New Petrol & Diesel Cars Banned In The UK From 2040, Now 2030

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So are they powering their electric generating stations with coal or plutonium?

That's the basis of the thinking for many of the anti-electro-grid arguments above, yes. As I already said the industry are tackling battery problems in terms of storage, recyclability and production practices, but those changes are driven much more largely by mobile phones and laptops. As I've also said: once the grid companies find they have customers then you'll find the sales and service infrastructure appears very quickly.
 
Exactly, grids aren’t up to snuff. And it would cost billions to bring it up to line.
And that’s not even getting into a discussion onto the economics and actual real-world efficiency of solar and wind energy. Let’s just say there’s a reason they’re massively subsidised.

I wasn’t talking about how green battery tech is or isn’t, I was more pointing out the reason a lot of the minerals are so ‘cheap’ is because they’re mined by children in places like China and Africa for 5¢ an hour. Unless we plan on ramping up child labour to meet the demand, you’ll quickly see the cost of electric cars skyrocket as they move away from that sort of stuff.
The grid is 'up to snuff' because people are not all going to buy EVs tomorrow, its a gradual uptick, while utility companies are more than aware of, and due to the charging pattern of EV's will have a much lower impact than the doom-mongers claim.

“On a daily time scale, demand typically starts off low, and builds through the early morning as people start getting ready for work and take care of things around the house,” says Jarod Kelly, a vehicle systems analyst engineer at Argonne National Laboratory’s Center for Transportation Research. Demand peaks around 6 pm, when workers get home, make dinner, watch Netflix...

… Then chill, as electrical demand drops into an overnight valley. These nighttime hours—when EVs are conveniently parked in garages and curbs—are the cheapest time to charge. This fact isn’t lost on EV manufacturers. “Most EVs have systems that allow you to say, ‘OK, I am leaving at 8 am,’ so the computer can calculate the rate at which it needs to charge so it is fully charged by the time you need to leave,” says Kelly. In this way, individual EVs spread their demand for juice over the course of the night.

This charging pattern would be ideal for utilities. In order to satisfy the day and night peaks and valleys of electricity demand, utilities typically have to spin up, and shut down power plants. All that cycling is expensive. Remember, EVs can use as much energy, or even more, an entire home to charge. In an ideal situation—where cars in a given neighborhood or city stagger out their overnight charging needs—the valleys would raise to meet average daytime uses. With more overall demand, and less diurnal variation, generating electricity gets be cheaper. And, because of the way utilities are regulated, that cost gets reflected in your bill, regardless of what you drive."
https://www.wired.com/story/electric-cars-impact-electric-grid/


You also seem to be retreading the same fallacies once again, so to repeat myself.

Given that it's one of the top 5 universities in the UK and a leading one globally for automotive research, I'm going to stick with them over a shouty person on the internet with no citations (which my reports had to be). Just a quick heads-up, I'm also not just looking at this from an outside perspective, it's quite literally part of my job, as I've discussed (and fully sourced) before.

https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/thre...e-into-the-world-of-electric-vehicles.377410/

The above contains all the details you need to know that yes they can more than handle the load, in fact, it would actually result in cheaper electrical generation!



More efficient? Nope (see the end of my post). Better in terms of performance (from a motorsport perspective)? Nope, which is why I already stated that they will be OK for commercial vehicles (mainly heavy), but makes for the world's most boring race series.

To get even close to the efficiency of electric you need to use the stored hydrogen in conjunction with electric motors, in which case you have everything you have already said you dislike about electric, but less efficient.

If you convert an ICE engine to run on hydrogen, to get only water vapour as emissions (and it's still not technically only water vapour - hydrogen is considered a near-zero emissions fuel - not zero emissions) you need to run it so lean that performance will suffer to the degree that you will lose performance and it's now utterly unsuitable for motorsport (but crucially will be ideal for heavy commercials). Run it as rich as you would with petrol and while you are now close (but still behind either petrol or electric) to a reasonable performance, but you are now also going to start causing nitrogen reactions (well unless you want to also carry tanks of pure oxygen with you as well) and releasing NOx as well as water vapour, still cleaner than petrol, but not as clean as electric, and still not as efficient or as good in terms of electric.

