Pretty bold move….

[mikeinca]

Originally Posted by Peter417

To add to that, the climate has never not changed.

Correct, but irrelevant to some degree. It's like saying that people have always died so what's the big deal if you get shot tomorrow in the town square.

Yes, climate change has always occurred, often with devastating effects for the planet, but there was nothing that could be done about it since it was caused by natural phenomena over which life here had no control. Unfortunately, this time the overwhelming scientific evidence is that we are the ones who are in the process of causing a budding climate disaster and the negative effects are now beginning to manifest themselves in major ways.

If your house catches fire, the intelligent response is to try and do something to put it out, not just stand by because well, you know, dry wood has never not burned. Even auto companies like Daimler, Ford, VW, GM and others are coming to that realization.

[Daquenzer]

Originally Posted by TR Anderson

Sometimes doing the right thing for our planet and thereby, for ourselves costs a bit more and is a bit more inconvenient than before.

The vehicle manufacturers will figure out the scale of vehicles, batteries, and reasonable distances on a single charge. A couple years ago I was reading they were already working with recharging with 440 volts in slightly more time than it takes to fill a car with gas.

I'm confident the new power plants will have designed more efficient generators in the coming years and there will be enough energy to power the nation. I've been looking forward to my first EV and will not miss the stops at gas stations every 3 days and $120 synthetic oil changes.

It's what we need to do and we will have the technology to do it efficiently and economically. If only we could stop stringing copper wires from wooden poles like we did 150 years ago, we'd be on to something.

And if I could figure out how to post a reply without having to log back on 3 times.................

But will that happen in 15 years? People continue to compare this to moving from horses to cars. It’s not that simple. With horses there was little to no infrastructure that had to be dismantled or reconfigured. It was a far less complex society. With EV vehicles we are talking massive infrastructure reconfiguring. We are moving from one major complexity to another major complexity.

Here is something very simple: Imagine living in an apartment building with nothing but a parking lot and a few garages. How is an apartment dweller going to charge a car? Do you really think that apartment owner is going to invest the money to charge hundreds of cars? Especially if it is retrofitting. And what if the apartment or neighborhood only has on street parking like many neighborhoods? Retrofitting all these house to charge EV’s is going to be a nightmare.

It all sounds nice on paper and theory.

I looked into putting solar panels on my house. The numbers just don’t work. And there isn’t enough money out there to subsidize making it work.

[mikeinca]

Originally Posted by Daquenzer

But will that happen in 15 years? People continue to compare this to moving from horses to cars. It’s not that simple. With horses there was little to no infrastructure that had to be dismantled or reconfigured. It was a far less complex society. With EV vehicles we are talking massive infrastructure reconfiguring. We are moving from one major complexity to another major complexity.

Here is something very simple: Imagine living in an apartment building with nothing but a parking lot and a few garages. How is an apartment dweller going to charge a car? Do you really think that apartment owner is going to invest the money to charge hundreds of cars? Especially if it is retrofitting. And what if the apartment or neighborhood only has on street parking like many neighborhoods? Retrofitting all these house to charge EV’s is going to be a nightmare.

It all sounds nice on paper and theory.

I looked into putting solar panels on my house. The numbers just don’t work. And there isn’t enough money out there to subsidize making it work.

Little or no infrastructure needed to be reconfigured? What about the thousands upon thousands of miles of roads and highways that needed to be built and maintained. The immense infrastructure required to secure raw materials, build and market cars and maintain them. The infrastructure required to provide fuel for IC engines. The societal cost of air pollution. The reconfiguration required to go from horses to cars was enormous.

Making it possible for everyone to charge an EV will be difficult but it is doable. Facilities for home and public charging will have to be expanded. Employers will have to provide opportunities to charge at work. Improved technology will be need to allow faster charge times and longer range. Our two EV's can already achieve an 80% charge in less than 1/2 an hour on a level 3 DC charger and future EV's will do even better.

It's unfortunate that you can't make the numbers for solar work for you. We have been able to cut monthly energy bills down to 10% of what they were previously and aside from the diesel I put in the truck to tow my AS, I haven't bought fuel in two years. (Well, I do buy a gallon now and then for my garden tools). I figure I'll get a payback on my solar investment in less than ten years plus the satisfaction of reducing my carbon footprint. In addition, solar and batteries keep my house running even when the power grid goes down, which happens all too frequently here, especially during fire season.

