Interesting Articles Relating to EVs

[Gr8ful]

Ron, a while back you wouldn't watch a you tube I posted saying you don't open anything you are not sure is safe & you don't know the content. Looks like that wasn't true as I've been posting the source & content & you refuse the watch the last one too. What does starbucks & churches have to do with EVs? You do sound like a church I went to once that claimed their way was the only way. the only truth & refused to look at other ideas just as you do. The U.S.A. is NOT a Democracy it's a Republic. EVs may win in the future when they make most roads "Charging Roads" bur that's many years away. I still don't understand why EVs don't have on board Charging Stations where you can plug into a 240v metered outlet while the car is parked at work, at a store, restaurant, etc & just pay for what you use. Also why don't all EVs have solar panels on the top, hood & trunks to charge for free?

 

[tx2sturgis]

Adding EVs to our fleet of ICE cars in our country in small numbers is reasonable, but the costly and messy manufacture of EV batteries makes it tough to scale up, its bad for the environment, and makes us even MORE vulnerable to problems around the world.

So...replacing our fleet of gas and diesel powered road going personal conveyances is not gonna happen for a VERY long time.

 

[bullfrog !]

Mass transit improvements , producing efficient cars and restricting single driver large SUVs and trucks to 50 MPH can all be done today. Want to make it safer for small vehicles? Lower the speed limit to 50 MPH. 35 billion was bet on the Super Bowl game today, If people can afford to do that they can afford to be taxed or pay for the damage they do to our environment. Wonder how many empty raised 4x4 diesel trucks were driven by a single driver to the game today.

 

[Happy Camper]

I would imagine that lowering the speed limit to 50 would lead to a massive loss of productivity and cause more traffic issues. It'll never happen nationwide.

Change the rules to incentivizes smaller vehicles and I'm sure they would be built and sold. They can still be built to a strong safety standard. I like the move by Toyota to make a hybrid version of every model. Plug in hybrid makes sense for many.

I would love to get a used hybrid for my next car to go along with my 94 Wrangler I'm working on. One can get 50mpg and the other 15mpg lol.

 

[rruff]

My concern has always been for those in the smaller cars...
Maybe accidents involving substantially unequal size vehicles don't cause excessive damage/fatalities to the smaller one. I don't know. Seems logical.

I makes a big difference.

How to make it safe? I had the idea to create a size and weight class for tiny cars, and the road lanes (narrower of course) and parking would be repurposed to favor them. Also like in the Netherlands, if someone driving a car injures a pedestrian or bike rider, there are severe penalties if they are found to be at fault. In the US it's the opposite... if the driver says "I didn't see them" , they will usually get off with no penalties at all. The message is clearly that people using efficient transportation are 2nd class citizens.

It's not just the upper "few" doing great. It's the top 20%.

I draw the line at the demographic that has seen a real increase in income since 1980, that is greater than the real increase in per capita GDP. From 1932 to 1980 real median incomes rose as much as per capita GDP! In other words most of the population kept pace with per capita GDP. Since then you had to be in the top 1% or higher! So the top 20% are only "doing great" relative to the poor slobs who are worse off. It's the mega rich who are taking all the spoils now.

 

[Gr8ful]

We've had cars that got 50-65 mpg & I owned several mainly for driving to work & save my diesel trucks for when needed. We had a family car, a truck & a crap mobile just to use to commute or quick trips to town. I never had any major issues with any of the high mileage cars. Then they added more computers & sensors, mileage went down, prices went up & I couldn't work on them anymore.

 

[rruff]

As I said elsewhere, problem with electricity is that we don't have good cheap way to store it. We have cheap way to satisfy base load demand, but we need to run coal power plants on idle to be able to satisfy peak demand (or risk network brownout nad collapse). Charging EVs is making this problem worse, not better.

EVs can be charged off peak at home. Nearly all of them also have a lot of excess capacity... ie the battery has a 250 mile range, but the owner is only driving 20 miles/day. So they can sell their capacity to the power company during the day to even out demand, and charge them back up at night.

 

[rruff]

When you start to look at converting to EVs as a national defense issue and how important a functional transportation system that isn’t dependent on fossil fuels solely is to our security those infrastructure costs begin to look minor compared to the defense buget we now spend.

We've been pumping as much oil as we burn for several years now. We aren't relying on foreign governments for that anymore.

The infrastructure even if we converted all transportation to electric would be a pittance. I calculated it a couple months ago, it's like a 20% increase or so in our total electric consumption. In the decades that change will take, increasing electric production 20% would not be hard.

 

[Happy Camper]

Production isn't the problem. Transmission and safety is the problem.

 

[wanderlust]

EVs can be charged off peak at home. Nearly all of them also have a lot of excess capacity... ie the battery has a 250 mile range, but the owner is only driving 20 miles/day. So they can sell their capacity to the power company during the day to even out demand, and charge them back up at night.

Yup, I violently agree with you here. You just described part of the smart power network with distributed storage we need. Of course network would have to be much smarter than the one we have now: run the counter bacward when "selling" electricity back - and for what price? How much I want to charge utilities for discharging my EV battery, which decreases its life, and puts me at the risk that when I jump into my car, my battery is not full?

Another problem is, this could work for owners of detached homes with a garage or at least a private driveway, but significant population lives in condos and/or parks on the street. I did noticed an extension cord going out of the window and taped to the concrete sidewalk, powering up EV parked in front of a house. Quite strange view. And 110V is slow charging, adding about few miles per hour.

Of course these are all solvable challenges not requiring any scientific breakthrough - "just" using existing technology at scale, supported by regulations. Political will.

