Kitchen

This is of course relative. Compared to gasoline powered cars, absolutely. Compared to hydrogen fuel cell cars or diesel cars that run solely on plant oils, probably not so true. And that is my point, their are more convenient options being worked on that are actually better for the environment. When these options come to market, the euphoria of battery EVs will drop real fast.

Lets do Vegemite vs Marmite.

Good point.

I just don't see this being the case. At first, yes, most people would charge at home. However as more and more battery swap locations became available, there would be a greater likelihood of people thinking that they can just do a battery swap and not worry about charging.

30 seconds of the gas refueling was dedicated to payment, however no payment was collected with the battery swap. I cant see payment processing be any faster with battery swaps compared to traditional refueling. Unless this is covered in the cost of the car, but I doubt that would be a long term viable option since there would be some that would greatly abuse it. Any anyway, there would need to be some kind of digital accounting and tracking for the swap out that would take some seconds to complete. So the time it took to swap the first car batter was 1:30. If you take away the processing time, the gas took about 3:30. Although this is longer by a little more than double, you have to take into account the pump shows 23.22 gallons being pumped. (I find this kind of odd since the A8 has at most a 21.7 gallon tank, and the tank sizes just keep on shrinking on Audi A Series cars from there. Where are those extra gallons going?) Average tank size is just half that anyway, so the actual time would be similar, for the most part. I will contest that if this was actually implemented, it would certainly make battery powered EVs more attractive. Food for thought though: How many additional batteries per car need to be manufactured and then stored and charged to make this refueling system run smoothly? I would guess at least two, in addition to the one already in the car. One charged and ready to go, while another being charged as a backup. Will batteries come down enough in price to justify including the cost of three of them in a single car purchase to the average consumer? If the main attraction to battery EVs is helping save the environment, isn't producing this many more batteries going to do more damage from the increase in mining? Additionally, what is the cost of land and infrastructure to store all of these extra batteries? If a much better connection was invented after this was implemented on a large scale (not unlikely; look at all the different computer ports was have gone through), would companies be willing to spend the money to transform all of the stations and batteries to the newer connection? Or would we just have to deal with an outdated connection for an extended period of time due to an unwillingness to loose already invested capital in the older style? Will all cars have the same style battery, shape, power supply, voltage and wattage, connectors, etc? If not, will the same refueling stations be able to replace all styles of batteries? What kind of storage and recharging facilities will they need in this situation? I am assuming a fairly large facility would be needed; how will that take up land resources and infrastructure? Or will be we need multiple stations that are only dedicated to one, maybe two, brands of vehicles? If so, how is this going to effect land resources? I am not saying these are obstacles that can not be overcome, but questions that certainly need to be considered.

Okay, so maybe a minute was a little fast, but 5 minute is still better then a couple hours. FYI, I just looked this up on the car review site: "A typical electric car (60kWh battery) takes just under 8 hours to charge from empty-to-full with a 7kW charging point." And this: "Tesla Supercharging stations charge with up to 145 kW of power distributed between two adjacent cars, with a maximum of 120 kW per car. That is up to 16 times as fast as public charging stations; they take about 20 minutes to charge to 50%, 40 minutes to charge to 80%, and 75 minutes to 100%." 5 minutes to fuel your tank to 100% or 75 minutes to fully charge the battery, what will people pick when given the option? 🧐 Even the 20 minute charge will be annoying to most people. I mean really, we have apps that allow you to order your coffee in advance so you don't have to wait in line. Do you really think, given the option, people will pick a vehicle that takes 15 times longer to completely refuel. Plus, if it takes that much longer to charge the battery, it will produce a queue substantially longer in wait time than what we deal with today with our gasoline stations. (As as an aside, I studied queuing theory in college and can tell you the relationship between service time and wait time is not linear. As service time increases, wait time increases logarithmically.) This will make the decision even easier for most consumers. Now before you say, just quadruple the amount of fueling stations, doing so would add in additional costs in land resources and infrastructure, in addition to spending 4 times more for the physical refueling stations. Additionally, and I am basing this off of highway studies, but I would guess the more recharging stations you have the more likely people would pick those, over charging at home, which would make the issue even worse. (With highways, it has been shown that widening a highway actually increases traffic since more people are likely to choose that route, thinking the increase in width will make the commute faster, essentially negating any time savings with the additional lane(s). It's an interesting paradox.) Also, aren't trickle charges better for the life of your battery, and produce a longer lasting charge? I have read that slow charging is always better, and a fast charging will shorten the service life of any battery. Battery powered EVs becoming standard ain't going to happen, at least not in the long run. Cars with a liquid or gas fuel source is where it will always be. EVs may become somewhat popular while we wait out innovation. PS. people would also have to mentally deal with the uncertainty of how long the actual wait time is at recharging stations. What I mean by this is, that if it takes anywhere from 20 to 75 minutes to recharge and all charging ports are in use when you arrive, you have no idea if most are choosing the 20 minute charge or if most are choosing the 75 minute charge. So you have no idea when one of those ports will open up. At any other station, if all pumps are being used, you know, worse case scenario, one will open in less than 5 minutes. I doubt most will choose to deal with this uncertainty, especially considering it will create a lot of stress if one has a schedule to keep.

