Any of you use vegetable oil on diesels?

[Lemmy]

Im not worried about tailpipe pollution per se - all airborne pollution concerns me.

Simply moving the emissions from tailpipe to smoke stack achieves little on its own, and that is negated by the additional environmental impact of manufacturing electric cars and their batteries over conventional vehicles.

Electric cars, great, I'm all for them and my next vehicle will for sure be electric. However, I'm not conning myself into beliving that they alone solve anything while we're still largely burning fossil fuels to power them.

The Leaf is one of the worst examples. Replacing a 1600kg petrol car with a 1600kg electric one is laughable, and then driving it around with only the drivers seat occupied is an utterly ridiculous proposition.

[oil pan 4]

The only coal fired power plants still operating in the US have scrubbers to wash out sulfur dioxide, bag houses to catch fly ash and flue gas recirculation to reduce NOx and improve efficiency.
Those are the dirtiest power plants we use.
Just in 2017 the US permanently shut down 17 gigawatts worth of old outdated coal power plants.

I spend a maximum of $36 on electricity per month to drive 1,500 miles per month. Yeah it's pretty ridiculous.

The ore and brineing processing that extracts the cobalt and lithium is pretty bad. A lot of these self proclaimed eco freaks wouldn't touch an electric car if they know what went into them.

[Lemmy]

And what powers the scrubbers? Yep, you guessed it, more fossil fuel.

I am genuinely all for cleaner technologies, but that takes to time to develop and generations for the public to adopt. We could achieve massive improvements by this afternoon by simp,y not using our cars for unnecessary or short journeys, but I'm more likely to see Michelle Obama at a Merle Haggard concert than have that happen.

It's up to us enlightened few to set the example, lead the way, but I suspect were pushing in the wind and ultimately too late.

[oil pan 4]

I would like to see more nuclear power.

[freebeard]

I was talking to my neighbor the other day and he said "We need to have solar-powered cars."

I said "We do. All three necessary components are available now from Tesla."

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by Lemmy

The Leaf is one of the worst examples. Replacing a 1600kg petrol car with a 1600kg electric one is laughable, and then driving it around with only the drivers seat occupied is an utterly ridiculous proposition.

That's a good point. I often see people obsessed about EVs claiming their motors are smaller and require a much lower maintenance than any ICE, but they seem to forget about the weight penalty and energy density of batteries still lower than conventional fuels. Had it been effectively about saving natural resources, I'm sure most of those EVs would be based into something inherently more efficient such as those kei-cars.

[Xist]

In 2001 someone told me "Solar cars are as viable as wind-powered cars."

I do not believe that has changes substantially since.

[RedDevil]

Very viable, unless you try to put them on the car.
If you want a solar powered car put the panels on your house and use the power to charge the cars batteries. Wind idem.
Or combined.
When there's no sun there's wind. Wind comes from where the sun don't shine

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Wind power seems out of question at all, while solar-powered cars may eventually work in the Brazilian Northeast.