Petrol and Diesel Cars to be Banned from 2040

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Hulkster said:
Commit to the world's most expensive electricity, then tell everyone they have to buy an electric car, genius!

The reason air pollution is so bad (though still infinitely better than just a couple of decades ago) is because environmentalists insisted we must be switch the diesel cars to save the planet. Now diesel cars are polluting towns and cities the environmentalists tell us the solution is battery powered cars.

Excuse me if I remain a little sceptical.
Certainly the mining and processing of the metals used to make these batteries is a serious environmental issue.

It's stupid trying to set these grandiose future targets with no idea how they can be delivered. No one has any idea when if ever the infrastructure will be in place to allow every single car to be an electric one, how the electricity will be generated, whether even if these problems can be overcome the cars themselves will ever be viable for anything other than short range city driving.

There are lots of ideas in these areas, but none have come to fruition. By all means the government can give support to help them come to fruition, but let's only outlaw the alternatives if and they already have, and it's actually possible to do what (at which point a ban would be unnecessary anyway as if the electric option is superior it will be adopted anyway).

Who knows what technology will develop between now and 2040? The government trying to lock us into a particular path and spending billions or trillions on taking us down that path is a nonsense.

Commit to the world's most expensive electricity, then tell everyone they have to buy an electric car, genius!

The reason air pollution is so bad (though still infinitely better than just a couple of decades ago) is because environmentalists insisted we must be switch the diesel cars to save the planet. Now diesel cars are polluting towns and cities the environmentalists tell us the solution is battery powered cars.

Excuse me if I remain a little sceptical.
Certainly the mining and processing of the metals used to make these batteries is a serious environmental issue.

It's stupid trying to set these grandiose future targets with no idea how they can be delivered. No one has any idea when if ever the infrastructure will be in place to allow every single car to be an electric one, how the electricity will be generated, whether even if these problems can be overcome the cars themselves will ever be viable for anything other than short range city driving.

There are lots of ideas in these areas, but none have come to fruition. By all means the government can give support to help them come to fruition, but let's only outlaw the alternatives if and they already have, and it's actually possible to do what (at which point a ban would be unnecessary anyway as if the electric option is superior it will be adopted anyway).

Who knows what technology will develop between now and 2040? The government trying to lock us into a particular path and spending billions or trillions on taking us down that path is a nonsense.
Click to expand...
Kennedy said "we're going to the moon by the end of the decade" when no-one had a clue how to do it. And it was done. I refuse to believe we can't handle battery powered cars in a quarter of a century, given that we have all the technology now.
 


I'm all for this. Even if the electricity only comes from burning oil at power stations, it will make our towns and cities quieter & cleaner.

When I cycle places, I hate waiting in traffic behind stopped cars. Basically my face is 3 feet away from the pipe that takes poisonous fumes away from the driver. Take a busy city on a day with low wind and those fumes build up. I used to live in Bristol, where the city centre is down in a bowl. Some days you could see a general haze above the city which was basically all these petrol generators polluting that anyone in the city is breathing.

As well as polluting air, there is noise. Even though modern cars are much quieter, they are still loud. I have just been away for a few days. A couple of places I stopped were well out the way of anywhere, we sat out on a night and everything was pretty quiet. The last place was within a mile of an A road, which we could not see but after a couple of days of quiet we really noticed how loud the road is. Some of that will by tyre noise, but I'd be interested to see how much quieter our roads become.

One interesting thing is this 2040 limit is exactly what France announced 3 weeks ago. This is not an original idea. Now if France had lobbied the EU, then the EU had instructed the member countries to vote on adopting this as law and our parliament had voted it in democratically, there would be hell on about EU control. Because we are just copying our neighbours, nobody is frothing at the mouth, scrunching up their Daily Mail in anger.
 
DJP said:
You're having a pop at people wanting less reliance on a carbon based society but what is stupid or naive about wanting a better future for our planet? Once the car companies and other engineers realise they HAVE to switch to electric vehicles the technology will improve at great pace and motoring costs will fall. I currently spend £45 a week filling up my tank but if I don't have to spend anywhere near that to keep an electric car on the road then bring it on. If that means I have to forfeit some of my petrol savings into paying more road tax or whatever then fair enough. If it is a mileage based system, again no worries. Some insurance companies already use mileage trackers as a means of charging people for their car insurance so road pricing will just be another extension of that.

