Motorhome evolution in a diesel-banned future

[Deleted member 29692]

I fail to see how a "Tax Break" is a subsidy?

That's exactly what it is

 

[PeteH]

That's exactly what it is

Which ergo means that everyone gets a "Subsidy".? (HMRC "personal allowance")

Actually, to revert back to the O-P. I still feel that the power to weight ratio of making an ALL ELECTRIC. Motorhome. is a BIG ask, and keeping it Charged, especially if "wilding" will be as big a challenge. Unlikely IMV to be a goer in my lifetime. However the "discussion" is an interesting Exercise.

 

[Deleted member 29692]

Which ergo means that everyone gets a "Subsidy".? (HMRC "personal allowance")

Pretty much yes.

Some get a greater subsidy than others with all the different allowances that are available.

Whether the government collect it first as tax and then give it back to you calling it a subsidy or just don't bother collecting it at all and call it an allowance or a tax break is irrelevant. It amounts to the same thing.

 

[Gromett]

I fail to see how a "Tax Break" is a subsidy?

A subsidy is any benefit given to a specific person or industry that is not available to everyone. In the case of a tax break, that person or company benefits and everyone else has to make it up.
The other effect of a subsidy is that it distorts the market. Giving a competitive advantage to one company or a sector in one country gives it advantages compared to a similar company in another market or country, this distorts the market by affecting competition..

Which ergo means that everyone gets a "Subsidy".? (HMRC "personal allowance")

The personal allowance is available to everyone so it therefore not a subsidy. Because everyone gets it it also has no effect on the market (no distortion)

 

[PeteH]

Reverting back to the O-P. As I said, I still feel that the power to weight ratio of making an ALL ELECTRIC. Motorhome. is a BIG ask, and keeping it Charged, especially if "wilding" will be as big a challenge. Unlikely IMV to be a goer in my lifetime. However the "discussion" is an interesting Exercise. Hoxever I still dont think we will see it commercially available at any sort of "Affordable" cost, any time soon?.

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[Manxcat]

I fully understand that there are technical issues to be overcome with electric or hydrogen powered vehicles.

What I don't understand is why so many seem to a against the change/in favour of keeping oil. There is no doubt that petrol/diesel is dirty and polluting.

Personally I am excited that there may be zero emission vehicles on the way.

 

[Gromett]

Reverting back to the O-P. As I said, I still feel that the power to weight ratio of making an ALL ELECTRIC. Motorhome. is a BIG ask, and keeping it Charged, especially if "wilding" will be as big a challenge. Unlikely IMV to be a goer in my lifetime. However the "discussion" is an interesting Exercise. Hoxever I still dont think we will see it commercially available at any sort of "Affordable" cost, any time soon?.

The Ban isn't until 2040 which is 23 years away. An all electric motorhome probably isn't practical or cost effective now. However 10 years from now when batteries are more than double the capacity and more development has been done by manufacturers on electric vehicles I honestly don't see it being an issue.

 

[bilM]

The Ban isn't until 2040 which is 23 years away.

Well just in case you have not seen the news us up in Scotland we have the ban in 2032.



Tesla and other electric-vehicle makers have done something clever and appealing: They have replaced carbon emissions you can see with carbon emissions you can’t see, at least not coming out of the tailpipe. In fact, if your electric vehicle is charged with electricity from a coal-fired power plant, it is estimated to emit 15 ounces of carbon per mile, a full 3 ounces per mile more than a similar gasoline-powered vehicle. But that’s just the beginning. Under the hood you’ll also find the wonderful, innovative lithium batteries that Teslas rely on to hold their charge. In 2013, the Environmental Protection Agency described these batteries as having the “highest potential for environmental impacts,” with lithium mining resulting in greenhouse-gas emissions, environmental pollution, and human-health impacts. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that specializes in “science for a healthy planet and safer world,” agrees: For long-range electric vehicles such as Tesla, manufacturing emissions are 68 percent higher than for conventional cars. So in order just to break even with a conventional car on environmental damage, you should expect to drive your EV a lot: around 75,000 miles, assuming your state has a European-like energy portfolio, and more if it doesn’t. But that can be hard to do, because the need for frequent recharging and the slow degradation of battery capacity make long trips increasingly difficult. And if your EV is powered by coal, as is the case in many U.S. locations, it will actually cause an increase in environmental impacts of 17 to 27 percent as compared with a conventional car.