Hydrogen fuel cells lose out on all fronts to electric and only come close to being useful in terms of heavy commercials, certainly, they are the worst option in terms of motorsport, well unless you want to remove performance from motorsport.

They also undo your argument around infrastructure, taking the UK as an example, there currently exist 13 hydrogen fuel stations, one of which will close next year. Electric charging points? Well excluding the fact that most people can charge them at home, that would be over 20,000! Lets also not forget that no infrastructure currently exists to produce and distribute hydrogen fuel on a commercial scale.


So does a number of components in every electric item you own (including whatever you are posting to GTP with), are you going to refuse to use them?



Except your argument is based on a myth, the majority of countries are banning the sale of new ICE vehicles from circa 2030, not the ownership or operation of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase...ictions_with_planned_fossil-fuel_vehicle_bans



That's what happens when you try a gish-gallop! However, I have now covered that above, it will cost me and I would have a whole 12 or 13 locations in the entire UK to re-fill it! That's still better per square mile than the US, that has 43!

"A 2017 analysis published in Green Car Reports found that the best hydrogen fuel cell vehicles consume "more than three times more electricity per mile than an electric vehicle ... generate more greenhouse-gas emissions than other powertrain technologies ... [and have] very high fuel costs. ... Considering all the obstacles and requirements for new infrastructure (estimated to cost as much as $400 billion), fuel-cell vehicles seem likely to be a niche technology at best, with little impact on U.S. oil consumption.[112] In 2017, Michael Barnard, writing in Forbes, listed the continuing disadvantages of hydrogen fuel cell cars and concluded that "by about 2008, it was very clear that hydrogen was and would be inferior to battery technology as a storage of energy for vehicles. y 2025 the last hold outs should likely be retiring their fuel cell dreams.”[154] A 2020 assessment concluded that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are still only 38% efficient, while battery EVs are 80% efficient.[155]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell_vehicle


What, are you the guy I got into this discussion about this topic with before and who I stopped talking to after he tried to pull rank with “I wrote a thesis paper on it, so I’m smarter than you. nyeh”?
No that was me, and trying to play the moral high ground is rather ironic given you said this...

"If you passed with those reports then your school sucks"

So let's roll our sleeves up and take a look at your citations:

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/electric-cars-co2-emissions-global-warming/ “An electric car powered by the current electrical grid will be responsible for the same levels of CO₂ as outputted by a gasoline car rated at 50mpg”
Well, this one is easy to start with, as I'm aware of both of the reports that its quote-mining from, with the end result being that it misrepresents the actual studies. I've linked one of them down below. It's also blatantly misleading as the number of non EV/Hybrids getting real-world 50mpg is? Go on have a guess. It's worded to try and make EV's look bad, but the plain truth is it's a mealy-mouthed attempt to disguise the fact that EV's get better MPG equivalents than any ICE vehicle while producing less whole life CO2 (which oddly they don't mention, despite it being a clear finding of one of the reports they cite).

https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-JL-0518-v2.pdf “if every car on the road were replaced with an electric car... the effect on greenhouse gasses would be negligible”
The author works for the petro-chemical industry, not exactly an unbiased source, nor is it an accurate claim.

https://www.realclearinvestigations...er_cities_arent_playing_in_podunk_124456.html “solar and wind farms are the least efficient use of land for energy generation”
That quote quite literally does not exist in your linked article! However I am more than aware of the (flawed) argument, that claims that conventional power stations have a smaller physical footprint, which requires ignoring the footprint of the source of the coal, gas, etc required and the fact that source is also single-use, while the solar or wind footprint is continually used.

