EV-based road transportation is not viable

[SiliconWizard]

While some EEVBloggers fantasize about penalizing other people for not riding bikes (or electric bikes), GM invests almost a billion dollars into production of V8 ICE engines.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/general-motors-investing-854-million-v8-engines

Nice!

[Monkeh]

Because psychopaths (sorry, CEOs) act in the interests of others on a regular basis.

Successful CEOs listen to consumers. Mad climate scientists and those they brainwashed, apparently represent a tiny fraction of consumer population.

Ah, yes, consumers are all highly educated and well informed.

Ever consider perhaps you've been brainwashed into believing cars are necessary, pollution is a non-issue, and bigger cars are always better? Because, well.. you have. To make them money. Successful CEOs manipulate consumers.

[vad]

Ah, yes, consumers are all highly educated and well informed.

Ever consider perhaps you've been brainwashed into believing cars are necessary, pollution is a non-issue, and bigger cars are always better? Because, well.. you have. To make them money. Successful CEOs manipulate consumers.

I am pretty sure you know better what 6+ million GM customers really need. And those who disagree should be “penalized” one way or another.

[bdunham7]

Ah, yes, consumers are all highly educated and well informed.

How is that relevant?

[rstofer]

I bought my Chevy Bolt for one reason only:  I am a retired EE and it seemed pretty cool.  No woke thinking, no 'good for the Earth', none of that nonsense.  It just seem pretty cool.

This was after I spent 3 years with a Chevy Spark EV.  That thing was outrageous - a true muscle car!  400 ft-lbs of torque was fun!

I've been at this BEV stuff for 8 years and I still think it is pretty cool.

High torque, high acceleration, low center of gravity, what's not to like!  And no biennial smog inspections!

[MadScientist]

The GM engine plant is aimed at suv and large vehicles . It’s another indication the US is a complete outlier on transport and climate change.

We will need new ice engines  for certain sectors for certainly 20 years

But none of that detracts from thd inevitably of BEVs assuming the vast majority of personal private car usage in the next few years.

The pathway has been decided by regulators , urban planners, environmentalists etc. A significant sector of the population is in support . In future pulling up in a big ice will have similar connotations as smoking in the presence of others

[tautech]

It’s another indication the US is a complete outlier on transport and climate change.

And the worlds largest oil producer. Significant wealth will resist all change.

[tom66]

While some EEVBloggers fantasize about penalizing other people for not riding bikes (or electric bikes), GM invests almost a billion dollars into production of V8 ICE engines.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/general-motors-investing-854-million-v8-engines

Yet they invested $6.6bn into EVs and are promising to invest $35bn up until 2025 into EVs and autonomous vehicles.  Which do you think they see as winning the "format war" of vehicles?
https://www.edie.net/general-motors-confirms-6-6bn-investment-in-ev-manufacturing/#:~:text=General%20Motors%20(GM)%20has%20announced,and%20automated%20cars%20by%202025.

A company like GM would be silly to give up on V8's now, given they are an established and well understood design, and have customers demanding them.  But they can surely see there is a limited future for them.

[Watth]

The altitude and weight (up to a point) don't matter that much with regenerative braking. Also, home recharging don't take much power as generally the car is plugged all night.

[CatalinaWOW]

While some EEVBloggers fantasize about penalizing other people for not riding bikes (or electric bikes), GM invests almost a billion dollars into production of V8 ICE engines.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/general-motors-investing-854-million-v8-engines

Yet they invested $6.6bn into EVs and are promising to invest $35bn up until 2025 into EVs and autonomous vehicles.  Which do you think they see as winning the "format war" of vehicles?
https://www.edie.net/general-motors-confirms-6-6bn-investment-in-ev-manufacturing/#:~:text=General%20Motors%20(GM)%20has%20announced,and%20automated%20cars%20by%202025.

A company like GM would be silly to give up on V8's now, given they are an established and well understood design, and have customers demanding them.  But they can surely see there is a limited future for them.

Fanatics on both sides of this issue don't put much thought into what the real world involves.  The market for V8 engines is unlikely to grow in the future.  But the market is likely to remain for a long time.

Compare EVs vs ICU with the transistors vs tubes competition.