 

[Gromett]

Tesla and other electric-vehicle makers have done something clever and appealing: They have replaced carbon emissions you can see with carbon emissions you can’t see, at least not coming out of the tailpipe. In fact, if your electric vehicle is charged with electricity from a coal-fired power plant, it is estimated to emit 15 ounces of carbon per mile, a full 3 ounces per mile more than a similar gasoline-powered vehicle. But that’s just the beginning. Under the hood you’ll also find the wonderful, innovative lithium batteries that Teslas rely on to hold their charge. In 2013, the Environmental Protection Agency described these batteries as having the “highest potential for environmental impacts,” with lithium mining resulting in greenhouse-gas emissions, environmental pollution, and human-health impacts. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that specializes in “science for a healthy planet and safer world,” agrees: For long-range electric vehicles such as Tesla, manufacturing emissions are 68 percent higher than for conventional cars. So in order just to break even with a conventional car on environmental damage, you should expect to drive your EV a lot: around 75,000 miles, assuming your state has a European-like energy portfolio, and more if it doesn’t. But that can be hard to do, because the need for frequent recharging and the slow degradation of battery capacity make long trips increasingly difficult. And if your EV is powered by coal, as is the case in many U.S. locations, it will actually cause an increase in environmental impacts of 17 to 27 percent as compared with a conventional car.

Those statistics are incomplete and misleading I am afraid. It looks like you have fallen for some of the anti renewables propaganda...

Lithium mining is one of the cleanest and safest material to "mine". It is extracted from brine by evaporation. There is only 3% lithium in a lithium battery. The only seriously harmful element in batteries currently is Cobalt used in LiCoO2 batteries. However I believe this chemistry is currently only used by Tesla. For instance Nissan uses LiMn2O4 which uses manganese. Quite a few others are using LiFePO4. The latter 2 are not harmful if disposed of properly which for car batteries this is pretty much guaranteed due to residual value.

You quote manufacturing emissions but don't quote the complete full report where this comes from. Even with our current energy mix, an electric car in the UK using electric from a mix of current energy it's output is equivalent to a vehicle that does 44mpg. This figure includes the energy used in manufacturing. This figure will also increase with time as we invest in more renewable energy.

On the U.S. figure. You say "Many" U.S. locations but you don't actually quantify this.

There is too much in your post for me to get into details here. However...

In 2013, the Environmental Protection Agency described these batteries as having the “highest potential for environmental impacts,” with lithium mining resulting in greenhouse-gas emissions, environmental pollution, and human-health impacts. .

The people you got your quote from either didn't read the full EPA report or are deliberately taking parts of it and running with it in a direction that wasn't intended. I am not going to break it down. But a picture is worth a thousand words. Here is a graph from that report.
The left hand scale is the total Green House Gas emissions, and the bottom scale represents the carbon intensity of the grid.

As you can see the ICEV (internal combustion engine vehicle) is the line at the top of the graph and from an ultra low carbon intensity grid of say 200 all the way up to 1100 the ICEV vehicle produces in excess of 250 g CO2 eq/Km. Even on the most carbon intensive grid not a single type of battery vehicle reaches the high levels produced by an ICE vehicle...

The full report is here. Pretty heavy going to be honest.
BROKEN LINK

One quote worth including here is..

In looking at the impacts for PHEV and EV Li-ion batteries, this study found that, in general, global
warming potential is one of the few categories in which EV batteries show lower impacts than PHEV
batteries; however, this is not unequivocal. A true net benefit in global warming potential for EV
batteries only appears when the grid is not coal-centric.

It is worth noting that even in the U.S. coal is dying. This death is accelerating and remember this report was produced in 2014 so it is already 3 years out of date.

Coal power in the United States accounted for 39% of the country's electricity production at utility-scale facilities in 2014, 33% in 2015, and 30.4% in 2016.

