Global Shift To Clean Energy Means Fossil Fuel Demand Will Peak Soon, IEA says (npr.org) 176
Demand for climate-warming fuels like coal, oil and natural gas will likely peak before 2030, evidence of the accelerating global shift to energy that doesn't emit greenhouse gasses, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA)'s World Energy Outlook. From a report: "The transition to clean energy is happening worldwide and it's unstoppable. It's not a question of 'if', it's just a matter of 'how soon' -- and the sooner the better for all of us," said Fatih Birol, IEA executive director, in a statement. The agency represents countries that make up more than 80% of global energy consumption. The annual IEA report estimates that in 2030 there will be 10 times as many electric vehicles on the road worldwide and 50% of the cars sold in the United States will be electric. The agency says solar panels installed across the globe will generate more electricity at the end of the decade than the U.S. power system produces now. And the report projects that renewable energy will supply 50% of the world's electricity needs, up from about 30% now.
But the report warns the pace of the transition will have to quicken considerably in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and avoid some of the worst case scenarios in a changing climate. The IEA's outlook lays out a strategy for meeting that goal that includes tripling renewable energy, doubling energy efficiency measures and slashing methane emissions from fossil fuel operations by 75% by 2030. Methane has more than 25 times the climate-warming potential of carbon dioxide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Climate and anti-fossil fuel groups say the IEA's methane strategy should be even more aggressive.
But the report warns the pace of the transition will have to quicken considerably in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and avoid some of the worst case scenarios in a changing climate. The IEA's outlook lays out a strategy for meeting that goal that includes tripling renewable energy, doubling energy efficiency measures and slashing methane emissions from fossil fuel operations by 75% by 2030. Methane has more than 25 times the climate-warming potential of carbon dioxide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Climate and anti-fossil fuel groups say the IEA's methane strategy should be even more aggressive.
Really? I only 7 years...? (Score:3, Interesting)
I dunno...I don't see that happening.
Even today, EV sales are stagnating....with EV's sitting on the lots.
The demand has dropped overall, and there are even people that went EV that found them to be a hassle for refueling that are upon trade in, going more for hybrid, or even ICE.
Interesting video on CNBC about this. [youtu.be]
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You ain't wrong. Only reason I bought mine is I literally got it for half the price since it's been sitting for years (and used as a loan car) by the dealership, they can't get rid of them.
And the solar image is SOOO painted. Here they have raised solar tax now, and for cars they've taken away all subsidies, and not only that, cars cost pretty much the same they did 5 years ago, people simply can't afford it (not talking about Norway here, since their gov. basically subsidise electric cars), but ours.. and
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The best part of the Norway thing is that it's basically 5 million people sitting on an oilfield...which they export so they can pretend to be green at home.
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Re:Really? I only 7 years...? (Score:5, Informative)
and the electric companies are now adding "surprise" electric car tax on people charging at home because of peak loads "Detected".
You want to toss out a citation for this claim? I've never lived anywhere in the US that forces residential customers into a time of use (TOU) plan. You can opt into them if they make sense for you, they frequently do if you're able to load shift, but even California doesn't force you into a TOU tariff. I've lived in red states, blue states, hyper-regulated markets, lightly-regulated ones, and I have never seen what you're claiming.
Worth considering: Many jurisdictions offer a separate EV charging tariff. If you're willing to invest in the required infrastructure to host a second meter, exclusively for EV charging, you can get better pricing, both on tariff and on any associated taxes/fees from the government.. It also allows you to use a TOU tariff for the EV charger (unless you work 2nd/3rd shift you can probably charge overnight rather than during peak hours) while keeping your house on a non-TOU rate, or the inverse if that makes sense for you.
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DTE just forced it on their customers this year in South Eastern Michigan. They previously had an Opt-In thing, but pushed this through with no ability to Opt-Out.
https://www.mlive.com/news/202... [mlive.com]
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I guess there's always the exception to the rule. That doesn't seem to have a whole lot to do with the GP's claim that it's forced on you after they see you charging an EV though....
