As is seemingly customary for big government announcement relating to the car industry, the expected decision to ban the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040 screams of headline announcement first, detail later.
The government has been taken to court over illegal levels of air pollution in the UK, and today’s imminent announcement is the headline of a series of measures to bring air pollution back inside legal limits.
The path to electrification is an inevitable one, and will happen by 2040 anyway. 2040 is 23 years away, which is three generations of cars on regular production cycles. Innovation and progress is happening at an unprecedented pace in the industry, with more in the last three years and the previous 20 before that. This will not slow down, so to that end the government is dotting the Is and crossing the Ts of something already in motion. The headline is fine and logical then, but here comes the detail. The industry is constantly asked to jump higher and it does so. But with this announcement more than ever, it needs the government support.
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This requires an investment infrastructure in electric charging points – and fast ones at that – on an unprecedented scale. There are 12,000 public charging points in the UK now versus 8500 petrol stations and the scores of pumps on them. Refuelling takes a couple of minutes, recharging considerably longer. This announcement makes electric cars no longer a curiosity or a lifestyle choice, they now become the way of keeping Britain moving. People will not want to compromise. This will require an equally big update to the national grid to facilitate the surge of power, tipped to be as much as 16% greater than today’s when electric cars really take off, and the grid struggles with surges as it is. We’ll also have a whole heap of batteries needing an ‘end of life’ use. Manufacturers speak of using them in our homes on smart grids, but our grid just isn’t set-up that way. It will need to be.
Given the comical pace the government operates at in any kind of major infrastructure project, can they really deliver this in 23 years?
The date might seem a long way away for the industry, but this date is much closer for a major infrastructure project. It’s one brought to you by the people behind HS2 (is this ever going to start?), the heel dragging on a third runway at Heathrow decision, and an announcement just last week on plans to cancel the electrification of major rail networks in the north of England. It can’t even commit to a date to switchover to digital-only radio.
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Air Quality and Electric Cars
At a energy-related seminar which I attended recently, one of the speakers - who is running several government-funded research projects - explained that a large part of the urban air pollution is due to the chiller units on delivery vans and lorries. Apparently most of these are driven by small diesel engines, drawing their fuel from the main tank, which (as one would understand) have to run all the time (that is, even when the large engine which moves the van or lorry is switched off). Unfortunately these small units are not subject to any pollution or efficiency standards, so constantly churn out huge amounts of NOx, CO2, etc, relative to their actual size (it was stated that this can often be 20 times - or more - the amount permitted from the motive power unit of the vehicle). The speaker suggested that, while aware of this, the government seems unwilling to take any appropriate action.
Its a non-announcement
Like the French version, the government will still allow the sale of hybrids. This makes sense and means that the V12 Ferraris and Astons will continue, they will just have to run electric only when in towns and this is a good thing. Fun in the country where there is no-one to breathe your fumes and quiet and clean where you will be annoying everyone else.
Hybrid actually makes perfect sense and means the sucess of this policy is not reliant on battery technology or provision of charging points. It will be business as usual but you will have to turn off your engine as you enter a built up area; sensible.
In terms of power, there will be a lot of micro generation. Solar panels will become really cheap and you will have a battery in your home too. I'd imagine that most cars will have solar roofs.
Best of all is that we will lose our reliance on imported oil and we will no longer have to be nice to the countries that have oil, many of which we would aviod if we could.
Solar roof won't help
Because it can only be about 2 Sq m and so deliver at best 300W on a sunny day. If the car is left in the open all day, you could get maybe 1500Wh total, or about 4 or 5 miles of range. In winter, forget it.
The governments are usually