No cycling! (or walking) but Jeremy Hunt’s budget delivers £5 billion giveaway to drivers

It's a classic pre election trap setter. Brown/Darling played similar games in 2010.

They've simply spent the money Labour was going to raise from the Non Dom reform on the NI cut meaning Labour either have to change their policies or raise taxes in order to 'balance the books'.

The reality is that both parties are committed to big tax rises from 2025 onwards.

Only the ones driving polluting engine powered ones

I love my bike wrote:

Only the ones driving polluting engine powered ones

Quite, my used diesel golf will produce many many times less emissions during the time I have it against buying a new electric car

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

 

Quite, my used diesel golf will produce many many times less emissions during the time I have it against buying a new electric car

It takes roughly 13,000 miles of driving for the additional Co2 manufacturing emissions of a new electric car to break even against a traditional petrol car, so unless you are going to get rid of your car before you have driven 13,000 miles, your statement is untrue. Additionally, an electric car has no tailpipe PM2 or NoX emissions which your diesel Golf will have in spades, so your claim is absolute nonsense.

Rendel Harris wrote:

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

 

Quite, my used diesel golf will produce many many times less emissions during the time I have it against buying a new electric car

It takes roughly 13,000 miles of driving for the additional Co2 manufacturing emissions of a new electric car to break even against a traditional petrol car, so unless you are going to get rid of your car before you have driven 13,000 miles, your statement is untrue. Additionally, an electric car has no tailpipe PM2 or NoX emissions your diesel Golf will have in spades, so your claim is absolute nonsense.

On the other hand if I keep running my existing 9 year old car. It might create more emissions as I drive than an electric car. BUT, unless I scrap the car, someone else would be driving my current creating emissions (and probably driving further than me each year too) while I am driving the new electric car.

Fair point and the reason why ultimately more ULEZ-type schemes will be required to remove the most polluting cars from the roads (not yours, obviously). But that's not the same as claiming that running a used car will create "many many times less emissions" than buying a new electric one, something that's only true if you plan to drive it less than 13,000 miles and then never buy another; even then that's only true for CO2 emissions and disregards particulate emissions, nitrous oxide etc.

I appreciate that both you and wycombewheeler are making genuine points, but I think you're mistaken. The argument is, "If I sell my car, someone else drives it, so it makes no difference to that car. But, I've bought another."

This only makes a difference if there is more driving. Presumably, the person buying your car no longer drivers their older car.

Buying and selling a car doesn't increase the number of cars in the 'system'.

Or they buy them so everyone in the household has a car, including each child. Or they have more than one car per person.
I think we are the about the only house on our estate with one car.

Rendel Harris wrote:

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

 

Quite, my used diesel golf will produce many many times less emissions during the time I have it against buying a new electric car

It takes roughly 13,000 miles of driving for the additional Co2 manufacturing emissions of a new electric car to break even against a traditional petrol car, so unless you are going to get rid of your car before you have driven 13,000 miles, your statement is untrue. Additionally, an electric car has no tailpipe PM2 or NoX emissions which your diesel Golf will have in spades, so your claim is absolute nonsense.

Rendel the liar. 

For one it's DIESEL not petrol

B) see report below disproving your lies

If we take those EEA report figures, then the production, transport and combustion of petrol in a 58mpg vehicle, and its maintenance, is responsible for some 0.23 tonnes of greenhouse gases per 1,000 miles. That’s excluding the emissions created in production, since the car already exists and is in use.

As we’ve mentioned, the same EEA report estimates the total CO2 burden of an EV produced and run in Europe to be just over 20 tonnes. However, without wishing to turn this into an elaborate GCSE maths scenario, the reality is that most EVs today use much bigger batteries than the 24kWh pack assumed in this data. So, we’ve doubled the four-tonne emissions burden of battery production stated in the EEA’s data, therefore assuming an eight tonne battery production burden for a 48kWh lithium-ion EV instead. This takes the total lifecycle emissions, including manufacturing, to run an EV over 150,000km (93,205 miles) on European mains grid electricity to 24.5 tonnes. That equates to 0.26 tonnes per 1,000 miles – slightly more than the used petrol car.

To put it another way: if the manufacturing alone of that 48kWh EV alone is accountable for 14 tonnes of CO2 emissions (as per the EEA report), that same emissions burden could cover over 60,000 miles of use in an existing, second-hand car, assuming it were doing 58mpg. After that point, an EV’s vastly lower running emissions makes it the greener car.

