Petrol and diesel car sales ban brought forward to 2035 | Hacker News Reader

Petrol and diesel car sales ban brought forward to 2035

bbc.com

34 pointssohkamyung60 comments

I've no idea how they'd even begin to create the infrastructure to support a large amount of electric cars. In a typical street of terraced houses in the UK, there are no driveways - In fact, 32% of the population rely on on-street parking. You park on the road. How are you supposed to charge your vehicle? Is the plan to line streets with unsightly charging points?

There are already some of these dotted around. On a quiet side round near my house, for example. Presumably the residents have requested them in this case, but they're not too ugly.

On-street charging is already available though a fair number of ubitricity charging points, who install 5kW sockets in lamp posts and bollards. They're basically invisible – there are a bunch of them in my area in London that I didn't even know about until I was specifically researching.

This depends on the borough.

My London borough (Haringey) does not do this and only use the Source network for which my home is equidistant to several... being more than 1km from all of them. No letters or pleas, or offers from myself to fund installation of lamp post charges in line with govt grants have been successful.

I'm going to be purchasing another fossil fuel vehicle as it's clear that electric won't work for me unless I can get the distance to a charger below 100m.

Oh... and charging from the property by running a cable over or across a path is apparently against the law: "Highways Act 1980, it is illegal for any person to place or run a cable or wire along or across any part of a public highway. So running a charging cable across a footway is not permitted" (excerpt from council reply to my enquiries).

Every street light is a potential charging point.

The challenge with the electric charging infrastructure is not the number of endpoints, but rather the amount of energy being transported.

The underground cables for streetlights have been dimensioned for the power draw of light bulbs (~100W each), not for a charging car (10kW or more).

Even if you change those cables: The distribution box for those streetlights is only dimensionded for say 100 lights (~10kW), not 100 charging cars (~1MW).

Even if you change the distribution box, the cable to that distribution box... well you get the point by now.

You don't need all that many Watts. Cars are parked about 23h a day. Electric cars need something like 20kWh/100km. Most people don't drive 100km a day, so on average you need a lot less than 1kW per car if every parking spot is also a charging point.

The problem with this line of thinking is that you are designing for the average case, while current fuel infra is designed for (almost) any case. A third of people will be a sigma or more off from you estimate of 100km max, which may mean that for one in 6 this solution will not be sufficient. It would be a pity if you're talking half measures only designed to fit a narrow use case. It is both strictly worse, and I suspect will affect people who have little other options disproportionately. (People who need long range may live further, because they are poorer, emergency vehicles who need the range, travellers/irregular travel).

The current fuel infrastructure is definitely not designed for any case. Gas stations run out of gas almost immediately in case of a rush to fill tanks (e.g. because of some crisis).

Similarly loading infra won't be able to to handle everybody suddenly needing their cars fully charged from empty. For the rare cases where people actually need more range than can be filled over a day with low power charging, there can always be a separate network of fast chargers. There is absolutely no need to design every parking spot for fast charging.

I've never experienced a fuel station out of fuel here in (mainland) Europe.

They run out fairly quickly if there is a strike of workers in any part of the supply chain.

Still, the infastructure (if old) has been dimensioned for max 250 W per lamp post, if recent (LED lamps) for 80-100 W at the most.

So, the increase in power need (according to your 1 kW) is between 4 and 10 times.

Also if a lamp post is every 30 meters and each car takes 5 meters, each post needs to serve 6 cars.

And we are already between 24 and 40 times.

Besides, how long is the cable of an electric car (the one on-board)?

You will need to have a 20 m cable on board if you happen to park in a spot mid-way betwen two 30 m spaced lamp posts.

Not to long ago we switched from gas lights to electric lights. That seems like a more difficult change than beefing up the electric infrastructure. I'm sure we'll manage.

Sure it can be done (technically), as often happens the issue is about the related costs, that are not at all trivial.

Who will finance the new installations?

Where will the newly added (or enlarged) electric cabins be put (in already densely populated/built EU cities)?

I think shared care services should be heavily promoted and subsidized in cities, especially for small cars, with their own smaller parking spots. These cars should be in every street. If cars are not autonomous by then, there should be drivers going around the city to move and distribute these cars. You should be able to take them from spot A and leave them at spot B, just like the bikes in Paris. Charging points should be moved into the ground, and cars should be able to park and connect themselves. That is not a big issue, although it will require adjustments to parking spaces. You could also create chained parking, bumper to bumper, where the cars interconnect and move if you need to get one out.

If the streets are lined with cars already, then objecting to the addition of charging points seems the height of absurdity.

If I had just one wish about this legislation it would be that a standards body was created to limit the number of form factors that can be used for batteries. Being able to buy a car and know that you'll be able to change the battery in 10 years time with a compatible unit (possibly even with better capacity) would take much of the anxiety out of the electric car transition.

Excellent news. I wish the EU would follow suit. Does anyone know how it is in the UK wrt heating with fossil fuels? Is there a ban on the horizon there too?

