Reality Check for all those fans of coal fired Automobiles

[Uncle Vernon]

Like most problems the solution rarely is found within short sighted solution. Regardless of how many washed up sports and film stars become politicians,

http://smh.drive.com.au/motor-news/petrol-cars-greener-than-electric-20120705-21ifc.html

[vk6zgo]

The funny thing is,after starting out with that headline,the article seems to "want two bob each way",& goes into ifs & buts,&" Yes this is so in this state but not that one." & so on.
Typical Journos!

[AntiProtonBoy]

Typical Fairfax right wing trash. Instead of focusing on the source of our pollution problems - i.e. the fact that we are shoveling brown coal (the worst polluter of all fossil fuels) into a furnace, they opt to attack electric vehicles instead. I mean what do they propose? Function on petrol for eternity? What the article fails to emphasize is that electric vehicles offer the flexibility to run on anything that produces electricity. The reality check for all of us is that we need to change the way we produce and consume power, because petrol won't last forever and coal is just good way to screw up our climate.



p.s. combustion engines suck, as I've ranted in the shout box before. Bring on electric. Less moving parts, more compact, more quiet, more reliable.

[EEVblog]

Idiots with short term thinking, and assuming we all use coal fired electricity, and will continue to do so into the future.
This sort of crap does nothing to help progress our renewable energy future.
Note how the electric car can go down to ZERO. The petrol car cannot - ever.

Dave.

[ejeffrey]

Also, they are comparing highway driving performance of a car designed for urban use.

It isn't like full electric vehicles don't have problems: cost, range, and battery lifetime.  Also, as a short term solution their advantage over hybrid cars is not huge in the majority of cases where the electricity comes from fossil fuels.  This article however starts off as sensationalist crap, and then spends a page of text walking it back.

[Uncle Vernon]

Typical Fairfax right wing trash.

Yeah all those right wingers Marr, Carelton, Fitzsimmons. Where were you planning on get a more balanced POV, Get-Up? The Greens?

Instead of focusing on the source of our pollution problems - i.e. the fact that we are shoveling brown coal (the worst polluter of all fossil fuels) into a furnace, they opt to attack electric vehicles instead.

And what were you proposing all electric cars powered only by windmills?

I mean what do they propose? Function on petrol for eternity?

Because after all coal is an infinite resource right?

What the article fails to emphasize is that electric vehicles offer the flexibility to run on anything that produces electricity.

What you fail to mention is that a shitload of electricity does very few Km of useful work. You also failed to mention exactly how much of that electricity is produced by something other than the burning of fossil fuels.

The reality check for all of us is that we need to change the way we produce and consume power, because petrol won't last forever and coal is just good way to screw up our climate.

Along with the reality that electric powered vehicles are not within coo-ee of being any sort of replacement in any foreseeable future no matter how many pimple faced youths are convinced by the propaganda.

p.s. combustion engines suck

They also exhaust and they do the job far more efficiently than any bucket-o-batteries shitbox alternative that has been offered to date.

as I've ranted in the shout box before.

There's you mistake. You'd thought people were taking notice of you! The fact your Datsun is broken is not a general representation of available technology.

Bring on electric.

Why who wants a slow, poorly performing expensive buzz box?

Less moving parts

It may have escaped your notice while flipping the pages of "boys own book of future cars" but almost the sole purpose of a car is movement. 

more compact

That'd be damn handy for those wishing to sniff their own scrotum whilst driving. Themore educated amongst us prefer to relax and look out the windscreen.

more quiet

So yo can hear all those doof-doof sub-woofers right?

more reliable.

Muhahaha.!!!! If you had a clue you'd be dangerous!

[Psi]

I wonder how efficient it would be to have two electric cars. The idea being that one was always at home being recharged from the solar panels on your roof.

Since the main issue with solar panels is storage and that they produce the most  power when you (and your car) is at work. If you had two cars you could alternate between them. They would also travel half the mileage, so would last longer before needing replacement.

Obviously the best idea is to use some sort of environmentally safe battery or capacitor bank to recharge during the day and dump that energy back into your car at night so you only need one car.
But we don't really have any eco batteries or big enough super capacitors yet.

You could easy fit an array of 4 by 6 (24) 200W panels on the roof. It would cost around $10k and produce max 4.8kW per hour.  The Nissan leaf battery is 24kWh so only 5 hours is needed of max sun/output to fully charge a leaf.

[Uncle Vernon]

Idiots with short term thinking, and assuming we all use coal fired electricity, and will continue to do so into the future.

