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Electrical Vehicles

I don’t think so!

My father was a part time well digger. The rest of the time he was a quarry manager for NZ Rail. I remember standing in front of my class doing ‘morning talk’ telling fellow 6 year olds that my father was surely dirtier than their father. A young lad feels pride in matters of this nature. Dad’s principle qualification for this task was to be soft hearted. When anyone in the neighbourhood wanted anything he would oblige. Beside our house was a forge, the car shed was an impressive workshop and the rafters bulged with stuff that would come in handy one day. I still have most of it.

Most of a community well digger’s equipment would just fit onto the fold down carrier rack on the back of our Morris 8. First on was the homemade wheelbarrow. This was filled with a crow bar, a New Zealand Railways issue shovel and a metal bucket with a long rope attached to the handle. The divining rods went inside the car - along with a couple of sticks of gelignite. (These were contingency supplies for plan B.) The ‘jelly’ was wrapped in an old singlet tied up with the yellow fuse to stop it sweating and the detonators were kept nestled in his tobacco tin.

Most wells were very deep. Getting in and out to dig was an ‘issue’ as we say nowadays. Dad achieved this by tying the bucket rope to the back of the car, laying the crowbar across the mouth of the well and slinging the rope over it. By putting one foot in the bucket he could be lowered into or lifted out of the bowels of the earth by one of his mates or my mother driving forward or backward. Once there he filled the bucket with diggings to be hoisted up by hand and he continued ever down towards the water his divining rods had told him existed at a certain depth.

It may astonish you to learn that no permit was required to dig, no water right was applied for, no inspector came to see the hole and on the occasions plan ‘B’ was invoked there was no paperwork to slow proceedings. The only safety apparatus ever used was the one on which he wore his hat. Self preservation was a strong instinct and apart from finding an indignant billygoat at the bottom of the well one morning I don’t recall any incident worthy of mention. Too bad society has replaced common sense with rules, costs and barriers.

Occasionally there were well jobs that required a little more. One job involved taking the hand dug spoil some distance up a slope. For this the ever ready wheelbarrow was pressed into service. Pushing a cwt of clay up a hill was a gut wrenching challenge that even superbly fit and sinewy labourers of the era were unable to manage. Nothing however was impossible. Overnight my father fabricated some brackets that attached both the starter motor and battery from the Morris 8 via a chain and sprocket to the wheelbarrow wheel. Some chains were laced around the wheel and a machine was created that could probably climb cliffs. Each morning the starter motor and battery were removed from the transport and bolted to the wheelbarrow. During the day a number of backup batteries were taken from helpers cars and at night the process reversed. This was the first electric vehicle I ever saw. It was cost effective, practical and simple, and with limitations it worked.

To this day I believe it is the best electric vehicle I have ever heard of. That is likely to remain the case forever. I have driven electric milk trucks in Britain and thought they were very quiet and very silly. Back here in NZ I used to deliver twice the amount of milk over a much wider area in half the time from a Ford Jailbar truck before school - and our customers appreciated the wakeup call. To my fiscal detriment and emotional distress I have owned electric forklifts that usually activated a big blinking red light indicating a docking with the battery charger was required just as a critical part of the job was reached. Pushing a forklift back to its ‘love pad’ for intercourse with the charger is not high on my list of good things to do.

The greenies who promote electric vehicles have obviously not had any first hand experience with them. Neither have they paused to think fully about the stupid suggestion that electric vehicles will save the world. Traditionally generated electricity is one of the most environmentally unfriendly energy sources available. It will remain so until we smarten up and embrace nuclear fusion.

A few years ago the Californian vegetarian environmentalist gained enough influence over those who enjoy life to invoke rules specifying a certain percentage of every manufacturers vehicle production had to be electrically propelled. While the manufacturers clearly knew this was the dopiest idea yet to emerge from the idle brains that had clearly been damaged by excesses of hallucination producing substances in the 60’s, they were pragmatic enough to realise that California is a big market. Big enough in fact to go along with the silly game until such time as they could prove better technology.  To keep the peace they started producing half ‘n half cars. That is, cars that half the time are propelled by traditional fuel and the other half by electricity. To achieve this, their engineers developed very smart batteries made from exceedingly rare and expensive materials and produced through very inefficient planet destroying processes. The environmental ‘footprint’ created by a car that is occasionally powered by zero emission electricity is enormous. Much greater in fact, than that created by the dreaded petrol.

Every battery powered vehicle requires charging. Excepting solar generation. The charging must be regular and of a certain voltage. It’s a little more involved than plugging in your 12v emergency recharger at home. The cost of making the electricity that flows magically from the socket in the wall is significant. It will involve huge hydro schemes, oil or coal fired generators, massive solar or wind generating plants and an enormously expensive inefficient distribution system. The energy loses through wires from the generation plant to your home is horrendous.  Added to that is the cost of those expensive, limited life batteries. The emissions of greenhouse gases and pollutants into the atmosphere from the creation and operation of these generation plants is planet destroying. The whole concept of electric cars is flawed. Added to that, can you imagine the surprise when it is discovered that electric cars are sneaking up on and squashing children who have not been taught to cross the road correctly.

There will come a time when smart scientists develop viable fuel cells. These may create energy from water or some other readily available source. More likely the infrastructure to distribute the new forms of energy will be expensive and may prove impossible under various resource consent regimes. Eventually there is likely to be energy from nuclear fusion but that will be a long way out and all the shriekers who think anything with the word nuclear in it is bad will first have to be quietly rounded up and disposed of.

Wait a moment! There is another option. It’s been around a long time and is proven technology. It emits significantly less greenhouse gasses. The CO2 that is given off is needed to make it. The soot particles created can also be caught and harmlessly incinerated. It will assist combat climate change, stabilise friable land, can be produced in 3^rd world countries by unskilled labour or on marginal land anywhere, is safely transportable and can be distributed through existing service stations. It’s called Biodiesel. The world can grow suitable crops that are easily converted to diesel. The key is ‘suitable’ crops. Not Corn or Palm Oil or anything else that impinges on the food productivity and prices, but plant material that is worthless for most other uses. They exist or are being discovered. This is arguably the process that WILL save the planet.

There’s another good reason why Biodiesel should be used to power our preferred mode of transport in the future. The natural torque characteristic of this fuel causes the cars to go like hell. Modern diesels are fast.

The Europeans are well along the path of developing this as the most likely form of vehicle energy for the next 30 years. Forget about the harebrained idea of electric cars. Diesel grown somewhere near you is the fuel of our future.