The new Fiat Pand(in)a

[SB1500]

I like 4x4 . if the new panda (the concept one) will be available I can about it. otherwise I will go for suzuki. the swift allgrip or the vitara/s-cross if I am looking foe something bigger.

for now I have a panda 1.3 multijet Antarctica 4x4 . I did some fixing and I will drive it until the destiny says otherwise.

I think the 4x4 is a given. In the past I think the 4x4 was always promised at launch but came a little bit later? It’s more than just a novelty or vanity feature. I think it’s the result of a huge demographic of people living in rural, mountainous / difficult terrain areas that depend on a car like the Panda 4x4. I think it’s safe.

The only thing I fear is that they take it from being genuinely simple, practical (great approach and departure angles) to some huge, heavy and not so practical or affordable model. You know, those gimmicky ‘all wheel drive’ sort of systems that might help in wet weather getting more traction, but can’t really help when driving on mud or uneven surfaces very well. They could do that and alienate loyal 4x4 owners like yourself. I don’t think they’ll ruin it though.

From what I hear the MultiJet can go on virtually forever so hope it serves you well. Probably a while before we see it again on sale here.

 

[The Panda Nut]

Nothing wrong with thw evs drive, its excellent. But the costs.... OMG.

Hydrogen is the way, but the electricity required to make it is KINORMOUS.

Battery manufacture is simply awful with the waste products and terrrible lithium mining. Some talk of new battery technology.
We need to use all options and hope technology will come and rescue the problems. For now I would still favour ice electric hybrids and plug ins. I dont rule out electric cars but cantaffotd one, and dont understand the depreciation curve or maintensnce cost long term. So you all buy them and I will watch for now.

After alI only bought a music cd player as they became obsolete.... Dont want to rush things.

 

[AndyRKett]

Nothing wrong with thw evs drive, its excellent. But the costs.... OMG.

Hydrogen is the way, but the electricity required to make it is KINORMOUS.

Battery manufacture is simply awful with the waste products and terrrible lithium mining. Some talk of new battery technology.
We need to use all options and hope technology will come and rescue the problems. For now I would still favour ice electric hybrids and plug ins. I dont rule out electric cars but cantaffotd one, and dont understand the depreciation curve or maintensnce cost long term. So you all buy them and I will watch for now.

After alI only bought a music cd player as they became obsolete.... Dont want to rush things.

I’d buy another diesel tomorrow if they still made them, or at least made them with a decent choice.

The most recent diesels are as clean as petrols but with much better economy as well as better driving characteristics such as way more torque and low down grunt.

I would by an EV if not for the cost. I begrudge paying the price of a luxury car for a run of the mill 5 door hatchback with added dullness. They’ve not really made an EV yet that really instils any sort of excitement, the Abarth ev could have been good has they made it a really interesting EV but instead they fitted speakers and tried to make it sound like an IC car, if I want a car that sounds like an engine then I’m going to buy an ICE car.

 

[kavinsanders87]

Nothing wrong with thw evs drive, its excellent. But the costs.... OMG.

Hydrogen is the way, but the electricity required to make it is KINORMOUS.

Battery manufacture is simply awful with the waste products and terrrible lithium mining. Some talk of new battery technology.
We need to use all options and hope technology will come and rescue the problems. For now I would still favour ice electric hybrids and plug ins. I dont rule out electric cars but cantaffotd one, and dont understand the depreciation curve or maintensnce cost long term. So you all buy them and I will watch for now.

After alI only bought a music cd player as they became obsolete.... Dont want to rush things.

I work as researcher in the field and believe me, hydrogen is not the answer and it will be not the answer to our issue for longtime.

Hydrogen is the most common molecule in the whole universe, guess where is one of the only few places were there is none, drumroll, planet earth.

( I do not go too deep with explanation but I am talking about hydrogen gas, there is hydrogen in other forms , stored as lithium hydride (solid) (or other hydrides of the other alkali metals). but you must produce H2 and synthetize the hydride as safe storage.

there are some research about using hydrides in fuel cells. very safe for storage, compared with gas h2.

