“No serious injuries” after wheel clears barrier at Goodwood Festival

55 comments on ““No serious injuries” after wheel clears barrier at Goodwood Festival”

1. 

   Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
   14th July 2023, 0:09

   Let’s have two straw bales on top of each other next year.
   (and to define track limits at the Red Bull Ring)
2. 

   Nick T.
   14th July 2023, 0:10

   I guess we’ll have to put chicanes all around Goodwood too. After all, we’re talking about human lives.
   1. 

      Jere (@jerejj)
      14th July 2023, 5:56

      Only a freak accident that had nothing to do with speeds since they’re low anyway.
      1. 

         Nick T.
         14th July 2023, 11:30

         I was being sarcastic. I was alluding to the, IMO, ridiculous suggestion of install a chicane heading into or after Eau Rouge.
         1. 

            Jere (@jerejj)
            16th July 2023, 17:17

            Nick T. – I failed to detect sarcasm. Sometimes easy, sometimes difficult.
            @qeki – Indeed.
   2. 

      Qeki (@qeki)
      14th July 2023, 9:01

      The only way to stop these things happening is to end every racing category on the planet
3. 

   Nick T.
   14th July 2023, 0:15

   RE: COTD

   It’s the teams’ fault they spend so much on driver academies and so little on searching for or fostering potential engineering geniuses. And it doesn’t take years to see if each is a potential genius. Newey was already debuting ground changing aero, suspension and more right out of the box in his early 20s.
   1. 

      MacLeod (@macleod)
      14th July 2023, 8:08

      @proesterchen –

      t’s not like Mr Newey towered over everyone in the past 35 years. He got beaten, regularly and convincingly by Rory Byrne. He got beaten by Mercedes for 8 consecutive years, without ever even trying to follow their superior design direction.

      I think Adrian was too good for the teams he worked for taking a lot of risk with matrials BUT you have a point Mercedes was on top for 7-8 years but that was mostly the engine when Red Bull got the Honda engine things were turning and when the strongest version of the Honda engine thinks went Red Bull way.

      Was it all Aero no ofcourse not you could see that when they used the Renault engine McLaren and Renault weren’t even close to Red Bull that was aero but you can’t compair Red Bull with Mercedes as they don’t use the same engine….
   2. 

      SteveP
      14th July 2023, 8:24

      One single WDC eeked out at the end of a regulatory period, under a development freeze and with some tailor-made rules changes that hit Mercedes harder than most does not a genius make.

      “end of a regulator period” ???

      RBR are winning, continually, because of a new set of regulations that favour ground effect aero – that being something that Adrian Newey is familiar with from past work.

      I don’t think RBR won any championship under the previous regulations.
      1. 

         MichaelN
         14th July 2023, 10:17

         2021 was the end of the 2017-2021 regulatory period, but as noted there were some pretty big limits on what teams could do to make changes to their cars (because the COVID-instigated delay of the ‘2022’ rules). But crucially, they also had to make a significant change to the floor. As Wolff admitted later, this impacted Mercedes far more than anyone expected, and as such they were unable to mount a timely and successful lobby against the change.
   3. 

      Coventry Climax
      14th July 2023, 10:45

      .. without ever even trying to follow their superior design direction.

      A) That’s what defines a genius, not following or copying someone else’s idea’s but constantly coming up with your own. I’m convinced he thoroughly studied all other ‘solutions’ though, like he always seems to study everything – and take notes.
      B) Superior design direction? That’s very debateable, to say the least. They had by far the best engine alright, and that most likey masked their car’s design imperfections in -a lot of?- other areas.

      But I’m sure there are other geniusses in the world alright. They might well be of colour, or female, or physically disabled or all of the above. I’m not sure the others really put the effort in to find one though.
      1. 

         Proesterchen (@proesterchen)
         14th July 2023, 12:15

         Superior design direction?

         One can’t thank Force India enough for their pink Mercedes putting everyone else in the field in their place.

