Britain's Government is set to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2040, when all vehicles must be fully electric as part of a plan to clean up air pollution, reports say.

The move follows a similar announcement earlier this month by the French Government.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-26/uk-to-ban-sales-of-petrol-diesel-fuelled-cars-from-2040-reports/8744076

How long before our addled Leaders follow suit?

"How long before our addled Leaders follow suit?"

Hey, what a beaut excuse for study trips abroad.

Jets fuelled up and ready, 'Never you mind, politicians' air travel doesn't affect that global warming'.

It will not be long Is Mise.
Some problems with this idea.
The first is price.
Take the Nissan Leaf for example. A very good city car.
I would have bought one except for the price.
In the US around $27,000 including a tax rebate.
In the UK around $A30,000.
In Australia $57,000 !

It is the usual Great Australian Ripoff.

Almost all my travel these days is fairly local.
A range of 140 to 170 Km is OK for most city use.
A friend has a Mitsubishi Miev used daily for commuting to work.
$1-50 a week costs for off peak charging and no service charges.

In the UK there are charging points at most service points on main highways.
The problem for country people who are a long way from towns that
they frequently visit would demand hybrids.
The new Tesla model 3 has a range of 300km if I remember correctly
and is selling in the US for around $US30,000.
In Australia they are quoting $A50,000 plus for 2018 or 19.

To sum up, range is the problem for country people and price is
everyones problem.

I would definitely buy one if it was not for the price ripoff.

This article prompted me to recheck prices in the UK.
The new price seems to be now 27,000 pounds.
Which is around $A50,000.
Some suggestion that large discounts are available.
The BMW i3 is the same price.
So it will be interesting to see what is happening in future
as sales of electric cars is rising quite significantly.

Obviously you don't live in South Australia Bazz. Just imagine the number of power failures SA could have, if people had to charge a couple of million cars by their Mickey Mouse windmill power system.

I think it is very inconsiderate of these ratbag politicians to wait so long to do this. I have now stopped breeding horses completely, & now the fools are legislating the breeding them to become almost as profitable as building windmills.

The young bloke down the road who has just become a qualified wheelwright, should make a fortune. He makes those old fashioned wooden wheels, shod with a ring of steel. We'll need millions of them to help carry us back to the stone age, with all the gullible politicians in the western world.

Ahhh yes Hasbeen, whatever the pollies do it is always too late or
too early or too small or too big but never exactly right.
In the UK the new decision only affects cars and vans because a truck
if it had enough batteries would have no payload room left.

If the oil tankers stop arriving we will need many many draft horses
or we will starve.
Wife just rang to pick her up so will put up more later.

The idiots who came up with that will not be around in 13 years, and neither will too many people at all, the way moronic politicians are trying to drive us.

Wow, great post. I like it.

How many charging stations would be needed between Adelaide and Perth?
Adelaide and Alice Springs-Darwin?

Of course, the sun always shines out there, so the car roof and a trailer covered with solar panels would help.

meanwhile all the Green, Labour and Liberal pollies fly around the globe first class (I suppose nothing compared to Gore's private jets). Never has a generation been so willing to be dumbed down despite the cost of education going up.

CONT:
Hasbeen,
Recharging cars is not a real problem as it is best done at
off peaks times anyway. The reason it is off peak because there is
plenty of spare generation.
My friend has his timer connected to come on when the peak time
ends and off peak starts.
Good for the generators as it will smooth out their demand.
A win win if ever there was one.

Re horses, I did see once that someone had calculated how we would get
from now with the present low numbers of horses to what we would need
if there was a sudden collapse in fuel supplies, it was many years.
The stallions would be very busy.

Is Mise, Nowhere enough area using the roof and a trailer panels.
What I have seen done was by Blade Electric Car Conversions.
He used to, not sure if he is still around, but when he had to drive
one of his conversions to Melbourne he had a small trailer, a really
small trailer, and a petrol generator in it. Did the job.

On the motorways in the UK, they call it the Electric Highway, there
are charging points at every services places.
They have multiple chargers and from memory they have either credit
card readers and or account cards. They are not owned by the service
centres but by a company that installs them. In London and other
cities there are curbside chargers.
The cars have apps loaded than can tell where chargers are located and the nearest.
I believe Nissan dealers have free chargers at their premises.
In Norway the Nissan Leaf is the number one car sales.
I have seen a photo of a parking area in Oslo with about 20 cars all
plugged into curb chargers.

There is even a ethical protocol to come back to your car when it is
charged and move it to a non electric car parking position.
The car can be setup to dial your phone when charged.
I know of a shopping centre in Sydney that has an electric car parking
position with a power point. Westfield here where I live has Hybrid
car parking positions. I asked why and they said they are going to put
charges in when they become more common.
I know of only three electric cars in the area and they don't need the
chargers there anyway.
Things are starting to move quite quickly overseas but Australia is as
usual is being stuffed around.

