Dr. Andy Palmer

My apprenticeship gave me some of the best days of my life & equipped me with the skills needed to lead businesses at the forefront of the auto industry. For employers & employees alike, apprenticeships add huge value. Find out more in this film with @TheTimes & @BizSupportGovUK.

@MikeysTimeout @Muzzoom_Models @GarethDeanPR @_JRE5_ @tiff_tv Valkyrie?

@Muzzoom_Models @GarethDeanPR @_JRE5_ @AndyatAuto @tiff_tv Nothing that any of the f1 teams have engineered in the past 15 years has trickled down into road cars.

Good! Let them wander off to wherever and leave us to create an entertaining racing series with maybe three of four engineering companies offering synthetic fuel V8s and get back to RACING. Yes, big budgets would disappear but is that such a bad thing ...

@_JRE5_ @tiff_tv They think of F1 as a marketing and brand platform that has some relevance to what they sell. F1 without Ferrari, isn’t F1

@AndyatAuto @tiff_tv Do they still consider f1 to be the evolution for road cars? I would have thought series like WEC are much more suited to transforming the technology to road cars

@clean_energyHZ @patrickjreddy @SMMT Simply not true because you don’t factor BESS and BEV into the equation. I’ve no issue with nuclear being part of the mix

@patrickjreddy @AndyatAuto @SMMT Evening peaks crush that theory. Solar is useless at 6 PM. Without nuclear baseload, this EV growth simply shifts fossil dependence to gas.

The @SMMT results for April U.K. car sales are in and break new records. BEV uptake reached a record 26.2% share of registrations in the month. Year to date, BEVs comprise 23.1% of the overall new car market, short of the 33% target but well ahead of the mandate once allowances made for hybrids, etc. April also saw the two millionth battery electric car registered (2,012,758), following bumper growth of 59.1% compared with last year. Consumers are reacting to petrol price hikes and the desire for alternative energy sources.

@clean_energyHZ @SMMT Recommend you check your facts

@AndyatAuto @SMMT Bravo. 59% growth. 👏👏 Yet this fleet requires baseload. Without nuclear, EVs simply shift fossil dependence from pumps to plants.

I hear what you’re saying; I profoundly believe that you don’t need a classical degree to be in a “profession” or a “trade”. I can’t speak for journalism, but I can say that some of the smartest engineers I know started out as 16year-old apprentices - some became professional engineers other brilliant tool room tradesmen plying their immense learned skills. I applaud what you did to create journalists from non-graduates- but I’d suggest that what is important was and is their results, rather than their luck or otherwise on their options for early education. A significant proportion of our society don’t have the choice of going to university. In my experience, we lose a significant talent pool as a result. Therefore it’s really important that we value alternative paths, for example apprenticeships, with equal prestige of a degree path to either a trade or “so called” profession. James Watt, George Stevenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Henry Maudslay, Michael Faraday, Richard Trevithick, Sir Mike Rake, Sir John Parker, etc all started without the benefit of a first degree; but where would we be today without their contribution.

At The Sunday Times I inherited a journalist training course for graduates. I kept that. And added a journalist training course for non-graduates. They became just as good journalists. We’re not a profession. We’re a trade. The best learning is by doing under experienced supervision.

@ListerLawrence @nathani3ldani3l @ListerCars The tail lights were interesting inspired from the Vulcan

And the competition winner is @nathani3ldani3l - most people said “Speedster” but Nathan correctly said “Volante” and was picked at random to win some @ListerCars goodies. Well done and thank you to all the other correct answers. 🥳

@ListerLawrence On my watch - Zag (Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato)

Name this car & retweet to be in with a chance to get some Lister goodies from me in the post. Winner chosen at random and extra points for accuracy. #competition

@ClaireCoutinho @cicero6666 I support nuclear energy as an integral part of our energy generation mix. I do not support short cuts to its safety. If you’d sat down-wind to Fukushima as I did; witnesses the TEPCO lies and the years of clean-up, you might also agree with me!

Natural England is out of control. Nuclear is the most land dense clean energy using up to 3000 times LESS land than solar and wind. Nuclear is much better for habitats and the environment and yet our environment regs are blocking our ability to build it. Madness.

A minor inconvenience for the sake of our health The requirement you’re referring to comes from the EU Single-Use Plastics Directive. There are two main justifications behind it: environmental/technical, and health-related. 1) Technical justification a) Caps are disproportionately common litter. Bottle caps are among the most frequently found plastic items in beach clean-ups. b) Preventing microplastics. Loose caps degrade into microplastics, contributing to pollution in oceans and soils. Keeping cap + bottle together reduces fragmentation pathways. 2) Medical / health-related arguments a) Reduced human exposure to microplastics. Microplastics are now found in water, food, and even human tissues. By reducing environmental plastic fragmentation, the policy aims to limit long-term exposure risks. So yes, the tether is a bit inconvenient, but unless you’re a litter lout or think ingesting micro-plastics is harmless, then I’d suggest the inconvenience is a small price to pay!

