Future value of your motorhome

[Gromett]

Wait til the blinkers come off on the realities of cobalt and lithium mining and the pollution caused by power stations, the particulates caused by rubber tyres etc.
Electric cars may be replaced by Hydrogen or we could have vehicles running on magnetic fields "Maglev". There are already Maglev trains. Maglev Cars

Cobalt is coming out of Lithium batteries at quite a rate. LiFePO4 batteries are increasing in capacity now to the point where Tesla is using them in their lower range vehicles and they are set to remove Cobalt completely from their other cells within the next 2-3 years.
As for lithium mining being bad? It is one of the cleanest minerals to mine.
Dirty power stations are going offline at an extremely fast rate and being replace with clean renewables at a really quick rate. With battery prices dropping grid scale storage is starting to take off in a big way removing the worry about the intermittent nature of wind for example.
As for particulates caused by rubber tires. This is low level and localised. EV's actually reduce localised pollution as they use regenerative braking rather than friction pads. So brake dust becomes almost non existent. EV's reduce pollution massively. No more leaking oil either and other nasty pollutants.

Hydrogen cars are electric cars. They don't burn hydrogen they use it in a fuel cell which converts it to electric. HFC vehicles still need a battery as a buffer as a Fuel cell cannot on it's own power a car at peak requirements. It also takes a lot more electric to convert water to hydrogen so this would require more electric to be generated than if you just used a battery directly. Massive efficiency problems with hydrogen. I think hydrogen will have a place in things like shipping but not for cars, vans or trucks.

 

[Gromett]

Unless the EV market has managed to make EV suitable for 44t HGVs by then there will still be a huge demand for filling stations for diesel which would keep many in business.

Geoff

Tesla is currently building a factory to produce their 500-600 mile Class 8 Semi. It will be in production within the next 2 years or so. Others will follow.

Big business is clamouring for them because they are cheaper to run and maintain. I expect Trucking and Vans will actually accelerate and be the first segment to voluntarily completely move over to EVs long before the 2035 deadline.

Oh and on the petrol station front. Big trucks tend to use large main road services for their fuel not the smaller independents that most of us rely on. I can think of 5 small stations locally that wouldn't survive if their customer base reduces too much. 1 of them also sells LPG which is going to be sad to lose for us Motorhomers.

 

[LesW]

As for lithium mining being bad? It is one of the cleanest minerals to mine.

There are dozens (hundreds) of opinions on the interweb claiming otherwise, not all tree hugging types either.

Water contamination is the worst thing at the moment, in places where water is a bit scarce.

 

[Nanniemate]

That's my plan as well

don't forget to remove all distinguishing marks or ID so that if you do get 'forgetful' the authorities don't know where to send you back to make sure you have a nice seaview

 

[gus-lopez]

Long term diesel storage has risks. A bit of condensation in the tank followed by a microbial infection, known as diesel bug. You could be left with 5,000 litres of unusable black sludge. I bought a boat that had stood unused for a couple of years and it took a lot of draining and cleaning of both tanks to get rid of the bug.

You'd continue using it for your central heating as well, my mate does.

Tesla is currently building a factory to produce their 500-600 mile Class 8 Semi. It will be in production within the next 2 years or so. Others will follow.

Big business is clamouring for them because they are cheaper to run and maintain. I expect Trucking and Vans will actually accelerate and be the first segment to voluntarily completely move over to EVs long before the 2035 deadline.

Oh and on the petrol station front. Big trucks tend to use large main road services for their fuel not the smaller independents that most of us rely on. I can think of 5 small stations locally that wouldn't survive if their customer base reduces too much. 1 of them also sells LPG which is going to be sad to lose for us Motorhomers.

For many though it will still come down to charging times. Most of the produce delivery trucks running to the UK from here run double drivers non stop. Neighbour runs no stop to Belgium(netherlands for collection no stop apart from breaks. If they could be recharged during those breaks then it would work if not then it increases the costs.

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[Madcaravanner]

It will not worry me, I’v just had a PSA blood test,

! The resulting number has gone “ through the roof “ I am waiting for a telephone from my consultant at 4pm this afternoon.
We’ll see what happens from this afternoon on.

