent top ups/fills- [ I think its a weight reduction thing for emissions? ] they dont tell you that in the brochures

Definitely glad of 80 litre capacity in my (2014) E class!

 

[st13phil]

[ I think its a weight reduction thing for emissions? ]

It is exactly that. For emissions testing purposes the vehicle weight is the DIN standard (the weight of the car with all the fluids necessary for operation, including a 90% full tank of fuel) + 75kg for "driver and luggage".

Reducing the size of the fuel tank therefore lowers the weight for emissions testing purposes and delivers lower test result emissions. This is also why there has been the shift towards "tyre inflation kits" that eliminate the relatively heavy spare wheel.

 

[Fastcar155]

Hi , Stanlow refinery is close to closure !

 

[190]

EDIT: can anyone signpost proper calculations on what it would look like if we all have EV? e.g. would we only be allowed to boil the kettle at certain times, due to strain on national grid?

I've run an 11kv distribution system the size of a small town so I have some insight.

It wouldn't necessarily be a strain on the national grid but the further you go down the system the worse it gets. For example I've looked at our local 1.5MW substation and counted the 300 houses it supplies. If every house had an EV with a 7KW charger and they all plugged in at the same time the load would be 2.1MW from EV charging alone. The whole electricity distribution system is sized on the principle of a diversity factor i.e. it's assumed not everyone will draw the maximum load at the same time and if they did it wouldn't cope. Your own house employs the same principle in that it's assumed you will never draw 13 amps from every socket at the same time and if you attempted that, it would trip the breakers before you got half way around the house plugging these loads in.

In practice even when everyone has an EV, they will not all be be charged at the same time but if you throw in heat pumps for every house as well it's hard to see how the existing local infrastructure will cope without some way of managing the diversity.

 

[merc estate]

So all the idiots are still queuing here but give it another day, No shortage of idiots but how convenient the news is full of this nonsense but they forget to tell us of the, 1000 dingy divers still coming in a day and about prince A booking his holiday to usa this year. Na better to divert the real news to the idiots.

 

[Rich764089]

I've run an 11kv distribution system the size of a small town so I have some insight.

It wouldn't necessarily be a strain on the national grid but the further you go down the system the worse it gets. For example I've looked at our local 1.5MW substation and counted the 300 houses it supplies. If every house had an EV with a 7KW charger and they all plugged in at the same time the load would be 2.1MW from EV charging alone. The whole electricity distribution system is sized on the principle of a diversity factor i.e. it's assumed not everyone will draw the maximum load at the same time and if they did it wouldn't cope. Your own house employs the same principle in that it's assumed you will never draw 13 amps from every socket at the same time and if you attempted that, it would trip the breakers before you got half way around the house plugging these loads in.

In practice even when everyone has an EV, they will not all be be charged at the same time but if you throw in heat pumps for every house as well it's hard to see how the existing local infrastructure will cope without some way of managing the diversity.

Thanks; very insightful and interesting. Sounds like it would be borderline as to whether existing infrastructure would cope with most people going EV then. Particularly whilst there are still large proportions of EV cars requiring several/ many hours of charging therfore increasing the liklihood of mass charging at the same time (unlike other relatively high consumers, such as kettles, that are used for short bursts).

Sorry for the thread tangent. Back to queueing...

 

[BTB 500]

It is exactly that. For emissions testing purposes the vehicle weight is the DIN standard (the weight of the car with all the fluids necessary for operation, including a 90% full tank of fuel) + 75kg for "driver and luggage".

Reducing the size of the fuel tank therefore lowers the weight for emissions testing purposes and delivers lower test result emissions. This is also why there has been the shift towards "tyre inflation kits" that eliminate the relatively heavy spare wheel.

I seem to remember that MB fitted a smaller tank to the W205 for this reason, with a factory option for a larger one ... but I believe UK market cars got this as standard. Certainly our 2019 C300 (petrol) routinely covers 450+ miles between fill-ups - of course MPG has improved steadily over the years anyway.

I know 'every little helps' but if you do the maths the weight saving of a smaller tank is surprisingly small. The difference between (say) 90% of a 40 litre tank and 90% of a 60 litre tank is around 13 kg for petrol or 15 kg for diesel. I think eliminating the spare wheel (plus jack & associated tools needed to change a wheel) is a lot more significant.

 

[markjay]

There seem to be ongoing talk of other potential supply issues, e.g. food deliveries to supermarkets, etc. I'm guessing that the HGV drivers shortage isn't limited to fuel tanker drivers.

So presumably the idea is that bringing-in 5,000 more HGV drivers will help ease the pressure across the haulage industry. Not a bad plan, though it should have probably been done at an earlier stage.

And I think that the talk of fuel tanker driver shortage is a bit of a red herring. We are only talking about it because people panicked and they all now all trying to brim their tanks at the same time.

In other words, if someone started a rumor that we're gonna run out of pies, we'd be talking now of a nationwide shortage of bakery drivers

Once the panick is over, fuel supply to petrol stations will get back to near-normal (i.e. still suffering mild pressures here-and-there due the overall shortage of drivers).

What we need in order to fix the petrol station queues problem, is not more fuel tanker drivers to deliver more fuel, instead we just need to wait until everyone finished brimming their tanks.... I give it a few more days.

 

[st13phil]

I know 'every little helps' but if you do the maths the weight saving of a smaller tank is surprisingly small.

Vehicle manufacturers do a great deal to keep mass down as lower mass allows smaller (and lighter!) brakes, less power (smaller, lighter drivetrain) for the same performance, etc. They aren't necessarily as extreme as following the old Colin Chapman adage of not using washers under bolt heads ("I'm not paying to drive washers around the circuit"), but they're not far off.

As an aside, that's one of the big engineering arguments against BEV's: you're always carrying around a huge dead weight that you have to accelerate, brake, and support.