St. Blazey Turntable

Apparently, Cornwall holds "globally significant" lithium reserves, estimated by some at over 100 million tonnes of ore by Imerys British Lithium which, if true, could make it Europe's largest lithium resource.
It seems lithium is found in the granite under former china clay mines near St Austell, so an awful lot of stone will need to be extracted I suspect before any Lithium sees the light of day.
Also lesser amounts of Lithium are in suspension in 'nearby' hot springs.
Currently under development are 'sustainable' methods of extraction to supply battery-grade lithium for the UK's electric vehicle industry which is hoped will grow. This might still mean substantial amounts of Granite needing to be moved from the mining site(s).
However, I wonder if Chinese imports will take over. Their electric cars are much cheaper to produce and shipping to UK doesn't seem to have that much effect upon the price.

 

You're correct about the stone but just because it is extracted doesn't mean it will be hauled away by rail or at all for that matter as it could just be pilled up and sold locally and in Plymouth as you would eventally get through it as time went on providing a steady secondary income without the enormous logistical challenge of hauling stone by rail.

Regarding the lithium itself, I personally don't see there being much of an EV market in this country. Private buyers aren't adopting EV's anywhere near as fast as they need to to meet the deadline, I personally think that petrol especially will remain the dominant power source.

 

Without comment on the UK market, I’ll just observe that if there are “globally significant” reserves, and they are exploited, the logistics of using rail to transport material are likely to be a very small part of the equation.

Volumes of material that large are likely to see planners insisting on transport that doesn’t put trucks on the not very good roads thereabouts.

 

1 in 4 cars sold in the UK is now an EV, the market is growing rapidly, if slightly behind the target set. This isnt bad considering the raft of anti EV propaganda spouted in the press and withdrawal of subsidies way too early by the last government. Prices are now falling rapidly with a raft of cheaper models launched this year alone and a government grant reinstated. Petrol won't be gone anytime soon no, but electric will be the dominant power in not too long a time.*
* (From someone who's house is all electric EV and would never go back to petrol. To avoid hijacking another thread feel free to PM me an questions on EVs, we have done nearly 100k miles in them now).

Regards Lithium I would suggest once again the UK is behind the curve. The latest battery developments are already using far less metals and have eliminated the likes of Cobalt etc which were always a popular target for EV critics. Unless they can get it out the ground far cheaper than the Chinese (unlikely) there won't be much of a market as they have already tied up much of the world's supply as they saw this boom coming 20 years ago.
By the time Cornwall gears up battery technology may have moved on again as it is advancing so rapidly at the moment. The UK needs to be looking at what could replace lithium, that's where the £ is.

 

The key word in your post there is "house". As someone who lives in a block of flats, I could never buy an electric car as I have nowhere to charge it! Given all the new blocks of flats being built everywhere, there will be a market for petrol cars for some time to come.

 

There’s a non sequitur there - having an EV is not solely dependent on having your own charging facility

You also (presumably) currently have a petrol car, and must refill it elsewhere.

 

True - but it costs more and takes more of your free time.

 

Precisely, people dont have petrol pumps on their drives. Most people do less than 30 miles a day, so a full charge on a 200 mile range EV will last well over a week for most people. That will recharge in around 30 minutes at a rapid charger which can be achieved whilst you are doing your shopping etc.

With the new batteries coming out, rapid charging will drop to 10 to 15 minutes. These are already available in Scandinavia etc.
I do accept that public charging is far too expensive and needs to drop. It shot up in price with the invasion of Ukraine, but whereas domestic electric prices have since dropped a little, the public chargers have not. Government needs to look at the taxation of EV electric given fuel duty has been frozen for well over a decade. But even allowing for that, a charge from empty will be around £40 for 200 to 250 miles travel on a rapid charger. Halve that on a slower rate.

It is starting to become more competitive with cheaper off peak rates being offered by some companies. Slower chargers are often much cheaper too, there even still some free ones. More companies are offering chargers at offices too, sometimes subsidised.
I fully accept that home charging is far more competitive, I can access EV tariffs which will recharge my car for around £4 overnight (& no, before anyone asks, you don't pay more for your electric during the day).

Again, I don't want to hijack this thread, if anyone has any genuine questions (or myths to dispel!), happy to answer via a PM!!

 

No, but hauling aggregate from deep into Cornwall and hauling it to say London or even Bristol by rail is likely to be far more expensive than extracting it from local quarries in the areas around those cities. It's if they can sell the material at a high enough price to make transporting it over very difficult route viable. Ideally with 2x66/6's to remove the need to split the train as that has to be more expensive in the long run. As for the planners, that is a very good point and would likely be deciding factor I think now that you mention it.

