Interesting question

@JohnAskew: we started cleaning up our act looooong before government regulation and now that regulations are in place they are having the reverse effect.

11 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

*snip*

Common sense,. It's allready known as range stress or range enxiety,. So when you park in your EV in your special charge parking spot, you plug it in. Do you leave your laptop unplugged because it has 4 hours left when you sit next to a socket? No you dont, so neither will you leave your electric car unplugged in a charging station, that's obvious. 

Ah yes, Range Anxiety : a phrase invented by people who don't drive electric cars.  If you were going on a long journey in you petrol car would you just jump right in and head off, or do you actually check what's in the tank and possibly even plan where you're going to stop to fill up?  It's the same process with an electric car, just with a smaller range.  How many times have you run out of petrol?  Probably about the same number of times that an electric car driver runs out of electricity.

I don't plug my laptop in to recharge until I see the power light turn orange, even if I am sitting right next to a socket. I often even wait longer than that a plug it on to recharge over-night so it's ready for the next day.  I can manage this because I am able to plan ahead.

11 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

I would ONLY charge it at work, as I'm not paying, but my boss is (actually customers, stockholders and all employees are paying).

I would never do that unless I was given express permission -- because I have this thing called a 'conscience' which you will find that most people have.

If I was offered a free re-charge my my work, I would also press them to do something to mitigate the cost; if they're offering recharging to all employees the costs will mount up, so they should do something like Google's solar arrays in the car-park.  I would do this because I recognise that employment is a two-way street and just shrugging and saying "Well, I'm not paying for it so I don't care" is not the action of a responsible employee.

11 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

1. Biofuels

This effects the elite not so much, they don't care if their burger is $1 or $2, they make enough money. The poor people that live of a couple of bucks a day do care that their food prices have been doubled. Not to mention the robbing of land done to create palmoil plantations. So effect on the elite, they get a warm feeling inside, effect on the poor, less to eat and loss of homes and income.

I completely agree with you on this one -- Biolfuels are a fool's errand.  No only do they take away food production resources, but some of the chemical by-products are pretty nasty too.  While using waste food oil is a fine idea, we still have to deal with the by-products.

11 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

2. Green energy

This again effects the elite not so much, they don't care if their power comes at 23 eurocents the kwh or 56 eurocents the kwh. They have the money to invest in solar panels and windmills to compensate for the loss of income via all sorts of subsidies and tax benefits. The poor however have no choice but to cut spending in other areas, as energy is one of THE basic necessities of any household. So again, it has little effect on the elite, but a huge effect on the poor, they are driven into energy starvation.

Which is exactly the reason that the wealthy should be paying their higher tax rates fully -- the wealthy pay more in taxes which go to subsidise green energy which can be used cheaply by everyone.  Eventually the technology matures enough to bring the costs down and the subsidies can be reduced.  This way we are less reliant on fossil fuels from other countries and more in control of the price we pay (unlike the oil prices being fixed by OPEC over which we have no control).

Herbie

12 hours ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

*snip*

And your source for this information is ... ?

Common sense.

And there you go... Game, set, match. You'll continue to decry the obviousness of the elephant in the room by attacking its truck, its tail, its ears but you refuse to see the elephant as a whole. 

No one is suggesting that renewables are superior today to petrol. Your comparison of the two technologies in their current form is ridiculous (amongst other statements like for every one public sector job that is created two private sector jobs are lost -- how about for every new public sector job a consumer is created that produces the need for more private sector jobs?). How many trillions of dollars have going into the development of petrol? Renewable have a long way to go before they are as mature as petrol but I'm happy to see the quick progress being made because of the investments both individuals and nations are making. Oil and related technologies have a limited future. Renewables do not (hence the name -- you know common sense like and all).

If you want to count every ancillary cost then you also have to include the cost of wars and lives fought over oil. Renewables like wind and solar are readily available to all. No haves & have nots; no power base that can be leveraged.

And that's where I'm going to end my contribution to this ridiculous thread. I'm sorry you are so limited in your vision of the future.

BTW, I hope for your own safety that you have rid yourself of all cell phones, laptops, etc. that are in your possession as it's pretty irrefutable by your account on how dangerous the are.  

7 hours ago, Proton2 wrote

@Dr Herbie: I don't seem to see any reference to the further calculations needed for the transmission losses and the other losses of energy along the way to get the energy from the power plant to the wheels of the electric car. The links you provided me seems to stop at the amount of electric power generated at the plant, which is a long way from the final destination for our calculation purposes.

You're absolutely correct -- the loss on the distribution grid is about 10%, so we can subtract that from the electric car efficiency, making electric cars between 11% and 48% more carbon efficient that petrol cars; still a substantial reduction.

7 hours ago, Proton2 wrote

Any way, where I live it's too cold to make an electric car practical to own. We even just had one of, if not the coldest Junes in recorded history here in south western Canada. My Carbon Tax also just went up to $30 a tonne on July 1   I will be burning wood in my fireplace this winter, carbon tax free

I have no problem with people using petrol cars when they are the best solution to their circumstances -- my point is that for the majority of the people in Europe and the USA for the majority of their time an electric car is a perfectly acceptable solution and has serious environmental and economic benefits.

