The Price Of The "electric Revolution"......

We have had rolling blackouts in the last two weeks simply because of cold weather, and electric power systems unable to meet demand. Have them in the summer also. Only government fools would put all of their eggs in one basket, or monopolize the electric power industry. Oh BTW we have wind farms out the wazoo everywhere.

 

I'm not against electric on principle but i dont think i could justify to my conscience buying one. When they develop an alternative to sending children into cobalt mines i might.
https://www.hermes-investment.com/u...11/Hermes-Modern-Slavery-Take-Note-Cobalt.pdf
If you are wondering i didnt read the whole article i just googled "children mining cobalt the true cost of electric" certain it wouldn't be a resultless search.
This was written before the current push to electric cars.
BTW i realise i'm a hypocrite and use a mobile phone.
I feel Greta would be much better served pressuring governments into finding better ways of changing motor transport than utilising slavery, because the peanuts they are paid and using children at the very least equates to serfdom if not outright slavery.
Hydrogen fuel cells, synthetic fuels, sustainable batteries that can be reused indefinitely not ones with a limited lifespan and then thrown away need to be the focus of development.
For an alternative to petrol or diesel to work it needs to be fill and go (or drop and swap in the case of batteries) for it to be viable.
Of course they really want to end personal motorised transport and have us all walking, riding donkeys or riding on congested public transport. Perhaps after all COVID might just have saved that personal transport freedom, we might just have to thank China after all. The biggest controller of individual freedom ever known, giving it back to us in the west..............

 

I'll stick with my oily diesel car for now and the ICE motorbikes. I'd be happy to buy an electric car, but not at the current prices,and I'm not buying one of those hybrid things either. Saving the planet? How does that work then? When you are towing round the weight of an electric motor plus batteries whilst running the fossil fuel motor and vice versa when you turn to electric power? I'm sure things will improve as more electric charging points are installed and the battery technology itself continues to get better, but in 10 years time I'll be well into my 70's so a mobility scooter will probably be on the shopping list rather than a new car and those are electric already.

 

I heard some bozo in Paris wants to build a new airport terminal for electric and hydrogen aircraft. They should take courses in physics, energy, and economics.

 

I have to say tho, it is interesting to see the development when it comes to electric vehicles.
I can absolutely see myself owning an EV in the future but would struggle to go for an electric motorcycle, at least of what's on offer today.

Sure, there are challenges with EV, but from an environmental perspective I think its the only way forward, and that's not only talking about climate change but looking at air pollution in the cities and so on.

Mining cobalt doesn't seem to be a very pleasant job, and that goes for many other earth metals we are used too.Hopefully the producers of gadgets using these type of metals take a bigger responsibility in the future.

 

Interesting article about this subject that I saw today:

https://www.theguardian.com/busines...ndreds-of-times-more-waste-than-electric-cars

 

Good read...thanks

 

Personally I still think unless new battery chemistry and rapid charge times are forthcoming, that Hydrogen is the better answer. Fast refuelling, high energy density (1kg Hydrogen is the same as 2.8kg of petrol), dual fuel (run out of hydrogen then switch to petrol or LPG), cleaner (possibly) and doesn’t depend on mining materials (from China).

 

I think we will need both and that one of them shouldn't be seen as the "ultimate" solution that will suit everyone.
Hydrogen has its pros and cons just as battery has.

What I do like about batterycars is that they charge over night and while at work, the few times I do drive far I can give up 20 minutes to charge it to 80%. Still have to stop for a rest anyway.
We will always depend on mining from different countries so don't see that as an problem.

The challenge with hydrogen is that it still needs to be produced, transported and stored. But I hope these things can be solved as I see hydrogen being more of a fuel type suitable for heavier vehicles such as trucks and buses.

Its been a while since I looked into hydrogen, but as far as I know I haven't seen any dual fuel hybrid cars using hydrogen. Are you thinking of CNG maybe? (methane/biogas)

 

Wisdom - Never put all of your eggs in one basket such as electrical energy.

For every 1 kw of solar, wind, etc you must have 1 kw of back up energy, most likely economical diesel fueled. Creating expensive to own, staff, maintain and operate redundant power generation systems that must be immediately capable of responding @ 100% capacity in 10-13 seconds 24/7/365.. Imagine starting a very large diesel engine, revving to full rpm, syncing with the power frequency hz at full load. These diesel engines consume power while at standby to maintain near operating temperature in the engine block, oiling system, and radiator to avoid thermal shock and failures. The rotor stator windings etc on the electrical end must be heated for the same reasons. Systems must be exercised on a weekly basis.

New Electrical distribution systems must be built to serve such a severe peak demand imposed by electric transportation.

Electrical supply costs will skyrocket to unimaginable levels.

No free lunches, so fondly quoted by fools.

