Graham Butcher

Link to the site is here Air Pollution in World: Real-time Air Quality Index Visual Map The measurements used include the following, there may be more, but these are the core ones. PM2.5, PM10, O3, NO2, SO2 and CO and if you select any monitoring station and hover the mouse over it, you will be presented with a pop box listing these and the results of each of these on an hourly basis, showing date and time, and the bottom of the box it will show you over a few minutes, the results for the last 12 months on a daily basis.

There has been much debate about the quality of the air that we breathe in this country and the huge push for clean air zones such as CAZ or LEZ and even ULEZ, but the fact still remains that in the grand scheme of things the air here in the UK is and has been some of the best in the world and has been improving year-on-year and to illustrate this I did a quick check on the global AIQ map yesterday around 1.00pm, and I present you some screenshots of the map, showing the severity of the air, the time and the date so there is no cheating going on. However, I still feel that the whole thing is more about separating us from our cash than anything else. The maps in order are Thailand, India, Europe, Norway, and finally UK, there are vast areas that do need to take steps to clean up their air and if our air was as bad as those then I'd have no beef about these zones being introduced, but the fact is, that our air is just as good as the air in Norway which is the nation that is being hailed as the leader of the EV car adoption with many cities having banned ICE cars from entering them, and yet we still have far more ICE cars but air quality is comparable. For instance, the UK was 12:68 meaning that the equivalent time in India and Thailand was 18:30 in India and 20:00 in Thailand so their pollution levels should be lower than the daytime one.

I just assumed that seeing as they were part of an ANPR setup which is required for CAZ or LEZ system that they cameras and the entire system would be setup and dedicated purely for the function alone and to reconfigure them for other purposes would be a bit of a faff and not possible without some major reconfiguration of the system. After all is said and done, is there a town or city that is not already set up without CCTV monitoring, so why not use that?

Hmm, if the police have gathered that kind of information from the cameras then they clearly have far greater capabilities and uses other than just ANPR, which is just what many YouTubers were claiming, it is becoming more like George Orwell's 1984 by the day.

I think that this is really turning out to be in the favour of the "YouTubers", who many have dismissed in the past as now the press have also managed to pick up on the story of paying per mile, and it was looking like London was going to be the first area to trail it. Even now, I still would not rule it out of becoming true, despite many claiming that it will not ever happen, the infrastructure is being rolled out in the form of a Trojan horse, "low emission zone cameras" as well as cameras in location such as the Dartford crossing for the collection of tolls etc. Once more of the schemes are introduced and the cameras, plus the average speed cameras are linked to central databases you have required support system to launch it nationwide. The 'secret' plan to charge Essex border drivers per mile - Essex Live

Unverified reports but no real reason to doubt the claims.

@Ootohere Grangemouth is sad news for sure, but it is not the only casualty, here in Essex we have lost the massive Coryton oil refinery, over 11 years ago.

No, I think the same.

@Ootohere I agree, politicians all lie to us, all the time. As I mentioned earlier, I'm a moderator on a global social media platform which has over 10 million UK users and there is a new power line planned to bring power from Scotland down south to London and the South coast on pylons and the route is within 2 miles of my house and there is some local opposition to them as you can imagine, one of those opposed to it is none other than the owner of the local Škoda service centre I use, and he has a nice large detached house with a drive that could accommodate many vehicles with ease, and the same is true for many others in the local group opposed to the pylons. You don't tend to get too many people who have social housing voicing objections to such plans. The best part of it is that only a limited number of people will be able to see the pylons as they will be located in areas not visible from their houses and the pylons route have been designed to be far enough away and screened for much of the route from housing areas. As you rightly said, underground cables are far more costly and will just shove the price of that power to the user up even more, which would make them all tick like a clock again over the staggering increases in the electric prices, tsk tsk.

The irony here is that it seems to be mainly people who have their own home and many with enough space to have about 2 or 3 cars off the road and home charge, who are among the biggest complainers about pylons.

What a faff, imagine that being an emergency situation, you would be totally knackered. Just imagine if the car was an emergency response vehicle on a life or death situation, not good at all. More work required I think to make the total experience of EV ownership more realistic and survivable, less style and more practicality is required I think. Even though the door locks/handles look good but surely common sense should have kicked in at the design stage as these problems were completely foreseeable, even the electrical operated latches are disaster waiting to happen as there have many cases of them not operable after a crash, or fire starts taking out the electrics and trapping people inside, not good at all.

