Battery based electric vehicles of today and tomorrow.

[Grumpycat]

I'm so old at this that when I was a kid the only options were the zinc-carbon dry cell and the lead acid wet cell. Battery technology has progressed since WWII, and there is every reason to think it will continue to progress. Better batteries have already revolutionized the EV market, and there is every reason to think that progress will continue. I submit that you have no context for your opinion.

Meanwhile, if we continue burning fossil fuels we face the prospect of making vast areas of our planet uninhabitable. If you think a few thousand people on our southern border are a problem, wait until they are a few million climate refugees.

Yeah, they've been saying that for 100 years too.

I own and drive a Tesla for the past 7 years. A Prius for 7 years before that. I reiterate you have been hiding under a rock only recently emerged and are now frightened of everything you see. A newbie. There has been a "breakthrough new battery technology" every week since Popular Science was first published. Very few are revolutionary (NiCAD, NiMH, lithium), few are evolutionary (LiFePO4), most are hype.

Environmental doomsayers love ecosystems but ignore the fact "burning fossil fuels" is simply the ecosystem returning resources to the original state so as to repeat the cycle again. Combine carbon with hydrogen and oxygen, then break it apart, then put it together again, then break it apart... That is how you live and breathe. CO2 is a gas of life. We can not live without it.

 

[/pine]

I'm so old at this that when I was a kid the only options were the zinc-carbon dry cell and the lead acid wet cell. Battery technology has progressed since WWII, and there is every reason to think it will continue to progress. Better batteries have already revolutionized the EV market, and there is every reason to think that progress will continue. I submit that you have no context for your opinion.

Meanwhile, if we continue burning fossil fuels we face the prospect of making vast areas of our planet uninhabitable. If you think a few thousand people on our southern border are a problem, wait until they are a few million climate refugees.

The real problem is...so many believing and drinking the AGW kool-aid...

 

[Larry Caldwell]

The real problem is...so many believing and drinking the AGW kool-aid...

The Simple Proof of Man-Made Global Warming

The two most basic Smoking Guns proving that carbon from fossil fuels is warming the Earth.

skeptoid.com

 

[oosik]

We subsidize big oil and farmers. That's two huge group that will need to be convinced that electric is the way. I think it will be difficult to take these subsidies away and give them to "electricity". Something will have to happen to update our electric infrastructure.

I've read that if 20% of all vehicles were converted to electricity tomorrow - the electric infrastructure would collapse.

If "we" have decided that electric is the future - the supply side must keep up also.

 

[PILOON]

We subsidize big oil and farmers. That's two huge group that will need to be convinced that electric is the way. I think it will be difficult to take these subsidies away and give them to "electricity". Something will have to happen to update our electric infrastructure.

I've read that if 20% of all vehicles were converted to electricity tomorrow - the electric infrastructure would collapse.

If "we" have decided that electric is the future - the supply side must keep up also.

Oh I believe that and with all the push towards electric vehicles it'll happen much sooner than you think.
Shucks even today power blackouts are getting very common.
Now also consider that fossil fuel taxes is what builds and maintains the road structures how will vehicle electricity consumption replace that source of revenue.
Recently many manufactures have indicated major electric vehicle production goals.
I ask how will apartment dwellers charge their EV's? Long extension cords out the 10 story windows? From future multitudes of public charging stations? and who will foot the bill for those charging stations?
In my opinion I think there is lot of valid good hype but a serious lack of long term cause and effect consideration.
I suspect we'll see a great deal of 'brown outs' before the whole EV movement becomes a working realty.
I can just see workers plugging their cars in when getting home, 5-5:30 PM, while supper is cooking and causing a brown out. (heck my ark welder knows when it's dinner cooking time)
Hydro companies have been preparing for variable rate times by installing intelligent meters, and that at clients expense.

 

[Agvg]

Well, inteligent charging that regulates up and down depending on the load in the grid is all ready here I live, and we have a few EV in this country but ofcource the nubers are small even with a high market share for EVes.

 

[oosik]

Lets face it. EV is now and will for the foreseeable future be a "niche" enterprise. There will be those who can get by with EV and may be able to afford it. Are you a country fellow who can afford one of those new EV pickups and can you curb your lifestyle around its limitations. If so, then plunk down the required deposit and wait a year, or so, to see what happens ........

 

[MossRoad]

An electric vehicle would make sense for us, as we have three vehicles. A Suburban for hauling large items and the trailer w/tractor, an Impala for out of town and all-day type trips and my wife's daily driver, and an old beater Sable for my daily driver. Maybe 11 miles per day. I could definately ditch the Sable for an EV, however, it would have to make economic sense. That isn't there for us right now.

 

[check]

Oh I believe that and with all the push towards electric vehicles it'll happen much sooner than you think.
Shucks even today power blackouts are getting very common.
Now also consider that fossil fuel taxes is what builds and maintains the road structures how will vehicle electricity consumption replace that source of revenue.
Recently many manufactures have indicated major electric vehicle production goals.
I ask how will apartment dwellers charge their EV's? Long extension cords out the 10 story windows? From future multitudes of public charging stations? and who will foot the bill for those charging stations?
In my opinion I think there is lot of valid good hype but a serious lack of long term cause and effect consideration.
I suspect we'll see a great deal of 'brown outs' before the whole EV movement becomes a working realty.
I can just see workers plugging their cars in when getting home, 5-5:30 PM, while supper is cooking and causing a brown out. (heck my ark welder knows when it's dinner cooking time)
Hydro companies have been preparing for variable rate times by installing intelligent meters, and that at clients expense.

LOL! We have already started installing charging stations in our Toronto Condo, and between the two towers there are 800 units!

 

[Grumpycat]

We subsidize big oil and farmers.

Repeating that over and over again does not make it true. Farming does receive subsidized loans and guaranteed minimum commodity prices, but oil companies are not subsidized.

What happens in the oil industry is that many necessary investments require specific provision in tax law to allow as a deductible expense. This is no different for oil than for any other business. Current tax philosophy does not intend to tax expenditures which are necessary to produce taxable income. Oil haters have found they can utilize public ignorance to claim valid tax deductions are "subsidies".

Your tractor is such an expense, not a subsidy. You should not have to use taxed income to purchase a tractor to use to produce crop, the income from which is taxed.

Am shocked at the level of economic ignorance which abounds. Was talking with a recently retired government employee who had a high school diploma plus about a year of additional training. He was unhappy about news of a developer who purchased a property for $8M 10 years ago, recently sold for $1.5M, getting a "$6.5M tax break". He could not understand the government is not giving the developer $6.5M to cover his loss. Try as I might he could not understand the developer paid income taxes on the original $8M investment in order to have those resources to invest. Having used that in honest attempt to make more money (which would be taxed) the investor lost. Government is not repaying the lost $6.5M but allowing the investor to deduct the loss against future earnings. To not pay taxes on money earned until he catches back up to where he was before the loss.