They issued the coupons printed for Suez. And they were never required. Motorcyclists complained that they were unsuitable for the more efficient machines of the 70s. When you sold the vehicle, you passed them on to the new owner.
Some had maximum limits. Some had minimum limits (to stop people topping up). Some queued for hours and found their tanks were already full.
1830 was not mentioned in the post i replied to. Just ' before phones'.
Christ on a bicycle! Consider my post suitably amended. D'ye think that humanity sprang into existance just at the moment to take advantage of telegrams but not phones? As any skoolboy could infer, I'm talking about the long period of history *before* any speedy means of communications, during which people just accepted that they'd likely miss all sorts of things happening.
:)
Not so often. But they do happen, they are at short notice and without a vehicle that can set off with no prior notice and do more than a tank's range, without long refueling stops, we'd not have made it for some of them.
With the in-laws being one of 13 on one side and one of 8 on the other, there are a *lot* of relatives!
You cant do that with all the cars parked on the car decks of the ferry, stupid.
Your sig is sposed to be last with a line with just -- on it in front of it.
Nope, because of that problem with plugging them all in, and the source of the power to charge them all by a useful amount for the relatively short time crossing the channel.
Quite apart from the risk of one of the catching fire with the entire ferry being wiped out by the subsequent fire.
Which is f*ck all time to do a decent charge without f****ng the battery life in the process.
Which makes it a hell of a lot of farting around plugging them all in once they are all parked up on the car deck.
And just how are they sposed to do that with the cars which in in the massive great block of cars ?
But with that providing f*ck all charge in that hour.
Funny that.
Pity about the cost of that. And all those retractable cables at every car parking spot.
Pity about the cost of those.
Taint gunna happen.
Corse they will due to cost alone.
Pigs might fly too.
IF you could afford them.
At a time when a letter was a couple of pence a telegram was several shillings
"Electric telegraph systems were in use commercially from the late
1830s, and expanded considerably in scope after they were nationalised under Post Office control from 1870. For the next century the service continued to be offered, although subject to considerable decline as the telephone system became more widespread."
Sure, it will get better, and will (have to be) good enough, as it's been decided that this is the way we're going, and a lot of people are going to make a lot of money from the tech. refresh, even if the end result makes us worse off.
A big problem is that people see the enormous advances in computers (CPU speeds, storage capacity, network speeds), and think the same advances will happen to batteries. Unfortunately a 100% increase in battery capacity¹ would be a major breakthrough, we need 1000% ^ n (cf. kilobit > megabit > gigabit network speeds).
¹(or charge time/life time/weight/cost, or whatever other metric is important)
Accountants know the cost of everything, but the value of nothing :)
Everyone here seems to obsess over the negatives and refuse to acknowledge the positives of EVs.
On my current variable tariff my fuel costs less than 2p per mile. Even if I was on a standard fixed rate tariff of say 15p/kWh, it would still be under 5p per mile.
I do 99% of my charging at home. The only charging I do away from home is on free chargers. This is of course a time limited perk in Scotland but I?d be a fool not to take advantage of it when convenient. ;-)
Zero emissions at the point of use. Maybe you don?t worry about your local air quality but if you lived in a congested city you health would almost certainly benefit from better air quality.
Also, they?re *really* nice to drive.
Of course they have their downsides (as trumpeted here ad nauseum) and definitely won?t suit everyone?s usage needs but I?ve done 10,000 miles of stress free motoring since last September.
Tim
Just to add - one year we attended 3 funerals there.
No the paragraph i replied to quotedActually, or course, we didn't cope, especially before phones. You might get a letter a week later saying your 8th cousin had pegged it a week previously in the west of Ireland.
Telegrams were commonly used in these circumstances before widespread ownership of home phones.
Don't try to weedle out of context.
Spot on.
It does when I as making the statement that in spite of petrol powered vehicles being around for over 100 years, we still don't have petrol feeds to our houses, like we do water, electricity (in the contemporary use of the term 'piped', like 'piped music') and gas.
Of course, as I stated.
So you agree with me then, we don't generally pipe petrol to people homes.
Of course.
Sure, I wasn't suggesting a reason why it hasn't been done yet, just that it hasn't.
It did indeed, just petrol didn't. Luckily, electricity now has. ;-)
Whilst out walking the dog yesterday I saw a car on charge outside someone house from what looked like a garden hose reel fitted on the wall behind the car, up on their drive. Then I looked at the badge and realised it was a Tesla. I think that's the first full EV I've seen being charged at home (my mate has a plug in hybrid thing [1] that I've seen him charging at work (his business).
Cheers, T i m
[1] I think they both have second hand plug in hybrid cars now as they both do quite a few miles and he's pretty canny re saving money.
There are none.
Pity about the stupid price for the EV to get that and the stupid cost of replacing the stupid battery so quickly.
Pity about the stupid price for the EV to get that and the stupid cost of replacing the stupid battery so quickly.
