Legacy automakers debt

[mjj_zx6rr]

The challenge with the whole choice of technology/fuel replacement for fossil is us, the end consumer. We don’t like change (evolution wise, a very sensible strategy) and so we compare anything new to what we know today - focussing on the negatives.

We understand the positives, but generally, our brains focus on the negatives and all we see is how our lives will be slightly inconvenienced.

Whichever technology might be a future option, it needs many hundreds of millions of investment from each automaker to make it work. Will us end consumers then actually buy that end product to allow them to recoup investment?

What if the government decides to legislate, or tax against whatever solution is offered? Dead end, lost investment.

What if the solution needs a very expensive investment in fuelling infrastructure? Who should make that investment and take the risk? If government (as many of us like to think), are we all prepared for tax rises to fund?

Pure Electric vehicles are the best solution by far (my opinion of course, but widely shared) for three very good reasons:

1. they are the most efficient use of energy in road transport, by many multiples. Around 90% of the energy in the battery ends up making the vehicle move. When we slow down, we get most of that energy back via regeneration. For a fossil fuelled car, that figure is more like 35% and ignores all the energy needed to extract, refine and transport liquid fuel.
2. genuinely zero tailpipe emissions. Game changingly wonderful improvement for air quality and pollution. A hydrogen or synthetic fuel ICE engine still pollutes, just less than fossil ICE.
3. the electric distribution infrastructure already exists. It is here today in every home, office, and building in the land. There are many places where it is not as powerful as ideally needed, but it is way, way closer to perfect than a barely existent hydrogen infrastructure.

The basic limitation our planet has is energy. If we keep inventing ways to use that energy inefficiently in the name of marketing/desire/change-resistance, then we are all looking at a simple continuation of today’s climate problems.

Our grandchildren are going to look back with horror on how stubborn we have all been when it comes to solving our climate problems.

Admission time, I am very hypocritical too. I have the same resistance to change as every other human. I use the expense of EVs as my ‘excuse’ for not having one, telling myself that by continuing to eke the most life out of my 15-20 year old cars, I am helping.

In reality, I am just making it harder for any solution to succeed by keeping my money in my pocket.

As at the start of this thread, who would be an automaker??!!

Martin.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[franglais]

lancpudn:
" Some pundits are already suggesting that the EV bandwagon is the Betamax of this change." LOL Really!!! renewablesnow.com/news/europes- … 30-792319/

BYD the Chinese company are looking to set up a plant in the EU too.

What exactly is happening next with BritishVolt?
Aus owned now. Still planning on Aus money, US tech, and Aus raw materials?
Who are the prospective customers for batteries produced by them?
Any specific plans from them?

[owenmoney]

trans.info/en/european-hgvmanuf … ion-321002

This from Volvo concerned that they are being distracted by having to spend time and resources on Euro 7, which could be better spent elsewhere.

trans.info/en/eactros-longhaul-testing-331420
trans.info/en/66-ton-electric-truck-331157

and elsewhere in Europe others are moving into trying Hydrogen trucks.
trans.info/en/europa-hydrogen-hgv-325338 - although with Hydrogen at 15 euros a kilo and a lack of infrastructure it’s going to be a tough sell. In 2021, banks of Hydrogen bottles were being installed at Lng stations to aide this progression. Somewhere i have photos of the station in Clermont Ferrand .
trans.info/en/100-hydrogen-fill … ons-324896
trans.info/en/db-schenker-hylan … uck-330135

[lancpudn]

Franglais:

lancpudn:
" Some pundits are already suggesting that the EV bandwagon is the Betamax of this change." LOL Really!!! renewablesnow.com/news/europes- … 30-792319/

BYD the Chinese company are looking to set up a plant in the EU too.

What exactly is happening next with BritishVolt?
Aus owned now. Still planning on Aus money, US tech, and Aus raw materials?
Who are the prospective customers for batteries produced by them?
Any specific plans from them?

Aussie Recharge said they plan to use Aussie minerals, US tech & British manufacturing to make battery traction packs as part of the AUKUS trilateral security pact without using Russian or Chinese minerals. I read Jaguar & Aston Martin would be customers of battery packs manufactured in UK.
According to Shec-Labs ( solar hydrogen energy corporation) hydrogen is going to be expensive, It takes 26 gallons of hydrogen at 150 bar to pack the energy equivalent of 1 gallon of petrol, At today’s price of $15/kg which is equivalent to a gallon of petrol. If it’s manufactured by any other method other than renewable green hydrogen it will be more polluting & more expensive than just using gas in the first place. machinedesign.com/news/arti … lon-of-gas

[carryfast]

MJJ_ZX6RR:
The challenge with the whole choice of technology/fuel replacement for fossil is us, the end consumer. We don’t like change (evolution wise, a very sensible strategy) and so we compare anything new to what we know today - focussing on the negatives.

