Northam Saint
Forum GOD!
On the way to Goodwood yesterday we saw a major pitiful for an EV. the chargers at MacDonalds weren’t working, one guy looked stranded. The Instavolt people were there fixing it, but goes to show.
Any pure EV owners here?
- Thread starter Hectorsgaf
- Start date
TobyC
Patriot
While electric vehicles do not produce tailpipe emissions, the materials that must be mined, processed, and refined to build the cars produce considerably more carbon dioxide than those used to build their gas-powered counterparts. In many cases, meanwhile, the power used to charge electric vehicles comes from natural gas and coal. Those emissions, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Mark Mills argues in a Wednesday report, "substantially offset reductions from avoiding gasoline." Additionally, driving an electric vehicle instead of a gas-powered one "could even lead to a net increase in emissions."
Estariol
Forum GOD!
First of all:
https://youtube.com/shorts/kZ9xdVJkrNk?feature=share
Second of all, i'm not buying any ev untill they sort out:
- extinguishing battery fires
- recycling old batteries
And most importantly:
untill child labor/slavery in the Congo is completely ceised and ALL the culprits are behind bars, or bankrupt from the fines and compensations.
https://youtube.com/shorts/kZ9xdVJkrNk?feature=share
Second of all, i'm not buying any ev untill they sort out:
- extinguishing battery fires
- recycling old batteries
And most importantly:
untill child labor/slavery in the Congo is completely ceised and ALL the culprits are behind bars, or bankrupt from the fines and compensations.
slapo
It's... alive!
Manufacture is problematic for both EVs and gas-powered vehicles, but from what I've been reading in the last few years, it seems that there's more room for advances as far as charging and battery tech is concerned than improvements to combustion engines.
There's also a budding battery mining industry where they buy older batteries and either refurbish them or take them apart to extract lithium and other materials.
Where the actual electricity comes from is pretty region-specific - there are countries with a significant chunk of electricity either from nuclear, solar and/or wind. It isn't like those aren't without issues themselves, but like battery tech, there are some interesting things likely to happen within the next decade or two.
Even if EVs turned out to be roughtly equivalent in greenhouse emissions, there's the other effect of EVs in use - not having to inhale the gases when in or around traffick, especially when there are large vehicles.
I think there's also one other issue - lots of EVs are in a higher luxury segment than combustion engine vehicles. There's a lot more tech in them, and there are comparatively fewer in the class of simple, reliable vehicles than for combustion engine vehicles just because of that.
Northam Saint
Forum GOD!
Some vey good points there. Perhaps synthetic fuels are the way forward. Electric car tech is amazing, but I won’t be investing for a long time, im not totally convinced.
slapo
It's... alive!
What's your actual point here?
Even if EVs (or, I don't know, nuke powered cars) still suffer from the issue, so do combustion-engine powered vehicles.
However, that they aren't truly zero-emission because of that, doesn't mean they aren't lower emission in total while in use (bearing in mind that power generation is a related, but distinct issue).
Don't the latest generation vehicles have measures against this already?
Already happening, though the scale probably needs to be ramped up somewhat.
Do you mean related to lithium mining, or any and all in the country?
I agree that it should happen, but if it's the latter, than you should probably stop buying most imported products on principle, including clothing an electronics, because it's impossible to know how much child labour there is, but it's very likely some is involved.
Estariol
Forum GOD!
Porsche is in the works of dšveloping synthetic gasoline.
Also, there’s hydrogen
I don’t know what measures are taken against batteries catching fires, since lithiom is one of the alcaline metals and can catch fire just feom the humidity of the surrounding air and can't be extinguished. The fire can be stopped by covering it with sand i. e. but it will reignite as soon as uncovered and burn untill all the lithium is burned away. And there is no way of preventing a fire in case a cell (or several of them) is pierced by a piece of metal in a crash, or a spontaineous ignition of a faulty cell contained in a cluster of a car's battery pack. On top of all that, lithium in a battery cell burns extremely aggressively because of the tight packaging.
As for recycling, the scale should be ramped up accordingly to the production ramp-up, which means not somewhat, but extremely.
Every single battery cell has a total of ~300 charging cycles, and after that all specs start to degrade. However, if the cells are in a cluster, or a battery pack, like in laptops, for example, the first and the last battery in the pack or cluster will degrade fastest. That is why you can take a laptop bat pack apart, separate the cells, throw the first and last in recycling, and use the rest for years ro come in flashlights or something else.
ADDENDUM:
And the difference in the degrading rate of battery cells is the most common reason for spontaineous battery ignition.
Also, there’s hydrogen
No, i was talking about Cobalt mining. And i know that there are a lot of products that use lithium batteries besides vehicles, but vehicle production is what ramped up the mining significantly.
