I am a bit dim

Peter Amey said:

So, excluding pollution from scrapping, 42 years of
"conventional" motoring is three vehicle lifecycles of 14
years, each representing 2 units of pollution (1 from
manufacture and 1 from use). That's 6 units.

My Morris has 1 for manufacture and 3 from 42 years use.
That's 4 units. So I am still ahead. More so if
decomissioning costs are included. You are right that the
balance shifts towards use in proportion: three quarters
of my pollution bill is from use rather than half for the
conventional cycle; however, ist is still lower in
absolute terms.

Except you are forgetting your Moggie Minor engine is far
less fuel efficient and much more polluting than its modern
day equivalent. It runs about half the mpg of an equivalent
modern car driven at Moggie speeds and has no emission
control at all on it. Factoring that in I bet you are well
over 6 units.

Tony

In article said:

I think while in general for people who buy new or nearly
new cars the major costs would be finance and depreciation,
the actual major costs for an individual car user depend
very much on what sort of car you've got and how much you
use it. An old car is likely to cost more in maintenance
than it does in depreciation, and fuel costs depend
entirely on how many miles you
do.

Absolutely. The last car I sold I got 200 pounds for, and
had bought it for 200 pounds in the first place, so the
maintenance was definitely more than the depreciation. (And
tax and insurance were more than maintenance, as it
happened.)

Quoted message said:

Except you are forgetting your Moggie Minor engine is far
less fuel efficient and much more polluting than its
modern day equivalent. It runs about half the mpg of an
equivalent modern car driven at Moggie speeds and has no
emission control at all on it. Factoring that in I bet you
are well over 6 units.

Or would be if it hadn't averaged only 1000 miles a year!

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On Mon, 8 Mar 2004 14:26:35 -0000, "Tony Raven"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Everything from the steel mills onwards are run with much
greater energy efficiency and much lower pollution than
they were when the Moggie was built.

Which was already factored in to the stats, given it was a
1990 steel mill your stats used.

And how inefficient the stell mill that produced the moggie
was is irrelevant in a decision about whether to scrap the
moggie, build a replacement and maintain and operate the
replacement uses greaater resources and produces greater
pollution than simply continuing to operate the moggie.

No-one is suggesting scrapping the moggie, manufacturing a
new moggie using 1950's steel mills, and then operating the
newly built moggie as an alternative to simply continuing to
operate the existing moggie.

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Gawnsoft said:

No-one is suggesting scrapping the moggie, manufacturing a
new moggie using 1950's steel mills, and then operating
the newly built moggie as an alternative to simply
continuing to operate the existing moggie.

No but continuing to operate the moggie is continuing to
use a fuel inefficient engine with no emission controls and
no consideration of pedestrian, cyclist or occupant safety
in the design. To replace it with a modern small fuel
efficient car with low emissions and some attempt at
pedestrian safety is I would argue the environmentally and
socially more sound option

Tony

Tony Raven said:

Gawnsoft wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

No-one is suggesting scrapping the moggie, manufacturing
a new moggie using 1950's steel mills, and then operating
the newly built moggie as an alternative to simply
continuing to operate the existing moggie.

Quoted message said:

No but continuing to operate the moggie is continuing to
use a fuel inefficient engine with no emission controls and
no consideration of pedestrian, cyclist or occupant safety
in the design. To replace it with a modern small fuel
efficient car with low emissions and some attempt at
pedestrian safety is I would argue the environmentally and
socially more sound option

Well, go on then, argue it. Presumably you have some
arithmetic to show us the trade off between the costs of the
manufacture of the new car and the extra costs of the
continuing inefficient petrol consumption of the old one,
plus some assumptions about appropriate time scale.

--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
["]http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

Chris Malcolm <[email hidden]> wrote:

: Well, go on then, argue it. Presumably you have some
: arithmetic to show us the trade off between the costs of
: the manufacture of the new car and the extra costs of the
: continuing inefficient petrol consumption of the old one,
: plus some assumptions about appropriate time scale.