In the first ten years of the transistor there was real question about whether they would ever be the dominant electrical control device.
Then towards the end of that first decade the long term winner became obvious.   But there was a real and viable market for tubes in a variety of markets for another decade or two.  And the long term winner wasn't the BJT which dominated at the time, but the FET, which was more of a curiosity at the time of the semiconductor takeover.   
Tubes held out in specialty applications (mostly high voltage or high power) for forty years after the first commercial transistors.
And even today, seventy years after that commercial introduction tubes are being built and used, both for extreme edge cases (photomultipliers and extreme high temperature operation) and in niche markets driven by things other than technology (audiophiles and nixie users).

[MadScientist]

True but valves were never outlawed ice will and is being so

[tom66]

I suspect we'll still have ICE for a long time in specialty applications.  For simplicity little beats a small petrol genset for emergency / worksite power for instance.  And diesel trucks will probably outpace electric trucks on some routes.  However, these will need to run on carbon neutral fuels, either synthetic or biofuel, and/or have a carbon offsetting tax applied to them that pays for the carbon produced to be removed.  This will make such fuels uneconomical for all but the most difficult use cases to use batteries and fuel cells in.

[Monkeh]

There's a lot of farm equipment with long running hours and very short windows of operation which just isn't going electric any time soon.

[CatalinaWOW]

True but valves were never outlawed ice will and is being so

Actually California is on its second cutoff date for non-zero emissions vehicles.  When the drop dead date arrived, and the market solution wasn't there yet they kind of quietly said "Oh, never mind". 

It.seems more likely that they will stick to their guns this time, but only time will tell

[tom66]

There's a lot of farm equipment with long running hours and very short windows of operation which just isn't going electric any time soon.

I imagine we'll see a "green diesel" available to farmers that is, at first, based on offset fossil fuel diesel supplied at an economic loss (because we subsidise farming in so many other ways what's another?)  And then eventually that is a biofuel or synfuel. Food supply is critical so we can't let the proposed ICE extinction harm it.

Though some farm equipment does seem ideal for electrification - short distances, long days, but with a place to charge every night.  An electric tractor with a 100kWh battery doesn't seem infeasible to me.  More difficult if the engine has to do a lot more work, like a combine or mill.

[tom66]

But like most overnight charging, 7-22kW AC is feasible for these vehicles, and farms often have dedicated 3 phase connections to the grid due to being classified as industrial areas.  AC chargers are fairly cheap.  You could get a 22kW wall charger installed for around £1k, which will make the tractor look cheap.

I am thinking more from the UK context though, some areas potentially will be too rural. 

[tszaboo]

There's a lot of farm equipment with long running hours and very short windows of operation which just isn't going electric any time soon.

Yeah, a combine harvester is like a million EUR and it only operates for a few weeks each year, but then often times 12-16 hours a day. And you cannot wait for it to charge up, if the weather allows it, you need to work, not wait for the equipment to charge. I don't think these are the problematic machines, even if agriculture is emitting more than road transportation.
The main issues for agriculture is N2O (fertilizer related) and methane (manure) emissions. I think there was a study that methane emissions can be reduced by a lot by adding a little bit of algae to the food of the animals. And fertilizer and land related CO2 can be replaced by industrial processes (or biological processes in enclosed controlled environments). Is it a lot of work? Yes, but it's probably much less than completely replacing a billion and a half cars.
I don't think zero emissions should be the goal, the goal is to reduce emissions quickly, as much as possible without completely bankrupting everyone in the process. Now instead everyone is fixated on road transport, which is very-very expensive for the individuals to get to zero, and it's only responsible for 10-12% of global emissions.

[Watth]

I don't see how these newfangled petrol engines could be available to anyone.
How are you going to supply millions of folks with this highly flammable liquid? What logistic chain could possibly achieve that?
Do you imagine folks walking around with buckets of petrol from home to town? Stores filled with cans of petrol distillate?
Don't you know gasoline needs a complicated refinement process? Can you imagine enough of these plants growing out of nowhere?
How could it be scaled to a daily use for the mass?

Realistically, automobiles will remain an enthusiast's past time, but not a reliable transport medium for the mass. Those who say otherwise are either delusional and incompetent, or have something to win by spreading this propaganda.

[tom66]

I don't think zero emissions should be the goal, the goal is to reduce emissions quickly, as much as possible without completely bankrupting everyone in the process. Now instead everyone is fixated on road transport, which is very-very expensive for the individuals to get to zero, and it's only responsible for 10-12% of global emissions.