I don’t know what measures are taken against batteries catching fires, since lithiom is one of the alcaline metals and can catch fire just feom the humidity of the surrounding air and can't be extinguished. The fire can be stopped by covering it with sand i. e. but it will reignite as soon as uncovered and burn untill all the lithium is burned away. And there is no way of preventing a fire in case a cell (or several of them) is pierced by a piece of metal in a crash, or a spontaineous ignition of a faulty cell contained in a cluster of a car's battery pack. On top of all that, lithium in a battery cell burns extremely aggressively because of the tight packaging.
As for recycling, the scale should be ramped up accordingly to the production ramp-up, which means not somewhat, but extremely.
Every single battery cell has a total of ~300 charging cycles, and after that all specs start to degrade. However, if the cells are in a cluster, or a battery pack, like in laptops, for example, the first and the last battery in the pack or cluster will degrade fastest. That is why you can take a laptop bat pack apart, separate the cells, throw the first and last in recycling, and use the rest for years ro come in flashlights or something else.
ADDENDUM:
And the difference in the degrading rate of battery cells is the most common reason for spontaineous battery ignition.
slapo
It's... alive!
Fair points.
I'm not quite up to speed on the safety measures, but I think the reason why we've only seen a few and not an "epidemic" of fires is that car makers prefer their customers alive and have taken a bunch of measures. So while it isn't without risk, it would, perhaps, be worth finding out what the real risk is given the measures in place.
I think recycling is just a matter of time (and perhaps some legislation).
Everything people do creates some sort of pollution so there really is no free lunch out there. We are just shifting where the pollution we are trying to eliminate enters into the equation in a lot of cases.
In quite a few areas the electrical grids are already strained to supply peak demand. Moving to EV vehicles will only exacerbate the situation unless more capacity is added. That in most cases would add even more pollution being produced.
It is a thorny problem with no easy answers.
Bob
In quite a few areas the electrical grids are already strained to supply peak demand. Moving to EV vehicles will only exacerbate the situation unless more capacity is added. That in most cases would add even more pollution being produced.
It is a thorny problem with no easy answers.
Bob
TobyC
Patriot
The process of direct conversion of coal to synthetic fuel originally developed in Germany.[14] Friedrich Bergius developed the Bergius process, which received a patent in 1913. Karl Goldschmidt invited Bergius to build an industrial plant at his factory, the Th. Goldschmidt AG (part of Evonik Industries from 2007), in 1914.[15] Production began in 1919.[16][citation needed]
Indirect coal conversion (where coal is gasified and then converted to synthetic fuels) was also developed in Germany - by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in 1923.[14] During World War II (1939-1945), Germany used synthetic-oil manufacturing (German: Kohleverflüssigung) to produce substitute (Ersatz) oil products by using the Bergius process (from coal), the Fischer–Tropsch process (water gas), and other methods (Zeitz used the TTH and MTH processes).[17][18] In 1931 the British Department of Scientific and Industrial Research located in Greenwich, England, set up a small facility where hydrogen gas was combined with coal at extremely high pressures to make a synthetic fuel.[19]
The Bergius process plants became[when?] Nazi Germany's primary source of high-grade aviation gasoline, synthetic oil, synthetic rubber, synthetic methanol, synthetic ammonia, and nitric acid. Nearly one third of the Bergius production came from plants in Pölitz (Polish: Police) and Leuna, with 1/3 more in five other plants (Ludwigshafen had a much smaller Bergius plant[20] which improved "gasoline quality by dehydrogenation" using the DHD process).[18]
Synthetic fuel grades included "T.L. [jet] fuel", "first quality aviation gasoline", "aviation base gasoline", and "gasoline - middle oil";[18] and "producer gas" and diesel were synthesized for fuel as well (converted armored tanks, for example, used producer gas).[17]: 4, s2 By early 1944 German synthetic-fuel production had reached more than 124,000 barrels per day (19,700 m3/d) from 25 plants,[21] including 10 in the Ruhr Area.[22]: 239 In 1937 the four central Germany lignite coal plants at Böhlen, Leuna, Magdeburg/Rothensee, and Zeitz, along with the Ruhr Area bituminous coal plant at Scholven/Buer, produced 4.8 million barrels (760×103 m3) of fuel. Four new hydrogenation plants (German: Hydrierwerke) were subsequently erected at Bottrop-Welheim (which used "Bituminous coal tar pitch"),[18] Gelsenkirchen (Nordstern), Pölitz, and, at 200,000 tons/yr[18] Wesseling.[23] Nordstern and Pölitz/Stettin used bituminous coal, as did the new Blechhammer plants.[18] Heydebreck synthesized food oil, which was tested on concentration camp prisoners.[24] After Allied bombing of Germany's synthetic-fuel production plants (especially in May to June 1944), the Geilenberg Special Staff used 350,000 mostly foreign forced-laborers to reconstruct the bombed synthetic-oil plants,[22]: 210, 224 and, in an emergency decentralization program, the Mineralölsicherungsplan [de] (1944-1945), to build 7 underground hydrogenation plants with bombing protection (none were completed). (Planners had rejected an earlier such proposal, expecting that Axis forces would win the war before the bunkers would be completed.)[20] In July 1944 the "Cuckoo" project underground synthetic-oil plant (800,000 m2) was being "carved out of the Himmelsburg" north of the Mittelwerk, but the plant remained unfinished at the end of World War II.[17] Production of synthetic fuel became even more vital for Nazi Germany when Soviet Red Army forces occupied the Ploiești oilfields in Romania on 24 August 1944, denying Germany access to its most important natural oil source.
