Current Awareness Bulletin - 1st September 2010
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| 1 September 2010 3:16PM | #1 |
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Current Awareness Bulletin - 1st September 2010On the 30th September we’re holding the 1st Annual PTRC-CILT Electric Vehicle Conference in London. It promises to spark a whole battery of new ideas.
Everything from trams and trolleybuses to electric delivery vehicles and the new UK built Nissan Leaf electric car will be under discussion. The $64,000 question ‘How much CO2 saving is really made?’ will be raised. This is a really vexed question. Here’s another tricky topic that will be tackled head on: ‘How developed is the technology currently?’ Now I dragged the family to Deepest Dudley this Bank Holiday to the Black Country Living Museum – where I sampled the delights of the Silent Service for the very first time. I know you’re thinking ‘what is a submarine doing in Dudley?’ but as well as submarines the term ‘silent service’ was also used by those who worked on our trolleybus fleets. For the youngsters I may need to explain a trolleybus was a bus driven by an electric motor which picked up its power from overhead wires. Over the excited nattering of Our Sam I could still appreciate the quietness and smoothness of the system. The driver was parping the horn the whole time as holidaymakers wandered into the trolleybuses’ path – it was so silent people were quite unaware they were inches from being squashed. Indeed compared to the boneshaker trams with their wooden seats that were also clanking along at the museum, if you were to have predicted back in the ‘30s which mode of vehicle would be at the forefront of a local passenger transport renaissance in 70 years time, I reckon you’d have called it wrong. Home deliveries are a key area where electric vehicles make a great deal of sense, especially in urban areas. The idea that electric vehicles make cleaner and quieter vehicles for stop start operations is of course entirely new. Oh except for all the milk floats we’ve had since the 1940s. The rise of internet shopping and the huge increase in delivery van traffic in the past few years, make the case for electric delivery vans compelling. And Sainsbury’s, Tesco and the like are very aware of how such vehicles will help achieve the challenging overall emissions targets they raise. And the free green PR doesn’t hurt. I’m apparently what they call an early adopter. Don’t get me wrong, Our Sam’s all mine – no one would put up with him if he wasn’t directly related. I’m referring to the fact I drive a petrol/electric hybrid car. But the march of progress is already catching up with my Toyota ‘Pius’. The future is now all-electric cars. Local authorities are slowly but surely installing charging points in car parks across the nation. For now they sit largely idle, but such is the speed of change that in three years from now it may be a very different picture with Nissan, Renault etc all pioneering electric cars with a decent range For full details of the event click here. EVs really do look as if they are finally about to live up to the potential they’ve promised for years. Or will it be another flash in a pan? As ever your local group meeting is a great forum to discuss this, and you can leave a message online here.
David Jinks
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