15 hours ago, SteveFx said:

I cannot see how people will charge their vehicles without either introducing rights to park outside your own house OR a massive investment in public recharging points every 10m.   

That would introduce a trip hazard - running the extension cable out of your front window or door . In addition I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of mischievous little excreta  who will no doubt take great delight in unplugging all the cars.. or is there some kind of car key operated lock for the charging cable? Then there'd still be a few Darwin Award nominees who might use a pair of bolt cutters to chop the cable...

Unless someone steals my '69 Camaro muscle car (yeah, right! I wish I actually owned one and had the finances to keep it running & maintained) then I can just get in it and drive whilst the neighbours would be frantically trying to boost charge their EV's ... and they'd think I'd be a prime suspect for all the unplugging!

14 hours ago, W2DR said:

Cost isn't the issue. The survival of the planet is the issue.

We (the world I mean) should take a good, long look at merchant shipping and sea port infrastructure too: All those massive cargo vessels plying the seven seas belching tons of diesel (heavy crude?) fumes and particulates into the atmosphere as they go about their business. Consider the multitudes of smaller fishing vessels etc. also. Once the vessel has arrived in port and is moored up then isn't the ship's electrical need supplied by... diesel generators?? Thus increasing localised pollution... Surely this is a not insignificant amount of pollution to be studied?

On another serious more personal note: I am not totally against EV's. Anything which comes with a "ludicrous speed" mode is indeed worthy of note IMHO.🍻 I've said before that Zero motorcycles manufacture a gorgeous street bike too, but the price... https://www.zeromotorcycles.com/en-gb/model/zero-srf

On the face of it, if I were to just look at having to commute to and from work (10 mile round trip each day), perhaps calling at the local shops which are also on the route, then certainly a BEV would be ideal! Our local public transport is rubbish; the timetable would dictate that I'd arrive late to work or about 1.5 hours too soon! Returning home would mean an additional hour also. The other concern is that my employer doesn't have any charging port infrastructure, nor could I easily have one installed at home - back to the trip-hazard extension cable scenario!

I cannot afford a BEV - there are no sub-£1500 BEVs available (my usual secondhand car "budget" or loan amount). In addition I believe that one has to lease the battery for another monthly payment (one advert i saw was for a 25k mile Renault ZOE priced at £5995  which had a £49 per month battery lease cost) on top of insurance, servicing and presumably annual MOT cost (more than 3 years old in the UK). Granted, one might look upon that monthly cost as being analogous to putting fuel in the tank. However, I'd also be paying for the electricity to charge a BEV anyway - surely that is more closely related to putting fuel in the vehicle? If one takes the extreme situation where I hardly used my car for months (I was furloughed for 5 months and will be part time in the new year), I'd be incurring an unjustifiable £49 per month IMO! Three months into my furlough period I finally had to put some fuel in my car - £25 which equates to about 4.5 gallons which sufficed for the remainder of the furlough period and beyond! My current car is a 2008 Mitsubishi Colt Attivo. Small yet practical, handles great, almost go kart like for an ordinary FWD hatchback and still fun on the country roads once you get that 1.1 litre, 3 cylinder  twin cam singing past 4000 rpm.

Further interesting reading:

https://www.theaa.com/cars/news/hot-topics/what-hidden-costs-are-there-with-evs-aa-cars-14279.html

12 hours ago, dave2013 said:

I understand your point, but there is indeed a difference. With a tax break every company engaged in the activity gets the break equally, whereas with subsidies such as govt. contracts or outright financial support, the govt. chooses who to give the money to, a concept which I do not support.

That implies that they can only be targeted differently, which isn't the case. If the government wants to subsidize Boeing but not Airbus, then they can create a tax break that applies to the construction of 100+ seat airliners in Washington, Kansas and South Carolina, but not Alabama. Airbus could technically qualify by moving their production, but it would be completely uneconomical to do so.

Again, money is fungible and whether it's a tax break or a direct transfer, it can be structured in such a way that the government (well, Congress) is very much choosing who to give it to.

Cheers

1 hour ago, HighBypass said:

That would introduce a trip hazard - running the extension cable out of your front window or door . In addition I'm willing to bet that there are plenty of mischievous little excreta  who will no doubt take great delight in unplugging all the cars.. or is there some kind of car key operated lock for the charging cable? Then there'd still be a few Darwin Award nominees who might use a pair of bolt cutters to chop the cable...

 

 

They are installing street side charging points. Some are built into lamp posts, some in the floor by the kerb. Yes, they do lock in place. 🙂 

 

Quote

We (the world I mean) should take a good, long look at merchant shipping and sea port infrastructure too: All those massive cargo vessels plying the seven seas belching tons of diesel (heavy crude?) fumes and particulates into the atmosphere as they go about their business. Consider the multitudes of smaller fishing vessels etc. also. Once the vessel has arrived in port and is moored up then isn't the ship's electrical need supplied by... diesel generators?? Thus increasing localised pollution... Surely this is a not insignificant amount of pollution to be studied?