The other main problem with rechargeable cars is the electricity replacing the petrol is generated with fossil fuels, and certainly, in Aus the total emissions due to electric cars far exceed the emissions and given the coal and gas generation in the EU there is little in the way of saving (except in France with nuclear power).

"Recharging cars is not a real problem as it is best done at
off peaks times anyway. The reason it is off peak because there is
plenty of spare generation".

Sounds good Bazz, but have you arranged for the sun to shine, & the wind to blow at those off peak times, or are you going to burn even more coal. You know fuelling electric cars with coal fired mains power generates more plant fertiliser than fuelling them with petrol. Kind of self defeating by the greenies, but I guess the wheat farmers will be happy.

It would be damn useless wanting any power from the wind up here. As is usual in winter, I have been having a ball flying my remote control planes, in the beautifully still air.

My neighbour is bitching. His windmill is not supplying enough water for a dozen cows to drink. He had to buy a water tank to fit his box trailer, & buy town water for them. It's a tough life for some.

Hasbeen,
I think your info may be way off.
The calculation I have seen show that well head to wheels generates
more CO2 and energy loss for a IC car than Minehead to wheels of an
electric car.
In the well head to wheels case most of the loss of energy occurs
in the engine itself because of heat loss and Who cares about the CO2
anyway we can not mine enough fossil fuels economically for it to be a problem.

The main problem with electric cars is the recharging rate.
When charging at home overnight you can charge at low rates and take
eight hours. From what I can gather the service area chargers operate
at a higher charge rate and can take an hour. Some are fast chargers
that can give an 80% charge in 15 minutes.
That worries me, who has had no experience with them, as I wonder what
that does to the life of the battery, if anything.

If you calculate the current drain at mains voltages a servo with
four or six cars fast charging you need power cables as thick as your arm.
I am sure that no one has seriously thought that through yet.
That will be why service stations will not be used like they are now
where everyone has to go to one every say 500 miles or so.
Home and work charging will become a necessity.

Bazz,

Land's End to John o'Groats is 1,407 km with lots of towns etc.
Adelaide to Perth is 2,693 km and Adelaide to Darwin is 3,028 kms and, a deviation from the Highways could be fatal.

I can see steam cars coming back, burning wood fuel.

We did this many years ago in SPUDS (Steam Power Unit Development Society) using a ready supply of old fence palings.

Hmmm, just checked, a fast charger being used on a Nissan Leaf would
require a three phase 415Volt 350 amp supply and a servo with six
fast chargers would require a 2100 amp 415 volt supply for a 15 minute charge !
Actually would probably necessitate an 1.1 Kvolt or 3.3Kv supply.
Don't see it happening.

Is Mise, quite a few options, such as compressed air.
No idea what sort of range could be achieved.
At very high pressures might be an explosion hazard.
They have a problem in cities like London with first getting parked
adjacent to your house and then running an extension cord across the
footpath.
Curbside chargers help but if large numbers of electric cars are in
use as per Norway there could not be chargers outside every house.
Here, that is not such a problem, as off street parking is common and
unit blocks can have GPOs at every parking spot.
A few years back when I was looking at downsizing I asked an agent
about having a power point for charging and it threw him into a tizz
and that had never entered his conscious being previously.
However didn't matter as shortly after I was told how much the Leaf
was going to cost.

Regular service is a non problem. The only possible service is fill
the windscreen washer, check the tyres and mechanical brakes.
They make a song and dance about connecting to their computer and
checking, errr what ?
My friend does not get the service done on his car as when asked what
they do the girl said, OH change the oil and oil filter brake fluid
etc. Hmmm said my friend I won't bother.

Bazz,

"My friend does not get the service done on his car as when asked what
they do the girl said, OH change the oil and oil filter brake fluid
etc. Hmmm said my friend I won't bother"

I like that, about par for the course; many years ago a friend had a Citroen 'Goddess', which was ultra modern at the time and a great car, but as various service centres stuffed it up, even to driving it off the hoist (lowered!!) and ripping out some hydraulic lines.
He was an estate agent and needed his car a lot, so he reluctantly sold the Citroen and bought a Holden.

