Boiling the frog with electricity

[JTScribe]

Interesting article.

Toyota CEO Agrees With Elon Musk: We Don't Have Enough Electricity to Electrify All the Cars

pjmedia.com

I'm all for electric vehicles. One of these days, I hope to upgrade to a CyberTruck.

But Musk and Toyoda are absolutely correct that we don't have the electrical infrastructure to support a complete cut-over. Which makes me wonder if that isn't intentional to some degree, particularly given we seem to be undertaking actions that will reduce the overall capacity of our electrical grid while introducing standards that will eventually raise the cost of gasoline to exorbitant levels. That will potentially accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, all while we're shuttering more plants than we're building. We see how that works in California; brownouts are common, grid maintenance is awful, and electricity is costly.

Call me conspiratorial, but if you wanted to shift the culture away from traveling freely in your own vehicle to a bus/train mass transit culture, what would you do differently?

 

[Ingomike]

This is all true, we do not have the power to shift the majority to electric vehicles, and we are not building that infrastructure...

 

[Tactically Fat]

I'll believe a lot of this once they stop any and all new construction.

 

[JTScribe]

I'll believe a lot of this once they stop any and all new construction.

Only 16 percent of new construction this year is natural gas. The rest are wind and solar. No new nuclear plants are coming online; several are being taken out of service.

Wind and solar are useful, but they're not a panacea, particularly without effective storage methods.

 

[snorko]

What I want: modest solar array on my roof - not enough to power everything but say 25% of average daily demand. Power cube in the basement - something about the size of a small chest freezer that could run things at moderate use for 2-3 days if needed. A plug in hybrid similar to my Subaru Forrester with solar imbedded into the roof to increase range slightly and a full charge range of 400 miles.

So excess power stored onsite and used to charge the vehicle at night.

 

[SheepDog4Life]

The fringe radicals would prefer to force everyone walk or bike daily.

But for the average pie-in-the-sky progressive, it's more like GO-ready-set, IMO.

For me, the "nirvana" for commute car would be like what Snorko mentioned, solar panels on the roof, storage bank, recharge the car at night... zero $$ for gas for commute and around town. My motivation is that I'm cheap... errr... wait... green, yeah, green, that's what I meant.

 

[Route 45]

GM to go all-electric by 2035, phase out gas and diesel engines

GM launched its first long-range electric car, the Chevy Bolt, in 2016.

www.nbcnews.com

 

[jwamplerusa]

Sorry, but in the absence of a baseload generating capacity and / or cheap plentiful industrial scale storage none of this works as it is being portrayed.

Now when you no longer own the vehicle, or anything else, and rent all of your " personal use " things then the entities who own those articles can utilize the power embedded in them as they see fit. So your electric vehicle will become a storage element in a grid and be pulled from whenever higher priority items need the power. The fact that means you will walk to work, well, you voted for these overlords you should enjoy the walk.

By the way, your new overlords and their methods of production Will always be the highest priority. so you better hope you can rent a pair of shoes that are comfortable.

For quite some time I have believed that electrification, especially of vehicular traffic, is the future. But I don't see a way for it to actually work in a fashion that most of us over the age of 30 would want or expect, without functional and cost-effective fusion power. There is also a need for another generational leap in battery / storage technology. The problem becomes one of storage recovery time. You can fill a tank in 10 minutes and go another 400 mi. If your vehicle has 400 mi range but takes 12 hours to recharge, now you have a problem. Now your vehicle needs say 1,200 mi range for that 12-hour recharge.

 

[Route 45]

There is also a need for another generational leap in battery / storage technology. The problem becomes one of storage recovery time. You can fill a tank in 10 minutes and go another 400 mi. If your vehicle has 400 mi range but takes 12 hours to recharge, now you have a problem. Now your vehicle needs say 1,200 mi range for that 12-hour recharge.

Electric car batteries with five-minute charging times produced

Exclusive: first factory production means recharging could soon be as fast as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles

www.theguardian.com

 

[churchmouse]

Interesting article.

Toyota CEO Agrees With Elon Musk: We Don't Have Enough Electricity to Electrify All the Cars

pjmedia.com

I'm all for electric vehicles. One of these days, I hope to upgrade to a CyberTruck.

But Musk and Toyoda are absolutely correct that we don't have the electrical infrastructure to support a complete cut-over. Which makes me wonder if that isn't intentional to some degree, particularly given we seem to be undertaking actions that will reduce the overall capacity of our electrical grid while introducing standards that will eventually raise the cost of gasoline to exorbitant levels. That will potentially accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles, all while we're shuttering more plants than we're building. We see how that works in California; brownouts are common, grid maintenance is awful, and electricity is costly.

Call me conspiratorial, but if you wanted to shift the culture away from traveling freely in your own vehicle to a bus/train mass transit culture, what would you do differently?

Do you even really have to question the motives behind all of this.
I do not.

 

[JTScribe]

Sorry, but in the absence of a baseload generating capacity and / or cheap plentiful industrial scale storage none of this works as it is being portrayed.

