But there is quite a bit of Methane produced... :icon_wink:

I should have said traditional fossil fuels instead of coal, as natural gas is not green either. In Florida coal and natural gas account for about two thirds of our electrical power.

Nuclear energy is the cleanest power currently available.

No, in Florida it is about 80% for natural gas and coal - mostly natural gas. There is little nuclear power in Florida, about 12%. There is also not much renewable - less than 5%. Except for a couple of reactors being built in GA, nuclear appears to have no future in the US. While that could change, I would not count on it.

When electricity is produced by coal and gas, electric cars are much more efficient than gas cars in terms of the amount of energy consumed. Why is this? The generation of electricity in power plants is pretty efficient and transmission losses are small because of the high voltages used. Electric motors are typically 95% efficient in converting electricity to motion. There are some small losses involved in recharging batteries. Gas cars are only about 30% efficient in converting the energy in gasoline to motion. Electric cars take more energy to manufacture but recoup it quickly.

I'm not sure what your point is, as sources give different percentages from different studies and time spans. All sources show natural gas as the main current source of electricity and most show coal as the second. Electric car champions never want to talk about that.

Electricity is mainly produced from fossil fuels, thus electric cars are mainly fossil fuel burners that are not green. Add to that the environmental cost of strip mining for battery materials and you have an argument that electric cars are more damaging than modern ICE cars.

My point about nuclear energy (again, in case people missed it):
Electric cars make environmental sense when this country realizes nuke power is the best option for power sources.

OK, I'll tell you what my point is: your numbers were wrong. I gave you the current numbers. And I stated that most electricity was generate by natural gas. Go reread my post.

Yes, electricity, especially in Florida, is mainly produced by fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are used to generate most of the electricity in the US. That is pretty clear. The point is that the total energy use by electric cars is much less than gas cars. Again, the energy use by electrics is less than gas cars since the generation, transmission, and use of electricity by electric motors is much more efficient than gas cars. Nothing is green. Virtually everything is manufactured using electricity generated from fossil fuels and requires natural resources mined from the ground. It is a matter of which technology uses less total energy. Buy an electric car or don't - nobody cares what you do.

You can stop talking about nuclear. It has no future in this country. And your comment about when electric cars make environmental sense is your opinion and most definitely not fact.

My numbers and your numbers were sourced from different studies and neither is 100% current (as I posted). Both show electric cars run on fossil fuels. So lets stop calling them zero emissions.

Nuclear power has a future when people recognize how clean it is.

Problem is, whenever you mention Nuclear, people think of "The China Syndrome"...

Or The disaster in Japan... Or how to get rid of the spent rods...

What they don't realize is that the newer Generation 4 Reactors are much safer, much more efficient, can use the old spent rods for fuel and the waste only lasts a hundred or so years, rather than millennia, like the older reactors...

Are there operational power plants at that level ?

Except mine are correct. Nobody called electric cars "zero emissions". Where did you make that up from? What I did say, if you go back and reread my post, is that electric cars use less total energy than gas cars.

Nuclear has no future in this country. You can try to delude yourself but that is the fact. Feel free to argue whatever you feel like with someone else. This is starting to sound like SJW (that would be you) v. Ben Shapiro.

Not yet. But Rotosam (sp?) in Russia just broke ground on one this Summer...

Most of the arguments against nuclear have little basis in fact but the reality is that nuclear has become a bad word. Germany is in the process of sunsetting all of it's nuclear plants. Even France, which generates over 70% of it's electricity from nuclear, will be reducing it's reliance on nuclear power to 50% over the next 15 years. I don't see the trend reversing itself. In a rational world, we would be building nuclear power plants, lots of nuclear power plants. But we don't live in a rational world as people are afraid of things they don't understand.

Actually, the OLDER nukes, like the ones used in Russia, are much safer and can't met down. But we won't use them.

Do you mean the same design as Chernobyl? If so, that was a bad design with no containment structure.

