Is Keeping Your Old Car Better for the Environment? by Engineering Explained
 

YouTube notified me after 2 days!

He said that if your car gets 40+ drive it for as long as you can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2IKCdnzl5k

Great!
Now I have to keep my cars forever!

I think compared to electric he said 7 years.

2028! Here I come!

I've tried, but nothing lasts forever.

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

The biggest problem is having too many.

https://ecomodder.com/forum/member-f...02-1-29-33.png

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

Even if a beater would require some extensive repairs to remain beatworthy, often it's still less energy-intensive to fix than looking out for a replacement. Even using a lower-grade sheetmetal to patch a rusty body becomes reasonable to some extent.

Everybody hates my old cars, but only my Subaru was unreliable. I wish the heater core had not gone out in my Civic, but I wouldn't have blown the heater core if i took proper care of my car.

I've calculated that it would take a Tesla roughly 25-30 years to make up for its production emissions compared to my used MR2 Spyder.
That is ignoring the fact that the Tesla will likely not last 28 years, much less on its first battery.
It is also ignoring the possibility of me converting my car to run on biofuels or doing a hybrid conversion.

So, I'll keep my Spyder, and I'll keep my bicycles.
If I'll end up needing to drive more, I will obviously consider going electric.

Jason claimed that Americans average over 12,000 miles a year.

That seems out-of-date. I am sure that some people are driving as much as ever, but I drove to see eleven clients each week in 2019, but I only see one-client in-person now.

I went from spending as much time driving as actually conducting therapy to a fraction as much now.

I thought he said that 12,000 was a actually lower than the average, which gives the "keeping your old car" an advantage. The less you drive them more sense it makes to keep your older car longer. If you're going to drive a million miles a years you'd probably be better off with the newest and most fuel efficient vehicle you could find. (Except an EV probably wouldn't be a good vehicle to try to drive a million miles per year in.)

I am favorable to both biofuels and those synthetic fuels made through carbon sequestration. When it comes specifically to biofuels, the possibility of resorting to nearly any organic waste as a feedstock for at least one biofuel also renders it more reasonable than simply pushing for a ban of the ICE.

You'd need to be a very busy person to average a million miles/year.
Just for fun I calculated the average (!) speed you'd need to go for that, wich is 114,2 km/h.
Let's say you actualy drive 12h/day on average instead of an impossible 24h/day, you would need to average 228,4 km/h for 12h per day.
Wich would be hard in just about any car short of some Audi with a large diesel engine doing circles in Nardo.
But then again, I'm not sure if the engine would even survive that kind of torture...

Indeed, but for some reasons our greens where very much against this idea.
There was a proposal to not have mineral oil tax on biofuels, wich they voted against.
Their reasoning was that we should focus on electric cars instead, wich we should indeed do, but that doesn't mean all ICE cars instantly disappear from the road.
Cars have a lifespan and we're still building ICE cars, if we want to reduce CO2 emissions, using CO2 neutral fuels for them is a significant factor.

Although having mineral oil tax on non mineral oil fuels is a little obscure to begin with if you ask me.:confused:

The so-called greens often ignore what is easily achievable, while they push for their pipe-dreams as if they were some sort of one-size-fits-all approach.


EVs might cater to the needs of some rich people who can afford to keep a fleet of specialized vehicles, while in a best-case scenario a plug-in hybrid is closer to cover most of the needs of a single-car household.


I support biofuels for strategic reasons, as they can be better integrated with many crops and livestock enabling a regional sourcing. This is also likely to decrease the carbon output of the logistics. And considering some residues at a negligible cost could serve as a feedstock, it's a more effective approach to keep the stability of the cycles of carbon and nitrogen at the atmosphere, as it would prevent organic matter to simply rot away releasing methane and some other compounds.


Some politics are outstanding at creating a problem out of nowhere in order to sell a fake solution.

I always hear that environmentalists oppose clearing out forests.

I don't like forest fires! Who does?!

Environmentalists?!

