Minister Ryan announces that the taxpayer will foot the bill for future purchases of vehicles by big business

Minister Ryan made this announcement today and coated it in a disguise whereby it appears that we'll be doing the environment a favour.

LINK

I'm becoming thouroughly sick of the Greens and am becoming moreso each and every day. Don't get me wrong here, I know many individual members and would consider them friends. But all the same, they're really starting to piss me off. I personally split the Greens into two distinct categories: the well intentioned hippies and the cynical manipulators. I've no issue whatsoever with the hippies, other than the fact that none of them work in the Dáil...

I've got a shit-list that's a lot longer than my arm, but I want to confine myself to the singular issue defined in the title of this thread. I hope you good folks appreciate the act of will, on my part, that this takes.

Electric cars, whether the hybrid variety or the fully electrical variety, are not even remotely friendly to the environment and are at best, generations away from becoming so, if ever.

Ryan is claiming that buying these yokes will save Ireland's oil costs. This would be true if we could manufacture electricity from the vaccuum without expending energy to do so, and if the second law of thermodynamics - entropy - didn't exist.

As a former electrotechnical engineer, who began his career in the 80's as an apprentice with the ESB, I'm well aware that the sub-standard infrastructure of Ireland's supply grid is nowhere close to being capable of powering Ireland's transition to the electric motor. Add this particular inefficiency into the current (pun intended) picture.

It's no wonder that Noel Dempsey was hovering behind minister Ryan as he made his earth-shattering display of ignorance. This is nothing more than a cheap (and not in the cost sense) gimmick at subsidising big business yet again.

Time for the Greens to go methinks. Idealists are a good thing when tempered with reality and common sense. I'm not accusing Minister Ryan of being an idealist of course, I'm just making allowances for some of his well meaning colleagues. Minister Ryan fits securely into the camp of 'cynical manipulators' in my book.

Hermes, the carbon emissions of electric cars are generally less than petrol or diesel cars.
I wrote about this here: http://www.eoinmadden.ie/2008/07/03/co2-emmissions-of-electric-cars/ I'd be interested to hear if you think my conclusions are wrong. (Or indeed if they are right!)

Hermes wrote:

Electric cars, whether the hybrid variety or the fully electrical variety, are not even remotely friendly to the environment

How so?

Hermes wrote:

Ryan is claiming that buying these yokes will save Ireland's oil costs. This would be true if we could manufacture electricity from the vaccuum without expending energy to do so, and if the second law of thermodynamics - entropy - didn't exist.

I imagine Ryan has heard of the 2nd law of themodynamics.
The point is they use less oil.
Oil which is burnt centrally in an efficient manner and then distributed via the electricity grid.
Granted, there is a cost to this distribution, but then there is a cost to petrol/diesel distribution.

eoinmn wrote:

Hermes, the carbon emissions of electric cars are generally less than petrol or diesel cars.
I wrote about this here: http://www.eoinmadden.ie/2008/07/03/co2-emmissions-of-electric-cars/ I'd be interested to hear if you think my conclusions are wrong. (Or indeed if they are right!)

Tis interesting stuff eoinmn.

I'm all for researching electrical transport and would favour large grants being handed out to universities to do so.

Your point about the emissions from electric motors is spot on. Unfortunately though, this is not the full picture. We must consider the whole route of the energy used to fuel these vehicles and not isolate them from the full picture. Windmills etc., do not as of yet supply a reasonable amount of Ireland's energy needs. Even if they did, there's still a problem. This form of electrical power generation is still in its infancy and thus, maintaining and installing these models tend to be prohibitively high. I'm afraid I don't have an actual breakdown of costs and cost comparisons at hand, but the proof of the pudding is in the fact that there's no plan to transit to using these models whilst ending our traditional approach. Furthermore, eventhough these models do not burn oil as a means of generating electricity, oil figures heavily in production, maintenance and indeed in lubrication etc. Also, one must factor in the fact that the amount of land clearence required to site one of these plants is also very inefficient and is not in the least friendly to the environment.