Wasn't Chernobyl in Russia? It was actually worse than a meltdown...

I should have said fossil fuels, not just coal. And I already corrected myself for that. We don't disagree that electric cars run mostly on fossil fuels.

Did you Google "zero emmision vehicles?" You should do that.

No, I was referring to Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor. They have their own "problems", but don't create the fuel rod disposal problem and can't "melt down".

Another solution is micro-plants. I worked as a consultant at the Palo Verde Nuclear plant in AZ for a couple years. It is the safest plant in the US, having operated for a LONG time with no serious incidents - less incidents than coal.

But, one of the thing we were investigating at the time was a study being done in the Northwest to look into distributed generation instead of centralized generation. Centralized generation is really bad at almost everything, but makes the owners very rich. Distributed generation is not perfect but solves a lot of the problems with "terrorist attack" security issues, wide spread outages, and on and on. The idea is to produce electricity at or close to the point of usage. Neighborhood or even individual houses producing their own and feeding any excess into a shared grid. Very robust structurally. The obvious methods of decentralized generation are things like small gas fired turbines, solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, hydrogen fueled turbines, fuel cells, etc. There is (has been?) research done on micro nukes also.

There are MANY possibilities that are safer, more robust and in the long run less expensive. But power companies don't want them, they can't control decentralized generation for profits.

Pretty much, falsehoods or out of context.

Horse and carts are a nightmare in roundabouts, and can you imagine the horse poop threads on here!

"Centralized generation is really bad at almost everything, but makes the owners very rich. Distributed generation is not perfect but solves a lot of the problems with "terrorist attack" security issues, wide spread outages, and on and on."


One only has to look to Texas last winter - to prove your point. For those who might want to try and bring it up, it is false that alt-energy production was at the root of Texas' problem during last winter.

ZZZZZZZZZZ....call me when you invent an electric car that will actually go 500 miles on a charge, not cost an arm and leg (can be afforded by low and middle income) and don't cost $10K to replace the batteries every 5-10 years. And when I say travel 500 miles (or even 300 miles) I mean driving at 65-75mph for long distances, with the A/C running. And I mean without having to stop for a four hour charge.
Lithium batteries are very volatile and will burst into flames if overheated during charging or hard running. I realize that there are a lot of safeguards on these cars, but there are still reports of burning electric cars.
I'll keep the mostly affordable gas cars, thank you.

Great points. Thanks for the added information!

I get it, you don't want an electric vehicle. Since you normally drive 10 to 12 hours without stopping. (Good bladder!)

You want an affordable car - but don't say what is affordable, and do you include the total cost of ownership in that calculation? Because Tesla 3's are already less expensive than most compacts that are comparably equipped over a 2 or 3 year period. Most mid-priced cars in the US average around $500 to $750 per year in maintenance. If you happen to own a BMW it can run much more. So, you are looking at $5K to $7.5K for your average ICE vehicle over that same 10 years. (Tesla's average annual maintenance for a Model 3 is about $300. or 1/10 of the cost of maintenance on an ICE)

And you certainly shouldn't purchase an EV if you plan on keeping it for more than 10 years since in 10 years it will be obsolete because of advancing technology. Most people replace their cars every 2 or 3 years.

The cost of batteries you are quoting is low, they run around $12,000 for Model 3's. Of course, that assumes battery technology remains totally static and no improvements in price/performance are achieved over the next decade. That could happen, but it would be a unique occurrence that has NEVER happened before in any branch of technology.

Yeah, I agree you should stick to ICE vehicles, I wouldn't want anyone to stress out over what the cost of maintenance would be for their 10-year-old car.

