Opinions on electric cars

[saz468]

Electric cars have advanced over the last century since a 1911 Baker electric and a 1976 Citicar do to Tesla and auto makers personally as a car enthusiast I have no problem with electric cars. What’s everyones opinion on electric cars?

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[Mcclaughry95]

Environment stance is pointless but performance is insane. But I like the sounds and feeling of ice. But I won't wait an hour to charge vs a few minutes to fill up.

 

[saz468]

Environment stance is pointless but performance is insane. But I like the sounds and feeling of ice. But I won't wait an hour to charge vs a few minutes to fill up.

Very good points and yes most of the electric power plants are coal burning.

 

[jtrader]

Not on board w/ electric yet, either. While I like the idea of maybe getting an electric motorcycle someday (something for getting myself around town easily), for transporting my family long distances, which we do frequently, I love the convenience of 5 minute fill ups to get 400 miles of distance.

Plus, I think I would miss the feel and sound produced by ICE. While I'm sure they will go 100% electric for new vehicles in my lifetime, they won't be stupid enough to take away our gas cars anytime soon. (Unless of course they jack gas prices to 20 bucks a gallon!)

 

[Phy]

Going to miss the exhaust sound, and manual shifting. I'm curious what aftermarket is going to do with electric cars.

 

[charleswrivers]

IMO... electric cars are outstanding. Batteries vs gasoline has very low energy density by weight and volume however. It just goes to show how efficient the power conversion is going from chemical energy in a battery to mechanical energy in the motor.

10 gallons of gasoline contain about 337 KW/hrs of energy and will push a Civic 350 miles or so @35 mpg. It takes 10 gallons of volume and weights 63 pounds.

A Tesla 3 long range has a 352 mile range using an 82 KWh battery, from what I looked up. Their batteries make those cars stupid heavy.

So the electric cars, by that metric, are roughly 4x more efficient as using their stored energy to convert it to mechanical work

But... they lug around large and heavy batteries that contain, compared to gas, very little energy. That energy, which predominately came from fossil fuels from coal or natural gas had that inefficient conversion still happen... but it happened at the power plant burning the fossil fuel to boil water and spin a turbine. It happened... the CO2 got made too... just the same as if you were burning gasoline... it just didn’t fall to you.

As our infrastructure slowly but surely continues to go the way of renewables (and selfishly, hopefully nuclear)... CO2 emissions will continue to drop. Given how efficient electric motors are and now relatively poor of a storage medium our cutting edge batteries are... any improvement, even small ones, will still have large effects in the ability to either 1) increase range or 2) maintain range with less cells, reducing weight and cost.

Batteries that are (not warranties for) claimed to last a few 100k are touted at lasting 1M miles in a few years (conceivably long after the car is shot structurally)... use less bad stuff (cobalt, for example) and continue to get more energy dense.

Don’t forget EV1 from General Motors in the 90s started off with lead acid batteries... like a damn submarine. It died with NiMHs has I recall.

I don’t have one... thought I’d like one for one main reason: Cost. I’d need to spend about $50k for a long range Tesla 3 to replace my current car. I still see cars as depreciating assets and $25-35k is my comfort zone for buying a new car. I prefer used to new as well and they’re improving so rapidly... the idea of buying a 10 year old EV has no appeal. I have a 20 year old truck... a 27 year old Z. Most of my vehicles in my life were bought used for 1/3-1/8 their new cost. I like cars but I’m not one to be speedy on them. Being a old sub electrician... I have little fear on what EVs are or what they represent. I also think that in the latter 1/2 of the 21st century, when batteries are more energy dense, cost less, and the electrical infrastructure continues to (slowly) evolve... they may well dominate.

 

[saz468]

Going to miss the exhaust sound, and manual shifting. I'm curious what aftermarket is going to do with electric cars.

I saw you tube videos on how to tune a electric motorcycle ( the Amazon electric motorcycle) so I’m sure there’s going to be a lot for electric cars as for exhaust sounds auto manufacturers already making fake throaty exhaust sounds on gas engine cars threw the stereo system

 

[Phy]

I saw you tube videos on how to tune a electric motorcycle ( the Amazon electric motorcycle) so I’m sure there’s going to be a lot for electric cars as for exhaust sounds auto manufacturers already making fake throaty exhaust sounds on gas engine cars threw the stereo system

Simulated noise just wont be the same. The aftermarket scene on electrics will likely be limited to cosmetic, tires, and "tunes". I don't see manufactures allowing 3rd parties to implement electric motors or batteries.

