ou're right, that would be better than what we have now. But still less good than EVs.
Go flame elsewhere.
The less sarcastic way of stating my point would be to note that gasoline is an approximation of the ideal fuel. There are some additional pollutants, of course.
It is assumed that most people realize that gasoline is not a sustainable fuel for the long term future. At some point, you're either going to run out, cripple the economy through high prices, or depend on unstable foreign governments to provide it (with associated wars), and that's ignoring the environmental impact.
EV is not an ideal solution either. You need to compare gasoline to the real pollution that will be created by the construction of the enormous number new electric generating plants that will be needed to meet the new demand and the fuel they use. There is also all the new power lines, as those are close to capacity now. That will require more copper, and copper mines. Plus the new house wiring that can handle the massive load of recharging EVs.
Obviously we need to generate the additional electricity, and that's where a variety of solutions come into play, be in solar, wind, nuclear, tidal, whatever. There will likely not be a silver bullet solution.
The distribution system is not close to capacity. You need to consider that the size of the electricity distribution system as a whole (whether it's the high voltage lines, or the wires in your house) are sized for the *maximum capacity requirements*. Do you have any idea how many 20A circuits you have in your house? Are you using all of them ALL the time? Surely you can spare one to "trickle" charge your car overnight, every few days?
Similarly, the grid is sized for a maximum demand case, and if we are intelligent about how and when we spread out the demand (through intelligent charging stations at your house that communicate to your power supplier) then we should not need to increase the size of the grid overall. Even in power hungry SoCal where a heat wave July day can tax the grid, there is *plenty* of capacity at night because the AC units are mostly off.
In England (where I'm from) there is this interesting thing that happens every year when the soccer cup final is on. Basically, at half time pretty much everyone goes to make a cup of tea (this is England, after all). That's 240V at about 13Amps (they have powerful kettles over there - 3kW is common). The grid does not melt, and the problem they sometimes have is supplying the maximum load from the power stations. The capacity of the distribution system is never in question.
"The biggest ever TV pick-up was reserved for a sporting event – the 1990 World Cup. It occurred on 4th July after England's semi-final against West Germany. Following an edge-of-the-seat penalty shoot-out, demand soared by 2,800 megawatts - equivalent to more than a million kettles being switched on, providing enough hot water for 3 million cups of tea."
If England, with a population of 60 million or so can handle a million 3kW kettles, then the US can certainly handle the equivalent ratio. 3kW is a hell of a lot of power over 110V - I imagine that most people will double up and create a 20A 220V line, which is common for large rooms with electric baseboard. We'll simply spread out the demand and have the system balance intelligently. It's not really rocket science...
The batteries of whatever technology need to be manufactured and eventually reprocessed. Neglecting these things runs the risk of repeating the ethanol debacle.
Agreed. We should keep a very close eye on the environment cost of producing and maintaining/disposing of these batteries/ultra-capacitors. There's no point in moving the problem from one place to another.
If fast charging/discharging battery technology becomes available, the power system can add these batteries throughout the grid to help hand peak power demands.
The less sarcastic way of stating my point would be to note that gasoline is an approximation of the ideal fuel.
...
EV is not an ideal solution either. You need to compare gasoline to the real pollution that will be created by the construction of the enormous number new electric generating plants that will be needed to meet the new demand and the fuel they use. There is also all the new power lines, as those are close to capacity now. That will require more copper, and copper mines. Plus the new house wiring that can handle the massive load of recharging EVs.
It really depends on what you define as ideal. The art behind the science of engineering is making reasoned trade-offs when every optimization to one part of the system harms the performance of another part. For instance, running EV entirely off of gasoline fired powerplants can be more efficient (more miles per gallon) than using an internal combustion engine due to the greater efficiency of a powerplant compared to your engine. Notice how all the waste heat (energy) of your engine can easily heat your car in the winter?
The best way to make these design decisions is a matrix of pros/cons. You decide which negatives are deal breakers (choice X cannot possibly work due to negative aspect Y), and then you select from the remaining technologies the one that best meets your goals. Let's do a quick study.
Gasoline:
Positives - High energy density to weight ratio, stable, can be transmitted through pipes (though shipped by truck to individual gas stations), mature technology, and distribution system already in place.
Negatives - Pollution, proceeds fund organizations with conflicting interests, limited ability to ramp up to new demand, "too much reliance", and little room for true innovation since large corporations with no interest in a changing market control distribution/processing.
Hydrogen:
Positives - Even higher energy density than gas, can be extract from easily attainable resources (water) in a simple manner.