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You want to toss out a citation for this claim? I've never lived anywhere in the US that forces residential customers into a time of use (TOU) plan.
San Diego. Here you really don't want to use electricity from 4 PM to 9 PM. Which is when everyone gets home from work and wants to cook dinner, run the dishwasher, and do a load of laundry. Oh, and charge their car.
20 years ago when SDG&E forced smart meters on us they said it would cut costs. I and anyone else who had 2 brain cells to rub together knew TOU wasn't far away.
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San Diego. Here you really don't want to use electricity from 4 PM to 9 PM. Which is when everyone gets home from work and wants to cook dinner, run the dishwasher, and do a load of laundry. Oh, and charge their car.
Why would they want to charge their car between 4 PM and 9 PM? They should set it to start charging at 10 PM.
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The TOU stuff is, so far at least, easy to win on even without an all electric house. Our major electric consumers are the drier and A/C, everything else is gas. Our savings with TOU are pretty minuscule, close to nothing ($2 to $3) in the winter when the drier is the only major consumer, more but nothing to get excited about ($5 to $10) in the summer months with A/C in play, and we've never "lost" money on the TOU rate compared to non-TOU.
All we do is avoid using A/C and the drier during peak hours (5PM
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Because without the TOU why bother scheduling your charging?
I was responding to a description of San Diego's (alleged) mandatory TOU tariff.
Easiest thing to do it just plug it in and start charging it when you get home from work
Of course you just plug it in when you get home. But you set the car not to start charging until after peak time.
, plus then you've toped up your charge if you plan some other trips in the evening after work
If you actually need to charge because you're going somewhere else, it's trivial to override the charging schedule. But this isn't 2013. EVs have big enough batteries that unless you're going on a road trip just charging overnight is plenty for daily use and in practice you never need to worry about charging enough fo
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Re: Really? I only 7 years...? (Score:2)
I didnâ(TM)t see where OP states this is the US. These shenanigans are happening in the EU as well as Michigan, New York and California as the grid is incapable of keeping up with even a decreased demand when switching to so-called green energy, so they should really build more gas/coal peaker plants, instead they put the entire grid on rolling brownout plans and de-incentivize the use of rooftop solar.
The Netherlands is now planning on taxing the solar you produce at home to help offset the incredible
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Interesting video, thank you.
I think the guy at the end hit the issue perfectly, every automaker is launching EV's at the 50-60K price range which is well saturated at this point and many people (myself included) are just not willing to throw down that type of money.
EV's today do absolutely have some tradeoffs especially in regards to peoples locale and living situations. Those tradeoffs look a lot different when a car is $30k versus $60k
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If they can get the EVs to be more in line with current range and refueling times as current IC
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The ranges for most of these EV's are 300+ miles which I think is good enough for most people. Refueling times just by the nature of physics and chemistry wont be nearing just pumping gas but the fact of at-home charging balances that out quite a bit, of course, that's *if* you can do at home charging. That's why the price is so critical, for a $50k price sticker some people aren't willing to make those small concessions. Prices always get put into the calculus of what people are willing to put up with.
I
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The thing is...that is a big IF that I think a lot of people pushing EVs either ignore or forget about.
I don't know for sure, but I would guess that the majority of folks living in the US are NOT in single family dwellings that they own with off street parking where they can readily install a charging station and charge overnight.
I would guess (and I may be wrong)..that the majority of those living in the US may:
1. Rent a house, and you cannot just
Re:Really? I only 7 years...? (Score:4, Informative)
There are some things in it's favor though.
A majority of Americans (quick search shows it at 60%+) do in fact live in single family dwellings and another big chunk live in non-apartment multi family homes (like townhouses). I mean, the 'burbs are a big big part of America.
Landlords who own single family homes to rent will have some incentive to install chargers, especially in a garage and especially if its a newer home as it likely has the electrical in place already or close to it. The charger itself is not the expense here, it's the electrical work and that can be very variable to the house and the placement. Even a 120V outlet can work reasonably well as an overnight charger, we are not talking about DC chargers here, I can buy a level-2 AC charger form Home Depot for $280. It's really more about having a non-street parking location which most single and multifamily homes have outside of the major metro centers.
