Toyota telling it like it is

[Mjolinor]

Going from a car doing what you need to one not doing what you need seems pretty radical to me. 🙂

 

[Strangely Brown]

37 minutes ago, AJones said:

The last 100 years has seen radical changes in how people get around as they go about their daily lives, but the current changes, keeping the car but simply switching from fossil fuels to electric is not remotely radical, frankly it is nothing compared to the changes our parents, grandparents and great grand parents lived though. 

Hah!

[Flatcoat]

40 minutes ago, AJones said:

What radical changes to how people go about their everyday lives? Driving around in a car which runs on electric rather than using petrol or diesel?

Go back 100 years and most people didn't have cars at all, they walked more, used bicycles, buses, trams, charabancs, trains. Most towns and cities had trams, even small villages were on the railway network.

Since then car ownership has massively increased, most trams were shut-down, the railway network was massively cut back by Beeching in the 1960s, bus routes and usage collapsed.

The last 100 years has seen radical changes in how people get around as they go about their daily lives, but the current changes, keeping the car but simply switching from fossil fuels to electric is not remotely radical, frankly it is nothing compared to the changes our parents, grandparents and great grand parents lived though. 

This is totally erroneous. ICE cars were not forced onto people by political dictat via soviet style 5 year plans. ICE cars became popular because they make people’s lives easier in an affordable solution. EV’s reverse that. 

[Haliotis]

45 minutes ago, Flatcoat said:

This is totally erroneous. ICE cars were not forced onto people by political dictat via soviet style 5 year plans. ICE cars became popular because they make people’s lives easier in an affordable solution. EV’s reverse that. 

That is exactly the point.  In this thrust towards ending the use of fossil fuels many people are being pushed or coerced into employing different methods of running their everyday life - solar panels, heat pumps, EVs, plant-based foods (the latest being “milk” that does not come from a cow), and we can expect the list to grow.  And all this to pursue an end which may, or may not be successful.

Our forebears went through gradual change as developments occurred and they made their choices about what they accepted or avoided - not at the mercy of having to change  rapidly because choices were being taken away from them.

For myself, one simple action could cripple me - loss of the cows.  I have to wear shoes with leather uppers.  I discovered long ago (painfully) that synthetic footwear caused my feet to go raw and swell.  Across the human race, there must be many people who suffer from ingesting or being in contact with substances/materials which are noxious to them, even though others may not be affected.   I know this has nothing to do with the global warming issue,  but where does interference with society end once governments go down this road?

[Flatcoat]

22 minutes ago, Haliotis said:

That is exactly the point.  In this thrust towards ending the use of fossil fuels many people are being pushed or coerced into employing different methods of running their everyday life - solar panels, heat pumps, EVs, plant-based foods (the latest being “milk” that does not come from a cow), and we can expect the list to grow.  And all this to pursue an end which may, or may not be successful.

Our forebears went through gradual change as developments occurred and they made their choices about what they accepted or avoided - not at the mercy of having to change  rapidly because choices were being taken away from them.

For myself, one simple action could cripple me - loss of the cows.  I have to wear shoes with leather uppers.  I discovered long ago (painfully) that synthetic footwear caused my feet to go raw and swell.  Across the human race, there must be many people who suffer from ingesting or being in contact with substances/materials which are noxious to them, even though others may not be affected.   I know this has nothing to do with the global warming issue,  but where does interference with society end once governments go down this road?

Milk IS plant based, what do the nut zero fanatics think cows eat?! Almond white liquid (I refuse to call it milk) uses a huge amount of water to produce the almonds before they are machine made into a white liquid. 

[Gren]

26 minutes ago, Flatcoat said:

Milk IS plant based, what do the nut zero fanatics think cows eat?! Almond white liquid (I refuse to call it milk) uses a huge amount of water to produce the almonds before they are machine made into a white liquid. 

Aha! Cows eat grass - so beef is plant based! 

[AJones]

2 hours ago, Flatcoat said:

This is totally erroneous. ICE cars were not forced onto people by political dictat via soviet style 5 year plans. ICE cars became popular because they make people’s lives easier in an affordable solution. EV’s reverse that. 

Lots of changes were forced onto people, tram and trolley bus networks in many towns and cities got closed forcing their users to switch to alternatives, same with bus route closures over the years, the Beeching closures of the railways had a huge impact on the towns and villages that lost their rail services and many like coastal towns are still affected today, people did not get the choice.

By comparison, going from a car that burns petrol to another car which runs on electric is pretty small stuff compared to some of the changes which happened to previous generations.

