Electric vehicles (EVs), their emissions, and future viability

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GoFaster

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Hydrogen is a non-starter. We are a couple of years away from seeing the next generation of EVs which have a range of approx 200 mi / 320 km and which (hopefully) are priced below $40k - namely, the Tesla model 3, and the Chevrolet Bolt (if it comes to market with that name).

Right now, EVs that are affordable are not considered good enough by most people (myself included) and EVs that are good enough are too expensive (the Tesla Model S is the one and only example of an EV in today's market that I would consider to be a good car, but it's too expensive).

200 mile range and below $40k, I suspect will be the magic combination that will be "good enough for most people".

I know that for myself, the most distant customer that I routinely visit is about 160 km (100 mi) away ... and they have an EV charging spot! I could deal with the occasional exceptions of having to charge away from home. I just couldn't deal with it every day.

An EV that is "good enough for most people" makes hydrogen irrelevant - as it should be, for all the reasons explained above.
 

gene r

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saGhost, Thank you so much for saving me a lot of work opposing Fool Cell. Great post.

I would like to add to this that hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles keeps you buying energy from "the man". With battery electric cars we can produce our own energy from our solar panels. Exactly what I do for free.
 

Tdijarhead

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TL;DR: Hydrogen cars are foolish, wasteful, and dangerous. :)
Walter

Well at least you back everything you say up. Now you just have to convince Toyota that they have no idea what they're talking about.

I just thought I'd stir the pot. Personally I do over 200 miles many days and there are zero charging stations available anywhere in my area. Electric will be desirable when I can go 500 miles and recharge in 10 minutes or less. Much like the diesel that I drive now that can easily go 700 and occasionally 800 miles and be refilled in under 10 minutes.
 
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saGhost

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Well at least you back everything you say up. Now you just have to convince Toyota that they have no idea what they're talking about.

I just thought I'd stir the pot. Personally I do over 200 miles many days and there are zero charging stations available anywhere in my area. Electric will be desirable when I can go 500 miles and recharge in 10 minutes or less. Much like the diesel that I drive now that can easily go 700 and occasionally 800 miles and be refilled in under 10 minutes.
Toyota is a private company and can do what they choose; right now my theory is that they figure it'll cost them less to build fuel cell cars than either building electric or just eating the fines from CARB mandates - assuming they believe none of the technology is practical right now.

What I really need is to get CARB to stop favoring the hydrogen solution over EVs (more credits for lower requirements if it has hydrogen) and governments to stop spending a fortune for refueling infrastructure and taking it out of our pockets.

Charging availability is certainly an issue for longer trips. Over 200 miles a day you can manage with just charging in your garage at night with a big battery Tesla right now though that's approaching the edge, especially in the cold.

But the important part is that both of these will improve over time.

This site has all sorts of Supercharger data, including graphs of sites added over time and coverage maps - give Tesla another year or so at the current rate and they'll have coverage for most of the US and Europe locked up.

http://supercharge.info/

(Just in time for a massive surge in sales when the 3 hits - so they'll need to concentrate on adding capacity then. Still a lot less capacity needed and a lot less cost than Hydrogen, though.)

Most of the cars Tesla sells right now go further than the ones they sold as recently as last year, and they expect to add several percent per year for a while. (60 kWh was replaced with 70 kWh for the low end cars, 85 kWh is in the process of being replaced with 90 kWh for the high end, but still available right now.)

Between these two factors, if it's just out of reach now, in a year it'll be practical (assuming you can save enough pennies, of course, and then justify spending them all in one place. Maybe I'll manage it next year...)
Walter

Edit: I just looked up the area your data on the left says you're in. There's nothing useful for local trips, but you would be able to reach the greater network of Superchargers through Syracuse to the north for sure, and likely through Somerset or Hagerstown or Cranberry to the south and west if you were carefully and fully charged when you left. There are a few public charge stations in the Corning NY area, too (still not nearby, of course.)

http://www.plugshare.com/
 
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nwdiver

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Electric will be desirable when I can go 500 miles and recharge in 10 minutes or less. Much like the diesel that I drive now that can easily go 700 and occasionally 800 miles and be refilled in under 10 minutes.
For the 0.01%ers that have those driving habits EVs will never be practical. For the other 99.99% of us that have realistic driving habits and park our cars for several hours/day a 200 mile range and <8hr daily charging and <30 minute fast charging is realistically more than sufficient. Anything more is just paying more for something that is rarely if ever used.
 
