Graham Butcher

As long as there are people who threaten the world's stability, then good luck getting the decarbonisation of the military anywhere in the world soon. We all need to find ways to be less confrontational and more friendly towards each other. With the huge number of nuclear warheads there are around the world, if they were all to be detonated the amount of emissions would be academic anyway as we could all be dead anyway . If only the authorities were to put as much effort into decommissioning these weapons and promoting peace and co-operation as they are with going electric, then the world would be a far better place and also the air would be massively cleaner then it would be with 100% electric motive power.

OK, I can see how the system could operate as long as it has the capability to set limits and of course I had not forgotten about destination chargers, as the car as you have already pointed out, spends most of its time stationary, and the biggest amount of time is when at home or maybe when you're at work, so those locations are ripe for harvesting spare energy etc. But I was mentioning that the video showed a Leaf plugged into a public charger within the first 30 seconds of the video while talking about V2G.

The closest I have so far got to smart home devices is a couple of Amazon Alexa smart speakers and a handful of Wi-Fi sockets that Alexa can control for me. Nothing too complicated and nothing that would result in a dangerous situation if the system were to fall over, which it has occasionally. It still has a long way to go before it will become a standard feature in homes, I feel. Much the same as V2H and V2G really in my view. You have already highlighted 1 potential flaw and that is that everyone (once we have the system) needs to get into the habit of plugging in. One of the videos on this shows a car plugged into a public charger, which flies in the face of what you are supposed to do, plug in just long enough to get your charge and bugger off and let the next person in line use the charger. So anyway you go along to the charger and plug in because you need to top up the battery in order to continue your journey or drive home etc, and the V2G kicks in decides that the grid needs to zap what little bit of energy you had left to bolster the grid for a while, what happens then? You were expecting a quick pit stop, a coffee while putting enough charge into your car for the drive, return to car to find either you have not been charged, or have less in the battery then you started with or whatever??

Indeed, I was aware of that, but history is always changing and right now the technologies you discussed are very much in their infancy and there can be no doubt that back in the early 70s there were all kinds of promising ideas and plans being drawn up to continue the space exploration. But it would be folly to think that lightening can't or won't strike again, no one knows what is lurking around the corner. I remember the TV show called "The Jetsons" which featured flying cars and highways in the sky, not on the ground and this extract from the Wikipedia page sets the scene> Premise In the future, the Jetsons are a family residing in Orbit City.[12][13] The city's architecture is rendered in the Googie style and all homes and businesses are raised high above the ground on adjustable columns. George Jetson lives with his family in the Skypad Apartments: his wife Jane is a homemaker, their teenage daughter Judy attends Orbit High School, and their son Elroy attends Little Dipper School. Housekeeping is performed by a robot maid named Rosie, who handles chores not otherwise rendered trivial by the home's numerous push-button Space Age-envisioned conveniences. The family has a dog named Astro that talks with an initial consonant mutation in which every word begins with an "R", as if speaking with a growl; a similar effect would also be used for Scooby-Doo. George Jetson's work week consists of an hour a day, two days a week.[14] His boss is Cosmo Spacely, the bombastic owner of Spacely Space Sprockets. Spacely has a competitor, Mr. Cogswell, owner of the rival company Cogswell Cogs (sometimes known as Cogswell's Cosmic Cogs). Jetson commutes to work in an aerocar with a transparent bubble top. Daily life is leisurely, assisted by numerous labor-saving devices, which occasionally break down with humorous results. Despite this, everyone complains of exhausting hard labor and difficulties living with the remaining inconveniences. Then this. Legacy William S Higgins writing for The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction noted that the show "has become a popular metonym for 'the future'. While satirizing Space Age notions of a better tomorrow, the series seems also to have visually codified expectations of the future to a great many viewers: when the twenty-first century arrived, complaints that flying cars and jet packs were missing often mentioned The Jetsons.".[62] Despite many attempts at developing the personal small flying cars that could zip through the air from point to point just like cars can on the ground, we still have not managed it.

Not to mention also, the massive amount of work that needs to be done to the grid to enable the capacity and connections to the charging stations, when as you rightly point out, we already have the filling stations there serving liquid fuel.

Yes and one day mankind might also colonise the moon which was talked about many years ago when man first stepped foot on the moon's surface in 1969 and 55 years later we are no further forward on that front. For once, lets concentrate on what is happening right now for the billions of people living in the real world and not in a bubble.

It's very important to you because you are very clued-up on this stuff, however I suggest that you are not typical of the average person who will not be aware of this stuff. Hence, why I say to the average driver and this is particularly true for the average ICE driver, who is facing the prospect that soon their only option of a new car is going to be electric. All of this V2H and V2G is also of course is dependent on having the ability to home charge, which has already been extensively covered in this thread. You have also, begrudgingly, acknowledged that this is a fact for millions of people, so those features are both meaning and worthless to them, thus, like I have many times pointed out, to them an EV is just a mode of transport. You are in a privileged position, and you don't appreciate that because of it, you can access these things and take it for granted, while you're eating cake, others just have bread. Please put yourself in a less privileged person's shoes and look at things through their eyes and accept that is the position they are in and can do very little about it. Also, please stop this point scoring all time it is dragging this whole thread into areas it does need to go to. PS. just watched that video you posted, and it would also need for existing cars to have extensive and expensive upgrades, and the same in the house, so thats an added cost that not everybody can afford.

