| Author | Message | ||
     Mike Thompson Frequent User Username: vroomrr Post Number: 1000 Registered: 04-2019 |
In possibly 2040 all Internal Combustion Fueled cars will be banned in the EU, and California (therefore the USA). The question is, will Rolls Royce go electric or something like hydrogen, or fuel cells etc.? https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/denmark-eu-ban-gas-diesel-cars/ | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 3474 Registered: 04-2003 |
Mike, This is feasible in cities and densely populated areas but less so [let alone necessary] in country areas such as where I am now where diesel fuel is available everywhere and often less expensive than regular unleaded. I have two diesel cars with current emission technology which are more fuel efficient and have better performance than their conventional equivalents [average 6.1 litres/100km is consistently achieved and I am known for not sparing the horses!]. I made this a deliberate decision as an intermediate stage in transferring to all-electric vehicles when they have a minimum 600kilometre range on an Australian hot summer day with the climate control fully operative. I am waiting for storage battery prices and technology for photovoltaic systems to stabilise before installing and going off-grid with a 3 phase grid feed-in to sell the surplus power. I am very interested in the Redflow Zcells described in Pat Lockyer's recent post given their claimed long service life with regard to capacity. IMHO - I think Rolls-Royce will initially go with the Hydrogen fuel cell if this fuel gains sufficient market penetration with regard to availability rather than storage battery technology. | ||
| Mike Thompson Prolific User Username: vroomrr Post Number: 1005 Registered: 04-2019 |
To me as has been the case for me for almost all my life, hydrogen makes the most sense. The infrastructure is already in place. As gas stations. No lead problems of batteries (for example). The exhaust is water, nothing more. It is renewable. All cars (I think) can be converted to hydrogen. 71 percent of the Earth's surface is covered in water. Hydrogen can be made by wind or solar power. Electric cars take a long time to be refueled (unless they are hybrid electric vehicles that are powered by an internal combustion engine, could be hydrogen, and an electric motor with batteries). The hydrogen fuel cell is the system's power plant. In it, hydrogen gas drawn from an onboard pressurized tank reacts with a catalyst, typically made of platinum. The process strips the electrons from the hydrogen, freeing them to do their thing, which is to be the electricity that flows through the electric motor to power the car. After their job is done, the electrons return to the fuel cell, where they are reunited with the parent hydrogen in the presence of oxygen pulled in from the ambient air. They meet in a ratio of two atoms of hydrogen to one of oxygen which is H2O, or water. But this takes a new element for future cars (some already exist). Hydrogen for cars will fuel the way for the Hydrogen fuel cell. Most people will want what they are used to, filling up the car and hearing the hum of that internal combustion engine. | ||
| Trevor Hodgekinson Experienced User Username: wm20 Post Number: 85 Registered: 11-2006 |
Always wondered where the solar powered hydrogen cells went. I can remember seeing a demo plant at UNSW and funding was made available for a commercial sized pilot plant, from memory to be done in Fiji. Probably because the costs could come out of the foreign aid budget in place of the research buget and of course it would be really problematic for professors & seniour research student to be forced to spend their summer break at the Fiji plant. The after than nothing for decades till the ammonia storage system was unveiled. \ Often wondered what happened | ||
| Patrick Lockyer. Grand Master Username: pat_lockyer Post Number: 2198 Registered: 09-2004 |
If it is true this may well be for the future and for Rolls Royce. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7592485/Father-eight-invents-electric-car-battery-drivers-1-500-miles-without-charging-it.html IMO more like a fuel cell! | ||
| Patrick Ryan Grand Master Username: patrick_r Post Number: 2180 Registered: 04-2016 |
Chaps, in answer to Mike’s original question, We just need to look at, or spy on what BMW is testing. At the launch of the Phantom VIII, the boss of Rolls-Royce did clearly say electric is on the to do list. | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 3498 Registered: 04-2003 |
