Electric Vehicles (OT)

[schillingfan]

This all makes me so furious. In 1980 I worked for California Governor Jerry Brown in the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research. The whole office, except me, was devoted to planning for alternative energy “small is beautiful” was his slogan. This was when the Shah was deposed in Iran and gas was scarce for a while. I bought a Honda civic. Half f our state fleet of vehicles ran on ethanol. We had the OPEC embargo in 1982 and there we long lines at gas stations and there were odd and even gas buying days. Reagan became President in 1980 and actively pushed increased U..S oil production and drilling and OPEC oil flowed again and people bought big cars.

In 2008, the economic collapse brought high fuel prices again and people started buying small cars and hybrids. With Obama as now President there was tension between drill baby drill and climate change, but I believe U.S. production rose again. Gas went down, people bought bigger cars and on we went.

Which brings us to 2021. If we had begun back in 1980 to convert off of fossil fuels and government had pushed money into alternatives we wouldn’t be here now. The oil and gas market is now global. Prices don’t depend on how much oil we produce here. We mostly depend on our own fuel and Canada. Government can effect market forces. I would love to put solar panels on our house and it would work as we sit on a hill with no trees blocking the sun. With real tax credits we could convert from oil heat to solar electric. Market forces are not free. Many government incentives have been towards fossil fuels for year.

It’s one of the reasons I despise Reagan. This all frustrates me to new end.

[DurhamBull]

I own a 2020 Chevy Bolt and love it.

@allentown Even with electricity generated by the worst possible source (100% coal), an EV over its lifetime will be responsible for fewer CO2 emissions than a gas-powered car. Here's some numbers that back that up, sorry that the article is formatted very badly.

Factbox: Lifetime carbon emissions of electric vehicles vs gasoline cars

One thing that's easy to overlook is that internal combustion engines are wildly inefficient. About 70% of the fuel burned in an average passenger car is simply wasted (lost as heat, noise, etc.) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency). By comparison, EV efficiency is generally greater than 75% and can get > 90% for city driving (https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/atv-ev.shtml). So even though coal produces a lot of CO2 when burned for electricity (natural gas less so, but still some) and there are transmission losses to account for, once the electricity gets to the EV, the vehicle uses most of it.

[allentown]

The proper scenario is scenario 3, in which the electricity comes from coal, because electric cars are extra electricity requirements added at the margin, which will keep coal-fired plants in business. That is a 78,000 mile break-even. That is as much as I drive in 15+ years.

[bkeich]

Julio, BKox,

It was a flippant / joking statement. Yes, Gasoline prices effect everyone, including myself. Most of my career has either been in the power or plastics industries, so yes, the price of oil is actually very important to me as it changes my work significantly.

My $8 / gallon statement was meant as a silly, flippant remark, but I was not clear about that. I would never wish that effect on our economy or on other people.

[DurhamBull]

The proper scenario is scenario 3, in which the electricity comes from coal, because electric cars are extra electricity requirements added at the margin, which will keep coal-fired plants in business.

I think I see your argument. In order to meet demand, utilities have to turn to coal, so any increased demand means more coal. I partially agree, but it's not the case everywhere all the time, and will be less often the case in the future. There's an interesting map where you can see in real time the carbon intensity of electricity in your area: https://app.electricitymap.org/map

"Low carbon" in their parlance means nuclear or renewables (wind, solar, geothermal, hydro). For instance, right now my power here in NC is 68% low carbon (mostly nuclear). The other 34% of demand is being met by fossil fuels, but even that is likely a combination of natural gas & coal.

There's an interesting interactive graphic on this page below the sentence "This shows the source of electricity generation in each state according to preliminary 2016 data": https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plants/

It's old data, but even back then you can see that a 16 states got ≤ 10% of their electricity from burning coal. PA was right in the middle at 25%. Since then, a number of fossil fuel plants have been retired (https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34452). Demand hasn't gone down; the slack is being taken up by new natural plants and increasingly by renewables.

