Presumably, if you only ever flew westwards at about 1,000mph, you could just have PVs on the plane and no need for a battery?

Water is a completely inconsequential issue - commercial electrolysis requires approx 10 litres of water to get 1 kg of hydrogen. I kg of hydrogen is equivalent to ~1 gallon of petrol.

The average person in the UK uses ~140 litres per day. Flushing the toilet uses 6 litres.

The rest of your points - using surplus wind or solar energy to produce hydrogen can be worthwhile. Whether it can be compressed and used on aircraft is another matter,

It is also possible to produce plant based fuels largely using only equipment and fertilisers powered by plant. Whether the net fuel produced justifies removing land from food production is a separate issue.

Water is a completely inconsequential issue - commercial electrolysis requires approx 10 litres of water to get 1 kg of hydrogen. I kg of hydrogen is equivalent to ~1 gallon of petrol.

Not inconsequential, because it requires said water to be fresh, and desalination uses enormous amounts of electricity to produce it from sea water. It's not as though England is awash with spare fresh water at the moment, is it?

And sea water, whether 'raw' or desalinated (at a costal desal plant) still has to be transported in large amounts to wherever the hydrogen is produced, or that has to be separetely piped from natural gas (for the reasons I stated in the debate about changing over from that to hydrogen for boilers) to the 'filling stations' or using not-so-green ICE fuelled tankers (unlikely they'll be EVs).

Not exactly easy or green, unless huge amounts of extra electricty can be generated to accomplish this and resources / infrastructure built to enable it all, which won't exactly take 5 mins (it has yet to be planned or designed, which takes many years) to build.

The average person in the UK uses ~140 litres per day. Flushing the toilet uses 6 litres.

The rest of your points - using surplus wind or solar energy to produce hydrogen can be worthwhile. Whether it can be compressed and used on aircraft is another matter,

It is also possible to produce plant based fuels largely using only equipment and fertilisers powered by plant. Whether the net fuel produced justifies removing land from food production is a separate issue.

Still a very im,portant issue, and in my view cannot be just swept aside as if 'unimportant', as doing this would have a major negative impact on the food supply worldwide, as was shown in Sri Lanka when they followed the WEF 'guideance' and practically stopped all 'modern' farming for poorly thought-out organic (i.e. without thinking through the consequences, e.g. hugely reduced yields), which lead to riots and the overthrowing of a government by the general population.

Look what is and has been happening in Holland, seemingly with their government looking to do similar things, no doubt with many weak-minded, WEF-sychophant Western puppet politicians of all mainstream hues looking on to see whether they can do much the same and 'get away with it'.

If only what you said about Sri Lanka was true:

Sri Lanka’s fertiliser ban and why New Zealand can phase out synthetic nitrogen fertiliser - Greenpeace Aotearoa

They say the batteries only last a few hundred flights, yet there are now quite a number of 10 year-old electric cars still in use, most of them on their original batteries, with only a small deterioration in range.

They're probably looking for a more durable type of battery.

And a 500 mile range is still useful for certain real-world roles.

They're probably looking for a more durable type of battery.

I gather a lot have given up on aircraft batteries as the weight to power ratio means they need too many batteries and hardly any cargo/passengers, so they are looking into Hydrogen to fuel the Jets or use green biofuel using a new method to produce the fuel, looking good so far, the fuel is far more refined than the bio fuel used by some at the moment

Yes humans can look at every practical way of reducing carbon emissions but will they change their ways. No. Will it make any difference No If we are all so concerned about the planet heating up nothing is really being done in the grand scheme and admitted as such by TB The head of the UN used the phrase only last week "" the planet is boiling" which is pretty alarming especially to youngsters and totally irresponsible. We have had warming now boiling. I suppose the next part of the physics lesson is evaporation.

If planes could fly by batteries and if the plane were overloaded some bright spark would take off a few batteries rather than a few the passengers just to save the revenue!

There is a French documentary with sub titles on the Cobalt industry in the Congo. It is alarming not just what it is doing to the population but the whole local environment. China owns 15 out of 19 firms mining for cooper/cobalt ore and basically has almost a monopoly on the Cobalt supply, all being shipped to them from South Africa. Why are the car makers going to China, this is the answer Batteries

Yes fully understand where you are coming from and humans should strive to continually improve. The present batteries and the whole concept of the EV is just not practical from mining the raw materials making and consumer usage which only a proportion of this country and the world will be able to utilise. People are not daft they know that current EVs are far from practical for most of their needs and a sensible gov would leave them with an alternative until both the cars and chargers improve. Yes sales are improving but I wonder what the proportion of private to subsidised company cars really is.

Question - does allowing slippage improve the chances of successful transition or simply encourage car manufacturers to be more relaxed/dilatory.

It improves it as it becomes less forced and less rushed - it will allow for better solutions, with a better thought out network rather than throwing everything together and hoping it will be all ok at the end.

