Author Topic: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?  (Read 458198 times)

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Offline vk6zgo

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #100 on: January 05, 2018, 03:00:23 am »
Electricity is quite a lot cheaper than gasoline or diesel in every place I've ever looked. Otherwise people would be generating their own electricity using gasoline or diesel generators but they don't outside of emergencies because it ends up being absurdly expensive per kWh.

There are a lot of other things beside the fuel costs that mitigate against this, such as the first cost of a diesel or other IC generator,plus ancillary bits.
A generator that can handle most household uses 24/7 will be a fairly specialised device, hence will be expensive.
Fuel tanks need to meet Govt specifications, so will also be costly.
Add to that pollution laws, & the fact that Local Government Authorities would be very unlikely to permit such an installation, in the first place.
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This thread contains a ridiculous number of excuses and mental gymnastics over why something can't possibly work, when quite obviously it does work for a great many people and can work for many more.

It works the other way, too .
The enthusiasts for electric cars, wave away real concerns, with "you will just have to adapt", or "you can have another long distance car", or "you can hire a car", or "sleep over at your destination" & so on.
People have real financial reasons for not doing these things.
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There seems to be a fallacy that we must put all our eggs in one basket so to speak, and settle on one single technology to meet all our needs. Electric cars are simply another available tool for the task of getting around, they're a tool that will work for some people and not others but we are nowhere even close to saturating the market of those for whom it is practically ideal. Once that happens then we can talk about what makes the most sense for those where it is not so clear.
Any car is not going to be ideal, but some compromises are better than others
That is why, without a radical change in how our societies are ordered, I believe that electric vehicles still have a while to go before they will be the majority type of personal transport.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #101 on: January 05, 2018, 08:11:31 am »
There are a lot of other things beside the fuel costs that mitigate against this, such as the first cost of a diesel or other IC generator,plus ancillary bits.
A generator that can handle most household uses 24/7 will be a fairly specialised device, hence will be expensive.
Fuel tanks need to meet Govt specifications, so will also be costly.
Add to that pollution laws, & the fact that Local Government Authorities would be very unlikely to permit such an installation, in the first place.

I don't buy that for a second. If it were economical to generate power that way then everyone would have one, they would be mass produced in huge quantities and costs would drop. As it is you can get generators really cheap these days, most of my neighbors have them and I hate the cheap ones, power goes out and within 10 minutes I can't hear myself think over the din. The nice quiet inverter generators are much better but even so it's easy to work out the cost per kWh and it's not even close to competitive with what I get from the utility. Just for fun let's run some simple numbers here based on the Honda EU2000i I occasionally borrow from a friend. This is a high end inverter generator about as efficient as they come.

Fuel capacity is 0.95 US gallons of gas (petrol) and that is rated to run 3.4 hours at rated load of 2kW so 6.8 kWh per tank or 7.2 kWh per gallon.

Gasoline prices fluctuate frequently but currently in my area regular is about $2.91/gallon, so that means electricity generated by burning gasoline is about $0.40/kWh, ignoring the additional cost of collecting and transporting the fuel to my home. Electricity from the utility costs me a bit less than $0.09 per kWh so less than 1/4th the cost of generating it myself.

I think it's reasonable to assume that a really efficient diesel generator could perhaps double the fuel economy, resulting in a modest savings even factoring in the higher cost per gallon of diesel but still substantially more expensive than utility power.


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It works the other way, too .
The enthusiasts for electric cars, wave away real concerns, with "you will just have to adapt", or "you can have another long distance car", or "you can hire a car", or "sleep over at your destination" & so on.
People have real financial reasons for not doing these things.

Nobody is saying that everyone is going to have to get an electric car or that it makes financial sense for everyone, or is convenient for everyone and that's fine. If everyone had them then we would have another set of problems but that doesn't mean there are not benefits to having a lot more of them than we do currently. It also doesn't mean that a lot of people could not easily adapt and make very minor lifestyle adjustments. I've lived long enough to see multiple waves of new technologies where each time older people bitched and moaned about how terrible they were and how they wouldn't work and this or that just wasn't possible, only to see people quickly adapt. While it's hard to believe, there are actually still numerous people who cling to incandescent light bulbs and find all manner of excuses why modern replacements are not suitable despite the fact that I've somehow got by without using incandescent lamps for general illumination for more than 20 years. People swear CFL and more recently LED bulbs are not any cheaper to run despite the fact that basic arithmetic plainly shows otherwise. It's simply a resistance to change and an emotional belief that anything new or "green" is some kind of liberal commie conspiracy or something.