 

I think its only about 4% for CO2, but then there are other issues, like ballast water which damages the marine environment, sound pollution, general pollutants. 

Green Hydrogen might be the answer...

https://www.reuters.com/article/shipping-energy-hydrogen-focus-int-idUSKBN27F18U

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201127-how-hydrogen-fuel-could-decarbonise-shipping

https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/hydrogen-can-power-virtually-all-container-ships-crossing-the-pacific/2-1-767073

 

Quote

On the face of it, if I were to just look at having to commute to and from work (10 mile round trip each day), perhaps calling at the local shops which are also on the route, then certainly a BEV would be ideal! Our local public transport is rubbish; the timetable would dictate that I'd arrive late to work or about 1.5 hours too soon! Returning home would mean an additional hour also. The other concern is that my employer doesn't have any charging port infrastructure, nor could I easily have one installed at home - back to the trip-hazard extension cable scenario!

 

10 mile round trip you say... you would get many more miles range than that. Reasonable priced BEV's will give you 200 miles plus. 

Why do you think charging from home is an issue? Do you have a drive to park your car on? If so, no issue. If not, then yes, until more lampposts and kerbsides have chargers its an issue. 

 

Quote

I cannot afford a BEV - there are no sub-£1500 BEVs available (my usual secondhand car "budget" or loan amount). In addition I believe that one has to lease the battery for another monthly payment 

 

That is a low budget for any car, IC or BEV. NO, you don't have to lease the battery. 

18 hours ago, dave2013 said:

 

The cost of an acre of land in my area costs anywhere from $5,000 to $30,000 depending on the location, i.e. lots in nice developed subdivisions closer to town cost a lot more vs lots further out of town.  Most house lots are from .25 to .75 acre in size.

Dave

 

 

$5000 to $30,000 you say. Good grief that's cheap. For housing? Bit better than our £350,000 pounds for just the 0.7 acre plot. 🙂 What's that in pounds, £3,687 to £22,000.

Are you sure that's for housing, and not just agricultural land? We do have cheap land in Guernsey but it's purely agricultural, not for housing. 

 

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by martin-w

4 hours ago, W2DR said:

I don't think you understand the economic impact to this country had the gov't. let GM go under. It's not just GM that's at stake. It's also all the suppliers, dealers, truckers, warehousemen, box manufacturers and a host of others who would also have gone under. IMNSHO that move to save GM was the smartest thing our govt. did in that whole economic crisis. The loan was paid back 100%, there was no cost to the taxpayers, and hundreds of thousands of jobs were saved. What's so wrong about that?

Then every single business and individual in the country should be able to get a govt. loan when they get themselves into financial trouble through bad decisions. 

Moreover, the govt. lost 11 billion dollars on that deal, so, no, the loan was not paid back 100%.

To be fair, Ford and Chrysler also got some cheap loans from the govt. during the crisis, but much less than what GM got. 

I'm not against govt. assistance during crises like natural disasters, severe recessions, or the ongoing Covid crisis.  What I'm against is govt. picking and choosing who to give the money to.  I remember well when the big three automaker executives all flew on their private jets to Washington DC to beg Congress for a bail-out using taxpayer money.  Do you think that any of those wealthy executives were held accountable for their bad decisions which hurt the businesses they are paid millions of dollars to run?

General Motors should have done what many other companies have done over the years, a managed bankruptcy.  The company would have been forced to face its problems and deal with them, and would have ultimately come out in better shape.  Millions of auto industry workers would not have lost their jobs; some workers would have probably lost their jobs, a harsh reality during economic downturns, but the majority of them would have kept their jobs.

Dave

42 minutes ago, Luke said:

That implies that they can only be targeted differently, which isn't the case. If the government wants to subsidize Boeing but not Airbus, then they can create a tax break that applies to the construction of 100+ seat airliners in Washington, Kansas and South Carolina, but not Alabama. Airbus could technically qualify by moving their production, but it would be completely uneconomical to do so.

Again, money is fungible and whether it's a tax break or a direct transfer, it can be structured in such a way that the government (well, Congress) is very much choosing who to give it to.

Cheers

I agree.  The govt. can do pretty much anything it wants in that regard.

I'm opposed to govt. politicians and bureaucrats using taxpayer money to give special deals to specific businesses, period.  If they want to give a blanket tax break for research and development, which they do, then that's fine as most businesses can take advantage of that.  I'd also be fine with a tax break for energy production across the board, not just for big oil companies.  I'm also good with farming subsidies.  Why?  Because those activities, energy and farming, are vital to our survival and national security.

