Tesla Model 3 revealed

[rovermorris999]

kambites said:

Yup. Fairly irrelevant when it comes to the choice between the two though, EVs will still be cheaper for political reasons.

Indeed. Political not scientific reasons sadly. As I don't need to commute I'll stick with the V8s until they're illegal.

[Mr GrimNasty]

EVs kill twice as many people from air pollution and save negligible CO2 over their lifetime, at massive cost to the taxpayer.

https://www.prageru.com/courses/environmental-scie...

[98elise]

Mr GrimNasty said:

EVs kill twice as many people from air pollution and save negligible CO2 over their lifetime, at massive cost to the taxpayer.

https://www.prageru.com/courses/environmental-scie...

So he includes the EV energy supply chain, but not the ICE energy supply chain in his comparison. Petrol doesn't just appear at the pump. O&G production uses a huge amount of energy. He also assumes battery production is all mined, not recycled.

Then lets consider the fact that car manufacturers are cheating emissions testing, and in real world driving they are far more poluting than the official tests would indicate.

Also he says lithium mining isn't green, but doesn't mention the O&G green situation. I doubt a decade goes by without a major O&G environmental disaster.

The major green benefit of EV's is that they are not reliant on fossil fuels. They can effectively consume energy from any source. Any environmental changes in the supply chain are immediately available at the wheel. If you are are a low mileage driver it would be perfectly feasable to run an EV from domestic Solar PV.

Edited by 98elise on Sunday 24th April 12:05

[otolith]

rovermorris999 said:

otolith said:

There are already electrically powered ships - though they don't rely on batteries, they carry their own nuclear reactor.

Nuclear-powered then.

All electric vehicles are powered by a power station somewhere. Some nuclear warships use the steam from the reactor to drive the propellers. Others use it to generate electricity and use that to power electric motors. I think it's fair to call the latter electrically powered.

[jkh112]

It is not surprising that the author of that paper did not consider the impact of petrol production .
He is a high profile climate change sceptic who has had scientific facts in his books successfully challenged in court . Govt funding for his think tank has been withdrawn and he now runs it out of the USA with funding from private sources. I doubt the funding comes from Tesla, but it may well come from the more established players in the automotive industry

[jkh112]

otolith said:

rovermorris999 said:

otolith said:

There are already electrically powered ships - though they don't rely on batteries, they carry their own nuclear reactor.

Nuclear-powered then.

All electric vehicles are powered by a power station somewhere. Some nuclear warships use the steam from the reactor to drive the propellers. Others use it to generate electricity and use that to power electric motors. I think it's fair to call the latter electrically powered.

Some electric ships use gas turbines instead of a nuclear reactor to provide electricity generation, so although they are fuelled by diesel oil they are also electrically powered.

[Tuna]

98elise said:

So he includes the EV energy supply chain, but not the ICE energy supply chain in his comparison. Petrol doesn't just appear at the pump. O&G production uses a huge amount of energy. He also assume battery production is all mined, not recycled.

It is indeed a very disingenuous comparison, though the way some EV enthusiasts talk it does seem that they think EVs run on happiness and only produce unicorn farts. Pretending that there can be zero environmental impact from moving a few billion people around the planet doesn't help the case.

98elise said:

Then lets consider the fact that car manufacturers are cheating emissions testing, and in real world driving they are far more poluting than the official tests would indicate.

In comparison, EV manufacturers produce no standard energy efficiency figures at all and cannot reliably tell you what the real world emissions of their fleet are. Remember that to produce a car with the required range, Tesla has added what, a tonne to the weight? If you want to talk about real world driving, you have to get away from imagined best case scenarios, and assume a realistic set of behaviours. Though the emissions tests do get gamed, they are forcing a more level playing field on ICE manufacturers, and the steady ramping up of standards means we've gone from cars that do 18mpg to cars that do 80mpg.

98elise said:

Also he says lithium mining isn't green, but doesn't mention the O&G green situation. I doubt a decade goes by without a major O&G environmental disaster.