Pity about the stupid price for the EV to get that and the stupid cost of replacing the stupid battery so quickly.
Pity about the stupid price for the EV to get that and the stupid cost of replacing the stupid battery so quickly.
Pity about the stupid price for the EV to get that and the stupid cost of replacing the stupid battery so quickly.
Pity about the emissions with producing the electricity.
Yep, its fine.
Bullshit.
Pity about the stupid price for the EV to get that and the stupid cost of replacing the stupid battery so quickly.
That?s lie with most with range anexity.
My next door neighbour has a plug-in BMW - but he also has two IC vehicles. He has enough money to afford 3 vehicles.
I am pleased to see they are trying to break yet another form of conditioning when our families are often at their most vulnerable, the funeral directors subtlety applying the pressure to get you to spend more money / effort than the deceased themselves might have ever wanted.
So they are now pushing a 'Simple' funeral where they just do the (legally required / reasonable) basics.
I guess how you deal with all this is if you are religious or not or how free thinking you are. AFAWAC, when you are gone you are gone and any 'ceremony' around the 'mortal remains' (in a box in the ground or in a jar) are a bit strange. We would be happy to be put out in black backs and our only descendant, our daughter is perfectly respecting of that decision / choice. ;-)
When my stepdaughter died (39) our daughter 'stepped up' and not only nursed her though to the end (even staying in the hospice with her for the last couple of weeks) but arranged the funeral that her half sister had said she wanted, but at the lowest cost possible (because that's also what she wanted). 'No flowers' etc as they are such a waste and requested people donate money to charity instead.
And of course there is nothing stopping those left behind doing whatever they want, individually or as a group or groups and from nothing at all (just good memories etc) to a big wake.
I have seen the honest side where people have stated they 'don't really want to go' but they are effectively blackmailed / coerced by people forcing them do something they don't want, be it a party, wedding [1] or funeral.
Re funerals, I think what is more important is what you did for / with them when they were alive, as was the case with my Uncle that I know wouldn't have wanted me to go to his funeral if I didn't want to (and I didn't) because we also *never* pressurised him into doing anything (even potentially 'fun' things), if he didn't want to. However, when he was alive, he was there for me when I was a kid by getting me my first woodworking kit and when I grew up, me helping him fix his car, ripping out his fireplace or getting 8x4 sheets of 3/4" MDF for him to make rocking horses out of (and they are heavy to lift on the roof of the car on your own). ;-)
'They' arranged a wake for him back at his house and you saw the very thing that I prefer to avoid and the vultures that had rarely ever turned up or done anything with / for him arguing over his valuables with all the 'he said I could have that' BS ... ;-(
Cheers, T i m
[1] Because my current wife and I had both been married before and done all the 'Till death we part ..' stuff ... and because we were considering having a child and had looked into all the legal implications of that with a Solicitor (who then told us to get married as it was 'easier' (from a legal POV)), because we wanted to just do the formal / legal stuff and no more we secretly arranged a visit to the local Register Office during a lunchtime at work (we worked at the same place) and *only* told the two witnesses to be there (not even what they were going to be doing). ;-)On hearing the news we had got married, my Mum and Dad invited out her Mum and Dad for a meal so that they could celebrate the event and that was cool (for them).
Enjoy it while you can. As the tax revenue from petrol and diesel falls, the government will have to find a way to replace it. And the most likely way, road pricing.
Oh yes, EVs have a lot going for them. The lack of a gearbox with variable (continuous or stepped) ratios means the driver is in direct control of road speed/acceleration, rather than controlling engine speed which translates to road speed via *different ratios* (*). It becomes easy to configure in acceleration profiles so the driver just has to command the car "accelerate smoothly from 0 to 60" and the motors will accelerate gradually to begin with, then more, then ease off to zero acceleration once the target speed is reached - which a driver of an IC car tries to do, with varying amounts of skill. They are quieter and cleaner (at the car, rather than the power station!).
Just a shame that with present-day technology, range is a lot less and recharging time is dramatically more than for an IC car, requiring a complete re-think about when/where you will recharge. And it is those negatives which people will remember: I'm the sort of person for whom one negative or unwanted change completely annihilates a plethora of advantages.
I remember during the Tony Blair or Gordon Brown Labour government of the early 2000s, road-pricing was proposed. The principle was fine, but the way they were proposing to implement it would have dramatically increased the cost of a given long journey (ie cost with road pricing and fuel was a lot more than flat-fee VED and fuel), and because they were proposing to apply it only (or at a greater rate) for motorways, the law of unintended consequences would have come into play: people who weren't in a tearing hurry would have been encouraged to divert onto "cheaper" A and B roads which couldn't then take all the extra traffic.