Also to be fair people who are living in their cars are likely nmot really the merket demographic for an EV. This sounds like a "San Francisco only" problem, the Tesla owner who can't afford a place to live...
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Many (most?) townhouses will need electrical upgrades to charge at home. Even today they're being built with 100 amp service around here since the heat is natural gas.
Or if the parking is on strata land instead of yours it's not up to you as to how or when a charger gets installed nearby.
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Townhomes also have larger main feeds that are split off into each unit, more like an apartment building than a single family home. The chargers don't necessarily have to tap off the dwelling circuits, especially if it's part of a larger complex and the idea for the owners to charge for the usage. Also 100A service is going the wayside in new construction more and more as natural gas capacity does not get expand, almost all new homes in the US come with AC installed as much and things like heatpumps (and
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Many (most?) townhouses will need electrical upgrades to charge at home.
Not really. At home I just charge on 120V AC. The average person just doesn't drive that much that you need heavy-duty 100 amp service.
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Even today they're being built with 100 amp service around here since the heat is natural gas.
A 100 amp service isn't ideal but it can still accommodate an EV. Our 100 amp service accommodates an electric drier + A/C. Since the rest of our appliances are natural gas (not sure why someone skipped on a gas drier when using gas for cooking, water, and space heating, but whatever) we have ample available amperage. We could probably do a 50 amp EV charger w/o issue, but a 30 would be on the safer side, and still plenty fast enough for most use cases.
We'd only outgrow it in the two EV scenario if unab
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Rent a house, and you cannot just install charging stations in places you do not own...and even if you get permissions from landlord, you likely will have to leave it when you move.
What makes you think an EV charging station has to be permanently installed? There are options that plug into outlets just like any other appliance. That's like saying you have to leave the drier or fridge that you paid for with the landlord if you move out.
Were I so inclined, our electric dryer lives in the garage, and with zero landlord approval required I could unplug it in favor of an EV charger. Telsa has a mobile connector [tesla.com] for this exact scenario. It even works (albeit at a glacial charging pace)
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Even just a portable (Level 1) charger (attached to a beefy extension cord [amazon.com] if you park on the street) gives you 3-5 miles of range per hour of charge. 12 hours of that each night is enough for many commutes.
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Is it realistic to expect someone to roll out and extension cord all the way from the house, across the lawn, sidewalk, etc to the car at night...and then roll it back up and put away every morning before work?
This isn't even considering the hazard of someone tripping over it at night, etc
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My father does it so he doesn't have to clean out the garage or get a Level 2 charger installed. He likes the EV because he no longer has to visit the gas station or get oil changes, so it's still a good tradeoff for him.
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Your father runs an extension cord out to the street? I've never lived anywhere that wouldn't eventually get you into trouble with the local authorities. If you're doing it on your own property, whatever, like a vehicle in the driveway of a home without a garage, or a garage you don't want to clean out, but for street parking? You're gonna run a cord out to the street, across the sidewalk, and just hope that nobody messes with it or (America being America) trips and sues you?
I think back to my apartment
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Even just a portable (Level 1) charger (attached to a beefy extension cord [amazon.com] if you park on the street) gives you 3-5 miles of range per hour of charge. 12 hours of that each night is enough for many commutes.
Beyond a long 10/3 cord being expensive enough to be a theft target, around here it is a bylaw infraction to lay cords across the sidewalk, which people sometimes do for their block heaters when it is really cold out. Apart from the obvious trip hazard for pedestrians which could get you sued, if it snows and covers the cord the sidewalk plow may take it away and damage your house and/or your car doing so. I used to drive a sidewalk plow many decades ago and cut many tangled cords out of my tracks. If yo
Re: Really? I only 7 years...? (Score:2)
The true cost of EV is not just the car but also the infrastructure to support it. You need a dedicated spot at home (adds cost to a home) to charge (220V/50A from the breaker box to your spot = $5-15k electrician and construction costs) and you then also need to have the power supply (given we also need a 25kW budget for heat pump+ backup heat, another 5kW for instant water heater and another 5kW for an electric range) we are quickly running into asking your power company to go to a business-grade connecti
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Many places I've lived did not have off street parking.