I know what you mean MY 6month check was done as I am suffering severe side effects from the Finasteride but I sneaked a PSA into the bloods the Urology Nurse wanted and got a letter saying that it had NOT gone back up as much as expected so leave our appointment for a further 6 months from now
Hope they can do something for you it ain't nice worrying

 

[Just smiffy]

It’ll be like Aires....

https://electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/11/Tesla-Kettleman-Supercharger-hero-e1573651328956.jpg?quality=82&strip=all&w=1200

 

[Coolcats]

Anyone put any thought in to the future value of their diesel motorhome as the day approaches to have all electric on to the roads.
If we speculate that as leisure vehicles they may have a shelf life of 15 years to the government's target of 2035 then there must come a time when prospective purchasers of your van will place a value based on its usable time left.
Most of us have probably been happy with the low depreciation in times passed but presumably that will not continue. The question is when and how fast the values would fall considering they may all become static caravans from 2035.
When new electric motorhomes come to market would people not be willing to pay a premium to future proof their investment with a marked fall in diesel sales. Perhaps that's when values start to fall faster than usuall?
Many will have to consider if and when they change their method of leisure travel such as caravan and electric car if they want some financial return on their van.
We are thinking to keep our present van untill forced to make it a static and not plow any more money in to further purchases. For us this means our second hand purchase in 2017 for will depreciate to £00.000 over those 18 years to 2035 at a rate of £5,000 per year which equates to £100.00 per week.
It's not all doom and gloom as we will use it extensively over those years for many adventures and enjoy the memories and all travel and leisure activities come with a cost.
Is there a different outcome for our trusty diesel motorhomes?

If I had thought and worried about deprecation I wouldn't have purchased the MoHo, its just Money and Money is a construct. Chances are on a £50-60K MoHo you will only see 35-40K of it when you sell after a few years so why worry.

You could argue with the increase in people ordering MoHo's and those buying them a this time its a sellers Market but once the mania has died down and people go back to buying flights and Air B&B holidays there will be a glut of MoHo's on the market devaluing what we have. Cant worry about it as I say its only Money.

 

[The general]

Hang in there mate, best of luck, I’m still here 12 years after my PC treatment started.
Phil

One in eight , have pc hang in there lads !!!!

 

[mikebeaches]

Has anyone the new car sales companies turning up offering delivery to your home or office
such as Heycar, cazoo and cinch.... must be trying to get rid of all those fields full of cars before its too late...

In late August we purchased a nearly new car online from a supermarket-style dealer in East London / Essex (London Motor Company https://www.lmc-cars.co.uk/ ). It was registered nine months previously, but had only 229 miles on the clock.

We spoke to the dealer on the phone and bought it without seeing it in the metal or test driving. It was delivered free to our home outside Bristol on a truck about ten days later. It was an easy hassle-free purchase.

It's a petrol automatic Citroen C3 Aircross mini-SUV and needless to say, we secured a good saving. After trawling the net extensively, including Heycar, cazoo and cinch, I couldn't find anything similar within £2k of the asking price, so just went for it.

All has turned out fine so far - we're well pleased!

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[Gromett]

There are dozens (hundreds) of opinions on the interweb claiming otherwise, not all tree hugging types either.

Water contamination is the worst thing at the moment, in places where water is a bit scarce.

When done badly using hard rock mining then of course it can be bad. But still infinitely better than coal, oil and LPG drilling.

However, lithium is present in huge quantities all over the world. There is no need to use nasty methods to mine it. The cleanest form of Lithium mining also happens to be the easiest is from salt flats using evaporation.

Have a look at Broken Link Removed to see what oil does...

Now look at this for Lithium. Bear in mind that this this is a fixed mine it will not get bigger over time as it moves to find more oil.

My final point would be this. A lithium battery can do 200,000 miles for that single amount of mined Lithium. To do the same in a Diesel truck you have to continuously drill for oil.