As a start, figures I've seen were for 50% of the energy use
of a car over its lifespan being used in making it. Now,
that figure was from a study I saw about 5-6 years ago.
Production is probably more energy efficient now, so is the
car. One could assume that the ratio is the same and work
forward from there.

But basically, it seems clear that it'll just come down to
how many miles you drive. One could make the moggie look
good v a new car by keeping the miles low or visa versa.

Arthur

--
Arthur Clune

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 08:16:57 -0000, "Tony Raven"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Gawnsoft said:

No-one is suggesting scrapping the moggie, manufacturing
a new moggie using 1950's steel mills, and then operating
the newly built moggie as an alternative to simply
continuing to operate the existing moggie.

No but continuing to operate the moggie is continuing to
use a fuel inefficient engine with no emission controls and
no consideration of pedestrian, cyclist or occupant safety
in the design. To replace it with a modern small fuel
efficient car with low emissions and some attempt at
pedestrian safety is I would argue the environmentally and
socially more sound option

Well, the last objection you raised to comparing operating
the moggie with the costs of scrapping the moggie, building
a new car, and operating the new car was that the steel
mills that made moggies were less efficient than current
steel mills.

So your 'no, but' doesn't seem to add anything that you
haven't already argued.

But, by all means, let's 'run over' (sorry, couldn't resist
the pun, even in the current newsgroup) the argument again.

A moggie (a typical car of the past) consumes more fuel to
operate than many atypical current cars.

In the US, where the trend is for even larger and less fuel
efficient vehicles than here, construction (energy &
pollution) costs are 10% of a typical US car's 14-year
life's use (/excluding/ decommissioning costs). (So here,
construction is likely to be a higher proportion, in 1990)

And let's assume, for the sake of argument that in the US
the typical use is for 10-12,000 miles per year.

We get: Build costs of a 1990 car approximate to fuel
consumption of a US car of 1990 doing 1/8th of 140,000 to
170,000 miles.

Or 17,500 to 21,000 miles of typical travel.

Let us assume that decommissioning a 1990 car is about half
as environmentally damaging as manufacturing a 1990 car.

This gives us a further 9,000 to 10,500 miles of travel.

Let us further assume that the Moggie, with it's efficient-for-
it's day engine (still fitted to new-design cars even in
the 80s) is about 50% as fuel efficient as the new-in-
1990 US car.

So, we get that the moggie has to be driven for 52,000 to
64,000 miles before it's better to have scrapped it, built a
replacement for it, and driven the replacement instead.

At the current owner's annual milage, that equates to 52 to
64 years use.

(Remember, updates of the moggie's A-series engine was in
production until about three years ago.) Cheers, Euan
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On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 08:16:57 -0000, "Tony Raven"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

No but continuing to operate the moggie is continuing to
use a fuel inefficient engine with ... no consideration of
pedestrian, cyclist or occupant safety in the design.

Are even modern engines designed with those
cosiderations in mind?
:-)

I think I know what you meant, though.

There are 3 main arguments in this matter that I can see.

1) How do typical moggie-speed accidents in a moggie,
compare in severity with typical current-vehicle speeds
in a current car?

As with so much else, makeing the cars capable of higher
speeds, cossetting the driver from the the noise vibration
and harshness of the higher speeds tends to result in
typically higher speeds.

(Which is one part of why the current anti anti-speeding
lobby is getting so worked up. they've been used to going
faster than they used to, and used to 50mph 'feeling' like
being stationary, but with much more action through the
't.v.' of the windows.)

Higher impact speeds tend to absorb advances in impact
safety.

2) At what point do advances in occupant or non-occupant
safety mean that should invoke the de-commission and
build costs involved in replacing a car?

At the worst, if we followed this argument to extremis, we'd
be constantly replacing existing cars, with every mooted
improvement.

There is clearly a trade-off to be made.

3) The moggie may not have had current non-occupant safety
legislation in mind, but it is in significant part due to
the combination of the less stiff body panelling of
today's cars, along with engine bays whose packing
desnity is enormous, and so the clearance between easily
deformable body-panelling and the engine (which is strongly-
braced and carved from a large lump of solid metal) is
very small.