Now as much as I love my older cars, it's just a simple fact that humans are going to have to adjust and adapt at some point because the current model of extracting oil from the earth and burning it to drive around in hundreds of millions of individual cars is not sustainable. Sooner or later oil will be scarce enough that we will have to find other options, whether that is alternative energy sources or much greater reliance on mass transit. We're on track to have 10 Billion people soon and more and more of those people are wanting modern conveniences.
 

Offline vk6zgo

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #102 on: January 05, 2018, 11:04:36 am »
There are a lot of other things beside the fuel costs that mitigate against this, such as the first cost of a diesel or other IC generator,plus ancillary bits.
A generator that can handle most household uses 24/7 will be a fairly specialised device, hence will be expensive.
Fuel tanks need to meet Govt specifications, so will also be costly.
Add to that pollution laws, & the fact that Local Government Authorities would be very unlikely to permit such an installation, in the first place.

I don't buy that for a second. If it were economical to generate power that way then everyone would have one, they would be mass produced in huge quantities and costs would drop. As it is you can get generators really cheap these days, most of my neighbors have them and I hate the cheap ones, power goes out and within 10 minutes I can't hear myself think over the din. The nice quiet inverter generators are much better but even so it's easy to work out the cost per kWh and it's not even close to competitive with what I get from the utility. Just for fun let's run some simple numbers here based on the Honda EU2000i I occasionally borrow from a friend. This is a high end inverter generator about as efficient as they come.

Fuel capacity is 0.95 US gallons of gas (petrol) and that is rated to run 3.4 hours at rated load of 2kW so 6.8 kWh per tank or 7.2 kWh per gallon.

Gasoline prices fluctuate frequently but currently in my area regular is about $2.91/gallon, so that means electricity generated by burning gasoline is about $0.40/kWh, ignoring the additional cost of collecting and transporting the fuel to my home. Electricity from the utility costs me a bit less than $0.09 per kWh so less than 1/4th the cost of generating it myself.

I think it's reasonable to assume that a really efficient diesel generator could perhaps double the fuel economy, resulting in a modest savings even factoring in the higher cost per gallon of diesel but still substantially more expensive than utility power.
My point was that it wasn't a reasonable comparison.
Your little Honda generator, or any other economically priced generator would not work 24/7 to replace the convenience of Mains power.
Something which really did the job is going to inevitably be larger & more of an industrial unit.
Nobody is going to make a special one just for those few nutters who want to supply their own power.
 Ironically, someone living in a remote area would probably find such a setup useful to charge their electric car!

I.C. cars already exist in their thousands, & as long as people can find fuel, will continue in use.
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It works the other way, too .
The enthusiasts for electric cars, wave away real concerns, with "you will just have to adapt", or "you can have another long distance car", or "you can hire a car", or "sleep over at your destination" & so on.
People have real financial reasons for not doing these things.

Nobody is saying that everyone is going to have to get an electric car or that it makes financial sense for everyone, or is convenient for everyone and that's fine. If everyone had them then we would have another set of problems but that doesn't mean there are not benefits to having a lot more of them than we do currently. It also doesn't mean that a lot of people could not easily adapt and make very minor lifestyle adjustments. I've lived long enough to see multiple waves of new technologies where each time older people bitched and moaned about how terrible they were and how they wouldn't work and this or that just wasn't possible, only to see people quickly adapt. While it's hard to believe, there are actually still numerous people who cling to incandescent light bulbs and find all manner of excuses why modern replacements are not suitable despite the fact that I've somehow got by without using incandescent lamps for general illumination for more than 20 years. People swear CFL and more recently LED bulbs are not any cheaper to run despite the fact that basic arithmetic plainly shows otherwise. It's simply a resistance to change and an emotional belief that anything new or "green" is some kind of liberal commie conspiracy or something.