Now when you no longer own the vehicle, or anything else, and rent all of your " personal use " things then the entities who own those articles can utilize the power embedded in them as they see fit. So your electric vehicle will become a storage element in a grid and be pulled from whenever higher priority items need the power. The fact that means you will walk to work, well, you voted for these overlords you should enjoy the walk.

By the way, your new overlords and their methods of production Will always be the highest priority. so you better hope you can rent a pair of shoes that are comfortable.

For quite some time I have believed that electrification, especially of vehicular traffic, is the future. But I don't see a way for it to actually work in a fashion that most of us over the age of 30 would want or expect, without functional and cost-effective fusion power. There is also a need for another generational leap in battery / storage technology. The problem becomes one of storage recovery time. You can fill a tank in 10 minutes and go another 400 mi. If your vehicle has 400 mi range but takes 12 hours to recharge, now you have a problem. Now your vehicle needs say 1,200 mi range for that 12-hour recharge.

Tesla’s recharge in around 15 minutes. Other than that you and I are mostly on the same page, though I’d say we don’t need fusion: LFTR reactors are promising, safe, and could fill in the gap that wind and solar won’t.

 

[BugI02]

Sorry, but in the absence of a baseload generating capacity and / or cheap plentiful industrial scale storage none of this works as it is being portrayed.

Now when you no longer own the vehicle, or anything else, and rent all of your " personal use " things then the entities who own those articles can utilize the power embedded in them as they see fit. So your electric vehicle will become a storage element in a grid and be pulled from whenever higher priority items need the power. The fact that means you will walk to work, well, you voted for these overlords you should enjoy the walk.

By the way, your new overlords and their methods of production Will always be the highest priority. so you better hope you can rent a pair of shoes that are comfortable.

For quite some time I have believed that electrification, especially of vehicular traffic, is the future. But I don't see a way for it to actually work in a fashion that most of us over the age of 30 would want or expect, without functional and cost-effective fusion power. There is also a need for another generational leap in battery / storage technology. The problem becomes one of storage recovery time. You can fill a tank in 10 minutes and go another 400 mi. If your vehicle has 400 mi range but takes 12 hours to recharge, now you have a problem. Now your vehicle needs say 1,200 mi range for that 12-hour recharge.

This. What EVs need would be palletized easy replacement of a car's storage with a charged up replacement, kind of like gas cylinders for your grill; but that shares little with the existing transportation infrastructure and will be an expensive, difficult change to implement. Thus the existing infrastructure for gasoline becomes an impediment to the utopian future and must be destroyed

If you make cheap energy expensive, you can make expensive energy seem cheaper, and there is much money to be made along the way selling all the new stuff needed. Like many other aspects of the great leap forward, if it doesn't work out as promised those hyping the technology will never be called to account and will likely already be on to pushing the next big thing

Save the world or get rich trying, to paraphrase 50 Cent

 

[BugI02]

Electric car batteries with five-minute charging times produced

Exclusive: first factory production means recharging could soon be as fast as filling up petrol or diesel vehicles

www.theguardian.com

Now look at the inverse relation between faster charging time and battery life

 

[Mikey1911]

Now look at the inverse relation between faster charging time and battery life

21st Century “Great Leap Forward”:

”Backyard Battery Factories”

Coming soon to your neighborhood.

 

[Route 45]

Now look at the inverse relation between faster charging time and battery life

There's likely an engineering solution to this. Topping off a battery doesn't affect it's life as much as 0-full charging, which one should avoid anyway. I doubt that the major players in the automobile industry that are making plans to move towards electric vehicles forgot to ask how long the batteries last.

Well OK, maybe GM is this dumb.

With the range of electric vehicles being 200-300 miles now, many people will hardly ever need to fast charge. About 80% of Americans live in or near urban areas, where you'd never have to drive that many miles round trip in your daily life.

I don't think there will be a sudden and dramatic switch to electric vehicles, but I do see things moving in that direction.

 

[foszoe]

Now look at the inverse relation between faster charging time and battery life

How long after electric locks came out did you feel comfortable having them on your vehicle?

 

[printcraft]

How long after electric locks came out did you feel comfortable having them on your vehicle?

 

[rooster]

Ok so I own a Tesla model 3. It’s a long range awd. Love the car, absolutely it’s better than gas in almost every way. Tesla supercharger network is the model for what charging should look like. When I stop in Whitestown I’m adding around 600 miles of range per hour. Stop at some random ChargePoint 220 charger 20 miles in an hour if I’m lucky. I plug it in every night and don’t give a second thought. Planning on moving this coming summer and will get solar installed on the next house. Now that I am using more power it’s honestly a no brainer.

all that said I’m sure the intellectuals and researchers are seeing the same trends. People want to get solar and as soon as it makes $$ sense when they get an electric car they do it. Top that off with I’m now seeing that solar battery setups are almost as cheap as whole house generators and i think you are going to see a mass exodus from the residential grid in the next decade.

 

[awames76]

how do i schedule a mass transit to pull a hay wagon.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

How long after electric locks came out did you feel comfortable having them on your vehicle?

There are no bones in ice cream!