28 Comments

My trash company uses trucks that are powered by nat gas and so does the bus service. I have to say it's economical and since they aren't going on a long trip, it's economical to use the garbage haulers and buses for short trips.

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I think that's a great use of natural gas.

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Disclosure I am (a) a climate skeptic and (b) a skeptic's skeptic. YouTube has dozens of videos from blissfully happy EV owners, especially when paired with home solar. If you are one of the five per cent that regularly travels long distances, your situation does not apply to us one-hour-a-day commuters. For reasons I'm sure you are all familiar with, I don't support solar on the national grid. Home solar makes eminent sense. If you own an EV, home solar renders you immune to gasoline supply-side shocks in price and availability. If you live in a state where the price of grid energy increases faster than CPI inflation, the payback period of your home solar just keeps getting shorter and shorter. So yeah, EVs make good practical sense. Oh yes and the heavier car argument is a red herring.

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I don't disagree. I will make a different argument. With centralized emissions caused by electricity production, it's easier to take care of them! When my dog dies and I store my truck in Minnesota, I can foresee installing solar on my house in Las Vegas and getting an EV for in town.

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An interesting article in the WSJ yesterday by Bjorn Lomborg. Much to my surprise, apparently electric cars leave a load of pollution themselves, just not the kind we think of with gasoline powered engines. https://www.wsj.com/articles/policies-pushing-electric-vehicles-show-why-few-people-want-one-cars-clean-energy-gasoline-emissions-co2-carbon-electricity-11662746452?mod=MorningEditorialReport&mod=djemMER_h

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True. Again, goes to my point about electricity generation at scale, the pollution is centralized and should be easier to handle. (I am not advocating for electric vs gas, but just recognizing both have opportunity costs).

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Physics, like reality, is a hard teacher. Good luck with getting the resources and manufacturing the electric vehicles with all of the green power needed. Charging will be another altogether another clean dream.

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I wrote about the status and future of EVs in early 2020:

https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/61482.html

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Thanks for posting. You have a great blog.

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Thanks!

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Well in my defense, it was in high school I dreamt this up...

Didn't know about the slipperyness of H2, but as smaller molecule, I would say leakage is a problem.

But, there are solutions that the market, given time can solve, iteratively, if legal. Clearly the pie in the sky aspect of this is fusion... fission is an iterative step.

One of the faults of Utopians (or Fabians, but I repeat myself) is they think everything is just a switch. Just pass one more law and we have utopia. The problem is you don't know out of whose mind the solution may come, but in general, it's never the expert. Solutions don't typically come from serf in a feudal terribly hierarchical society, but that is what all of the 'best people' (think Raiders) seem to have in mind.

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The Villages in Florida have been using electric vehicles (golf carts) for local trips for a couple of decades. Works well for them. Most residents also have a gasoline powered vehicle.

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re Pollution, there seems to be remarkably little interest in 'traditional pollution'...ie, emissions that have a measurable and definable effect on health or well-being in the short and medium term. It's all CO2, CO2, CO2...generally miscalled 'carbon' by people who should know better.

Bjorn Lomberg in WSJ this morning notes that EVs create more particulate pollution than IC cars because of the effect of the weight (batteries) on tires, brakes, and roads.

I was just talking last night with someone returning from a 300-mile trip in a rented Tesla. He has his own Volvo electric, but got the Tesla for the trip because of the pseudo-self-driving features. Needed a charge on the way home, pulled into a place with 6 Superchargers...5 of the spaces were occupied by cars that weren't Teslas and weren't even electric, but just grabbed the parking spaces because they were close to the nearby bar. The remaining space was occupied by a Tesla that was charging and he had to wait about 20 minutes for it to leave, then another 30 minutes to charge his own car.

He does like electric cars because of the acceleration performance, but has noticed that there is considerably more road noise than from IC vehicles....tire replacement is also required more frequently.

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My guess is they are heavier!!! Those batteries aren't light. For a long over the road trip, give me a diesel....

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As far as I’ve ever seen, the only case for electric cars is the one you allude to: offshoring your air pollution. They’re perfect for California, because they enable two of the state’s leading products, NIMBYism and self-righteousness. Until electricity becomes more plentiful and cleaner — which our enlightened leaders seem determined to prevent — the idea of the U.S. (never mind the world) fully switching to electric cars is preposterous.

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I thought GM had the right idea when they developed the concept for what ultimately became the Chevy Volt. That car was to be a genuine gasoline/electric hybrid, like a locomotive, where the gas engine, in the Volt, is constantly generating electricity. But they screwed it up.

