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.
Good points, but John-From the UK has a very narrow view in relation to EV's versus ICE's and about the size of Texas and other US states. For example, Texas's landmass is twice as large as the UK, and with a little over half the population of the UK (25.1 million texans, versus 40.5 million in the UK). Alaska is 40 times as large as the UK, and the population is near 800,000. Alaska roads are very few, so air travel across long distances is quite common (no roads leading to a lot of villages).
Travel distances across Texas are twice as long at the travel distances in the UK, and residents of the UK live closer to each other than residents of Texas. Power distribution (power lines) in Texas are twice as long as the ones in the UK. Then Texas is affected by hurricanes every year (including wind power), while the wether in the UK is more stable than the weather in Texas.
John is basing his assumptions about the US on how things are in the UK where he lives. His neighbors can probably hear him fart, while in Texas a neighbors's hearing would have to be twice better than a neighbor in the UK in order hear the fart from his Texas neighbor.
I think your data are out of date. UK is closer to 63m, and Texas is 29m.
As regards weather, yes, Texas being on the Gulf of Mexico and a temperate latitude is hurricane-prone.
You can't do much about hurricanes; but south Texas is probably better prepared for wind and rain than they are for ice storms which almost never happen.
Here in the Northeast U.S., snow and ice storms are a common occurrence in winter, and people have long since invested in the equipment and infrastructure to deal with it.
Ice causes tree branches to fall on power lines; in the Northeast it happens every winter, so after the first Nor'easter or so, all the weak branches are gone and the trees are "hardened". People have fireplaces, space heaters, generators, snow plows, and shovels, and they know to run the taps and keep pipes from freezing. Big trucks in every town keep the roads and sidewalks clear and salted.
In south Texas, not so much! It's not surprising that this outage happened and I wouldn't "blame" the people down there. It's a wakeup call and it will hopefully help Texas and other southern states to harden their infrastructure to better survive future power outages. Anyway aren't we supposed to be talking about no new gas cars after 2035 in Massachusetts?
Texas is a very large piece of real-estate, and nothing like where you are from where people live on top of each other. Wind power is also used in Texas.
But long distance transporting of produce, construction materials, groceries, construction equipment, and so on won't be done with EV's any time soon. I am referring to trucks with single, double, and triple trailers and tanks. The same for trains throughout the US. These trains and trucks traveling across the US and North through Canada to Alaska (trucks in this case, since there aren't railways from Canada to Alaska) have heaters and refrigeration units, that depending on the product being transported are kept running day and night. Supermarkets chains (Fred Mayer, Safeway, CostCo, etc.) truck their products North, and then ferry these trucks from Seattle to Alaska, and then the trucks transport the products their respective supermarkets within Alaska. Then the oil and mining companies operating in Alaska truck their products all the way to the North slope (oil companies), to the pump stations, and so on. The mining companies do the same, but most are in the interior of Alaska.
Yes, at least for cars, I can very well happen where there are concentrations of people such as metropolitan areas, but even so it is going to be difficult for tenants living in multi apartment buildings unless these places have parking lots or garages with charging stations. Besides that, should the existing ICE vehicles would all of the sudden turn into EV's, there is not sufficient electrical power to charge the all.
I believe that in 2018-19, hybrid automobiles were outnumbering EV's five to one. There are all kinds of projections about the future sales of EV's, but those are estimates. We will have to wait and see https://www.statista.com/topics/4421...icle-industry/
I don't think it was clear that that long distance heavy duty trucking in very far northern climates was what was specifically being discussed. I think most would agree that that would be the domain of ICE powertrains for quite a while to come.
The topic wandered from Massachusetts, to Alaska, to the UK, to Texas, and recently via my, to Scandinavia.
These are all different places with different conditions. Massachusetts, the UK, Texas, and Scandinavia are all easily doable for EVs when it comes to general automotive use as Scandinavia is ostensibly the most challenging of these with its greater distances, sparser population, and colder climate but also has by far the highest the EV adoption rate so there's obviously no real technical barrier for their adoption in any of the other places mentioned except for Alaska which is much more sparsely populated than Scandinavia and with far more inclement weather.
Quote:
Originally Posted by easy62
Funny the wind farms failed during the frigid weather in Texas.
Most of the power loss in Texas was due to natural gas plants. If that's your metric rather than misguided deregulation, then I guess Texas should be chucking all of those natural gas plants for wind and nuclear.
Funny the wind farms failed during the frigid weather in Texas.
As did the gas and coal fired plants because none of them were winterized as recommended. Windmills work all over the world in frigid conditions when specified correctly.
I think your data are out of date. UK is closer to 63m, and Texas is 29m.
As regards weather, yes, Texas being on the Gulf of Mexico and a temperate latitude is hurricane-prone.
You can't do much about hurricanes; but south Texas is probably better prepared for wind and rain than they are for ice storms which almost never happen.
Here in the Northeast U.S., snow and ice storms are a common occurrence in winter, and people have long since invested in the equipment and infrastructure to deal with it.
Ice causes tree branches to fall on power lines; in the Northeast it happens every winter, so after the first Nor'easter or so, all the weak branches are gone and the trees are "hardened". People have fireplaces, space heaters, generators, snow plows, and shovels, and they know to run the taps and keep pipes from freezing. Big trucks in every town keep the roads and sidewalks clear and salted.
In south Texas, not so much! It's not surprising that this outage happened and I wouldn't "blame" the people down there. It's a wakeup call and it will hopefully help Texas and other southern states to harden their infrastructure to better survive future power outages. Anyway aren't we supposed to be talking about no new gas cars after 2035 in Massachusetts?
I don't think it was clear that that long distance heavy duty trucking in very far northern climates was what was specifically being discussed. I think most would agree that that would be the domain of ICE powertrains for quite a while to come.
The topic wandered from Massachusetts, to Alaska, to the UK, to Texas, and recently via my, to Scandinavia.
These are all different places with different conditions. Massachusetts, the UK, Texas, and Scandinavia are all easily doable for EVs when it comes to general automotive use as Scandinavia is ostensibly the most challenging of these with its greater distances, sparser population, and colder climate but also has by far the highest the EV adoption rate so there's obviously no real technical barrier for their adoption in any of the other places mentioned except for Alaska which is much more sparsely populated than Scandinavia and with far more inclement weather.
Most of the power loss in Texas was due to natural gas plants. If that's your metric rather than misguided deregulation, then I guess Texas should be chucking all of those natural gas plants for wind and nuclear.
Maybe I wasn't clear. I was referring to long distance trucking and power lines in Texas. Since Texas is not as populated as the UK, and since since the Texas' landmass is almost twice as much as the landmass of the UK, travel distances are longer in Texas.
If you look at a map of Texas versus a map of the UK, you will notice that in the UK most people live closer to each other than it is in Texas. Power lines in Texas are much longer than the power lines in the UK, too.
Trucking across Texas takes several hours with truck stops to rest or sleep in the cab overnight. Meanwhile the refrigeration system that keeps perishable products cool must run non-stop. The same for the truck's AC during the hot summer. Can an EV truck's battery, towing a double or triple trailer loaded with groceries and perishable foods across Texas maintain both the driver and the products cool?
I do agree with you that in places that have people close to each other (the US states you have mentioned), as well as the UK, EV is a lot more possible than in places where the people are spread out and away from the cities.
But this problem still remains: where are apartment dwellers going to charge their EV's.
---------
This thread could have just as aptly been named No more air conditioning after 2035 in Massachusetts.
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.
