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Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

nytimes.com

451–460 of 489 posts

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#451
post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid $500 and put a hitch on my Model S. I can tow more with a trailer than I could've put in my Toyota pickup truck bed (in 10 years of ownership, I never once towed anything more than 1000 lbs with my pickup). Not saying your use case is wrong (I get the appeal having owned a truck for so long), only that folks should consider that a pickup truck is not the only path to easy cargo logistics.

Ya, I don't think I would be too excited to haul a trailer with my $80k+ luxury vehicle. Nor would I have a place to park and store that trailer.

To each their own. Too many folks out there with pickup trucks who don't need them is my point.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This!!! I've told everyone who'd listen for years that an electric motor is the better option for a pickup trucks due to the more appropriate matching of the torque curve to the hauling load demands. When my beloved '00 Ram 1500 died about 5 years ago I decided to hold out for an electric truck that I assumed would be coming to market. Looks like I may finally get my chance shortly. I honestly don't know if the cumul…

Trains are electric motors powered by diesel generators. Seems like it should be an easy sell for people that whatever trains do is an effective way to handle heavy loads.

Trains don't do hills very well. Train tracks are always mostly straight and level. They do that extremely well.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#453
post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was 17, I crashed and totaled my '77 Ford pickup because I slid out on wet pavement. Everyone said I needed sand bags but I loved being able to peel out so easily. Live and learn.

Love fishtailing the Camaro.

Love fishtailing the Hellcat at 70mph.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#454
post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, I don't think I would be too excited to haul a trailer with my $80k+ luxury vehicle. Nor would I have a place to park and store that trailer.

To each their own. Too many folks out there with pickup trucks who don't need them is my point.

> Too many folks out there with pickup trucks who don't need them is my point.

Too many folks out there with opinions about what others should do with their money is my point.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trains are electric motors powered by diesel generators. Seems like it should be an easy sell for people that whatever trains do is an effective way to handle heavy loads.

Trains don't do hills very well. Train tracks are always mostly straight and level. They do that extremely well.

And freeways have regulations about what the maximum road grade can be to prevent trucks from slowing down too significantly on hills.

That's just a law of converting massive amounts of kinetic energy into potential energy as the weight goes up hill.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To each their own. Too many folks out there with pickup trucks who don't need them is my point.

> Too many folks out there with pickup trucks who don't need them is my point. Too many folks out there with opinions about what others should do with their money is my point.

I have an opinion (backed by a consensus of scientific practitioners) on the burning of fossil fuels (because of rampant climate change) in products because someone feels they need it versus a legitimate need. There's no point in arguing about an entitlement complex of a subset of the population ("right to own a pickup truck"), just gotta drive progress forward so people make better choices (behavioral economics) or don't get to make the choice at all (regulation).

If climate change is less important than someone's "right" to own a "garage queen" (if the vehicle is never going to see service other than asphalt and rarely have a load in the bed or on the hitch), that's not an argument I'm interested in expending cycles on, as these political beliefs can border on religious fervor.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - They're far more expensive than ICE vehicles as there aren't a whole lot of used EVs but there are tons of used ICE vehicles at vary price levels. For now. That's a combination of efficiencies of scale problems. VW Group says that they'll hit the efficiency of scale where EVs are cheaper across the board for every make and model to produce than ICE vehicles sometime between now and 2023 (that's less than four yea…

>You think it would be hard to schedule a 30-45 minute meal somewhere once every two weeks? Uh, not everyone can afford to go out to eat once every two weeks just to charge their car. Another HN myopic view "I make a lot of money, everyone must make a lot of money".

