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No, constrained as in ineffective for the purposes of many potential buyers making other valid choices available to the market.

Not that its relevant to the discussion, which is focused on what works, but if I were to buy an EV I believe virtually every Joule of energy it used would come from burning natural gas. Solar is about 4% of the grid, most of which is used by the people who generate it.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 05 Aug 19:33

Silvaire wrote:

if I were to buy an EV every Joule of energy it used would come from burning natural gas.

This is true, but it’s also true that you would burn overall less fossil fuel than you would by running a typical ICE. It’s also true that there is no cleaner alternative to an EV, and it’s as clean as the energy used to power it. Currently the worst place in the EU to operate an EV is Poland, and it’s still nearly 30% cleaner than an ICE when factoring in end-to-end energy consumption. In the worst case, if you run a Tesla Model S (the least clean EV end-to-end) on coal-based energy, it takes 4-5 years before it becomes cleaner than an ICE.

An ICE can never get cleaner, regardless of what kind of fuel you burn—except possibly biodiesel. Biodiesel is certainly cleaner than traditional fuel, but it’s impractical as a large scale solution.

EHRD, Netherlands

The word ‘clean’ in this context is really funny, a typical example of the propaganda on this issue. CO2 is what plants breathe in, its not hazardous to us and notwithstanding our perception of how much we want in the atmosphere, its very clean.

How much natural gas or oil anybody burns with their car depends on how far they drive, and in which particular EV or ICE car, large or small. Also, increasing the range of EVs to a more practical level will make them bigger and even heavier, and so increase their energy consumption. Efficiently using large quantities of energy is no different in terms of gross energy consumption than inefficiently using smaller quantities. The relative efficiency of EVs versus ICE cars is hardly worth bothering about anyway: given a 45% average power plant efficiency and transmission/conversion losses EVs are roughly comparable to the most efficient ICE cars. And actually to be honest, I just don’t care – the issue of EV efficiency is a mole hill being made into a mountain by people promoting a quasi-religious authoritarian agenda. The energy in both cases comes predominantly from fossil fuel, its broadly comparable depending on the specific vehicle you choose, and in reality it will continue to come predominantly from fossil fuels for as far into the future as anybody can see.

Europe in particular has for centuries bred beyond its resources. In the past the solution was to ship people overseas, me for instance, but there aren’t so many places to send them these days and the natural resources are ever more depleted. The best thing you can do for the environment is stop breeding like rabbits, and it actually has a big effect. It also has an effect in reducing tax revenues, which is why it isn’t promoted by the European ruling elites who live off the taxpayer and who would instead like to impose a sacrifice in quality of life on an excessively large population, acting in their own self interest.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 05 Aug 21:35

But of course every day the installed base of renewables increases, and will accelerate as a result of Putin’s special military action, at least in Europe. And nuclear becomes fashionable again it seems, if only as a bridge. And Vehicle-To-Grid should also contribute. All parameters point towards a solid contribution of EV’s to improve our environment.

Sorry to have drifted the discussion towards the real benefits of EV’s. Our planet instead of our pockets.

Private field, Mallorca, Spain

The US government subsidizes ICE-based personal transport to a degree not found in any other western country

If “subsidy” = “collect tax elsewhere” then yes. Europe heavily subsidises airlines…

My Model 3 has never been connected to anything other than public charging infrastructure.

Here in the UK, that would cost you as much as running a diesel car. Maybe not elsewhere in Europe, due to “subsidies”

but it’s also true that you would burn overall less fossil fuel than you would by running a typical ICE

That is strongly dependent on whether the generation chain involves the steam cycle (which is only about 40% efficient), which it does for oil, coal, nuclear, but doesn’t for natural gas burnt in gas turbines.

But of course every day the installed base of renewables increases, and will accelerate as a result of Putin’s special military action, at least in Europe

A couple of things there: a) the biggest energy user on the mainland is not going nuclear regardless of economic hardship (well not yet) b) the distribution is constrained by the network. A street of say 50 houses could support of the order of 5 Teslas doing lots of driving. This can be solved but not trivially.

