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California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

bloomberg.com

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Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#51

Post by rhino369 »

Retric wrote: post #42
DannyBee wrote: post #32

California also has the worst electrical infrastructure in the nation, and is not doing something like "requiring the EV people who will stress it" to pay a tax for improvements, or if they wanted to be punitive, a tax on gas cars to pay for it, or anything other than saying what a great idea this would be and pushing for it on the environmental side. Given that converting all cars in CA to electric would seriously s…

It's odd that you think private companies who own and operate the Grid need public support to expand it. If demand increases they make more money which can pay for upgrades directly or in the case of large shifts pay down loans. PS: A 2% change per year is actually well within normal variations.

I'm not 100% sure how California public utilities commission works, but in most states, the company would in fact need government permission to do upgrades. Otherwise they can't charge more money to do it.

Power companies are heavily regulated and so are power rates. Their business model is dictated to them.

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#52

Post by stephengillie »

a3n wrote: post #23
kwhitefoot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it externalizes it. But it centralises it too, making it easier to keep it clean. It also removes the pollution from town centres making them much pleasanter places to be. The total efficiency of burning oil in a large power station to power electric cars is generally is slightly better than burning the oil (which must be much more highly refined) in an internal combustion engine even if it is a hybrid.

There's also that you have to burn fuel in the tank trucks to get the fuel to the consumer. Centralized generation is vaguely like dependency injection, or loosely coupled modularity in general, you can put what you want into it. My only concern with electric vehicles is battery end of life. What do I the consumer do? Will I be able to sell my 25 year old EV? Have we gotten far enough to see what that end looks like?

You use/lose some of the energy in transport, either way. I forget exactly, but high voltage power lines lose something like 1% of their energy every...100 miles?

Another way to look at it would be: How much electricity would it take an electric truck to deliver that gasoline?

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#53

Post by Retric »

Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 wrote: post #29
rhaps0dy wrote: post #22

>Cali­fornia emits only 2 percent of global green­house gases What? That's huge! California does not have 2% of the world's population, not even close! Looking at it another way, all the more effect the regulations there will have.

What does the number of people have to do with this? Industries contribute much more to emissions. (also not relevant, but California's current GDP is ~2.2T, which is around 3% of the total world GDP (75T)).

A lot of California pollution is indirect, as in produced from factories outside of the state. Which makes GDP a terrible measure of pollution.

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#54

Post by strictnein »

marcosdumay wrote: post #44
danielweber wrote: post #28

What is the comparison between using energy to generate liquid fuels from atmospheric CO2 (which would be carbon neutral) and trying to electrify the entire transportation sector? Those Los Alamos guys [1] said in 2007 they could get it down to $3.40 a gallon. Okay, maybe they were wrong and/or optimistic. But, still, there is some price point at which it is break-even. What is it? Five dollars? Ten? The advantages o…

Where's the electricity coming from? If your answer is natural gas, or oil powered generators, then no, there isn't a price point where it will break even. Now if you can answer that question with nuclear reactors or renewables of any kind, then your logic probably applies. Yet, I doubt it will ever be the main fuel powering our transportation.

Why doesn't natural gas count? It's increased usage is one of the key reasons the US's carbon output is down over 10% since 2005.

> "There are two basic factors that have contributed to lower carbon intensity (CO2/kilowatthour [kWh]) in the electric power sector: 1) substitution of the less-carbon-intensive natural gas for coal and petroleum, and 2) growth in non-carbon generation, especially renewables such as wind and solar."

http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/carbon/

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#55

Post by marcosdumay »

Shivetya wrote: post #19

Well battery tech will be a roadblock for some time but deadlines as far out as these make it look like something is being accomplished but provide enough time to not actually be a deadline. Converting off peak electrical power into hydrogen is getting more and more viable and frankly, I don't mind storing and transporting hydrogen versus stuffing the planet with li-ion batteries replete with their hazards. GM should…

Don't even mind storing that hydrogen. You certainly haven't actually tried to use those hydrogen fuel cells for anything real, not even in a lab.

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#56

Post by Retric »

rhino369 wrote: post #51
Retric wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's odd that you think private companies who own and operate the Grid need public support to expand it. If demand increases they make more money which can pay for upgrades directly or in the case of large shifts pay down loans. PS: A 2% change per year is actually well within normal variations.

I'm not 100% sure how California public utilities commission works, but in most states, the company would in fact need government permission to do upgrades. Otherwise they can't charge more money to do it. Power companies are heavily regulated and so are power rates. Their business model is dictated to them.

There is no need to change rates if demand increases, if anything things get cheaper per KWH as electric cars increase night time demand. As to permission, that’s not a cost which would need to be paid for.

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#57

Post by xixi77 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #44
danielweber wrote: post #28

What is the comparison between using energy to generate liquid fuels from atmospheric CO2 (which would be carbon neutral) and trying to electrify the entire transportation sector? Those Los Alamos guys [1] said in 2007 they could get it down to $3.40 a gallon. Okay, maybe they were wrong and/or optimistic. But, still, there is some price point at which it is break-even. What is it? Five dollars? Ten? The advantages o…

Where's the electricity coming from? If your answer is natural gas, or oil powered generators, then no, there isn't a price point where it will break even. Now if you can answer that question with nuclear reactors or renewables of any kind, then your logic probably applies. Yet, I doubt it will ever be the main fuel powering our transportation.

But doesn't this equally apply to fully-electric vehicles as well?

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#58

Post by peapicker »

patmcguire wrote: post #38
rhaps0dy wrote: post #22

>Cali­fornia emits only 2 percent of global green­house gases What? That's huge! California does not have 2% of the world's population, not even close! Looking at it another way, all the more effect the regulations there will have.

World GDP is about $87.25 trillion and California GDP is about $2 trillion, so California has more than 2% of world GDP. You could make the case that that's a more important metric than population.

If you look at GDP per person in the population, California is only 14th in the US ($58K per person -- Delaware at #1 is $112.K per person GDP), so they have room to more efficiently make that GDP per person than they do. Delaware does have a higher CO2 emission rate per capita, tho (nearly 50% more than California)

Re: California Has a Plan to End the Auto Industry as We Know It

#59

Post by jerf »

strictnein wrote: post #54
marcosdumay wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the electricity coming from? If your answer is natural gas, or oil powered generators, then no, there isn't a price point where it will break even. Now if you can answer that question with nuclear reactors or renewables of any kind, then your logic probably applies. Yet, I doubt it will ever be the main fuel powering our transportation.

Why doesn't natural gas count? It's increased usage is one of the key reasons the US's carbon output is down over 10% since 2005. > "There are two basic factors that have contributed to lower carbon intensity (CO2/kilowatthour [kWh]) in the electric power sector: 1) substitution of the less-carbon-intensive natural gas for coal and petroleum, and 2) growth in non-carbon generation, especially renewables such as wind…

It's impossible to win with converting a fossil fuel X into something and then to convert back to fossil fuel X, because of basic thermodynamics. If you want to convert fossil fuel X to something to convert to fossil fuel Y, you may be able to "win" over the current situation but you will very likely never get to get zero emissions in the system as a whole, because of the first step. It isn't necessarily impossible to burn X tons of CO2 and pull X+delta tons of CO2 out of the air, depending on the exact binding energies of the chemicals involved (which given that both are fuels, probably don't have an advantageous difference you can exploit), but you'll certainly be paying somewhere else to do it. And given that pulling CO2 out of the air at scale is quite challenging even on its own merits, it probably can't win in a practical manner.

If you're going to pull CO2 out of the air you pretty much have to be using a non-CO2-generating power source to do it if you want to net CO2 withdrawal.

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