And even now...that the current place I reside does....it is only regular household voltage (120V?)...
I'd have to get a lot set up to run 240V out there and that area is a brick exterior wall....so, would be a big PITA to set that up on first observation of my current situation.
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This is very wrong. By 2035 it will be illegal to sell combustion vehicles in 2 of the largest car markets in the world.
More EV's are produced now so there is more inventory. The dealers are the problem with EV sales.
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I'm guessing when we get "close" to 2035...and the infrastructure is still not significantly better than now, and the EVs are MUCH cheaper and have ICE comparable range, that the citizens aren't going to stand up for it, and well....the govt officials will kick the can further down the road.
They may want to be green, but they value their jobs more than they value being green.
And too...I
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"Even today, EV sales are stagnating....with EV's sitting on the lots"
Elon/Tesla has been predicting they alone will be selling ~20 million EVs annually by 2030.
I 1st spotted this in the Introduction of their 2020 Impact Report
https://www.tesla.com/ns_video... [tesla.com]
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Or when he said in 2016 full self-driving would be available and made people pay thousands of dollars for that privilege which still hasn't come to fruition.
When Space-X owner uses the word "launch" (Score:2)
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One interesting statistic was that for all the doom and gloom about EV having a slump is that EVs in this 'bad' state was still 8% of sales. This seems a potentially viable trajectory to get to 50% of new car sales in 7 years.
We are still waiting to see the manufacturers get significant selection out under $30k. Particularly in a "we might be in tricky economic times" context, the $30k+ segment I imagine to be particularly challenging. I could imagine that at least *new* cars to get to a 50/50 split.
As a
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I admit, it is only a single data point.
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I can believe it though, in the right neighborhood with the right demographic that is a very appealing factor. Be interested to know if the charging is part of the rent or is it pay-to-charge because that factor makes it appealing to developers as well, you have an entire money making center in a parking lot that would otherwise be a cost center.
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I can believe it though, in the right neighborhood with the right demographic that is a very appealing factor. Be interested to know if the charging is part of the rent or is it pay-to-charge because that factor makes it appealing to developers as well, you have an entire money making center in a parking lot that would otherwise be a cost center.
I don't know how the infrastructure is done in building, but the sign out front did say EV charging possible in every parking space. The building I work in have just added a bunch more EV charging spaces in the parking lot. Makes sense as it is an ongoing revenue stream for the building owners.
My next vehicle will be an EV, but that is still a few years off.
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Interesting that it is sold as "possible" so I guess they probably ran wires to each spot but probably didn't connect them and/or install a charger yet? Lean on the tenant for that when requested? Good thinking through as just running the wires is a good bulk of the cost.
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There's a LOT of people out h
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Who's going to want to pay to tear up all that paved lot area and install 100's of chargers?
The landlords, if there is a demand from tenants to have chargers and the fact that they can charge the tenants for the power used to charge. Long term that could make them more money. The critical mass has to be there though so currently we are in this weird lurch with not enough demand for the capital investment of renovation.
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Yep while reading your post I was thinking "chicken and the egg" type thoughts....
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Currently, the strategy for the broad chicken and egg is some incentives being thrown around. Unfortunately, the incentives seem to keep imagining "gas == electric" model and we think we need more gas-station style EV chargers, which are nice to have in a pinch if you have EV on a rare long haul trip, but suck so much harder than residential electric charging or gas pumps. 98% of EV driving would likely be covered if you waved a magic wand and everyone had residential charging available, with the DCFC sta
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It's tricky though.
On the one hand, they could probably charge a 2x premium over residential rates.
