This guy gets it! He actually knows where electricity for these electric cars comes from. Unlike a lot of SJW Greenies.

 

What does AGW stand for ? Whats SJW Greenies ?

 

Anthropogenic global warming. It is the new term by environmental activists to mean "the slow increase of carbon dioxide based on human emissions." It's a new buzzword to bypass the fact that all global warming activist theories have been disproven by science, and all they have is emotion.

SJW is a social justice warrior. This is typically a liberal who will not do anything themselves, yet will want their god, the state, to do their "justice" by things like wealth distribution. Usually it is someone who feels very guilty for being white.

A greenie is an environmental activist, as opposed to an environmentalist, who is an educated scientist.

Leaving the politics alone, the reason the environmental activist movement is stupid is due to a few reasons:
1. Orbital mechanics play more of a role in earth temp than we do.
2. Each volcanic eruption plays more of a role in earth temp than we do.
3. We have no control model to know what the earth would be like without us.
4. There is no reason to hamstring the USA by more onerous regulations to get 1% less pollution when nothing is done to Mexico, China, and North Korea for their 70%
5. It is simply a feel good movement. I will not waste my tax dollars, nor the economy, to make brain-dead bimbos feel better.

I am not a scientist, but I am an engineer, so I appreciate science, and can recognize ignorance when I see it.

 

Thanks Koda!! You made my day!!!

 

I'm an aerospace engineer, so I'm curious how orbital mechanics plays into this at all...

 

There's a whole other Oldsmobile themed message board you can take this crap to. They thrive on politically motivated banter. Keep it out of here.

 

Ach, take your 127 posts over there. Contribute, before you criticize.

Joe, heat from radiation has got a distance factored into the equation, I forget my heat transfer, but it's either once or squared, so, since the earth's orbit is not perfect, it can effect cooling and heating of the planet relative to the mean.

 

Yes please. Take the trolling political crap somewhere else. I'm sure an appropriate echo chamber can be found somewhere.

 

A while back my brother in law commented that if 50% of the cars on the road were electric vehicles then we'd have blackouts every day after work when those drivers got home and plugged their cars in.

 

The earth's orbit is an ellipse, but it doesn't vary, at least not on human timescales. That change in the radius from the center of the sun to the center of the earth is very repeatable over an orbit and has zero to do with global heating or cooling. The fact that the earth is actually CLOSER to the sun during winter in the northern hemisphere should tell you that this eccentricity is meaningless as far as total radiated heat load is concerned.

 

If the angle of the dangle is inversely proportionate to the mass of the ***, will the heat of the meat be constant?

 

That's actually a big consideration.
I was talking to a neighbor who's a globe trotting Strategic Technologies <insert add'l buzzwords here> director for Delphi.
Electrification is the future..
All of the major mfgrs are committing to it and have virtually ceased IC engine development.

Biggest challenge in US is power production & infrastructure.
If every car in the US miraculously changed to full electric tonight, you'd need massive increases in power production & delivery.

By about 10-11 PM ET, the nation would be consuming many times current peak production as across the country, the vehicles were plugged in for the night.
Short term plan is to install a power bank (big battery) in homes that charges off peak for use later in combination with increases in regional power generation.

Then there's the fact that many people won't want to wait 8 hours to charge and will want 240v, or even 480v, powered chargers.
The effort required to get higher V/A to residential areas would be enormous.

 

Possibly the best post in this thread. Thanks.

 

X2, Terrific!

 

 

Well, the good news is, we aren't switching over night. The infrastructure will grow and adapt over time as it did when we switched from horses to cars. The switch could be A LOT easier if we just accepted modern, next gen nuclear as the ultimate answer to the problem.

 

Electrical is changing. Infrastructure is changing also. The move toward "wind energy" and photovoltaic collectors is happening. Many energy companies are shutting down coal fired power plants and replacing them with natural gas powered equipment. Natural gas is cheaper and the smaller gas turbines can be fired up to provide power in high demand situations.
Nuclear power has its drawbacks also.

 

I'm not sure I want 480V in the hands of idiots.

 

Thanks for the banter guys! I've learned a lot.

Rich

 

A friend at work drives an electric car. He told me one day he got to work and realized he had left his laptop at home. He couldn't go get it because his car couldn't make it back home without a recharge. I'd say there's still a ways to go before electric vehicles are practical.

 

Alternative energy vehicles are still very political (observe the sand in a few of the above posts, even) as opposed to practical.

The big companies KNOW this, which is why Prius's are marketed to urban liberals. It is about making a statement about your politics, rather than the energy realities of the situation.

Now, IF we get 0% emission coal, and IF we have hot swap batteries, and IF we have the infrastructure to do it, then MAYBE it will be better.

Gasoline is a stellar fuel, it's liquid, and the energy is there. This is why it has been here for 120 years. People are missing the boat on electric cars, gasoline needs replaced with another liquid fuel that burns without bad emissions.

 

LPG should be used for all commercial vehicles, its abundant and less expensive.

 

Yes, natural gas is cheaper, but ultimately the goal is to get away from it too. Yes, changes are happening, but are they changing fast enough? That is the question.

 

Certainly could do so, but it doesn't have anywhere near the energy density of diesel, so the range is low and performance a little worse. It would be cleaner than diesel though.