I think the efficiency of electrical vehicles will continue to improve. I fear though, that this efficiency increase will never amount to anything that might be considered environmentally friendly, in my lifetime at least.

Finally, we must consider battery production. Whilst the end produce of these batteries might be considered to consist of zero emmissions, the production and disposal of them amounts to anything but.

Hermes wrote:

Finally, we must consider battery production. Whilst the end produce of these batteries might be considered to consist of zero emmissions, the production and disposal of them amounts to anything but.

Sure, electric cars are not *zero* emissions.
And wind turbines, wave power, solar, etc are not *zero* CO2 emissions.

But compared to the straight burning of oil, coal and gas there is less CO2 emissions.

Hermes wrote:

I'm all for researching electrical transport and would favour large grants being handed out to universities to do so.

I don't think there is any irish universities working on this.

We'd be better off giving our money to Honda or Toyota.
Or creating demand for electric vehicles, which is what it seems the minister is trying to do.

There is a big project in Denmark, that has a lot of wind power, to set up several tens of thousands of battery charging stations for cars.

I would have agreed with your point until recently Hermes, but the issues of the grid and insufficiency of wind and tidal power can be overcome.

Having tiny little cars of course is an enormous saving. My next car will be a matchbox.

eoinmn wrote:

Hermes wrote:

Finally, we must consider battery production. Whilst the end produce of these batteries might be considered to consist of zero emmissions, the production and disposal of them amounts to anything but.

Sure, electric cars are not *zero* emissions.
And wind turbines, wave power, solar, etc are not *zero* CO2 emissions.

But compared to the straight burning of oil, coal and gas there is less CO2 emissions.

I wouldn't agree with this. Oil must be consumed to make the energy these cars utilise. Whilst the fact that supplying oil to less locations (i.e supplying it to generating plants as opposed to petrol stations) from the start of the energy route might indeed make some savings, it must still be distributed to where it's needed around the country. The savings would be very minimal if any were achieved at all. I say 'if at all' because, we're given the impression that petrol stations will become a thing of the past. In my opinion, this will not happen.

Batteries have a short lifespan before they need to be recharged. This means that folks will need to carry spare batteries around with them so that they don't run out of fuel, which makes the vehicles more inefficient due to the excessive weight of batteries. Or, more reasonably, it means that petrol stations will adapt to selling electrical energy. When this happens, it will mean that petrol stations will need to expand considerably on the amount of land required ro run their business concerns efficiently, what with all the extra parking that will be needed etc. Afterall, unlike filling your car with petrol, which will take a few minutes at most, one will have to park one's car for hours to fill up. Efficiency is shot in the head in a number of ways in this, two of the chief examples being time wastage and land wastage. More fossil fuels will be burnt to account for these inefficiencies. I.e. energy demands will rise dramatically just to account for inefficiency, thus the amount of oil products burnt will rise dramatically, just to cope. We'll be creating a feedback loop based on squandering oil and burning it needlessly.

Like I said already, let us put our investments into research, that's where we'll achieve savings. Running with the pack in this instance is just going to involve us jumping of a bridge into very deep and turbulent waters.

cactus flower wrote:

There is a big project in Denmark, that has a lot of wind power, to set up several tens of thousands of battery charging stations for cars.

I would have agreed with your point until recently Hermes, but the issues of the grid and insufficiency of wind and tidal power can be overcome.

Having tiny little cars of course is an enormous saving. My next car will be a matchbox.

I must disagree CF. The extra land required to house these plants is very prohibitive and very costly. I think it will be some time before we can call Denmark's efforts a 'success.' But all the same, I must praise them for their efforts. They're at least moving forwards and not wasting money implementing ideas without an infrastructure to accomodate them.

