And that is exactly the problem with the horses. They get sick, $hit and pi$$ all over the place, unless you use a $hit bag and a catheter that is, stink like hell, have no bloody warranty, servicing (vet) is rather expensive and I am severley allergic to ******s!

I have horses walk past my house daily, having had several of these beast fart in my vicinity I'd argue that there is a significant impact on my local environment from these creatures. Horse **** I can live with but the wind....

I honestly think that infrastructure is the killer here. There is no H2 infrastructure, there is a liquid fuel infrastructure and by liquid I mean at room temp liquid.

Just about any sustainably producible liquid fuel is going to be easier to manage than H2.

we're short on electricity as it is right now. Renewables are starting to look like big shiny money pits to more and more people and to have their own environmental impacts in production and in use. Great white hopes like wave power don't seem to be going anywhere and no one is stepping up to build new nukes.

Shale gas might well drop LPG prices so that's going to **** on the green parade from a great height.

That is why biobutanol is good and BP and others are tripping over themselves to put their grubby mitts on it!

My vRS TDI 6M runs 0-100 in 8.5sec (or so)

And can do 1,000km in a day, without having to stop to do anything to it.

Try and do that on a horse, 'eh? :p

When we run out of oil, which some experts put at being in our lifetime, your car won't be going anywhere!

Your car also adds pollutants to the atmosphere which have been shown to have negative affects on human and environmental health.

It's all to easy to maintain the status quo but sooner or later we will all be forced to make radical changes and then it might well be back to horse & cart.

it might well be back to horse & cart.

Dammit, what will I do then with me being alergic to the walking sussages?!?

Get ready for Horse Excise Duty, Hay duty + VAT, dung tax, horse shoe disposal charges, glue tax, annual HOT test.

Horse license test + observation a and theory tests (find the dipstick).

Under 16s can do reduced performance Donkey and Shetland tests

we're short on electricity as it is right now. Renewables are starting to look like big shiny money pits to more and more people and to have their own environmental impacts in production and in use.

The trouble with renewables is that they are often produced when no one wants them i.e. 3am or such. You can't store the electrical energy that the consumer requires - 240V AC, hence why it would be great IF this surplus power can be used to charge large battery packs for cars etc. This can be done over night when the demand is low.

Also I see more reasons to store power in battery arrays - just think of your PC. What does it run on? AC or DC? DC. The power is supplied as AC and then converted to 12V DC, wasting a huge amount of energy as heat. Why not supply homes with DC power for our PCs, laptops, phones, TVs, Fridges, etc. High draw devices such as cookers, kettles, washing machines and showers would still require AC at the moment, but it would be a start.

Get ready for Horse Excise Duty, Hay duty + VAT, dung tax, horse shoe disposal charges, glue tax, annual HOT test.<br />Horse license test + observation a and theory tests (find the dipstick).<br /><br />Under 16s can do reduced performance Donkey and Shetland tests

<br /><br />You are a cruel individual my friend! I read your post in the office And not only started making funny noises but almost wee'ed myself laughing - gotta have vivid imagination lol

Edited 1 October, 201213 yr by Jabozuma

The trouble with renewables is that they are often produced when no one wants them i.e. 3am or such. You can't store the electrical energy that the consumer requires - 240V AC, hence why it would be great IF this surplus power can be used to charge large battery packs for cars etc. This can be done over night when the demand is low.

Also I see more reasons to store power in battery arrays - just think of your PC. What does it run on? AC or DC? DC. The power is supplied as AC and then converted to 12V DC, wasting a huge amount of energy as heat. Why not supply homes with DC power for our PCs, laptops, phones, TVs, Fridges, etc. High draw devices such as cookers, kettles, washing machines and showers would still require AC at the moment, but it would be a start.

Problem is DC suffers from huge line losses (Try sending DC over any long length of cable and large ammounts of current are required to get useable power out of the other end) hence why mains electricity is distributed around the country as AC. A 12V DC ring main around your house is not really feasible.

Problem is DC suffers from huge line losses (Try sending DC over any long length of cable and large amounts of current are required to get useable power out of the other end) hence why mains electricity is distributed around the country as AC. A 12V DC ring main around your house is not really feasible.

Yes, but do-able! See here:

http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/2011/03/21/first-dc-network/

Batteries could be local to the house and recharged overnight using power from renewable sources etc. This is digressing from the main topic so I'll stop there.

Golf-Fiend,

Yes, it is being tried out. One thing you need to pluck from that article-there is no transfer network to speak of and "device density" or power requirement per m2must be very high. For domestic purposes it makes no sense whatsoever due to transfer losses but for industrial systems in particular it is the way forward. ABB has bought patents last year to run Data Centres o DC power-saves around whooping 40% !!!

Battery packs usually have a life of 10 years, given that a battery pack for a VW Touraeg is in the region of £10,000, we'll be throwing these zero emissions vehicles away at around 10 years old. What a waste.

Battery packs usually have a life of 10 years, given that a battery pack for a VW Touraeg is in the region of £10,000, we'll be throwing these zero emissions vehicles away at around 10 years old. What a waste.

Not sure we will be throwing the whole vehicle away - at least I hope not - just the battery!

