Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

i see a business opportunity here i buy a smelly old diesel truck with a big smelly diesel generator on the back and go around charging up these green machines i mean no one cares where the power comes from as long as it's in the tossler .:shrug:

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

A cyclist-powered generator on call to any location? 24/7? Just call and they cycle up and pump out pedal-generated electricity whilst wearing lycra and pretending they are competing in the Tour de France?

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

Oops, I think you just inadvertently "outed" yourself there Taf ;)

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

As others have states what ever powers new cars have to be as "friendly" to use as fuel in the "infernal combustion engine" (Harry Harrison).
1)Full "charge" in minutes in many places and fuel to remain good for a long while (no greater "leakage")
2)Range measures in many hundreds of km's
3)Reasonably compact - no good having all your storage taken up by "fuel".
4)Vehicle to perform similarly to current - sporty, pulling, handling, space, off road (whatever you use/choose in your car).
5)Easy to carry extra fuel - long distance/remote driving e.g. safari, exploration

I'm not limiting to electric/battery as some other technology may present itself.

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

Who is going to pay to rewire all our street lights ? and how will you be charged for using it ? or do you think councils will allow us to recharge for free ?

Why would self driving cars reduce the number ?

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

Buses use a great deal of energy with all the stopping and starting. Yet already there are experimental routes operating with electrically powered buses. I understand that while at the terminus for 5 minutes they pick up a booster charge from something hidden under the tarmac (nothing to plug in)

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

We can only guess at what improvements to battery/charging technology and the cost thereof which may occur between now and whenever this happens but I think I can safely predict that our glorious leaders, the great and the good and their mates won't find themselves regularly in need of convenient charging facilities. Us mere taxpayers, on the other hand, will likely find ourselves scrabbling around trying to find communal charge points which a free and working when we actually need them. Will these be easy to find and cheap to use I wonder?... :rolleyes:

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

I am sure some enterprising people will see the chance for meet a commercial need. How did so much of the country get 3/4G so quickly?

Because it seems that the most logical way forward for self-driving cars will be as a taxi service. At the moment you drive you car, park it for x hours, then drive it again. So many cars spend the majority of their time idle. If that car was going around doing rides for many other people then you couldn't need so many cars or have them take up so much space. It would be far more cost effective.

A lot of the companies investing in self-driving cars are doing it for that. Uber's long term goal is to replace their human drivers with self-driving cars, the reason they're intentionally losing money to undercut other taxi services is to ensure they're dominate in the market when it happens. Google too have said this is their motivation for exploring self-driving cars. They've pointed how much land is wasted storing immobile cars.

You would 'call' a car via a smartphone/speaker/watch/whatever which will take you to the location before shooting off to do another job. It would be far cheaper than a normal taxi because you've cut out the human element and can do it at scale.

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

Inductive charging.


Cheers


Dave

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

Because that doesn't require every home to have a mast outside into which they can plug their phone maybe?

;)

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

Credit card or maybe each car will have a chip identifier and you will get billed monthly? Like when you buy petrol or diesel...

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

Maybe because upgrading a few cell towers is not quite in the same league as upgrading every lamppost.

---------- Post added at 13:49 ---------- Previous post was at 13:46 ----------

Who exactly gets billed monthly for petrol/deisel ? I have to pay on the day.

Its pretty easy to charge for petrol/deisel, since its at a garage, monitored, and machines (pump or till) connected to the banks. Again, not the same as every lamppost.

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

it's not just lampposts it's the cable that feed them the substations that provide the power etc.. in short the whole infrastructure would need upgrading to cope with the extra load so digging up every street .

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

We're talking many amperes per hour for cars, not milliamperes for phones. The magnet field would he lethal to anyone with a pacemaker. Hmmm and passing cyclists and prams would get dragged onto the road....

Re: Petrol & diesel vehicles ban.
 

You pay for petrol/diesel each month; the concept is the same.

Ford have been developing "wi fi" charging btw; apparently, induction charging as mentioned by Dave (GrimUpNorth) has been in use in S Korea for years.

It's the future.