Are fully electric cars really “coal cars”, “fracnatgas cars”, “uranium cars” or…

[Mike Eskimo]

…am I barking up the wrong tree ?

I guess “hydro cars” , “sun cars” and “wind cars” could be others but my point is :

Across this big land of ours , nat gas, then coal, then nuclear is what powers most “electric” cars.

We knew that but do we think about that ?

(Sorry but that’s as deep as I go on Monday mornings…)

 

[Cam]

Ya' need oil to make solar panels dontcha'? Although they are working on that.

 

[VonBonfire]

We knew that but do we think about that ?

Hello authoritarian transportation. Limit the ease with which you can travel vast distances. You could invest in hotels because what else will you do on that cross country family vacation when a few hundred miles is all you can go before your environmentally hazardous duracel on wheels needs a 10 hour recharge?

 

[imwjl]

Hello authoritarian transportation. Limit the ease with which you can travel vast distances. You could invest in hotels because what else will you do on that cross country family vacation when a few hundred miles is all you can go before your environmentally hazardous duracel on wheels needs a 10 hour recharge?

Is this Jeep what you're using for your vacations? The one my kids had needed that sort of time. All the Tesla owners close to me get 100+ to 200 miles with 15-20 minute stops.

For anyone interested in the @Mike Eskimo questions, later I'll try to repost the excellent Wall St. Journal article I've done before from outside the paywall. It is particularly good because of their skeptic angle and their looking at worst case scenarios.

 

[bettyseldest]

Could be wrong (wouldn't be the first time) but here in the UK we are about 38% renewable and rising. Obviously we will need more to replace the energy currently provided by fossil fuels, but it is achievable. My next house will have panels and a battery of along with an EV, which should make me self sufficient most of the year. Not everyone will have the space or funds to live in a passive house, but many will, and existing homes will be modified to reduce energy consumption.

 

[telleutelleme]

It is a transitional time towards renewables. It is not going to happen overnight because so much is made besides fuel from fossil based resources. It is a start and even the petroleum industry is onboard. Everything we create is in some way related to a non-renewable resource. Wind and solar being somewhat of an exception, although the land use is at risk with both.

 

[Killing Floor]

When people speak about "Smart Grid", electric vehicles are a part of that process. In theory EVs that are connected to charge stations with 2-way metering could be drawn down as a distributed power source for emergency use. We're a long way from that as a reality but it does work. Regardless of the source of utility generated electricity the losses across municipal grids are tremendous. And most coal/nuclear/solar/hydro/magic generators only have 1 speed, ON.
The long view of EVs is that in order for them to fully permeate the market there needs to be a shift to distributed generation coinciding with this. Right now we are feeling the bumps along the way.

 

[maxvintage]

This again?

Yes, an electric car is being powered by electricity generated by a mix or carbon, uranium water, solar and wind. This is true. They are not cost free in environmental terms. I thnk about this, but where I live the power company does not make it easy to adjust where your power is coming from.

But it's very clear that the economics of power generation favor renewables--it's way cheaper to build and operate a solar array or a wind farm than it is to build and operate a coal fired electric plant. I suspect the future will involve large scale use of Iron Air batteries (https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/), which are cheap to make out of common materials and can be used to store grid power at home and at wind and solar sites.

The materials in Lithium Ion batteries can be recycled. How much of the gas in your car can be recycled?

Meanwhile another guy up the street just covered his roof with solar panels. That's three houses I can see from my living room. None of our neighbors, oddly enough, have started drilling wells so they can refine their own gas in the backyard.

I just recently got an electric car and posted about it, including a long trip to a rural area where there were no charging stations and how I managed it. It's true, there are inconveniences.


My wife, meanwhile, invested in Aptera, https://aptera.us/, a three wheel electric vehicle that can get forty miles of range from its onboard solar panels, just from parking in a lot on a sunny day.

 

[feldkeen]

In Florida we are mostly natural gas. We have some coal fired cars on the road though.

 

[ChicknPickn]

We are not even close to a ”renewable” solution for air freight. Therefore, refineries must remain online for that sector of the economy, if not others. For air transportation to remain affordable, refineries require certain economies of scale. This suggests to me that ICE vehicles are not soon going away.

