General Chat

[sne]

Mondo Duplantis a whisker away from setting a new indoors world record in the Pole Jump with 6.17.

One of those impossible records By Lavillenie but Duplantis was so close. Guy is 20 y.o.

Edited February 4, 2020 by sne

[Davkaus]

8 minutes ago, mjmooney said:

So where is all this electrical energy generated from? Coal-fired power stations? Nuclear? 

Gas, nuclear and, increasingly, renewables. Less than 5% of UK power came from coal in 2018. That's always reducing. Over a third now comes from renewables, and that's going up YoY.

On top of that, it's been shown that electric cars are significantly cleaner even if they were powered by coal.

 

Edited February 4, 2020 by Davkaus

[Stevo985]

17 minutes ago, Xela said:

I'm all for EVs, the sort of low mileage and short distances I travel, I'm a perfect candidate for one. 

Petrol and diesel cars take a couple of mins to fills up at a station. I'm just wondering how advanced battery technology can get in terms of fast charging. At the moment its hours not minutes to charge an EV. If that can change then its possible I guess. 

The rapid chargers these days fully charge a car in an hour or two. The Mitsubishi Outlander fully charges in 40 minutes.

20 minutes gives you anywhere from 60-200 miles depending on the car.

Give it another 15 years and imagine how quick it will be. Maybe it'll never be as quick as the couple of minutes to fill your tank now, but to give you enough charge to get home? I reckon it won't be far off. If not there'll be even more demand for coffee shops in service stations.

[Genie]

21 minutes ago, Xela said:

I'm all for EVs, the sort of low mileage and short distances I travel, I'm a perfect candidate for one. 

Petrol and diesel cars take a couple of mins to fills up at a station. I'm just wondering how advanced battery technology can get in terms of fast charging. At the moment its hours not minutes to charge an EV. If that can change then its possible I guess. 

I think we’ll see 2 big changes over the next 10-15 years. The speed to charge cars and also the range.

Few years ago a Prius in EV mode would do about 30 ish miles. Now Jaguar has a high performance e car with real world 250 miles. Musk is talking about almost getting 400 miles out of a single charge very soon.

Ive seen the technology in action of wireless car charging. In the real world this would eventually be a plate on, or under your drive and you just park above it and it charges whilst you’re in the house.

Because it generally takes longer than the couple of minutes to full up with petrol people will change their behaviours to keep it topped up by charging overnight, like a mobile phone.

[Genie]

I think the scrapping of hybrids is short sighted though. You could impose very strict emissions targets on the fuel burner but keep the very useful technology going.

[Chindie]

The Birmingham plan is basically agnostic to cars, it wants to rid cars from the city centre entirely, electric or not.

Which is a big ask for a city basically kept alive by cars and with a ropey infrastructure compared to more or less any similar city in Europe.

While it gets to that point it quite openly intends to make driving in the city as irritating as possible. Will never forget reading the document they released that stated, straight up, they intended to cause more traffic jams purposefully, by adjusting traffic light timings and reducing lane capacity wherever they can.

[Davkaus]

What people forget is that traders need access to Dixons.

[lapal_fan]

53 minutes ago, Genie said:

I think we’ll see 2 big changes over the next 10-15 years. The speed to charge cars and also the range.

Few years ago a Prius in EV mode would do about 30 ish miles. Now Jaguar has a high performance e car with real world 250 miles. Musk is talking about almost getting 400 miles out of a single charge very soon.

Ive seen the technology in action of wireless car charging. In the real world this would eventually be a plate on, or under your drive and you just park above it and it charges whilst you’re in the house.

Because it generally takes longer than the couple of minutes to full up with petrol people will change their behaviours to keep it topped up by charging overnight, like a mobile phone.

Yea that's it really.

People don't usually commute more than 100 miles, and Tesla's now, even in winter can deliver 280m, 380m in the summer.

People will have charge points at work, which will only really supply a drip feed of electric because most of your charge will be overnight on your parking pad (think the wireless charging for your phone, but the size of a brick on your drive).