 

[charleswrivers]

Simulated noise just wont be the same. The aftermarket scene on electrics will likely be limited to cosmetic, tires, and "tunes". I don't see manufactures allowing 3rd parties to implement electric motors or batteries.

Maybe... I’ve been over clocking computers for years... replacing cell phone batteries in “sealed” phones. Where there’s a will and a market for folks to do their own work on the cheap... products will come up to buy. The Tesla’s are little more than a computer program themselves... just like how we can get a Ktuner/Hondata. There is already 3rd parties that have hacked their ECU equivalents to provide lower cost “performance boost” flashes on Teslas. The draw back is you have to disable the OTA updates or it’ll be overwritten.

If I can do a battery changeout or cell jumper on a sub with a battery holding enough juice to blow me sky high... doing an EV holds no great concern. If they’re those annoying solder tabs though instead of bus work you wrench, it is very tedious work.

 

[Hasdrubal]

The amount of metals that go into a battery electric car is going down, but it will never be less than a fuel cell electric car. If the primary concern is the environment via carbon emissions, both can be better than gasoline, but if you add mining of metals into the equation, the demand for lithium to replace all the future cars with battery power is staggering. Hopefully they can eliminate the need for cobalt, which is largely mined in the Congo with no regard for Western child labor standards-

https://www.ft.com/content/c6909812-9ce4-11e9-9c06-a4640c9feebb

Provided we can get the infrastructure in place, hydrogen tanks can be refilled far more quickly than battery fast charging, and the fuel cell remains the same size for any desired power output no matter how large or small you make the fuel tank. And sure, we don't have the infrastructure today, but there was a time when there were no gas stations, and there was a time when Tesla didn't have any charging stations.

The big problem is where to get the hydrogen. Water electrolysis is not very efficient, I don't know how cracking it from other chemical compounds compares to other methods of power generation, and really if we were to switch the entire vehicle industry over, the best way to get that much power for fuel cell electric or battery electric cars is nuclear. I could go on for a while about thorium reactors being safer and having less harmful waste than traditional uranium fission, but it's politically unpalatable for voters, and governments don't like to fund reactors that don't produce plutonium for bombs as part of the cycle.

I still retain some hope to see a commercial fusion plant go hot in my lifetime, but my dad just retired a few months ago, and he keeps telling me it's been twenty years away for the last thirty years...

 

[Civics4Ever]

Not on board w/ electric yet, either. While I like the idea of maybe getting an electric motorcycle someday (something for getting myself around town easily), for transporting my family long distances, which we do frequently, I love the convenience of 5 minute fill ups to get 400 miles of distance.

Plus, I think I would miss the feel and sound produced by ICE. While I'm sure they will go 100% electric for new vehicles in my lifetime, they won't be stupid enough to take away our gas cars anytime soon. (Unless of course they jack gas prices to 20 bucks a gallon!)

I guess you haven't heard Biden is president? The cost of gas is going to increase a lot more than it has in the past.

 

[Hasdrubal]

The cost of electricity will go up by quite a bit too, if we switch away from natural gas to wind and solar. And the number of birds swatted out of the sky by spinning blades their evolutionary pressure didn't prepare them for will be... well, ignored no matter how many there are. Doesn't make for good PR. Despite that, it will be a lot.

To be fair, though, cats kill a huge number of birds every year for fun, and nobody seems to care about that either.

 

[charleswrivers]

The amount of metals that go into a battery electric car is going down, but it will never be less than a fuel cell electric car. If the primary concern is the environment via carbon emissions, both can be better than gasoline, but if you add mining of metals into the equation, the demand for lithium to replace all the future cars with battery power is staggering. Hopefully they can eliminate the need for cobalt, which is largely mined in the Congo with no regard for Western child labor standards-

https://www.ft.com/content/c6909812-9ce4-11e9-9c06-a4640c9feebb

Provided we can get the infrastructure in place, hydrogen tanks can be refilled far more quickly than battery fast charging, and the fuel cell remains the same size for any desired power output no matter how large or small you make the fuel tank. And sure, we don't have the infrastructure today, but there was a time when there were no gas stations, and there was a time when Tesla didn't have any charging stations.

