China, Europe Drive Shift To Electric Cars as US Lags (reuters.com) 468
Electric cars will pick up critical momentum in 2017, many in the auto industry believe - just not in North America. Tighter emissions rules in China and Europe leave global carmakers and some consumers with little choice but to embrace plug-in vehicles, fuelling an investment surge, said industry executives gathered in Detroit this past week for the city's annual auto show. From a report: "Car electrification is an irreversible trend," said Jacques Aschenbroich, chief executive of auto supplier Valeo, which has expanded sales by 50 percent in five years with a focus on electric, hybrid, connected and self-driving cars. In Europe, green cars benefit increasingly from subsidies, tax breaks and other perks, while combustion engines face mounting penalties including driving and parking restrictions. China, struggling with catastrophic pollution levels in major cities, is aggressively pushing plug-in vehicles. Its carrot-and-stick approach combines tens of billions in investment and research funding with subsidies, and regulations designed to discourage driving fossil-fueled cars in big cities. The road ahead for electric vehicles (EVs) in the United States, however, could have more hairpin curves.
Back to the future (Score:3, Funny)
Batteries (Score:4, Insightful)
We still don't have batteries! I'm serious I forgot to buy some at Safeway the other day.
No well seriously, we don't have batteries that can enable us to replace gasoline. We need to improve capacity at least 4x, if not 10x.
Some say the answer is Lithium-Air batteries .. but then hardly anyone is doing any research on order-of-magnitude battery technology improvement .. let alone Lithium Air. Whoever is doing research on new battery concept has virtually no funding. The ones getting slight funding are the people working on incremental updates.
We need companies like Tesla, Google, Apple, Samsung, Panasonic to get serious in funding a foundation or institute that researches advanced battery concepts. Battery research funding budget should be in the billions not thousand.
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Re:Batteries (Score:5, Insightful)
Tesla is somewhat wrong on this. The main barrier is PERCEPTION of range.
Everyone thinks they need to drive 10,000 miles on a charge. Nobody actually does. Current range of a Tesla is plenty (assuming there's supercharger coverage in the direction you want to go). Unfortunately, until you actually drive one, you won't believe me. I didn't believe me until I bought one.
When I bought my Tesla, I assumed we'd have to take my wife's car on any long road trips. I was wrong. We take the Tesla on all the road trips because it's more convenient, and more comfortable. I just didn't believe that road-tripping in an EV would be practical.
I think the only way to fix this perception problem is over time as more people have these vehicles and share their own experiences with others, and as more and more charging stations are rolled out.
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Yes I have known about this -- thats why I am strongly in favor of nuclear fusion and cheapening solar energy research so we can detox the atmosphere.
But the problem is that generating fuel from atmospheric, algae, or plant sources will be more expensive than opening a valve on a pipe stuck the ground until we actually run out of oil which may take hundreds of years.
People will always choose the cheapest alternative.
We can come up with cheap ways to generate electricity .. but we also need a better way to s
If irreversible, why not let it continue naturally (Score:2)
I laso believe that "Car electrification is an irreversible trend".
So then why give hefty tax breaks to the 1% for buying electric cars today, rather than simply waiting for ten years when it makes sense that all cars are electric? You really aren't going to push the development that much faster than it would happen anyway.
Same is true for solar power and other alternative forms of energy. They are coming, they will dominate - just let that happen rather than trying to pick an exact winning form of that te
Re:If irreversible, why not let it continue natura (Score:4, Insightful)
That's only logical if there isn't some other reason to switch from fossil fuels. As it turns out, the overwhelming majority of experts in atmospheric and oceanic sciences happen to have a reason why we should encourage the transition to vehicles powered renewables sooner rather than later.
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It must really suck when reality [nasa.gov] just completely fucks over your moronic claim. I'm going to be generous and assume you're just a fucking idiot ignorant of just about every fact on climate change, and not in fact a dishonorable immoral liar.