And as regards "misty-eyed, right-on lentil munchers", the meat industry is responsible for more methane emissions than anything else on the planet and that has the single biggest impact on climate change so good luck to vegans for being on the right side of the climate change argument. ("The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has shown that animal agriculture is globally the single largest source of methane emissions and that, pound for pound, methane is more than 25 times as effective as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere.")
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No, Mr. Straw man! :lol:

I'm having a pop at people who see everything positive and nothing negative about electric cars. (No pun intended!) They paint a warm, fuzzy future where it's all good and problem free. As soon as you mention there may be downsides we have to watch out for, they won't have it.

Your remark about forfeiting some of fuel savings to pay more road tax demonstrates exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. Basically 'Bring it on, I don't mind paying road tax cos I'm saving the planet', just flat out assuming it's going to be affordable, that simple, or that nothing worse will follow.

Chipping in a bit of your fuel savings isn't going to replace all the lost duty and VAT, nor will it reduce this supposed congestion the people in power and lobby groups harp on about. Also, despite claims otherwise, electric cars still impact the planet negatively. Why on earth would the government want to make motoring cheaper or easier, when they've demonstrated the exact opposite for decades?

VAT, alcohol duty, bigger electricity bills, or just expensive roads, tracked wherever we go. The revenue has to come from somewhere. Maybe a huge tax on lentils? ;)

You're dead right about meat, more specifically red meat. I'd be much happier giving up red meat than my car. I enjoy a steak like many others, but I see it as something I could easily give up. It's a luxury, whereas I see a car as an essential item. It's a precious thing that we would be ill advised to take for granted. Bring on leccy cars, but don't fuck with our affordable freedom of motoring, that's all I say.

DaveH said:
I'm all for this. Even if the electricity only comes from burning oil at power stations, it will make our towns and cities quieter & cleaner.

When I cycle places, I hate waiting in traffic behind stopped cars. Basically my face is 3 feet away from the pipe that takes poisonous fumes away from the driver. Take a busy city on a day with low wind and those fumes build up. I used to live in Bristol, where the city centre is down in a bowl. Some days you could see a general haze above the city which was basically all these petrol generators polluting that anyone in the city is breathing.

As well as polluting air, there is noise. Even though modern cars are much quieter, they are still loud. I have just been away for a few days. A couple of places I stopped were well out the way of anywhere, we sat out on a night and everything was pretty quiet. The last place was within a mile of an A road, which we could not see but after a couple of days of quiet we really noticed how loud the road is. Some of that will by tyre noise, but I'd be interested to see how much quieter our roads become.

One interesting thing is this 2040 limit is exactly what France announced 3 weeks ago. This is not an original idea. Now if France had lobbied the EU, then the EU had instructed the member countries to vote on adopting this as law and our parliament had voted it in democratically, there would be hell on about EU control. Because we are just copying our neighbours, nobody is frothing at the mouth, scrunching up their Daily Mail in anger.
Click to expand...

Are you seriously claiming that no one has a problem with this legislation but would be angry if the we did it cos the EU told us to? Is it supposed to be a dig at Brexiteers? Daily Mail readers? Maybe they're the same thing?

That's a very disappointing, lazy-arsed post by your usual standards.
 
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Morse said:
Are you seriously claiming that no one has a problem with this legislation but would be angry if the we did it cos the EU told us to? Is it supposed to be a dig at Brexiteers? Daily Mail readers? Maybe they're the same thing?

That's a very disappointing, lazy-arsed post by your usual standards.
Click to expand...

:lol::lol:

My point was if this was an EU legislation then people would be out in the streets with pitchforks, where as very few discussions and comments on news stories are linking the fact that we have done the same as the French.
 
DaveH said:
:lol::lol:

My point was if this was an EU legislation then people would be out in the streets with pitchforks, where as very few discussions and comments on news stories are linking the fact that we have done the same as the French.
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Give it time, early days and all that!
I suspect the long time before it comes into effect has dulled the impact somewhat.

I'll be almost 74 by then, it seems a very long way off! Or maybe not. Hmmm, I feel old all of a sudden.

bobpc30 said:
Have often asked that myself. Change it at a garage probably. The bigger question is, are all car manufacturers going to use the same battery or us there going to be a VHS/beta max type of thing ahead for us.
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We won't be using Lithium Ion based technology at all well before then IMO. Bookmark this. :lol:
Graphene has been talked about for use in batteries, there's probably other things as well.

Hopefully whatever it is doesn't burn like the sun when it decides to go wonky!
 
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Morse said:
Give it time, early days and all that!
I suspect the long time before it comes into effect has dulled the impact somewhat.

