sb Loc: Florida's East Coast

A hybrid car generates electricity to charge the battery from the stopping energy which would ordinarily be waste energy as you brake. The same vehicle with just a gas engine would not get 45-50 MPG. But the extra cost of batteries and replacing them at 8-10 years makes the hybrids not very cost-efficient. My neighbor has an electric car and rooftop solar panels. I thought about going to solar to power the house: it would cost $40,000 for a complete install with batteries (to cover me when the power goes out after a hurricane). This is also not cost -effective, given that my electric bill is about $150 per month it would take 20 years or more to break even - but halfway there I would have to spend another $10,000 to replace the batteries.

Electricity-powered vehicles, just like the hydrogen-powered idea which garnered a lot of excitement a few years ago (Kanye West even promoted converting Air Force One to hydrogen power to the president) simply changes the power source from f****l f**l in your car to f****l f**l - or nuclear - elsewhere. Natural gas burned in a power plant is probably less polluting than burning gas in automobiles. So electric vehicles will help prevent urban air pollution.

Fotoartist Loc: Detroit, Michigan

What about the part where solar panels are used to fly jet planes or power and run large factories to build electric cars. Or the biggest mining dump trucks in the world which are used to mine lithium and rare earths are powered by windmills?

pendennis

No one supporting passive power solutions ever thinks out the end-to-end costing of it.

First, all passive systems, whether wind or solar, are heavily subsidized. Wind power solutions don't recover enough cost to pay for the coke to produce the steel involved. Windmill vanes have to be replaced periodically, and those scrap vanes are not recycled; they're "hidden" in vast land fills in a couple of western states.

And what about the wildlife casualties? People decried the use of DDT, but not a whimper about bald eagles and other birds flying into windmills.

Lithium-ion batteries are not recyclable. They are either dumped in landfills, or hidden in some storage area.

What is going to power the means to mine the galena ore for the batteries? And where will the galena ore be mined? And what of the lead market when, and if, electric vehicles tip the balance of manufacturing. Just how expensive will those batteries become.

Construction of any scale just can't be run on batteries. The power-to-weight ratio of construction equipment will never favor electric motors. Internal combustion provides far too economical solutions for mobility and power.

None of the "greenies" have even begun to answer the economic and engineering problems with passive power generation. And when asked, always evade the questions.

JohnFrim Loc: Somewhere in the Great White North.

I forgive you, son, for you know not of what you speak.

neillaubenthal

I was in the nuclear powered Navy for 20 years...and you’re right...thorium reactors are a fine idea with many good points and likely safer than what we have today. However...the left isn’t interested in them by and large...they only want solar and wind...and ignore the severe issues those have. They only work in the daytime and when the wind is blowing...requiring massive amounts of batteries to store power for the night and calm...and solar is really effective for about 5 hours per day unless you constantly tilt the panels which greatly increases the complexity. Second problem is that you need hundreds of square miles of turbines and arrays...and nobody wants them in their suburban utopia. Thirdly is that the good locations for both are not where the people live...they’re out in the west mostly and the t***smission facilities to get power from there to population centers simply doesn’t exist yet. Look at the overall efficiency as well...neither solar or wind is as efficient in turning incident power into output power as a steam or gas turbine is...so you need more than you think of towers, panels, and windmills.

The biggest issue is storage for night time use...and it is t just the batteries...you need cooling and charging no ll the ancillary stuff...and there simply isn’t enough lithium production capacity in the world to meet the amount you need...lead acid batteries have limited life and are less efficient than lithium as well.

The only way the f****l f**l power industry can disappear is if fusion power is established or if we embrace nuclear of some sort...

AOC and the left seem to believe that they can legislate scientific progress...they can’t. They also seem to think that they can print an unlimited amount of money to finance their pipe dreams...they can’t and still have a country.

JohnFrim Loc: Somewhere in the Great White North.

