The Political Discussion Thread

[Annoyed]

But people can't afford to buy two cars. Take my situation.

I need a vehicle that is capable of towing 4000 Lbs and I typically tow that 200-300 miles for weekend trips, etc. So that means I NEED a truck chassis, and that kind of range.
If I am low on fuel, a 10 minute stop at a gas station, and I'm good. 5 hour recharge time would be completely unacceptable.

I can't afford to buy a tow vehicle and an electric for daily use, so I have to purchase a single vehicle that can handle all my requirements. So guess how valuable an electric is to me?

[Gatefan1976]

But people can't afford to buy two cars. Take my situation.

No one is asking you to.

I need a vehicle that is capable of towing 4000 Lbs and I typically tow that 200-300 miles for weekend trips, etc. So that means I NEED a truck chassis, and that kind of range.
If I am low on fuel, a 10 minute stop at a gas station, and I'm good. 5 hour recharge time would be completely unacceptable.

Sure.

I can't afford to buy a tow vehicle and an electric for daily use, so I have to purchase a single vehicle that can handle all my requirements. So guess how valuable an electric is to me?

Is something's value to you personally a good indicator of what other people should do?

If an electric car or hybrid does not suit your needs, no one is demanding that you get rid of your vehicle.

[Annoyed]

No one is asking you to.

Sure.

Is something's value to you personally a good indicator of what other people should do?

If an electric car or hybrid does not suit your needs, no one is demanding that you get rid of your vehicle.

Yet. But you can be sure there are many that would like to force me to.
And my situation is hardly unique.

[Falcon Horus]

It is properly called gender dysphoria

It is indeed.
Should have used the proper term.

Doomed you say.. Perfect, you can volunteer yourself to join my zombie legion when you pass..

You have a zombie legion?

1st, Enviros oppose any technology that generates additional energy, be it Nuclear, Hydro, wind (if if it's not practical) and such. Can you name even 1 energy generation technology that the enviros don't oppose?

Which "enviros" are you referring to, if I may be so curious?

[Gatefan1976]

Yet. But you can be sure there are many that would like to force me to.

We can't even make a dent in the use of petrol, I think you are fine.

And my situation is hardly unique.

Well, there may be less than 5% of people who a in your "special situation", so why should we bow to your minority?
Why should we be forced to suffer so you can do what you want to do?

[Gatefan1976]

Should have used the proper term.

You have a zombie legion?

The proper term............
Hmm.............
Republicans?

[Annoyed]

Various environmental groups. When ever you read about some one proposing a power plant, regardless of the type, there are always a ton of objections brought up by various groups. Not once have I seen an exception to this.

[Falcon Horus]

Various environmental groups. When ever you read about some one proposing a power plant, regardless of the type, there are always a ton of objections brought up by various groups. Not once have I seen an exception to this.

And what are their reasonings?
Have you given those a serious look?

Or are you not capable of seeing the possible long-term effects of power plants build in a certain place? Can you only see the dollars it'll bring about? Tough luckwhen there's ever a spill of any kind...

I'm sure BP remembers the Mexican Gulf fondly.

[Annoyed]

No, I don't particularly care or even pay attention to what any enviro group goes on about. Ever hear of the "boy who cried wolf" ? They're long past that point.

Like I say, regardless of the type, hydro or whatever, they aren't happy, and try to block development.

[Ian-S]

You'all do realise what these electric cars are charged from?

If someone said to me give me your Micra and we will give you an electric car in return I'd go for it, but only because the furthest I usually travel is to the beach a hundred mike round trip away.

[Womble]

If an electric car or hybrid does not suit your needs, no one is demanding that you get rid of your vehicle.

Yet.

Always add "yet" to sentences like this.

Also, if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan. Recent history.



Electrical vehicles discussion is mostly a dialogue of the deaf because both proponents and opponents of switching to electrical want to go all in and don't realize the sheer diversity of situations vehicles are currently used for and the scale of infrastructure involved in both fossil fuel and electrical vehicle operation.

Electrical vehicles are feasible where travel distances are small. They make sense for urban public transport and for people who don't travel far from home except on the rarest occasions. Electrical cars make sense for small countries like Israel, hence me having been a huge fan of the Better Place project before it bankrupted. They do not currently make much sense for the USA, Russia or Australia.

Electrical vehicles require massive infrastructure investment. As autonomous units sold the way Tesla sells cars right now, their market penetration will always remain negligible because disadvantages compared to fossil fuel cars are too great and fossil fuel car infrastructure is already in place. Electrical car adoption on a large scale requires establishing a support network equivalent to those ubiquitous gas stations and repair dealerships that currently exist for normal cars, except it's more technologically complex and expensive.

The reason Better Place went bankrupt was exactly that. They had a brilliant concept, seriously amazing technology (battery-swapping was actually borrowed from the ammunition-loading mechanism used by the F-16 fighter jets) and a sound business model, but setting up the smart grid and charging stations (one station per 25 miles of road) required billions of dollars of up-front investment and over a decade of dewvelopment and setting the grid up. Investors' patience simply dried up. And that's a project for a small place like Israel. Scale it up for the size of the USA, and you need trillions of investment before you begin making any money. Not even the wealthiest corporations and governments can afford that.

The way ahead with electrical cars is NOT starting with private vehicles but with urban public transport and corporate car fleets, where the switch is made easier and decision-making is more centralized. Electrical motorbikes for pizza delivery, electrical delivery vans, buses, taxis. Use cases where range anxiety is the least acute. Pushing wide-scale electrical car adoption for private use at this point simply makes no sense.

[thekillman]

But people can't afford to buy two cars. Take my situation.