[Daquenzer]

Originally Posted by mikeinca

Little or no infrastructure needed to be reconfigured? What about the thousands upon thousands of miles of roads and highways that needed to be built and maintained. The immense infrastructure required to secure raw materials, build and market cars and maintain them. The infrastructure required to provide fuel for IC engines. The societal cost of air pollution. The reconfiguration required to go from horses to cars was enormous.

Making it possible for everyone to charge an EV will be difficult but it is doable. Facilities for home and public charging will have to be expanded. Employers will have to provide opportunities to charge at work. Improved technology will be need to allow faster charge times and longer range. Our two EV's can already achieve an 80% charge in less than 1/2 an hour on a level 3 DC charger and future EV's will do even better.

It's unfortunate that you can't make the numbers for solar work for you. We have been able to cut monthly energy bills down to 10% of what they were previously and aside from the diesel I put in the truck to tow my AS, I haven't bought fuel in two years. (Well, I do buy a gallon now and then for my garden tools). I figure I'll get a payback on my solar investment in less than ten years plus the satisfaction of reducing my carbon footprint. In addition, solar and batteries keep my house running even when the power grid goes down, which happens all too frequently here, especially during fire season.

But it took decades!!! 50 years.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2013/03/06/H...ung-Big-Shift/

The upshot of this article: In the end the demise of horse power and the ascent of the automobile ably illustrated two characteristics of energy transitions: they don’t always solve problems and rarely perform as advertised.

We are talking about a massive shift in 15 years. Not going to happen.

[richard5933]

Again, someone remind me...

How long was the time gap between the Wright Brothers and the Apollo moon landing?

That was a colossal change in technologies - from literally nothing to landing a man on the moon and bringing him home safely.

Surely we got this...

[mikeinca]

Originally Posted by Daquenzer

But it took decades!!! 50 years.

We are talking about a massive shift in 15 years. Not going to happen.

In 1939 the total of all US Armed forces was 334,000. The Army had around 300 tanks and less than 3,000 aircraft. By the end of the war, just six years later, the American armed forces totaled nearly 13 million personnel and American industry had produced over 90,000 tanks and a staggering 300,000 planes. We also took a crazy theory regarding nuclear fission and developed it into the atomic bomb which ended the war with Japan.

The point is, when faced with an existential crises people do what they must do to survive. Doing nothing, just because it's hard, is not an acceptable alternative. The technology exists and can be further developed to deal with this problem, if we have the will. But what we need to do first is to stop pretending there isn't a problem at all.

[Peter417]

Originally Posted by wulfraat

cognitive ability to affect change to a certain degree

I like the comment above about footprint regardless of the choice one makes regarding transportation.

Can we control the weather? Are we sure? In the 60s and 70s we were all going to freeze to death. Then in the 80s and 90s we had global warming. Now that is not panning out we have moved to climate change. The science sure changes a lot.



I have planted an average of 50 trees a year for the last 14 years. Trees make it rain. They prespire hundreds of gallons of water a day. They aslo act as swamp coolers. Shielding the earth from the sun keeps it cooler. Planting trees will definitely cool the earth. I cannot say that going out and buying an EV will cool the earth.



Instead of buying into the narrative let's all go make a real difference. Always think critically. Always think creatively.



Intread of buying a new commuter to drive to work maybe we should be asking employer's why we are driving to work. Maybe we should choose home locations the facilitate riding a bike to work or walking.



Having a pile of cash to trade for a shiny new EV will make you super green. Personally I'm not going for titles or show.

[Tater]

My uneducated guess is that brands and possibly types of vehicles will agree on a standard battery configuration and there will be "stations " where you pull in and change your batteries for fully charged ones and on your way. Motels will add charging stations to attract customers as one stop service.

[uncle_bob]

Originally Posted by markdoane

To make a fair comparison we need to also consider the distance from the source to the point of use.