Every 159 litre barrel of Crude oil produces the following:
73 litres Petrol
36 litre Diesel
20 litres Jet fuel & heavy fuel oil
6 litres Propane
34 litres of other stuff

So if your van does 30 mpg on average over 200,000 miles you would be getting 6.6 miles per litre... 200,000 / 6.6 = 30,300 litres of diesel. I will leave you to do the maths on how many barrels of oil you will use over that period.

A lithium based battery has somewhere on the order of 160g of Lithium per KWh so 100Kwh battery (which is huge) would have 16KG of lithium in it.

Makes you think doesn't it? 30,300 litres of diesel vs 16KG of lithium. Oh and Lithium can be recycled but your oil/Diesel gets burnt and the by products released into the environment.

My philosophy these days is; If you are burning something you are doing it wrong in principle. The only reason to burn stuff now are for economic reasons.

 

[Gromett]

For many though it will still come down to charging times. Most of the produce delivery trucks running to the UK from here run double drivers non stop. Neighbour runs no stop to Belgium(netherlands for collection no stop apart from breaks. If they could be recharged during those breaks then it would work if not then it increases the costs.

80% charge is supposed to take half an hour. Well within the break time of UK/EU drivers.
At 4.5 hours driving at 60mph you would cover 270 miles which is well under half of the battery capacity.

The maths works, how it works in practical terms is another matter. The long distance double driver setups are not a large proportion of the miles covered so it may be the last segment of the market to move over. By which time the tech will have improved dramatically.

 

[WESTY66]

When done badly using hard rock mining then of course it can be bad. But still infinitely better than coal, oil and LPG drilling.

However, lithium is present in huge quantities all over the world. There is no need to use nasty methods to mine it. The cleanest form of Lithium mining also happens to be the easiest is from salt flats using evaporation.

Have a look at Broken Link Removed to see what oil does...

Now look at this for Lithium. Bear in mind that this this is a fixed mine it will not get bigger over time as it moves to find more oil.

View attachment 437084


My final point would be this. A lithium battery can do 200,000 miles for that single amount of mined Lithium. To do the same in a Diesel truck you have to continuously drill for oil.

Every 159 litre barrel of Crude oil produces the following:
73 litres Petrol
36 litre Diesel
20 litres Jet fuel & heavy fuel oil
6 litres Propane
34 litres of other stuff

So if your van does 30 mpg on average over 200,000 miles you would be getting 6.6 miles per litre... 200,000 / 6.6 = 30,300 litres of diesel. I will leave you to do the maths on how many barrels of oil you will use over that period.

A lithium based battery has somewhere on the order of 160g of Lithium per KWh so 100Kwh battery (which is huge) would have 16KG of lithium in it.

Makes you think doesn't it? 30,300 litres of diesel vs 16KG of lithium. Oh and Lithium can be recycled but your oil/Diesel gets burnt and the by products released into the environment.

My philosophy these days is; If you are burning something you are doing it wrong in principle. The only reason to burn stuff now are for economic reasons.

Ah but you’re forgetting all the costs/infrastructure associated with recharging said lithium battery to do the 200,000 miles and not all of the electricity comes from renewable energy sources

 

[tonyidle]

Tesla is currently building a factory to produce their 500-600 mile Class 8 Semi. It will be in production within the next 2 years or so. Others will follow.

Big business is clamouring for them because they are cheaper to run and maintain. I expect Trucking and Vans will actually accelerate and be the first segment to voluntarily completely move over to EVs long before the 2035 deadline.

Oh and on the petrol station front. Big trucks tend to use large main road services for their fuel not the smaller independents that most of us rely on. I can think of 5 small stations locally that wouldn't survive if their customer base reduces too much. 1 of them also sells LPG which is going to be sad to lose for us Motorhomers.

Some informative stuff on hydrogen if you search. This is just one article:

High hopes for hydrogen | National Grid Group

As we travel toward a cleaner net zero future, we must look for alternatives to methane or ‘natural’ gas such as hydrogen. Here Antony Green, Project Director for Hydrogen Transportation, Gas Transmission, explains how National Grid is getting ready for a greener gas future.

www.nationalgrid.com

 

[Gromett]

Ah but you’re forgetting all the costs associated with recharging said lithium battery to do the 200,000 miles and not all of the electricity comes from renewable energy sources

I am not forgetting about it.. In fact I specifically mentioned it in an earlier post

Dirty power stations are going offline at an extremely fast rate and being replaced with clean renewables at a really quick rate.

