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Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

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Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#31

Post by closetnerd »

lotsofmangos wrote: post #15
closetnerd wrote: post #9

Wondering if anyone knows if current state of manufacturing, maintaining, and disposing batteries actually is actually more ecological than using gasoline? I'm sure the potential of batteries to be more ecological and efficient is there, but the general assumption seems to be that they are already there and I'm not too sold on that idea yet.

In release terms, you are not turning your store of energy into a mix of vapours, gases and particulates on every cycle and adding them to street level atmosphere, so that is an immediate bonus that batteries would seem to win on, especially in the built environments in which we live. Getting and processing lithium and silicon are big messy industrial processes, but so is getting and processing oil and you need a lot…

> In release terms, you are not turning your store of energy into a mix of vapours, gases and particulates on every cycle

This is sort of a point of contention at this point in time however. As you stated:

> putting sunlight into metal using sand.

This would be the longer term benefit of battery powered cars. Some countries have already made progress. And unless you're driving a Tesla and only charging it as there Supercharging stations, its not completely sunlight powering your wheels. It currently comes with the ecological impact of harvesting coal, burning it and etc.

Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#32

Post by droidist2 »

closetnerd wrote: post #31
lotsofmangos wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In release terms, you are not turning your store of energy into a mix of vapours, gases and particulates on every cycle and adding them to street level atmosphere, so that is an immediate bonus that batteries would seem to win on, especially in the built environments in which we live. Getting and processing lithium and silicon are big messy industrial processes, but so is getting and processing oil and you need a lot…

> In release terms, you are not turning your store of energy into a mix of vapours, gases and particulates on every cycle This is sort of a point of contention at this point in time however. As you stated: > putting sunlight into metal using sand. This would be the longer term benefit of battery powered cars. Some countries have already made progress. And unless you're driving a Tesla and only charging it as there Su…

Ignoring the differences between coal and oil (sure oil would be better if we had an unlimited amount) a single power plant will be more efficient and cleaner than hundreds of thousands of internal combustion engines.

Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#33

Post by sandworm »

People have commented on the pumps v. station issue, but what about time?

The most accurate measure of the infrastructure might not be how many plugs are around, but how many cars can be charged per day. Or perhaps how many vehicle-kilometers are available to electric cars. With pay-at-the-pump any gas pump can fill a car in say two minutes. An electric charger, even the fast ones, will take 10-100 times as long to "fill" a tank.

So take the number of charging plugs and dived that by a factor of 10x->100x. Then come back when the number of available "fills" per day becomes comparable.

Then adjust for the reduced range and come back when the total number of available vehicle-kilometers breaks even. I'm afraid that day is still a long way off atm.

Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#34

Post by emj »

closetnerd wrote: post #31
lotsofmangos wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In release terms, you are not turning your store of energy into a mix of vapours, gases and particulates on every cycle and adding them to street level atmosphere, so that is an immediate bonus that batteries would seem to win on, especially in the built environments in which we live. Getting and processing lithium and silicon are big messy industrial processes, but so is getting and processing oil and you need a lot…

> In release terms, you are not turning your store of energy into a mix of vapours, gases and particulates on every cycle This is sort of a point of contention at this point in time however. As you stated: > putting sunlight into metal using sand. This would be the longer term benefit of battery powered cars. Some countries have already made progress. And unless you're driving a Tesla and only charging it as there Su…

In Sweden all personal transport by car takes 45 TWh per year, if everyone converted to electric cars/hybrids it would be 13 TWh. That's what the propaganda says anyway. Since most personal transports by car are so short it's in the sweet spot for electric cars.

Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#36

Post by cpwright »

mikeash wrote: post #22
cpwright wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is that hard, it just isn't as useful. I have a tank in my basement that holds 300 gallons of heating fuel (basically diesel); and it is pumped to my boiler. Instead of diesel it could easily be gasoline to a car; but why worry about delivery, etc. when there is already a large infrastructure to fuel my car and the marginal benefits are tiny. Whereas, if I bought an electric car; having the charger w…

People who already have a tank in the basement are pretty rare. How much effort/money would it take to install a new tank, plus a car-compatible pump? Compare with a couple hundred bucks for an electrician to install a 240V outlet, and a few hundred more for a charger (if you don't just use the one that comes with your car).

About 10% of the US has oil or propane heat, both of which require a tank. Where I live in the Northeast it is about 30%. I've never had to pay to have a tank installed, but the tank itself costs around $500.

I think if it were actually useful, it might happen. Fleets do it. But its clearly a choice, you can effectively work getting gas into whatever errands you are doing without much of a delay; and it doesn't need to be integrated into the facility you are going to. Having a gas station on the same road as a major shopping center or on the way to work is the norm where I live. Having some limited number of electric chargers at work is not.

Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#37

Post by sebastianavina »

skywhopper wrote: post #10

IMO, including home chargers is fine (if it were common practice for people to have gas pumps in their garages those would be fair to count as well), but to be a fair comparison, I think you need to count the actual number of gas pumps in total, and factor in the difference in "charging" time between the two technologies. So if there are an average of 6 pumps at each station, and if it takes two minutes to gas up an…

also, most people charge their cars while sleeping, so in your day-to-day, moving around the city, maybe you will never use an electric station ever.

Is like saying I will never use a pump for my diesel engine.

those are different animals. one of which may never see a public charge utility.

(Take for example me, I just move home-gym-work, the max I can move in a given day are 30 km, so, I will never need one of those utilities)

Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#38

Post by robotcookies »

sandworm wrote: post #33

People have commented on the pumps v. station issue, but what about time? The most accurate measure of the infrastructure might not be how many plugs are around, but how many cars can be charged per day. Or perhaps how many vehicle-kilometers are available to electric cars. With pay-at-the-pump any gas pump can fill a car in say two minutes. An electric charger, even the fast ones, will take 10-100 times as long to "…

That's a good point. And if people are leaving their cars while charging to run errands or such, they are likely to take up more charging station time than what might be presumed if they immediately opened up the spot after getting their car charged.

Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#39

Post by closetnerd »

emj wrote: post #34
closetnerd wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In release terms, you are not turning your store of energy into a mix of vapours, gases and particulates on every cycle This is sort of a point of contention at this point in time however. As you stated: > putting sunlight into metal using sand. This would be the longer term benefit of battery powered cars. Some countries have already made progress. And unless you're driving a Tesla and only charging it as there Su…

In Sweden all personal transport by car takes 45 TWh per year, if everyone converted to electric cars/hybrids it would be 13 TWh. That's what the propaganda says anyway. Since most personal transports by car are so short it's in the sweet spot for electric cars.

Interesting what those number might mean. I expect energy consumption to be in favor of batteries, but didn't expect that much.

Re: Japan Has More Car Chargers Than Gas Stations

#40

Post by greglindahl »

sandworm wrote: post #33

People have commented on the pumps v. station issue, but what about time? The most accurate measure of the infrastructure might not be how many plugs are around, but how many cars can be charged per day. Or perhaps how many vehicle-kilometers are available to electric cars. With pay-at-the-pump any gas pump can fill a car in say two minutes. An electric charger, even the fast ones, will take 10-100 times as long to "…

The overwhelming majority of electric car charging takes place overnight in the owner's garage, while the owner sleeps. So there's your time issue: no having to stop to fill up once a week or so, just plug in and unplug each day.

There's no comparison to be made, because electric cars are just plain different.

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