So the good news is that "extra" demand isn't being met by coal 100% of the time nowadays, and depending where you live, coal might not be used at all. And in the future, wind and solar (and batteries, I hope) will provide a larger and larger share of the mix. EVs, as they say, get cleaner over time.

[julio]

If you (anybody) purchase an EV now (or when you next purchase a new vehicle), the likelihood that its power will be drawn from a coal-fired power plant will diminish with time; even if the extra KwH you pull in the first year come partially from coal, that draw will decline each year you own the vehicle. Given that new vehicles purchased now will be in the fleet for a long time, the sooner we start getting EVs into the fleet, the sooner we will get the ICE vehicles out of the fleet. We're phasing out the coal-fired power plants; even if getting EVs into the fleet now means some of their power will come from coal in the short run, that's better than carrying gasoline (or diesel) burning ICE fleet 20 years into the future after we retire the coal-fired power plants. So we don't wait until the generation infrastructure is largely carbon-free to move to EVs; we modernize the generating capacity and the vehicle fleet together.

[LegoDoom]

Also, why aren't EVs being made with solar body panels?

The technology does not exist to make a solar panel that could meet the safety requirements that a vehicle needs.

Fisker Ocean | Fisker Inc.

The Ultra trim level is intriguing. 340mi range, 3.9s 0-60, $50k

[bkeich]

I agree about putting solar panels on the top of cars, but also houses. Basically, everything that can be should be, assuming it is at least marginally financially reasonable. I actually think that it should be in the building code that all new houses have solar panels, unless there is a community approved exception or a place that it just doesn’t make sense (Pacific Northwest, etc)

That said, the panel on the top of a car is not going to provide much power. If you can somehow manage to get 250W of panel on top, it would provide 3 KWH per day (optimistically, assuming full sun). That is about 3-5% of a full charge for most cars, so it is something, but it isn’t a lot. Adding to that the weight and the possible structural issues with the car, I think we need an improvement in the technology.

Maybe when we can get a full KW of panel on the car it starts looking better. Maybe that is now, but I think the technology is still a little short. (I know there are prototype and speciality cars that can do this, but that is a long way from a mass produced panel).

[LegoDoom]

I agree that the tech needs to get better. Fisker is claiming it can generate 1500 miles per year and up to 2000+ in optimal conditions (which is not the northeast).

And it looks like the roof is only on the top trim level which is $69k.

[andyb]

Interesting. Here is the Motor Trend article that has another competitor saying it adds a little more than 1200 miles in sunny climate a year.

Is the 2023 Fisker Ocean's Solar Roof Fab or Folly?

At the moment this seems an expensive luxury to add 10% to a car's range (and lower operating costs of course). That is probably not good enough though maybe in another 10 years it could add 50%. I think the market here is for people like me without a garage that are looking for a "city vehicle". Adding 10% to range does not do much for me. It would do even less for long haul driving when there is not enough time for the sun to charge anything. But for city driving where most trips are less than 5 miles a day it could add days or weeks between charges potentially.

Maybe the proper use for this technology is to extend the electric range of a gas hybrid like a Prius. If a Prius could get the first 5 or 10 miles from solar it might do the same as the plug-in supplemental models. The original Chevy Volt for instance where the goal was for the first 50 or so miles to be electric before gas took over. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

[LegoDoom]

I didn't realize that the Fisker Karma had the same feature 10 years ago (but it only powered the accessories... in fairness it was a small roof). That was a really cool car. If anyone remembers I'm pretty sure they sold them at the back building of Mike Piazza Honda/VW.

[LegoDoom]

Looks like the Ioniq also has solar panels for non-US models.

[zambonir]

I actually think that it should be in the building code that all new houses have solar panels, unless there is a community approved exception or a place that it just doesn’t make sense (Pacific Northwest, etc)

We've got plenty of solar up here, and more sun than you'd think. (Oregon has far less annual rainfall than Philadelphia for instance, and also much less winter.)

[bkeich]

I actually lived in Eugene for 3 years, so I understand.