There were a lot of technologies that didn't make it into the mainstream, & among those that did make it, some had a pretty rocky road.
CFLs were pretty useless, they do not produce the same amount of light in the spectrum which is useful to human eyes as incandescents do, their life span was nearly as poor, & the better quality ones, which were still cruddy, were quite expensive.
Tube fluorescents are much better in every way, but of course, require new wiring.

The current crop of LED bulbs are a very good replacement for incandescents------the early ones were lousy,though!
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Now as much as I love my older cars, it's just a simple fact that humans are going to have to adjust and adapt at some point because the current model of extracting oil from the earth and burning it to drive around in hundreds of millions of individual cars is not sustainable. Sooner or later oil will be scarce enough that we will have to find other options, whether that is alternative energy sources or much greater reliance on mass transit. We're on track to have 10 Billion people soon and more and more of those people are wanting modern conveniences.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #103 on: January 05, 2018, 10:07:26 pm »
My point was that it wasn't a reasonable comparison.
Your little Honda generator, or any other economically priced generator would not work 24/7 to replace the convenience of Mains power.
Something which really did the job is going to inevitably be larger & more of an industrial unit.
Nobody is going to make a special one just for those few nutters who want to supply their own power.
 Ironically, someone living in a remote area would probably find such a setup useful to charge their electric car!

I.C. cars already exist in their thousands, & as long as people can find fuel, will continue in use.

The comparison was perfectly reasonable except that you skirted around the entire point, which is that looking at this specific generator which is particularly efficient at converting gasoline into electricity, the resulting electricity costs more than *four times* what it does from the for-profit utility. Convenience, longevity, maintenance, all of that is completely irrelevant if the cost is higher even before you take any of that into consideration.

You can even ignore all of that if you like and look at medium and large scale generation, there is a very good reason that power plants in developed nations don't burn gasoline, diesel or other high grade fuels to generate electricity and that is it isn't economical. If one really wanted to nitpick it could be pointed out that small generators could easily be tied into the grid to produce power when it was convenient to do so as is done by many small scale solar/wind installations but that would be ridiculous since there is no economic incentive to use expensive self generated power to offset cheap grid supplied power.

Of course people will keep driving IC cars for a long time, nobody here is saying they won't. An alternate technology becoming mainstream doesn't mean the currently dominant tech is going to go away.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2018, 06:37:46 pm by james_s »
 

Offline cdev

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #104 on: January 14, 2018, 05:10:24 am »
How much does the price of electricity impact the cost of an electric car?

The reason I ask is because the price of electricity may be going up a lot here in the US soon as the LNG export facilities come online.
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Online tszaboo

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #105 on: January 15, 2018, 10:20:22 am »
How much does the price of electricity impact the cost of an electric car?

The reason I ask is because the price of electricity may be going up a lot here in the US soon as the LNG export facilities come online.
Or the price of gas could go crazy high. Like 2 times as much as now. Or even higher than that. Or even reach the same level as all the Europeans are paying for gas. Imagine that. Imagine paying 6.5 USD/gallon, like we pay here.
 
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Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #106 on: January 15, 2018, 05:18:52 pm »
How much does the price of electricity impact the cost of an electric car?

The reason I ask is because the price of electricity may be going up a lot here in the US soon as the LNG export facilities come online.
Or the price of gas could go crazy high. Like 2 times as much as now. Or even higher than that. Or even reach the same level as all the Europeans are paying for gas. Imagine that. Imagine paying 6.5 USD/gallon, like we pay here.
And still the economy is booming. Gas and energy prices in general don't really matter that much because increasing energy prices just drive inflation.
« Last Edit: January 15, 2018, 05:20:25 pm by nctnico »
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Offline cdev

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #107 on: January 15, 2018, 06:28:58 pm »
The "invisible hand" of the free market is supposed to decide,putting inefficient business and workers out of business if they can't keep up with the laws of supply and demand. Or so the advicates for that interpretation claim.

But I think the likelihood of electricity prices going sky high is much more likely than that happening to gas.  There has been SO much disinformation being spewed on this area its kind of obvious some kind of major scam is going on.

See this study.

http://www.crai.com/sites/default/files/publications/CRA_LNG_Study.pdf


How much does the price of electricity impact the cost of an electric car?

