[Topspinmo]

Do to limited electric vehicles on road plus the power problem will the even replace majority of fossil fueled vehicles in this century? Or at least by 2050?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8FHgwgQhCw

So, is this guy wrong?

This just production problems which don’t include the extra power and distribution of power to make dent in reduction of fossil fueled vehicles.

Then, there they cost involved manufacturing EVs due to rising cost rare earth minerals (majority can’t afford 40K plus cost of EV vehicles for around town. Sure small amount EVs helps, but got real problems and distribution to solve IMO before make dent is vehicles on the road.

[Byte1]

I wonder what ever happened to hydrogen fuel cell technology. Not enough profit in it? The byproduct of burning hydrogen is water, I believe. Too simple or too difficult?
Like you said, the materials for making decent batteries is obtained mostly overseas. Until they can make a battery that will fuel a motor vehicle for a 500 mile trip, who wants one? Sitting in line to charge your batteries for hours, makes a distance trip take a long time. Are they planning to build hotels around the charging stations?

[ThirdOfFive]

Originally Posted by Topspinmo

Do to limited electric vehicles on road plus the power problem will the even replace majority of fossil fueled vehicles in this century? Or at least by 2050?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8FHgwgQhCw

So, is this guy wrong?

This just production problems which don’t include the extra power and distribution of power to make dent in reduction of fossil fueled vehicles.

Then, there they cost involved manufacturing EVs due to rising cost rare earth minerals (majority can’t afford 40K plus cost of EV vehicles for around town. Sure small amount EVs helps, but got real problems and distribution to solve IMO before make dent is vehicles on the road.

A wholesale replacement of petroleum-powered vehicles with electric vehicles is in large part an environmentalist's pipe dream.

It is more than going out and shelling out big bucks for, say, a Porshe Taycan, or slightly fewer bucks for a Cooper electric, Toyota, etc. The fact is that America's industry, and thus America's economy, runs on hydrocarbon fuels. Goods move by two major ways; rail and semi truck on land and by ship on the water. All three burn hydrocarbon fuels, and it is a pretty safe bet that none of us, nor our grandchildren, will see electric semis, locomotives or container ships in our lifetime.

Then there is air transportation (goods and people). Jet-A (Kerosene, actually) accounts for nearly 10% of all the hydrocarbon fuel burned for transportation in America. And don't forget industry. American industry actually burns MORE hydrocarbon fuels (petroleum, natural gas, coal) than does the entire transportation sector; 36% of the total for industry compared to 35% for transportation.

Here's the kicker. We can go out and buy a Toyota Prius or something and feel all warm and fuzzy, but replacing a petroleum-burning automobile for an electric one is less than a very small drop in a very big bucket. WE, as individuals, might "run" on electricity, but our ECONOMY doesn't. And won't. Not for a very long time, if ever.

[dewilson58]

Good Video

[Bay Kid]

China owns us, not just this but everything.
Talking about destruction of earth! Mining destruction and pollution?

[Stu from NYC]

We are a long way from moving away from hydrocarbons. Technology will have to improve substantially.

In the meantime focus on fuel economy.

[MrFlorida]

Not in our lifetime...considering most of us are over 65.

[Mortal1]

why does no one mention the very salient fact that the production and replacement of the vehicles and batteries all use either hydro, coal, nuclear, petroleum or natural gas to power the factories and that their carbon footprint is much larger than all the vehicles on the road today. Disposal of these "green" products also has a mega huge impact for those looking to replace their so-called "green" vehicle. are people just stupid or ignorant? does keeping ones head in the sand make all these issues go away? or is the bigger issue that if you go electric you are somehow contributing to the longevity of the planet?

face it...if you want renewable energy you have to solve these problems FIRST and yet it is rarely mentioned because that would actually require a completely new energy source than sol and wind.

now please go plug in your electric vehicle and ignore all the issues....you'll feel better...like giving the homeless person begging for money(and has a dog)who may make more than you do.

[Stu from NYC]

Originally Posted by Mortal1

why does no one mention the very salient fact that the production and replacement of the vehicles and batteries all use either hydro, coal, nuclear, petroleum or natural gas to power the factories and that their carbon footprint is much larger than all the vehicles on the road today. Disposal of these "green" products also has a mega huge impact for those looking to replace their so-called "green" vehicle. are people just stupid or ignorant? does keeping ones head in the sand make all these issues go away? or is the bigger issue that if you go electric you are somehow contributing to the longevity of the planet?

face it...if you want renewable energy you have to solve these problems FIRST and yet it is rarely mentioned because that would actually require a completely new energy source than sol and wind.

now please go plug in your electric vehicle and ignore all the issues....you'll feel better...like giving the homeless person begging for money(and has a dog)who may make more than you do.

Very true and amazing these issues are ignored. Yet GM plans to go to 100% electric perhaps they know something we do not but honestly do not think so.

