Electric cars not the answer

solarvic

I live in gas country and think  shuting down pipe lines and going all electric is a fairytale. There are already 2 states that outlaw gasoline cars by 2035.  I feel that it should be choice of whether to buy electric or fossil fueld car.  We can,t keep up with the electric demand now so how we going to generate enough electric without fossil? There was an artecale in my local paper that going all electric cars will eliminate 100,000 thousand auto workers jobs. electic cars do not need engines, transmissions, drive shafts differentials catalytic converters and all the computer electronics that keep them from poluting the air. There are a lot of other jobs that get eliminated that serve the fossil fuel. Steel mills that make the pipe, iron foundrys that make the castings for the equipment needed and the list goes on and on. Gm said in that artical that they will be buying many of the parts and wireing harness  which has a lot of heavy cables and other components  from off shore supplyers.  When all houses are electric and cars and everything is electric powered there are going to be a lot of cold toes and stranded cars. 

Photowhit

Not sure what a "...gas country..." is.

The facts are, oil is a finite resource. Both Shell and BP have stated the believe we are past "Peak Oil". Oil reserves will continue to be lower each year in theory from here on out. Most of the easy oil reserves are know and future oil reserves will require more to harvest or process. 

We need to look at alternative energies...

solarvic

I didn,t say ban electric cars. Some of them are ok especially hybrids that have a long range.  I was even considering a chevy volt at one time. As far as the oil companys go they lie a lot too. In pennsylvania where I live they say we have more oil than saudi arabia and  can export oil products and natural gas to other countrys.  What happened here was the oil company you mentioned  leased a lot of land and paid over $5,000 an acre for a short term lease and drilled some wells and capped them till pipe lines get built and started rumors that we don,t have oil. There were 2 natural gas power plants built in ohio by the gm plant that made the chevy cruze . Gm closed down that plant and now  and there is suposed to be a electric truck that has about a 200 mile range.  Probably ok for local delivery uses but not much good if you want to go very far. 

solar_dave

Most of our driving is with Chevy volts, charge mostly off grid tie solar. The range extender generator gets about 38 miles per gallon and works great, in the last year I think we have used about 10-15 gallons of gasoline. Not sure what we will do when these get longer in the tooth but we continue to look for alternatives.  I personally don't like the Chevy Bolt, mostly made in Korea. Teslas are to damn expensive and seemingly less reliable.  

Dave Angelini

Not alot of cars being charged in Texas today Not too much gasoline/diesel coming out of the pumps either.
 I saw some trucks in Houston at a gas station with a genset filling up. We should tell them that they can use the genset to charge the electric cars... Stop it

solarvic

solar dave. I do not know if you like pickup trucks or not but I hear tell toyota tundra is is suposed to hit the market this fall and ford soon after are going to have hybrids soon after. I think they might have thier present gas engines and add the electric to get more towing torrque. 

Dave Angelini

BTW California is only saying the sales of new vehicles gas powered will be limited. This also is an executive order and not voted on by the people or the legislature. All it would take is a change to a different governor and it can all change. There is a recall underway in California. If the power keeps going out on hot days when the wind blows, people may not like the direction.

Just as Texas is going to study their issue with the ice storm, California has started to understand the huge problems/costs of dealing with really bad forest management. This started about 50 years back and may take that long to correct if there is not more money to fix the problems. With C19, it just has been a year of doing very little. The maintenance not done in Texas will probably be C19 related also.

solar_dave

solarvic said:

solar dave. I do not know if you like pickup trucks or not but I hear tell toyota tundra is is suposed to hit the market this fall and ford soon after are going to have hybrids soon after. I think they might have thier present gas engines and add the electric to get more towing torrque. 

Actually I have a pickup truck, 2006 Chevy Colorado, really low milage 36K, I like the 2.8L  4 banger with 5 speed, it will haul my 7X12 enclosed single axle trailer at highway speeds OK in 4th gear but not in overdrive. Great for hailing duties around town, but getting used less and less each year.  Now used mostly to haul cans for the grandkids to recycle.  Got it cheap at the end of the 2006 model year and it will last the rest of my life for sure.

BB.

One thing that is an "unexpected consequences" of government Green Energy Subsidies (such as wind turbines) is that folks with thermal power plants (coal, nuclear, etc.) is that it makes the traditional/reliable power unprofitable--Leaving us with power that is subject to the whims of nature (wind, sun, biomass, etc.).

And what Austin Texas  demonstrates about prepping (posted 2/17/2021):

https://www.captainsjournal.com/2021/02/17/what-austin-texas-demonstrates-about-prepping/

I have a family member who lives in Austin, Texas.  This is a video he sent me (he didn’t take it, but is near where this video was taken).  This video is a couple of days old.  This line was about a mile long as guessed by the videographer.  There are no more lines like that because the grocery stores are out of food.

