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In 2011 when the Nissan LEAF appeared there was one rapid charger at the Ecotricity HQ, that was it and over 10,000 petrol stations. Now Charging stations exceed the number of petrol stations. Charging stations are opening at 250 / month and Petrol stations are closing. We are about to go below 8000 open
By 2030 many petrol stations will have closed and prices gone up, a lot. By 2040 there will be no petrol stations as we know them because all cars & vans will have switched. Only commercial sites will remain for farms, HGVs & coaches, as by then all buses will have switched.
For you to get petrol you will have to go to a classic car place with an above ground tank, like a heating oil tank or as seen in lorry depots. Fuel deliveries will be limited to farms, commercial depots etc.
At this point you getting Petrol will be difficult & costly. You maybe required to transport your petrol car / bike on a flatbed.
I’m very much an EV ‘believer’, but this is rather fanciful. There will be plenty of places that continue to seek petrol and diesel, for the foreseeable future. Albeit they won’t sell much - it will be a sideshow for them.
The reality is that we’ll all be driving EVs as everyday transport and those who wish to spend their money owning and driving IC engined vehicles will continue to do so. The number of people who do wish to do so will be small as they will invariably be enthusiasts who are a niche group. It’s quite simple really!
It’s much the same principle that you can - if you wish- drive a traction engine on a main road and watch it belching out coal smoke as it trundled along. They and their fuel source have not been in regular use on the roads of this country for the best part of 90 years, but you can still use them. However there will be many more ‘classic’ car owners than owners of traction engines.
Just a thought but are brakes and tyres not becoming the largest source of particulate pollution from cars? Each tyre for example losing about 1kg in weight between new and scrap conditions. So from a pollution point of view the change to electric becomes somewhat irrelevant.
They were rubbish in some applications, and admittedly should have been labelled more clearly with what they should have been used for, but for general indoor illumination they were fine.
The intended market for the original Thorn 2D was commercial and industrial, where energy efficiency and long life were far more important than appearance. To quote Max Boyce 'I Was There'. http://www.lamptech.co.uk/Spec Sheets/D FLC Thorn 2D16.htm After that, CFL all got a bit out of hand.
Obscure fact: The early prototypes of what became the 2D lamp were W shaped. Then two things happened. The designers of the glass bending machines complained bitterly about being asked to create reverse curves. Somebody spotted that bringing the two ends together made for a much better electrical and mechanical design.
@Bald Rick - buried fuel tanks require an annual inspection and every 5 years emptying for a full ultrasonic inspection. Petrol has a shelf life of 6 months. The inspection regime is onerous under COMAH and the life of a 'UST' is limited by this. These regulation will get greater.
Regulation of underground storage tanks in England and Wales
A smaller above ground tank in a bunded area has much less onerous inspection requirements and will be the likely storage medium of fuel as usage declines and the high cost of buried tanks becomes uneconomical. This is why small bus depots and commercial yards use these as well as all farms
@Bald Rick - buried fuel tanks require an annual inspection and every 5 years emptying for a full ultrasonic inspection. Petrol has a shelf life of 6 months. The inspection regime is onerous under COMAH and the life of a 'UST' is limited by this. These regulation will get greater.
A smaller above ground tank in a bunded area has much less onerous inspection requirements and will be the likely storage medium of fuel as usage declines and the high cost of buried tanks becomes uneconomical. This is why small bus depots and commercial yards use these as well as all farms
I don’t doubt that. But there will still be a reasonable market for petrol / diesel sufficient that anybody who wants some some will be able to get some relatively easily.
I don’t doubt that. But there will still be a reasonable market for petrol / diesel sufficient that anybody who wants some some will be able to get some relatively easily.
And odds are it'll be biofuel or synthetic and thus 'carbon neutral'. It's certainly what Porsche are planning, and would be a welcome step to stop some from trying to guilt trip petrolheads about carbon emissions!
I still have some CFLs running today, and they're doing a perfectly good job. What about them was "only fit for the bin"?
