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Out for my exercise ride I passed a storage yard full of Telsa waiting to be distributed somewhere and in the background was the Queen Mary 2 sat idle but engines running. At first I thought I could make some arty comment about the past and future of travel, diesel engines vs electric motors etc but decided just to take a quick snapshot with my phone.
One thing that puzzled me was why did so many of the Tesla's have their boots open when they were obviously in long term storage and not being moved around as there was no-one there?
Now and again the software needs a boot up.
I'm literally making this up, but maybe they open and close the boots periodically if its not raining to keep the air in the car fresh?
Maybe they are the ones that getting prepped for sale today- or maybe its a F.up!
I often see cars on forecourts with the boots open - I had always assumed it was to freshen them up.
Now and again the software needs a boot up.
Excellent.
in the background was the Queen Mary 2 sat idle but engines running.
You do realise that yo can't just switch off a ship like that? It uses huge amounts of power just sitting alongside.
It also electric final drive.
Many modern docks have the capability to plug in the liner rather than relying on it's less efficient engine for power
Now and again the software needs a boot up.
Bravo.
RE: the open boots... Wild guess - as it's a sunny day, this is the easiest way to indentify the ones that will be loaded on to the next transporter when it arrives?
That is strange, don't think it is to do with air circulation as they all look like Model 3s and they are saloons. As a side note, the red looks much brighter in the flesh than on the website.
The hot weather seems to be good for the batteries, mine normally 'leaks' a couple of miles charge every 24 hours when idle.. the other day it went up by 1 mile!
Hackerz innit
They are model 3s.
I was there for about 5-10 minutes and there was no sign of anyone working in the area also some of the cars with open boots appeared blocked in by others. Hard to see from the picture but the row of red cars are nose to tail so only the one nearest could move which doesn't suggest readiness for loading.
The software boot is my fav guess so far
Many modern docks have the capability to plug in the liner rather than relying on it’s less efficient engine for power
Not in Southampton.
Besides, a bit of diesel fumes in Southampton, is way down the list in what is wrong with Cruise Ships and the environment.
Yeah but for Southampton cruise ship pollution is an issue and the city really should invest in a big plug socket if we are going to try to encourage cruise ships to come here.
Mind you, I can image there will be a dip in demand for cruise ship holidays this year
Mind you, I can image there will be a dip in demand for cruise ship holidays this year
Could see a massive reduction in fleet sizes. Vast majority of the ships are registered under flags of convenience, so don't qualify for any Government hand outs.
Even the 2 big boys could struggle to survive this.
It’s to let out Elon’s musk.
Duff build quality would be my first guess.
I temped for a while somewhere like this, we'd be working from a list of cars that were needed today, we'd go round and open the boots as we found them, then work out what order to shift them around in an attempt to minimise the number of movements...
alaric - I will bow to your superior knowledge. Also might pop down to see if any have moved
Makes sense, especially as the boot is not power operated so someone will have had to go round manually opening specific cars.
SW release V7.2b - The latest ludicrous driving mode is less impressive than it used to be..
Wot alaric sed! Doesn’t matter if some cars are blocked in, they get shuffled around to get at the ones required, we have to do it all the time, although sometimes we’ll put the wipers up, a lot of cars won’t allow the wiper arms to be lifted right up, so we open the boot, and just put the blocking cars into another free space. It gets to be a bit of a pain when you have cars block-parked five rows deep, with the rows up to fifty cars long.
While people may not necessarily be visible, drivers or transporters may be coming at any time. Or sometimes not for some considerable time!
Having looked closely at the photo, I think those are parked five deep, with an access lane between the blocks, which our remote storage area was like last year for a while, it’s now back to rows of two cars, back to back - soooo much easier to access!
Photo update will be provided tomorrow (if I remember)
a bit of diesel fumes in Southampton, is way down the list in what is wrong with Cruise Ships and the environment
I rather understood that cruise ships sitting in port running on internal power was a significant source of pollution in the vicinity. Heavy metals, partially burnt combustion products etc.
It might seem that there's actually a really simple reason that the Queen Mary 2 isn't on shore power in Southampton.
There isn't any.
