Electric Vehicles

[yankees60]

ev.JPG (60.17 KiB) Viewed 1219 times

[D1984]

ev.JPG

That Diesel-powered charger is not the norm, suffice it to say. It was from Australia from 2018 and is a stop-gap type of solution for electrifying travel across remote sections of the outback until grid extensions can be made (and on top of that, until renewable energy becomes the norm for places like Australia and the US and thus EV charging is powered by non-polluting sources like the sun and wind). See https://thedriven.io/2018/12/14/diesel- ... you-think/ .

I'd bet that 99.95% (or more) of EV chargers in the US are mains grid-powered; even if the grid does still use electricity produced by burning fuel oil or Diesel (like, say, some parts of Hawaii) the power companies burn it in large generators that are more efficient than your average medium-sized 350 kw home or industrial Diesel generator. Actually, most US fossil-fuel produced electricity now comes from natural gas combined cycle plants which beat the pants of Diesel in terms of efficiently converting thermal energy to electricity. Finally, as the grid gets greener and greener (i.e. more renewable-powered) each year charging EVs will also get greener and greener. The DOE does a study every year or two for MPG equivalents for electric cars in various regions of the country by electric grid Independent System Operators; I couldn't even find one for the early 2000s (when renewable energy generation--except for hydropower--barely even existed in the US); the oldest I could find was for 2009 and it is at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ra ... ssions.png ; compare this with the one for 2021 (using late 2019 data so likely the grid is even cleaner now and thus EV MPG equivalents are even higher) at https://blog.ucsusa.org/wp-content/uplo ... 25x900.png and see how dramatically EV MPGe's have improved as the grid itself gets greener.

[I Shrugged]

I'm not anti EV. But, sit and watch how many vehicles get petro fuel in an hour at a busy interstate highway gas station. The typical car fill up takes less than 3 minutes. Now if they were EVs instead, tell me how they do it and how much real estate and grid capacity it takes.

[yankees60]

I'm not anti EV. But, sit and watch how many vehicles get petro fuel in an hour at a busy interstate highway gas station. The typical car fill up takes less than 3 minutes. Now if they were EVs instead, tell me how they do it and how much real estate and grid capacity it takes.

That is an excellent question.

However...do you ever see this scenario occuring?

Even when I was far more active in getting off my property than I am now...for the vast majority of the hours of the week...my cars were always just sitting. Obviously always just sitting there when I'm sleeping and sitting there whenever I was working in my office. And, many times in between.

How far do any of you believe we are from driverless cars?

Once we get there...this could be the scenario....

Hardly any of us would own our own cars. There would be fleets of electric cars either sitting in large car fleet lots or with many of them being out for hire.

I guess as I'm writing this...it'd be similar to an Uber? I want to go to my softball game tomorrow night. I call and have a car sent my way to be at my house at 4:35. When I am game is over I call for one to arrive so as to drop me back off at my house.

Several years back I read a tremendous article on how much society will change once we have driverless vehicles...It will be beyond the obvious like all the people who get paid to drive vehicles....it will also affect many in the medical profession because there will just be much less injuries due to vehicle accidents and many other unthought of repercussions.

But getting back to your main issue. In the scenario I describe those vehicles would all be sitting around, constantly being charged to 100% capacity before they come your way. And, if your desired trip would use up all the mileage capacity of that fully charged vehicle..you'd not have to wait for that vehicle to be charged. A new fully charged vehicle would be awaiting you when the other ran out and it'd be at maximum a 2 minute changeover from the former vehicle to the new vehicle.

[Kriegsspiel]

I think as with most things, when you maximize efficiency, you lose in resiliency. If nobody owns a car, and everybody is using Uber's self-driving cars or whatever... what happens when Uber gets ransomwared? Or if a disgruntled employee sabatoges the system, or the charging station you were counting on hitting on the highway lost power for whatever reason, or Tesla's autopilot system gets hacked, or whatever. Then you're fucked.

On the other hand, if you're not able to supercharge, as with Teslas, who wants to sit there for hours as you charge? Well.. rent an ICE. Or if you are a two car family, why not have an EV for local trips, and an ICE for when you drive long distance?

Funny enough, I just had this discussion IRL yesterday.

[yankees60]

I think as with most things, when you maximize efficiency, you lose in resiliency. If nobody owns a car, and everybody is using Uber's self-driving cars or whatever... what happens when Uber gets ransomwared? Or if a disgruntled employee sabatoges the system, or the charging station you were counting on hitting on the highway lost power for whatever reason, or Tesla's autopilot system gets hacked, or whatever. Then you're fucked.

On the other hand, if you're not able to supercharge, as with Teslas, who wants to sit there for hours as you charge? Well.. rent an ICE. Or if you are a two car family, why not have an EV for local trips, and an ICE for when you drive long distance?

Funny enough, I just had this discussion IRL yesterday.

You are exactly correct with the trade-off and the great strength potentially turning into a great weakness.

This past Monday night I went to the fireworks display in the town next to me for the first time since 1993. I tried to park far enough away so I'd not get caught up in the after traffic. A friend I met there who parked in a lot closer to the fireworks but not that far from me told me he waited 40 minutes before he even tried to leave. Though a lot of people come a fair distance to see these fireworks...this is still a town of all of about 17,500. How many cars and people were really there? But there was still mega-delays for many in leaving.

How much worse would it have been if there had been swarms of hired self-driving cars coming to pick us up all at at the same time? Double the delay? Once on their way in (all coming the same time as opposed to all of having arrived at different times) and once on the way out?