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The citation shows increased PPM of CO2 and increased temperature. No model I am aware of requires that PPM and temperature rise to be in lockstep. That's simply a pseudo-skeptic strawman argument.
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Look at the data (Score:2)
Do you deny CO2 in the atmosphere has shot up to record levels?
Do you deny that that increase is not matches by an equivalent temperature increase?
You are the one who wants everyone to fear. It is therefore incumbent upon you to prove the assertion that CO2 leads to runaway warming. The data does not show that any longer, but you are welcome to try so we all may laugh at you just like we do the other religious extremists trying to justify nonsense with faith.
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The problem is that the fossil fuel industry is the most heavily subsidised industry going. A nuclear plant for example is always going to be made to be responsible for complete costs of waste disposal, and yet fossil fuel plants, and cars are allowed to just spew their waste into the environment at no cost.
If you were to make the fossil fuel industry pay it's actual costs - i.e. impact on people's health for example, rather than expect people to subsidise them by paying for their own health issues caused b
Population density (Score:2, Informative)
There's a large portion of the USA that isn't very densely-packed. We can't exactly visit several countries on a single tank of gas. Or four times as many people in the same amount of land area.
You just don't have to drive as far to get where you need to be. And that's what electric cars are great for.
Re:Population density (Score:5, Interesting)
I posted the links above. The US's urbanization is largely the same as Europe's larger countries, and in fact, China hasn't even reached 60% urbanization yet. The only real exceptions are relatively small countries like Belgium and Luxembourg. Heck, Germany has a higher rural population per capita than the US.
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And once again, the average American's commute time is 25.4 minutes [wnyc.org].
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And once again, the average American's commute time is 25.4 minutes [wnyc.org].
We're talking about distance, not time, Han Solo.
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That don't help you much either:
http://www.statisticbrain.com/... [statisticbrain.com]
Only 23% of Americans drive more than 20 miles one way to work.
Re: Population density (Score:2)
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So you need to replace ALL gas driven vehicles before you get a benefit?
A lot of US landmass may be sparsely populated but if even 30% of the people living in cities and the surrounding suburbs drove electric, I think the impact on on pollution would be measurable.
Full electric doesn't make sense for everybody. However, it's nice to see that the technology is getting within reach of those for whom it does make sense.
Infrastructure vs Independence (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't understand people. I can't drive to the middle of a mountain range, and charge an electric car. There's no electric grid there. I can easily fill up on fuel wherever a fuel truck can drop some off -- which is basically the very same places that my car can go.
North America is very different than Europe. Paris and London are how many hours away? A European train can take you through ten countries in a single day. In North America, you'd be lucky to hit five major cities in 24 hours of driving.
There's a lot more middle-of-nowhere around here. It's not about electric vs gasolene. It's about portable fuel vs transmission-over-infrastructure. We don't have any infrastructure -- that's why we have roads to get between places.
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Average commute times in the US are 25.4 minutes [wnyc.org]. Just how many people do you think your scenario cover as a percentage of the population of the United States?
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Forget daily-commute-to-work times. Think road-trip, vacation, drive-to-parents, drive-to-children, thanksgiving, skiing, apple-picking, outlet-mall. I drive to friends, weekly, more than 100km away. I drive to wine-country five times annually.
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So what you're saying is that transportation and energy use policies should be based upon a pretty infrequent set of scenarios. With that logic, why not build thirty lane highways to wine country, or fuck it, have a helicopter standing by?
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That's actually the real point. Transmitting electricity is horribly inefficient, compared to transporting portable fuel. The energy required to send a car 500 kilometers is approximately 50 litres of gasolene. Transporting 50 litres of gasolene to a fuel station by truck costs no more than the truck expense, and the truck's fuel expense, and the road wear and tear. And the larger the truck, the less it costs per litre.
But for the electricity, not only is there transmission loss, but there's also repeat
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I don't understand people. I can't drive to the middle of a mountain range, and charge an electric car. There's no electric grid there. I can easily fill up on fuel wherever a fuel truck can drop some off
That's not a very common use case.
