[alancalverd]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/2010/sep/23/carbon-footprint-new-car suggests 17 tonnes of CO2 emitted per average car manufactured. It would emit that much in about 80,000 miles driving. Whilst it is true that most cars nowadays will  run for more than 100,000 miles, a fair number get destroyed or rust to bits at a much younger age.

Oil changes are pretty insignificant, say a gallon every 10,000 miles in addition to a gallon of fuel every 50 miles.

 

the fossil fuel cars would be twice as polluting as electric cars

if you start from scratch, yes. But right now we have more than enough cars anyway - "that ship has sailed".

The question still remains as to how much more copper steel and plastic  we will need to install the required infrastructure for electric cars to replace gasoline and diesel, and what will we do about the other 50% consumed by buses and trucks?   

[wolfekeeper]

Things like steel and aluminium don't need fossil fuels for recycling though.

But that's missing the enormous mineral elephant in the room; the huge pile of mineral oil that the fossil car burns over its life! That pile is an order of magnitude bigger than the car and cannot be recycled.

Er, no. The energy required to make the average family car, from mining to roadside,  is about the same as it consumes  in its working life. That's the weakness of the "all electric now" argument - you have to burn an awful lot of fuel to replace the existing stock of perfectly adequate vehicles.

You're assuming that the energy used to recycle a car is fossil fuelled, why? And they're not 'perfectly adequate', they're more expensive to run and their total purchase cost is higher and their emissions are killing the planet, or more accurately, making our planet drier, hotter and more inhospitable for HUMAN life. Already a lot of cars are being replaced with plug-in hybrids.

[hamdani yusuf]

Our opinions are shaped by information sources we chose to read or watch. Online sources are suggested by algorithms based on our previous choices of information types, which amplify our pre-existing biases.
If we start with a conclusion, we will be able to find sources supporting that conclusion on the internet, whether or not it accurately describes objective reality. That's why conspiracy theories are thriving.

[alancalverd]

You're assuming that the energy used to recycle a car is fossil fuelled, why?

As I write, less than 10% of UK electricity is being generated by renewables. Most industries are on short time and at least half of our non-transport energy consumption is direct heat by coal, gas or oil.

Mining for iron, copper and lithium cannot be powered by unreliable energy sources - mines have to be lit and ventilated 24/7, even without drills, explosives , trucks, dumpers...... You might be able to use grid power for some refining processes but that's still subject to a limit of 20% unreliables before the essential  conventional backup stations become uneconomic. Then you have to transport the raw material by ship and truck.   

they're more expensive to run

Only because of the tax regime. Given that 50 - 90% of electricity is generated from fossil fuel in most countries, at about 50% thermal efficiency, the input energy cost per mile of an electric car at 90% final conversion efficiency is about the same as that of a fossil-fuelled car. Actual fuel cost in the UK is less than 5p per mile for a hefty family car (2 liter diesel). EDF (the French company that owns most of the UK electricity supply) reckons 4p per mile for an electric car, but this must increase with an infrastructure levy if we are to replace the entire fleet of gas guzzlers with charging points - the motorist, after all, pays for the cost of fossil fuel distribution. 

[wolfekeeper]

You're assuming that the energy used to recycle a car is fossil fuelled, why?

As I write, less than 10% of UK electricity is being generated by renewables. Most industries are on short time and at least half of our non-transport energy consumption is direct heat by coal, gas or oil.

I make it more like 20%, which is unusually low. A week ago or so it was over 80%. The average is over 50% low carbon now.

Mining for iron, copper and lithium cannot be powered by unreliable energy sources - mines have to be lit and ventilated 24/7, even without drills, explosives , trucks, dumpers...... You might be able to use grid power for some refining processes but that's still subject to a limit of 20% unreliables before the essential  conventional backup stations become uneconomic. Then you have to transport the raw material by ship and truck.

Bullshit, mines can be connected to a grid like anyone else. And we're well past 20% now. The UK grid last year was 30% renewables and over 50% if you include nuclear. And growing extremely rapidly. Many, many other places are on ~100% renewable. 0% of them have fallen over due to renewables. Meanwhile for example the Texas grid went down because its natural gas pipelines froze- fossil fuels.

they're more expensive to run

Only because of the tax regime. Given that 50 - 90% of electricity is generated from fossil fuel in most countries, at about 50% thermal efficiency, the input energy cost per mile of an electric car at 90% final conversion efficiency is about the same as that of a fossil-fuelled car.

Not the UK, the UK grid is greener and cheaper at night, and people use that to charge up. The UK grid is over 50% low/no carbon energy, and the percentage is higher still at night.

