The Car Debacle

[derek-33]

so no petrol /diesel / hybrid cars to be sold after 2035 in the uk, fair enough, apart from the fact we would not have enough power supply to charge these electric ones up,(a power station takes a decade to build just one) given that most of these will be charged at night if your lucky enough not to live in a block of flats..street park or in a high vandalism area, solar power is useless after dark.. now what about the tens of thousand of HGV trucks on the road.. going electric ?? remember its 100% carbon cut ..the batteries would have to be supersize and bearing in mind they do hundreds of miles in a day, stopping to charge for god knows how long every 100 miles if your lucky, good luck to this

[ToraToraTora]

the other problem with hydrogen is that mostly it comes from water and that uses electricity to split it out, so you may as well use the electricity directly. H is not the holy grail.

[teacake44]

I've still got a peddle car from 1958. :0)

[THECORBYLOON]

"Hydrogen has a low energy density.
While the energy per mass of hydrogen
is substantially greater than most other
fuels, as can be seen in Figure 1, its
energy by volume is much less than
liquid fuels like gasoline. For a 300 mile
driving range, an FCEV will need about
5 kg of hydrogen. At 700 bar (~10,000
psi) a storage system would have a
volume of about 200 liters or 3-4 times
the volume of gasoline tanks typically
found in cars today. A key challenge,
therefore, is how to store sufficient
quantities of hydrogen onboard without
sacrificing passenger and cargo space."

[THECORBYLOON]

Apologies for the formatting.

[andy-hughes]

We have no idea what the technology will be so far ahead, but we do know that a number of governments will have come and gone, and the one in power at the time may well have different ideas from the current incumbents.

It's all if's and maybe's, so we shouldn't waste time worrying about it.

[mushroom25]

//If the ventured north of the M25 occasionally, they can see the filthy slow late expensive buses we have to live with up here, and no tube or tram or late buses. Then they would see why people are reluctant to give up their cars. //

just one more thing (I love Columbo!) - my daughter has just bought a new house on a new estate on the edge of a large town in the east midlands, where the only credible (and safe) access is by car. this is only one of several (maybe many) similar developments on greenfield sites that are not self-contained (eg they have no amenities or infrastructure beyond the houses and their access roads), and in locations where bus services currently don't exist and are never likely to. thus the residents are on and off the estate all the time to schools, shops, doctor's, etc and all these journeys have to be by car. until town planners change their strategy, there's no way people can exist effectively without a car.

[Khandro]

Nobody answers my question so better try myself; Due to the fact that steam provides constant pressure unlike the piston strokes of an internal combustion engine, steam-powered cars required no clutch, no gearbox and were overall extremely easy to drive. All you needed was a few minutes to let the boiler heat up.

Unfortunately, within the space of a few short years Henry Ford would almost single-handedly kill off the steam car. Although in the early 20th century steam engines were technically superior to old internal combustion engines, they couldn’t match the low cost of Ford’s mass-produced cars.

https://www.carkeys.co.uk/news/why-does-nobody-make-a-steam-powered-car

[mushroom25]

steam engines are essentially heat engines, turning chemical energy into mechanical movement, just like internal combustion engines. it's true that a steam engine can start under load. but it's also true that for a given calorific value of fuel to move the engine, a petrol powered engine does it with 35% efficiency, compared with a steam engine's 10% efficiency. today it's a no brainer really.

[Canary42]

The usual smattering of 4Ds burying their heads in the sand, as they have been for the last thirty-five years or more which is why we've landed where we are today.

[andy-hughes]

What's a 4D?

[aelmpvw]

the government's target of fifteen years seems a tad optimistic when it took them three years to sort brexit out ...

[Khandro]

mushroom /a petrol powered engine does it with 35% efficiency, compared with a steam engine's 10% efficiency. today it's a no brainer really.//
You cannot compare a steam engine of a century ago with a modern combustion engine which has had all that time in technological evolution.
According to Ford Motor Company, the Model T had fuel economy on the order of 13–21 mpg and a top speed of 25 mph, while the Stanley steamer then, held the world land speed record & held it for decades.

[ToraToraTora]

"a power station takes a decade to build just one" - the Chinese will do it in a fortnight!

[mushroom25]

//You cannot compare a steam engine of a century ago with a modern combustion engine which has had all that time in technological evolution.//

if the steam engine had evolved since the 1940s, that would hold water. but it hasn't, and any quest to produce a modern efficient steam engine would fail, simply because there are better technologies available. the UK only remained faithful to the steam engine as long as it did was that the then labour government didn't want to make miners redundant whilst spending cash on imported oil.

[Khandro]

mushroom; There's so much wrong in that post, I can't even be bothered to start to address it.

[douglas9401]

Induction pads under the road might solve the charging problem, just scale up the phone charger, warn everybody to steer well clear and we're there.

Miniature nuclear reactors too.

The steam idea only needs a readily available heat source, why not a giant magnifying glass on a bracket, fixed to the vehicle roof to focus the sun onto the water being lugged around.

I don't think my heart's in this

[New Judge]

I know quite a bit about steam engines and I can tell you that you will never, ever, produce one that gets anywhere near the thermal efficiency of an internal combustion engine (which is poor enough). Heat losses are just too great. More than that, the most efficient use of steam is made via a turbine rather than a reciprocating arrangement. The difficulty is that vast quantities of cooling liquid (most usually water) are needed to condense the exhaust steam so as to create a vacuum at the exhaust end. This is needed to preserve the flow of steam through the turbine. This is fine on a ship – it’s surrounded by cold water and the heat extracted from the steam simply transfers to the ocean. It’s also fine for power stations which are always built by rivers or on the coast. But it doesn’t work on a small scale vehicle which has no readily available cooling medium and which has to lug not only its fuel and water, but also its cooling water around with it.

Experiments took place in the 1930s designing steam turbine railway locomotives. One such experiment was the London Midland & Scottish Railway’s design by William Stanier. It achieved its vacuum effect by ultra efficient draughting of the fire through the boiler and was moderately successful. However it was soon learned that steam turbines are only really efficient when run at constant high speeds (fine on ship or in a power station, not much use for a locomotive or a car). It was rebuilt as a conventional reciprocating locomotive and met its end in the Harrow rail disaster in 1952.

And I nearly forgot. The one big drawback with steam (at least as far as this question goes) is, whatever you do with it you have to burn something to produce it.

[Zacs-Master]

There were steam trains in Switzerland which heated the water from electricity produced by hydroelectric means. No burning of things there.

[Khandro]

NJ; Interesting, but that is an analysis of very old thinking and science. I have no idea & dare I suggest neither have you, of what a century of collective research & innovation might have produced.

[lankeela]

So how does a self charging electric car work? Sure that is what is being advertised on tv. Why can't you plug an electric car into the cigarette lighter and charge as you go along?