Kick Those Shoes Off and Relax. It's the Delta 2017 Tea Break

[Peter Mallett]

Once upon a time you would stop for a brew in a lay-by.

[bauble]

I still have difficulty getting my head round the amount of time you have to allow for recharging during a journey. But, having said that, in the EV world Tesla are light years ahead with their 'Supercharger' facilities scattered all around the world. In the US they're are naturally even more of them.

I always carry a spare can in the boot.

[midgetman]

Bauble you could always carry your bike and turbo trainer in the boot and wire it up to the car's alternator. Kill two birds with one stone!

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk

[PeterMorley]

Originally Posted by Mike Bell

I still have difficulty getting my head round the amount of time you have to allow for recharging during a journey. But, having said that, in the EV world Tesla are light years ahead with their 'Supercharger' facilities scattered all around the world. In the US they're are naturally even more of them.

I guess like driving a truck with the driving hours regs, you would discipline yourself to accepting that a trip would require stops at certain times for 'fuel', and adjust your life accordingly....

As I've mentioned before a very good racing friend drives his Model S (yes, it's got ludicrous mode ) all over Europe quite happily, but what he can't do is tow his race car behind!

Apart from not being patient enough to wait for the recharge I'm not entirely sold on the benefits - a friend who works for Toyota agreed that the current electric/hybrid cars are only an intermediate solution and something else needs to be found (like hydrogen fuel cells).
The problem is the public are being told that current cars are the solution, which will slow down the development and uptake of solutions that make a real difference.
There is also the issue that nothing is being done about other sources that aren't being tackled - e.g. the rise of cheap flights undoes the work that car owners are paying for, solar panels & windmills barely generate more than the energy used to make them etc.

And as you say you can't tow anything with them, apparently even a roof rack is verboten on some.

Now that people are realising what many people have been saying about diesel cars for 30 years or so is true, I find options for replacing my tow car are mainly diesel (partly due to the ever decreasing size of petrol engines) which is even more frustrating.

But for commuter/city cars there are some clear advantages to electric solutions but so were Smart cars and the non-uptake of them was unfathomable (but then so is the idea of spending hours commuting to sit in front of a computer screen) and things like the Model S are far from being city/commuter cars.

[grantp]

The problem with the hydrogen storage power concept is that the investment required in fixed infrastructure is enormous.

Then there is the question of where and how the energy required for separating the gas will be generated.

And finally the "only" by-product is water vapour. Quite a lot of water vapour as I recall, and the effects of that on the eco balance of the surface of the planet may nee to be assessed. I don't recall reading a paper that have done any more than hand-wave about that.

Commuting to work is a fairly ludicrous things to have to do but at least if one is being chauffeured it is, potentially, not an entire waste of time and effort and personal energy. I suspect that commute "pods", whether individual or shared, could be beneficial to all. Handled on a hire as needed basis there would be no problems like parking to deal with.

For long distance stuff one either uses the required breaks for recharging as a rest period - no bad thing perhaps. The chances are that technology will improve charge speed although perhaps at the cost of battery longevity. Not something to care about if one is just renting the vehicle.

Alternatively just swap vehicles along the route of the journey as with horses in the old days. This would also be the principle of travel between countries perhaps, not the least because each country or area of a country will want to see some revenue from pass through traffic and local hire would satisfy that need.

In recent times planning regulations for new housing developments have tended to require a maximum of 1.5 cars accommodated per household. If you look around estates built in the past 15 to 20 years the potential parking problems are fairly obvious.

When the young families that moved in grow to maturity, and all the offspring wish to have personal mobility options, the idea of 4 or 5 cars per typical household will be largely unsupportable. The planning policy is likely to include more constraint for future developments even if it is only due to trying to cram as much housing as possible onto the land available.

Autonomous, self delivering, hire on demand pods will become very popular. No parking need, no cleaning requirement, no trips to the fuel station to get your hands dirty. No huge insurance charges for young drivers so long as they stay in autonomous mode. No worries about using social media on the move (one would assume).

The only downside would be systems tracking you all of the time. But the last 10 years or so have introduced that concept through smart phones and people seem to accept it in the main.

I really can't see hydrogen cells as anything except a niche market unless there turns out to be far tool little raw material around to allow battery production at the scale that might be necessary to satisfy worldwide need OR a reliance on intermittent renewable energy sources is not practical for some needs or locations. However, reduced market penetration for the technology would likely make fuel cells rather expensive propositions.

[bauble]

If this is the sort of things you blokes chat about when you 'kick your shoes off' what on earth do you in your leisure time? Try and solve complex mathematical equations and create a parallel universe in cyber space?

Man walks into a bar. Oof! It was an iron bar. (One frequented by irons)

[Mike Bell]

Originally Posted by bauble

If this is the sort of things you blokes chat about when you 'kick your shoes off' what on earth do you in your leisure time?

Never you mind!

