Electric cars, unclean at any speed

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by NachtRitter

SHere, Andrew Walden, who was apparently irked by the "37 skeletal wind turbines abandoned to rust on the hundred-acre site of the former Kamaoa Wind Farm" states:

Note also that (per the linked article) those 37 "abandoned" turbines have now been dismantled and sold for scrap. Just like a lot of worn-out cars :-)

Oh, and fossil-fueled generating plants get decomissioned, too. Here's our local utility planning to shut down its coal plants in favor of renewables & natural gas: NV Energy to decommission coal plants, shift to gas and renewables - Las Vegas Sun News Here's another closed coal plant: Edison to decommission Mohave power plant in Nevada - Los Angeles Times

[sheepdog 44]

You also have the Edison2 and similar vehicles, which i believe will be the platform of future highway cars. From 800-1,400lbs they are 2.5-3X more efficient and use less than half the battery of todays EV's. Thats a 2-300% better cradle to grave sustainability of the vehicle, battery, and electric consumption over a modern EV. Thats an order of magnitude more environmentally friendly than your average gas car.

It hasn't been talked about much, but i also really like the idea of Neighborhood Electric Vehicles out numbering highway capable EV's, and NEV car-sharing. Something in the 48 volt range, and 20- 40 miles, lighter weight with even smaller batteries and easy to grid charge from a standard socket. These are even more cheaper and sustainable, and would displace the most pollution and gas use from city cars.

I think the author would've made a better case arguing against the scale and production requirements of modern cars in general. 3-4,000lbs of raw material with a single occupant in most cases. I might just count all the cars driving by on main street one day for half an hour and see what percentage have 1 person.

[niky]

Originally Posted by t vago

Fracking, once thought of as some uneconomical pipe-dream, is now putting the USA on a path to be self-reliant in 5 years. That was another bit of wishful thinking, not so long ago. What's more, the peak-oil crowd can't stand the thought that there might more proven oil reserves under the USA, than the entire rest of OPEC combined.

Fracking is only economical now because the technology has improved and because Middle Eastern oil costs so much. But the overall productivity of these wells and the longevity are not going to match the run we had with Arabian oil over the past few decades.

Daily Kos: Drill Baby Drill! The Fracking Bubble is Bursting!
(I had an older link on the Bakken formation somewhere... I'm pretty sure it's on Ecomodder).

Peak Oil is real. We've passed it for Arabian oil, and we're going to pass it sometime for US oil... maybe sooner than the industry would like.

But perhaps "Peak Oil Production" is not our biggest concern. "Peak Oil Consumption" should be. There's only so much the customer can afford to pay, and only so little that investors are willing to fund in new drilling ventures. Even with depressed global demand and the general malaise still in place after the 2008 crash, the derivative market absolutely refuses to let Brent Oil fall under $100. And Stateside, investors would like it very much, thank you, if people would be willing to pay $65-85 per barrel before investing in new shale oil developments.

Sooner or later, oil will become too expensive for consumption on a personal level. And eventually, both oil and coal will become too expensive for consumption at an industrial level. Before we get to that stage, the rising costs of oil will make other alternatives more palatable and affordable. While I still don't see wind or solar ever replacing coal, they will definitely be part of the post-oil mix.

[niky]

Originally Posted by sheepdog 44

I think the author would've made a better case arguing against the scale and production requirements of modern cars in general. 3-4,000lbs of raw material with a single occupant in most cases.

I count myself lucky to have a job driving new cars every month. While I do enjoy the luxury of lumbering around in a 4,000 lb truck-crossover-thing-whatever, every time I drive a supermini, I wonder why we need anything bigger?

If people were to all drive around in small cars with tiny motors, we would have no crash survivability problems. We'd all be going too slow to have that issue.

Later this month I'm getting a fling in the new Suzuki Alto. Still a tiny penalty box, still can't hit anything over 80 mph, but with a real-world ability to hit 60 mpg in (normal) highway driving, what does that matter?

[jamesqf]

Just a passing thought on the notion that the failure of Solyndra, Fisker, and a few other startups means that PV, wind, and EVs are failures. Anybody remember DEC, Apollo, CDC, Commodore, and all those other defunct computer companies? Guess that means computers are a total failure, eh? Better give up and go back to mechanical adding machines, don't you think?

On the automotive side, anybody remember AMC, Delorean, Studebaker, Packard, Hudson, Auburn, Dusenberg, and all the other failed automakers? Guess we'd all better go back to riding horses, 'cause obviously the automobile is a total failure.

[Frank Lee]

...3-4,000lbs of raw material with a single occupant in most cases...

Come out to Redneckville for a lookee-see. The commuter vehicle/recreational cruiser of choice has eight cylinders, a/t, 4x4, frontal area of 40 sq ft or more, Cd of .45 or more, and a curb weight of 5,000 lbs if not more (but a popular weight saving mod is the muffler delete).

All that for less than a single occupant; the carcass is in there but the brain is MIA.

[niky]

That's something.

There are over a thousand defunct auto manufacturers, as far as I can tell (from Wikipedia) and even their listings don't include some of the lesser known Chinese and third-world start-ups.

-

To note: the Commodore 64 was a smashing success. It only failed because people refused to buy anything more modern from the company, thus forcing them to churn out the old 64 for far longer than you'd think possible.

-

I still miss it!

[Occasionally6]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

I'd say it's more like 40 years.

OK, I was being overly generous .

Originally Posted by niky

Sooner or later, oil will become too expensive for consumption on a personal level. And eventually, both oil and coal will become too expensive for consumption at an industrial level. Before we get to that stage, the rising costs of oil will make other alternatives more palatable and affordable. While I still don't see wind or solar ever replacing coal, they will definitely be part of the post-oil mix.

Perhaps I could put it like this: At the current time, in terms of direct costs, extracting and burning fossil fuels as energy sources is generally cheaper to do than it is to obtain the equivalent energy from renewable sources. That situation may or may not continue for long enough to allow the use of all the available fossil fuels. It doesn't matter though.

Consider if for every, say, 10 coal fired power stations or for every 10 000 gas tank fills a water desalination plant has to be built, someone has to rebuild their storm damaged home or relocate from areas that have become unacceptably flood prone (including whole island states), or pay the cost of fighting wildfires due to (what are currently) extreme weather conditions, increased A/C use or additional refrigeration work, and then ask: Will we still use fossil fuels?

That's a qualitative assessment and you can look for the exact numbers but at some point the answer is definitely: 'No'. That's because the cost of offsetting the consequences of fossil fuel use are very rapidly going to exceed the direct cost difference between doing so and paying for energy derived in a renewable, or at least non-emitting, way (if they haven't already).

At some point, it is irrelevant what it costs to extract them or the efficiency with which the energy they contain can be extracted and used. At a system level, the EROI is too low.

The inevitably higher cost of extraction will drive the shift from fossil fuels to renewables but won't drive it as fast as the requirement to avoid AGW consequences.

[Frank Lee]

Solar Plane: Making clean tech sexy, adventurous

These stupid idiots shooda just stuck an ICE in there. /sarcasm

[P-hack]

yay, solar powered drones. Now you don't have to land when you run out of fuel, just bombs.