Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I think we’ve been over this multiple times and yet you still repeat the same mistakes. Energy density for gas is high, but it is inefficient in terms of conversion to useful work. While batteries have lower energy densities, the electric motors they drive are incredibly efficient at converting that energy into useful work while motors are also generators so can be used to convert kinetic energy back into electricity when braking.
Your basic logic is faulty. Cars are purchased based on use cases and their market segments. EVs are a heterogenous category in that they are a powertrain type, but that’s not necessarily how people purchase vehicles. Instead, they purchase base on the market segment—that is, the body type of the vehicle and its pricing range. The Model 3’s competition is the entry level premium sedan. As a fairly competitive vehicle in that category, EV or not, the market share it takes is mostly from that segment. The Model S sells in the premium category and is the third or fourth best seller out of about a dozen entries in its segment. No one is ditching their Ram for either of these, because it’s not the same segment. And yea, a lot of the automakers have released subpar EVs that aren’t very competitive in their segment. They’re usually vehicles engineered as ICE vehicles with the EV part ramrodded in. The next few years are going to see a number of EVs in different market segments released with many built as EVs originally or at least made modularly enough to easily accommodate such.
Who is being tricked here? I’m well aware of the actual numbers and the projections. You don’t seem to really understand the data you’re referring, and then on top of that seem to like making inaccurate statements. The problem is that you are reliant on having a set schtick that you believe in, so you need to constantly contort around to try to make your arguments work, but it just comes off as misinformed and oddly sad.
There’s nothing faulty about my logic. Electric motors are about 3 times as efficient as gas engines but gas is 100 times as energy dense as lithium batteries. That’s why cars, trucks, ships, planes, trains, and spaceships haven’t been powered by electric motors and lithium batteries. But that doesn’t really matter, because people don’t buy the most efficient version of a car anyway.
The i3 and i8 are not gas cars with “EV parts ramrodded in”. The hybrid Pacifica is more efficient and cost less than the gas Pacifica but nobody’s buying them. Tell people how much more efficient a Volt is over a Cruze, but it’s not going to bring the Volt back.
You’ve basically listed one car that does well and another that does ok against their respective (and shrinking) market segments (they also drive themselves and stream Netflix, but you think is solely the EV action people want), and converted this into a meaningful trend. That doesn’t put you in the position to lecture me on contorting to make arguments work. Save your pity for yourself.
The history Geek in me has to point out that the WWII Pacific war largely came about because the U.S. and Japan were eyeing each other up regarding natural resources located around the Pacific Rim. Due to Japanese expansionist policies, the U.S. embargoed oil deliveries to Japan, so Japan decided to cripple the U.S. fleet in Hawaii as a way to buy time to consolidate its holdings, part of which was Indonesian oil. Hitler's Africa campaign was also fought over access to Libyan oil, but that's a bit different, just part of the wider campaign.
So yeah, in a roundabout way, at least part of WWII was fought over strategic access to oil, Japan as an island nation with relatively few natural resources but an appetite to be a modern industrial empire, was a recipe for disaster. Interestingly, they managed to do it in decades since, without having to build another Yamato.
On a side note, the final episode of "Preacher" last night had the main characters discussing "People who saved the world". Churchill and Lincoln made the cut, and then the discussion devolved into Frodo Baggins, LOL. Genius conversation, and it's had me thinking ever since about which historical figures could reasonably make that list. If Elon watched that episode, I'm sure that for at least a second or two, he put himself on it.
I would roughly agree with your WWII assessment, but with the caveat it was also a steel embargo and over war intensive resources in general. We were ok selling oil and steel to Japan, just not while they were taking over the world. It was the taking over the world part we had a problem with.
Second Gulf War. Destabilizing of Iran with the toppling of its democratically elected president back when the country had a division between church and state and was much more liberal, though that’s still just a war in waiting.
2nd Gulf War was over weapons of mass destruction. Contrary to popular belief, oil prices were actually pretty stable in the 90’s and oil sells for market price regardless of how anti American a foreign dictator is. You don’t have to take over a country to get a good deal on oil. That’s the beauty of the free market economy.