Check this out. The progress in just 10 years is stunning.
We have practically stopped generating electric from coal.
The percentage of renewables has gone from 1% to 40%
Wind and solar now produce around 25% of our total annual consumption.

The Diesel car you buy today will get less efficient and dirtier over time.
The EV car you buy today will only get cleaner over time as more fossil fuel electric production is moved over to renewables.

Oh and a thought for you. Even if you run your EV on the dirtiest electric from the worst type of coal, it's overall emissions are lower than an equivelent diesel car.

A recent study published by researcher Ryan Cornell of Harvard University shows that electric vehicles emit less carbon emissions than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles even when charged off a largely coal-powered grid.

Source.

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[Gromett]

Some informative stuff on hydrogen if you search. This is just one article:

High hopes for hydrogen | National Grid Group

As we travel toward a cleaner net zero future, we must look for alternatives to methane or ‘natural’ gas such as hydrogen. Here Antony Green, Project Director for Hydrogen Transportation, Gas Transmission, explains how National Grid is getting ready for a greener gas future.

www.nationalgrid.com

I am familiar with Hydrogen and Fuel Cells. Done a lot of reading up on this and other related subjects.

The economics and physics do not work out except in some areas (such as long distance shipping and perhaps long haul trains through isolated geography.)

 

[Gromett]

Some informative stuff on hydrogen if you search. This is just one article:

High hopes for hydrogen | National Grid Group

As we travel toward a cleaner net zero future, we must look for alternatives to methane or ‘natural’ gas such as hydrogen. Here Antony Green, Project Director for Hydrogen Transportation, Gas Transmission, explains how National Grid is getting ready for a greener gas future.

www.nationalgrid.com

I will suggest that if you are not familiar look into steam reforming of natural gas to produce hydrogen which is the most efficient method currently. Check out where the CO2 goes from this process. Methane is CH4 1 carbon atom and 4 hydrogen. The carbon has to go somewhere.

The second method which is green, is electrolysis. Check out how much energy (electric) it takes to produce 1 Litre of hydrogen... Then imagine how much more electric we would need to produce to go 100% hydrogen for transport AND heating. Then check out the effiency of just using the electric via a heat pump to heat a house rather than electrolysing water, piping the hydrogen to the home then burning it. The efficiency difference is staggering.

 

[WESTY66]

I am not forgetting about it.. In fact I specifically mentioned it in an earlier post


Check this out. The progress in just 10 years is stunning.
We have practically stopped generating electric from coal.
The percentage of renewables has gone from 1% to 40%
Wind and solar now produce around 25% of our total annual consumption.

The Diesel car you buy today will get less efficient and dirtier over time.
The EV car you buy today will only get cleaner over time as more fossil fuel electric production is moved over to renewables.

Oh and a thought for you. Even if you run your EV on the dirtiest electric from the worst type of coal, it's overall emissions are lower than an equivelent diesel car.


Source.

I am not clever enough to counter that argument, BUT clean wind turbines will be less efficient as they get older too, just like the motors powering our crushers and conveyors at work and will need replacing at some point in the future

 

[Gromett]

I am not clever enough to counter that argument, BUT clean wind turbines will be less efficient as they get older too, just like the motors powering our crushers and conveyors at work and will need replacing at some point in the future

Wind turbines do get less efficient over time due to the leading edge of the blade getting damages by the abrasives in the wind. Much work is going into new technologies for the leading edge to protect it, and also methods of repairing the leading edge.

The same thing happens to traditional power plants. They get less efficient as they age and they have to have maintenance carried out.

Lots of videos about wind turbines on youtube. This one is of a product by 3M.



and a high wire job, doing a repair.