https://www.heritage.org/energy-eco...-benefits-the-green-new-deals-energy-policies “The American green new deal... would be economic suicide”
Tax is bad (cos I'm a laisse-Faire capitalist) is not a rebutal

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-25/cobalt-child-labour-smartphone-batteries-congo/10031330 “Cobalt used to power large percentage of electric cars mined by abused children”
Its also used in ICE cars, your phone and your computer.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/0...n-the-grid-take-depends-on-your-neighborhood/ “to support mass adoption of electric cars... would require massive overhauls of electrical grid to even support level 1 overnight charging”
You missed this bit "Muratori's paper only considered uncoordinated charging, but the researcher notes that one way to ameliorate this problem is with smart charging. Smart charging would use an energy management system that can time when an EV charges and modulate charging power accordingly.", guess what almost every EV sold today has? That's right smart charging, the article quite literally doesn't cover the manner in which almost every EV on the planet is charged.

Electric has its own problems as well.
No one has said it doesn't, but even when its burning coal to produce electricity, EV's still have a lower whole life CO2 impact than ICE vehicles.

It doesn’t come from magic. Something has to make it, and tidal and wind generators create problems as well.
They do, but significantly less problems than fossil fuels use for generation.

The batteries are toxic and of limited life, and lithium is relatively rare. So let’s hope something perfect appears.
Petroleum and Diesel are also both toxic, so that's really a rather moot point, also its simply not true to say that the batteries (in terms of vehicle use) are of limited life, as they can be used (and are) for battery farms once they have reached the end of life in vehicles.

Now just because they ae not perfect doesn't mean that they are not better alternatives to what we are currently using.
 
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The idea that electrical companies won't fall over themselves to take over the transportation infrastructure from gas stations and the like with the functionally infinite amount of money that would bring them is amusing though.
 
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The idea that electrical companies won't fall over themselves to take over the transportation infrastructure from gas stations and the like with the functionally infinite amount of money that would bring them is amusing though.

👍 Swop out the Mobil signage for AEP Energy, replace the pumps with fast chargers and fill the underground storage tanks with nice clean electricity and it's job done. You wouldn't even need to get rid of the low-quality coffee and top-shelf porn mags.
 
👍 Swop out the Mobil signage for AEP Energy, replace the pumps with fast chargers and fill the underground storage tanks with nice clean electricity and it's job done. You wouldn't even need to get rid of the low-quality coffee and top-shelf porn mags.
Add in the ability to literally turn every streetlamp into a revenue-generating EV charging point and they are fighting each other to do this.

https://www.fleeteurope.com/en/new-energies/europe/analysis/1300-street-lights-converted-ev-chargers-london?a=JMA06&t[0]=Siemens&t[1]=Ubitricity&t[2]=electric vehicle&t[3]=charging infrastructure&t[4]=London&curl=1
https://www.lucyzodion.com/solutions/electric-vehicles/

1,300 already in London alone.
 
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The market is heading towards EVs because politicians are railroading people into buying them.

There are far more ICE vehicles on the market than EVs and ICE vehicles outsell EVs by some huge number, so I'm not sure politicians are railroading people. I think people are just becoming more aware of what will happen when we have another spike in fuel prices again. They're also seeing that EVs can actually function as a normal vehicle and be able to give them the range they need to do daily tasks. Tesla also helped make EVs "cool" for many people. Prior to that, you had dorky-looking vehicles that only appealed to a certain niche population. Tesla changed that and made the EV look like a normal vehicle you might actually want to buy. Now other manufacturers are jumping onboard with that as well.

The best replacement for fossil fuels are things like hydrogen ICE, alcohol/vegetable oil, and if we want to go full Fallout; nuclear fusion/fission. These options are completely renewable, require minimal changes to the power grid, and most ICE vehicles can be converted to run on the former 3. The only reason we aren’t pursuing those technologies more is because legislators know precisely ****-all about alternative energies and instead get their knowledge on it from the same sources as John Q Public: internet blogs and out-of-context studies.