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tongsli

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For the 0.01%ers that have those driving habits EVs will never be practical. For the other 99.99% of us that have realistic driving habits and park our cars for several hours/day a 200 mile range and <8hr daily charging or <30 minute fast charging is realistically more than sufficient. Anything more is just paying more for something that is rarely if ever used.

I agree. I'm ready to switch. I'd love to stick with VW, but if an affordable TESLA is better that's what I'll buy.

But VW will get my first consideration.
 

tadawson

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Cost, safety, environment, reliability: Fuel cells are much worse across the board.

Right now, there are exactly nine places in california where you can refuel a hydrogen car:

http://www.cafcp.org/stationmap

Most of the time, several of those are down:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/513010068843714/?fref=nf

Building new fueling stations is expected to cost ~$3 million *a piece*:

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56412.pdf

That's almost all taxpayer money, by the way. The $3 million station can only refuel 30 cars per day, by the way - and not in 5 minutes each if they all arrive right together.

(For reference, a standard Supercharger site costs about 10% of that and has 8 stalls, each of which can *fully* refuel a Model S in 75 minutes, or more likely do an 80% charge in 40 minutes - 216 cars in a day @ 80%.)

I don't want to spend too much time on safety, but the idea of storing the most mobile and dangerous gas we know of in a car at ten thousand psi is crazy. Here's a thread about what happened when a compressed natural gas car burned at one third the pressure and the safety device didn't work:

http://www.cleanmpg.com/forums/gene...xplosion-dialup-warning-many-photos-7555.html

Oh, a here's a filling station that burned because someone used the wrong alloy of metal and the hydrogen got through it:

http://prod.sandia.gov/techlib/access-control.cgi/2012/128642.pdf

Any release of hydrogen is almost certain to lead to fire because of the wide range of combustion ratios and low activation energy...

As for the environmental part, they say it's renewable, and it can be - if you electrolyze water using 100% renewable electricity - which costs around 5x as much as steam reformation of natural gas; steam reformation would make a hydrogen driven mile cost about the same as a gas hybrid one.

http://www.fsec.ucf.edu/en/consumer/hydrogen/basics/production.htm

http://www.caloric.com/upload/Downloads/hydro.pdf

I don't have a link handy aside from a discussion thread, but when we assemble the numbers you get about half as far on electricity used to create hydrogen and run through a fuel cell as you do on electricity used to charge an EV from the grid.

Looked at the other way, that means if your fuel source isn't 100% renewable, the hydrogen car running off electrolyzed water pollutes twice as much as an EV. If it is 100% renewable, it requires twice as much renewable investment for the same result.

I don't have much data on reliability/durability, but right now the DoE says some state of the art cells can last 75,000 miles with only 10% degradation:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/hydrogenandfuelcells/pdfs/accomplishments.pdf

And after all, DoE thinks the Mirai fuel cell stack might be as cheap as $4700 if manufactured in large volumes...

TL;DR: Hydrogen cars are foolish, wasteful, and dangerous. :)
Walter
Ever seen a lithium battery fire? Hotter than any of those . . . . at least, as the survivors of the Hindenburg know, helium fires go up . . . . whereas you sit atop the battery . . .

- Tim
 

bhtooefr

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The other thing is that Toyota went all-in on hydrogen back when BEV technology looked like it was going to be impractical. Now, they have to either stay on the hydrogen hype train to try to save face to their shareholders (they're publicly traded, too, so they can't do everything they choose), or they have to admit that they bet on the wrong horse.

And, they've done some token BEVs here and there, sure... but the first-gen RAV4 EV was a compliance car, the eCom was a small scale (50 car) experiment for Japan only, the second-gen RAV4 EV was yet another compliance car that Toyota outsourced to Tesla, and the eQ/iQ EV was another small scale (100 car) experiment. Toyota's built a grand total of 4250 BEVs, I believe, and 4100 of those were California compliance cars. 1550 of them were made over a decade ago.

