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We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

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Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#221

Post by tigershark »

nostrademons wrote: post #136
RobertRoberts wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure it's less efficient by default or simply because of lack of R&D into making steam engines better. I read about a government program in maybe the 70s (oil crisis?) where steam engines were reviewed to replace gas engines. The reason being is that burning fuel at atmospheric pressure means you burn it more cleanly and fully. This sounds like an efficiency balance at some level, certainly a pollution advan…

You run into Carnot cycle [1] physical limits. The efficiency of any heat engine is bounded by 1 - Tc/Th, i.e. the ratio of the absolute temperatures of the cold reservoir (usually the exhaust gases) to the hot reservoir (combustion temperature). To make an engine more efficient, it needs to run as hot as possible. Non-superheated steam engines are bounded by the boiling point of water (373 C); assuming 21 C outside…

Water boiling temperature is 373 K, not Celsius. 21 C of the air temperature is 294 K.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#222

Post by scj »

amelius wrote: post #139
fragmede wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its always been possible to make a small electric commuter car to drive round at 30mph for short distances Early models of the Nissan leaf weren't too much more than that (though there have been some advances since the invention of electricity). However, golf carts are the modern version of the small electric car - and is street legal in service jurisdictions! (Okay, technically what's street legal isn't literally…

For short distances you could use a bicycle or scooter instead. Cars are mostly useful for larger distances, i.e. on highways, where slow vehicles are not allowed.

Cars are also useful in colder / rainy weather...

Where I live, people tend to ride motorbikes on a weather permitting basis. Which means the bulk of days are in late May, June, July, August, and early September. Assuming they can afford to have a second vehicle.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#223

Post by g00s3_caLL_x2 »

hwillis wrote: post #184
godelski wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another reason: Even today the energy density of batteries is SUBSTANTIALLY smaller than that of fossil fuels. [0] We frequently see this graph [1] showing how far batteries have come (they have! and we need to keep going) but not understanding this is part of the issue too. [0] is why we need to keep researching, but [0] is why electric was never going to win in the beginning. It is taking very advanced materials to…

This is an incredibly myopic take masquerading as "first principles". First, you're flat wrong on the differences between gas and batteries, especially for cars. Second, you need an actual reason energy density is the fundamental metric- cars aren't rockets and weight isn't the end-all. It's impossible to neglect the efficiency here. Car-scale combustion engines have a real world efficiency of around ten percent comp…

You can argue these points and prove mathematical efficiently all you want, in the end, it's about those who control the purse strings.

Right now, that is still 'Big Oil'. They are buried into our politicians pockets like an Alabama tick.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#224

Post by lovemenot »

jacquesm wrote: post #46
standardUser wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out the same was true for internal combustion engines all along.

Actually, no. Given the state of the tech at the time and our knowledge about pollution and the effects of various types of exhaust gases on the atmosphere it wasn't true 'all along'. There were levels of vehicle use that were perfectly acceptable. But now that transportation is a world wide commodity instead of a luxury those effects are inescapable. So there was some point in time where the balance shifted, and the…

Your parent comment was transparently using hindsight (it turns out).

No crystal ball needed.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#225

Post by mywittyname »

m-i-l wrote: post #178
rb808 wrote: post #4

You can visit Thomas Edison's house with his lab near Newark NJ. There are two electric cars on display. Interestingly here it says in 1914 38% of all the cars on the road were electric; 22% gasoline, 40% steam powered. http://www.edisonmuckers.org/edisons-cars/

"In 1914: 38% of all the cars on the road were electric; 22% gasoline, 40% steam powered."[0] "by 1917, only 50,000 electrics were registered compared to 3.5 million IC cars. Steamers were all but gone"[1] Assuming both sets of stats are correct, it sounds like something happened between 1914 and 1917 that led to the switch from electric (or steam) cars to ones powered by internal combustion engines. Perhaps the Firs…

Jay Leno has a YouTube channel with several episodes on his steam-powered vehicles, if anyone is interested. He goes through the enormously complicated startup procedure, which takes about 45 minutes. His comment was that most people who could afford a car could afford "a man" who would take care of all of this every morning.