There are a lot of things wrong with your post. Where to start? You can buy an electric for about the same amount as the average new car - about $40K. Current generation Tesla batteries can go 200 to 300K miles - no need to replace the batteries for most people. The next generation of Tesla batteries are targeted for 1M miles. This is far longer than any gas engine can go without a rebuild. Four hour charges? Nope, you can do about 150 miles of charge in about 20 minutes with a Supercharger. I have never driven 300 miles without stopping. Chevy Bolt batteries have some issues during charging. Don't buy a Chevy Bolt. Tesla batteries may have a fire issue if they are compromised during a crash. The gas tank on a gas car may also have issues during a crash. Buy an electric car or don't. Please don't make up stuff.

And Three Mile Island it only took 14 years to cleanup “ The cleanup at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant has ended after 14 years with a final puff of radioactive steam from the evaporator used to get rid of contaminated water from the 1979 accident. ... There is contamination in the reactor building, but it's fixed in the walls.Aug 15, 1993”

Tesla
 

Not so much on topic but I got a call from one of my clients (insurance) today. He drives a Tesla and was chased by 2 deer down the road this morning. One hit the back of his car as he tried to drive faster to get away from them. He said it was very scary. It seems very weird to me but maybe they were trying to hijack his car! :icon_wink:

When I drive to FL, gas and BR breaks rarely take 10 minutes...

You're ignoring the Tax Incentives that seem to be needed to entice people to by these vehicles...

Not anymore...

"According to an IHS Markit study, the average length of new-vehicle ownership in the U.S. stands at 79.3 months, or nearly seven years."

My Hyundai Genesis is coming up on 11 years old, 130K miles and I've no plans to replace it... Not for the over $45-50K it would cost...

My extended warranty ran out at 120K miles, since then, nothing but oil changes. But I am due for new brake pads...

Which has nothing to do with my point about Gen IV reactors, but sure...

Excellent reply, thank you.

And so, how many stops do you make? If let's say 5, then that adds 100 minutes to a what 18-hour drive? If that is the deciding factor, please don't buy an EV today. (I just saw a report of an EV - sorry didn't read it, so don't know who - that has a 500-mile range).

I would say the tax incentives are not NEEDED, but help move people to the decision to buy. Tax incentives are often used for that, not just for EVs. The tax break on home interest is the same thing. Do you think people would instantly stop buying houses if they no longer get tax breaks for buying? The government does a lot of social engineering with taxes, sadly...

You no doubt take very good care of your car and have good maintenance experience. My numbers were averages.

The nice thing about this is no one is holding a gun to anyone's head to buy Teslas. But, EVs are coming and likely in a decade with be the only choice.

Typically? 3...

I just find it odd that the largest tax breaks are for the high end Teslas, that only the rich can afford...

People HAVE to live somewhere. They don't HAVE to buy an EV (well, except in CA, where they're trying to make it a law, even though they don't have anywhere NEAR the power grid to supply them... Hell, they're having problems with people charging the ones that currently are on the streets!)

But if they remove the home interest deduction, it'll crash the housing market, so good luck with that...

Thanks, but your averages were in "Ye Olden Days"... That hasn't been the case for many, many decades...

I've no problem with people making a CHOICE to buy an EV. But good luck with it being the ONLY choice...

Doubtful but it may be expensive to buy a gas vehicle in 10 years.

Well, you can still buy vinyl records and players, you can buy flip phones, you can buy horse-drawn. carriages and wood-burning stoves - Yup, you will still be able to buy ICE vehicles, just like other relics. I personally think it will be sooner than a decade because technology is expanding exponentially not linearly and the result will be some form of technology that makes ICE totally impractical. Right now ICE is competitive.

Imagine a micro-fusion reactor that can power your car/house/pool/everything for you for life and costs a couple of hundred dollars. I doubt that will happen, but look at cell phones and think of 2 decades ago. We now have a device in our pants pocket that can contact anyone almost anywhere in the world instantly with no long-distance charges, and with it, we can access almost all the knowledge in the world instantly...The same change is coming to cars. Bet on it.