         That’s as conclusive a proof as we’re ever going to get that Mercedes’ design direction, one that was questioned every single year of the eight years in a row they won the WCCs, was fundamentally superior.

         Imagine what a talent like Adrian and a group like Red Bull Racing could have done with that concept as a starting point.
   4. 

      Nick T.
      14th July 2023, 11:51

      Yes, he’s easily towered over everyone besides Brawn who was the only other genius capable of regularly taking him on (and most of the years he didn’t win he still produced the best chassis) most notably w/SF + MB. Losses not down to inferior aerodynamics or suspensions, but the amazing powertrain unreliability of the McLaren-Mercs cars (04 was the only year SF had a better chassis) vs SF’s historic reliability. And during the MB run, if RBR had the MB engine they’re taking at least some titles.

      About 80% of the chassis (not just aero) conventions we assume as standard/almost invisible now came from Newey (these aren’t mind words BTW).

      But let’s start from the beginning:

      -He revolutionized Indy Car almost instantly upon arrival (which had more complex aero at the time) and Rahal instantly put him in charge of designing his cars.

      -When Newey entered F1 teams were barely bothering with aerodynamics (again, not my words and also visible by the dreadful squared off chassis). They were just bolting on massive wings enabled by the huge power of the turbos.

      -When Newey’s Leyton House car came out it looked unlike anything F1 had ever seen and was the only V6 cars (which had 250+ hp less than the turbo cars) to compete with the turbo cars and blew away the other NA cars.

      -Newey then went to Williams and gave them the most dominant chassis in F1 history. Rule changes targeted at Williams and seasons with mediocre drivers like Hill and Senna’s death were the only reason they didn’t win every title before Newey moved to McLaren at the end of the ‘90s.

      -He moved to McLaren and his first car immediately won their first two titles and would have won many more in the early 2000s, but their engine and transmission reliability was amazingly bad. Kimi had one season in which he retired more than 10 times solely due to engine failure.

      -We know what his Vettel RBR cars did

      -We know how good the chassis was when Merc was dominating. Why do you think RBR was so good at Monaco where power wasn’t everything?

      -Now, his cars are dominating again

      But he’s no genius, right? Please point to a time he wasn’t showing himself to be the best chassis designer since he entered F1.

      ps – I say this as someone who dislikes Max, disliked Vettel during his RBR/Ferrari year and never liked McLaren. So, I have no bias in the matter.
   5. 

      frood19 (@frood19)
      15th July 2023, 7:57

      People seem to be conveniently forgetting the years of Merc dominance in cars not designed by Newey.

      However, the current regs do present a problem because they are so restrictive the opportunities for differentiation are very limited and niche so it is more likely that there is only one great solution (and therefore all the teams eventually converge on that solution). You can argue that this has always been the case, but in previous years testing and development were less constrained so it was easier for teams to (a) converge on whatever solution was best and (b) spend time innovating. Now we have so few engine parts that you’re essentially locked in to the same performance all year (this used to be quite an exciting story of development throughout a season) and lack of testing means aero packages only receive tiny incremental updates that don’t necessarily change anything much.

      On the plus side, this year’s field is super close (with the exception of red bull race pace) so the order of the grid is subject to a lot of natural variation from race to race. As long as the calendar has enough variety, we will see quite a good battle (if you conveniently forget about red bull and Verstappen!)
      1. 

         Nick T.
         15th July 2023, 10:23

         I really don’t get how you can say something like that with a straight face.

         Brawn teams (most notably Ferrari and Mercedes) are the only ones to ever beat Newey and it wasn’t down to superior aerodynamics, but the amazing unreliability of the McLaren cars (2004 was the only year Ferrari was genuinely always the fastest car) combined w/amazing Ferrari reliability. During the Mercedes run, if RBR had the Mercedes engine they would have taken titles without doubt.

