All good things come to an end

[PC-LAD]

Problem with hydrogen is availability, though it would be far far easier installing hydrogen pumps at existing service stations than it would digging up everything to put charging points in. And the government still have something to tax

Agree'd, Government requires the money generated by taxation of fuel. Maybe we'll see electric hydrogen hybrids in the near future as well, That would be Interesting.

[Zak33]

Problem with hydrogen is availability, though it would be far far easier installing hydrogen pumps at existing service stations than it would digging up everything to put charging points in. And the government still have something to tax

precisely

And it's realtively quicker to fuel up than to charge up, and it can be transported to the places it's needed by truck.

[kalniel]

Agree'd, Government requires the money generated by taxation of fuel. Maybe we'll see electric hydrogen hybrids in the near future as well, That would be Interesting.

Hydrogen is kind of hybrid already - you combine it with oxygen to generate current which powers an electric motor, no doubt with capacitors/batteries as a buffer. Rather than charge a heavy battery on a hydrogen car you might as well use the same electricity to run the fuel cell in reverse on a bit of water and generate hydrogen to top up your tank

[Ttaskmaster]

I'm not suggesting pricing people out of the market by raising fuel tax

But you will, as there will always be people who cannot afford the higher rate of fuel.
Meanwhile everyone else will just carry on using as much fuel, but pay more for it... Remember when everyone said they'd boycot fossil fuels if it went over £1 a litre? That never happened. Now it can be as much as £1.50 and people will still buy it, because it's so much cheaper and far more usable than most of their other options.

And those who can't should always have the choice of what kind of car they use

They may have the choice, but not the budget.
I drive a nasty old diesel because it was free. I cannot afford to even replace that, at the moment.

But if a different car is more efficient for your kind of journey they you can use it and make savings

Right now my wife buys more fuel in a week than I do in a month. To stop this, we'd have to move house (across two counties) in order to save enough on that fuel to (eventually) her a new car... oh, and I'd have to get a new job.

By the time this happens, I fully envisage autonomous vehicles moving us around for a price that will be hard to beat by owning a vehicle and the associated upkeep yourself.

I've seen such pictures painted before, but they never factor in people who drive for leisure or who do things like going off-road... or indeed any journey that cannot be done just from plugging a route into SatNav.
Heck, just the other day we went up to an event where parking was ad-hoc, in the field next door - EVs would flip out if you tried to direct them to do that!!

[watercooled]

Agree with a lot of what others have said, it's easy to make promises you don't have to keep. And you have to question the likelihood of this coming to pass if the industry isn't actually ready, because environment or otherwise, I can't see any government being stupid enough to commit economic suicide by destroying one of the biggest, most profitable and economically vital industries, when other countries aren't playing ball.

There are a lot of issues that need to be considered with a sweeping legislation change like this - firstly the wider environmental and infrastructure impact of the change. Sure, there are benefits to EVs in terms of emissions but they're not magic - they require many materials to make which are themselves environmentally damaging to produce. I'm sure processes such as recycling will improve with time, but Li-ion batteries have been around for a long time now, and as I understand it, the recycling process still isn't great. Of course different studies have different motives but quite a few have shown battery production contributes a substantial amount of CO2 emissions too. Where the crossover point lies (as in the mileage required before they start beating ICE vehicles in emissions) is apparently debatable, but it's not like you go from 100g/km to 0 by buying an EV. Not even close, and that's not even considering electricity generation emissions.

2035 really isn't that far away to be demanding such a huge change and like I imagine most people who actually think about it, I am very sceptical. Particularly when it comes to outright banning any sort of hybrids. I understand the problem with a few individuals exploiting the system (to put it mildly) by never bothering to actually plug in PHEVs, but there's a real risk of causing short-term harm of destroying investment in such bridging technologies in the meantime - how will companies feel about investing lots of money into technology which would have such a short window to produce a return?

I understand range is improving and for at least regular commuting it's becoming a non-issue for many drivers, but range is still the elephant in the room. On balance, given I don't do it often and tend to take breaks anyway, I'd probably accept (in terms of making a purchasing decision between ICE and EV I mean) having to take a pit stop at a service station with a cross-country drive, but that's assuming the sort of ~300 mile range we see on high-end models filters down to more reasonably-priced models. And therein lies another problem - batteries are currently really, really expensive, and are pretty much a service item. And heavy. Really heavy. Hmm, maybe some sort of plug-in, rentable range extender pack would be a solution for that? After all, what's the point in lugging around 300 miles worth of range when you're only doing 20 miles on an average day?