[midgetman]

Originally Posted by bauble

If this is the sort of things you blokes chat about when you 'kick your shoes off' what on earth do you in your leisure time? Try and solve complex mathematical equations and create a parallel universe in cyber space?

That's the thing about motor sport Bauble, it's populated by frustrated engineers who take great delight in fixing things, and if they can't find something to fix they'll cast around until they find something.

"If it an't broke - go and break it!"

I used to have a race mechanic who was forever trying to fix things on race day. We used to invent problems with the trailer and tow car just to stop him fiddling with the racer.

[Peter Mallett]

In all of this discussion about commutes etc. we forget that t'interweb has improved to the extent that many people can work from home for the majority of their working week if the employers would just get with the programme.

When Concorde first arrived on the scene the reasoning was pretty sound. transatlantic business worked on short time so any means of reducing the "commute" across the pond was a boon. All that changed with teleconferencing and later video conferencing.

The need to sign something in person has virtually disappeared so the need to physically be in the same room and the others in a meeting is greatly diminished.

All of which would do wonders for those "green" folks except in their world it is better to penalise (via tax) people than to actively reduce their need for travel.

Hey ho.

[John Elwin]

Originally Posted by Mike Bell

I still have difficulty getting my head round the amount of time you have to allow for recharging during a journey. But, having said that, in the EV world Tesla are light years ahead with their 'Supercharger' facilities scattered all around the world. In the US they're are naturally even more of them.

I guess like driving a truck with the driving hours regs, you would discipline yourself to accepting that a trip would require stops at certain times for 'fuel', and adjust your life accordingly....

As I've mentioned before a very good racing friend drives his Model S (yes, it's got ludicrous mode ) all over Europe quite happily, but what he can't do is tow his race car behind!

Quentin Wilson, no less, was extolling the virtues of electric cars on Daily Politics at lunchtime. He commented on how cheaply you can buy a s/hand Nissan Leaf, which rather suggests something...

[Mike Bell]

Originally Posted by John Elwin

Quentin Wilson, no less, was extolling the virtues of electric cars on Daily Politics at lunchtime. He commented on how cheaply you can buy a s/hand Nissan Leaf, which rather suggests something...

Yes the Leaf is very cheap second hand. I reckon most other EVs will suffer heavy depreciation, more or less likely depending on the badge! The Renault Zoe is also cheap 2nd hand, but like the Leaf, has a very small range. The latest version has a huge improvement on this, and so will knock value of old ones more. Like a lot of tech, early adopters suffer taking a hit as said tech improves.....

My Tesla owner friend is on his second. He had one of the first Model S's imported, which was excellent but suddenly became of less interest to new converts as the later higher powered models were so much better. He took advice (including mine!) and px'd it for the '90' 4wd version while the older car was still attracting attention...

My choice would be an i3 but again, small range at the moment. Chev have got a new hatchback 'Bolt' in the US which looks great and has a good range- but guess what, they decided not to engineer it for RHD! Daft....

[John Elwin]

Originally Posted by Mike Bell

Yes the Leaf is very cheap second hand. I reckon most other EVs will suffer heavy depreciation, more or less likely depending on the badge! The Renault Zoe is also cheap 2nd hand, but like the Leaf, has a very small range. The latest version has a huge improvement on this, and so will knock value of old ones more. Like a lot of tech, early adopters suffer taking a hit as said tech improves.....

My Tesla owner friend is on his second. He had one of the first Model S's imported, which was excellent but suddenly became of less interest to new converts as the later higher powered models were so much better. He took advice (including mine!) and px'd it for the '90' 4wd version while the older car was still attracting attention...

My choice would be an i3 but again, small range at the moment. Chev have got a new hatchback 'Bolt' in the US which looks great and has a good range- but guess what, they decided not to engineer it for RHD! Daft....

My only experience of an electric car was a drive in a converted Golf in Holland, which was very impressive performance-wise. Thinking about it, that was in 2009, eight years ago, yet things don't seem to have moved on much since then. I think public perception, particularly in UK, has struggled because in the early days whenever EV's were mentioned on TV up popped a bit of footage of a Gee-Whiz or whatever it was called. No self-respecting driver would be seen dead in anything like that!

[grantp]

As the "Bolt" was mentioned ... it seems one might have tried to ...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01...e_comes_alive/



Maybe.

[grantp]

As change of subject for a mo, but still transport related,

I would guess a few of us qualified for Bus Passes in recent times although I was somewhat displeased to discover that if one lived in England but outside Greater London the qualifying age is somewhat later.

London, Scotland, Wales and NI its 60.

England has a staggered age change which appears to have been left unchanged since last year.

Now the deal is aligned to the new revised retirement ages. This affect ladies of a certain age most dramatically.

For example, my sister-in-law, a couple of months older than I, could afficially retire with a State pension at 60.

