Brexit, for once some facts.

OxygenJames

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actually... it may be possible.
I talked to someone about this subject yesterday in a London park.

People living in London are of course looking forward to the day when car fumes won't be a problem and nobody is forced to ride a bike.
I was trying to sell him my idea of a secondary battery good for 50 mile for e-cars.
He told me to forget about it.
His view is simple: in less than a generation, only self driving/automated driven cars are allowed in London's streets. If you want to drive a car, go to a theme park. Young people won't have to learn to drive any more. People won't need to 'own' a car, the number of cars will drop very significantly.
All the cars know where and when to go for a recharge not to overload the grid.
The future is nearer than you think.
Sounds like some utopian dream. People like to be in control. Self-driving cars are not about to take over. To think so is to ignore that simple human drive - to be in control. It runs deep in our psyche. Why do you think 'take back control' worked so well for the Leave campaign?

To think that you will be able to ban people from driving their own cars in London with a decade or so? No way. That is not going to happen.
 
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Woosh

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I've given a disagree to the self driving automated cars which won't surprise you. It isn't going to happen on almost all of London's streets.

But I agree that the number of London cars will reduce, it already has been falling for a long while now, but that's been due to the big expansion in cycling and public transport. When Crossrail opens there will be another big drop in cars entering.

The future that's near is further increases in public transport and more restrictions on car use, such as the forthcoming expansion of the low emission zone to a far greater area. I can also see whole streets or even small areas banned to private cars, there's already a part time ban on i.c. vehicles delivering in one area, restricted to electric only. A larger charging zone or more charging zones are also possible, even likely since it's already being discussed.

All this is far cheaper than an automated car future, more profitable too and much more acceptable to the public.
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I think you underestimate the effect of self driving technology. It is the key to turn all the batteries in electric cars into reservoirs for solar and wind generated electricity.
Imagine the UK will go all out for self driving electric cars.
We would need only about 10 millions of them, each will drive about 50,000-70,000 miles a year instead of 40 millions cars, each driven 7,000 miles a year plus a large number of taxis, busses and trains.
The amount of energy is much less than the petrol we pour into our cars at the moment.
 

flecc

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is there any mileage (no pun intended) in having charging circuits under the road instead of having fixed points. Obviously not the answer at the moment but if it is to become a reality some different thinking is necessary
It's rather wasteful without very intimate contact, but apart from that I think the way our streets are with so much infrastructure already in them, like sewers, water, electricity and gas supplies and those repairs needed will be a big restriction.
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Woosh

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It's rather wasteful without very intimate contact, but apart from that I think the way our streets are with so much infrastructure already in them, like sewers, water, electricity and gas supplies and those repairs needed will be a big restriction.
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driverless cars solve that problem too.
If we replace all the cars in London by automated cars, instead of 2.5 million cars, we'll need only half a million.
 
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flecc

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I think you underestimate the effect of self driving technology.
I think not, and personal e-cars support the grid in the same way anyway, they already do in Denmark.

But I think you underestimate the public fury at losing their cars.
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Woosh

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I think not, and personal e-cars support the grid in the same way anyway, they already do in Denmark.

But I think you underestimate the public fury at losing their cars.
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Look at the rate of car ownership in London: fewer people want to own a car each year following the next, especially among younger Londoners.
The rate of decline was less than 0.5% a year before 2006, accelerating to 2% a year in 2011.
Uber has made the job easier: if you share an Uber car, you pay half price for your fare.

A 2017 study by RethinkX, a technology think tank, claims there will be a mass shift in vehicle ownership approximately a decade after self-driving cars are legalised for public use. At that point, annual use of ride-hailing services will cost approximately $3,400 a year, while car ownership will cost $9,000 a year. The $5,600 gap might be the tipping point for changing the paradigm of car ownership for many millennials who have used the Uber Pool service since they were young. The study also shows that Transportation as a Service (TaaS) will provide 95 per cent of the passenger miles traveled within 10 years of the widespread regulatory approval of self-driving cars. By 2030, self-owned internal combustion engine cars will represent 40 per cent of the cars in the U.S. vehicle fleet, but they will provide just 5 per cent of passenger miles
 
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Woosh

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Ubers without drivers should be very cheap.
TaaS, transportation as a service, that's what most self driving cars will be. Much cheaper than owning a car and if people are not allowed to drive on busy routes, automated cars will be faster too.
 