Patrick's article makes a lot of sense for cars spending most of their time in an urban environment where the economics favour the setting up of convenient changeover facilities. I am not so sure the economics favour locations with huge land areas and populations largely located along the ocean coast line such as Australia where the cost of setting up changeover facilities in the country areas, freighting fresh batteries and returning used batteries and the need to change batteries with several hundred kilometres of range left would be an impediment. For this reason, recharging batteries using locally generated photo-voltaic power with high capacity fast charging would probably be a more economic alternative despite the finite life of the existing rechargeable battery types. | ||
| Patrick Francis Frequent User Username: jackpot Post Number: 299 Registered: 11-2016 |
https://robbreport.com/motors/cars/roll-royces-103ex-vision-next-100-concept-goodwood-2871951/ I have a worry: I am involved in a company that installs electric charging points for electric vehicles. The world is pushing towards electric vehicles at an alarming rate. Gibraltar will not allow any vehicle that is not fully electric to be registered after 2030. Honda has announced that within 3 years they will no longer build vehicles that are not hybrid or electric. My worry is, how long will the classic car industry survive? Fuel will get more and more expensive to discourage its use, and our classics will become museum pieces like steam engines. With that, an associated drop in value and desreability- who wants a car that they can't drive. Point is, though, that all the boats in any of the large cruise liner companies or cargo companies produce more pollution than all the cars put together due to the gunge they burn for fuel.......yet no control on that front | ||
| Mark Aldridge Frequent User Username: mark_aldridge Post Number: 644 Registered: 10-2008 |
Patrick what about aircraft ! Might upset environmentalists who must fly round the world on their vital holiday yet hammer the motorist !! Mark | ||
| Mike Thompson Prolific User Username: vroomrr Post Number: 1046 Registered: 04-2019 |
So Rolls Royce has come full circle with their new electric car. And when they ban all vehicles except electric, what about hydrogen? (Knee jerk, heavy on the jerk part, by EU.)   Aircraft https://www.airbus.com/newsroom/news/en/2019/10/new-airbus-facility-will-help-zero-emission-technologies-to-take-flight.html . | ||
| Mike Thompson Prolific User Username: vroomrr Post Number: 1049 Registered: 04-2019 |
Thanks David. | ||
| Trevor Hodgekinson Experienced User Username: wm20 Post Number: 97 Registered: 11-2006 |
Patrick what about aircraft ! Might upset environmentalists who must fly round the world on their vital holiday yet hammer the motorist !! Mark Exactly I currently repair small engines & mowers These too will have to go electric to comply with exhaust emission regulations However a Jumbo jet tosses out around 200 gallons of unburned Jet A1 every time it takes off. Apparently that is not a problem But the emissions from a 20cc line trimmer will kill all lifeon the planet. | ||
| Mike Thompson Prolific User Username: vroomrr Post Number: 1060 Registered: 04-2019 |
Along with the link above "Aircraft" to airbus here is a video as well. Electric Aircraft Propulsion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXVOsDd6YIo | ||
| Patrick Ryan Grand Master Username: patrick_r Post Number: 2184 Registered: 04-2016 |
Mike, Did you do the photoshopping in the above image? | ||
| Mike Thompson Prolific User Username: vroomrr Post Number: 1061 Registered: 04-2019 |
Patrick Ryan, Yes the RR electric looks like it has wagon wheels to me, so I added them to a horseless carriage (car). It probably took a half hour to make. I outlined the pieces and pasted them into that picture, took the color out, masked the parts that I wanted to be in the picture and pasted around them, added to the background, took away the top of the carriage, blended ect. | ||
| Mike Thompson Prolific User Username: vroomrr Post Number: 1062 Registered: 04-2019 |
The original picture if you wanted to see it.   | ||
| Trevor Hodgekinson Experienced User Username: wm20 Post Number: 99 Registered: 11-2006 |
Just been flipping through the current Foundry Planet. They are doing a not particularly objective look at electric vehicles. Apparently the pollution from the manufacture of a single Tesla battery is the same as 8 years of normal car driving in Germany. That would be 2 years down here. That leaves you with 8 years to cover the embedded pollution in the rest of the vehicle and get to a zero emissions state before the end of battery life of 10 years. VW are looking at the introduction of their all electric car however they will need to drastically reduce the expected production as VW would need 130,000 tons of Cobalt / year to meet their production target. However the know production of Cobalt world wide is only 123,000 tons with little chance of a drastic increase. And I thought that the availability of Lithium would be the choke point. | ||