The major green benefit of EV's is that they are not reliant on fossil fuels. They can effectively consume energy from any source. Any envorinmental changes in the supply chain are immediately available at the wheel. If you are are a low mileage driver it would be perfectly feasable to run an EV from domestic Solar PV.

It would have to be pretty low miles. A typical UK domestic solar installation will get you about 9000 miles a year in a Tesla - and that requires that you have it plugged in at home during all daylight hours. In the three months of winter, you get virtually no useful energy at all. If you really wanted to be harsh and included the opportunity cost of a domestic solar installation (i.e. the interest you loose by putting your cash into solar panels), it works out at a little over 7.5 pence per mile - roughly the same as an efficient ICE.

The issue here is that whilst there is plenty of room to increase the number of EVs on the road, it's much much harder to dramatically increase our renewable capacity. Early adopters really have the best of all worlds - energy is relatively cheap and untaxed, and there is sufficient renewable capacity to commit to 'running green'. No one is actually recycling lithium into batteries (it would seriously put the price up) and the current demand can be met by relatively few strip mines.

Edited by Tuna on Tuesday 26th April 12:48

[Slow]

http://www.popsci.com/researchers-accidentally-mak...

Batterys that wont fail over time it seems is the future?

[k-ink]

I can't see Apple using batteries which last without failure. It's not in their ethos. It's not something many companies would care about either, as we live in a disposable world of tat unfortunately.

[Slow]

But a car isn't something disposable every 4/5 years like a phone for most people. Someone ends up using it for 10+ years easily before the mot man sends it to the grave.

They need a long lifetime or people won't buy them second hand.

[TransverseTight]

Mr GrimNasty said:

EVs kill twice as many people from air pollution and save negligible CO2 over their lifetime, at massive cost to the taxpayer.

https://www.prageru.com/courses/environmental-scie...

And the numbers for the UK including NOx and PM2.5 & PM5?

None of which are mentioned in that report. It's easy to ignore that the UK grid is much cleaner than the US which isn't exactly in a rush to clean up it's act due to having a local coal supply.

They also don't drive as much diesel in the US as we do over here.

UK average gird emissions are down to 350g/kWh while coal is around 800. I've run the numbers using published figures and even the worst case EV - in the uk powered totally by coal is cleaner and emits less CO2 than the best ICE. Not by much, but it certainly doesn't emit double or kill twice as many people (50,000 UK deaths are attributable to urban air pollution caused by vehicles).

[Mr GrimNasty]

TransverseTight said:

And the numbers for the UK including NOx and PM2.5 & PM5?

None of which are mentioned in that report. It's easy to ignore that the UK grid is much cleaner than the US which isn't exactly in a rush to clean up it's act due to having a local coal supply.

They also don't drive as much diesel in the US as we do over here.

UK average gird emissions are down to 350g/kWh while coal is around 800. I've run the numbers using published figures and even the worst case EV - in the uk powered totally by coal is cleaner and emits less CO2 than the best ICE. Not by much, but it certainly doesn't emit double or kill twice as many people (50,000 UK deaths are attributable to urban air pollution caused by vehicles).

You didn't listen properly. It was comparing average figures for petrol/diesel with EV.

The poor air pollution situation is China is almost entirely because of the take up of EVs. They all fail the common sense test.

Your back of fag packet figures are junk, frankly.

Coal powers stations obviously produce more of the very same PMs, although the risk from PMs is vastly overstated and only a minority comes from private diesel cars anyway. So effectively the environmentalists are being hoisted by their own petard on that one.

All current 'green' solutions are simply bad - expensive, not effective or efficient, poor engineering solutions, not economically viable, requiring vast subsidies.

Poland, Spain, Germany and Denmark are all currently trying to extract themselves from their wind turbine catastrophe. And Venezuela has power cuts because it refuses to use it's own fossil fuel reserves for power generation.

The collapse of SunEdison is just the beginning, TESLA will go exactly the same way as there are many parallels.

Like solar and wind turbines, EVs are a poor technical solution with no substantial benefit.