The reason I ask is because the price of electricity may be going up a lot here in the US soon as the LNG export facilities come online.
Or the price of gas could go crazy high. Like 2 times as much as now. Or even higher than that. Or even reach the same level as all the Europeans are paying for gas. Imagine that. Imagine paying 6.5 USD/gallon, like we pay here.
And still the economy is booming. Gas and energy prices in general don't really matter that much because increasing energy prices just drive inflation.
Shale gas is what I think is being over-hyped the worst. There is lots of evidence that the real reserves they have are much much smaller and more costly to extract than are being represented.  New York Times did a series on this a few years ago but they still keep repeating things that they know are not true.

http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/96242-shale-gas-bubble-combined.html

We could likely reduce our energy consumption in most areas, substantially, but I think its a mistake to attempt to export it now when there are so many questions..

Another one is methane release.. Shale gas may be so leaky as far as methane release that its carbon footprint is as bad as coal. A fair amount of evidence points in that direction.

A good summary is here: "A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas" (Howarth 2014)

http://www.sierraclub.org/sites/www.sierraclub.org/files/sce/connecticut-chapter/Howarth%202014.pdf

Also, every few decades there is a major volcanic eruption which darkens the suns rays to varying degrees, globally. When there is ash in the atmosphere, winds die down and rain also declines. Also the climate gets cold for some time, because the suns rays are reflected out into space. Sometimes that causes famine.

Benjamin Franklin, one of the founders of the US wrote quite a bit about this, proposing that society should prepare for such events as best as it could, in advance. because they happen and their incidence is impossible to predict.

A good argument could and should be made that natural gas should be kept in reserve for such events. Not sold off now while governments are so corrupt that they allow it.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2018, 01:02:47 am by cdev »
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Offline fcb

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #108 on: January 15, 2018, 08:53:13 pm »
How much does the price of electricity impact the cost of an electric car?

The reason I ask is because the price of electricity may be going up a lot here in the US soon as the LNG export facilities come online.
Or the price of gas could go crazy high. Like 2 times as much as now. Or even higher than that. Or even reach the same level as all the Europeans are paying for gas. Imagine that. Imagine paying 6.5 USD/gallon, like we pay here.
I'd love to pay $6.5 USD/gallon here.

Currently petrol is around £1.20 per litre (1.20 x 4.546l/usgal x exchange rate ) = $7.53/gallon
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Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #109 on: January 16, 2018, 08:08:47 pm »
How much does the price of electricity impact the cost of an electric car?

The reason I ask is because the price of electricity may be going up a lot here in the US soon as the LNG export facilities come online.
Or the price of gas could go crazy high. Like 2 times as much as now. Or even higher than that. Or even reach the same level as all the Europeans are paying for gas. Imagine that. Imagine paying 6.5 USD/gallon, like we pay here.

Which is why it's good to have a variety of different energy sources. With a mix of gas, diesel and electric cars on the road, a drastic price increase in one fuel source has less overall impact. If the price of gasoline goes through the roof I can get a ride from one of my friends with electric cars. If the price of electricity goes up drastically they can get a ride from me.
 

Offline cdev

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #110 on: January 16, 2018, 08:24:32 pm »
Energy poverty
Energy poverty is lack of access to modern energy services. It refers to the situation of large numbers of people in developing countries and some people in developed countries whose well-being is negatively affected by very low consumption of energy, use of dirty or polluting fuels, and excessive time spent collecting fuel to meet basic needs.


People in Europe have low cost healthcare and education, people in the US have until the cheap energy. Now they are trying to make the cost of healthcare and education in Europe more like the cost in the US, (astronomical) and trying to make the cost of energy in the US more like that in Europe (astronomical).

This is what is called the "race to the bottom".

Which is why it's good to have a variety of different energy sources. With a mix of gas, diesel and electric cars on the road, a drastic price increase in one fuel source has less overall impact. If the price of gasoline goes through the roof I can get a ride from one of my friends with electric cars. If the price of electricity goes up drastically they can get a ride from me.
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Offline vk6zgo

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #111 on: January 18, 2018, 04:25:19 am »
How much does the price of electricity impact the cost of an electric car?