On the other hand, even with that, each charge-enabled spot would probably have to replenish 30,000 miles of range before it is break even, unless you charge a large 'sign up' fee to defray the up front cost. At 3x residential rates, you'd get to a breakeven of 15,000 miles but start creeping into being as expensive as refueling a gas vehicle, at least in my region.
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That's pretty variable to the amount of work involved though, these aren't DC fast chargers being installed but pretty basic AC chargers which are really just a relay with some other bits attached to them. Most of the cost is going to be in pulling electrical to the locations. What's the cost you are using to calculate that 15-30k?
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I was thinking:
-About $1k per spot (an EVSE + labor + running wire/conduit/potentially breaking concrete). I think this is on the cheap side, but maybe economies of scale with a few dozen to bring it down to 1k
-Assuming they could reasonably get away with a 0.10 $/kwh premium for charging
-About 3 miles/kwh (roughly where a lot of EVs sit)
$1k / 0.10 * 3 == 30k
If they can do a 0.20 $/kwh premium, then 15k miles, however at that point at least in my area you start touching price parity with efficient gas vehi
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Interesting, thank you for doing the math.
I wonder if assuming having an EV charge spot is a "premium" feature when renting if that can also factor into. Most apartments near me now have a few spots for EV charging so I have to assume those people pay something extra for usage.
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"Lots of people (especially in older cities) have homes or rent homes that do not have off street parking at all. So, what do you do there?"
What do they do now, when they don't have a place to plug in the block heater overnight, and it gets down to 20 below zero?
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What's a block heater?
And whatever it is....it doesn't get that cold here....?
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"Lots of people (especially in older cities) have homes or rent homes that do not have off street parking at all. So, what do you do there?"
What do they do now, when they don't have a place to plug in the block heater overnight, and it gets down to 20 below zero?
Whatever they do, they should do it carefully.
https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org]
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Tricky one here, you have a bit of a chicken and egg going.
I'm going to be renting, so I'll just buy a gas car because it's too hard to find a place with EV charging.
I'm not going to provide charging, all the prospective tenants have gas cars.
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That doesn't mean US buyers are giving up on EV shopping entirely. Data from Recurrent shows that demand for used EVs is up. The used BEV market is outpacing even the most popular new EVs, like Tesla's Model 3, and the reason behind this is pricing, naturally. The average price for a used EV is $27,800, down 32% year-over-year.
Like most things, it seems the price out the door and the consumer expectation for price are not aligned. So while the sales are slow, the used market is quite hot for EVs. Additionally, you'll notice sales for PHEVs and HEVs [bloomberg.com], especially the HEVs, are pretty hot.
So there absolutely is a demand for EVs of one type or another. It's just the BEV production is just not aligned with what consumers are willing to pay at this time. This is likely the source of what you're seeing. But Hybrids, I see a ton of t
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Really? So why are hybrid minivans at the same price they've been at for years, as much or more as new?
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Cars stay on the road for about 12 years, often passing through multiple owners in its life. Even if we only sold EVs from now on will mean that there will be a lot of ICE vehicles on the road for many many years to come.
That we'll see a huge uptick in the number of EVs sold is pretty obvious. But 10 times a small number is still a small number. It's a pretty reasonable prediction.
As for recharging being a hassle? I don't really agree. I've rented EVs and it was a hassle for me, because I had no charging st
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"EV sales surged 49.8% compared to last year, increasing 5% from the 298,039
sold in Q2. "
https://electrek.co/2023/10/12... [electrek.co]
It will be interesting to see oil drop in price (Score:2)
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Assuming this article is true, at some point the oil producers will have to switch tactics from "we've decided to cut production, pay up bitches" to "look how cheap our oil is, you don't need to switch to electric".
I don't always agree with Gwynne Dyer, but he made that same point recently.
"The authors of the paper calculated that Saudi Arabia could earn $1.7 trillion before demand completely dries up if it goes the ‘fire sale’ route, compared to only $1.3 trillion if it cooperates with all the non-Arab members of the OPEC cartel and tries to hold oil and gas prices up."
https://gwynnedyer.com/2023/gu... [gwynnedyer.com]
A wise man once said (Score:3)
If you think the middle east is a mess now, just wait until we don't need their oil.