As for the small car. Yup it might be small, but it will be excessively heavy. And any space you might require for luggage or passengers will be taken up by batteries.

Wind and tidal power are well worth researching, especially tidal power (there was a time when the ESB were a leading world authority on research into tidal power!). But we're currently very far from where we want to be.

There have been some remarkable breakthroughs into solar power in the last few months mind you. There might be hope for us yet.

Hermes wrote:

Minister Ryan made this announcement today and coated it in a disguise whereby it appears that we'll be doing the environment a favour.

LINK

I'm becoming thouroughly sick of the Greens and am becoming moreso each and every day. Don't get me wrong here, I know many individual members and would consider them friends. But all the same, they're really starting to piss me off. I personally split the Greens into two distinct categories: the well intentioned hippies and the cynical manipulators. I've no issue whatsoever with the hippies, other than the fact that none of them work in the Dáil...

I've got a shit-list that's a lot longer than my arm, but I want to confine myself to the singular issue defined in the title of this thread. I hope you good folks appreciate the act of will, on my part, that this takes.

Electric cars, whether the hybrid variety or the fully electrical variety, are not even remotely friendly to the environment and are at best, generations away from becoming so, if ever.

Ryan is claiming that buying these yokes will save Ireland's oil costs. This would be true if we could manufacture electricity from the vaccuum without expending energy to do so, and if the second law of thermodynamics - entropy - didn't exist.

Quote :

As a former electrotechnical engineer, who began his career in the 80's as an apprentice with the ESB, I'm well aware that the sub-standard infrastructure of Ireland's supply grid is nowhere close to being capable of powering Ireland's transition to the electric motor. Add this particular inefficiency into the current (pun intended) picture.

It's no wonder that Noel Dempsey was hovering behind minister Ryan as he made his earth-shattering display of ignorance. This is nothing more than a cheap (and not in the cost sense) gimmick at subsidising big business yet again.

Time for the Greens to go methinks. Idealists are a good thing when tempered with reality and common sense. I'm not accusing Minister Ryan of being an idealist of course, I'm just making allowances for some of his well meaning colleagues. Minister Ryan fits securely into the camp of 'cynical manipulators' in my book.

There are two things here at least initially - the sincerity of some of the Green Ministers and politicians and their policy moves and the technical side of it - efficiency of electric vehicles / energy economics. We'll go for the more interesting bit first.

Internal combustion engines (petrol burning) are about 30% efficient meaning they convert less than one third of the energy in petrol to what they are supposed to convert it into - movement - and the rest is lost in mostly heat through friction. A diesel engine is a bit better at 45%. For a start an electric vehicle won't have this friction issue so much so can't you imagine that it might be more efficient to build some kind of big generator that burns oil, produces electricity for the car batteries but uses the heat generated to perhaps heat the water in an apartment block or a series of local shops or something like that.

It is only 10% of the vehicle fleet by 2020 too which isn't so much at all really ... I'd prefer to see a transitional period which phases out fossil vehicles preferably using sustainably-grown fuel. I'm disappointed the Greens have mentioned sweet shag all about seaweed or algae oil - a technology which could be very fitting for us here or anywhere because algae eats CO2 produced in fossil stations and then doubles its volume in 24 hours. The plant gets converted into fuel that a diesel engine will burn. Algae or seaweed could very well be one of the Anarchist technologies as it's local and possible to produce at home.

But the introduction of electric vehicles could do very good things for breathability of air in the likes of Dublin - don't knock it so fast !

On batteries, the longevity was written about recently in Ecogeek (who is fairly credible in my humble estimation). He says that a recently tested battery is still going after a simulation of 180,000 miles and shows no signs of depleting I assume it is constantly recharged and then used in a treadmill type effort. 180k miles is a hell of a lot of driving before you have to take a dirty battery out and put another in.
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2325/69/

Electric vehicles somehow tend to be smaller and lighter too so perhaps less materials will be consumed in their production but I don't see why they shouldn't appear perfect for cities as they are quieter, cleaner and less vexatious to the spirit all round.

