141–150 of 175 posts
I'm all for electric vehicles, but there are a few things that have bothered me about its mass adoption. Right now, electrics comprise a tiny part of the automobile market share. Yet Tesla is already running into supply issues, particularly with lithium as there are only 3 companies in the world that do industrial-scale lithium mining, that too in a handful of mines around the world. Secondly, I suppose we're current…
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This is a real problem and a real concern. An EV essentially is a car with a very expensive fuel tank (the battery), made out of specific materials and properties. While it is efficient in energy use and can make use of fungible electricity, lithium is rare, limited to specific areas of concentration, and can (as any material) only be partially recycled. There's lithium elsewhere on Earth, or more precisely, in seawa…
The saudi oil minister said that if everyone in the world had as many cars as the US, then they wouldn't have enough oil. So that's a very aggressive yardstick you're setting for EVs. It would be much more sensible to electrify the cars/busses/trucks/delivery vans that are driven a lot, that are driven in stop-start traffic, and that are driven in heavily populated areas first. That gives you much more bang-per-buck…
Pointing out which specific subcases remain impossible doesn't disprove the larger case.
There's a good question as to how scalable EV's are generally. Present scale is minuscule. A small feaction of a percent in the US, and that actually fell in 2015. I'm not sure what 2016 and future trends (based on pre-orders) look like.
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This is a real problem and a real concern. An EV essentially is a car with a very expensive fuel tank (the battery), made out of specific materials and properties. While it is efficient in energy use and can make use of fungible electricity, lithium is rare, limited to specific areas of concentration, and can (as any material) only be partially recycled. There's lithium elsewhere on Earth, or more precisely, in seawa…
The saudi oil minister said that if everyone in the world had as many cars as the US, then they wouldn't have enough oil. So that's a very aggressive yardstick you're setting for EVs. It would be much more sensible to electrify the cars/busses/trucks/delivery vans that are driven a lot, that are driven in stop-start traffic, and that are driven in heavily populated areas first. That gives you much more bang-per-buck…
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Most hydrogen-powered cars are electric cars. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle (listing upcoming hydrogen vehicles, all using fuel cells). And that's actually the point of switching cars to electricity: we have many sustainable ways of making electricity, and zero ways of sustainably making gasoline. Get cars running on electricity, then continue building out the infrastructure.
>zero ways of sustainably making gasoline This is untrue, actually. You can depolymerise virtually anything carbon-based into oil. It's currently more expensive than digging it out of the ground, but we'll never run out of oil. What's more, assuming the carbon in the feed stock originally came from the atmosphere, burning the resulting product is carbon-neutral. Something to think about, given the unbeatable energy d…
The reality here in second-tier Chinese cities is that most people already get around, if not always then at least often, by electric vehicle. They've either never had cars, have bought cars but have problems parking them or getting anywhere due to traffic (many cities were not designed for cars, and now have millions of them clogging every available space on and off the road network), or just jump on the back of bla…
It was quite an shock for me to go back to Paris and realize how much my neighborhood is polluted by toxic fumes and deafening engine back-fire.
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You're talking about a $60k+ (realistically probably more like $80k) vehicle. Aluminum body panels for luxury cars in that class have long been similarly priced. If you bought an all aluminum Audi A8 in 1999 for a similar price, you'd be in a similar situation. If you balk at that kind of repair bill, you shouldn't be considering a car in that price range. Your comparison of the used Ferrari hood is hardly applicable…
> In reality, Tesla is doing you a favor by making their body panels so expensive because that means it's easier for your car to get declared a total write off in an accident and you can get a new car I think the chance of getting new value for your totalled car is pretty slim, unless it was written off in the first year or you're paying extra for GAP insurance. My car got written off by an insurance company last yea…
As for being green; when you write off a car it's not like it just gets buried in the ground whole. It gets parted out and the parts all get sold. It's actually quite green. :P
Your insurance will give you replacement value for the car that was destroyed. No that's not original MSRP but it's what the destroyed car is worth. If you're really intent on repairing it, you usually use that money to buy the written off car from whoever the insurance company ends up selling it to (usually whatever mechanic or storage place the totaled vehicle is physically located) and then pay to have it repaired. If the total of that procedure is higher than what the insurance company gave you, then it's a bad idea to do that. :)
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>zero ways of sustainably making gasoline This is untrue, actually. You can depolymerise virtually anything carbon-based into oil. It's currently more expensive than digging it out of the ground, but we'll never run out of oil. What's more, assuming the carbon in the feed stock originally came from the atmosphere, burning the resulting product is carbon-neutral. Something to think about, given the unbeatable energy d…
This is where we should be heading IMHO. Synthetic petroleum fuels that are carbon-neutral. This lets us keep using the existing infrastructure for transporting and retail sale of fuel, lets people keep using their current cars to maximize that value. Saves the absolutely massive investment that would be necessary to upgrade electical generation and delivery infrastructure to power a large fleet of EVs.