 

[Gromett]

One thing a lot of people don't consider is that by then there will be a roaring trade on conversions. Loads of companies will set up to provide EV conversion kits for vehicles and this might make the changeover neutral.

I posted this earlier this morning. Just gone to look at Electrek to catch up on the news and saw a manufacturer has launched a product to convert a 1977 version of it's vehicle to electric due to popular demand.

How long will it be before other manufacturers see a chance to make some money off official conversion kits and 3rd party OEM's decide to get on the band wagon?

GM unveils 1977 K5 Blazer-E with electric power thanks to its upcoming eCrate conversion kit

GM has unveiled its 1977 Chevy K5 Blazer-E converted to electric power with its upcoming eCrate conversion kit using Chevy...

electrek.co

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[bobnick]

In 2034 the Gov will realise it ain't going to happen in 2035 so will extend the deadline to 2045, then in 2044 they....................well you know where i'm going.

 

[Gromett]

In 2034 the Gov will realise it ain't going to happen in 2035 so will extend the deadline to 2045, then in 2044 they....................well you know where i'm going.

If it was simply the government forcing this I think you could well be right. But this is happening for commercial reasons as much as anything now it has gotten started.

 

[tonyidle]

I will suggest that if you are not familiar look into steam reforming of natural gas to produce hydrogen which is the most efficient method currently. Check out where the CO2 goes from this process. Methane is CH4 1 carbon atom and 4 hydrogen. The carbon has to go somewhere.

The second method which is green, is electrolysis. Check out how much energy (electric) it takes to produce 1 Litre of hydrogen... Then imagine how much more electric we would need to produce to go 100% hydrogen for transport AND heating. Then check out the effiency of just using the electric via a heat pump to heat a house rather than electrolysing water, piping the hydrogen to the home then burning it. The efficiency difference is staggering.

Agreed. I wasn't suggesting that I'm convinced by the hydrogen argument. I didn't know until a few days ago that there was any study that suggested using the NG grid so I thought others might be interested. It does occur to me that no more carbon is produced by reforming than would be produced by burning NG so centralised carbon capture might be an (expensive and difficult) possibility.

Producing electricity by solar, or wind / water / wave energy, is really the only viable way to obtain it. Burning anything other than hydrogen produces carbon and hydrogen production has its own problems. I'm just happy that we're making some progress in those areas.

 

[Gromett]

Agreed. I wasn't suggesting that I'm convinced by the hydrogen argument. I didn't know until a few days ago that there was any study that suggested using the NG grid so I thought others might be interested. It does occur to me that no more carbon is produced by reforming than would be produced by burning NG so centralised carbon capture might be an (expensive and difficult) possibility.

I am not convinced by carbon capture to be honest. The first time it fails and releases mega tonnes of CO2 will be it's death knell. I think it will actually be cheaper to roll out massive amounts of Wind/Solar backed by grid scale storage than it would to use carbon capture and still drill for oil.

Producing electricity by solar, or wind / water / wave energy, is really the only viable way to obtain it. Burning anything other than hydrogen produces carbon and hydrogen production has its own problems. I'm just happy that we're making some progress in those areas.

Burning hydrogen still produces Nitrogen Oxides which is not desirable. The only good way of using hydrogen in my view is in fuel cells. But getting the Hydrogen from steam reforming CH4 would be silly as you then still have the Carbon problem.

I think the only way hydrogen can be helpful is if excess renewables are used to electrolyse water. This hydrogen could then be stored and used either for shipping or if there is an excess injected into the gas lines to reduce the burning of methane in the home.

The point I am trying to make is this.
Digging or drilling fossil fuels then burning them makes no sense even with carbon capture from a logical and scientific point of view. It really only makes sense to burn stuff from an economics point of view OR as an interim measure if it is the most suitable and cleanest solution at the time.
For instance replacing coal with gas made a lot of sense as it is cleaner and cheaper. But to extract hydrogen from natural gas then burn it doesn't make a lot of sense to me unless it is a side effect of something else that is worthwhile.

It's the old saying. "Don't let perfection be the enemy of progress".

Hope that makes sense?