People now are being damaged by being hit by the engine
block, in effect.

In the case of the moggie, the body panels are less
easily deformed, and the engine bay has a great deal more
space in it.

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Gawnsoft said:

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 08:16:57 -0000, "Tony Raven" <junk@raven-
family.com> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

No but continuing to operate the moggie is continuing to
use a fuel inefficient engine with ... no consideration of
pedestrian, cyclist or occupant safety in the design.

Are even modern engines designed with those cosiderations
in mind?
:-)

I think I know what you meant, though.

There are 3 main arguments in this matter that I can see.

1) How do typical moggie-speed accidents in a moggie,
compare in

[snip]

Quoted message said:

2) At what point do advances in occupant or non-occupant
safety mean that should invoke the de-commission and
build costs involved in replacing a car?

[snip]

Quoted message said:

3) The moggie may not have had current non-occupant safety
legislation in mind, but it is in significant part due
to the combination of the less stiff body panelling of
today's cars, along with engine bays whose packing
desnity is enormous, and so the clearance between
easily deformable body-panelling and the engine (which
is strongly-braced and carved from a large lump of
solid metal) is very small.

[snip]

I don't know the answer to any of these questions but I do
know that the insurance company charges me less than £100
(before NCD) for fully comp, for an agreed value of £4,600,
unlimited mileage. That at least suggests that the risks
created by my Minor are less than some more modern vehicles?
This is despite the drum brakes (or perhaps because of them
given risk compensation factors)!

Peter

dirtylitterboxofferingstospammers said:

Quoted message said:

Free cycle training is available for schools in Norwich.
You should contact your local authority.

John B

Not being funny John - but been there, tried that. It may
be available in *Norwich* but in *Norfolk* it's different.
I've made phone call after phone call after phone call,
been passed from pillar to post, eventually got in contact
with the person "in charge" who told me he was an ex-
traffic cop and he thinks the roads are much too dangerous
to cycle on... then went into the big problem being not
enough parents volunteering to take the training to be
able to run the courses (as they are run by volunteers),
so I offered my time. I even offered to do it at more than
one school, if that was acceptable. Indeed, the local
H*lfords offered to do courses at their place but LA "in
charge" person said this was totally unacceptable to him.

Since then - nada, zilch, diddly-squat.

Cycling training is obviously in safe hands in Norfolk...

Cheers, helen s

My wife works at an Edinburgh primary school and just today
she was asked if she would like to volunteer to take a
cycling proficiency training course so she can teach the
kids at her school.

She got asked because she has been known to cycle
occasionally.
--
Mark

After thinking long about a signature I've decided not to bother.

Gawnsoft said:

There are 3 main arguments in this matter that I can see.

1) How do typical moggie-speed accidents in a moggie,
compare in severity with typical current-vehicle speeds
in a current car?

Assuming we are talking built up areas where most pedestrian
accidents occur and where speeds are similar for the Moggie
and any other car, the Moggie is far far worse. Its got
stick out bumpers at the wrong height, sharp bits of metal
all over, a hard bonnet. Everything that a modern car safety
tester would say is bad news in accidents.

Quoted message said:

As with so much else, makeing the cars capable of higher
speeds, cossetting the driver from the the noise vibration
and harshness of the higher speeds tends to result in
typically higher speeds.

Not relevant in 30mph speed limits really

Quoted message said:

3) The moggie may not have had current non-occupant safety
legislation in mind, but it is in significant part due
to the combination of the less stiff body panelling of
today's cars, along with engine bays whose packing
desnity is enormous, and so the clearance between
easily deformable body-panelling and the engine (which
is strongly-braced and carved from a large lump of
solid metal) is very small.

People now are being damaged by being hit by the engine
block, in effect.

In the case of the moggie, the body panels are less
easily deformed, and the engine bay has a great deal more
space in it.

You don't seriously believe that the design of old cars was
safer for pedestrians than modern cars do you. If you do I
think your rose tinted spectacles are colouring your view.

