Are we going to move to greener transport

mikew

mikew

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With the promise :LOL: of more bike lanes, electric scooter certification being rushed through, the obvious lack of public transport being able to cope and maintain social distancing, what do you think will happen.
 
I think I made the right decision getting rid of my car and getting a motorbike!
 
One of my favorites used to be electric bikes.
 
woof woof said:
This could work for a section of society in London and other cities and it's doubtless been dreamed up by people who live in London but in other places it's complete and utter fantasy for many people.
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Total agreement, nothing could move fast enough on this front anyway, i read observing social distancing public transport could only handle %10 of pre virus commuters,the return to work will be interesting to say the least.
 
Price of S/H bikes has gone through the roof lately mike . I can’t see the likes of you or me on one though :wave::wave:
 
always makes me laugh "initiatives" like this, same with the move to electric vehicles, it's great in theory, but the only real plan seems to be shout about how much money is being thrown at it. There will be a brief flurry of activity, then something else will crop up and funds will be diverted. The infrastructure for these sorts of schemes is years of committed effort away
 
mikew said:
I think i could manage one of these in electric

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I've thought for a long time that there's a market for adult pedal powered things other than the usual bikes and the odd trike and these days it'd be relatively easy to add a battery pack that'd be adequate for the uphill sections for taking two adults a few miles into town and bring them back with some shopping or even a short commute.
 
woof woof said:
I've thought for a long time that there's a market for adult pedal powered things other than the usual bikes and the odd trike and these days it'd be relatively easy to add a battery pack that'd be adequate for the uphill sections for taking two adults a few miles into town and bring them back with some shopping or even a short commute.
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The last electric bike i had towed a trailer with 20kg in it with hardly any effort from me.
 
I hope I'm wrong but I'll be surprised if electric works. I can't see it working with the technology we have today.

I don't think it's about the best option now, I think it's more about electric was the direction that was decided and something big will have to happen to stand any chance of changing that. If at all.

Quite some time ago I do know that a large EU car maker decided that electric was the future and there was no other option. That attitude maybe wouldn't work here as the UK government would just let the company succeed or die but elsewhere industry and government are much more closely related and that affects government policy. The result is that electric is now a movement rather than the right answer. IMO.
 
woof woof said:
This could work for a section of society in London and other cities and it's doubtless been dreamed up by people who live in London but in other places it's complete and utter fantasy for many people.
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Exactly. More than ever, London seems to me to be a completely different country from the rest of the UK.

When I lived "in" London I thought myself lucky to commute less than an hour. It was a distance of about 12 miles by road. With decent cycle lanes that would take most people about an hour on a bike so perfect for replacing train with bike.

Now I live in Folkestone, people find 40 mins commute a bit of a hassle but would expect to travel 25-30 miles in that time. Maybe 2 - 2 1/2 hours by bike.
 
I have many problems with the push towards walking and cycling and even electric transport with the tech we have now.

The high street is 15 minutes walk away but it's all up hill. Not so much that it affects me but to the elderly or less able it can be a complete bar to walking. Cycling could be an easy option but again you have to have a degree of ability and with both walking and cycling there's the issue of security and getting shopping back. The nearest supermarket is maybe 25 minutes walk away so the issues there are the same/worse. Town is an hours walk away and although I can do it I wouldn't like to do it carrying shopping and of course the bigger items we all buy now and again would be unmanageable.

And then there's the question of work. All my working life since the age of 21 I either carried tools and test gear and/or equipment of some sort to different places so a car was the only possible answer.

I can see how walking, cycling and electric cars and bikes as they are now can be the answer for office workers and others who go to the same place or other nearby places and don't need to carry a lot of stuff but I'd guess that many others are in a similar position to what I was in.

My problem with electric transport is it'll work well enough for the relative few people who can accept the limitations pay the cost and use them but at the moment I can't see it being the answer for the outside of London/other cities masses. What if we all bought electric cars tomorrow? Well we can't but what if we just ordered one tomorrow? Where are all the components going to come from? Where's the infrastructure/charging capacity? How are we going to make all the batteries? How are we going to solve the end of life issues? Why are we going forward with this if we can't answer these questions?

The whole "electric" thing raises questions for me and I haven't got the answers. I hope someone has because if demand rises a lot of people currently in favour of electric transport may change their minds.
 
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Sky said:
It doesn't seem that many years ago that they convinced us all to change to diesel. :banghead:

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Realise it's a humourous dig at the idea, however in the last 5 years there has been a massive move away from coal for power generation in the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...-breaks-record-for-coal-free-power-generation

At the time of posting it's 30½ days since coal contributed to the UK National Grid... Last year it was 2.1% of the mix over the year...
 
Samsung and a few others are making solid state batteries that will blow the current batteries into the weeds. Several times the density and far cheaper. The samsung one should be ready in a few years. There's another group making a glass battery that's around a decade away.

Fossil fuels are dirty. The energy grid gets cleaner over time. The limitations now will be non existent soon enough.