The only way to make h2 in a sustainable way is exclusively using green energy ( that produce pollution but much less compared with fossil fuels , zero pollution doesn't exist ).

which is not possible and will be not possible for many years.

BUT MOST IMPORTANLTY follow this rational :

We must use ELECTRIC ENERGY to produce h2, and then store the gas (which is more than explosive) , to fill the tank of a car and use that h2 in a fuel cell to produce ELECTRIC ENERGY...... there is something wrong , especially because there is an efficiency loss around this system.

it is like we are thirsty and use water in a process to generate a "thing" that then will be used to produce water (just store that water and use it) .

I think it is more efficient use the energy to store in a battery and use it to run the electric motor.

The lithium in the batteries is fully recyclable, (like we do now for Lead batterie for normal cars) ( 90% of lead is recovered from recycling old batteries.)

Now we make pollution to extract lithium, but in the next 25/50 years all the lithium will be reused and no more lithium will be extracted. (studies confirms that even now , counting all the production and life cycle , the patrol car consume more and generate irreversible pollution , (chemical that will enter the water cycle and they will be never recovered).

In addition battery form cars are not recycled straight away, a battery that is dying will be not able to keep the original voltage (very high for car batteries usually) then those batteries will e used in solar farms (or similar activities) , and just then , when they will not be able to keep even 12v they will be sent to recycling the lithium.

I am not a fan of one side or the other, I just analyze statistics and make conclusion on data.

we had the technologies to start the green revolution back in 2000-2005 but there was no will to do it. if we had start 20 years ago we would have done such things.

To reduce pollution and be sustainable, we have to spend more, (we do not burn coal anymore for that reason , even if the coal is cheap compared with nuclear, natural gas, etc)

if we choose an electric vehicle for now , we did it out of a sense of duty for the environment.

another thing to take into consideration is that there is no "revolution" , we are now (at least in Europe) producing 40% of electric energy form sun, Eolic, and other renewables source and will be not possible to replce everything with renewables.

a mix of those will b always necessary. (in the future with more effort improving the renewable part of the mix.

 

[The Panda Nut]

I work as researcher in the field and believe me, hydrogen is not the answer and it will be not the answer to our issue for longtime.

Hydrogen is the most common molecule in the whole universe, guess where is one of the only few places were there is none, drumroll, planet earth.

( I do not go too deep with explanation but I am talking about hydrogen gas, there is hydrogen in other forms , stored as lithium hydride (solid) (or other hydrides of the other alkali metals). but you must produce H2 and synthetize the hydride as safe storage.

there are some research about using hydrides in fuel cells. very safe for storage, compared with gas h2.

The only way to make h2 in a sustainable way is exclusively using green energy ( that produce pollution but much less compared with fossil fuels , zero pollution doesn't exist ).

which is not possible and will be not possible for many years.

BUT MOST IMPORTANLTY follow this rational :

We must use ELECTRIC ENERGY to produce h2, and then store the gas (which is more than explosive) , to fill the tank of a car and use that h2 in a fuel cell to produce ELECTRIC ENERGY...... there is something wrong , especially because there is an efficiency loss around this system.

it is like we are thirsty and use water in a process to generate a "thing" that then will be used to produce water (just store that water and use it) .

I think it is more efficient use the energy to store in a battery and use it to run the electric motor.

The lithium in the batteries is fully recyclable, (like we do now for Lead batterie for normal cars) ( 90% of lead is recovered from recycling old batteries.)

Now we make pollution to extract lithium, but in the next 25/50 years all the lithium will be reused and no more lithium will be extracted. (studies confirms that even now , counting all the production and life cycle , the patrol car consume more and generate irreversible pollution , (chemical that will enter the water cycle and they will be never recovered).