Coal is now more expensive than all other types of power excluding Nuclear. Because of the shale gas revolution in the U.S. coal plants are being wound down rather rapidly or converted.

So even in a really dirty country like the U.S. EV's are a much better bet...

 

[SpeedyDux]

Broken Link Removed
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-review/hyundai/ix35-fuel-cell


All production model Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars. The Clarity has been available in one form or another for about 10 years.

Not only can they do it, they are doing it

The biggest stumbling block in the UK is that there are only a handful of garages selling hydrogen and those are all in the South East.

@NickNic - my perception of the main stumbling bock remains the problem of the on-board hydrogen tank under 700 bar pressure and its pipes, filters, and ancillaries, being "serviced" by the technicians (I am being kind) at the Main Stealerships. It was bad enough when I had a leaking petrol tank in my previous car. I discovered that smelly and dripping leak after it had simply been ignored or not noticed at service / MOT time. Only one of a very long list of woeful errors and omissions I could list, but I have no confidence whatsoever in the franchised garage trade's capability not to leave me driving a potential fireball. There are a few gems in the non-franchised garage sector who aren't cowboys but they seem to be a minority. If you find one, they are brilliant.

Hydrogen fuelled cars are likely to remain a tiny proportion of the car market. I see them more as a manufacturer's technology showcase. I wonder what the insurance industry thinks and how they rate the risk.

100% electric cars seem a better bet especially for safer long term ownership. At least there is less to go wrong, less life-threatening hazard if it does go wrong, and I expect less requirement for potetially incompetent servicing.

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[Deleted member 29692]

@NickNic - my perception of the main stumbling bock remains the problem of the on-board hydrogen tank under 700 bar pressure and its pipes, filters, and ancillaries, being "serviced" by the technicians (I am being kind) at the Main Stealerships. It was bad enough when I had a leaking petrol tank in my previous car. I discovered that smelly and dripping leak after it had simply been ignored or not noticed at service / MOT time. Only one of a very long list of woeful errors and omissions I could list, but I have no confidence whatsoever in the franchised garage trade's capability not to leave me driving a potential fireball. There are a few gems in the non-franchised garage sector who aren't cowboys but they seem to be a minority. If you find one, they are brilliant.

Hydrogen fuelled cars are likely to remain a tiny proportion of the car market. I see them more as a manufacturer's technology showcase. I wonder what the insurance industry thinks and how they rate the risk.

100% electric cars seem a better bet especially for safer long term ownership. At least there is less to go wrong, less life-threatening hazard if it does go wrong, and I expect less requirement for potetially incompetent servicing.

I'm sure you're right about the dangers but you seem to have missed, or be ignoring, the point that these three models are in full production. They are not concepts or prototypes or anything else.

Whatever concerns there are have obviously been addressed to the satisfaction of the relevant authorities. That's good enough for me.

As for maintenance any ICE vehicle can become dangerous if it's not maintained properly as can any battery electric car. Everything I can find on the subject confirms that FCEV vehicles require similar serving to other electric vehicles i.e. less than an equivalent ICE model because of the fewer moving parts. You've picked out the Hydrogen storage system in particular. Do you have any real information on exactly what if any serving the fuel system requires on an FCEV? suggests there's no more, perhaps slightly less, involved than there would be on an ICE vehicle.

 

[olley]

Hydrogen doesn't have to be stored under pressure, it can like acetylene be absorbed into another medium. This explains it.
https://eic.rsc.org/feature/fuelling-the-future-solid-phase-hydrogen-storage/2020153.article

 

[SpeedyDux]

I'm sure you're right about the dangers but you seem to have missed, or be ignoring, the point that these three models are in full production. They are not concepts or prototypes or anything else.

Whatever concerns there are have obviously been addressed to the satisfaction of the relevant authorities. That's good enough for me.