The big problem is where to get the hydrogen. Water electrolysis is not very efficient, I don't know how cracking it from other chemical compounds compares to other methods of power generation, and really if we were to switch the entire vehicle industry over, the best way to get that much power for fuel cell electric or battery electric cars is nuclear. I could go on for a while about thorium reactors being safer and having less harmful waste than traditional uranium fission, but it's politically unpalatable for voters, and governments don't like to fund reactors that don't produce plutonium for bombs as part of the cycle.

I still retain some hope to see a commercial fusion plant go hot in my lifetime, but my dad just retired a few months ago, and he keeps telling me it's been twenty years away for the last thirty years...

I’ll admit I know very little about H2 cars. We use electrolysis for O2 on the boats and it works well at letting us not die. The idea that the electric drivetrain would be the same but you could save in weight is appealing. Having that second step on the infrastructure to convert electricity to H2 to put into a car is a bit of a bummer vice directly hooking into the car to recharge the Lithium cells. I’ll have to read up on it and see how the best of fuel cell cars compare. There was a lot of downers about the highly explosive (makes gasoline look like hot water) nature... how it’d leak through through containers, embrittle materials. Still... it’s largely a waste gas that is expelled through O2 production already. There could already by a limited production stream available for use if it was just collected.

 

[Hasdrubal]

Boats must mean submarines? I had a thought about trying to go Navy and be a reactor guy, but ended up being sick of math by the time I reached calculus, figured I wouldn't have too good a shot passing the school. Went Army instead, but still wonder sometimes.

But yes, if you're sitting on a power source like that and your supply chain to anywhere is nonexistent for months at a time, electrolysis is perfect. For industrial scale, and minus such easy access to electricity, the numbers don't look as good.

This article appears to be heavily biased towards battery cars, but it has some info on relative efficiency. I say biased because they completely ignore the environmental impact of so much lithium and cobalt mining, the ethical problems of Chinese control over much of the world's rare earth mineral production (I'm half Chinese so I don't feel bad criticizing their ethnic cleansing program and possible use of slave labor), and the cost of upgrading the national power grid to handle so much more demand if everyone switched to a Tesla tomorrow.

https://insideevs.com/news/406676/battery-electric-hydrogen-fuel-cell-efficiency-comparison/

Currently the high pressure H2 tanks on fuel cell cars are gaseous only, but they've been extensively tested. Liquid storage will probably be impractical, but there's plenty of research going on for various types of binder media to increase both safety and density.

https://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars.html

https://thenextweb.com/shift/2020/0...drogen-storage-breakthrough-metallic-sponges/

 

[charleswrivers]

The cost of electricity will go up by quite a bit too, if we switch away from natural gas to wind and solar.

Solar is showing to at least competitive or downright cheaper than fossil over its life. Then again, it’s not a steady source of power w/o a banking method once the sun is down. Those banking methods are... well... clunky. That’s where retaining nuke and the best of natural gas and coal until such capacity exists it can be taken offline is a good plan. Or... you do what California did and pull fossil plants offline without a suitable replacement, not be able to meet energy needs and not be able to take care of your citizens.

I’ve never looked Into wind too thoroughly though I’ve seen a few solar farms. Deep current variants be more dam-less hydro than wind seemed kind of neat. Given the set it and forget it if modern solar vs those windmills... and what little I’ve read about them seeing they weren’t as good of a bang for the buck. Wind just seems overly complicated with higher maintenance costs and kind of poor output.

I’m sure our infrastructure is going to change some over our lifetime. We’re trying new stuff... some may stick... some won’t. The power industry is a business too... here to make money. If they’ve bought and paid for a “dirty” power plant decades ago that’s making them $$$ hand over fist vs investing in a new tech that has a large initial investment, it’s not going to happen unless they know they’ll get a good (better) return. Even then, it may well be more desirable to stay where they’re at in the short term until a major upkeep period that took the plant down might be the time to decom it.

If there’s something better... and better using means cheaper, then I’m all about the change. I’d also love to see fusion in my lifetime. I think we’ll lucky to see fast fission plants come online and take all our old mid-20th era tech plants offline. We can pull all of our spent fuel we’ve been storing and actually deplete the Uranium/Plutonium to fission products instead of just using a tiny portion of the fuel w/thermal fission and setting it aside to bemoan it being bad and needing to be disposed.

It’s all a business. It’s there to make $$$. Solar is growing like mad. It’s not all Ferngully-esk saving the planet for those making them. There’s dollars backing it because there’s a return on investment to be had. It may well be subsidized... meaning we taxpayers are indirectly buying the things... but... they’re still getting built like crazy.

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