Imagine how it would be if you 500+ HP on tap in an EV on tap, you could perhaps burn out a set of tyres with ease and also a possible reason for the insurance on EV's being much higher than for an ICE vehicle?

What! Do you mean to tell me that all that silly nonsense the other day was all about something that has not happened yet. If so then it strengthens my point that ICE drivers view an EV as nothing more then just another car, full stop.

Yes I have brought up children, 4 of them and I have never felt the need to use the special locks you mention as my children were brought up to know right from wrong. In any case, correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect going by reports that others had to smash windows in order to get people out of the front seats of these cars, it does rather suggest that if the electrics fail, that the doors cannot be opened from the outside either? Surely the door handle would be the first thing that people would be reaching for instinctively or is it that the flush handles simply confuse people, and they don't understand how to operate them? If that's the case, then that is another example of style over substance as time is being wasted trying to rescue people because the door handles don't operate in the normal fashion? There are also ICE cars that also have odd handles that would confuse people, like some of the TVR's have a button to press under the door mirror, Alfa Romeo 156 has the rear door handle hidden, all of which is in my view dangerous. Edit, the new Range Rovers is another one with the flush handles that pop out when you touch the sensor in the handle.

Yes I always thought that with electric becoming the norm, anyone wanting to do anything like that, only need to knock out the grid and everything would soon grind to a halt. As to the car doors, it should have been common sense to ensure that the doors can always be opened. And a legal requirement.

I voiced my concerns about the practise of some electric cars relying on the car actually having power left in the battery and the circuitry still being intact, i.e., no blown fuses or wiring issues in order to open the car doors from inside, and I guess the same would apply from outside, especially in an emergency situation. Now it seems that this is a problem currently more to do with Tesla's, but as some will recall that the Mac Master also got locked inside his Porsche Taycan, and some members berated him at the time, and saying it was clickbait 🙄. Well, guess what it wasn't, it was a fact and the Tesla has been called out for this before and people have been trapped inside burning cars and have only been rescued by others breaking the windows and the people climbing out through them. Then it has also been reported and shown on some YT channels that there is in fact on the Tesla's and Taycans, 2 door releases on the front doors, a manual one (tucked away) and a press button, just like in that Rolls Royce video, pressing the button releases the door, the same for the rear passengers in a Tesla, BUT there is not a manual release. This is a classic case of style over substance, why not just have the same as other cars have, a simple system, that can operate the doors normally, even if locked, the internal door handles/levers will unlock and open the doors allowing for easy escape in an emergency situation. It now turns out that there are in some rear doors on Tesla's but not all and in all cases it involves removing bits of the car to gain access to then, when fitted. Less than ideal, I think you'll agree, especially when you may have your children in the back or elderly parents etc, or maybe someone who is not even familiar with the car. In fact on one model, you have to remove the entire door card, this is something you cannot do when the door is shut, go figure?? This video explains more and actually shows you where these are. Don't shoot the messenger, but if nobody has been killed in cars fitted with this type of system, then it can only be a matter of time.

Doh! Why do I feel like Homer Simpson then This is a problem though with nuclear energy, what do you do with the spent fuel rods and the contaminated reactors and how do we know that it will be safe in the future, oh yes, that's right put our trust and faith in the politicians with all the answers

Hmm, I used to be a regular visitor to AWE at Aldermaston and Foulness and used to get a police escort everywhere on site, I wonder if I ever glowed in the dark when I got home.

Why am I not surprised that it was kept secret from the public, it's all about profit at the end of the day.

Haha, I expect Englands response to that will be, "Hold my Beer" and watch this

Nope, it was a foregone conclusion that they would find a way to put prices up, just as they have over the Russia/Ukraine war, if peace was to break out tomorrow, the prices would remain high until pressure was brought to bear and even then, it would only be a partial return to the pre-war prices.

Well we all knew that would happen sooner or later, the government can't manage without their VED tax, for every new EV car on the road, the government miss out on revenue.

Well, yes if you're talking about the VED and the fuel duty, but EV's don't pay either, they only pay the VAT on the lecky they use.

I must have missed those then.

Yes, but surely they cannot be expected to be charged double tax, RUC tax plus fuel duty tax, can they?

I just watched this interesting video about filling a Hydrogen car from 10% level to 100%, just 4:30 minutes, pretty good, but the delivery hose almost froze solid, how would that hose hold up doing that all the time?

This to me currently makes zero sense at all, or am I missing something here. From April 1st New Zealand are withdrawing their concession to drivers of EV and plugin hybrids of zero RUC (Road User Charge) chargeable by the km or mile and will start charging them in order to ensure that EV drivers also contribute towards the upkeep of the roads. Electric vehicles to pay road user charges | Beehive.govt.nz It is also reported that drivers of plug-in hybrids been trying to remove the plug-in system and register their cars as pure petrol or diesel powered cars as it would mean that they will in effect be paying double taxation, once on the litres of fuel they purchase and then by the distance they travel?

Likewise, I have had the auto parallel park system on my last 2 cars since 2013 and I have never felt the need to use it so I don't even know if it works, and if I could have ordered the car without it, I would have done so.

Well we have to assume in these chats that will not be the case.