My wife, a tad over 2 years younger, has to wait several more years. In fact I just checked her eligibility for a bus pass, assuming that on the previously published scale she would be about right for qualifying, and discovered that in fact it will be some time in 2020 before that low cost benefit will be available to her.

If we had been living in Wales, Scotland, NI or Greater London she would have qualified some years ago. Not that she is likely to want to use a bus ... but that is hardly the point.

One wonders about how many other areas the English are being stitched up to the benefit of the rest of the Kingdom ... and whatever one could class Greater London as these days.

[grantp]

Originally Posted by Mike Bell

Yes the Leaf is very cheap second hand.

And looking on the Nissan national website they are mostly very low mileage too!

2p a mile for electricity.

£4 a mile (at least) for depreciation.

Is that a lot for a small family hatchback?

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by grantp

One wonders about how many other areas the English are being stitched up to the benefit of the rest of the Kingdom ... and whatever one could class Greater London as these days.

Since devolvement was introduced, we are no longer a real "United Kingdom", any more that the USA is truly united.

You have to feel for those who might live in the Borders just inside Scotland who will shortly have to pay more Income Tax than their neighbours who are lucky to live in England.

And these differences will no doubt become more pronounced in the future. For example, Scots' youths can already receive free university tuition in Scotland, but others wishing to study there have to pay the fees. And so on.

[bauble]

Originally Posted by grantp

As change of subject for a mo, but still transport related,

Now the deal is aligned to the new revised retirement ages. This affect ladies of a certain age most dramatically.

For example, my sister-in-law, a couple of months older than I, could officially retire with a State pension at 60.

My wife, a tad over 2 years younger, has to wait several more years. In fact I just checked her eligibility for a bus pass, assuming that on the previously published scale she would be about right for qualifying, and discovered that in fact it will be some time in 2020 before that low cost benefit will be liable to her.

Grant no gentleman would discuss his wife's age on a public forum, not only is it bad form, but, from experience, extremely dangerous.

[Mike Bell]

With BE out of F1 (announced today), just wondering if there's a place for him in histeric racing.....

[bauble]

Originally Posted by Mike Bell

With BE out of F1 (announced today), just wondering if there's a place for him in histeric racing.....

Quick, Mike get the TV rights signed up,

[John Elwin]

Originally Posted by Mike Bell

With BE out of F1 (announced today), just wondering if there's a place for him in histeric racing.....

Well, he's got plenty of cars...

Good man, Bernie, he even tried to find a job for me once.

[Mike Bell]

Originally Posted by John Elwin

Good man, Bernie, he even tried to find a job for me once.

Hey John, I dare you to post that on the F1 forum 'Goodbye! At last....' thread.

[John Elwin]

Originally Posted by Mike Bell

Hey John, I dare you to post that on the F1 forum 'Goodbye! At last....' thread.

If it wasn't for Bernie they probably wouldn't have even had an F1 to moan about.

As the saying goes, 'seek as ye find' - I had a few contacts with Bernie over the years & have nothing but respect for him.

[VIVA GT]

Originally Posted by bauble

Grant no gentleman would discuss his wife's age on a public forum, not only is it bad form, but, from experience, extremely dangerous.

Baub, I think that this is similar to the fact that women who carry a little extra weight live significantly longer than men who mention that fact...

[grantp]

Originally Posted by bauble

Grant no gentleman would discuss his wife's age on a public forum, not only is it bad form, but, from experience, extremely dangerous.

No names mentioned.

Anyway, she's the one who keeps mentioning the apparent anomaly, especially with reference to her sister. Sibling rivalry and all that.

In any case I have come to the conclusion that "Gentleman" is a term of disparagement these days in many circles and almost certainly sexist from the POV of the "sisters".

Using it may even be a "hate crime".

I may be forced to contact my lawyer and take advice - just as soon as I have checked whether I could obtain legal aid.

[PeterMorley]

Originally Posted by grantp

The problem with the hydrogen storage power concept is that the investment required in fixed infrastructure is enormous.

Then there is the question of where and how the energy required for separating the gas will be generated.

And finally the "only" by-product is water vapour. Quite a lot of water vapour as I recall, and the effects of that on the eco balance of the surface of the planet may nee to be assessed. I don't recall reading a paper that have done any more than hand-wave about that.

I really can't see hydrogen cells as anything except a niche market unless there turns out to be far tool little raw material around to allow battery production at the scale that might be necessary to satisfy worldwide need OR a reliance on intermittent renewable energy sources is not practical for some needs or locations. However, reduced market penetration for the technology would likely make fuel cells rather expensive propositions.

I did read/hear somewhere that a problem with hydrogen cells is that the most common greenhouse gas is actually water vapour, so even if they could be made viable they might not help anyway!

Rather than offend Bauble even further and given that most of us seem to be of a similar mind on the subject I won't add more to the topic and will use the internet for its main purpose - e.g. looking for pictures of cats, apparently dogs are currently more popular so I feel the need to redress the balance...