What future for our current cars with combustion engines ?

Since there is the `` green ``movement against combustion engines ... and our cars should be replaced by `` cleaner `` alternatives....by the year... soon !​

Altough its a joke in itself..... when you look to the complete picture... BUT its more a way of window dressing, a way to say : look we do something about it.... but that is for another discussion !​

​

BUT once Electric / hybrid cars have become the norm, we can expect a lot unpleasant things in the next 10 - 30 years...​

Are we still allowed to drive our cars​

​

Petrol / Diesel availability... (and petrol stations ) and higher prices ?​

Our cars get banned from the city or Low Emission Zones​

​

​

When the market of current parts / technology go down.... Parts availability ( New and Used ) can become a huge issue​

as after all a business need volume to keep going... and manufacturers will have to change into other markets/ products​

​

Will our cars keep their value ?​

Or do they want our cars into the shredder ASAP ?​

Much misinformation and window dressing is going on...and each is talking for their own profit​

​

Much much more questions.... and we better be prepared !​

​

 

I firmly believe hydrogen is the way forward, I don't think electric cars are in any way green yet taking everything into account. From construction, including mining for battery materials, to generating the electricity, disposal of old/faulty batteries and dealing with the vehicle at end of life, they're not goo for the environment

 

I agree, its an even greater ecologic disaster than what we have today with our current cars with combustion engines...
Agree, hydrogen is certainly a way to go

And we dont even have enoug electricity production capacity and storage, nor the transport, ( cable network ) as it was never meant to be that much

 

Agree with hydrogen - Its naturally occurs in the earths environment and is FREE and what comes out of the exhaust only Water!

Honda were making great strides with this years ago.

Every car manufacturer still encourages customers to change cars every 2-3 years so there is always going to be vehicles to be disposed off and where this fits environmentally with car manufactures i dont know

Battery manufacturing / disposal is an environmental disaster

What gets me is volkswagen advertises their electric cars as carbon neutral ???

 

Weren't bmw doing their own recycling of vehicles a few years ago, or in Germany at least? Sure I've seen a documentary on it, but it isnt a large scale thing.
The whole infrastructure of charging and whole networks needs to be changed from what I can see, we have one place to charge cars publically in the town where i live, and that is only for taxi drivers, so hardly gets used. On my trips to Somerset to see my boy most of the chargers at service stops are out of order so pretty pointless.
Are vw possibly supporting bodies that say will do environmental protection projects such as planting trees to offset to a zero carbon sum that will take years to balance?
Trouble is the manufacturer needs to sell vehicles, so look at them as disposable nearly, scrappage the great government backed scheme showed it's about production not protection and preservation, maybe its because I had older parents, but I'd rather rebuild or fix something than throw away, unfortunately most garages have fitters, not motor engineers any more, if a computer diagnostics says needs new sensor they wont look for a broken wire or split boost hose, quite a shame.
Totally unsure what the way forward is, seems battery plants are to be the uk option, but I suspect the government are giving a massive subsidy similar to the film industry for uk work, hence all the marvel movies filmed in Britain due to Disney getting 40% costs back or something.
I'll get off my soapbox now, next.

 

Huh?
Last time I looked, the only commercially viable source of hydrogen was by starting with natural gas as raw material.

Electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen is only 'free' if you have abundant electricity generated from cost-free renewable sources.

It would make sense to use surplus wind-power (when it does occur) to produce hydrogen if the infrastructure was put in to do so; but that's a load more capital investment in production and storage. Not sure when it becomes 'free'?

Did you mean one of those two, or something else?

 

Agree it's all about saying were doing something.my petrol burning mk1 I see as greener than any new car as it was built 40 years ago and disposing of it to by electric car is more polluting.than to keep running it.
But dont get me started.its ok to ship beef &lamb 12000 miles and that's ok.

 

Yeah all of these "alternative fuels" have issues. Ethanol is great except it starves people, Hydrogen is great except is lossy (electricity -> Gas -> electricity) and batteries are great except mining does a lot of damage.

I think there's that statistic when cars get past a certain age its almost always better to continue using them rather than buying new, because the resources are required are so huge.
I think personally there the approach that large Aero has of slowly switching over the BioFuel with a view to use Hydrogen Hybrid in the future is the way forward. Its obviously never going to be totally "green" but its a lot easier to get power stations and hydrogen generation up to a high efficiency when compared to a combustion engine. Most cost plants are in the 40% range and oil and gas are pushing 70% efficiency, that combined with nuclear wind and solar and you're well on your way.
And in the meantime, technology like Mazda has, SPCCI (HCCI) in its Skyactive-X engines is a step in the right direction.