That is correct, 1 in 4 new cars are EV's but 60% of those EV's are fleet/company buyers not private which suggests that the private market isn't as strong. The number of ICE vehicles on the road compared to EV's continues to rise (obviously as 3/4 new cars are ICE) and, with the current rate of growth, it is going to take a lot of years for it to balance out at even 50/50. I personally am not a fan of EV's but I do see where they would be useful (low mileage town driving, non car enthusiasts or even taxi's etc.) but unless you have a driveway where are people charging them? We have endless rows and rows of 19th centruty housing in my city and there is simply no room for chargers, you cannot guarantee that you can even park properly and even if you can who is to say that the chargers won't already be in use? It's a very interesting situation and wiull be fasinating to watch it play out over the next however long.

Thankfully I am fortunate to live in a house with parking for 4 vehicles on the driveway so could have an all EV fleet (I wouldn't do as we all hold the same opinions) and, other than the mess of wires, it would be doable for us if we wanted too.

What's new, the UK is behind the curve in just about everything possible.

It's not just flats, terrace houses where parking is very random and unpredictable are in the same position.

No of course it's not, but it is one of the consideration that you must make when deciding to purchase one. It takes around 5 minutes to refill either one of my cars (admittedly the Jag is a regular expensive event) and then I am on my way. I don't know how long the average EV takes to charge these days but even if you said it was an hour, what am I doing at a petrol station or anywhere where EV chargers are for that matter for an hour?

 

The point is that the lithium is in Cornwall, not London or Bristol. It's associated with the specific igneous rocks that occur in the area (as is china clay), and the choices about where to extract it and process it, and then what transport is required, have to be made based on that. It's no different to 150+ years ago seeing steelworks in out of the way places like Consett or Merthyr - because that's where the raw materials were - and now we see processing in (say) Scunthorpe using imported iron ore and coke.

 

I personally (for work this is) do around 15 miles per day and then whatever else I do in the evenings is on top of that. Where are these rapid chargers, are all the supermarket ones like the ones in Sainsburys rapid chargers or just 'normal ones'.

I don't think that the cost of charging is the barrier to entry for most, I think it's the intial purchase cost. Where are the sub £3000 old bangers on Facebook Marketplace for yound drivers/those who cannot afford or want too spend more money on a car? EV's are very much aimed a the higher end of the consumer market and, in my opinion, alienate those at the bottom of the market who cannot afford the car to begin with let alone pay for a charger.

 

Yes, but will the secondary aggregate be worth hauling all that distance by rail that is my point. If the ore is being extracted and then transported by rail to be processed and made into pure lithium elsewhere then that is different as there will be a lot of ore to haul, but if it's being processed in Cornwall then I don't know if the volumes of pure lithium will justify rail transport, how much are they expecting to extract per year for example?

 

All good questions - but bear in mind that something will need to be done with the secondary aggregate, so rail haulage may (may) be the best option rather than treating it as effectively landfill.

 

Very true, as a rail enthusiast I am of course hoping that whatever they do/however they do it results in plenty of trains running back and forth between Cornwall and the rest of the country.

 

Getting back to the question of st blazey , how many former GW semi roundhouses remain, Whats road access like? as its listed, why hasn't anyone mooted its use as a museum , I can think of a few engines, with Cornish history, such as Beattie well tanks, GW halls, Paniers etc, that owners could place on loan, a few engines from the national collection, a few privatly owned, What else in Cornwall could match it?

 

Bodmin and Wenford?

 

Presumably Mr Smythe, you are a climate change denier? Unfortunately we don't have the luxury of choosing between EVs and fossil cars! Ask any railway infrastructure engineer! Not to mention climate scientists.

Would you call a £16k Dacia Spring a high end EV? You can buy three year old off-lease EVs for about half their original price.

 

I wouldn't say that I am a climate change denier no, but rather someone who looks at it from a realistic perspective. Why don't we have the luxury of choosing?

The Dacia spring is a poor example of an EV unforunately as while it maybe cheap at £14,995 it also not that brillaint and very slow with a 0-60 of 19.1 seconds and a range of 140mi. To get anything decent you need to spend far money money.

If anyone wants to create a dedicated thread for this discussion feel free.

 

Those stats are quite enough for a city run about. This car has been very successful across Europe before it arrived in yhe UK. Also starting to see a few around here in Mid-Wales, a small car with loads of plastic that doesn't matter too much if it gets a few knocks - would suit quite a few small holders!

For 16k though you can get plenty of decent EVs on the second hand market with much more range and probably quite a lot of warranty left too.

Mods feel free to move these posts to the EV thread.

 

If you ask any climate scientist they will tell you that the cause is the ever increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, caused by the burning of fossil fuels together with the release of methane from warming soil respectively. Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide but has a shorter life than the latter. Humanity has to stop taking carbon out of the ground and putting it in the atmosphere. The need for action is urgent. I was in south west France in June where the average high temperature is about 25degC. It was 40degC for days on end.

Regardless of the properties of the Dacia Spring, there are clearly EVs not intended for the higher end of the consumer market, as you put it. If you think that a car's speed, acceleration and range are more important than climate change, perhaps you should re-assess your priorities?