The problem is that the people in California who bought them with the intention of lowering their emissions were duped. I really want to get an electric car, but the range is an issue. A hybrid doesn't get me off petroleum products. The bill of goods VW sold the public on their diesels having lower emissions didn't just bite them in the butt, a lot of people were disappointed that their "lower emissions vehicle" was just a lie.Originally Posted by slgrieb
When you're left out of the club, you know it. When you're in the club, you don't see what the problem is.
I am Green-Eyed.
Remember electric is ultimately powered mostly by fossil fuel (1/3 coal, 1/3 natural gas). Better start petitioning your representatives to push for nuclear or you will never be entirely off fossil fuel.
No, I have solar panels on my roof, it will be powered for free by the sun.
There's not a lot of coal here in California. There aren't any coal mines, it would have to be brought in by rail or truck. And that wind farm about 25 miles away in Rio Vista I'm sure provides a lot of the power for my area. So while your statement may be true for some areas of the nation, it's not true everywhere.
When you're left out of the club, you know it. When you're in the club, you don't see what the problem is.
I am Green-Eyed.
Not at night...
...and it's not free, you paid for those panels and the running cost is the amount that you would otherwise gain from selling to the grid.
Don't forget electricity goes through massive interconnects. The surplus (if any) gets sold to other parts of the country and the excess demand gets covered from other sources.
And the total generation only covers 2/3 of the usage, so 1/3 is "imported".
And 60% of those 2/3 comes from burning gas.
Good plan GreenEyed! Someday we will look back at our petroleum based vehicles and laugh. The change will not happen overnight but it will happen. There will be steps in the transition so your electric car is not necessarily the final answer. And if it is, the source of energy is bound to change. Regardless, I like the fact that you are part of change. The status quo is certainly not the answer.
Tomorrow, the sun will shine onto the earth.
Huh? I assume CeeBee will disagree with most if not all of what I said. I just wanted to toss something in that would require him to be a bit creative in his disagreement.
Likely not during our life. Big trucks can't be powered by electricity unless they move to a model with swappable batteries and instead of fueling you just swap the batteries in 10 minutes instead of wasting 2h to recharge.
The biggest issue is that we don't have the infrastructure to replace petroleum by electricity.
US used 143 billion gallons of gasoline in 2016. Each gallon takes some 10kWh of electricity to replace, so 1.4bil MWh to replace the gasoline usage. The 2016 production was 4bil MWh - so you need to increase the generation by 35%. Once you add the road diesel use in the mix you are looking at 50% extra demand.
Also consider that for residential use it means doubling the load. The grid can barely keep up with supplying electricity during hot summer days, imagine additional load with each car drawing more than a big AC unit.
Most of this extra load will be at night, so solar is out. That leaves coal (meh dirty), gas (limited resources) and nuclear (environuts glowing green of anger). Tapping *all* rivers for hydro can only cover 12% of the current consumption and most of the worthy rivers are already being used. Wind has some potential but environuts cry about stupid birds being chopped and you need the weather to cooperate. In the end, without massive investment in nuclear power and muzzling the crybabies there will *NEVER* be a complete switch to electric. There simply isn't enough power available.
Clouds and rain here so solar is out.
Apparently, you have not heard of this technology known as batteries. It's basically an energy storage unit. Think of it like a box, not unlike the battery in your car that provides power to the starter to crank over all 8 cylinders in your engine.
The cost is hardly anything. I got a loan, no money up front from the HERO program. The loan is a lien on the house by way of my property taxes, which are deductible according to IRS rules. I basically get it all back.
This makes little difference to me as I'm not concerned about the masses of other people/industry and what they do or do not do to get off dirty fuel. I can only worry about my own footprint.
Or do you just enjoy playing devil's advocate? If renewable energy isn't a viable option in your area, it's not a viable option. Many types of renewable energy are possibilities in my area so I do what little I can. Because it's totally cost effective for me. Sorry you don't live in an area that's as sunny as it is here. After too many years of that though, we call it a drought and we have to eat that shit sandwich. So I might as well at least pay for the AC with all that sunshine.
When you're left out of the club, you know it. When you're in the club, you don't see what the problem is.
I am Green-Eyed.
It boils down to cost. Batteries have a life and cost money; in addition virtually all battery technologies are *extremely dirty*, just take a look what extracting/reprocessing lithium does to the environment.
$100/kWh is still a dream for lithium batteries and they last some 1000 cycles - that gives you a cost of $0.10/kWh to begin, but when you start factoring in the charge/conversion efficiency it's more like $0.12/kWh - much higher than grid generation rates and therefore not viable.
Storage technologies are only viable where the demand is low and there is no alternative.
Update, two years and four months in I finally had my first repair on the black beast. Passenger side would only blow cold air even when heat was on. Replaced the blend door actuator, cost of 20 bucks and 45 minutes of my team and she's like brand new again.
I'm a couple hundred miles away from passing 150,000 miles. I did replace the downpipes about two months ago to give it more low end power. It's definitely a bit quicker off the line and the turbos sounds a bit louder now. The end result of that is because of the cool noises, I'm a bit heavier on the right foot now and getting about 2 miles less to the gallon since the install.
Also had to put new tires on it, ended up getting 45K out of the ones that came with the car.
One more thing about batteries... the supplies of Lithium are finite.
Any limited commodity in demand will experience a sharp increase in price, to the point where it may have no financial advantage over alternatives.
The only clean way of producing energy 24/7/365 at a reasonable cost is nuclear. There is no way around it. NONE.
Windmills and solar won't be able to power the world with the required availability. Just look what happens when the power goes off for 1h...
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote