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Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

forbes.com

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Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#101

Post by eigenloss »

emptybits wrote: post #41

I have questions about the environmental impact of EV batteries when it comes time to replace or dispose of them. I've read a few things, including an old statement by Tesla on the topic.[1] > Tesla: "our lithium ion cells contain no heavy metals, nor any toxic materials. In fact, our cells and Energy Storage System, by law, could be disposed of by putting them in a landfill. However, we have no intention of landfill…

People will buy completely wrecked Teslas for $5-20k just to extract and resell the battery modules. Each of the 16 battery modules from an S goes for about $1200 a pop. The secondary market will buy essentially any quantity of lithium cells if the price is below $200/kWh, no questions asked.

Recycling efforts are almost always for show. If a cell or module has at least 30% of its original capacity remaining, people will reuse it for stationary storage or weight-insensitive vehicles. Shredding and recovering cathode materials from lithium cells is about as economically nonsensical as recovering silicon from cell phones.

There is such a massive worldwide shortage of batteries right now that worrying about dumping them in landfills is beyond pointless. You may as well worry that we're throwing away too many gold bars.

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#102

Post by eigenloss »

dagw wrote: post #82
Iv wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tried what? Running a wire vs building a road? Of course non-existent wire vs existing road is not competitive. If both exist, electricity wins. If neither exists, electricity wins. And electricity has that added advantage that you can buy an equipment that will produce it in place without consuming additional resources. The only case where fuel is competitive is when roads exist, electricity distribution doesn't, an…

If neither exists, electricity wins. Are you sure? I'm not. Especially not when we're talking the sort of electrical infrastructure that can support charging multiple electric cars and trucks (although there's no point in having an electric car if there aren't any roads). Obviously electricity is the right long term answer and where we should be going, but I doubt it is the cheapest immediate solution in many parts o…

Electricity moves itself. You apply power on one end and it flows down the line at about the speed of light. There is literally nothing (other than superconductors) with lower marginal cost per joule transmitted than wire.

Wires never blow a tire, head gasket, or transmission - and in fact they cannot even crash into and kill people on the highway. They're just long pieces of copper or steel tied to a tower. How convenient!

If you instead compare the fixed costs, as you seem wont to do, you'll find that HV (500 kV) transmission lines and towers capable of carrying several gigawatts [1] continuously have substantially lower initial and lifetime costs per Joule-kilometre than oil pipelines, rail, trucks, tankers, or anything else that has to move oil. [2]

[1] https://www.power-technology.com/features/featurethe-worlds-...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2014/04/26/pick-your...

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#104

Post by quaquaqua1 »

circlefavshape wrote: post #93
quaquaqua1 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think new uses and new users will continue to abound, so I don't think humans will radically reduce their consumption. One evidence of this is just the sheer number of cars on the road these days. Human population is increasing, and an abundance of cheap ICE cars means everyone is driving to work at least in suburban areas. In the past, busses and bikes were selected because cars weren't economical for certain indi…

Where do you work? That is not the case at anyplace I've ever worked

In Nassau County NY where the majority of buildings here are either single family homes or corporate office buildings with giant parking lots.

Of course just 30 miles east you have NYC where probably less than 5% of people drive to work or own a car, period. But on a geographical basis, most of this population center is designed for cars and it is very common for a 1 hour trip (60 miles) to take 2.5 hours during rush hour(s).

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#105

Post by tim333 »

akeck wrote: post #103

This writer works through some upper limits of vehicle electrification, based on cobalt reserves: https://syonyk.blogspot.com/2015/12/cobalt-requirements-for-...

The writer doesn't seem to distinguish between reserves and resources, a common mistake in these kinds of articles. In normal mining use reserves are areas of ore you've mapped out and shown to be economically extractable by drilling holes, taking samples etc, resources are the amount or stuff out there. Reserves always only go a few years ahead because it takes money to find them, drill them and so on. That doesn't mean we're running out.

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#106

Post by mises »

imtringued wrote: post #86
mises wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transport != store. I can transmit, assuming there's a sink on the other end (though loss is an issue over distance). Considering there is neither enough lithium nor enough cobalt to make a Tesla for every American, battery tech will be a huge bottleneck.