 

[bottlenecker]

It doesn't matter. There are lots of ways to generate electricity, and the way most of it is generated is going to change.

I think the batteries are a more interesting topic.

 

[imwjl]

…am I barking up the wrong tree ?

I guess “hydro cars” , “sun cars” and “wind cars” could be others but my point is :

Across this big land of ours , nat gas, then coal, then nuclear is what powers most “electric” cars.

We knew that but do we think about that ?

(Sorry but that’s as deep as I go on Monday mornings…)

That will depend on where you are in the country. I will re-share what I know in our enterprise.

Our enterprise has 3/4 locations running on renewables, and now the 4th with a different utility could. Two municipalities in my area have lots of vehicles powered by renewables including a fire truck.

EVs have more negative externalities and costs that disappear with age.

Are Electric Cars Really Better for the Environment?

EVs produce fewer emissions overall than their gas-powered counterparts, but there are caveats

www.wsj.com

 

[telleutelleme]

This again?

Yes, an electric car is being powered by electricity generated by a mix or carbon, uranium water, solar and wind. This is true. They are not cost free in environmental terms. I thnk about this, but where I live the power company does not make it easy to adjust where your power is coming from.

But it's very clear that the economics of power generation favor renewables--it's way cheaper to build and operate a solar array or a wind farm than it is to build and operate a coal fired electric plant. I suspect the future will involve large scale use of Iron Air batteries (https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/), which are cheap to make out of common materials and can be used to store grid power at home and at wind and solar sites.

The materials in Lithium Ion batteries can be recycled. How much of the gas in your car can be recycled?

Meanwhile another guy up the street just covered his roof with solar panels. That's three houses I can see from my living room. None of our neighbors, oddly enough, have started drilling wells so they can refine their own gas in the backyard.

I just recently got an electric car and posted about it, including a long trip to a rural area where there were no charging stations and how I managed it. It's true, there are inconveniences.


My wife, meanwhile, invested in Aptera, https://aptera.us/, a three wheel electric vehicle that can get forty miles of range from its onboard solar panels, just from parking in a lot on a sunny day.

Lithium is not renewable. It is mined and as such is not dissimilar than fossil fuels.

"The total global reserves are estimated at 14 million tons. This corresponds to 165 times the production volume in 2018. Where is the most lithium mined? With 51,000 tons, Australia was by far the most important supplier of lithium in 2018 – ahead of Chile (16,000 tons), China (8,000 tons) and Argentina (6,200 tons)."

Everything Humans use has impact on LPE (Life, Property and the Environment). Water use to put out wildfires washes what's been burned back in to the environment, impacting water quality, unplanned de-forestation etc. etc.. Little thoughtful steps on how to address LPE impact will make change and is.

 

[maxvintage]

Lithium is not renewable. It is mined and as such is not dissimilar than fossil fuels.

"The total global reserves are estimated at 14 million tons. This corresponds to 165 times the production volume in 2018. Where is the most lithium mined? With 51,000 tons, Australia was by far the most important supplier of lithium in 2018 – ahead of Chile (16,000 tons), China (8,000 tons) and Argentina (6,200 tons)."

Everything Humans use has impact on LPE (Life, Property and the Environment). Water use to put out wildfires washes what's been burned back in to the environment, impacting water quality, unplanned de-forestation etc. etc.. Little thoughtful steps on how to address LPE impact will make change and is.

Where did I say it was renewable? I said it was recyclable.

And yes, electric cars are not cost-free

 

[That Cal Webway]

As Johnny Cash once hailed,

"Hey, Coal Porter!!"

.

 

[bumnote]

Hello authoritarian transportation. Limit the ease with which you can travel vast distances. You could invest in hotels because what else will you do on that cross country family vacation when a few hundred miles is all you can go before your environmentally hazardous duracel on wheels needs a 10 hour recharge?

Authoritarian? Seriously??
You do realize gas stations used to be far and few in between, interstate travel by car was something not terribly far removed from travel by covered wagon...and this didn't change until after WW2. 70 years ago a cross country trip by car took weeks, not days.
By the time electric cars become the norm, the inconvenience will be negligible.

