Electric Car Economics

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by lordgeoff

Pretty much spot on with your comments Raymond.
A few comments I would perhaps not agree. I think the theory of Peak Oil is not really relevant. The exploration seems to surge when more supply is needed. There are many discovered and untapped supplies. Even in Australia. Gas is abundant pretty much everywhere so it will be around for as long as it is needed. New clean energies, Thorium, Fusion Hydrigen are abundant and just await the technology to exploit. The current “renewables” will be a case of “......what was your generation thinking Granddad. You had so many choices and you picked Wind and solar...? wtf”
Australia’s Baseload Grid is steadily imploding with 24/7/365 electricity generation being replaced by intermittent unreliable and not fit for purpose wind/solar. And $100million (4minute) Baseload capacity are exceptionally good...only for Elon🤪.
Many €Billions yet to be pissed up against the wall before the penny drops. Germany is seeing the folly of Energyweinde.

I once remarked to an engineer I was assisting with a problem that with a little more work he could make his system fool proof. His rejoinder was that he had given up on fool proofing many years before when he discovered that fools were often really ingenious bastards. The factor overlooked by the proponents of the Peak Oil theory was that the folks in the oil and gas industry are really ingenious bastards, particularly those in the field in the United States.

However, when you extract oil from shale you are actually scraping the bottom of the barrel because whilst shale oil is relatively easy to find it's also difficult to extract and it's really only the extreme efficiency of the service companies required in the US and high oil prices that makes it economic.

At the moment we have a sufficiency of gas resources however it is becoming more difficult to find and expensive to extract. Shell has built a massive floating LNG plant to use on the NW Shelf of Australia and I suspect it will be the development model for many of the remote offshore fields in the future.

I think Australia is the world biggest exporter of uranium at the moment but the development of nuclear power is banned by law. It's also the second largest exporter of LNG but industries reliant upon gas are relocating because it's becoming to expensive in Australia. We are also number two or three on coal exports but are demolishing our reliable coal fired power stations and rendering the electricity grid unreliable and expensive.

It's beginning to appear that 40% is approximately the maximum of "renewables" that the grid will tolerate before becoming completely unstable as far as voltage and frequency are concerned. Rooftop solar PV has become very popular with the middle classes because of their credit ratings and government subsidies and Australia's long summers and sunny climate are advantageous to solar (roof top solar water heaters have been popular for decades here) but we already have serious problems with voltage instability in some areas where penetration is high. This is an area where electric vehicles would greatly assist, particularly if one had a two battery system with one in use in the vehicle and a second at home or in a local substation being charged from the roof top solar of every house provided for by the substation.

Users of this forum who take an interest in refrigeration matters may recall the great eutectic/evaporator plate battle between Richard and Ozepete. This is another area waiting for the refrigeration equipment manufacturers to discover the benefits of the cold storage potential and energy production/time shift capabilities of eutectics.

Having solved the problems of domestic and transport renewable usage we now move on to industrial and "deliverables" (a better terminology than "base load")

We are always going to need electric power generators which can provide reliable power no matter the weather conditions prevailing. I have become fascinated by the potential of Liquid Fleuride Thorium Reactors, LFTRs. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima have as major contributors the loss of coolant leading to massive reactor power excursions and subsequent hydrogen gas production and ignition. This is always going to be a problem with pressurized water coolant/moderators in a nuclear reactor.

With their atmospheric pressure operating environment, the fail to safe fusible plug dump system and greater proliferation resistance and short lived transuranics waste production the LFTRs appear to be a great solution to some of the serious problems dogging nuclear power production.

[a64pilot]

If we solve the waste problem, then nuclear not only becomes viable, but likely the most logical. But I agree not Rickover’s water cooled reactor, great idea for the 50’s and I’m sure the quickest way to a nuclear Navy, but maybe not the best for power plants.
Waste is the problem

[Cheechako]

Things are going way beyond just electric. This one changes shape as you drive and growls.
https://youtu.be/6tUWYXe9qbY

[a64pilot]

Noise makers will I believe soon be required, there was at one time a huge movement to “bell the Prius” as many claimed the blind would be run down in wholesale numbers.
Many of us wanted the George Jetson car sound.
https://youtu.be/QdWswvLPdE0

[a64pilot]

This is what we were supposed to be driving 20 or 30 years ago.
https://youtu.be/pP6XwdLEvDo

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

If we solve the waste problem, then nuclear not only becomes viable, but likely the most logical. But I agree not Rickover’s water cooled reactor, great idea for the 50’s and I’m sure the quickest way to a nuclear Navy, but maybe not the best for power plants.
Waste is the problem

There is no good solution to the waste.