Having made a life and a career in the automotive design and engineering industry, and being an oldie, I felt that change would be hard for me. Apart from the 'romance' of the motorcar, which anyone like myself would see it as our 'first love', the idea of courting a new 'girl' is a little distressing. I have in the past been (and still am) very critical about EV's and the like because there was never an efficient, affordable solution in sight. I do not subscribe to embracing new technology 'at any price', because it does not fulfill one of the factors which make a new idea a 'good idea'. So if the cost of the initial purchase is not at par or cheaper than its predecessor and it will cost me the same or less to run/keep and the time it takes to re-charge (filling up) takes the same or less time as the fossil fuel cars, and I don't have to spend a fortune ten or so years down the line to replace the batteries, then I will not consider this new technology, and neither should the rest of the world. I have not seen a Tesla cheaper than about $160,000. so I don't know where the price quoted earlier comes from. We have a mongrel govt which has already been punishing us for having one of the highest standards of living in the developed world. They have continually raised our cost of living, for example, forcing us to buy new cars by making laws to remove the older ones from our roads. Then it follows that they have a guaranteed form of income with all the taxes and fees associated with the purchase of a new car. We already know that we are paying way more than the rest of the world for the same car and yet no-one gives a crap. So it will be some time before I will stop driving my fossil fuel 'antiques', because I'm not paying these prices and getting punished just to please a few idiot tree huggers!

Bazz a peer reviewed paper published in a German scientific publication has answered the question of EV emissions.

If only electric vehicles world wide, they would reduce current emissions by 4.8%.

However as the majority of them are in China where most electricity is produced in old coal generators & a few EU countries, they currently produce more CO2 emissions than would a similar age fleet of petrol cars.

See the German, in English, No Tricks Zone blog for details.

OK Hasbeen I will have a look at that blog.

Altrav, well sooner or later those of us still around might well have
to drive what is available. Bear in mind that by that time long distance
trucks will probably be a dying breed. In the US they are installing
natural gas refuelling stations along highways for trucks.
Things are changing and freight is already moving back to rail.
There has been a large upsurge in rail freight over the last few years.
This is partly because trans move eight times the ton miles than
trucks for the same amount of fuel.
Also two men instead of perhaps 100 truck drivers.

As far as the cost of batteries is concerned already there are now
companies that exchange, repair and recondition batteries.
If a number of cells stop working the cars monitoring system can
pinpoint which cells are faulty and replace those cells.
In fact it is a job you can do yourself if you are electrically
knowledgeable.
You need to be as the battery voltages are around 400 volts.

Tesla's model 3 is selling for about US$30,000 but A$50,000 here.
TGARO !
Well Altrav it is not as dismal as you portray, I have driven a
Nissan Leaf and I can tell you it was really a pleasure and a quiet
and smooth experience. Dinosaur drivers need not apply.
However you petrol zoom zoom heads can stay with your Dinosaur
FJ Holdens etc.

BAZZ I know what is coming. I suppose it's more about change for me. I am familiar with this new world order, I probably am having trouble accepting it. As we are an engineering family we have already experienced EV's when some thirty years ago one of my brothers built one. As you can imagine the charging time and range were appalling. It was part of a learning curve for us. My reluctance is purely as if I am losing a 'loved one'. I look forward to the EV's, but not if we are going to have to compromise in some way. I must admit I have not heard of this Tesla Model 3, and at $50,000 I would still be reluctant to buy one. It sounds like it would be of similar size/category to the Toyota Corolla. If so knowing the cost structure of EV's versus piston cars, it is WAY too much. I have critiqued EV's from the beginning and I have always been aware of the development that has been going into this industry, but my criticism has always been about value for money. I like the 'feel' of an EV, don't get me wrong, it's just that I will not accept a new/good idea if it doesn't tick ALL the boxes. One day I know they will but in the meantime I don't like being the guinea pig and taking all the risks that are associated with the development of a new product.

There is a problem with electric cars that is seldom mentioned.
Is there enough lithium to produce enough batteries for all the worlds
cars, and can the lithium be economically recycled ?

A group of chemists did a study of all elements in the table and
compared each element with all the others and came to the conclusion
that we have found all the better combinations already.
People keep waffling about how in the future batteries will be much
larger capacity and lighter but I suspect it is just that, waffle.
Solar cells with a 100 times more output may just manage to make the
car toddle along but such cells do not seem to be possible with the
amount of energy arriving on one square metre.

If my suspicions are correct there is a long term problem.
Do we abandon the idea of personal transport altogether ?
Can we use the pod system proposed at various times ?
That is tracked vehicles on major routes that you hail, board, punch
in your destination and it takes you there getting its power from its
rail in whatever form that takes.

Mercedes is experimenting with overhead wires for trucks on autobahns,
as per trolley buses.

The issue of the extreme combustibility of Lithium on exposure to air making cars with lithium batteries a death trap also needs to be addressed.

I have, for many years, promoted the idea of 'super conductors'. I have always felt that these were not only a safer alternative but also a cheaper and lighter technology. The development and progress of the 'SC' has been silent for some time. I can only hope that these companies have not fallen foul of the 'grant' schemes for batteries at the expense of SC's. If anyone has any updates on the current status or progress of the Super Conductor I would (and I'm sure others too) like to know.