They were rubbish in some applications, and admittedly should have been labelled more clearly with what they should have been used for, but for general indoor illumination they were fine.
I never liked them given the slow warm up time and bulbs often failing far too prematurely (and not cheap brand bulbs either). Some could be dimmed, badly, but they saved money and I invested in them as much as possible because of that. Today I have one light that uses them; an outdoor security light that combines a CFL always-on light and a halogen floodlight (now changed for an LED). I really should change the light and get rid, but it's still hanging on.
I was incredibly happy to switch to LEDs once they became affordable (admittedly, first generation ones had many issues with drivers, so they died too) and now even cheap LED bulbs will last.
Add in dimmable smart bulbs you can dim or turn off automatically, or trigger with motion sensors or when you come home (geolocation on your phone) and so on, and there's no love lost on something that can only be considered good because they were more cost effective than incandescent bulbs.
Just a thought but are brakes and tyres not becoming the largest source of particulate pollution from cars? Each tyre for example losing about 1kg in weight between new and scrap conditions. So from a pollution point of view the change to electric becomes somewhat irrelevant.
To my mind the fact that this is an agenda being pushed by government almost guarantees that it will turn out to be wrong. In the same way that people were forced to buy those useless compact florescent bulbs, that were only fit for the bin, and the big push to use diesel to reduce CO2 followed immediately by why are you stupid people buying diesel cars when the problem is particulates.
Which isn't general indoor illumination as @py_megapixel was talking about. I have never bought any CFL, buit the several packs that were posted through the letterbox by whicheve electricity supplier I had at the time have been used in the loft, in hall, stairs and landing fittings, in a dining room (now replaced with LEDs). The kitchen had 12 CFL GU10 lamps, they have all been replaced with LEDs, but the CFLs were fine for over 10 years when LEDs were a) expensive, b) unreliable and c) not very bright. Higher power types wereavailable but as I said, I was using the free ones that were part of the supply company's greenwashing exercise.
Other rants about government measures, I bought a diesel car in 2010. It worked for me and certainly made a lot less CO2 than an equivalent Petrol engined car. I didn't know about the NOX but as I didn't use it much in towns I felt that the CO2 was a far bigger threat to the future environment. It doesn't matter where the CO2 is produced, it has a global impact. That car has been scrapped now anyway. Unless you know better than everybody else about EVs, and their pollution, of private vehicle optionns (until 2030) the represent the best option for the environment.
I don’t doubt that. But there will still be a reasonable market for petrol / diesel sufficient that anybody who wants some some will be able to get some relatively easily.
Let's say we get to the point where there's 1 million ICE's (so still quite a lot of them, and broadly double the number of classic/historic cars which are on the roads currently, and also about double the number of pure EV's registered by the end of 2020). My local garages with a local population of 9,000 probably wouldn't bother still selling petrol/diesel as they would likely only be about 220 ICE cars (compared with about 6,500 cars today). Given that they are likely to be doing limited milage, let's say 5,000 miles each that's a market of 22,000 gallons a year.
With some nearby villages that's probably enough for four tanker loads a year.
That's just not worth investing in, and over time there will be a need for investment. As such, over time, they'll just stop offering it.
Within towns, where you're likely to find that supply will be offered for longer, as there's likely to be enough of a market for the investment to be worth doing.
However it's likely to come at a cost, not least the inconvenience of traveling to get it rather than being able to fill up whilst going somewhere.
I'm also not sure that the garages would do enough other trade to remain open. We've got a smallish supermarket, a reasonable sized one due to open next year, an Aldi/Lidl being proposed and 2 other convince stores (which are fairly close to the garages) as such it's unlikely that they would both do enough trade to remain open.
Whilst one does have a reasonable sure area, so could become a Tesco Express type shop, it's likely to be at the expense of one of the other convince stores.
