Electric

charley96 wrote: »

txcoastal1 wrote: »

You won't be able to afford fly. Gas will be to expensive

Yes, the days of 2.00 gas will soon be over.

I hope you are correct as that will signal people are getting back to work. I would hope that no matter whom is president

sucks2beme wrote: »

Someone needs to be thinking past gas.
Maybe hydrogen is better. It certainly stores
Easier. The tech to burn it is pretty conventional.
It creates water when burned. Either way at
Some point oil runs out. China has starting
Building pebble bed reactors that are pretty much
Meltdown proof. That tech is a good source
of cheap power. Double win, more electricity
and it also can be used to power hydrogen cracking.
Wind and solar can't easily be stored without, you
Guessed it, batteries. But you can use it to crack
hydrogen to use later.
Either way, yes the fools are rushing forward
Without thinking through the issues.
Batteries are the weak link here.
.

They're thinking about it. Follow Elon Musk on Twitter.

jdjohn wrote: »

I hope the Pinto has good brake lights! You don't want to get slammed in the rear!

Pinto or not, I think there's a joke in there somewhere...

^^Including civil wars.

Kex wrote: »

sucks2beme wrote: »

Given there will be a push to make transport electric, did anyone do the math?
We are looking at a household with two cars using 30-50% more power than
They do today. The grid in most states isn't going to handle even a modest
Increase in demand.

If we go electric (our cars are 14 and 15 years old right now, so we could think about replacements at some point), we would do it with a solar roof as well. That would solve the cost problem and the distribution problem, but does require an initial investment. We would almost never have to charge away from the house, maybe a dozen times a year, or less.

Do you understand how many solar panels you would need to be able to charge your average Tesla at a rate that doesn't require an 8-11 hour charge time?

Your average suburban home with a 1500 square foot footprint doesn't have enough roof space. Especially since most roofs do not face the ideal direction to gain the most time in the sunlight.

Every house would need it's own solar farm with pedestals that had the panels mounted to follow the sun through the day. If you live in areas above or below the tropic lines then your winter time daylight hours would have significantly reduced solar energy exposure from both sunlight intensity and duration that you likely wouldn't be able to fully recharge a battery bank that went below 25% full in the amount of daylight available.

Additionally, you would need a pretty extensive conversion system to convert the DC current from your average solar panel to the AC current your house and charging system would require. To get affordable solar panels that actually work on days that aren't full of clear sunshine, you'd need amorphous silicon panels. You can get panels that will be about 40" x 12" and put out about 25-35 watts for about $70 a panel. That's about 1 square meter.

Now, you can get 400 watt panels but they cost significantly more than $100. Way, way more than $100.

Your average Tesla Model 3 has an 11.5 kW onboard charger and needs roughly 30,667 watts to support it if you're going to charge the car with just solar power. A single, cheap, 400 watt panel costs about $250 and is about 45 inches by 20 inches for about 2 square meters of area, get the more dense compact ones that are about 20% smaller and you're closer to $300 a panel for the cheap ones. A more realistic price panels that are worth a damn is $450-$500 per panel.

But, to support 30,667 watts to charge a Tesla Model S, you need about 77 of the 400 watt panels. You'd need 1227 if you use the more affordable 25 watt panels.

77, 400 watt panels at 2 square meters each is 154 square meters or about 1700 square feet and the panels alone would cost anywhere from $20,000-$40,000.

1227, 1 square meter panels is 1227 square meters or 13,000+ square feet and would cost about $85,000. That's a third of an acre, BTW.

So unless you want to build a solar farm in your yard just to charge your Tesla, your average household does not have the square footage to support charging an electric car that is commensurate with what the average consumer, around the globe, not just the U.S., expects from an automobile for range, acceleration, handling, safety and comfort.

All this above is for ideal conditions and panels operating at peak efficiency. Your solar panels will not charge anything at night. So unless you switch to the night shift for work, you're going to be using grid power no matter what and the draw on the grid power for millions of 11.5 kW chargers needing 30,667 watts each to power them is astronomical and there isn't boo a personal solar farm on your roof, your shed roof, the car port roof you need to build to hold more solar panels but still have a driveway to park your Tesla so you can charge it and whatever is left of your minuscule acreage your house is on will do to keep the load off the grid.

Also, what do people who live in cities and don't own any property do?

But you go ahead, you keep thinking that electric cars are a super great idea and we're not just thinking about it right.

My current car (Mazda3) I bought new in November 2004. While it still works fine, at some point I will have to replace it. Now that I am retired my driving is greatly reduced so I might go electric for my last car. All car manufacturers are going big time with new electric vehicles and in a few years there will be quite a variety of choices. There is no denying that the days of gasoline are coming to an end.

invalid wrote: »

I don't think gasoline is coming to an end anytime soon, plus to many products are made out of the leftovers.

Denial is not a river in Egypt...

audioluvr wrote: »

invalid wrote: »

I don't think gasoline is coming to an end anytime soon, plus to many products are made out of the leftovers.

Denial is not a river in Egypt...

I'm not denying anything just being realistic, do you have any idea what would happen to the economy if gasoline production was stopped even in the next 20 years. It will stop when it's not economical no longer.

BlueFox wrote: »

My main dislike with electric cars is they all have an automatic transmission. I have never owned a car with an automatic, and I'm not sure I want one.

For the most part, they don't have any transmission, because they don't need one.

Electric motors deliver maximum torque from a standstill, whereas ICE's have to use a transmission. You can't drive at 100 mph in first gear, but you can't move off from a standstill in 7th gear. Electric cars don't suffer from those limitations.

Jstas wrote: »

Do you understand how many solar panels you would need to be able to charge your average Tesla at a rate that doesn't require an 8-11 hour charge time?

You misunderstand my intentions.

I haven't researched this much, since I have no immediate desire to replace our existing vehicles, but, the idea would be to use solar to generate most of the energy needed for the residence, which could easily be done, and which is mostly needed during peak hours, when the grid would be most stressed. We could then use the grid to charge the car at reduced off peak rates at night, when it's least stressed (which for SoCal Edison in our area is after 9 p.m. to midnight, and at any time from midnight until 4 p.m.). During those times, each kWh costs about one third the peak rate.

Furthermore, any electric vehicle with a range of 200 miles or more would rarely be driven those 200 miles in a single day, so the battery would almost never be fully discharged. For normal usage of about 30 miles a day (or whatever), it would require less than 10 kWh to charge the vehicle at night. That's about one quarter of summertime average daily usage for us, so it should work out economically, and we'd never have to visit a filthy gas station ever again.

I also found the idea of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles appealing, and there's even a fueling station near our local store, but that doesn't seem to have gotten any traction with the manufacturers.

xschop wrote: »

The infrastructure for oil is MUCH bigger than electrons.

electron infrastructure

"General Motors Co. joined a growing group of automakers promising an emissions-free future for cars by pledging to sell 20 all-electric vehicles by 2023."

https://www.industryweek.com/technology-and-iiot/emerging-technologies/article/22024275/gm-maps-allelectric-future-with-20-models-arriving-by-2023