The biggest threat to the future success of the United Kingdom is pinning our economic hopes on the global corporates, yet this is exactly what Mrs May, under the brainwashing of the CBI and Oliver Robbins, is trying to use Brexit to secure. Neither are the globals themselves backwards in adding their own lies to Project Fear; the latest last week were from the international car makers.
What they forgot to mention is that in ten years or so their cars will be banned for sale in Europe, their plants just so much scrap metal and wasteland, and their vast Euro workforces all redundant. That's not the fault of Brexit but of technological progress. An electric powered car has just something like 15% of the parts of an internal combustion engined one. So why screw the entire British economy, as they want May to do, to prolong their JIT uselessness by a few more years? The sooner the UK bites the bullet and attracts investment into 100% UK assembled electric vehicles the better.
It's not just carmakers. We've reached peak global. The corporates are simply unable to increase their profitability from their operations by a single cent more - only a continuous process of mergers and takeovers generates new money, and we're at the end of that road. We're way past Standard Oil, and now only a radical rethink of Conservative capitalism can rescue the British economy. Sadly, Mrs May, with her limited understanding and abilities, is not the Prime Minister to head this process. Tenacity and resilience are only positive virtues when exercised in following the right path.
Steve Baker in the Telegraph today (£) and Janet Daley yesterday are both singing the same hymn. A party for a young, energetic, entrepreneurial, internationalist and enterprising Britain doesn't shackle itself to the dead-weights of the terminally-ill global corporates and the CBI. Our future Conservative membership is waiting for a party that articulates their hopes and aspirations, their knowledge and world-view, yet Mrs May wants to lead the party into failure and error, wants, like Corbyn, to lead a party stuck in the 1970s and unable to progress.
For the sake of Brexit, and for the sake of Britain, she must now resign and hand over to a Leader who can do the job.
28 comments:
The Peugeot iOn is more expensive than the 108 *AND* a life time of fuel
All Electric Cars have a place as rich boys toys, hybrids as luxury / SUV, but we are a long long way from them replacing low end petrol.
But yeah, the old ways are dead.
EUrope has entirely missed the technology revolution,
So much so that whilst since 1996 the US and UK economies have grown by 129% and 86%, Germany has grown by only 35%
Because it's completely missed tech.
Just In Time deliveries to UK factories from the EU will be delayed only to the extent that the UK Government decides to impede them after arrival at 'Dover'. I can think of no reason why the UK Government would want to do that. The scare is bollocks.
The future may indeed be electric, but the technology to produce the cars isn’t the issue - it’s the mind boggling huge investment required to upgrade the grid to charge the things.
The cobalt cliff is another issue that needs to be attended to.
Djy
not to mention lack of charging locations.
No attached double garage, no all electric cars.
Maybe 1 in 100 houses have a double garage, even industrial estate office parking is rarely sufficient.
Building a few new power plants is easy in comparison.
10million batteries would provide a fantastic amount of demand side management
But there's no where to park them and plug them in.
Perhaps a plan for public transport? Reverse Beeching?
attracts investment into 100% UK assembled electric vehicles the better.
Unfortunately Britain is already playing catch up on this one. Germany for one has quietly been acquiring (ie bribing), just for example, the Chinese Battery makers. Huge new plant opening in the former DDR lands.
Raedwald writes: "What [car manufacturers] forgot to mention is that in ten years or so their cars will be banned for sale in Europe, their plants just so much scrap metal and wasteland, and their vast Euro workforces all redundant."
I beg to differ on much of that. There are no practical means of powering all self-contained road vehicles from electricity stored in batteries. Liquid hydrocarbon based fuels are just too practical for that job to be replaced, either at all or in the "ten years or so" timescale.
What I do see, because of reduced pollution (and other performance benefits like fuel economy and peak acceleration) is that different forms of hybrid electric/hydrocarbon propulsion will very likely come to the fore. What I am thinking of is the wheels being driven only ever by electric motors, and there being modest-sized batteries that are charged continuously from a hydrocarbon driven engine. Such an engine need only deliver the average power requirement of the vehicle, rather than peak power - and hence can be made more cheaply, run more efficiently and pollute less.
On the pollution in particular, there is specific need for most pollution reduction in dense urban areas - this given that the 'poison' is in the dose - and the high and dangerous dose comes only through high vehicular concentration. This benefit can be gained by not recharging the batteries (and hence not running, or running much less, the hydrocarbon engine) while driving in such urban areas.
Without the additional cost of so many rechargeable batteries (through not needing them for long range), such hybrid cars could (eventually and with further design work) become sufficiently cheap to be price-competitive with hydrocarbon-only powered vehicles.
Given the need for both electric power components and hydrocarbon power components, I think it will be a long time before we have significantly less need for car manufacturers and their current workforces and skillsets. In any case, workforce levels and skillsets are always changing (the one reducing, the other deepening). Such change is inherent in economic development and always has been. [No buggy whips! No horse manure pollution on the streets!!]
Best regards
Radders is entirely correct - we engineers have been working on driverless/electric for over 30 years: all the usual technological Eeyores are out in force - we laugh at them - engineering experts who in actuality are not professional engineers - engineering is incremental and we are nearly there.