In addition battery form cars are not recycled straight away, a battery that is dying will be not able to keep the original voltage (very high for car batteries usually) then those batteries will e used in solar farms (or similar activities) , and just then , when they will not be able to keep even 12v they will be sent to recycling the lithium.

I am not a fan of one side or the other, I just analyze statistics and make conclusion on data.

we had the technologies to start the green revolution back in 2000-2005 but there was no will to do it. if we had start 20 years ago we would have done such things.

To reduce pollution and be sustainable, we have to spend more, (we do not burn coal anymore for that reason , even if the coal is cheap compared with nuclear, natural gas, etc)

if we choose an electric vehicle for now , we did it out of a sense of duty for the environment.

another thing to take into consideration is that there is no "revolution" , we are now (at least in Europe) producing 40% of electric energy form sun, Eolic, and other renewables source and will be not possible to replce everything with renewables.

a mix of those will b always necessary. (in the future with more effort improving the renewable part of the mix.

I agree there is no zero emissions and its silly for anyone to say there is. You make some good pints that need to be seen and heard so we move on with an integrated policy with a variety of fuels. There is a project in Scotalnd where they use wave / tidal power to pump water to massive tanks to be used for electrical generation when the tides are not producing. They also use surplus to produce hydrogen for generation. Hydrogen would be clean and simialar to petrol in use for the user, but I agree its a long way off due to the high electrical cost of its production. I keep hoping that the discussions on the best overall mix of fuels will come more to the fore. I hope your information about lithium re-use turns out to be right. In truth we need to be improving public transport as well as in the UK its appalling, unreliable and in short supply. Its great to hear what you say based on your knowledge which is better than mine. Lets hope governments make policies that push improvements and home provision of sustainable generation. In the UK we should see greater use of hydro electric power too. At least things are progressing. Just not fast enough.

On the plus side I counted 164 solar panels in just one small area of our village while walking the dog yesterday. There must be at least 5 times this number in total. If the 164 all produce an average of 3.5kw/Hr I estimate a decent sunny day will see 3.65 megawatt hours of power. Its a worthwhile contribution. (c 3.5 tonnes CO2) Im going to do a survey of the whole village and also make the details of the power generated, and the savings I make from Solar Panels known here to encourage others to consider if they can afford to join in the savings. Im thinking of a small wind turbine as an addition to our generation.

 

[AndyRKett]

I work as researcher in the field and believe me, hydrogen is not the answer and it will be not the answer to our issue for longtime.

Hydrogen is the most common molecule in the whole universe, guess where is one of the only few places were there is none, drumroll, planet earth.

( I do not go too deep with explanation but I am talking about hydrogen gas, there is hydrogen in other forms , stored as lithium hydride (solid) (or other hydrides of the other alkali metals). but you must produce H2 and synthetize the hydride as safe storage.

there are some research about using hydrides in fuel cells. very safe for storage, compared with gas h2.

The only way to make h2 in a sustainable way is exclusively using green energy ( that produce pollution but much less compared with fossil fuels , zero pollution doesn't exist ).

which is not possible and will be not possible for many years.

BUT MOST IMPORTANLTY follow this rational :

We must use ELECTRIC ENERGY to produce h2, and then store the gas (which is more than explosive) , to fill the tank of a car and use that h2 in a fuel cell to produce ELECTRIC ENERGY...... there is something wrong , especially because there is an efficiency loss around this system.

it is like we are thirsty and use water in a process to generate a "thing" that then will be used to produce water (just store that water and use it) .

I think it is more efficient use the energy to store in a battery and use it to run the electric motor.

The lithium in the batteries is fully recyclable, (like we do now for Lead batterie for normal cars) ( 90% of lead is recovered from recycling old batteries.)

Now we make pollution to extract lithium, but in the next 25/50 years all the lithium will be reused and no more lithium will be extracted. (studies confirms that even now , counting all the production and life cycle , the patrol car consume more and generate irreversible pollution , (chemical that will enter the water cycle and they will be never recovered).

