California sueing car manufacturers

[Kathlean]

Anyone else read/heard about this?

California has started a case against the top 6 car manufacturers over the pollution and damage to the environment they have caused.

Not too sure of my opinion on this one and finding it hard to express.

We all know that something has to be done to stop the damage we are doing to our planet but if people didn't want to buy gas guzzelers (saw a quote about Arnold Swarzenegger selling his 10 mpg fleet of cars in response) the the manufacturers wouldn't make or sell them.

What about other polluters? Are they going to sue them all? Will they have to work out how much proportionally they damage the environment?

Can't see how this will work.

LOL!

California really has to be the most litigous place in the world.

Everyone in the whole nation jokes about them.

There used to be this advert for nuts, sets in California, of course.

Think this is sooo funny. Not sure I entirely agree that car manufacturers are consumer-led though. IM very humble O, if the car manufacturers had any real interest in the environment they would have pulled their fingers out 10 years ago and invested in some serious r&d into green energy sources - bio-fuels, hydrogen etc. The oil companies and car manufacturers deserve everything they get.

Big money has gone into other fuels.
It's very very hard.
Batteries have consumed vast amounts of dosh, and yet in the last century have improved hardly at all.

Hydrogen is dangerous stuff, as is methane and anyway they need to come from somewhere.

Contrary to those of us who've seen too many Hollywood movies, it's midly hard to get petrol to explode, and it's not very toxic.
It's energy density is high, and there is deep experience in handling it.

Even at it's relatively high current price, everything else is much more expensive, usually less green and frequently dangerous enough to be used as a disaster in Thunderbirds.

Biofuels are horribly un-green, quite possibly the most environmentally damaging energy source known.

Car firms produce what people will buy.

They've tried to sell little cars and failed.

They actually don't care what they sell, and the margins on BMW minis sold in the USA are vastly
more profitable than gas guzzlers.
But they are niche vehicles.

If consumers wanted 60 MPG vehicles they could have them. But they would be slow and the size of "Smart" cars.
It's not the car makers, or the oil firms, it's us.
It's dishonest psuedo liberal gesture politics to blame car and oil firms.
It's us.
You want better cars then you are going to have to pay more for a car that goes slower and has less elbow room than a British train a ruch hour.

The car makers would love to sell you these.
Not because they are good people, because often they are not, but because they want your money.

Ford's biggest competitor is not General Motors or Honda, but the huge number of cars in use. If people upgraded from old inefficient cars to new ones, the car makers would lurrrrvvee it.
But you don't do you ?

DC you are going to have to produce some facts and figures to support a couple of your more outrageous assertions here:

'petrol isn't very toxic' - please explain how you figure this.

'Biofuels are horribly un-green, quite possibly the most environmentally damaging energy source known' - again please explain 'cos that sounds like the sort of thing BP would come out with.

Oh, DominiConnor on oil. I just luuuuurve these threads.

But, he's right about biofuels being un-green. This is because you burn them, and therefore release CO2 into the atmosphere just like fossil fuels. And, they aren't very renewable. I mean do we really want to chop down all the forests and plants in our quest for energy?

People are very quick to blame the oil companies and label them as conspirators. But, really the challenges are that 1- the technologies have not been developed due to technical chanllenges (and not lack of funding) and 2- those technologies which are technically functional are not economically viable on the marketplace.

For example, electric cars do exist, but you find me putting my kids in one if they were free. Why? Because they are cracker box death traps. If you get in an accident n one of those and the other car is a 5 series BMW, the people in the cracker box will definatley lose. On the road, there is a trade off between safety and energy consumption/pollution. And I would personally go for safety. So, as DC points out (OMG, I've supported him twice in one post) I the consumer am defining what will sell. I don't want a SMART car. In spite of their name, I personally think people who buy them aren't very smart. I don't want a car that can't do 100 MPH, and if some twat crashes into me, I don't want to die. So give me a good sturdy car with a bit of performace and good crash test result.

Now, if we all had to ditch our cars and get on public transport in the name of saving the planet, I could do that. But, I have no interest in being at an unfair disadvantage on the road.

I obvioulsy meant to type "you won't find me putting my kids in one ..."

Hey, this reminds, (as I see this thread coming round to the benefits of nuclear), what is Gordon Brown's view on nuclear? Is he with or against Tony on that one?

please explain 'cos that sounds like the sort of thing BP would come out with.

Oh dear Uwila you ought to read the newspapers.
You will see loads of adverts by BP et al saying how they "investing" big money in this junk.

Biofuels are crops grown by heavily subsidised farmers who sepnd the money on pesticides, fertilisers etc. Don't you wonder why some US politicians are so keen on them ? Currently the oil lobby is in power, but the farming lobby will be in next.

As for the low toxicity of petrol I again wonder how you manage not to come in contact with the modern world.

You can drink petrol. Won't be good for you, but some have actually managed to get drunk on it without dying.
People work in petrol stations for decades with no major effect on their health. I personally have spilled it on my skin with no ill effects.
Any part of your body that touches hydrogen fuel will die. The variable is how much of you it takes with you. That's if it doesn't explode just for a laugh.