There was a big push for ethanol around 2008-2010, if you recall. But then suddenly out of nowhere, EVs start getting massive subsidies and E85 and other renewable fuels disappeared outside of a few places. Meanwhile we have places like Brazil where the majority of their cars run on ethanol meaning they’re one of the few countries not beholden to Big Oil.
My guess is because ethanol is largely locally and domestically produced, which severely threatens the balance of power that has so many countries reliant on foreign sources of energy. So some hands were shook behind closed curtains, and local energy production support had the rug snatched out from under it to maintain status quo. EVs are no different from dinoburners in this regard; you’re still utterly reliant on foreign sources for raw material. I fully admit I haven’t researched the paper trail on it, so this stuff is pure speculation on my part.

Hydrogen requires a ton of energy to make. While it's abundant, it's not exactly easy to convert into fuel. However, the biggest issue with hydrogen by far is the lack of infrastructure to support it. You keep harping about the grid not being up to snuff, but for some reason, you're completely overlooking the fact that hydrogen fueling stations just don't exist. Yes, there are a handful in California, New York, and a few other places, but for it to be widely adopted, you'd need millions of these stations. While it could certainly happen, it would take time to develop that infrastructure and most of it wouldn't even be remotely profitable for decades.

Alcohol and other plant-based fuels are an option, however, that too requires a significant change to the infrastructure. Farming isn't exactly eco-friendly either and to grow enough crops to meet the energy demand would be staggering. For example, to create 1 gallon of ethanol, it requires 26 pounds of corn. The average ear of corn weighs about half a pound, so that's about 50 ears per gallon or about 750 ears to fill up on a 15-gallon tank on a car. You get roughly 3,200 ears of corn per acre, meaning that one acre would roughly fill four cars. There are 640 acres in a square mile netting about 2 million ears per square mile. meaning you'd be able to fill up about 2,600 cars. Altogether, the US has around 530,400 mi² of farmland, which if it just grew corn would net about one trillion ears, which would net about 22 billion gallons of ethanol. In 2019, the US used around 142 billion gallons of fuel, so we'd be a tad short.

To grow enough corn to meet the demand of the US, you'd need roughly seven trillion ears of corn coming from about 3.5 million mi² of farmland, or to put it another way, almost the entire area of the 3.7 million mi² of the US. If you take away all the infertile land in the US, we'd wouldn't have enough space to produce enough corn to meet the demand. This also isn't including how much water we'd need to actually grow the stuff either.

The thing with electricity is that we already have an infrastructure. Sure, it might not be up to par to meet the demand, but it's a helluva lot easier to upgrade an existing infrastructure than it is to build a completely new one from the ground up.
 
Hydrogen requires a ton of energy to make. While it's abundant, it's not exactly easy to convert into fuel. However, the biggest issue with hydrogen by far is the lack of infrastructure to support it. You keep harping about the grid not being up to snuff, but for some reason, you're completely overlooking the fact that hydrogen fueling stations just don't exist. Yes, there are a handful in California, New York, and a few other places, but for it to be widely adopted, you'd need millions of these stations. While it could certainly happen, it would take time to develop that infrastructure and most of it wouldn't even be remotely profitable for decades.
Hydrogen also has to run insanely lean to come close to zero emissions, and you will still get some NO2 in with the water as emissions (unless you also carry pure oxygen around with you as well), which will murder performance if it's an ICE conversion (a drop of 50%) and be less efficient than an EV if its an FCV with electric hubs.

Hydrogen is less efficient, not as clean, far more expensive and as you say has effectively no retail infrastructure.

Don't expect it to be listened to, however, as I have already covered all of this in another thread, along with the issue of hydrogen not having an infrastructure, currently, the US has 35 hydrogen filling stations in the entire US, the UK is slightly better served per square mile with 13, however that's soon to be 12 once Honda Manufacturing pulls out of the UK next year.
 
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@McLaren
“No u”

Petro-funded "thinktank" dislikes the idea of loss of petro cars. Just as amazing the second time round.