Future lithium batteries won't use cobalt.

Any source on this? I understand there alternative technologies, but most have disadvantages in terms of power density, longevity, price, etc.

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#107

Post by inflatableDodo »

jhoechtl wrote: post #38
inflatableDodo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A cube 3 meters on a side can contain enough gasoline to power the average car for its entire lifespan. A cube 3 meters on a side can also contain almost 160,000 meters squared of solar cell wafers, given a common wafer thickness of around 170 micrometers. Assuming around ten square meters per car, that could keep nearly 16,000 cars on the road for decades. edit - to take this further, a standard shipping container…

> given a common wafer thickness of around 170 micrometers > So that comes to under 14,000 shipping containers full of wafers, which could fit in one single ship delivery, for all of the vehicles in the USA. Taking the thickness of 170 micrometers and extrapolating this measure of a solar waffer to the needs of US cars is just ... unreal. The OP came up with a serious relation. How many containers would be needed whe…

I don't quite see why you think transporting wafers 170 micrometers thick is unreal or in some way extreme. 170 micrometers is the same thickness as 135 gsm art paper.

edit - Also, 170 micrometers is positively beefy compared to what is coming down the line. 1 micrometer thick flexible cells have already been developed - https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/06/20/New-flexible-sol... -

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#108

Post by henrikschroder »

doctor_eval wrote: post #68
nordsieck wrote: post #66

> Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days As A Transport Fuel Are Numbered I know the article was about cars, but fossil fuel will always have a place as aviation fuel. The only thing I can currently see ending that trend is widespread use of vacuum tunnel trains.

I see the claim that we need fossil fuels for airlines and rockets raised frequently, but once we have widespread renewable electricity, what’s the barrier to creating fuel from air and water, using electricity? AFAIK, it’s not really fossil fuels that are needed for planes and rockets, but high energy density liquid fuels, and these can surely be created renewably once we have a renewable energy infrastructure. Or h…

> what’s the barrier to creating fuel from air and water, using electricity?

> it’s not really fossil fuels that are needed for planes and rockets, but high energy density liquid fuels

The energy density of liquid hydrogen is really low, so that idea won't work. You want hydrocarbons of some sort, because they have the required energy density, so you could probably switch planes to run on some sort of biodiesel instead of fossil fuel.

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#109

Post by neuralRiot »

trothamel wrote: post #72
Diederich wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With existing infrastructure, for most locations, electricity is far easier to transport than gas. Even with some necessary scaling to support widespread car charging, electrical infrastructure is far more robust, redundant and safe than the gas.

Not sure that's true. A gallon of gas has 33.4 kWh in it, and the US limits fuel pumps to 10 gallons per minute - it's moving 334 watt-hours per minute, or moving 20 megawatts. It looks like electrical equipment of that scale tends to confined to substations, power plants, and other controlled areas. When it comes to robustness, you often see power after a hurricane supplied by gasoline powered generators, with the g…

>Not sure that's true. A gallon of gas has 33.4 kWh in it, and the US limits fuel pumps to 10 gallons per minute - it's moving 334 watt-hours per minute, or moving 20 megawatts.

This is something often overlooked when comparing fossil to electric fuels, on any average car you can "charge" enough fuel for 600miles in 10min whereas on an electric you need to charge for 75min to be able to make 350miles and that's if you have a supercharge station available.

Re: Economics of Electric Vehicles Mean Oil's Days as a Transport Fuel Are Numbered

#110

Post by Tomminn »

klwejchkwejrhc wrote: post #16

>renewable electricity has a short-run marginal cost of zero, is cleaner environmentally, much easier to transport and could readily replace up to 40% of global oil demand Hmm, not sure about that "much easier to transport" part. A cube 3 meters on a side can contain enough gasoline to power the average car for its entire lifespan. The gasoline is a liquid, it is relatively easy to move it between containers. Any tec…

Imagine the delta between the electric infrastructure we need when we have a car fleet that is electric vs the electric infrastructure we need when we don't.

Given we need to transport electricity for a bunch of other things, this delta is small.

It's big relative to the electric fleet size when the fleet is small, but it's tiny when the electric fleet is a substantial fraction of the car fleet.

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