The "death" of the car, (as we know it)

[Danidl]

Which is silly since wave power is merely wind power with much of it's energy removed.
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Not silly at all,...
Granted wave energy is a derived form of energy coming from wind, but Wave power is a more concentrated form of energy, where mother nature has done the concentrating for us, and even better, is a time delayed resource, so helps reduce fluctuations in energy. Since we cannot undo mother nature's work, we may as well exploit it..

 

[Danidl]

That's a web page, the facts say otherwise if examined. Remember he claimed 100% of the world's energy from solar in 12 years time.

If there was very good chance of that, or anything like it happening, why would so many countries be building and planning power stations with at least 60 years lifespan. That includes the UK, the huge 3200 mW Hinckley Point starting construction for commissioning sometime in the 2020s, and a number of Chinese nuclear stations planned to follow.

And why would the world scrap all their hydro power stations, many new built, in favour of spending a fortune on solar, merely to achieve his silly prediction of 100% solar. Or scrap all the wind power fields just commissioned and still being erected, for the same reason.

With the greatest respect AK, I believe you should allow more time for your critical faculties to make deductions from the facts.
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Whenever the discussion on sustainable energy decends as this one is in danger of doing , I always recommend that the protagonists, would back off a little and instead take the time to read David McKay, freely available book, .. both available in hard copy form and as a free PDF called "sustainable energy without the hot air". . There is no better waffle free authoritive treatment.... From a fellow physicist.

 

[flecc]

Not silly at all,...
Granted wave energy is a derived form of energy coming from wind, but Wave power is a more concentrated form of energy, where mother nature has done the concentrating for us, and even better, is a time delayed resource, so helps reduce fluctuations in energy. Since we cannot undo mother nature's work, we may as well exploit it..

There are far better ways of deriving energy from the sea, also having delay and generation spread abilities.
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[Danidl]

There are far better ways of deriving energy from the sea, also having delay and generation spread abilities.
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As far as I know, energy from the sea is limited to
1. Collection of surface wave energy
2. Currents underwater similar to wind turbines but stubbier
3. Tidal barrages
4. Thermo Cline , heat machines
5. Osmotic pressure at riverine saltwater interfaces.
6. Harvesting thorium and other radioactive material.
Are you aware of others?
Each of these has opportunity costs, and limitations.

 

[flecc]

As far as I know, energy from the sea is limited to
1. Collection of surface wave energy
2. Currents underwater similar to wind turbines but stubbier
3. Tidal barrages
4. Thermo Cline , heat machines
5. Osmotic pressure at riverine saltwater interfaces.
6. Harvesting thorium and other radioactive material.
Are you aware of others?
Each of these has opportunity costs, and limitations.

Agreed, I meant tidal barrage. Extremely expensive initially but with high productivity, faultless reliability, very low maintenance costs and near permanent extremely long life it's ultimately a low cost option.
.

 

[Danidl]

Agreed, I meant tidal barrage. Extremely expensive initially but with high productivity, faultless reliability, very low maintenance costs and near permanent extremely long life it's ultimately a low cost option.
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The maintenance costs are higher than at first sight... sand moving in turbine wheels is pretty abrasive and sea life growth barnacles etc a constant annoyance. There is a very nice one on the rance in northern Brittany. But once the civil engineering is done the bulk of the capital expenditure is done. There are unfortunately only a limited number of exploitable sites as you need to have a West coast location and a large inlet with a narrow bay mouth.

 

[Ruadh495]

This is seriously flawed logic. The whole point about the Uber App is that they have ten's of thousands of potential customers directly linked to thousands of drivers, all done totally automatically, no human telephone controllers. That is why it is so much cheaper and more efficient.

This might help albeit not London but still, very big cities

The next step will be driverless EV's, but we have done that one to death, at the moment.

Cheaper and more efficient than ordinary taxis, certainly, but the Uber system still doesn't address the problem of the vehicles travelling without a fare. That's at least 40% of their mileage (according to the source given) which is completely wasted. Private cars do very few miles that don't effectively transport the driver somewhere; taking the car to it's MOT and back is about the only equivalent I can think of.

The "flawed logic" lies in treating Uber (and conventional taxis) as part of the public transport system, and so regarding a taxi journey as a car journey avoided. It's not; it's a car journey plus the extra distance the vehicle traveled since dropping it's last fare / leaving it's base.

Replacing personal cars with Uber or similar could save some space currently used for parking, but it will increase overall car mileage. This might not impact emissions much, if we assume the Ubers are more efficient than most private cars (they do tend to be hybrids) and also will be running warm most of the time, but it will increase congestion.