> Does anyone know how it is in the UK wrt heating with fossil fuels? Is there a ban on the horizon there too?

There was a planned ban on gas heating for new build houses from 2025[1] announced last year.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47559920

For heating it makes the most sense to use gas and put subsidies into insulation.

In The Netherlands we are - for some boneheaded reason - killing gas and replacing it with burning wood. With the subsidy spent on that we could insulate every building in the country to a high level and have a massive war chest left over to further build out EV infrastructure.

Modern wood burners are quite efficient at full combustion and wood is a renewable, carbon neutral fuel if sourced from sustainable forestry. Pellet burners are particularly excellent.

It's counter-intuitive but compared to burning non-renewable, a valid option for reducing co2 emissions.

Meanwhile in the UK... about 10 years ago I bought a wood burning stove that was built to meet UK clean air regulations. I have a friend with a wood, so I thought I would do my bit for CO2 emissions Unfortunately, currently particulate pollution is enemy number 1, so wood burning stoves get you tutted at.

"More or Less" on BBC Radio 4 did an investigation of the supposed particulate pollution from wood burners. Basically, although data is thin (and misused by HM Gov), if you have a modern stove and properly dried wood you won't be a particulate polluter.

Thermodynamically speaking heat pumps or using waste heat from other processes makes more sense than burning gas just to heat a home.

The whole thing is so meaningless they could move it forward to 2025 and the market would be largely unaffected. It's touted as "petrol and diesel cars" ban, but it's nothing of the sorts - after all, hybrids are exempt from the ban, so all you're going to see is every manufacturer making a "mild hybrid" version of their cars, usually by adding a tiny 1kW battery to help with start-up and....that's it. That's already happening with most brands and models as it is.

Now I don't mean to say that the "hybridisation" is bad per-se - but such a "lazy" effort is not exactly super useful either. For example - Volvo is replacing all of their engine options with at the very least mild-hybrid engines, no doubt in anticipation of this regulation. But for example, looking at the figures for the XC60, there is pretty much no difference between petrol/diesel T5/D5 models and the hybridised B5 models, not to mention that its battery doesn't last for more than a mile and the electric motor can't drive the car faster than 20-30mph anyway - so as soon as you start you know, actually driving anywhere....the car is no different than a regular ICE car anyway, except you're lugging the weight of the battery with you. In my opinion it's an option that only exists to fulfil the regulatory requirement and nothing else, it won't actually be any more eco-friendly in real life usage.

TLDR - the regulation is mostly toothless, since it's very easy to circumvent with a very weak mild-hybrid drivetrain, which most manufacturers are at least in the process of doing.

Edit: - apparently I'm wrong, the new deadline includes full ban of both hybrid and plug-in hybrid vehicles.

The ban also includes hybrids

Right, I just had to look it up - the old ban didn't include hybrids and plug-in hybrids, the new one does:

"In 2018 the government announced plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans from 2040 onwards as part of the Road to Zero Strategy, but it said that ultra-low-emissions vehicles – including hybrids and plug-in hybrids – emitting less than 75g/km of CO2 would still be allowed.

However, the new plan will ban the sale of any vehicle that is not zero emissions. Based on current technology, that would allow only electric or hydrogen vehicles to be sold. "[0]

[0] https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/updated-non-zero...

The article states that the ban also includes hybrid vehicles. Check the emboldened sentence under the first image

If I drive my UK small-city commute by car, it's mostly stop-start traffic through 20/30 mph roads. It won't help on the motorway but the carbon efficient replacement for that is a train, not an EV.

Amazingly you can watch live(ish) what goes into the grid. I'm sure this has been shared here before:

http://grid.iamkate.com/

Nice.

Anyone knows why biomass is categorized as "other" and not under "renewable energy"?

GridWatch is another great site that presents the same data, plus also data for France: http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php

Hopefully this commitment won't go the way of other long term targets, like the 2020 budget surplus plan...

There's no mention of one of the worst culprits, buses with diesel engines. Plus, outside of rush-hour they're driving around virtually empty.

> outside of rush-hour they're driving around virtually empty.

Even during rush hour, most cars drive around virtually empty.

I know this is London only but they are changing over. I think generally the busses have a ten year life and more will be changing as time goes on.

"London’s electric bus fleet becomes the largest in Europe" https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2019/septem...

Investment in the UK car industry has plumetted since the referendum was called.[1] When the current government came into power I imagined they would do whatever they could to rescue that situation. Now I'm wondering if they have come to the conclusion that it can't be saved. I couldn't imagine them making decisions like this otherwise.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49170387

I could see Nissan staying in the UK, just to produce the Leaf for the home market, I'm expecting the other car companies to close though.

I'll be surprised if they are still here in ten years. Nissan is interesting as since Ghosn has gone their interest in EV's seems to be waning.

That's a highly cynical view. On the one hand, Nissan are reportedly considering ramping up production in the UK [1]; on the other, the UK government no doubt realises that there is considerable economical potential in green energy.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/feb/03/nissan-eu-u...

