Electric vehicle discussion

The Mach E is stellar and lots of tongues are hanging out for the Lightning already, so he certainly picked the correct member of the Big 3 to associate with this pitch.
 
Ford is also doing R&D on batteries which it appears will be built in-house. A smart move considering possible supply disruptions with other countries like... uh... you know, the the one that starts with Ch...
 
Why would anyone buy an abortion on 4 wheels?
Above all, why does a politician have to force people to buy them? They have to stop.
 
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However, I keep repeating that no one can force another person to buy something they don't want. And that the only green cars are those parked.
 
Right to repair does need to be addressed in the EV market with companies like Tesla, but otherwise I'm all for them becoming the standard.
 
Right to repair does need to be addressed in the EV market with companies like Tesla, but otherwise I'm all for them becoming the standard.
Yes, R2R in general needs more support and for mass-market EVs even moreso.
 
However, I keep repeating that no one can force another person to buy something they don't want. And that the only green cars are those parked.
How do you feel about less car-centric urban design, then?
 
However, I keep repeating that no one can force another person to buy something they don't want. And that the only green cars are those parked.
How do you feel about less car-centric urban design, then?
The problem I'm seeing with current pedestrian-focused urban design, such as the '15 minute city' (everything you need walkable within 15 minutes), is a tendency to forget, or in some cases outright dismiss, the needs of people who can't get everywhere on foot. I'd be happy to see pedestrian-focused urban design with accessible mass transit, but that needs to come with an understanding that for some people reliable and safe walking distance is measured in the very low tens of metres, and that for those of us who are wheelchair users any steps or any slope over 1 in 10 is a no go zone. In practise that means some form of vehicle access is needed pretty much everywhere. It doesn't need to be general access, you could restrict it to accessible electric taxis, but it needs to be there or you start shutting disabled people out of cities.
 
However, I keep repeating that no one can force another person to buy something they don't want. And that the only green cars are those parked.
OTOH its pretty simple to restrict what people can buy, as the UK has done by ruling no sales of internal combustion engine only vehicles post 2030. I strongly suspect that will be expanded to hybrids as well. No one will be forced to buy one, but if you want a new car post-2030 ....

And while electric vehicles may not be ideal for the environment they're less bad than IC-engined.
 
I'm not a great fan of EV because methanol or ammonia could substitute to gasoline more easily, in IC cars and hybrids.
Main problem is to produce these fuels without CO2 (ammonia) or famine (methanol)...

Why no E85 / hybrid cars, btw ? sounds good to me. Even classic IC cars can be run on E85.
 
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I'm not a great fan of EV because methanol or ammonia could substitute to gasoline more easily, in IC cars and hybrids.
Main problem is to produce these fuels without CO2 (ammonia) or famine (methanol)...

Why no E85 / hybrid cars, btw ? sounds good to me. Even classic IC cars can be run on E85.
Oil could also be produced by capturing carbon dioxide from the air, seas and oceans.
 
I'm not a great fan of EV because methanol or ammonia could substitute to gasoline more easily, in IC cars and hybrids.
Main problem is to produce these fuels without CO2 (ammonia) or famine (methanol)...

Why no E85 / hybrid cars, btw ? sounds good to me. Even classic IC cars can be run on E85.
Oil could also be produced by capturing carbon dioxide from the air, seas and oceans.
This would turn hydrocarbons from an energy source to an energy transfer medium, like hydrogen. Are there any new developments on artificial photosynthesis or biofuel technology?
 
I'm not a great fan of EV because methanol or ammonia could substitute to gasoline more easily, in IC cars and hybrids.
Main problem is to produce these fuels without CO2 (ammonia) or famine (methanol)...

Why no E85 / hybrid cars, btw ? sounds good to me. Even classic IC cars can be run on E85.
Oil could also be produced by capturing carbon dioxide from the air, seas and oceans.
Why produce a complex hydrocarbon, when you can use the same enegy directly, or to generate hydrogen or simple alcohols? Oil is far from the most efficient target for that kind of process, and would have the same pollution issues as existing oil-based fuels.
 
Is it possible to produce methanol / ammonia without oil and without nuclear power ? through solar power / solar furnaces ?
In passing, never quite understood why plain old BWR can't be used to make biofuels.
Why does it takes a HTGR ?
 
In order to improve things, people sometimes need a nudge in the right direction. EVs reduce pollution and enable energy independence. Both of these are good things.

They very often dont do the 1st thing (its entirely dependant on the nature of the grid of the nation concerned), and nearly always do the reverse of the 2nd thing.