Apparently environmentalists have been cooperating with fire prevention: https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/11/...try-practices/

I would disagree with that, the range is there, the fast charging infrastructure is the and the car prices are coming down.
However they haven't realy trickled down into the used car market yet, or at least the ones with good range.

Taking a 20 min charging break every 400-ish km or 3-4h of driving isn't realy something I'd consider big of a deal as I'd need to take a break at that point anyway.

Well, I have heard of clearing out forests causing desertification (i.e. the Sahara). But in the other hand I've never heard of a desert fire.

On topic, an ICE can be converted to wood gas. I'll not sure to how that compares to running electric off of wood.

Wood-gas is pretty terrible:
1. It is very inefficient
2. It requires a somewhat elaborate starting procedure
3. It reduces an engines power output massively
4. It makes your oil go acidic rather quickly
5. The emissions of an engine running on wood-gas are terrible

Use that plant material to make ethanol instead.:thumbup:

Not in my country. But anyway, some folks here get excited about EV because they believe it would be cheap to slow-charge it at home, yet most of the times I have seen some "affordable" EV it was being used by an Uber driver, who may not have enough time to spend waiting for a slow charge.
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VzaSwiHNY...direito%2B.jpg

Slow charge is relative.
Here in germany it's normal to have 3-phase running to your house, wich means you can usualy install either an 11kW wallbox or an 11kW power outlet.
So you can charge even a 100 kWh battery that has been drained completely over night.
With cars like VAGs ID-series, Teslas Model 3/Model Y and so on, you can see prices going down to more average levels.
In a few years these cars will end up in the used market as well and be reasonably cheap.

In Mexico you get a 110V (or 120V?) service with only 30 amps total for the whole house.

In the USA a lot of us rent our homes/apartments. And even if we do have a way of installing a charger it is usually harder to get much more than 240V at 30 or 40 amps (well actually 80% of those amps or 24 or 32 amps respectively). The more you go from there the more likely you need your house service upgraded (total amperage at pole to home) although some homes may need an upgrade even with a 20 amp (16amp) increase.

I'm quite surprised how terrible the electric grid is over there.
With 110V and 30A, you've only got 3,3kVA for the whole house.
A normal power outlet here has 3,5kVA (maximum, not sustained).
As for 240V, single phase systems, for that kind of power you'd probably want a higher voltage/more phases as that would require rather thick cables.

What where they thinking with this whole split-phase 110/220Vsystem over there?
3-phase 220/380V is more efficient and requires less copper for a given power requirement as well as giving you the option of running 3-phase motors directly from the grid.
Plus let's not forget that you can run RCDs from the breaker box.

/rant

We get a lot of wildfires here in Arizona.

I've been reading up (out of curiosity) on wood gas. And you can set it up to run on gasoline/ethanol to get the firing process started then switch over to wood gas (via switches/valves in the car) after a few miles of driving. Making the startup not so elaborate procedure.

There is a study by the university of alabama showing comparable emissions to gasoline on an older (90's I think?) dodge v10 and 37% more efficient than gasoline.

I have to leave for work, but I will find the link to the study.

Of course I haven't checked every house in Mexico, but that's the only power standard I've seen several dozen of them.

And that 30A is max, not sustained. Sustained is 28A, or about 2.6kW continuous. FOR THE WHOLE HOUSE of course.

It's also common to see two (or more) households using the same fuse box (no breakers down there). It's also common for people to steal electricity by throwing hooked cables up onto the street cables or by placing jumpers behind the electric meter.

I've also known of more electrical fires in Mexico than in the USA.

That's what I have in my apartment :turtle:


At least in Brazil, foreign companies built the first grids at a local level, leading them to use the standard of their countries of origin. That's why some cities have a 110V grid whole others resort to a 220V one, even though nowadays the national grid is fully integrated.

Google says that the Secretaria de Salud is Mexico's equivalent of OSHA, but something tells me that you cannot compare them.

Actually, many things tell me that, including this picture:
https://ecomodder.com/forum/attachme...1&d=1632272654

I feel that if they were team players one would be standing in the basket and the other would be pushing it and passing up stuff.

