Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Large Diesel Engines

Indeed. And as I like to point out, in the UK, where more than half of the electricity generated comes from burning fossil fuels, electric cars are only really moving the pollution from one place to another.

In France, where less than 9% of the electricity comes from burning hydrocarbons, the argument for them carries rather more water.

The issue of whether the grid will be able to cope with a rapid switch to electricity is a real one. As I understand it, there are already issues about the security of electricity supply in the near future, without adding a huge layer of extra demand.

Bit out of date with your data, Giles. At no time in the last year has coal generation exceeded 28% of generation output. We currently run around 50% gas, 20% nuke, 10% renewables, 20% coal, but obviously the actual balance varies according to the available output from renewables. Right at this minute it's <10% coal.

Even if coal power stations are used, the pollution emitted is way lower than what would be produced by the individual diesel engines, and of course the stations aren't located in areas where there are loads of people to be poisoned.

Whichever way you look at it from a pollution point of view EVs make good sense.

EV is definitely going to be the growth. Maybe home battery packs to store solar energy will expand? Tesla are one company who sells a system now.
I wonder when fuel cell/hydrogen technology will improve to be a contender too?
The more I look into EV the more I am tempted.

Jaguar/land Rover seem to be continuing to invest in diesels so I imagine they will not be happy if life gets too hard for diesels.

I can't help feeling there is a lot of hysteria in the move against diesels. One has to consider more than just the emissions problem of the vehicle. In general terms one must consider that the modern diesels are often smaller (lower manufacturing cost and associated cost of transport, raw materials, processing etc. all of which contribute to pollution)for a given real world performance (low to mid range torque), consume less fuel (less refinery and transport costs and emissions), now longer throw out fine carbon particles (due to filters) and are generally pretty clean with efficient catalytic converters and AddBlue.

I'm also not convinced that all the real costs of electric an hybrid vehicles have been considered.

They haven't Peter.
It's the usual knee jerk reaction...

I doubt any government, anywhere, will take a holistic view of the scenario...

This is where the smart money in the utilities is being invested. New companies are setting up who are aiming at aggregating thousands of domestic customers with battery storage to act as tradeable units on the wholesale electricity market.

People who invest in solar panels with battery storage can look forward to being able to realise significant benefits in future.

On a slightly larger scale, we are seeing increasing numbers of Industrial and Commercial customers abandoning diesel generation backup in favour of battery storage to provide backup supply in case of outage on the grid.

The main problems seem to be in urban areas where a high vehicle density is found. Congestion charges don't seem to reduce this, just generate cash. I can visualise development of electric public transport, city centre delivery of goods by approved vehicles only to reduce diesel vans/lorries. These have increased with the increase in internet shopping and proliferation of courier companies. Maybe hubs would be set up for local non polluting vehicles to finish off delivery from ( deliver bulk to outskirts and EV city centre delivery type scenario?). The continued taxation route doesn't seem to help so far, but is a cash cow. Either develop diesel exhaust cleaning systems or make radical changes to the transport structure.

As said before, bring back trolleybuses / trams &c.
Oh, and electric milk floats

My 2p worth....based on recent change from diesel to petrol.

less than 6000 miles a year, mostly short distance = petrol, petrol hybrid or electric.

6000 to 18,000 a year, good proportion of long runs = hard to call. New Euro 6 Diesel, but electric a possibility and Petrol not to be ruled out.

18,000 miles a year, a lot of long runs = Euro 6Diesel, but a largish car with room for all the Add Blue kit.

We do about 7000 miles a year and wanted a 4 seater coupe with performance. So we bought the AMG43. Petrol...

Largely I suspect because it wouldn't actually prove very helpful. It's the cities that are suffering, air quality even in relatively small cities like Bristol has deteriorated to the point where it is causing serious health issues for many people.

Getting pollution out of cities is far more important than worrying about an overall distribution. The good news is that out in the country, we'll probably still be able to drive our grubby old Landys for a while yet, even if we have to leave them out of town when we go to the city