7 hours ago, alanfp said:

Is the threat any different to those actors getting a petrol powered car to explode.  Some people seem to forget that petrol is volatile and flammable and explosive.

Indeed, but I imagine somewhat more difficult to explode remotely whereas an EV is 'connected' with a 600kg LiIon battery attached 😁

I know this post is about buses, rather than cars, but still...

Local company signed up to £500 Million contract to provide a further 1000 'emission free' buses. Owned by Jo Bamford, of 'JCB' fame. Buses are ideal candidates for this type of propulsion, being on a set route with exact millage used, and an overnight rest to prepare for next day.

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/northern-ireland/momentous-deal-worth-up-to-05bn-secured-by-wrightbus/a1472911918.html

 

2 hours ago, StephenFord said:

I know this post is about buses, rather than cars, but still...

Great news!* I particularly like the mention of apprenticeships.

Yes, we've said many times here that this is an ideal EV application. The P & R buses and most of the inner city locals in my area have gone over to electric and it seems to work very well. Likewise many of the home delivery firms are now using E-vans which is equally sensible.

(* Going even further off topic but hope a solution can be found for the H & W situation. Have I seen mention somewhere of possible ROI investment?)

 

 

29 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

(* Going even further off topic but hope a solution can be found for the H & W situation. Have I seen mention somewhere of possible ROI investment?)

I have great affection for H&W, I grew up in a house where Samson & Goliath could be seen from the upstairs windows. Was always jealous that as teenagers my best friend managed a weeks work experience there where he got an H&W boiler suit as well as being able to get to the top of one of the cranes, I doubt modern day H&S would allow such things LOL My own work experience was in Short & Harland where I managed to knock a few rivets into a Shorts SkyVan LOL Again, modern H&S would frown upon such a practice 🤣 (It's OK, I was under strict supervision!)

The CEO of Stellantis has been warning of this for some time, looks like we're getting close to the crunch.

https://bmmagazine.co.uk/news/vauxhall-owner-to-decide-future-of-uk-factories-as-net-zero-row-escalates/

Clearly it's to put pressure on the Government to relax the ZEV mandate and/or come up with some support (particularly for private EV sales). Is he bluffing? Who will blink first?

31 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Clearly it's to put pressure on the Government to relax the ZEV mandate and/or come up with some support...

But how could that be?? Our esteemed government has stated the 'green' revolution will generate millions of new jobs. The talented minister in charge, the great Edward Milliband, had already acquired a working revenue of £11 BILLION which he'll be allocating entirely to other countries (not UK) in order to save the planet.

Often said on this thread but worth repeating, government should keep their darn nose out of important energy policy issues which they clearly know nothing about, and concentrate on getting themselves Oasis tickets...

The Government have apparently attracted £6.3 billion inward investment in data centres. These things are huge consumers of power but it's not clear where the power will come from.

Google seem to have more of a clue according to this story:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/google-buy-power-small-modular-nuclear-reactor-company-kairos-ai-needs-2024-10-14/

12 minutes ago, StephenFord said:

The talented minister in charge, the great Edward Milliband,

Please do not tempt me to use immoderate language!

 

6 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

Google seem to have more of a clue according to this story:

Interesting to note that the younger generation, indoctrinated into the cult of being green, live their life online on their iPhones/iPads etc, but are totally oblivious to how much power is consumed keeping their clouds from collapsing, and now the emerging AI industry which is hugely power hungry. Makes our current petrol/diesel cars look decidedly energy thrifty!

There must be an actual grown up somewhere at Google!

7 hours ago, StephenFord said:

There must be an actual grown up somewhere at Google!

Yes, they are in charge of running the creche 🤣

https://www.fastcompany.com/91216063/i-dont-want-to-give-it-up-ford-ceo-jim-farley-has-been-driving-a-chinese-ev-for-months

15 minutes ago, eddie eastwood said:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91216063/i-dont-want-to-give-it-up-ford-ceo-jim-farley-has-been-driving-a-chinese-ev-for-months

I've said it before, the Chinese are rubbing their hands together with glee over the 'west' obsession with green tech, and they will produce any gods amount we want. Whether it's EVs, solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps, or whatever we want, they'll make it.

The real legacy we are leaving our children is the certain change in world order where the 'east' will have total dominance over the planet economy. China works to a 30 year strategy, whereas the west works till the next election strategy.

Quite glad I'm old...

Don't think the Chinese will be too happy seeing Trump back in office as it may effect their world domination plans for EV penetration. Still, every cloud, eh? 😁

It will be interesting to see how quickly the manufacturers pull back from their EV plans now that they will soon have a less rabidly aggressive government policy to deal with regarding EV adoption and infrastructure development. The soon previous policy was build as many EV models as possible and then say that the infrastructure is being built (but, it wasn’t really happening at the speed that they intimated it was) with all of it being subsidized by the taxpayers!

it appears that the game is over for the  advocates of taxpayer funded EV adoption. I am all for the development of EV vehicles but I draw the line at forcing the average citizen to pay for it.