The amount of energy it takes to take oil out of the ground, transport it, refine it and transport it to a fuel station is huge. Then you burn it at 30% efficiency. It's crackers.
 
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srichards said:
Samsung and a few others are making solid state batteries that will blow the current batteries into the weeds. Several times the density and far cheaper. The samsung one should be ready in a few years. There's another group making a glass battery that's around a decade away.

Fossil fuels are dirty. The energy grid gets cleaner over time. The limitations now will be non existent soon enough.
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I hope so.
 
srichards said:
Samsung and a few others are making solid state batteries that will blow the current batteries into the weeds. Several times the density and far cheaper. The samsung one should be ready in a few years. There's another group making a glass battery that's around a decade away.

Fossil fuels are dirty. The energy grid gets cleaner over time. The limitations now will be non existent soon enough.

The amount of energy it takes to take oil out of the ground, transport it, refine it and transport it to a fuel station is huge. Then you burn it at 30% efficiency. It's crackers.
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You're right, it's madness, but so is thinking that electric is a realistic option with todays tech. I know little about battery tech other than my camera battery lasts a very short time drawing minimal amounts of power, and that that is impacted by temperature, battery age and use, and until those detrimental effects are mitigated, then for many electric cars are a non-starter. Thats before you consider how half the population (guessed figure) who live in flats or with no off road parking are going to charge their vehicles.

I'll be interested to see these solid state batteries, haven't heard of those
 
Na I love driving a car but ironically I only use it when I drive away from London.

I like cycling too but central London zone 1 Is not safe for that at all.thats where cars should be banned more imo.

Driving is good especially in times like this when you want to stay away from people
 
The battery degradation that everybody worried about seems to have proven so far to be a lot less than estimated. The early Leafs are the only real ones that suffer from it. Everyone else uses proper battery management that keeps the batteries at better temperatures to reduce degradation.

Those that live in flats could charge at work or at the supermarket or anywhere else anyone sticks a charger. Their own cars are parked somewhere so you bung in charging wherever they are already parked. The cars are parked for many hours of the day so it might be possible in future that many cars will have solar panel roofs and charge themselves up more.

There's also wireless charging as well so there won't be the hassle from trailing cables.

I don't think there are many people that couldn't make a 300 mile range car work for them.
 
srichards said:
The battery degradation that everybody worried about seems to have proven so far to be a lot less than estimated. The early Leafs are the only real ones that suffer from it. Everyone else uses proper battery management that keeps the batteries at better temperatures to reduce degradation.

Those that live in flats could charge at work or at the supermarket or anywhere else anyone sticks a charger. Their own cars are parked somewhere so you bung in charging wherever they are already parked. The cars are parked for many hours of the day so it might be possible in future that many cars will have solar panel roofs and charge themselves up more.

There's also wireless charging as well so there won't be the hassle from trailing cables.

I don't think there are many people that couldn't make a 300 mile range car work for them.
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I don't work now but one of the last places I worked at (I worked at different sites) had very limited parking and was in an area controlled by a council that appeared to be anti car. I say appeared to be as they imposed so many restrictions. Some people working there used to arrive two hours early to get a parking spot, I just didn't get involved in that. I remember arriving one day at about mid day and I was amazed to find a parking spot so I parked in it. Almost immediately a fuming young lady barged into my office insisting I move my car as it was in her space. I must have been waiting, seen her move and dived in and stolen it. That's the sort of thing that went on and I can only see it getting worse if people have to be near a charging point.

I may be a killjoy but I just can't see electric as it is now working.
 
woof woof said:
I don't work now but one of the last places I worked at (I worked at different sites) had very limited parking and was in an area controlled by a council that appeared to be anti car. I say appeared to be as they imposed so many restrictions. Some people working there used to arrive two hours early to get a parking spot, I just didn't get involved in that. I remember arriving one day at about mid day and I was amazed to find a parking spot so I parked in it. Almost immediately a fuming young lady barged into my office insisting I move my car as it was in her space. I must have been waiting, seen her move and dived in and stolen it. That's the sort of thing that went on and I can only see it getting worse if people have to be near a charging point.

I may be a killjoy but I just can't see electric as it is now working.
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We have parking spread over several car parks, for around 3000 cars at work. In the present situation, theres only a couple of hundred people out of over 3000 on site, everyone else is working from home. We have about 6 chargers in one car park. A hell of alot of extra chargers would be required when more people go electric even if there was only a few hundred cars let alone a thousand or more.
 
If they still made "proper" mopeds like the Mobylette , (and didn't make you wear a helmet to boil your brain), I would have one.
 