The reason I ask is because the price of electricity may be going up a lot here in the US soon as the LNG export facilities come online.
Or the price of gas could go crazy high. Like 2 times as much as now. Or even higher than that. Or even reach the same level as all the Europeans are paying for gas. Imagine that. Imagine paying 6.5 USD/gallon, like we pay here.
I'd love to pay $6.5 USD/gallon here.

Currently petrol is around £1.20 per litre (1.20 x 4.546l/usgal x exchange rate ) = $7.53/gallon

You are using the wrong conversion.
The USA uses "pretend gallons" which are smaller than full blooded "Imperial" gallons.

For example, the classic "44 gallon drum " familiar to Brits & older Aussies is a "55 gallon drum " in the US.

We call 'em "200 litre drums" nowadays in Oz!
 
 

Offline IanMacdonald

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #112 on: January 18, 2018, 02:57:47 pm »
Think the main point with most such developments is that letting market forces decide is almost always better than distorting the market with taxes, subsidies, etc. If the battery car can fulfil a role then it will sell.

We've seen how boiler scrappage schemes spawned a massive scam market in the UK, with phones jumping off the hook day in day out with illegal recorded message telesales scams.  Whatever the original intent, crooks are very quick to latch on to these schemes and use them to fleece gullible or vulnerable people. Most of the scammers were of course cowboy outfits who would probably have done an unsafe gas installation anyway.   :--

Never forget the Law of Unintended Consequences.

There is also the risk of prematurely promoting a new technology, only to have a better version come along shortly afterwards. That really does no-one any good, least of all the planet as it creates not one but two monster junkpiles of perfectly serviceable goods.  :palm:
 
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Offline cdev

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #113 on: January 19, 2018, 01:03:21 am »
They have been doing that same pump and dump thing with natural gas exploration companies.

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/96242/shale-gas-bubble-combined.pdf

But the resource is basically running out.

Did the price of electricity increase in Australia when Australia started to export natural gas?

« Last Edit: January 19, 2018, 01:19:32 am by cdev »
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Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #114 on: January 19, 2018, 08:45:37 pm »
Think the main point with most such developments is that letting market forces decide is almost always better than distorting the market with taxes, subsidies, etc. If the battery car can fulfil a role then it will sell.

We've seen how boiler scrappage schemes spawned a massive scam market in the UK, with phones jumping off the hook day in day out with illegal recorded message telesales scams.  Whatever the original intent, crooks are very quick to latch on to these schemes and use them to fleece gullible or vulnerable people. Most of the scammers were of course cowboy outfits who would probably have done an unsafe gas installation anyway.
I agree that law makers are oblivious to the holes in the laws they are making but as long as they patch them fast enough not much is lost. Unfortunately you can't leave everything to the mechanics of the free market. The mechanics of the free market don't care about the environment, how many people get killed or long term adverse effects. This is why it is necessary to put regulations and steering mechanisms in place. This means to subsidise new/improved technologies and put heavier taxes on unwanted technologies.
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Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #115 on: January 19, 2018, 09:25:51 pm »
The problem with relying on the free market entirely is that the market is made up of people, and a lot of people are either not particularly intelligent or are oblivious to specific concepts. One doesn't have to look far to see for example large numbers of people who utterly fail at understanding the concept of total cost of ownership. They will buy stuff with a credit card and only comprehend what it adds to the monthly payment, they are totally oblivious to the amount they are actually paying for the item spread out over time once interest is factored in.

To use the previously mentioned boiler example, pulling some numbers out of my backside strictly for the sake of example, vast numbers of people would buy a boiler for $400 that cost them $600 a year in fuel to run rather than spend $800 on a more efficient boiler that consumed half as much fuel. Anyone who understands basic arithmetic can easily calculate that the more expensive unit in this example is actually cheaper but you might be surprised at the number of people for whom this is a totally foreign concept. For whatever reason they cannot make the connection between efficiency and their monthly utility bill and money in the bank. Again for anyone feeling really pedantic those numbers are made up simply to serve as an example.
 

Offline IanMacdonald

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #116 on: January 20, 2018, 10:01:28 am »
".vast numbers of people would buy a boiler for $400 that cost them $600 a year in fuel to run rather than spend $800 on a more efficient boiler that consumed half as much fuel."