You do! Regardless of whether or not you are paying the feel good levy on your bills.

This sort of crap does nothing to help progress our renewable energy future.

Neither does an industry crippling carbon tax, or adoption of flawed technology such as electric cars.

Note how the electric car can go down to ZERO.

The electric car cannot go to zero emissions! The only way to go to zero emissions is to return to the cave and all die of exposure. I have no issue with the fact we should be making conscious efforts towards reducing man-made emissions,but these cars are simply bunkum. The only emissions saved are those that are simply off-shored to pollute somewhere else.

The petrol car cannot - ever.

Efficient petrol engines are doing more useful work relative to electric and hybrid alternatives with lower emissions.

[Uncle Vernon]

Also, they are comparing highway driving performance of a car designed for urban use.

It may be different where you are, but for most the daily urban commute does involve highway and motorwayuse.

This article however starts off as sensationalist crap, and then spends a page of text walking it back.

The whole premise of general use electric vehicles is based on equally sensationalist crap. Sure there are places where electric vehicles are the only sensible option, that place however isn't in personal or light business transport.

[EEVblog]

Obviously the best idea is to use some sort of environmentally safe battery or capacitor bank to recharge during the day and dump that energy back into your car at night so you only need one car.
But we don't really have any eco batteries or big enough super capacitors yet.

Dave.

[EEVblog]

Idiots with short term thinking, and assuming we all use coal fired electricity, and will continue to do so into the future.

You do! Regardless of whether or not you are paying the feel good levy on your bills.

Nope. I was very careful to pick a plan that is 100% new technology and I keep an eye on the audits to ensure that there is no (legal) funny business like there is with the lesser plans.
I pay for a chunk of the renewable energy infrastructure, and on average, it all works out. I help drive demand for it with my wallet. Been doing that for a decade now instead of just not giving a shit like most people do. The ones who think that renewable energy will just magically happen one day and they'll be able to switch over overnight for cheaper than fossil fuel. 

Dave.

[EEVblog]

Neither does an industry crippling carbon tax, or adoption of flawed technology such as electric cars.

Short sighted thinking.
So there is no future at all for electric cars? No point bothering at all?
If everyone thought like that, the technology will never progress.
Once renewable energy and order of magnitude storage technology takes over mainstream, you'll be begging for that electric car.

Dave.

[Uncle Vernon]

Nope. I was very careful to pick a plan that is 100% new technology and I keep an eye on the audits to ensure that there is no (legal) funny business like there is with the lesser plans.

May be you have, I still hold doubts, but without going into the specifics of your plan, there is no escaping that more energy is being sold as green than there is renewable electricity produced.

I pay for a chunk of the renewable energy infrastructure, and on average, it all works out. I help drive demand for it with my wallet.

Again maybe you do but for a lot the whole green plan thing is a penance that makes them feel good while doing nothing practical in their day to day consumption. The old whack in a few Turnbull subsidised CFL and think your saving a baby fur seal.

Been doing that for a decade now instead of just not giving a shit like most people do.

Commendable because truth be told most including all the smug Prius pilots don't give a shit.

The ones who think that renewable energy will just magically happen one day and they'll be able to switch over overnight for cheaper than fossil fuel. 

IE: most of the population, including the noisy green lobby.  I take more of an engineering approach, I'd rather look for the best way of doing things with what we have, and work on ways of doing things better in the future. I've knocked thousands of KW'hrs of consumption off many CBD installations,  often by throwing some consultants you-beaut energy strategy in the bin.

In short if people started looking at and working through the real problems rather than running about half cocked, panicked and clueless about carbon taxes and electric rickshaws our society would be a much more comfortable and environmentally friendly place.

[hans]

We have the green energy offers in the Netherlands as well here, and you basically get the same electricity and same price. So it doesn't do anything at all, just says it's green (marketing)

If you do pay more, I still think you get the same electricity but your money is used to invest in new plants and good initiatives. A wind mill produces more electricity when it's windy, a solar panel when it's sunny. They can be predicted short term, but some people claim you always need a gas power station or something to back it up in case.
And yep, you need to keep it running, because such a station costs days to boot up.

I do believe in Electric cars. If you look at it, some people talk about hydrogen being great, because it can be produced with green energy. Well, so you can power electric cars. Hydrogen fuel cells are just inremote, I believe not even proven reliably in a lab and require all kinds of strange materials.
Batteries are getting better and better. I recently read some wikipedia article about lithium air batteries, which are very light (as the name suggests).