(paragraphs bolded for reading convenience)

Firstly, I can't vouch for every country, but where i live owning two cars is fairly common.

Secondly, regarding ownership in general:

There's the question of how long modern car ownership will still exist. One can question whether we're already past the moment of traditional car ownership. In one or two decades it may have turned around completely.

It's definitely future music, but it's also not so far out there, some effects are already showing (e.g. leasing cars is extremely common now). It means that the future may effectively be permanently renting a car, and picking up one as fits. A small, fully electric car for daily commute, a station wagon for shopping, and a hybrid or similar for longer treks like vacations.

This raises two further questions, namely to what degree we still have certain needs. The main reason for a bigger car is for shopping purposes (which online shopping may erase completely) or family purposes. The other is that AirBNB and Uber show that people are fairly lenient as far as sharing goes. Traditional ownership, especially in the face of autonomous cars, may be gone in a decade or wo.

Again, this is definitely future music, and it's impossible to tell whether it really will happen. But it's mostly a change in mentality, not one in technology.

Thirdly, while i understand your situation, the data i quoted earlier suggests you're not the norm. Again, i can't vouch for every nation (Australia and Russia seem like problematic countries). My personal engineering judgment is that longer-range cars will require a different solution. Time will tell here. But that wasn't my point, my point was that there's plenty of low-hanging fruit. We don't have to turn everything electric tomorrow.

Yet.
Always add "yet" to sentences like this

Given that tobacco is clearly unhealthy yet still not fully banned, i see a very difficult future ahead for any politicians trying to ban petrol completely. Especially in abovementioned regions like Australia, it will be very difficult to push for a petrol-free country when you don't see a fuelpump for three straight days. When we get to a state where non-fuel cars can go long distances (either through fuel cell technology, alternative fuels or better batteries), there's no reason not to go green. But it would require an actual alternative, and that alternative is worth pursuing.

As for what you mentioned, public transport is perhaps the most ideal case for electric vehicles, since they have to start and stop frequently, and have a predictable route (so recharge and/or battery switching can be optimized).

As to infrastructure, the majority of infrastructure already exists in the form of a powergrid. I don't see why electric cars would require more infrastructure than fossil fuels (and we had to build that infrastructure too). You are correct about the chicken-and-egg problem: there are few electric cars because there are few charging stations (and vice versa). But such a problem is solved iteratively: more charging stations make electric cars more accessible, leading to incentive for more charging stations etc.


As a final note: Discussions nowadays seem far more black and white than they ever were. To me, there's no point in trying to make magic happen today. It's better to speak of an energy transition, and it doesn't have to happen in the next five years. If we simply replaced our infrastructure as needed, we're 80+% renewable around 2050.

[Annoyed]

^ I have never understood leasing. Let's see.. make car payments for 3 or whatever years, and then give the car back! Works great for the dealer, not so great for me.

And regarding "Given that tobacco is clearly unhealthy yet still not fully banned, i see a very difficult future ahead for any politicians trying to ban petrol completely"

I wouldn't be surprised a bit if some nut job like Al Gore tried this.. Consider what the government has already done.
In the 1970's, a sizable percentage of the cars on the road at the time required lead or equivalent in gasoline as a lubricant for the valves. Without it, the engine's valves would destroy themselves. But in 1975, the government all but mandated the removal of lead from gasoline, not because it was toxic to young brain development, but rather it was on the altar of environment; Catalytic Converters were the best method of meeting emissions standards of the time, but lead would destroy the converters, so it had to go. There was another suitable substance to keep the valves happy, I think it was phosphorus, but the govt. said that was a no-no too. How many otherwise perfectly good cars had their engines destroyed by this?

Now, go forward 25-20 years. Now, in the 1980's and 90's, Oxygenated fuels were the enviro's fuel of choice, and this was mandated. To the detriment of small engines such as marine engines, lawn mowers and other power equipment, which were not designed to handle this.

Even now, Ethanol is being added to our fuel by govt. decree. Guess what folks? A lot of engine fuel system components were made of rubber. And alcohol chemically attacks rubber. Why do you think you find so many lawnmowers and such in junk piles at the end of people's driveways and at garage sales? The fuel systems are shot!

So, within the past 50 years, we've had 3 separate instances of government mandated changes to the fuel supply, all detrimental to vehicles in use at the time at the behest of the enviros.
The idiot occupying the white house today actually had "driving the coal industry out of business" as one of his campaign planks in 2008.

So I'm not so willing to trust that someone might convince some left-leaning political idiot to try to outlaw gasoline.

[Womble]

As to infrastructure, the majority of infrastructure already exists in the form of a powergrid. I don't see why electric cars would require more infrastructure than fossil fuels (and we had to build that infrastructure too). You are correct about the chicken-and-egg problem: there are few electric cars because there are few charging stations (and vice versa). But such a problem is solved iteratively: more charging stations make electric cars more accessible, leading to incentive for more charging stations etc.

Power grid is only dense in urban areas. In larger countries it's thin on the ground and you need a massive expansion. Moreover, you need a different KIND of power grid, because electricity is a problematic kind of fuel as far as storage and usage goes; the aforementioned Better Place project's charging infrastructure was predicated on a new-generation smart grid that could automatically time-shift the recharging of batteries to off-peak hours. Plus they had to install a nationwide fast charger network because sometimes, people would occasionally (and inevitably) find themselves out of charge AND too far away from battery swapping stations. A single fast charger cost $40 000 to install.

"True" electrical vehicles would also need a completely different model of payment for charging.

[garhkal]

You have a zombie legion?

Certainly! Gotta have my own minions for when i declare my intent to take over the world...