I'll be almost 74 by then, it seems a very long way off! Or maybe not. Hmmm, I feel old all of a sudden.
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Similar to what I said when chatting at work. I have just turned 40 and the ban will be (hopefully) after I retire.

Take a look at:
http://www.mobilephonehistory.co.uk/lists/by_year.html
for the phones around in 1994. The phone industry has been one of the main drivers for battery technology until now, and look how much that has changed.

The sexy Apple laptop of the day was:
https://collection.cooperhewitt.org/objects/18653399/

Back then, it was battery size that governed a lot of the laptop size, though you did need a certain thickness for the 3.5" floppy drive.
 
yamar1 said:
i doubt this will happen, same as most gov bull.

by 2040 id imagine the petrol/diesel engine will emit no harmfull gasses, judging by how much the manufacturers have reduced it in the last 20 years. the technology is improving year on year.
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the ford 1.25's and 1.6's will still be running on 2040
 
Pants said:
Too long - I gave up reading half way through.
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Haway. The lad had valid points. Don't conform to the Ritalin generation/Ignorance is king stereotype.

GK said:
Hulksters answer to in inevitable oil shortage is to do nothing and snipe from the sidelines at any solution.
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Its not sniping, the way I read it anyways. Just keeping a healthy dose of skepticism in regards to BIG CORP telling us whats good for us or not.

DJP said:
You're having a pop at people wanting less reliance on a carbon based society but what is stupid or naive about wanting a better future for our planet? Once the car companies and other engineers realise they HAVE to switch to electric vehicles the technology will improve at great pace and motoring costs will fall. I currently spend £45 a week filling up my tank but if I don't have to spend anywhere near that to keep an electric car on the road then bring it on. If that means I have to forfeit some of my petrol savings into paying more road tax or whatever then fair enough. If it is a mileage based system, again no worries. Some insurance companies already use mileage trackers as a means of charging people for their car insurance so road pricing will just be another extension of that.

And as regards "misty-eyed, right-on lentil munchers", the meat industry is responsible for more methane emissions than anything else on the planet and that has the single biggest impact on climate change so good luck to vegans for being on the right side of the climate change argument. ("The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has shown that animal agriculture is globally the single largest source of methane emissions and that, pound for pound, methane is more than 25 times as effective as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere.")
Click to expand...

I'm sorry marra. I'm not against electric cars at all but you do know where the bulk of the electricity comes from dont you?
 
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Hank Scorpio said:
Probably a blind thread to force the motor trade to actually tackle pollution. Fair enough imo

I do however believe we will see self-drive cars within 10-15 years.
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More like 5 to 10, the tech is pretty much there on the car side, what is needed is a stable (non-changing) road network. I don't see much issue with banning the gas cars by 2040, I can see private cars maybe disappearing by 2050 anyway as we all share smart "taxis".
 
Morse said:
No, Mr. Straw man! :lol:

I'm having a pop at people who see everything positive and nothing negative about electric cars. (No pun intended!) They paint a warm, fuzzy future where it's all good and problem free. As soon as you mention there may be downsides we have to watch out for, they won't have it.

Your remark about forfeiting some of fuel savings to pay more road tax demonstrates exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. Basically 'Bring it on, I don't mind paying road tax cos I'm saving the planet', just flat out assuming it's going to be affordable, that simple, or that nothing worse will follow.

Chipping in a bit of your fuel savings isn't going to replace all the lost duty and VAT, nor will it reduce this supposed congestion the people in power and lobby groups harp on about. Also, despite claims otherwise, electric cars still impact the planet negatively. Why on earth would the government want to make motoring cheaper or easier, when they've demonstrated the exact opposite for decades?

VAT, alcohol duty, bigger electricity bills, or just expensive roads, tracked wherever we go. The revenue has to come from somewhere. Maybe a huge tax on lentils? ;)

You're dead right about meat, more specifically red meat. I'd be much happier giving up red meat than my car. I enjoy a steak like many others, but I see it as something I could easily give up. It's a luxury, whereas I see a car as an essential item. It's a precious thing that we would be ill advised to take for granted. Bring on leccy cars, but don't fuck with our affordable freedom of motoring, that's all I say.



Are you seriously claiming that no one has a problem with this legislation but would be angry if the we did it cos the EU told us to? Is it supposed to be a dig at Brexiteers? Daily Mail readers? Maybe they're the same thing?

That's a very disappointing, lazy-arsed post by your usual standards.
Click to expand...

Good post mate. Well apart from banning red meat. :evil:
 
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