bank loans for replacement batteries.

[flecc]

Today, at £6.50, £3.74 is taxes, thus £2.76 is fuel. The fuel price includes refining, retailer profit and all that, of course.

So the price of fuel in real terms has risen over 24 years from £1.93 to £2.76, or by 43%. The taxation on it has risen from 58% of the total in 1973 to 73% today.

I entered a small correction to my figures Lemmy, I've been paying £6.30 a gallon for petrol for some while. According to all the most recent figures I've been able to locate (late 2010), the total of taxation stands at almost 70%, so the net petrol proportion seems a lot less than the £2.76 you've shown, just over £1.89 in my case.

I fully agree that petrol is not expensive, it's stayed fairly constant in inflation adjusted cost throughout the whole of my adult life.

 

[andyh2]

That Twizy looks pretty good. I still think it's a great shame that politically there isn't greater consideration given to encouraging / discouraging vehicle types based on power restrictions. An ICE Twizy could have a heater and therefore proper doors and be more practical for the UK.

It would be interesting to see what car manufacturers would come up with given a 15kw power limit (same as Twizy) or indeed a 0.25-0.5kw power unit for assisted cycles. I'm sure for bicycles they could be much more efficient and quiet than the sort of motorised wheels available before full on motorcycles became affordable.

Might it be possible to improve mpg to a level where alternative biofuels could become realistic?



.

 

[flecc]

I agree Andy, the insecure Twizy is no good for me at present, but a secure under 20 kW i.c. one I'd buy tomorrow. It would cost a lot less too, probably about £4k, and be capable of a very high mpg.

I'm anti bio-fuels though, until we work out how to feed everyone in the world adequately and conserve the environment at the same time, the use of agricultural land for car fuels I think an obscenity.

 

[Cyclezee]

There is another dual fuel alternative for cars that has been around for many years, LPG/Petrol.

I have been driving LPG powered cars for more than 10 years from 1.3 Daihatsu Sirion to 3.0 Ford Mondeo.
My current LPG powered car is a 1.4 Fiat Doblo which I use as a general run around and for commuting 300 miles per week. It cost with a BRC conversion already installed. Currently, I am paying 71.9p per litre for LPG and taking into consideration the increased consumption of LPG, I get the equivalent of 70 to 80 mpg.

In contrast, my 2.0 Mercedes A Class CVT diesel averages 47 mpg, although I have managed 60 mpg with very careful driving.

 

[andyh2]

That's a fair point regarding bio fuels Flecc.

I wonder what sort of mpg could be attained with a 15kw ICE Twizy and a 0.5kw ICE bicycle assist motor.

I started to do some calcs for charging an e-bike with a Honda generator. I got as far as calculating it would use about 1l fuel to charge enough for 110 miles ie about 500mpg. I didn't make any allowance for the extra 13kg dry weight of generator + fuel, or for converting from 12v to 26v, but even so it looked quite good.

To recharge from mains would be about 0.2ppm. To recharge from generator would cost 1.2ppm. But if you assume battery cost of £400 for 10,000 miles over 2 years and take out the tax element (5% on home elec, 20% VAT on battery and 65% fuel duty and VAT on petrol) the respective costs become 3.5ppm for recharge from home elec and 3.7ppm for generator. That makes no allowance for purchase of generator or servicing. Taking out the tax elements gives a fairer comparison of relative resource use as defined by current market prices.

I stopped calculating as realistically it should be more efficient to power the bike direct from the ICE motor instead of using as a generator. That Honda generator has a max output of 1kw and a 500w version should be smaller and lighter.

I'm very happy with my e-bike, but I find it very frustrating that we could have a real reduction in resource use by supporting low power ICE which could be available very quickly and instead we are supporting electric vehicles which only make sense because of the legal framework. (That might be different in a country like France with a high proportion of nuclear power, but that's a whole other debate )

If we supported lower power ICE vehicles then over time our expectations of power and speed would be reduced. If / when the limitations of electric power are overcome then that reduced expectation would make it more possible for electric vehicles to meet those expectations, rather than our current 'inflated' ones of very high power and long distances.

 

[flecc]

That certainly makes a lot of sense Andy, and in a sense I've already been down this route over 40 years ago. Back then Honda made some microcars, light four seaters looking like small hatchbacks but with twin cylinder, air cooled low capacity engines. Identical apart from the 360 cc or 600 cc engines, they were called the N360 and N600. Sadly only the "big" engine one was being brought into Britain at the time and called the Civic so I had to buy that. It was more than adequate, good for 90 mph, the 360 cc one said to be good for over 80 mph. I commuted a near 30 mile round trip for three years with that, for a while with two adult passengers as well, and used it for most of my other motoring. They also made a 402 cc model, the 360 being for Japan and the 402 and 600 cc models for export markets.

Of course the original Citroen 2cv also had a 375 cc twin cylinder 9 bhp engine, increased twice eventually to 600 cc. These sort of cars proved the viability of small ic, and with power outputs per cc more than doubled by progress now, they'd be even more viable now.

