Its not about how fast you get there, its about getting there in style!
Oh yes and for those that care, upcycling:crazy_face:
You’re right of course but if you give people a financial incentive then it gets things moving much faster
Yep! financial incentives are the main driver for most people. In fact, the only driver for many people.
I’ve driven a Tesla for 5 years now; people walking in car parks do NOT hear them coming. It’s a problem for hybrids as well when running in electric-only mode. My Tesla already has a noise-maker for such situations; it’s called “the horn.” (In all fairness - how about a quieter version of the horn to use on people not other cars; like a cute little bell on a bicycle.)
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I remember a Lancia giulia or possibly giulietta in the late 1960s which had two horns - one for cars and the other - a bell - for pedestrians and bicycles. Very civilised.
Is there any reason why these should be mutually exclusive? or why you shouldn’t be able to do both? Or want to do both?
A change like that all at once obviously wouldn’t be practical, regardless of the merits of reducing fossil fuel consumption.
What will the future look like? If we knew we’d have saved the planet, and made ourselves rich, long ago.
Financial incentives have always played a part; our governments give them to us all of the time to lead us where they want us to be led. Tax breaks for XXX.
I guess i’m partially thinking back about 15 years to when I started buying diesel fuelled cars. The incentive was the then Government’s encouragement in lower fuel tax and lower emmissions, the better miles-per-gallon and hence significant saving in cost. That was the start of my contribution to saving the planet. Or so I thought.
For sure I know that financial incentives work. Are we incentivising the right technologies and good practices ? or are we, as you say, incentivising the ones where the powers-that-be want to lead us ?
(I am aware that this post is heading dangerously close to the Political arena so i substituted “powers-that-be” rather than use Gov…)
Indeed, before their rapid decline in the early '70s, Lancia was truly a car for the connoisseur. I still really regret not buying an old Aurelia GT when I had a chance, back when they were relatively affordable, and I still have a bit of a hankering for the achingly pretty Beta HPE that a friend of my mother’s used to drive, even though I recall that bits of it would regularly come away in your hands and the bodywork would tend to crumble like mature cheese every time it rained. It made the build quality of her previous Scimitar GTEs look Porsche-Like by comparison.
It begs the question - is it feasible to think of electrifying old classic cars?
It’s certainly being done - even to Jaguar E-types. Quite successfully in some cases. Of course, whether it is desirable is another thing. I suppose if the engine is shot and all you really have is the body (and chassis where appropriate), then it seems excusable.
Yes there’s a company in Wales that are doing it successfully along with their Irish arm. They use Tesla motors! The Lancia B20 is your man!
Didn’t Prince Harry drive an electric E-Type Jaguar at some point during his wedding day ?
Yes he did made to order if you would like one !
We were in Berlin recently and had lunch in a Little Green Rabbit on Unter den Linden. The restaurant was attached to a VW Studio, full of electric vehicles, including vans and the Porsche shown above. What caught my eye was a huge poster with the electric camper - called Buzz I think. We tow an Eriba with our petrol Audi and one day I’d love to have an electric camper. It looks perfect, though the price undoubtedly won’t be.
I just bought a golf GTE. It’s absolutely brilliant in that I do most of my driving in town (school drop off picks up, supermarket runs etc) and can do all of that on electric only. If I need to go further afield the 1.4 petrol engine kicks in. On a run up to Cheltenham and back this weekend it returned 88mpg overall. My next car will be full electric.
That’s the price of survival of the human race you are talking about HH…!!!
That is currently the trouble with electric cars: they are great if you can afford them.
Another trouble is that currently there is insufficient charging infrastructure across the country and the fully-electric cars have insufficient range unless you are just using it for short journeys.
Also even at home, unless you can park off road, charging is a real challenge. My daughter lives in North London and they park on the street, as do most other car owners there. Usually they can park within a few hundred yards of home but sometimes they have to park two or three streets away. There is no on-street charging available at all there. Even if they can park outside the house, there is the busy pavement between them and their car. These sort of problems across the country are going to make it very difficult for the UK to go fully electric.
Best
David
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Yes I quite agree David. In London last week I did notice some Siemens “ubitricity” charging points that were installed in lampposts. Apparently it takes about an hour to install them.
So, it can be done but they need to be rolled out in every residential street and that seems a very big challenge.
Great pun 