I don't think we'll ever get to true zero emissions, but the goal is net zero, which is to say that we can remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than we create.

Carbon capture and storage facilities are likely to be expensive to build and run and it's unlikely to be practical to run fossil fuels at our current rate in parallel with carbon capture.  So we need to reduce emissions from fossil fuels and then capture what we do emit.

The secondary benefit of reducing combustion fuel usage is improving air quality which is why EVs (or I guess hydrogen FCEV) must be the requirement for city centre air quality.

[mikeselectricstuff]

There's a lot of farm equipment with long running hours and very short windows of operation which just isn't going electric any time soon.

Yeah, a combine harvester is like a million EUR and it only operates for a few weeks each year, but then often times 12-16 hours a day. And you cannot wait for it to charge up, if the weather allows it, you need to work, not wait for the equipment to charge.

That could actually be a potential use-case for hydrogen - generate & store H2 locally from solar over a long period, then use it when needed.
 

[tom66]

That could actually be a potential use-case for hydrogen - generate & store H2 locally from solar over a long period, then use it when needed.

Or CNG powered tractor based on on site anaerobic digestion. Maybe even CNG fuel cell.

[tszaboo]

I don't think zero emissions should be the goal, the goal is to reduce emissions quickly, as much as possible without completely bankrupting everyone in the process. Now instead everyone is fixated on road transport, which is very-very expensive for the individuals to get to zero, and it's only responsible for 10-12% of global emissions.

I don't think we'll ever get to true zero emissions, but the goal is net zero, which is to say that we can remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than we create.

Carbon capture and storage facilities are likely to be expensive to build and run and it's unlikely to be practical to run fossil fuels at our current rate in parallel with carbon capture.  So we need to reduce emissions from fossil fuels and then capture what we do emit.

The secondary benefit of reducing combustion fuel usage is improving air quality which is why EVs (or I guess hydrogen FCEV) must be the requirement for city centre air quality.

Why would we ever want to do carbon capture? Unless we can do that very cheap on an industrial scale, there are always industries that can use the extra electricity to make something useful. Look at this picture below (from NASA), just to understand how tiny we are compared to the natural processes. I would actually bet money, that we can "carbon capture" more CO2 from the oceans cheaper than from the air. All we need to do is plant more vegetation, forests, and change our usage to reduce unnecessary emissions. You know the ones that are easy to avoid. And guess what, we are already doing that. Deforestation peaked in 1980 and now there are 2 million square KM of new forests. Net. We should stop deforestation in Brazil since that seems to do the most damage. By exporting food there, it would be worth to do maybe even below cost.
Adding ~5% extra vegetation worldwide would offset the entire CO2 emissions caused by fossil fuels.

[Watth]

The secondary benefit of reducing combustion fuel usage is improving air quality which is why EVs (or I guess hydrogen FCEV) must be the requirement for city centre air quality.

Exactly. This is why diesel was lately (and finally) exposed for it's particulate pollution especially in dense (urban) areas.

[tggzzz]

Carbon capture and storage facilities are likely to be expensive to build and run...

The operating expense is largely energy costs. ISTR reading that it would take 25% of the output power for CCS, but that might be a faulty neuron. That is a non-negligible inefficiency.

As to whether CCS can work on a global scale for many decades, I haven't seen any analysis.

[nctnico]

The secondary benefit of reducing combustion fuel usage is improving air quality which is why EVs (or I guess hydrogen FCEV) must be the requirement for city centre air quality.

That won't help if the power plant next to the city keeps on emitting toxic fumes. In a previous post I already showed (through a simple calculation) that only a few percent of coal based electricity generation makes a BEV several time more dirty compared to a modern hybrid. Also, dense city centers are not big so the actual number of people living there is low while there are many more people living in the suburds. All in all the idea to make a few streets cleaner while exposing the entire city to several times higher concentrations of toxic gas is not a good idea. It makes more sense to simply block the streets that have little ventilation for traffic (or ban cars with poor or no emission control for those streets) in order to improve air quality.

And CO2 capture is one of the worst ideas ever. You basically create an underground toxic gas bubble. There have been several incidents with natural CO2 sources that suddenly release their content resulting in a great number of deaths.