All-electric is something for the very distant future. Whilst there's still fossil fuels (including the vast resources of natural gas yet to be tapped) there will ALWAYS be a means (political and financial) to burn it - the ICE - and increasing fossil fuels longevity is a matter for HYBRID technology where the battery power is used solely for getting the vehicle moving from standstill.
So the all-electric vehicle is just green propaganda for now.
You are right Raedwald, this is the battle of the "closed shop" all over again.
However, this time it is not the miners, or the shipbuilders and their heavy metal skills that are at risk.
This time it is the corporates, and their agents toiling at their PC's, in order to make themselves not look redundant or uncaring about the little man who used to use his skills throughout his working life, but now finds that if he can get any work at all, it is as a call centre specialist. Or operating as a service to the tax man.
They want it all, and we have to stop them, or see the young, be enslaved or starve.
The oldsters, are not the uncaring, they are very caring about their children, they are trying to do the right thing by getting out and breaking this corporatism before it is too late!
Domo is dead right. Electric vehicles are subsidy-mining technology, bought by the wealthy as an act of thumbing their noses at the plebs and advertising their green credentials.
I live in a street of 40 houses. There are nearly 100 cars. If you put them all on charge suimultaneously, the lights would go out.
If UK based car manufacturers can't sell in the EU, then why should we let their manufacturers sell here? Britain.s roads are awash with BMW, Merc, Audi, VW, Peugeot, Citroen = if not Renault, Fiat and a bunch of others. I travel in Europe, and frankly, while I see the odd Jag, I simply don't see UK-built Toyota, Mazda, Honda. The whole creepy Remainer business is more Gina-Millar-ine.
Come on, R - stiff upper lip mate!
Both the revolutionary changes from steam to electric engines and analogue to computing power took fifty years to be realised to a point they were more beneficial than the old way.
it takes time to change everything. And the change to electric cars is to change everything.
Laughable nonsense, the MSM choir unable to think individually preach groupthink probably produced by the conmen.
The conmen learned nothing from the last disastrous election where they dumped their natural electorate and pursued the elusive "dumb young things" who have been saturated with socialism all their lives. How did that work for ms dismay?
As to electric cars, yUK is the least natural place to adopt them, as others point out the decrepit grid barely accomodates present demand without top-ups from the continental grid. How will a multitude of charging stations be accomodated? And what will happen when the north-east winds blow? Rolling brown-outs courtesy of your smart meter. Politicians have been faffing around with one nuclear plant for a quarter century, still there is nothing to show for it.
With or without Brexit, with or without new "leadership", liebour or conmen, 70 years of managed decline cannot be reversed overnight, and judging by the puerile conversation there is a good deal more decline in your future.
Electric cars in yUK will be as useful as the windmills meant to charge them, static most of the time, clogging the thoroughfares, highly unaffordable and obsolete with depleted batteries within five years.
A number of comments are correct - perhaps best summed up by BQ MP: "It takes time to change everything. And the change to electric cars is to change everything."
The idea that an electric powered car has just c15% of the parts of an internal combustion (IC) engined one is strictly for the birds - 15% of the powertrain perhaps, but all the other components of the body, seating, security, braking, instrumentation, safety, etc remain essentially the same. Of course a hybrid re-introduces an IC engine anyway.
My calculations indicate that if all road vehicles are replaced by electric then the electrical energy consumption of the UK would more than double. Yes, an electric car converts electricity into motion much more efficiently than an IC engine converts hydrocarbons into motion, but there are inefficiencies throughout the chain of: generation, conversion, transmission, conversion, charging, and battery.
That energy demand means about double the number of power stations that we have now. They are simply not going to get built in the time frame imagined by politicians. And that leaves out all the national infrastructure changes from charging points to garages.
Cas nails it as ever. I find it disconcerting when the BrexSShiteurs go all 'wunderwaffe' about the NEW technologies (very new btw...electric cars have been around since 1884) that are going to save us all along with our British daring -do, know-how and pluck.
And yet you can already get a "solar cells plus wall battery" package with the wall battery configured to charge your e-car. Not only does this move a lot of car charging 'off the grid' but also selling any spare power to the grid also smooths the demand on the grid over the day.
Deploy big battery farms which charge from off-peak electricity and renewables and you start to see the benefits of easing peak demand on the national grid.
Discovered Joys-I invite you to invest in the said solar-cells-and-wall-battery in rainy yUK.
I doubt that the technology would generate power more than 20% of the year, and due to overcrowding it would be mostly impossible to orient the cells for maximum advantage. Perhaps the manufacturers could include a free donkey to provide transportation for the majority of your use.
Proposing such remedies that are marginal even in semi-tropical zones for yUK is laughable, but probably suitable for the new-improved-thrusting-industrialist conmen party.
Does anyone really believe that the vast corporate OIL industry will just sit back and allow electric vehicles to take their markets?
There is no NEED to change to EV's - the only need/demand has been forced upon us by politically-motivated lies about CO2. What's wrong with using the most abundant, already-in-place efficient fuel - if you take the hysteria out of the subject?
