I told you EV's were Rubbish

Asked the question about declining revenue about six years ago :yawning_face:

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The exodus to EV’s was just “Electric Dreams” :notes:

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maybe so if there was no traffic to deal with and only the odd Kangaroo blocking the road. Just try driving on the M25 motorway around Heathrow Airport and it is stop start for mile after mile. you have been out of the UK for so long things have changed traffic wise.

link

https://www.m25traffic.co.uk/latestm25news/

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Looks like constant / daily one road closings

Location : The M25 anticlockwise entry slip at junction J12 . Reason : Congestion. Status : Currently Active. Return To Normal : Normal traffic conditions are expected between 16:45 and 17:00 on 6 November 2025. Delay : There are currently delays of 10 minutes against expected traffic.

Talk about the cost of motoring these days…This is not strictly about EV’s but will affect every car made after 2017. They are far too complicated for what they are intended to do. Other than engine management there is no need for a computer in a vehicle, as well as being a distraction to the driver, they are making motoring far too expensive for the average motorist. Is that deliberate? To get people off the road. If that happens to me, I will rewire the whole lighting system.

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Dachs my point wasn’t just about EVs but about Lithium demand for just about everything electronic we use these days. I don’t think a prejudicial dip in demand in EV cars will make a dent on the shortage

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Distances haven’t changed though have they? Is the range of an EV affected by traffic? presumably it is but the average person still only drives about 40km per day.

An EV would only need charging once a week at the most.

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And now they are using vast amounts to back up wind and solar with huge battery storage units. They have just been granted permission to build the biggest one in the UK about two miles away from where I live on the old Thorpe Marsh power station site.

https://www.nationalwealthfund.org.uk/news/fidra-energy-reaches-financial-close-uks-largest-battery-energy-storage-project-backed-eig-and

Apparently there is no contribution to the national grid from solar. Combined Cycle Gas Turbines are doing the heavy lifting tonight, with 6% being bought in from Ireland and the Netherlands among others.
The Biomass supply comes from Drax, a coal fired station converted to biomass. The biomass is wood pellets sailed across the Atlantic from Canada in great big diesel engined ship.

Drax

Drax is actually stood on 300 years worth of coal… :009:

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There is little doubt that you highlight many issues as the UK, indeed many countries, transition from fossil fuels to less polluting energy sources. The notion of shipping bio-mass fuels is, however, no different from the issues of shipping natural gas. Something like 20% of gas imports are shipped. You should be complaining about that.
As for coal, I thought you earlier agreed it was a dirty, waste-producing fuel and not suitable for energy production. No matter how much is sat in the ground. Have you changed your mind?
Lastly, I would have thought it was a good thing that investment was being made into a grubby part of the country where a dirty coal fired plant once polluted. Just because that investment is a battery storage unit still means jobs in construction and in running. Or do you only want dirty investment and dirty jobs?

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Yes, a good point Lincs, when you consider that all the UK’s Natural Gas platforms in the North Sea have been shut down, and we buy gas from Norway…And guess where that comes from?
I do agree coal is dirty and takes up lots of land at a coal fired station, but wouldn’t it have been more economically viable to use what we have close by, until proper alternatives have been put in place? I would imagine that the damage to the environment that ‘dirty coal’ does, would be offset by hundreds of daily 1200 mile trips from North America by huge diesel engined ships…

The lithium battery storage fiasco is like putting a sticking plaster over a major arterial bleed.
After the unit has been constructed, how many jobs do you think it will provide?
Perhaps a couple of blokes monitoring and a few maintenance men…Not exactly the amount of men and women who worked in South Yorkshires pits.
Whole communities have been destroyed and never recovered since we embarked on the green energy malarky.
Miners

Most lithium fires are so severe that the fire brigade usually lets them burn out by themselves such is the heat and ferocity…and the fumes are highly toxic, God help us if it ever catches fire…And it will…
Nigel Lawson

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Now you mention it Lincs, yes…
We seem to buy most of our natural gas, however, the biggest bulk of it comes via an undersea pipeline from Norway…
Gas

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For me the problem is the charging time and the risk of running out in the middle of nowhere.

I understand that they are producing faster charging units but can’t see how that new tech can be transported to every house or street and it seems counter-intuitive to do so when this generates so much carbon in itself. It’s so annoying walking past a house with the electric cable hanging from street furniture or covered by those cable covers on the pavement, because people plug into an extension lead from their house.

I was thinking of a hybrid, but have heard that they can explode. I think it was an uber driver who told me that if the EV element of the hybrid fails you cannot use the petrol as a back up. We were discussing this because we drove past a car that was on fire. He said it must be a hybrid.

So many fires are being caused by lithium batteries.

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AI, is slipping in through the backdoor :icon_wink:

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never mind back door, it’s totally in our face at work. Today we had an email explaining how AI can help us with various tasks. Basically making it easy to no longer think.

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Are you sure about that?

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HA HA There is nowhere in the UK that is in the middle of nowhere! Being 20 minutes from Tescos is not nowhere :icon_wink:

The solution to charging is on its way, it is just early days.

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I have to consult my AI software in order to formulate an answer to your question!

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Not long ago I learned about AIChat and asked it if it wanted to be my friend as I had no friends , It replied NO

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We do have lots of motorways Bruce & constant traffic snarl ups. My nightmare would involve being stuck on the M25 in a jam with your charge going down and down

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today’s AI joke was

Question : what is the best time of day to go to the dentist?

Answer : 2.30…

after this quip the words “dad joke” were shown in brackets.

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