If it were, the mountains would be full of people.
That pesky free will again... (Score:2)
I would love to live in the future but I have to deal with the present.
Also betting that none of these electric cars from Europe or China are anything remotely close to something I would want to use regardless of how it's powered.
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Germany is getting smarter (Score:2)
OTOH, GM, Chrysler, and Ford are basically too stupid for words to actually build new battery facilities. They instead look at how to manipulate their stock prices and do not care about real long-term profits.
Thankfully, companies like Tesla and Rivian will really destroy the American companies and end up buying them.
Just for once (Score:2)
I would love it if these knuckleheads chained themselves to something real, like roads, bridges, power lines, or any on
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As someone who drives an EV, it is better in every single way than my previous internal combustion vehicles. EVERY way.
EVs will win eventually with or without government intervention (which, by the way, I'm against) because they are far superior to internal combustion vehicles.
The EV is more powerful, more comfortable, has better driving performance, less maintenance. The Internal combustion vehicle has... an established user base, and more fuelling stations.
So really the ONLY advantage an internal combusti
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2. Refuelling time (as glossed-over)
3. Energy carrying mass and volume density
4. Safety. Not interested in riding on about a quarter ton of fuel and oxidizer packed close together, thank you.
5. (Not that I care, but) "icky-ness" of manufacturing process. An engine block is just aluminum. Batteries and high-current semi-conductor devices use some pretty nasty chemicals.
While I love th instant torque... (Score:3)
I have wanted an electric vehicle for some time. Almost bought a Volt when then Gen II came out, but the thing is a small 2+2. With me at 6'4" (190cm) and my two 6' tall teenagers, there's no way to fit in the vehicle. (I had the same issue in my Jetta TDI.) Recently bought a Malibu hybrid, which contains the Voltec engine albeit with a much smaller battery. At least I can fit by young boys, though still can't take four passengers comfortably, like in my Avalanche.
Now - if an electric can have the midsize of my 2006 Avalanche and the range (500+ miles) with the ability to recharge in 10 minutes, and the guarantee that the battery won't be sitting in a landfill after losing charge ability in five years, I'm sold.
Never going to win these arguments (Score:3)
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That's a fallacy, what difference does it make how far you need to travel? Unless you are driving 10 hours a day, an electric car will get you as far as you can possibly drive without stopping. And the best part about electricity is that the infrastructure for electricity is massive compared to gasoline.
How can you possibly drive far enough to get to a gas station and not far enough to get to an electrical outlet? Doesn't make sense, cause that gas pump is electric.
Certainly the technology needs to advan
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an electric car will get you as far as you can possibly drive without stopping
What range do you think EVs have on a single charge, anyway? I can drive upwards of 3 hours without a break. With an average-priced EV, that's not even near possible.
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Sure it is as long as your average priced EV is a Chevy Bolt.
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Despite the name, that's a hybrid and not an EV.
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Event worse, in Europe the Bolt will we sold as "Opel Ampera-e". Yuck! I still want the car though. 300km+ on a single charge!
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I thought that was a typo. I didn't know there was such a thing. That's also expensive.
Renault Zoe (Score:5, Interesting)
What range do you think EVs have on a single charge, anyway?
Between 100km and 150km per 20kWh worth of battery charge.
Exact mileage depends on car model.
(e.g.: Tesla use lighter than average material and are designed from the ground up for longer ranges.
Other cars are simply "an electric motor replacing the ICE under the bonnet and batteries bolted wherever there's free place" quick conversion like the VW e-Golf and VW e-Up that VW hastily released in the wake of the diesel scandal, and might have lower mileages).
Also depends on the driver (driving like an aggressive idiot at high speed on the highway, and you'll get a lower range than driving conservatively maybe a bit under the maximum speed limit).
I can drive upwards of 3 hours without a break.
Which is *definitely* not recommanded.
Current recommendations here around in continental Europe is a break each 1 or 2 hours max.