Oh, and burning wood is carbon neutral, so there wouldn't be a carbon tax on it, but it's not sustainable unless you plant some replacements (see the Sahara dessert for reference).

Herbie

6 minutes ago, Dr Herbie wrote

*snip*

(see the Sahara dessert for reference).

Hmmm... dessert...

if I am rich, I would get a RangeRover because you will never know when apocalypse happens. When that happens, I need reliable transportation. Even if I died, I would want other survivors to utilize useful treasures I left behind.

Personally I dislike electric cars because they are very uneffecient. It is only switching consumption of resource to that extremely heavy and toxic battery. I do not see how this is clean at all. Hybrid is ok because we conserve energy lost during breaking. It is still uneffecient with that battery, but, since it indeed improve mpg, I am fine with it, dispite that extra toxic weight.

if we use very efficient fusion generator that can be recycled for future car, i think that would be awesome. Imagine a car where you dont need to refuel at all and you can move it to a new car instead of wasting it.

Or some kind of organic organisim that is easy to grow and can be converted to energy easily. That would be great too. This organism can harvest sunlight better than any solar panel. No need to maintain, just put water and let the sun and take its course. Amazing. 

1 hour ago, Proton2 wrote

"

*snip*

And then, as she says, there's another problem:

*snip*

Seems to contradict the view of the UK energy companies, if you watched the video link I posted earlier.

If more people used electric cars, there would be less demand for petrol which would reduce the demand for electricity by oil processing plants that, it turns out, use much more electricity than I expected in the production of petrol.  I didn't know that oil refineries were often deliberately built next to power plants (like Google do for their data centres).

Turns out that the electricity used to produce one US gallon of petrol would power a Nissan Leaf for roughly 16 miles. It's not that impressive compared to the 42 MPG I get in my current car, but I've known people drive petrol cars that got less than that.

Herbie

1 minute ago, PaoloM wrote

*snip*

Hmmm... dessert...

Ha! Freudian slip -- I haven't had dessert yet!  

*mooches off to the kitchen for a speculative rummage*

Herbie

@Dr Herbie:

Hmmmm.... I disagree because USA population is not dense in most of the states, and they are close to 50% or more of USA population. And those people are on the road, they dont park for an hour and taking that tea time.

1 day ago, Blue Ink wrote

@ZippyV: 60 mpg is nothing to write home about these days. Leaving alone pure electric for the current range problem and battery lifetime, there are countless diesel and petrol options that easily exceed 70 mpg (there's a VW Golf 1.6 TDI that makes 74, for istance) and you can exceed 80 mpg on some models (source: www.nextgreencar.com ).

If you are going to use UK miles then it's 72.43 MPG. Also note that I don't drive on the highway at all.

@ZippyV: as I recall, the Prius I looked up on that site was rated about 66mpg (UK) or something like that... "Your mileage might vary" was never more appropriate.

Nothing is perfect, however there are methods of generating electricity that are cleaner and more efficient than petrol engines. It's also considerably easier to deal with the problems of waste products in a single power plant than it is when they're being generated from every single vehicle on the road.

Yes, but the question is do we use those methods? The answer is, mostly, no. As I said above, it shifts the pollution out of urban areas, which is probably good and you get different types of pollution (less NO2 but more mercury for eg., I think, although those specific examples could be wrong).

Also power station chimneys release their wastes much higher which means, I believe, that the UK gives Scandinavia a load of acid rain

The best short term solution is probably nuclear fission since that gives you the waste all nicely bottled up (although how it compares once mining and transport of uranium have been taken into account I don't know). Longer term ITER needs to hurry up. Also sacrifices will need to be made. I remember a while ago proposals for a huge tidal station in the Severn estuary that could have produced some ridiculous proportion of the country's energy demand - people objected on the grounds that it would kill the fish but, tbh, if it comes to killing the fish or warming the globe I'd kill the fish any day. Similarly people need to stop being so NIMBY about wind turbines etc(I always throught they looked nice anyway and never understood the "oh noes they're ugly" argument) - although whether they'll ever supply a significant amount of our energy, I don't know.

I think there's also a place for things such as water heating solar panels on homes to reduce resource use (photovoltaics, though, should be avoided as the compounds used within them could be far far better used for other things)

@GoddersUK: Well indeed, but once you've shifted the problem from millions of individual cars to  just the power stations it's closer to being solved. Especially if we can push for cleaner and greener forms of electricity production at the same time. It's easier and more practical for governments to tax and legislate against unclean power production than individuals vehicle usage.

There is no single solution that will fit all scenarios, the use of existing waste to produce biofuels will suit some situations, electric vehicles others and some situations will doubtless still rely on petrol (I can't see those Alaskan ice road trucks getting by on batteries in the near future!) The future will doubtless require a multitude of solutions, unless something utterly revolutionary comes along.

9 hours ago, magicalclick wrote

@Dr Herbie:

Hmmmm.... I disagree because USA population is not dense in most of the states, and they are close to 50% or more of USA population. And those people are on the road, they dont park for an hour and taking that tea time.