Batteries are made of a witches brew of stuff like lead, nickel and cadmium. All of which are real bad things.

Biodiesel isn't very toxic, though it's very hard to get it to burn as cleanly as the fossil fuels.

I'm not saying petrol is good, but it sets a high barrier that isn't going to be passed by "consciousness raising", or failed US vice presdients who make films, and claim to have invented the Internet.

Vicious stuff though it is, hydrogen is what we're going to get. The only plausible way to turn nuclear electricity into automotive power is to make H2. You won't enjoy that.

Give it 50 years, and heavy genetic engineering will turn out a plant that converts solar to fuel, but the strength of the hysterical end of the green lobby means that is very unlikely.

***Posted by DC:

"> please explain 'cos that sounds like the sort of thing BP would come out with.

Oh dear Uwila you ought to read the newspapers.
You will see loads of adverts by BP et al saying how they "investing" big money in this junk. "
*

Eh? Want to explain why you have adressed me in that response? I find "oh dear Uwila..." very patronising in view of the fact that I went to great pains to support your argument(s).

"Batteries have consumed vast amounts of dosh, and yet in the last century have improved hardly at all."

Not true. Worth reading is Electric Vehicle UK . Long distance, high speed electric vehicles have been possible for a while - just no bugger will manufacture them.

Wouldn't California be better off legislating rather than litigating? There would be a much more immediate effect if they slapped a tax on all cars that do below a certain mpg. I know they won't though because the senator would lose the next election. I just don't really see what will be gained even if they win, the air quality will still be bad, the people will still be driving the same cars but they will be absolved of individual responsibility (after all if the courts say it's the manufacturers fault then it can't be the car owners fault). Surely a public education campaign would be more effective.

Perhaps it's a fiscal rather than environmental decision, California is pretty short of money isn't it? Maybe they were looking for a way to raise funds that wouldn't involve taxation and thought that this could be a case that they could win.

It is a case of mistaken identity I think Uwila. DC should have been patronising me, not you. ;)

Public education only works when you can show personal interest, and not always then.
The way to cut petrol consumption is to push up the price, possibly through taxes. But even then it's not a quick fix, since cars can easily last a 10-15 years, so any useful effect takes a long time.
Ironically of course a new big car may have better fuel economy than an old small one.
It is equally rational to remove the taxes on new cars, and possibly more effective.

Yes GeorginaA, batteries have improved a bit over the last 100 years, but less than practically any other type of technology other than steam engines.

I scanned the site, and the car with "120 mile" range. That's a best case, rather like the claimed MPG for cars, ie you wont get it outside a test track.
It uses laptop batteries which have some advantages over the more efficient lead/acid car battery, typically in weight.
But as we have seen with the Sony/Dell/Apple fiasco, LIon batteries aren't exactly the safest technology known. Laptops use vastly less power than cars, if the problems detailed here had happened in a car, it would not only have destroyed the car, other cars near it, but blasted a hole in the road and nearby buildings.

They are very expensive, and replacement is frequent and about as environmentally bad as the frequent replacement you need in any battery powered vehicle. Indeed, if I were to guess, I'd pick Lead/Acid as more environmentally sound because the technology for reclaiming lead is pretty effective.
It is at least mildly dishonest for the site to have little or no mention of the environmental impact and cost of battery replacment.
I'd also like to see stuff on the heat dissipation of these things. Aside from the occasional combustion, you've got a lot of energy in a big block. That's not impossible to solve, but running batteries too hot degrades their life still further.
Also they don't like the cold.
Not one little bit. A lot of California never sees a frost, but in the UK, you'd have to have something with quite a bit of poke to warm the batteries up to a temperature they could work at.
Again you can do this, but adds to cost and degrades reliabiltiy.

Part of my work included dealing with large blocks of batteries used as emergency backups for hardcore IT installations. The London Fire Brigade will not enter a building with one of these things in it unless people are known to be in danger.
The nature of almost all types of battery is that water can be a very bad thing, both explosive through the production of gases, but also toax and there isn't an easy way of making sure they can't electrocute people. You can't really turn them off.
For a laptop, that's not a big thing, but enough power for a car is enough to do serious damage to people and property.

Yep, you have no end of trouble with those exploding milk floats and golf carts...

GeorginaA

Perhaps GeroginA I could trouble you to read my post again ? Carefully this time ?
Also the link I posted which explain this.

You will find that I vaguely favour lead/acid batteries, as used in your milk floats. The batteries that explode (I provide links to pages that use short words), are the type to be found in laptops.

These are pushed by the more excitable proponents of battery cars because they can get the range up to a level that seems not to embarass them.

Sadly there has been a spate of explosions and fires using this technology. LIon is not insane rubbish like biofuels, but is not the way to build an electric car.
As far as I know, there is no way to build a decent car using electricity, regardless of cost, and even if they sort out the thermal issues and recharging, and find a way of making a battery than can deliver sustained load without needing frequent replacement.