It will become common that charge lines will be built under roads or in roads so you can charge on the move, motorways are prime candidates, this is so logistic companies can ensure their deliveres will be on time.

Its all a bit "pipe line" atm, but it'll happen.  Probably before 2050.

[limpid]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

I think we’ll see 2 big changes over the next 10-15 years. The speed to charge cars and also the range.

I'll give you those two changes, but the single most effective thing that can be done is to reduce the number of journeys needed, which will also reduce the number of vehicle needed.

[Genie]

7 minutes ago, limpid said:

I'll give you those two changes, but the single most effective thing that can be done is to reduce the number of journeys needed, which will also reduce the number of vehicle needed.

It would make a huge difference, but all the predictions are that vehicles on the road are going to keep increasing.

My employer is pretty relaxed about working from home. It’s great for me as it’s 42 miles each way saved so I WFH 1-2 times per week.

[imavillan]

Well, to help get cars off the road, and if Andy Street (Villa fan) is to be believed. He has a 20 year plan to implement the following.... 

https://www.itv.com/news/central/2020-02-04/billion-pound-transport-plans-proposed-for-west-midlands-include-underground-lines-and-21-new-rail-stations/

(The West Midlands Mayoral elections are on the 7th May this year so this plan comes with a vote grabbing warning)

Billion pound transport plans for West Midlands include underground lines and 21 new rail stations

 

It would be brilliant if it came off though.

Edited February 4, 2020 by imavillan

[chrisp65]

A 21 station underground would be a vastly better investment than shaving 15 minutes off how long it takes to get to London.

[tonyh29]

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

The rapid chargers these days fully charge a car in an hour or two. The Mitsubishi Outlander fully charges in 40 minutes.

20 minutes gives you anywhere from 60-200 miles depending on the car.

Give it another 15 years and imagine how quick it will be. Maybe it'll never be as quick as the couple of minutes to fill your tank now, but to give you enough charge to get home? I reckon it won't be far off. If not there'll be even more demand for coffee shops in service stations.

The article I read the other year talked about swap out batteries , I guess a bit like calor gas whereby you leave the empty and drive away with a full one ... trouble with that is it doesn’t sound like cheap motoring and how many hundred / thousands ? would a busy service station need to have charged and in stock at a given time ?

[chrisp65]

This year they start installing 150kw chargers on motorways.

They’ll give a car a 250 mile charge in 15 minutes.

IF the sales blurb from Pod Point is to be believed. They’ve got the backing of Ford, Daimler Benz, VAG, Jaguar etc and plan to have 40 motorway services supplied with 15 minute chargers. The cars coming out in the next 5 years expect to have a range around 250 miles.

Anybody buy any of those Saudi oil shares that went public the other month?

[Stevo985]

10 hours ago, Chindie said:

The Birmingham plan is basically agnostic to cars, it wants to rid cars from the city centre entirely, electric or not.

Which is a big ask for a city basically kept alive by cars and with a ropey infrastructure compared to more or less any similar city in Europe.

While it gets to that point it quite openly intends to make driving in the city as irritating as possible. Will never forget reading the document they released that stated, straight up, they intended to cause more traffic jams purposefully, by adjusting traffic light timings and reducing lane capacity wherever they can.

I don't know if it's a result of what you mention above, or the ongoing chaos that redeveloping Paradise Circus is having, but driving into Birmingham is getting worse and worse.

[Chindie]

6 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

I don't know if it's a result of what you mention above, or the ongoing chaos that redeveloping Paradise Circus is having, but driving into Birmingham is getting worse and worse.

A couple of years ago when I was driving into the city for work, I would regularly, on the way home, hit enormous traffic jams that suddenly would completely disappear when I went past a random junction. There were no accidents in the area, the other side of junction would inevitably be flowing fine, the flow across the perpendicular route would be normal. Just my route was nose to tail for 20 minutes. No kidding this once caused me to spend 40 minutes to drive half a mile. And seemingly the only thing causing it was the lights.

A broken down car on the route home once caused a tailback for over 3 miles into the city centre on my route. Which is shite. But at least I could see that the broken down car had caused an issue.

