Question of the Month: Will the next car you purchase be an EV or a Hybrid Electric Vehicle?

I just bought a new diesel powered car. I live in a very rural part of SW Scotland, 7 miles to nearest small shops, 14 miles to nearest supermarket, 56 miles to nearest big town.

Mostly I drive 28 miles per day (work and back).

Sometimes I drive 350 miles (to visit aged father in England) and 700 miles in a weekend. Only an absurdly expensive electric car can do that.

But in the UK we have other issues:

There is a political attempt to move all domestic heating to electricity and all vehicles to electric power and all electricity generation to renewables but it's not backed up by any serious planning. Our capacity for electricity generation and storage is way short of the predictable demand.

The whole idea is mad - we have millions of vehicles that burn hydrocarbons, a huge investment in the infrastructure to fuel them , make them and maintain them. Our houses are mostly heated by burning hydrocarbons and we have a huge infrastructure to support this.

What we need is to replace the hydrocarbons from fossil fuel with hydrocarbons made from atmospheric CO2 and renewable energy (nuke, solar, wind  etc).

That we we don't need to bin all the stuff we've got and make new stuff. Its generally accepted that re-use is better than re-cycling - why are cars and domestic boilers and gas sations any different ?

Sooner or later Joe Public is going to realise that wearing hair shirts to keep warm isn't going to be much fun and will sling out some of the more obviously silly targets. I'm hoping we'll see some seriously considered engineering and start putting money into places where it can do some good.

There is work going on to make hydrocarbons from atmospheric CO2, some using trees, some using artificial photosynthesis cells (direct CO2 to propanol has been demonstrated). There is hope.

Back to the car - by 2030 in the UK we'll at least have adopted the EU model of waiting until 2035 before banning ICE unless they use synthetic fuel.

I reckon that when my new car is ready to go by about 2028 I'll be able to buy a new one that can burn synthetic fuel. Or maybe the Flux capacitors will be working properly and I can use them.

I predict a lot of "Giga Factories" being re-purposed to make white elephants.

MK

michaelkellett said:

Our capacity for electricity generation and storage is way short of the predictable demand.

This gets said a lot, but the National Grid has repeatedly said this isn't the case. Eventually, all those idle car batteries could be used to balance demand near the source and smooth out generation requirements, but we're a way off this.

I agree we shouldn't throw away perfectly good ICE cars and gas boilers, but that's not being suggested. It's a ban on more new ones that's being proposed. Definitely keep the existing stuff whilst it's still usable. Nobody's suggesting otherwise.

I didn’t know that about boilers and house sales.  Is that a Scotland thing?  Totally bonkers if true

There are mixed messages, as although there is the 2025 ban of gas boilers in new homes, there also appears to be a move underway to replace natural gas with hydrogen gas. Starting from 2028 it is supposed to be a 20% hydrogen/80% natural gas blend and then a final transition to 100% hydrogen.

The downside is that all existing gas appliances need to support blended gas by 2028, and then 100% at some point in the future. It looks like a lot of new boilers today are already 20%/80% blend ready. So if you replace your old boiler ready for blended gas in 2028 then you may need to replace it again depending upon the chosen date of the 100% roll-out.

This may get around the problems of moving domestic heating onto the electricity grid and homes not being efficient enough to support air source heat pumps all year round.

However the catch is that there don't appear to be 100% hydrogen boilers designed for domestic use yet and apparently the UK can't supply enough hydrogen for domestic heating anyway.

michaelkellett said:

Sorry Fred, not sure where you are based but in the UK there is political activity to ban the sale of houses unless they remove gas/oil boilers and replace with heat pumps.

I'm just south of London. I've never seen any suggestion of banning the sale of houses with gas boilers, and the links you gave don't say so either. There may be a suggestion of banning the sale of new gas boilers, but that's a very different thing from forcing replacement or banning the sale of houses with one.

Coincidentally, I'm looking at replacing a gas water heater and considering a replacement also using gas. Electric heat pumps may be more efficient but the cost of electricity per kWh is much higher than gas.

I think it stems from this newspaper headline:

"SNP plans to effectively ban sale of homes with gas boilers"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/23/scotland-homes-sale-ban-swap-gas-boilers-heat-pumps-snp/

However, the article says:

"...From 2025, properties will need to meet Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of C or above at certain trigger points, including a sale..."

So it depends upon what is required to meet the EPC rating at the time of sale. If you have an old inefficient gas boiler, then you may well not meet the EPC rating and thus it may prevent a house sale.

As far as I can tell the revised EPC rules are planned (by the SNP) to specifically exclude the use of fossil fuel powered heating systems. Similar EPC rule changes are being discussed for the UK. Some of the proposals would ban biofuels as well.

We won't know until the changes are actually published.

Which is why I said:

michaelkellett said:

in the UK there is political activity to ban the sale of houses unless they remove gas/oil boilers and replace with heat pumps

ie such changes are being proposed and discussed by those in power.

MK

Indeed.

It's a bit ironic though that a number of the retro-fit heat pump installs state that you may need a gas boiler to supplement the heat pump during colder winter months.

Hydrogen? Really?? https://phys.org/news/2006-12-hydrogen-economy-doesnt.html

Really.

https://www.energynetworks.org/newsroom/britains-gas-grid-ready-to-deliver-hydrogen-across-the-country-from-2023-energy-networks-announce

https://www.britishgas.co.uk/the-source/greener-living/hydrogen-boilers.html

Youre incorrect on this and the move is global. Using electricity to generate heat is the most inefficient way to use electricity. There simply isn't enough capacity in any existing energy grid any where in the world to supply or generate enough electricity to replace hydrocarbon generation.

Wonder how they intend producing all this hydrogen given the amount of energy required to produce a joule of hydrogen energy is about a joule?

Then you have to have an infrastructure to supply it which is prohibitively expensive.

Then you have to have infrastructure to convert hydrogen to electricity and transmit that.

This means it take more than 10 times the hydrocarbons to generate electricity from hydrogen that it does to simple generate electricity from hydrocarbons.

Wonder how they intend producing all this hydrogen given the amount of energy required to produce a joule of hydrogen energy is about a joule?

Then you have to have an infrastructure to supply it which is prohibitively expensive.

Then you have to have infrastructure to convert hydrogen to electricity and transmit that.

This means it take more than 10 times the hydrocarbons to generate electricity from hydrogen that it does to simple generate electricity from hydrocarbons.