All diesel and petrol car sales to be banned

[SueEllen]

Would you suggest we use Helium instead?

Then you would find youths taking gulps out of the fuel tank that's before you go bang.

[Mordac]

One snag with hydrogen is that it leaks quite fast from tanks, and (due to basic physical principles) this is next to impossible to prevent over time.

It is also highly inflammable even at low concentrations and temperatures, and hydrogen combustion releases huge amounts of energy. From the Wikipedia article Hydrogen safety :



I wouldn't want a large tank of it in my garage, or loads of them scooting around on the roads, especially with bad guys who could easily adapt the tank in a hydrogen powered vehicle into a colossally powerful bomb!

So it looks like the choice is between driving around in a ready made bomb, or driving around hoping one gets to ones destination before the juice runs out. And then hoping again that wherever one is going has a secure charge point, e.g once you've paid for a 7 hour charge at the local charge-point, some scrote doesn't park next to you and nick your charging cable while you're not watching. Because you won't be watching, you'll be doing something else. We call it "life". Nobody seems to have thought all this through, least of all the govt.

[Dark Black]

2040 is just a ban on new petrol/diesel car sales isn't it? By the time all such cars have left the road I doubt very much I'll be driving. Even assuming I'm still alive by then I'll probably just be dribbling in the corner...

So do I give a fook...? No, I'll just enjoy ripping up lanes like a good petrol-head in the meantime

[tomtomagain]

So it looks like the choice is between driving around in a ready made bomb, or driving around hoping one gets to ones destination before the juice runs out. And then hoping again that wherever one is going has a secure charge point, e.g once you've paid for a 7 hour charge at the local charge-point, some scrote doesn't park next to you and nick your charging cable while you're not watching. Because you won't be watching, you'll be doing something else. We call it "life". Nobody seems to have thought all this through, least of all the govt.

Don't worry you can buy a new petrol car in 2039 and keep that for 10 years. You won't need to go electric until 2050.

.... of course, you will find it increasingly hard to fill up your old-fashioned petrol motor because all the petrol stations will have closed.

[Paddy]

Supply and demand of electricity will be a factor. No doubt electricity prices will be hyped up thus the cost of using electricity homes will increase drastically.

[WTFH]

Supply and demand of electricity will be a factor. No doubt electricity prices will be hyped up thus the cost of using electricity homes will increase drastically.

The price of electricity will have to rise anyway, the French/Chinese will want more money for Hinckley Point from the government, so they'll put the tax up on electricity to pay for it.

[Gibbon]

e.g once you've paid for a 7 hour charge at the local charge-point, some scrote doesn't park next to you and nick your charging cable while you're not watching. Because you won't be watching, you'll be doing something else. We call it "life". Nobody seems to have thought all this through, least of all the govt.

It won't beyond the wit of Suity to secure the charging lead i.e. it will 'talk' to your car and won't be available to re-use until your car has had it's ordered charge. So they could disconnect but it will then be in suspend mode unless the attendant resets it. Same if someone nicks your home charger. Use some sort of VPN to allocate connection.

[tomtomagain]

23 years time ... that's 4.5 general elections away. So you might as well file it in the "It isn't going to happen" folder.

But you'll still almost certainly end up buying a hybrid or full-electric car ... because that's what the manufacturers are going to be making. Nothing to do with government policy, that's just the way they are going.

But with 23 years more development in automation, battery and charging technology who knows what it will be like? Maybe someone will come up with a mega-battery which you only need to charge once a year when you put in for a service. Or maybe there will be over-the-air charging as you drive.

Or maybe hardly anyone will own a car but we'll all be calling them up on-demand.

Isn't the future exciting!

[tomtomagain]

The price of electricity will have to rise anyway, the French/Chinese will want more money for Hinckley Point from the government, so they'll put the tax up on electricity to pay for it.

Don't worry. We'll have cracked Fusion. Electricity will be too cheap to meter.

[Paddy]

Don't worry. We'll have cracked Fusion. Electricity will be too cheap to meter.