(e.g.: There are big public service campaigns to advise drivers to have at least a quick "turbo-nap" every once in a while when driving long distance)
But let's make the assumption that you are 2 drivers sharing the load, and that you'll switch midway (without charging the car, nor making any break longer than required to change seat - no the best experience, but hey).
With an average-priced EV, that's not even near possible.
Renault Zoe are currently the cheapest e-cars with a decent battery.
(You can even get them for the price of an average priced ICE-car if you decide to rent the battery instead of buying it).
(They are definitely after the same market as Tesla's upcoming model 3, except that Zoes have been on the street for quite some time, and Renault chose the opposite progression from Tesla, release progressively longer range vehicle while staying affordable - instead of long range vehicles while progressively releasing cheaper models)
The latest model has upgraded the battery to 45kWh, which should give you between 200km and 300km of range. (depending on the speed/aggressiveness of driving 130km vs 100km on highway vs. 80km on streets between cities).
That's definitely in near the 3 hours of your example (and by now, both drivers of our assumption should get a nap, or at least make a long break - enough to put quite some additionnal range back into the battery using standard 50kW chargers)
For a car that cost in the general ballpark figure of ~30k USD (not some 100k+ USD Tesla Model S super car).
And all of the above aren't made up numbers, but my actual experience with Zoes.
They are available at the local car-sharing company (though not the more recent 45kWh battery), and I've already driven quite a lot of trip with them.
I can easy get 100km when I drive aggressively or 150km when much more conservative.
The current drawback I see, is that Renault doesn't have collision avoidances option available on their smaller cars like the Zoe.
(unlike VW where - like lots of european constructors - for the last several years even the lowest entry-level model like Up comes with a LIDAR [a.k.a. "City Safety"] in standard configurations,
or unlike all the noise that Tesla is making around their "Autopilot" since a couple of years ago).
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I'm not the original poster here, but let me answer the questions anyways... bear in mind that this *MY* opinion, based on *MY* experiences. if EV's work great for you, that's fine... but if you are going to ask why somebody might not, let me elaborate on some details that I personally identify with.
If you *wanted* to drive 10 hours in a day, you are completely hosed with an EV. Owing to the fact that this is something I will do a few times a year, this is a significant factor. Also, I'm not keen on d
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Just one thing to consider - it's false to compare the TOC based only on gas savings. You have to factor in maintenance savings too - EVs need massively less maintenance than ICE cars, there are just so much less than break. Even the brakediscs last (much) longer because they only work for the last tiny bit of stopping - the rest is done with regenerative braking to extend their range.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Lead Balloons are only impractical if you have insufficiently insane engineers.
Re:It's about landmass (Score:4, Interesting)
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Some only go 30. Others go at least 200. I don't claim they can replace ALL internal combustion cars, but don't exaggerate. Let's keep it real.
Re:It's about landmass (Score:4, Informative)
A Leaf is a realistic 120 (30kWh battery). Tesla is a really solid 300 (100kWh battery).
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A population density argument makes sense for things like public transportation, but not for electric vehicles. It's a phrase that gets trotted out all the time for as an argument against various public-good endeavors, but I often find that if you replace it with the phrase "political will", it makes just as much if not more sense.
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If you regularly need to travel 2-3 hours away from home, the time loss from long mid-trip recharges is not small.
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What percentage of the population do you imagine needs to travel 2-3 hours from home to work? You're describing what is, in most developed nations, and most certainly in urban areas where most of the people in developed nations live, is a minority vehicle requirement.
So just to be clear, you want transportation and energy policies based upon the commutes of a pretty small percentage of Americans.
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Ever been to Los Angeles?
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That would be a lot of recharging stops from here in an EV.
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Reading comprehension - Regularly doesn't mean daily.
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If I meant daily, I would have said daily. 2-3 times a month is low, but still enough to consider "regularly."
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In other words, you want to keep the term pretty nebulous because you intend on basing your argument on indefinite semantics.