 

[SRHmusic]

What matters more is that a) EVs are more energy efficient than internal combustion engines by quite a bit (like 70%+ compared to 40%), with less waste heat and regenerative braking; b) they can run on electricity generated in a wide variety of ways, including distributed generation like home solar. It opens up the vehicle energy market to a variety of technologies rather than just petrol.

 

[Mike Eskimo]

Could be wrong (wouldn't be the first time) but here in the UK we are about 38% renewable and rising. Obviously we will need more to replace the energy currently provided by fossil fuels, but it is achievable. My next house will have panels and a battery of along with an EV, which should make me self sufficient most of the year. Not everyone will have the space or funds to live in a passive house, but many will, and existing homes will be modified to reduce energy consumption.

It is a transitional time towards renewables. It is not going to happen overnight because so much is made besides fuel from fossil based resources. It is a start and even the petroleum industry is onboard. Everything we create is in some way related to a non-renewable resource. Wind and solar being somewhat of an exception, although the land use is at risk with both.

When people speak about "Smart Grid", electric vehicles are a part of that process. In theory EVs that are connected to charge stations with 2-way metering could be drawn down as a distributed power source for emergency use. We're a long way from that as a reality but it does work. Regardless of the source of utility generated electricity the losses across municipal grids are tremendous. And most coal/nuclear/solar/hydro/magic generators only have 1 speed, ON.
The long view of EVs is that in order for them to fully permeate the market there needs to be a shift to distributed generation coinciding with this. Right now we are feeling the bumps along the way.

This again?

Yes, an electric car is being powered by electricity generated by a mix or carbon, uranium water, solar and wind. This is true. They are not cost free in environmental terms. I thnk about this, but where I live the power company does not make it easy to adjust where your power is coming from.

But it's very clear that the economics of power generation favor renewables--it's way cheaper to build and operate a solar array or a wind farm than it is to build and operate a coal fired electric plant. I suspect the future will involve large scale use of Iron Air batteries (https://formenergy.com/technology/battery-technology/), which are cheap to make out of common materials and can be used to store grid power at home and at wind and solar sites.

The materials in Lithium Ion batteries can be recycled. How much of the gas in your car can be recycled?

Meanwhile another guy up the street just covered his roof with solar panels. That's three houses I can see from my living room. None of our neighbors, oddly enough, have started drilling wells so they can refine their own gas in the backyard.

I just recently got an electric car and posted about it, including a long trip to a rural area where there were no charging stations and how I managed it. It's true, there are inconveniences.


My wife, meanwhile, invested in Aptera, https://aptera.us/, a three wheel electric vehicle that can get forty miles of range from its onboard solar panels, just from parking in a lot on a sunny day.

Yes - this is where my thoughts go when given a chance - the grid , the shift in power generation, and a rethinking of battery technology . Lithium ? For now…

 

[JL_LI]

The physics is what you learned in high school. Matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed. Whatever you use to power your vehicle comes from somewhere. There’s no work without an energy input. Your waste doesn’t disappear. It changes form and reappears where you least want it.

Remember the biology experiment where you inoculated a flask off culture medium with a few bacteria. They kept reproducing until they consumed all available resources including decomposed dead and left behind a dead flask.

Even the idiots who cut classes and walked down the street to the fast food joint learned the lesson. There’s no free lunch.

Things we were taught that no longer apply. The poor will always be with us. Not true. They’ll die off first. Only the strong survive. This isn’t true either. They’ll kill each other off.

The single advantage of e vehicles is that they don’t produce green house gasses in operation. But they consume resources, some of them scarce, in their manufacture and they leave behind carcasses that are slow to decompose but leach toxic waste products into the environment.

So there’s no free lunch. The only solution is fewer people with less that they don’t need. Humanity has found a way to make that happen. War.

 

[Mike Eskimo]

Authoritarian? Seriously??
You do realize gas stations used to be far and few in between, interstate travel by car was something not terribly far removed from travel by covered wagon...and this didn't change until after WW2. 70 years ago a cross country trip by car took weeks, not days.
By the time electric cars become the norm, the inconvenience will be negligible.

This as well. The A word is a dead-end wildly hypocritical