The reverse is more the case. People are being persuaded to scrap conventional boilers and replace them with condensing types on the grounds that this will save the planet. Or, something. The truth is that the energy saving is small, while the waste produced by all this scrappage is large. Of course, the real motive is that the installers profit from it. Legislation also forbids the scrapped boilers from being redeployed, ensuring a monster scrap heap.

I think we have to beware of the same syndrome arising with  battery cars. The scrappage of huge numbers of conventional cars will mainly benefit the auto makers, and we then have to consider whether these firms are directly or indirectly influencing the politics for their own gain. They may for example be funding the Green Party to promote their own interests. (Exactly what they accuse Big Oil of doing, in fact.)

As with wind turbines, the cost advantage of the battery car goes away if the subsidy is removed. In this case the subsidy is threefold; handouts to buyers in the form of scrappage schemes, low or zero road tax, and no fuel tax. My guess is that if electrics became the norm, governments would have to claw back all that lost revenue. Exactly how they would do that remains to be seen, but it might involve a per-mile usage charge for example. Or a much higher road tax than for IC engines. 

The bottom line is that Joe or Jane Public pays all of these e-car subsidies, and because a large part of that subsidy is electricity, that is true whether Joe or Jane even owns a car or not. There really could not be anything less fair. It ends up with the person who cycles to work and takes a bus into town, paying for the neighbour's e-car.
 

Offline cdev

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #117 on: January 21, 2018, 12:27:06 am »
What makes people think that the personal automobile in almost any form will remain popular, or even legal, say 100 yrs from now?

People shouldn't extrapolate today's economic conditions into the future where they may not even remotely apply.

I think the future world depicted in "The Matrix" where people spend their entire lives plugged into a net of machinery that keeps them alive via a protein goo, permanently logged into a simulation of 1990s Earth, is around as likely, or unlikely.

Suppose the next 1859-like ("Carrington class") solar storm occurs causing loss of spent fuel cooling capacity, "loss of the ultimate heatsink" in dozens, perhaps hundreds of nuclear power plants around the globe, all at the same time, and meltdowns a few hours to days later, in some significant proportion of them..

That could render much of the planet uninhabitable.

What would be done then?
 

I hope we don't end up like this!

« Last Edit: January 21, 2018, 12:51:36 am by cdev »
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Offline cdev

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #118 on: January 21, 2018, 01:10:54 am »
What I am describing would be exactly that, a huge ripoff of the taxpayers based on ISDS.

http://energypost.eu/pursuit-free-energy-trade-trans-atlantic-trade-investment-partnership-ttip-endangering-action-climate-change/

They are basically setting up the US paxpayer to have to bail out these companies by setting up an intolerable situation the country would have to may huge sums to get out of.


Similar to the Yukos case, which may have been strictly to establish this precedent so that some huge aware could be taken against the US without it looking too suspicious. Read up on ISDS. And the "US-Gambling" case between Antigua and the US.  Over the supply of online gambling serices.

They will likely soon be doing that on health care too. (except via a state to state mechanism embedded in GATS, - but it works much like ISDS)

This is being done to trap the US in a system it could not afford since the 1980s. It would never do for the US to get public healthcare just as the US is forcing other countries to give up theirs. This is why so many US political candidates lied about it. Promising voters the moon when they really get rocks.


This situation is illustrative. Its the investors that matter now, not countries. They bought them fair and square.

http://gala.gre.ac.uk/2744/1/PSIRU_Report_9828_-_2010-02-H-tradelaw.pdf

Knowing perfectly well that American patients arent going to want to be shipped overseas for health care no matter how poor they are or cant afford it if they stay.

Think the main point with most such developments is that letting market forces decide is almost always better than distorting the market with taxes, subsidies, etc. If the battery car can fulfil a role then it will sell.

We've seen how boiler scrappage schemes spawned a massive scam market in the UK, with phones jumping off the hook day in day out with illegal recorded message telesales scams.  Whatever the original intent, crooks are very quick to latch on to these schemes and use them to fleece gullible or vulnerable people. Most of the scammers were of course cowboy outfits who would probably have done an unsafe gas installation anyway.   :--

Never forget the Law of Unintended Consequences.