49 minutes ago, Haliotis said:

That is exactly the point.  In this thrust towards ending the use of fossil fuels many people are being pushed or coerced into employing different methods of running their everyday life - solar panels, heat pumps, EVs, plant-based foods (the latest being “milk” that does not come from a cow), and we can expect the list to grow.  And all this to pursue an end which may, or may not be successful.

Our forebears went through gradual change as developments occurred and they made their choices about what they accepted or avoided - not at the mercy of having to change  rapidly because choices were being taken away from them.

Our forebears went through two world wars, they went through huge upheavals and made incredible sacrifices, the kind of changes we are discussing don't even come close to what previous generations experienced.

By modern comparison, having some solar panels fitted to the roof, having a nice cosy home heated by a heat pump rather than a gas boiler, or driving around in an EV that maybe only does 250 miles before you charge it, rather than 500 miles for a petrol, none of these changes come remotely close to the kind of choices and sacrifices faced by our forebears. 

 

[Flatcoat]

11 minutes ago, AJones said:

Lots of changes were forced onto people, tram and trolley bus networks in many towns and cities got closed forcing their users to switch to alternatives, same with bus route closures over the years, the Beeching closures of the railways had a huge impact on the towns and villages that lost their rail services and many like coastal towns are still affected today, people did not get the choice.

By comparison, going from a car that burns petrol to another car which runs on electric is pretty small stuff compared to some of the changes which happened to previous generations.

Our forebears went through two world wars, they went through huge upheavals and made incredible sacrifices, the kind of changes we are discussing don't even come close to what previous generations experienced.

By modern comparison, having some solar panels fitted to the roof, having a nice cosy home heated by a heat pump rather than a gas boiler, or driving around in an EV that maybe only does 250 miles before you charge it, rather than 500 miles for a petrol, none of these changes come remotely close to the kind of choices and sacrifices faced by our forebears. 

 

They went through world wars to preserve freedom of choice. Not to be dictated to be nut zero fanatics. You are equating changes and introductions of forms of transport and technology that improved people’s lives. They were not forced to go on a tram. Some councils had trolley buses, some had diesel buses or all 3. The closures were not dictated by unelected quangos to a soviet style unrealistic timeframe, services closed down because people were buying motorcycles and cars and discovering personal transport. And buses still run. They haven’t been eradicated. People had the choice. Homes could be heated by coal, gas or electricity. The choice was there and all were affordable. Please tell me how ‘working people’ afford solar panels, heat pumps, EV’s? I do not want an EV. Full stop. It doesn’t suit MY car needs. I do not want a noisy inefficient heat pump. Full stop. My sister has a heat pump and her electric bills are horrendous. The payback on PV’s with my electric use is 25 years before which the panels will probably need replacing. 

[Haliotis]

The sacrifices and upheavals were not as bad as some may think.  That is because people then were made of sterner stuff, and took in their stride what many of today’s folk would cringe at.  The greatest sacrifices and hard life was that of the military services.

I was four when WW2 began.  I was fortunate because my gran had learned her cullinary skills in service. She could make a very tasty meal from the cheapest off cuts of meat, and her rabbit stews were of a delicious level that a Michelin Star chef would not be able to match.

The most technical pice of equipment that the average family owned was a radio.  There were not the things to be missed as is the case today.  Most men, and some women, had a bike and rode it in all weathers.  And catching a tram or bus was not a hardship.

[koji]

15 hours ago, Haliotis said:

[...]

Our forebears went through gradual change as developments occurred and they made their choices about what they accepted or avoided - not at the mercy of having to change  rapidly because choices were being taken away from them.

[...]

Exactly, that's the key word, Haliotis:

"GRADUAL CHANGE"

Not an imposition by bureauts...

 

[Mojo1010]

AJones - EV may work for you, not for the majority of the owners on this forum. Toyota the biggest car manufacturer in the world where the majority are saying EV isn't suitable for them. I would have an EV if it works for me, it doesn't, the sums and practicality doesn't add up. I would be worse off in many aspects with an EV. 

[Haliotis]

10 minutes ago Mojo said:   “A Jones - EV may work for you, not the majority of the owners on this forum.”

I would go along with that.  I am happy with my hybrid, but an EV that needs to be charged at an electrical point is a no-no for me.  Even for those home owners with the facilities to have their own EV charging point installed there can still be problems.  With grown  up children living at home longer, how is an own EV charging point going to work?  I know of families (we have such a family member) where there are as many as four cars at one address.  Can a private household have a multi-point EV charging circuit?  How would they juggle around getting their cars on charge without the risk of argument?  What about when the grown ups finally leave home - would these EV multi-points have standing charges based on the number of points?    What about family members visiting from a distance - needing to get their car(s) charged on, or soon after, arrival?   People do move house - what about if the chosen new home does not have EV charging facilities already on site?  What about drivers who travel a distance to work, where the round trip cannot be achieved without a recharge during the day?  All work premises will not have EV charging points for employee use, and some will not have employee parking spaces.  All work premises will not be conveniently sited close to a public EV charging point.  Are employers likely to allow employees to take time off for EV recharging on a daily basis?   Given that there will be other drivers using any public charging points, limiting recharging during lunch break is not realistic - particularly so if the business has a number of employees needing to visit the same public charging points.