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The case for electric cars is simple - their mandated adoption will destroy the mobility of the middle class in this country. That is their primary feature.

Jeff, I have to ask. Are your sure the 'haze' you saw was pollution? I traveled to the LA / San Diego area frequently (once per month) from the late 70s until my retirement 4 years ago and I can assure you that the air in the LA basin is infinitely cleaner than it was when I started visiting.

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It is my assumption....could have been wildfires : 0

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I thought about this quite a bit as a futuristic teenager. My solution was nuclear fission with dialysis providing hydrogen for cars with O2 s as waste. Car exhaust was water.

I even thought the H2 could be distributed by existing Nat Gas lines.

If you get to be a billionaire from this throw me a couple percent!

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Lots of talk and projects going on re hydrogen. Problem is, existing electricity-to-H2 production methods have both efficiency losses and significant capital costs. Hydrogen is also more 'slippery' than natural gas, and existing gas pipelines may have too much leakage unless they are upgraded.

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I've no problem with the concept of electric vehicles, it's the regime's despotic and unworkable command economy approach that I despise. Gas is expensive? Just buy an EV silly! Meanwhile they've closes many FF power plants, jacked up the price of electricity and promised us rolling blackouts.

At least some of these vehicles have spec ranges comparable to ICE ones. If I had the jack I'd look hard at getting one or both of the Rivian offerings. Still, driving routinely in cold snowy areas or cross country through the Plains or parts of the SW would give me second thoughts.

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Oh, I agree! I think it's despotic. Buttgieg/Granholm might be the least empathetic people I know. I also worry a lot about instituting a social credit system, and the software in your car gets disabled....or the have the ability with tracking software to know where you are in your car at all times...some definite Big Brother stuff could happen.

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I'd rather maintain decentralized mobility. Imagine trying to get out of the way of a hurricane in electric cars with limited range. There might be a future for electric cars, but we are a long way away from viability from a technological perspective. It would require a completely new perspective on electricity generation and storage, and the range and recharging time issues will have to be a lot better than it is now for mass market adoption. Decades away at best I believe, and that is outside my timeline so I'm not too worried about it.

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Here’s a great study from Volvo comparing the carbon footprints of the ICE and EV versions of the same vehicle platform. It hasn’t gotten much attention, I’ll surmise, because the main finding is that it takes many driving miles for the EV to better the carbon footprint of the ICE version, due to the carbon outlay in the EV manufacturing process. This is not what EV proponents are promoting. I’m even surprised Volvo even released this, as they plan on going all EV. This study is from 2020 before the European energy price surges, so increased European electricity costs will further skew the results in favor of the ICE version.

https://www.volvocars.com/images/v/-/media/project/contentplatform/data/media/my23/xc40-electric-light/volvo-cars-LCA-report-xc40.pdf

The fact that the EV manufacturing process is more carbon intensive also minimizes the effect of the centralization of the pollution for EV power generation. The bigger problem is the pollution from the decentralized manufacturing process for all the various EV components, especially the minerals.

My biggest problem is that the mandating of EVs will restrict the mobility and freedom of lower income Americans, because there will be no old used EVs for these Americans like there are currently old used ICE vehicles. Once their batteries need replacing, EVs, like almost all green technologies, end up in landfills. For example, a BMW X5 PHEV is by all accounts a fine vehicle, however, BMW only warranties the batteries for 8 years. The battery replacement cost? Currently $30,000. What is the value of that X5 at year 6? In year 9 it’s a ticking time bomb, if it’s not already in a junkyard. An ICE vehicle that last 10-20 years is much more environmentally friendly.

Getting rid of the ICE infrastructure like the green zealots want to do is also a national security issue. In the event of a national emergency like an earthquake or a war, the reliability of the ICE infrastructure is priceless. Imagine an all EV California after a major earthquake.

Last but not least, you really don’t want an EV being charged in your home garage, and you really don’t want to live above a garage in a condo or high rise that allows EV charging. The fire risk from an EV itself, and also from the charging unit, is unlike the fire risk from an ICE vehicle. EVs release toxic materials when they burn due to their components, and they are prone to reigniting after initially being extinguished. Check out the firefighting instructions from Tesla in their Emergency Response Guide, starting on page 26. https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/2021_Model_S_Emergency_Response_Guide_en.pdf

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I've often wondered if such close proximity to strong electric motors in the 'ol EV will ultimately knock one's balls out of commission.

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