         Many or even most of the chassis (not just aero) and aero conventions that we assume as standard (basically, most of the features we don’t even notice anymore) came from Newey. Not my words either.

         But let’s go back to the start:

         -When he entered Indy Car in the ‘80s (which had more complex aero than F1 at the time) he immediately revolutionized the sport and despite being in his early 20s was hired by Rahal to lead his design team.

         -When Newey entered F1 teams were barely bothering with aerodynamics. They were just bolting on massive wings with no concern about drag because of the immense power of the turbos.

         -Newey’s first car, the Leyton House looked unlike anything F1 had ever seen, was the only NA car (which had 250+ hp less than the turbo cars) to compete with the turbo cars and blew away the other NA cars AND, most importantly, was copied by every other team the next year. Over night, he changed what F1 cars looked like.

         -Newey then went to Williams and gave them the most dominant chassis in F1 history. Rule changes targeted at Williams and seasons with mediocre drivers like Hill and Senna’s death were the only reason they didn’t win every title before Newey moved to McLaren at the end of the ‘90s.

         -He moved McLaren where his first car instantly won two titles and would have won many more in the early 2000s if not for awful powertrain unreliability. KR had a season in which he retired more than 10 times solely due to engine failure.

         -Then he won four straight WCCs/WDCs w/Vettel.

         -We know how good the chassis was when Merc was dominating. Why do you think RBR was so good at places like Monaco, Hungary, MC, etc. where power wasn’t everything?

         -Now, his cars are dominating again

         But he’s nothing special, right?
         1. 

            Nick T.
            15th July 2023, 10:27

            PS: I am not an RBR fan and dislike Max particularly. So, I have no dog in this fight.
   6. 

      Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
      16th July 2023, 10:21

      Teams spend quite a bit of money on developing engineers. It doesn’t help because Adrian Newey is the last one standing of the aero engineers who spent significant time having briefs of the entire car. That stopped being possible in the early 2000s due to a combination of F1 being too complicated to have one person in sole charge and junior series becoming spec due to costs.

      Now, if an engineer has a truly revolutionary take, there’s nowhere to test it and no way to prove to anyone that it’s the way one should go (unless the computer happens to agree). This is why F1 became an arms race – firstly of who can get more than a certain threshold of money and then who above that threshold can spend it the most efficiently. Now that the budget cap has made the budget cap the “certain threshold”, it’s about who’s allowed to spend the most money earliest in the regulation cycle. This conveniently explains the times Adrian Newey succeeded and also the times his cars didn’t win the title (basically, he lost when McLaren got outspent by Ferrari, then when he went to Red Bull that had start-up costs and then costs of boosting their staffing base, and then there was the phase where Mercedes outspent Red Bull).
4. 

   Jere (@jerejj)
   14th July 2023, 5:55

   French GP probably won’t return in the short term in any case, but definitely a temporary circuit over returning to Circuit Paul Ricard or Magny-Cours, given those circuits’ remote locations combined with F1’s general trend towards city circuits that has been ongoing for a while.
   I wholly expect the Madrid temporary circuit plan to happen & by replacing Circuit de Catalunya as the sole annual Spanish GP host later this decade.

   I sometimes wonder how Seb storages purchased old F1 cars, given a regular garage doesn’t really have space for such vehicles.

   Regarding the BoP aspect, I hope so too.

   Admittedly, regulations are unnecessarily restrictive.
   1. 

