General Chat

I remember years ago in the fifties a kind of tongue in the cheek look into the future suggested that trains would run on steel balls, instead of wheels.............

The Japanese have trains doing huge speeds no wheels at all.
The Brits cannot electrify the G W R main line to Bristol Cardiff anf Swansea.
So they are stuffing polluting diesel engines into the new trains for the electrical gaps. These trains have wheels and won't go much faster than the current ones.
They are made of course in Japan.

Where is the work for the working man to fo?

Designed in Japan, Rollo, but production stock is being assembled at Newton Aycliffe, near Darlington. The IEP train shells are still constructed in Japan, although many other components come from UK suppliers.

Testing is underway at Melton Mowbray and along the ECML down to Peterborough.

The decision to postpone electrification over what is a relatively short distance (i.e. Cardiff to Swansea) is probably shortsighted longterm and it is likely the perceived savings will not be fully realised due to increased operating costs.

what about the two wheeled variety? motor bikes scooters and the like/

Electric motor bikes are available and extremely practical city transport try Zero for instance. MotoGP will have an event for racing electric bikes 2019.

Most industry analysts believe that the I C E will vanish from new vehicle sales long before the govts announcement for show. The reason is pretty obvious - lower running costs.

It does not take a lot of imagination to see that the next 30 years of changover are going to be very disruptive. More imagination the possessed by most politicians though. On top of the switch to electric power robots will do much of the construction and maintnance and at least some of the driving. The employment consequences are numbing.

I

Pity no one listened to Eric all those years ago. Loved his Christmas lectures.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Laithwaite

Sadly, Eric went off the rails a tad and lost all his credibility, with his ideas on perpetual motion.

Back in the early late 50's, early 60's electricity was going to be to sole source of "clean" power for every single house in the future. What happened?

50 years later, two third of our home's power requirement is provided by gas, and in the winter, a proportion of our heating by coal and wood and despite the need to use electricity for all the electronics we have, white goods, making tea, led lighting and our pond pump, our electric demand is lower than ever.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as energy for nowt.

Power output, requires energy input. All you can do is to make the loss between what goes in to what comes out smaller, i.e. better efficiency and or move the generation source somewhere else, ie take the engine out of the car and put it in a power station.

The government are thinking of how to recoup the £28bn in lost fuel tax. A quick search on t'internet has various estimates on the cost of pollutants to the NHS. Some estimate up to £60bn. Therefore they should cancel each other out.
As to spare parts for washing machines etc., we will probably just download a 3D copy.

...it all depends on how safe the internet is - at the moment, not too safe at all.
With bank accounts being hacked, the NHS being hacked, porn available to anyone, cr*p systems in local councils - and jobcentres.
If they can 'get into your house' and suss out your valuables - they will :-|

The Internet is neither intrinsically safe or unsafe as with many technologies. It all depends on the users, the technical people and above all those who control the budgets.

It is a commonplace to slate short term budget decisions that store up all kinds of disaster further down the line. I.T. is no exception save that the technical ignorance of the bean counters is without parallel.

I have been a key player in a few it systems critical to UK everyday life. None of them have ever been compromised. No, the bean counters were relgated as any kind of downtime was deemed unacceptable.

With forthcoming updates to European GPS and data networks charging for road use in real time is perfectly feasible. It also offers many extras such as congestion pricing and granular traffic control.

Yes, the government not funding updates to the NHS was probably the cause of the problem.
But if a government can't be bothered to run a system as important as the NHS properly, they will have little thought about outlying districts' need for charging stations.
Even in 2017, there are still inhabited areas where internet/mobile phone signals are so poor, they're useless.
The other problem with relying on technology run on electricity is damage to the supply.
Attack a sub-station and quite a few people will be at a standstill.

Over 99% of the UK knocking out a sub station will cause another to kick in automatically possibly with a short delay. That is why we have a National Grid. There are also truck size mobile power units which are deployed in crisis situations. The Grid is in course of renewal.

Modern economies have been reliant on electrical power at point of use for nearly a century. In the UK power source policy is an even bigger dogs dinner tham brexit and for the same reason, ideology over logic. UKGOV prefers gas, nuclear power over renewables. As the remorseless tide of ever cheaper renewables rolls on they simply bend the rules to favour carbon and nuclear.

