Safe Speed Forums

The same report quotes 2.2MWh per unit produced and delivered. Actually it quotes 2.2MW/h/unit but I assume that's a mistake! The last (?Environment Agency?) report I saw said 0.47kg of CO2 per kWh of mains electrickery so it ought to be about a tonne of CO2 per vehicle built and delivered but (a) big car plants might have their own CHP or micro-generation and / or lots of windmills and (b) it will (ought to) include other sources like the delivery trucks which don't run on electricity.

It must include all the carbon costs. Mining the ore for the steel, transporting it to the steel works, mining the coal for the coke ovens, transporting the coal to the furnaces, burning coal in the ovens to make the coke for the blast furnace, operating the steel mill, mining the gas, transporting the gas and burning the gas to fire the furnace, transporting the raw steel from the furnace to the hot rolling miles, cold rolling mills, strip miles. Rolling and transporting the sheet steel, cutting and stamping the steel in the presses.

And that's just the bodywork steel. Similar supply chains exist for the engines, and any aluminium, plastic, rubber, glass, wire or electronic components. Then it all has to be put together by workers (who drive to work, need warming, food, clothes, training and education) etc. If ALL this isn't summed, then any figure is bogus.

I wouldn't be remotely surprised if these manufacturer figures are fractional carbon cost of their factories, rather than the whole deal. There's a lot hanging on this. Does anyone know the real cost?

PS: This is a good discovery, because it means that, whatever the manufacture carbon cost is, the ratio gets better the longer you use the car, and worse the shorter the car's life. At last there is an advantage to global warming!

Naturally, I agree, but have absolutely no means of verifying (or otherwise!) the claims. This is a motor industry report and is therefore quite likely to put as much of a slant on the figures as they feel they can get away with. On the other hand, I know that increasing numbers of major manufacturers are dumping increasing numbers of environmental questions on their suppliers (such as "how much CO2 is created per thousand of these washers that you supply us")? If those figures are accurate (and include all the variables you mention), then there's no reason why the "whole vehicle" figure shouldn't be accurate. I dearesay one could devote one's entire working life to establishing a true cost though!

While I also agree that (obviously) no matter what the figures are, you can make them a smaller percentage of the total by keeping the car a long time, you need to offset this against the better CO2 emissions performance of the vehicle in use. Those figures are also, I expect, wildly inaccurate if they're based on the quoted "x grammes per km", because I've never yet driven a car that achieves it's quoted fuel consumption figures in real life - let alone betters them! On the other hand, that was always the case, so on a back-to-back comparison, the newer cars would be likely to emit less in their lifetimes.

Try some of the environmental sites, they might have their own take on the "true" CO2 cost of car ownership!

Yes, of course. But then we'd need to un-offset the cost of building and renewing the factories that make the cars, the transport costs of workers going to and from the factories, the carbon cost of the road infrastructure to allow workers to go to and fro, the cost of building the cars that the workers need to go to and fro, etc. Then we'd need to un-offset the amount of carbon that the land the factories reside on would otherwise extract from the environment, if it were turned over to forest. And we'd have to un-offset the amount of carbon created by the new wealth generated by the factories, as "industrial societies" create the most carbon.

This all seems like a Sisyphean task to me!

Especially as everyone is chasing their tails trying to prove they generate low levels of CO2, which is not a pollutant anyway and is essential to life !
If everything that man[kind] did that generates CO2 was stopped, then the reduction would be 3.5% of the quantity in the ecosystem.
So, just so that the extremely vocal AGW supporters can have good careers, and sell carbon credits (and get very, very, rich so doing) we are running around trying to stop making something which we make little of anyway (in the general scheme) ?
The world is going to hell, fast, on the basis of a lie.

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The world runs on oil, period. No other substance can compete when it comes to energy density, flexibility, ease of handling, ease of transportation. If oil didn’t exist we would have to invent it.”

56 years after it was decided it was needed, the Bedford Bypass is nearing completion. The last single carriageway length of it.We have the most photogenic mayor though, always being photographed doing nothing

Thats pretty much my conclusion,

It is difficult finding figures for this since it is difficult to know where the "Boundries" have been set.