Diesel being significantly worse for the environment due to its PM2 and NOX emissions than petrol so I'm not sure why you think that's a win.

Well done for proving that you know how to copy and paste from the Internet, unfortunately you are clearly unable to copy and paste an unbiased report, hilariously it's from cargurus.co.uk, a site that exists for the buying and selling of secondhand cars. Well they are going to have no vested interest in promoting secondhand cars in their article entitled "What’s Greener: A Used Car Or A New Electric Vehicle?" are they? So, they've taken an EEA report and included the CO2 emissions involved in building an electric car, but not those involved in building a petrol car, then they've doubled the size of battery, but even with that jiggery-pokery they've only managed to come out with the emissions neck and neck. It should be noted also that the report's figures for a petrol vehicle assume that the petrol vehicle averages 58 mpg over its lifetime, a real world figure only achievable by the most economical brand-new cars on the market today, so not one to be expected from a secondhand car. Do you really expect a report to be taken seriously when it contains sentences such as "After all, [buying a secondhand car is an] instant win; you’re saving a huge portion of a car’s whole-life emissions by effectively cutting out the production burden."? The production burden still exists, it just so happens that somebody has paid for it before you. You could equally well buy a new electric car and then sell it after 20,000 miles and say that because you only owned it for maybe 5% of its lifetime it was incredibly green because you are only responsible for that percentage of the construction costs, the rest is down to subsequent owners. Ridiculous logic.

Rendel Harris wrote:

Diesel being significantly worse for the environment due to its PM2 and NOX emissions than petrol so I'm not sure why you think that's a win.

Well done for proving that you know how to copy and paste from the Internet, unfortunately you are clearly unable to copy and paste an unbiased report, hilariously it's from cargurus.co.uk, a site that exists for the buying and selling of secondhand cars. Well they are going to have no vested interest in promoting secondhand cars in their article entitled "What’s Greener: A Used Car Or A New Electric Vehicle?" are they? So, they've taken an EEA report and included the CO2 emissions involved in building an electric car, but not those involved in building a petrol car, then they've doubled the size of battery, but even with that jiggery-pokery they've only managed to come out with the emissions neck and neck. Do you really expect a report to be taken seriously when it contains sentences such as "After all, [buying a secondhand car is an] instant win; you’re saving a huge portion of a car’s whole-life emissions by effectively cutting out the production burden."? The production burden still exists, it just so happens that somebody has paid for it before you. You could equally well buy a new electric car and then sell it after 20,000 miles and say that because you only owned it for maybe 5% of its lifetime it was incredibly green because you are only responsible for that percentage of the construction costs, the rest is down to subsequent owners. Ridiculous logic.

Dont be a dope, spinning it like usual

It's not meant to be a comparison of buying a new one, it's a used diesel vs a new electric

Get lost now kindly. 

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

Dont be a dope, spinning it like usual

It's not meant to be a comparison of buying a new one, it's a used diesel vs a new electric

Get lost now kindly. 

Well down to your usual standard of intellectual argument when faced with facts, well done. By the way, why would you be bothered about emissions anyway? You informed us a few weeks ago that it was okay to produce as much CO2 as you want "because it's a natural gas", so why are you arguing the toss over which type of car produces most?

Rendel Harris wrote:

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

Dont be a dope, spinning it like usual

It's not meant to be a comparison of buying a new one, it's a used diesel vs a new electric

Get lost now kindly. 

Well down to your usual standard of intellectual argument when faced with facts, well done. By the way, why would you be bothered about emissions anyway? You informed us a few weeks ago that it was okay to produce as much CO2 as you want "because it's a natural gas", so why are you arguing the toss over which type of car produces most?

I'm not bothered about CO2, that's the only thing you are and will ever be right about. 

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

I'm not bothered about CO2, that's the only thing you are and will ever be right about. 

So you're not bothered about CO2 but have attempted, with multiple posts and going to search out an (incredibly biased) article to try to prove your case, to engage in an argument in order to prove that your car will be responsible for fewer CO2 emissions than an EV. Time weighing a bit heavily on your hands is it?

