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What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

nytimes.com

171–180 of 460 posts

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#171

"About 65% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels" These EV cars should be renamed "Coal Cars" so people understand the true harsh carbon footprint. Because you plug the car into a wall doesn't mean the energy is clean. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

How does the emissions of a coal plant (plus the loss from transfering over the power line, battery, into motors) compare to the emissions of a regular petrol or diesel car?

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#172
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're no where near the point in which it's the main obstacle to further adoption Sure. I'm talking about universal adoption because the article is ("take over the world") > We don't drive especially far in a typical week This is a good point, EV range is already long enough that many urban drivers will not need to charge every day. > For some subset of street parkers, enough of that parking time will be spent at f…

> Sure. I'm talking about universal adoption because the article is ("take over the world") Once you reach a critical mass of users, taking over the world will be inevitable, even with some of the inconveniences. Finding a gas station, for example, will get harder for ICE drivers as EV vehicles take off (lots of gas stations will go out of business, so you'll have to drive longer to refill your car), auto shops capab…

I doubt many will go out of business. At least in the U.S. the stations themselves make maybe 2-3 cents a gallon profit, which likely doesn't even begin to cover operating costs. The vast majority of their income is from the convenience store items.

All but the most poorly run will pay whatever is needed to install electric chargers and stay in the game.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#173
post #151

Price? (for normal people) Yes there are EVs cheaper than teslas at a comparable price to ICE cars, but they don't seem to have comparable performance and utility. I can't make an economically minded decision to buy an EV today unless i'm an EV enthusiast or I have lots of money to spend on luxury. (That was Elon Musks whole point of Tesla in the first place, but the market doesn't seem to have substantially shifted…

Every EV owner in my area seems to also own a gas car too. My landlord commutes in an EV but his wife has a normal suv for all the kid stuff. (Im in BC where long higheay trips are very much the norm.) EVs are fine if you can afford to keep a second vehicle to cover all the things they cannot do.

BC is a bit of an exception because of the low density. In a higher density area, you can count on public transit to take you long distances and use the electric car to make up the difference.

One of the benefits of going full electric would be smog reduction. Again, BC doesn't really have a smog problem because of low density, but somewhere like Toronto or LA would benefit hugely from not having gas and diesel vehicles clogging up the streets (and air).

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#174

"About 65% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels" These EV cars should be renamed "Coal Cars" so people understand the true harsh carbon footprint. Because you plug the car into a wall doesn't mean the energy is clean. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

As I understand it, even electricity generated from coal is significantly cleaner than the equivalent in gasoline.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#175

"About 65% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels" These EV cars should be renamed "Coal Cars" so people understand the true harsh carbon footprint. Because you plug the car into a wall doesn't mean the energy is clean. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

Depends on where you live. Not all states are coal states.

Where I live (NY), coal is either gone or on the way out. Electricity comes from hydro, gas and nuclear. Coal is getting killed by natural gas.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#176

"About 65% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels" These EV cars should be renamed "Coal Cars" so people understand the true harsh carbon footprint. Because you plug the car into a wall doesn't mean the energy is clean. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

Even with unsustainable generation the carbon footprint of one big generator is less than the footprint of lots of tiny ICEs. https://www.withouthotair.com/c20/page_131.shtml

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#177

"About 65% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels" These EV cars should be renamed "Coal Cars" so people understand the true harsh carbon footprint. Because you plug the car into a wall doesn't mean the energy is clean. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

This has been proven false back in like 2008. Even if electric cars were to run off coal plants, they would still be more efficient because the plants can capture and reuse heat with boilers.

That being said, coal has to go anyway. I run my electric car from 98% hydro power and 2% wind power and I pay 6,9 cents per kWh, and that's Canadian money, pretty cheap.

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#178

"About 65% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels" These EV cars should be renamed "Coal Cars" so people understand the true harsh carbon footprint. Because you plug the car into a wall doesn't mean the energy is clean. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3

The amount of energy it takes to refine one gal of gas my EV drives about 27 miles. ICE cars double dip:

https://greentransportation.info/energy-transportation/gasol...

Re: What Needs to Happen Before Electric Cars Take Over the World

#180
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I never understood : why don't they create cars where the battery is removable and when you go to a "gas" station there's a machine that just change your empty battery for a full one. In fact I thought about patenting the idea 10 years ago but I didn't have the know-how.

People have been talking about this for as long as they've been talking about electric cars, and several companies have demoed prototypes. The two main problems are that the machines needed to do this change are very expensive and tricky to maintain compared to a simple gas pump, and more importantly, unless you can get all car manufacturers to agree to a universal standard for batteries and battery access you're goi…

  unless you can get all car manufacturers to agree
  to a universal standard for batteries
And unless batteries get so good that the battery in that £19,000 Renault Zoe has identical performance to the battery in that £90,000 Tesla Model X, they never will :)
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