Discussion»Questions»Environment» How many drivers/passengers of Hybrid electric vehicles die from electrocution yearly in their own cars and not from the actually crash ?
Why should there be "many"? These cars do use high voltages and presumably can pass hefty currents, but you are nowhere near the volts and amperes unless you deliberately footle around with the "works" without knowing what you are doing!
In England, if any of these type of vehicles are involved in crashes, only certain vehicle specialist are allowed to recover the damaged cars,vans, trucks or busses...... The police are not allowed to touch them when they attend crashes and not all fire brigade personal are trained to deal with road side fires or crashed vechilsvhecils.....
The amperaged of the main batteries is extreamly high and can easily kill people instantly..People that like to work on their own cars are more at risk to..,
There are cars that use voltages of 600-700v .....Just by changing a headlight bulb you can risk death by electrocution...
Another thing I've just read is that far more people are being knocked down and run over because the cars are almost silent...... Plus I've just this second read that there is no proper facilities yet for recycling all the batteries... I think the next serious world polution problem will be dealing with spent batteries..
The worlds been using plastics now for sixty years plus with countless millions of tons ending up in our oceans.... Electric batteries will be the next major pollution issues I'm sure...
There are electrical component in most modern cars that if burnt in a crash the can be absorbed through your skin.....They are highly toxic and can also be pretty leathal to....
Thank you Nice Jugs: I didn't know about the recovery restrictions.
As I understand it such vehicles still have 12V systems for the lamps and other low-power auxiliaries, but I don't know how the auxiliary battery is charged.
A friend's just told me among the new MoT requirements (UK law) is that you will no longer able to take the car away for repairs for the re-test. His comment, "Smacks of a cartel"....
I reckon in a few decades' time, hundreds of thousands of Britain's car owners will have been forced off the road by the spiralling costs of motoring, ever-increasing difficulties of complying with the law, and sheer practical difficulties of re-charging the batteries unless your house has with its own front-drive. Useless if you live in a Victorian terrace or its modern equivalent like the so-called "Poundbury" estate near Dorchester, or a flat in a block or over a town-centre shop. One eventual result is that remoter, poorer areas like Cornwall will become very isolated.
Hybrid cars have small petrol engines as well as huge batteries under the rear passenger seats.....They also have very small lead acid batteries to start the car.....My friend often gets back to her car and the small battery is flat ...it's happened a few times....
There are fast charge public recharging places all over London....it's very very cheap to recharge a car that will then give you around 300 miles range.... Headlights on many petrol/ diesel cars now can use 20,000 volt upwards head lights systems...
I can't believe that about MOT testing station keeping people's cars if they fail.....so many testing stations only have room for one or two cars waiting and where would they keep them and how much would they charge to store them...not all MOT stations repair cars either.... New rules mean a car has an allotted 30 minute time for the test.....so a test station with one car ramp/ lift can only test around 16 in any eight hours.....
Are you English...? If so where are you in Blighty...lol
I live in NW London.....
You wait....the next vehicles they will ban once they've sold fifty million will be battery cars ,vans... The polution in Canada ,Indonesia,Australia,Russia and the Phillipines has huge health costs.... Its poisoned a huge area of both Canada and Romania the health of people near the sites is alarming.... There is also the costs of transportation of Nickel cadmium and the processing of it that's a huge problem as wel... It will al be banned once the damage is done and companies have made their money....
I suspect your friend's car has a fault, assuming nothing left inadvertently switched on (as I did once, with a reversing camera... for a week!). There's no reason otherwise for the battery to run flat.
I looked up the MoT information and I must admit I could not find that bit my friend had said, about not taking the car away. Garages will only keep cars for the necessary repairs - but have always done that.
Not all garages do the test either but they carry out the servicing and take it to an MoT garage. I've had that done a few times over the years.
My own is in for a service and MoT now (I live in Dorset), and I had a call today to say it needed a bit of work they hope to complete tomorrow.
It may easy at the moment to find public recharging points but I can't imagine there being enough for everyone, especially in areas where most residents are forced to keep their cars anywhere on the street they can find a space.
I share your concerns about the overall environmental effect. I think it's just replacing one problem with another. Battery-manufacturers no longer use Nickel-Cadmium but Lithium-based couples, and are looking actively at even more efficient plate and electrolyte materials. Whatever they use will still need millions of batteries making, and when these wear out within, at best, a few years; will need to be able to recover the materials effectively!
Nor have they considered how the UK is going to produce enough electricity for masses of battery cars plus extending railways-electrification plus an ever-increasing population all demanding more and more electricity...
I mentioned the railways because not long ago, Mrs. May brightly announced hoping to replace diesel traction with electric on Britain's railways, but to do so will need a lot of political will and tax-payers' cash, to electrify some thousands of route-miles presently diesel-only. Either that or simply close down great swathes of the system, forcing even more people onto the roads, or to stay in ever-more isolated communities.