They only reduce pollution if you very specifically ring-fence what you define as the pollution, and the considerably higher cost of ownership (which may in fact eventually totally prevent "ownership" at all in the ways we currently understand consumer goods) will make the end user even more energy-tied to the organizations providing EV`s.

In my view, they will lead to catastrophically damaging resource-wars which will be at least as awful as anything we`ve seen over oil in the Gulf, will eventually totally demolish the entire concept of personal ownership of any vehicle, and will relegate road transport to use strictly by the upper-middle and upper classes.

I`m not saying "Lets use engines for the rest of human existence", I`m just saying, if you think this transition will come with problems any less severe than those we already have now, you have simply not done enough research. For example did you know the cost of ownership forecasts usually stop at 8 years ? (this number will always be a moving number based on making sure you never get to what happens when the battery needs to be replaced, see footnote 17, page 9)


A glance at the world map of which type of countries own the resources all this will need, tells you very quickly, that things are going to get very sticky.

Here is but a tiny snippet of the problems to come, and powertrain development engineers (like me) get rather fed up being chucked shiny newspaper articles about a magical green future which only needs us to throw away engines to attain. If only reality were so simple. If we all decide to use electricity alone for transport as a philosphical choice, thats one thing, but I`ll be interested to see how many are willing to sleep in the bed they`ve made when all these chickens come home to roost.

 
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Sure replacing oil (a finite resource) by lithium (another finite resource) won't help.
It is also a matter of 8 billion people (soon) wanting a common standard of living: the one from the advanced countries which is all by itself unaffordable...
 
As someone who follows battery technology, it's clear that certain technologies are being held back in order to allow for the quickest return on investment. Yesterday, President Biden test drove the all-electric Ford F-150. The Ford Motor Company is building an electric vehicle manufacturing complex in Dearborn, Michigan and is doing its own electric battery R&D in nearby Allen Park, with plans to produce their batteries in-house, avoiding problems with foreign suppliers. In China, at this moment, a company is waiting for the first order of a million-mile battery, which exists. As the current health crisis eases, those in charge of getting the quickest return on investment must decide the right time to introduce new technologies. Next month, a company called Rivian will begin deliveries of its electric pickup truck.

I strongly urge all readers to consider the current media trend: It's the End of the World. As the current health crisis ends, we will face the apocalypse -- from global warming. The thing we must act against now in order to avoid our extinction. Well, look at the various proposed schemes, and how long they'll take to implement. A Carbon Tax? What an idiotic idea. Even if the US meets or exceeds all goals, it will still take years. And what about China? It appears they will still be burning coal when the US does not.

Lithium wars? What nonsense. Various other chemistries are being tested successfully right now, including solid-state batteries. But investors will need an opportunity to exit their investment in lithium. They don't want to lose any money.
 
Recycling li-ion batteries hasn't been done on a large scale yet because by and large, the first generation li-ion batteries still in use. And after they're removed from cars, they get a second life as home batteries (because the reduced capacity is less of a problem in stationary applications). You'll see the industry ramp up when the supply of dead batteries starts growing.
 
The current plan for Li-Ion batteries in cars is swapping them out with new. All of this is in the process of being implemented. More car charging stations will appear as part of the money from the US infrastructure plan.
 
Electric cars are also heavily subsidized. Without subsidies they are like Tony Stark without his armor. Please don't even try to talk about global warming as I read in previous comments. Really, don't do it.
 
From the Ford Motor Company about the all electric F-150:

"The reveal takes place at 9:30 p.m. EDT, May 19, from Ford World Headquarters and will be broadcast live with 30+ ways to watch across physical and digital destinations, including the Ford Facebook and YouTube channels, Twitter, key national publications as well as 18 impactful out-of-home locations such as Times Square in New York City and Las Vegas Boulevard."
 
Pretty interesting cross-section of views here:

Electric Vehicles have just reached superior lifecycle cost in some niches, basically short range stop and go due to much reduced wear and tear, no fuel used while idling and small battery requirement. The Amazon's order for a fleet of delivery vans is a visible signal of this, and a sizable part of the existing vehicle fleet is already set to be replaced.

However battery costs have been dropping at ~ -13% per year for the past decade. While development trends into the future is hard to predict, past history is somewhat useful of a guide, just look at moore's law. If battery improvement continue at this rate for another 3, 5 or 10 years the ICE is simply not competitive in most roles. The only way that this does not play out is that all (dozens of) the manufacturing scaling and developmental battery projects fail tomorrow somehow. With many different technological directions and raw material requirement there is no single point of failure.