As the OP 1st posted about fires on li-on batteries in cars, I hope he NEVER plugs his cell phone or laptop in without keeping an eye on it.
As a happy owner of a EZgo Elite cart for the last 12 months (3,500 miles), never had a fire. Never had any service done on it. Never went to a gas station (used to be an every-other week trip. Took me about 30 min round trip), that's at least 12 hrs. of just going to get gas.
But keep your eye on those rechargeable devices! Your house could go up in flames!

You are trying to draw an analogy between cellphones and cars? Really? The problem is that there are approximately 100 million new vehicles sold each year, worldwide. Yeah, that is a big number and the infrastructure to support that doesn't materialize overnight. It will take more than a decade to develop the manufacturing capacity to build that many electrics. Battery manufacturing capacity is the big issue. Toyota, the largest automaker in the world at 10 million cars per year, is making very slow progress and does not have an all electric vehicle for sale in the US. The legacy automakers cannot move that fast. They have all pretty much said so. Some may go out of business. Even the US Government doesn't believe it as the new tax credit legislation includes hybrids. Best guess is we will be at 50% all electric vehicles (new sales) in 10 years, and that would be quite an accomplishment.

Excellent response, and hard to dispute your position, seriously very good and valid points.

But, 10 years ago everyone said you could not design a rocket to launch and land and be reused within weeks. Everyone laughed, now it is routine for SpaceX.

Smartphones, 13 years ago millions in first world countries, today about 5 billion of them, and all those cell towers to support them.

I don't know how it is going to happen, I just believe it will.

Combining automated AI manufacturing, repurposing gas stations (infrastructure) to charging stations (for profit) existing factories - Toyota, Honda, GM, Ford, etc, etc, etc. All switching to EVs. Tesla alone now has over 25,000 superchargers.

Distributed generation with localized mass storage battery systems (Tesla has them in several countries already) and I saw in the news a few days ago several states are considering legislation to build public charging stations.

It will certainly be interesting to see where we are in ten years.

Oh, and 11 years ago the first iPad came out, and Apple alone has sold more than 500 million of them. I think if you include Andriod tablets there are around 60 to 70 million sold per quarter now.

Lots of big numbers.

When money is to be made, companies will find a way to hurry up.

Again, drawing comparisons with cellphones is not worthwhile. There is a big difference between manufacturing cellphones and cars. Again, the capacity to manufacture enough batteries will take a long time to develop. For the US alone, battery production would need to ramp up by 15x over the current number. Electric car manufacturing is limited by battery production. US automakers are projecting they will be at 50% all electric by 2030. Some projections for 2030 include hybrids and not only all-electrics. I tend to believe the people who actually make the product since production planning is a long term process.

Tax credits shouldn't be given to buy anything.

Just curious...

Do you drive an EV? I don't remember you saying if you did or not...

To those who think the technology can't be developed quickly - Having spent my career at a company which heavily invested in Research, Development and Manufacturing in the development of new technology, I was always impressed by how fast a new plant could come on line once the decision was made to move forward. (3-4 years from planning to finish) While you are correct in saying that cars are more complex than phones, most of the car does not need a lot of new technology. That leaves a few components of which batteries would appear to be the biggest issue. Would you please give a reference which addresses why building new battery factories would be such a long lead time?

Ford announced they are building 3 new battery plants $5.8 to $7 BILLION.
Who will be Arthur Dent and lie to stop progress.
Currently a EV is not in my future I’m sticking with my hybrid at 49mpg highway could be more if I slowed down. Driving in TV my best has been 56mpg with A/C on or fill up tank about 8 weeks.
Recently at 24hrs of LeMans Toyota HyperCard Hybrid w/V6 won race 4 laps ahead of nearest competitors a lap is approximately 8.47 miles

They are holding guns to our heads to pay for them (for others to buy luxury cars).

I consider it tithing to the new Green Religion.

I think we need to call them ECE cars, as in external combustion engine cars since they are fueled by natural gas and coal.