Electric cars.

Am I the only one that seems aware that there are many parts of things including electric cars that are reliant on oil? Oil is needed to make plastics among other things, so if we are not refining oil in quantity to power our vehicles, what are we going to use as alternatives for plastics? Even wind turbines need oil - around 60 gallons in each one for cooling/lubrication.

This is the thing that boils my pee with pretty much everything nowadays - it is all or nothing and no balance; worse still it is joined by a strong "want it all, want it now and sod you if it crushes you or destroys your life" attitude, often backed up with science that is only allowed to give the 'right' answer.

 

I believe that there has been a steel developed (I think Volvo were involved) that does not require coke, but it does require vast amounts of electricity in its manufacture, and it costs a packet.

There seems to be a general lack of understanding of how things get made - whilst at the same time being utterly hypocritical/ignorant to ship anything and everything in from China.

We are sat here, quite literally about to freeze pensioners and vulnerable folks to death to try and solve a percentage of the 1% of global emissions we are responsible for... by buying vehicles that
are made in China, containing goodness knows what in terms of rare earth metals, made with cheap steel using coke as you rightly point out, then shipping those vehicles half way round the world for us to tootle about in for a handful of years before we are told that they are the next environmental disaster and we need to change again.

 

Oh, and cost savings between diesel and electric are currently around £75 per month (maximum) thanks to the new rates for our domestic energy. Given that a half decent electric car is circa £45k, it is going to take a good few months at £75 to break even.

 

I have been running a little spreadsheet as I am trying to get a view of what vehicle I should be looking at next, or whether I should refinance and keep the current one. One option that arose was a plug-in hybrid, allowing for short journeys to be made on electric power with a petrol engine for longer journeys - the BMW 530e ticked a lot of boxes (to my surprise) and is capable of doing 90-95% of our use on electric power:



As it stands, 100% use of electric would save £76.01 per month (based on 7500 miles per year); I have just had a conversation with someone on Twitter who has filled his works van in a Texaco station, with the only diesel:



At that cost, £1.939 per litre, it is £88.64 per month cheaper to use electricity. To do so, involves buying/leasing a new car of course, but then if the cost of that is broadly similar to the current car... at what point does it seem sensible to protect oneself and make the move? Is this how we are going to have our hand forced?

 

That and ferry hulls to sit and rust at Fergusson Marine...

 

Indeed and it would seem that is exactly how they want it. This is also trending very strongly today, as cost is going to remain one of the biggest hurdles for anyone to move to an EV (with cruddy charging infrastructure being the other)

 

You don't. There hasn't been road tax for years, just vehicle duty. It's a shame as the roads could really do with it! But I completely support the point