Negatives - Difficult to distribute, unstable, very energy intensive to extract from water so usually extracted from hydrocarbons instead, corrosive, relatively unproven technology.
EV:
Positives - Efficient, can be produce by a variety of sources (both clean/dirty and expensive/cheap), distribution network is largely in place (though may need expanding) and mature, runs quietly, electronic motor technology is extremely mature, allows new automotive designs like one motor on each wheel of a vehicle (rather than a driveline) which are likely to further improve efficiency and power of automotives, electricity can be created in so many ways that the market is entirely open for innovation (electricity is a true commodity whereas gasoline is not).
Negatives - Energy density to mass is low compared to hydrogen or gasoline, current technology requires long charging times, current technology has limited battery life with expensive replacement cost, some battery production/disposal cause dangerous pollution, some batteries can be dangerous.
From this list, I would consider energy density vs efficiency to be the main trade off. EV have lower energy density, but overcome that by being generally less lossy. Also, electric motors attached to each wheel of a car will be significantly more efficient and lighter than a combustion engine working via a driveline. I don't have numbers to back this up, but I suspect the changes in design should compensate for the extra weight of batteries over a tank of gas.
Finally, my list is hardly comprehensive, and I welcome additions. Note that during the early 1900s a similar decision was being made between gas engines, electric ones, and steam engines. For all the right reasons (at that time), gasoline won. Now, for all the right reasons we can hope it will lose.
It is assumed that most people realize that gasoline is not a sustainable fuel for the long term future. At some point, you're either going to run out, cripple the economy through high prices, or depend on unstable foreign governments to provide it (with associated wars), and that's ignoring the environmental impact.
I'm not one of those "most people. All we have to do is drill more, use the shale, sands, etc., and continue to slowly use other power sources as they become more and more economically feasable as technology makes them available.
I have little doubt that if the Lord waits, and our industrialized culture does not implode, that we will still use hydrocarbons as our main source of energy at least a century from now.
I also have no doubt that, thanks to the resourcefulness and intelligence of man, the resulting polution will become less and less significant.
I'm not one of those "most people. All we have to do is drill more, use the shale, sands, etc., and continue to slowly use other power sources as they become more and more economically feasable as technology makes them available.
Oil production has peaked. There's a whole lot more of it left in the ground, but its difficult to get at. Its not like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia where if you drill you're guaranteed to hit oil for next to nothing in costs for the well. The result is that ANWR, offshore drilling, shale, etc have very little pumping capacity and will take decades to exploit. In the meantime US production capacity peaked in 1970 and has been declining ever since. ANWR is worth about 1 Mbd in 2025, canadian oil shale is worth about 2 Mbd in 2025. I think offshore is about another 1 Mbd in 2025.
Meanwhile, China recently was increasing its consumption at 1Mbd/yr. Saudi Arabia increasing production by 0.5Mbd in a single year did nothing significant to gas prices.
We need to hit 100Mbd of oil -- an increase of 20Mbd over the current 80Mbd usage in order to keep this party going -- while everything is pointing toward a flattening or decline of our ability to pump oil over the next 20 years.
And the current argument over ANWR/offshore/shale/etc is also meaningless when the oil companies don't have the rigs and the capacity to exploit the current leases that they have. Legally open it all up to drilling and won't increase production at all because the companies aren't willing to go to the expense of building more rigs.
( And this is avoiding all the arguments over the carbon-emissions and if we're not just better off leaving all the carbon in the ground, but we already went through that... )
ou're right, that would be better than what we have now. But still less good than EVs.
Go flame elsewhere.
The less sarcastic way of stating my point would be to note that gasoline is an approximation of the ideal fuel.
Other than the carbon emissions. If there was a carbon-neutral liquid fuel replacement for gasoline that would be the ideal fuel.
As there isn't the first thing to look for is technologies where the distribution system is already in place. Hydrogen does not have a distribution system in place. Natural gas has a distribution network, but it isn't built out sufficiently. Electricity, on the other hand, is built out -- particularly if EVs are charged off-peak.
The big problem with EVs are that the electrical grid is not carbon-neutral. If we build coal plants to power EVs, then we've just made the whole problem worse. If the grid is mostly solar / wind / hydro / nuclear, then EVs are a good solution.
There is the issue of disposing of the batteries, but more eco-friendly battery chemistries are coming out, and that issue is less than most of the problems with other technologies.
And the current argument over ANWR/offshore/shale/etc is also meaningless when the oil companies don't have the rigs and the capacity to exploit the current leases that they have. Legally open it all up to drilling and won't increase production at all because the companies aren't willing to go to the expense of building more rigs.