 

[Danidl]

Cheaper and more efficient than ordinary taxis, certainly, but the Uber system still doesn't address the problem of the vehicles travelling without a fare. That's at least 40% of their mileage (according to the source given) which is completely wasted. Private cars do very few miles that don't effectively transport the driver somewhere; taking the car to it's MOT and back is about the only equivalent I can think of.

The "flawed logic" lies in treating Uber (and conventional taxis) as part of the public transport system, and so regarding a taxi journey as a car journey avoided. It's not; it's a car journey plus the extra distance the vehicle traveled since dropping it's last fare / leaving it's base.

Replacing personal cars with Uber or similar could save some space currently used for parking, but it will increase overall car mileage. This might not impact emissions much, if we assume the Ubers are more efficient than most private cars (they do tend to be hybrids) and also will be running warm most of the time, but it will increase congestion.

As a person who rarely takes taxis, or hackney and is hazy about the distinction between them, my observations would be along the lines of..
. There is about the same amount of energy consumed in making a car and dismantling it at end of life as there is in filling it with fuel during its working life. So increasing the use of the existence of the current stock is more energy efficient.
The construction costs of parking facilities, the real estate they occupy, and the energy encurred in building and maintaining them is an added expense.
Systems which allow the hired car, to pick up passengers, deposit them, and then pick someone else nearby must be more efficient than owner driven cars to locations at all these levels. Think in terms of airports and adjacent cities .

Will they increase congestion?.. not if it means less parked cars. Roads would functionally be two lanes wider if there was no on road parking. The use of the IT infrastructure to organise private journeys by taxis of whatever means, should mean less wasted journeys and less wasted fuel and less car parks.
And as the previous poster listed, fossil fuel cars, at operating temperature are less polluting than engines starting from cold.
The downside is that there would be less people employed in carpark construction, crash repair, tyre imports, car manufacture etc

 

[flecc]

The "flawed logic" lies in treating Uber (and conventional taxis) as part of the public transport system, and so regarding a taxi journey as a car journey avoided. It's not; it's a car journey plus the extra distance the vehicle traveled since dropping it's last fare / leaving it's base.

It's far worse in London since UBER virtually never replaces a private car journey. The combination of severe congestion and prohibitive Central London parking charges means people rarely ever use their cars to travel into the central area where most of the UBER bookings are made, unless they are forced to have them available during the working day . Indeed a very high proportion of Londoners don't even bother to own a car since it would be so useless to them. Despite the high London wealth it has one of the lowest car ownership ratios in the UK.

For example, within this decade and living in Outer London I had a period when I needed to go into Central London a number of times over a seven month period. Despite owning two cars I didn't use them for any of those journeys and wouldn't have dreamed of doing so.
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[SHAN]

This has grown legs since I started it. I live off grid, solar, wind and an oil fired generator since 1992, works fine.

 

[soundwave]

 

[tommie]

The maintenance costs are higher than at first sight... sand moving in turbine wheels is pretty abrasive and sea life growth barnacles etc a constant annoyance. There is a very nice one on the rance in northern Brittany. But once the civil engineering is done the bulk of the capital expenditure is done. There are unfortunately only a limited number of exploitable sites as you need to have a West coast location and a large inlet with a narrow bay mouth.

Isn`t there a Turbine setup at the entrance to Strangford Lough (Down coast) that runs off the in/out currents?

Ok, more here for the North coast in 2018
http://www.irishnews.com/business/2016/02/09/news/work-on-massive-tidal-energy-park-to-commence-in-2018-411706/

 

[Danidl]

Yes.. the Openhydro operation manufacturing in Greenore is a world leader. The strangford Lough kit was if memory serves, an 1/8 scale version of what they plan as the production model

 

[Ruadh495]

As a person who rarely takes taxis, or hackney and is hazy about the distinction between them, my observations would be along the lines of..
. There is about the same amount of energy consumed in making a car and dismantling it at end of life as there is in filling it with fuel during its working life. So increasing the use of the existence of the current stock is more energy efficient.
The construction costs of parking facilities, the real estate they occupy, and the energy encurred in building and maintaining them is an added expense.
Systems which allow the hired car, to pick up passengers, deposit them, and then pick someone else nearby must be more efficient than owner driven cars to locations at all these levels. Think in terms of airports and adjacent cities .

Will they increase congestion?.. not if it means less parked cars. Roads would functionally be two lanes wider if there was no on road parking. The use of the IT infrastructure to organise private journeys by taxis of whatever means, should mean less wasted journeys and less wasted fuel and less car parks.
And as the previous poster listed, fossil fuel cars, at operating temperature are less polluting than engines starting from cold.
The downside is that there would be less people employed in carpark construction, crash repair, tyre imports, car manufacture etc

All good points (though the cost of manufacture/disposal one is perhaps more an argument against scrappage), but are they enough to overcome that 40% of mileage done "empty"? That nearly doubles the "cost" of every taxi mile.