A wholesale move to nuclear would change everything apart from b) above which would need a lot of investment, which, hey, would drive taxation of mileage driven. I recently went to a seminar on EVs and these were the conclusions.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

A rarely publicised factor is that the range is impacted a lot by heating and aircon, but again this is generally accepted for short journeys,

Well, I don’t know. I can say for sure that the aircon in my car reduces the range by about 5%, which is the same as it did in my previous (diesel) car. I haven’t had the car long enough to have done any extensive driving at less than -5°C, but given that the engine consumes about 10-15 kW at highway speeds, I doubt that the additional power used for heating will have a significant effect on range. The fact that the battery has less capacity at low temperatures is much more noticeable.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Peter wrote:

Maybe not elsewhere in Europe, due to “subsidies”

I assure you that there were no subsidies involved in the figures I quoted in post #91. Commercial charging stations paying full taxes on the electricity.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Commercial charging stations paying full taxes on the electricity.

Sounds like the Swedish govt has capped the profit margins of the companies operating these. Here the margins are huge.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

A street of say 50 houses could support of the order of 5 Teslas doing lots of driving. This can be solved but not trivially.

One would think that ratio depends on the climate where you live, hereabouts the sun mostly shines so I think the ratio is smaller than 10:1 here if every home had a decent land area for solar panels.

I believe the non-trivial local government ‘solution’ here goes as follows, in the minds of the bureaucrats: If state government can coerce people into buying EVs via taxpayer paid charging at work and elsewhere (as they are now providing), plus high gasoline taxes, special local emissions homologation requirements and ending construction of new gas stations, it might kill the economical sale of gasoline cars over time. At that point they would end ‘free’ taxpayer funded charging at work. That, plus the ever growing 39 cent/kW-hr electricity cost off the grid at home (which is, ‘surprise’, mostly ‘climate’ derived taxes and four times the cost of electricity in other nearby states) would then coerce people with $50-80K EVs into buying an additional $50+ K of solar plus batteries for their houses, allowing charging at night when they’re not driving. That provides enough range for them to work effectively and pay their taxes. The grid won’t store enough renewable energy to recharge EVs en mass at night and never will.

A key element in the above is to create a perception that EVs purchased now are being powered by fairly dust coming out of the wall socket. That seems to be going well, a lot of people seem to be completely oblivious to reality. They don’t know or care enough to think about driving a natural gas or coal powered car. Actually they don’t even care if it works very well and they’re not hard to convince – its just a status enhancing toy no different than any other.

The only tiny little problem with leading people down this path (other than the coercive and authoritarian nature of the whole thing) is that the distribution of land and cash isn’t well correlated to the distribution of driving: most people driving don’t actually own any land for the solar panels and they don’t have the cash to build an energy storing solar power plant on that land… I’m sure some of the bureaucrats would like to fix that ‘problem’ directly too, but that’s not going to happen. Instead what is already happening is that those who can’t afford to play at $50-80K per car plus 39 cent/kW-hr charging at home or $6/gallon gasoline move somewhere else instead, where a less manipulated market can better provide for them. Maybe the solution is to build a wall, to keep productive people from leaving. After all it worked so well for their spiritual brethren in East Germany

Last Edited by Silvaire at 05 Aug 22:53

Apparently my limitation of “5 Teslas” comes initially from

  • the size of the 11kV → 230V transformer at the end of the street and
  • the size of the 230V cable running from it

IF (and it is true this applies only to a small % of drivers) you used a Tesla etc for serious commuting, then you need a lot of power. The typical house here is limited to 1 phase and 80A. Anyway, we have done this before in other “electric” threads. The whole proposition pivots on how many people do serious commuting or are travelling salesmen etc. For sure fewer than pre-CV19, but not a lot less.

To change this would need a huge investment, way up in tens of billions, and that simply won’t happen unless the proposition involves road pricing.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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