[ThirdOfFive]

Originally Posted by Mortal1

why does no one mention the very salient fact that the production and replacement of the vehicles and batteries all use either hydro, coal, nuclear, petroleum or natural gas to power the factories and that their carbon footprint is much larger than all the vehicles on the road today. Disposal of these "green" products also has a mega huge impact for those looking to replace their so-called "green" vehicle. are people just stupid or ignorant? does keeping ones head in the sand make all these issues go away? or is the bigger issue that if you go electric you are somehow contributing to the longevity of the planet?

face it...if you want renewable energy you have to solve these problems FIRST and yet it is rarely mentioned because that would actually require a completely new energy source than sol and wind.

now please go plug in your electric vehicle and ignore all the issues....you'll feel better...like giving the homeless person begging for money(and has a dog)who may make more than you do.

Excellent points.

Worthy of mention also is the fact that "going electric", does NOT mean going without hydrocarbon fuels. Nearly 60% of electricity in America is produced by--you got it--HYDROCARBON fuels (Natural Gas 40%, Coal 19%). Of the remaining 40% fully half of that comes from nuclear (ironic, considering that it is even more virtuous to hate nuclear than it is to hate hydrocarbon power). Only 20% comes from "renewables". (Energy in the United States, U.S. Energy Information Administration website).

Electrical energy--that stuff that you use to push your little electrical buggy down the road--is far from the clean energy people seem to think it is.

[MartinSE]

Originally Posted by Topspinmo

Do to limited electric vehicles on road plus the power problem will the even replace majority of fossil fueled vehicles in this century? Or at least by 2050?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8FHgwgQhCw

So, is this guy wrong?

This just production problems which don’t include the extra power and distribution of power to make dent in reduction of fossil fueled vehicles.

Then, there they cost involved manufacturing EVs due to rising cost rare earth minerals (majority can’t afford 40K plus cost of EV vehicles for around town. Sure small amount EVs helps, but got real problems and distribution to solve IMO before make dent is vehicles on the road.

Yes, he is sort of right. EVs, Computers, Phones, etc, etc, etc. need lots of are earth minerals. And China has been aggressively acquiring rights to rare earth minerals around the world for the past few decades, by cuddling up to poor countries building infrastructure in exchange for those rights. We on the other hand haven't been building those relationships, and will find it hard to move forward with out them. I will suggest (and I am sure it will start a political war here), but... the fossil fuel companies have spent a LOT of money lobbying to keep us addicted to fossil fuel and not allowing the government to build an alternative source of energy. it makes sense, it is in their interest to keep us tied to them for energy.

Now, on to predictions,

The fuel for the majority of power plants, factories, gas ovens, furnaces, etc etc etc will probably NOT happen in 30 years.

In talking about EVs, there are a couple issues to be resolved -

1. Batteries. Higher density, faster charging, faster production - the batteries we have now are ALMOST good enough. But, we certainly need higher production rates - more factories etc. Tesla is building new battery plants trying to catch up, but it will help when GM, Ford, Mercedes, VW, et all start making batteries too. This is just developing better tech, and that will happen if there is demand. Right now Tesla can't make enough batteries, and the demand is very high, so there is motivation to develop battery tech. If the other auto companies join the EV push, they will need batteries, that will help since GM, Ford et al, have the cash (or credit) to build massive battery factories.

2. We need a startup (maybe) that provides a cost effective mechanism to covert "gas stations" into recharging stations. That has logistic problems like getting Electricity to the gas stations with high enough current rating to super/fast charge. One alternative to that is the industry comes to a standard battery pack that can be swapped by a "robot"/automatic battery swapping station. So, you drive in, pull up on the platform, robot arms come out, remove the battery pack from your EV and insert a new one. Lots of design considerations, like to you "own" the batteries, or are you renting them. Etc etc.

3. Distributed electrical generation is a MUST have. When I was working at Palo Verdre Nuke plant in AZ there was a lot of debate over distributed generation, where every house, or at most every neighborhood has it's own power generation. The way we do it today is very vulnerable to outages (and sabotage) and expensive. Unfortunately, power companies kind of lose control if everyone (or every neighborhood) has it's own generation - be it Solar, geothermal, wind, hydro, etc, etc.

The big thing we need to understand is that no one thing is a silver bullet to solve our energy problems. Every location needs to customize the solution to what works best for them.

So, with all that in mind, I say, the majority of Automobiles sold in the US will be EVs within 20 years (maybe 10 if there is a lot of government support, but I don't see that happening).

I see private ownership of automobiles going away within 20 to 30 years. With FSD we will see "timeshare" cars. Where you pay a flat rate per month for use a a car - high subscription, more miles. When you want to go someplace you can schedule a car to arrive at a fixed time every day (good for commuting to work) or you can call a car and it will arrive in 5 to 10 minutes. The car takes you where you are going and then returns itself to the "pool". If you go on a shopping trip, there will be cars waiting to be summoned in the parking lots, so you shop, call the car while checking out, and walk outside and it is waiting to take you home. ETC. This will result in no more insurance, no more maintenance, no more drunk drivers, no more driver caused accidents, and much improved traffic flow both in town and on highways since the cars will all communicate and coordinate with each other.