Generally, but not entirely accurate. There's a long waiting list for the small handful of ships in the world that can drill the deep offshore wells. That may change in the next few years as more ships come online, but it's not a result of oil companies not wanting to spend the money... they just can't get the boats.
The big problem with EVs are that the electrical grid is not carbon-neutral. If we build coal plants to power EVs, then we've just made the whole problem worse. If the grid is mostly solar / wind / hydro / nuclear, then EVs are a good solution.
No, but this is in a convoluted way the advantaged of EVs. The grid is nothing in particular. Any energy source we can harness can be converted to electricity - some more efficiently than others.
Try saying the same about oil or natural gas. The EV will kill the combustion engine in much the same way the internet will kill the DVD/CD.
I have little doubt that if the Lord waits, and our industrialized culture does not implode, that we will still use hydrocarbons as our main source of energy at least a century from now.
If that's true, it will be a mistake and it will not be how you are probably thinking. Nobody respectable suggests that we'll have ample oil to support motor transportation in 92 years. Nearly everyone respectable thinks we have enough coal available for that time frame however. Yours is a fundamentally coal fired society.
If this happens, it's likely that they'll be getting pretty worried about peak coal about that time. Is it 150 years off, or is it just 30 years off? Let's not make this like the Y2K bug where we panic about a problem that we can solve, then sort of solve it, but just set ourselves up for another epic failure in the not-to-distant future.
By the way, I'm referring to the Y2038 Bug if you haven't heard of it. Here's the wiki on Y2038, with a fun little timer that shows you why Jan 19th 2038 will be "the end of the world" again.
The big problem with EVs are that the electrical grid is not carbon-neutral. If we build coal plants to power EVs, then we've just made the whole problem worse. If the grid is mostly solar / wind / hydro / nuclear, then EVs are a good solution.
No, but this is in a convoluted way the advantaged of EVs. The grid is nothing in particular. Any energy source we can harness can be converted to electricity - some more efficiently than others.
Try saying the same about oil or natural gas. The EV will kill the combustion engine in much the same way the internet will kill the DVD/CD.
Imagine, for example, that carbon sequestration actually works out well, and we find safe and responsible ways to store CO2 somewhere. If that occurs, then we can go ahead and burn as much coal as we like, and that's how we'll make the electricity. I find it hard to believe that we'll be able to convert our cars to coal and capture the CO2 from it. I'm sure it's technically possible, but a far more sensible approach is to centralize the facility.
There's a reason why we don't all have little coal powered electricity generators in our garages.
As RCC says, the electric vehicle and electric distribution system are agnostic to the methods of electricity production. It also seems to be a very efficient way of distributing that energy.
Imagine, for example, that carbon sequestration actually works out well, and we find safe and responsible ways to store CO2 somewhere. If that occurs, then we can go ahead and burn as much coal as we like, and that's how we'll make the electricity. I find it hard to believe that we'll be able to convert our cars to coal and capture the CO2 from it. I'm sure it's technically possible, but a far more sensible approach is to centralize the facility.
There's a reason why we don't all have little coal powered electricity generators in our garages.
As RCC says, the electric vehicle and electric distribution system are agnostic to the methods of electricity production. It also seems to be a very efficient way of distributing that energy.
I may not have been clear, that was the point I was trying to get at.
And to put it stronger: we *must* create a carbon-neutral electrical grid, therefore EVs will also be carbon-neutral. Failure isn't really an option. EVs just ride along with whatever carbon-neutral technologies are used in the electrical grid.
And yeah, if we get viable carbon sequestration for coal plants before we get viable nuclear fusion plants, then we can use coal (monkeys will also fly out of my butt...)
And yeah, if we get viable carbon sequestration for coal plants before we get viable nuclear fusion plants, then we can use coal (monkeys will also fly out of my butt...)
As long as those monkeys are carbon neutral, it shouldn't matter.
Seems to me a comparatively simple matter to stir up the ocean bottom and thereby fertilize large areas of the ocean that are basically a salt-water desert as far as life goes. That will allow plankton to grow, fish to feed, and organic matter to settle to the bottom, capturing carbon on the way down. The amount of energy required to do that seems about the same as that required to pump oil from off shore drilling sites to the surface. The environmental downside should be minimal, considering that's exactly what happens to make the areas near the Arctic and Antarctic so fertile, were the stormy weather stirs up the ocean bottoms to fertilize that water.