Let's face it, even FCA is more invested in BEV technology, and this is a company whose CEO is literally telling people not to buy their BEV product. They've sold more 500es - again, a car that their CEO is literally asking people not to buy - year to date than Toyota's produced BEVs period since 1997.

(Of course, Toyota's FCEV experiments count towards their compliance car totals, too...)

Really, things are going to get interesting with the Japanese carmakers. Honda is mainly focused on hydrogen (but keeps a toe dipped in the EV waters), Toyota's all-in on hydrogen, looks like Suzuki's on the hydrogen side too. Conversely, Nissan is seen as a BEV leader of sorts (although Tesla and GM are going to bring the hurt to them soon), and Mitsubishi's decided that BEVs are the future too. Daihatsu's screwing around with hydrazine fuel cells. And then there's Mazda, whose strategy seems to be ride out internal combustion to the very end, because they can't afford to develop a BEV, and then hopefully get bought out by someone like Toyota (right now, it's working quite well for them (they've got excellent real-world efficiency out of decently large NA gassers, and Toyota's buying Mazda2s to slap Scion iA and soon Yaris badges on), but it's not a good long-term strategy), with the possible backup plan being burning hydrogen in wankels (but, really, that's not going to happen, and it's still ICE, and being hydrogen, it's even less efficient than even FCEV, let alone BEV).

For that matter, Mazda's strategy might even backfire in the short term - they're big enough that California's requiring them to buy ZEV credits, and unlike VW, their two platforms aren't designed to hedge bets and support every technology no matter what wins - just look at the Japanese-market Axela (Mazda3) Hybrid's battery packaging. The Miata might actually make a decent compliance car if push comes to shove, though, as the transmission tunnel that hurts packaging in ICE form, helps packaging in BEV form.
 
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saGhost

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Ever seen a lithium battery fire? Hotter than any of those . . . . at least, as the survivors of the Hindenburg know, helium fires go up . . . . whereas you sit atop the battery . . .

- Tim
Source?

The best I could come up with after some fishing online is that gasoline and diesel and most other hydrocarbons will go to about 3800 F, and hydrogen about 4000 F:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adiabatic_flame_temperature

There are some warnings about how lithium battery fires are very hot - around 1000 F...

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/safety_concerns_with_li_ion

You do understand that the model S battery pack contains about the same energy as 2.5 gallons of gasoline, spilt up into seven thousand little pieces that are separately fused and cooled so one failing won't start a chain reaction, right?
Walter
 

meerschm

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There is a difference in time frame when H2 as an energy storage and transfer medium may be practical.

there are several advantages to using H2. net mass of H2 and a carbon fiber tank is likely less than the same mass of a battery or capacitor. combine this with an optimized structure and more savings can be had.

also, there are ways to generate H2 directly from solar, which have not been optimized. another research area.
 

saGhost

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There is a difference in time frame when H2 as an energy storage and transfer medium may be practical.

there are several advantages to using H2. net mass of H2 and a carbon fiber tank is likely less than the same mass of a battery or capacitor. combine this with an optimized structure and more savings can be had.

also, there are ways to generate H2 directly from solar, which have not been optimized. another research area.
I dunno, maybe.

I'll have to come back and add a link or quote later; when we were having a discussion like this on the Tesla forums I tried to create a fuel cell system that had equivalent power and energy to a Model S battery pack using well documented components (on paper, of course.)

The result was about half the weight, but a lot more volume. (In both cases, I didn't attempt to add the thermal management systems, which probably gives a slight edge to the fuel cell given the heat difference.)

As an engineer, what I find interesting is that most of the weight and cost in the fuel cell system comes from matching the power output, suggesting that an EREV might offer a lighter, cheaper solution - enough dense, efficient battery storage to cover routine driving, a small fuel cell and tank for longer driving.

Of course, to be really practical you need more efficient fuel cells and much better ways to make hydrogen, and this doesn't address the safety issues (on board steam reformation? Hydride based storage?)

I haven't given up I on fuel cells completely, but the current technology isn't competitive or terribly safe. Maybe the future will change that, maybe not. I'm confident that EVs will be suitable for most people in just a few years.
 
