UK bans sales of gas/diesel powered cars, 2040

Yes this is all great to make well to think people all warm. In 20 years i wonder what they ll say about electric cars with all these billions of dead batteries that are quite hazardous

 

When the government wants socieity to change its buying ways, it's easy to do.

For example, it just raises taxes on fuel. Sure, it's available but more and more expensive. Or, it puts tighter controls on emissions testing or increases fees for testing. Or, it blocks the licenses for places to sell gasoline for whatever reason so there are fewer and fewer places to find it.

All this can be done easily by the bureaucracy and the support of the news media to get the propaganda out. And, in fact, car makers will support it as it obsoletes older cars faster to replace them with new electric cars.

 

Very true. Just hope that by then, classic cars would be such a small minority of vehicles that they'd stop persecuting them

 

Does anybody have a good source for Tesla battery production, and how much CO2 it produces. Someone from a German newspaper stated the battery production produces more CO2 than and gas powered economy car would driving 20,000 kilometers for 6 years. That sounds amazing if true.

 

According to the EPA, the average passenger vehicle in the US emits 4.7 tons of CO2 a year: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle-0

That's the average...obviously we have large trucks here and small vehicles so some will be more or less and that's based on average miles driven the EPA used.

The figure for the battery is based on 150-200kg CO2 per kwh of the battery. So a 85kwh battery is 12.75 to 17 tons of CO2. So making the battery alone (and not driving the car) is equivalent to driving an average passenger vehicle in the US for 3-4 years.

Then you need the electricity to drive the Tesla and that has CO2 emissions with everything from solar panel manufacturing to coal or natural gas powerplants with losses in sending it through the grid. Then losses just by the car sitting unused and the battery slowly loses charge.

Edit: I don't know how long the batteries last in Teslas (years or miles), but I know they warranty them somewhere around 8 years and 100k miles. They obviously become less efficient with time in holding a charge just like laptops and cell phones. So there will need to be more studies along the way.

I'm okay with people buying Teslas because the looks, acceleration, lack of sound/quiet ride, double trunk storage, HOV lane access, free charging stations, etc, but I don't accept "green" as a reason.

 

Tesla Battery Emissions Study - Carbon Emissions From Making EV Batteries

also suggests similar numbers. 17.5 tonnes of CO2 per 100kwh battery. So about 3-4 years of driving as you say.

 

The mixing of autonomous and regular cars will be an interesting issue yes. You can also imagine hybrids in that respect and retrofit speed regulators even in older cars. It will be a long time in the making though. It will take two decades to get to a decent majority of cars and even then what do you do with foreigners, tourists etc...

Imho autonomous will take even longer to arrive in cities because the driving conditions are so much more complex. For instance a good driver also uses interaction with other drivers and people to "feel" their most probable response. That is not how computers work right now, it is very difficult to work with such soft factors. There is also a myriad of situations that a self-driving car will not have an answer to, like maneuvering through parking lots, roadworks, illegally parked cars necessitating "forbidden" maneuvers etc. Also what would stop every pedestrian from just crossing the street if a self-driving car approaches, knowing that that can be done without risk? In my view cities will be the last to be adopted because of complexity and liability.

 

They could make HOV on highways and bus lanes within downtown areas for autonomous-only as a way to quickly phase it in.

 

I am sure there will be experimental perks at a certain point for autonomous. I don't think they can defend giving bus lanes etc to such groups though.
And as for special lanes, often the traffic jams are caused by simply too many cars at the same time on the road. Taking lanes off an existing highway, thereby increasing traffic load there, while giving it to a group of autonomous vehicles will be controversial at best. That discussion will take quite a bit of time. Can you politically justify redirecting one lane off a four-lane for the benefit of autonomous cars before 25% of the cars actually are? And on what grounds, etc

Nobody questions that the future commute will look different. Next to nobody uses a classic car for daily commute - yet they are still very popular.