As for maintenance any ICE vehicle can become dangerous if it's not maintained properly as can any battery electric car. Everything I can find on the subject confirms that FCEV vehicles require similar serving to other electric vehicles i.e. less than an equivalent ICE model because of the fewer moving parts. You've picked out the Hydrogen storage system in particular. Do you have any real information on exactly what if any serving the fuel system requires on an FCEV? suggests there's no more, perhaps slightly less, involved than there would be on an ICE vehicle.

Interesting link. Any kind of fuel system needs a filter to remove contaminants. Unless the filter is a lifetime non-service item (as well as the high pressure kit) that the technicians will never need to touch, I'm treating this hydrogen fuel technology with the Mk1 barge pole. It's all about the difference between "is" and "ought" in the after-sales service, not the number of items on the schedule. I'm not against the fuel cell, which has its uses. I just prefer idiot-proof technologies, where the fail safe state is inherently safe.

Fukushima shows why PWRs took a wrong turn; they have their uses in Subs, but for civil applications there are alternative designs of nuclear reactors that can't go into meltdown if the cooling system stops cooling. Yet we still build new PWRs for power generation, and their safety case always gets approval. No expert expected a really big tsunami so a higher sea wall / bund was not required. Saved money. Nothing to do directly with Hydrogen powered FCEVs, but the illusion of the safety case approval versus commercial pressure gives rise to doubts.

 

[Deleted member 29692]

I just prefer idiot-proof technologies, where the fail safe state is inherently safe.

I take it you steer well clear of petrol and diesel engines then?

 

[SpeedyDux]

I take it you steer well clear of petrol and diesel engines then?

Haha. I'm a petrolhead who used to compete in motorsport. Safely.
Diesel is inherently much safer than petrol anyway.

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[gus-lopez]

As for subsidies, Solar is now so cheap you can get your money back within 14 years and in the meantime you can power your car for a massive discount (around 75% on some figures I have seen)....

..

In the Uk ,maybe. Here in Spain you'd become bankrupt , as many have.

Electric vehicles are currently subsidised to encourage uptake. For instance a Tesla will cost you £35000, but you will get £7,000 back off the government. So you too can benefit from the subsidies.. ..

In the Uk maybe. Here it would be given, the same as the scrappage scheme, as a reduction in income tax paid in one year. So if you don't pay any or pay less than the amount you would get back then you'd be losing out.
& here 82% of ALL vehicles sold are , & always have been , diesel powered. Used to be that if you had a petrol powered vehicle you were considered extremely wealthy.

The land doesn't need to be "given up"

Where a solar farm is built on agricultural land the land usually can be, and is, still used for livestock grazing.

Having travelled the Uk extensively I can count on one hand the amount of solar installations that had sheep grazing in them. Never seen any in other EU states.

That's exactly what it is

No it isn't. A subsidy is something , like the feed in tariff, that is paid directly whereas the " personal allowance " only applies if you have an income.

Which ergo means that everyone gets a "Subsidy".? (HMRC "personal allowance")

Actually, to revert back to the O-P. I still feel that the power to weight ratio of making an ALL ELECTRIC. Motorhome. is a BIG ask, and keeping it Charged, especially if "wilding" will be as big a challenge. Unlikely IMV to be a goer in my lifetime. However the "discussion" is an interesting Exercise.

Only if they have an income, & also if they only have an income below the 'personal allowance' then they are receiving less than their neighbours + subsidising their allowances.

A bit like how "social housing " has to be built with solar panels, Hot water systems ,etc; to comply, yet the bloke next door paying 400k gets sweet fa whilst supporting & paying for next doors income.

I wonder how they are going to get the future MH's in under 3,5 T when they can't manage it now ?

The personal allowance is available to everyone so it therefore not a subsidy. Because everyone gets it it also has no effect on the market (no distortion)

Only if they have an income.

If we had stayed with /reverted to the original simple diesel ,one designed to run on any hydrocarbon fuel we could all be using vegetable oil, recycled chip fat ,etc.

 

[SpeedyDux]

Hydrogen doesn't have to be stored under pressure, it can like acetylene be absorbed into another medium. This explains it.
https://eic.rsc.org/feature/fuelling-the-future-solid-phase-hydrogen-storage/2020153.article

At the risk of sounding facetious, liquid storage of hydrogen is so much simpler. It's right there in the fresh water tank of your MH.