Sometimes I wonder if the policy-makers and Sunday-supplement types have any scientific and engineering knowledge at all, even at lay level. By their public utterances, some appear not even to know the differences between fuel, energy and power, or a train from a locomotive; yet still waffle glibly about using Facebook on a fancy 4G 'phone making one "technologically savvy"!
"All be banned once the damage is done..." Err, yes, but then what - or Watt? I feel rather glad I'm now in my mid-60s and without issue, let alone grand-issue.
Just a few years ago the government began to push for greater diesel vehicle sales...then diesel got instantly more expensive once more cars got sold... Now they are pushing for more electric vehicles to be sold and want to scrap all diesels....
I agree ,we are led by fools with hardly a grain of common sense between them.... They talk of pollution and yet millions of tons of plastic get dumped into the oceans......Not one country has tried has attempted to try ridding the seas of floating plastic waste..
Companies are making fortunes from erecting wind farmes....none recoup the costs of buying ,erecting and running them....
We we are a nanny state nearly now led by half wit fools desperate to make money....
Some 20 years ago they stopped making normal gas boilers and only condensing boilers could be fitted as replacements...... For the first ten years they were just so unreliable and for little or no saving on your gas bill... if any broke down you had to remortgage your home to get anyone to repair them..... Lord Sainsbury was the MP that rushed through the new boiler laws.....he also owned or was a major shareholder in the only condensing boiler manufacture company in England...
The engine battery in a hybrid car is tiny....leave the side lights on and that drains the battery as does playing the radio when the engines not running... Electrifying railway lines creates more work both in selling off the old diesel trains and creating extra work..... Wether it's worth while is another issue altogether.....:(
I see four problems with the UK's Governments, irrespective of Party, when handling anything involving Science and Engineering.
One is an overall woeful ignorance of basic science and engineering, but that appears shared by most of the Press and public alike nowadays, almost to the point of it being fashionable to claim such ignorance - presumably using Facebook to do so.
The second compounds the first. It is the rise of the "career politician" who might have a good degree but in something of relatively low value, but becomes employed as a Party clerk, perhaps rising to some non-entity Senior Clerk with a snooty title like "Director of Communications", then stands for election... yet has never had a "real job" in his or her life.
There ARE MPs of all parties with solid backgrounds in various trades and professions - more so in the Lords - but sometimes I wonder if their experience counts when faced with dogma or concerted piffle from campaign groups whose noise is inversely proportional to their knowledge.
This leads to Problem Three: Cabinet construction and shuffling that usually means particular portfolios are handed to those with little or no professional, pre-MP, experience of the work they are supposed to oversee. You mention Lord Sainsbury's vested interests: well, Tony Blair made him Science Minister, even though actually, he's a shop-keeper (albeit shops in a major chain).
Fourthly, simply short-term thinking - point-scoring and the next election being uppermost.
There is nothing wrong in electrifying the railways as such, but it has to be done in a planned manner with all the engineering involved in the hands of Chartered Electrical, Mechanical and Civil Engineers of real railway-engineering experience, supported by experienced railway administration staff; and without interference from Government or Whitehall beyond ensuring it's completed and paid for in a fit and proper manner. And preferably by UK companies - most of the profit element of a long rail journey I made this weekend went to Germany, and I noticed new trains bearing the makers' name, Hitachi!
However this does raise the problem of finding suitable managers. We've suffered from decades of practical skills being denigrated, ignored or destroyed to follow a snobbish illusion of they being no longer necessary, promulgated largely by the IT, money and so-called "media" trades. Have you noticed those types won't even use the "E-word"? They prefer the vague, more-or-less meaningless "technology", hackneyed to death though it is. We've also seen the rise of the "career manager" who knows balance-sheets and pretentious Americanisms like "Chief Cliché Officer", but no real experience in any aspect of what he or she is assumed capable of managing by directors impressed only by a Diploma in "Management".
As you hint, electrifying the full National Rail network would need very careful financial analysis and planning, but by people who can look not five, even ten, but fifty years hence as far as humanly possible, and based on their solid understanding of the industry. And if that analysis shows some routes are more economically kept diesel-hauled, at least for the foreseeable decades, so be it. The pollution from this source for given loads and distances by rail is very low compared to the road alternatives, because the power hence fuel needed is much lower; this on top of the technical developments in diesel fuel efficiency and emissions-reductions generally.
Condensing boilers... Yes I know they are or were costly and short-lived. A friend who is a registered gas-fitter explained to me that the manufacturers tried to cut costs by using inappropriate metals that corroded too readily. I gather they are better now. Apart from anything else, it's poor commercial practice to limit the reliability and life of an expensive item, especially once competitors appear.
Oh, and going back to my previous post... my car did need some work on it for the MoT. A suspension fault, fair enough; but a faulty or choked pollen filter I didn't even know it has? What's that an MoT item for?
Durdle 