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You're the one that claims that "regularly" is somehow a specific unit of time - I wasn't the one quantifying.
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But that is when the electric car doesn't use any power.
Unless it's summer or winter and you want to be comfortable.
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If you regularly need to travel 2-3 hours away from home, the time loss from long mid-trip recharges is not small.
True. But unless it's their day job, how many regularly spend that much time in a car anyway? If you're working eight hours a day - low for the US, I hear - and sleep eight hours you've go no life left with that commute. On the weekend I suppose if you have close relatives or a cabin that's just in the sweet spot it could be a regular thing, but if it's two-three hours one way and you're staying can get destination charging. Or not if it's a remote cabin, but then EVs aren't for you. Don't get me wrong, I'v
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I mean 2-3 times a month - usually weekends. Maybe visiting family (150+ miles one way). Hybrid vehicles are there, but EVs average around 80+ miles per charge. And adding 30 minutes or more to a 3 hour trip just to sit and wait on a recharge is just not small to me. Driving 10 hours for a vacation, because it's still way cheaper than 2 plane tickets would be something like 8 or 9 recharges in one day. I don't think I could keep my sanity. I also don't like driving someone else's car, and I don't thin
Re:It's about landmass (Score:4, Insightful)
And somehow, those five people always have enough time to be available to poo-poo on any Internet thread discussing EVs :-)
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Good point... you could have charged your EV three times in the time you've spent telling me you don't have time to charge EVs.
Plug-in Hybrid, solution solved (Score:5, Informative)
I've owned a Chevy Volt for over 3 years now. In the warmer summer months, (I'm in Canada), the small battery supplies pretty much 100% of all my power needs. In the winter or if I decide to go long distance once a year, it switches to gas usage seamlessly. It's really too bad folks see it only as EV or only as gas. It's essentially both without compromise. So you charge it when you don't want to use gas and you can use gas when you need the distance or heat.
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Over 80% of Americans live in urban areas. That's roughly similar to France and Spain, and only slightly lower than the UK, and in fact higher than Germany. It's also far far higher than the percentage of the Chinese population living in urban capita.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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People aren't statistics. 80% of Americans living in urban areas mean that the other 20% are REALLY spread out. I'm not sure what that proves.
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What it proves is that the US has urbanization demographics roughly similar to other developed nations, thus making the argument that the US is somehow extra special a little absurd. China's urbanization hasn't even reached 60% yet, and yet it is pushing towards electric vehicles.
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China's urbanization hasn't even reached 60% yet, and yet it is pushing towards electric vehicles.
China has 64 cities with over 1 million people; the US has 10. China has 1.35 billion total people; the US 320 million. The US is slightly larger than China in land mass.
I do not think your "urbanization" percentage means what you think it means.
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How many suburbs are so far away that newer EVs can't make the drive without a charge? Seriously, you're reaching very hard to try to justify continuing use of gasoline-burning vehicles where that justification is shrinking rapidly.
And no one says that all uses of gasoline or diesel vehicles are out, or that EVs are for everyone, but if urbanization is your argument, it's absurd. According to this site [wnyc.org], average commute times in the United States are 25.4 minutes.
You don't live on ur use 99.9% of that landmass (Score:2, Informative)
Most of you live in cities, more densely populated than in Europe. So the size of that country is really extremely unimportant.
Hire a petrol car for long journeys. Given your pitiful excuse for holiday allowance over there, you can't afford the time to drive long distances anyway, so you fly internal. Where you can't take your car on in the overhead locker.
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http://www.ancientrails.com/wp... [ancientrails.com]
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That's sad. There's a whole world out there.
Renting a gas car works if you have the forethought to reserve, maybe. And it would have to be relatively rare (not every 2-3 weeks). But if it gets to the point that nobody has a gas vehicle at home, those weekend rental prices will skyrocket. The only reason rental cars are even relatively affordable is because they get driven on weekdays too.
And if you are renting very often, it would be cheaper to buy a 2nd vehicle. Hence my original wording.