The 0.6T/Unit (1000KWHr/unit) sounds about the right order of magnitude for the "assembly" plant. However it should be recognised that the bulk of the "manufacturing" is done by the componant suppliers and, in turn, their raw material suppliers and it doesnt seem anything like enough to cover all these additional componants.

(Figures I have found thus far suggest 4-5,000KWhr/T for raw steel, 15,000KWHr/T for aluminium. This is all before you start doing usefull things to it! (also, using recycled materials can reduce this substantially, but at a cost!)




Of course its bogus! The whole point about statements like this is to try to talk down the costs of manufacture and talk up the costs of use in order to convince convince the buying public and politicials that scrapping perfectly good older vehicles so you can buy shiny new ones (and thus keep their factories busy) is "Good" for the enviroment!

Its complete Bollox!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

I reckon you're scraping the bottom of the barrel there a bit! "...if they were turned into forest..." I take the general point though. However, in fairness, if your're going to consider all that, you also need to consider the CO2 involved in the extra work and spares required to keep an older car on the road. The electricity for the welder perhaps? ... the cheap parts made in the third world in factories using "sub-optimal" environmental technologies; the cars for the garage trade who keep these old sheds on the road to get to work in, the heating for their railway arches (bound to be less thermally efficient than a nice new "main stealer's" premises...

...and so on!

Incidentally, on scrappage subsidies, saw this in some meeting minutes..

"...A new draft paper may be available in April 2009. A seminar on "Best Practices on Scrapping Schemes" is planned to be held on 16th February in Brussels to determine the key parameters and to ensure the schemes’ equality. There will an exchange of views on the advantages and challenges for scrapping schemes for all categories of vehicle. Invitations to attend will addressed to the Member States’ Finance Ministries and representatives of Industry."

Will keep an eye out for more!

Sounds like it might be worth investing in a dozen thirty quid cars

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

I've come in a bit late on this thread but...

I noticed earlier that people were talking about pad wear indicators. And complaining about "extra wiring" and "extra bulbs".

My car has them on the front (not on the rear, it says in the book that you should get your rear pads checked when the fronts are replaced though). But there's no extra bulb. I have a large dot matrix LCD display on the instrument panel that tells me all kinds of things like my current MPG, outside temperature, what gear you're in (if you have the automatic - which I don't), what radio station/CD track is currently playing (if you have the OEM head unit - which I don't) as well as flashing up amber warnings for things like low oil level, low washer bottle level, low fuel - and of course low brake pads.

Yes, the system is brilliant, I've had it on my last 3 cars. But every time I turn the key I still expect it to say something like "AMI BIOS, 256MB RAM OK, Starting Windows XP Embedded..."

Of course it doesn't run XP (even Embedded), however there's more computing power in the ECU than NASA used in the Space Shuttle!

I do feel these days that you're driving the computer and the computer is driving the car. Even the first car I had (1995 Fiesta) had an electronic engine management system and a positional sensor for the accelerator pedal, albeit mounted on the injector and operated by the throttle cable. The A4 I drive these days just has a positional sensor with the accelerator pedal attached to it and a bundle of cables coming out. No mechanical linkage at all.

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Magistrates rule #1: "Never let justice get in the way of a conviction."

I'm just trying to fit it all in. But now I've raised the concerns about planned
obsolescence, let's look at the big picture. We've been talking about
"political" obsolescence. Another type is "technical obsolescence".
Nothing goes wrong with the same level of confidence as "high
technology", so that is where the makers concentrate their efforts.

That's why simplicity is best. Consider Squirrel's unnecessary embedded computer.
It will go wrong every (say) 5 years due to component degradation. Capacitors are
particularly flaky. It has "more computing power in the ECU than NASA used in the Space Shuttle",
but it doesn't need much at all - a couple of PID loops and a logic circuit would do it. Yet you'd
scrap the car rather than renew, if it is more than 10 years old.

What a fix it all is.