Average American commute is 16 miles. That would be easily covered by electric cars with a range of 100 miles (even accounting for the silly amounts of time sitting in congested queues).

Herbie

Ah yes, Range Anxiety : a phrase invented by people who don't drive electric cars.  If you were going on a long journey in you petrol car would you just jump right in and head off, or do you actually check what's in the tank and possibly even plan where you're going to stop to fill up?  It's the same process with an electric car, just with a smaller range.  How many times have you run out of petrol?  Probably about the same number of times that an electric car driver runs out of electricity.

Sure, it's all in their heads. Each day when I leave I check wether I need a refeul this day and plan where to do it. On vacation it's different, I just drive till I am 200km above empty and start looking for petrol station signs, as I want to be on the safe side. So with an electric car I'd be looking for a charge station as soon as I leave. Did you ever take a holiday with a car? I went to Italy, Norway, Chech Republic and Germany,.

I don't plug my laptop in to recharge until I see the power light turn orange, even if I am sitting right next to a socket. I often even wait longer than that a plug it on to recharge over-night so it's ready for the next day.  I can manage this because I am able to plan ahead.

Why would you even do that? I don't think that's normal behavior.

I would never do that unless I was given express permission -- because I have this thing called a 'conscience' which you will find that most people have.

If I was offered a free re-charge my my work, I would also press them to do something to mitigate the cost; if they're offering recharging to all employees the costs will mount up, so they should do something like Google's solar arrays in the car-park.  I would do this because I recognise that employment is a two-way street and just shrugging and saying "Well, I'm not paying for it so I don't care" is not the action of a responsible employee.

You are a real Robin Hood, normal people would just like their laptop, plug in their car. Look around you, normal people are driven by greed or self preservation (same thing). So if you offer them a freebie, they will take it.

I completely agree with you on this one -- Biolfuels are a fool's errand.  No only do they take away food production resources, but some of the chemical by-products are pretty nasty too.  While using waste food oil is a fine idea, we still have to deal with the by-products.

Good!

Next step, acknowledging that windmills cause warming and climate change!

Article in nature.

Oh and bird death;

Which is exactly the reason that the wealthy should be paying their higher tax rates fully -- the wealthy pay more in taxes which go to subsidise green energy which can be used cheaply by everyone.  Eventually the technology matures enough to bring the costs down and the subsidies can be reduced.  This way we are less reliant on fossil fuels from other countries and more in control of the price we pay (unlike the oil prices being fixed by OPEC over which we have no control).

Herbie

Sure, first give them a tax cut and then slap on an additional tax. The burocracy in your world would cover the entire planet.

@DeathByVisualStudio: The effect on government subsidised jobs has been researched at length and the conclusion is indeed; each government created job costs twice as much as a job in the market. Seeing that you can only spend a buck once, two jobs are lost for one job created.

If you don't want to acknowledge this, it's fine with me, doesn't change the facts one bit. Keep your eyes closed, fingers in your ears while yelling 'NANNANANAANA, CANT HEAR YOU!', just because the facts does not compute with your vision of the world.

You can't force a transition to a new way of living. Solutions that are pushed top-down rarely work. So if government decides that biofuels, solar and wind are the future, most likely they are not.

I'm not afraid of the future, I just don't think that the future is decided by burocrats but by the free market, us!

4 minutes ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

*snip*

Sure, it's all in their heads. Each day when I leave I check wether I need a refeul this day and plan where to do it. On vacation it's different, I just drive till I am 200km above empty and start looking for petrol station signs, as I want to be on the safe side. So with an electric car I'd be looking for a charge station as soon as I leave. Did you ever take a holiday with a car? I went to Italy, Norway, Chech Republic and Germany,.

If you had read what I posted earlier you would know that I already said that for longer journeys you can easily hire a diesel car -- but you don't need a diesel car fo day-to-day commuting.

4 minutes ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

You are a real Robin Hood, normal people would just like their laptop, plug in their car. Look around you, normal people are driven by greed or self preservation (same thing). So if you offer them a freebie, they will take it.

Then we obviously have a different point of view -- I accepts that there are people like that, but I also believe that the majority aren't selfish arseholes.

4 minutes ago, Maddus Mattus wrote

Next step, acknowledging that windmills cause warming and climate change!

*snip*

Oh and bird death

Windmills (and other energy systems) will cause localised climate changes.  It's obvious, but it's not a global problem and it's not on the same scale as the burning of fossil fuels.

We've already covered bird deaths in previous threads -- deaths by wind turbines are a hugely minor figure compared to bird deaths from windows in buildings or birds being hit by cars and a minuscule fraction of bird deaths by domestic cats.  If you're suggesting we should ban wind turbines to save birds, then you'd also have to support banning windows, cars and cats.

Herbie

Average American commute is 16 miles. That would be easily covered by electric cars with a range of 100 miles (even accounting for the silly amounts of time sitting in congested queues).

Herbie

Statistics,...

You can't make this stuff up,...

If the average commute is 16 miles, then we can get rid of cars alltogether and make them go on bikes!