Careful, they said the Titanic was unsinkable.
Electric Vehicles
- Thread starter LOREN
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They did, but I remember the chief designer or engineer had voiced concerns early on about several potential risks but was overruled in favour of economics and prestige in launching the Titanic. Also as far as I know the Titanic disaster brought in several safety features in all new ships. Can't see why we shouldn't learn from Chernobyl and Fukushima - after all they've been studied to death.
Still, you're right in that nothing is impossible, but we can make the risk very small. In the end, economics are the driver of most things, the point where an accident becomes too expensive to handle there will be solutions found to minimize the risk.
Imagine south Florida being evacuated due to an impending cat-5 hurricane. Several million people stopping in just 300 miles to charge their electric cars for 45 mins to an hour apiece? I’m not fooling myself in thinking ICE cars wouldn’t create massive backups at the gas stations in Central and North Florida, but it only takes 2 mins to fill my car up with gas and continue on. Would I like to have a Tesla? Hell yeah! Would I get rid of my gas powered car to solely rely on electric? Not a chance in hell!
Ranges on EV will vastly improve over the next few years as battery tech developes.
That sounds a lot like the people saying electricity will be cheap in a few years because fission generators will finally be figured out by then, even after decades of trying and failing.
If I can drive without any concerns for recharge within 1,000 miles, I'll get EV. Right now in this area, it's hard to go 500 miles. Simply, not enough charging stations. Oh, we have charging stations in some areas. But they are all concentrated in certain areas. If you go 200 miles from those areas, none. I vote for hybrid. Makes most sense currently.
This is an excellent point I had not considered as I don't live in a hurricame-prone area. A logistical hurdle, for certain.
Fusion reactors? Fission is what we currently have with advancements in fusion reactors being hotly contested and questioned.
For those above saying nuclear power is our answer, I think that opinion is, respectfully, incredibly myopic. If we look at the exhaust from a fission system under operation, yes, it is clean (producing only steam).
The fate of the waste produced by these fission reactors, however, presents a significant problem that has not been solved in 70+ years of research; thus the whole system is incomplete. The reprocessing of said waste into fuel for a different kind of reactor (involving a different chemical process) is probably the best option we have, but countries such as France and the US have blocked meaningful use of these processes under the guise of "national security." So instead, we kick the can down the road, storing the waste temporarily until someone can think of a permanent solution. Barring none, our current era will be remembered for thousands of years for being "that civilization that didn't prepare for the future and only operated under the principles of convenience and expediency."
I am not versed in fission generators but I know Telsa’s vehicles have improved in the range almost yearly.
Electric is the future, no doubt. Has anyone confronted the problem created by the quietness of EV's? The whole auditory warning given by gas/diesel engines is eliminated. I live on a blind curve, and rely on noise to know someone is coming, though I am also lucky enough to have some windows on a house down the street that serve as mirrors. This is particularly dangerous for pedestrians at night when the pedestrians can't be seen, and the vehicle can't be heard. EV's are a big technical and cultural change and will definitely require more adaptations than we now realize. Can you charge your EV off a regular outdoor socket, or do you have too have this rewired for the purpose?
Centralized energy for all needs isn’t a very appealing scenario. I had a neighbor who converted his house to electric heat back in the 70s/80s because it was the big thing at the time. He regretted the decision for decades after. His costs kept going up and anytime the neighbor would loose power his house was basically dead. If in the winter time, their house would go freezing. Until better local energy solutions are developed, I’d be very leary of any mass “everything electric” push. If I had to rely on the stability of the power grid for all life and travel requirements, it wouldn’t be a pleasant situation to be in. There’s way too many other dependencies that still need solutions before moving everything to the grid.
They are almost too quite, in a parking lot you can easily sneak up on someone in a bad way. The main problem I have with them right now is cold weather performance. When it gets cold around here, say -10 or so, you can have a full charge and within 10 minutes it is saying you lost 40% of your range. After that initial drop it levels off but if you have a 200 mile range EV you are not going too far. Granted the vast majority of trips people take are short ones. They will need to find a fix for this.
I think a 500 mile range on a full charge is where I see buying.
Motor Trend has a cover story on the Ford F-150 EV. Haven't read it yet, but plan to give it full attention. If anything can bring EV's along in public acceptance, the F-150 could be it in the U.S. It is the top seller and the most profitable vehicle Ford makes, I believe. I plan to start a business to rough up the beds of pick-ups for suburbanites who must own a pick-up but never use the bed. I'd scrape the bed up and put some nicks and dents in there so the owner doesn't look like such a poseur. Maybe sprinkle around some hay and gravel. Kidding.
I got in a cab in San Francisco once, and was waiting for the driver to start the car, then all of a sudden we were silently moving ?
It was electric, unbeknownst to me. Almost completely quiet. So, yes, I could see how that could present a problem in certain situations.
I am a bicycle rider. What I hear most of the time is tire generated noise more then the engine noise of an approaching car. Vehicles can add a whistle to the front fender also. (A new DMV requirement?)
Have they improved battery efficiency though?
I remember Elon describing the how the Gigafactories are necessary to drive the cost of batteries down, so I guess it might be possible to make electric cars "affordable", but I'm not sold on the idea of Lithium Ion being better for the world than Gasoline.
The only place where Electric does make sense is high density urban environments where people never drive long distance and passenger car pollution is a serious topic, but for the entire car industry to move to electric is a huge problem for the other half of the general population.
I was wondering how electric car owners are charged for roads & highway maintenance taxes, like gas burners pay at the pump per gallon.
Right now, as far as I know, they aren't!
Many are suggesting a GPS system to record miles, but here in the US, I don't see that flying. People don't want big brother tracking where they've been. They say they will track miles but not location. There's also the problem of crossing boundaries where one state, county, etc, have differing rates. How can that be accomplished by not knowing where you've been? Perhaps they can add it to the cost at the charging stations...who knows?