That's about grids and is out of date, we covered that. Firing out links like chaff isn't helping.







Bloomberg, and it concludes its opener by saying we'll "probably be eating a lot more vegetarian hamburgers". After the statement about how Democrats are going to force-retrofit kitchens the thrust of that article is clear. The remainder doesn't disappoint.

The sad thing is that amongst all the hyperbole there's a serious point - investment is required to improve the grid. That's obvious, we've covered it here, and so your link brings only one new thing; mainstream media. Corker.

As far as the grid cost goes, it's an argument that doesn't stand up to much comparison. We (and I mean ICE drivers here) rely on a network of facilities that run from the point of contact in deep oilwells to the dripping tip of the forecourt nozzle. That network wasn't free, it doesn't maintain, refresh and extend itself for free, and it makes a lot of money by charging those overheads to the end-purchaser. And that's just how electrical grids work, but because we know where the sun is it's without the multi-billion exploration costs. And they are multi-billion, there is a huge amount of money in oil.

It seems that you're more worried about a change that you personally don't like (or the Democrat bogeypersons) than actually looking more closely at meat of the arguments you're presenting.
“Bloomberg LP, one of the largest news media outlets, isn’t mainstream” we’re done here.
 
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“Bloomberg LP, one of the largest news media outlets, isn’t mainstream” we’re done here.

You said they were mainstream, what on earth is the point you're trying to make? I highlighted the word because you used it, normally once one gets into an argument with someone who believes in "MSM" one is up against a pretty narrow world-view. Which was exactly what your sources went on to show.
 
There are far more ICE vehicles on the market than EVs and ICE vehicles outsell EVs by some huge number, so I'm not sure politicians are railroading people. I think people are just becoming more aware of what will happen when we have another spike in fuel prices again. They're also seeing that EVs can actually function as a normal vehicle and be able to give them the range they need to do daily tasks. Tesla also helped make EVs "cool" for many people. Prior to that, you had dorky-looking vehicles that only appealed to a certain niche population. Tesla changed that and made the EV look like a normal vehicle you might actually want to buy. Now other manufacturers are jumping onboard with that as well.



Hydrogen requires a ton of energy to make. While it's abundant, it's not exactly easy to convert into fuel. However, the biggest issue with hydrogen by far is the lack of infrastructure to support it. You keep harping about the grid not being up to snuff, but for some reason, you're completely overlooking the fact that hydrogen fueling stations just don't exist. Yes, there are a handful in California, New York, and a few other places, but for it to be widely adopted, you'd need millions of these stations. While it could certainly happen, it would take time to develop that infrastructure and most of it wouldn't even be remotely profitable for decades.

Alcohol and other plant-based fuels are an option, however, that too requires a significant change to the infrastructure. Farming isn't exactly eco-friendly either and to grow enough crops to meet the energy demand would be staggering. For example, to create 1 gallon of ethanol, it requires 26 pounds of corn. The average ear of corn weighs about half a pound, so that's about 50 ears per gallon or about 750 ears to fill up on a 15-gallon tank on a car. You get roughly 3,200 ears of corn per acre, meaning that one acre would roughly fill four cars. There are 640 acres in a square mile netting about 2 million ears per square mile. meaning you'd be able to fill up about 2,600 cars. Altogether, the US has around 530,400 mi² of farmland, which if it just grew corn would net about one trillion ears, which would net about 22 billion gallons of ethanol. In 2019, the US used around 142 billion gallons of fuel, so we'd be a tad short.

To grow enough corn to meet the demand of the US, you'd need roughly seven trillion ears of corn coming from about 3.5 million mi² of farmland, or to put it another way, almost the entire area of the 3.7 million mi² of the US. If you take away all the infertile land in the US, we'd wouldn't have enough space to produce enough corn to meet the demand. This also isn't including how much water we'd need to actually grow the stuff either.