First, the idea that it is carbon neutral is absurdly wrong. If you're pulling the carbon out of anywhere but the atmosphere (and you are), then it's no more carbon neutral than pumping oil out of the ground and burning that.
Second, it's hugely inefficient. If you're manufacturing fully synthetic petroleum, then that synthetic petroleum is acting like an energy storage medium, a liquid battery, rather than as a true fuel (a source where you're getting more energy out than you put in.)
Any kind of battery source which has to be physically moved around via other sources of transportation is hugely inefficient compared to EVs with actual batteries where the energy merely has to be sent down transmission lines and the like. The losses involved in moving electricity around are far, far less than moving synthetic petroleum or hydrogen or any other "pseudo battery".
Lastly, internal combustion engines are extremely inefficient themselves, especially compared with electric motors. They require tremendous upkeep and have energy losses that are three times that of EVs. So even if you could make the claim (which you can't) that your synthetic petroleum energy storage medium is 100% as efficient as moving power around, the ICE is going to result in needing to use up 3x as much energy to move your vehicle from Point A to Point B compared to an EV.
Synthetic petroleum is a really, really bad idea and should not be pursued.
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This is a real problem and a real concern. An EV essentially is a car with a very expensive fuel tank (the battery), made out of specific materials and properties. While it is efficient in energy use and can make use of fungible electricity, lithium is rare, limited to specific areas of concentration, and can (as any material) only be partially recycled. There's lithium elsewhere on Earth, or more precisely, in seawa…
> arguably the ultimate definition of cost is energy requirements No, it's not. The ultimate causes for costs are human labor and taxes (including similar concepts like rent or license fees) – everything else derives from that. You're not paying the Sun for its energy output, but the workers that mine the materials, process them, and build solar panels.
Solar flux is a given, and isn't modifiable by human activity. But the flux reaching Earth is limited, and in the sense of that which you give up -- opportunity costs -- there's only so much of it available. Stored solar flux -- as biofuels, wind, hydro, or fossil fuels -- represents an exergic potential (value) with an eMergic cost.
Economic prices fail to consider that emergic cost entirely, but in a very real sense it's an account balance being depleted. Environmental sinks also have costs associated with clearing and negative impacts.
Howard and Eugene Odum, ecologists, coined the term emergy and discuss it. There's a fair literature concerning it in ecology, though little or none in economics. I believe economics is in error here.
Again, very much not mainstrem econ. You'll find treatment in ecological, biophysical, and thermoeconomics however: Georgescu-Roegen, Daly, Hall, and Costanza, among others.
http://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-10-06/energy-ecology-...
(By Howard Odum's daughter.)
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But what proportion of houses have off road parking in your own garage. Also think what does this do to the Electricity Grid if a non trivial amount of EV's are put on charge every night.
Overnight demand is substantially less than daytime - last night's demand in the UK was about 20% lower: http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/index.php The grid would prefer a another demand curve, so overnight charging is helpful.
I'm all for electric vehicles, but there are a few things that have bothered me about its mass adoption. Right now, electrics comprise a tiny part of the automobile market share. Yet Tesla is already running into supply issues, particularly with lithium as there are only 3 companies in the world that do industrial-scale lithium mining, that too in a handful of mines around the world. Secondly, I suppose we're current…
When the current lull in oil prices ends, electricity will take its place. And we will start the same cycle for batteries that we have lived through over the past 100 years with oil -- either technology will bring out more lithium, or research will move us to use a different fuel source.