That said the thorium cycle offers some improvement, fuel would much easier to get, weapons proliferation would be slightly harder and waste would be reduced. Of course with more reactors there would be more waste regardless of the fact that each would be generating less waste on a per GW basis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoriu...ctinide_wastes

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

If we solve the waste problem, then nuclear not only becomes viable, but likely the most logical. But I agree not Rickover’s water cooled reactor, great idea for the 50’s and I’m sure the quickest way to a nuclear Navy, but maybe not the best for power plants.
Waste is the problem

Nuclear power is necessary at this juncture.

Yes, popular sentiment has had a role in making the construction of new nuclear plants difficult, but this is mainly an issue of government aversion to doing the hard work of making nuclear energy safer and more trustworthy to the public, and the fossil-fuel industries rushing into this convenient gap to make hay (and CO2) while the sun shines.

Nuclear energy must always be a partnership between government and industry, because the level of commitment required to produce and manage it, the security implications, and managing the long-lived waste issues cannot be entrusted entirely to private concerns. We simply cannot afford to let a private nuclear or waste management company go bankrupt, or be gutted by takeovers and asset-stripping.

There's going to be many opportunities for private industry to participate and innovate in the construction and operation of nuclear plants, but the client and owner must be the public. If operated intelligently, it could be a nice little earner for government, and a source of funds for the proper management of nuclear waste.

Chernobyl and Fukushima had fairly obvious points of failure (unsafe procedures in the former, standby generators were flooded in the latter) and there are other designs that don't have the same failure modes so I'm pretty confident that newer water-cooled designs could have better safety records. And I have confidence that better options will evolve.

[MarkSF]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

Premium is based on peoples belief’s. That’s it, really, nothing more.
Witness Women’s hand bags or the Rolex watch, is a Rolex a better watch than a Seiko? I’d argue that in fact it’s not as good a watch, but it’s certainly considered to be a “premium” watch. Why? Peoples belief that it’s a status symbol, nothing more.
Often all that extra money does buy you high quality, but not in proportion to the price.?

No, the engineering in a Rolex is far better than that in a mechanical Seiko. On a whole next level of precision and craftsmanship. Or did you mean a quartz Seiko?

The problem here is that we need to firstly define the purpose of a watch. That means different things to different people.


Is it solely to accurately tell the time? Then a cheap quartz is better than any premium mechanical watch.

Some people might expect more. An investment? To look beautiful? Clearly a high end watch has a decorative function beyond its utility. Maybe one would take some interest and pride in the engineering prowess needed to make a highly accurate mechanical watch.

If a high end watch is useless, so is all art, jewelry, music, anything with a purely or mostly aesthetic function.

Dodgy ground for someone with a sailboat. Better sell it and get a power boat. So much better for getting from A to B.

[Marc1]

Originally Posted by MarkSF

No, the engineering in a Rolex is far better than that in a mechanical Seiko. On a whole next level of precision and craftsmanship. Or did you mean a quartz Seiko?

The problem here is that we need to firstly define the purpose of a watch. That means different things to different people.


Is it solely to accurately tell the time? Then a cheap quartz is better than any premium mechanical watch.

Some people might expect more. An investment? To look beautiful? Clearly a high end watch has a decorative function beyond its utility. Maybe one would take some interest and pride in the engineering prowess needed to make a highly accurate mechanical watch.

If a high end watch is useless, so is all art, jewelry, music, anything with a purely or mostly aesthetic function.

Dodgy ground for someone with a sailboat. Better sell it and get a power boat. So much better for getting from A to B.

Spot on ... and the same can be said for every other ill defined advantages on any other discussion.
Electric car is "better" than internal combustion ... why?

Is it cheaper? No

Is it faster? Probably, yet considering that even a $1000 car can do the legal limit, speed of a car is just like that rolex.

Lower emissions? Less particulate emissions sure, but if you think in emissions as CO2, I have news for you. Temperature variations have nothing to do with CO2 and if the human race goes all to live on the moon, the temperature variations will remain unchanged. "Carbon" or no "Carbon"

Time between refuelling? A complete and utter flop.

Time to refuel? Another spectacular flop.

Cost of fuel? A potential gain if you can build yourself a solar or hydraulic charging station. As a mass product for everyone, hardly. The forces of supply and demand will take care of that quick smart.

Soiling of the environment to produce all the parts? Another spectacular flop, if you take all the component into consideration and the process to produce all components.