Someone once sent me a link (and I wish I saved it) of old fashions ads that would never get release today. Most were the classic misogynistic ads of a bygone era, but one was for a beer tap for your dashboard. It showed two men sitting in the front seat of a car with pints of beer with the tagline, "never be bored in traffic again." This was once a real product.

Now this could actually work! Consumers vote with their money on convenience, and there is nothing convenient about needing to charge your car and then waiting a couple of hours until you can drive it again. Filling up a tank in less then a minute and being back on the road, that's convenience. Most people don't realize this, but battery powered cars were invented prior to gasoline ones. They went away for the same reasons, people would rather spend a minute filling up their car then a few hours recharging it. History will repeat itself. “If you build up consumer demand solely based on how many thousands of dollars the government can give you to encourage you to buy a [product], that to me doesn’t sound like a terribly sustainable business model.” Personally my favorite line in the article.

Interesting read, reminds me of the car companies buying all of the public transportation lines in West Coast cities back in the 30s and 40s and shutting them down. Great for the car companies, but ... I was aware of the other technologies and different types of reactors that are currently being worked on, but I do have hope that we will eventually let nuclear take off again.

Although for residential, I could see this being the case, but how much energy do you really use at home when you are away a 1/3 of the day. How about for commercial uses and manufacturing? I don't know the statistic, but how much more energy is used in manufacturing compared to residential usage?

Interesting input on the storage solutions; I was not aware of those designs. Although these are interesting, I would imagine they would still require a large geographical footprint for any practical use. So, in order for them to work, they would need to be far from any urban center, just to allow for the land to cheap enough. This then increases utility line length, which increases cost of building and maintaining. But going back to power supply, (did you read the article by the way?) how do you overcome the fact that solar and wind farms are in general much further away from urban environments, requiring longer utility lines, which also increase cost in building and maintaining? Additionally, it takes 20 more power plants, as compared to one modern concentrated plant, to produce the same amount of power requiring 20 times more lines, all with installation and maintenance issues; how is this cheaper? Last, how do we justify the cost of all these lines, knowing full well that most of the time they will be used at far below max output and sometime not at all? Seems like a waste of resources. There were additional points in that article that I just don't see wind and solar overcoming, ever. And insofar as your disinformation comment, and I am not sure you directed it at the provided article, but Forbes is a fairly reliable publication with well thought out articles. And all other well written and researched articles, which look at the full cost of wind and solar, I have seen all come to the same conclusions. I just don't see wind and solar ever being more then a dream accounting for only a small portion of the grid. Nuclear is where my bets are placed. One more thing, you seem to imply wind turbines and solar panels need very little maintenance. I just don't buy this. Anything with moving parts (wind turbines) will break eventually. Maybe it is not happening now, but I attribute that to them being so new. Give them some years of service and they will surely need an army of technicians and mechanics. Second, don't solar panels work less when they get dusty? Do they clean themselves?