Very few politicians care about solving a problem, if the benefits of such solution are more than 2-4 years away - because all they care about is being re-elected in the next round. Why should I (a politician) spend effort if benefits of them will be harvested by someone who replaced me? And voters also do not care much, because very few bother to be informed. And then few "informed" voters form a Green Party and vote against greener candidate in 2000 and 2016, or decomission perfectly good nuclear power plants in Germany and switch back to coal for power. Or the repeted debacles of Texas winter power failure. And likely I am missing quite a lot in all problems above - I am not expert, just curious reader with some tech backround, little harder to fool than many others. Famous know unknowns and unknown unknowns.

Thinking is hard, and every complicated problem has simple pseudo-solution, which is also wrong and politically expedient. What else is new?

I like that we can have a civil debate about such complicated issue, looking forward to camp and talk to some of you in person.

 

[RonDean]

Ron, a while back you wouldn't watch a you tube I posted saying you don't open anything you are not sure is safe & you don't know the content. Looks like that wasn't true as I've been posting the source & content & you refuse the watch the last one too. What does starbucks & churches have to do with EVs? You do sound like a church I went to once that claimed their way was the only way. the only truth & refused to look at other ideas just as you do. The U.S.A. is NOT a Democracy it's a Republic. EVs may win in the future when they make most roads "Charging Roads" bur that's many years away. I still don't understand why EVs don't have on board Charging Stations where you can plug into a 240v metered outlet while the car is parked at work, at a store, restaurant, etc & just pay for what you use. Also why don't all EVs have solar panels on the top, hood & trunks to charge for free?

G8, You ignore HALF the reason I explained I don't like video sources. I can assimilate more info faster when it is in text form. I also don't have to sit through a long video to watch something I find at the end l already knew. But I am sure there are others that find them useful, even if I do not. RE: Starbucks and churches. Someone mentioned taxes to pay for EV infrastructure and I added this in reference to that.

I've heard the argument about democracy and republic many times before - usually by those on the right. It is both - depending on definition or aspect. We democratically elect our representatives. Then our representatives democratically vote on laws. I'm not sure how this relates to EVs, but I am sure any change to infrastructure would impact us in some political fashion. After all, what doesn't eventually become a political football these days?

in reference to on-board chargers, As I understand it, it is the amount of energy needed for FAST charging that is the problem - not if the charger is on-board or in a post. We can easily charge at home overnight with 240V. 240 V is only about 10% more efficient than 120V. My daughter charges her hybrid on a 120v circuit overnight. At some point she intends switching to level 2 240v circuit. We need an electricity source rated between 7kW and 22kW (k=1000) for the type of fast charging which travelers want. This means the level 3 Tesla chargers are operating at about 5000V. Putting panels on the EV roof is just not nearly enough to add to that to be meaningful. But, for a small commuter EV that sits in a sunny parking lot all day before driving a few miles back home and then plugging in for the night? Yah, that makes sense, and no fast chargers need.

 

[user 22017]

Mass transit improvements , producing efficient cars and restricting single driver large SUVs and trucks to 50 MPH can all be done today. Want to make it safer for small vehicles? Lower the speed limit to 50 MPH. 35 billion was bet on the Super Bowl game today, If people can afford to do that they can afford to be taxed or pay for the damage they do to our environment. Wonder how many empty raised 4x4 diesel trucks were driven by a single driver to the game today.

Couldn't agree more, bullfrog! Oops, I mean bullfrog !!

 

[rruff]

According to The World Factbook of the CIA, only the top 20% of wage earners saw an income increase since 1980 (adjusted for inflation, but I don't know about your GDP thing).

Keeping up with inflation just means stagnation... no change in living standard. If that was "normal" we'd all be poor subsistence farmers like 200 years ago. Normal is when real wages and benefits keep pace with real per capita GDP, which has more than doubled since 1980. For the last 200 years it's fluctuated around a trend line of 1.8% increase per year, compounded of course. Since 1980 wages and benefits have been nearly stagnant.

Here is real per capita GDP since the late 40s.

I used to be able to find a chart of this that went all the way back to 1820, but this will have to do...

 

[rvwandering]

I moved a series of posts to another thread because they were off-topic and political. We have drifted into allowing political posts as long as they are not belittling or attacking a person or group of people. Thanks for keeping your discussions civil! Here's the new thread. https://vanlivingforum.com/threads/inflation-real-income-and-politics-moved-from-interesting-articles-relating-to-evs.49584/

 

[rruff]

deleted...

 

[tx2sturgis]

Dang, I was asleep at the switch I guess. I had not been 100% keeping up with this thread.

I usually let any typical thread drift a bit, as long as it's at least on a similar and/or related topic...but this one kinda ran off the rails.

Thanks!

 

[Gr8ful]

No One is Talking About Electric Car Deaths, Very interesting! Safe YT Ron

 

[rruff]

No One is Talking About Electric Car Deaths, Very interesting! Safe YT Ron

Our ridiculous trend of driving bigger and heavier vehicles started a long time ago. I've never heard anyone complain about it but me...

 

[bullfrog !]

Surprisingly me too, VW’s, dune buggies, rail buggies, Samurai’s and Honda Civic Hatchbacks the older small ones weee mainly our means of transportation but fulltime travel when we started was motorhomes and now a Suburban with a trailer. Small cars to me feel safer as I have more room to maneuver in the lane much like motorcycles but yes mingling with heavy vehicles is unsafe but with the number of large semi trucks on the road and most of the battery weight being low to the ground in many EVs probably the odds won’t change much in my opinion.

 

[Gr8ful]

I put function ahead of style so I used bigger NOT heavier trucks for working & small high mileage cars for economy. N0 3000#-4000# extra for batteries.