      Marvin The Martian (@marvinthemartian)
      14th July 2023, 7:32

      it certainly won’t return in 2024 and probably not 2025, but I wouldn’t rule out a return in 2026. The new aero regs are here to stay long term and the tracks that are being ‘selected’ tend to favour the aero have lots of high speed corners and straights, or lots of very short, sharp turns. Generally tracks are somewhere inbetwen like Jeddah and Baku. The differentiator in the cars tends to be the very slow or the very fast corners.
      I like Paul Ricard as a circuit layout as it had plenty of difficulty and was not short on action for its brief spell on the calendar, but the mistral chicane was a mistake and the run of areas were a joke. Had it been more traditional with gravel traps etc. it would have been seen more favourably for F1, but then it wouldn’t have appealed to other series. Now hardly anyone races there, its a bit like clothes where one size fits no one. Magny Cours has always sucked though. There is nothing you can do to that track to make it decent other than rub it out and draw it again. Whoever thought 5 hairpins and 5 not straights was a good idea needs shoeing.
      I think a Nice street circuit, or Marseille or even would be good, but then it’s just going to be a parody of Monaco. Too close and too similar in character. France has plenty of other cities so why not close La Peripherique and have them race around the outskirts of Paris? It’ll be the only time anyone gets anywhere on that road!
   2. 

      Simon
      14th July 2023, 14:02

      “I sometimes wonder how Seb storages purchased old F1 cars, given a regular garage doesn’t really have space for such vehicles”

      Really?
      1. 

         Jere (@jerejj)
         16th July 2023, 17:18

         Simon – Yes, because F1 cars are far more inconvenient to store than regular road cars or more or less any other four-wheeled vehicles.
   3. 

      Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
      16th July 2023, 10:22

      @jerejj Without BoP, there wouldn’t be a prototype sportscar scene. So unless someone can come up with a better way of enforcing relative equality between the cars, it won’t happen.
      1. 

         Jere (@jerejj)
         16th July 2023, 17:19

         @alianora-la-canta Who needs equality between cars anyway?
         Competitors should never get penalized for performing well in any sports.
         1. 

            Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
            16th July 2023, 23:54

            @jerejj Who needs equality between cars? The companies spending millions to enter cars in this series as opposed to others. They’re in more of a position to demand it than F1 due to more competition between series.

            No car entrants, no series.
5. 

   Fer no.65 (@fer-no65)
   14th July 2023, 5:59

   I don’t understand the COTD. A genius will always move the bar far above reach. If Newey wasn’t there the winning concept would be something else and they’d all copy it. It has nothing to do with the regulations …
   1. 

      Coventry Climax
      14th July 2023, 10:15

      I do not agree with you, see my post below.
   2. 

      Stephen Crowsen (@drycrust)
      14th July 2023, 20:43

      If Newey wasn’t there the winning concept would be something else and they’d all copy it.

      I agree, or at least I agree that if Adrian Newey wasn’t designing F1 cars then someone else would have designed a car which everyone wants to copy. That car would look similar to the RB19 and it would be the one which everyone is at least looking at to inspire their next design. The design of a car is a compromise which happens to abide by all the rules, so a good design is a compromise which enables the car to be fast and abides by all the rules. In our case the RB19 is currently the compromise which produces the fastest car within the current rules, so all the designers will be using it to inspire their next design. My expectation is all the car designers are now frantically working out why the RB19 is as good as it is, and then trying to emulate the advantages of that car into the design on their own car. It could happen one of these RB19 inspired cars is faster than the RB19, in which case that will become the car everyone wants to copy.
   3. 

      Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
      16th July 2023, 10:23

      @fer-no65 Definitely not true, including in Adrian’s case. Money is capable of moving the bar far beyond the reach of genius.
6. 

   PMccarthy_is_a_legend (@pmccarthy_is_a_legend)
   14th July 2023, 7:20

   I was never a Schumacher fan, mainly because of the Ferrari years, I so desperately wanted someone to mount a challenge but it never happened in those years. But I got to admit seeing Mick sitting in the car and wearing his old man’s helmet gave me a lump on my throat. Really nice to see.
7. 

   Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
   14th July 2023, 8:53

   Re France and Spain, no, not more street circuits please! There will soon be as many street circuits as open, traditional ones. It’s madness.

   I think France should try giving Magny Cours another go. Maybe they could make some modifications to bring it up to date. We don’t need a race in Nice which is only a stones throw from Monaco.
   1. 