There is also the risk of prematurely promoting a new technology, only to have a better version come along shortly afterwards. That really does no-one any good, least of all the planet as it creates not one but two monster junkpiles of perfectly serviceable goods.  :palm:
« Last Edit: January 21, 2018, 01:16:42 am by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline james_s

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #119 on: January 21, 2018, 02:13:05 am »
".vast numbers of people would buy a boiler for $400 that cost them $600 a year in fuel to run rather than spend $800 on a more efficient boiler that consumed half as much fuel."

The reverse is more the case. People are being persuaded to scrap conventional boilers and replace them with condensing types on the grounds that this will save the planet. Or, something. The truth is that the energy saving is small, while the waste produced by all this scrappage is large. Of course, the real motive is that the installers profit from it. Legislation also forbids the scrapped boilers from being redeployed, ensuring a monster scrap heap.

I think we have to beware of the same syndrome arising with  battery cars. The scrappage of huge numbers of conventional cars will mainly benefit the auto makers, and we then have to consider whether these firms are directly or indirectly influencing the politics for their own gain. They may for example be funding the Green Party to promote their own interests. (Exactly what they accuse Big Oil of doing, in fact.)


It depends. About 10 years ago I replaced my working but 30 year old forced air furnace which was 80% efficient with a 93% efficient condensing furnace. The original still worked but it was reaching the point where the second set of heat exchangers were getting close to the age where the original set failed. At the same time I dropped the size down from 100k BTH/hr to 80k since the original was oversized, popular because people like to heat up the house quickly and gas was cheap in the 70s. That replacement make a noticeable decrease in my gas bill and has paid for itself quite a while ago now. If you have a tired old boiler that is nearing end of life anyway then it doesn't bother me to create an incentive to replace it with a cleaner more efficient model. Now I didn't get any kind of subsidy because I installed it myself, I could have got a rebate from the utility but to do that I would have had to pay an installer and that would have cost me a lot more than the rebate covers.

Now I would not scrap perfectly good boiler that was not particularly old, and I think laws barring installing used boilers are ridiculous but that doesn't mean it's always bad to offer some incentives or rebates. Here they are more often offered not by the government but by the (for-profit) utility companies because it saves them having to spend big money upgrading infrastructure. If you want to be irritated, look up the criminally wasteful "Cash for clunkers" program we had here, a thinly veiled bailout for the auto industry, it was claimed to be getting old dirty cars off the street but in fact to qualify they had to be licensed and drivable, and newer than a certain age, conveniently covering the most popular used cars and SUVs. On top of that you could trade in a car for the rebate and get a truck or SUV that resulted in no savings. All of these running cars that were traded in were mandated to have the engines destroyed before they were sent out to scrapyards. It was no benefit to the people who had the true clunkers because they couldn't afford to replace theirs with a brand new car even with the rebate. All it did was destroy a lot of good cars that could have had many years of use on them, while spending my tax dollars to subsidize middle and upper middle class people buying new cars.
 
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Offline IanMacdonald

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #120 on: January 21, 2018, 11:32:13 am »
A: What makes people think that the personal automobile in almost any form will remain popular, or even legal, say 100 yrs from now?

B: People shouldn't extrapolate today's economic conditions into the future where they may not even remotely apply.

C: Suppose the next 1859-like ("Carrington class") solar storm occurs causing loss of spent fuel cooling capacity, "loss of the ultimate heatsink" in dozens, perhaps hundreds of nuclear power plants around the globe, all at the same time, and meltdowns a few hours to days later, in some significant proportion of them..

A: Try making any journey by public transport that is not either To or From a city center, and you will see why it has to be.  To get 60 miles you may have to travel 100 to the nearest city, passing your destination on the way, and then travel 40 back again in the direction you came.  |O

B: Too true, and applies in spades to the mass deployment of wind turbines and the like. Fusion will almost certainly be perfected before '100% renewables' is reached n 2050 or wheneveri. At which point they become scrap. Scrap with a fair proportion of non-recyclable content, too.

C: That is probably an exaggeration, but it IS a valid reason why we should build no more reactors with pressurised water cooling or zirconium fuel cladding.
 

Offline cdev

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #121 on: January 21, 2018, 01:29:22 pm »
A: What makes people think that the personal automobile in almost any form will remain popular, or even legal, say 100 yrs from now?

B: People shouldn't extrapolate today's economic conditions into the future where they may not even remotely apply.