It's not widely known, but the Hillman Imp was originally to be a twin cylinder car of this sort, but on learning of the impending Mini design, they panicked and instead adopted a redesign of the Coventry Climax alloy four cylinder 750 cc engine, enlarging it to the Mini's 850 cc.

So there's plenty of precedent, including the Japanese Kei microcar class for under 360 cc cars.

Here's a photo of the Honda N series that I had:

 

[banbury frank]

Hi Tata Nano £1,700 in India

Tata Nano in India - Prices, Reviews & Photos - CarWale

The have full uk approval and a 3 cylinder 850 cc diesel 100 MPG engine ready price should be around £3000

with 5 year warranty


Tata Nano crash test by autocar.co.uk - YouTube
test shows ncap off 4 *

Frank

 

[flecc]

That's ok for cheap Frank, but too big an engine, it was really small ic engines we were thinking of. There are loads of cars with 800 cc and larger engines, we lack the true microcars for urban/suburban use, using engines less than half that size.

 

[Deleted member 4366]

Surely it's about how far you can go with a litre than the size of the engine. Anyway, if you must have a small engine, there's alwas the Piaggio Ape 218cc petrol or 422cc diesel:
Piaggio Ape TM 703 Panel Van - For big deliveries
or the Aixam with 400 or 505cc diesel and top speed of 30mph,you wouldn't want a much smaller engine:
Home
I had the idea to make a hybrid out of an OS 52 four stroke model aero engine connected to brushless aero motor as a generator to charge my battery while going along, but of course it's illegal. I even thought of mounting in in a trailer to charge an extra battery which I could swap when the one on my bike was empty, but then I got a proper generator to do it. I might try it out at next Tour de Presteigne.

 

[banbury frank]

Hi not illegal if you have 2 battery's one on charge one running the Bike

Frank

 

[flecc]

Surely it's about how far you can go with a litre than the size of the engine. Anyway, if you must have a small engine, there's alwas the Piaggio Ape 218cc petrol or 422cc diesel:
Piaggio Ape TM 703 Panel Van - For big deliveries
or the Aixam with 400 or 505cc diesel and top speed of 30mph,you wouldn't want a much smaller engine:
Home

They are very crude and too slow and noisy though, no point in holding up traffic unnecessarily. Far more refined and good performing cars are possible with around 300 to 400 cc and economy as the Kei class cars like my old Honda N series showed. They'd be so much better with today's engine advances.

And I'd like to see something like the Renault Twizy with a very small ic engine, overcoming all the problems battery power introduces.

 

[lemmy]

Taking the opposite tack, back in the 70s after the petrol rationing and the 50mph limit, I bought a special economy edition Renault 5.

This had the same power as the 850cc engined 5 but was a detuned 1600cc. It was lovely to drive because of the low down torque and the unstressed engine gave many more mpg than my previous 850 had done.

With this one, even the insurance company accepted that it was an economy model and it was rated as such.

The trouble is, human beings....well, male ones, at least, seem to have 'faster is better' hard wired into their brains. In fact in give and take journeys, the 50mph limit in Heath's time made little difference to overall journey times.

For its energy content, a gallon of petrol is unmatched for cheapness and it's a shame to waste it on 4 wheel drives and high powered cars which go mostly go nowhere further or faster and simply serve the ego.

Even if a source is abundant that is no reason to waste it. Even reading that, I am aware how out of touch with modern times I am

 

[andyh2]

Our ambivalent attitude to speed limits is quite interesting in all this as well. So despite a national maximum of 70mph it's OK to have 200mph motorbikes and cars. However we are quite happy to specify maximum speeds and / or power attainable by vehicles in certain categories eg
15mph e-bikes
engine 50cc 30mph max for mopeds
Light motorcycle 63mph, 125cc, 11kw
A2 motorcycle licence 25kw with no speed or weight restrictions.

With further odd arrangements for HGVs which have speed limiters at 56mph (although highway code still allows 70mph on motorway) and PCVs speed limiters at 62mph (although highway code only allows 60mph on motorway).

In effect it seems that restrictions for relatively small groups of the electorate are politically possible, but not so for large voting groups. However there are several potential ways to encourage lower powered vehicles (car tax, vehicle excise duty, congestion charging rates). If they became the choice for most people it might then be politically possible to bring in restrictions on what are currently main stream vehicles.

I'd pay good money to watch Jeremy Clarkson test the 2015 15kw Lamborghini or Aston Martin

 

[flecc]

Our ambivalent attitude to speed limits is quite interesting in all this as well. So despite a national maximum of 70mph it's OK to have 200mph motorbikes and cars. However we are quite happy to specify maximum speeds and / or power attainable by vehicles in certain categories eg
15mph e-bikes
engine 50cc 30mph max for mopeds
Light motorcycle 63mph, 125cc, 11kw
A2 motorcycle licence 25kw with no speed or weight restrictions.

Some of these might seem odd but are really rational. The reason e-bikes are regulated is that they are ridden by anyone, untrained, untested, unlicenced, uninsured. Motor vehicles with number plates are driven by trained, tested, licenced, insured and traceable people, so their behaviour can be regulated rather than in most cases their vehicle restricted.

And some of the vehicle regulation relates to operator's age, the vehicle restriction no longer applying once a certain age is reached.