One other they talked about in the Nova Series…was Lithium batteries.
The problem with Lithium batteries is the Lithium. There’s a finite resource of Lithium. It’s NOT renewable. So we’re back to the same problem we have with oil…Eventually we’ll start to run out.
Jay Leno was interview several times during in this Nova series.
He made a great point…It’s NOT the cars that are bad…it’s the Fuel. Change the fuel and the buy product of the fuel. He got one of the Fuel Cells SUV’s to drive around. Been driving it around for 2 years now…and LOVES it…0 pollution. Now we have to make Hydrogen cheaply and cleanly.
re: The power grid
Our plants are on a cooperative energy consumption program for lower electric cost. In the control rooms are indicators. At times we need to switch to generator power. Why? because there are currently inadequate power supplies at peak times. Your reference notes charging during non peak times.
Not yet. Battery energy density is not high enough to make an electric car viable yet. Another generation or two of improvements will get miles between charges up enough to make them practical. The might even be useful for long trips if they could be driven 8 hours at highway speeds between charges. Even that will probably happen; if only 20 years from now.
I agree that plug-in hybrids, like the Volt, are the Next Big Thing.
“whitey, pretty troll-like post and the logic has stunted growth too”
Actually, EVs will cause cancer, only in a different way. Charging an EV will likely be done with electricity produced at an oil or coal fired power plant. Sure, emissions are easier to control at a power plant than at thousands of tail pipes, But there are still large amounts of particle and gaseous pollutants that could lead to cancer if breathed in. Of course, trains cause cancer, too, when looked at it this way.
Battery-powered mowers also can’t cut much yard. I have about 15,000 sq ft of grass and I’d need 2 or 3 batteries to cut the yard. And the longer the grass, the more power is required. As Whitey said, small lawns are OK for electrics. Big lawns, or even moderately sized ones like mine require gas.
Myth: Electric cars will end ALL of our dependence from oil and end pollution as we know it
fact: You have your head stuck where the sun don’t shine
There is an off-peak time during the night, but who’s to say that when electric cars become more commonplace, that they won’t add another peak time of 12am to 4~6am to offset so many people charging their cars at night
The Nissan Leaf is rated by the EPA at 99MPGe. That means that an amount of electric charge, equivalent to 1 gallon of gas, has to be put into the battery to move the car 99 miles down the road.
“Plant-to-plug” electric efficiency is roughly 36% in the US. That means, that for every 100 BTUs of “burned stuff” at the plant, 36BTUs of energy come out the plug.
99(0.36)=36MPG (more or less).
So, the first “mass electric” car is very modestly more efficient than a gasser, and probably less efficient than certain hybrids/diesels. And in exchange for that modest savings, one has to endure the acid rain, mercury poisoning, undermining of property, etc associated with increased burning of coal. E-cars might do wonders for our trade deficit, but if you think they will “save the earth” or similar malarkey, you’re fooling yourself: they’re the eco equivalent of 'low-tar cigarettes."
What I also found offensive was your web site’s equating the “greenness” of an energy source to the amount of CO2 it produces. This is an absurd simplification. Consider hydroelectric: no CO2, but it has (probably irreparably) altered the ecology of the desert Southwest–as well as kill off salmon in a brutally efficient way.
Read some Edward Abbey then tell me about how “green” hydro power is.
C^3, you keep posting these threads about unproven technology (e-cars, high-speed rail, etc) that you are certain will “save the earth” and (by implication) cure cancer. Thus, you present as being naive to the point of irrationality.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are very, very young, and have insufficient life experience to draw upon to lend you a healthy amount of skepticism about the “latest and the greatest” thing to come along. In a decade you’ll be older and wiser; in the meantime, try to develop the ability to think skeptically and rationally about new ideas, especially those supported by those with similar ideological bent.
I have never seen the answer to my question in print so I pose this to someone with some knowledge on this.
How much does it cost to charge a EV vehicle? It has to cost something, electricity isn’t free. I am exagerating but is it like running a toaster all night or more like Clark Griswald in the NL Vacation lighting up his house at Christmas and the whole neighborhood going dark?
CCC, I’ll ask again what kind of vehicle do you own?
Personally, I think there’s a lot of hypocrisy in an issue like this. Take the Detroit Project which advocates the elimination of all SUVs for instance.
The DP states that Detroit and their SUVs are behind ruining the Earth. I emailed them once and asked what makes a Nissan Armada, etc any different from a Tahoe or Explorer and they don’t wanna talk about it. Apparently Detroit is the only one manufacturing large SUVs.
The head of the DP appeared on a TV program some years ago and started in on the elimination of all SUVs. It was pointed out to this guy that he had driven to the studio in a large Mercedes Benz with a huge gas guzzler tax attached to it and he got the same look as a deer in the headlights while stammering that, "I’ve got a Prius on order…"
BS, and I own beachfront property near Tucson too…
You had better start wondering where the power plants and electrical grid are going to come from because if 1 or 2% of the public goes to EVs then you’re going to see the mother of all rolling blackouts and a larger than normal number of housefires.
When motor fuel gets up to about $10 / gallon, all these arguments just fade away…
Americans have this feeling they have a God-given RIGHT to drive any car they want any place they want any time they want as fast as they want…But at $10/gallon, that attitude will change…
Electric cars run on coal and we have enough coal (if you don’t mind strip-mining vast areas) to last another 200 years…We are importing 60% of our transportation fuel now and we are having a lot of trouble paying for it. The Nissan Leaf is the first one…It won’t be the last one…
That’s basically the problem, to get more than about 40 or 50 mile range, you need so much battery that the car basically becomes a battery on wheels, that is, the weight of the battery is a major percentage of the car’s total weight.
Simply putting in an even larger battery may not increase the range because the increased weight caused by the bigger battery saps the extra energy that that battery holds.
How about living in Buffalo in the winter when you might need to spend all night in the car when an expressway gets plugged up in a storm and you have to spend all night in the car. Even more expressway parking lots will form as EVs run out of charge fighting the snow and keeping you warm.
Americans have this feeling they have a God-given RIGHT to drive any car they want any place they want any time they want as fast as they want…But at $10/gallon, that attitude will change…
Exactly right. The private-internal-combustion-engine-for-all model of society is illogical and devastatingly greedy. Car culture in general is unsustainable and we have to get on the fast track away from it before it pollutes our society and environment to the point of no return.
Exactly right. The private-internal-combustion-engine-for-all model of society is illogical and devastatingly greedy
It’s NOT the internal-combustion-engine that’s the problem…it’s the fuel for the internal combustion engine that causes pollution. You’ve stated here many times…you have one goal…and one goal ONLY…you want everyone to ride trains…ONLY…You’ve said you don’t like buses…or another other mass transit that isn’t TRAINS…
You’ve been asked MANY MANY times to explain your answers and you REFUSE…please leave.
honestly, mike, take a chill pill. I never stated any of those things, you have imagined them. Either join the discussion or ignore it; the rest is outside your purview
How many of the heavy metals mined for EV batteries cause cancer? How ecologically are EV battery components mined? Do these mining operations pollute groundwater?
I guess posing real world questions of which CCC hasn’t approved now constitutes troll-like behavior.