 

Good point, we will be more dependant on electricity in the future.
I can totally see that we in the future will need more intelligent grids, especially with solar-panels on our roofs and charging cars at night.

Hopefully the need for fossil oil and products that uses it will go down and then free up some power that we can use to fuel our EV's instead.

 

I owned a sailboat until I discovered I couldn't afford free energy.

I worked as an engineer at a nuclear power plant also.

LED lights were supposed to be our grid saving nirvana.

 

As with most things, there are pros and cons. I got mine last week. It drives like a dream. A silent, powerful dream. My main concern at the moment is how on earth am I going to keep my license? With 408 PS and 486 lb ft of instant torque it’s like having my foot on dynamite. As we have ultra expensive petrol and ultra cheap hydroelectric power, my ‘fuel’ cost has been reduced to 20 pct. So far I’m very happy.

In my country EVs had a 60 pct. share of the sales last year, while hybrids and fossil fuel cars had 20 pct. each. From 2025 we can’t buy a new fossil fuel car. Until then we have the choice between totally tax free EVs and heavily taxed ICE cars, after the ban year I expect the taxes to be moved over to EVs. The way it is, my government sponsored me with 15,000 UKP.

I have had a charging station installed in the garage, and apart from the northernmost part of the country the charging infrastructure is quite good, so access to quick charging is not an issue. We’ll be taking the car on a trip up north this summer, that might prove ‘interesting’ – we’ll see.

Will I keep my classic car and motorcycle? You bet. That’s where my heart is.

 

There has been research into ICE dual fuel hydrogen (pure and blended) and diesel. I think maritime would be a good application until they make it work more widely. I think (and may be wrong) that free piston generator/engines may lend themselves to burning anything.

There is of course the other approach to using hydrogen - fuel cells to create electricity and water directly.

Hydrogen could theoretically be made anywhere from excess power and used an an energy store until needed.

As everyone says - best to spread the bets to develop as many options and solutions as possible.

 

Wow, need to look into this, sounds interesting. I was under the impression that hydrogen needs to be stored in high pressure tanks.

I also had a look at fuel-cells but when you use methanol (or maybe it was ethanol) as a "fuel". Guess the challenge there is to produce it.

Hydrogen is interesting in many ways as it can be used as a backup and to "store" energy as you mention @Cyborgbot (and similar do what @Old dumb arse describes with the diesel engine).
The EU invests heavily into hydrogen I've been told so its deffo a fuel to that will be around in the future. Think the problem when used in EV's is the same as with today's batteries, they take up space.

 

I'd love to have a go on an electric bike, all the youtubers who have reviewed them are surprised how good they are, they would have to up the range to about 400 miles and drop the price (cheaper than petrol ones ) before I'd be tempted..i'd still want a petrol bike as well though

 

I haven't driven one, but ONE thing I always think of when looking at electric bikes and thinking if I would consider one is "I WANT MY CLUTCH"
I'm a bit old school when it comes to gearboxes, everytime I drive an automatic (such as VWs DSG) I love it....but then head back to my car and I'm like..."well, this is better, I'm in control". I know its a load of BS and i'm just fooling myself, but I do have a thing for manual gearboxes in cars and bikes.

 

My wife’s son pays nearly 9K for pedal only versions of velocipedes! Calls ‘em mountain bikes.
Ken.

 

Like it or not, we will eventually have to give up the internal combustion engine. It won’t happen for years to come, I’ll guess that it will be in the 2040-50’s or so. The argument is over what the replacement will be and how we manage the transition. Unfortunately the people in charge of this are politicians. These plonkers listen to nasty, unpleasant troll-like witches like Greta and gormless, hypocritical, poorly educated footballers (who are fed scripts by journalists). The manufacture of hydrogen is too dirty and energy consuming for it to be competitive. Besides, its energy density is low when storage is taken into account and its handling is somewhat problematic, “Renewable” fuels just rip up forests faster than food farming and we don’t eat enough chips to run our cars on recycled cooking oil.

So electricity it is. But we don’t produce enough and we have a few more issues to deal with. The main one is storage, both long and short term. It’s not windy every day, there’s not enough sunlight at night (Doh!) and people have a nasty habit of sticking to a clock which gives spikes in demand. So we need various sorts of batteries, frequency maintenance devices and something to support our base load. The latter is probably best done with large scale Thorium reactors as well as small scale local ones. By small scale I mean something that is half the size of supermarket. But we’ll have to see off the green bastards first. Maybe we could burn them?

Once we have sorted out a permanent supply electric vehicles will make sense. Even so, there will be old gits like me still running internal combustion engines fitted to motorcycles well beyond the 2050’s much like there are cars running on the road that were built before the First World War. Over time their numbers will reduce but they’ll still be there.