The thing with electricity is that we already have an infrastructure. Sure, it might not be up to par to meet the demand, but it's a helluva lot easier to upgrade an existing infrastructure than it is to build a completely new one from the ground up.
“Politicians aren’t railroading people into buying EVs”
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/thre...s-banned-in-the-uk-from-2040-now-2030.357818/

It’s significantly easier and cheaper to build infrastructure for a new technology hardly anyone is using than it is to gut, level, and rebuild from scratch infrastructure that is deeply integrated in society and is in use 24/7 by hundreds of millions of people. Compare: building the new bridge next to the old one and diverting traffic to the new one after completion, and tearing down an old bridge before building the new one in its footsteps.
“Hydrogen isn’t all that efficient” you mean to tell me a technology that has only just started to be toyed with isn’t as advanced as the tech that has a 150+ years head start on it? Nawww...

And the area required to create a wind farm capable of powering the US would take up about 1,000 square miles, and that’s with each turbine operating at peak capacity 24/7, 365. A solar farm is even worse; to be capable of powering the USA it would require enough land to roughly equal the size of Arizona. And again that’s if said farm is the absolute cutting edge of solar tech operating at peak capacity 24/7, 365. Obviously, neither form of power operates at anywhere close to that level of efficiency for anywhere near that amount of time, so the space necessary is many times greater. And that’s not even addressing the costs involved. A 500-turbine windfarm costs billions. Multiply that up to national levels and you’re suddenly looking at 11 figure setup costs and 9 figure maintenance costs. Multiple times the federal budget of the US. It would, by many orders of magnitude, be the most expensive federal project in American history. Now imagine what it’d be like for countries that AREN’T swimming in cash like the US is. You can maybe make the argument of stretching the costs out over time, but places like the UK and EU are set on banning sales on fossil fuel vehicles in less than 20 years. Setting aside trillions of dollars/pounds/euro over a few years to pour it into a SINGLE project doesn’t make much economic sense now does it.
And unlike maize or other crops capable of producing biofuel, solar and wind farms don’t actually contribute to the environment. No soil fertilisation, no pulling of CO₂ from the air. Instead, they require pollution and heavy industry and environment destruction to produce. There’s hot debate on whether they even generate enough energy during their lifespan to actually offset the pollution used to produce them in the first place. If a solar panel requires more pollution to produce than it offsets in its lifespan, that’s a net NEGATIVE.

You said they were mainstream, what on earth is the point you're trying to make? I highlighted the word because you used it, normally once one gets into an argument with someone who believes in "MSM" one is up against a pretty narrow world-view. Which was exactly what your sources went on to show.
I brought up them being mainstream because you offhandedly dismissed my earlier sources for being ‘right wing alt media propaganda’. So I went out of my way to use a more ‘traditional’ source. And now you’re saying “you used the phrase ‘mainstream media’, u r dum” what sort of idiotic gaslighting attempt is that? You dismissed my earlier sources because they weren’t ‘mainstream’ enough and then accuse me or being a conspiracy theorist for doing what you wanted me to?

@McLaren
“You decided to stop engaging because someone making dumb claims and cyclical arguments, guess that means they win!”
 
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I brought up them being mainstream because you offhandedly dismissed my earlier sources for being ‘right wing alt media propaganda’.

I didn't say that at all, that's a lie.

Regardless of any confusion about whether or not I was commenting on Bloomberg's perceived "mainstream" status or simply your use of the word a propos of nothing... I still made a point about the article rather than just dismissing it on the basis of that argument you made up. It's unfortunate that you're using this smokescreen to avoid the fact that I (and many other posters) have pointed out that your sources' claims about grids, demands and costs are simply incorrect.
 
The grid is 'up to snuff' because people are not all going to buy EVs tomorrow, its a gradual uptick, while utility companies are more than aware of, and due to the charging pattern of EV's will have a much lower impact than the doom-mongers claim.

