General Chat

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.

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.

...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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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?

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 problem with robotics is, one 'hack' or electricity failure, and they're (to put it politely) done! :-D :-D :-D :-D

In a state of the art modern warehouse the picking is all robotic right down to a pallet going into the truck. Amazon's people intensive system is way behind the curve. Automated trucking will happen within 20 years.

Delivery by drone is impracticable in volume.

It is not economic to repair a lot of domestic kit mostly due to the high Labour content Inc travel. Picking up items for robotic repair is far cheaper.

The future for the semi skilled and average white collar worker is bleak. Radical new ideas are badly needed.

The old think none of this affects them. They could not be more wrong.

yes Rollo but teletransportation of spare parts is not a go-er yet... still needs physical intervention..


so unless amazon can deliver by drone the neccessary components and knowledge...

your appliance is so much scrap material...

Most if not all of the control systems of stuff from washing machines to cars to space vehicles are now digital and can indeed be diagnosed at a distance and to some degree be fixed. Stuff is rairly repaired in the classic way just faulty modules replaced.

Industry is very busy further automating not only manufacturing but also fault diagnosis and repair. Brexit or not mfg industry is unlikely to be a big source of well paid jobs.

The C18 was utterly unprepared for the industrial revolution. Some countries have shown some awareness of what is about to happen but def not Anglo saxon politicians on either side of the Atlantic.

but how can a washing machine or any mechanical appliance be repaired "over the Internet" it requires hands on activity, not all of us push characters around a screen as a job of work,

Without any govt vacuous promises the market will shift towards electric vehicles. It has made this eye catching announcement, utterly devoid of substance, hoping to divert attention from its paltry and illegal response to the nox problem right now. The matter will soon be back before the Supreme Court. The EU side of Brexit has noted Ukgov unwillingness to comply with the rulings of its own supreme Court and as a result will not give an inch on E.C.J. jurisdiction.

There is no shortage of accessible lithium. The batteries can be recycled. Moreover battery performance will improve a lot plus other technologies using common elements are being researched.

Cars etc can be charged at home, at charging points etc - this is already possible in France the electric grid is ubiquitous. The number of filling stations is likely to shrink drastically. By using GPS Road usage can be monitored for tax purposes with the bonus of charging by time/location and self enforcing speed limits.

Electrical power will prevail over Lpg and hydrogen because ii it is safer and can be carbon neutral. 100% émission free. Buses, Hgv etc can easily run on electric power. Some already do. Electric motors have a very long life - 50 years + - and married to aluminium bodies the replacement cycle could become an industry headache after the initial phase is over.

As with the shift from horses to powered vehicles after ww1 the problem for the govt is not issuing absurd cut off dates but managing the transition. Without far more coherent transport policies there are going to be a lot of very angry losers.

Home working is not going to catch on very much because the simple fact is that people work better in teams and groups. Otoh very high speed Internet will greatly reduce the need for large numbers of people to work in large city office blocks. Already the Shard is still half empty and there are no tenants for the Deutch Bank folly.

Joan - fully charged cars have a max range of 300 miles, so let's assume 250 for practical purposes. Assuming ambulances, fire engines, busses, lorries etc have a larger battery capacity, they'd probably be about the same.

The problem is that everyone is looking today's technology and trying to project how this might look in the future.


Yes, it is correct to have policy which aims to reduce or even eliminate emissions but who says it has to be re-chargeable lithium batteries? For all we know it may turn out to be nuclear powered plutonium cells than don't require a recharge.

Reality is that we simply have no idea how things might look in 25 years time.

The £250,000,000 that the government has earmarked is nothing more than a joke. It amounts to little more than a one off contribution of £4 per person. Final cost is likely to be in the order of hundreds if not thousands of £billions.