Nothing to do with money, pack a picnic and find a charger near a pleasant park. The point is there are all sorts of options to spend your time for 30-45 minutes. Grab a laptop and work from your car. Go for a hike. Walk the dog. Whatever you were already going to do out the house on the weekend once every fortnight.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - They're far more expensive than ICE vehicles as there aren't a whole lot of used EVs but there are tons of used ICE vehicles at vary price levels. For now. That's a combination of efficiencies of scale problems. VW Group says that they'll hit the efficiency of scale where EVs are cheaper across the board for every make and model to produce than ICE vehicles sometime between now and 2023 (that's less than four yea…

"You think it would be hard to schedule a 30-45 minute meal somewhere once every two weeks?" I think there is an issue that may not be obvious with the charging time. Let's say for the sake of argument, sure, people can tolerate taking ten times the amount of time to charge as filling a gas tank. But what that means on a large scale, if everyone switches to electric, is that we need ten times the number of charging s…

Everyone charging at home in off-peak hours "fills in the bathtub" on energy usage charts. Peak demand during the day is huge, and it drops off substantially at night. We already have the power capacity to support every car switching magically tomorrow to EV so long as everyone agrees to charge in off-peak hours.

Yeah, there's absolutely no reason for chargers to be rare. In much of the world we have the electricity already spread amazingly wide. Every outside plug is already a potential Level 1 charger. You may frown at how slow Level 1 "trickle" charges, but think about how long most cars spend sitting somewhere, anywhere. Gain a few miles every time the car is parked. You can't put a gas station in every parking space, but you can certainly put a boring old fashioned three-prong plug there. (We have that technology. We've had it for like a century now.)

"Charging Stations" as a construct are certainly a convenience, especially when looking for reliable charging away from home, but chargers can be anywhere the (electric) light (bulb) touches (and that's a lot of the developed world). Thinking of chargers in traditional gas station terms is missing the opportunity, and confusing how the supply chain works. We don't need to centralize big reservoirs of "fuel" to maintain an EV fleet, we use the electric grid we've already spent a century building out, diversifying, and largely decentralizing.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Too many folks out there with pickup trucks who don't need them is my point. Too many folks out there with opinions about what others should do with their money is my point.

I have an opinion (backed by a consensus of scientific practitioners) on the burning of fossil fuels (because of rampant climate change) in products because someone feels they need it versus a legitimate need. There's no point in arguing about an entitlement complex of a subset of the population ("right to own a pickup truck"), just gotta drive progress forward so people make better choices (behavioral economics) or…

If we are wanting to save the earth, then maybe instead of buying an $80k Tesla, people should buy a much cheaper Nissan Leaf (or ride a bike) and put all the money saved into carbon offsets.

Re: Flood of Oil Is Coming, Complicating Efforts to Fight Global Warming

#460
post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an opinion (backed by a consensus of scientific practitioners) on the burning of fossil fuels (because of rampant climate change) in products because someone feels they need it versus a legitimate need. There's no point in arguing about an entitlement complex of a subset of the population ("right to own a pickup truck"), just gotta drive progress forward so people make better choices (behavioral economics) or…

If we are wanting to save the earth, then maybe instead of buying an $80k Tesla, people should buy a much cheaper Nissan Leaf (or ride a bike) and put all the money saved into carbon offsets.

If one must pick either an expensive EV where the manufacturer is pouring the margins into expansion (factories, charging networks, etc) or a slightly cheaper, weak EV that is barely an effort (compared to their total manufacturing capacity), it's obvious which I would (and have) picked. Tesla invested over $400 million into a charging network so EV buyers could be confident about traveling with their cars, other manufacturers have not (VW's Electrify America is a requirement of their Dieselgate settlement with the US gov). Expensive Teslas (Roadster, S, X) helped deliver cheaper Teslas (you can get a Model 3 for $40k, within spitting distance of the average price of a new car).

The thesis is straightforward. People aren't going to stop driving outside of areas that have public transit (most of the US), therefore we must default to cars sticking around. EVs don't get cheaper unless battery manufacturing scales up. Cheaper batteries means cheaper EVs as well as energy storage (both utility scale and for the home). EVs and energy storage reduce fossil fuel consumption. Serious companies scale up their EV powertrain manufacturing. No manufacturer's actions have been as serious as Teslas. Carbon credits are fairly useless if you're not contributing to the rapid electrification of transportation, like a bandaid on a bleeding artery. Clean up the blood after you get the bleeding stopped.

Or buy that cheap Toyota while Toyota still flails trying to convince the world fuel cells (and the 35 or so hydrogen fueling stations in the US) are the future, while they continue to pump out 10 million internal combustion vehicles per year.

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