What you can have is one that pollutes several times as much as the worst American Hummveee gas guzzler, requires frequent replacement of batteries and has a range of the milk floats GeroginaA cites.
Electricity is a far more polluting power source than petrol. It's not a primary power source at all.
It's something you get from burning other stuff. Also transmission loses, voltage changes, battery inefficiency et al all mean that far more crap goes into the air.
The difference is that you can kid yourself, because you can't see the CO, CO2, nitrous oxides, suplhur and suprisingly high level of radiation from coal and oil powered plants.

Oh DC, could you try to be a bit less patronising? You actually have some valid points on this debate, but they appear to be in tentionally presented in a manner to boost your righteous image rather than actually educate the people interested in the thread.

You might find you would actually persuade people more effectivily if you try to be a bit more humble.

PS It isn't the use of words that contain a large number of letters to which I object; but rather the meandering sentence structure that I find lacks clarity.

DC - what about hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, wave power, solar panels etc. All green, all primary energy sources, none gained by burning other stuff. I think that you are being deliberately disingenuous just to prove your point.

Perhaps DominiConnor, I could trouble you to spell my name again? Carefully this time?

The problems you cite really aren't insurmountable if anyone put some half-arsed effort into it. The thing is, they just don't want to. It's not profitable enough for them.

And the laptop battery thing - well when they started going wrong (only a tiny suffered major explosions btw - we're not having daily fireworks in offices across the land and considering the millions of laptops sold, they really are pretty safe - safer than your average rottweiler... probably) it was a surprise enough that there was an immediate recall - replaced by non-defective batteries (I have a replacement myself in fact, it was very efficiently done).

But then again, maybe we should just not bother. Saving our planet is just so much effort after all...

I think we should encourage people to get out of their cars and onto public transport. Why doesn't Red Ken take say half of the money he brings in from the congestion charge and put it into the tube, hence bringing the cost to the commuter down and encouraging people to get on the train instead of in the car.

Could it be because the real purpose of the congestion charge is to generate revenue?

We also need to improve public transport outside of London.

When we lived in Croydon we hardly used the car (in fact we lived for a couple of years without a car and just renting one if we needed it for a weekend away).

I won't use buses here. It's cheaper and quicker for me to take the car into town and pay for the parking for a quick 1hr dash around the shops than it is to take the bus which winds around every tiny road on the way. Buses here are completely pushchair unfriendly, not frequent enough and they're a right hassle.

Public transport out of cities is not really financially viable to be run as a business. It needs to be heavily subsidised if you genuinely want people to stop using their cars.

Hydroelectic is a tiny % of electricity. It isn't that green either. They screw up ecosystems big time.
Solar is fighting it out with bonfires made of tyres and spent nuclear rods as the least green source of energy known to man. Frequently solar celss don't even give out as much energy as used to make them. Look up how photovoltaic cells are made.
Wave might be a bit useful, wind is OK if you are prepared for large scale extinctions of birds and thousands of human lives lost. I do think windmills are pretty though.
My point is not that oil is good. It's not.

My point is that there is not one long term green solution for electricity, or energy production in general.
The nearest we have is nuclear, which although is hardly problem free does at least work (usually).

It's simply wrong and openly dishonest to say that corporations "can't be arsed" to make electric cars work. Huge great big piles of money have gone into the various technologies necessary.
We now have lighter materials, and batteries that are slightly less crap than they used to be.
But batteries have resisted serious improvement for centuries.
If you opened up the battery in a milk float and showed it to Faraday who pioneered electricity 200 years ago he'd see his work still in use in a way he would instantly recognise.

It's not that people haven't tried, it's that they have largely failed. Expensively.

There is the stupid green myth that we have the technologies necessary, and all that requires is "big evil American firms" to be forced to do the "right thing".
Being mostly atrs graduates they really want ot believe in "campaigns" or "raising public awareness".
Won't work.

The person who invents a decent battery will not only change the world but become insanely rich.
But they haven't.

DC, Could you define "decen battery" for me, please?

Oh, and...

"My point is that there is not one long term green solution for electricity, or energy production in general.
The nearest we have is nuclear, which although is hardly problem free does at least work (usually). "

ABSOLUTELY!

If the big oil companies could change gear and charge us just the same for green energy they would. The trouble is it doesn't exist. Fossil fuels are currently cheaper. And I expect we will soon see a world wide nuclear revival.

Oh FFS!

They sell these cars in the US. The WHOLE of the US not just California. And it DOES rain in other parts of the States, it's not all Beverly Hills 901whatever!

There are hybrid cars too and we can get them over here but they're scarce. We tried to test-drive a Toyota Prius but couldn't get our local dealer to source one for a test drive.

These cars aren't being sold over here because it's assumed they wouldn't make enough profit on them. End of.

And now I'm accused of being an arts graduate... . Oh, but of course... I'm a woman, I can't POSSIBLY be expected to understand all these things