Otherwise there will be a niche market for conversions from electric to petrol. How ironic...

Check out http://www.eti.co.uk/ ,some interesting projects relating to clean power!

^^ Dead Link.

Battery packs are expensive now but as with eny technology it needs more volume, plus innovation in the pipe line and it will much less than £10k in ten years when it comes to changing, will probably be also half the size and weight.

If it wasn't for the general population phobia with regards to nuclear power we would be driving cars powered by steam generated by small nuclear reactors or on nuclear batteries.

For now my vote is on biobutanol - just like the idea of my car running on booze as well

A 10k battery replacement is going to write off almost every 10yr old car.

If we're going to have to go down the battery road I think rented batteries will be the way forward. Every 3yr or so you'll get a swap and the old one will go back for recycling. Renault already do that on the Twizy

Also if batteries are a must either we'll get supercapacitors perfected so we can have fast full charges similar to filling up with petrol or manufacturers are going to have to agree on standard batteries so that they can be swapped out at 'filling stations'.

http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/11/cheaper-ultracapacitors-for-electric-vehicles/

Edited 2 October, 201213 yr by Aspman

It would be soo c00l to have that super capacitor tech developed soon...

Chinese scientists discovered a surprising properties of an ordinary pen ink. 1 gram of inka has 27m2 of area and area is the king in supercapacitors

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/09/pen-ink-proves-surprise-key-to.html.

I must Admit I was looking very seriously at buying Renault Zoe - £13.6k price tag with £70/month battery rental fee and your batery gets swapped for free after 5 years time (works out @ £4.2k). then again you are not paying any taxes, nothing to service (is that right?) and running costs are way cheaper (avg £0.137 green car and avg. £0.01 for EV car - http://www.npower.com/Campaigns/ev/home/index.htm ).

I wonder how insurance of EV vehilces compares with traditional ones? Something like Twizy would be perfect as a first car for my son in 7 years!

It would be soo c00l to have that super capacitor tech developed soon...

Chinese scientists discovered a surprising properties of an ordinary pen ink. 1 gram of inka has 27m2 of area and area is the king in supercapacitors

http://www.newscient...se-key-to.html.

I must Admit I was looking very seriously at buying Renault Zoe - £13.6k price tag with £70/month battery rental fee and your batery gets swapped for free after 5 years time (works out @ £4.2k). then again you are not paying any taxes, nothing to service (is that right?) and running costs are way cheaper (avg £0.137 green car and avg. £0.01 for EV car - http://www.npower.co.../home/index.htm ).

I wonder how insurance of EV vehilces compares with traditional ones? Something like Twizy would be perfect as a first car for my son in 7 years!

Wouldnt like any kids of mine driving round in a twizy. Absolutely zero crash protection. Plus you look like a ****.

At least better than a bl00dy scooter! But I do get your point..

There is also an argument that if you give them something like an old Volvo they will feel invincible...

I think he will remeber his karting days crashes and do utmosts to avoid any while drivig on the roads.

Cameras will e a must as well... but I digress.

Getting back on the subject I think the best idea would be to use all electric cars where power is generated bu Nuclear Power Stations and waste fuel is expedited into the sun. Bare with me here. With carbon tubes technology developing it is not impossible to envisage within our life times orbital lifts being built. Theory is there, materials and technology almost there, just too expensive now/no political/business will to build. The uses are borad, microgee manufacturing, research and science boost with nuclear waste utilisation as a bonus.

They can also be used to superconduct solar power down from orbital solar power farms - lasers not feasible due to weather.

If the Twizy would do 70mph and 100 cold miles on a charge I'd get one in a shot to commute with.

Open doors doesn't bother me I'll just wear my m/c gear. In fact I'd be perfectly happy if they'd strip out the roof everything to get more performance I'll happily wear my lid.

My commute is 40 miles a day (100 miles would give me one day grace if I forgot to charge) but I'm not doing it at 30mph.

I've read there are big issues with electric cars going over 60mph. The motors lose all their efficiency at a certain point so they are now actually starting to look at gearing for them.

Why not supply homes with DC power for our PCs, laptops, phones, TVs, Fridges, etc. High draw devices such as cookers, kettles, washing machines and showers would still require AC at the moment, but it would be a start.

Low voltage DC - massive transmision losses. The lower the voltage the higher the transmision losses. That is why electricity is "moved" around the country at several thousand volts and only dropped to 240 by the local substation in your street.

High voltage DC is far more dangerous than AC and needs an invertor to convert to AC if you want to reduce the voltage as transformers only work for AC.

Wont buy an EV, this article will not sway me into buying 1.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19830232

Specially when they say consider the average life of a vehicle being 200,000Km, when no EV has reached that sort of Miles / KM's yet to prove the batteries will last that long.

That is why went for Fabia vRS

Still stick to my guns and say bibutanol is the future!

I've just read this on the BBC which suggests that we could run short on power (including electricity) in the winter of 2014/15...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19842401

Not that far away.

I suggest decommissioning few more Nuclear Power Plants (any left btw?) and building some more coal fired ones instead, much healthier

What about liquid air? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19785689

It's all too technical for me now - but very interesting.