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Tdijarhead

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For the 0.01%ers that have those driving habits EVs will never be practical. For the other 99.99% of us that have realistic driving habits and park our cars for several hours/day a 200 mile range and <8hr daily charging and <30 minute fast charging is realistically more than sufficient. Anything more is just paying more for something that is rarely if ever used.
While cities contain the majority of people they do not hold 99.9%. No not everyone who lives in flyover country drives over 200 miles a day. However folks in flyover drive so much more than people who have everything around the corner. Walmart for me is a 35 mile round trip. The closest mall is a 65 mile round trip. Now think of the fun of going to either and finding an unoccupied charging parking spot, which neither have.

30 minute "fast charge" is ridiclous. Can you picture this pulling into a "filling/charging station on the way to the mall? Hey we need to stop and charge because I forgot to plugin last night and we can watch the latest episode of our favorite show.

Historically when one type of technology replaces another it's because it is so clearly superior and cost effective that people want it hands down. At this point there is no clearly superior method of moving around the distances that are outside our cities.

In my county the average household income, two earners is between $40-50 thousand. My brother works for the state unemployment agency, we've had that conversation. At that income level which isn't far out of line for many rural areas across the country ,Telsa is a pipe dream, and one that most people wouldn't even look at. A $40,000 purchase price mentioned earlier isn't going to cut it for them.

The local Chevy dealer has a charging station on site, the owner installed it when he remodeled the dealership. He is currently driving a Volt. He drives to work and plugs it in and I assume he plugs it in at home also. That car is plugged in the majority of the day. Vastly akin to leaving my diesel parked around the corner at the gas station , when I'm not driving it, with the diesel hose sticking out of the fill hole. Ohhh, wait sorry 700+ miles between fill ups. :)

Even you guys with your electric cars cannot just pick up and drive for any real distance without careful planning. You have another gas/diesel car for that.

I wonder what the government tax credit for the model T was when that " new technology" came to market?

Like I said earlier 500 mile range, less than 10 minutes charging time and you've got a technology that is at least equal to and maybe even superior to gas/diesel.

I'm sure you guys that like electric have heard these arguments before. Fix them and you might have a winner, fail, and well can you say airship?
 

nwdiver

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The local Chevy dealer has a charging station on site, the owner installed it when he remodeled the dealership. He is currently driving a Volt. He drives to work and plugs it in and I assume he plugs it in at home also. That car is plugged in the majority of the day. Vastly akin to leaving my diesel parked around the corner at the gas station , when I'm not driving it, with the diesel hose sticking out of the fill hole. Ohhh, wait sorry 700+ miles between fill ups. :)

I'm sure you guys that like electric have heard these arguments before. Fix them and you might have a winner, fail, and well can you say airship?
Yeah... cause having your car plugged in is SUCH a pain... ever driven a diesel where it gets cold?



Really.... really not that much of a hassle... much less of a hassle than having to go to the gas station.

These aren't arguments... they're largely non-sense... why are you charging on the way to the mall if the mall is 65 miles round trip? Most people don't go >100 miles from home on a regular basis.

The cost is the only valid argument... give it 3 years ;) ... or get a used volt for ~$10k...


At the end of the day... the priceless question is 'What's the solution?' How do we quit this absurd addiction to fossil fuels? I've gone ~3 years exporting more power to the grid than I take boycotting oil in every way I can... bailing our sinking ship while petrol addicts poke holes in the hull; It's sick and pathetic... how is this in any way moral? Don't like BEVs... fine.... what's your solution?
 
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El Dobro

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I wonder what the government tax credit for the model T was when that " new technology" came to market?
Possibly the same $1300 that I got for my '09 "clean diesel"? Oops, sore spot.
 

Yblocker

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Like anything else, EVs have their place. We have a Smart EV for my wife, and it's perfect for her purposes; 95% of her trips are within 15 miles of the house. For longer trips we have the TDI or the Subaru wagon.
 

bhtooefr

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The other thing is that as the EV population increases, more and more businesses will put in chargers to attract business from EV owners. Level 1 chargers will get the job done - and cheaply, probably enough to offer it for the entire parking lot - for most employers (because fast charging simply isn't necessary if a car's sitting for 8 hours), level 2 and 3 will be needed for opportunity charging at businesses.

