Dealers have been informed there are no immediate plans for a 1,4 Hybrid Turbo, but there are back street rumours of tweaking a smaller engined one…but it would need ro be a bit epic to match ours TBH. Limits youy can go too with 3 pot and or 1.2;s. Seems the 1400cc ones still made in Japan are sort of loss leaders…another rumour but I know the drive train in ours cost 3k more to build than the Pakistani factory small engined cars,even the boot shape in ours is differemt to house the bigger battery. Odd…but there we go.
The Sports DOA. Suzuki calls time on Swift Sport, Jimny and more - PistonHeads UK
They’ve got some white goods vehicles to comes soon. as they jump on the 2 tonne electric fairground ride train
MX-5 Sustainable road trip | Mazda UK.
Interesting.
EXPENSIVE !!
Coryton’s biofuels come at a substantial mark-up compared to ‘regular’ 98-octane petrol in the UK
Super 33 starts at £3.80 per litre
Super 80 costs £4.65 per litre
Racing 50 costs £5.24 per litre ( 102 octane )
It could be scaled up, presumably.
At those rates it would cost me an extra £1000-1250pa
What’s the depreciation on an new EV?
Discuss (20 marks)
A gimmick. Mazda is in the business of selling new cars. What do they think is going to happen in the years leading up to 2035?
Its a bit of greenwashing. Biofuel is not 100% sustainable. It might get very close (in terms of all the carbon cost being 100% biogenic), but the source of carbon in the fuel (from crop waste stocks) isn’t 100% biogenic in origin, at least right now.
Its been an observed element of farming for 10,000 years that you simply can’t plough and sow a field ad infinitum without seeing a reduction in yield. And the yields we obtain now are the result of a little help in the biology from the laboratory. Without that help, we would starve. Plants need phosphate, nitrogen, sulfur, iron, copper etc to synthesize the enzymes that help fixate atmospheric carbon in the process everyone knows about from school, photosynthesis. And there isn’t enough of these micronutrients. Hence, fertiliser came about, which at one level might be animal waste, and at the other level, manufactured substances.
Everyone will probably remember the Haber process from school; how to take atmospheric nitrogen and convert that to ammonia, which is the major source of nitrates in fertiliser. Manufacture of ammonia is 2-3% of global energy consumption, 3-4% of carbon output.
On the face of it, a biogenic fuel is better than a fossil fuel. One of the reasons we are in a mess goes back to James Lovelock’s observations two generations ago. Its very simple. The carbon cycle is very simple, like other mineral cycles. Its the equilibrium between reduced carbon (eg sugar) and oxidized carbon (CO2). The biological world maintains that equilibrium, otherwise carbon very easily oxidizes, and we will all be dead. The biological world are plants and bacteria that convert CO2 to reduced carbon. The plants produce cellulose and sugars. Methanogenic bacteria produce methane, which becomes a source for methylotrophic bacteria and so forth.
But digging dinojuice (oil) out of the ground throws that equilbrium out of whack. Biofuels aren’t new; Rudolph Diesel ran his first engines on peanut oil/ Biofuels as transport fuel were common until WW2, but ultimately lost out to cheap oil-based fuels postwar.
And burning biofuels in racing cars will still contribute to global warming. You are still taking those plant hydrocarbons and burning them.
Animals don’t eat 100% of plants. Thats why we have peat, which evenyually becomes oil and coal. But now that won’t happen, because we are going to take waste straw, corn cobs and whatnot, and use it to power a 60 year old Aston Martin on a race track. Biofuels are not sustainable, they are more sustainable, and thus, temporary in nature (they are not the solution to the conundrum about how humankind can persist).
So a big mistake for Mazda to push out this nonsense as if its part of their corporate plan for 2050. But I understand why they are saying. Mazda bet wrongly when they sunk valuable R&D Yen into Skyactiv engine technology, which is ultimately a dead end. The smaller companies like Mazda, and Jaguar should have been innovating, and generating licencable IP that would have kept them relevant. Smaller companies are the ones that are more agile, than slow moving Ford, General Motors, VW and Toyota.
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Anyone else wish an 11 year old thread wasn’t bumped…
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“how humankind can persist”
The science and subsequent punditry is fascinating but that sort of alarmism undermines any scientific discussion and just delays democratic decisions as people filter out the noise. People haven’t the time and just turn off. Perhaps humankind SHOULD die out in that case - in another 5000 years. We are obviously the problem, nothing we do is carbon-free and I expect that applies to all food munching, methane belching animals. Humans have been burning wood to survive for millennia, destroying the planet way before the industrial revolution, after which supposed catastrophe life expectancy increased from 30 to 85 and the world population ended up a hundred times greater. Surely a win for humankind.
So, philosophically, this is not really about the planet is it? It’s about how we trillions of ■■■■ sapiens can carry on polluting in our 2.7 ton EVs (0-62 in 4 seconds) and not having a conscience.
The whole carbon emissions discussion has also sidelined a more immediate ecological problem with industrial and human waste poisoning the earth and oceans. One example amongst many is that humankind is threatened by low fertility rates caused by female hormones being flushed into our water supplies and lowering sperm counts.
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Why isn’t it mankind anymore 
Britain is currently producing 2% of global emissions, affecting Climate Change.
Other western countries have to deliver economic growth, so I can only think that their global emissions policy is way down their list of priorities.
Dunno. Some unscientific anti-men psycho babble from the usual suspects.
Some interesting quotes from an impeccable source - the BBC.
“a resting human being requires about the same amount of energy as an old-fashioned incandescent light bulb to sustain their metabolism - about 90 watts (joules per second) -
but the average human being in a developed country uses more like 100 times that amount, if you add in the energy needed to get around, build and heat our homes, grow our food and all the other things our species gets up to.”
“Some 5% of the world’s natural gas supply is used to create ammonia-based fertilisers, for example, without which half the world’s population would starve.”
That’s 4 billion people 
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‘guilty’?
Perhaps ‘currently’ instead of guilty would be a better choice of grammar. 
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No worries. I think I’d be the last person on Earth calling out someone’s grammar, going by the state of my posts 
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