But will your MD be eating dry, bland turkey on Christmas day? ... He probably has venison and goose sitting on his table to wash down with a nice Chateau Margaux and then a Chateau D'yquem to finish. He'll probably chuckle at his staff eating turkey with lager and Blue Nun :D:D
 
SpudH said:
Just about any sub 2.5L diesel post 2000 will be better than the Prius on the open road. The latest diesels much better. The pre 2010 models are actually quite mediocre on the motorway. At 75mph it'll only do about 45mpg and is reallly not that nice at that speed, the engine just sounds strained. My brothers 520d is probably doing 65mpg and straining to be let off the leash at that speed.;)

But a gimmick it's not. In sub-urban driving it is quite brilliant. Its a family sized car that gives a genuine 50+mpg on the school run regardless of traffic. Something that never gets mentioned is just how effortless a car to drive it is, particularly in traffic. As Rangie drivers we're well used to the easy kind of driving but the Prius takes it to a new level. It's like a bumper car. Having said that you'd never accuse it of being fun to drive but few Toyotas are. And, like most Toyotas, it is soul-less but I've got the Rangie for that.:D:D
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Yeah possibly brilliant school run shopping car. But how long will they last. How many 20 year old Prius's will there ever be. A car worth £1,500 that needs a £5,000 battery pack is not going to be top of the used cars buyers list. That means they are going to be recycled more often than a normal car now is, so anything they save in CO2 output in their life will be lost in scrapping and making them more often. I think that is the point some make about them.
 
wammers said:
How many 20 year old Prius's will there ever be.
Click to expand...

Thats a fair point but the percentage of cars getting beyond 10 years old is on the decline. They will be driven out of the market place by policy and tighter controls, particularly emmisions etc.

wammers said:
A car worth £1,500 that needs a £5,000 battery pack is not going to be top of the used cars buyers list.
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Again a good point but the same is true for most cars. How much is a short engine or a gearbox for a Rangie from LR. Nobody is going to put a new engine from a dealer into a 2001 Rangie either. You are comparing a new battery price from a main stealer to the value of the car. Ecomomies of scale and demand will bring down the price of the battery. Right now I have a Hilti 18V battery drill which, while once outstanding, is next to useless now due to bad batteries. Hilti charge over €180 for a replacement battery. There are companies in the UK who will re-cell the existing f**ked battery for €30. The same is happening in California with Prius batteries, its down to about $2,000 for a battery re-cell and the price is only going one direction as the car were originally sold with a 10year guarantee on the battery so market forces are only coming into play now.

wammers said:
That means they are going to be recycled more often than a normal car now is, so anything they save in CO2 output in their life will be lost in scrapping and making them more often. I think that is the point some make about them.
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I think that is debatable and will have more to do with policy than the actual car. As said above, the reasons for scrapping out a Prius any earlier than any other car, while valid in the recent past, are diminishing rapidly. Policies like the scrappage schemes ran in many countries have a much bigger impact on the service life of the car than the actual ability of the car to last. Seanmulls 1995 P38 has 247,000 miles on it and is as sweet a drive as you'll get but is a bit like the 25 year old axe thats only had 3 heads and 5 handles over the course of its life. We both benefitted from a woman who had her dog of a 148,000 mile 98 DSE put down with the scrappage scheme (for a Megane:doh::doh:). That RR needed to be scrapped.

On the other hand my own mother put a 70,000 mile 1998 Avensis they'd bought in 1999 into the scheme just because the scheme was closing.:eek: The car was like new except for 13 years worth of shopping trolley attacks and parking by ear:rolleyes:. That car had a genuine minimum 10 years left in it but was crushed because of policy:mad::mad:, unbelievable waste:doh: She went out and parked her new Auris using the same techniques she'd honed with Avensis and demolished the front corner:(. Spent the money she'd saved on the scrappage scheme fixing damage she wouldn't have bothered fixing on the Avensis. Thats progress and carbon footprint reduction for you:rolleyes:
 
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I don't think it matters about the carbon footprint to be honest. Earths natural carbon cycle is almost in equalibrium even with the man made output. Which is a small fraction of the natural cycle. The atmospheres carbon content has been going up and down, as has the temperature, naturally for billions of years, in predictable cycles. Mans assistance on this occasion is minute compared to the natural cycle production. Planting a few trees could negate mans input. We in Britain produce around 2% of the worlds carbon output. If we stopped producing carbon tomorrow the industrial expansion of China and India would wipe that out in a month or so. I see no reason why the people of Britain should be bearing the brunt of large carbon taxes when to all intents and purposes nobody else gives a ****.
 
