Electric cars.

Yes, @pete. @Fat Controller has covered that for you in his post. Hybrids as he said come up a fair bit cheaper than fully electric vehicles. Mine is not a plug in car - not wanting the hassle of it.

My/our current car is a Hyundai (never again, but nothing to do with being a hybrid) and we've lost boot space as the battery is in there. My previous car was a Ford Puma, the battery was in the middle of the car which also allowed 'pan' space in the boot, most cars now don't carry a spare wheel.

 

Dropped our own kerb in the 70s over a bank holiday weekend.
I remember it well, was very hot.
We got permission which cost nothing.

Apparently these days they have to dig up the pavement and dig out to a depth as if it was part of the road.
The contractor has to be council approved as well.

 

@Retired Italian cars or the 60s and 70s didn't generally wait for the rain before they started rusting. My brother bought a brand new Fiat 850 Sports Coupe and the brake discs and drums were thick with rust when it arrived.

 

I can remember seeing cars coming into the country from Europe, they often had a layer of waxy stuff on them to protect them.
I can also remember when companies like Ford and Vauxhall had compounds with hundreds of unsold cars all beginning their rust journey, if you bought one they obviously cleaned it up, but it might have spent months just sitting around.

I used to buy new Fords when I was young and you had to order the spec you wanted, then it was made to order, sometimes it was months before your car was produced mostly in Europe.

 

Yes so can I; one of my jobs, as a teenager, was to clean it off new Audi and VW cars for the local dealer. Used an old fashioned pressure washer that used a paraffin burner to heat the water and pressurise the system.

 

Hi,

In my early twenties I started a garage business from scratch with a set of spanners and 2lb hammer.

With little money I needed to be inventive so with a lot of cheek I approached a car sales lot about a mile away and asked what he did with the cars he accepted in part exchange but weren't worth his time to repair; he sent them to auction; I offered to take them on for what he thought he'd get at auction so the deal was made; I didn't pay him until I'd sold the cars.

It's over 50 years ago and I was taking cars from him like Ford Anglia 105's needing new cills etc. I collected such cars for about a fiver and after a bit of work sold them on for double the amount allowing me to pay the guy and make a decent profit.

A year later I was doing OK but suddenly it dawned on me I was only living for my garage business starting at 8 o'clock every morning often working right through until 3 o'clock the following morning; I was living with my parents and would dash home for baked beans and an egg then get a a few winks of sleep. In those days it was rebore's and crank grinding; side valve Ford 100's I converted to shell bearings to the big ends; it was interesting to open the boot of a Ford Anglia to see a cart spring had broken through the floor; rust attacked any car with a vengeance; cars in those days were mostly positive earth and often with 6V electrics; my customers applied more and more pressure wanting their cars repaired yesterday; I'd had enough of this punishment so packed the lot in and enjoyed a good nights sleep never to chase money again; it simply isn't worth it.

I wonder what the next car fuel will be then the government can stab the EV owners in the back the way the government stabbed diesel car owners in the back; perhaps nuclear with a power pack the size of a mobile phone?

Kind regards, Col.

 

Any EV purchaser who thought they would go through life without 'Road Tax' and other charges for motoring was living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. It should have been obvious to anybody with a brain cell that the lost revenue from reduced petrol/diesel sales would have to be made up somehow, someday. That day has come.

 

Thermoelectric nuclear batteries, running off plutonium have been used on a number of satellites including the still functioning Voyager missions. Problem is they don't have a lot of oomph certainly not enough for a car. So no not mobile phone battery size, probably similar size to current lithium car batteries, they will however outlast everything else in the car, will make crashes interesting if the shielding is compromised.

 

Star Trek @shiney ?

 

Personally I'd go with a magnetically confined singularity.
Although as with all these exotic power sources the problem is converting the energy output efficiently into a rotary motion to drive the wheels on your car.