Makes sense that a few of the companies would do that — from what I’ve been hearing, the problem with cars in particular is post-customs-union cross-border manufacturing playing badly with rules of origin and just-in-time manufacturing, so I am expecting spring like 75% shutting down U.K. factories and 25% expanding U.K. factories at the same time and for the same reasons.

> That's a highly cynical view.

The current UK government is full of people who have repeatedly demonstrated that they don’t know how the UK government functions. The cynicism is deserved.

>That's a highly cynical view.

The figures don't lie, investment has plumetted. If they were serious about keeping the UK car industry then we would be heading towards close integration with the EU. That is the opposite of where we are going.

> When the current government came into power I imagined they would do whatever they could to rescue that situation.

What on earth led you to believe that? Nothing that any British government of recent vintage has actually done supports it. They seem to be utterly uninterested in UK based manufacturing and what little is left is mostly owned by foreign entities. The same goes for service industries such as rail where ideology prevents long term state ownership but only if the state in question is the UK. See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DB_Cargo_UK which describes a British rail freight company wholly owned by Deutsche Bahn which is wholly owned by the German Federal government. I don't mean that DB is necessarily bad for either the company in question or the UK but it seems odd that so much of that sort of thing seems to happen in the UK but seems less popular in other countries.

What on earth led you to believe that?

It does look like wishful thinking now :)

This is not necessarily good. There is not enough lithium on earth to replace all UK cars with electric ones. Worse still, the lithium that does exist would require violence to extract profitably, as we've recently seen with the US-backed fascist coup in Bolivia.

We need to seriously consider biofuels instead. Biodiesel in modern engines in particular is very efficient.

https://medium.com/@Grossmanite/the-green-new-deal-is-specie...

Sodium-ion batteries aren't as good as lithium-ion, but not all vehicles need top performance. There's more than enough sodium.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium-ion_battery

There is probably no need to replace all UK cars either.

My thoughts exactly. We will still need cars of course, but don't necessarily need to replace them one-to-one. I hope alternative transport will fulfill most needs in a way that will reduce car ownership in the first place.

This is my hope, too. Already I can cycle almost anywhere in my city but it's harder for those who are less confident on the roads (or those who can't bounce when an accident does occur or can't face down some dangerous driver).

There are now ambitious plans for cycling, and micro-mobility, infrastructure in UK cities but they need our central government(s) to stop being so car-centric (still!) and make the proper investments.

I would like conversions to become more common and thus significantly reduce the price. As city-centre diesel bans come in, and the road tax increases, then converting an existing vehicle would be great. It would make a nice little industry spread out through the UK.

An example would be my VW T5 '08 campervan conversion. As it's converted to a camper it has more than twice the resale value of the van alone. Unfortunately the DIY conversion kit is currently in excess of UKP 10k. Add other costs and it's not, yet, worth tackling.

The main issue with changing energy source is a change in engine. Biodiesel requires little change, so it should be an excellent stop-gap as the industry hopefully hammers down on efficient, ethical and environmental energy storage.

That could easily be hydrogen, or even biofuel itself – the ultimate goal is to reduce the carbon cost of storing the energy. While lithium-ion has zero continuous cost, its initial cost is rather high, and if the battery is less efficient or prone to breakage more often its continuous cost (of repair and replacement) may well be worse.

Hydrogen cars still use electric motors and have batteries. They just use the hydrogen to generate electricity to charge the batteries, which then drive the motors:

https://afdc.energy.gov/files/vehicles/hydrogen-high-res.jpg

Hydrogen can also be used in internal combustion engines with most of the benefits of reduced emissions (NOx not withstanding) with minimal modification. If there was a source, distribution and storage infrastructure for hydrogen we could start using it tomorrow.

Personally I don't see much hope in that direction. Hydrogen combines high pressures with corrosive nature (see hydrogen embrittlement) and high flammability. Unless someone comes up with a really good storage matrix for it.

They are not banning used cars only new cars. And there is no shortage of lithium.

I wonder how long until enough petrol stations have closed that fueling petrol or diesel cars becomes difficult? If hydrogen cars become commonplace, then the conventional petrol station will likely survive, but if new sales are all battery electric vehicles, many petrol stations will probably go out of business.

Worldwide mineral reserves of Lithium: 16 million tons

Worldwide lithium dissolved in seawater: 230 billion tons

80g lithium/kWh battery * 100kWh batteries/car * 32 million cars in the UK = 260 kT

80g lithium/kWh battery * 100kWh batteries/car * 1 billion cars in the world = 8 million tons

So? There's about $544 billion dollars worth of gold dissolved in seawater, but it's completely impractical to extract it.

Known land reserves alone are twice what we need for every car on the planet.

The ocean reserves are for illustration because the person I was replying to claimed there wasn’t enough on the entire planet for the U.K. alone.

What is the process like for getting lithium out of sea water? Is is a clean process or do we need to poison the oceans further to do this?

Perhaps it could be extracted from the concentrated waste water created by desalination plants?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com