Possibly because it's the summer break? If there was any Scuderia Ferrari news at all, we would all, I hope, rather be discussing that!
Forget 25%....Currently 900K EV's registered in California, against 30 million registered motor vehicles in California. It's 3%....and suffering brownouts! Meanwhile, the ''green'' future looks more like this: Image Unavailable, Please Login Cutting down green areas and covering the lot in solar panels. It's a ridiculous joke all this, and I'm certainly not laughing. If anything we should be planting vastly more trees. PS did anyone tell these green lobbyist what the solar panels are made from, and how often they need replacing? The winners being the government, the losers being everyone else. The life expectancy of EV's is the same as any other conventional road car: Give or take 100K miles, 12 or so years before it's headed to the scrapyard. Most ICE road cars can go on for a bit longer and mostly do, unless they're scrapped due to poor maintenance. The battery in an EV degrades over the same period of time and no amount of maintenance is going to make it last longer. So after give or take 12 years, the battery needs to be replaced...IF it's still being made, it's going to be very costly. If it's not being made still, it's going to be much more costly. So it gets scrapped. Therefore, a new EV will need to be produced. An EV costs more in environmental damage to produce than a conventional ICE. Over time it's cleaner than an ICE, yes (though it does depend on where the countries' electricity comes from)...right until it needs a battery replacement. And then we're at the first point again, it either gets scrapped or the owner loves it so much the battery gets replaced, at great environmental cost (both in scrapping the battery and creating a new one). For conventional cars (both ICE and EV, mind you), the problem is people are idiots and scrap them too soon. There is no reason a normal ICE to do less than 200K miles these days, if not much more. Only piss poor maintenance or a crash prevents it. An EV however, batteries degrade whether you like it or not (of course, so long it's being used...). It's ok if you replace the battery in a phone or laptop, not so nice on an EV. If you want to be environmentally conscious, drive an enthusiasts' car. There will always be a buyer. If the car is totally dead due to an accident, blown engine, flood damage, whatever...every single viable piece of the car will be bought up and sold on...the most environmentally sane way of recycling a car!
Governments are not faceless dictators who work against the population. In the West, they are individuals elected democratically, who can be removed. Laws are also decided by elected people's representatives. If governments and representatives are out of tune with the majority, they can be voted out. The old chesnut is to blame everything on governments. Very little is done against the people in fact, but that myth persists.
I'm not going to go into this any further as it's for another subforum. All I can (hopefully) say is what you describe sure was the intention but I totally disagree with your statement.
All of this debate over EV vs e-fuel vs vs hybrid vs ICE is pointless. I think Europe will go mostly if not entirely electric for mainline passenger cars in 35'. OTOH, I think we're going to see high performance sports cars switch to e-fuels to keep their beasts legal. The EU has already given them that loophole to stay legal, because they know Germany and Italy are not going to suddenly de-facto ban sports cars in their countries.
I know a lot of people care about the sound angle in motorsports of ICE's becoming irrelevant in the future. Personally, I'll take a quieter race car over one with an annoying sound that gives me a headache. Formula-E have cool cars that are fun to watch, but man do those things give me a headache when they go to an onboard. Those LMP1 Audi's and Peugeot's sounded like phantoms, and yet they were stunningly beautiful and nimble cars. By 2035-2040ish, most racing will sound like that, imho. It's not the end of the world either. The future for racing is to become more exotic in the designs, and build cars that are sleek again. If this nimble and sleek beauty came back into racing, but was quiet instead of screaming, I'll take that compromise over the boats we have today. Image Unavailable, Please Login
William, I've always assumed you were UK based, but I may be wrong. Perhaps you aren't, because if you looked around at the state of the UK economy there's no way you would say this with a straight face. We have wound down oil extraction, refused to invest in nuclear power, invested in hydro/solar/wind in force aaaaaaaand we are in the midst of an energy crisis the likes of which hasn't been since the 60's as well as the highest inflationary environment for decades as a result. France is EXPORTING energy because they've done such a good job investing in effective energy production. We fell to pieces the second Russian energy supplies stopped. It's totally hubristic to look at the facts and say we're on the right path. We aren't. EV's and "green" energy are NOT the solutions to the climate crisis. Our infrastructure can't handle it now and there are no significant plans to overhaul it so that it does meet requirements. The economy must stop being ruined so that we can say we're meeting arbitrary eco-milestones that do nothing to slow climate change and everything to make living in this country soul destroyingly expensive. Nuclear is our only option for energy production if we actually want to go full EV as a country. The climate lobby can't have their cake (EV's) and eat it too (solely green energy production) - it's not realistic and it's costing people their livelihoods. P.S - this is all economic, no mention of anything P&R, this transcends political party.