Charging points could aid them in attracting business, however given that there's significant numbers of the local housing stock have driveway parking (actually there's quite significant numbers of homes localily with garages) this is likely to be of limited use, as it's likely to mostly be those passing through. However with a major trunk road bypassing the village few are going to looking for the former petrol station site for a mid journey charge (not with services on the trunk road not that far away in either direction, within a 20 minute drive).
In the slightly wider rural area there's a population of about 25,000 and 6 garages, I suspect that at least one will close in the next few years as EV numbers pick up. Especially given that fuel use is likely to remain down from the 2019 usage. New homes, increasing the population, will help them stay open than would have otherwise been the case. However the recent fairly rapid rise in fuel costs isn't going to help the volume of sales.
Likewise nor is the difficulty in getting replacement cars and the associated inflation in second hand car prices.
Let's say we get to the point where there's 1 million ICE's (so still quite a lot of them, and broadly double the number of classic/historic cars which are on the roads currently, and also about double the number of pure EV's registered by the end of 2020). My local garages with a local population of 9,000 probably wouldn't bother still selling petrol/diesel as they would likely only be about 220 ICE cars (compared with about 6,500 cars today). Given that they are likely to be doing limited milage, let's say 5,000 miles each that's a market of 22,000 gallons a year.
With some nearby villages that's probably enough for four tanker loads a year.
That's just not worth investing in, and over time there will be a need for investment. As such, over time, they'll just stop offering it.
Within towns, where you're likely to find that supply will be offered for longer, as there's likely to be enough of a market for the investment to be worth doing.
However it's likely to come at a cost, not least the inconvenience of traveling to get it rather than being able to fill up whilst going somewhere.
I'm also not sure that the garages would do enough other trade to remain open. We've got a smallish supermarket, a reasonable sized one due to open next year, an Aldi/Lidl being proposed and 2 other convince stores (which are fairly close to the garages) as such it's unlikely that they would both do enough trade to remain open.
Whilst one does have a reasonable sure area, so could become a Tesco Express type shop, it's likely to be at the expense of one of the other convince stores.
Charging points could aid them in attracting business, however given that there's significant numbers of the local housing stock have driveway parking (actually there's quite significant numbers of homes localily with garages) this is likely to be of limited use, as it's likely to mostly be those passing through. However with a major trunk road bypassing the village few are going to looking for the former petrol station site for a mid journey charge (not with services on the trunk road not that far away in either direction, within a 20 minute drive).
In the slightly wider rural area there's a population of about 25,000 and 6 garages, I suspect that at least one will close in the next few years as EV numbers pick up. Especially given that fuel use is likely to remain down from the 2019 usage. New homes, increasing the population, will help them stay open than would have otherwise been the case. However the recent fairly rapid rise in fuel costs isn't going to help the volume of sales.
Likewise nor is the difficulty in getting replacement cars and the associated inflation in second hand car prices.
If it really came to it people will get fuel delivered to their homes. You can actually do this now, even leaded fuel is available believe it or not. Should you need to refuel on a relatively regular basis or don’t want to store fuel in containers/drums you could even install your own tank/dispenser. It’s all added cost but it’s not prohibitive.
On a general note, I’m slightly amused that in this thread we’ve gone from people finding (largely spurious) reasons why EVs aren’t viable, to people finding (largely spurious) reasons why ICVs soon won’t be viable!
CFLs were only too dim if you were conned by the "equivalent to" incandescent wattages shown on packets instead of looking at lumens. This is still a problem with LEDs. But CFLs also took too long to light as they got old, were too big for some places and flickered before death, so good riddens.
On a general note, I’m slightly amused that in this thread we’ve gone from people finding (largely spurious) reasons why EVs aren’t viable, to people finding (largely spurious) reasons why ICVs soon won’t be viable!
And I am slightly depressed that no-one is discussing train/bus+bike/escooters instead of the oversold EVs and ICVs. Does no-one see a way for trains to harness this opportunity?