“On a daily time scale, demand typically starts off low, and builds through the early morning as people start getting ready for work and take care of things around the house,” says Jarod Kelly, a vehicle systems analyst engineer at Argonne National Laboratory’s Center for Transportation Research. Demand peaks around 6 pm, when workers get home, make dinner, watch Netflix...

… Then chill, as electrical demand drops into an overnight valley. These nighttime hours—when EVs are conveniently parked in garages and curbs—are the cheapest time to charge. This fact isn’t lost on EV manufacturers. “Most EVs have systems that allow you to say, ‘OK, I am leaving at 8 am,’ so the computer can calculate the rate at which it needs to charge so it is fully charged by the time you need to leave,” says Kelly. In this way, individual EVs spread their demand for juice over the course of the night.

This charging pattern would be ideal for utilities. In order to satisfy the day and night peaks and valleys of electricity demand, utilities typically have to spin up, and shut down power plants. All that cycling is expensive. Remember, EVs can use as much energy, or even more, an entire home to charge. In an ideal situation—where cars in a given neighborhood or city stagger out their overnight charging needs—the valleys would raise to meet average daytime uses. With more overall demand, and less diurnal variation, generating electricity gets be cheaper. And, because of the way utilities are regulated, that cost gets reflected in your bill, regardless of what you drive."
https://www.wired.com/story/electric-cars-impact-electric-grid/


You also seem to be retreading the same fallacies once again, so to repeat myself.





No that was me, and trying to play the moral high ground is rather ironic given you said this...

"If you passed with those reports then your school sucks"

So let's roll our sleeves up and take a look at your citations:

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/electric-cars-co2-emissions-global-warming/ “An electric car powered by the current electrical grid will be responsible for the same levels of CO₂ as outputted by a gasoline car rated at 50mpg”
Well, this one is easy to start with, as I'm aware of both of the reports that its quote-mining from, with the end result being that it misrepresents the actual studies. I've linked one of them down below. It's also blatantly misleading as the number of non EV/Hybrids getting real-world 50mpg is? Go on have a guess. It's worded to try and make EV's look bad, but the plain truth is it's a mealy-mouthed attempt to disguise the fact that EV's get better MPG equivalents than any ICE vehicle while producing less whole life CO2 (which oddly they don't mention, despite it being a clear finding of one of the reports they cite).

https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-JL-0518-v2.pdf “if every car on the road were replaced with an electric car... the effect on greenhouse gasses would be negligible”
The author works for the petro-chemical industry, not exactly an unbiased source, nor is it an accurate claim.

https://www.realclearinvestigations...er_cities_arent_playing_in_podunk_124456.html “solar and wind farms are the least efficient use of land for energy generation”
That quote quite literally does not exist in your linked article! However I am more than aware of the (flawed) argument, that claims that conventional power stations have a smaller physical footprint, which requires ignoring the footprint of the source of the coal, gas, etc required and the fact that source is also single-use, while the solar or wind footprint is continually used.

https://www.heritage.org/energy-eco...-benefits-the-green-new-deals-energy-policies “The American green new deal... would be economic suicide”
Tax is bad (cos I'm a laisse-Faire capitalist) is not a rebutal

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-25/cobalt-child-labour-smartphone-batteries-congo/10031330 “Cobalt used to power large percentage of electric cars mined by abused children”
Its also used in ICE cars, your phone and your computer.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/0...n-the-grid-take-depends-on-your-neighborhood/ “to support mass adoption of electric cars... would require massive overhauls of electrical grid to even support level 1 overnight charging”
You missed this bit "Muratori's paper only considered uncoordinated charging, but the researcher notes that one way to ameliorate this problem is with smart charging. Smart charging would use an energy management system that can time when an EV charges and modulate charging power accordingly.", guess what almost every EV sold today has? That's right smart charging, the article quite literally doesn't cover the manner in which almost every EV on the planet is charged.
“Meaningless word salad; I don’t like your sources so I’ll just ignore them” ain’t it curious how nobody bats an eye when an alt energy conglomerate sponsors a study that’s pro-alt energy; yet it’s causus belli for disregarding a study when a pro-dinojuice conglomerate sponsors a study that’s pro-dinojuice?

the first quote isn’t about economy returns, it’s about emissions they’re responsible for. An EV gets 100% of its energy from electrical mains power, which is only as clean as the power station it gets its energy from. If you live in the US, there’s a good chance your Tesla runs on coal. Nice deflection attempt, though.