Realistically, Nuclear is the only option for most countries that want to go EV. However, Nuclear salvation becomes an existential thread when war comes to your country.
I am based in London, spend 6 months of the year in UK, the rest in France and Spain. If your cup is half empty, mine is still half full, and I don't think the UK is doing too badly. Economically, the UK is still ahead of France, and we could buy electricity from them if necessary. But not at present, half of their nuclear power stations are shut because of maintenance, say their newspapers.
Not exactly half, actually slightly less than that, about 40%. And those which are shut down are not only for maintenance. In a nutshell, 24 reactors are shut down as for today, from a total of 56 reactors available for electricity production. The lowest number of reactors shut down was 12 this winter, but it varies from week to week. Some are shut down for the standard usual renewing of the nuclear charge, some are shut down for renewing some cooling pipes since a serie of microcracks on these cooling pipes was detected two years ago, and some are shut down simply because the plants are water-cooled, it is now summer and the level of many rivers is low these days; but, on the other hand, in summer, the energy demand is low, so nothing worrying here. But on the whole, it is true that France is facing a delicate matter of "block obsolescence" of its nuclear plants. As this has to do with budgetary matters and the difference in the public debt of 1975, when the "all-nuclear electricty" investment was decided under Valery Giscard d'Estaing, and what happened to the French public finances since, I really think it would bring us very far from the Scuderia Ferrari thread... Rgds
And California has had to go back to using fossil fuels to keep up with energy needs. I'll be laughing all the way to the gas station as I watch the cars going slower and slower as the energy gets less and less.
You are talking about vehicle ownership. That isn't the plan. You will not own your car, you will rent/lease it and it will be replaced every three years. And it won't be because you decided to.
To try to get this back on SF 2023...none of the current and future cars will be race cars as we have known them. I don't think Leclerc and Sainz could make it in real cars. Watching Senna take a car around Monaco, I don't think the modern drivers have the skills or the passion to take those risks. I'm putting myself on a waiting list for the 2024 Monaco Historic Grand Prix weekend. That will be real race cars driven by real race car drivers. It will smell and sound and feel and look like honest motor racing. I'm hoping to see the F1 Ferraris from when the greats were driving them.
I just hope Alesi returns with the B3...his race last year was the best f.1 drive i saw in many years....too bad some idiot ruined it....
William, to be clear you and I align on pretty much all things F1 so I don't want you to think this is a personal attack - this is purely an intellectual discussion. It is worth saying, however, that it's not a case of we could buy power from France if we need to. We do buy power from France because we need to. 9.7% of our power was imported from Norway and France. Similarly, French GDP growth is around 0.7% in 2023 and forecast 1.4% in 2024. UK GDP at 0.3% in 2023 and forecast 1.1% in 2024. In any case, let's get back to SF Do we all expect Carlos to finish below Charles, or will he sneak up through his consistency where Charles might overcook it again?
Summed up very nicely indeed. if the green brigade want to save the planet, they should concentrate on handing out contraceptives. Governments around the world want all this green job creation, it expands the economy, fuels growth and increases taxes, which they love to waste and so the circle continues.
Since I helped derail this discussion I am going to attempt to re-rail it (I know, not a word). I predict that Charles will win Monza to break the Red Bull string. I also predict that most of the political leaders who have pushed through legislation demanding widespread EV adoption will be out of jobs when the unworkable nature of this policy becomes apparent. In the US, many municipalities are banning new natural gas hook-ups in favor of heat pumps and induction stoves. We also can no longer buy filament light bulbs. In the US rich EV buyers are being subsidized by other tax payers who aren't wealthy enough or willing to pay for a Tesla or Lucid.
Always possible, but by then everything will be too advanced (EV production, charging network, scrapped fuel tankers, huge wind farms, new taxation, etc ..) to do a U-turn and go back to ICE anyway. PS. Good luck with a Ferrari win at Monza ! Vasseur will piss himself if that happens.