On a general note, I’m slightly amused that in this thread we’ve gone from people finding (largely spurious) reasons why EVs aren’t viable, to people finding (largely spurious) reasons why ICVs soon won’t be viable!
In particular the suggestion that there will be virtually no ICE cars left on the road by 2040 (only 10 years after banning their production) is just ridiculous, if maintained and not driven high miles, a modern car is good for at least 15 years.
And I am slightly depressed that no-one is discussing train/bus+bike/escooters instead of the oversold EVs and ICVs. Does no-one see a way for trains to harness this opportunity?
As I’ve said previously, the problem with public transport is it’s often perceived as slow, unreliable, uncomfortable and expensive. Unfortunately the reality matches this perception in a lot of cases! I try and use the train as much as possible but for shorter journeys it really doesn’t make sense outside of major urban areas. I don’t know what the answer is to be honest, probably mass subsidies and mass investment which isn’t going to happen.
On a related note I’m back to flying to Aberdeen, I can’t tolerate a journey of that length on an Azuma. Interestingly my (non-enthusiast) colleague flew down to London last week for exactly the same reason. I don’t want to have yet another seat debate(!) but there a serious point here; rail travel needs to excel in at least one area be it cost, comfort, speed or reliability to draw people in, and it often doesn’t. In fact I’ll be honest, there are occasions when the only real reason I travel by train is because I like to, take my interest out of the equation and it doesn’t actually make sense!
Just a thought but are brakes and tyres not becoming the largest source of particulate pollution from cars? Each tyre for example losing about 1kg in weight between new and scrap conditions. So from a pollution point of view the change to electric becomes somewhat irrelevant.
To my mind the fact that this is an agenda being pushed by government almost guarantees that it will turn out to be wrong. In the same way that people were forced to buy those useless compact florescent bulbs, that were only fit for the bin, and the big push to use diesel to reduce CO2 followed immediately by why are you stupid people buying diesel cars when the problem is particulates.
Brake dust is a non issue on EVs as they use regen braking down to about 5mph, giving the friction brakes virtually nothing to do except holding the car stationary. There are 2 exceptions to that. When the battery is full, regen braking doesn’t work unless there are a bank of resistors to take the current generated and emergency braking, where the friction brakes do all of the braking as under those conditions friction braking is more predictable. It’s not unusual for front brake pads to be barely worn at 100,000 miles.
Tyre wear particulates is a problem that is being worked on by manufacturers and you are right that it a cause of respiratory issues and also of plastics entering rivers and seas.
But in terms of climate change, it’s a red herring. That is still down to burning fossil fuels and food (specifically meat) production.
I’m not going to preach on those subjects as I still burn fossils to heat my home and I’m a meat eater.
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In particular the suggestion that there will be virtually no ICE cars left on the road by 2040 (only 10 years after banning their production) is just ridiculous, if maintained and not driven high miles, a modern car is good for at least 15 years.
I would argue the high mile cars may last longer than low mileage.
the most engine wear occurs when it is not fully warmed up.
The biggest thing that may impede ICE vehicles is fuel availability. It’s going to become much more expensive as the ICE fleet winds down as refineries close and less oil is produced.
Which causes its own problems: often the brake discs need grinding (or "reprofiling", to use a railway term!) because, due to lack of use, they've become covered in detritus and are less effective. The example county I've been given for this is Norway (which apparently has a very high proportion of electric cars).
Depends on the definition of high mileage. At the lower end that's correct, a car driven 12,000 miles per annum predominantly on motorways likely will be in better condition that one driven 5,000 miles consisting primarily consisting of lots of short runs of a few miles, I was thinking more more along the lines of cars which have covered 25,000+ miles per year.
And I am slightly depressed that no-one is discussing train/bus+bike/escooters instead of the oversold EVs and ICVs. Does no-one see a way for trains to harness this opportunity?
