Battery based electric vehicles of today and tomorrow.

[SylvainG]

e-Bike a danger to pedestrians? Around here most pedestrian hits are by cars, as are most bicycle deaths.

There are more cars than e-bike. I bike now about 3,000 km per year (used to bike 10,000 km per year when commuting by bike) and you always have to watch for pedestrians (and dogs, specially with long leach!) on MUP because they can change direction without looking. Happens to me several times per year, even when ringing my bell to give them a heads up (specially when they're in group). An e-bike is heavier and not as maneuverable as a 15-20 lb bike. Get hit by one at 30+ MPH and you'll feel it.

 

[RoyJackson]

Everybody says" public transportation is so great for the environment but the reason only the ignorant push for it is the math doesn't work. The cost per seat mile is enormous. Smart politicians have figured out that public transportation costs a lot for the few votes it will buy.

What’s the cost of maintaining the present road transportation system compared to the cost of a designed public transportation system?

Biggest problem with public transportation is it's only efficient in high density populated areas...which is also where most pollution originates.
I see electric vehicles efficient in cities and, maybe, suburbs...but until the batteries' range is, at least, doubled, not in the rural areas.

 

[Jchonline]

We don't need to be in that big a hurry. The transition will take decades. As has been discussed, it will be 50 years before we're converted to majority EV use. That's longer than the service life of power plants. Even the Grand Coulee is over halfway through its design lifetime. We're going to have to replace 90% of our electrical generating capacity anyway.

I agree, but grow tired of hearing about EVs ad nauseum with no real plan for powering them. I suppose its par for the course lol.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Current policies of non energy independence drive the cost of fuel up as an incentive to move to EV's.
When fuel goes up in price, more money is being transferred. Large amounts of fuel are required in agriculture and manufacturing. When fuel prices rise, the cost of just about everything else rises also.

True. That is why food produced by fermentation in time will reduce the need for tractors, fuel and land for animal factories and row crops to feed the world.

Lab-grown food is about to destroy farming – and save the planet | George Monbiot

By then the fleets of self driving electric trucks can manage getting the food from labs to distribution.

 

[Jchonline]

Shopping centers don't produce coal sludge, toxic chemicals, plug up streams. No comparison. Dirty Coal has no future.

Yes but shopping centers displace wildlife, reduce foliage/tree density, and suck lots of electricity. Evil!

Biggest problem with public transportation is it's only efficient in high density populated areas...which is also where most pollution originates.
I see electric vehicles efficient in cities and, maybe, suburbs...but until the batteries' range is, at least, doubled, not in the rural areas.

Not just the battery's range, but the battery's range in varying weather conditions (very hot, very cold). Cold temps can double the discharge rate if the batteries are not actively heated (yes the newest Teslas have battery heaters built in). Hot temps make it harder to charge Lithium based batteries.

My number is 700 miles in extreme cold temps with the heater in the vehicle running while pulling just under CDL load. It needs to be better than ICE for me to make a move!

 

[MossRoad]

Insight: Rocking down to Electric Avenue? Good luck charging your car

European and U.S. cities planning to phase out combustion engines over the next 15 years first need to plug a charging gap for millions of residents who park their cars on the street.

www.reuters.com

 

[RoyJackson]

Yes but shopping centers displace wildlife, reduce foliage/tree density, and suck lots of electricity. Evil!



Not just the battery's range, but the battery's range in varying weather conditions (very hot, very cold). Cold temps can double the discharge rate if the batteries are not actively heated (yes the newest Teslas have battery heaters built in). Hot temps make it harder to charge Lithium based batteries.

My number is 700 miles in extreme cold temps with the heater in the vehicle running.

And trees absorb CO2.
The only advantage of shopping centers is they reduce the need from driving from store to store...that's it.
And, just as important to me, is since shopping centers are not normally built in lower populated areas, less likely to kill the "Ma and Pa" shops and ruin rural life.

Good point about battery life...as I'd written, good for urban transportation, but not much else.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Insight: Rocking down to Electric Avenue? Good luck charging your car

European and U.S. cities planning to phase out combustion engines over the next 15 years first need to plug a charging gap for millions of residents who park their cars on the street.

www.reuters.com

One thing that the author failed to mention was that car ownership in cities will drop like a rock due to self driving EVs serving as Robo taxies to your location on demand.

 

[RoyJackson]

One thing that the author failed to mention was that car ownership in cities will drop like a rock due to self driving EVs serving as Robo taxies to your location on demand.

I seriously doubt that...

 

[Jchonline]

One thing that the author failed to mention was that car ownership in cities will drop like a rock due to self driving EVs serving as Robo taxies to your location on demand.

As long as Apple can keep theirs from hitting curbs!

Apple Self-Driving Car Needed a Realignment After Clipping Curb in Autonomous Mode

One of Apple's self-driving test vehicles was involved in a minor incident on September 27, according to a filing made with the California DMV [PDF]. The self-driving vehicle, which was operating in autonomous mode at the time, clipped a curb while going 13 miles per hour. There was no damage...

www.macrumors.com

 

[kenmbz]

We used to have great electric public transport in many cities like NYC.
It was called a trolly, and they were put out of business by the car lobbies, and sometimes outright purchase and retire.