Something else which I appreciate is improving with time, is just cost by itself - equivalent EVs are still much more expensive than their ICE counterparts. I know there's likely a break-even point if it's owned for long enough but residual value is also a concern, and as some commentary in related articles has said, there's not much in the way of choice for the most popular classes and price brackets of vehicles on our roads.

TBH I have often thought that, provided economies of scale can make it cost effective, synthetic fuels could play a big part. Existing liquid fuel infrastructure could be used, along with existing vehicles and all their conveniences. Provided the source of energy used to produce them is environmentally-friendly then they're just one option. I'd be kind of surprised if oil companies haven't given it some consideration if the writing is on the wall for their business model.

And then there's infrastructure. What's the government's plan to make the necessary change to the National Grid, not to mention where all of that extra electricity generation is coming from. "Renewables" will remain intermittent, nuclear takes a long time to build. CCGT (gas) stations are relatively fast and cheap to build though - see where this is going? And I bet some of the National Grid are breaking into sweat at the thought of everyone on a street coming home from work and adding an additional 10kW a piece to the local transformer, at peak time! I just can't see how that would work if some sort of 'smart' charge management system wasn't employed. On that topic though, scheduling most vehicles to charge gradually overnight would be a novel way of levelling out the UK grid's otherwise highly variable day/night loading. But like I say, it still needs to come from somewhere.

Just shouting that you want something to happen but not actually providing the necessary foundation for it to happen is all too common, and from what I've seen, this seems to be a very poorly thought through, potentially damaging publicity stunt.

I'm also on the side of seeing this dystopian 'ride hailing' service as just that - a grim fantasy. If people really cared so little about cars, it would have hard to rationalise the titanic industry the motor industry is - if no-one cared as this dystopian vision would suggest, I'd expect to see most people driving around in utilitarian vehicles and running them into the ground. That's not even remotely close to real observations. And before anyone mentions 'oh but leasing is rising in popularity' - that's really quite different isn't it? The car is still, for all intents and purposes, yours to enjoy and maintain.

I don't own a sports car and nor do I travel long distances on a regular basis, but I still see a car as more than just a taxi that I have to drive myself. And I'm sick of seeing nonsense from people along the lines of lecturing people what does and doesn't constitute a hobby or form of enjoyment.

All in all, this headline simply raises questions. You've told us what, but how?

[kalniel]

All in all, this headline simply raises questions. You've told us what, but how?

Boris' reply to such questions is an entirely inadequate 'let's be positive and enthusiastic!'

[badass]

I think a lot of this is moot and moving forward most people will not even own a car.

Take away the cab driver and how much does it cost for a taxi journey?

By the time this happens, I fully envisage autonomous vehicles moving us around for a price that will be hard to beat by owning a vehicle and the associated upkeep yourself. We will essentially have Cars as a Service

Exactly. That will be for the reasonable well off. For the rest and those that have the terraced house problem - Better public transport.

We can;t increase tax on fuel as we will end up with our own gilet jaunes problem as most people are capable of seeing outside their tiny little bubble.

[Zak33]

I shall add some meat to the bones of this debate - lets assume the UK government sees this through.

Firstly, for CARS (not light commerical vehicles such as vans) there's about 2.3 million new cars registered per year.
We have been lower than 2 million in memory but lets assume everyone keep PCP'ing there way into a new motor regularly

There are approx 32 million cars on the road at any point, going up and down a tad but peaking I think at 32m, and then a good few million untaxed for sale

32 / 2.3 = 14 years to clear them all out, plus the untaxed ones

If all newly registered cars need to be simply electric from 2035, we will roll into a state where there are a good amount of them already electric but no where near half, probably not even 1/4. There will be loads of hybrids but they're all going out of new car supply in 2035.
it could take another 15 years to be all electric.

What this could mean is that for a decade, people with no infra structure could still use second hand vehicles.

[DanceswithUnix]

Exactly. That will be for the reasonable well off. For the rest and those that have the terraced house problem - Better public transport.

Actually I suspect robotized taxis could put public transport out of business by undercutting them whilst actually going where you want to go from where you wanted to start.

I still think there is an easy win for emissions: massive tax relief (zero stamp duty for starters) for people moving within a 2 miles of their place of employment. Really, our commuting habit is beyond daft, and the stick of fuel pricing clearly isn't helping.