Of course that inefficiency is likely to decrease with increasing usage, but it increases again with declining population density (as we move out of the city centre). Outside city centre shopping areas, movement patterns tend to be less favourable. You get large numbers of people arriving at certain points at certain times, but few leaving at that time (ie workplaces at 8.30am).

Another factor which would increase the inefficiency would be additional operators. To be efficient all the taxis and potential fares have to share the same online platform, so a monopoly is required. Such a monopoly should be state controlled. So TfL should be looking to license the technology from Uber, apply it to the black cabs and rescind all other taxi licenses.

I have no doubt that the Uber system can greatly increase the efficiency of taxi services, but I remain to be convinced of the potential for automated "Ubers" to replace the private car. The technology with most potential there remains the bicycle, combined with public transport (particularly rail) for longer distances. Though if the bicycle were going to replace the car it would have done so by now... Maybe e-bikes will tip the balance?

 

[Ruadh495]

This has grown legs since I started it. I live off grid, solar, wind and an oil fired generator since 1992, works fine.

Interesting. How much land do you have? I'd guess you have to be quite isolated to get away with putting up wind generators? Do you run your oil generator on biofuels (ie chip fat)? Wood or oil for heating, or does it run your heat too. Waste heat off the generator perhaps?

I'm planning something similar, so very much genuine questions.

 

[flecc]

The "death" of the car, as we know it.

They die all the time, it's why we have the AA and RAC.
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[PeterL]

Replacing personal cars with Uber or similar could save some space currently used for parking, but it will increase overall car mileage. This might not impact emissions much, if we assume the Ubers are more efficient than most private cars (they do tend to be hybrids) and also will be running warm most of the time, but it will increase congestion.

Not sure how you work that, perhaps I misunderstand? Agree that there would a saving in parking spaces but there is much more potential for efficiencies with the likes of Uber than that. Far more than to just consider the vehicle itself. We already have the Uber driver being 60% engaged, let's say over an 10 hour period (easier maths) that's transporting lots of different people somewhere for a full six hours of his/her shift. Could well be a saving of 12, or more, different journeys. It is there that the efficiencies come into play. One car doing the work of 12. Not sure what the comparable figures for conventional taxis, think it was 40%).Thinking about this one can only assume that as Uber begin to dominate the conventional taxi will become less efficient and so on?

Another factor which would increase the inefficiency would be additional operators. To be efficient all the taxis and potential fares have to share the same online platform, so a monopoly is required. Such a monopoly should be state controlled. So TfL should be looking to license the technology from Uber, apply it to the black cabs and rescind all other taxi licenses.

One of the problems with that being it would never have happened. You need market forces to create opportunities - someone needs to make a profit out of current inefficiencies.

 

[PeterL]

They die all the time, it's why we have the AA and RAC.
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They too, of course.

 

[Steb]

Interesting. How much land do you have? I'd guess you have to be quite isolated to get away with putting up wind generators? Do you run your oil generator on biofuels (ie chip fat)? Wood or oil for heating, or does it run your heat too. Waste heat off the generator perhaps?

I'm planning something similar, so very much genuine questions.

i was wondering the same, however - having lived on a very small sailboat (27 foot) for a year (to be fair in sunny Martinique) I am very aware of the difference between what we need and what we think we need. a laptop really is as good as a desktop, and a TV (if one isn't stuck in a country blanketed in fog, rain, impenetrable gloom for half the year), cooking can be very low energy (pressure cooker) as can cleaning (thermal shower, plastic 20L bag, black on one side, left in sun for four hours), transport (ordinary bike does journeys up to 10 miles practically). I only fired up the diesel once a month to check whether it works and whether the fuel's clean. a simple life is much more enjoyable, most of our "needs" are imagined.

 

[Ruadh495]

Not sure how you work that, perhaps I misunderstand? Agree that there would a saving in parking spaces but there is much more potential for efficiencies with the likes of Uber than that. Far more than to just consider the vehicle itself. We already have the Uber driver being 60% engaged, let's say over an 10 hour period (easier maths) that's transporting lots of different people somewhere for a full six hours of his/her shift. Could well be a saving of 12, or more, different journeys. It is there that the efficiencies come into play. One car doing the work of 12. Not sure what the comparable figures for conventional taxis, think it was 40%).Thinking about this one can only assume that as Uber begin to dominate the conventional taxi will become less efficient and so on?

But those journeys aren't "saved", that's the problem. All those 12 individuals still used a car to travel the distance they were traveling. So not a case of one car doing the work of 12 (that's called a "bus"), but one car making 12 journeys, plus the bits in between. That is assuming Uber rides aren't usually shared, which could introduce some additional efficiency.