      Qeki (@qeki)
      14th July 2023, 9:04

      @phil-f1-21 If they could move Magny cours closer to lets say paris then it would be perfect but its so in the middle of nowhere and so few hotels nearby its almost impossible to get a good feel race there
      1. 

         Coventry Climax
         14th July 2023, 10:13

         Wouldn’t it be easier to just improve the facilities and make it a race track again, instead of a failed impressionist’s painting on a tarmac canvas?
   2. 

      S
      14th July 2023, 10:05

      Great idea! Get rid of Monaco.
      1. 

         drmouse (@drmouse)
         15th July 2023, 8:06

         Agreed
   3. 

      Jere (@jerejj)
      14th July 2023, 12:16

      @phil-f1-21 Unfortunately (for some), Magny-Cours location is too remote for F1’s general trend, even more isolated than Circuit Paul Ricard’s, so Magny-Cours return is extremely unlikely.
      @qeki Building another similar circuit close to Paris could be an option, but doubtful.
      1. 

         Phil Norman (@phil-f1-21)
         14th July 2023, 13:35

         Yes I realise M.C. has its drawbacks from a location point of view. I still think a street circuit at Nice is a waste to time.

         France is in effect the birth place of Grand Prix motor racing with its historic links. I think the French authorities should really just bite the bullet and get someone to build a new state of the art GP circuit in a location close to one of the big centres of population. If they did and it was any good, it would attract a lot of interest and would probably be on the calendar for ever.
         1. 

            S
            14th July 2023, 13:56

            If they did and it was any good, it would attract a lot of interest and would probably be on the calendar for ever.

            Being ‘good’ comes a distant second to offering eye-watering sums of money when it comes to securing places on F1’s calendar.
         2. 

            Alianora La Canta (@alianora-la-canta)
            16th July 2023, 10:25

            @phil-f1-21 Paul Ricard is close to a major centre of population (Marseille). The trouble is the quality of the roads in between.
8. 

   Coventry Climax
   14th July 2023, 10:07

   Wheel
   They were fortunate, I guess.

   Street race Nice
   No, no, no. Not yet another street circuit. Let Nice, Monaco and possibly some others start their own Côte d’Azur Cup or something.

   Vergne
   What the FIA calls ‘misconduct’ is called an opinion in the real world.

   COTD
   My opinion: There’s an issue with the FIA’s restrictive rules set alright. But whether there’s only a single genius m/f available, worldwide? Don’t really believe that. But -FIA ruleset again- it’ll take quite a bit of resources to find someone similar, get that person to work for you in all freedom and then get to the point where you can put as much -justified- trust in that person as Red Bull puts in Newey. It’s just cheaper to copy what someone else has come up with, and with the current system of revenue division, there’s little incentive to come up with your own.
   The current rule set breeds a closed, short sighted, incestuous, limited and degenerated show system. Nothing ‘pinnacle’ about it.
   1. 

      drmouse (@drmouse)
      14th July 2023, 11:41

      TBH, though, this has been the case for a long time. If one team sees another with a better car, they will normally try to emulate it, at least in part. Look back at exhaust blown diffusers, F-ducts, double decker diffusers etc. As soon as one team started doing it, the rest tried to copy at least that part, and many would do what they could to emulate the entire design. There have also been several times when a lower team made as near as possible a straight copy of a top team’s design from the last season.

      There are probably multiple approaches which can perform equally well in any given set of regulations. However, if one proves to be significantly better than what you currently have, it is far safer to copy that than to continue with your own design in the hopes it will match or exceed it.
      1. 

         Coventry Climax
         14th July 2023, 17:47

         And it’s been a long time that the regulations get tighter and tighter, while e.g. consistent monitoring and enforcement, and things like track limits drag on and on and on and on.
         And while copying has been of all times, with the cost cap, we’re heading in the direction of teams not even having the means to develop anything at all anymore. If you copy, you’re not original, and the best you can do with it is second best. And that’s what F1 is going to be; a spec series of FIA prescribed car copies.

