And you watch the cost of electric rise, ever so slowly at first, then more, every country in the world relies on that fuel duty.

They will use the excuse they need to raise the cost of electric in the short term to cover the building of the infrastructure (new power stations) & the prices will never go back down, they never do go down.

And yes i`m cynical.

Mezo.

I'm with you on that one. I've even wondered whether the looming shortfall in UK electricity generating capacity coming at just the point when we're being forced into dumping internal combustion vehicles is intended to 'generate' a build new power stations taxation crisis. If nothing else it would be a means to swerve around the anti nuclear lobby. For all the green paint that's been daubed on windmills and solar farms (in the UK ) sitting freezing in the dark with your car battery flat will cause a rapid reappraisal of priorities.

The trouble at the moment is that the cost of electricity is based on essentially tax free domestic use and car charging is piggybacking onto that. It'd be a brave politician who'd say 'your car charging electricity is going to cost ten times as much from Monday and we'll be round to fit the new meter shortly'.

On the other hand, given that 'a week is a long time in politics', the current crew could just be kicking the can down the road. Experience tells me that cock up beats conspiracy virtually every time.

Know that I'm beating a dead(literally speaking) horse, but coal was replaced by oil which is being replaced by electric. Based on a quick google search,in the UK there used to be 1,191,000 people mining coal, there are 2,000 as of 2015. Coal production is at a 300 year low. I saw a video recently-- sorry, poor memory can't remember where-- showing a biker running low on juice, went to a vending machine, changed out his batteries, and moved on. I grew up on a farm that had horses for fun, not actual work. I do not miss mucking out the stables. I will miss the old days, but its move on or get run over.

If only the UK could join a trading bloc like everyone else seems to want to - that would be a real boost to the economy rather than, say, leaving one which to date is reckoned to be around £200 billion.

In reality the cost of the roads will get picked up by someone and who better than the people that are using them thereby linking damage to the actual useage. That way a heavy goods vehicle that does 100,000 miles a year pays more one doing 20,000 miles and a car doing 10,000 miles pays more than a motorcycle doing the same mileage. Radical I know, but it may just work. Well until the road transport lobby start whining - the answer to whom should be "you want to keep your costs down, well plan to be efficient and don't drive as far".

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

UK doesn't mine coal anymore simply imports it, 6.5 million metric tons last year.

Mezo.

In Boris's inverted political universe it's far more likely to be the other way round - HGVs doing 100k /yr are essential to the economic welfare of the country / support gazillions of jobs / etc etc so get a 'time for technology to catch up' deferral and tax break. Private cars doing mainly the school run and drive to work commute will be hit by a combination of 'get off your a*se and get some exercise' and 'work from home' taxation, and leisure vehicles (like motorcycles) will be shamed off the road by nudge theory moral outrage and 'you're killing the planet' surcharges.

Have an accident on your bike soon and it won't be settled by who was in the right / in the wrong but by who had the best reason to be on the road. 'He pulled out in front of me your honour'. 'Yes but he was transporting vaccines to a care home in his electric truck. You were riding to Tesco / Starbucks when you could have arranged a home delivery.'


for now but ...

In 1913, coal use in UK was 292 million tonnes, in 2016,it was 20 million. Took over 100 years to almost disappear. New ways have been found to power the UK, it sure looks likely new ways to power transportation will happen, sooner more likely than later. Just because electricity may well replace gas, it doesn't mean that adventure, long distance biking will end. It just means that new sources of power will be established. 100 years ago finding petro in rural Brazil, Congo, Louisiana was a chore, soon finding charging stations in those areas will be easy. Today, it is 96 miles from Roswell NM to Vaughn NM, major highway, no gas stations. There is a rest area midway that has electric power. Best not to panic that bike travel will end forever.

Well that trip is easy as if you run out of fuel then any passing alien will give you a lift.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

Yeah like importing wood pellets from the USA to again burn, growing straw in the fields of the UK to again burn & still most of the UK's electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels (oil, gas & coal) nothing has changed over the decades & never will until they take a leaf out of the French books & build multiple nuclear power stations.