Tony

Gawnsoft said:

Well, the last objection you raised to comparing operating
the moggie with the costs of scrapping the moggie,
building a new car, and operating the new car was that the
steel mills that made moggies were less efficient than
current steel mills.

So your 'no, but' doesn't seem to add anything that you
haven't already argued.

But, by all means, let's 'run over' (sorry, couldn't
resist the pun, even in the current newsgroup) the
argument again.

My arguement was that a modern car manufacture and running
quickly outperforms running a Moggie

Moggies have no emissions controls. Emission controls cut
emissions ten fold.

Moggies have about double the fuel consumption of a modern
equivalent

Moggies are not designed with the safety of anyone in mind.

Kid yourself with nostalgia if you want but you are
driving a polluting fuel inefficient vehicle that has no
safety merit.

Tony

Arthur Clune said:

As a start, figures I've seen were for 50% of the energy
use of a car over its lifespan being used in making it.

The figure is 10% for energy and 50% for pollution (see the
reference I posted earlier in the thread)

Tony

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 23:04:13 -0000, "Tony Raven"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Gawnsoft said:

Well, the last objection you raised to comparing
operating the moggie with the costs of scrapping the
moggie, building a new car, and operating the new car was
that the steel mills that made moggies were less
efficient than current steel mills.

So your 'no, but' doesn't seem to add anything that you
haven't already argued.

But, by all means, let's 'run over' (sorry, couldn't
resist the pun, even in the current newsgroup) the
argument again.

My arguement was that a modern car manufacture and running
quickly outperforms running a Moggie

Yes - and it turns out, based on the Carnegie-Mellon figures
you provided, not be correct.

On the Carnegie-Mellon figures, their typical 1990 car
eventually outperforms running a moggie, if the annual
milages are high enough. (as at milages lower than about
3000 miles per annum, the 14-year repeat-replacement kicks
in before the advantages turn in the new car's favour).

Quoted message said:

Moggies have no emissions controls. Emission controls cut
emissions ten fold.

No - emission controls cut emissions of some particular
substances, by converting them into other emitted
substances. (For example, converting CO into CO2)

They do not eliminate 'emissions'. CO2 /increases/ with
emissions controls, as catalytic convertors require a
relatively rich fuel mixture to be used, then catalytically
convert the unused fuel carried into the exhaust).

Quoted message said:

Moggies have about double the fuel consumption of a modern
equivalent

In operation, they can have up to. Although many typical
modern cars have equal fuel inefficiency - the engine
efficiency gains are absorbed in powering larger, heavier
cars at higher typical speeds.

Quoted message said:

Moggies are not designed with the safety of anyone in mind.

As I pointed out earlier, this is true.

That does not mean that they are 'unsafe', with current cars
being 'safe'.

For many years, the safest car on British roads for occupant
safety was the Austin Ambassador, despite the fact that the
contemporaneous Volvos had much more design and engineering
effort put into safety issues.

Quoted message said:

Kid yourself with nostalgia if you want but you are
driving a polluting fuel inefficient vehicle that has no
safety merit.

As opposed to causing pollution from decommissioning and replacement-
construction, and operation. Or taking up the fuel
inefficiency from attempting to power larger cars.

Perhaps the poster who operates the Moggie could tell
us the fuel consumption figures of the Moggie that is
being operated?

We could then compare that with typical current models of
car.

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On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 22:52:51 -0000, "Tony Raven"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Its got stick out bumpers at the wrong height, sharp bits
of metal all over, a hard bonnet.

A relatively hard bonnet with no fixed object right behind
it is not significantly worse (and may be better) than an
easily-deformable bonnet with an engine block flush with its
underside.

It is this last issue that has been a key issue behind the
recent additional car design regulations being introduced.

Bumpers are fated to remain higher than ground level, no
matter what.

It has sharp pointy parts, but many of the surfaces, and
surface joins are very curvy.

I realise the chances of a full NCAP test results are
unlikely to be made available for the Moggie, given how late
in its product life-cycle it is, but it would be interesting
to find out what the results were.

In fact, it might make an intriguing newspaper or magazine
feature article. Hmmm....