 

[Coolcats]

When done badly using hard rock mining then of course it can be bad. But still infinitely better than coal, oil and LPG drilling.

However, lithium is present in huge quantities all over the world. There is no need to use nasty methods to mine it. The cleanest form of Lithium mining also happens to be the easiest is from salt flats using evaporation.

Have a look at Broken Link Removed to see what oil does...

Now look at this for Lithium. Bear in mind that this this is a fixed mine it will not get bigger over time as it moves to find more oil.

View attachment 437084


My final point would be this. A lithium battery can do 200,000 miles for that single amount of mined Lithium. To do the same in a Diesel truck you have to continuously drill for oil.

Every 159 litre barrel of Crude oil produces the following:
73 litres Petrol
36 litre Diesel
20 litres Jet fuel & heavy fuel oil
6 litres Propane
34 litres of other stuff

So if your van does 30 mpg on average over 200,000 miles you would be getting 6.6 miles per litre... 200,000 / 6.6 = 30,300 litres of diesel. I will leave you to do the maths on how many barrels of oil you will use over that period.

A lithium based battery has somewhere on the order of 160g of Lithium per KWh so 100Kwh battery (which is huge) would have 16KG of lithium in it.

Makes you think doesn't it? 30,300 litres of diesel vs 16KG of lithium. Oh and Lithium can be recycled but your oil/Diesel gets burnt and the by products released into the environment.

My philosophy these days is; If you are burning something you are doing it wrong in principle. The only reason to burn stuff now are for economic reasons.

Could be worth working out how much digging of the earths resources and Enviroment is destroyed and how much diesel it takes to manufacture such a ‘clean’ technology. I read this morning how Dale vince has created technology to create diamonds which require no digging or destruction of the Enviroment, now that’s what is really smart Environmental innovation.

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[Coolcats]

Investigations have started (not in the UK as yet) into using the existing NG network to distribute Hydrogen. So far it's looking good although their will need to be additional pumping stations. If it can replace NG for homes there's a very good chance the existing network could service vehicle filling stations.

Hydrogen transport is right here right now, personally I think this would be a much better way forward than just relying on battery cars.

 

[tonyidle]

Hydrogen transport is right here right now, personally I think this would be a much better way forward than just relying on battery cars.

Battery cars have only one issue to overcome and that is battery capacity ie range. Weight, other than for legislative purposes, isn't an issue. For the end user it is hard to imagine any current technology offering a better solution. Fuel is produced remotely and delivered via an existing backbone grid leaving the only real problem of end-user connection. Average daily car mileage is around 28 -
https://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/mobility#a5)
- which means a very large number of drivers must do a lot less and for these users charging at home, where possible, can be accomplished using existing connections.

 

[tonyidle]

Burning hydrogen still produces Nitrogen Oxides which is not desirable. The only good way of using hydrogen in my view is in fuel cells.

Sorry - for burning read using

 

[Coolcats]

Battery cars have only one issue to overcome and that is battery capacity ie range. Weight, other than for legislative purposes, isn't an issue. For the end user it is hard to imagine any current technology offering a better solution. Fuel is produced remotely and delivered via an existing backbone grid leaving the only real problem of end-user connection. Average daily car mileage is around 28 -
https://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/mobility#a5)
- which means a very large number of drivers must do a lot less and for these users charging at home, where possible, can be accomplished using existing connections.

Don’t get me wrong there is always a need for a mix of technologies Hydrogen being one of them which you could produce at home if you wished. At one time there were many nay sayers for battery powered cars now they are becoming more available across all manufactures. It is also interesting that Hydrogen was chosen as a fuel for a train not lithium batteries so it may well be in the future Hydrogen may be used for heavy goods vehicles over batteries.

 

[Nanniemate]

I am 61 and have already outlived both my parents, I gave up trying to buy a decent crystal ball a few years ago as none worked properly so I really couldn’t care a less about what might or might not happen in 15 years re electric vehicles and future proofing vehicle values.

Good luck dipsie I hope they can get things under control for you.

If the crystal ball don't work do you want to try my broomstick its turbo charged.

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