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A car costs $300-$400 per month until you pay it off (especially if you include maintenance), that tends to be more than my typical business travel car rental.
My household has a single (gasoline) vehicle, the few times we really need a second car for around the town we use Uber, still cheaper than owning a second car.
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As you just said, it's cheaper still to just own one gasoline-powered car, which was my point.
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Agreed. Also paying a premium for a hybrid or electric car can buy a LOT of gasoline for a high mileage Honda Civic or Toyota Corolla, etc. I doubt if one would break even during the lifetime of most of the cars. There would be a few exceptions but very few.
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An electric vehicle only works as a primary vehicle if you rarely leave a major metro area.
Or that there are better options than cars for leaving your living metro area, like trains and bullet trains everywhere (plus cheap taxis in China), so that's what you do when you have to go further.
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That's what you do if you leave one metro area to go to another. That's not realistic for going from one semi-rural area to another, with not even an Interstate highway between. Or from one metro area to a rural area.
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If you switch to electric, though, you can change the back end. improve the battery technology, replace coal with solar, but with ICE you pollute 24/7 .
Re:It's about landmass (Score:4, Funny)
but with ICE you pollute 24/7 .
You need to get out of your car more.
Re:It's about landmass (Score:4, Informative)
They also tend to be far more polluting that a gas powered car. From the production of the batteries to the coal fired power plant that generates the electricity.
Every time you say this I will shock you through your keyboard, but with a minimum of CO2. From the Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
Even when the power is generated using fossil fuels, electric vehicles usually, compared to gasoline vehicles, show significant reductions in overall well-wheel global carbon emissions due to the highly carbon-intensive production in mining, pumping, refining, transportation and the efficiencies obtained with gasoline.
They even have a dandy little chart with Tailpipe and total CO2 produced for electric and gasoline cars.
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Re:It's about landmass (Score:5, Informative)
Have you actually calculated the amount of CO2 released per distance traveled for a car powered by gasoline, versus one powered by electricity from a coal plant? If so, I'd be genuinely interested in comparing notes. If not, please sit down and do a quick calculation before claiming electric cars "tend to be far more polluting."
Here's my (admittedly rough) calculation:
Gasoline:
Approximately 9.5 L/100km (average for 2015 model year)
times 2.31 kg CO2 emitted per L gasoline burned
= 21.9 kg CO2 per 100 km traveled
Electric:
17.9 kWh/100km (for the 70 kWh Tesla Model S)
divided by 80% wall charger efficiency (Tesla claims 95%, some users report 80%)
times 0.527 kg CO2 per kWh (EPA average, includes line losses)
= 11.8 kg CO2 per 100 km traveled
Mind you, we're unfairly penalizing the electric car here because we're counting transmission losses over the power grid, whereas we're only counting the emissions from the gasoline already in the tank. A fairer comparison would take into account the carbon involved with gasoline distribution, but that goes beyond something I can easily estimate.
I'll admit I'm not factoring in the environmental impact of battery manufacturing. (I suspect it isn't as bad as the anti-EV crowd claim, since lithium isn't a heavy metal.) Perhaps someone more informed than me can speak to the overall impact of manufacturing an electric versus gasoline car... I'd be interested in reading their insights.
Re:It's about landmass (Score:4, Informative)
You want me to connect dots for you? Adding a half hour for charging for every couple hours of driving is not a small time sink.
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You're going to need to have something to eat and a bathroom break anyway - and that's only if you're in a mode of a very long trip. Most people don't drive several hours each day in a continuous trip - they go somewhere because they're going to do something there, so their car can charge while they do whatever they need to do. There's a few people who don't fall into that category, it's true - I guess for that small amount of people, electric cars aren't the answer. They are also fairly expensive at the mo
Re: It's about landmass (Score:4, Insightful)
You can drive 250 miles in two hours?
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Because where I work, there's already competition and dick-waggling ("well, I'm a DIRECTOR") among the five electric car owners to score the four available electric spots.