Left_is_for_Losers wrote:

To put it another way: if the manufacturing alone of that 48kWh EV alone is accountable for 14 tonnes of CO2 emissions (as per the EEA report), that same emissions burden could cover over 60,000 miles of use in an existing, second-hand car, assuming it were doing 58mpg. After that point, an EV’s vastly lower running emissions makes it the greener car.

Tailpipe emissions are just one part of it. Replacing fossil fuel cars with EVs does not address the many other issues arising from private car use.

Does the battery pack last the life of the car? Is the burden of disposal/recycling taken into consideration? And is the lifetime of an EV similar to a petrol/diesel vehicle?

It's almost impossible to state that as a fact, the whole debate is extremely complicated and due to manufacturers not being transparent you'd be a fool to state that EV is significantly more environmentally friendly than an ICE https://earth.org/environmental-impact-of-battery-production/, isn't it time someone brought Hydrogen motors to the table?

Hydrogen powered vehicles have been around for ages ... other than Plant, don't expect them to spread - or at least not in the UK.

The UK government has stated that Hydrogen has no place in domestic heating, and extrapolating from that, other than specialist applications [such as plant], the infrastructure for hydrogen deployment will not exist.

Personally [and not just because I've worked in the gas industry for 20+ years and my job is designing gas systems], the car manufacturers have sold the dream of EV; it fits in quite nicely with the UKG plan of Net Zero and everyone becoming micro-generators through PV and battery installations... and to be cold in winter because of AS/GS heat pumps ... all while watching the digits spin on their electric meters.

[This can turn in to a major rant that I haven't got the energy to write and you haven't got the the time or willpower to read]

And there we have the possible problem, UKG is the driving force here and given that the current cabal have hung their flag on the carbon fuel mast and the superficial benefits if EVs for their own personal gains. I would not be trusting the UKG on matters such as this.

I'm not a huge fan of heat pumps because of the capital costs vs benefits, but that may change. There are other, and IMHO, better solutions for reducing the energy demand for home heating in UK.

And as someone that runs a solar system, UK does not provide enough light in winter for PV to be sustainable (unless you have a football field sized garden that you're prepared to cover with panels).

Yup. If the issue is massive overuse at some point efficiency won't cut it and we are facing reduction in use. We can choose - either voluntary now or involuntary later*.

People rightly rail at governments but their actions can be rather limited - at least our less autocratic and dictatorial ones. It's clearly safer to refuse to make some things easy (eg. active travel); making some things difficult can be done - but like a weak parent they're very reluctant to say "No. Enough." to a large chunk of the population.

* In the past we've managed to sidestep this issue several times with technology and learning to exploit different resources - at the cost of *different* problems after decreasing periods of plenty.

I saw an article about an army lorry recently where hydrogen was in use. However, on reading the detail it became apparent that the lorry is used to burn hydrogen to turn into electric to recharge electric vehicles ! Not really seeing how that is green - the efficiency must be poor.

That's not to far away from coal fired powered stations producing power for "green" EVs...

Is it possible that it was a testbed for hydrogen burning motors?

It does, on the surface, sound a bit silly. Link?

This one? https://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/10/this-beast-of-a-chevy-colorado-is-h...

It does run off hydrogen but also carries a large battery that it charges from its fuel cells that can be put into anything else, presumably not just other vehicles but radar stations etc. The way things are going I expect to see a civilian version on the streets of London in the not too distant future…

JCB have designed, tested and built hydrogen engines for plant that work the same way as current ICE.

They have also covered a number of Merc Vito vans with their hydrogen powerplant.

First Bus run hydrogen powered busses ... including double decker ... with busses in Aberdeen having clocked over a million miles.

As I said before... without the financial input driven by the domestic heating market, large scale infrastructure won't exist in the UK.

90%+ of those that post on here, and denigrate motorists, are motorists ... car to the start of the Save the Planet ride ....  food delivery to the local shop by big diesel trucks ... green electricity provided by wood pellets shipped across the Atlantic by ships burning bunker fuel ... .... less time pretending more time cycling.  👍

Butchering Orwell - we're all motorists!  But some are more motorists than others...

... and just for now, that may be quite helpful (as well as having benefits to the individual driving a bit less).

Stephankernow wrote:

I have no problem and its NOT a give away its OUR money NOT the governments.

Unless you have your own printing press I think you'l find that it is actually the government's money that they let you use, without it you would be back to the barter system.