We understand the positives, but generally, our brains focus on the negatives and all we see is how our lives will be slightly inconvenienced.

Whichever technology might be a future option, it needs many hundreds of millions of investment from each automaker to make it work. Will us end consumers then actually buy that end product to allow them to recoup investment?

What if the government decides to legislate, or tax against whatever solution is offered? Dead end, lost investment.

What if the solution needs a very expensive investment in fuelling infrastructure? Who should make that investment and take the risk? If government (as many of us like to think), are we all prepared for tax rises to fund?

Pure Electric vehicles are the best solution by far (my opinion of course, but widely shared) for three very good reasons:

1. they are the most efficient use of energy in road transport, by many multiples. Around 90% of the energy in the battery ends up making the vehicle move. When we slow down, we get most of that energy back via regeneration. For a fossil fuelled car, that figure is more like 35% and ignores all the energy needed to extract, refine and transport liquid fuel.
2. genuinely zero tailpipe emissions. Game changingly wonderful improvement for air quality and pollution. A hydrogen or synthetic fuel ICE engine still pollutes, just less than fossil ICE.
3. the electric distribution infrastructure already exists. It is here today in every home, office, and building in the land. There are many places where it is not as powerful as ideally needed, but it is way, way closer to perfect than a barely existent hydrogen infrastructure.

The basic limitation our planet has is energy. If we keep inventing ways to use that energy inefficiently in the name of marketing/desire/change-resistance, then we are all looking at a simple continuation of today’s climate problems.

Our grandchildren are going to look back with horror on how stubborn we have all been when it comes to solving our climate problems.

Admission time, I am very hypocritical too. I have the same resistance to change as every other human. I use the expense of EVs as my ‘excuse’ for not having one, telling myself that by continuing to eke the most life out of my 15-20 year old cars, I am helping.

In reality, I am just making it harder for any solution to succeed by keeping my money in my pocket.

As at the start of this thread, who would be an automaker??!!

Martin.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No surprise the EV proponents are relying on the laughable lie that EV’s are ‘90%’ efficient. While conveniently ignoring the fact that it’s 90% efficiency of only 30% efficient generation and transmission from power station to battery.So actually an EV is only 20% efficient at turning fuel into motive effort.
The truth is an internal combustion engine is easily able to manage 40% efficiency for far lower fuel cost including fuel duty and 20% VAT.
Bearing in mind that a change to hydrogen would still be electric dependent either way but obviously without all the economic and environmental carnage of battery production and wasted time spent during charging.

[mjj_zx6rr]

Carryfast:
No surprise the EV proponents are relying on the laughable lie that EV’s are ‘90%’ efficient. While conveniently ignoring the fact that it’s 90% efficiency of only 30% efficient generation and transmission from power station to battery.So actually an EV is only 20% efficient at turning fuel into motive effort.
The truth is an internal combustion engine is easily able to manage 40% efficiency for far lower fuel cost including fuel duty and 20% VAT.
Bearing in mind that a change to hydrogen would still be electric dependent either way but obviously without all the economic and environmental carnage of battery production and wasted time spent during charging.

It is true that coal and nuclear power stations are only c. 30% efficient. Gas power stations are about 50%, and renewables are very close to 100%.

It should also be noted that in the 30% efficient nuclear scenario, the ‘wasted’ energy is just heat - no particulate nor CO2 emissions, merely heat that could in theory be reused.

amp.theguardian.com/news/databl … n-politics

Uk energy mix these days seems to be 12% nuclear, 0% coal, 50% gas and the rest renewables.

amp.theguardian.com/environment … at-britain

Sorry for the Guardian links. Just the simplest to find with a web search on my phone.

So that mix puts us around 65-70% efficiency on overall power generation. Not perfect of course, but a more efficient picture.

I dispute that mainstream ICE has reached 40% efficiency, and even so, that only applies at an engine’s peak operating window (generally max torque with a wide open throttle, which rarely occurs in practice). This line of thought also means that all the energy needed in oil extraction/refinement/transport is ignored.

There are many cost/range/lacking-excitement arguments against electric vehicles, but efficiency is simply not an argument - much science to back this up.

The same applies with environmental impact from battery manufacture. Of course there is some, and much needs to be improved. However, the environmental impact from oil extraction is also completely ignored.