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Tony Raven said:

Gawnsoft wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Well, the last objection you raised to comparing
operating the moggie with the costs of scrapping the
moggie, building a new car, and operating the new car was
that the steel mills that made moggies were less
efficient than current steel mills.

So your 'no, but' doesn't seem to add anything that you
haven't already argued.

But, by all means, let's 'run over' (sorry, couldn't
resist the pun, even in the current newsgroup) the
argument again.

Quoted message said:

My arguement was that a modern car manufacture and running
quickly outperforms running a Moggie

Quoted message said:

Moggies have no emissions controls. Emission controls cut
emissions ten fold.

Quoted message said:

Moggies have about double the fuel consumption of a modern
equivalent

Quoted message said:

Moggies are not designed with the safety of anyone in mind.

Quoted message said:

Kid yourself with nostalgia if you want but you are
driving a polluting fuel inefficient vehicle that has no
safety merit.

I think if you actually do the arithmetic you will find that
you have described a car. Any car :-)

For example, consider the modern car engine, so much more
efficient than its predecessors. But it's based on engine-capacity-class-
driven development, motivated originally by racing capacity
classes, and now financially enshrined in insurance
capacity classes.

But as Lord Rayleigh pointed out when the bureaucrats first
proposed the silly idea of racing *engine* capacity classes,
doing that would end up with an industry squeezing ever more
power out of a given engine capacity by means of highly
stressed high revving engines whose manufacture is much more
polluting, whose operation is inherently more polluting, and
whose maintenance is inherently more polluting, than the
engines which would have resulted from *petrol* *tank*
capacity race classes.

Consider safety, and simply consider the natural
consequences of operating the brakes on a vehicle by means
of the part of the body which is the furthest from the
brain and the most difficult to accelerate quickly, namely
the foot. How daft can you get? Try measuring the
difference in speed of reaction to a visual stimulus
between hand and foot!

The motor car is an engineering abortion. But as Bill Gates
has demonstrated so clearly, what matters to the consumer
isn't engineering and design, it's marketing.
--
Chris Malcolm [email hidden] +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
["]http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

Gawnsoft wrote: [snip]

Quoted message said:

[Tony Raven]

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Moggies have about double the fuel consumption of a modern
equivalent

"Double" is a bit OTT, see below.

Quoted message said:

[snip]

Quoted message said:

Perhaps the poster who operates the Moggie could tell us
the fuel consumption figures of the Moggie that is being
operated?

We could then compare that with typical current
models of car.

Never less than 35 mpg even round town, easy 40+ on a run
(on lead free). Not as good as a modern car but certainly
not twice as bad. Even the electric hybrid Prius only
claims 57 mpg.

Tony Raven has some valid points and I certainly don't
advocate everyone running a banger (or even a classic).
Nevertheless I am reasonably morally content with organizing
my life round minimizing car use and keeping a wonderful bit
of motoring history in regular use. The Morris is a bit like
my recumbent in that I can rarely get the grin off my face
when I use it.

I am also unable to reconcile the obvious danger my unsafe
car generates with the low insurance premiums I pay (see
earlier post).

Peter

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 22:52:51 -0000, "Tony Raven"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

As with so much else, makeing the cars capable of higher
speeds, cossetting the driver from the the noise
vibration and harshness of the higher speeds tends to
result in typically higher speeds.

Not relevant in 30mph speed limits really

Only /if/ drivers stuck to the 30 mph speed limits.

And as you know, not only do they not stick to them, there
is now a lobby vociferously demanding to do it without
dsignificant risk of being caugh and penalised.

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On Tue, 9 Mar 2004 22:52:51 -0000, "Tony Raven"
<[email hidden]> wrote (more or less):

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

As with so much else, makeing the cars capable of higher
speeds, cossetting the driver from the the noise
vibration and harshness of the higher speeds tends to
result in typically higher speeds.

Not relevant in 30mph speed limits really

Only /if/ drivers stuck to the 30 mph speed limits.

And as you know, not only do they not stick to them, there
is now a lobby vociferously demanding to do it without
dsignificant risk of being caugh and penalised.

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