Comments
Obviously we need to generate the additional electricity, and that's where a variety of solutions come into play, be in solar, wind, nuclear, tidal, whatever. There will likely not be a silver bullet solution.
The distribution system is not close to capacity. You need to consider that the size of the electricity distribution system as a whole (whether it's the high voltage lines, or the wires in your house) are sized for the *maximum capacity requirements*. Do you have any idea how many 20A circuits you have in your house? Are you using all of them ALL the time? Surely you can spare one to "trickle" charge your car overnight, every few days?
Similarly, the grid is sized for a maximum demand case, and if we are intelligent about how and when we spread out the demand (through intelligent charging stations at your house that communicate to your power supplier) then we should not need to increase the size of the grid overall. Even in power hungry SoCal where a heat wave July day can tax the grid, there is *plenty* of capacity at night because the AC units are mostly off.
In England (where I'm from) there is this interesting thing that happens every year when the soccer cup final is on. Basically, at half time pretty much everyone goes to make a cup of tea (this is England, after all). That's 240V at about 13Amps (they have powerful kettles over there - 3kW is common). The grid does not melt, and the problem they sometimes have is supplying the maximum load from the power stations. The capacity of the distribution system is never in question.
"The biggest ever TV pick-up was reserved for a sporting event – the 1990 World Cup. It occurred on 4th July after England's semi-final against West Germany. Following an edge-of-the-seat penalty shoot-out, demand soared by 2,800 megawatts - equivalent to more than a million kettles being switched on, providing enough hot water for 3 million cups of tea."
If England, with a population of 60 million or so can handle a million 3kW kettles, then the US can certainly handle the equivalent ratio. 3kW is a hell of a lot of power over 110V - I imagine that most people will double up and create a 20A 220V line, which is common for large rooms with electric baseboard. We'll simply spread out the demand and have the system balance intelligently. It's not really rocket science...
Agreed. We should keep a very close eye on the environment cost of producing and maintaining/disposing of these batteries/ultra-capacitors. There's no point in moving the problem from one place to another.
It really depends on what you define as ideal. The art behind the science of engineering is making reasoned trade-offs when every optimization to one part of the system harms the performance of another part. For instance, running EV entirely off of gasoline fired powerplants can be more efficient (more miles per gallon) than using an internal combustion engine due to the greater efficiency of a powerplant compared to your engine. Notice how all the waste heat (energy) of your engine can easily heat your car in the winter?
The best way to make these design decisions is a matrix of pros/cons. You decide which negatives are deal breakers (choice X cannot possibly work due to negative aspect Y), and then you select from the remaining technologies the one that best meets your goals. Let's do a quick study.
Gasoline:
Positives - High energy density to weight ratio, stable, can be transmitted through pipes (though shipped by truck to individual gas stations), mature technology, and distribution system already in place.
Negatives - Pollution, proceeds fund organizations with conflicting interests, limited ability to ramp up to new demand, "too much reliance", and little room for true innovation since large corporations with no interest in a changing market control distribution/processing.
Hydrogen:
Positives - Even higher energy density than gas, can be extract from easily attainable resources (water) in a simple manner.
Negatives - Difficult to distribute, unstable, very energy intensive to extract from water so usually extracted from hydrocarbons instead, corrosive, relatively unproven technology.
EV:
Positives - Efficient, can be produce by a variety of sources (both clean/dirty and expensive/cheap), distribution network is largely in place (though may need expanding) and mature, runs quietly, electronic motor technology is extremely mature, allows new automotive designs like one motor on each wheel of a vehicle (rather than a driveline) which are likely to further improve efficiency and power of automotives, electricity can be created in so many ways that the market is entirely open for innovation (electricity is a true commodity whereas gasoline is not).
Negatives - Energy density to mass is low compared to hydrogen or gasoline, current technology requires long charging times, current technology has limited battery life with expensive replacement cost, some battery production/disposal cause dangerous pollution, some batteries can be dangerous.
From this list, I would consider energy density vs efficiency to be the main trade off. EV have lower energy density, but overcome that by being generally less lossy. Also, electric motors attached to each wheel of a car will be significantly more efficient and lighter than a combustion engine working via a driveline. I don't have numbers to back this up, but I suspect the changes in design should compensate for the extra weight of batteries over a tank of gas.
Finally, my list is hardly comprehensive, and I welcome additions. Note that during the early 1900s a similar decision was being made between gas engines, electric ones, and steam engines. For all the right reasons (at that time), gasoline won. Now, for all the right reasons we can hope it will lose.
