Electric cars.

I sat in a pub garden in IOW, and a local said, yeah you can sit here and watch it raining on the mainland and it never gets here.

 

Wednesday's Lottery numbers would be nice, many thanks

 

14 28 13 26 53 104, good luck.

 

Hi,

We've visited Ambleside many times in The Lake District each time it's been wonderful weather. Hayes Garden Center is our favourite place; one glorious day we were outside at Hayes; my wife seated at a table me at the kiosk buying drinks when suddenly there was a sudden tremendous bang as an RAF fighter plane almost took my cap off. We used to stop at Settle on the way up and buy fish and chips just across the road from the car park; nice fish and chips too. Getting behind a caravan on the way above Skipton was always a pain there being few passing places. 80 miles from here so a nice day out

Years ago whilst on the way up to Ambleside driving on a dual carriageway in our Citroen 2CV we passed a Ferrari F40 the Ferrari must have been in first gear at tick-over.

Kind regards, Colin.

 

Fun fact about the power of marketing. The Ferrari F40 was marketed as being ridiculously fast, with a top speed of 225 kph at a time when everyone was still almost exclusively familiar with imperial. 225 kph is about 130 mph. Certainly fast for its day, but hardly amazing when the 2 litre version of the ford Granada could do around 120 mph if the wind was blowing just right.

 

F40 had a top speed of 225 MPH.

 

I've just googled it. I stand corrected. That really is ridiculously fast.

 

Hi,

Our Citroen 2CV must have been capable of at least 230MPH because we passed the Ferrari on a duel carriageway.

Electric cars are supposed to be the way to go to save our planet as are wind turbines and solar panels; I think its a lot of rubbish and I won't be dashing out to buy an EV; solar panels or wind turbine;

My friend Tony has just sent me two very interesting videos; here's one of them;



Tidal power will be still here when gas reserves run out and if done correctly could replace gas entirely; I'm sure the waves crashing into our shoreline would generate enough power to put a few candles out and produce cheap power not relying on any other country but what do I know.

Kind regards, Colin.

 

They were on about nuclear fusion yesterday and how they have finally got more power out than they put in.
That seems to have been a long time happening as I thought I heard it talked about 40 yrs ago, may be more.
And then there was the Advanced Gas cooled reactors, I seem to remember them being called, way back in the 70s, we were world leaders until some government, not sure which, just pulled the plug on funding after wasting god knows how many billions on the project.

 

Yes electric cars have failings and there are issues about some of the materials used in the batteries and motors, but overall they are better from a pollution and climate change point of view.

Again they are not ideal,but have come on in leaps and bounds over the past decade and are continuing to improve and are better than alternatives. Hydrogen will be a niche fuel for the foreseeable future.
The worst thing you can do with fossil fuels is burn them.

Tidal power has been the coming thing for as long as I can remember, just like nuclear fusion.
France has had a successful tidal power station for some decades, over here there were proposals for schemes in the Wash, Swansea Bay, the Severn Esturary, however the Government would not fund them or act as guarantor for private funding; then the first thing that happened after the announcement of a proposal was the announcement of a protest group to oppose the idea, so planning permission was not going to happen. The French are less fussy about things like planning permission.
Other schemes relying on wave power or tidal power have been prototyped and the wreckage retrieved, sometimes, a few months later. There has been progress, but currently tidal power of this type is more expensive per kwh than wind or solar.
note both wind and tidal power fractionally slow the Earth's rotation making the day longer.

Nuclear fusion has been 30 years away since the 50's and while the announcement yesterday was excellent progress the extra energy they got out was enough to boil a couple of kettles.
Also the power in was measured as the power in the laser beams hitting the targets, not the power required to generate the laser beams; so overall still in deficit.
Sadly I think it is still 30 years away, but this time that's a more realistic 30 years. Also it's not going to be cheap or small.