In addition battery form cars are not recycled straight away, a battery that is dying will be not able to keep the original voltage (very high for car batteries usually) then those batteries will e used in solar farms (or similar activities) , and just then , when they will not be able to keep even 12v they will be sent to recycling the lithium.

I am not a fan of one side or the other, I just analyze statistics and make conclusion on data.

we had the technologies to start the green revolution back in 2000-2005 but there was no will to do it. if we had start 20 years ago we would have done such things.

To reduce pollution and be sustainable, we have to spend more, (we do not burn coal anymore for that reason , even if the coal is cheap compared with nuclear, natural gas, etc)

if we choose an electric vehicle for now , we did it out of a sense of duty for the environment.

another thing to take into consideration is that there is no "revolution" , we are now (at least in Europe) producing 40% of electric energy form sun, Eolic, and other renewables source and will be not possible to replce everything with renewables.

a mix of those will b always necessary. (in the future with more effort improving the renewable part of the mix.

What a fantastic post and lays bare everything I have been reading around this topic, unfortunately there are people who like to jump on any negative press of electric cars and use that to write off the whole idea. Equally there are those that think hydrogen is the answer because it will be burned in the same way as petrol which simply isn’t the case, and future hydrogen cars even the hydrogen powered Toyota available right now, is still in essence an electric car.

Also people don’t realise the life cycle of electric car batteries includes a period of use in other areas such as mass storage of power, once they have reached the end of there useful life in cars. After car use they make very good batteries where weight is less of an issue.

I agree there is no zero emissions and its silly for anyone to say there is.

that’s why “net zero” is the current buzz word ie can we save as much pollution with this thing we are making to off set the pollution we created to build it. A prime example being a solar panel.

So to simplify it is making one solar panel creates one unit of pollution from the energy used to make it, but once in use it saves 10 units of pollution over the period of its life then it had completely offset the pollution it caused when made, it’s not that it has not caused pollution it’s just that the pollution used to make it is far less than what it saves.

As more and more people build houses with solar panels, and more wind turbines are built, more of the energy used to make more solar panels and wind turbines will come from renewable resources and so the pollution will go down in a theory for each new solar panel made (I’m only talking about emissions such as CO2 and not by products of chemical processed)

Technology has also made us so much better at finding uses for by products of manufacturing or waste such as plastic bottles being turned into home insulation

But the same old arguments will always come up, digging up lithium makes pollution, we burn fossil fuels to make electricity so why bother….. well one day we won’t

 

[SB1500]

That's a very good post above, and @kavinsanders87, you certainly know much more about it than I do! However, I don't think the likes of Toyota would have come as far to produce a production car and heavily invest in further research into Hydrogen if it was a total non-starter. There's obviously a lot of very real barriers to it as you mention - but folks like yourself, researchers / analysts / people in companies like Toyota, who lets face it, aren't exactly know for dipping their toes into fads to quickly ditch then (e.g. pioneering fuel efficiency in the US and then hybrids globally way before the average person cared as such).. There must be some glimmer of hope behind the investment from them.

Even in the EV battery field, for a company that doesn't believe in it, they're on the verge of coming out with solid state batteries that would show up the rest of the proper EV industry. They seem to know what direction or technology they think will pay off in the long term. Even BMW in the past, and recently, are dabbling in hydrogen.

No argument about electricity being a great way to spin the crankshaft / move the wheels - in a BEV or the likes of a Toyota Mirai, that part is elegant, reliable and so simple / reliable that it's mind blowing versus all the moving parts in an engine. It's the whole battery, how we make them, how we charge them, how long they'll be useful and how much they cost to replace / recycle that gets people choosing sides and falling out I suppose.