And remember UK also imports electricity from Ireland, Netherlands & France because it doesn't have the capacity to fully meet its own electricity requirements, and they want you all to go out & buy EV`s ? really?

Its a crock of political BS IMHO.

Mezo.

I think you are somewhat behind the current situation on a number of things. We don’t grow straw - we grow wheat and straw is a byproduct that is then used as a fuel - of course you could take the view that we grow straw in which case wheat is the byproduct.

We don’t burn very much coal nowadays but we do burn gas - this is a change over to decades as we used to burn loads of coal but now very little and no oil at all. Gas is used more than it used to (40.6% of all electricity comes from gas). We are expanding the amount of off-shore wind generation than we have now (13GW) by a factor of four to 50+GW. Nuclear is also on stream at 17%. The intention is that we will be carbon neutral by 2050 at the latest. So the total fossil fuel used in electricity generation is 42.7% - which is, as far as I am aware, less than half.

We do import electricity. So do France (from the UK amongst others). Ireland also imports from the UK. As do the Netherlands. This is because it is an international market that works together.

Now when it comes to EV there is an odd situation as, whilst they are plugged in to suck up juice to charge them up people leave them plugged into the network once they are charged up - in this way they actually add capacity to the network and the system allows the batteries in the car to feed back into the network. So they smooth out the demand on power plants - this is particularly useful with wind generation as that can fluctuate more than other technologies.

Which brings me back to the technology that is likely to be the ultimate answer - geothermal electricity generation. The electricity can be used directly or as a stepping stone to hydrogen production - a technology that has the potential to replace petrol and diesel once it has matured.

As far as being a crock of political BS if you are right and climate change is not real then we will have made sure that we don’t waste a finite resource and we will have stopped polluting the air we breathe. If Greta is right then we will have stopped messing up the environment. Either way, it is the right thing to do.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

Problem is both times they offered a ride to Jupiter, real bitch getting a ride back(at least that's what I told my wife happened).

You did the right thing there, you can wait for ages before anyone is coming back this way. Also, the service at the McDonalds there is really poor - fortunately Starbucks is far better.

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You will have to do without pocket handkerchiefs, and a great many other things, before we reach our journey's end, Bilbo Baggins. You were born to the rolling hills and little rivers of the Shire, but home is now behind you. The world is ahead.

Sooner than you think....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47715415

I don't particularly care what the EcoGoblin or "right-On" governments want to achieve.

I want to get from A to B in as least time as possible with the least amount of hassle.

For the Electric Revolution to happen the following has to happen:


1. The Technology has to half in Price. I'm not paying £20K or more for a battery driven bike, especially as batteries wear out, and are half the cost of the Motorcycle. Battery replacements have to be in the pennies to make this affordable.

2. Charging points have to be ubiquitous, they MUST be as easy to find as a petrol station.

3. Range must get close to the least worthy of touring motorcycles i.e. 150 miles. Current models claim 200 mile ranges but those testing are finding this is not realistic. 100 miles max is the best honest review I can find.

4. Charging must take minutes. Not 40 minutes but 5.


I can't remember where it was, but an experiment was taking place in a S.E. Asia country that gave me some hope.
They had pluggable, replaceable battery units.
At the roadside there were Amazon type lockers. You removed a battery unit from your bike, plugged it into a spare slot and you got a fully charged unit from the "locker".

Before the Model T, most workers could not afford a car. Ford made it possible for more and more workers to afford a car.
Range for early cars was low, now you can get a Prius that get 50 mpg. When autos started to be sold, few towns had a gas station/auto mechanic(now we have "auto techs") If batteries can be rented at a charging station, charging times will be zero. When I was younger (40 years ago) my home town still had rings set into the sidewalks so you could hook up you wagon--no kidding. They weren't being used, but they were still there.