C: Suppose the next 1859-like ("Carrington class") solar storm occurs causing loss of spent fuel cooling capacity, "loss of the ultimate heatsink" in dozens, perhaps hundreds of nuclear power plants around the globe, all at the same time, and meltdowns a few hours to days later, in some significant proportion of them..

A: Try making any journey by public transport that is not either To or From a city center, and you will see why it has to be.  To get 60 miles you may have to travel 100 to the nearest city, passing your destination on the way, and then travel 40 back again in the direction you came.  |O

B: Too true, and applies in spades to the mass deployment of wind turbines and the like. Fusion will almost certainly be perfected before '100% renewables' is reached n 2050 or wheneveri. At which point they become scrap. Scrap with a fair proportion of non-recyclable content, too.

C: That is probably an exaggeration, but it IS a valid reason why we should build no more reactors with pressurised water cooling or zirconium fuel cladding.

People in theory will have a lot more time after automation has progressed but it will be very unequally distributed. Poor people won't have more time, working, as many will be, several part time jobs, perhaps traveling huge distances between them, (although this will be reduced because of globalization of services, instead those jobs will likely be bid out to foreign firms) and in the developed countries far more people will be poor than today. They will likely be struggling to maintain a capacity to drive, and as you pointed out, its unlikely that the government policy will make it any easier for them, concerned as it will be by falling rates of purchasing of new automobiles.

What they will do is create huge taxes on older cars, or continually require new capabilities in cars allowed on the roads which only the newer cars have.

Poor people will also be pushed out farther and farther from urban areas and affluent exurbs blessed with better than average public transportation, and lack of credit may make it difficult for them to avail themselves of it where it does exist.  Cashless Cities will exclude them.

Its hard to say what will happen, but the path we are on now leads to a much less positive place than the place many people still think we are going.

 If the essence of capitalism is making profits at any cost I think its basically " written off" its books the necessity of giving anything back to larger and larger segments of society - as its cost of doing business. Dumping a number of important goals by the wayside quietly. You can tell when they have been dumped by the shrill increase in talking about them by politicians, a form of over-compensating.

Younger generations may find it quite difficult to ever attain or maintain parents or grandparents level of wealth under "the new economy".  They may never really be able to strike out on their own. The wealth they would have needed to marry, purchase homes of their own, have children, etc, would have had to come from wages undiluted by predatory globalization.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2018, 01:53:29 pm by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline splin

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #122 on: January 21, 2018, 07:53:57 pm »

What they will do is create huge taxes on older cars, or continually require new capabilities in cars allowed on the roads which only the newer cars have.

Perhaps, but for now, and hopefully the forseable future, governments are elected and much as they might like to impose their will "for the long term good of the nation" (or for the benefit of their cronies and / or post government revolving door employment), there is always a limit to what the voters will tolerate. Especially if a large part of the electorate is disaffected by a reversing economy.

Taking away (relatively) cheap but dirty motoring from the masses and restricting cleaner, but not pollution free, electric motoring to the wealthier may seem attractive, or at least an acceptable option to descision makers in cities like London well served by public transport, but it may not be so well received out in the sticks and poorer towns and cities. Think Brexit...
 

Online nctnico

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #123 on: January 21, 2018, 08:25:18 pm »
What they will do is create huge taxes on older cars, or continually require new capabilities in cars allowed on the roads which only the newer cars have.
Fortunately the old cars are not scrapped but exported to countries with less strict laws. And sometimes cars don't have to be exported far!
A couple of years ago Germany banned old diesels so many Germans where forced to get rid of them. In the Netherlands we had low tax tariffs for old (collectible) cars. This resulted in many old Mercedes diesel cars being imported into the Netherlands and the owners didn't had to so much ownership taxes. Ofcourse this was a foolish move by the buyers because the hole got plugged quickly. The cars are probably still driving around somewhere in Africa.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Galenbo

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Re: When Will Electric Cars Become Mainstream?
« Reply #124 on: January 21, 2018, 08:34:08 pm »
Just build a couple of hundreds of Nuclear plants, electricity price will drop and driving electrical will be cheaper than the alternative.
If you try and take a cat apart to see how it works, the first thing you have on your hands is a nonworking cat.
 


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