201–210 of 348 posts
At what point will it become a safety issue if X% of cars in a multi-story garage are electric, considering both the fire-safety of batteries and their weight?
At what point will it become a safety issue if X% of cars in a multi-story garage are electric, considering both the fire-safety of batteries and their weight?
Some people may jump on you about the fire-safety of Tesla cars (or BEVs in general), but I want to get ahead of that with a link to the Highway Loss Data Institute's December 2018 report for 2016-2018 motor vehicles, where the Tesla Model X had a RCF (Relative Claim Frequency) of 192, the second-worse score for vehicles in its class, and the Tesla Model S had a RCF of 140, the worst in its class.
Because the report covers model years 2016-2018, the Model 3 wasn't included in the analysis. Regardless, the point about the relative aptitude of Tesla-manufactured BEVs to catch fire in non-crash scenarios is well made by that report.
https://www.iihs.org/media/c93b98d8-6a7d-44a1-810e-4468ec539...
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That’s no surprise, since Norwegian government heavily penalizes ICE vehicles, and advantages the electric cars. No VAT, no CO2 tax, and lots of other incentives are involved. If your goal is to upgrade your country’s vehicle fleet to electric, then Norway is a good example that with enough government spending it can happen. Don’t mistake it for “normal people jumping onboard electric train”, though, they are jumping…
Model 3 appears to be the #6 best selling car in USA last quarter* and I don't believe there is much of any USA tax incentive anymore. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/06/tesla-model-3-6th-best-...
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ICE engines are around 20% efficiency I think, while e.g. a gas turbine in a power plant is around 60%. Very little efficiency is lost in transmission cables and in the electric motor, so it is definitely a lot more efficient to use electric cars as a way of burning fossil fuels. Not to mention that coal plants and gas power plants can be changed to burn biomass or do gasification of biomass. That allows us to avoid…
”Very little efficiency is lost in transmission cables and in the electric motor” It’s not that clear-cut. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_energy_efficiency : ”Taking the conversion factor of 2.58 in France into account (see Embodied energy#Electricity), we would find an efficiency of about 0.5/2.58 or 19 %, which corresponds to the order of magnitude of the balance of the combustion vehicles, according to…
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When you add load to a grid that's in the process of decarbonizing, you need to look at the marginal impact. Taking the average energy mix is bad math, because you're delaying the shutdown of the dirtiest sources. This can get more complicated if you have excess renewable energy generation at times, where the use is essentially free. Not to mention demand dispatch to smooth intermittent renewables. I'm a big EV fan,…
It is more a philosophical question. If you add demand to a system should it be counted like a marginal addition, or as the same as the current demand. Most studies on the subject of the full cycle of CO2 emission of EV tend to use average carbon intensity of the electricity. The few studies that use marginal carbon intensity are from mostly biased anti EV, pro fossil fuel sources. Also it is not always the worse car…
This is true in general - if I buy a TV, and my neighbor already has one, should my TV be counted under marginal excess consumption and therefore more dirty than his? I would personally say absolutely not, but I've read (and disagreed with) analogous arguments to the contrary.
But if you're deciding between the relative merits of building a BEV or ICE, that's not really the same situation. The marginal load on the grid is entirely optional - you can just skip it and build a petrol car instead. It's not a philosophical question of whether your neighbour's TV set should be accounted for under a different energy mix than your Tesla just because it was there first.
It's a pragmatic question. We do A, X is the marginal impact. We do B, Y is the marginal impact. As a society, subsidize X proportional to the extent that X Now there's no wiggle room in this argument that leaves BEVs worse off. The studies that have argued that made laughable assumptions.
> Most studies on the subject of the full cycle of CO2 emission of EV tend to use average carbon intensity of the electricity. The few studies that use marginal carbon intensity are from mostly biased anti EV, pro fossil fuel sources.