I imagine the democratization of automobiles in the teens and 20s lead to the cheapest solution winning.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#226

Post by pier25 »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #132
pier25 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People usually think cars are the biggest sources of emissions but it's not even close. All transportation (car, planes, trains, etc) represent 14% of global emissions. Globally the biggest source of emissions is energy production which represents about 35% (25% of direct emissions and 10% of processes like refining fuel). https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emiss... So, I doubt emissions from ICE…

I think this was posted/referenced recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k Gates interview on energy

Nice video.

Yeah, energy production, storage, and consumption is really the fundamental problem to solve.

For example Vlacav Smil has said many times that the US should invest heavily in home insulation to reduce heating and AC energy.

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#228

Post by rb808 »

m-i-l wrote: post #178
rb808 wrote: post #4

You can visit Thomas Edison's house with his lab near Newark NJ. There are two electric cars on display. Interestingly here it says in 1914 38% of all the cars on the road were electric; 22% gasoline, 40% steam powered. http://www.edisonmuckers.org/edisons-cars/

"In 1914: 38% of all the cars on the road were electric; 22% gasoline, 40% steam powered."[0] "by 1917, only 50,000 electrics were registered compared to 3.5 million IC cars. Steamers were all but gone"[1] Assuming both sets of stats are correct, it sounds like something happened between 1914 and 1917 that led to the switch from electric (or steam) cars to ones powered by internal combustion engines. Perhaps the Firs…

Looks like 1.7m model Ts were built around that time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Model_T#Price_and_product...

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#229

Post by amai »

Beldur wrote: post #133

When I visited the Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, I was surprised to find out, that Porsche's first car was an Electric one :-) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porsche_P1

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner-Porsche from 1900:

"The Lohner-Porsche's design was studied by Boeing and NASA to create the Apollo program's Lunar Roving Vehicle."

Re: We Could Have Had Electric Cars from the Beginning

#230

Post by todd8 »

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #180
todd8 wrote: post #98

Perhaps we could have had electric vehicles sooner, but we would have needed clean sources of electricity, not coal powered generation, to make a difference.

No, it would not have been needed because even with coal-generated electricity, EV are cleaner than ICE (because small engine are far less efficient than big power plants). Besides, if all the car were powered by electricity, we probably would have made the electric grid cleaner and switch to renewables far sooner. Because switching from coal to gas and gas to solar/wind would have had a positive impact on almost all…

I don't believe that this is completely accurate.

According to the information found on page 7 of Cleaner Cars from Cradle to Grave, a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists [1], an electric vehicle that is charged by electricity from oil or coal generation has overall equivalent emissions to a gasoline vehicle that obtains 29 miles/gallon. Roughly on par with fuel-efficient contemporary gasoline powered vehicles. So I stand by my claim that electric cars don't solve the problem without addressing the emissions due to coal/oil based grid power.

In an alternative history, perhaps we could avoid petrochemical power, but it's not clear to me how we would have done that. Ford began production of the Model T in 1908. Solar and wind production would not have been feasible in the early 20th century, and even today hydroelectric power provides only a fraction of our energy consumption. See [2].

With regard to the original article, I find its analysis flawed. As I've already stated, power production for electric vehicles wouldn't have been clean in the early 1900's, but modern clean electric cars depend on more than a power grid based on renewable energy sources. They depend on lithium-ion batteries, invented in 1980. What would the country's electric cars have utilized before the 1980s? (Lead-acid and NiCad have serious environmental impacts, Lead-acid has poor energy vs weight, and NiMH batteries were not invented until 1989. All three of these battery types have charging rate limits that prevent them from being used in practical cars.[3])

Perhaps we could have done much better in the past with our decisions, but "masculine daring-do"[4] isn't the reason that we ended up with the levels of CO2 that we have in the atmosphere today.

[1] https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cl...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States#/m...

[3] https://phys.org/news/2015-04-history-batteries.html

[4] From the original articles sub-title.

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