Martin.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[carryfast]

MJJ_ZX6RR:
It is true that coal and nuclear power stations are only c. 30% efficient. Gas power stations are about 50%, and renewables are very close to 100%.

It should also be noted that in the 30% efficient nuclear scenario, the ‘wasted’ energy is just heat - no particulate nor CO2 emissions, merely heat that could in theory be reused.

amp.theguardian.com/news/databl … n-politics

Uk energy mix these days seems to be 12% nuclear, 0% coal, 50% gas and the rest renewables.

amp.theguardian.com/environment … at-britain

Sorry for the Guardian links. Just the simplest to find with a web search on my phone.

So that mix puts us around 65-70% efficiency on overall power generation. Not perfect of course, but a more efficient picture.

I dispute that mainstream ICE has reached 40% efficiency, and even so, that only applies at an engine’s peak operating window (generally max torque with a wide open throttle, which rarely occurs in practice). This line of thought also means that all the energy needed in oil extraction/refinement/transport is ignored.

There are many cost/range/lacking-excitement arguments against electric vehicles, but efficiency is simply not an argument - much science to back this up.

The same applies with environmental impact from battery manufacture. Of course there is some, and much needs to be improved. However, the environmental impact from oil extraction is also completely ignored.

Martin.

Meanwhile in the real world an ICE powered car will manage around 25-30 miles on a gallon of petrol for around £6 ‘including’ fuel duty and 20% VAT.Bearing in mind a gallon of petrol contains around 12kwh call it 4kwh at an efficiency of 30%.
With all of the supposed fuel efficiency advantage of EVs tell us how much would that same distance cost at 50p per kWh + equivalent fuel duty and 20% VAT.
The truth is exaggerated efficiency claims for electric are the only thing that can explain that type of price anomaly.
Transmission losses across the grid let alone combined with battery manufacturing costs obviously way outweigh the equally supposed fuel efficiency disadvantages of internal combustion.
In addition to the energy and transport security implications of a transport sector which gets crippled if the electricity supply goes down accidentally, or deliberately in the case of hostile act.
As for CO2 you mean the inert gas that provides our oxygen supply assuming there’s enough CO2 to sustain photosynthesis and 0.04% of the atmosphere is at the bare minimum for that.
A so called greenhouse gas that froze Mars.
While a nuclear disaster or two will derail this whole half baked all electric utopia and EV fiasco unfortunately in that case all too late.

[mjj_zx6rr]

Carryfast:
Meanwhile in the real world an ICE powered car will manage around 25-30 miles on a gallon of petrol for around £6 ‘including’ fuel duty and 20% VAT.Bearing in mind a gallon of petrol contains around 12kwh call it 4kwh at an efficiency of 30%.
With all of the supposed fuel efficiency advantage of EVs tell us how much would that same distance cost at 50p per kWh + equivalent fuel duty and 20% VAT.
The truth is exaggerated efficiency claims for electric are the only thing that can explain that type of price anomaly.

You are entirely correct about cost, however cost and efficiency are entirely different things. Charging an EV is a comparative cost to fuelling an ICE currently because electricity is more expensive than petrol right now. The Ukraine war being one of the biggest factors to this. The argument was very different 3 years ago when electricity unit price was a third of what it is today.

The simple fact is that for the whole end to end process, generating electricity to power an electric car is multiples more efficient (from an energy perspective) than extracting oil, to refine into petrol/diesel, to power an ICE car.

Perhaps an analogy to describe how the cost flip side would look like :
Let’s say you wanted to live in an off-grid house. You could use a large commercial diesel generator to power your new home, or you could invest in the required amount of solar panels and power storage batteries to cope with the fact that the sun does not always shine.

The solar/batteries will be much more expensive to buy in the first place, perhaps £50,000. They will be free to run from then on (discounting the maintenance needed for both solutions) as the fuel is free from the sun.

The generator will be cheaper to buy, perhaps £5,000. It will require fuel every day, perhaps £15 per day, to run and generate power.

Cost is straightforward, and a decision based purely on cost would be working out the payback period and comparing to how long you expect to live in the house.

Efficiency is something entirely separate. The solar panels are essentially 100% efficient, generating very little waste heat whilst converting sunlight to electricity. The solar panels emit no CO2, particulates nor any other harmful emissions during their use. The storage batteries, inverters, DC to AC converters and all the rest easily run at 90% efficiency.