Life cycle? This one is unclear. Cars go for several decades, this contraptions? who knows! there is some anecdotal evidence of longer than 10 years, but from biased sources.

Safety? An electric car can reach ridiculous speeds in rocket like times. Manufacturers shouldn't be allowed to build cars that can not be legally driven anywhere but on a salt lake. Considering that with the start of electric cars, we have an instant parallel industry feeding from the wrecks, I think that "safety" is a bit of a joke here.
Not to mention what happens to a battery in a crash.

There are most likely many other aspects to a car i left out, but to go back to the simile of the rolex and the seiko ... if you take away the assumed status symbol, the assumed reduced warming, and the assumed cleanliness, I think that an old Toyota Corolla with 100,000 km and a price tag of $2000 is a much better proposition from almost all aspects i can think off.

So an electric car is like a Rolex that is slow one day and fast the next, needs winding up every 2 hours, no one knows how to fix it, will become useless in 5 years time and will need to be take apart by a nuclear physicist for recycling.

[flyingnut40]

You speak mostly crap!
My BMW i3 is built in a COMPLETELY GREEN factory powered by solar and wind..... the car is 98% recyclable...... and YES it is the quickest car BMW makes..... FROM 0 to 30 mph. Tops out at 90 mph and disconnects the HV battery on ANY air bag deployment. Carbon fiber Life Cell that is stronger than steel and stays that way because it dosen't rust!
Yes it takes 10 seconds morning and night to hook up charger cable..... the rest does not involve me.
It costs 1/3 to fuel compared to the V.W. diesel that I had that V.W. had to buyback and crush.
After a few 60 mpg cars it tough to find a comparable, let along BETTER more efficient way to get around. I swapped a $50/wk. Diesel bill for $40/month increase in hydro.
I'm completely O.K with buying a $53,000 car at the end of a three year lease with 15,000 miles on it for $18,000 still under warranty.
No guilt here!!!!!

[flyingnut40]

Quote
I'm pretty confident that newer water-cooled designs could have better safety records. And I have confidence that better options will evolve.

One only needs to look at the Canadian CanDo <sp> reactor that needs energy INPUT to keep it going and as soon as ANYTHING goes wrong it ramps down in fail safe mode...... a runaway is NOT possible....... safest in the world.

[Mauruuru]

Marci go ahead and keep driving those ice cars. Somebody has to pay the pensions for all those auto workers. It might as well be you and people like you

[foggysail]

Originally Posted by Mauruuru

Marci go ahead and keep driving those ice cars. Somebody has to pay the pensions for all those auto workers. It might as well be you and people like you

There is only one way electric cars will replace the combustion engine vehicles and that is by government fiats! I cannot see the day when so called green energy will replace conventional power generation because of cost if nothing else. I will never willingly purchase an electrically power vehicle. I enjoy keeping my vehicle’s temperature around 80 degrees F during the winters and cold during the summers.

Rhode Island’s Department of Public Utility authorized National Grid to pay upwards to $0.43/kilowatt for renewable energy about 5 times the cost of current power generation methods. No wonder people complain about the high cost for electricity.....yeah, the same people that scream ‘’GO GREEN!’’

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by foggysail

There is only one way electric cars will replace the combustion engine vehicles and that is by government fiats! I cannot see the day when so called green energy will replace conventional power generation because of cost if nothing else. I will never willingly purchase an electrically power vehicle.

You're blending two entirely separable things -EVs and "green energy". This thread is on EVs, so let's just do that.

EVs will replace most ICE-powered cars in/around cities because it is more efficient, less polluting, and easier to maintain. EV prices will eventually be at or lower than equivalent ICE vehicles because they're actually simpler to build.

[Dockhead]

Op here, with an update.

I haven't bought an i3 yet, but I have been using them through a car sharing service.

A great vehicle! BMW really knocked themselves out - it's a tour de force of design and technology, far more interesting to my tastes than Tesla.

My lifestyle has gone so far down the road away from car ownership that I'm not sure I will be going back soon. When you don't have a car waiting for you downstairs, you live differently, and it's not all bad. I use the bicycle most of all, and it seems the extra cost of buying groceries in the expensive downtown shop is offset by savings in time and car use. Plus I feel healthier and more vigorous getting around under my own power. It shrinks my world, but the pedestrian and cycling radii are still full of lots of things - I live in the center of the city. I spend a few hundred euros a month on uber, but almost all claimed on my expenses.

Besides that, I'm back to living a couple of international borders away from the boat, so I'm splitting my time among multiple countries. It's stupid to leave a car standing idle for weeks at a time.