First, like I said, I was not sure if recycling solar panels was in deed possible, I was merely relying on the info I received. If they are, which you say, then great. Furthermore, aside from this, you did not really explain why any of my other points are incorrect. Second, just because there are billions of dollars being invested in electrical storage, does not mean it will come to fruition. What large scale storage solutions are their currently (being built without any rare earth elements that come directly from mining and refining, using large amounts of hydro-carbons for the processes, not to mention destroying the land)? Third, I have no issue with us getting rid of coal power, and I would like to see it happen. However, I don't think wind and solar will get is there with out greatly raising the cost of electricity. Like I said, this is already evident. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/04/25/yes-solar-and-wind-really-do-increase-electricity-prices-and-for-inherently-physical-reasons/#296a2d517e84 A large raise in the cost of energy will just destroy the economy. Last, if we are going to have our energy produced by a large amount of (100,000+) wind turbines and solar panels, compared to concentrated power plants, I just dont see how this would require less techs. All those things need to be maintained, not the mention the additional amount of transportation lines required, which will require a workforce spread out over a large area. Please explain how I am wrong, not just tell me I am wrong.

Wind and solar is a fad. They are just not practical in the long term or in any large scale. They produce a fairly small amount of energy given the large amount of geography they take up. Not only do they not produce energy all of the time, but the wind blows the least and the sun shines the least (aside from night) at dawn and dusk, exactly when we use the most amount of energy. This is exacerbated by the fact that we have no way of storing large amount of electrical energy. So they produce the least amount of energy when we need the most and the most when we need the least. Both wind and solar require a significant amount of mining and refining rare earth elements, and then transportation and installation, all of which uses hydrocarbons. Both require a fairly large amount of service techs to keep the power running, especially compared to a concentrated coal, oil, gas or nuclear power plant. Electricity really is a service and the more people needed to provide that service, the more expensive it gets. This has already become evident in countries going all in on wind and solar. Additionally, since all electrical grids need a energy source that can provide electricity on demand, of which wind and solar are not, coal, oil, gas or nuclear power plants still need to be in the mix. With the exception of nuclear, constantly running a coal, oil and gas power plant on and off actually burns more then just keeping it going 24/7. Last, and I may be wrong on this but my source was an architect I work with that I trust, solar panels are not recyclable. This creates landfill issues. Personally, I think nuclear is the only electrical energy source that can replace coal. Politicians will eventually come around, but it may take 10 years of us going down the wind and solar rabbit hole before we actually consider it. I posted this before I saw your other posting. On the note of hydro, and geothermal too, they are only really applicable in relatively limited locations of the world. So, although great for those locations, neither are practical for overall production. Additionally, hydro-electrical is bad for the environment as well.

I look at EVs the same way I look at wind and solar electricity, a new fad that everyone is jumping onto that really is not practical in the long term. Some countries may decided to force feed us EVs, along with wind and solar, but ultimately, after some suffering, we will abandon them and go with something more practical. As was pointed out before, one of the main disadvantages of EVs is that they require rare earth elements. This requires a significant amount of mining, and mining has never been clean by any stretch. The lack of cleanliness of mining is not going to change, and therefore, EVs may ultimately be worse for the environment then gas powered vehicles. The other great downside of EVs is that they need to be charged, and this does not happen in less than a minute (the amount of time it takes to fill up my gas tank). I just dont see the average consumer ever putting up with this in the long run. Maybe for a bit, but eventually everyone will be looking back to the good old times of just filling up your tank in a jiffy. Furthermore, EVs just don't provide the amount of power required for heavy work, like in construction. Diesel engines will always be in need, perhaps run by natural oils instead of petroleum, and that will be in great competition with EVs. Plus if we do find a way to harvest large amounts of natural oils for diesel engines to run on, considering the mining needed for EVs, diesels of the future would be much better for the environment. I read a while back that algae produces so much oil and grows essentially anywhere, that if we figured out how to effectively harvest the oils, we would be set with transportation fuel.

They are still on their way.