I am sure that other forum members can think of obstacles I have missed, but I do believe that even my observations indicate that the use of EVs nationally is far from being as simple as the bureaucrats would have us believe.

[Cyker]

I would caveat that to apply to *current* EVs.

I actually like how EVs drive, but the Battery is a massive (Figuratively and literally  ) Achilles Heel.

If they can make them (or an alternative) smaller, lighter and more energy dense then it would make EVs much better.

At the moment they are just too big heavy lumbering and short-ranged for me. Sure the blistering instant acceleration is fun, but that's not going to get you from London to Llandudno and back.

Even with the high efficiency of EVs, a Battery that only holds 10s of kilowatts of energy is not going to stand a chance against a much smaller fuel tank that holds megawatts, even with a relatively inefficient ICE (And that's not even considering super efficient hybrid drivetrains!)

But those improvements are going to take a while and the people in charge need to understand that. They need to invest in the tech and give it a chance to mature, but they're too used to just expecting things to magically happen.

 

[Flatcoat]

Irrespective of how good EV’s become, Where is the energy going to be generated? 

[Mjolinor]

23 minutes ago, Flatcoat said:

Irrespective of how good EV’s become, Where is the energy going to be generated? 

Obviously. Battery in the bin, increase 5g power by several orders of magnitude and you can run them like dodgem cars from the stick on the roof. 🙂

(Me saves the world , again)

[Cyker]

3 hours ago, Flatcoat said:

Irrespective of how good EV’s become, Where is the energy going to be generated? 

That is a very good point and one that also gets glossed over - I don't think people realise how many gigawatts of energy fossil fuels put into cars every year, and that would have to be replaced with electrical energy - I've read studies that reckon it's 2-3x current generation, and that's just road traffic!  

That said, I reckon if they stuck a solar panel on every roof of every building in every city, it'd go a long way to help since the majority of people would have to charge during the day anyway, and might also help cool the country down since cities won't act as giant heat sinks in summer (Although we may accidentally create a solar death ray pointing at the sky if they're all angled the same way  )

I've long posited that if they spent the money pushing that out instead of on building this increasingly white-elephanty chinese/french nuclear plant it would have been far better value and be on-line far faster.

By the time that nuke plant comes on-line it already won't be enough for the projected power use and the p/kWh is going to be high.

The only problem is the grid can't cope with all that solar - It's designed to take power from a few remote generator plants and distribute it to everywhere, but it's not designed to take many low-power generators and that's partly what's hamstrung the whole thing (Turns out there are many wind and solar farms that have been built but are not connected to the grid and are sitting there just doing smeg-all because of this!!  )

It's not so bad with houses, as the solar will feed the house first and most of it won't even go into the grid, which is why I think that would have been a better path.

 

[Haliotis]

Today I have just watched Raechel Reeves reporting her “findings” of a 22Bn black hole that the Tories supposedly covered up.  Jeremy Hunt’s response denied her claims, so we are still in that suspense world of just who to believe.

Whatever, the inferred result is a likelihood of a financial squeeze that will constrict us all.  This is bound to reflect on what the new government can support in the way of grants to promote progress by the private sector in pursuing the clean energy projects.  So, look out for confusion on the horizon.

[Flatcoat]

I am still not clear how electricity is generated when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining…. Like on a foggy November day….. or even on a summers night. Also Puzzling me where all the electricity will come from when all transport is electric, all heating is electric, all manufacturing replaces gas with electricity…… all the new data centres and giga factories are built…… 

[Cyker]

Same place it always has - Gas, nuclear and coal.

There's enough storage (Or will be) to weather through short lulls, but there will eventually be so much and widely deployed wind, solar, tidal etc. generation that if they all stopped producing power at the same time, it'd probably mean we're in the middle of an alien invasion or something  

Plus we will likely always have gas turbines as backup, as they are very fast to bring online, and as long as we can get over the NIMBY factor, these new small-scale modular nuclear reactors being tested will probably start getting deployed all over the place too, and their construction time should be a fraction of a normal GW-scale nuke plant.

[Flatcoat]

21 minutes ago, Cyker said:

Same place it always has - Gas, nuclear and coal.

