Friday Reads – 22 May 2020

1. Re: car cost estimation article.

   Presumably survey performed and submitted before impacts of C19 were apparent. And Jalopnik recently also published highlighting similar level of underestimation but not the potential impact of better information on willingness to consider alternatives.

   Unfortunately I think C19 will encourage people back into cars for all kinds of journeys regardless of better understanding of cost (and the lower marginal cost and convienience of a car can generate additional journeys and risk, and create a new “tragedy of the commons”).

   I live in a household where others have health vulnerabilities (on the non critical list) and sadly I am considering changing jobs to a job that is a car commute instead of transport to protect them (walking/cycling not really a likely option).

2. Airships – hydrogen is out as a buoyancy gas, for obvious reasons. Helium, the only obvious alternative, is in critically short supply worldwide. There is NO OTHER option. Don’t waste available helium by even letting your kid have a shiny party balloon!

3. Seattle -what a pathetic, disjointed, mess.

   You couldn’t make it up if you tried.

   And, what ambition, they’re going to sort it out by 2041!

4. That “Car Cost” article is highly amusing – to me, at any rate.
   But then I’m at least 2 SD’s from the mean, I would guess.
   What they may not address much is the sheer incovenience of getting to some places without a car, even really close to London, & where/when you can’t hire one ( Over 70, soon to be past 75 ) & I don’t think hire companies want you to shift Horse Manure in icar’s boot, either ( Estate Cars are expensive to hire )
   And, some of us only travel 1500-2000 miles a year by car – where nothing else will do.
   Oh yes, what’s this “depreciation” thing, by the way? 😁

   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   John MF
   No worse that our government’s so-called “policy” on railway electrification, if you think about it.

5. @JohnMF
   Balloon gas is frequently impure recycled helium. There is no shortage of helium.

   Most helium is wasted when you burn natural gas that it hasn’t been through a separation process. Helium is “produced” by separating it from natural gas. But in most cases this doesn’t happen. So there is huge potential to increase helium production. Production has been depressed for several decades because the US has been gradually selling off its enormous helium stocks that it built up in the cold war. This kept the price low and made investment in helium extraction unprofitable. Clearly we are going to have to get used to more expensive helium, but producers are now investing to fill the shortfall.

6. I’m with Greg on the Car Cost article. In normal times I drive only a couple of times a month at most, but when I do I want a car to my specification, available flexibly at short notice for as long as I want it and already containing the nick-nacks I’ll want while using it. I already know what I can fit into it, it’s there waiting for me nearby (rather than having to collect it from somewhere else so an extra journey at start and finish or wait for it to be delivered), and I can make it as dirty as I want if necessary.

7. The car cost estimation article uses that victim-blaming phrase “range anxiety”. Also it thinks it is to do with not enough rechargers. But actually it is to do with how long it takes to charge. There aren’t any more fuel stations than rechargers. But it doesn’t bother us if (eg in a rural area) the nearest one is several miles away, because it is only going to take 5 mins to fill up when we go past.

   Most Norwegians who buy electric cars nevertheless mostly continue to own liquid fuel cars as their main car. They are perfectly aware the electric car is cheaper. It isn’t cost that is the main barrier to stopping using liquid fuel cars. Their concern is not “anxiety”, it is a genuine limitation on what they can do with the vehicle. Especially if, as is the case for a lot of Norwegians, you go to stay in summerhouses where there is isn’t an electricity supply, let alone a recharger. Getting people to change their lifestyles that are currently based on refuelling a car in 5 mins is a much bigger ask than getting them to notice what is cheaper.

8. Ivan
   Exactly
   IF I could afford to re-supply my vehicle with electric propulsion ( There are conversionas available ) – I still might not.
   One: The conversion would cost more than twice as much as replacing my diesel engine with an LPG-converted ex-petrol V8 – almost as expensive as a new car, which I certainly can’t afford.
   Two: If I’m on a long drive, I want to stop off at a country pub, or somewhere pleasant, not some revolting M’way “service area” while I queue up for over half an hour to recharge, when I can refill with liquid fuel of any sort, in 5 minutes.
   No-one seems to have actually though the logistics through, as far as I can see ….

9. The claim that helium should not be wasted on party balloons is made, not because of any current shortage, but because eventually if all the helium on earth is allowed to escape into the atmosphere and away into space, there will be none left. I have no idea whether the estimated time until this happens is of the order of centuries, millennia or any greater power of ten (in years). But humanity is going to have to face up to a lot of other problems rather more pressing than helium over a rather shorter timescale.

10. The very real objections to electric cars just mentioned do have, in theory, a resolution. That is a plug-in hybrid. A car which can be operated using energy from mains electricity whenever possible, but which can offer the same range and convenience (at an increased cost) whenever and wherever recharging is impossible or inconvenient.

    Sadly at the moment such cars are very expensive to buy, and have a range of other problems such as unimpressive reliability, limited electric range, limited choice and poor payload to total weight ratios. But all these might change over time.

11. I agree that no electric car can be recharged as quickly as you can fill the tank of a conventional petrol/diesel model. That said, while the hassle of recharging an electric car is a concern, the situation is improving quickly. There are some models now on sale (various Tesla, the Jaguar i-pace, even the ‘lowly’ Vauxhall Corsa) which will accept the 100Kw rapid chargers, and will take on at least 150 miles range in under half an hour. This rapid charge tech is appearing first on luxury models (virtually all new tech that we now take for granted – think of anti lock brakes – appears first on luxury models) but is quickly migrating to “everyday” cars. For many people, taking a comfort break and grabbing a coffee, half an hour for more about 150 miles of range is an acceptable recharge time. The network of rapid chargers isn’t big enough yet – but it is changing.

12. @Malcolm
    Helium bubbles up from the interior of the earth, where it forms as alpha particles from radioactive decay of heavy elements. It accumulates in impermeable formations. Natural gas formations are particularly convenient to extract it from, when we are taking out the gas anyway. The proportion of helium in natural gas varies. 1% ish is fairly common. There are a small number of high helium deposits in the 5-10% range, which are the best for extraction. And some have very little. WIth it bubbling up like that, its going to be around and available to some degree for billions of years. If you calculate how much is bubbling up, it is more than we use. The issue is that it is coming up everywhere and only in a few places is it being conveniently trapped. We are using up the currently easily available stock pretty quickly, but not noticeably more wastefully than fossil fuels themselves.

    The party balloon complaint, often made, is a typical case of complaining about something that is of very small order in comparison to all the other damaging things we do. Just by running your gas central heating system, you probably wasted more helium in a few moments than having a party balloon, because of all the unextracted helium in your gas. There are many other ways that people have fun, or fail to be economical, that are much more damaging in a resource consuming sense, than the odd party balloon. You can feel virtuous by not having a party balloon.

13. Plug-in hybrids are a dead-end in London because they’ll have to pay the Congestion Charge next year, So no-one who lives or might drive inside North/South Circular is going to consider one .
    They could be a very useful bridging technology in other (geographically larger) countries.

    (speculatively) I do wonder if the build out of charging stations in London will turn out to be money well spent:
    – the price of charging isn’t going to come down;
    – As the squeeze to reduce the number of vehicles continues (by C charging, (resident) parking charges; VED, physically less road space) ;
    – improvements in battery technology will reduce the need for drivers away from home to charge;
    then we might reach the point of saturation sooner rather than later

14. I do think we should follow Japan’s lead and only let people have cars if they have a garage to store them in.

    Thousands of hardly used vehicles litter London’s streets, using up space that could otherwise be bus lanes or pavement cafes – there’s a very real opportunity cost thrust onto the public for storing all of these cars at well below market rate.

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