Indirect coal conversion (where coal is gasified and then converted to synthetic fuels) was also developed in Germany - by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in 1923.[14] During World War II (1939-1945), Germany used synthetic-oil manufacturing (German: Kohleverflüssigung) to produce substitute (Ersatz) oil products by using the Bergius process (from coal), the Fischer–Tropsch process (water gas), and other methods (Zeitz used the TTH and MTH processes).[17][18] In 1931 the British Department of Scientific and Industrial Research located in Greenwich, England, set up a small facility where hydrogen gas was combined with coal at extremely high pressures to make a synthetic fuel.[19]
The Bergius process plants became[when?] Nazi Germany's primary source of high-grade aviation gasoline, synthetic oil, synthetic rubber, synthetic methanol, synthetic ammonia, and nitric acid. Nearly one third of the Bergius production came from plants in Pölitz (Polish: Police) and Leuna, with 1/3 more in five other plants (Ludwigshafen had a much smaller Bergius plant[20] which improved "gasoline quality by dehydrogenation" using the DHD process).[18]
Synthetic fuel grades included "T.L. [jet] fuel", "first quality aviation gasoline", "aviation base gasoline", and "gasoline - middle oil";[18] and "producer gas" and diesel were synthesized for fuel as well (converted armored tanks, for example, used producer gas).[17]: 4, s2 By early 1944 German synthetic-fuel production had reached more than 124,000 barrels per day (19,700 m3/d) from 25 plants,[21] including 10 in the Ruhr Area.[22]: 239 In 1937 the four central Germany lignite coal plants at Böhlen, Leuna, Magdeburg/Rothensee, and Zeitz, along with the Ruhr Area bituminous coal plant at Scholven/Buer, produced 4.8 million barrels (760×103 m3) of fuel. Four new hydrogenation plants (German: Hydrierwerke) were subsequently erected at Bottrop-Welheim (which used "Bituminous coal tar pitch"),[18] Gelsenkirchen (Nordstern), Pölitz, and, at 200,000 tons/yr[18] Wesseling.[23] Nordstern and Pölitz/Stettin used bituminous coal, as did the new Blechhammer plants.[18] Heydebreck synthesized food oil, which was tested on concentration camp prisoners.[24] After Allied bombing of Germany's synthetic-fuel production plants (especially in May to June 1944), the Geilenberg Special Staff used 350,000 mostly foreign forced-laborers to reconstruct the bombed synthetic-oil plants,[22]: 210, 224 and, in an emergency decentralization program, the Mineralölsicherungsplan [de] (1944-1945), to build 7 underground hydrogenation plants with bombing protection (none were completed). (Planners had rejected an earlier such proposal, expecting that Axis forces would win the war before the bunkers would be completed.)[20] In July 1944 the "Cuckoo" project underground synthetic-oil plant (800,000 m2) was being "carved out of the Himmelsburg" north of the Mittelwerk, but the plant remained unfinished at the end of World War II.[17] Production of synthetic fuel became even more vital for Nazi Germany when Soviet Red Army forces occupied the Ploiești oilfields in Romania on 24 August 1944, denying Germany access to its most important natural oil source.
LeeMaz
Forum GOD!
Unfortunately VW’s EV’s are average at best and early adopters hindered by poor software systems and poor interior quality, not what you expect from a VW. It doesn’t help that their sister brand Skoda and Audi both have produced better versions of essentially the same cars. Potential cuts have been made to try and pay off the dieselgate issues.
Smiffy
Forum GOD!
As we know, there is an intended ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars from 2030.
There is no tax being charged on pure EV cars, at least in the way that tax is collected at the pumps. I don't have the figures but the revenue from the sale of fuel must be enormous. I cannot see that this tax could be easily replicated by plug in EVs.
There is also the issue of the high cost of EV cars and vans.
I would like to wager that the 2030 cut off date is pushed back and in order to give some guidance, perhaps not the right word, to manufacturers and the retailers that the plan is being relaxed.
There is no tax being charged on pure EV cars, at least in the way that tax is collected at the pumps. I don't have the figures but the revenue from the sale of fuel must be enormous. I cannot see that this tax could be easily replicated by plug in EVs.
There is also the issue of the high cost of EV cars and vans.
I would like to wager that the 2030 cut off date is pushed back and in order to give some guidance, perhaps not the right word, to manufacturers and the retailers that the plan is being relaxed.
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Now, that is an interesting point regarding not collecting the tax at the pumps the way they do now. I am sure they will up other taxes associated with vehicles or make new ones. Road maintenance will likely increase as EVs are much heavier than ice powered vehicles and increased funds for that will have to be found.
Bob
Bob