Morris Minor Owners Club

Just been sent this link to a Daily Mail story that reveals the manufacture of electric cars produces 63 percent more carbon dioxide than making a conventional one.

It’s not mentioned whether the figure includes the impact of mining the various rare metals that go into the batteries. And it definitely doesn’t include the effect of recycling the car when it's scrapped after a few years because its electrics had a tizzy – nor its battery. And have you seen the way those things burn when there’s a fault?!

Worth remembering next time some climate cretin tells you classic cars are bad for the planet – OK, the Moggy doesn’t have a catalytic converter or electronic engine management, but the youngest is the best part of 50 years old and still going strong. Now that's environment friendly.


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ls.html?it

Electric cars shock: Manufacturing green vehicles churns out more CO2 than making fuel models
• Electric cars would have to be driven for 50,000 miles before being as 'green'
• Report suggests the green transport revolution could increase emissions
• The research threatens to undermine the PM's plan to achieve net zero emissions by banning sales of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030

Who knows what to believe.

Absolutely. How accurate are the reports that we read? And why do they often contradict each other?

with all the information ref the virus I know who NOT to believe

'climate cretin' love that..just about sum's them up.

What’s a climate cretin ? I’m wondering if I might be one !

I don't think anyone could seriously claim that classic cars are 'bad for the planet'......there just aren't enough of them to make a difference, especially when compared to all the other activities which are consuming finite resources and creating pollution and waste on a massive scale.

Anything in the Daily Mail has to be viewed as suspect.
It's only a 'Shock' to DM Readers, it's been widely reported in other press for years.

Old cars are common in poorer parts of the world, plenty of countries have old bangers on the streets; in the Americas everywhere south of the US/Mex border has wrecks driving around, then there's the Africa and Asia to consider.....
Look at the old 50s designs that India continued to make into much more recent times....

les wrote: ↑Fri Nov 27, 2020 5:43 pm Who knows what to believe.

Indeed.

This "research" is not actually research.

There was no study. There were no new recorded results. This is a brochure put out by some lobbyists and a PR firm being loyally repeated by the usual suspects under the same ownership - the Mail, Telegraph & Times. The latter two being especially sad cases of decline in standards and the former has always been nonsense, in my view.

There are many points to rebuke in this pamphlet as it is deliberately misleading, a start... the report underestimates combustion engine emissions ~50% by substituting reality with laboratory tests and forgetting fuel production (add a further 25-30%). The only comparison made for the headline of "50k miles before being greener" is between the Volvo Polestar and XC40 with cherry-picked figures using vehicles produced at different factories (China vs. Belgium). The "report" then generalises the results for the Polestar for all EVs.

Producing batteries does have CO2 impact, of course, say 95 kg CO2/kWh battery. Taking this into account and the average national grid emissions to charge at ~100gm/kWh the cross-over point for lifetime CO2 emissions is more like 25k km (15.5k miles).

Yes EVs still produce CO2 to produce and run while the national grid continues to use non-renewable sources. No this is not more than ICE vehicles. Yes there are problems with sourcing battery materials, these are all too slowly being solved, most extractive industries share these problems just like oil drilling.

No, the government are not coming for our Moggies and we still enjoy zero road tax and ULEZ exemption, due to the relatively tiny impact they have - not many people drive them very far each year!

Remember the reason most cities are pushing LEZ's and electric vehicles has nothing to do with climate warming and CO2, its because of the noxious fumes (primarily CO, HC's and NOx). While a minor is pretty good for CO2 it's pretty dismal for the others, it's great that despite this we are exempted from London but I wouldn't be suprised if other cities don't follow suit.

I read somewhere a long time ago that a car needs to be used for 20 years to have been worth the resources it took to make it.
So all Minors qualify, twice over, and then some.

Not wishing to hijack this post, but I must mention E scooters.
My town has been in an E scooter trial for a few weeks now. The scooters are bright yellow, and are supposed to be used in the city centre only. They are EVERYWHERE. Abandoned miles away from where they are supposed to be.
Research from Living Streets showed that E scooters would be used by people who were already pedestrians, and would not persuade anyone to leave their car at home. This seems to be true, with most scooters seemingly being used by students.
The manufacture and charging of E scooters is detrimental to the environment, and their use is a hazard to pedestrians.
Very bad for aquatic life when they end up in rivers and canals.

