Good day my good friend.

Not much to say today, so lets just get on with it…

If you have any suggestions for interesting news items or bits of research to include in this newsletter, you can email me.

You should also join a lot of like-minded people at Mobility Camp in Bristol in September. Tickets are on sale now.

James

What we can learn from messing up

One of these days, I am going to start a database or a wiki on things which us transport professionals messed up, and how we can learn from them. I am pretty sure I would not be short of options. But this research paper on lessons learned from the failure to electrify commuter rail in the US would be in there.

Its a common message, and a reminder of the challenges we face in making our world better. Politics is in there (because it always is), but a more important one is electrification not being a solution to the identified problem. Simply put: do the operational challenges justify electrification? I mean electrification is great for a lot of reasons (better for the environment, lower operational costs to name but two), but its not a tool for all jobs…

Electric vehicle batteries are not the same over time, and neither are their carbon emissions

This is a great study of the deployment of electric buses across 4 British cities (London, Belfast, Aberdeen, and Cardiff). Not because it goes into whether electric buses are a good thing, but it goes into an issue often not considered when understanding the impact of electric vehicles over time. Simply put, the battery degrades, and this significantly affects the capacity of the battery and its impact on carbon emissions.

The conclusions can best be summarised as this. Real-world environments, including things like heat variations, significantly affect the performance of the battery. As the battery degrades, it becomes harder to charge and loses power more easily. And if renewables aren’t a big part of the energy mix, this could mean that carbon emissions increase in some circumstances. The conclusion? Be aware of your local conditions before deploying electric buses.

Random things

These links are meant to make you think about the things that affect our world in transport, and not just think about transport itself. I hope that you enjoy them.

• This English Town Is Letting the Sea Have Its Way (Atlas Obscura)

• A Revolutionary Solid-State Battery Is Nearly Here, Scientists Say (Popular Mechanics)

• Redefining London’s social spaces (City Monitor)

• Volkswagen CEO Diess Warns Car Plants Are at Risk From Energy Supply Halt (Bloomberg)

• An Amazing Ball-Wheeled Omnidirectional Vehicle (Laughing Squid)

Something interesting

That’s…a lot of cycling.

If you do nothing else today, then do this…

Read and respond to the Law Commission’s Remote Driving Issues Paper. As always by the Law Commission, its an excellent, excellent read.