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The great electric vehicle debate rages on... Low carbon, big footprint...?

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danny7147:
This is turning into a nice little informative thread lol! I certainly don't think that there's a hope of having enough to power the world's cars, but it's still a great alternative.

Leading away from the political and environmental aspects though, it was financial that aided my decision. Thedesigntailor mentioned about the smell. When I first used it I found a local company that sold the oil they'd recycled. Interestingly, he had to pay tax on the stuff he sold as he was classed as a fuel distributor! Two things stopped us using it... firstly the smell. The first batch gave the car a nice maple syrup smell, the second was pure fish and chips! Fine in the evening, but not nice when you've got a 5am start! Secondly, he charged £1.10 a litre. Sure, a saving on pump prices, but the same price as buying it on offer from supermarkets.

I mentioned Crisp 'n Dry... we use whatever is on offer. It's had rapeseed, sunflower, most types, and the car runs fine. It's a 1.9rd, and it has to be said that you lose perhaps 5% of the power... marginally slower on the pull off and hill starts, but for the money we save it's of no real concern.

But! Going back to what started this thread, I am curious to know your thoughts on electric cars and their environmental impact. A recent study suggests that when you take into account the lifespan of a vehicle and carbon footprint the new Honda electric car is actually 3 times worse for the planet than a Hummer!

thedesigntailor:
I wouldn't buy an electric car simply because of depreciation.

On the veg oil front, I've heard that a splash of white spirit gives you more power than from diesel. Please don't take my word for it though!  ;)

Howard81:
Well we are nowhere near as close to running out of natural oil like the media would have you believe.. we're just using up most of the easy to reach bits. There are gigantic quantities of it much deeper inside the Earth, but to get it out would need an insane about of engineering and investment - it's not worth the expenditure.. yet..

Sadly the dream of having an fully electric or semi-hybrid car that would be good enough in all aspects to entirely replace todays existing petrol and diesel cars is years away.

The Toyota Prius was a groundbreaking car when it launched in 1997, but it seems to me that the basic underlying technology hasn't changed that much at all in 15 years! Especially considering how environmentally unfriendly it is.. it's really nothing more than an expensive gimmick, and it irritates me that they're constantly being heralded for being so great to the environment due to "zero emissions".

The other car that comes to mind are those little G-Whiz things. When I first moved to London, the flipping things were everywhere. Buyers even got a Government cashback grant for "going green", plus they had the added benefit of having free road tax, exemption from the Congestion Charge and you could even park them in London for free. But fast forward a few years when the batteries wore out people found they're not worth spending £2K a new set.  The cars cost £7-8000 new and considering the range was 40 miles on the flat - less if you had to press the Turbo button to be able to get up a hill. That's useless!

It's not new news either, Sir Clive also reckoned once the C5 became a hit consumer electric vehicles would take off big time which would encourage the various battery manufacturers to kick their battery development up a notch!  But even the current fancy Lithium LiPo etc batteries of today's electric cars are essentially hand-me-down military aerospace technology from 20 years ago - NASA had a large part in developing some of the, but only because they were needed to work in zero gravity on the Space Shuttle!

I wonder what the carbon footprint for the lifecycle of a C5 is  ;D

danny7147:
Something made me smile in Cite Europe yesterday, a 5 watt solar panel for €19. Now, what's the point in that? Advertised as having enough power to charge a mobile phone or laptop, would the carbon footprint and pollution generated in it's manufacture ever be less than the electricity generated to power my phone lol :-)

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