Cockney said:
If they still made "proper" mopeds like the Mobylette , (and didn't make you wear a helmet to boil your brain), I would have one.
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I think India still makes them like that but we cant have them due to pollution
 
nilagin said:
We have parking spread over several car parks, for around 3000 cars at work. In the present situation, theres only a couple of hundred people out of over 3000 on site, everyone else is working from home. We have about 6 chargers in one car park. A hell of alot of extra chargers would be required when more people go electric even if there was only a few hundred cars let alone a thousand or more.
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Or.....we might need to move away from the idea that the "company" is responsible for charging its employees vehicles. Imagine if somebody drove to work in a petrol powered car and expected a free refill because they had bought a car with a fuel tank too small to get home. I doubt many firms would lend a sympathetic ear.

woof woof said:
I may be a killjoy but I just can't see electric as it is now working.
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And that's basically why it doesn't. The reason I don't have an electric car is that "soon" there will be better ones along which will make a current car look so out of date that nobody will be able to give it away. And any batteries it has will go to scrap (I mean, with luck they will be recycled but IIRC that isn't exactly green tech right now). So it's arguably better for the environment not to buy one until the battery tech improves. But when it does, I'll bet we are just a year or so from the next improvement - and so it goes. Revolutionary change takes a while.
 
Cockney said:
I am right in saying that by law you have to have a "bucket" on your head to ride one?
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Yes, but to be fair no matter how small the motor your head hitting the road would still not be a good idea
 
JonathanRyan said:
And that's basically why it doesn't. The reason I don't have an electric car is that "soon" there will be better ones along which will make a current car look so out of date that nobody will be able to give it away. And any batteries it has will go to scrap (I mean, with luck they will be recycled but IIRC that isn't exactly green tech right now). So it's arguably better for the environment not to buy one until the battery tech improves. But when it does, I'll bet we are just a year or so from the next improvement - and so it goes. Revolutionary change takes a while.
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All that but I was mainly thinking of the worries about making and disposing of all those batteries and the lack of charging infrastructure.

I think I read/heard somewhere that there just isn't enough of the stuff we need to mine and otherwise produce that's needed for batteries of the current tech. I can't see the recently publicised idea of mining the sea going down too well with the public.
 
mikew said:
Like this

https://www.tomosgb.com/models/classic-xl-45

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If, IF, I were to have a 'town bike' it would be something like that. I drive to work, 2.5 miles & less than 10 minutes (I done it in 7 minutes the other week!) probably about 40-45 minutes walk & even longer by public transport. If I worked in the city centre in a typical office job, I would probably cycle/walk - that's about 3 miles.

Oh, and I dragged the Escort out of the garage today. I guess that's green transport if you look at it on an average :)
 
Cobalt that is used in batteries is also used in fuel refining to remove sulphur from fuel. No idea of the volume of cobalt is used to do it though.
 
mikew said:
Yes, but to be fair no matter how small the motor your head hitting the road would still not be a good idea
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So crash helmets on bikes? Electric scooters? Jogging? Walking?
 
JonathanRyan said:
Or.....we might need to move away from the idea that the "company" is responsible for charging its employees vehicles. Imagine if somebody drove to work in a petrol powered car and expected a free refill because they had bought a car with a fuel tank too small to get home. I doubt many firms would lend a sympathetic ear.
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We have a fuel station at work and years ago (long before I started there) before fencing was put up and another security gate. Some people used to pinch the odd bit of fuel. ;)
 
Last year I went 'all electric' and won't look back.

I live in a semi-rural location and decided to by a good electric bike (a Moustache samedi x Road) and use this for virtually all my shopping where its around 4 mile round trip. I was incredibly unfit and overweight but absolutely love this bike - it really is brilliant and good fun.

I also 'purchased' and electric car that has a 240 mile range. I too had concerns about mileage/batteries etc but I will change the car every three years to benefit from the latest technology.

I have changed my 'mindset' to owning a car - just accepting I have to pay 'x amount' every month to have a car less than 3 years old. I have never run out of range and it makes petrol/deisel cars feel archaic.

I love it :)
 
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I will tell you a big secret. The "DIRTY" diesel is going to make a big comeback. Prepare for the 2nd hand market to explode in 2-3 months time. Public transport is finished and bike is not suitable for everyone, but only shorter range and good weather travel with no payload. Get a few bangers to sell on if there are any cheap ones left.
 
I'll believe that when I see it.

There may be a rush for second hand cars but diesel is another issue and could be permanently tainted in the minds of many due to the VW emissions lying fiasco and the environmental and health impacts which may or may not be comparable to other fuels but have perhaps been demonised in the media. I've always thought diesel cars were hateful things and personally I'd drive anything else, absolutely anything else.
 
LongLensPhotography said:
I will tell you a big secret. The "DIRTY" diesel is going to make a big comeback. Prepare for the 2nd hand market to explode in 2-3 months time. Public transport is finished and bike is not suitable for everyone, but only shorter range and good weather travel with no payload. Get a few bangers to sell on if there are any cheap ones left.
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Older dirty diesels are banned or have to pay a high charge to enter alot of places where people would use public transport.
Whereas 53% of the London workforce commute by public transport. Only 17% of the UK workforce commute by public transport.
https://www.citymetric.com/transpor...c-transport-commuters-most-england-already-do
 
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