21–30 of 205 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Electric cars are actually more or less a natural sink for wind energy and solar because they add storage capacity to the grid, something it currently does not have.
Tesla is offering free electricity to Tesla owners in a Scandinavian country under this idea (excess energy is soaked up by the electric vehicles).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tesla is offering free electricity to Tesla owners in a Scandinavian country under this idea (excess energy is soaked up by the electric vehicles).
Scandinavian countries are the exception (and Canada could be) because of the amount of hydropower they produce.
"A Texas Utility Offers a Nighttime Special: Free Electricity"
"The women are just three of the thousands of TXU Energy customers who are at the vanguard of a bold attempt by the utility to change how people consume energy. TXU’s free overnight plan, which is coupled with slightly higher daytime rates, is one of dozens that have been offered by more than 50 retail electricity companies in Texas over the last three years with a simple goal: for customers to turn down the dials when wholesale prices are highest and turn them back up when prices are lowest.
It is possible because Texas has more wind power than any other state, accounting for roughly 10 percent of the state’s generation. Alone among the 48 contiguous states, Texas runs its own electricity grid that barely connects to the rest of the country, so the abundance of nightly wind power generated here must be consumed here."
- switching all cars to electrical would increase the total electricity consumption by 20%, while currently we export about 10% of our production. All the changes are going to happen over a timeframe of more than 20 years, because that is how long it takes to replace the cars at minimum, a long time to make any necessary adjustments to the grid.
- in general, electrical cars should be rather beneficial to the grid. There is no reason to charge them at dinner time. Electrical cars have timers and current control, it is very easy to have them charge at times where the grid is underloaded. Many power companies have rebates at night anyway to get rid of excess electricity. (Assuming a car with a reasonably sized battery, like the Model 3)
- long term, the speed of charging could be controlled remotely by the power company (for a rebate) so they could use this further to stabilize the grid.
- The Model X is available with a tow hitch, and it seems that the Model 3 might have one too (Elon tweeted something to that extend)
- Most Tesla owners seem to be happy with the combination of range and the Supercharger network, and the range is going to improve by about 5% per year.
This was why I thought the Chevy Volt had the right idea; having a gas-tank there as a backup, but depend on electricity 95% of the time. But, in my opinion, the best thing to do is to move to a big city and use the trains, or campaign for a good train system in your city, which obviously can't work for everyone.
— available end-to-end (no waiting for the train and changing lines) — allowing for some privacy (in a car, I am always in good company; not so much in trains) — protect from the elements (riding a bike uphill in cold rain is less than pleasant)
Trains, buses and bicycles are quite inferior options in this regard. Only Uber provides a tolerable alternative (but owning a car is still way cheaper).
So we're down to a irregular usage of vehicles, like car rental, car sharing or uber, all of which need to be flexible. EVs are not the right thing.
The only useful EV usage I can come up with is for commercial usages in pre-defined distances/routes. E.g. last mile delivery operated in a pool that justify setting up a central maintenance location, battery chargers/or swapping systems and more or less fixed usage time (=> loading batteries/servicing cars during the night or via spare cars)
2 is a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Replacing batteries is something Tesla played with for a while but ultimately abandoned. Super Chargers charge a car in far less than an hour. There are probably other interesting solutions out there. These are all fixes for problem 4 as well.
Problem 3 and 5 seem like the same problem - we need to build more infrastructure as we build more cars.
6 is a non-issue for many people. I drive 15km to work every day, and then 15km home. I'd be happy with a car with a 100 mile range, to be honest.
7 is an interesting one, because most gas cars actually don't allow you to tow a trailer. My Honda Fit stated in the manual that towing a trailer would void all warranties. My Hyundai Sonata says "Towing with this vehicle is not recommended." Lots of larger cars that you think would be able to tow something can't, usually due to undersized cooling for the automatic transmission. Also, adding a trailer to an EV will hurt the range, but adding a trailer to a gas powered car hurts the range too; you just don't care because it's easy to refuel more frequently. See problems 2 and 4.
Problem 8: Service. Yeah. Xerox said they had nothing to worry about when it came to Japanese companies producing cheaper photocopiers, because none of them could match Xerox's humongous service infrastructure. You couldn't get a Canon tech down to your company to fix your Canon photocopier. Who makes your photocopier?
And problem 9 seems like a non-issue to me.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
$5000 of solar panels in the office parking lot and you get almost 0 draw from the grid for the commute. I guess that doesn't compare favorably to $600 (~200*$3) per year for fuel, but it isn't real far out either.
Gas is $2 right?
I would certainly factor the different cost structures in if I was doing the calculation for real (gas could be $4 in a couple years, who knows).
I think this guy over estimates how much burden electric cars will put on the grid. For a round trip of 20 miles to work and an efficiency of 200 Watt-hours per mile, you get 8kWh which can be charged slowly at 1kW over 8 hours. Think of that in comparison to air conditioning or electric dryers.