I haven’t had time to research the topic thoroughly, but I believe there is considerable interest in PHEV diesels in Europe.
The takeout of my comment at 37 was to be that if we are looking at drastic cuts in emissions in the developed countries of 80-90%, or even 50%, we must reduce the proportion of toltal emissins devoted to road transport. Some sectors, such as methane from animats, air travel, cement-making and socalled ‘fugitive emissions’ are going to be difficult to reduce. So our aim should be to decarbinise almost conmpletely road transport, especially for private transport, and to minimise it’s use so that we are not using masses of concrete to build highways, flyovers etc.

It seems to me that decarbonising the electricity grid is a priority to run public transport and to provide a power source for private vehicles.

Also I doubt whether price signals on carbon are going to get us where nwe need to be. We are going to have to subsidise the upgrading and perhaps operation of public transport and the infrastructure for bicycles.

Latrobe Valley brown coal power plants would be good for Melbourne if Melb took up electric vehicles: plumes dispersed over farmland, forests, small towns, and out over Bass Strait (particulates partly captureded by electrostatic precipitators). Prevailing south-westerly breezes carrying plumes away from Melb most days. So certainly these pollutants are not hovering over a major city.

Smog in Melb due mainly to temperature inversions, basin effect with Dandenongs to the east, road traffic burning hydrocarbons, sunny days for photochemical effects???

But Hazelwood power station AND the others are big CO2 emitters. Eucalypt plantations by power companies are offsets, some planted in early 90’s. Worst factor seems to be the high water content of brown coal, so coal needs drying which uses energy, which is provided by - guess what? - burning brown coal. I saw an estimate last week that 60% of Victoria’s energy production is used to dry brown coal. Golly!!

At about 50 miles per gallon or a bit better the Tata Nano isn’t all that impressive in terms of economy. The diesel hybrids seem to promise more, for example the Ford Reflex.

Along the way in reading around there was an estimate of 270 million cars in India and China at some future point, 2020 I think. I don’t think the world can contemplate this prospect with equanimity.

Currently road transport accounts for about 10% of world emissions. The received wisdom seems to be that the world should reduce it’s emissions by about 50% by 2050. With the expected increase in population that gets us down to about 2 tonnes of CO2e per capita (I think it should be a good deal less). According to this list 117 countries are already there or above with CO2 alone. China is at 3.84.

There is a still useful chapter on transportation in Monbiot’s book Heat. He quotes a study he got from Lynn Sloman which found that 40% of journeys made by car could be made by public transport, by bicycle or by walking. With improvements to public transport and cycling facilities another 40% could be saved.

Public transport needs to be redesigned to make it a preferable experience to car travel.

He doesn’t do complete life-cycle metrics on CO2 but on a standard journey from London to Manchester the CO2 per passenger was 36.6 kg for cars, 5.2 for trains and 4.3 for buses. Each coach, he says, hoovers up about a mile of cars on the road. The carrying capacity of a road could be increased by about 15 times if we did away with cars.

The subject of this test ride though was the ‘deluxe’ model fitted with the larger whopping 436cc engine with 5-speed gearbox that puts out a heady 7.5hp and which has a maximum speed of just 55mph. To put these figures into perspective, a 500cc petrol-engined Indian Enfield can output approximately three times as much power.

Fully sick, and by ’sick’ I mean ‘truly demented’.
And for your daily trip into WTFistan, here’s the best of British lunacy: a homebrew diesel GSX.

It can work in the country too [provincial town in Victoria]. I drive approx 125 km each week day, to and from work. Two of those days I’m in a car pool of 4 people, the other three days in a car pool of three people. So I drive on 1.5 days a week, averaged out, instead of 5. Saves me cash, wear-and-tear, time concentrating on driving; and the gossip is entertaining.

I’m not claiming to be a carbon angel: self-interest ($ savings) is a powerful prod.

But that’s just the driving I’m obliged to do, 48 weeks a year. Weekends and recreation, no car pooling yet.

cheerio

It has been suggested that they haven’t changed the tools in the factory since 1955.

My Honda was significantly faster in first than his enfield (when it ran) was in top.

Amazingly, Enfield also does a diesel bike - often modified to be more directly farm machinery.

Can one add in the population health benefits of “moving” the pollution from city streets to power plant smoke stacks?

I’m not sure which would be “better” overall or even how you define better in this kind of comparison.

I have read that the transmission is by a rubber band which I presume means that there are two cones connected by the rubberband and gear change is effected by forcing the band to find different diameters on each cone.It should not be too hard to add an electric motor to that arrangment.

This could only be done of course when the Chinese have made the cost of panels dirt cheap.

You beat me to it. Royal Enfield motorbikes have been available in Australia for some time. Cheap, slow but full of character they say.

They are not to be confused with the Lee Enfield rifle I had as a young fella.

Put the two side by side and the difference is easy enough to spot…

The Lee-Enfield (actuall Short Magazine Lee-Enfield or SMLE) was a rifle (Lee design and Enfield manufacture) used in .303 inch calibre as the standard British infantry firearm from 1908 until replaced in the late 1950s. It replaced the Lee-Metford rifle (which it closely resembles) used in the South African conflict. The Indian-made motorcycle in question is the Royal Enfield Bullet 500, first made in 1953 by the Enfield Cycle Co. of Coventry, UK and made in India essentially unchanged since 1955.

The Hindustan Ambassador was originally based on the 1948 Morris Oxford, but has undergone a such a range of cosmetic and mechanical changes over the 60 years of its manufacture that it can no longer be said to be the same car.

And, Paul, I should have gone into more detail here, as I did at Greensblog. Of course, there’s huge problems with ethanol, and electric cars are only going to be useful as climate action if charged by renewables. But I was simply using Wagoner’s statement to highlight that peak oil concerns are slowly going mainstream…

Lectures to developing countries of the ‘you should’ variety are tedious when there seems no sign of drawback by those who are sucking up all the resources.

David Rubie, have you been to new Zealand recently? Their cars are shit.

Compared to before the import restrictions were lifted, they are both (a) cheaper and (b) cleaner. Australian roads aren’t exactly filled to excess with bright, shiny, efficient vehicles either, but pretty much anything fuel injected and/or catalysed is better than the gross polluters currently clogging 2nd/3rd world roads. I just can’t see millions and millions of Indians taking up that Tata Nano - they simply can’t afford it even at $3,000AUD + running costs (which will increase, not decrease). It’s aimed at the up-and-comers. While there are (comparatively) lots of them, it’s not like suddenly 1 billion people will be taking to the highway. Those already running a car or considering the purchase of something crap like a wprn out, second hand Maruti 800 (an old Suzuki Alto) will have something new and clean to choose. Older, rubbish cars will just be abandoned as being too expensive to repair and/or become more valuable as scrap. It’s good.

As far as carbon emissions from electric cars, it depends. One calculation I’ve seen compared the Toyota Prius and a Mitsubishi all-electric prototype; they came out roughly the same if you assume the electricity came from the New South Wales grid. The further point is that there are more ready replacement for coal-fired power stations than there are for fossil fuels in cars.

I suppose my feeling is that in this debate there is still too much abuse (e.g. “dirty little smoke bombs”) and too few facts. Not all facts have to be quantitative, but it’s a damn good base to start from, if the perils we abhor are predicted by quantitative meteorolgical and biogeochemical modelling. Not to mention population forecasts, economic modelling of developing economies, etc.