[rovermorris999]

Sadly, sunlight and wind are insufficiently energy-dense and too intermittent to be anything more than a marginal power source. I think solar may have a future for some generation capacity in very sunny climes but until a decent storage solution (and 'Powerwall' isn't it) comes along even there conventional generation capacity is needed when the sun goes down. I only wish it wasn't so.

[kambites]

rovermorris999 said:

Sadly, sunlight and wind are insufficiently energy-dense and too intermittent to be anything more than a marginal power source. I think solar may have a future for some generation capacity in very sunny climes but until a decent storage solution (and 'Powerwall' isn't it) comes along even there conventional generation capacity is needed when the sun goes down. I only wish it wasn't so.

These molten salt solar plants seem to have potential for smoothing supply.

[rovermorris999]

I think there's an awful long way to go before it'll be possible to reliably run a modern industrial society using 'renewables'. To think that there's even talk of demand management is appalling. Our leaders and policy makers should be offered a revolver and a bottle of whisky.

We are drifting somewhat off-topic.

Edited by rovermorris999 on Sunday 24th April 20:59

[gangzoom]

rovermorris999 said:

Sadly, sunlight and wind are insufficiently energy-dense and too intermittent to be anything more than a marginal power source. I think solar may have a future for some generation capacity in very sunny climes but until a decent storage solution (and 'Powerwall' isn't it) comes along even there conventional generation capacity is needed when the sun goes down. I only wish it wasn't so.

Renewable are rapidly heading towards contributing 1/3 of Germany's energy supply - hard a 'marginal' power source. Without solar power there is no fossil fuels, we are on the verge of been able to use solar/wind power directly. It's exciting times ahead.

http://thebulletin.org/can-germanys-renewable-ener...

[Flooble]

rovermorris999 said:

I think there's an awful long way to go before it'll be possible to reliably run a modern industrial society using 'renewables'. To think that there's even talk of demand management is appalling. Our leaders and policy makers should be offered a revolver and a bottle of whisky.

We are drifting somewhat off-topic.

Edited by rovermorris999 on Sunday 24th April 20:59

I think those of you with opinions in this area should keep going, it's precisely on topic in so far as if petrol cars are replaced by electric ones, then eventually (bearing in mind the calculations earlier which show people will be walking on Mars at about the same time) more electricity generation will be required.

Personally I'd just convert a couple of offshore islands into nuclear generation and reprocessing facilities (ideally with molten salt reactor that burns other reactor's waste). No CO2 (other than the concrete) and runs all the time. But that doesn't tend to go down too well with people who want us to all live in a cave eating berries.

[rovermorris999]

gangzoom said:

Renewable are rapidly heading towards contributing 1/3 of Germany's energy supply - hard a 'marginal' power source. Without solar power there is no fossil fuels, we are on the verge of been able to use solar/wind power directly. It's exciting times ahead.

http://thebulletin.org/can-germanys-renewable-ener...

Talk to Germany's grid engineers to see how wonderful that has turned out to be.

[k-ink]

It's been said before, but here goes again. Apparently if we can capture 0.1% of the Suns rays which lands on Earth we could power everything civilisation demands for free. The sensible solution would be to put vast solar arrays in hot inhabitable areas: Australian outback, Middle East, Africa, etc. This would require international cooperation of course.

We could ditch all the other power sources. But then the rich and powerful would see a loss of profits. So this obvious solution is unlikely to happen until the day after all fossil fuels are burnt.

[walm]

k-ink said:

It's been said before, but here goes again. Apparently if we can capture 0.1% of the Suns rays which lands on Earth we could power everything civilisation demands for free. The sensible solution would be to put vast solar arrays in hot inhabitable areas: Australian outback, Middle East, Africa, etc. This would require international cooperation of course.

We could ditch all the other power sources. But then the rich and powerful would see a loss of profits. So this obvious solution is unlikely to happen until the day after all fossil fuels are burnt.

Oh yes, capturing 0.1% of the Sun's rays is so simple and cost-effective.
I can't believe those evil capitalists are holding us back, the bds.

You do realise that most governments still SUBSIDISE solar?
You may have to look up what that means, but I can help a little: SOLAR IS MORE EXPENSIVE THAN OTHER SOURCES OF POWER.