I have little doubt that if the Lord waits, and our industrialized culture does not implode, that we will still use hydrocarbons as our main source of energy at least a century from now.
I also have no doubt that, thanks to the resourcefulness and intelligence of man, the resulting polution will become less and less significant.
Oil production has peaked. There's a whole lot more of it left in the ground, but its difficult to get at. Its not like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia where if you drill you're guaranteed to hit oil for next to nothing in costs for the well. The result is that ANWR, offshore drilling, shale, etc have very little pumping capacity and will take decades to exploit. In the meantime US production capacity peaked in 1970 and has been declining ever since. ANWR is worth about 1 Mbd in 2025, canadian oil shale is worth about 2 Mbd in 2025. I think offshore is about another 1 Mbd in 2025.
Meanwhile, China recently was increasing its consumption at 1Mbd/yr. Saudi Arabia increasing production by 0.5Mbd in a single year did nothing significant to gas prices.
We need to hit 100Mbd of oil -- an increase of 20Mbd over the current 80Mbd usage in order to keep this party going -- while everything is pointing toward a flattening or decline of our ability to pump oil over the next 20 years.
And the current argument over ANWR/offshore/shale/etc is also meaningless when the oil companies don't have the rigs and the capacity to exploit the current leases that they have. Legally open it all up to drilling and won't increase production at all because the companies aren't willing to go to the expense of building more rigs.
( And this is avoiding all the arguments over the carbon-emissions and if we're not just better off leaving all the carbon in the ground, but we already went through that... )
Other than the carbon emissions. If there was a carbon-neutral liquid fuel replacement for gasoline that would be the ideal fuel.
As there isn't the first thing to look for is technologies where the distribution system is already in place. Hydrogen does not have a distribution system in place. Natural gas has a distribution network, but it isn't built out sufficiently. Electricity, on the other hand, is built out -- particularly if EVs are charged off-peak.
The big problem with EVs are that the electrical grid is not carbon-neutral. If we build coal plants to power EVs, then we've just made the whole problem worse. If the grid is mostly solar / wind / hydro / nuclear, then EVs are a good solution.
There is the issue of disposing of the batteries, but more eco-friendly battery chemistries are coming out, and that issue is less than most of the problems with other technologies.
Generally, but not entirely accurate. There's a long waiting list for the small handful of ships in the world that can drill the deep offshore wells. That may change in the next few years as more ships come online, but it's not a result of oil companies not wanting to spend the money... they just can't get the boats.
NYTimes article
No, but this is in a convoluted way the advantaged of EVs. The grid is nothing in particular. Any energy source we can harness can be converted to electricity - some more efficiently than others.
Try saying the same about oil or natural gas. The EV will kill the combustion engine in much the same way the internet will kill the DVD/CD.
If that's true, it will be a mistake and it will not be how you are probably thinking. Nobody respectable suggests that we'll have ample oil to support motor transportation in 92 years. Nearly everyone respectable thinks we have enough coal available for that time frame however. Yours is a fundamentally coal fired society.
If this happens, it's likely that they'll be getting pretty worried about peak coal about that time. Is it 150 years off, or is it just 30 years off? Let's not make this like the Y2K bug where we panic about a problem that we can solve, then sort of solve it, but just set ourselves up for another epic failure in the not-to-distant future.
By the way, I'm referring to the Y2038 Bug if you haven't heard of it. Here's the wiki on Y2038, with a fun little timer that shows you why Jan 19th 2038 will be "the end of the world" again.
Imagine, for example, that carbon sequestration actually works out well, and we find safe and responsible ways to store CO2 somewhere. If that occurs, then we can go ahead and burn as much coal as we like, and that's how we'll make the electricity. I find it hard to believe that we'll be able to convert our cars to coal and capture the CO2 from it. I'm sure it's technically possible, but a far more sensible approach is to centralize the facility.
There's a reason why we don't all have little coal powered electricity generators in our garages.
As RCC says, the electric vehicle and electric distribution system are agnostic to the methods of electricity production. It also seems to be a very efficient way of distributing that energy.
I may not have been clear, that was the point I was trying to get at.
And to put it stronger: we *must* create a carbon-neutral electrical grid, therefore EVs will also be carbon-neutral. Failure isn't really an option. EVs just ride along with whatever carbon-neutral technologies are used in the electrical grid.
And yeah, if we get viable carbon sequestration for coal plants before we get viable nuclear fusion plants, then we can use coal (monkeys will also fly out of my butt...)
As long as those monkeys are carbon neutral, it shouldn't matter.