All electric motorhomes.... Possible or not?

I think for our usage hydrogen will be the answer, the battery improvements announced are only going to give a relatedly small improvement in range, perfectly fine for the vast majority of cars, but not for many motorhomes.
 
In the rush for the brave new world of EV's everyone seems to have forgotten who owns the rare elements required to make the battery of each and every one .
And once we have gone so far down the cul-de-sac of EV's then they will double or triple the price or just cut off supply.... the UK owns none of them and will be held hostage or have to comply with their demands .
It seems strange that we are being forced to have EV's because we are polluting the planet when the launch of one Space X satellite is more polluting than most of those on this forums entire lifetime of emission's combined , let alone planned missions to the moon or mars .... air travel is also immune from being targeted or forced to change by 2030 .
The rush for EV's is more about the control of the public and how they travel....the most pollution any vehicle produces in it's lifetime is during manufacture yet it seems the plan is to scrap perfectly good vehicles and force people to buy new ones.....the emission's produced by the vehicles making the infrastructure needed for a windfarm and the many tons of raw materials transported to the site are conveniently not included in the calculations of justifying a wind turbine , nor the fact that life expired turbine blades are not recyclable for example .
 
Grimbo said:
In the rush for the brave new world of EV's everyone seems to have forgotten who owns the rare elements required to make the battery of each and every one .
And once we have gone so far down the cul-de-sac of EV's then they will double or triple the price or just cut off supply.... the UK owns none of them and will be held hostage or have to comply with their demands .
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The UK has one of Europe's largest deposits of Lithium, so we can swap some of that.

It seems strange that we are being forced to have EV's because we are polluting the planet when the launch of one Space X satellite is more polluting than most of those on this forums entire lifetime of emission's combined , let alone planned missions to the moon or mars .... air travel is also immune from being targeted or forced to change by 2030 .
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A Space X launch produces around the same co2 as the worlds oil tankers produce in one minute.

The rush for EV's is more about the control of the public and how they travel....the most pollution any vehicle produces in it's lifetime is during manufacture yet it seems the plan is to scrap perfectly good vehicles and force people to buy new ones....
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The plans announced so far are to ban the sale of new ICE vehicles, there hasn't been any plans announced of scraping vehicles.

.the emission's produced by the vehicles making the infrastructure needed for a windfarm and the many tons of raw materials transported to the site are conveniently not included in the calculations of justifying a wind turbine , nor the fact that life expired turbine blades are not recyclable for example .
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For ICE vehicles most calculations ignore the co2 need to find extract and transport oil.
 
Swap Lithium ? I don't foresee any swapping going on ....as in all things we will be paying dearly for the elements we need ..it won't be a fair swap and we will have no independent source for our needs .

Agreed the shipping industry is an awful polluter and needs to clean up it's act ....but the level of CO2 they produce is much more than all small vehicles such as cars produce so shouldn't they be targeted first ? After all they number far fewer ....

I still think the pollution caused by futile space exploration and missions to mars would be better saved and the money put into fully understanding what happens under 2/3 of our own planets surface and perhaps in doing so would obliviate the need to try and colonise another planet so we can ruin that . In 30 years of diving it is indisputable to me that the world oceans are in dire trouble yet we continue to allow whales to be slaughtered , entire fish stocks to be wiped out and ecosystems destroyed..... if everything became electric overnight it wouldn't stop this decline

Scrappage is already happening .....see any local car dealers .....vehicles with another 10 years of serviceable life removed from the roads so new vehicles can be sold both ICE and EV , yet no independent figures are available for the affect on the environment if they were used and the new vehicles not produced .

EV calculations conveniently ignore the huge amount of CO2 that will be produced not to mention huge infrastructure devastation ....to put charging points into every street and road so they can be charged overnight when most people can't park outside their house or even in the same street . Look back a few years at the amount of damage that was done in the great cable TV laying episodes with whole streets worth of trees being killed by their roots being cut by trenchers ...... all the vehicles doing this work will have ICE engines as battery powered plant doesn't work....... nor do agricultural vehicles or HGV's and won't for the foreseeable future .