Driving in the city is nightmarish. And I'm not convinced it's just weight of traffic - they're actively trying to make driving worse, particularly on major commuter routes around the city centre. And then they are also openly trying to attack parking around the city as well.

Which wouldn't be so bad. But there's large areas of Birmingham where the public transport sucks. Before I could drive my options for getting into town realistically was the bus, which was shit - slow, unreliable, caught on the same roads every car was. Even when they implemented bus lanes a great deal of the route didn't have the lanes anyway. I ended up getting into town earlier and earlier just to try to avoid sitting on a bus in traffic for the better part of an hour (or more) to do a trip you could quite genuinely do in 20 minutes in a car at any other time of day.

The entirety of North Birmingham is a wasteland for rail.

[Stevo985]

19 minutes ago, Chindie said:

A couple of years ago when I was driving into the city for work, I would regularly, on the way home, hit enormous traffic jams that suddenly would completely disappear when I went past a random junction. There were no accidents in the area, the other side of junction would inevitably be flowing fine, the flow across the perpendicular route would be normal. Just my route was nose to tail for 20 minutes. No kidding this once caused me to spend 40 minutes to drive half a mile. And seemingly the only thing causing it was the lights.

A broken down car on the route home once caused a tailback for over 3 miles into the city centre on my route. Which is shite. But at least I could see that the broken down car had caused an issue.

Driving in the city is nightmarish. And I'm not convinced it's just weight of traffic - they're actively trying to make driving worse, particularly on major commuter routes around the city centre. And then they are also openly trying to attack parking around the city as well.

Which wouldn't be so bad. But there's large areas of Birmingham where the public transport sucks. Before I could drive my options for getting into town realistically was the bus, which was shit - slow, unreliable, caught on the same roads every car was. Even when they implemented bus lanes a great deal of the route didn't have the lanes anyway. I ended up getting into town earlier and earlier just to try to avoid sitting on a bus in traffic for the better part of an hour (or more) to do a trip you could quite genuinely do in 20 minutes in a car at any other time of day.

The entirety of North Birmingham is a wasteland for rail.

I'm lucky that I live a 10 min walk away from two train stations in Sutton Coldfield that get me into Birmingham in 15-20 minutes (or Villa Park in 10 )

But I'd still often drive into Town if I was going somewhere a fair distance from a train station or if the weather was particularly shit. And I'd never usually have much of an issue.

But the last couple of times I've tried this it has been a nightmare. About November last year I tried to drive in and it took me about 2 hours. Would usually be about a 20 min drive.

 

So I'm sticking to the train now.

 

[lapal_fan]

Birmingham is actively attempting to stop cars coming into the city, it's part of a plan to pedestrianise it by 2050 (I think that was the deadline).  

My brother worked on "the gateway to Birmingham" project, which was redoing centenary square, and the trams around New Street, reaching down to Broad Street/5 Ways. 

Birmingham in the past had the opportunity to have an underground system (in the Victorian age I believe) and city planners turned it down - oh how we've regretted it since. 

If there is any chance to do one, we should be all over it.  As has been said, it's all good pedestrianising it, but you've got to have good public transport options, which currently, we don't.  Moor Street and New Street are too close together and Snow Hill is too far for people who don't know the city or immobile people.  The buses are trash, the trams will help, but aren't fully functional and there isn't enough options for stops for commuters.  

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, lapal_fan said:

Birmingham in the past had the opportunity to have an underground system (in the Victorian age I believe) and city planners turned it down - oh how we've regretted it since. 

Last time it was seriously mooted was in the 1920s. Very narrowly voted down in the Council. Subsequently there was the roads and cars boom that we all know about, and the conclusion was that the moment had passed and the opportunity had been missed - the disruption and expense now ruled it out. Interesting that it's now being floated again. 

Edited February 5, 2020 by mjmooney

[Stevo985]

A lot of the tunnels are already there aren't they? 

Sure I read somewhere there was a vast network of tunnels underneath Birmingham