 

[RoyJackson]

We used to have great electric public transport in many cities like NYC.
It was called a trolly, and they were put out of business by the car lobbies, and sometimes outright purchase and retire.

There was also the "trackess trolleys":

Trackless Trolleys

Trackless trolleys in Waverley Square in Belmont. Note that unlike regular buses, trackless trolleys run on overhead wires like streetcars do.

www.bostonstreetcars.com

These were fairly common back in the late 50's through late 60's when I was growing up (suburb of Baltimore, MD). The advantage of these is no tracks required and the trolley could pull to the curb, rather than blocking traffic.
Cheap to ride, too!

 

[Larry Caldwell]

People buying ICE vehicles are still subsidizing people buying Teslas, due to government imposed regulations that require ICE vehicle manufacturers to purchase emission "credits" from EV manufacturers.

Tesla just recently showed their first annual profit, and even that was enabled by the flow of money from ICE manufacturers. Tesla has yet to manage to build cars for less money than they sell them.

I really appreciate the subsidies the gummint pours into ICE infrastructure. If it were not for the $billions a year they spend on material and fuel subsidies, I would be stuck at home a lot more.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

when i went to disney land. epcot, the exxon exhibit told me oil is from dinosaurs.

could both disney and exxon be lying to me?

Just simplifying for the dummies. For instance, the Permian Basin was laid down before dinosaurs evolved. Land animals at the time were amphibians and reptiles, but the oil was cooked from single celled ocean goo that was the bottom of the food chain at the time. Even more fossil fuels are from the Carboniferous era, the 60 million years before the Permian. Some of our deep natural gas may be remnants of the Earth's original methane atmosphere, before photosynthesis converted it to oxygen.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

My number is 700 miles in extreme cold temps with the heater in the vehicle running while pulling just under CDL load. It needs to be better than ICE for me to make a move!

Welcome to the world of minority living. I'm sure people will still be able to hook up their 5th wheel travel trailer and tour America, and your wintertime hobbies will be able to use the same hardware.

I expect economics to be the big driver of change. I have seen the price of fuel increase 15x in the last 50 years, and if it increases another 15x it will make most ICE applications impractical. Projections are that EVs will also be cheaper to manufacture, though I suspect manufacturers will load unnecessary features onto the car that they can overcharge for.

 

[SylvainG]

Everybody says" public transportation is so great for the environment but the reason only the ignorant push for it is the math doesn't work. The cost per seat mile is enormous. Smart politicians have figured out that public transportation costs a lot for the few votes it will buy.

What’s the cost of maintaining the present road transportation system compared to the cost of a designed public transportation system?

It's not uncommon to see buses here outside of rush hour to be almost empty, with just a few people (sometime just one) in it. They are also big buses, even the articulated one.

 

[Grumpycat]

a comment was made a while back that burning wood is carbon net zero because the tree had been capturing carbon it's entire life, just releasing what it had been saving.

can't the same logic be applied to oil and coal. coal is dead plant matter that had been saving carbon all its life and oil is dinosaurs which are also carbon life forms.

No because the "logic" is, "It is what we say it is. You are not allowed to question." Just as you are not allowed to question the evilness of CO2 which just so happens to be essential to their beloved ethanol production. See also: masks and vaccine mandates.

Same idiot logic claims there is no carbon emissions in ethanol because the carbon was previously captured by the growing of corn. But as you noted we live in a carbon cycle. Carbon in the atmosphere feeds plants. Plants make fuel, feed humans and other animals, which ultimately end up in the ground feeding plants.

Life on Earth can not exist without the carbon cycle.

 

[Jchonline]

It's not uncommon to see buses here outside of rush hour to be almost empty, with just a few people (sometime just one) in it. They are also big buses, even the articulated one.

The vast majority of busses in Colorado are empty most of the day.

 

[California]

There was also the "trackess trolleys":

Trackless Trolleys

Trackless trolleys in Waverley Square in Belmont. Note that unlike regular buses, trackless trolleys run on overhead wires like streetcars do.

www.bostonstreetcars.com

These were fairly common back in the late 50's through late 60's when I was growing up (suburb of Baltimore, MD). The advantage of these is no tracks required and the trolley could pull to the curb, rather than blocking traffic.

Electric buses are widely used in San Francisco. I expect the regenerative braking downhill pushes power into the grid.

Now they are upgrading the whole transit fleet with electric hybrid buses that can also run from an onboard battery. These will still run when the overhead power fails or the pantograph loses connection, issues which cause traffic disruption when a bus loses power in an intersection or corner. Spend some time in SF and you will eventually see the driver of an old-school electric bus out with his pole reconnecting to the catenary.

Is it a bus or is it a trolley? New SF Muni fleet can go off-wire

Muni replaced its 40-foot trolley buses with a new generation that can run off-wire for...

www.sfchronicle.com

 

[Egon]

It's not uncommon to see buses here outside of rush hour to be almost empty, with just a few people (sometime just one) in it. They are also big buses, even the articulated one.

Okay; so what would be the scenario with very much reduced roadway system‘s and a proper public transportation system that people would use to get about??