A fossil fueled car is so inefficient. Think about it: let's pump up oil, 'filter' it to diesel (costs a ton of energy), ship it to a gas station (a truck has to ship it), use many pumps to move the stuff around (although this is a small fraction of energy, you still need the things!) and then use a horribly inefficient engine with technology from 1893 to burn it. A maximum efficiency figure for a diesel is 40-50% maximum. For a petrol this figure is about half. A big (gas) power station has the same efficiency and requires less trouble getting energy transported to your car.

The efficiency of the car, electrical grid and charging/discharging may be a few % as well. But the idea is that you shouldn't use a gas power station to power your electric car, but green energy. If that is accomplished, your car is basically running CO2 free (except the effort required to make it - but I don't know how much bogus is made up in those figures).
In the end, you CAN make an electric car CO2 free, and you can never do that to a diesel or petrol car. Those two will always ignite fuel in a 1890's technology engine.

We just need better battery technology (lighter, more dense, less expensive) and a smart power grid. Smart Grids were cars can request a charge period, and the grid figures out what the most efficient way is of charging all the cars on the grid (assuming you have like 50% of the population on electric).

[_Sin]

As much as I love my petrol drinking monster, I'm very much of the opinion that electric is probably the future. However an awful lot needs to change for it to happen.

If we're all running around in electric cars, the demand for energy will go up such that all these solar panels and windmills being installed will be next to useless. We need far greater supply of clean energy, and as I said the other day, IMHO the natural candidate is nuclear fusion.

Combine that with a battery technology which can charge in minutes and support a range of hundreds of miles, as well as being chargeable more or less anywhere, and which does not need to be expensively replaced every few years, and maybe we're in business.

I'll happily invest/support anyone pushing for that kind of future. I have no desire to invest in tilting at windmills in a giant lithium powered (and expensive!) golf buggy - that stuff is a dead end.

Until then, I'll stick with petrol.

[Rerouter]

i suppose the bigger problem is that is only starting to appear now is, say not only renewable energy but consumer level solar take off (yes its a feel good thing whatever, the panels are worse than the energy they will displace, blah!)

is that you see spots in the grid saturate, come a little past 9:30AM to about 4PM, my line voltage is lucky to fall below 263V, roughly the cutout point of most grid inverters, from all the solar installations pumping in power at a period of low demand, now i get the batteries will store it,

but what happens when our net energy production from intermittent sources exceeds our usage, short of all the inlets fighting for a chance to pump the voltage up, what happens? i myself am unaware of what happens with solar panel inverters when they cannot apply a load, do they float open circuit at some higher voltage?

[Uncle Vernon]

Short sighted thinking.
So there is no future at all for electric cars? No point bothering at all?

There is very little future for electric cars becoming a viable replacement for current technology! Most of it is century old technology! None of the problems that limit electric vehicle technology have been meaningfully addressed.

If everyone thought like that, the technology will never progress.

Hang on a minute! I didn't suggest current technology was infinitely viable! Nor did I suggest we did not need development of alternate technologies. What I am suggesting is that in terms of anything other than marketing, electric vehicles have achieved no real progress and at times even with all their limitations and restrictions these vehicles are environmentally no better than IC engines.

Once renewable energy and order of magnitude storage technology takes over mainstream, you'll be begging for that electric car.

How is any of the current batch of rubbish any nearer that end goal? There is no indication of long life instant recharge super batteries appearing from any of this bunkum. Hell there is already pressure for a multitude of high current curbside recharge stations. Do the sums and you soon realise it'sone massive hoax, to appease some clueless politicians.

[Psi]

We're well overdue for a massive leap in battery technology, it has to happen sooner or later.

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--Excellent article, one which has the kind of facts that seem to cause some folks to want to start biting the furniture. The time for the electric car is not quite here yet, but it may well be soon. When the technology is mature it will grab an appropriate share of the market, without the Government(s) forcing marginally effective units onto the road with subsidies.

--Countries with huge taxes on gasoline are already doing the electric vehicle a huge favor by distorting the real difference in cost between petrol and electricity. Unfortunately most Government(s) have plans to stick their fangs into the jugular of the electric grid, for questionable renewable schemes forcing some rate payers into the Don Quixote mode. About the time EVs are looking likely, the Government(s) will either double the cost of electricity or start taxing by the kilometer, and probably both.

--Just how does using taxpayer money to subsidize vehicles that turn in the kind of numbers, reported in this article, actually do anything but waste money. No one is against electric vehicles. Build enough to test the concept, record the numbers, then on the next attempt. There is no need to build thousands and thousands of dead losers at public expense. Save the money, and use some of it for research. The person who wrote the article, probably wrote it because he does give a sh*t. Just because you want something does not change the math, go figure.