Not yet, anyway; ABP (Associated British Ports) have it as an 'ambition' but sounds like there's issues over funding and technical issues over the available power from the grid.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-50562113
Always worth doing a bit of simple googling, eh.
I rather understood that cruise ships sitting in port running on internal power was a significant source of pollution in the vicinity. Heavy metals, partially burnt combustion products etc.
Aren't they supposed to switch from the god awful bunker fuel to something just mildly carcinogenic when they come into port? Although I think they get so many hours when they can belch out pure cancer over the local population before they switch to cancer-light.
Househusband has it right - We know what needs to be done to remove probably the worst (in terms of volume and nastiness) of pollution but ABP want Southampton to pay - government penalise local government if they don't - and Southampton Council want ABP to pay but have all the force of a wet tissue to make it happen.
@WorldClassAccident Cheers, this piqued my interest for various reasons! Was, briefly an enginering officer in the Merchant Navy, did my cadetship (engineering) at Warsash in late 80's/early 90's and know the area well. Also, particularly for a vessel as large as a cruise liner with all its hotel facilities, switching to shore power and back again when ready to depart isn't as simple a task as one might think unless the technology has somewhat evolved - it did mean a brief blackout when I was afloat.
I watched a semi-documentary about it. Apparently quite a few of the cruise destinations are investing in electric hook ups to avoid two or three ships being sat in small harbours for 4-6 hours ticking over on crap quality marine fuel.
Interestingly it was more important for small places where the impact was most noticeable than for big places like Southampton where it just blended into the background pollution.
Cleaning up the rest of the pollutants has made it more obvious.
Yes, they have improved electric to engine power hand over, a bit like cars with stop/start technology
The Tesla photo today looks similar but there are different cars boots open.
Also spotted these with windscreen wipers up, I presume for the same reason
On the liner polution we currently have four big liners in going nowhere for the foreseeable future just chugging away to keep the lights on and pump the fumes out.
Britania, QM2, Ventura and one I could see the name
Yes, they have improved electric to engine power hand over, a bit like cars with stop/start technology
It's still got to be on the order of a 20-30 MW load though. Short of very briefly paralleling both supplies during the cutover I can't see how you could do it without a blackout.
Here's who's in: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ports/106 Looks like the Queen Mary is off out for a few hours.
Many modern docks have the capability to plug in the liner rather than relying on it’s less efficient engine for power
Probably being used to keep some overpriced, leccy rep mobiles topped up somewhere nearby...
[i]Probably being used to keep some overpriced, leccy rep mobiles topped up somewhere nearby…[/i]
Is that aimed at me 🙂
It’s to let out Elon’s musk.
I think you have achieved Perchypanther level here.
*doffs cap*
Shore power really isn't all that common in many ports, so it is usual practice to keep a diesel generator running to support the electrical loads of the ships system while in port. This is slowly changing however.
Nowadays a modern ship with IMO Tier-3 compliant diesels is substantially less polluting than in the past, especially now that the 2020 sulfur cap has prevented the use of fuels with more than 0.5% sulfur without exhaust gas treatment.
However, QM2's diesels are relatively old (~18 years from fitment) and lack the above systems, so it will be quite polluting, especially as it will be low loaded with the ship being near deserted.
Those DG's would have been designed to propel the ship as well as power the multiude of engineering systems and tourist facing facilities onboard. These will mostly be shutdown or ticking over so the DG running will be very lightly loaded, which increases emissions significantly. Modern ships often have a small auxiliary diesel for port use but a quick google doesn't suggest this is the case here.
Using a quick 30 second calculation I make it out that she's probably consuming about 600l of diesel an hour to keep things ticking over, possibly less if she's been completely shut down.
TL:DR, shore based infrastructure is badly lacking across most of the world and she's probably kicking out a fair bit of nasty greenhouse gases at present.
Interesting. The QM2's smoke was the most yellowy green colour of all four, the rest looked white
We conkered the werld wiv ships that had sales, wy do we need vese wuns wiv enjins
When you have loads of cars like that to shift around do you need a separate key for each one or is there a 'master' key that will unlock it enough to shift cars around but not drive more than 20kph?