And, 80.7% of the US living in urban areas means, with EV technology that's coming very soon (under 3 years away), a huge majority of the US's transportation needs could be reasonably met by an EV without requiring level 3 charging at every business.

For those not living in urban areas, ICE is going to eventually become too expensive to run with a lifestyle of driving into a city daily, with the costs of emissions compliance, needed taxation to pay for infrastructure, and internalizing negative externalities of hydrocarbon combustion (both due to emissions and due to securing non-renewable fuel supply). And, unless running 100% renewable, even EVs won't really be sustainable for that kind of frequent trip. So, ultimately, rural areas are going to find themselves awfully isolated, I predict - think weekly or monthly trip into the city to resupply. You'll want to consider moving closer before this happens.
 

tadawson

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Source?

The best I could come up with after some fishing online is that gasoline and diesel and most other hydrocarbons will go to about 3800 F, and hydrogen about 4000 F:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adiabatic_flame_temperature

There are some warnings about how lithium battery fires are very hot - around 1000 F...

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/safety_concerns_with_li_ion

You do understand that the model S battery pack contains about the same energy as 2.5 gallons of gasoline, spilt up into seven thousand little pieces that are separately fused and cooled so one failing won't start a chain reaction, right?
Walter
Check again - 1000 degrees is a thermal runaway, and is the temp that it *ignites*, not the temp it burns at. They also tend to grenade from overpressure, and since the electrolytes can ignite when exposed to air, it has the potential to make a collision a real no fun zone. Fusing is great, but minimally effective, since once one cell goes, any active cooling is gone, and once adjacent cells hit about 250, they go into runaway as well, and it's a big chain reaction. Cells also vent pressure in flame, much like a blowtorch, and I don't want to be anywhere near that, thanks . . . Granted, different packaging, but same chemistry used in models, and I have personally seen those go off, and even a small one melts down everything near it . . .

- Tim
 
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bhtooefr

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Oh, it's worth noting that assuming 36 kWh/100 mi (what the Model X 90D does on the highway), 100 kW charging (what KAIST OLEV is capable of), 70 mph, 1/4 of the road needs to have in-road charging for it to sustain a vehicle of that type at that speed without stopping to charge.
 

Tdijarhead

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Yeah... cause having your car plugged in is SUCH a pain... ever driven a diesel where it gets cold?



Really.... really not that much of a hassle... much less of a hassle than having to go to the gas station.

These aren't arguments... they're largely non-sense... why are you charging on the way to the mall if the mall is 65 miles round trip? Most people don't go >100 miles from home on a regular basis.

The cost is the only valid argument... give it 3 years ;) ... or get a used volt for ~$10k...


At the end of the day... the priceless question is 'What's the solution?' How do we quit this absurd addiction to fossil fuels? I've gone ~3 years exporting more power to the grid than I take boycotting oil in every way I can... bailing our sinking ship while petrol addicts poke holes in the hull; It's sick and pathetic... how is this in any way moral? Don't like BEVs... fine.... what's your solution?

Nice pic, maybe one diesel in the lineup. I wonder how an electric battery driven car would preform in that kind of weather. After all those vehicles are all plugged in because their battery in that kind of cold doesn't have enough juice to start the car ,what alone drive it. For an electric car I would envision an extension cord miles long just to be able to drive somewhere in that kind of cold.
Has anyone even tried to use an electric vehicle in an area where the temps regularly go -20F or below?

I happen to like fossil fuels I'm not boycotting the oil company's. I don't consider it an addiction it's more of a cost effective convince and I'm perfectly happy driving around my internal combustion engines. I like working on my cars and keeping them up an electric car other than the normal brakes and such sounds like a very complicated piece of machinery.
 

Chris

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Nice pic, maybe one diesel in the lineup. I wonder how an electric battery driven car would preform in that kind of weather. After all those vehicles are all plugged in because their battery in that kind of cold doesn't have enough juice to start the car ,what alone drive it. For an electric car I would envision an extension cord miles long just to be able to drive somewhere in that kind of cold.
Has anyone even tried to use an electric vehicle in an area where the temps regularly go -20F or below?
The Volt can be used in that temp, though it can't be left parked that cold indefinitely without a plug-in to keep the battery above -13° F.