Trump will put cold water on the Chinese importation of EVs. There are many reasons why this will happen beyond just not allowing them a market foothold. The fact that every vehicle has the ability to track and transmit data including cellphone data and conversations is an issue.

Well, the pollsters seem to have got that wrong. After weeks of "Too close to call" and "counting may take weeks", etc it seemed to be all done and dusted by the time I looked at the news at 7.45am GMT.

I see the son of a toolmaker was quick to send his congrats (but not as quick as Macron). It's fortunate that The Donald is not a vindictive man with a long memory or there may be consequences from some of the remarks made by the present Foreign Secretary in recent years.😀

Turning to matters closer to home and the thread topic, it seems everywhere I walk locally is festooned with construction notices for "Yorkshire Green" which I initially thought was something to do with locally grown veg. It is in fact the Yorkshire arm of the massive programme of upgrading and reinforcing the National Grid to connect to the many wind and solar farms which will provide our cheap clean energy as the Man who can't eat a bacon sandwich tells us.

Not sure how this claim squares with the recent report from the National Energy System Operator (NESO). They estimate that the ambition to decarbonise the Grid by 2030 will cost £40 billion per year. Wonder who'll be paying for that?

3 hours ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

 They estimate that the ambition to decarbonise the Grid by 2030 will cost £40 billion per year. Wonder who'll be paying for that?

I feel that is a very conservative estimate. I've said numerous times here, for most, the numbers involved are just too big to understand.

A MILLION seconds is 12 days.

A BILLION seconds is 36 years.

The cost for each one of us will simply be horrendous, yet despite the bright light heading straight for us, no one in power seems to see it...

Anyone buying stuff off eBay? 🤣

Soon be seeing lots of these. Evri now joining the EV brigade that include Amazon, DHL, DPD that we deal with. 

2 hours ago, iantt said:

Soon be seeing lots of these. Evri now joining the EV brigade that include Amazon

Donald will soon put a stop to all that malarkey 🤣🤣

19 hours ago, StephenFord said:

I feel that is a very conservative estimate. I've said numerous times here, for most, the numbers involved are just too big to understand.

The ESO report was only concerned with reinforcing/rerouting the Grid to transmit electricity,  the costs of all the windfarms, solar farms, etc, etc, to produce it are not covered in that. 

I was having a look at the Energy Dashboard site at about 7.30pm yesterday. Wind was producing 10% of our electricity, solar nil (obviously), the bulk was from gas, supported by what little nuclear we have and biomass (from Drax, which is suppose to be green but everyone but Millipede seems to know it  isn't). 

Some way to go to meet the 2030 target, it seems. And even then, there was an ominous comment in the ESO report about "rationing" use, e.g. only using high consumption devices at certain times.

1 hour ago, unofix said:

Donald will soon put a stop to all that malarkey 🤣🤣

I'm rather in favour of electric vans for parcel etc deliveries. Certainly where I live they're stopping at every other house so a big reduction in noise and pollution from unnecessary idling. Must make sense to the fleet operators also.

20 hours ago, StephenFord said:

The cost for each one of us will simply be horrendous, yet despite the bright light heading straight for us, no one in power seems to see it...

Frankly the transition should have started a long time ago and spread over a longer period would have been a lot less painful but the fossil fuel industry has spent decades rubbishing the science to protect their profits.

12 minutes ago, Eric Bloodaxe said:

there was an ominous comment in the ESO report about "rationing" use, e.g. only using high consumption devices at certain times

And there you have the reason why they're foisting smart meters on us. They give the supplier the ability to cut your supply at the click of a mouse.

6 hours ago, mjt said:

Frankly the transition should have started a long time ago and spread over a longer period

When I joined the "leccy board" over 50 years ago there was indeed a plan for transition, which I still believe was a good one. Clearly fossil fuel interests have had an influence (turkeys don't vote for Xmas), but imo the biggest issue has been meddling from all shades of the political spectrum for whatever reason. Initially it was "anything but coal", to break the NUM, latterly it has been the green agenda.

6 hours ago, mjt said:

And there you have the reason why they're foisting smart meters on us. They give the supplier the comtrol to cut your supply at the click of a mouse.

Spot on Mike. I recall years back being on a working group on smart metering. Many advantages from the supplier point of view - cheaper to buy than the old mechanical disc meters, reduced the need for meter readers, bill more often, better management of peaks and troughs in demand, etc. 

The problem back then was how to sell it to the public. What we needed (and didn't have at that time) was Governments who would do the job for us and get the public to foot the bill.

got our first batch  of transit custom EVs a few weeks ago.  They should do well. 

Oh and a few now infamous capris. Not my thing. 

Here's one for Stephen . . . . .

I don't know if anyone saw this but a week or so ago there was a report on our local news channel, which I think made it onto the national news, about a Merc EV that exploded while parked on someone's drive. The heat was so intense it damaged the front of the house, partially melting the garage door.

Their CCTV showed a puff of something like vapour from the back of the car quickly followed by the explosion and fire. It looked as though someone was trying to put it out with a garden hose - not the brightest of ideas with a lithium fire.