Oh, and commercial truck drivers will cease to exist as FSD replaces them, making lower insurance, higher efficiency (truck on the move 24/7). etc.

That is my vision of 20 years or so (Maybe 30 for the truckers to be replaced).

Now, for the rest, power plants, factories, air flights, international cargo shipping etc. We will be hard pressed to replace all of they with electric of some other non-fossil fuel alternative in less than 50 years, maybe longer. If we simply ran out of oil, it would happen MUCH sooner. But, oil is too cheap (despite todays high prices) too easy to transport, and too high of an energy density to be replaced any sooner.

Sadly all that is the majority of pollution generated by Fossil fuels. But, we will NEVER get there is we don't start. For example, there are not going to be charging stations every where until there are EVs and there are not going to be enough EVs to support charging stations everywhere until there are charging everywhere. Catch 22. This is where government incentives come in to play, by making it more desirable it will happen sooner. Whether we see those and whether they are enough - I dunno.

All of that assumes we remain with the same battery chemistry - we won't. All of that assumes new sources (space) of rare earth minerals don't become available and financially practical to mine - they will.

So, there are a LOT of connections, like a spider web that will begin wiggling as we begin transitioning and those wiggles will result is massive changes in technology.

One of the difficulties in predicting technology changes, is that historically tech advances at an exponential rate, while we think about it in a linear rate. So, it "seems" like things are changing slowly, while in reality they are changing faster every year. AI is going to be play a BIG role in the design of new batteries and chemistries, and new power generation systems, etc etc.

It would NOT surprise me if 20 years from now Fossil fuel burning is outlawed. But, I can't tell you how we will get there. But it wouldn't surprise me. We made it to the moon in a decade, when everyone said it was impossible. SpaceX is up to 12 reuses of recovered launch vehicles and 10 years ago everyone laughed at the idea. Things can change fast - if we don't prevent it. And Fossil fuel companies have a very big incentive to prevent change.

[MartinSE]

Originally Posted by Stu from NYC

Very true and amazing these issues are ignored. Yet GM plans to go to 100% electric perhaps they know something we do not but honestly do not think so.

So, you are saying some guy on the internet is smarter than GM engineers. That GM is plunging blindly forward into EVs without understand the issues?

That is really strange, one thing US automakers have NEVER been accused of (well, at least since the Edsel) is being rash in making decisions. One of the reasons Japan did so much damage to our auto industry is we wouldn't change production techniques and Japan was very innovative with statistical process control/engineering.

And even if GM is "smoking dope" and being stupid, then I guess every auto manufacturer in the world is too.

[MartinSE]

Originally Posted by Mortal1

why does no one mention the very salient fact that the production and replacement of the vehicles and batteries all use either hydro, coal, nuclear, petroleum or natural gas to power the factories and that their carbon footprint is much larger than all the vehicles on the road today. Disposal of these "green" products also has a mega huge impact for those looking to replace their so-called "green" vehicle. are people just stupid or ignorant? does keeping ones head in the sand make all these issues go away? or is the bigger issue that if you go electric you are somehow contributing to the longevity of the planet?

face it...if you want renewable energy you have to solve these problems FIRST and yet it is rarely mentioned because that would actually require a completely new energy source than sol and wind.

now please go plug in your electric vehicle and ignore all the issues....you'll feel better...like giving the homeless person begging for money(and has a dog)who may make more than you do.

Well, there is a chicken and egg issue. But, I would say you have to have demand for EVs BEFORE you can afford to solve the issues you brought up.

Who do you think is going to invest the trillions of dollars to convert to an all electric economy if there are no customers?

Both have to happen - more or less at the same time.

And I don't know why you think no one is "aware" of the elephant in. the room (those problems). Every single company I have looked at are seriously working on those problems.

Chicken and Egg.

[MartinSE]

Originally Posted by Bay Kid

China owns us, not just this but everything.
Talking about destruction of earth! Mining destruction and pollution?

China has been playing the long game for decades. They DON"T own us, but they certainly are working on controlling our drugs (fuel, rare earth minerals, AI, etc, etc, etc). And they are very good at getting third world countries to "like them" and give them the right to resources in exchange for infrastructure development.

We won't even put money into our own infrastructure, much less using that to acquire rights to resources we need. I will say fore the past 50 or so years, we have been in naval focusing mode, and not playing the long game. This is seriously evident in our major corporations on a short term profits binge.

[fdpaq0580]

I'm not planning on buying an electric car. But I do understand that any change of major type takes time.
For example, once we lit our caves with fires and torches. Along came candles. Then oil lamps. Gas lights were common before electric lighting. Imagine the difficulties in converting a city from gas lighting to electric lighting. There were plenty of folks that found reasons why that was a waste of time and resources, too. Yet, it is what we all use today. Not every advance in technology is easy or universally accepted in its infancy, but, with persistence and improvements changes, progress takes place.
Again, I am not planning on buying an electric. It doesn't make sense in my life. But, in time, with advancements, electric vehicles of all sorts may become the norm, someday.