Saw a Merc CLK recently. In common with most modern german cars the way to put out the service light is described in the owners manual (though it is somewhat fiddly)

While trawling through this VAST owners handbook, a thought occured to me....

Later I surfed the web looking for a copy of the Saturn V Moon rocket flight manual. Eventually I found it, and yes, I was right!

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"The road to a police state is paved with public safety legislation"

But you actually see fewer cars stuck at the side of the road these days than you did 20 or 30 years ago! When Squirrel's unnecessary embedded computer packs up (and chances are, it will outlive the rest of the car) it just won't tell him what gear he's in. SO WHAT???!!!

I'm guessing that any incentive will be some sort of discount voucher off your next purchase of a shiny, brand new (and sub-130g/km CO2) car! Having succumbed to an initial panic attack, I think the chances of scrappers dishing out £2k in cash to anyone who brings in an old shed like mine will be somewhat remote!

I'm not sure if Audi actually tell you how to do it, however anyone with an Audi with DIS (Driver Information System), read on:

Insert the ignition key but don't turn it yet. Press the spanner button on the dashboard (the one that normally tells you how long to the next service). Keep it held down and turn the ignition key to the II (Run) position. Whilst still holding the spanner button press the 0.0 button (that zeros the trip-meter). The service display will then reset.



I'd laugh if that wasn't true! In some ways I think automotive technology has got too complex. On the other hand when you've got a 2 litre direct-injection diesel engine that can deliver 210bhp and still manage 58mpg (I've done this on a couple of long trips) - and that's whilst driving all 4 wheels - there might well be something in it.

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Magistrates rule #1: "Never let justice get in the way of a conviction."

The ECU controls a number of things besides a warning icon if the brake pads are low.

Apart from the obvious ones like fuel mixture, boost pressure etc, the ESP (stability control) is built into the ECU, as is ABS, brake force distribution, brake assist control, torque control (the MkIII Torsen diff is variable with an actuator that is controlled by the ECU) and probably a few hundred other things.

As for going wrong, as far as I know it's mounted inside the passenger compartment so isn't subject to extremes of temperature. And I have computer kit that's 25 years old here (an original Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore 64 along with 1541 floppy drives) that all still works perfectly.

Other parts on the car are far more likely to fail than the ECU. The turbocharger, the head gasket, the EGR valve etc. So as much as some of us long for the days of a RWD twin-carb V8 with no fancy electronics or limited slip diffs I'd say modern vehicles are much more reliable.

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Magistrates rule #1: "Never let justice get in the way of a conviction."

There is no reason why a computer should fail every 5 years. The computers on Pioneer 5 were still working thirty years after it was launched (admittedly in a much less hostile environment that a motor car). Correctly specified capacitors are no more flaky than any other automotive component. A "couple of PID loops and a logic circuit"" is a bulkier, more expensive and less reliable solution than using a micro-controller.

This continuing reference to "more computing power in the ECU than NASA used in the Space Shuttle", always amuses me. NASA used more computing power for the Space Shuttle than was available to the rest of the nation at the time - they just kept it on the ground rather than sending it into space.

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When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. H.G. Wells
When I see a youth in a motor car I do d.c.brown

how this thread twists and turns

going back to the carbon footprint of a car, as far as I am concerned it is perfectly acceptable to allocate all of the tonnes of carbon that go into making a car. However, if we are going to add the mining and processing carbon to the car/washing machine/bicycle then that carbon has gone from the balance sheet of the mines and steel/metal works and can't be on both balance sheets, if you follow me.

it seems highly unlikely that all these functions are contained in the one ECU, if only because the systems are unlikely to come from the same suppliers! whats the car?

Yes - they are all in the scrapyard. That's my point.

I manage a 1000 node grid farm as my day job at the physics institute, and I loose at least 2 nodes a week from hardware faults. That's 10 to 20 percent per year. These are top quality server blades. Nothing fails with the same level of confidence as high technology.

PS: there's no difference to managing a 1 node grid farm than a 1000 node grid farm. All the nodes are the same! But it allows me to gather some numbers on how good commoditsed computers really are. And they are not much cop, to be honest.