         I can only hope there’s people with the guts to start a new, – true sports – series – without the FIA and LM.
         Ferrari threatened leaving the sports a couple of times, but they never had the cajones.
         1. 

            drmouse (@drmouse)
            15th July 2023, 14:01

            I’d love to see a much more open engineering competition series, with just a few basic limits set: maximum power and energy input for the drive units, some dimensional limits on the chassis, etc, and see what can actually be done.
            1. 

               Coventry Climax
               17th July 2023, 12:31

               Now we’re talking!
               But let’s not forget some sensible safety measures, like a couple of crash tests. But probably most of it would need to be around the track and with organisers and race control.
9. 

   drmouse (@drmouse)
   14th July 2023, 12:09

   RE: eFuels

   That article summarises my opinion entirely.

   Where EVs are viable*, burning eFuels in ICEs for personal transportation are not a good idea as things stand. They are a massively wasteful and inefficient use of resources. There may be some benefit in using them temporarily to prolong the life of existing vehicle fleets, but not in using them for new vehicles except for a very narrow range of circumstances. Unless we get to the stage of having a significant surplus of renewable energy capacity, we’re just throwing away a significant chunk of that energy for no good reason.

   * Obviously, there will be some places where EVs are not viable at this point in time. They need a reliable power grid and charging infrastructure. In some less-developed countries, this will be very difficult to achieve in the near future, though it would be much better to invest in improving these than eFuels. There are also some use cases where full electrification is not viable, like aircraft. F1 is also one of these for the time being, as we are not yet at the point where a fully-electric drivetrain can produce the performance we expect for a full race length.
   1. 

      drmouse (@drmouse)
      14th July 2023, 12:12

      I must add, though, that I hope they do continue to make eFuels available for a long time. There are a whole host of classic cars which we don’t want to lose entirely. I expect them to be expensive, though, and I know most classics will require engine modifications to run eFuels, but we do want to keep them running.
   2. 

      Proesterchen (@proesterchen)
      14th July 2023, 14:17

      Agreed. The only thing I’d add is that the parties pushing synthetic fuels are quite nicely correlated with interests in fossil hydrocarbon deposits.

      Which I’m sure is merely a coincidence.
   3. 

      S
      14th July 2023, 14:25

      You forgot the most important factor for ‘eFuels’ and against battery/EV’s when talking about energy…
      Energy is indeed required to create ‘eFuels’ and the process is (currently) inefficient – however: A) that will improve over time, and; B) that energy can come (mostly) for free from the sun, wind or water (all infinite sources).

      Compare with a battery (and its replacement every 10-15 years) – the materials that go into that are finite, and also highly energy intensive (not to mention harmful). Mining, transport, primary processing, more transport, secondary/downstream processing, packaging, etc – all contribute to the vehicle’s emissions footprint. Many people don’t attribute these to the vehicle itself, making the figures look much nicer.
      Add also that a battery is a physical product than will require recycling or disposal at the end of its effective life – independent of the vehicle – which will require even more energy and comes with its own emissions footprint.
      1. 

         drmouse (@drmouse)
         15th July 2023, 8:16

         Just as the production of efuels will improve over time, so will methods of battery production, mining methods etc. There are already promising prototypes without reliance on such materials.

         However, while efuel production may improve, it’s still limited by the internal combustion engine. F1 engines are one of the most efficient ever produced at about 50%, and that’s only because of the hybrid components and the specific way it’s being used. That’s unlikely to be achieved in a pure ICE road vehicle. So, even if efuel production managed to be 100% efficient and transportation of that fuel took no energy at all, an ICE vehicle will not even get close to the efficiency of an EV.
         1. 

