Electric Cars - help me understand

[Atlantic59]

Our existing transportation systems and infrastructure are built on liquid fuels. It does not make much sense to just throw everything away and start over with electric. Will you have electric long haul tractor-trailer trucks, electric cargo ships? Throw away hundreds of millions of existing cars? No.

Liquid fuels can be made from crops and this can be carbon neutral. The crops would be converting solar energy into a liquid form that we could use in place of some of the fossil fuels used currently.

Some hybrid of bio liquid fuels with electric is what I would expect to see in the future.

 

[Dave-the-rave]

Meh! I wanna see the replicator in Star Trek where I press a couple of buttons and a beer and a cheese burger fall out the bottom.

 

[TexOkie Shaver]

Meh! I wanna see the replicator in Star Trek where I press a couple of buttons and a beer and a cheese burger fall out the bottom.

 

[tube_guy]

Electric power generation, like what's used in a typical power plant, is actually fairly inefficient. A power plant frequently runs at a thermal efficiency of about 35 percent. That efficiency actually has nothing at all to do with the efficiency of the equipment used, so it's very difficult to improve upon. It's the fundamental thermal efficiency of the thermodynamic cycle that steam turbine power generation is based upon. The efficiency of the equipment used to run that cycle actually decreases the overall efficiency more. It just takes a lot of energy to run the pumps that pressurize the water so that running a steam turbine is even possible. An internal combustion engine is actually a bit more efficient. A modern diesel engine is thermodynamically a little over 50 percent efficient, for example. Many engineers spend their entire careers trying to increase these efficiencies by 1 or 2 percent. And most are unsuccessful.

 

[Alacrity59]

Our existing transportation systems and infrastructure are built on liquid fuels. It does not make much sense to just throw everything away and start over with electric. Will you have electric long haul tractor-trailer trucks, electric cargo ships? Throw away hundreds of millions of existing cars? No.

Liquid fuels can be made from crops and this can be carbon neutral. The crops would be converting solar energy into a liquid form that we could use in place of some of the fossil fuels used currently.

Some hybrid of bio liquid fuels with electric is what I would expect to see in the future.

 

[McBlade]

Liquid fuels can be made from crops and this can be carbon neutral. The crops would be converting solar energy into a liquid form that we could use in place of some of the fossil fuels used currently.

One thing which isn't talked about nearly enough is the impact of a changing climate on agriculture.

Agricultural systems are very tightly adapted to specific climate regimes. Variation from the mean even within the range of normal climate conditions can dramatically affect productivity. Given that climate is going to change everywhere, and keep changing decade after decade, global agricultural output is almost certain to take a big hit.

You might argue that we can adapt. If one crop doesn't grow plant another. But agricultural knowledge is gained and passed down over generations and without this productivity will suffer.

And as soon as you have adapted the climate has changed again. Some places may get so hot and/or so dry you just can't adapt.

Relentlessly rising food prices are likely to be the big story of the coming century alongside more frequent and more severe famines in the poorest and most exposed parts of the world. I wouldn't want to rely on spare agricultural capacity for fuel production but perhaps we can do it as an industrial chemical process instead using vats full of algae.

 

[esswun]

When Tesla roadside service is dispatched to help an ailing Tesla owner they show up in gas powered Ford Transit vans. Faith in action!

 

[GaryTha]

I have a Chevy Bolt. I got it before the big price jump. My son's work is off the grid with solar power. He recharges there for free.

It's great if most of your trips are around town up to about 35 miles a day with an occasional 150-mile day. We have a gas car for long trips.

We get a minimum of 5 miles/KWH. Our local electric rate is $0.16/hr. Divide the gas price by 3.2 to get the equivalent miles/gal in terms of price.

Fully charged, I wouldn't plan a trip more than about 150 miles. This leaves sufficient reserve for faster speeds and air conditioning or heat.

 

[StillShaving]

What ever happen to the idea of Hydrogen powered vehicles? I thought the fuel cell technology (think reinforced tank, not NASA fuel cells) had reached a point that we didn’t have to worry about the hydrogen exploding?