Solar and battery tech cost curves projected out to another 10 years would have costs be lower than transmission: it is cheaper to throw up a solar battery installation than hook to a grid with zero cost electricity. At this point the entire energy architecture changes and all the hassle of centralization just dies.
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The government push at this point in time is joining the victors at the last moment: the market sees the curves above too and is throwing a lot money at it. Subsidies and likes now is no longer supporting vulnerable yet critical industries but waste. If the cost curve works out as projected, subsidies would be clearly absurd in two years and the question will be how to recover tax revenue from gas. The job of government should be setting standards and dealing with regulatory hell with regard of building things at places, including electrical vehicle infrastructure.

Not that throwing money around could be stopped politically, since it appeals to upper-middle left/green voter block, while getting money from wealthy new industrialists and with a sizable (potential) jobs footprint.
 
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I'm not a great fan of EV because methanol or ammonia could substitute to gasoline more easily, in IC cars and hybrids.
Main problem is to produce these fuels without CO2 (ammonia) or famine (methanol)...

Why no E85 / hybrid cars, btw ? sounds good to me. Even classic IC cars can be run on E85.
Oil could also be produced by capturing carbon dioxide from the air, seas and oceans.
This would turn hydrocarbons from an energy source to an energy transfer medium, like hydrogen. Are there any new developments on artificial photosynthesis or biofuel technology?
There is actually, though its all still very small scale. Large Macroalgae's like Kelp seem to be hot ticket for carbon sequestration, aquaculture, and bio fuel crops. It grows incredibly quick and requires no input asides from an upswell current, downsides are the development of infrastructure to keep it in place and it can be finicky with water temperatures requirements.


Not "biofuel" but the Navy has demonstrated the ability to remove Carbon from seawater and convert into jet kerosene; it needs to be nuclear powered to be cost effective i.e. deployed on the Carriers, but the price per gallon is cheaper than UNREP.

 
Recycling li-ion batteries hasn't been done on a large scale yet because by and large, the first generation li-ion batteries still in use. And after they're removed from cars, they get a second life as home batteries (because the reduced capacity is less of a problem in stationary applications). You'll see the industry ramp up when the supply of dead batteries starts growing.
In the same order it was said that Solar Cells were bad because they couldn't be recycled, well the truth is they weren't being recycled, not because they couldn't be but because the supply of surplus, aged out cells was insufficient to initiate industrial scale recycling. The thing is now earlier generation cells are starting to be recycled in large quantities it has actually been discovered that they are highly recyclable with less wastage and greater efficiency that many if not most other modern products.
 
Pardon me but, limiting the solution to ONE route of development will extend the problem. There ARE clean fuels for ICE vehicles already and we can for example harvest the green algae blooms in our oceans, turning another problem into part of the solution. What is causing this tunnel vision is blindly following those who have a vested financial interest in a one path policy. Lemmings do NOT have it right.
 
 
Pardon me but, limiting the solution to ONE route of development will extend the problem. There ARE clean fuels for ICE vehicles already and we can for example harvest the green algae blooms in our oceans, turning another problem into part of the solution. What is causing this tunnel vision is blindly following those who have a vested financial interest in a one path policy. Lemmings do NOT have it right.

See my post HERE :-

cheers,
Robin.
 
Electric cars are also heavily subsidized. Without subsidies they are like Tony Stark without his armor. Please don't even try to talk about global warming as I read in previous comments. Really, don't do it.

Electric cars are on the verge of being economically viable without subsidies. They got to that point because subsidies allowed the industry to ramp up supply, by creating demand.
And why shouldn't we talk about global warming? Electrification is an excellent method for lowering CO2 emissions, mainly because electric powertrains are vastly more efficient than ICEs.
 
Electric cars are also heavily subsidized. Without subsidies they are like Tony Stark without his armor. Please don't even try to talk about global warming as I read in previous comments. Really, don't do it.

Electric cars are on the verge of being economically viable without subsidies. They got to that point because subsidies allowed the industry to ramp up supply, by creating demand.
And why shouldn't we talk about global warming? Electrification is an excellent method for lowering CO2 emissions, mainly because electric powertrains are vastly more efficient than ICEs.
Because I hate vulgar and radical Greenpeace-style environmentalism. Is it so hard to understand? Tom Clancy had foreseen all this in "Rainbow six".
 
 
Electric cars are also heavily subsidized. Without subsidies they are like Tony Stark without his armor. Please don't even try to talk about global warming as I read in previous comments. Really, don't do it.