As far as users are concerned the COST will never change. There is no benefit to the customer. The only 'incentives' are artificial and taxpayer supported which can't (and won't) last indefinitely.
Let the markets prevail. It's .gov interference in the markets that have screwed the system badly enough as it is.
They say that it takes up to 12kw of electricity too produce 1 gallon of petrol, if so then there,s no argument about ev,s regards robbo
I'm all for a way forward on electric cars - I just have the reservation that we fret about our phones not lasting the day; cars are another thing.
Surely it's about a combination of things - engine efficiency, storage, harnessing potential energy (solar, wind, wave, tidal)
Remember the days of competing CPUs in computers - the impossible became unimaginably easy in the end.
One thing that always bugs me with the EU set-up is that - if a country like Britain can innovate and manufacture its way through a very horrible war (yes, I know, thank you USA) why, free of the EU bureaucrats, can it not do the same with regards to renewables/electric cars.
We just need the will and ambition.
@annon 1 Oct: 0847
Will and ambition? Everything boils down to COST and PROFIT. If there's no profit to it (or 'special' requirement i.e. war) then what's the point? Even WITH incentives (subsidies) people are reluctant to adopt technology that is 'forced' upon them when they've got something that serves purpose perfectly well at zero additional expense.
Using falsehood like 'won't someone think of the children' (i.e. the CO2 scare) doesn't help other than increase the cynicism factor.
Give the public something they want and something they know they aren't going to be cheated with and they'll adopt it very quickly indeed. But since the only benefit to EV's is income for the state (guaranteed taxes and movement monitoring will be a part of the package) plus the fake efficiencies (over the likes of modern diesel) and the exorbitant costs (ok, they'll come down but you have to get people buying first - chicken and egg scenario) and you can see that only the committed eco-facist and those with more money than sense are convinced.
And let's just gloss over the REAL technicalities of energy production/distribution for now......
We've yet to explore other transport methods and fuel efficiency techniques all of which use existing technologies and production lines, are orders of magnitude cheaper to deliver and have (effectively) infinite resources to support them (oil is still strong, fracked gas is untapped, coal even...).
Take the POLITICS out of the market place - see where people go for their transport needs. The CHEAPEST will always win. And that will never be EV's (until we get the fabled Fusion reactors going - but even then we'll be scammed as we were with ordinary nuclear 'so cheap we could give it away' lies).
Please, if you don't know the difference between energy and power, save yourself embarrassment and don't comment.
You can always rely on Jack Ketch to sneer at any British accomplishment, or even effort. His attitude may have been revolutionary at the height of Empire jingoism 150 years ago, but now we are a third rate nation on the floor it's just tedious and curiously old-fashioned.
There is no need to argue about the merits, or otherwise, of replacing all our car fleet with existing type electric cars "in ten years or so". The practicalities of constructing new electricity power stations to provide the electrical energy says it is impractical (assuming a similar number of cars on the roads).
There are over 380 electricity generating power stations (not including Interconnectors) in the UK listed by "DUKES" (https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/electricity-chapter-5-digest-of-united-kingdom-energy-statistics-dukes). But some are small, or only used occasionally.
So lets say there are 200 substantial electricity generators (from Wind arrays to Nuclear plants). Then to double electrical energy production in ten years we are looking at building 20 new power stations a year every year for the decade. That is not going to happen.
Yes, some of that increase could be obtained by increasing plant utilisation, perhaps by load spreading, and by demand reduction, technological developments, and efficiencies. Yet in a decade we would also have to replace all our existing Nuclear fleet, and a number of other plants, just to stand still, on top of the new build.
It is much more likely that we will get mix of existing technologies - IC, electric, hybrid, fuel cell, or other unknown technologies. Anyone who thinks they can call that mix from here is delusional.
This subject is always entertaining to us engineers - it always gets the most response - why? because all you little lads think we are going to cut your automotive willies off!
Electric cars can only ever attain sales in tandem with supporting infrastructure. The fact is that they can only grow where the technology exists to charge them. I don't have a drive, so I'm reliant on local government to install on-street charging infrastructure. For more people to have electric cars on my street, the charging infrastructure density has to increase close to one charging point per house at least.
Then the back-end infrasturucture has to cope as well: the grid, the power stations, sub-stations, etc.
The Green tide is turning according to this post at WUWT
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/09/29/canada-and-the-world-abandon-green-energy-agenda/
Many years ago, when TV was in black and white, Raymond Baxter (remember him?) introduced a 'Tomorrow's World' programme by interviewing a farmer who ran his Austin A30 on a set of car batteries which were kept charged up by a petrol driven lawnmower engine fitted in the car. Later reports stated that his patent was bought by one of the major petrol companies who were said to have quietly shelved it as it could affect sales if the idea caught on.
Even now, purely electric driven cars don't seem to have the necessary supporting infrastructure or battery shelf life. Imagine having to change your petrol or diesel engine every 5 years or so?
I'll stick with my 9 year old petrol engined car, which can get me from my home in the south to my home town in the north on one tank of petrol and which takes only minutes to fill up at one of the many petrol stations.
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