I've yet to work our why emitting plant food is a problem, it's a hopeless "greenhouse" gas and it only makes up 0.0038% of our atmosphere, concentrations have been far, far higher than that in the past. Plant growth increases until saturation passes 5%.

As for Piouses (sorry I can't type the real name) they are actually very well made - probably one of the few modern cars that will last 20+ years batteries aside.
 
wammers said:
I don't think it matters about the carbon footprint to be honest. Earths natural carbon cycle is almost in equalibrium even with the man made output. Which is a small fraction of the natural cycle. The atmospheres carbon content has been going up and down, as has the temperature, naturally for billions of years, in predictable cycles. Mans assistance on this occasion is minute compared to the natural cycle production. Planting a few trees could negate mans input. We in Britain produce around 2% of the worlds carbon output. If we stopped producing carbon tomorrow the industrial expansion of China and India would wipe that out in a month or so. I see no reason why the people of Britain should be bearing the brunt of large carbon taxes when to all intents and purposes nobody else gives a ****.
Click to expand...

I suppose it comes down to the differerences between what we now do, what we can do, what we could do and what we should do. I'm a bit bit biased as I work in the renewable energy sector but I hope I'm not blind to reality. I read a point recently that almost encapsulates the entire argument. It was to do with the energy cost to create CO2 friendly technology.

It stated that if wind power was economically viable, commercial shipping would still use sail power. Its a breath taking argument, brilliant in its simplicity and irrefutable.

But its an argument for now, not the future. The same goes for fuel cell technolgy, it might have a role in the future but not any time soon. The whole world is set up for hydrocarbon fuels. To roll out a new technology is just not possible in the short term or even feasible in the medium term. We must concentrate on the efficiency of that finite energy resource oil while promoting the like of bio-ethanol that can run in tandem with it. Diminishing oil resources will force the price up to make the more expensive 'green' alternative more competitive. The increase in fuel cost will be offset by the use of existing infrastructure and technology.

Carbon taxing is just a means to an end, it will create the environment to allow the alternatives develop under artificial economic conditions. Just look at fuel economy, nothing significant happened fom the time of the oil crisis in the 70's until UK introduced emmision led BIK taxing and the London congestion charge. In a matter of 5 years the manufacturers responded with an order of magnitude increase in the availability of fuel efficient/low emmision diesels.

Here in Ireland they introduced similar legislation in January 2008. In 2007 less than 5% of new cars sold were in the sub 150g Co2 bracket. In 2011 95% of new cars were in that bracket (there was actually such a loss in tax revenue from motoring that they've had to target those vehicles with the biggest tax increases. My brothers 520d went up more in tax than my P38).

The same will happen with green energy. They knockers point to the new availablity of massive reserves of oil sand and such. But they choose to forget that the oil industry always knew it was there, it just was not economical to process it. At current barrel prices it is now profitable. the argument that opens up new reserves of oil is the same that will make alternative energy economic in the near future.
 
SpudH said:
I suppose it comes down to the differerences between what we now do, what we can do, what we could do and what we should do. I'm a bit bit biased as I work in the renewable energy sector but I hope I'm not blind to reality. I read a point recently that almost encapsulates the entire argument. It was to do with the energy cost to create CO2 friendly technology.

It stated that if wind power was economically viable, commercial shipping would still use sail power. Its a breath taking argument, brilliant in its simplicity and irrefutable.

But its an argument for now, not the future. The same goes for fuel cell technolgy, it might have a role in the future but not any time soon. The whole world is set up for hydrocarbon fuels. To roll out a new technology is just not possible in the short term or even feasible in the medium term. We must concentrate on the efficiency of that finite energy resource oil while promoting the like of bio-ethanol that can run in tandem with it. Diminishing oil resources will force the price up to make the more expensive 'green' alternative more competitive. The increase in fuel cost will be offset by the use of existing infrastructure and technology.

Carbon taxing is just a means to an end, it will create the environment to allow the alternatives develop under artificial economic conditions. Just look at fuel economy, nothing significant happened fom the time of the oil crisis in the 70's until UK introduced emmision led BIK taxing and the London congestion charge. In a matter of 5 years the manufacturers responded with an order of magnitude increase in the availability of fuel efficient/low emmision diesels.

Here in Ireland they introduced similar legislation in January 2008. In 2007 less than 5% of new cars sold were in the sub 150g Co2 bracket. In 2011 95% of new cars were in that bracket (there was actually such a loss in tax revenue from motoring that they've had to target those vehicles with the biggest tax increases. My brothers 520d went up more in tax than my P38).

The same will happen with green energy. They knockers point to the new availablity of massive reserves of oil sand and such. But they choose to forget that the oil industry always knew it was there, it just was not economical to process it. At current barrel prices it is now profitable. the argument that opens up new reserves of oil is the same that will make alternative energy economic in the near future.
Click to expand...

