Oh for gods sake - do you really have to spout such racist drivel?
rolls eyes and goes to wash up
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How can they cost more to service? Apart from the brakes there is nothing to service and even the brakes do less work with the motors being used for electricity regeneration.
I read this article in the Guardian and was surprised by the passion in the comments, as I think the moderator was because they closed it down very quickly. There were quite a few attacks on Simm, the coauthor of the report. Truth is electric cars are not a panacea, we just have too many cars and trucks no matter what powers them. Cities across Europe are crowded out with cars, motorways likewise with trucks. Speaking as a hypocrite (I like cars, have four of them, one a fast Morgan, one a very fast diesel and a fast petrol hybrid) in my opinion there needs to be a new radical approach to goods transport and more work on vehicle sharing for the rest of us.
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Do you mean adaptive cruse control Roger? The problem with traditional cruse control is that you have to keep flicking it on and off. Youāre sitting there happily on the motorway at 110 in a 110 zone and somebody overtakes at 115 pulls in front of you and slows down to 105. Flick, flick, flick. A pain and it happens all the time. Adaptive cruse control sorts all that out. I have all the electronic bells and whistles on one car and they are superb. Driving home from Italy last Saturday in torrential rain they made a nine hour nightmare a doddle. I could have done the trip in another (maybe excluding Morgan) but it would have been more work and more stressful. Iāve also driven a Tesla Model S over long distance and once again the aids are excellent, not so happy with total autonomy mode though.
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No John, i have adaptive CC and to a point it is great, i mean the braking system (OK cheap and nasty Ford hire cars) which slap the brakes on if the scenario you mention occurs.
Where do you get racist from, I must say some areas of France seem better and I put it down to the rural areas in the Limousin and charente , but what I said was true.
The first thought I had was that your post could be seen as racist
Yes, Iāve had a couple of panics by the emergency braking system, particularly one hairpin near where I live. Iāve just turned down the sensitivity and it seems OK now. Though I havenāt driven at anything to see if it actually still works.
This seems pretty definitiveā¦
The research quoted (not yet public) is by T&E - which is I guess the most respected relevant expert organisation in the world.
Iām not sure itās quite as clear cut - the article assumes that the electric vehicle is fully recycled, including the battery which is extremely questionable at present and seems to ignore (as many similar studies do) the fact that we still have to burn fossil fuels to generate the electricity that the car uses. Yes renewables are an increasing percentage of the electricity that we consume - but a long way from 100% for the moment.
Itās extremely unlikely that T&E will have overlooked such basic factors Paul - really your criticism is that the article doesnāt go into every aspect of the research detail, which is of course true, but always the case in newspaper reports.
The Guardian is often guilty of not linking the original research behind stories - I find it endlessly frustrating as I always do check the original - but in this case itās justified as itās not public yet.
The strip mining of various locations to source the metals for the batteries and the motors are far from environmentally friendly.
The increased recyclability of EVs going forward is a big step in the right direction, but weāre going to have to build millions of new EVs from scratch to fully replace ICEVs.
They have just now published it!
Or maybe this is just the battery studyā¦
There is a huge percentage of the parts of all vehicles that are now recycled and its increasing. Some car companies have departments who look for materials and processes to increase sustainability and circular economics. The high power car batteries have a second life as house and factory battery powerwalls for storage of solar generated electricity. These are possible because the high drain ev motors are not the same as low drain domestic use. At the final end of life the materials can be recovered and re used, these facilities are growing in number as the market increases. Just look at the increase in the cost of high voltage batteries on Ebay. I was going to buy an ex ev battery pack last year and now would have to pay almost double such is the demand.
As for burning fossil fuels to produce electricity for the EVā s this is a pretty much out of date argument in most parts of the world where EVās exist, the UK for example uses a mix of renewable and nuclear.
We have a 12 year old 308 1.6HDi, 167k miles, does 72mpg in normal use (not towing big twin axle trailer). Given that we only paid Ā£9k for it at a year old it owes us nothing. Iād keep it forever (particularly considering the environmental cost of manufacturing) but the RHD is a drag and I canāt go back to MOT it.
Itās now parking up on the drive on a UK SORN in France and I guess one day Iāll book an MOT, drive it to UK and give it to a daughter to get a scrappage fee that far exceeds itās value.
Lucky her! Here, you pay to scrap. Which I have always found extraordinary and is why all our French neighbours have old cars rotting in their fields. I canāt help feeling there is a business opportunity there. 
I think this is more aspiration than practical reality - there was an announcement by Nissan that it planned to use recycled batteries in its xStorage product - but I canāt find any mention of that in the current advertising material.
As for plastics - I donāt know the exact figures but it seems that recycling of automotive plastics remains low (outside of factories recycling plastic shards and waste from manufacture). For one thing there are an enormous variety of plastics used in the average auto (39, according to one source I found) and for another the average age of a vehicle at the end of its life is apparently 11 years (woefully low IMO) so it takes that long for any improvement in the ease with which auto plastics will filter through.
Yes, low carbon sources are becoming more important but still < 50% of total electricity generation in the UK.
Mining Lithium and rare earth metals causes a lot of environmental damage.
Donāt get me wrong I think EVs are here to stay, but I think you still have to take the environmental claims with a healthy dose of realism.
Sorry Paul I still refute that figure as latest data shows. I was at a talk by a National Grid chap who showed how things are progressing. They want more EVā s as they can store off peak power that could then be, with participants agreement be fed back into the grid when required and cost of power production is higher. A couple of days in 2020 there was surplus electricity so NG asked people to charge their cars (subject to an EV tariff) for free.
Whilst all mining is costly so is extracting fossil fuels so which is worse and the great cobalt debate fell flat when it was exposed that cobalts main use is removing sulphur from fossil fuels to make low sulphur versions and unlike batteries is not apparently recovered and re used. Tesla use less than 1% of cobalt in their batteries and his cheaper models will use lithium iron phosphate batteries.
Dont take me wrong either, there is plenty of greenwash about and sifting through it with a healthy dose of realism is very necessary. All steps towards where we need to be as was the internal combustion engine.
Interestingly the article that you quote goes some way to avoid giving much in the way of hard data such as the overall %age of electricity generated by renewables, or the average CO2 per kWh - for the whole year, not just some nice warm months when demand is low. Itās all short periods of record this or that.
Clearly renewables are of increasing importance but it is still less than 50% (not much less BTW, but less).
Iām not too clear how there can be surplus electricity - surplus capacity, yes. Also the statement ācharge their cars (subject to an EV tariff) for freeā makes no sense, either it was charged, so not free or free, so no tariff - and how did they tell any use was for EV charging?
Good idea perhaps but Iād have thought better implemented centrally - and thereās no infrastructure to dump charge back from EVs at the moment.
My view is that climate/ecological breakdown is such an overwhelming issue that it rarely demands an either/or choice - the answer is usually BOTH - and then some.
So I donāt think you can use the argument that some electricity is produced by fossil fuels against EVs - the answer to that is not to stop developing/using EVs, itās to stop producing electricity with fossil fuels.
Similarly with lots of other false alternatives, like electric cars versus more/better public transport - the answer is BOTH - and lot more walking and cycling and less longer distance traveling overall too.