Electric cars are on the verge of being economically viable without subsidies. They got to that point because subsidies allowed the industry to ramp up supply, by creating demand.
And why shouldn't we talk about global warming? Electrification is an excellent method for lowering CO2 emissions, mainly because electric powertrains are vastly more efficient than ICEs.
Because I hate vulgar and radical Greenpeace-style environmentalism. Is it so hard to understand? Tom Clancy had foreseen all this in "Rainbow six".
So in a nutshell you are opposed to electric cars and emissions reductions because people you don't like / fear are in favour of them?

Ok forget about global warming etc. what about smog, exhaust particulates etc. known carcinogens that cause very nasty cancers? What about the fact that we need oil for chemicals and materials that we cant survive without these days, shouldn't we be conserving it for that instead of just burning it?

By the way I am a complete petrol head, love cars ,love driving fast, pride myself in having one of the fastest cars where I live, one lucky bloke has a lambo, but there's another with a faster car than mine, a Tesla 3. Reality is is, if I want to keep driving fast cars I will need to go electric within the next several years.
 
Pardon me but, limiting the solution to ONE route of development will extend the problem. There ARE clean fuels for ICE vehicles already and we can for example harvest the green algae blooms in our oceans, turning another problem into part of the solution. What is causing this tunnel vision is blindly following those who have a vested financial interest in a one path policy. Lemmings do NOT have it right.

See my post HERE :-

cheers,
Robin.
Got it, the drive to electric is to reduce the presence of US in OUR cars. Electric of itself as a propulsion form is already begining to fall away with alternatives that are just as green or better, some just happen to include batteries in the direct drive process. The truth as you stated in the link is to make US the lemmings and put us on public transport which cannot carry the current load, let alone present changes and I have zero access for one. My fifty year old VW does few miles and has a better carbon footprint than many new cars due to the fact that it has not been replaced many time with associated carbon impact and is reduced in mileage and maintained properly. Sometimes people admire the car for being unuual and 'quirky' but other times I get harrassed in the street/car park by zealots who want to burn her. What will THAT due to their carbon footprint?
 
Electric cars are also heavily subsidized. Without subsidies they are like Tony Stark without his armor. Please don't even try to talk about global warming as I read in previous comments. Really, don't do it.

Electric cars are on the verge of being economically viable without subsidies. They got to that point because subsidies allowed the industry to ramp up supply, by creating demand.
And why shouldn't we talk about global warming? Electrification is an excellent method for lowering CO2 emissions, mainly because electric powertrains are vastly more efficient than ICEs.
Because I hate vulgar and radical Greenpeace-style environmentalism. Is it so hard to understand? Tom Clancy had foreseen all this in "Rainbow six".
So in a nutshell you are opposed to electric cars and emissions reductions because people you don't like / fear are in favour of them?

Ok forget about global warming etc. what about smog, exhaust particulates etc. known carcinogens that cause very nasty cancers? What about the fact that we need oil for chemicals and materials that we cant survive without these days, shouldn't we be conserving it for that instead of just burning it?

By the way I am a complete petrol head, love cars ,love driving fast, pride myself in having one of the fastest cars where I live, one lucky bloke has a lambo, but there's another with a faster car than mine, a Tesla 3. Reality is is, if I want to keep driving fast cars I will need to go electric within the next several years.
Sure, and they also want to eliminate cattle farms. Those too are victims of environmental fury.
 
Electric cars are also heavily subsidized. Without subsidies they are like Tony Stark without his armor. Please don't even try to talk about global warming as I read in previous comments. Really, don't do it.

Electric cars are on the verge of being economically viable without subsidies. They got to that point because subsidies allowed the industry to ramp up supply, by creating demand.
And why shouldn't we talk about global warming? Electrification is an excellent method for lowering CO2 emissions, mainly because electric powertrains are vastly more efficient than ICEs.
Because I hate vulgar and radical Greenpeace-style environmentalism. Is it so hard to understand? Tom Clancy had foreseen all this in "Rainbow six".
So in a nutshell you are opposed to electric cars and emissions reductions because people you don't like / fear are in favour of them?

Ok forget about global warming etc. what about smog, exhaust particulates etc. known carcinogens that cause very nasty cancers? What about the fact that we need oil for chemicals and materials that we cant survive without these days, shouldn't we be conserving it for that instead of just burning it?

By the way I am a complete petrol head, love cars ,love driving fast, pride myself in having one of the fastest cars where I live, one lucky bloke has a lambo, but there's another with a faster car than mine, a Tesla 3. Reality is is, if I want to keep driving fast cars I will need to go electric within the next several years.
Sure, and they also want to eliminate cattle farms. Those too are victims of environmental fury.
Well cows do fart an awful lot but its likely more related to the land clearing associated with cattle, i.e. burning forests, creating smoke that drifts across countries and again, deposits particulates that cause nasty diseases.
 

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