What future for our current cars with combustion engines ?

If I was to hazard a guess - I would say that bio-diesel will eventually get the chop as well, not as fast as the other fuels I reckon but would still become persona non-gratis. At some stage (15-30 years), if you're not driving an electric/eco vehicle then you're not driving on the public roads - that's what it will come down to.

 

Or fit one of these in our cars...

 

Dont they do a kit tofit in the classic mini?
Was considering a moke kit few years ago, they are making chinese electric mokes and look ok, not really thought of those as parts until now, weren't overly dear either, if cut out middle man.

 

https://swindonpowertrain.com/uk/news.aspx

 

That's the kiddie

 

100% this.

The type of person who buys an electric car today, at a price somewhere double a normal ICE car, will be leasing/renting it for a couple of years and throwing it away. Rinse and repeat. You can't buy your way to a greener planet.

Personally I think the likes of us lot who keep old motors and avoiding individual creation of a new one are the greenest of all.

I'd like to see manufactuers supporting their classic cars and getting behind the idea that it is greener to keep something old going than to crush and pump millions of CO2 in to the atmosphere creating a new one every few years. VW are pretty crap compared to Mercedes and Porsche for example for classic parts.

 

About the extreme rain and flooding in the south of Belgium and the Eifel in Germany....

From a facebook post : Imagine, in the future, only electric cars will be used in such disasters. A few sparks would spray for a second, there would be a short circuit and that's it. Flood water, no more power and no more operational burners.

 

Yeah surely electric would be no good in that environment. I think we will get to a place where an alternative fuel makes up a population of the cars on the road (a bit like diesel became a decade or so ago) but petrol and diesel will still exist. I hope so anyway. Besides the classic car industry employs many and is worth £billions so the goverment would be daft to give that up.

At the moment we are seeing a lot of chatter from politicans to show they support fixing the world and they are going all in on electric to give a push. We all know policitians rarely deliver what they set out to achieve so once we get to a decent % of alternative fuel cars, that includes those like Porsche and I think it's Shell who are developing petrol synthetic alternatives, I think they will give up and move on to even bigger polutres such as the air industry, farming etc.

I would be nice to see old cars like ours be converted to a synthetic fuel abit like what my parents did to the lead car to take unleaded.

 

Unfortunately from what I can see/determine - the fossil-fuel burning automobile has been turned into the 'boogey man' for all our environmental woes and that's the industry that's getting a good old kicking from politicians, tree bark eaters and pretty much anyone else with an environmental grudge.

I agree with you in that cars are by no means the only culprits and aviation, agriculture and heavy industry are far from being whiter than white.

However, I do get the impression that there is far less of an appetite to pursue those industries and ergo we have no shortage of concerned groups and bodies more than happy to stick the knife into the automotive industry and cars overall.

Of course the VAG diesel scandal was the icing on the cake and the corporate efforts made by VAG to use lies and subterfuge to hide it have now given countless people all over the globe, ample ammunition to detest the car industry and cars in general. You can also be sure that VAG are not the only one's guilty of this and I'm somewhat surprised that other car manufacturers haven't been rumbled on this issue.

 

Our family car is also our Caravan tow car so Diesel it is.

I could see us with an electric car of some sort for shopping and my wife's commute but not for towing.

A friend of mine is quite high up in Rolls Royce and they wrote off a Hydrogen powered engine project after spending millions on it iirc.

 

Interesting video.

 

Surely humans arent very green, do they not exhale the same stuff, 7 billion plus and counting and if you get out of your car and onto your bike you exhale even more..Not heard anyone suggest reducing their numbers although a certain asian country has had a go....

 

Practically no comparison at all to be made between a cyclist and vehicle emissions. Road run off alone can carry over 300 pollutants into rivers. Many of those will still be present with electric cars due to the tyres and brakes.

https://www.london.gov.uk/press-releases/mayoral/study-shows-road-pollution-is-polluting-rivers

I wish I had a screen grab during lockdown one, but I can tell you it looked nothing like this. It looks slightly overstated due to the icon size, but even so.



One of my lock down pastimes was 'what is that plane overhead?'. Something I also noticed is the many noisy polluting American military planes which had engine upgrades scrapped due to defence cuts.

 

this is the real problem, people cause pollution. maybe that certain Asian country recently had a 2nd attempt at the solution to the problem..."x files music"

 

If a battery cell get overheated and the car get into flames .... even when the fire is out, it can start again due a chemical reaction within the battery.... its very hard to extinguish an electric car fire... in Belgium it has become Std practice to load the car into a special container with water to let it cool down for a longer period ( atleast 24 h ) before the car get scrapped... and also the water is then contaminated and need also treated ...they name it progress... or Eco friendly

 

Well that's fab I wonder how long the battery will last on one of those, when you're towing a skip full of water behind you.
I believe at least at the moment that the cure is as bad if not worse than the disease.

I don't doubt for one second that the climate is changing and not in a good way but what's the point in substituting one problem for another? There's a hell of a lot more research and development required before true eco-friendly and practical solutions will be in place.

 

Had a guy come into work this week with a bmw hybrid estate.
He said it will do 37 miles on electric only, and when it's on conventional engine the economy is abysmal because of the weight of the thing.

 

Toyota are still hedging their bets. Whilst they were the first(?) to enter the hybrid market 20 ish year ago, they continue to develop ICE's, hybrids, PHEVs, fully electric vans and are investing in hydrogen fuel cell powered tech. In fact, they already have 2 HFC powered models.

I suspect other manufacturers are doing similar things, but for Sales/Marketing/consumer confidence reasons they are pushing the current 'product' which happens to be batteries. If manufacturers (and govts) did not show confidence in a particular tech, the consumers would be wary about buying a product that could be worthless in the near future.

 

Like them figures more people need to see that creating a new electric car is more damaging than driving an old timer.
Over 10 years of driving your old car equals production of 1 electric car.madness
And the time the electric car reaches 10 yrs itll prob be scrap anyway.the battery will be knackered.and no doubt worth more than the car so old cars rule end off.

 

Ford's offerings are no better.

The low battery range Hybrid's are just a blatant tax dodge imho..