Eamonn Ryan would want to introduce the SMART meter thing for homes soon though.

Quote :

As a former electrotechnical engineer, who began his career in the 80's as an apprentice with the ESB, I'm well aware that the sub-standard infrastructure of Ireland's supply grid is nowhere close to being capable of powering Ireland's transition to the electric motor. Add this particular inefficiency into the current (pun intended) picture.

Could you expand on that - I'd like to know more.

Interesting post Auditor #9. There still hasn't been a reply from Eamon Ryan to the query submitted regarding Ireland's energy plan and any constraints, including grid issues. After nearly three weeks this is disappointing.

I'll see if a reminder can be sent tomorrow.

Cactus,
hopefully they'll reply to you at some stage. I think that SMART meter was promised about two years ago.

Hermes wrote:

Electric cars, whether the hybrid variety or the fully electrical variety, are not even remotely friendly to the environment and are at best, generations away from becoming so, if ever.

What exactly are you thinking of here Hermes ? I'm not sure the lithium-ion batteries are so virulent for the environment but could be. After that the electric vehicle is pretty much the same as any other except it has an electric motor which might call for a lot more copper.

Has Minister Ryan got copper stocks and shares ?

Auditor #9 wrote:

There are two things here at least initially - the sincerity of some of the Green Ministers and politicians and their policy moves and the technical side of it - efficiency of electric vehicles / energy economics. We'll go for the more interesting bit first.

Internal combustion engines (petrol burning) are about 30% efficient meaning they convert less than one third of the energy in petrol to what they are supposed to convert it into - movement - and the rest is lost in mostly heat through friction. A diesel engine is a bit better at 45%. For a start an electric vehicle won't have this friction issue so much so can't you imagine that it might be more efficient to build some kind of big generator that burns oil, produces electricity for the car batteries but uses the heat generated to perhaps heat the water in an apartment block or a series of local shops or something like that.

It is only 10% of the vehicle fleet by 2020 too which isn't so much at all really ... I'd prefer to see a transitional period which phases out fossil vehicles preferably using sustainably-grown fuel. I'm disappointed the Greens have mentioned sweet shag all about seaweed or algae oil - a technology which could be very fitting for us here or anywhere because algae eats CO2 produced in fossil stations and then doubles its volume in 24 hours. The plant gets converted into fuel that a diesel engine will burn. Algae or seaweed could very well be one of the Anarchist technologies as it's local and possible to produce at home.

But the introduction of electric vehicles could do very good things for breathability of air in the likes of Dublin - don't knock it so fast !

On batteries, the longevity was written about recently in Ecogeek (who is fairly credible in my humble estimation). He says that a recently tested battery is still going after a simulation of 180,000 miles and shows no signs of depleting I assume it is constantly recharged and then used in a treadmill type effort. 180k miles is a hell of a lot of driving before you have to take a dirty battery out and put another in.
http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2325/69/

Electric vehicles somehow tend to be smaller and lighter too so perhaps less materials will be consumed in their production but I don't see why they shouldn't appear perfect for cities as they are quieter, cleaner and less vexatious to the spirit all round.

Eamonn Ryan would want to introduce the SMART meter thing for homes soon though.

Hermes wrote:

As a former electrotechnical engineer, who began his career in the 80's as an apprentice with the ESB, I'm well aware that the sub-standard infrastructure of Ireland's supply grid is nowhere close to being capable of powering Ireland's transition to the electric motor. Add this particular inefficiency into the current (pun intended) picture.

Audi wrote:

Could you expand on that - I'd like to know more.

You raise many interesting points. Regarding the efficiency of different engines: you're very correct, but the oil burning engine that is required to power efficient electrical engines should be factored into the efficiency of electrical engines. For the electrical engine, we effectively have two engines. One that converts oil into power and the other that converts the power into movement. The lack of efficiency that this picture implies, does not bode well.

