I think it is true to say that diesel cars were never popular here, people liked their V6 or V8 petrol engined family cars.
It is only really the cars like mine ie four door utes that have replaced the “family car” with their 3 litre turbo charged diesels and their 3.5 tonne towing capacity that have awoken people to diesel engines.
That is speaking very generally, for example the Ford Ranger has a choice of a 2.2 or 3.2 turbo charged diesel but you get the idea.
Foxy, you don’t have to change batteries every five, six years, most manufacturers warrant their batteries for up to ten years, but after that it doesn’t mean the batteries are done, yes the range may shorten but hopefully by then the charging infrastructure will be better and you can top up when required
They claim that these cars use a newer type of battery (NOT the traditional lead acid type)
Doesn’t matter, they are still going to fail at some point, and that’s one hell of a replacement cost considering an equivalent lead acid battery on a petrol or diesel car would be about £60 :!::!:
So you buy an all electric car now on the ‘hope’ that in 5 or 6 years there will be charging stations wherever there’s currently a petrol station.
Sorry but I’ve been ‘conned’ by these types of ‘promises’ before. There will never be enough charging stations around during my lifetime so I ain’t going to even think about getting an all electric car.
I think you may be getting confused over the batteries, electric cars use lithium batteries to power the vehicle , they still have a separate battery to power the cars electrics as a conventional ice car, the batteries shouldn’t fail but just lose their capacity to fully charge thus reducing their range, I think for the moment a hybrid car is the way to go that can use electric only mode for a few miles, then a conventional petrol/ diesel motor for extended journeys
Never?
EVS were around a hundred years before IC engines.
A few months ago there was a big media splurge about this English inventor guy who had developed an alternative to the lithium batteries now used in cars. His battery was neither expensive (cheap enough to sell in the supermarkets) nor toxic (being made out of every day non-toxic materials) making it easily recyclable. Since then I’ve heard nada, ziltch, niente about it. I wonder if the big battery manufacturers or vehicle manufacturers had bought his patent from him and closed the technology down?
I’ve done a brief search on t’internet but can’t find anything.
Of course, he could have just been making unsubstantiated claims. A ‘mad inventor’?
If, however, he really did invent something along those lines and big business has covered it up, it is possible that it can be invented again!
Have you seen the BMW i models?
Pretty much what you describe.
IF it’s true and a big corporation bought the rights then they’ll have spent £millions tying every single part of the invention up in patents and hidden it away.
How can you hide patents? The whole point of them is to be public surely?
Check out patentable Trade Secrets.
I may be wrong.
I think you are. Trade secrets are just that and a separate issue, you don’t patent them because then they are exposed to public scrutiny. A patent is only enforceable if it is known for obvious reasons.
For example the formula for Coca Cola has never been patented but is a trade secret and jealously guarded.
It is quite legal to reverse engineer a trade secret and reproduce it because it is not patented.
Patents protect the details but trade secrets might protect things like method of production.
So I was right.
I was wrong:lol:
Reg the problem with patents is having one only protects one single part of something you’ve developed. It doesn’t take a genius in some convenient East Asian laboratory to find a work around (e.g. “use Screw B in Hole 1” instead of “use Screw A in Hole 1”) and, BOOM, all your money spent in patenting has gone up in smoke. Better to buy out the idea and quietly sit on it until either everyone’s forgotten about it or you’ve got a belting world-beating idea that actually works like Trevor Baylis’s wind-up radio.
I doubt that there is any single part in use.
Yes, as I mentioned, the torque and pulling power of a diesel is far better than a petrol. Petrol is best for speed I suppose. Also, engines improve, my 1.6 diesel is faster than my previous 2lt petrol.
Can someone (preferably someone who has bought a Hybrid car) tell me the reason why they bought one?
Here’s what I think…
How can it be good for the planet when there are lots more parts involved?
How can it save on pollution when it still has a petrol engine either to charge the battery, or drive the vehicle when the battery fails?
Any engineer will tell you that to move a load a certain distance takes a certain amount of energy. There is no such thing as ‘perpetual motion’ so it would appear that with a hybrid vehicle the energy to drive the car or charge the battery to cover a certain distance will be the same…Plus the hybrid is far heavier than a petrol engined car so will require more energy.
So what is the point of having a petrol engine, charging a battery ? Why not just buy the petrol engined vehicle? Because hybrids will be discontinued at the same time as conventional internal combustion engined vehicles…It makes no sense…Unless it’s more of a status symbol and keeping up with the neighbours. Or look at me I’m doing my bit to save the planet…But are you? Not according the the CEO of Volvo, he says that the building of EV’s and the supplying the lithium and cobalt for battery production will mean that it would take over six years to break even. Furthemore, the battery might be capable of 300 miles plus fully charged while new, each year the range will decrease as the battery starts to deteriorate. Just think how long your laptop battery lasts, and how long it keeps a charge…
I’ve had a full hybrid (not a plug-in one) for more than one and a half years and I mainly bought it because I wanted to reduce petrol consumption. I now cut it in half. My previous car consumed 8l/100km and my new car needs between 4 and 5 l. That alone made the purchase worthwhile financially and ecologically. I couldn’t buy a plug-in hybrid because the anti-EV lobby of my condo has so far successfully voted against having wallboxes installed. Going for a full hybrid was and still is all I could do at the moment given that you’d need a wallbox for the two alternatives left. In Germany the idea of thinking a hybrid car or an EV is a status symbol is erroneous. They are still sneered at.