GPS used for monitoring Road use for pricing, traffic control would not be affected by short term terrestrial power outages. That is because in real time the only power sources involved are located on the GPS satellite and the vehicle. The vehicle unit would have enough local memory to hold data. The only alternative for fuel tax would be either a massive, ugly land based surveillance system which could only be delivered at vast cost or a totally different way to replace the fuel tax eg by raising VAT. Given the stron influence that current players have with the MOT a land badrd system is most likely. It would join the long list of expensive Ukgov It failures.

Nevertheless the I.C.E. technology is now obsolete following the launch of the latest Tesla 3 auto with a SP of $30 000. It is now a matter of managing the transition which is likely to be a bumpy ride with large changes in work and land use patterns.

....so the viral attack in Kiev, earlier this year, dubbed “Industroyer” and “Crash Override”, that 'took down' electricity substations and circuit breakers didn't happen?

Attacking other forms of infrastructure wouldn't be too difficult, either, it appears, as industrial communication protocols are standardised across a number of types of critical infrastructure – from power, water and gas supply to transportation control.

So, whatever Rollo believes UKGOV prefers, this malware doesn't really care!!


"It is possible to fix the risk posed by Industroyer before it leads to disaster – but to do so will be expensive and time consuming, according to Paul Elon, a director at cybersecurity firm Tripwire. “Due to economic pressures, it has become necessary for many organisations to centralise some of the management and control functions that would have previously been local to industrial plants, refineries, and distribution facilities.

“This centralisation has meant expanding the reach of the enterprise network into the industrial environment, and in doing so exposing those industrial environments to levels of cyber risk for which they were neither secured nor designed.”

....and, as even the now privatised, foreign owned utility companies are all about vast profit rather than delivery, the chances of them spending millions on fixing something that isn't in, nor does it affect, their country is small, which will lead to the UK Government (ie the UK Citizens) paying to repair the problem to ensure the companies continue to receive ever increasing profits.

We shouldn't forget, England is living under 'austerity measures' at the moment (well, some are), and the Government claims we have no money.

so these truck mounted "power supplies run on thin air? I expect....hmmm!


this is purely down to Control...the government as the overseer...every thing we do, or would like to do is controlled by rules or taxation...the government never has GIVEN the public anything.....unless it was for its own benefit...

Out of ignorance came forth fruit cake.

Sorry, like to clarify Rollo for us thickies???

Both Maggie and Bob had good points, it's not a discussion if you just try to insult feel free to try and educate.

Truck mounted power supplies use batteries and are used in emergencies. They are used world wide and have nothing to do with "government control" or any energy policy. They are also used in projects without easy access to the grid or where the local load would be too high. The current govt feels that neighbours should be able to club together and buy one of their own.

There is no rational response available to F.U.D.

Caroline should be pleased at the disruptive changes in power production and usage which are a classic example of free economics. A bit tuf that Ukgov does not see it that way though. The politics of the well heeled running low cost Teslas and Volvos while the hoi poloi are still running I.C.E. and queuing at ever fewer petrol stations would challenge Solomon.

The change certainly worries the Bank of England which is looking at a 2008 credit crunch with loans secured against a wall of worthless tin.

Hmmm - Caroline asks for clarification - and is told what she should think??????

...and no acceptance that sub-stations can be attacked, and attacked in more than just a 'local' way, through the (apparently) really safe medium of technology - and hackers. No opinions, Rollo? You could try Googling it.


Then your last comment, Rolo:

"The change certainly worries the Bank of England which is looking at a 2008 crefit crunch with loans secured against a wall of worthless tin."

Not sure what a crefit crunch is, but it wasn't just in the UK.

Then there's a point no-one seems to have noticed - what about foreign cars and lorries?
Even if we were IN the EU, we can't dictate what sort of vehicles other countries use, so what about imports, brought here by lorry?
By the same token, if all our lorries were electric, how would they cope with charging in other countries?

LOL Maggie I am but a little girlie so I need to be told how to think :-D

So these batteries Rollo.....how are they charged up then and how long do they hold a charge?

Maggies point about the EU, would all truckers need to carry a super sized travel adapter with them so they can plug in?

Cyber attacks...they happen everywhere all the time, even the biggest and the best are attacked at some point...the hackers are always "improving".

There will be changes, of course there will how quick and how successfully who knows.....but even electric cars need power and the national grid will need to improve to handle it no doubt.