Our problem in general is the throwaway culture we have, which our little Moggies are very much not a part of.

What needs to change is the level of churn that the car manufacturers have thanks to their PCP (“never-never”) schemes. They want people in new cars every 2-4 years for their profit levels when there is absolutely no need for it. Volvo are even offering cars now on “subscription”, with no minimum term!

In general terms I welcome moves towards cleaner air in our towns in cities and renewable sources powering our homes so our children can breathe cleaner air.

I think that the problem here is that governments accros europe have swallowed the ev car lobby's pr without any real thought, this is possibly because virtually all our politicians are city dwellers. Other more enlighted (and dare I say cleverer) institutions like the I meche are suggesting we should be following a multi-faceted approach including moving liquid fuels to bio mass based asap, that means every vehicle however old will be zero co2.

MorrisJohn wrote: ↑Sun Nov 29, 2020 8:09 am Our problem in general is the throwaway culture we have, which our little Moggies are very much not a part of.

They have lasted longer than many of their contemporaries, partly due to their robust construction, yet I don't think they were designed with any significant longevity in mind. It is the affection and interest people have in these iconic vehicles that has kept them on the road. The vast majority have, of course, been consigned to the scrap heap by now.

I meche are suggesting we should be following a multi-faceted approach including moving liquid fuels to bio mass based asap, that means every vehicle however old will be zero co2.

That sounds like a good idea, plus there would still be fuel for us to run our cars on, as you say, without the issue of emissions.
However, I suspect it would involve spending / investing money that certain individuals / major corporations don't want to.
Plus the PC brigade / EV lobby will be set against anything that preserves / extends the life of the internal combustion engine, which I get the impression they view as the incarnation of evil.............
And they have always been deaf and blind to any arguments that don't fit in / agree with their doctrine / mantra......
Best wishes,
Mike.

Who is this "PC brigade" and where do I sign up? Seems we'd have a great time being very polite to each other.

A further development from the original source of this thread. It seems Jagnut is correct in that major corporations don't want to spend the money - namely on switching to alternative fuels and EVs. Tut tut, Aston Martin et Al.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/astongat ... liebreich/

look at it from their side, they are being asked to move to a technology for which no one has come up with a plan of how to make any profit on, not the sort of thing their share holders (ie you me and anyone with a pension) wants to hear.

There are also plenty of reports which are equally biased funded by the green lobby as well.

I doubt Nissan or Renault are making losses on every Leaf and Zoe they sell, somehow.

Both-sides-ism about the 'green lobby' obfuscates the fact that the weight of misleading nonsense is coming from the old dinosoars interested in continuing very profitable dinosoar burning at the expense of everyone else. In economic parlance; ignoring an external cost.

What does concern me is that responsibility for decarbonising the economy is being pushed onto consumers, and at the consumer's expense, which is very convenient for government and industry as they can then point the finger at us. I think it's correct to push back on this and perhaps this is where we can find agreement. A completely "green" passenger car fleet doesn't get us very far if heavy industry, international shipping, and national grid generation don't change. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't make our best reasonable efforts to move to EVs when we can.

Nissan don't make money on the leaf it was Ghosen's strategy to get them market leadership as Toyota did with HEV, the new management are moving to larger electric vehicles which can be profitable ( and as you say much more expensive).

At the moment a motor, inverter, gearbox, charger and the HV cabling cost a similar amount to a IC engine, then you still have to fund the battery some how. The motors etc will come down as oem's start making them in house but the batteries are a real problem as the material cost keeps rising.

There is another problem brewing, at the moment governments are heavily subsidising EV's which makes them vaguely affordable, but their fiscal planning is to take vast amounts of cash from motorists not give them it, if we all buy EV's they are going to have to get even more expensive.

I work on the development of EV's and they are great to drive but everyone in the industry is struggling to find a way to make a business case, even Tesla with their pricing are reckoned to make their tiny profit from the services they provide rather than making cars.

At the moment a PHEV makes the most sense, a small battery which covers 90% of journeys (if you plug it in) and a cheap basic petrol engine for the longer journeys.