I've got kids and meetings and places to be. I don't have the time or patience for the hassle of fighting for a spot and babysitting my car, so my entry into the fully electric car market will probably have to wait until recharging is as convenient as the five minutes a week I spend refu
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Because you can't recharge an electric car? Without defining your argument it's hard to put any stock in your comment. Come back when you put more thought into it.
Sure you can. But there are far fewer spots where you can recharge them, and then there's the cases where assholes just leave their cars for a few hours and clog up the spots for other people. Then there's the lack of places you can charge within the vehicles range, and it kinds goes on from there.
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The large majority of Canada's populace live in urban centers (81%).
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/table... [statcan.gc.ca]
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But as soon as you get out of one of those urban center, you probably need to drive 2~4 hours to get to another urban center.
Re:It's about landmass (Score:5, Insightful)
I live on Vancouver Island. The distance to the nearest large urban center is an hour's drive, and it's a drive I make maybe every three or four weeks. In fact, to get to Vancouver, in actual "driving" terms (ie. not riding a ferry) is about an hour and a half. Yes, if you live in Prairies, the drive between, say, Edmonton and Calgary is pretty long, but really, what percentage of the Canadian population do you imagine makes that trip on a regular basis?
Once again we see people trying to argue against EV's based on driving patterns that only a pretty small fraction of the population actually partake of.
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I was thinking of the distance between, say, Montréal and Québec city, or Montréal and Ottawa, etc.
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And how many people who live in that region of Canada drive that route with any regularity, as a percentage of overall population of the region? Just how common do you imagine your commute scenario to be?
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It's probably a daily drive for some people, a weekly drive for others, a monthly drive for a few, etc.
I'm not anti-electric by any mean, but we do have to admit that we have to drive a lot between major cities.
Me? I could probably charge an electric car with a small 50km range only once a week and be more than okay. But I'm not going to pay 20K$+ for such a car.
Re:It's about landmass (Score:5, Insightful)
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I was thinking of the distance between, say, Montréal and Québec city, or Montréal and Ottawa, etc.
Will Quebecois electricity even work with electric cars from other provinces?
Re:It's about landmass (Score:5, Informative)
I live in Calgary, I drive a Tesla.
I regularly make trips to Vancouver, Kelowna, Merritt, etc. all of which are hundreds of km away and require recharging.
If you don't think an EV can be used in Canada you're living in the past.
Re:It's about landmass (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is actively taking your gasoline driven car away. If you really need it, keep it. But for the largest part of the population, it might make sense to drive an electric car most of the year, and only for the few long trips into sparsely populated regions, they can rent a gasoline powered one.
Your argument is akin to arguing that cars are not usable for anybody, because there are some people living on small islands who need a boat to get somewhere else, or because once in a while, you need to go by airplane, because it would take too long to drive from New York City to Seattle. Yes, there are special cases, when a car is not a good solution. For those cases, we have other solutions. But that doesn't mean that we have to abandon cars. People living on small islands will not be frequent car customers. So what?
The same can be said for electric cars. Yes, there are special cases where they aren't a good solution. But for most people in most cases, they are. And for special needs, there are special transportation means you can use -- be it a gasoline powered car, a train, an airplane, a boat or a bicycle. It doesn't mean that you have to own all of them.
Re: (Score:2)
Everything I'm seeing in the way of urbanization, population density and commute statistics suggests that EVs would work in the large majority of scenarios in North America and Europe. Yes, there are outliers, and certainly there are scenarios that Americans regularly partake in which will push past EV limits, but to base an entire transportation strategy on scenarios that are either infrequent or in a very sharp minority seems utterly illogical to me. Simply put, most people do not drive hundreds of miles
Re: (Score:3)
Re:"Lags" (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine - cancel all oil subsidies first please. They outstrip EV subsidies by a large margin. Add in the cost of pollution and damage done to people, and determine the new price at the pump. Then see how much you like paying for gas.