--Uncle has you all dead to rights. Do not tell us how he does not care, or how short sighted he is, confront his facts head on, please. Science is numbers not sanctimony.

“Wish in one hand, and whiz in the other, and see which one fills up first."
Gator Dundee 1948 -

Best Regards
Clear Ether

[vk6zgo]

Short sighted thinking.
So there is no future at all for electric cars? No point bothering at all?

There is very little future for electric cars becoming a viable replacement for current technology! Most of it is century old technology! None of the problems that limit electric vehicle technology have been meaningfully addressed.

When you come right down to it,conventional IC vehicles are mainly century old technology,too!
The dear old reciprocating engine has staved off all the challenges by other IC engines.
The refinement of these engines has been evolutionary,rather than revolutionary.

If everyone thought like that, the technology will never progress.

Hang on a minute! I didn't suggest current technology was infinitely viable! Nor did I suggest we did not need development of alternate technologies. What I am suggesting is that in terms of anything other than marketing, electric vehicles have achieved no real progress and at times even with all their limitations and restrictions these vehicles are environmentally no better than IC engines.

IC engines had the good fortune to not have to worry about the environment in their formative years,so the innate better efficiency of burning the fuel where it does its work made them the winner,over steam & electric vehicles,even allowing for the cost of delivery of fuel to the user.
They have been so good for so long,that other technologies didn't need to be researched,so they are pretty much "behind the "8" ball in comparison!

Once renewable energy and order of magnitude storage technology takes over mainstream, you'll be begging for that electric car.

How is any of the current batch of rubbish any nearer that end goal? There is no indication of long life instant recharge super batteries appearing from any of this bunkum. Hell there is already pressure for a multitude of high current curbside recharge stations. Do the sums and you soon realise it's one massive hoax, to appease some clueless politicians.

I agree,we shouldn't  hold our breaths waiting for new breakthrough storage technologies.
I am old enough to remember when atomically powered cars were quite seriously proposed.
New,lightweight radiation shielding materials were "just around the corner"----Hah!
Or the gas turbine cars,------ acceleration lag killed them!

[EEVblog]

None of the problems that limit electric vehicle technology have been meaningfully addressed.

So what?
Just give up?, take your bat and ball and go home and never put another research dollar or effort into it again?
Anyone who thinks those limitations won't be addressed in the future has not studied the history of technological development in society. They will be wrong.

Hang on a minute! I didn't suggest current technology was infinitely viable! Nor did I suggest we did not need development of alternate technologies. What I am suggesting is that in terms of anything other than marketing, electric vehicles have achieved no real progress and at times even with all their limitations and restrictions these vehicles are environmentally no better than IC engines.

Then we are in agreement.
The fun thing about the future is that it always progresses.
Those betting against electric cars long term are on a sure losing bet IMO.

How is any of the current batch of rubbish any nearer that end goal? There is no indication of long life instant recharge super batteries appearing from any of this bunkum. Hell there is already pressure for a multitude of high current curbside recharge stations. Do the sums and you soon realise it'sone massive hoax, to appease some clueless politicians.

Once again, so what?
It's not about doing the sums now. That is just your personal choice and needs as a consumer now.

The point is that it is massively important that electric cars and associated technology be encouraged and invested in, heavily. Which is why I hate anyone who poo-poo's the idea because it doesn't seem viable now.
Why? because the car, as one of the worlds most indispensable tools for modern society, it is the financial and technological driver we need to ensure that society progresses and gets away from absolute dependence upon fossil fuels, that WILL run out, or more likely become not financially viable into the (not too distant) future.

Dave.

[Simon]

While i'm all for electric cars but I think we need to develop renewables even faster. Yes charging an electric car off a coal fired station is not doing much to help the equation and will end up wasting more energy. The car looks greener because it does not have an exhaust but the damage was done when charging the batteries.

Most people don't grasp the power requirements of moving 1 ton of steel so no you won't be charging it off a couple of panels on your roof in a few minutes. As a friend wisely suggested we will needed industry standardised batteries that can be swapped in and out of the car in about the same time you refuel a petrol vehicle so that the battery can be charged in it's own time. This means government involvement or at least a decent infrastructure that works.

And i ask whatever happened to "fuel cells" ? they use oxygen and hydrogen to make water both obtainable from electrolysis that can be solar powered. I'm sure a "gas infrastructure" carrying the two fuels would be more efficient than all those cables and transformers we currently use for electricity.