There's enough storage (Or will be) to weather through short lulls, but there will eventually be so much and widely deployed wind, solar, tidal etc. generation that if they all stopped producing power at the same time, it'd probably mean we're in the middle of an alien invasion or something  

Plus we will likely always have gas turbines as backup, as they are very fast to bring online, and as long as we can get over the NIMBY factor, these new small-scale modular nuclear reactors being tested will probably start getting deployed all over the place too, and their construction time should be a fraction of a normal GW-scale nuke plant.

So we have duplicate generator capacity….. yep, that sounds good idea. How costly is that? It doesn’t need all solar and wind to stop at the same time it only needs some of to shut down. Small reactor generation is by far and away the best option but I won’t hold my breath Milibrain, Kneeler and their team delivering any of it. 

[Cyker]

That's all years, possibly decades away anyway, which is my main worry - Our government in general haven't had a great track record with long term projects...

One of my goals is to get my own house so I can slap loads of solar panels on it and a big enough Battery to run the house overnight or a couple days; You effectively become self-sufficient and it'll be a rare day that doesn't generate enough power. Even in cloudy winter days there's usually enough UV getting through to run a house with enough spare to partially charge the Battery.

[Mjolinor]

18 minutes ago, Cyker said:

One of my goals is to get my own house so I can slap loads of solar panels on it and a big enough battery to run the house overnight or a couple days; You effectively become self-sufficient and it'll be a rare day that doesn't generate enough power. Even in cloudy winter days there's usually enough UV getting through to run a house with enough spare to partially charge the battery.

I have a friend doing exactly this. He was a doctor so only worked for the NHS for a few years then left with a massive pension and 100k lump.

I have been doing odd bits for him when he is stuck so am sort of keeping an eye on it.

Point of interest. In order to stop paying the electricity standing charge he had to fork out £2000 to get the wire to his house physically removed. He tried all ways, even with the meter and incoming HRC fuse removed they still insisted he had to pay.

 

[Flatcoat]

1 hour ago, Cyker said:

That's all years, possibly decades away anyway, which is my main worry - Our government in general haven't had a great track record with long term projects...

One of my goals is to get my own house so I can slap loads of solar panels on it and a big enough battery to run the house overnight or a couple days; You effectively become self-sufficient and it'll be a rare day that doesn't generate enough power. Even in cloudy winter days there's usually enough UV getting through to run a house with enough spare to partially charge the battery.

Have you actually run the calculations? If only it were so easy, Good luck with it but I won’t hold my breath. 

[Cyker]

1 hour ago, Mjolinor said:

I have a friend doing exactly this. He was a doctor so only worked for the NHS for a few years then left with a massive pension and 100k lump.

I have been doing odd bits for him when he is stuck so am sort of keeping an eye on it.

Point of interest. In order to stop paying the electricity standing charge he had to fork out £2000 to get the wire to his house physically removed. He tried all ways, even with the meter and incoming HRC fuse removed they still insisted he had to pay.

 

I don't actually want to disconnect my (future) house from the grid completely so it won't be so complicated, although I do want a big enough Battery to minimize how much power I feed back into the grid (And possibly to enable charging of my future 300+ mile EV Yaris...?)

 

55 minutes ago, Flatcoat said:

Have you actually run the calculations? If only it were so easy, Good luck with it but I won’t hold my breath. 

Nah but I know it doesn't make any financial sense, but then neither did buying a brand new Yaris Mk4  

The goal is not so much to save money as much as reduce dependency and minimize outgoings. I always try and pay more up front if it'll lower my on-goings, even if the projected long term numbers don't make financial sense.

Of course this is all predicated on me getting a house which, given the mortgage offers I've had, seem quite unlikely to happen any time soon...

(You people that own your own house and probably paid 5 groats 2 shillings and a ha'penny for it should count your blessings!!   )

[Rhymes with Paris]

5 minutes ago, Cyker said:

You people that own your own house and probably paid 5 groats 2 shillings and a ha'penny for it should count your blessings!!   )

5 groats?

I paid 5 goats, so I presume this is a typo.

But I do get how difficult it is now compared to the 70s 80s and 90s.

The only choice of buying I had in 1986 was a part rent part ownership in Acton when I worked next to Heathrow,or returning Oop here or buying a starter terraced house in exchange my goats.

I wish in retrospect that I had stayed down there, and worked it out somehow.

The salary at that time was only 8 grand a year, a Volvo,and all the sand you could eat, construction company you see.

Are houses that are in a state of disrepair, and need a lot of work still available down there?

Can,or used to be a way for someone a bit handy on the tools.