Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

timharford.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 291 posts

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#221

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

TrevorAustin wrote: post #208
willcipriano wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd expect EVs to be cheaper if they are actually simpler, last time I looked that wasn't really the case outside of cars produced in China that most western customers wouldn't buy.

I’m actually in the market for an EV or PHEV that seats 6 or more, and my search started with the Model X. But I’ll probably wind up getting a Volvo XC90. It’s around $30K cheaper, which is nice, and more importantly, if I ordered a Model X tomorrow, the expected delivery date is January 2023 .

Did you take the resell value into account?

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#222

Post by bobthepanda »

ip26 wrote: post #217
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most" We have a name for them - Bus Drivers! Why is all the discussion is focused on personal cars, they sit idle 90% of the time. First vehicles to go electric should be bussed, light delivery vans, taxis and all other service vehicles that are in motion over 10 hours a day, 365 days a week. Today 95% of all electric busses are in China…

There’s a critical difference; convincing your local government to switch to electric buses is rather more difficult than choosing how to spend your own money.

If you're a local US government, you probably have trouble keeping the lights on, let alone justifying CapEx on more buses.

King County in Seattle recently costed a transition to all-electric: the conclusion was that it would cost 41% more than sticking with the current hybrids, and would be equivalent to reducing service by 237,000 hours annually. https://seattletransitblog.com/2020/11/02/metros-fleet-all-e...

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#223

Post by Kluny »

nojs wrote: post #179

> Each new person who joins a queue goes to the front, standing immediately behind the person being served. This is, of course, an outrage against reason, intuition and natural justice. It is also highly efficient. If you’re next in line to be served, but someone shows up and shoehorns herself into position in front of you, you walk away. The line is only going to get longer, and you’re always going to be at the back…

Yeah - the stalls have the same capacity, the same consumer demand is present, but now we have fights!

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#224

Post by jetsetgo »

ip26 wrote: post #217
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most" We have a name for them - Bus Drivers! Why is all the discussion is focused on personal cars, they sit idle 90% of the time. First vehicles to go electric should be bussed, light delivery vans, taxis and all other service vehicles that are in motion over 10 hours a day, 365 days a week. Today 95% of all electric busses are in China…

There’s a critical difference; convincing your local government to switch to electric buses is rather more difficult than choosing how to spend your own money.

No post body was provided.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#225

Post by bobthepanda »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #185
FriedPickles wrote: post #38

To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most, the true bottleneck is batteries . So, the problem is to get batteries on the road in a way that they will displace the most gas miles as soon as possible. This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), then in a second stage, replace those with full EVs. For most city vehicles…

"To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most" We have a name for them - Bus Drivers! Why is all the discussion is focused on personal cars, they sit idle 90% of the time. First vehicles to go electric should be bussed, light delivery vans, taxis and all other service vehicles that are in motion over 10 hours a day, 365 days a week. Today 95% of all electric busses are in China…

IMO the case for all electric buses is a bit weakened by two things:

* for an electric hybrid bus with regenerative braking, the city bus is pretty much running on batteries most of the time anyways, because it never goes above 30MPH and there's so much stopping and starting to repower the batteries.

* in practice, BEB fleets need to be bigger than their diesel equivalent fleets because of the range anxiety. In particular, BEBs and their higher weight perform worse on elevation rises, where they are spending more energy to lug the heavier weight around, and in winter. Winter is interesting, because the way current bus heating works is that they take the waste heat from the ICE and dump that inside. Electrically heating a bus takes additional energy, and on top of that batteries perform worse in cold weather. The problem is severe enough that so far the most successful cold-weather BEBs maintain a fossil fuel system just to keep the bus warm.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#226

Post by pksebben »

coliveira wrote: post #218
smt88 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I just ignorant? No. Economics academia is an "emperor's new clothes" field. They generate enormous amounts of dense, complex-sounding literature, and most if it is as you describe. It's never practical. Sometimes there are interesting models that help to understand things that happened in the past, but as a field, economics seems unable to predict anything that will happen in the future (even on a fundamental l…

It's like this because they start from postulates that are contrary to reality. The idea that elements in an economic systems act in a rational way, or that there is an "invisible hand" that drives the markets, or that the markets operate in equilibrium, these are all ad hoc ideas that have no basis in reality. I classify it more like a kind of economic theology.

Yeah, that rational markets bit I keep hearing about sounds more like an example of proof that the markets we have are not rational. Like; "IF the markets WERE rational, they would probably do thing" and then thing is something that is observably not happening.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#227

Post by Miner49er »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #158
H8crilA wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, coal is still absolutely huge: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_cons... Don't get fooled by stats from rich countries as those countries "cheat" by importing goods and materials with large entry footprints embedded into them.

In the US coal has dropped from 30% of our electricity generation to 10% in barely a few years. Coal plants around the country are shutting down because of how expensive coal is compared to wind and solar. Meanwhile we had nearly 20GW of grid-scale solar and wind added in one year, and that doesn't count small installations like residential rooftop systems.

While renewables have had an impact, hasn't it mostly been replaced by natural gas?

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#228

Post by rcMgD2BwE72F »

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #144

I bought a new car this year when I graduated and got a new job. The main reason I didn't buy an EV is because of the cost, the dependability (I'm not gonna be a guinea pig wasting time getting repairs that not many people know how to resolve yet), and because I live in the Midwest where salted roads in winter just eat the hell out of everything. So I'm gonna need a new car in 5-10 years anyway. Obviously EV is the f…

>and because I live in the Midwest where salted roads in winter just eat the hell out of everything

In which country are EVs most popular? IIRC, Norway.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#229

Post by mlyle »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #215
FriedPickles wrote: post #38

To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most, the true bottleneck is batteries . So, the problem is to get batteries on the road in a way that they will displace the most gas miles as soon as possible. This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), then in a second stage, replace those with full EVs. For most city vehicles…

I read somewhere PHEV users don’t really bother charging effectively making them even worse than gas guzzlers. Also that seems what Toyota is thinking with their anti-BEV lobbyism.

Hugely variable. I only burn about 20 gallons of gas per year. About one third of that is to avoid fuel spoiling, one third of that is for when I need longer trips, and one third when I screw up charging.

Even so, I get about 40MPG, so much better than an average vehicle.

It does sting to maintain an engine for 800 miles a year.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#230

Post by mlyle »

lkbm wrote: post #37
runnerup wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes this is similar to China attempting to corner the market on Lithium, but then as soon as they squeezed prices, Chile suddenly built out a massive amount of Lithium production. You cannot "buy all the coal" any more than you can: - buy all the oil (OPEC vs. NA shale fracking) - buy all the lithium (China vs. Chile) - buy all the magnesium (Freeport, TX vs. China vs. get from any seawater anywhere)

People can still start new mines, but the price of coal will increase due to the capital costs that incurs (and the time it takes to ramp up production). This works the same as a tax on coal, or a subsidy on its competitors: some people will keep using it, but people on the margins will be pushed to the alternative. The fact that the cost increase is likely front-loaded due to the time it takes to ramp up a new mine…

> With lithium, the answer would be yes, because lithium demand is growing. With coal, hopefully not so much.

Yah, if nothing else the regulatory risks would make one pretty nervous about dumping a ton of money into a new coal mine.

Post reply on HN