I believe the 2030 date allows hybrids also? If that is the case, most manufactures have gone down that route already, so we might not notice much difference.

Except having to delve significantly more deeply into our wallets for the 'priviledge' of buying a brand new non-'pure' ICE car.

I noticed that even before the pandemic-related price rises, the price of a basic mild hybrid was about 10-20% more, and for what, a slightly better mpg and emissions rating? Something more to go wrong, and seemingly does quite a bit, especially with cars that aren't well used.

I do think that the use of underpowered electric motors in many hybrids that don’t allow the car to be moved on battery power only, are an emission cheat and not worth the cost or complexity.

Yep. Like with many car environmental 'innovations' over the past 20+ years, many don't do anywhere near as well in the real world as the lab or 'official' test bed. If the trades descriptions etc were properly enforced, most car manufacturers would have been bankrupted by now.

Which mild hybrid does not improve emissions and MPG?

The better MPG for most as far as I can tell, comes at the expense of burning more oil (unless the run in is done correctly) which I would have thought difficult if the control systems say when the engine starts and stops at its request

to make the engine have less friction, the piston rings are a slack fit in the bores which allows the engine to burn excess oil, it has been said up to 2 litres a month and certain researchers have mentioned the oil being fully synthetic as most are, the burnt oil has a detrimental effect on our bodies

you only have to look it up as the information on this is freely available

though it wasn`t mentioned what the gases of Hybrids emit, but did say they are worse than a petrol or diesel.....

believe what you will, but its possible its correct if allowing an engine to burn excessive amounts of oil, and more than one source confirms it

If the trades descriptions etc were properly enforced, most car manufacturers would have been bankrupted by now.

Which mild hybrid does not improve emissions and MPG? Just as an example?

But the claims of 60-70mpg in 'mixed driving' never pan out unless you drive in a very specific area and way, not as the vast majority of drivers do.

Rather like diesels were sooooo good for the environment, rather than making respiratory disease worse in urban areas, because diesel engines are suited to lugging heavy loas and motorway driving, not short trips from cold in an urban setting. or that NOx levels emitted from them in normal use match that in the 'tests' used to 'pass' the law.

And how many PHEVs have mpgs quoted that mostly rely on the cars predominantly being used in EV mode in urban areas and being able to be fully recharged near daily in order to be in EV mode the vast majority of the time, which likely won't apply to a lot of them, if not the majority.

"And how many PHEVs have mpgs quoted that mostly rely on the cars predominantly being used in EV mode in urban areas and being able to be fully recharged near daily in order to be in EV mode the vast majority of the time, which likely won't apply to a lot of them, if not the majority."

The Octopus website addresses this, up to a point:

"Because of the complexities of PHEVs (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles), the WLTP introduced a new way for them to be tested. This is because the cars run on both battery and fuel, so we need to test them for battery performance and engine performance to get the right efficiency figures. Plug-in hybrids have to take the WLTP test multiple times, starting with a fully charged battery and ending with an empty one. Another test is done when the battery power is entirely out and the car is running purely on petrol or diesel, which gives a clear picture of what economy drivers can expect. After these tests are done, the car's electric range is used to figure out the car's official emissions and fuel economy numbers."

That's still subjective because the test's parameters decide how long the car is being driven solely in EV and not. Technically a PHEV can be driven solely on either, depending on usage. And the latter depends on whom buys the car:

1. Mostly urban dwellers, perhaps who don't have home or regular access to a (fast) charger, but who would use the EV mode as much as they could on short(er) trips;

2. Those in more suburban or rual areas who might liekly have such access, but who might do longer commutes and work trips, using the car more in ICE only mode, or;

3. The company car driver whose firm just bought a PHEV to reduce their (P11D) tax burden and do a lot of miles on motorways, don't have the time (or care much anyway as they aren't paying for the 'fuel') to sit around waiting for it to recharge and thus use the ICE far more.

Some of these (often very large / heavy) cars will do far less than a Focus of Mondeo ICE only type car mpg wise when not in EV mode for a decent amount of the time.

‘ 1. Mostly urban dwellers, perhaps who don't have home or regular access to a (fast) charger, but who would use the EV mode as much as they could on short(er) trips;’ PHEV’s tend only to have a 3.6kW onboard charger (unless a 7kW charger has been specified as an option), so plugging them into anything other than a 3 pin plug is fairly pointless.

Perhaps, but most workplaced won't have an accessible charging point or (mostly for health and safety reasons) no access to just a standard three pin 230V socket to charge it. Most don't even have enough parking spaces for 1/3 of their staff.

That means a potential PHEV owner has to be able to have a car with sufficient EV range to get to work and back under any driving conditions as well as needing to fully recharge it every day at home. Works for some, but for many, it won't, because they don't have a driveway / garage.

Most PHEVs have a range around the 40 mile level, which is cutting it fine for many a commute (both ways). I wonder if that means that a good number of such cars end up in the hands of the retired?