The diesel generator is at the normal ICE level of efficiency, 30-40% and easily evidenced by how much heat is expelled by both exhaust and cooling pack. The diesel generator emits many tonnes of CO2 per year, many KGs of NOx, particulate matter and other known harmful emissions during its use.

Carryfast:
As for CO2 you mean the inert gas that provides our oxygen supply assuming there’s enough CO2 to sustain photosynthesis and 0.04% of the atmosphere is at the bare minimum for that.
A so called greenhouse gas that froze Mars.

I assume you don’t agree with the significant body of scientific research proving CO2 driven climate change? You never know, in a few hundred years, history may well prove you correct here. I would not bet much on that outcome myself however.

Martin.

[carryfast]

MJJ_ZX6RR:
You are entirely correct about cost, however cost and efficiency are entirely different things. Charging an EV is a comparative cost to fuelling an ICE currently because electricity is more expensive than petrol right now. The Ukraine war being one of the biggest factors to this. The argument was very different 3 years ago when electricity unit price was a third of what it is today.

The simple fact is that for the whole end to end process, generating electricity to power an electric car is multiples more efficient (from an energy perspective) than extracting oil, to refine into petrol/diesel, to power an ICE car.

Perhaps an analogy to describe how the cost flip side would look like :
Let’s say you wanted to live in an off-grid house. You could use a large commercial diesel generator to power your new home, or you could invest in the required amount of solar panels and power storage batteries to cope with the fact that the sun does not always shine.

The solar/batteries will be much more expensive to buy in the first place, perhaps £50,000. They will be free to run from then on (discounting the maintenance needed for both solutions) as the fuel is free from the sun.

The generator will be cheaper to buy, perhaps £5,000. It will require fuel every day, perhaps £15 per day, to run and generate power.

Cost is straightforward, and a decision based purely on cost would be working out the payback period and comparing to how long you expect to live in the house.

Efficiency is something entirely separate. The solar panels are essentially 100% efficient, generating very little waste heat whilst converting sunlight to electricity. The solar panels emit no CO2, particulates nor any other harmful emissions during their use. The storage batteries, inverters, DC to AC converters and all the rest easily run at 90% efficiency.

The diesel generator is at the normal ICE level of efficiency, 30-40% and easily evidenced by how much heat is expelled by both exhaust and cooling pack. The diesel generator emits many tonnes of CO2 per year, many KGs of NOx, particulate matter and other known harmful emissions during its use.

Carryfast:
As for CO2 you mean the inert gas that provides our oxygen supply assuming there’s enough CO2 to sustain photosynthesis and 0.04% of the atmosphere is at the bare minimum for that.
A so called greenhouse gas that froze Mars.

I assume you don’t agree with the significant body of scientific research proving CO2 driven climate change? You never know, in a few hundred years, history may well prove you correct here. I would not bet much on that outcome myself however.

Martin.

Firstly I’m suggesting that the ‘cost’ of electricity at the meter is the result and proof of the fact that your claims of efficiency are at best ‘off’ .Or at worse deliberate lies by the electric utopia proponents.I don’t see any reason for the supposed jump from 30% efficiency regardless of generation fuelling method coal or nuclear or renewables bearing in mind that even biomass ( burning trees ) is classed as a renewable.
It’s obvious that they stand to gain assuming that they can pull off this all electric captive market scam being sold to the public as a utopian solution to a non existent problem.
At best what you’re selling us is an energy policy based on wiping out farmland under solar panels, burning living trees in the form of biomass instead of dead ones in the form of fossil fuel and the risk of nuclear disaster. At 50p per kWh + taxes for the privilege.
All based on a convenient lie that CO2 cooked Venus when Mars proves that it’s no greenhouse gas.
As for the diesel generator ironically this all electric utopian nightmare will obviously wipe out the skills and incentives to manufacture and maintain internal combustion engines and the production and storage and distribution infrastructure of the fossil fuels to fuel them.
So that’s our energy and transport security gone.Together with our food production buried under solar panels.
Who needs enemies when we’ve got this type of sabotage within.

[lancpudn]

lancpudn:
Huge price war going on in China as it is tightening emission rules on the 1st July, VW amongst 40 other brands including Honda & Toyota JV’s are offering $537million in cash subsidies for car purchases before the deadline todaynewspost.com/auto-news/vw- … ule-looms/

It’s now akin to BOGOF in China before the July 1st deadline
“The promos offered by various brands in China are nothing short of outrageous such as offering discounts of up to 40 percent (around P 712,000) of a vehicle’s sticker price to an outright buy-one, take-one offer.” carguide.ph/2023/03/could-s … -lead.html