Hello from Andrew Moore
 

Greetings! I'm most interested in reducing fuel consumption with a rarely-driven car that serves very useful purposes now and then for its load and people-carrying capacity: Volvo 245, 1979. I'm a chemist/biochemist from a research background originally, and I have a book in production with Oxford University Press all about energy and material economies of carbon compounds. From 3 years' worth of literature reading and calculations/modeling, I'm now sure that, at average yearly mileages, it's environmentally friendlier to keep a worthy existing car, work hard on reducing its consumption, and use it ever more sparingly, than to try to do something "environmentally-friendly" by buying a brand new car (of **any** type, ICEV, PHEV or BEV).
I look forward to some interesting advice and exchanges. I've just made a post on A-pillar fairings to reduce gutter turbulence. I'm also planning fuel injection retro-fit, and an extra gear for my transmission. Hypermiling via intelligent driving style also interests me a lot! Best wishes, Andrew

Welcome to Ecomodder.

Agreed about keeping older cars active. For decades I drove cars that had been put together from junkyard parts (1957 Beetle on a 1966 pan and 1964 Notchback on a 1971 floorpan) or out of a farmer's field (1959 Rambler American and 1971 Superbeetle).

Where is the post on A-pillar fairings? According to Gerrelt's Garage it's popular on Porsche 911s as a raingutter filler.

Without having done any calculations, the notion of purchasing (consuming) your way to efficiency seems absurd. That's not to say efficiency doesn't pay dividends, only the realization that wealth and consumption are the same thing. A wealthy society will consume more.

Re my post on A-pillar fairing mod: I posted it yesterday 5th February. Perhaps it didn't "stick". I saved the text and pictures on my laptop, so I can re-post. Pls let me know. Many thanks!

You have a Profile Page with a Statistics tab. There you can see every post that 'stuck'.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/search.php?searchid=4820716

Oh I know what he means. The way they advertise new cars is insane. I saw one on an EV that said it was greener with less emissions from its expected 120,000 mile life cycle. I was thinking in my head hmmm 120k miles seems low so this is already sus lol

Spot on re life cycle... and here are some numbers
 

From the calculations I did for my book, the situation is the following:

If you "needlessly" swap your "worthy" internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) for a new battery electric vehicle (BEV) of comparable **size** - i.e. comparable **utility** (important qualification!!!); and assuming current average mileages and current electricity mixes (i.e. proportions from fossil / non-fossil electricity generation),

-- If you were a “global average person”, you’d need to drive well over 700,000 km / 435,000 miles before the cumulative CO2 burden of the BEV broke even with that of the ICEV.
-- If you were in the US, the figure is near 330,000 km / 205,000 miles.
-- If you were in Europe it would be near 190,000 km / 118,000 miles.

In terms of number of years that it would take you, on average yearly mileages (averages for location), to "break even", we're talking about ranges that are way beyond the usual buying-selling cycles, and way beyond the battery warranty periods... What does one do with a second-hand BEV, even at a mere 10 years? New battery, at massive environmental cost? Will anyone even want to buy it from you without a new battery?

And, yes, there is often a "use" for the car that you unnecessarily swapped, but the second-hand car market is currently way beyond saturation in many, if not most, places where the EV market is taking off. Good used diesels are hard to shift from second-hand dealer forecourts, and used cars in general are simply piling up... I see it regularly here in Europe. What's the situation in the US?

The biggest "deception" in all of this is the energy, CO2 (and environmental burden in general) that battery manufacture, and the manufacture of ancillary technology for EVs has in comparison with the much less "burdensome" ICEV. The real figures - hard to find, but I scoured the peer-reviewed published literature - reveal five- to six-times the ordinarily-reported figure for energy consumption in making most of the things that differentiate a BEV from an ICEV. Then you can also imagine what the other climate- environment-related impacts truthfully are...

Even if/when all electricity/energy is green, the environmental impact of the current battery economy is enormous. The break-evens that I calculate from that perspective are so large that they're "ridiculous".

Basically, if we continue to dig up more and more of the Earth, thereby producing the typical environmental impacts of mining, to get at all the metals and minerals that we need for making batteries and electronic/electric ancillaries, we're off to a very bad start in terms of sustainability... Yes, fossil oil mining is also terrible... so what about E-fuels? Well, many people are doing their best to "rubbish" them, but I've done calculations, and I come to some very different and sobering results. I can't reveal that bit yet...

My book will be out around July this year.

Yeah I don't see it working for now. The hybrid is the next obvious step. Can't beat a tiny battery that is easily replaced with almost the same running cost. I have really enjoyed the Prius.

Right. Hybrids with a small battery are, in my opinion, a good solution in many scenarios. Often it's the mixture of technologies that makes the best progress. This relates to openness to technology diversity, which, unfortunately is not really on the agenda of politics or industry. They're trying to find single-technology solutions in too many areas, because that is the economically-efficient way to go. However, in my opnion, it will not serve environmental aims. Using less of everything would be a great start... :-) So, ecomodding of any kind of car gets a big thumbs-up from me :-)

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-f...headlights.jpg

I went back to tne McMinnville, OR, dealer to buy a floorpan they had in the showroom to make a fiberglass sports car, but they had plopped the oval-window body on it so I got the whole thing and never got the fiberglass body. Baja'd when I pocketed an insurance settlement.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-f...4-11-26-01.png

The 1956 oval-window was sitting in a farmer's field with the angle iron bumper[ettes], minus the stance, wheels and ragtop.