All you need is electrical energy to convert it back to gaseous hydrogen and oxygen. Better still, you could use that electrical energy to power the motors and just use the water for washing and cooking.

 

[MR. FUSION]

There are a number of issues in this whole Electric car business which needs solving first.

1. Fast and super fast charging kills batteries (even Lithium)
2. Super fast charging has a much higher loss of energy than slow charging - no accurate data that I can find, Superfast is the only way it can practically deliver a usable system for roadside re charge.
3. Availability of Lithium: Teslas plans alone for Electric Cars and massive storage batteries reduce the know reserves of Lithium (this years consumption rate) from 300 odd years to 14 years. That includes the know reserves and the estimated known and unexploited reserves.

At least I will probably be dead by the time the ban comes in!!!

Note that Angela Merkel has stated publically that Germany does not agree with an end date to the diesel!

If the Germans introduced sensible rosd speed limits like the rest of Europe they would probably cut their fuel consumption by half overnight.

 

[MR. FUSION]

@campa cola
This makes an interesting read. As I have said many times, we are just at the start. but the fall in battery and wind costs is starting to have an effect.

https://arstechnica.co.uk/informati...re-dipping-toes-into-energy-storage-projects/

The batteries had better be working and able by the time the old nukes are burned out, as they are currently providing most of the grid baseload at present.

 

[gus-lopez]

If the Germans introduced sensible rosd speed limits like the rest of Europe they would probably cut their fuel consumption by half overnight.

or refrained from the drag race between village speed cameras . Had to follow someone for nearly 45 minutes driving like this & the vast majority do it.

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[MR. FUSION]

or refrained from the drag race between village speed cameras . Had to follow someone for nearly 45 minutes driving like this & the vast majority do it.

They drive unessesarily fast and drive their Moho's like their BMW's..... unessesarily fast.

 

[Gromett]

Hornsea 2 has just won the contract.. This will be the UK's largest windfarm. The bid for a strike price of £57.50 MWh.. WOW that is cheap.
just 3 years ago offshore was £102+ per MWh. The subsidies have worked, manufacturers have invested heavily and we are all now reaping the reward

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-41228969

It is worth pointing out that this price compares favourably to Gas generators, and is way way cheaper than nuclear...

This is a 1.3GW wind farm and will be finished by 2022.

Hinkley point was supposed to cost 1.8Bn and be completed by 2025. It is already running 15 months behind schedule and £1.5Bn over budget... £20.3Bn already....
It will Generate 3.2GW of electric with a strike price of £92.70 in 2012 prices...

It is also worth noting that Triton Knoll a 1.2GW farm off the coast of Lincolnshire should be coming online shortly and Moray East a 1.1GW farm with 1st phase completion 2022/3...

Our electric is getting less carbon intense by the year... Looks like a few more years and we can say goodbye to coal totally.

 

[Deleted member 29692]

There was an item on the news yesterday about renewables and subsidies.

As things stand now all solar and land based wind recieve NO subsidy at all.

Off shore wind is subsidised.

Hinckley C is and will be massively subsidised

 

[bilM]

There was an item on the news yesterday about renewables and subsidies.

As things stand now all solar and land based wind recieve NO subsidy at all.

Off shore wind is subsidised.

Hinckley C is and will be massively subsidised

Britain’s renewable electricity subsidies are set to cost 8.7 billion pounds a year by 2020/2021, pushing up household energy bills, the National Audit Office said on Tuesday.
The government initially set a cap on the levy control framework (LCF) of 7.6 billion pounds for 2020/2021, but this is now expected to be exceeded by 1.1 billion pounds, the NAO said in a report.
“This is equivalent to 110 pounds on the typical household dual fuel energy bill in 2020, 17 pounds more than if the schemes stayed within the cap,” the National Audit Office (NAO) said.
The LCF is designed to protect consumers by placing a cap on the subsidies given to renewable power generators such as wind and solar.
The cap would be exceeded due to a fall in fossil fuel and wholesale electricity prices, and after the government underestimated the amount to electricity that would be produced under certain schemes, the NAO said.
“Government’s forecasting, allocation of the budget and approach to dealing with uncertainty has been poor, and so has not supported value for money,” said Amyas Morse, head of the NAO.
Some of the British subsidies, such as feed-in-tariffs, pay power generators an extra fee for each megawatt hour (MWh) they produce, while others such as the contract-for-difference (CfD) pay a top-up to wholesale power prices to ensure a minium price is met.
The government moved last year to rein in some of the spiralling costs by cutting subsidies for onshore wind, solar and biomass plants.
The NAO acknowledged the efforts to cut costs, but said the government “needs to do more to develop a sufficiently coherent, transparent and long-term approach to controlling and communicating the costs of its consumer-funded policies.”