With the proliferation of wind farms and solar fields, in addition to the general dispersion of existing hydro and coal generation facilities, I think that the distance we need to transport electrons is less than the distance we need to transport dinosaur juice.

Hi

If you get into a "grid" of many dispersed / independent sources, controlling that grid becomes *very* difficult ....

Even controlling a grid with a few sources is not all that easy. My first introduction to the Quebec Hydro lines mentioned earlier was involvement with the very novel for it's day GPS based system they put in.

Bob

[RedSHED]

Originally Posted by uncle_bob

Hi



If you get into a "grid" of many dispersed / independent sources, controlling that grid becomes *very* difficult ....



Even controlling a grid with a few sources is not all that easy. My first introduction to the Quebec Hydro lines mentioned earlier was involvement with the very novel for it's day GPS based system they put in.



Bob

It actually sounds like a really fun problem. White noise tracking a major sine wave on one side, same thing on the other. Treat it as either a math problem or a physics one, either approach should work but the applied math way might make it more scalable.

[mikeinca]

Originally Posted by Peter417

Can we control the weather? Are we sure? In the 60s and 70s we were all going to freeze to death. Then in the 80s and 90s we had global warming. Now that is not panning out we have moved to climate change. The science sure changes a lot.

I have planted an average of 50 trees a year for the last 14 years. Trees make it rain. They prespire hundreds of gallons of water a day. They aslo act as swamp coolers. Shielding the earth from the sun keeps it cooler. Planting trees will definitely cool the earth. I cannot say that going out and buying an EV will cool the earth.

Instead of buying into the narrative let's all go make a real difference. Always think critically. Always think creatively.

Intread of buying a new commuter to drive to work maybe we should be asking employer's why we are driving to work. Maybe we should choose home locations the facilitate riding a bike to work or walking.

Having a pile of cash to trade for a shiny new EV will make you super green. Personally I'm not going for titles or show.

It's not about controlling the weather, per se. It's about the damage done by dumping billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year and the demonstrable negative effects that activity is having. The science isn't changing but it's becoming more refined and predictions are being updated as more facts and real world experience become apparent. Let's not get hung up on labels; global warming is absolutely occurring. It's just that "climate change" more accurately describes the entire range of negative weather effects we are observing.

I completely agree with your "creative solutions" approach. Everything must be on the table, including a transition to EV's. One part of my personal solution is that I run my vehicles on power produced by my own solar array thereby significantly reducing my carbon footprint. That's not for show at all; it's real.

[jcl]

Originally Posted by uncle_bob

Hi

If electricity was cheaper to distribute over very long distances, you would see nothing but power lines all over the place.

The problem is loss in transit. A pipeline takes in X and (usually) puts out X on the other end. An electric power line loses some percentage of the power for every mile of transport. Go far enough and you loose pretty much all of what you started with.

Indeed you can play games with DC power vs AC power. That has it's costs and issues as well. You don't loose the energy quite as fast running DC, but you still dump some for every mile it travels. Hydro Quebec (for instance) runs some DC, but the bulk of what they haul is still very high voltage AC.

Bob

Just getting back to a connected computer, so a short delay.

The discussion re distribution in your example was about 35 friends all wanting to charge up their BEVs, so essentially a charging station. The distribution in question would be a local utility, not a long distance power line. Sure, it is cheaper to distribute energy by tanker over oceans when it we are talking oil, but not many local gas stations are supplied by tankers or pipelines. We are comparing the distribution cost of a local utility, to gasoline and diesel delivered by pipeline and truck to bulk terminals, then by truck to fueling stations.

[jcl]

Originally Posted by Daquenzer

I personally have lots and lots of doubts about an all EV world.
1) The materials to develop lithium batteries is the dirtiest kind of mining and there is a limited supply. How is that going to be handled by the environmentalists? And do we really want to depend upon China for this material like we do now?
2) Batteries become less efficient over time. What is the cost of a new battery, and how are they going to be disposed of?
3) The electric grid. Already California and Texas are having problems. Add in all those EVs….just saying.
4) Are people really going to wait 30 minutes to charge up on the road? in the winter? with crying kids in the car? or some stop with lots of people waiting for the “fast” chargers?
5) And how is -20 going to effect the battery in Wisconsin? or another northern state?
6) And who is going to fix all these new vehicles? program them? etc.