@DuncanJTerry They’ve made all our lives just a little bit worse, for no reason at all.

Stupid EU bottle cap just spilt orange juice on me. Lots of OJ in the lid, gets you before you can even rip the bastard thing off.

I understand your point but as a reminder ~145 countries → net-zero agreement 70+ countries → ICE phase-out targets announced ~30 (roughly) → have actual enforceable legislation tied to these goals The UK Conservative Govt at the time, with the full support of the OEMs tried to advance adoption in-order to bring the U.K. a technological advantage. This advantage has of course now been ceded to the Chinese OEM just at the moment where market demand exceeds legislative quotas.

@AndyatAuto @zatzi ...Government attempting to mandate outcomes in areas of social behaviour & individual purchasing decisions, that were previously free will, is a perverse approach in a classically liberal democratic system. That'd be true in prosperous times, otherwise, it's self-destructive 2/2

The nut zero mob just want us to be miserable and poor don’t they? “The sale of traditional tumble dryers is to be stamped out in a net-zero drive that will push consumers toward more expensive machines that take longer to dry clothes.”

@joncoop194 @zatzi Wherever Govt and Industry chooses to invest. Certainly the UK leads the world in terms of battery control.

@AndyatAuto @zatzi Not beholden to foreign powers , where are your beloved batteries,solar panels & most components for wind turbines produced.

News about Renault sales in U.K. for April - Renault said electric vehicles made up “almost 50%” of its UK sales in April. The same source also says EV enquiries jumped about 42% SMMT results for the industry as a whole will be out on Tuesday. As predicted, expect a big jump in EV interest; EV sales funnel closely correlates with gasoline price.

Brent crude rose hits $126 (£94) a barrel. As this translates through to pricing at the pumps, expect a huge surge in demand for EV’s Resilience comes from multiple sources of power generation and this messages now starts to be loud and clear as it was back in the 80’s with the move to more economical engines and the rise of the Japanese OEM’s. This time, the winners will be those who invested early in EV.

EV lease orders surge in U.K. as oil hits $100 / barrel. $120 could mean as high as £1.85/litre in a crisis scenario at the pump and that correlates to R2=0.85 to EV adoption. Let’s hope not, but a prolonged period of crisis in Iran will accelerate EV adoption at a moment where the majority of that supply will be absorbed by Chinese manufacturers- this would be a crying shame for European OEMs (who aren’t ready) given this moment was always when not if. I know the bots and EV haters will jump in, but this is just maths about a crisis of supply that should never have existed! Expanding the sources of energy to avoid a monopoly of fossil fuel is ultimately the only legitimate answer to this cyclical problem.

@Electroversenet Wow so many untruths woven into one tweet- impressive. You’re going to love the U.K. EV sales results for April 😉

Electric cars are sold as clean. Yes, EVs cut tailpipe pollution, but if the goal is CO2 reduction, the full chain tells a different story. The production of an EV requires more mining, refining, battery production and power generation over a standard petrol or diesel car. Battery minerals are dug up and processed elsewhere. Air, water, soil and workers take the hit. Across the full chain, EVs cut CO2 by only 20%. But on top of that, batteries degrade. Over an EV's life, one battery replacement will collapse any CO2 advantage. EVs also add major electricity demand. They do not erase the old energy system. They load more pressure onto it. So this is not zero emissions. If you want to charge your EV at night or when the wind isn't blowing, then it will be 100% fossil fuel powering that. EVs are not green. They are virtue signaling on wheels.

Firstly the image is of a copper mine! Secondly almost all BESS (battery energy storage) uses LFP chemistry which doesn’t contain Cobalt. LFP is also increasingly transplanting NMC chemistry in transport. You’ll also see an increase in Na-Ion, salt, which is a waste product of desalination. Be critical by all means, but I’d suggest fact checking before commenting

From an ignorant old Civil Engineer - here is a picture of a cobalt mine in the Congo. Every bit is excavated, moved and processed using fossil fueled powered equipment. The hypocrisy of the renewable energy clowns & grifters now praising battery storage - is alarming.

@MrJamesMay I think it’s Spruce but could be Pine 😉

Here’s a slightly wanky view of my new woodworking project. A free packet of screws to the first person to guess what it is.