 

[Deleted member 29692]

Britain’s renewable electricity subsidies are set to cost 8.7 billion pounds a year by 2020/2021, pushing up household energy bills, the National Audit Office said on Tuesday.
The government initially set a cap on the levy control framework (LCF) of 7.6 billion pounds for 2020/2021, but this is now expected to be exceeded by 1.1 billion pounds, the NAO said in a report.
“This is equivalent to 110 pounds on the typical household dual fuel energy bill in 2020, 17 pounds more than if the schemes stayed within the cap,” the National Audit Office (NAO) said.
The LCF is designed to protect consumers by placing a cap on the subsidies given to renewable power generators such as wind and solar.
The cap would be exceeded due to a fall in fossil fuel and wholesale electricity prices, and after the government underestimated the amount to electricity that would be produced under certain schemes, the NAO said.
“Government’s forecasting, allocation of the budget and approach to dealing with uncertainty has been poor, and so has not supported value for money,” said Amyas Morse, head of the NAO.
Some of the British subsidies, such as feed-in-tariffs, pay power generators an extra fee for each megawatt hour (MWh) they produce, while others such as the contract-for-difference (CfD) pay a top-up to wholesale power prices to ensure a minium price is met.
The government moved last year to rein in some of the spiralling costs by cutting subsidies for onshore wind, solar and biomass plants.
The NAO acknowledged the efforts to cut costs, but said the government “needs to do more to develop a sufficiently coherent, transparent and long-term approach to controlling and communicating the costs of its consumer-funded policies.”

The subsidies for Hinckley Point C are, and will continue to be, more or less double the subsidies for Off Shore wind per MW/h so nice copy and paste but no cigar I'm afraid.

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[Gromett]

World record for Electric vehicle. It covered 1,101.2 mile..... AND it was a bus..

So for those who think range is an issue

https://arstechnica.co.uk/cars/2017/09/proterra-electric-bus-range/

Oh yes, and it charges in 1 hour

 

[PhilG]

Interesting article...

 

[gus-lopez]

Interesting article...

& quite true. Most people will gain no benefit ,unless they are naturally a conservative & steady driver , without changing there driving style. It was tested & proven with the early Prius that a normal driver still only averaged 26mpg without adopting a ' Mobil economy run ' driving style. Which beggars the point that if we all did that with the vehicles we already used pollution & fuel usage would fall dramatically anyway.

 

[Gromett]

Interesting article...

Thanks, Looks like people are buying the wrong tool for the job...

 

[PhilG]

The issue here is Greenwashing, yet again IMO.. folk are buying these things thinking its doing good, when its actually doing nothing , and in some cases its actually worse. I worked for Mitsubishi, and when they canned the Motorsport program and went down the PHEV route to be their 'thing' , the irony was incredible, all the road going cars were so piss poor on fuel , the Direct Injection Petrol engines were shocking , we had a Grandis for 12 months , which was lovely to drive, but jesus, was it expensive to run.
I had forgotten about owning it , they had so many unsold cars that they leased them to us at £199 a month including insurance.

My friend bought one of the PHEV SUV's for the tax break, but he wishes he'd not have bothered now.

The large fleet operators ultimately dictate the market, you can see this in the service intervals of modern cars, now pushed out to 20000 mile plus, without any actual changes in the mechanicals .. because lease companies don't want to be paying service bills.

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