I believe there are a few startups working on HEV (hydrogen electric vehicles) instead of BEV (battery electric vehicles). Nikola Corporation was in the news some months ago due to some fraud issues, but I believe they are still focused on hydrogen fuel cells for the trucking sector since the weight of batteries is too range limiting for an 18 wheeler. Hydrogen is more expensive to produce but the weight and short refueling time is an advantage. Hopefully solid state batteries, ammonia fuel cells, or some other energy storage technology will improve the state of things.

 

[Hachet]

Not sure why the op asked the question originally but it's important to ask why... Why are we being pushed toward electric vehicles?

 

[tamahagane]

Not sure why the op asked the question originally but it's important to ask why... Why are we being pushed toward electric vehicles?

Carbon dioxide emission of electric vs fuel. For electric cars, most is emitted during battery production; for fuel engines, it's during driving with the overall advantage being for electric. You might like this article.
As for the OP, the calculation is too optimistic, but the idea is right. Still the inefficiency of electricity transportation seems lower than the production of the production of synthetic fuel (via electrolysis). The latter is currently discussed for aviation purposes mostly.

 

[luvmysuper]

I am all for alternative energy use. I do believe that industry should be driven by innovation.
I think that development of alternative fuel source pricing and use should naturally evolve from improved technology rather than increasing tax rates on existing energy as a means to balance the playing field for alternative energy.
You can make your garden plants the same height two ways, fertilize the shorter plants or cut the tops off of the taller ones.

 

[Hachet]

 

[FarmerTan]

Asking questions like this is like living in 1910 and asking "What are they going to do, put gasoline stations all over the place? How are you going to get the gasoline to them? What happens if you're out of gas and there's no station nearby?"

When the infrastructure is needed, the infrastructure will come, in whatever form makes the most sense at the time, whether or not we can imagine it today.

I can't help but be the old guy yelling "get off my lawn!" But...... I realize human nature doesn't change, and again but.....we live today, vs 100 years ago, in a "fast food" werld..... The infrastructure WILL HAVE TO be in place before we "get off the pot" so to speak.

We need another Edison, a SELF educated genius to solve today's problems where this is concerned.

 

[FarmerTan]

Not sure why the op asked the question originally but it's important to ask why... Why are we being pushed toward electric vehicles?

Because we have the mentality that a beaver dam is more "beautiful" than a power plant.

 

[Go West Young Man]

View attachment 1296033

Electric is not perfect, but it's considerably cleanER than gas.

 

[Stubblebum]

Electric is not perfect, but it's considerably cleanER than gas.

Thank you for sharing your opinion.
As for me, I think I would rather live next to an oil field than a lithium mine.

 

[ZJ68]

Not sure why the op asked the question originally but it's important to ask why... Why are we being pushed toward electric vehicles?

Climate Change: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

In the past 60 years, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased 100 times faster than it did during the end of the last ice age.

www.climate.gov

 

[luvmysuper]

I support the development of electric (or alternative fuel) vehicles, but until there is widespread clean generation capacity, you're just swapping one source of emissions for another.
At present, the vast majority of peaker plants are still fossil fuel generation, primarily coal.
There are not a lot of new power plants being built.
As you increase demand for electricity without clean generation, you bring more peaker plants online.
Coal, gas and petroleum make up 60% of the US generation.
Wind, solar and hydro make up 18%.
The rest is burning biomass, refuse and other combustible materials which still produce emissions.

 

[Avi]

I support the development of electric (or alternative fuel) vehicles, but until there is widespread clean generation capacity, you're just swapping one source of emissions for another.
At present, the vast majority of peaker plants are still fossil fuel generation, primarily coal.
There are not a lot of new power plants being built.
As you increase demand for electricity without clean generation, you bring more peaker plants online.
Coal, gas and petroleum make up 60% of the US generation.
Wind, solar and hydro make up 18%.
The rest is burning biomass, refuse and other combustible materials which still produce emissions.

To be honest the free market has pretty much spoken here. It’s worth pointing out we were below 10% in 2008 and the wholesale cost of electricity from renewables has been dropping like Moore’s law. It does not take a Wall Street hedge fund manager level of genius to extrapolate where this is going in terms of low cost energy generation in the near future.

It is pretty hard to compete with decentralized, renewables for new plant generation.

There is a reason the conversation has flipped to subsidizing coal plants under misguided discussions around grid stability.