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50Hertz

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your situation is more like flexi-time.
most people on zero hour contracts cannot choose when to work. They are also immediately put under pressure if they say no.
Yes, I imagine that if they say no to a particular day, the threat of never being asked to work again is ever present. I suppose it’s like being put on permanent stand-by, but without the stand-by pay or protections. How did we regress to a situation like that?
 

flecc

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Look at the rate of car ownership in London: fewer people want to own a car each year following the next, especially among younger Londoners.
The rate of decline was less than 0.5% a year before 2006, accelerating to 2% a year in 2011.
Yes, as I posted. But it's not Central London residents who provide all the traffic, most of it is in or comes from outer boroughs and outside London.

We will not see automated cars running round most of London in the near future, such as the ten years of this discussion about e-car adoption. With current technology they won't cope with all the current traffic including cyclists, and constantly changing road circumstances. In the USA they are already causing big problems for other traffic in a couple of city trials, and there's no way other traffic can be banned within that short time.

And that other traffic isn't all cars by far, much of it is vans, trucks, buses etc which cannot be removed.

I can see possible limited introductions of automation in the central areas, maybe with installed route guidance systems and restrictions of other traffic. But I doubt I will be encountering any driverless cars in my outer London borough within the next ten years, or any reduction in car ownership here within that period.

We don't seem able to even repair the potholes, many of ours would bring a Google car to a standstill, and I can't see any sensors successfully detecting all potholes and avoiding them.
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Woosh

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I think not, and personal e-cars support the grid in the same way anyway, they already do in Denmark.

But I think you underestimate the public fury at losing their cars.
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driverless cars can be directed toward a charging station when and where it suits the grid while if you own the car, your time and place are picked to suit you, not the grid.
 

Woosh

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Yes and if Unicorns were real everybody would be happy too.
driverless cars are real enough.
Billions are still being invested into this technology every year.
 

oyster

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flecc

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I think you underestimate the effect of self driving technology. It is the key to turn all the batteries in electric cars into reservoirs for solar and wind generated electricity.
Imagine the UK will go all out for self driving electric cars.
We would need only about 10 millions of them, each will drive about 50,000-70,000 miles a year instead of 40 millions cars, each driven 7,000 miles a year plus a large number of taxis, busses and trains.
Multiple fantasies I'm afraid. People mostly want to travel by day, and that's when the most current is needed from the grid. So you can't have it both ways, the cars in use and suppying the grid at the same time. Nor could the people all travel by night, since that's when most of the charging is needed at times of least grid demand if we are not to greatly increase generation.

For similar time needed reasons 10 million automated cars won't replace 40 million private cars, all the buses and taxis and longer distance trains.

The people will still keep and use their private cars far into the future. Remember that even if we do ban i.c. car sales in 2030, they'll still be in use for at least 20 years thereafter, plus all the personal electric ones,

Realistically the ban will probably revert to the present UK one of 2040, meaning owner driven i.c cars running around to beyond 2050. It will take that 30 years to downscale the international oil industry to a much lower level, those companies and national exchequers will see to that.
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Woosh

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Well they are about as real as Brexit being a good idea...
let's say your average driving need is 10 miles a day, that's 3kWH as energy consumption a day for getting around town, or 125W.
The national grid capacity is about 80GW. If we went all out to automated electric cars, that would put an extra load of 8.2GW.
That load is flexible, the car can even go for a couple of days without needing recharge.
Not as impossible as some people think.
 

Woosh

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People mostly want to travel by day, and that's when the most current is needed from the grid.
if you follow that line, it explains why you can't see my point. Your e-car does not need recharging every day. Imagine you rent out your battery to your neighbours, buying electricity when it's cheap and sell it back to them in day time, you could make a couple of £ each day.
If you share a self driving car, each car can serve on average maybe 5-7 people, driving 50-70 miles a day. Your Leaf has an autonomy of about 150 miles, enough for a couple of days.
 
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