This doesn't surprise me at all. But I don't think it's quite proof that the average carbon intensity is the correct method - I think there's a strong bias for people in the field, whether unconscious or not, to encourage BEV adoption and not provide ammunition to the many groups that irrationally or for vested interests oppose it. Wherever there are decisions to be made in methodology that are both justifiable, even the most reasoned researcher will reach for the one that aligns with their beliefs.
Not to mention the potential backlash. I've made here quite reasoned arguments (of course there's room for disagreement), am in favor of BEVs and each of my posts have been downvoted more than once. There's significant social pressure among crowds like this to not be seen in any way anti environmental, even if it means erasing some of the finer points running contrary to what is still an obvious conclusion.
And it is an obvious conclusion. BEVs are the future that can't come soon enough.
Thank you very much for the detail and links.
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That’s no surprise, since Norwegian government heavily penalizes ICE vehicles, and advantages the electric cars. No VAT, no CO2 tax, and lots of other incentives are involved. If your goal is to upgrade your country’s vehicle fleet to electric, then Norway is a good example that with enough government spending it can happen. Don’t mistake it for “normal people jumping onboard electric train”, though, they are jumping…
Model 3 appears to be the #6 best selling car in USA last quarter* and I don't believe there is much of any USA tax incentive anymore. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/06/tesla-model-3-6th-best-...
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Hybrids are being phased out (as Chevy did with the Volt).
Prius are doing just fine, so are Honda hybrids, especially plug-ins
Part of that is that there's a lot more hybrid competition for the Prius than there used to be.
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Also, price of gas is 2.5x higher in Norway than somewhere like the USA. If you're in the USA and fill your tank once a week, you probably spend ~$2000/yr in gas. And that's how much you'd save in gas if you went electric. In areas with higher fuel prices, the incentive is proportionally larger. (That's ignoring the cost of paying your electric bill, not sure if that changes the math much..)
It depends on what price you pay for Electricity, but paying for the electricity is more than half as cheap as paying for gas. Plus in the US there are so many free chargers, I just charge my car at the office.
And as more people shift from ICE-powered vehicles to electric ones, it seems likely that some of the taxes currently imposed on gasoline may end up applying to electric charging as well, as governments will need to maintain the revenue somehow.
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Also, price of gas is 2.5x higher in Norway than somewhere like the USA. If you're in the USA and fill your tank once a week, you probably spend ~$2000/yr in gas. And that's how much you'd save in gas if you went electric. In areas with higher fuel prices, the incentive is proportionally larger. (That's ignoring the cost of paying your electric bill, not sure if that changes the math much..)
Yea, so the cost of electricity is 25c/kWh (NYC). 3 miles per kWh or 0.08 per mile (not including charging efficiency). City: 20 miles per gallon ($2.75/gal) or 0.13 per mile Highway: 30mpg or 0.09c. Hybrid: 40mpg or 0.07c. Tesla is too expensive for a very little benefit, smaller EVs have tiny range. Hybrids would be cheaper than a Tesla.
The same prices for dino juice in my quite efficient toyota avensis and current fuel prices was about 0.7-0.8 NOK/km. That car is now sold and will never be missed.
The savings are huge, especially if you drive a lot.
I live in an apartment complex in Berlin. We have a parking garage that belongs to the complex. Unfortunately the housing company does not allow installation of a wallbox in the garage, even if I paid for it myself. The housing company is owned by the municipality. Large-scale adoption of electric cars is unrealistic when the majority of people have nowhere to charge it.
Anecdotally, around 40% of the electricity in Germany was generated from coal in 2018, but in january 2019, a group of federal and state leaders as well as industry representatives, environmentalists, and scientists made an agreement to close all 84 coal plants in the country by 2038.[1] Just as in many other parts of the world, expanding electrical consumption through electric vehicles does not make sense if we also…
Of course, but it's kind of a chicken and egg problem. The sooner we switch to electric cars, the earlier the right incentives and levels of demand are in place to upgrade our electricity generation and grid.