Petrol and diesel engines to be phased out

My German mate Ralf was telling me that German government are phasing out diesels. This prompted me to do some research and amazingly I found this article - http://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/future-cars/news/a31097/german-government-votes-to-ban-internal-combustion-engines-by-2030/

Could this be possible? Seems a long way off, but actually that's only 13 years away, and we know how time seems to go quicker the older one gets. Scary!

No petrol or diesel engines? Crazy! Yes it's Germany, but this could spread across France, Spain, all of Europe in fact. Even Brexit may not stop the march of the greenies!

Like I've said many times before around the camp fire, I'm glad (not to mention very lucky) I've lived/am living through my period in history, when driving early on was free of speed cameras, sleeping policemen, Sunday afternoon drives on empty roads were a joy, fuel was cheap by comparison to now, you could even afford to race Range Rovers off-road, etc. etc. etc. That's just motoring thoughts of course, even worse to have threat of a potential world war just around the corner like in the first half of last century. Very lucky indeed!

It is coming at some point. There is a limit to fossil fuels and one day extracting the dregs will just be too costly. To be honest, if some company could produce a swap-in alternative fuel engine that gave the same performance as Tembo's 200 Tdi and wasn't insanely complicated to hook up, I would go for it. I think 2030 is going to be more than a bit ambitious however. For personal vehicles maybe, but replace all the hydrocarbon engines in lorry's and heavy equipment? And it may work in Europe but the rest of the world? Africa on electric cars? I also have a hard time envisioning a bunch of Americans standing around their gleaming rods and bragging about how many watts this baby cranks out!

Quite! Then of course there will always be special dispensations for classic cars, by which time half of the Land Rovers in existence will be of the correct age.

In a previous life I worked for a large oil company as a test driver we were running test cars normal family hatchbacks as well as large executive saloons that were capable of well in excess of 90mpg in the early 1990s with the aid of fuel and oil additives.

We also had a small fleet of 1600cc 16 valve family saloons that to my knowledge we run for thousands of miles with no oil in the sump but were run for an hour or so with a medium that was then drained.
The cars would then do 500 miles before going into the workshop to have the engines stripped down to there constituent parts measured up and rebuilt.
Then 1000 miles before the procedure was repeated I personally did 5 sets of the tests on the car so at least one of them had done 5500 miles oil less, the test were still running when I left to pursue a career in ballet.

And they were also doing experiments on Hydrogen and other alternative fuels including hydro and magnetic engines.

I remember one of the scientists telling me the alternative to fossil fuels were already in place but they were masked and patents etc were bought up and there was no was the large oil companies would let them out into the public domain until they could secure their financial security from fossil fuels.

Oil companies and governments will keep on with fossil fuels until the inevitable happens as the revenue strain from the production and taxation are so critical to them.
I expected the obvious to happen after being conned into swapping our petrol cars for diesels (more economical ??) the tax on said diesel increased year on year.
In the not too distant future the tax will steadily increase until in the name of saving the planet diesel cars (not sure about HGVs as that's another argument) will be taxed so heavily it will make your nose bleed and head spin.

Yep, it's all about generating income, No. 1 priority for the government.

Its always about money and remember the oil lobby are very rich and extremely powerful, do you know you can even get a nuclear powered car running off Thorium and about £60 worth of thorium can power it for over 100,000 miles.

Never heard of Thorium before, sounds like something they'd use on 60's Star Trek. They reckon a car has been invented that can run for 100 years with just 8 grammes of the fuel.

A great boast that, nothing to do with the fact that nobody around today would ever live to verify/disprove the theory! A definite win win for the claimants.

I thought someone had got a car to run on water??

Or am I just dreaming!

Yes, they did and were immediately silenced, there are many variants of hydrogen as it is the most abundant element and it makes sense to run vehicles on them.

I run a variant of that, this is called HHO and is hydrogen + hydrogen + oxygen and is made solely from rain water and wind power, basically you make a stainless steel HHO generator and fill it with rain water and apply 2 volts per negative plate and you get hydrogen X 2 and oxygen X 1 part.

Around 30 years ago Europe tried to cut emissions and went down the diesel route and commerce entered the fray and they chose to tax it (it was a long term European revenue plan) and they chose CO2 as it was the cheapest system to implement and yielded the highest return in taxation revenue.
Asia went down the electric route and chose fuel cells using hydrogen coupled to electrical drives and in Tokyo they built a number of hydrolysis plants collecting rain water and using traditional hydrolysis using solar panels so these plants produce free hydrogen from rain and sun, and yes you can fill your hydrogen car up there for very little, the drawback is the limited quantities of hydrogen they produce using inefficient solar.