The infrastructure issue dramatically influences the above picture. Allow me to make a comparison. The electrical grid is similar to the water grid. The actual infrastructure is very old and barely copes with present demand. On top of this the methodology we use to supply electricity, ie cables and wiring etc., is prone to losses too. It's not like copper and aluminium are super-conductive. The point you made
about heat losses is interesting in this respect. There's no way possible to convert the heat losses from the infrastructure into useful energy. Also, you must couple copper and iron losses in transformers etc. into the inefficiency picture we're forming. Short of everyone driving to their nearest powerstation to 'fill up' there's no way of reducing these losses. Even if we did drive to the power stations, we'd be adding further consumption into the picture. And indeed, distributing the saved energy itself would be again prone to losses.

All in all, the more machines and aparatus required to create energy and turn it into work, the more inefficient it is. Electric cars, thus far add many more mouths to feed.

I agree with you absolutely about the algae and the seaweed etc. This is research and I'm all for it and all for exploiting the fruits of it. We're not harvesting fruit now though, we're pulling the leaves from the trees.

Be nice to have a car that you can just plug in wouldn't it ? You'd be terrified of your electricity bill though, of course.... unless it was amazingly cheap to run your car.

I'm not sure of the efficiency of the battery packs of cars like the Volt and the Tesla but I'm going to try to find out here. I've no doubt that batteries and hybrid engines will increase in efficiency to such a degree that we'll be able to get huge mileage out of some wind and a drop of oil. Already they're talking about 80 and 100 mpg when a nissan micra gets about 50.

On Monday Ireland produced a fair whack of wind out of a max possible of 1160 Megawatts as you can see. Tuesday and today haven't been as dramatic. That's a lot of 'free' energy all the same on Monday.


From MIT technology review:

Quote :

The Volt design calls for far more battery cells than are actually needed to supply the car's 40-mile electric range. The pack has a capacity of 16 kilowatt-hours, or 2.5 miles per kilowatt-hour. In comparison, Tesla Motors is selling an electric car that gets 220 miles on a 53 kilowatt-hour pack, or more than four miles per kilowatt-hour.

http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/22186/

Now, an electric kettle, which I've just switched on is around 2 kilowatts hours - which means, if I let it boil for an hour would cost me two units of electricity - or around 30 cents. The Volt above consumes the power of 8 electric kettles and I get 2.5 miles per kilowatt hour it says. That's impressive but the Tesla (which is a sports car) is believed to be more efficient at four miles per kilowatt hour. So for 15 cents I could go four miles ... at 1€ a litre of petrol I can go 10 or 11 miles so that looks like the Tesla is better value on my fuel pocket if only there was enough electricity.

Theoretically speaking if we had a day of 700 MWs all day, is this correct ?
The windfarms producing 700 Megawatts with theoretical constant wind is equal to 700000 kilowatt hours that's 2.8 million miles so on Monday the Irish people more or less could have driven 2.8 million miles in their Teslas if they had them

- And if they owned the windfarms they could have driven for 'free'. Theoretically speaking of course.

Or have I got my figures wrong ?

Your figures are very correct methinks and quite interesting. But, they don't tell the full story.

Let's say the cost of the lithium-ion battery is about €5,000. This is a direct fuel cost too. Couple that with the fears of dwindling resources and you have a situation in the battery market that echoes the peak oil picture. This will mean a rise in demand, a drop in supply and a rapidly rising cost. Check this out: LINK

Whilst I'm all for researching lithium-ion cells (and I'm way impressed with the latest advances achieved in efficiency by replacing the carbon with silicon), they are still very much in the experimental stage, as far as I'm concerned, and they're not without problems that need to be addressed. See here: LINK

I'm coming off as sounding very anti electric motor. That's not the case at all. I love electricity and its potential (again, pun intended). What I'm concerned about here is twofold.

i. The taxpayer footing the bill for vehicles for big business and subsidising their running costs (the ESB's standing charge after all is spread around - as will the extra cost of the development of the infrastructure be).

ii. That the electric car is being marketed as a finished model when it is very far from being a complete picture.