I am sure someone smarter than me is working on these problems. At least I hope so.

Lots of research going on in how to source lithium. Seawater is one area.

One of the likely places to reuse high mileage vehicle batteries will be in distributed storage, eg a home with a solar installation. Tired vehicle batteries work well there. We should also expect to see batteryrecycling expanded. They need some EV batteries to wear out before they can spend much money on that. The loudest concerns about this issue seem to be coming from the fossil fuel industry.

Grids such as the one in Texas have big problems without EVs. Perhaps the growth in BEVs will prompt reform of the current utility regulations. Interconnected grids would be a good place to start. I think we also have to consider more distributed generation, as another poster mentioned.

We wait 30 minutes to charge from time to time. That is charging time; we have never waited to access a charger. The car knows how many charging bays are open at each Supercharger on our route, so we haven't yet been surprised to find all bays occupied. On a long trip, we tend to stop more frequently, and do shorter charges. The chargers deliver the maximum charging rate at the beginning, and tail off as the battery gets closer to fully charged. There is less total waiting time with more frequent but faster charges. On our trip this past weekend, we topped off at serveral Tesla V3 Superchargers. At the last one, we saw 247 kw, which is the highest we have seen so far. The vehicle knew our home destination, and suggested we leave after 6 minutes, as that was all we needed to get home. We weren't ready, so left it on for 12 minutes or so.

Last winter, -20 C was fine for us. We preconditioned the vehicle (while plugged in) so the cabin and batteries were heated for our departure at 6 am. Yes, range is reduced, but it didn't significantly impact our trip.

So far, all our servicing has been done by the manufacturer's reps. It has been minimal. There isn't really any regular servicing. My family has had an independent automotive repair garage for years. They won't be seeing any business from the new BEVs. All of the programming has been done over the air, automatically. The team that does that is located somewhere, I don't know where.

I think lots of people are working on these and other issues. I keep getting surprised by their progress, not their lack of progress.

[jcl]

Originally Posted by Peter417

There has never been a full scope environmental impact of a car that I know of. In a world economy based on growth, what Government or Business would want to know the answer to that study? Most companies have chosen to go the planned obsolescence route.



A modern car is made up of a lot plastic and non recyclable materials. It's a good thing it is cheap to bury all our trash in the ground.

Here is some background info recently published. It looks at the lifetime environmental impact of vehicles using various modes of propulsion, considering manufacturing and power generation differences by country.

https://theicct.org/publications/glo...r-cars-jul2021

The relatively high emissions of older vehicles is why we have "cash for clunkers" programs that pay people to take an older vehicle off the road. It isn't always better to keep running an older vehicle, even if it is reliable.

[Jim & Susan]

These EV threads have replaced the Tow Vehicle threads for the amount of passion it generates from people on both sides of the issue. They're fun, weird and misinformed all at the same time----ok, on ALL sides of the issue.

So, here's my solution, lets get the Mods to create a new sub-forum under the Tow Vehicle forum. We can call it "POWERED BY DREAMS, WISHES AND UNICORN FARTS". That way I can put an ignore tag on it so I won't be drawn to this train wreck every time somebody decides to re-hash the issue.

Y'all do know that Elon's best ideas are actually powered by Ganja, right? Like, where is that battery he was going to build for every house on the planet, Dude? Where's my munchies, man? Maybe he ran out of Lithium? Or was that Di-Lithium. I get confused these days.

Jim

[jcl]

Originally Posted by Daquenzer

But will that happen in 15 years? People continue to compare this to moving from horses to cars. It’s not that simple. With horses there was little to no infrastructure that had to be dismantled or reconfigured. It was a far less complex society. With EV vehicles we are talking massive infrastructure reconfiguring. We are moving from one major complexity to another major complexity.

Where did all the stables go? The blacksmiths? And you couldn’t go on a trip with a newfangled automobile until there was gasoline available along your route.

Fully agree we live in a more complex society today. But also one with far more in the way of capability and capacity to deal with change.