You're quite right and I think that is the point the OP was making when starting the thread. Given I've mostly replaced my car use with the bike at home and can manage a good distance fairly easily I saw the train as being the perfect compliment to cover the long distance and then I have the flexibility of the bike at the other end. However there's little capacity for bikes on current trains apart from the Scotrail 153's so I don't find it a very viable option having had to give up on a number of trips I planned because I couldn't get a bike reservation.
In particular the suggestion that there will be virtually no ICE cars left on the road by 2040 (only 10 years after banning their production) is just ridiculous, if maintained and not driven high miles, a modern car is good for at least 15 years.
Why would there be if the cost so much to run?
How when they are banned all over the place
Why would anyone apart from a petrol head want the hassle of getting fuel?
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Which causes its own problems: often the brake discs need grinding (or "reprofiling", to use a railway term!) because, due to lack of use, they've become covered in detritus and are less effective. The example county I've been given for this is Norway (which apparently has a very high proportion of electric cars).
CFLs were only too dim if you were conned by the "equivalent to" incandescent wattages shown on packets instead of looking at lumens. This is still a problem with LEDs. But CFLs also took too long to light as they got old, were too big for some places and flickered before death, so good riddens.
And I am slightly depressed that no-one is discussing train/bus+bike/escooters instead of the oversold EVs and ICVs. Does no-one see a way for trains to harness this opportunity?
Since the act of filling up with fuel is barely any hassle at all, I presume you're referring to your assertion that there will be next to no petrol stations in 2040, which is based on nothing more than circular logic - "there will be no petrol stations because no one will be driving ICE cars" - "no one will be driving ICE cars because there are no petrol stations".
If it really came to it people will get fuel delivered to their homes. You can actually do this now, even leaded fuel is available believe it or not. Should you need to refuel on a relatively regular basis or don’t want to store fuel in containers/drums you could even install your own tank/dispenser. It’s all added cost but it’s not prohibitive.
I think a lot of petrol stations will either close entirely (as so many already have over the last 15 years - even though car numbers haven't fallen, presumably because the land is more valuable for offices/residential) or be redesigned to allow many vehicles to park up and charge, either via a cable or via induction charging. The kiosk will then offer toilets, food/snacks and seating for those waiting 5, 10, 30 minutes or whatever for charging. Rather like a mini motorway services.
Some may keep a few pumps for vans and lorries, the latter of which may not find EV technology as practical yet based on current battery technology; far too much space/weight taken up with batteries.
Since the act of filling up with fuel is barely any hassle at all, I presume you're referring to your assertion that there will be next to no petrol stations in 2040, which is based on nothing more than circular logic - "there will be no petrol stations because no one will be driving ICE cars" - "no one will be driving ICE cars because there are no petrol stations".
No hassle at all? Diverting off route, queuing up, getting that dirty crap on your hands, paying, tempted by sweets - yuk! That is hassle, when I get home I plug in and walk indoors!
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I think a lot of petrol stations will either close entirely (as so many already have over the last 15 years - even though car numbers haven't fallen, presumably because the land is more valuable for offices/residential) or be redesigned to allow many vehicles to park up and charge, either via a cable or via induction charging. The kiosk will then offer toilets, food/snacks and seating for those waiting 5, 10, 30 minutes or whatever for charging. Rather like a mini motorway services.
Some may keep a few pumps for vans and lorries, the latter of which may not find EV technology as practical yet based on current battery technology; far too much space/weight taken up with batteries.
What many forget is that the huge capital costs of the current fuel system depends on high volumes of sales. Take that away and the system is no longer viable in the way we expect it today.
The main reason for that currently is down to EV owners not having to pay fuel duty. That cannot and will not continue indefinitely, the government must make up the shortfall from gradually falling fuel sales somehow and it's inconceivable this will be anything other than some form of tax on car ownership/usage. In addition, the lower running costs of EVs over ICE cars are reflected in higher purchase prices, both new and used, there's no reason to think this price differential on used cars won't continue.
No hassle at all? Diverting off route, queuing up, getting that dirty crap on your hands, paying, tempted by sweets - yuk! That is hassle, when I get home I plug in and walk indoors!