Are shelves taller in Mexico? I always laugh at the signs in Walmart to get help getting stuff off of the top shelf. Why? I can reach it.

They probably can't.

https://www.driveonwood.com/static/m...nal_report.pdf

I was mistaken on the vehicle. He also has a dodge ram 3500 that he uses on his farm. The test was conducted with a dodge dakota, should be the v8 in it, not the v6.

Towards the end (pg 10):


(this will be my last off-topic post)

Meanie! :)

better
 

I'm thinking of it along the lines of COVID.
We have a CARBON-64 vaccine, which will kill the carbon dioxide pandemic scientists have been warning us about since 1957. EVs.
Vehicles with carbon comorbidity issues might be prioritized on an mpg basis.
Those with the lowest fuel economy would be triaged for immediate 'vaccination' and retirement from service. Recycled. Replaced with a zero-carbon vehicle.
On down the line, on an efficiency basis.
The least-offensive emitters are the last to be electrified. Say, a Plug-in Prius, @ 55-mpg.
Carrots are favorable to sticks. Incentives. Wrap it up in the flag and make people feel good about the whole thing.
Sicily hit 122-F in August, an all-time heat record. Avocado and orange production suffered. Farmers who could, dug reservoirs, as ground water is now 'iffy'. If they have another year of drought, it's game over for agriculture.
And we continue to add carbon, doing nothing to remove what's already there. Removing carbon IS the solution according to climatologists, but first we've got to stop digging the hole we're in.
40-mpg is good but it isn't zero.

I really don't know why this scene looks so familiar to me :D even though I have never been in Mexico.

"Tortilleria"?

One might turn that logic back on itself: Deny access to restaurants to the morbidly obese and spare the children experimental mRNA injections.

I liked this Kurzgesagt, not only because the animation is done in Blender*:

Can YOU Fix Climate Change?

But then, at the end, you find out it's sponsored by Bill Gates' GatesNotes. Now, when I don't know what to think I fall back on Bucky Fuller's Design Science Revolution,


*Froop Poop :)

obesity..........injections
 

I don't believe we're authorized to address these sorts of issues, as we'd have to venture into all the areas which are specifically taboo.

I meant the 110/220V split-phase system in the US compared to the 220V/phase 380V 3-phase system we have over here in europe.
But what you've said sounds like a total mess.

IIRC the 220V in my country is usually 3-phase, while the 380V is found only at some industrial installations.


Brazil is the country of gambiarra. What would you expect? If I told you about every strange thing I see here, you'd be impressed.

I don't mean to make some sort of a stereotype, but from what I've heard it seems pretty much all Central and South America have about the same electrical systems. I don't forsee any sort of a mass migration to plug-in vehicles any time in the near future in those countries, except maybe for public transport only.

I meant the 220/110V system in the US, they use split phase there without RCDs in the breaker box.
That means phases are 180° seperated with a neutral in between.
So they get 110V+110V, plus if a hot wire is touched and a ground fault created, nothing is stopping it unless there is so much current flowing through the poor individual touching the hot wire that the fuse blows.
Here in europe we have 220V phases and 380V 3-phase, we also have RCDs in the breaker box wich stop the current after miliseconds even if its only a few mA.

Would you have the time or even the space in the forum?

There are so many strange makeshifts I see almost every day, and some might be relatable to cars so there might be space for them on the forum.


Sure there are many technical similarities, usually influenced by either British or American companies.


I remember seeing BYD electric buses tested in my hometown, but I still see hybrids as more viable. Most of the plug-in vehicles I see are hybrids, yet in some cities there are some rich folks who buy expensive EVs either because they want to get access to what is portrayed as a breakthrough tech or just to show off.

I'm sure keeping something like this...
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_fOB9of01...ro-direito.jpg
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3CoVrElR3...ro-direito.jpg

instead of replacing with something like this...
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-trV0dGVKc...olis%2Bfrt.jpg
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0U-fERaLQ...olis%2Btrs.jpg

could make more sense.