I like my diesel car, sorry Tesla
The Problem with Electric Vehicles
31–40 of 205 posts
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#32The major concern from my perspective is how ecologically damaging battery production is. That said I'd still choose it over fossil fuels. Fossil fuels pollution is uncontainable, spewing out into our atmosphere, while the pollution from rare earth extraction is largely localised.
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#33This is not the type of in depth though that I expect from this author, whom I usually find to be brilliant. These are first-level concerns of somebody who just realized electric cars exist and is looking for the "problems", however in practice most of these are mitigated by tech curves, and the true problems are going to be far different.
What are the true problems?
I find Jacques' concerns to be well thought out, showing that he has actually dug into the numbers. However, I'm interested to know what you see are even more significant problems.
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#34This is not the type of in depth though that I expect from this author, whom I usually find to be brilliant. These are first-level concerns of somebody who just realized electric cars exist and is looking for the "problems", however in practice most of these are mitigated by tech curves, and the true problems are going to be far different.
Until you handle the first level concerns, you don't get to the second...
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#35This 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.
Chevy Volt goes a step further and has the gas powered engine hooked up to the wheels. I prefer the approach taken by the BMW i3 where the (optional) gas powered range-extender is purely used to generate electricity, but there's room for both in the transition period and PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) seems like it might be an important market segment.
The Chevy Volt and BMW i3 are identical in the regard of the function of their petrol engine. The Volt is using Chevy's Voltec drivetrain, so there's no way for the engine to put power to the wheels except through charging the battery - the same as the i3.
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#36I 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.
I can't find the paper, but the US DOE has a report from 10 years ago that ~77%~ 84% of light vehicles (cars) can be moved to the electric grid using existing generation resources. Consider that wind and solar installations are accelerating (and that wind is so cheap in parts of Texas, its free at night!) and I can assure you, there is no electrical grid burden. EDIT: Citation http://www.world-nuclear.org/information…
Not sure why you are downvoted, but 77% of light vehicles does not equate to 77% of total consumption. 77% of the light vehicles are likely exactly that 77% that is used rarely, it's just the Pareto principle at work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle , the bulk of the consumption will be done by a relatively small number of consumers. And so a very large number of those consumers could be converted to electricity without much impact on the grid or generating capacity but that would not be a huge impact on total consumption of fossil fuels.
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#37This is a bunch of fallacies that have been brought up again and again and have been addressed.
The biggest canard is "If everybody switched to EVs tomorrow our power grid couldn't handle!"
Yes and if everyone went outside right now and pooped in the street we'd all drown in shit. Neither scenario is actually going to happen.
The reality is that EVs are far, far more efficient than ICE vehicles. Not only that, they don't create all the secondary waste products like used engine oil, coolant, etc. LiOn batteries are highly recyclable.
Adoption of EVs has been and will continue to be gradual, and our power grid will continue to expand to handle the load.
Just as a personal anecdote, I currently have a Nissan LEAF and when we got it we expected our power usage to jump dramatically. It did not. But our savings on fuel (not to mention maintenance) did jump. Even with current cheap gas prices, it's still way cheaper to drive the LEAF than our 30mpg CR-V.
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chevy Volt goes a step further and has the gas powered engine hooked up to the wheels. I prefer the approach taken by the BMW i3 where the (optional) gas powered range-extender is purely used to generate electricity, but there's room for both in the transition period and PHEV (plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) seems like it might be an important market segment.
The Chevy Volt and BMW i3 are identical in the regard of the function of their petrol engine. The Volt is using Chevy's Voltec drivetrain, so there's no way for the engine to put power to the wheels except through charging the battery - the same as the i3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GM_Voltec_powertrain
"When the engine is running it may be periodically mechanically linked (by a clutch) to a planetary gear set, and hence the output drive axle, to improve energy efficiency."
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#39These are relatively minor problems however. The gas station problem for example is solved by charging your car at home or work. Gas stations exist because we can't refuel our cars at home.
What about people who park curbside? Will their cars be spending 2 hours/night at the charging station?
Re: The Problem with Electric Vehicles
#40All this shit we've been working on and actively can improve? Shiiiiiet, I guess we might as well not do it and use gas until it runs out, right?