But as you bought the subject up, for those not fortunate enough to have a drive, that's still far less hassle than being 100% reliant on public chargers. I can't remember the last time I've ever had to divert off route to fill up anyway, definitely talking years rather months. As it is refuelling is just an extra few minutes once a month on top of a trip to the shops I'd be making anyway.
By 2040, anybody still driving an ICE is doing it because they specifically want to drive a car with an ICE - whether that's because it's a historic favourite of theirs, it makes a nice noise, they're incredibly spiteful, etc. Talking about running costs is completely irrelevant, the market will be inelastic - if they want to drive their car they'll drive it and stomach the costs.
You have to differentiate between driving a car to get to a location, and "going for a drive" - there will inevitably be a significant number of pure (and hybrid!) EV 'enthusiast' cars, but there'll be many more vehicles in that role with fuel tanks and exhaust pipes
In particular the suggestion that there will be virtually no ICE cars left on the road by 2040 (only 10 years after banning their production) is just ridiculous, if maintained and not driven high miles, a modern car is good for at least 15 years.
In my example I specified the number of cars rather than as fixed date, it's possible (but unlikely) that could be 2040, however it's more likely to be post 2040 and could even be post 2050.
In part as whilst I was comparing against current classic/historic cars (i.e. those over 40 years old), there was an allowance for there being double the number, which would likely put the youngest somewhere between 15 and 40 years old.
However at that point the number of cars wouldn't likely support local purchase of fuel. With the 6 local petrol stations in the local rural area probably ceasing to sell it (which could be pre 2040, again none selling it would be less likely than the majority at that time, but not outside the realms of possibility).
Whilst it's entirely possible for cars to last 15+ years as time passes the numbers of them do fall away (for instance due to crashes or doing very high milage). If there's a scrappage scheme, that would accelerate their demise over what's typical.
It's also worth bearing in mind that it's possible that the number of new registrated ICE cars in 2030 is likely to be quite a lot lower than is currently the case. As such whilst in 2019 the vast majority of the ~2.4 million new cars where pure ICE, by 2030 it's likely to be fairly low figures, quite possibly sub 10%, maybe even sub 5%.
Even at 10% that's going to be 240,000 new cars, which is they all last 20 years isn't very many (less than 1%) as there's over 30 million cars in the UK.
(Yes there'll be some older cars kept too, but some of those would only be replacing those which get scraped by the time that they reach 20).
As such the figure of 500,000 extra over the classic/historic cars (also 500,000) is unlikely by 2040 but not unreasonable by 2050.
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And I am slightly depressed that no-one is discussing train/bus+bike/escooters instead of the oversold EVs and ICVs. Does no-one see a way for trains to harness this opportunity?
Probably it comes down to that people are wedded to their cars and other such options just don't register as viable. This is confirmed by those houses where the garages are bigger than most rooms in the house and the driveways are a significant percentage of the outside space. That's before we consider the amount of land used for roads and car parking. A business park typically has buildings on 40% of the land with the vast majority of the rest being parking and/or site access roads.
It's also highlighted by the fact that since 2000 the number of cars has increased much faster than the population (something like population has grown by 16% whilst the number of cars has grown by 24%).
It is very much the best steps to cutting our carbon emissions are actual steps.
Failing that bikes, e-bikes, then public transport and then and only then using cars (even then it's better to use a shared use car, such as a car club car, than your own private one).
Even on a rail forum, it's unlikely that there would be strong support to reduce their own car useage (even just walking a bit more those trips which are less than 1 mile).
I don’t think any car requiring leaded race fuel is going to achieve 65mpg! I take your point though and a couple of quid a litre for super unleaded is probably not unrealistic. My thirstiest car (which is currently in bits and won’t ever do high mileages) manages 16/17mpg according to it’s own trip computer so it will be expensive to run, but cars are an expensive hobby anyway so it’s just something I’ll have to live with.
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