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Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

reuters.com

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Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#31

Post by physicsguy »

Many, many houses do not have anything other than on-street parking here. Since 2012 I've lived in 5 houses, and three of them had no driveway. I'm currently buying a house which has no drive way, with no way of fitting one. Apparently 1/3 houses have only on street parking. Unless they also provide huge, huge grants to rapidly implement dense onstreet charging, and fast, this is a pipedream and will end up getting pushed back.

Edit: To evaluate the scale of how difficult it is to implement on street parking - go and have a look out of your own window in a built up area and count the number of lamp posts and the corresponding number of cars. Right now (9:35am), in a pretty built up area, I can see three lamp posts on my own street, and eighteen cars parked on the road. One of those lamp posts is located where it's illegal to park because of double yellow lines. I currently live in a rented flat at the moment, and that has another 25 car parking spaces. To get charging points located there would require a number of disparately located and willing landlords to agree to wire up the car park for electric charging too.

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#32

Post by mister_hn »

I hope that with these bans, actually the government will take action on the high prices of electric vehicles and on the charging infrastructure.

A middle-size car can't cost € 40.000 (without batteries!), a lot of people can't afford them.

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#33

Post by adrianN »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #28
adrianN wrote: post #3

This is a necessary step to becoming carbon neutral by 2050. Countries that don't make similar announcements soon are not serious about that goal.

I’m not sure about the economics of it, but I’d rather drive a car powered by synthetic gasoline made from pulling carbon dioxide out of the air. No new CO2 combined with no restrictions on range & quick refueling times sounds like a win. I still don’t know where people will plug in all of these electric cars.

The economics are such that it probably won't work out. EVs are >85% efficient from wind turbine to movement. Making synthetic fuel is at best 40% efficient from electricity->fuel and the ICE only translates that to movement. We probably don't have enough room for turbines and solar panels to produce the necessary power.

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#34

Post by dragonwriter »

rightbyte wrote: post #17
Jaruzel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Brit[1] this convention still irks me. Maybe we should just be American about it, and call the whole of the UK 'England', and pretend Scotland is it's own country? /s --- [1] Yes, I get the irony of calling myself a 'Brit', but 'Uker' just doesn't sound right.

Are not Scotland, Wales and England each countries though?

> Are not Scotland, Wales and England each countries though?

Sure, but in a sense where UK “countries” are a thing somewhat like US “states” (but somewhat less, in that neither is independent, but US states are notionally sovereign nevertheless.)

The UK is the entity which is a sovereign and independent entity.

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#35

Post by sbierwagen »

Hamuko wrote: post #19
robin_reala wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renault Master Z.E. is either 3.1t or 3.5t and comes in a bunch of configurations: https://www.renault.co.uk/electric-vehicles/master-ze/specif...

> The real life estimates of 75 miles in Summer and 50 miles in Winter also give an insight of how powerful these batteries are, reducing your need to be constantly charging your vehicle and allowing you to enjoy the ride! Isn't that pretty shit?

Lousy compared to a van with a full tank of petrol. On the other hand, https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-per-day-does-a-FedEx-or...

>Originally Answered: how many miles per day does a FedEx or UPS driver drive on average? That answer varies from hub to hub, route to route. In my hub, there are several routes that average maybe 5 miles a day total, whereas the route I run averages 75-80 miles a day.

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#36

Post by adrianN »

raxxorrax wrote: post #22
adrianN wrote: post #3

This is a necessary step to becoming carbon neutral by 2050. Countries that don't make similar announcements soon are not serious about that goal.

A lot of people might buy cheap used cars in 2029 that might be on the road till 2040-2050. If he is serious about it, which is rare when officials promise something 10 years into the future, he would suggest a plan to provide the needed infrastructure.

The median age of cars on the road is 10 years or so. While it's true that there is a long tail of very old cars, it's unlikely that many of them will be around by 2050, especially if fuel infrastructure becomes sparser due to lack of demand.

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#37

Post by [deleted] »

Jaruzel wrote: post #10
valleyer wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty common to use "Britain" (usually not "Great Britain", though) as shorthand for "the UK state". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britain_(place_name)#Modern_us... > The term Britain is widely used as a common name for the sovereign state of the United Kingdom, or UK for short.

As a Brit[1] this convention still irks me. Maybe we should just be American about it, and call the whole of the UK 'England', and pretend Scotland is it's own country? /s --- [1] Yes, I get the irony of calling myself a 'Brit', but 'Uker' just doesn't sound right.

[deleted]

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#38

Post by anovikov »

LatteLazy wrote: post #30

This perfectly epitomises the uk (and the rest of the worlds) attitude to global warming: * it's a non binding commitment to do something but not for at least a decade * it's not enough even if it does happen * it will be too late by then (it probably already is for anything but drastic action) * it's totally at the whim of future governments who will be no more willing to spend the money/time/popularity than the cur…

But on the other hand, this IS indeed a super drastic action and we can't expect any nation on Earth apart from possibly, a few city-states like Singapore, to do as much in the same time frame. Petrol cars will be mainstay of transportation for about 40-50 years and will dominate new car sales for at least 20-30 years depending on the country. Anything but classic petrol and diesel cars will still hold tiny market shares 10 years down the road almost everywhere.

I mean, the climate change situation is hopeless. Some measures may be taken in the name of it, and they are important, but they are mainly a side action: for example, they do a lot to suppress oil-funded dictatorships like Russia or Saudi Arabia - people won't support the measures if they were directed at that openly, but if it's about climate, they are a lot easier to sell. But, we have to just admit that the global warming will proceed and probably faster than even the worst estimates predict, and just plan accordingly out of this assumption. It is too profitable to mine and use fossil fuels, any large nation trying to stop doing so will be competed out of existence by those who don't (and they will have way lower energy efficiency so will displace your uncompetitive products with theirs, in the end INCREASING overall emissions), and largest polluters are nuclear powers so you can't even force them to stop by military action.

Just see where the climate will stand when 3x of the current extractable reserves of fossil fuels are burned (because technology will develop and a lot of new reserves will become available which are now not). And plan for that level of global temperatures, precipitation and sea levels. It will happen, and the nations that win are those who plan in advance.

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#39

Post by raverbashing »

scarygliders wrote: post #21
rightbyte wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are not Scotland, Wales and England each countries though?

They are not sovereign countries. Both Scotland and England gave up their sovereign status when the Acts of Union were enacted, to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Basically, Scotland, Wales, England, and Northern Ireland, are nations which comprise the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which is the sovereign state.

"Gave up", that's a charitable way of putting it ;)

But to the topic, yes there's no apparently shorter way of referring to the UK as anything else but "Britain"

Other Kingdoms get away because they only have a "single name" (Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, etc)

Unless we come up with a name like the flag and call it Swaland or something like that

Re: Britain to ban new petrol cars and vans by 2030 on road to net zero emissions

#40

Post by lovemenot »

raxxorrax wrote: post #22
adrianN wrote: post #3

This is a necessary step to becoming carbon neutral by 2050. Countries that don't make similar announcements soon are not serious about that goal.

A lot of people might buy cheap used cars in 2029 that might be on the road till 2040-2050. If he is serious about it, which is rare when officials promise something 10 years into the future, he would suggest a plan to provide the needed infrastructure.

If so, their second-hand price will increase accordingly. Until this aporoach becomes uneconomic for the majority.

In the meantime, any new carbon tax would also work against this approach.

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