 

Your friend must either have an older electric car, live a long, long way from work, or can't remember to plug his car in at night. I'm coming up on my third year of driving electric and I use my electric car for about 95% of my driving. I've never had this problem and I find the electric car to be very practical. There are some situations where it isn't a good fit, but for most it works pretty well. In addition, they are rapidly improving in both charge range and charging rate. The future is electric and for many it's here now and for others it's coming sooner than they think.

 

He specifically said he can't drive round trip from home to work and back home without recharging. That's how he knew he couldn't go back for his laptop.

Everyone here lives a long, long way from work (timewise, at least). I'm 9 miles away and when school is in and snowbirds arrive it takes me 40 minutes due to the thick traffic.

Not sure how long Nissan Leaf has been on the market. Are those considered old?

And I highly doubt he forgets to plug it in at night. That's just not what electrical engineers do.

 

As long as you people keep this going, I will not have to worry about going to college!

 

Good stuff, you guys are "wicked smaht!"

 

There are a lot of fart smellers I mean smart fellows here! I have a theory that there is just to many people on this planet. The Earth will fall from the sky eventually because of the excessive weight

 

I am the director of Power Generation for the utility company I work for. We have a diverse portfolio that includes coal, natural gas, wind, solar and landfill gas (methane). New wind contracts are less costly than any other fuel but us unreliable for base load. Wind proponents in our area tout that wind provides more than 60% of generated power at certain times but they leave out that it did this at 3am when the load is at its lowest. Coal is still cheaper than natural gas but as you mentioned, new reciprocating engines have very fast start up times when compared to coal so they are much better at "chasing wind". The retirement of base load coal units is troubling and will become an issue when forecasters are incorrect on the amount of wind predicted. There have already been a few times over the last year where this occurred and if it had not been for coal and natural gas, there would have been severe black outs.
Another concern is the amount of wind being built without upgrades to the transmission system to support it. Too much generation causes congestion on the transmission system and can cause reliability issues as well as drive up cost to the consumer.

 

I think we should follow what the Amish people are doing. You dont hear them saying, "I forgot to plug in my horse last night", "My horse ran out of hay", Call AAA and deliver some hay". At least the horse gives you fertilizer for your garden.

 

If it is a first generation Leaf (the crazy ugly one that looks like a frog), yes it is considered old. Most likely he has a first generation Nissan Leaf. It was considered a good electric car once, but now it's considered to be pretty poor. The range and charge rate on those is pretty poor and the battery pack design is terrible, so the battery packs in those degrade really fast depending on the climate they are operated. Yes I can totally understand your friend not being able to return for his laptop in that car.

Please don't judge all electric cars based on the old Leaf. They have VASTLY improved since then. Your commute is perfect for a modern electric car. You could easily drive with zero gas and have no worries about forgetting your laptop. On a full charge you could make your commute both ways without charging for a week and half at least. If your employer provides a charging station, you could drive with zero fuel expenses. Check out the next gen EVs, likely you'll be surprised.

 

I tend to agree with you. Over population is the root of the problem IMO.

 

Wind and solar is no drop in replacement for gas and coal for sure no matter what some of the optimists say. That's why I advocate next generation nuclear as the ultimate replacement. In our area, the wind turbines can be turned on and off depending on demand for electricity. If the wind is really blowing, but they don't need the power, they feather the prop and then cage it. Do they not do that there as well?

 

Hmmm... If I visualize every car and truck I see on the road converted to horses, I can also visualize the smell and the mess.

 

I wonder how you'll have 480V in residential neighborhoods, unless people all get generators capable of that. On Long Island, most residential neighborhoods only have single phase power. To upgrade the distribution system to accommodate this would be an enormous undertaking, costing millions, and taking a very long time.

 

I agree with you that renewables cannot take the place of base load units (at least not with current technology). All new wind generators are required to be dispatchable variable energy resources (DVER's) however many of the older units are not.

 

Thins the heard?

 

I was at a local Cars & Coffee on Saturday. The Tesla club was there and I have to say I've never seen 15+ Tesla cars in a row. The club was really loud because I felt they were making up for their insecurity with the sound of their vehicles. Just imagine Lambos, Ferraris, Mclean's, Old school muscle all rolling in and the club was whooping and hollering, seemed to draw attention to the Teslas. When one Tesla gull wing doors open playing Star Wars theme and had a helmet of the imperial force on the head rest cruised thru the crowd I cringed. Of course I parked my loud, throaty, cammed, 1968 4-4-2 right next to them. My wife told me it's my passive aggressive nature I replied "it was the next open parking spot...".

I work in technology, my kids call me a nerd but I'd never grin and drive a tesla thru a crown playing start wars them with a helmet on the head rest with the doors wide open. I draw the line at my nerd level.
To each his own I just had a Hathos rush ("cringe-y feeling you get) watching this happen at a very cool Cars and Coffee.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hathos

I enjoyed all the smart minds in this thread.

 

Nobody charging their EV overnight needs to do it in 3 hrs. You can put that scary Fox News strawman away.

You want to know what the Amish / Mennonites around my area are installing? Wind and solar. They aren't stupid, they know a good deal when they see it and aren't so politically retarded to not exploit it.