| Patrick Ryan Grand Master Username: patrick_r Post Number: 2186 Registered: 04-2016 |
Great job there Mike. Thanks for the pics and the explanation. | ||
| Patrick Ryan Grand Master Username: patrick_r Post Number: 2187 Registered: 04-2016 |
Trevor, Those numbers are staggering. When you combine all your research above, add the power used, and the raw materials consumed to produce the actual car, and then add how the electricity is generated in different countries, to then charge the car, it almost seems a normal, smaller economical car is far “greener” from the start of the normal cars life and say run it for 10 years or more, the normal car seems far more environmentally friendly. | ||
| Mike Thompson Prolific User Username: vroomrr Post Number: 1067 Registered: 04-2019 |
Where hydrogen can be produced by wind and solar power, and very little needs to be changed to the engines, and the only thing that comes out the back is a little trail of water. To me this has always seemed to be the way to go. | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 3505 Registered: 04-2003 |
With regard to the raw material supply problem for electric vehicles, I expect this will be resolved by implementing more rigid and enforced recycling/reclamation measures as will all other new vehicles regardless of their means of propulsion. The current practices of "waste rather than reuse" have to be changed quickly if we are to conserve limited resources and maximise our quality of life. Hydrogen fuel vehicles will require fuel cells to produce electricity if this fuel is to be used to full advantage, the availability and cost of the materials needed will involve similar considerations to battery-powered electric vehicles. | ||
| Trevor Hodgekinson Experienced User Username: wm20 Post Number: 100 Registered: 11-2006 |
Patrick, No real research I subscribe to a variety of trade journals from my foundry past: The American Foundrymens Journal Foundry World Foundry Planet keeps the little grey cells functioning. Now the entire issue of FP was on electric vehicles , mainly the cons and on the affect of electric vehicles on the foundry industry. Right now 3 of the largest foundries in Germany are being liquidated and all of them were heavily reliant on automotive orders so the articles they printed were never going to be objective, however if the numbers are correct they provide some food for thought. There is not enough cobalt available to allow any more the 3% of the global automotive production to be full electric. Lithium prices are skyrocketing which of course has spurned a frenzy of lithium prospecting. So cobalt might follow suit. Some of my friends from uni days worked for the State & Federal governments. Their job was to read every trade journal , company press release and annual return. They then highlighted the bits they thought the government needed to know & pass them on to their supervisor, who then edited, copied & distributed what was needed to be known to those who needed to know it. Both of them lost their jobs within a few years of each other in one of the "unnecessary back room job" culls. Had they still been there they would have highlighted the 2010 "loan" of $6,000,000 to GM by the Obama government to build a new aluminium foundry in Michigan which was massive news in all of the foundry newsletters. It even made papers like the New Yorker, Business America & the Financial Times but apparently no one in the Australian governments knew about it so when GMH announced the closure of the Elizabeth plant it was a total shock to both the SA & AUS parliaments. It was no surprise to the other car makers or foundry men because we knew that GMH made a loss on every car assembled but a massive profit on all of the aluminium castings & assembled engines we exported to every GM plant world wide, so if Aust castings were going to be replaced by USA castings as of 2016 there would be no need for GM to remain in Aust. From the day the Howard government signed the USA - Aus trade deal there was no purpose in keeping any Aust car plant running, except for GM who sources all the Al castings worldwide from Aus so GM was not going to close. As GM was not going to close the others needed to remain in order to maintain local sales & not give GM a massive PR & sales boost. Note it was a $6,000,000 "loan" because the USA does not subsidise any industry, whether GM ever pay it back or not is another thing all together. The figures varied between $4b & $6b but you expect that. When Ford declared bankruptcy in the GFC apparently their biggest creditor was the USA government for similar "loans". . | ||
| Trevor Hodgekinson Experienced User Username: wm20 Post Number: 101 Registered: 11-2006 |
