twindham

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Motorola

Precisely. EV's have less moving parts, therefore less energy lost or dissipated in getting to the wheels. The only downside to EV's is that batteries aren't currently capable of storing anywhere near as much energy as gasoline. However, mechanically, there is no question that they are far more efficient vehicles than any traditional ICE car. They use less energy to achieve the same, if not better results.

winterturb

in ideal conditions. In cold weather a Tesla can loose up to 40% of its range. Electricity loses 22-25% of its energy from the source to the target. An electric motor is 90% efficient in a vehicle but when you factor in energy lose in the line and energy loss due to cold or extreme heat the EV looses its perceived efficiency advantage. Very few understand the complexity of energy production and transportation/transmission and the associated costs and efficiencies.

most homes electrical system can’t handle adding an EV without and upgrade never mind the grid. Furthermore plants are not being built to handle the 30% or more increase In electricity demand. As homes convert to more IOT and more things go electronic demand of electricity is increasing quickly without adding cars to the mix.

china is building 2400 new coal plants to handle the increase in Electricity demands. The USA is shutting down coal plants and reducing electricity supply.

hydrogen is interesting but takes a lot of electricity to produce. More than it’s worth and without government subsidies people wouldn’t buy hydrogen. It’s too expensive.

the rare earth mining to make a Tesla battery is nothing short of shocking. To make one Tesla battery 250 tons of dirt must be processed. That’s not insignificant to the environment especially since a lot of this is done in questionable circumstances and less than ideal and safe conditions. (Child labor etc)

The grid as it is and the current electricity production In the US cannot handle the coming EV revolution. But Americans have a way of overcoming the obstacles and Hopefully will find a way to make it work if they can reduce regulation and get working together to make it happen as they have in the past. In today’s climate will it happen? That’s remains to be seen

LeX2K

Check out Bjørn Nyland on YT he's done many tests including in very cold weather. A Tesla with heat pump lost less than 20% even though it was -20 or colder.

twindham

Great reply to the "completely wrong" comment. Its a lot more complicated than it seems and it isn't just about mpg. Your points were excellent and persuasive with out even talking about the complexity of recycling a EV battery. Doesn't sound like a "canard" now does it?

LeX2K

Explain why a battery is more complicated to recycle versus an engine, transmission, catalytic converter, fuel tank, fuel lines, fuel filters, engine and transmission filters etc. You say it is "a lot more complicated" so educate us.

EZZ

The EVs can charge on a 50 amp circuit breaker. That's about 30 miles per hour. A regular outlet will get you only 4 miles per hour. It takes a anywhere from $200-1000 to get a house ready for EV but the one time cost is still magnitudes cheaper than gas.

I think everyone acknowledges that EVs come out less environmentally friendly out of the showroom floor but make it up over time and easily surpass any ICE over the lifetime of the car.

Right now, so many homes are going solar due to the massive tax credits you can get. Most of the Teslas in my neighborhood are fusion powered like mine. Makes complete sense for those who own their home and have solar. I think ICE will co-exist with EVs for a long time though. But I do think I'll see more EVs on the road than ICE in my lifetime.

winterturb

The cost to upgrade a home is not expensive the cost to upgrade the grid and provide the energy to supply the upgrade home IS big and offsets the economic benefits.

A Prius considering the life cycle from dust to dust has 2 1/2 times more impact on The environment than a fuel burning suburban. Tesla is more so than a Prius. Look it up if interested. But that’s not the subject of the debate started by the OP

You hit the nail on the head. solar is only economical with Subsidies. The Suns energy is at the source not on the roof top.

It would take Tesla’s producing batteries for the next 500 years to store enough energy to run the country for all of one day. Folks have no idea how much fossil fuels run the country and how irreplaceable they are

electric vehicles outnumbered Ice vehicles at the turn of the last century until they realized the efficiency of Fuel. This whole new EV revolution is being pushed by the religion of the environmentalist. Telsa does not exist without government subsidies the whole push to EVs is government and religion driven.

you don’t need to defend Tesla. It’s an incredibly impressive product. But no product is environmentally neutral and to not consider every aspect of the environmental
impact of whatever the product may be is not being objective.

as for now The grid cannot handle the increase demand and there is No current production capacity to meet the demand. Again China is building up to meet the demand and the USA is removing production which WILL cause a shortage as it all ready is in California and New York with rolling blackouts.

