Finally, an American car to be proud of again

[drrod]

Just watched a programm on Speed called Logic. It was about several electric cars that are not the ones you hear about much. Some ineresting cars to say the least. However, there is still not much in the pipe tat I could see that addressed the main "plug in electric" problem. That is that the electricity is still going to be generated in the normal fashion and that is just off loading the emission problem to another area.
No doubt advances will be made but I expect it will be at leas another 5-10 years before they become mainstream.

Rod

[konadog]

...the electricity is still going to be generated in the normal fashion and that is just off loading the emission problem to another area. Rod

Exactly. The crux of the problem is that we have all come to assume that we will always have personal vehicles that can carry heaps of stuff and rock down the road at 110 km/h. It's not sustainable - no matter how you power it. In another generation or two we'll all go back to walking...

[glenn]

There was a huge electricity spill in the US over the weekend. Electricity was seen flowing down the street and people had to be evacuated from their homes as clean up crews were dispatched. Locals say that the smell of electricity is absolutely overwhelming in the area, and some have reported skin rashes - presumably a result of all the electricity fumes in the air. Residents say their property values have been decimated, because of all the residual electricity that will remain in the soil for years and will continue to off gas carcinogenic compounds for decades.

Luckily, it looks like none of the electricity will reach the local lake, where drinking water is drawn from.

[nxski]

There was a huge electricity spill in the US over the weekend. Electricity was seen flowing down the street and people had to be evacuated from their homes as clean up crews were dispatched. Locals say that the smell of electricity is absolutely overwhelming in the area, and some have reported skin rashes - presumably a result of all the electricity fumes in the air. Residents say their property values have been decimated, because of all the residual electricity that will remain in the soil for years and will continue to off gas carcinogenic compounds for decades.

Luckily, it looks like none of the electricity will reach the local lake, where drinking water is drawn from.

While humorous, I don't understand the relevance!? The pollution may be contained to one area, but it's still pollution.

The other problem with electric power is that there needs to be electricity nearby. Imagine you wanted to build a hydroelectric dam to make electricity in a more environmentally friendly way. How does all the machinery operate without already having electricity there to begin with?

[glenn]

Really? I thought the relevance is pretty obvious: oil is toxic. It's dirty when it's extracted, it's dirty when it's refined, it's dirty when it's transported, it's dirty when it's burned. Electricity is not, and it can't be spilled. Plus, the most efficient gas engines have about a 43% thermal efficiency, diesel about 50% (I hate to think about how inefficient our vans are). Add to this the fact that it now takes more than a litre of fuel to produce a litre fuel (oilsands is even less, some say it takes 2 litres to produce 1 litre). Imagine a dirty tanker following you around everywhere you go.

Here's another one for you. Global warming was caused by hippies.

If we had gone ahead with a shift to Nuclear power back in the 70's, we would be much better off today than we are with fossil fuels. When you consider the damage done by the thousands and thousands of spills, small and large, the carbon emitted, the carcinogens emitted, the environmental destruction during extraction, the potentially trillions of dollars required to mediate a rising sea - etc. . . we would have been better off with the occasional Chernobyl or Fukushima. To suggest that electricity - even coal fired - is as dirty and harmful as fossil fuels is folly.

I still drive an internal combustion vehicle - but no one in my family commutes: my wife rides her bike, I work from home, my kids and I walk to school. To be clear, I am not, and I never have suggested that fossil fuel be banned. I do think we are not paying the true cost for it though - we are leaving that cost to our kids. I am saying that it is ridiculous that millions and millions of internal combustion engines sit idling for several hours a day in gridlock. I'm just saying that it is awesome that production electric cars are finally starting to appear on our streets. Like LED light bulbs - the cost comes way down as they start to hit the mass market.

[nxski]

Thanks for the clarification, your point makes much more sense now.

If it takes 1L or more to get 1L of oil the system is flawed, where is the oil being sold coming from if more than what is being extracted is being burned? This just doesn't compute mathematically, that would, in essence, mean that we are now completely out of oil (or at least useable oil).

[glenn]

You got me!

One day after all the low hanging fruit is plucked, the energy to produce a gallon of gas will exceed the energy you get from burning a gallon of gasoline, and that will herald the end of the oil age - we're not quite there yet.

More accurately, if you take into account all the energy required to produce a litre of gas - which includes exploration, extraction from the ground steam extraction, refining from crude, transporting, delivering, etc. - currently we are somewhere around 25-30% of the energy extracted is required to produce that refined product. So it's still a net gain.

I was getting a bit loose with my facts there.

[drrod]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100620484

While showing much promise, lack of sales, high R&D and production costs, +/- shaky management decisions, it appears that Fisker is in danger of becoming yet another footnote in automotive history.

rod

[Onesweetvan]

I'm curious, why not LNG?

It's cheap, it's relatively clean and there is an abundance of it all over the world it seems. Isn't the world asking for clean, affordable and abundant energy source?

[FalcoColumbarius]

For clarification: By "LNG", are you referring to "Liquefied Natural Gas"? If so, if everyone in the world starts using it then how long will it be abundant?

Falco.

[Onesweetvan]

For clarification: By "LNG", are you referring to "Liquefied Natural Gas"? If so, if everyone in the world starts using it then how long will it be abundant?

Falco.

Well that's certainly a good question and if everybody started using it the price would likely go up as well. But apparently the US has enough to power the world for something like 100 years and Canada has way more than that. Plus whatever the rest of the world has.

At any rate it seems that this will be the fuel of choice for many as there are LNG stations popping up all over the place. If you drink milk or eat dairy products in the lower mainland, that milk arrived on an LNG powered truck.

[glenn]

You're not confusing it with CNG - compressed natural gas - that is released by fracking are you? Because that is a very, very dirty business. There is lots of it, but it creates more pollution than the tarsands ever will.

http://www.dangersoffracking.com/

[Onesweetvan]

CNG and LNG are the same fuel in different forms. CNG has very low range as a motor fuel but LNG which is Natural Gas compressed to the point where it becomes liquid is very usable as a motor fuel. It's also very clean.

[glenn]

http://green.autoblog.com/2013/04/13/fi ... $199-month

How about an electric fiat 500e for $999 and $199/mo? 87 mile range. Only in California for the first year, but like I've said, get used to seeing more and more affordable electric cars on the market. With that comes more and more charging stations and infrastructure. Maybe they will always be a niche vehicle - but so are our 15 yo JDM diesels and they are pretty cool.

[DeliTan]

If it wasn't all about the corrupt pursuit of money and (political) power, we would design better electricity storage technology and charge it from a thorium LFTR.

ps: I NEED a Tesla Roadster