You make many good points. I believe the current shift to wind and solar is not to "replace" f****l f**ls, but rather as an interim step to "reduce" or offset the use of f****l f**ls as we make progress toward better systems and approaches. I am a strong believer in safe nuclear (fission and/or fusion) as well as hydrogen. I don't think we will ever get away completely from f****l f**ls or the myriad of useful chemicals that are derived from oil, but we can try to do better than we do today. I view my investment of nearly 2X the cost of a comparable ICE-only vehicle to buy a plug-in hybrid as my contribution to future generations.

thom w Loc: San Jose, CA

Most haul trucks use electric propulsion. They currently power them using diesel powered generators, but it could be done with batteries. What does lead have to do with electric vehicles? The biggest machines on many mine sights are electric shovels.

letmedance Loc: Walnut, Ca.

The Hybrid gets more MPG than the standard internal combustion engine, when ever the car slows down regenerative braking recharges the battery. My Big Toyota hybrid gets better mileage than the Smart Car

letmedance Loc: Walnut, Ca.

We have been ahead of the world in EV and Hybrid decelopement.

trainspotter Loc: Oregon

Jus like their Diesel reports a few years back? How'd that work out for them?..."net carbon zero"....what a JOKE..stupid terms for NOTHING...

DennyT Loc: Central Missouri woods

The real problem was the car owner ignored all Tesla instruction and safeguards!!

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

Yes, if the UHH people have been following Tesla... Elon Musk... revolution, then they would understand that E-Car revolution "IS" and that once the other car manufacturers realized that an E-Car tsunami is coming they had what I call an "Oh, S**t Epiphany" and started joining the E-Car Club. You can buy a E-Ford Mustang! Yes, even 18 wheeler trucks are economically profitable.

Long Hall Trucks "the energy consumption was up to three times less [better] than the diesel trucks."
The report is 22 Pages long with great detail.

https://www.t***sportenvironment.org/sites/te/files/publications/20180725_T%26E_Battery_Electric_Trucks_EU_FINAL.pdf

btbg

I'm not arguing that point. I'm just talking about the potential of fire danger in lithium ion batteries. Well documented. That's why you can't put lithium ion batteries into checked luggage on airlines.

btbg

This does not say the energy consumption was up to three times better. The trucks don't even exist yet. This says that the energy consumption will be three times better assuming that A) the batteries fall into the parameters they assume, B) the batteries get the range they assume, and C) charging is done primarily at night in the truck company's own garage. That one may be the biggest sticking point as they were doing their analysis on "long-haul" trucking and the range they state is not sufficient for long haul truckers to only charge at night.

That leaves a number of problems that the position paper does not address. 1) Where and how to set up charging stations for truckers since trucks take a lot of space and 40 or 50 trucks all charging at the same time would use a tremendous amount of energy. 2) They assume that the cost of drivers remains unchanged. That is not true if the driver has to spend longer charging than they did filling up with diesel. It would increase both the amount of time it takes to deliver a product and the hours the driver is on the job. That is of course unless you use rapid chargers, which by the admission of the people who wrote the position paper uses more energy. Thus negating much of the "better" energy usage. Are just two of the obvious problems. But possibly the biggest problem is that the amount of batteries needed means that the truck can't haul as much weight as previously, adding additional trucking costs that are not factored into the analysis. For example if it takes four trucks instead of three to haul the same amount of goods, then the "savings" from the lower energy use are largely negated.

And, there is still that pesky problem that there currently aren't any viable long haul electric trucks being manufactured.

pendennis

Not likely, and all your doing is trading cargo load capacity for power generation. The load limits on most highways is 80k lbs GVW. And there's this little law of physics called "The Second Law of Thermodynamics". No vehicle can do 100% fuel renewal. And the top limit on electric trucks is 200 miles, or less. A diesel powered semi, even at 6.5mpg, has over a 1000 mile range. Long haul is still done with diesel

Mining is a virtually stationary production; "with a long enough extension cord"...

Your model doesn't hold up on highway construction where equipment has to be mobile, even for short hops.

And just how do you lubricate all those motors?

And BTW, Lithium batteries are not a panacea. Lead acid batteries are still, and will be required in the future, and that lead has to come from a mine. Lead is not 100% renewable.