I think this also unfortunately shows a bit of lack of knowledge. Most charging for EVs is done while parked and that is also what most cars spend a vast majority of their time doing. Distributing gasoline into every home and parking space is a bit of a bear, but it is expected for electricity. The average driver drives less than forty miles a day and that is easily recoverable at even a slow charging outlet.
In this case, fast chargers take a slightly less primary role that gas stations do so don’t need to be nearly as ubiquitous as their gas counterparts though there certainly needs to be more.
Now, that’s about how important it is to have a fast charging station at every street corner (and somehow you probably would already know if you have tried driving an EV recently). In terms of rate of charge for a fast charger, you’re probably a decade or so away from three hundred miles in ten minutes for a production vehicle provided that the rate of improvement is slower this decade than it has been in the last.
Part of the problem about predicting the future is, well, it's just so darned unpredictable.
But if we go from what we know - we know that the supply of fossil fuels, even with better recovery methods, is largely finite. And with the growth around the world of IC engines powering personal transportation, the date of being able to see the end of the road for cheap, unlimited liquid dinosaur, grows ever nearer, even if it's not in "our" lifetimes. Throw humanity's seeing CO2 as "poison", greatly accelerates the need to find a suitable replacement. Now, whatever oil is replaced with (batteries, "beamed" electrical power, direct-wired streetcars or trains, hydrogen or something else entirely), is going to require a source of non-fossil energy to create. Solar and wind may give us Warm Fuzzies, but there isn't enough land available to power the entire country with renewables, not if we want to continue eating. So that leaves nuclear, and maybe one day, fusion, which could make eventually make even hydropower uneconomical. So if Greta really wants to be productive, she needs to stop skipping school and get her degree in Engineering, to produce better power plants and energy storage devices.
But right now, it looks as though the consensus is that our immediate, near-term solution for personal transportation is going to be electrical and battery based, even though I think that Tesla and other manufacturers are simply beta-testing the concept on a widespread basis at the present moment, what we're driving thirty years from now will probably not resemble what is currently being built. But that's a good thing, as there are some pitfalls with what we're doing currently - Mr. Cadogan just poisoned my widdle mind again this evening:
In terms of rate of charge for a fast charger, you’re probably a decade or so away from three hundred miles in ten minutes for a production vehicle provided that the rate of improvement is slower this decade than it has been in the last.
While I agree with most everything you posted, I think your projection for fast charging is a little pessimistic. Fast charging speed has increased significantly in the last year. The Tesla Model 3 reportedly can already charge about 180 miles in 15 minutes and the new Porsche Taycan, is supposed be even faster. Really fast charging may be only a few years away.
2nd Gulf War was over weapons of mass destruction.
Both Gulf wars were over stability in the ME, The first was about Iraq invading Kuwait, one of our oil suppliers. The second was simply a continuation of the first. Had zero to do with WMDs. And all the actions in that region before were about keeping the oil lanes open and flowing freely. We didn't want Russia taking over that region and getting all the oil.
There’s nothing faulty about my logic. Electric motors are about 3 times as efficient as gas engines but gas is 100 times as energy dense as lithium batteries. That’s why cars, trucks, ships, planes, trains, and spaceships haven’t been powered by electric motors and lithium batteries. But that doesn’t really matter, because people don’t buy the most efficient version of a car anyway.
The i3 and i8 are not gas cars with “EV parts ramrodded in”. The hybrid Pacifica is more efficient and cost less than the gas Pacifica but nobody’s buying them. Tell people how much more efficient a Volt is over a Cruze, but it’s not going to bring the Volt back.
You’ve basically listed one car that does well and another that does ok against their respective (and shrinking) market segments (they also drive themselves and stream Netflix, but you think is solely the EV action people want), and converted this into a meaningful trend. That doesn’t put you in the position to lecture me on contorting to make arguments work. Save your pity for yourself.