Actual fuel cost in the UK is less than 5p per mile for a hefty family car (2 liter diesel). EDF (the French company that owns most of the UK electricity supply) reckons 4p per mile for an electric car, but this must increase with an infrastructure levy if we are to replace the entire fleet of gas guzzlers with charging points - the motorist, after all, pays for the cost of fossil fuel distribution. 

Nope. The grid is lightly loaded at night, and the electric cars suck down their power then. No more widescale infrastructure is needed. The National Grid has stated they can take it. Indeed, they WANT a whole bunch of battery electric vehicles connected because they can use it for balancing the grid.

And that's not what the studies show. The cheapest electricity sources of all time are wind and solar. And that's not the subsidised price; that's the price.

And the pollution. Those diesel and petrol cars produce immense pollution. Who pays for that? We all do, through our taxes, and through our bad health, through asthma, heart disease and other nasty issues.

[alancalverd]

I'm writing at 23:40. According to Gridwatch the UK is consuming about 30 GW - 50% of max capacity - of electricity. 59% of this is being generated by fossil fuel, 19% by nuclear, just over  7% from biomass and less than 2.5% from wind. So if you charge your car from tonight's wind, you won't get far tomorrow.

It is entirely possible that on a warm summer evening with a steady 20kt wind, there might be enough spare grid capacity to charge our 35,000,000 cars at 1 kW, giving them a range of 30 miles or so the next day. Except that we don't have plans for 35,000,000 charging points, or sufficient windmills to do even half of the job. And whilst the average car does indeed only do about 30 miles per day on average, that's not a lot of use if you need to go 60 miles tomorrow.

If you think EDF, whose business is to sell electricity, have got their pricing wrong, you would do well to inform them.

[wolfekeeper]

Why would I need to charge it tonight, when I charged it last thursday when the grid was swimming in green electricity?

And there already are far more than 35 million charge points, every 13 amp socket in the UK is a charging point.

[hamdani yusuf]

Someone has made some research into this for decades now. Let's see if someone else has some counter arguments.

[alancalverd]

Why would I need to charge it tonight, when I charged it last thursday when the grid was swimming in green electricity?

  possibly because you drove somewhere on Friday. And remember even with the grid running at full capacity, you can only do 30 miles on one night's charge because everyone else is charging theirs too.

And there already are far more than 35 million charge points, every 13 amp socket in the UK is a charging point.

Very few of which are by the roadside, which is where most of the cars are parked at night. and if everyone else is charging their cars, you can only get 5 amps from your socket.

[alancalverd]

The million mile powertrain is no big deal. Trucks and buses have similar powertrain lifetimes but the problem with cars is that the doors rust and fall off and suspension and steering components loosen and break. Unless the car is made of plastic (horror!) or aluminum (initial CO2 footprint about 7 times that of steel), in which case it's only trivial stuff like suspension and steering that fails and the doors stay on. Aero engines generally cover 10,000,000 miles before major overhaul.

The best traction batteries are down to half capacity (replacement level) in about 100,000 miles, at which point a small diesel engine is just running nicely. Coupled to a modern automatic gearbox, it should cover another 100,000 without major overhaul and still deliver 90% power.   

Battery technology is not new, and the demand for improved energy density and lifetime has been around since the 1860s, but the chemistry of liquid fuels still has the advantage. As I see it, the present use of "artificial" energy at UK levels (about 5 kW per capita, roughly the world average) is not indefinitely sustainable: our descendants are either going to have to live without heating, lighting, manufacturing and transport, or reduce their numbers to a level where they can live in comfort for ever.

[hamdani yusuf]

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/12/battery-storage-systems-30-cheaper-than-rival-gas-peaker-plants-for-firming-renewables/

Battery storage 30% cheaper than gas peaker plants for firming renewables.

The contest is over. Faster, cheaper, more flexible than gas turbines – battery energy storage must be the future peaking energy service provider of choice, according to a new paper by Australia’s Clean Energy Council.

Australia's Clean Energy Council (CEC) says in a newly published paper that large-scale battery energy storage has become the best way to spread energy generated by solar and wind throughout any day, and to instantly respond to peak energy needs in the National Electricity Market (NEM) for long and short durations.

The paper compares the levelized cost of energy delivered by a new 250 MW gas peaker plant with 250 MW four-hour and two-hour grid-scale batteries. It finds that overall – when various costs are calculated – that the batteries are 17% (two-hour) and 30% (four-hour) cheaper.

Improvements in battery-operating technology mean storage now outperforms gas-fired peaking plants on speed and reliability of response, which was the basis of gas technology’s biggest claim to a place in the future renewables-based electricity system.