Dave

 

38 minutes ago, martin-w said:

 

$5000 to $30,000 you say. Good grief that's cheap. For housing? Bit better than our £350,000 pounds for just the 0.7 acre plot. 🙂 What's that in pounds, £3,687 to £22,000.

Are you sure that's for housing, and not just agricultural land? We do have cheap land in Guernsey but it's purely agricultural, not for housing. 

 

That's a big difference between Europe and the U.S. - we have a lot more land.  There's still plenty of available land for farming so few restrictions on buying some land and building on it.

Dave

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

What I'm against is govt. picking and choosing who to give the money to.

We all pick and choose what and to whom we give money. Why do you think the govt. should be any different? As I said before, you clearly don't understand the economic considerations surrounding what was happening back in 2007/2008.  Maybe if you had a degree in economics from Wharton like President tRump (having a rich daddy pays off sometimes) things would be more clear to you 🤣 .

Edited December 19, 20205 yr by W2DR

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

Some are built into lamp posts, some in the floor by the kerb. Yes, they do lock in place. 🙂 

Aha. Good to know. 

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

you would get many more miles range than that. Reasonable priced BEV's will give you 200 miles plus. 

Precisely 

1 hour ago, martin-w said:

That is a low budget for any car, IC or BEV. NO, you don't have to lease the battery. 

Doing what I can with what I (don't) have.. I do not have a driveway either. My point is that currently, road legal, safe, cheap IC cars can be had. I even bought a runabout for £100 which still had 9 months left on it's MOT. It did get scrapped at the next MOT though - power steering leaks, corrosion too close to structural members. Easy to achieve that on a Hyundai Amica (Atos) automatic!! If they were not so tall you would trip over the little buggers! 

Cheers for answering my questions! 🍻 Agreed - green hydrogen for big ships does seem to be a great idea.

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

General Motors should have done what many other companies have done over the years, a managed bankruptcy.  The company would have been forced to face its problems and deal with them, and would have ultimately come out in better shape.  Millions of auto industry workers would not have lost their jobs; some workers would have probably lost their jobs, a harsh reality during economic downturns, but the majority of them would have kept their jobs.

The challenge in 2008 was that the Big Three do not "make" cars in the traditional sense, they assemble them. A bankruptcy from GM would likely lead to thousands of suppliers (who may have been solvent, but on the edge) losing millions in receivables pushing them into bankruptcy, etc. etc. Remembering 2008 there was a real risk of a systemic failure - it is I think the only true economic "panic" I've seen in my lifetime (I was a toddler at the time of the 1973-74 oil crisis). In a panic and shortage of demand orthodox finance goes out the window unless you feel that Herbert Hoover was one of our best Presidents.

1 hour ago, dave2013 said:

If they want to give a blanket tax break for research and development, which they do, then that's fine as most businesses can take advantage of that.

I would suggest that the companies that benefit most from targeted tax programs are the ones with accountants and attorneys who understand how to navigate the tax regime and structure their activities in a way to qualify for the tax break, and each example of an "undeserving" company qualifying makes the regime more onerous and complex, and therefore less helpful to the organizations it was designed to aid.

Really, the best way to support entrepreneurship is a general regime that facilitates it (and that isn't always less government - one of the best ways to get people out of megacorps and into their own businesses is to have a sane UHC system).

Cheers!

9 minutes ago, Luke said:

Really, the best way to support entrepreneurship is a general regime that facilitates it (and that isn't always less government - one of the best ways to get people out of megacorps and into their own businesses is to have a sane UHC system).

I agree with you there, especially regarding healthcare.  The U.S. has an awful and expensive healthcare system IMO.

Dave

16 minutes ago, W2DR said:

We all pick and choose what and to whom we give money. Why do you think the govt. should be any different? As I said before, you clearly don't understand the economic considerations surrounding what was happening back in 2007/2008.  Maybe if you had a degree in economics from Wharton like President tRump (having a rich daddy pays off sometimes) things would be more clear to you 🤣 .

Please keep your political opinions to yourself.

Thanks.

Dave

15 minutes ago, Luke said:

I would suggest that the companies that benefit most from targeted tax programs are the ones with accountants and attorneys who understand how to navigate the tax regime and structure their activities in a way to qualify for the tax break, and each example of an "undeserving" company qualifying makes the regime more onerous and complex, and therefore less helpful to the organizations it was designed to aid.

Of course, if business taxes were low to begin with then we wouldn't need special tax breaks.  I support low taxes on businesses and higher taxes on the incomes of the well-to-do, something akin to what the Scandinavians do.

Dave