I think manufactures like Volvo who offer "subscription" based servicing is also a good thing actually. Outwardly it seems a bit naff and obviously they can do it in the wrong way (shutting out private repairers for example) but if they do it right it will be great. It forces them to design well and make thing lasts because everything that fails is coming straight out of their pockets. And it gives them reoccurring income from the customer so the don't have to sell as many new vehicles

 

Well if you want irony - here in Canada, they are countless freighters coming in from the Middle East bringing oil to this country. There are bunch of people in the west and east of the country that have objected and stopped the use of pipelines to transport the country's own native oil resource being moved around for refining/export. It makes no sense to me as if one of those freighters has an accident/leak the environmental toll will be catastrophic and the country is currently a net importer of oil and the opposite should be the case. I mean if you're going to use oil - then it's much better to be yours and you have far greater control in the monitoring and upkeep of the oil pipelines and guess what - the freighters are going in the opposite direction.

Back to alternative fuels - I honestly don't know, I feel these 'green electric vehicles' are at best a publicity exercise and what's required in terms of making them in conjunction with providing the necessary infrastructure at your home and along traffic routes to support makes the cure as bad as the disease.

Regarding older cars such as our beloved Golfs - I agree on keeping them as it is the green thing to do but at some stage in the not too distant future we (or the next generation) probably will not be able to drive them as the fuel just won't be there anymore or be rendered incomprehensively expensive to purchase and or they will be prohibited from road-use through legislation.

 

I was reading an article about electric car manufacturing. It stated that the electric car in question left the factory with 26 tonnes of carbon debt just through the manufacturing process. So that’s 26,000,000 grams of co2 before it even turns a wheel. Mk2 is rated at 148.2 grams of co2 per kilometre. So that’s 175,438 kilometres or 109,012 miles you can drive your Mk2 before you have to get worried about how much more pollution it’s putting out than a new electric car. I think you’d have to keep that electric car a long time before reducing your carbon footprint. Which may not be of much benefit given how quickly electric car technology is moving?

 

That is why i started this tread, as we all like our cars and enjoy them.
The big question is... how much longer can we drive them

Going back in time there were books burned....and it looks that we are going into that direction again, except its now cars

There are no simple solutions....in alternative fuels.... Imo the current combustion engine technology is at a high level and with some more input it can do for quite a while...but some forces are on the brake to stop any more research

If we look from raw materials to end of life and recycling, then our older cars are not as bad as they want us to believe

But the big players play their game and money rules the world....
Its far more economic driven ... than its about clean air, less waste, recycling and circular economy ... they only use that as sales talk....the reality is often not that promising !

 

I think we just enjoy are cars today. With the best laid plans tomorrow’s never guaranteed for any of us nor our cars. Just don’t know what’s around the corner, in life or on the road. Could be stolen, written-off, anything? Just go drive and put a smile on you face.

 

cant wait to get a horse and cart and mod it


But seriously. if i have to make sacrifices so that my kids and my grand kids get to enjoy the plant and actually survive, then im cool with that.

 

175,438 km, whoever buys one of these new should be forced to keep it untill they achieve this distance traveled. or they dont get there eco browny brigade badge,

 

So does a shetland pony get more scene points as its lower?

 

all about the Shire Horse, Torque for days

 

Meh, start stockpiling petrol and/or diesel now, everytime you fill your car up fill a 5 litre can too, assuming you fill up once a week you'll have 2600 litres in ten years time.

I stockpiled bog roll last year and still have enough to last another 5 years which is impressive when you consider the amount of s**t that comes from me

Personally I was devastated that the Mr Fusion reactor featured in Back to the Future 2 didn't happen

 

Genius Gaz, I've resisted the bttf idea for the entirety of this discussion.
Cant we just do pd conversion and make biodiesel from the chippy, really do fancy a bluemotion polo lump in a mk2.

 

Bluemotion?
That's the eco fair trade dolphin friendly version isn't it?
Sod that chuck a Toureg V10 in if you want a diesel, polar bears are over-rated as a species anyway.

 

Back to reality, is biodiesel acceptable still, or is it going to be a nono too? Did consider it with my clio, but got sidetracked.