[EEVblog]

Once renewable energy and order of magnitude storage technology takes over mainstream, you'll be begging for that electric car.

How is any of the current batch of rubbish any nearer that end goal?

BTW, for my own personal needs, something that operates like the new Holden/Chevy Volt would be almost ideal. And this is still relatively primitive technology at the present time. Imagine how much more ideal they will be for a broader range of people when Sagan starts driving, or his kid starts driving!
I could use it fully electric for probably 99% of my needs, with hardly any disruption to my lifestyle in terms of charging. Saving massive amounts of fuel for the benefit of those who want to piss it away when they don't need too.
In fact, dare I say it, it would save me time and frustration too, because there is very little to go wrong with the thing, rather than my hideously complex gas guzzler that needs endless constant repair and maintenance.

BTW2, I hate the Prius, it should never have gone into production unless it had plug-in capability. It was a ridiculous idea.

Dave.

[Uncle Vernon]

So what?
Just give up?, take your bat and ball and go home and never put another research dollar or effort into it again?

When did I suggest that! What I have a problem with is the bunkum before research that is being shovelled towards us. Instead of farting around and heavily subsidising this kind of crud, I'd like to see some real research and industry assistance. Hell we have a carbon tax that has just signaled the end of Australian production of photovoltaic panels. But hey I'd better not shout the linkage too loudly because the ACCC has been instructed that only the Greens?Labor coalition is authorised to misrepresent on any kind of scale.

Anyone who thinks those limitations won't be addressed in the future has not studied the history of technological development in society. They will be wrong.

What bit of history shows technology driven by emotion rather than need and invention?

The fun thing about the future is that it always progresses.

The not so fun thing about junk science is that it stifles that same progress.

Those betting against electric cars long term are on a sure losing bet IMO.

Prepared to put a timeframe and your house on that bet?

Once again, so what?
It's not about doing the sums now. That is just your personal choice and needs as a consumer now.

It is absolutely about doing the sums, and about practicality and real world results.

The point is that it is massively important that electric cars and associated technology be encouraged and invested in, heavily. Which is why I hate anyone who poo-poo's the idea because it doesn't seem viable now.

It wont be viable without quantum leaps in energy storage and transfer. Those leaps show zero signs of happening in any foreseeable future. At least the fuel cell and hydrogen ideas have some merit in the energy vs fuel mass equation.

Why? because the car, as one of the worlds most indispensable tools for modern society, it is the financial and technological driver we need to ensure that society progresses and gets away from absolute dependence upon fossil fuels, that WILL run out, or more likely become not financially viable into the (not too distant) future.

How is widespread adoption of electric vehicle even remotely viable. And how are they escaping the dependence on fossil fuels? They're not.  You could not build enough windmills or solar panels to power one tenth of the current fleet!
I have no doubt mankind ultimately has wean itself of fossil fuels, but will bet you London to a Brick, viable replacement technology will have SFA to do with storage batteries. The longer minds are closed and the paradigm is restricted by an old tech sphere of thinking the further we are from real solutions.

[SgtRock]

Greetings EEVBees:

--I agree that the Volt will make a good vehicle for some people. If you want to buy one, more power to you. I do not know what the details of Holden's deal with GM are, so I cannot comment. But here in the US, if you study what went on at GM, the bilking of the previous bondholders so the Government could award the company to the Unions, and the failure of the GM to make good on Government loans, so far, makes the whole deal a very questionable proposition. Like the failing banks, failing companies should be allowed to fail. Right now in the US the Volt is subsidized, and being supported by Government purchases and by companies like GE, for reasons that are not dollars and cents business propositions.

--Merely because you can buy a Volt, and it works for you does not automatically mean that the decision to produce it, was motivated by common sense economics.

--I notice people keep saying "Do research, but quite producing, unprofitable subsidized vehicles" And, the response is "Well, sniff, you just do not want to do anything" That is a refusal to confront the question. It is just finger wagging instead of mathematics.

--Please, buy all the EVs, you want, but please do not make the poor harried tax payer pay for them.

"If we leave it any longer, and no politician seems to be taking Peak Oil seriously, then we are going to see total economic collapse." 2008
"It’s probably too late to prepare for peak oil, but we can at least try to salvage food production." 2009
"Peak oil hasn't happened, and it's unlikely to happen for a very long time." 2012
George Joshua Richard Monbiot - 1963

Best Regards
Clear Ether