            S
            15th July 2023, 15:08

            But efficiency doesn’t matter anywhere near as much when the fuel is ‘clean’ – produced predominantly or entirely from clean energy resources.
            Efficiency only matters now because the current fuel is harmful, and so it makes sense to use less of it.
            It also matters as stored battery energy usage in increased, as a battery’s energy density is very low by comparison, and carrying more batteries simply adds more mass as size.

            F1 on batteries is a fantasy in the near future – the combustion engine is pure necessity.
            It might as well run on the cleanest fuel possible – something that can transfer directly to the consumer market for their own (existing) road cars as production ramps up and costs go down.
            The benefits extend beyond car racing and motoring, unlike simply making batteries out of increasingly exotic materials and demanding that everyone replace what they currently have with completely new products.
            1. 

               drmouse (@drmouse)
               18th July 2023, 10:03

               That is fine if we have enough renewable energy to produce it. We don’t. We don’t currently have enough to power everything which currently runs on electricity. Therefore, production of efuels will effectively be done using non-renewable sources initially, as even if they are produced using renewable sources, that generally energy could have powered something else which must instead be run on non-renewable energy.

               Until we have a significant excess of renewable energy available, efuels are one of the worst possible uses for the limited supply we have. Efficiency does matter enormously when supply is constrained.
   4. 

      MichaelN
      14th July 2023, 16:46

      There is nowhere near a “surplus” of renewable energy*, and while that might be an argument against synthetic fuels – it’s also not insignificant when it comes to BEVs. In the USA, an estimated 12% of energy generated is from renewable sources. The UK and Germany claim about 40%, while France lags far behind at just over 20% (but France is an outlier due to its a huge nuclear infrastructure). [*There is sometimes too much renewable energy on the grid, on sunny and very windy days, but unless this is stored it largely goes to waste.]

      Having BEV cars charged by non-renewable energy is a problem, especially because making BEVs already has a bigger climate impact than making petrol cars. Numerous manufacturers have published studies on this, and of course BEV-proponents will take the most positive outcome, while BEV-detractors the most negative (’tis the way of things), but with current technology the tipping point seems to be somewhere around 50-60.000 kilometers of use. And that becomes muddied a bit when the studies start assuming share of renewable energy in providing electricity to charge them. The tipping point in the US would be much later on than in the UK, for example, because most of the BEV-charging in the US will be done with non-renewable energy.

      Building and shipping cars is a significant part of the vehicle’s total energy consumption over its lifespan. So making sure cars can remain in use longer can also be a big help in reducing the industry’s climate impact, as well as ensuring that private transportation remains affordable for most people. There’s definitely a role there for synthetic fuels.
      1. 

         drmouse (@drmouse)
         15th July 2023, 8:32

         Running EVs partially on dinosaur juice is likely still better than running an ICE purely on dinosaur juice, and it’s massively better than running an ICE on efuel produced partially using electricity generated by dinosaur juice.

         Even if the EV was using only electricity generated using combined cycle had turbines,such power stations are significantly more efficient and less polluting than ICE vehicles.

         You are right, of course, that the manufacture of EVs is more energy intensive. I’ve seen conflicting reports of how this affects the lifetime energy use and/or emissions. However, most of the reports I have seen which place EVs worse assume a worst case scenario for them (short battery life, no battery recycling/reuse/refurbishment, scrapping the vehicle very early). I suspect lifetime emissions and energy use are similar between the two right now, but they’ll likely improve more for EVs than ICEs over time.
10. 

    Rhys Lloyd (@justrhysism)
    14th July 2023, 15:38

    COTD:

    If you simply ignore RBR, the championship is actually quite tight and exciting.
    1. 

       drmouse (@drmouse)
       15th July 2023, 9:03

       The on-track competition is quite tight and exciting if you ignore RBR.

       The technical competition, however, is heading towards “who can make the best copy of the Red Bull”. That’s certainly not exciting.
       1. 

          Coventry Climax
          17th July 2023, 12:35

          Plus they’d still only come second, as that’s the max that copies tend to achieve.

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