I have a current eco project running and this is 4 houses and they have no mains gas and run solely on HHO produced on site, this is a mini wind turbine charging a bank of 12v batteries, these are connected to the HHO generator with a supply of rain water and it produces about 77 litres of HHO using 20 amps, this is then put through a scrubber which is clean water and it feeds a commercial gas bladder. When the gas bladder is 90% full it activates a 12v gas pump which fills a 3500 litre commercial gas storage tank, the tank can be filled from empty in 39 minutes and due to the HHO containing the oxygen molecule it burns much hotter than mains gas.

Our system only cuts in when the gas storage tank is half empty and 1/2 a tank lasts all 4 houses 6 months before it cuts in during the cold winter months due to the much hotter flame in the gas boilers (standard combi boilers) which are regulated by the boilers thermostatic control on the burner so they heat the system much quicker and use much less gas for a given output. They also give a hotter flame in gas cookers so you use much less gas during cooking and cook quicker in most cases.

In reality the system only kicks in twice a year so there is a surplus of gas if required and we have a bottling facility and we fill gas bottles, you can weld on gas alone if you gas weld, and you can braze or solder with ease, with several filled gas bottles we can connect other properties to HHO and with the battery packs having months to charge there is much more scope to produce more gas for free.

What work has to be done and what does it cost? I built the system for under £1000 and if this is divided between the four properties it equates to £250 each which is less then one quarters utility bills for a small home, and with the spare capacity and the fact you can bottle gas you can run a fuel cell in a car, you can throw a couple of gas bottles in the boot and have approaching 2000 miles of free running of your car.
Every week you have to change the water in the bubbler which means draining it and cleaning it out, you then add 3 gallons of clean, filtered tap water to it to fill it up.

Fossil fuels will not be phased out for one very simple reason! infrastructure, at the current time no EU country has the infrastructure to charge en masse electric vehicles and this is the first problem, second is the charging itself, how many people live in streets with terraced housing with no parking where they can charge their vehicles without lots of trailing cables everywhere. Claim time coming, how many trips and falls will be reported and claims made under civil torts which means more money for the legal profession, or you are forced to charging points run by private companies and councils, more profit = more money for someone by holding them to ransom.

Range is an issue, great for short journeys but not for anything else, note the sales spiel on range of "UP TO" which means this is the maximum range you can achieve, enter winter and cold batteries have less power density and this equals less range, start adding in lighting, heating, demisting, rear screen heaters and everything else and this range drops considerably. Enter the rise in eco driving where people turn off lights when stationary in traffic, or they drive on sidelights instead of headlights, and they have a defective light, or those vehicles run out of power on the motorway for example, and we have serious safety issues, particularly with regenerative braking where you run out of power and your brakes are applied. Anyone fancy this situation in lane 3 of a motorway at night in an unlit section of motorway? me neither.

More safety, what about accidents with vehicles operating in the 400-600 volt DC range, fireman and ambulance crews at risk of electrocution and this is assuming the occupants haven't already be electrocuted to death by their metal box. What about conventionally fuelled vehicles being hit by an electric vehicle and a short circuit ignites their fuel and the lot blows up, death by exploding fuel or electrocution is still dangerous to the point of death.

There are many more issues I could raise.

Britain: The U.K. said in July that it would ban sales of new gasoline and diesel cars starting in 2040 as part of a bid to clean up the country's air. By 2050, all cars on the road will need to have zero emissions.

France: The government says that it wants to end sales of gas and diesel-powered vehicles by 2040 as it fights global warming. After that date, automakers will only be allowed to sell cars that run on electricity or other cleaner power. Hybrid cars will also be permitted.

Germany: Merkel was asked last month if it would make sense for Germany to set a deadline to end sales of cars fitted only with gas or diesel engines.

"I cannot name an exact year yet, but the approach is right because if we quickly invest in more charging infrastructure and technology for electric cars, a general changeover will be structurally possible."

Some German towns and cities have already threatened to introduce their own diesel bans to curb pollution.

India: The government said earlier this year that every vehicle sold in the country should be powered by electricity by 2030.

Norway: The government's transportation plan outlines a clear target: All new passenger cars and vans sold in 2025 should be zero-emission vehicles. Norway is leading the way. About 40% of all cars sold in the country last year were electric or hybrid vehicles.

The others: At least eight other countries have electric car sales targets in place, according to the International Energy Agency. Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Korea and Spain have set official targets for electric car sales. The United States doesn't have a federal policy, but at least eight states have set out goals.

The IEA report contains an alarming statistic that shows just how far many other countries have to go:

Globally, 95% of electric cars are sold in only 10 countries: China, the U.S., Japan, Canada, Norway, the U.K., France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Interesting reading eh?

To be honest, while I love my old 200 Tdi 110 and 90, if someone developed a drop-in electric (or other tech) crate engine that would give similiar performance and not too outrageous a price tag...I would consider it. I would even consider a chassis up rebuild around a different technology if that was going to give me another 30-40 years of life in my trucks. Hopefully this shift in government regulations encourages the after market business community to develop something along these lines. Probably ten+ years away yet for anything that would give equivalent range and could be sold as a drop-in but I would think there is a decent market there.