I suppose I have faith in these big companies putting their money where their mouthes are on things as a Hydrogen future

 

[kavinsanders87]

I agree there is no zero emissions and its silly for anyone to say there is. You make some good pints that need to be seen and heard so we move on with an integrated policy with a variety of fuels. There is a project in Scotalnd where they use wave / tidal power to pump water to massive tanks to be used for electrical generation when the tides are not producing. They also use surplus to produce hydrogen for generation. Hydrogen would be clean and simialar to petrol in use for the user, but I agree its a long way off due to the high electrical cost of its production. I keep hoping that the discussions on the best overall mix of fuels will come more to the fore. I hope your information about lithium re-use turns out to be right. In truth we need to be improving public transport as well as in the UK its appalling, unreliable and in short supply. Its great to hear what you say based on your knowledge which is better than mine. Lets hope governments make policies that push improvements and home provision of sustainable generation. In the UK we should see greater use of hydro electric power too. At least things are progressing. Just not fast enough.

On the plus side I counted 164 solar panels in just one small area of our village while walking the dog yesterday. There must be at least 5 times this number in total. If the 164 all produce an average of 3.5kw/Hr I estimate a decent sunny day will see 3.65 megawatt hours of power. Its a worthwhile contribution. (c 3.5 tonnes CO2) Im going to do a survey of the whole village and also make the details of the power generated, and the savings I make from Solar Panels known here to encourage others to consider if they can afford to join in the savings. Im thinking of a small wind turbine as an addition to our generation.

It all right , in theory. Like I said every renewable source ( like use sea tie energy to move turbines) must be used in the "mix" of course this mix is different from each country. ( Politics mix up a little things , sometimes they choose the alternative that gives more jobs rather than efficiency and sustainability. ) I am thinking about all Europe ( not just UK). Scientific processes improve during time , awareness about the environment as well.
In Italy , for example , gov and people was against European decision to update laws and processes to promote REUSE over RECICLE . Italy is specialized in recycle of many things ( recycling sites give lots of work and jobs to people) that why policts does not want to promote REUSE, which is the best overall.
Politics and science does not work together sometimes especially in places like Italy , where gov does not care about scientific advice.

 

[SB1500]

It all right , in theory. Like I said every renewable source ( like use sea tie energy to move turbines) must be used in the "mix" of course this mix is different from each country. ( Politics mix up a little things , sometimes they choose the alternative that gives more jobs rather than efficiency and sustainability. ) I am thinking about all Europe ( not just UK). Scientific processes improve during time , awareness about the environment as well.
In Italy , for example , gov and people was against European decision to update laws and processes to promote REUSE over RECICLE . Italy is specialized in recycle of many things ( recycling sites give lots of work and jobs to people) that why policts does not want to promote REUSE, which is the best overall.
Politics and science does not work together sometimes especially in places like Italy , where gov does not care about scientific advice.

Sometimes the government are right to hold off though, as sometimes science can advance so fast that to go 'all in' today, could be costly with minimal yields where in a decade there could be a much more cost effective, more efficient way to achieve the same output / goals. I don't think anybody here would deny the climate challenges in the world, but in fairness, the mainstream narrative on 'the main problem' has changed drastically from the 90s..early 2000s...mid 2010s, and now some research is suggesting that actually, Co2 can play a crucial positive role in the climate.. Thankfully science is open minded and able to admit when it gets it wrong, climate isn't a clear cut thing. And governments, with limited budgets, also have to worry about more urgent issues such as healthcare, education, security etc which can't be put on hold either. We all know governments can be ignorant and useless, but I do sympathise with them too as they have an impossible task, it's not like we know the clear way forward with these issues as climate. I always like reading findings from the research and the initiatives some countries / places do that turned out well. I don't like the articles with a finger-pointing narrative, telling usually working class people to feel guilty and pay more money to 'fix the problem'. There is unfortunately a lot of articles and speak like that these days and I think it works against the goal of solving climate issues in the minds of the general public.

It's interesting to hear about Italy. We get told that we in the UK are the fussy / ignorant ones when we had issues with the EU or disagreements over things, as if we were some sort of problem child. It's not surprising to hear that different member states equally have their issues with it. Hopefully it's a net positive for Italy and others to remain in it.