Yes i will live with most of that. But it does rankle a little, that 50% of the north sea oil production is pumped straight into tankers, then taken to America, so they can have cheap fuel. It is us who should be having cheap fuel for however long it lasts, not the worlds largest polluter. We are in effect paying a lot more, to pollute a lot less. Our egocentric politicians want to lead the world in carbon production cutbacks, when what we produce is a drop in the ocean. Green taxing is costing the British people and economy billions, at a time when it should be on a high because of motor fuel self sufficiency. Thatcher squandered 250 years worth of domestic gas supply to generate electricity, when we have 400 years worth of coal below us. Wind power at this moment in time is just like the Prius a very expensive gimmick. Maybe in a hundred years we may need it but not now.
 
wammers said:
We can make gas from coal, a byproduct being coke that can be used for clean burn fires. A fact obviously lost on Maggie Thatcher.
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Was that in the days when people had jobs,and actually manufactured things in the uk!!!!!!:blabla:
 
Just a thoght , is it possible to retro fit a v8 into a prius ? roting Landy's and flat battery Prius's , just a thought
 
lazydog said:
Was that in the days when people had jobs,and actually manufactured things in the uk!!!!!!:blabla:
Click to expand...


Yeah that was it you remember. Before Thatcher closed industry down and said we would rely on tourism from then on. Apparently Japs a Krauts like to come here and photograph the ruined factory sites. It's big business you know. :)
 
They move all the old places here to a museum and then charge us to go and see men workin the old way;)
 
wammers said:
Yeah that was it you remember. Before Thatcher closed industry down and said we would rely on tourism from then on. Apparently Japs a Krauts like to come here and photograph the ruined factory sites. It's big business you know. :)
Click to expand...


I guess it's an inconvenient time to point out that UK manufacturing fell a greater amount under 13 years of NuLav than under 18 years of Tories. Wind back to 79, we had to go to the IMF for handouts - a completely bankrupt nation with the trade unions controlling what does and doesn't get produced. That cartel had to be smashed for the nation's sake. In 97 the Tories handed over the 4th richest nation in the world and rising into McBruin's incapable hands - during a global boom he managed to double national debt, debt your great grandchildren will still be slaving to pay off, sell off our gold and smash the world's best private pensions provisions through over-taxation - we are now the 7th richest nation and sliding fast. Yeah blame it all on the Banksters - they are part of the story - but the cupboards were already bare before the 'crunch. Brown and Blair's story was a story of votes bought by a sea of debt that will drown us.

I'm not a staunch Tory BTW - I believe you need a left-wing government occasionally to invest in public services - but unfortunately our lefties bankrupt us whenever they get their chance, then blame the Tories for the pain of paying back their debt.
 
trouble is we sold all the familys possestion to pay it off last time, we dont have fook all to pay it with this time :doh:
 
StuckAgainSteve said:
I guess it's an inconvenient time to point out that UK manufacturing fell a greater amount under 13 years of NuLav than under 18 years of Tories. Wind back to 79, we had to go to the IMF for handouts - a completely bankrupt nation with the trade unions controlling what does and doesn't get produced. That cartel had to be smashed for the nation's sake. In 97 the Tories handed over the 4th richest nation in the world and rising into McBruin's incapable hands - during a global boom he managed to double national debt, debt your great grandchildren will still be slaving to pay off, sell off our gold and smash the world's best private pensions provisions through over-taxation - we are now the 7th richest nation and sliding fast. Yeah blame it all on the Banksters - they are part of the story - but the cupboards were already bare before the 'crunch. Brown and Blair's story was a story of votes bought by a sea of debt that will drown us.

I'm not a staunch Tory BTW - I believe you need a left-wing government occasionally to invest in public services - but unfortunately our lefties bankrupt us whenever they get their chance, then blame the Tories for the pain of paying back their debt.
Click to expand...


Thatcher had the bank rate at 16%, that made it more profitable to close your factory and put your money in the bank. Lots of government cockups have caused what we have now, but none so big as that one.
 
wammers said:
Thatcher had the bank rate at 16%, that made it more profitable to close your factory and put your money in the bank. Lots of government cockups have caused what we have now, but none so big as that one.
Click to expand...

I have a historical interest rate chart if you want me to post it, double figure interest rates were inherited from Labour in 79. At least wage rises kept pace, the high interest rates also keep house prices in check and meant you could pay your mortgage off with pocket change after 20 years, until gormless Brown took the price of housing yourself out of the interest rate calculations enabling house prices to shoot into the stratosphere way beyond the cost of living - which is where they have stayed since - until then, houses have always cost ~4x the average salary. Now they are 7x - the legacy of Brown's incompetence.
 
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