Zero-emission vehicles, their batteries & subsidies/rebates for them.- No politics regarding the subsidies!

[Head_Unit]

The ICE powered car is now in the same position as the final generation of piston engined high performance aircraft and steam locomotives in having developed technology to deliver superb performance but which is fundamentally already obsolete.

There was a really good article in one of the car magazines about a BMW having reached "peak ICE" that is the whole setup was SO complicated, it was insane compared to a battery car. Inverted hot-V with exhaust in the center, multi turbos, car had to keep running the oil after shutdown to cool the turbos so much the batteries were dying, but too expensive to retest and resubmit emissions certifications, so the "fix" was BMW would change the battery free at each oil change.

 

[Destination: Moon]

What difference does battery technology matter? California is browning out occasionally. If the magic wand waved and CA had 50% electric penetration overnight, it's grid would implode in minutes.

Not really, chargers are built so you can set them to charge at times of low demand. The key to much of our ever more crowded planet is to build systems that aren't forced to meet big demand peaks and lay unused for long periods of time. Currently, where you live and how your electricity is generated makes a profound difference in the benefit of EVs. We're 30 years behind the curve. Either this is way overdue, or tilting at windmills - depending on which news feed you choose to digest.

 

[Head_Unit]

Back to "zero" emissions vehicles, we've had three Chevy Volts and loved them. The Bolt, [vomit emoji]. Ugly little thing inside and out in my opinion-if you have one sorry, hope you like it. My buddy's neighbor changed from Volt to Bolt due to carpool lane stickers, now that's expired he wants to dump it. Volts are cool and let me say as an automotive engineer well designed, too bad Chevy killed it. Too bad they didn't put the same concept into a truck!

Oh I also drove the original Civic Hybrid (2006) for about a month and a half, testing problems with an iPod interface. That thing...the CAR was quite nice, but the power sucked, and the mileage was not so great (no I don't remember the numbers). What a Honda engineer told me was that they had to use the 1.3 gas engine in order to hit the mileage target. Then I can say the IMA electric motor at only 20 horsepower was just inadequate to boost the acceleration OR the mpg very much. MISS.

Any of these cars, I would never buy, only get on a good lease deal. In spring 2013, Chevrolet cut the price of the Volt $5000. Great! Unless you had bought one, now GM just killed $5k off your resale value. So we leased. Then the next one came out so much better and devalued the first generation. Same effect happened with the BMW i3 versus their improved one, the price of the old one dropped. Of course a similar effect happens with a Camry or Mustang or whatever however not to nearly the same extent.

 

[jhaider]

Not really, chargers are built so you can set them to charge at times of low demand.

With Teslas at least you can also schedule charging times from the app.

 

[Beershaun]

Regarding the power grid. It seems like all the Sunbelt States could solve their power needs by "panelling out" everything with a roof on it then migrating their power utility strategy to a "network distribution" approach rather than thinking of themselves as a power generator first. If every house and building had solar panels on it today you have a very secure and resilient grid that would be running at its best when the temps were at their highest. I live in Seattle and put 10kw of Solar panels on my roof 2 years ago. I don't see a power bill (I net out zero on the year). I installed AC and a hot tub and still have excess to share. My next car will be electric in 2-3 years and I can cut out gas prices and stop wasting fuel.

I'll go back to my earlier point about wasting fuel. Ev may not suit everyones lifestyle right now (long distance trips and towing) ,but for people who commute every day 10-20 miles and or sit in traffic, or drive around on their own property for work like farmers and contractors, the benefits are fantastic.

 

[Old Listener]

I'm not so sure California isn't doing a slow implosion in all sorts of ways.

Slow is indeed applicable to some problems in California.

Water problems go back decades. We've been pushing housing into wild lands and to seasides where bad things happen to houses regularly.

However, urban California problems are mostly problems of success. Healthy economic activity has created job markets with good paying jobs for those with relevant skills. House prices and rents keep going up because of demand. Commute traffic can be bad but more and more people work at home some or all of the time.

Our power company needed to react and catch up after the wildfires in 2020 some of which they caused. They seem to be managing area power outages better in 2021. Home owners are reacting to the water shortage by replacing lawns with low/no water landscaping.

We'll continue to have problems but I think urban California will continue to be the place we want to live.

 

[Jim Matthews]

We'll continue to have problems but I think urban California will continue to be the place we want to live.

I often wonder if experts on any given place have ever been there.

 

[JeffS7444]

IMO, there's not much point in being passionate about renewable energy without being equally passionate about consuming fewer resources! I realize that the popular solution is to solve problems by buying shiny eco-toys, but it may take take years to offset the costs of manufacturing the things in the first place.