David. If that was only true. However because of the "Golden Rule" I for one can no see that happening. Wasting equals low purchase price so higher sales volumes thus high profits - recycling equals higher purchase price, lower sales and less profits. So those who live on those profits will never allow this to happen. I am sure you know it would be cheaper in the long run for the face scraping males to use a cut throat razor. It would also drastically reduce the world wide consumption of surgical grade stainless steels. But the price per razor is a lot lower for 3 gram of stainless in a lump of plastic so they are easy to sell but impossible to recycle. You also have to change the "volume , volume , volume" mentality of the recyclers. I tried in vain to get the car breakers at Sims to toss the wheel nuts into a 44gal[220litre] drum. One for plain nut & bolts and another for chromed ones. You of all people would appreciate the value to foundries of feed of a know chemistry but the offical view was if there was not 1,000 ton/ month it was not worth it. Same story with wheel studs. They got knocked out of cast Iron drums because they was a contaminant and reduced the price we got for drums, but to save them & sell them as a specific grade of scrap, "not enough weight" so they got tossed in with the shreds. | ||
| Mike Thompson Prolific User Username: vroomrr Post Number: 1068 Registered: 04-2019 |
David, if governments (and probably humans in general) gave a crap about "conserve limited resources and maximise our quality of life" we would have been "terraforming" Mars right after going to the Moon. So that when the population has begun to outstrip resources, or some super germ comes along, the human race would survive. We just don't think in that term. We will wait until all the resources are gone and every inch of land is inhabited, and there are no funds left but for basic needs, then say we have to do something when it is too late. We stopped going to the Moon before the mission was complete because of the cry that that money would be better spent on welfare checks. The Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was halted due in no small part to George W. Bush not being elected as governor of Texas, and the out cry from the Republicans that the Democrats were pouring money down a hole in Texas. The SSC was canceled by the U.S. Congress after years of construction and expenditures of $2 billion (in other words 2 days of war in Iraq). The LHC makes some 6 trillion electron volts, the SSC would have made 20 TeV in around 1993 +, some 20 years head start. So don't get your hopes up on any government doing the right thing. And as far as hydrogen I mean just hydrogen in a tank like your gas tank (pressurised) and going down a carburettor and burned like gasoline. No electric anything. | ||
| Trevor Hodgekinson Experienced User Username: wm20 Post Number: 102 Registered: 11-2006 |
The USA had a Thorium salt reactor running full power for over ten years then a change of president caused the program to be shut down & all documents destroyed. China fired up their research Thorium Salt reactor this year and built an entire university around it so I expect them to be generating electricity from them big time in the very near future. The Indian reactor is due to go on line next year. The day the cold war ended and the USA did not "need" a ready supply of "scrap" plutonium which conveniently could be re-purposed into making bombs. The Thorium program should have been rebooted, but Peabody & the Coke Bros would rather burn lots of their coal, for the right price. | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 3507 Registered: 04-2003 |
Trevor, You make an interesting comparison for me between Sims and Comsteel with their scrap practices. No doubt this was associated with the requirements of your customers purchasing scrap for reprocessing and the mass required. Comsteel works-generated and state warehouse scrap was always sorted and stored based on alloy content and type e.g stainless steel, high alloy and tool steels, carbon steel, low alloy steel and foundry scrap. We even stored swarf from the warehouse cutting facilities for return to Waratah. It is my recollection, a premium price applied to sorted scrap from outside suppliers mainly Newcastle scrap metal dealers to check incoming scrap and segregate identified high value scrap for sale to Comsteel. The Newcastle-located industries then segregated their scrap at the production line. Given the fact we had a chemical laboratory that had a "state of the art" facilities that could do a full chemical analysis of a flat metal sample around 1 inch square in a few minutes, routine checking of scrap was a way of keeping the shift chemists busy especially on back shifts!! Notwithstanding this technology, it was relatively common for the arc furnace melter to