[Ttaskmaster]

I still think there is an easy win for emissions: massive tax relief for people moving within a 2 miles of their place of employment.

With that one sentence, you've just enraged almost the entirety of London's working community!!
I wish I had your talent!!

Seriously, though, car purchase vs house purchase?
What is it, £35k for a Nissan Leaf, now? £50k for a Tesla?

That vs £350k for a smallish 2-3bed semi starter home on the periphery of the town I'm currently in.... Oh, and within 2 miles of where I'm based for work, you're mainly looking at corporate and industrial buildings or houses that start around the £690-700K mark... It's still cheaper for people to drive down from Milton Keynes than to live/move here. Probably why they're expanding the commuter town element!

So with bags of respect, Uni, it might sound awesome in theory but I think too many people could not afford the transition, too many people make more money as is, and too many employers would simply increase wages to cover the increased cost of living/commuting.
Now, I get the feeling there is some other kind of incentive that would work using your base premise, but I probably don't know enough about practical economics to figure it out this late on a Friday afternoon...

[Zak33]

Really, our commuting habit is beyond daft, and the stick of fuel pricing clearly isn't helping.

you're right about this... every one of us is sat in traffic going the opposite way to the person who lives where we work etc

But how... moving home to a job that you might leave after a few years isn't viable. Not a chance.

[kalniel]

you're right about this... every one of us is sat in traffic going the opposite way to the person who lives where we work etc

But how... moving home to a job that you might leave after a few years isn't viable. Not a chance.

Then move the job to you. The 4-day working week was derided, but it works for some countries. How about a compromise: Where practicable, mandatory 1-day a week is working from home?

[watercooled]

Better public transport.

Good one!

Just taking a step back for a moment, it won't be another wall of text this time!

I did some really ballpark back-of-envelope calculations for CO2 emissions for just the electricity supplying the car. In this case, ignoring the emissions due to production which are also a significant part.

Petrol vehicle - 100g/km is common for an economical car

As of today, 7/2/20 - decent wind supply, ~200g/kWh

EV-database put Skoda Vision IV at around 300Wh/mile, so divide by 1.61 = 0.186kWh/km

200g multiplied by 0.186 = 37.2g/km

Yes it's substantially better than a current pure petrol vehicle, but it's not zero is it? Add in the production emissions and you get closer again. EV's are only a part of one possible solution, they don't solve the problem entirely by themselves.

[Zak33]

Then move the job to you. The 4-day working week was derided, but it works for some countries. How about a compromise: Where practicable, mandatory 1-day a week is working from home?

again, emminently sensible.

if every person who COULD work remotely, DID work remotely regularly, the overall CO2 emmissions from lower journeys would be much lower, and the traffic would be less, lowering CO2 even further, and also lowering RTA's and so forth.

overall that all makes sense

[DanceswithUnix]

With that one sentence, you've just enraged almost the entirety of London's working community!!
I wish I had your talent!!

I have no problem with that

What is it, £35k for a Nissan Leaf, now? £50k for a Tesla?

That vs £350k for a smallish 2-3bed semi starter home on the periphery of the town I'm currently in....

It isn't the base cost of the house you are comparing to though, it is the incremental cost of moving.

If I move, it is something like £15K in stamp duty in one hit. If I move out of here it is in a box ready to be put 7 feet under, and that expense is a big reason why. It hardly feels like good value, and I did spend less than that on my car.

[Apex]

I shall add some meat to the bones of this debate - lets assume the UK government sees this through.

Firstly, for CARS (not light commerical vehicles such as vans) there's about 2.3 million new cars registered per year.
We have been lower than 2 million in memory but lets assume everyone keep PCP'ing there way into a new motor regularly

There are approx 32 million cars on the road at any point, going up and down a tad but peaking I think at 32m, and then a good few million untaxed for sale

32 / 2.3 = 14 years to clear them all out, plus the untaxed ones

If all newly registered cars need to be simply electric from 2035, we will roll into a state where there are a good amount of them already electric but no where near half, probably not even 1/4. There will be loads of hybrids but they're all going out of new car supply in 2035.
it could take another 15 years to be all electric.

What this could mean is that for a decade, people with no infra structure could still use second hand vehicles.

The problem for me is that take the above; just what are they going to replace the current petrol/dev/phev cars with; the current crop are over priced junk (to me) the charging infra isn't there to support it.

The very statement leaves more questions then answers.