Electric motors are in practice 3 times as efficient at their worst which would be against a very efficient ICE generally running around 30-40 miles per hour continuously without stopping for traffic or traffic lights which isn't the most versatile comparison. The energy density difference between gas and current mass production lithium-ion batteries is high (not 100 times difference these days, more like 60 times which is still very significant). What makes up for some of that today is that the other components of an ICE vehicle powertrain and exhaust system aren't necessary so that weight and volume can be used for batteries and regenerative braking which allows you to recover some of the kinetic energy back as charge when braking.
Cars, buses, trucks, and trains (there's been a series of battery electric trains deployed in recent years) are where the energy density and costs improvements with batteries have now made EVs competitive. They aren't going to be competitive for planes or space launches (though maybe someone will surprise everyone with a non-rocket space launch in the near future) for quite a while.
The i3 and i8 was not EV parts ramrodded in nor was the Leaf and some others--the Pacifica was. The i3 is useful as a city car, but there's not a huge market for that in the US. I'm not too familiar with the i8. I do think the hybrid Pacifica not selling very well is interesting. Hybrids aren't doing too well in the US market lately, that's for sure. The shift has been towards all-electric for better or worse.
Tesla went all-in on electric vehicles. Yea, it has a lot of other bells and whistles that aren't EV related which other automakers also are pushing to market whether EV or not. Teslas are still EVs that take advantage of what EVs do better than ICE vehicles and it's helped push other automakers to have invested a lot more in electric vehicle development and fairly good, though usually pricey, vehicles have been released recently and more are slated to come.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 10-01-2019 at 09:52 AM..
Part of the problem about predicting the future is, well, it's just so darned unpredictable.
But if we go from what we know - we know that the supply of fossil fuels, even with better recovery methods, is largely finite. And with the growth around the world of IC engines powering personal transportation, the date of being able to see the end of the road for cheap, unlimited liquid dinosaur, grows ever nearer, even if it's not in "our" lifetimes. Throw humanity's seeing CO2 as "poison", greatly accelerates the need to find a suitable replacement. Now, whatever oil is replaced with (batteries, "beamed" electrical power, direct-wired streetcars or trains, hydrogen or something else entirely), is going to require a source of non-fossil energy to create. Solar and wind may give us Warm Fuzzies, but there isn't enough land available to power the entire country with renewables, not if we want to continue eating. So that leaves nuclear, and maybe one day, fusion, which could make eventually make even hydropower uneconomical. So if Greta really wants to be productive, she needs to stop skipping school and get her degree in Engineering, to produce better power plants and energy storage devices.
But right now, it looks as though the consensus is that our immediate, near-term solution for personal transportation is going to be electrical and battery based, even though I think that Tesla and other manufacturers are simply beta-testing the concept on a widespread basis at the present moment, what we're driving thirty years from now will probably not resemble what is currently being built. But that's a good thing, as there are some pitfalls with what we're doing currently - Mr. Cadogan just poisoned my widdle mind again this evening:
Of course predictions are difficult--there's a probability curve that gets worse the further out in time you go. The best you can do is look at historical data for recent trends and extrapolate that to the near future. Outside of that, things get wonky much faster.
Solar and storage of different kinds technically has the ability to power our current energy needs if we really went all in on it--it's just very much not economical enough to do so now and our energy needs are probably going to increase over the years.
While I agree with most everything you posted, I think your projection for fast charging is a little pessimistic. Fast charging speed has increased significantly in the last year. The Tesla Model 3 reportedly can already charge about 180 miles in 15 minutes and the new Porsche Taycan, is supposed be even faster. Really fast charging may be only a few years away.
Really fast charging may only be a few years away. It's possible the rate of improvement keeps up with what was seen over the last decade for production vehicles. Taycan charges at a faster top rate of 270 kW compared to the Model 3’s 250 kW max and the charging stations that the Taycan uses can deliver 350 kW as a top rate, but no production car is currently rated to charge as such. Top rate doesn't get held for the entire duration of the charge time though, so having to charge for adding a range of 300 miles for 10 minutes means having to hold a very high rate for a fairly large number of kWhs.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