It's coming to a point whereby we're going to have to invest in nuclear energy. Whilst I'd favour this in many respects, I'd be very afraid that the government would appoint people to run these installations, that they express confidence in, like that goon, the former head of FÁS, for example. The future is not at all rosey and committing to a brand new (and experimental) technology to sustain us at the beginning of a global financial (and political) meltdown, scares the living shit out of me.

It does seem to be true about Lithium Ion and the shortage of Lithium Hermes and I'll copy and paste another Ecogeek article here which is very chilling if G.M. consider the Volt to be a saviour for them. The comments on the article below are also interesting - do we know for sure if it's the end of lithium or could that be a lot of oil-company conspiracy ? Will there be another class of technology that will supplant the current ? There is the Air Car too which runs on compressed air plus the biofuel from algae etc.

As for the question about using taxpayers money to support a technology that is obsolescent ... I don't know. I think this is a 'city tax' - you get an appropriate vehicle if you live in a built-up area. Would you agree that we all forsake some liberties when we go to live in the big smoke ? I think this might be the most obvious of them regarding air pollution.

http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/2261/

Code:

Sometimes, we try so hard to dig ourselves out of a hole that we don't see ourselves falling into another. In the desperate struggle to free ourselves from oil, let's not make the same mistake with another finite resource - lithium.

Lithium, already a choice ingredient in laptops and mobile devices due to its light weight, has now caught the attention of electric car manufacturers. Lithium provides the light, powerful boost that will be needed to run the plug in cars of tomorrow. But if electric cars really catch on, there will be a demand for millions and millions of these batteries. As with oil, we must ask ourselves: Where does lithium come from?

The short answer is: South America. There, briny liquids are pumped out from under vast salt flats; the liquids dry into lithium salts which can be further processed into lithium metal. The largest of such salt flats is in Chile, although geological studies show large untapped resources in Bolivia.

But will the Bolivian lithium supply be enough? One geologist - R. Keith Evan - says not to worry; there will be an abundance of supply, plenty for all the cars we want to make. William Tahil, though, disagrees. In two papers he wrote for Meridian International Research over the past year, he claims that even if the current lithium manufacturers scale up their production levels as much as possible, there will only be enough lithium for 1.5 million Chevy Volt-type cars by 2015. Not to mention, he says, the untold environmental devastation that will take place as the lithium is plundered from the ground.

It is possible that Tahil is wrong, and Bolivia may be able to produce more lithium than he predicts. But the mere possibility of a resource shortage so early in the history of electric vehicles is frightening, and calls into question whether such a technology can truly be called sustainable.

Hermes wrote:

...

The infrastructure issue dramatically influences the above picture. Allow me to make a comparison. The electrical grid is similar to the water grid. The actual infrastructure is very old and barely copes with present demand. On top of this the methodology we use to supply electricity, ie cables and wiring etc., is prone to losses too. It's not like copper and aluminium are super-conductive. The point you made
about heat losses is interesting in this respect. There's no way possible to convert the heat losses from the infrastructure into useful energy. Also, you must couple copper and iron losses in transformers etc. into the inefficiency picture we're forming. Short of everyone driving to their nearest powerstation to 'fill up' there's no way of reducing these losses. Even if we did drive to the power stations, we'd be adding further consumption into the picture. And indeed, distributing the saved energy itself would be again prone to losses.

...

Yeah, I'd agree with all of that. And there are lots of transformers and cables between the two. Domestic power may have to go through 4 or 5 transformer stages before arriving at one's house.