[alancalverd]

Back to the problem of emergency equipment. A gas-powered generating station does not self-degrade with time, and fuel storage is virtually indefinite. Batteries use active chemistry and have finite internal impedance so they self-discharge and self-destruct over time. Cheap today, but how long before you have to replace it? I wonder who funds the "Clean Energy Council"? Probably not the oil or gas industry.

But that ain't the problem anyway. To go fully renewable you need to install 5 days total, not short-term peak, storage capacity, increase your generating capacity to allow you to recharge the store whilst supplying normal load, and then upgrade the entire system to supply all the other energy uses. Household consumption, for instance, uses 4 times as much gas and oil     as electricity. Industrial consumption is pretty similar. And cars only account for about 40% of transport fuel consumption.

Part of the problem is that fossil fuels are so efficient and efficiently distributed that people ignore them and faff on about electricity, which provides very little of our actual requirement.

[Bored chemist]

To go fully renewable you need to install 5 days total,

Or a big enough grid.

[Bored chemist]

Battery technology is not new

The relevant bits of battery tech- for example Li ion batteries- are new.
It's a bit silly to pretend otherwise.

[alancalverd]

To go fully renewable you need to install 5 days total,

Or a big enough grid.

No, dear. The grid is what distributes the stuff. No matter how many miles of wire, you need to add 5 days' storage for when the wind doesn't blow.

[hamdani yusuf]

Back to the problem of emergency equipment. A gas-powered generating station does not self-degrade with time, and fuel storage is virtually indefinite. Batteries use active chemistry and have finite internal impedance so they self-discharge and self-destruct over time. Cheap today, but how long before you have to replace it? I wonder who funds the "Clean Energy Council"? Probably not the oil or gas industry.

Let's ask someone with first hand experience in this matter, such as Australian consumers.
https://www.startupdaily.net/2020/03/south-australias-tesla-big-battery-saved-consumers-116-million-in-electricity-costs-last-year/

The $200 million “Big Battery”, installed in South Australia in 2017 by Elon Musk’s Tesla company, has almost paid for itself, saving consumers around $116 million in higher power costs in 2019, a study by engineering and project management firm Aurecon has concluded.
That figure is nearly treble the $40 million saving in 2018.

The Hornsdale Power Reserve (HPR), 230km north of Adelaide, is owned and operated by French renewable energy producer Neoen, and connected to the company’s adjacent wind farm. It holds enough power for 8,000 homes for 24 hours, or more than 30,000 houses for an hour during a blackout

The lithium-ion battery is partly the result of a 2017 Twitter bet between Musk and Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes that Tesla would supply the battery within 100 days or it was free.
In November last year, Neoen announced plans to increase the battery complex’s size by 50% to 150MW, to be competed in the first half of 2020. It remains the largest battery in the world.

[alancalverd]

Battery technology is not new

The relevant bits of battery tech- for example Li ion batteries- are new.
It's a bit silly to pretend otherwise.

So are all sorts of things like electronic fuel injection. Nobody is pretending anything, and when lithium batteries stop catching fire, self-discharging or degrading with use, I'm sure we'll find a use for them that's almost as versatile as a petrol can. And maybe with 5 times the present energy density and a 200 kW charge rate with no heat problem, like I get from a petrol pump.

[hamdani yusuf]

To go fully renewable you need to install 5 days total,

Or a big enough grid.

No, dear. The grid is what distributes the stuff. No matter how many miles of wire, you need to add 5 days' storage for when the wind doesn't blow.

Given large enough area, when the wind doesn't blow in one place, it would likely blow somewhere else. It can also be complemented with solar panels.
If the grid is large enough to cover solar panels on the Sahara, Europe can rely on renewable energy.

[hamdani yusuf]

So are all sorts of things like electronic fuel injection. Nobody is pretending anything, and when lithium batteries stop catching fire, self-discharging or degrading with use, I'm sure we'll find a use for them that's almost as versatile as a petrol can. And maybe with 5 times the present energy density and a 200 kW charge rate with no heat problem, like I get from a petrol pump.

When is the last time you heard that lithium battery caught fire?  Is there no improvement can be made?

[alancalverd]

The $200 million “Big Battery”, installed in South Australia in 2017 by Elon Musk’s Tesla company, ..................

 Neoen announced plans to increase the battery complex’s size by 50% to 150MW, to be competed in the first half of 2020. It remains the largest battery in the world.

So the battery costs about twice as much per kilowatt as a gas generator plant and doesn't actually generate electricity.