The trucks haven’t been able to run, so the shelves are bare.  Worse, the water system is torn apart by freezing temperatures, and water is off to most of the city.  There is no potable water, there is no more food.  There is now a run on gasoline, and the stations are quickly running out their tanks.

Power is off throughout vast portions of Austin and in fact throughout much of Texas.  It would be easy to write an essay about the power situation, but denials that the rush to natural gas and windmills is at least partially responsible are wrong.

The windmills are frozen, and the CTs (Combustion Turbines) sit above ground.  They are frozen solid and cannot operate.  Solar panels are covered with snow and ice, and besides, wouldn’t be capable of supplying the industrial base with enough power even if they could operate.

While there is a lot of research in next generation nuclear (like Molten Salt reactors) occurring at ORNL and ANL, and that’s nice, it wouldn’t have been necessary to wait on that.  PWR (Pressurized Water Reactor) and BWR (Boiling Water Reactor) technology is mature and safe.

The problem is that no CEO wants to invest money in nuclear power because the tax incentives are so significant for solar panels.  But the only source of cheap, clean, mature energy that can supply an industrial base with power is nuclear.  Unless, of course, they intend to move the industrial base to China (which is in fact investing huge sums of money in nuclear) and then beg for scraps that fall from the master’s table.

....

-Bill

Dave Angelini

Nice investment... Yea the solar subsidy for commercial solar is unbeatable.
The US Military is quietly doing what France did with small Nuke plants. You should see what I saw at Vandenberg.  And it is not aliens from Roswell....My brother in law would kill me.....

solarvic

I saw on the news today that Texas only run the NG turbines for peak loads. So sitting idle they were cold enough for the ice to acumulate. They should have had them online sooner. I supose Texas and a lot of other states will learn a lot from this.  Most wind turbines have gear boxes to get the speed up to make a generator turn fast enough to work. I retired in 2010 and the engineer showed me som pictures of a turbine that was direct drive without gear boxs. It has a hub with the blades on one end of the shaft and the other end had a casting that looked like a giant brake shoe with windings in a complete circlei  on the the inside. Kind of built like a car alternator about 20 feet in diamater. Can,t remenber just what it looked like for sure but Semans was suposed to build the wind turbine.  

MrM1

Seems to me,  The Key to Renewables is Elements,  As in Periodic Table.  And Everything I read says there just isn't enough elements on the planet to produce all the Solar/Wind/Etc to supply the demand.  So unless some new tech emerges or things get a lot more efficient, we probably need to take the approach with dino  power ... well as the saying goes "don't quite your day job"

JRHill

I, like Vic, am in Gas (and Diesel and Propane) country. What defines this is that grid power is not an option and during the winter season, even if it was clear out, which isn't often, and the days are just too short for solar power. We HAVE to recharge our battery bank via generator just for household use in the winter, let alone charging an EV. I actually would love an EV but it just doesn't pencil out.

What does pencil out is my wife's F250 and my F350. These rigs are what's is needed to traverse steep logging trails hauling loads in and out over miles of rough roads that many 'cars' can't use due to lack of ground clearance. Add to that wear and tear due to light duty suspensions and steering. Also add to this the occasional 12" to 48" of snow.

So a 'woke' city person may shrug and say "Tough. Move." Yeah, right. It would be a sentence of hard labor to have someone who thinks like this as a neighbor. So for the current time when I see articles about banning ICE vehicles in the future I watch for certain things like banning ICE vehicles under a given size or only NEW ice vehicles. The time is early yet but in five or ten years just watch the uprising of ICE owners over ridiculous legislation and bans which are illogical.

boB

People in the southern states and where the sun shines would be able to store energy during the day and transfer that to their electric cars during the night...   Or maybe a swappable battery for the car that is charged during the day from solar.
But up here where the sun hides a lot, that won't be an option except to help out.

Hopefully in another 10 to 15 years, the grid will be better equipped to handle electric vehicle charging if generation can also keep up.

I'm not so sure there will be enough raw materials to easily make all of the batteries we will need ?  Right now, almost all of the lithium batteries come from Asia so we are going to have to get cracking here !  Too bad our technical work force is dwindling in the US...    Sure seems that way anyway as one who hires those types here in the PNW.

solar_dave

I like my electric cars, sold off the 2012 Volt and bought a new 2022 Bolt 2LT.  Nice car, decent deal.  Wife still has her ultra low mileage 2011 Volt which has been solar charged its whole life.  

 Solar grid tie is just fine with the goals of low/no cost operation.  Lasts months bill was $92 And all of that was night time generation (AC was running hard all night), service delivery charges and a few bucks in the typical weirdo charges. Still have 1500+ kWh in the on peak generation bank so we charge day or night, preferably in the day on peak cycle. Rather use them than give them back at year end for like $0.02 kWh.