Stepping up to 110KV for transmission
Stepping back to 38KV for area Distribution
Stepping down to 10KV for local distribution
Stepping down to 220V for domestic use

There may be more, I'm not well up on network topologies.
Given these trafos are about 80% efficent (depends on lots of parameters) the overall trafo efficiency is 0.8 ^ 4 = 0.41 or 41%.

Thats before adding cables. Not very nice, is it?

Also, there are significant inefficiencies in the battery charging process. The 220V ac mains has to be rectified and regulated to about 14V dc to be suitable for charging. (I'm assuming a 12V nominal battery). You could throw in another 0.8 for this bit.

Now you can switch on your motor, and off you go. And may the road rise with you. But you won't get the same amount of energy out of the battery that you put in.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Now you can switch on your motor, and off you go. And may the road rise with you. But you won't get the same amount of energy out of the battery that you put in.

You do if it’s solar charged.

Tis scary stuff alright. I'm reminded of the capitalist idea of inbuilt obsolescence, in order to force people to buy products again and again - razors being an excellent example. But now we're talking about technology with built in obsolescence. That's very different and in my mind it conjures up a picture of desperation; we're like a drowning man clutching at straws.

I'd never support giving up any liberties under any circumstances, especially when the payoff is a fictional one. Fair enough, there may be less pollution in the immediate area of these vehicles, but, where the power is generated and indeed where the ingredients for batteries etc. are mined, there is extra pollution to balance what we enjoy. It's a case of mugging Peter to pay Paul and I'd not even begin to like it.

I don't see this directly as just another tax. I see it as the State giving away more of our resources for free - another gamble that has been the model of the type of stupidity that has predicated the global collapse. For example, why is it that you, should you invest in one of these motors, cannot avail of a 100% write-off against the taxes you pay?

This has nothing to do with promoting environmentalism or fairness, it's about squeezing every drop of blood you possess out of you before the shit properly hits the fan. The aim is to tame you before you're left in a pile of shite, fending for yourself.

Hermes wrote:

What I'm concerned about here is twofold.

i. The taxpayer footing the bill for vehicles for big business and subsidising their running costs

Would it be ok if they were little businesses?

Hermes wrote:

I don't see this directly as just another tax.

Because it is a tax break?

Hermes wrote:

I see it as the State giving away more of our resources for free - another gamble that has been the model of the type of stupidity that has predicated the global collapse. For example, why is it that you, should you invest in one of these motors, cannot avail of a 100% write-off against the taxes you pay?

You don't pay VRT or road tax if that is any consolation.

tonys wrote:

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Now you can switch on your motor, and off you go. And may the road rise with you. But you won't get the same amount of energy out of the battery that you put in.

You do if it’s solar charged.

I meant more along the lines of the charging / discharging process. A battery dissipates heat during both, so it is not an ideal energy store.

If you expend 1KWh charging a battery from any source, you may only get 90% of that back on discharge in useful electrical energy.

Just trying to highlight the lossy bits...

Thanks for that EVM. I was going to start quoting from some of me old books and would have probably confused myself, moreso than anyone else.

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

tonys wrote:

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Now you can switch on your motor, and off you go. And may the road rise with you. But you won't get the same amount of energy out of the battery that you put in.

You do if it’s solar charged.

I meant more along the lines of the charging / discharging process. A battery dissipates heat during both, so it is not an ideal energy store.

If you expend 1KWh charging a battery from any source, you may only get 90% of that back on discharge in useful electrical energy.

Just trying to highlight the lossy bits...

Still if that energy is there and will not be used otherwise, 90% is OK and given what it’s replacing, it seems like a good deal to me. Solar is the way to go.

eoinmn wrote:

Hermes wrote:

What I'm concerned about here is twofold.

i. The taxpayer footing the bill for vehicles for big business and subsidising their running costs

Would it be ok if they were little businesses?

It would offend me a lot less, especially if they were indigenous. But as we know such companies are in the vast minority of those who would or indeed could avail of this giveaway.