Originally Posted by Daquenzer

Here is something very simple: Imagine living in an apartment building with nothing but a parking lot and a few garages. How is an apartment dweller going to charge a car? Do you really think that apartment owner is going to invest the money to charge hundreds of cars? Especially if it is retrofitting. And what if the apartment or neighborhood only has on street parking like many neighborhoods? Retrofitting all these house to charge EV’s is going to be a nightmare.

It all sounds nice on paper and theory.

I looked into putting solar panels on my house. The numbers just don’t work. And there isn’t enough money out there to subsidize making it work.

We live in a strata condo, so not a landlord situation but there are some parallels. It took us a year to get an AGM vote organized and achieve a 75% vote of owners. We are almost finished installing 154 new charge points, one for each strata owner, in between each two parking stalls. That will be a 40 amp outlet, then any who want them will have a 6.6 kw level 2 charger (vehicle connection) installed, at their own expense. The strata (us owners) paid for all the cabling, transformers, and installation. Those that didn’t want one still voted for it. If we don’t have chargers, our property values take a hit relative to other buildings, and people here are heavily invested in their property values.

We didn’t put in guest chargers, but the city has installed two public fast chargers on the street, 50 m from our building.

We can’t do solar. Two friends with Model 3s here did. We are on the 49th parallel, and are famous for our west coast rainforest climate. It still pays.

[jcl]

Those interested in distributed power generation may not have seen details of Tesla’s Virtual Power Plant. Interesting concept.

https://electrek.co/2021/07/22/tesla...-compensation/

[Ginophiles]

Originally Posted by Jim & Susan

Y'all do know that Elon's best ideas are actually powered by Ganja, right? Like, where is that battery he was going to build for every house on the planet, Dude? Where's my munchies, man? Maybe he ran out of Lithium? Or was that Di-Lithium. I get confused these days.

Jim

We own a Model 3, in addition to a big ass RAM Diesel truck, and are NOT Elon fan boys...However, up until a few years ago, if America wanted to send people to the ISS (space station) that we helped build, we had to rent seats from the Russkies. Space X developed reusable launch vehicles built in, and with, almost entirely American made parts. Not a bad idea, weed or not.

Tesla walls (batteries) are currently available for homes, though they are pricy, but then so were flat screen TVs many years ago. An idea still developing.

Tesla went from a niche roadster for Hollywood elites to a Model 3 that just blends in with every other sedan on the road. They're not for all people in all situations yet, but if it works, it's a nice fun car that's a kick in the pants to drive. Elon made EV mainstream, not some clown-car looking thing that screamed "I'm Greener!!". Full discloser, as a contractor I installed 30 panels on my shop myself and we live in NorCal, so sun isn't an issue but $4 a gallon gas is, or isn't as the case may be.

Not saying the guy isn't nutty.

But I do love the "rotary dial phone" gang that comes out on discussions like this. I always picture them sweeping their 8-track collection off the desk so they can really pound the keyboard about the latest tech innovation that's going to ruin society.

And yes, Safety 3rd my friend!!

[Bobbo]

Originally Posted by jcl

Where did all the stables go? The blacksmiths? And you couldn’t go on a trip with a newfangled automobile until there was gasoline available along your route.

But we also didn't have governments banning the purchase of new horses before that infrastructure was in place.

I have no problem with the shift to BEV, but let the marketplace bring it about. Not government bans. People need their personal infrastructure to be able to support a BEV before they buy one. Not everyone's does. Yet.

[Daquenzer]

Originally Posted by mikeinca

In 1939 the total of all US Armed forces was 334,000. The Army had around 300 tanks and less than 3,000 aircraft. By the end of the war, just six years later, the American armed forces totaled nearly 13 million personnel and American industry had produced over 90,000 tanks and a staggering 300,000 planes. We also took a crazy theory regarding nuclear fission and developed it into the atomic bomb which ended the war with Japan.

The point is, when faced with an existential crises people do what they must do to survive. Doing nothing, just because it's hard, is not an acceptable alternative. The technology exists and can be further developed to deal with this problem, if we have the will. But what we need to do first is to stop pretending there isn't a problem at all.

Existential crisis? You compare climate change to WW2? You have to convince an awful lot of people. That will definitely take more than 15 years.