and now with the federal government attacking pipelines increasing demand with Natural gas is becoming less and less likely

what happens with a solar flare that knocks out the grid? This happened and fried the telecom system In the past. Fried transformers. Burnt lines. What happens to all the EVs when the power goes down? Depending on such a fragile system is puzzling to me

LeX2K

So much negativity and doom and gloom. Nothing can be done, we can never get away from oil, grid will collapse. Will locusts swarm my city if there are too many electric cars? BTW you're making some outlandish claims I'd like to see at least a couple of sources/citations. Not "google it".

winterturb

if gas cars are banned the grid, as it exists currently, cannot handle the demand of electric cars. If that’s doom and gloom to you then so be it.

it’s not my place to educate folks on the efficiencies of different energy sources and the costs associated with producing them. Until you have spent time on a drilling rig or help change the high speed shaft in a windmill one may never be able to grasp what it takes to provide energy to the grid, no matter what I or google says.

Plugging a chord into an outlet is a whole lot different than understanding what it takes to manipulate Mother Earth to provide energy to the plug.

EZZ

It's not like the grid will be the same today as 10 years from now. You vastly underestimate the power of economics and opportunity. Nothing will stop the utilities from upgrading to meet demand when there is revenue opportunity ahead. The grid will not be the bottleneck at all. You can argue raw material resources, lack of EV demand, competition from alternative technology (like hydrogen) but if power is needed, someone will invest the capital needed.

peteharvey

Traditional fossil-fuel powered ICEV wouldn't ever be prohibited all of a sudden at short notice.
They would be "gradually" and "progressively" phased out with concomitant replacement by BEV's.
This would allow time for non-fossil fuel burning renewable energy power stations and charging outlets to be phased in.

Sure, some geographic locations with very low temperatures may not be well suited to BEV's.

twindham

Its complicated because even Tesla has NOT landed on a firm battery recycling plan. They have it farmed out to various third party companies and they are still working on a technology to effectively recycle their own product. Here is a quote from one of their own impact reports.
“At Gigafactory 1, Tesla is developing a unique battery recycling system that will process both battery manufacturing scrap and end-of-life batteries. Through this system, the recovery of critical minerals such as lithium and cobalt will be maximized along with the recovery of all metals used in the battery cell, such as copper, aluminum and steel. All of these materials will be recovered in forms optimized for new battery material production.”

Like many processes with batteries these are chemically intensive but if they can get it figured out in more efficient way than simply building new batteries with tons of earth minerals then it could be a winner. As of right now they don't have it figured out.

UDel

Engines, Transmissions, fuel tanks, etc generally last the life of a car, sometimes longer, that can be 30 or 40 years or longer especially when it comes to more modern cars, many parts of engines and transmissions can also be re used, filters are small and disposable. EV car batteries are very large and won't last anywhere near as long as engines and transmissions, their efficiency starts to degrade just after a few years and there is not much that can be done recycling wise with them once they fail or too inefficient, at least cost effectively. That is not even getting into how much lithium, nickel and other metals will have to mined(very dirty process, very destructive to the environment) to implement EV's in mass numbers and how new and larger powerplants will need to be built which is also destructive, costs enormous amounts of money, their own set of issues, etc. Our and Europes electric grids can not handle mass usage of electric cars, not even close and the costs and amount of issues it would take to handle it far outweigh any minor possible benefits of mass EV usage and they create their own set of problems/issues too.

Mass EV implementation/banning IC cars is about power, control, politics, money, agenda's, it has little to nothing to do with actually improving anything environmentally or the climate.

UDel

Why is the grid going to be so different in 10 years? I don't see any set plans for it to change that much, is California/large California cities going to suddenly have a stable power grid in a couple years and not have rolling blackouts anymore that they have had for decades? Is California suddenly going to get a efficient water delivery system so people can regularly water their lawns, wash their cars all year? Is NYC going to have a stable power grid/system so they don't have power outages, issues in hot temps? How much are all these new and larger powerplants going to cost along with all the charging infrastructure for all these forced EV's? We are already over 20 trillion in debt, much more since the Wuhan virus, is it really needed or worth it now, we have other far more important issues. How vulnerable will this power/EV transportation be to hacking, someone deciding to just shut it down for whatever reasons and keep people from traveling, etc.