Well said, straight from the heart and true. Of course it goes without saying that if you have off street parking and can charge at home and if an overnight charge is enough for your daily usage, then running costs will tumble dramatically. Not everyone has those, or charge ability at work. I seriously doubt that many companies are willing to accept the massive costs associated with providing charging facilities for employees cars, other than pool cars and delivery vans. What we all need is more honest posts about living with EV's in the real world for the people trapped in circumstances that do not lend themselves running an EV cheaply, to help others understand the positives and negatives so they are better able to decide which suites them better rather than ending up like Taycan man, always moaning about them.

And they wonder why electric cars are not being adopted at the rate that they would like. Exactly the same result would happen if they were petrol pumps, at 37p more than those down the road, they would also be empty. They have got to get the price per kW sorted, there should never be that much of a differential in price.

If LFP batteries have a 20% reduction in energy density but can be charged to 100% capacity, but Li-ion batteries have the higher energy density but not best to charge them over 80% SOC, then the range is surely going to be exactly the same, because you have the same 20% difference by virtue of the 80% opposed to the 100% of the LFP?

I don't know about the other rare metals, but the Tantalum can be very volatile, capacitors using it are known to be particular fire hazards in their own and have to be used within strict tolerances, or they become little fireballs which given the right set of conditions could be nasty. As to any Cobolt stocks in Scotland or anywhere else for that matter, I hope will stay there and that we would have found a safer material to use soon.

The truth about the amount of Cobolt used in both EV and ICE cars is here, and currently anyone attempting to deny that EV cars are by far the largest single users of Cobolt need to take their heads out whatever place they have stuffed them and put on their big boy pants and admit that there were wrong and unless things improve, then the situation is going to get far worse. Cobalt Blues: Mythbusting your comments about cobalt in EV batteries and fuel — Auto Expert John Cadogan

What, you flew and created all that nasty pollution 🤣

Also, do we actually know that it is an EV or a hybrid, and if it was/is then the battery does not appear to be involved, not every EV fire is going to be battery related, they suffer the same other fire hazards that ICE cars do, electrical from 12V battery system and of course discarded cigarette ends etc.

A single car in row is not that much of a problem, but in car park where others are parked close, especially if they are also EVs then you have a massive problem. Look at all the videos of EVs when the battery is on fire and you will see the jets of fire shoot out from the sides, not yet seen one where they come out from the front or rear. With that in mind, imagine the average car park with cars on the left and right, often less than a metre away and you can see the problem. Add in the fact that more and more EVs are coming onto the roads, it might only be a few years away before there is a good chance of 70% of cars being EVs it is then that we will be seeing major problems when fire breaks out and events like those in Korea will be far more common.

Agreed, but if you can't afford to have a 2nd car all taxed and insured ready to jump in. This is why I say that currently the EV is not capable of being considered a replacement for an ICE, even with home charging for many people. To be a suitable replacement they need to be capable of getting fully charged in about 5 minutes and be able to find a charger easily, and resolve the problems associated with EV fires, then if the price is right, the barrier to their wide spread adoption is removed.

Never come across any cars that needed that, but I know that many of the big truck and bus engines do sometimes.

Speaking about chargers, it seems the apparent shortage of them in Chelmsford is beginning to resolve itself now, my local Esso filling station, a couple of streets away is currently having some installed, judging by the space allocated to them, I'm guessing that it will be a total of 3, still to be confirmed.

Indeed that is always a problem for some people in any location and time of year, but is also one that takes just seconds to resolve once rescue services are on the scene, open the fuel filler and pour a gallon of fossil juice into it, job done. I once had to rescue a colleague who run out of diesel just as he exited Blackwall Tunnel in East London, slipped into the PFS, half a mile along the A13, £10 of diesel in a jerrycan and a funnel later, all solved and on his way again (I don't think he ever paid me the tenner either, oh well).

Even in those areas pretty well served in the South and the Midlands, there will still be pockets where you would be hard-pressed to find a charger, especially at busy times.

Very true, and the same can and does apply in equal measures when people are wide awake and fully alert, that's the nature of accidents, sad but its true.