Below 15° F the Volt's ICE is automatically run to provide heat and to artificially extend the range.
 

Dave_D

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While I agree that hydrogen is a loser that does not completely rule fuel cells out. There have been methanol fuel cells available for some time, although none at the size that would be needed for an automotive application. While methanol is trickier to handle than gasoline it is routinely used in racing applications. Methanol also addresses the range problems with hydrogen, as it has a much higher energy density.

Dave
 

Tdijarhead

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For those not living in urban areas, ICE is going to eventually become too expensive to run with a lifestyle of driving into a city daily, with the costs of emissions compliance, needed taxation to pay for infrastructure, and internalizing negative externalities of hydrocarbon combustion (both due to emissions and due to securing non-renewable fuel supply). And, unless running 100% renewable, even EVs won't really be sustainable for that kind of frequent trip. So, ultimately, rural areas are going to find themselves awfully isolated, I predict - think weekly or monthly trip into the city to resupply. You'll want to consider moving closer before this happens.

Interesting thinking, I hope that never happens. Id hate not being able to make regular trips into those hotbeds of debauchery and crime. :)

The Volt can be used in that temp, though it can't be left parked that cold indefinitely without a plug-in to keep the battery above -13° F.

Below 15° F the Volt's ICE is automatically run to provide heat and to artificially extend the range.
So a fully electric car would not be able to function reasonably in that environment?
 
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Chris

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So a fully electric car would not be able to function reasonably in that environment?
It would need countermeasures, even if it's a battery with enough excess capacity to warm itself while parked.
With its insulation a Volt can probably make it 24 hours at -20 F before the battery drops too cold.

Arguably, most diesels don't function reasonably when cold-soaked to -20 F.
 
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nwdiver

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So a fully electric car would not be able to function reasonably in that environment?
Does fine... you just need to pre-heat the car while plugged in (which can be done remotely or automatically) to not significantly impact range.

Tesla in Norway


After all those vehicles are all plugged in because their battery in that kind of cold doesn't have enough juice to start the car ,what alone drive it.
Um.... no... those cars have block heaters... i.e. engine block heaters. It's harder to combust fuel in a cold cylinder. Far worse for diesel which requires heat of compression but still bad for gassers.

The point is that there are significant negative consequences to dumping >40B tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year; Some of us are doing everything we can to mitigate that but are still forced to endure the consequences of those too irresponsible to curb their addiction. Explain how that is in any way fair.
 
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Tdijarhead

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The point is that there are significant negative consequences to dumping >40B tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year; Some of us are doing everything we can to mitigate that but are still forced to endure the consequences of those too irresponsible to curb their addiction. Explain how that is in any way fair.

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=196460

Just in case you missed this. Maybe it's time to go back to the tesla forum where everyone agrees with that tripe.
 

nwdiver

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http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=196460
Just in case you missed this. Maybe it's time to go back to the tesla forum where everyone agrees with that tripe.
Physics ain't on that list....

Regardless... if you don't like BEVs what's a better solution and why? Keep in mind the reality of radiative forcing ;)

Here's a nice visual of radiative forcing and how different wavelengths pass more easily through some chemicals...

Visible on the left (how the earth warms); IR on the right (how the earth cools)
CO2 is opaque to IR but transparent to visible, similar to this guys glasses... conservation of energy... if more energy comes in than leaves it don't take a rocket scientist to understand what happens.



How can you have a thread on EV emissions without discussing why those emissions matter?
 
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Oberkanone

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For those not living in urban areas, ICE is going to eventually become too expensive to run with a lifestyle of driving into a city daily, with the costs of emissions compliance, needed taxation to pay for infrastructure, and internalizing negative externalities of hydrocarbon combustion (both due to emissions and due to securing non-renewable fuel supply). And, unless running 100% renewable, even EVs won't really be sustainable for that kind of frequent trip. So, ultimately, rural areas are going to find themselves awfully isolated, I predict - think weekly or monthly trip into the city to resupply. You'll want to consider moving closer before this happens.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2010/01/wood-gas-cars.html

I'll burn wood before I'll consider moving to the big city.
 
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