211–220 of 241 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In Norway it's 2025. Still too long? :)
When your country has only 5 million people and is a top petroleum extractor and exporter, sure, it's easy to subsidize electric vehicles. Realistically it should be 2020.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Electric cars are the real world example of loose coupling. Once your car is electric the source of the electricity can change (from Coal -> Gas -> Solar) and you don't have to change your car even slightly. So it doesn't matter about any of the arguments about whether an electric car is more efficient or not when the electricity comes from coal. What matters is that having electric cars enables us to move to a futur…
I'm as big fan of EVs as the next guy, and would love to see cities with clean air and no noise. But, there are few things that we forget about when we talk about zero-emmision cars. EVs pollute less, but they pollute too, and in cities as well. They emit dust (including the most harmful particles: PM10 and PM2.5) from break discs and tires. Difference between CO2 in power plants and in city centers matters, but not…
Citation needed. It seems obvious to me that a huge power plant is going to be less polluting per kWh than a tiny little engine in a car. Otherwise, we'd use tiny little car engines to power everything - which only happens at the moment in places where they cannot get electricity by other means (building sites etc).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm as big fan of EVs as the next guy, and would love to see cities with clean air and no noise. But, there are few things that we forget about when we talk about zero-emmision cars. EVs pollute less, but they pollute too, and in cities as well. They emit dust (including the most harmful particles: PM10 and PM2.5) from break discs and tires. Difference between CO2 in power plants and in city centers matters, but not…
> From a macro perspective the gain for environment is on par, if not better, than from electric cars. Citation needed. It seems obvious to me that a huge power plant is going to be less polluting per kWh than a tiny little engine in a car. Otherwise, we'd use tiny little car engines to power everything - which only happens at the moment in places where they cannot get electricity by other means (building sites etc).
I don't think it follows that just because we have historically centralized power generation, this was obviously due to efficiency. For example, centralization of management, investment, pollution control, logistical (fuel delivery), safety (nuclear) and reliability concerns seem far more obvious to me, although I don't doubt there could be an efficiency benefit to large-scale generation, I've just never heard of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm as big fan of EVs as the next guy, and would love to see cities with clean air and no noise. But, there are few things that we forget about when we talk about zero-emmision cars. EVs pollute less, but they pollute too, and in cities as well. They emit dust (including the most harmful particles: PM10 and PM2.5) from break discs and tires. Difference between CO2 in power plants and in city centers matters, but not…
> From a macro perspective the gain for environment is on par, if not better, than from electric cars. Citation needed. It seems obvious to me that a huge power plant is going to be less polluting per kWh than a tiny little engine in a car. Otherwise, we'd use tiny little car engines to power everything - which only happens at the moment in places where they cannot get electricity by other means (building sites etc).
However, I have to agree that my previous comment _wrongly_ implied that burning coal at the plants to power the electric cars is the main issue we have to deal with.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I though you Americans have it pretty rough when you're caught going over speed limit?
It very much depends on where in the U. S. one is at. East of the Mississippi River (eastern U. S.): I'm a good boy who doesn't do more than 10mph over the limit. The exception is Ohio: if I can't avoid the state completely, I do THE SPEED LIMIT. Western U. S.: whatever I think I can get away with. IOW, if I can see for multiple miles with few cross roads and driveways, then it's whatever I feel comfortable with. Tho…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gasoline engines aren't going away for a while; even when every self-driving car is electric, there will be a market for people who want gasoline engines. If it gives a bump in fuel economy to the next (last?) generation of gasoline and hybrid vehicles, great! I also wonder if the maintainability of these engines will be the same as with diesel. That would be another big benefit.
I visited a Tesla store once in mountain view, and they have a great little demo where you can check the cost of charging your car in various states. Washington DC, for whatever reason, gets its electricity from a gasoline power plant. In Washington, the Model S gets 28 MPG. This happened a while ago so I could be misremembering, but regardless I don't believe that the environmental value of electric vehicles has bee…
Now in winter gasoline/diesel cars have the issue of nearly always running rich on very short commutes as they strive to get to an optimal operating temperature. The EV just loses a serious chunk of range. Both of course can be preconditioned but the EV is more efficient there.
As for Mazda. None of the electrification upcoming laws exclude fuel powered vehicles, range extenders and hybrids all seem to meet many requirements.
older article about range/ev/winter http://www.teslarati.com/effects-winter-tesla-battery-range/ I hope they have corrected how regenerative braking works since then
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gasoline engines aren't going away for a while; even when every self-driving car is electric, there will be a market for people who want gasoline engines. If it gives a bump in fuel economy to the next (last?) generation of gasoline and hybrid vehicles, great! I also wonder if the maintainability of these engines will be the same as with diesel. That would be another big benefit.
Diesels aren't inherently more maintainable than gasoline engines. That impression comes from the fact that diesel engines are used in situations where durability is paramount, thus are designed to be robust. Most passenger car engines have several criteria that are more important than maintainability (emissions, power, fuel economy, size, cost, manufacturing simplicity). People don't hold up BMW passenger diesels as…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or a bet on hybrids. Hybrids enable new types of engines that for instance operate at constant rate or that are under-powered for acceleration from a stop or going uphill.
I don't think hybrids have any future except in the heaviest of vehicles, where batteries won't make sense for another few decades. We're already seeing companies being interested in making battery-only buses, tractors, semis, and even airplanes. Not all models of those types of vehicles may work with batteries, but it's a sign of what the future could bring.
A have Toyota Auris with hybrid synergy drive and even though it has really small battery (so it costs less than $25000 including tax), I am able to ride through small town using EV mode only and then use ICE between towns. My mileage is 4.4 l/100 km which is ~53.5 miles per gallon and I'm driving in city most of the time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm as big fan of EVs as the next guy, and would love to see cities with clean air and no noise. But, there are few things that we forget about when we talk about zero-emmision cars. EVs pollute less, but they pollute too, and in cities as well. They emit dust (including the most harmful particles: PM10 and PM2.5) from break discs and tires. Difference between CO2 in power plants and in city centers matters, but not…
EV should consume less brake discs because small braking recharges the battery.
Mercedes Benz introduced something very similar to this ten years ago[1]. The engine was using HCCI at low RPM and conventional spark-plug ignition at higher RPM. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiesOtto
Whilst most other manufacturers have persued downsizing and turbos to get efficciency on paper (at the expense of real world emmissions) Mazda have gone another road with their SkyActiv technology and it seems to be paying off for them.