(*) ie the same accelerator movement produces different acceleration depending on whether the gearbox is in second or third gear, which you instinctively compensate for with a manual gearbox but end up fighting with an automatic when you are not in control of which gear you are in. Or at least I find it a problem: I never mastered the ability with an automatic to accelerate briskly but not wheel-spinningly out of a roundabout, because small pedal movement produces little power in high gear, whereas fractionally more produces a bit more power but a surge in acceleration because the gearbox has changed down and there is less mechanical load on the engine - hitting the happy medium takes a *lot* of practice. In a manual car I'd stay in the higher gear but apply more power, or else I'd already have changed into the lower gear (and remain in it) before the acceleration. Gearchanges are things that in a manual car I schedule to do before or after but not during high acceleration, to keep things smooth.
Any technology follows at first an exponential curve, and then an asymptotic curve.
The first CPU I programmed clocked at 4Mhz. but te ones I have here are all 1-4Ghz, despite the fact that the oldest one is 15 years old. The technology is now mature and as 'good as it gets' and apart from adding ciores it aint gonna get any better any tome soon
Lithium batteries ARE the breakthrough. In the periodic table it is at the sweet spot of energy to weight. It is the *best* metal to use. And currently its not good enough. We are on the asymptotic part of the development curve, not the exponential. This is nearly as good as it gets for electrochemical batteries. It is tantalisingly close to being way more useful, but there's no cigar yet.
3 x improvement in energy density nets you something that would rival fuel cars, and power cross channel ferries and even fly a passenger plane a few hundred miles. 10 x energy density and you are in the same ball park as kerosene - and you can fully replace fuel engines, except maybe in military applications where uber fast refuelling and well off grid performance is requiredBut unfortunately the theoretical limit is I think - I haven't checked it - about 8 times, and that's just for electrolyte and so on - you still need electrodes, and a case..
The flight batteries that I first bought in around 2006 are actually
*lighter* than the ones on sale today. But today's ones are tougher, take more abuse and last longer.The fact that electric cars have the range they do is not down to battery improvements per se, its as much to do with using the battery more efficiently with regenerative braking etc.
a 100kwh battery is in raw terms about 10 litres of fuel. Ok an electric motor is about 3 times more efficient. but that's still only 30 litres of fuel equivalent. So the 'mpg' equivalent is 6.6 gallons.
you simply would not sell a car with a 6.6 gallon tank that took an hour to fill up
And in fact many batteries are 50kWh...
the jaguar I pace is around 84 usable kWh allegedly and does a shade over 200 miles well that's 200 miles on 5.5 'gallons' - not that great.
But even that on a big heavy car is a tribute to regenerative braking and aero...
...its almost impossible to break the 100mpg mark for anything remotely car shaped, and even 70mpg is doing well. Car development is pretty much mature - there aren't any more great gains to be had. The fact is that when you drill down through the crap what is left is that you need a certain amount of energy to push a car shaped car on tyres on tarmac at a given speed, over a given distance, and that the bigger battery you carry the heavier the car and the more energy it takes....
We need 300kWh batteries. To do 600 miles. The I-pace battery is 600kg In a vehicle that weighs 2200kg. so about one third the weight of the car. If it were 300Kwh it would be around 2200kg so the car would weigh nearly double, using twice the energy to get up to speed every time it stopped. And you never get all the energy back through regen braking. Only at a constant speed would it have three times the range.
The best (lightest) raw pack for flight I can find - no real case, no protection circuits - would net out at 1.7 tonnes in sufficient quantity to do 300Kwh. Jaguar are *already* nearly as good as it gets.
We are nearly as good as it gets - as it *can* get. And its not quite good enough to make the electric car mainstream. In an urban/suburban situation as a second car, plugged in every night, to do the school and supermarket runs, its fantastic.
It's even ok for a one hour commute ..but not much more.
And the cost! And the materials! RC flight batteries are 50p per watt hour give or take. 300kw would be about £150,000...just for a 600 mile range battery - now I am sure that jaguar can buy cheaper than that but still - expect £75000 worth of battery to be attached to your car.
Makes nicking the exhaust for platinum look like kindergarten stuff.
let's say that 2/3rd of the battery weight is lithium...a tonne say..the spot price of the raw material is $13/kg so that $13,000 just for the raw lithium.
lets also say that we end up with 20 million cars on the roads not to mention the lorries..so 20 million tonnes of lithium to 'net zero' the UK.
That's one quarter of the total known reserves in the world...
and and 500 times the annual production of the worlds biggest producer - Australia.JUST FOR THE UK
Seriously, it ain't gonna happen. Not with lithium batteries anyway.
Either we lose electric cars altogether, or we accept severe restrictions on personal travel.
Unless someone comes up with some as yet undreamed of energy storage technology, and it would have to be something in the quantum level of things, because we have explored all the other bits of science well enough to know there ain't no more answers there.
Its a shame. I would love a 300bhp 600 mile range 5 minute recharge electric car for under 20 grand.
As it is I'll stick with my turbodiesel jag, which does all of that.
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