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Do you think anyone will care, if we don't need their oil? The Middle East has been a mess since before Islam split, and nobody really cared until after WWI.
Market backlash (Score:2)
Does anyone know of any studies that have modeled the price of consumer fuel as the adoption of EVs increase? I have been curious about that for a while now.
In a simplistic view, if demand at the pump collapses because everyone (say 50%+) is driving EVs, I would expect the price to collapse. Would we see sub-$1/gal gasoline price again?
If so, then you would see a reduced demand for EV cars. ICE cars would become much more competitive than they are now.
I don't see how it plays out.
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Re:Market backlash (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not an economist, but...
Oil producers have a $/barrel below which it's uneconomical to get oil out of the ground. E.g. the Saudis can pump oil out at $2.80/barrel according to a Yahoo article I just googled up. (It's not quite that simple: production cost is one thing, but countries that fund themselves by oil production have other expenditures that need to be covered by the sale of their oil, so the market $/barrel they need to cover their budget requirements is much higher... but you get the idea.)
As demand falls, that puts downward pressure on price, but as prices fall those producers with a higher $/barrel will exit the market, so supply will fall too, which puts an upward pressure on price. There's also Jevons Paradox, whereby efficiencies which mean less oil is needed will actually mean more rather than less oil is used.
So I don't think oil will ever be dirt cheap, there will be some equilibrium price which is lower than it is today but not crazy low.
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I'm not an economist, but... Oil producers have a $/barrel below which it's uneconomical to get oil out of the ground.
That varies from site to site.
If the price of oil drops, they will stop producting at the wells that have the higher cost to pump it out of the ground, but keep producing from the walls that have low cost to pump it out of the ground.
Main use of oil? We burn it. (Score:3)
The part you get wrong is your answer to the question you pose here:
But what about the main use of oil?
Easy question to answer. The main use of oil is fuel.
All other uses put together don't come close to the amount of oil we simply burn up. Plastics are a mere 400 million tons per year-- sounds like a lot, right? Millions of tons! But fossil fuel production is measured in the billions of tons.
Numbers are important.
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Oil companies can definitely tank their prices to convince people to hold onto their ICE vehicles longer or to simply not go pure battery electric EV. Especially with the cost of electricity surging (providers need to build the safe infrastructure necessary to fuel all these new EVs), the best strategy Big Oil can implement is to change from miles per gallon to "Dollars per Mile" and fight the battle on price. Try some California energy prices in this exercise:
Toyota Prius
* $5.00/gallon gasoline
* Fuel Effic
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Especially with the cost of electricity surging (providers need to build the safe infrastructure necessary to fuel all these new EVs)
Not to mention the backup infrastructure to provide power when the 'clean green renewable' generation isn't; all of the "renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels" rhetoric still doesn't account for the cost of providing 24/7/365 dispatchable power in the face of night-time, overcasts, a week or more of calm, and other conditions that tank renewable production.
Re:Market backlash -- Chargers (Score:2)
EV sales will plateau around at around 15% of all consumer vehicles on the road (regional average) simply because safe public charging doesn't exist for the TENS OF MILLIONS of renter households that don't have the option to charge at home. If you can't charge at home and you don't have a safe and convenient public charging option, you don't go EV. Period.
I'm curious about that 15% number and where it comes from.
What it reminds me of is the adoption profile of 802.11 wireless access. It used to be rare and "precious" in that you had to pay for it if it was accessible at all. Today, you can get WiFi nearly anywhere. Even if you happen to be in a zone where all access is restricted, you can almost always fall back to your personal hotspot using LTE or 5G. We have access and ease of use that was unthinkable not that long ago. The transition was faster
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Nuclear (Score:2)
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Peak oil (Score:3)
Haha. Peak oil has been predicted more often than fusion breakthroughs.
