I have no clue if this is correct, shit is over my pay scale but it friggin makes sense. Read on with an open mind!
Got this from my buddy Mark Reed... an interesting take on Electric Cars.
“As an engineer I love the electric vehicle technology However, I have been troubled for a longtime by the fact that the electrical energy to keep the batteries charged has to come from the grid, and that means more power generation and a huge increase in the distribution infrastructure. Whether generated from coal, gas, oil, wind or sun, installed generation capacity is limited.
A friend sent me the following that says it very well. You should all take a look at this short article.
IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE, THEY WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN PAYING A GASOLINE TAX ON EVERY GALLON THAT IS SOLD FOR AUTOMOBILES, WHICH WAS ENACTED SOME YEARS AGO TO HELP TO MAINTAIN OUR ROADS AND BRIDGES. THEY WILL USE THE ROADS, BUT WILL NOT PAY FOR THEIR MAINTENANCE!
In case you were thinking of buying hybrid or an electric car...
Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of those things has never been discussed. All you ever heard was the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it. This is the first article I've ever seen and it tells the story pretty much as I expected it to.
Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things, yet they're being shoved down our throats. Glad somebody finally put engineering and math to paper.
At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro Executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious.
If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.
This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So, as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This later "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an 'OOPS...!' and a shrug.
If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the following. Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. It's enlightening.
Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes, "For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine." Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.
It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.
According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned, so I looked up what I pay for electricity.
I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 Mpg = $0.10 per mile.
The gasoline powered car costs about $25,000 while the Volt costs $46,000 plus. So the Canadian Government wants loyal Canadians not to do the math, but simply pay twice as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country.
Originally Posted by ROYC75:
That's a possibility. TBH, IMHO there are a lot of concerns here to think through. Like 1, not everybody is going to be able to pony up that much money for a new ride.
Heh, wait until the flying car comes out!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I can understand that concern, but I'd think that once they become the normal, there will be available at all sorts of price points. At least, I'd hope. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Rain Man:
Separating it from politics, I'm always curious why some people adamantly oppose attempts to establish new technologies. It's not a bad thing to try something new, and if it doesn't work then you abandon it. Why do some people not even want to try it?
It's not even technology in particular. It might be a different type of zoning to help make housing more affordable, or adding bicycle lanes. Any time changes are attempted, some part of the population acts like it's the apocalypse before it's even attempted. It's not even about the issue, I think, but rather it's just a discomfort with doing anything differently than the past.
This is an excellent observation. I've sometimes wondered the same thing. I think some of it can be attributed to humans being creatures of habit and routine. Also, a lot of people, in general, tend to dismiss ideas that not familiar with or fully able to comprehend. So, a lot of times, it's easier for people to just shake their fist at things than to give new ideas/technology the proper effort they deserve. [Reply]
Originally Posted by TimBone:
This is an excellent observation. I've sometimes wondered the same thing. I think some of it can be attributed to humans being creatures of habit and routine. Also, a lot of people, in general, tend to dismiss ideas that not familiar with or fully able to comprehend. So, a lot of times, it's easier for people to just shake their fist at things than to give new ideas/technology the proper effort they deserve.
Yeah, and I'll admit that I'm really trailing edge on adopting new things. However, I don't oppose other people trying them, and if they work then I'll get on board a decade later.
When I got married, I'm pretty sure that my wife thought that I had time-traveled from the 19th century. We were moving in together and we inventoried things to see what was redundant. The checklist went like this:
Microwave - she had it, I didn't.
Nice camera - she had it, I didn't.
Vacuum cleaner - she had it, I didn't.
Toaster - she had it, I didn't.
Blender - she had it, I didn't.
Dinner plates - she had them, I didn't.
Television - she had it, I didn't.
On and on and on. I basically owned a couch and a bed and a couple of pots and pans that looked like they'd been used on a cattle drive. [Reply]
Originally Posted by TimBone:
I'll be the one to get it to DC, I guess. And this is a genuine question, because I admit I have done absolutely zero research.
Can someone explain why Republicans are so opposed to electric cars? I was genuinely surprised to hear it was a political talking point at all.
