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I Can Drive a Stick Shift

In Britain this isn't particularly remarkable.

Automatics I suppose must be fine for long straight roads but in the real world in civilisation...

...well it's like comparing Baby's First Hammer with a proper tool kit.

I think like a lot of things in the modern world (ok automatics aren't exactly new, but still... they're more common than they used to be), we're so happy to sacrifice convenience for experience.

Driving around a busy, hilly town is a pain...but I think you feel much more connected to your car with a manual gearbox.

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SW-User

As we move to all electric vehicles though they will be a historic anacdote.

You'll be the last generation to remember them. You'll be telling your grandkids about manual gearboxes and how even by then how you used to have to actually steer the car yourself.

Lhayezee · 26-30, F

@SW-User God that's horrifying (pollution issues aside, which electric cars don't necessarily fix they just put the pollution somewhere else)

SW-User

@Lhayezee I agree with you re electric cars. I had an amusing debate with someone who had bought one and told me it was zero emissions.

🤔 All the steel in it, the plastics etc. Then the energy to drive the plant to build it, then the ship to transport it from Japan to Southampton.

That's before you plug it into a grid which typically has only ~30% of available electricity produced by renewable sources.

How's that zero emissions?

Lhayezee · 26-30, F

@SW-User IKR

And don't get me started on the plan to get rid of gas hobs 😑

SW-User

@Lhayezee yes.... After government policy essentially gave incentive to burning huge quantities of gas to produce electricity since the 90s.

Lhayezee · 26-30, F

@SW-User It's not that so much as the plan is to generate more electricity from gas because it's way cleaner than coal or oil, and cheaper, and fills the gap at least until they spent enough subsidising chinese companies to build new nuclear power stations etc.

So they burn the case, make the electricity, then send the electricity to your house using cables - which means a lot is lost in transmission.

Whereas, for a gas cooker/boiler, the energy is transmitted to your house in a lossless form (assuming no holes in the pipe :P ), and you get virtually all of that turned into heat energy. It's far more efficient to burn a fuel at the time you need its heat or light, rather than to turn it into something else which then has to be converted again. Simple physics. And if even a music student can work that out then you have to wonder...

SW-User

@Lhayezee yes it is a primary not secondary energy source. Using it to produce electricity I always thought wasteful. We needed back then to get back into to nuclear power game. Which we led in the 60s but have lost our to others now.

wildbill83 · 36-40, M

@SW-User EV's are nothing more than a novelty as they were 100 years ago (they're nothing new and are as old as internal combustion itself); onboard chemical storage of electricity (batteries) wasn't practical then and still isn't practical now.