Re:Everyone Saw The Reality (Score:5, Informative)
I support your decision to buy whatever you like in the market, though my experience is different than what you describe.
I paid less than 1/2 that ($40k) in March 2018 (more than five years ago) and have had no failure (though my range has decreased about 10%). Doing the math, assuming 75 mph, 2 hours is 150 miles. At 0.250 kWh/mi (what my car uses), that is 37.5 kWh. If it takes 16 hours to charge 37.5 kWh, then the person would be charging at approx 2.3 kW. Most home chargers are 3x that and most fast chargers are between 25x and 100x that rate.
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Most home chargers are 3x that and most fast chargers are between 25x and 100x that rate.
They actually go higher than that, I've seen up to 350kW claimed on paper. Regarding that, I seriously question if the electric grid is ready to handle it at scale. I shudder to think of the hit to the grid if every use of a gas pump represented a 350kW spike in demand. It won't be a 1 to 1 replacement, many people will be able to charge at the lower "home" speeds, but if EVs are ever going to be useful for road trips, cross country moves, etc., we'll need a decent fast charging infrastructure and I'm
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I did use the term 'transmission where I meant to use 'distribution' -- thank you for catching that *facepalm*
If you can overtime the technical challenges -- and I have no doubt you can, although, NIMBYism is going to be a problem -- we're still far removed from standard services/tariffs when we get into the energy demand for just one of these chargers, never mind a service station full of them. The applicable tariff from my utility, "Large Nonresidential Standard Service (201 - 4000kW)" includes:
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Most of the stuff in your car won't last 10 years. Dumb comment is dumb.
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LOL. Guy who has never owned old vehicles.
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Old vehicles are the ultimate survivorship bias though, you obviously only see the ones that made it and that gives the impression that "older cars were made better" when reality is average vehicles lifespan in the US is 12 years and millions upon millions end up in the scrap heap every year, especially in the northern half of the country where many cars are doomed to less than a decade due to salt and snow for half the year.
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100% agree, i've owned about 4 cars from the 1980's in my life and they were all pretty shit in terms of reliability.
For every Gen-3 Camaro and Foxbody Mustang we still see out there there's a million K cars and Chevy Corsicas that have long been melted back into i-beams.
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Most of the stuff in your car won't last 10 years.
I drive every day in an 18 years old car, which is doing just fine. What are you talking about ?
Time to build Nuclear power again! (Score:2)
Time to build Nuclear power again!
Re:Everyone Saw The Reality (Score:4, Informative)
"I am not paying $100k for a car that will fail in 5 years due to batteries"
If you're in the USA, the minimum federally-mandated EV battery warranty is 8 years
https://www.greencars.com/gree... [greencars.com]
Re:Everyone Saw The Reality (Score:5, Informative)
Well, don't pay $100k for an EV. I wouldn't pay $100k for any car, but I bought my EV.
If my car has a battery failure within 5 years, well, it should be warrantied fine. Ok, 10 years on, maybe I'll have an issue. Of course I'm no stranger to a 10 year old car being a money pit, I've had a couple of ICE cars, one from a notoriously reliable brand, turn into giant money pit of repairs.
For infrastructure, well, I can't honestly claim to know it can easily scale, but at least for now, I pull into my garage and every few days I think "guess I'll charge now" and plug it in and walk away to go about my life in my house. It's actually *less* intrusive than gas (having to navigate a crowded gas station, then stand in the heat or bitter cold while the pump fills my car, versus plug in and walk away in the comfort of my own garage). I'll confess I wouldn't know what I'd do if I didn't have my own garage with charging, that would potentially suck quite bad.
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I would posit that this is exactly the situation that most US citizens find themselves in...hence, at some point, demand for EVs saturates well before everyone has one.
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If my car has a battery failure within 5 years, well, it should be warrantied fine.
If you're lucky; the couple in Wales who discovered after driving their Tesla in heavy rain that water ingress to the battery was not covered under the battery's warranty [walesonline.co.uk] and were facing a £17,000 repair bill after waiting five hours for a Tesla Roadside Assistance to arrive when their car failed to start after they'd stopped for food have discovered otherwise to their chagrin. A repair bill a quarter the price of their car new is not something that you normally expect to face.