Is it because big oil money is on the Reoublican side?
Originally Posted by TimBone:
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I can understand that concern, but I'd think that once they become the normal, there will be available at all sorts of price points. At least, I'd hope.
I mean, people didn't just ditch their horse and buggies and go out and get a model T. [Reply]
Originally Posted by eDave:
I mean, people didn't just ditch their horse and buggies and go out and get a model T.
I've been interested in learning about that transition. It had to have been a big deal, but I've never read anything substantive about it.
Maybe it was an easy thing to do. I guess the concept is the same. They both use roads and they both park when you're at the store and you keep both of them in a garage/stable at your house. So maybe it wasn't that big a deal.
But did they have stop lights in the horse and buggy days? Speed limits? Were horses and buggies driving on the right side before cars showed up? What changed in the hay industry? I presume that the horse population dropped by about 99 percent over a 20 year period, right?
My house was build in 1906, and it had a stable in the back yard. From what I've read, Denver experienced a major transition from horses to cars in around 1910. So how did the family in my house transition? I'm really curious.
There are a couple of houses in my neighborhood that still have hitching posts on the front median. I think that's awesome. I bet my house had one, and I wish it was still there. [Reply]
Further, I've read that in many cities cars weren't even a foregone conclusion when they showed up. The same technology that was helping cars was helping streetcars, trolleys, and trains, so for a while you had horses sharing the streets with cars which were sharing the streets with things like trolleys. It just happened that cars overwhelmingly won the market battle. That would be an interesting thing to go back in time and observe, and see people's attitudes.
The technological changes in that era were so immense once electricity came into common use. I mean, my house had both electrical supply and gas supply (or kerosene or something) to the light fixtures because apparently both were still considered viable options.
And in a forty year period you got the telephone, cameras, motion pictures, refrigerators, phonographs, cars, and even airplanes. Did people love all that new stuff or were they wary of it? [Reply]
Originally Posted by Rain Man:
Separating it from politics, I'm always curious why some people adamantly oppose attempts to establish new technologies. It's not a bad thing to try something new, and if it doesn't work then you abandon it. Why do some people not even want to try it?
It's not even technology in particular. It might be a different type of zoning to help make housing more affordable, or adding bicycle lanes. Any time changes are attempted, some part of the population acts like it's the apocalypse before it's even attempted. It's not even about the issue, I think, but rather it's just a discomfort with doing anything differently than the past.
All those things are considered "progressive". And that's why you can't separate it from politics. People also fear change and things they don't understand. [Reply]
To me, it's not about being progressive or green or whatever you want to label it; the problem is that technology advances at it's own rate and people accept the technology when it become practical and more cost effective than what they're currently doing. This really seems like something that hasn't been well explained to people who don't understand the cost of lithium mining, electricity production, charging times, load on the existing grid, infrastructure changes, fuel taxes and probably more things than I can think of.
Unfortunately, it seems that there's a lot of things that people don't know about and yet are being forced down our throats as the savior of the planet. Any attempt to go against the prevailing message is seen as 'bad'.
All of the advances in the last 100 years have been because of cheap, plentiful energy. I won't see it however I believe that humans will move beyond oil and coal to more efficient forms of energy production. For that to happen, there's a whole lot more that needs to change than driving electric cars, solar panels and wind turbines.
The fuel tax argument is legit, but it's already being discussed about having a mileage usage tax instead which is likely more fair being that all vehicles get different mpg but drive the same mile. [Reply]
What I got out of this is Canadians pay a lot for electricity. $1.16 per kwh is high as hell, even if they're paying in Canadian dollars. I pay $0.12 per kwh on average. [Reply]
Originally Posted by TimBone:
I'll be the one to get it to DC, I guess. And this is a genuine question, because I admit I have done absolutely zero research.
Can someone explain why Republicans are so opposed to electric cars? I was genuinely surprised to hear it was a political talking point at all.
Is it because big oil money is on the Reoublican side?
I've always had the same question.
I've never understood the push back on stuff like solar power and electric vehicles. [Reply]
