An almost new TFL Battery powered Bus only a few years old -
now in a Barnsley Scrap yard awaiting scrapping!
A typical cost for this type of vehicle new is around £400,000.
Was this TFL vehicle representative of good value for money for London ratepayers?
Human beings will never be 'Net Zero' they breathe out CO2
With the rush to Net Zero and away from Fossil Fuel vehicles to supposedly 'Greener' vehicles, Electric, Hybrid or Hydrogen powered, are these Net Zero enthusiasts going down the wrong road and indeed a road to ruin? I think so and here is why:
We have had access to 'free', clean energy since 1954. Yes, check up what Dr. Stephen Greer has to say on that after you have read this. Free, untaxable - and clean and its not solar power or nuclear I'm talking about either.
We are just one of the many oil based economies of the world with America as one of the biggest stakeholders. If free energy is available, it will certainly change the world economy, potentially disastrously for those relying on oil revenues like Britain does indirectly through applying taxation and duty.
The 'pay to pollute' model won't change easily as there is too much money to be made from oil and its use and you can't deploy 'pollution taxes' on free, clean energy. So that's why road pricing for electric vehicles hovers just out of sight. Its the only way to recoup the money. And don't think that your vehicle charging is cheaper, it can already cost more to charge an EV than to fuel a conventional vehicle.
The internal combustion engine is not dead yet by a long way
The 'race to the bottom' away from the internal combustion engine (ICE) is a big mistake for the following reasons:
* Modern engines are at their now cleanest in terms of emissions they have ever been
* Engines will continue to be improved and made cleaner to operate
* Synthetic alternative fuels are infinite and green, recapturing CO2 generated all round
* Battery components are finite and China controls the majority holding resources
* Battery components prices may rocket and become a seller's market
* Britain has already cut its CO2 by 40% from 1990's levels - others must act now
* What future & waste legacy is there for spent batteries that cannot be recycled?
* Battery cars recoup none of their CO2 generation
* Bio Mass CO2 used to make electricity for battery cars is not recouped
* Massive 100 amp electricity demand to charge millions of cars is unsustainable
* Green energy can not meet our electricity needs now, let alone charging cars up
Moving away from Fossil Fuels as propellants is a way forward, but perhaps retaining them only for use as lubricants in other industries, but the key is if you make oil products, the oil distillation process leaves you with other by-products - including Oil, Petrol, Diesel, Grease, Paraffin etc. Countries like Russia have an appetite for those products and I don't see them switching to expensive battery vehicles because of the cost and they will be a market for fossil fuels for some time. Let alone the cold weather that kills batteries.
Porsche and Siemens have been developing synthetic fuels and this is the answer to our future transport problems. This fuel provides the most convenient transport solution in that you are not reliant on a mains charger, a working charger, a battery, the right charger plug or indeed a power supply to feed it.
The recent 2 weeks of homes without power in recent storms in Scotland shows that if your house is reliant on electric power, you are going to be left cold and in the dark if that source fails. And your battery car sits dead in the drive until the electricity supply comes back on.
Already the power industry thanks to Green initiatives is reliant on Diesel generators backing up the shortfall demands that Green energy can't service. Burning wet Biomass wood chips helps one 'Green' power station to be the single biggest source polluter in CO2 terms in the UK, how Green is that?
Let alone factoring in the cutting down of swathes of CO2 processing forest to make pellets that are burned wet, about the most un-Green thing you can do, oh and don't forget the 3000 mile sea journey these wood chips made from America to be burned. You couldn't make it up.
Factor in the 100 Amp requirements for fast car charging hitting the National Grid and you are looking at the biggest embarrassment to this nation for all time - if there is no power, it will cause chaos, loss of life and perhaps civil disorder.
Already power is down in amperage at the plug, you might get 220 volts at the plug but are you getting the Amps? The lights seem dimmer and the electric cooker takes longer to do the same job it did a few years back, even on a new cooker.
Add on the demand from a possible 20 million electric cars to that Electric Boob and you face black outs unless you can provide some other available resource. The solution is obvious, synthetic fuels not battery vehicles.
The synthetic fuels solution is probably the best measure we can adopt for now, the fuels can be grown from plant Algae and are infinite, the fuels work in current and older vehicles and does not have the issues that the dreadful E10 Ethanol petrol does, they can be also used in all our current road, rail, sea and air transport vehicles that currently use fossil fuels without adaption in probably the majority of cases, it also recaptures any CO2 burned in new growth Battery cars don't.
Batteries unfortunately recapture none of their CO2 creation dividend or their environmental negatives, let alone the human cost of slave labour to get some of the components.
Electric vehicles are in their infancy in terms of battery technology, the ICE engine has had around 140 years of development, displacing the battery vehicles in the early 1900's.
If we can't recycle batteries, then the ingredients they consist of are another waste problem that will be needlessly created and sacrificed on the altar of political expediency by clueless headline-grabbing politicians.
Why gamble all your future cards on the 'now' poker hand of infant-level technology batteries? Once those elements are used they may not be recoverable for future use. That will have been a catastrophic mistake. Remember Fridgehenge?
Rather than hobble ourselves with unsatisfactory and damaging battery vehicles, we should go with synthetic fuels, at least for the short term of the next 40 years until another alternative can be developed. In this way our CO2 dividend will be stable or neutral and probably less damaging than battery vehicles. Its not rocket science.
The people making these energy decisions are possibly not the best informed, to be polite. If you asked them why they were going down this precarious road, pointing out the pitfalls of the battery vehicle versus the synthetic fuel alternative, they would likely have no real answers when presented with the obvious benefits of Synthetic Fuels over battery power.
They are trying to 'sell' a concept of battery vehicles. Potentially it could result in the next 'South Sea Bubble' when it all goes wrong. The reliance on resources majority controlled mostly by one nation (China) are a schoolboy error and the elephant in the room they choose not to see. No credible industry or company relies solely on one avenue of supply. If that is compromised you can be finished if that fails.
Synthetic fuels negate that scenario. They are the future, for now at least.