change the heat grade after initial meltdown and first chemical analysis. This was primarily to deal with unexpected high-alloy content melts or melts with unwanted high residual elements that had to diverted to less-critical orders. I remember having to be "on call" outside normal working hours to authorise melt diversion of "problem heats" before I transferred to Sydney. With regard to the demise of the Thorium reactor, you also should remember which large US companies supplied a significant number of nuclear fission reactors for power generation, ships and submarines. Given the government and industry expenditure involved in research, development and manufacture of reactors, extensive and expensive political lobbying would have been involved to protect and enhance vested interests - need I say more! Mike, I was aware of where you were coming from regarding a hydrogen-fuelled internal combustion engine however the inherent inefficiency compared to alternative technology using hydrogen for transport applications suggests to me the I.C engine is unlikely to have widespread application. Re the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), a family member has been involved with the Large Hadron Collider Project in recent years. | ||
| Mike Thompson Prolific User Username: vroomrr Post Number: 1069 Registered: 04-2019 |
David, if I remember correctly, all you need to do to made an engine preform like gasoline, is a bigger engine. Since I like the mad max style of doing things, I don't see a problem with a bigger engine (small blocks are for pussies)  . You don't need any emission control and if you make your own hydrogen you don't even have to worry about gas mileage. I'm sure someone will figure out some way of as you go down the road you make your own fuel, and all you have to do is add water as needed. And spit out the oxygen, (since most trees will be gone in numbers a win win). Then there will only be water stations along the roads like with old trains, and they just carried the fuel onboard. As far as family involved with the LHC, you must have a big family. Maybe one of them is really good at high math to help with my project. | ||
| David Gore Moderator Username: david_gore Post Number: 3508 Registered: 04-2003 |
I do not know exactly what is involved as confidentiality restraints apply. I suspect the involvement is with telemetry - no mathematics involved just applied "state of the art" data transfer technology. I have a cousin-in-law who recently retired as an Associate Professor of Pure Mathematics from one of our better Universities. He speaks a language I do not understand  . | ||
| Mike Thompson Prolific User Username: vroomrr Post Number: 1078 Registered: 04-2019 |
I learned trigonometry in about 8 hours and calculus in about 10 hours, then lagrangians and hamiltonians in about an hour, but then I forget them in about the same amount of time, so it is a sum total of zero. If I still had a very good memory (nearly photographic) I could do it myself, but my memory is so bad and I would have to relearn on a constant basis the math skills to do the job. When I worked as a parts specialist they would force me to take an hour lunch, so I would go into the back a listen to videos, or read math book, read - watch videos on Einstein's field equations and tensor calculus. They thought I was from another planet. | ||
| ross kowalski Prolific User Username: cdfpw Post Number: 1277 Registered: 11-2015 |
Mike, Hydrogen IC engines are kind of nonsense. They pollute like any IC engine, require crank case oil changes like any IC engine, are woefully inefficient like any IC engine, the fuel energy density is incredibly low, and it has CG dangers in addition to flamibility issues. Hydrogen as a car IC fuel makes little sense. So electric cars yes, fuel cell cars yes, Hydrogen IC cars ... No. | ||
| Mike Thompson Prolific User Username: vroomrr Post Number: 1079 Registered: 04-2019 |
Ross I don't see how you can say Hydrogen IC pollutes. The recombination of hydrogen with oxygen produces water vapor. Oils can be produced by soybeans etc. Using electrolysis of water no high carbon emissions are produced as from natural gas. The low density of hydrogen compared to fossil fuel is just a matter of souping up an engine. The first Rolls Royces were only some 10 hp. Now they are in the 500 hp range. Batteries equal pollution. If they can get fuel cells to work in say a Tesla Roadster I could be persuaded to go that route. But the proven IC engines are a natural next step in weaning the public off of fossil fuels. And building the hydrogen infrastructure toward fuel cells. Like natural gas is being done with 18 wheelers. | ||
| Randy Roberson Frequent User Username: wascator Post Number: 835 Registered: 05-2009 |
Ford declared bankruptcy? I think not. GM and Chrysler=yes. |