Manufacturers are keenly aware of this conundrum and proudly boast of "net zero" manufacture, but is that simply an accounting game in which they've bought carbon credits from other industries which were never going to generate much of the stuff in the first place? As for recycling programs, haha, maybe your old stuff goes to a legitimately good recycler, or maybe it gets shipped overseas where regulations are lax: Either way, it's "out of sight, out of mind".

As for what to do with money if we're not buying so much stuff anymore, I suppose we could buy ourselves more idle time to do as we please: Few people claim to have enough of that.

 

[SIY]

I often wonder if experts on any given place have ever been there.

I lived there for thirty years. I would not even consider going back.

 

[Jim Matthews]

I lived there for thirty years. I would not even consider going back.

You're too polite to slag an old girlfriend.

There's an echo chamber full of California critics that never set foot in the place. It's not for me, but 40 million people can't all be wrong.

(Now people that choose to live downwind from the Great Lakes are another story...)

 

[bladerunner6]

I'm not so sure about that fabrication carbon footprint. The rare earths required is intensive and those tend to be a dirty extraction and refining method. Plus rare earths are well, rare.

Rare earths aren’t really rare.

The economics of current extraction techniques is a different issue .

 

[bladerunner6]

You're too polite to slag an old girlfriend.

There's an echo chamber full of California critics that never set foot in the place. It's not for me, but 40 million people can't all be wrong.

(Now people that choose to live downwind from the Great Lakes are another story...)

Hey, fresh water is the most valuable thing on earth. We know what we are doing by living in Michigan!

 

[001]

The internal resistance of the batteries goes up limiting the available current. No idea why.

There's been some interesting research in Australia to do with sugar of all things; https://www.abc.net.au/news/science...lfur-sugar-future-electric-vehicles/100457492

 

[Jim Matthews]

Hey, fresh water is the most valuable thing on earth. We know what we are doing by living in Michigan!

Yinz get water in the hard, wet or powdered variety? (Or all at once)

 

[001]

Here's some interesting research focusing on recycling/reclaiming EV batteries;
A few quotes from the paper: "...we have successfully shown that speciation control through electrolyte engineering, combined with surface functionalization by using charged polymers, enabled the synergistic tuning of metal selectivity during electrochemical deposition." and "...demonstrating that high-purity metal recovery can be achieved solely by electrochemical pathways."
Full article here https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26814-7

 

[Deleted member 21219]

Yinz get water in the hard, wet or powdered variety?

I absolutely love powdered water! Put just a little bit in a container, add 2 cups of water, and you've got a pint of water to drink! Amazing! Jim

 

[cookiefactory]

Barring any further delays the model x we ordered in April will get delivered in Jan. I was primarily interested due to the safety features. My wife will be the primary driver and can use all the help she can get

 

[JRS]

Not likely to happen in any of our lifetimes. The AI required for truly self-driving vehicles (on actual public roads) is decades if not centuries off.

Trucking industry has other ideas--by 2024 autonomous Level 4 vehicles (no human, limited circumstances). https://spectrum.ieee.org/this-year-autonomous-trucks-will-take-to-the-road-with-no-one-on-board

 

[JRS]

I find the notion that an automobile might be heirloom-quality very charming:

Parts of Japan are promoting wood products, because they've actually got too many trees planted early in the 20th century, and some of those woods are now in need of thinning. Wood can be a fine way to sequester carbon as long as you don't burn it!

What they are now able to do with wood is truly remarkable--absolutely a material for the future. One example: https://phys.org/news/2021-10-hardened-wooden-knives-slice-steak.html

 

[EJ3]

I travel, I average 125 miles a day. When I am off, I will hook up my boat (18 ft Aluminum, 30 HP outboard) & cover (with a partner) 1100 miles (day 1) in a day to go do things I want to do. I will stay in an area for a day, perhaps traveling my normal 125 (day 2) while I go caving or do hiking, biking, SCUBA, whatever. (Day 3) After resting say 6 hours, then I am off again for 300 miles (+100 or so going places in the area). Day 4 will be 125 miles or so doing day 1 things & resting 6 hours. Day 5 will be 600 miles +125 scouting things to do for day 6. Day 6 will be 125 miles doing day 1 things. Day 7 will be 1100 miles back. 70%+ is in rural areas, 60% in places that have ZERO electric power.

At my home of residence the KW rate for OCTOBER was this:

electricity rates for residential customers range from
$0.19 (Residential), $0.31 (Commercial) & $0.33 (Government) U.S. dollars (USD) per kilowatt-hour (kWh)

At this rate Please explain to me why I would want any ZERO emission vehicle (and we all know that it is only ZERO at the vehicle itself and it costs way more to dispose of, creating an immense hazardous waste pile of it's own every few years, not to mention the big one at it's end of life).

Also, The fact that I am rarely in towns, cities (nor would I ever want to be) but I can always have 5-10 gal. of gas (diesel, whatever) and can be going in 5 minutes, day or night, if I run out of power, no mater where I am at.