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I think they should sue Tesla for refusing to honor warranty. I don't think the mandatory warranty gets a 'no rain allowed' exemption. Well, at least in the US, don't know about UK.
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We do not have the infrastructure and we never will.
Nice to find somebody with perfect knowledge of the future!
What's your secret? Do you use a crystal ball? Tarot cards? Inside source at the Oracle at Delphi?
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LOL, clearly you did not read this article which talks about how China is screwing itself by building more coal plants.
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You mean article by the biased writer who didn't understand engineering reality? Same as you, they are building those plants for valid purpose, because green without energy storage won't always work.
Reality is a bitch, and she doesn't care if you're not in heat when she is.
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"how China is screwing itself by building more coal plants."
I'm not so sure. Are they screwing themselves or simply aggregately screwing everybody just a little bit more, with a huge benefit to them of extra power at cheap coal prices? It seems like they get more cheap electricity, their health goes down maybe a little depending on how dirty and how close they are to human population, we all get more CO2. As long as they can externalize the costs they can run quite a profit building more coal plants.
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... and slashing methane emissions from fossil fuel operations by 75% by 2030. Methane has more than 25 times the climate-warming potential of carbon dioxide, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Climate and anti-fossil fuel groups say the IEA's methane strategy should be even more aggressive.
It does have a higher climate effect, but it has an atmospheric lifetime of 7-12 years, while CO2 has a lifetime of hundreds of years. So methane warms the world in the short term, but CO2 is what's important long term.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital... [nasa.gov]
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Then, once it's done there, it turns into CO2 and starts that part of the cycle.
No, methane emissions matter.
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That is an incorrect statement, and hasn't been true for ages.
BEVs do have substantially higher upfront CO2 embodiment from their manufacture, but drastically lower emissions related to their use. Depending on what assumptions go into your model (vehicle size, operational lifespan, carbon inten
Re:In California.... (Score:5, Informative)
False. PG&E only serves northern California. Southern California is served by SCE and SDG&E.
They are warrantied for 25 years. Do you throw stuff out when the warranty expires?
False. Electric vehicles are around about 89% efficient. [motortrend.com] Diesel engines only achieve up to about 50% thermal efficiency, not counting drivetrain losses.
That depends on the region's energy mix. In a coal region, you're better off with a hybrid than either an EV or an ICE vehicle. In a renewables region, you're best with an EV.
Battery packs can be refurbished to extend their life without the need to recover the raw lithium. My last pure ICE car lasted 180,000 miles before the engine needed to be rebuilt or replaced due to loss of compression. It was regularly maintained. Speaking of which, EV cars don't need oil changes.
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False. Electric vehicles are around about 89% efficient. Diesel engines only achieve up to about 50% thermal efficiency, not counting drivetrain losses.
Invalid comparison. What is the efficiency of an EV from the point where the electricity is being generated to the power delivered to the road? 66% of the primary energy used to create electricity is wasted [enerdynamics.com] by the time it arrives at the customer. So your 89% efficiency is on 34% of the energy, dropping the overall efficiency to ~30%. Diesel engines may have only a 50% thermal efficiency, but that's based on 100% of the energy in their fuel.
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The ultimate efficiency metric is sunlight to torque, because even diesel fuel was once plant matter. Sunlight can charge EVs with about 20% efficiency [solar.com] in terms of watts per square meter, then 89% of that becomes torque as I explained above, for an overall efficiency of 17.8%.
In comparison, photosynthetic efficiency [wikipedia.org] is only about 3-6%, then you have to turn that into biodiesel and then it loses another 50% in the engine. Assuming no loss in converting plant matter into biodiesel and ignoring drivetrain loss
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Even if we tried really hard there is no way that could happen. If we started today with a 100% goal and every one on the planet said yes we are going to do this, it would take 30 years.
It's a long term problem. A long term solution is reasonable.