To be honest it's all smoke and mirrors and there are no truly independent figures as both sides have such vested interests and so much money is at stake .

The only way to sort this is the one thing that no government is willing or will ever do ....limit the amount of the most polluting item on the planet... Human Beings
 
Let's hope the European electric/battery revolution doesn't lead to even more children digging cobalt by hand in the Congo

....but hey, we got a target to hit!

:confused:
 
colinmd said:
CNN Wrongly Blames Electric Cars for Unethical Cobalt Mining | DeSmog (desmogblog.com)
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Yeah I saw that, poor journalism and sensationalised. Article blamed electric cars directly where as I am fully aware that the majority of cobalt does not go there presently but I stated 'hope it doesn't lead to' so am unsure of your point

Estimates put 50% of cobalt supplied to the battery manufacturing process, including phones, laptops etc coming from Congo. Children mine cobalt in the Congo and I fear these targets will have a negative effect in the battery manufacturing industry
 
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Just putting it in context. I'm sure it will lead to an increase in child labour in the cobalt mines, but these will most likely be children taken from scouring the rubbish heaps, either way it's a place which will exploit child labour unless 'we' in the western world decide to do something about it.
 
Tookey said:
Yeah I saw that, poor journalism and sensationalised. Article blamed electric cars directly where as I am fully aware that the majority of cobalt does not go there presently but I stated 'hope it doesn't lead to' so am unsure of your point

Estimates put 50% of cobalt supplied to the battery manufacturing process, including phones, laptops etc coming from Congo. Children mine cobalt in the Congo and I fear these targets will have a negative effect in the battery manufacturing industry
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The LEAD ACID battery manufacturing industry use primarily recycled Lead and readily available Sulfuric Acid. Maybe this is a good reason to stay with that older proven technology where it still does the job?
 
wildebus said:
The LEAD ACID battery manufacturing industry use primarily recycled Lead and readily available Sulfuric Acid. Maybe this is a good reason to stay with that older proven technology where it still does the job?
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Double post
 
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wildebus said:
The LEAD ACID battery manufacturing industry use primarily recycled Lead and readily available Sulfuric Acid. Maybe this is a good reason to stay with that older proven technology where it still does the job?
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Unfortunately I am not knowlegable enough on batteries but hope to see your point discussed by those that are.

I do understand supply and demand and these Euro aims are dollar signs to some and the environmental (and people) damage at the mining/manufacturing stage will not figure in the emission reduction stats presented to us.
 
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Cobalt is infinitely recyclable, problem is more and more devices using it.
co2 emission calculations have been made for entire life cycle from the mines to scrapping of vehicles, BEV's are still better. BUT, there is also another huge benefit, less street level polution, this is estimated to be killing thousands in the UK alone, and whilst vehicles are far from the only culprits, those streets with high traffic flows are far worse than any other areas.
 
I believe you are all wrong and DAC is the future. One main part of it (the Fischer-Tropsch process) has been used for years by Sasol in South Africa. I know because I did commissioning on the Gas to Oil part of the process.

singularityhub.com

The Promise of Direct Air Capture: Making Stuff Out of Thin Air

By making CO2 a vital part of our economy, we can begin to derive value from one of our climate change agents, currently emitted as a waste product.
singularityhub.com singularityhub.com
 
There will be a lot of misinformation about the effectiveness of electric vehicles, with all the vested interests for the existing way to do things. See the link below.
Aston Martin has been avoiding investment in electric vehicles and is way behind

www.theguardian.com

Aston Martin in row over 'sock puppet PR firm' pushing anti-electric vehicle study

Report disputing green benefits of EVs attributed to company registered to wife of carmaker’s director
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
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