Posted on 09/07/2016 11:15:52 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Is the electric car the inevitable wave of the future? Is the internal combustion engine finished, through, a relic of the 20th century—as many are now saying?
I have argued before that electric cars are overhyped. I calculated that the Tesla, for example, is still a really bad deal when you compare its substantial extra costs against the cost of operating a similar gasoline-powered car over five or ten years.
But what if I'm wrong? For example, how much of that calculation is due to the inflated cost of a Tesla, which uses all of the positive publicity lavished on it by the media to sell its cars at a pretty hefty premium?
Elon Musk's genius was to realize two things. First, the electric car had to be exciting. Previous versions had been designed as environmental hair shirts meant to show just how much you were willing to sacrifice for the cause in terms of performance, design, and just plain cool. By contrast, Tesla took advantage of the one really interesting performance feature of an electric motor—its ability to deliver a lot of torque instantly on demand—and used it to build a fast sports car....
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearfuture.com ...
It’s still a coal fired car.
Didn’t they call for the death of the diesel engine years ago?
Well, it could also be nuclear powered.
Coal, hydro, nuclear, solar, gasoline, propane... Lots of sources for electricity.
I want to get another EV and charge it via solar for off grid independence.
Don't forget hydro. The northwest uses a lot of hydro, hell, even the desert southwest uses it - Hoover Dam.
They will claim it is solar or wind powered.
There used to be a lot of wind powered ships.
“Nuclear powered road vehicle” is not as far out as some may think.
By adapting the design of Thorium-fueled Molten Salt reactor by miniaturization, to where it still produces very significant heat, but is now small enough to be mounted on the chassis of a road vehicle. Heat energy is the medium by which the power of any fuel is harnessed, and a reciprocating internal combustion engine is only one of the mechanisms that may be used. A design of a reciprocating engine that uses only hot air as a medium, the Stirling engine, could use air heated by the Thorium power cell, and convert it to propulsive power. The one waste product of this operation is excess heat, as the reactor would be heating continuously.
There would be ways to utilize this continuous production of heat energy, by banking it in a huge water reservoir, as a heat bank. directing the excess heat into the water, and using this system for such purposes as home heating, or as any engineer knows, a number of industrial purposes.
I cannot see owning an electric car myself, absent vastly improved range and cost performance - but progress towards those goals is being made, and I would not try to predict where things will go in the future.
There's about a 10% chance of that, whereas there's about a 60% chance it's coal fired. Plus, it yanks the envirolibs chain better that way.
You're not wrong, you're absolutely right. Crazy environmentalists want to throw out a product of over one hundred years of technical refinement - the internal combustion engine and gasoline. Extremely efficient, and gasoline packs a lot of punch for the money. My liberal brother-in-law bet me $100 in 2009 that gasoline powered cars would disappear within five years and electric cars would be dominant. He hasn't paid up, conveniently denying he made the bet due to dementia. He's lost a lot of money in solar power investments.
Electric cars are not going to become dominant for some years to come. For the time being, ICE cars will be dominant for quite a while.
Electric vehicles are subsidized at the manufacturing process and then again to the end user or consumer in the form of tax rebates
They are financially not viable without those two conditions
Three reasons why your comment is ignorant:
1. Teslas get 100 MPGe. So they use about 1/4 the energy a comparable internal-combustion car uses.
2. Coal is no longer the dominant, or even largest, source of electrical power in the U.S.
Natural Gas = 34%
Coal = 32%
Nuclear = 20%
Renewables =13%
Petroleum = 1%
3. 97% of new electrical power generation capacity last year was from renewables.
Both of you made far more reasonable statements than the extremists.
Want to know why the electrical car isn’t going to completely dominate by say, 2030? Because gas will still cost about $2 a gallon. If it were going to cost $8 a gallon, hell yeah, electrical cars would dominate. Why won’t gas cost $8 a gallon? Electrical cars.
Or fusion powered. We hope...
“1. Teslas get 100 MPGe. So they use about 1/4 the energy a comparable internal-combustion car uses.”
Based on what price of gas? $5/gallon??
“Coal = 32%”
Not by natural free market selection, but because Obama has artificially shut down hundreds of coal plants.
Modern gasoline engines have a maximum thermal efficiency of about 25% to 30% when used to power a car.
That is down right pitiful.
Big whoop - a motorcycle can do that. Teslas are sports cars, specifically for good efficiency and not for good carrying capacity or comfort.97% of new electrical power generation capacity last year was from renewables.
. . . which says that subsidies are buying a lot of wind turbine peak (under ideal circumstances of weather and demand) "capacity.” Scare quotes around “capacity” because when you need electricity you may not have much wind.Coal will likely decline, even post-Obama. Fracking is a cheaper way of getting fuel.
The author claims that there has been, and expects in the future more to come, progress in IC engine design. A point not lightly to be disregarded.
Pitiful indeed; I clearly remember a research engine in the IC engine lab in college getting 30%, back during the Kennedy Administration.
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