I have a personal amusement thing going while I drive:
Watching traffic to see who is wearing the mask while they drive.
Not all that many over-priced golf karts to be seen, but they are at the top for mask wearers. Priaps as well.
Make of that whet you will.
Not in my future. Guess my Ram will be my last vehicle. Even Musk says they can’t build enough solar/wind to power 100% elec cars.
The problem with grid power availability to charge EV’s is primarily an issue with a lack of realistic storage schemes for any excess generation. A secondary problem is limitations of efficient energy transport over long lines between two regions. Thirdly, inter-conversion between storage and grid distribution suffers a significant loss penalty in either direction.
Any moving mass is a store of momentum. This fact is applied in the use of flywheels for energy storage. The structure of the rim of the flywheel is the crucial energy storage component, as the energy capability is tied to velocity squared. The yield strength of flywheel construction limits the velocity, thus the potential for energy storage.
An electrical engineer specializing in magnetic levitation & propulsion conceived a way to side-step the flywheel’s material strength limitations. Active levitation typically involves adjustment of electromagnets to lift a material against gravity and maintain a nominal position. This is an unstable process made possible by a very fast feedback system modulating the magnetic lift force.
Active attractive positioning by a curved track magnet system, applied to a moving flexible mass, achieves deflection of that mass about a closed circular path. Modify that system to two half-circle turning magnets connected by two straight segments of linear magnetic accelerators, and momentum can be transferred in or out of a recirculating ribbon-like mass. Two way efficient exchange of electrical and kinetic energy is the goal.
It is more a feat of grand engineering, rather than pushing the limits of science to implement such an energy storage scheme.
Where’s the juice?
bookmark
Gasoline prices in three years will make you cry.
EVs are designed for Asian countries where people are packed into cities and don’t travel long distances by car. The auto industry is designing cars for these customers because there are a lot more there than there are in America.
They might have a market in urban areas where the average trip is less than 5 miles.
A little less useful on the Great Plains or the mountain West.
Selling them is easy.
It's what happens when they are 20% of the fleet, never mind 80%, and they all plug in at 6 pm or at 8 am that's hard, very hard, SO HARD in fact that this is never, ever going to happen.
PC make believe seems to be dictating a market. This is true insanity.
So was the metric system....LOL
While auto makers and dealers rush to expand the EV grid, environmentalists are pushing to shrink the electrical grid’s power generation by pushing solar and wind, while killing coal and gas plants.
If the Texas electric grid couldn’t handle winter weather then how is it going to handle a million electric vehicles?
Don’t worry, by Republicans sitting out the Georgia Senate runoffs (to ‘teach the GOP a lesson’) and thereby handing the Senate to the Democrats, dealers won’t have much trouble selling electric cars, as that will be all that will be permitted. And, just in case that’s not enough ‘encouragement’ for the conservatives who thought they ‘taught the GOP a lesson’, they’ll also start the process of scrapping existing gasoline vehicles.
In 15 years, the days of fossil fuel vehicles will (along with legal gun ownership) will be over*.
*...but we did ‘teach the GOP a lesson’, right?
Selling things to people who don’t want to buy them.
Rebuilding old cars like cuba might be a good financial investment. I think I will buy some junkers.
The only possible way to make them viable(?) is to use auto rail for longer trips.
And even them I’m not sure a train system could handle millions(?) of passender cars a day?
In other words what is the cost electric vs gas.
Build a hundred new nuclear reactors and perhaps there will be enough electricity for everyone to drive one of these faggotwaggons.