Isn't it all about the batteries? On-board generating has to be the answer. A dirty great big dynamo like we used to have on our pushbikes is the way to go!

The challenge is battery technology I imagine...I am sure Assassin will know more. But current batteries just can't hold enough of a charge. I am sure this will change though as there are all sorts of technologies, especially military, that are being held back by traditional battery technology. The electric engine would not be that difficult.

As mentioned before, on a fleet day I drove a BMW 5 Series around Rockingham Raceway - boy was it smooth and fast! And at my events, I've seen a Toyota Land Cruiser and a Land Rover Defender, both of which were electric.

It's certainly on its way!

Tembo, correct.

They may phase out petrol and diesel for (claimed) environmental reasons but that claim it total bullshit as one 100 KwH lithium ion battery produces the same toxic emissions as 8.2 years of a similar powered petrol or diesel engine, and that is before they build the rest of the car. They cannot recycle lithium (and many others) batteries and they can only partially recycle some elements such as copper, nickel, and the electrodes, so what happens to the rest of the battery.

Electronic components cannot be recycled and they are simply dumped abroad, a case of out of sight and out of mind, so with all cars going over to electric you have a hell of a lot of dumped electronics in third world countries, then you have the rare earth motors which also cannot be effectively recycled with any success, despite claims to the contrary.

Its ABBA policies of Money Money Money, let me explain:

Car costs £15,000 in petrol form, readily and easily available, fill up with fuel and drive away for several hundred miles without problems; switch that to an electric version and the price rises by 66.6% to £25,000 so do the maths, do you take the percentage of taxes from a £15,000 car or do you take the same percentage of taxes from a £25,000 car? instant taxable income rise of 66.6% on the £25,000 car for the treasury.

Nuclear powered cars

Possible? yes, we already have nuclear powered submarines which can use plutonium or uranium.
Built? yes, using a compact thorium reactor and as thorium is less radio active then the ambient atmosphere it is even safer then petrol.

Why not build them? because of one simple fact, weaponisation: both plutonium and uranium can be weaponised and thorium cannot be weaponised so it was ignored and some jiggery pokery took place many years ago so put public money into plutonium and uranium so we are spending public money on it to the detriment of the much safer thorium, but why?

Its the percentage game again, do we spend £200M on a nuclear power station with a straight 30% profit for the designers and builders, OR

do we spend £50M on a thorium power station with the same percentage profit margin?

30% profit on £200M = £60M.
30% profit on £50M = £15M.

What are the engineers saying? that IC engines will remain and only the fuel will change, and currently Hydrogen is the favourite replacement.

I always thought that with hydrogen produces water vapour out of the exsust, then goes up to the clouds then we get more rain, which is not good?

This is correct, but every type of propulsion produces emissions of some sort, petrol and diesel engines emissions are well known but the emissions of batteries being built are becoming better understood, but every battery produces emissions during charging and discharging and hydrogen is the best known from lead acid or gel batteries. So, even when you crank your engine your battery is producing hydrogen gas, then it produces more as it is being charged.

Here is the crux of the matter, what emissions are your vehicle producing? and why do Governments feel the need to be dishonest about it, clearly it is for money or taxable revenue and nothing else. Look at how cars are taxed currently within the EU, it is on CO2 emissions and nothing else so why was CO2 chosen? because it is the easiest to tax and the cheapest to tax and it earns the greatest revenue for the chancellor. Why not tax on diesel particulates or nitrous oxides? because they cost more to implement and you can only get away with fleecing the motorist for so much money.

With hydrogen you do get water but this isn't simply water, its acid water which produces acid rain.

Thank you for your wisdom again Assassin 

No need for thanks, and certainly no wisdom, just a lifetime in engineering and a fierce interest in new technologies within engineering.

"a lifetime in engineering and a fierce interest in new technologies within engineering" ... which equates to experience and therefore wisdom. Far too modest!

Not really Tom, just common sense really.

Just to add to this, only one survey has been done into the energy required by vehicles due to its complexity, it covered the design, outsourcing of components, the transportation of these components, assembly of a vehicle, the emissions produced by the service life of the vehicle, and the recycling of the vehicle.

Government are, and have claimed for decades that only 20% of the emissions produced by vehicles is in the manufacturing and recycling of the vehicle and the remaining 80% of emissions are produced by the service life of the vehicle.

This survey turned these claims (lies) on their head as they found that 80% of emissions are produced by the manufacturing and disposal of the vehicle while the remaining 20% are produced by the "in service" life of the vehicle.

So, why are we being lied to by the Government and why are so many people so gullible and falling for these lies when they can check the facts easily for themselves. Why are the government still persisting with these lies when the evidence proves them wrong.

In other words ... whose nests are they feathering?