Whoa! Really looks like a bug (from outer space :-)

At a later point it got a new nose and Black Imron paint. It took two hoods to move the cutline up and use Jeep hood latches. Needed black paint and Batman ears. :)

The one in the carport now also came out of a farmers field. Here it is before the new artillery-spoke Lemmerz wheels.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-f...5-100-1036.jpg

The notchback was also a floorpan swap,

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-f...-outa-town.jpg

I forget where that one came from. Probably the one I'd like back the most -- 1964 body on a 1971 floorpan, five-speed, 1776 with 40mm Webers. Upshift into 5th at 85MPH. :) Tow vehicle in fourth.

All I have left is the five-speed swingaxle with Type III drums.

The stuff of legends :-) When I was kid, we had the later model of that VW, but as a station wagon. It's a wierd thing to think of a S.W. with the engine in the back...

Also taking range-anxiety in consideration, hybrids make way more sense than EVs for most people.


Odd enough, the same virtue-signallers who call for some "diversity" mostly for a political agenda, are the first ones who say everybody should embrace a random one-size-fits-all BS which ends up proving itself unsuitable for many diverse segments...


Sometimes applying a similar tech into different applications can actually be a good thing, but the way EVs are simply forced by bureaucrats is pointless. Same applies for the SUV craze all around the world, when a good traditional station-wagon is neglected...


Even though simpler, dumbproof old tech, might remain functional and require fewer raw materials to be turned into replacement parts in the long run, let's suppose someone who owns an ancient car and would rather have an engine swap instead of overhauling the old engine, and the newer one occasionally may lead to fewer emissions. I'm OK with that. But simply trying to push for some unrealistic standards like bureaucrats tend to do, forcing people to either buy an expensive late-model car or ride a 125cc motorcycle and call it a day is ridiculous.

Right-on. It's a tough concept to discuss at societal level: a friend of mine tried out my argumentation (i.e. cricially considering the wisdom of a BEV purchase on the basis of energy/CO2/environmental impact) with a work colleague who was planning to buy a BEV. The colleague replied, OK, I hear you, but if we don't buy into this technology, we won't see any technological advance in this area. It's an interesting reply, because the implicit sentiment behind it is: "we should urgently support new technology", and not "we should urgently support more frugal behaviour (with whatever technology)"...

You know, people get easily impressed by "new advances in science" even when they're not so new at all, just like BEVs which existed for more than 100 years, yet marketing made them cool again in the eyes of the current endorsers. Not to mention some tree-huggers praise the "alternative" lifestyle of the hippies, yet look with disdain to someone who would rather pour old frying oil right into the tank of some old car with a perfectly-mantained IDI Diesel engine instead of embracing the electrification craze which has been more politically-centered than customer-centered. Nobody who prefers an ICE seems to be willing to ban EVs, while some rather fanatical EV converts just seem to forget the ICE even has a role providing backup electrical power on gensets for instance.

Right, there is an enormous amount of illogical and very counter-productive thinking going on around EVs. I read massive amounts of research literatuer on the matter, including sociologists reports of user behaviour. A very strong insight emerging from user surveys is that a large proportion of EV owners have a feeling of superiority over ICEV owners; also, in terms of usage patterns, many EV owners report feeling much more comfortable about driving their car into town to fetch "things that they forgot to buy" for example... thereby using their EV much more for these "into-and-out-of-town" journeys than their ICEV. Energy use concerns seemed to have disappeared, and the "towns are for people, not for car" concept with it...

Some EV owners seem to really believe they have "moral superiority" over anybody else, while others seem to see themselves as smarter than anybody else by taking an advantage as they perceive electricity as cheaper than fuel, especially when they can plug somewhere they're not the ones paying the bill.

Right! The "morality" bit is interesting, because many people see the whole EV vs. ICEV as a strongly moral, and not scientific, debate: I was describing the environmental issues of the EV battery economy to an acquaintance of mine who is a member of the Greens and an espoused environmentally-conscious person; I talked about the problems of externalizing mining impacts and CO2 emissions, material and energy balances that didn't currently look favourable etc.; he nodded and seemed rather interested: we then carried some things to his car on the parking lot, and it transpired to be a large Mercedes plug-in hybrid (and his other car a smaller pure BEV), upon which he remarked "I'm afraid I haven't reached your ethical standards in this area"... What???!!! This is about knowledge, logic and reflection (in that order)! If we all try to find out more about those aspects, we will stand a better chance of doing the "right" think in an ethical sense as well...

The morally superior EV owner would run Edison nickel-iron batteries.

And Tetrataenite motors.

In the end, many EV endorsers only care about showing off, either how they see themselves as morally superior, or just for being an early adopter of some tech they believe to be as ground-breaking as some media outlets are reporting.


Would you really expect that guy to care about logic? Sounds like he's just a fool willing to hear some mainstream media outlet choose whatever could be pointed out as being more "ethical" than anyone else and spoon-feed him.