“but guize, just listen to me and be compassionate” is not a rebuttal either. The reality is the world runs on money. It’s not as simple as ‘print a million dollars for everyone and then everyone is a millionaire’, that’s not how economics work. You can’t just dismiss economic reality by sneering and saying “filthy capitalist pig”.

To a significantly smaller degree. “You use 20 pounds of cobalt? You have no right to complain. Might as well mine a hundred tons more!”

ah yes, the classic “it’s got smart/lowercase I in the name, it must be good” argument. What smart charging is is it reduces how much charge is being put into a battery depending on the load at the time. It doesn’t reduce the amount of energy being used overall, just redistributes the power output to avoid peak times. Easy to do when 3% of cars on the road are EVs, so their impact is minimal. What about when it’s 30%? 50%? 100% of all cars are EVs? I know your response: “upgraded infrastructure!” The abstract gibberish that literally no one has actually concretely spelt out how it’s gonna happen. There’s a big difference between wishy washy “let’s do something” and actually having a plan, so you know.


I didn't say that at all, that's a lie.

Regardless of any confusion about whether or not I was commenting on Bloomberg's perceived "mainstream" status or simply your use of the word a propos of nothing... I still made a point about the article rather than just dismissing it on the basis of that argument you made up. It's unfortunate that you're using this smokescreen to avoid the fact that I (and many other posters) have pointed out that your sources' claims about grids, demands and costs are simply incorrect.
You: “I didn’t criticise you for ‘alternative media sources”
Also you:
Okay, not sure I really want to hear what RealClearPolitics has to say about land ownership, their views are pretty clear. It was suprising how little meat this article gave - issues over planning, developer payments, landscape protection... all things which need improvement if they are lacking but which aren't specifically applicable to renewable energy farms. So improve the problems. After all the same problems occur for people near coal-fired stations, right?

Some of that article is also based on the "turbines give you cancer" camp's views, not a good look.



I know we're not allowed to mention academic work but Heritage.Org is one of the examples I teach to demonstrate "Authorised Heritage Discourse". Heritage is an extremely right-leaning Conservative organ and, of particular note, one founded and heavily funded by petro-chem. Definitely has a dog in the fight. Puts lots of dogs in fights, has a traditionalist petro-chem agenda.

you and nobody else has proven me incorrect. I’ve been bombarded with a lot of smug self-satisfaction and sourceless quotes that “debunk” my cited articles. Going ‘hurr durr u r an dum’ is not an argument.

“Maybe if I keep quoting my opponent and projecting on him, it’ll make me look smart” How about you do me a favour and name a single cyclical argument I’ve made. I’ll wait
 
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“Meaningless word salad; I don’t like your sources so I’ll just ignore them” ain’t it curious how nobody bats an eye when an alt energy conglomerate sponsors a study that’s pro-alt energy; yet it’s causus belli for disregarding a study when a pro-dinojuice conglomerate sponsors a study that’s pro-dinojuice?

the first quote isn’t about economy returns, it’s about emissions they’re responsible for. An EV gets 100% of its energy from electrical mains power, which is only as clean as the power station it gets its energy from. If you live in the US, there’s a good chance your Tesla runs on coal. Nice deflection attempt, though.

“but guize, just listen to me and be compassionate” is not a rebuttal either. The reality is the world runs on money. It’s not as simple as ‘print a million dollars for everyone and then everyone is a millionaire’, that’s not how economics work. You can’t just dismiss economic reality by sneering and saying “filthy capitalist pig”.

To a significantly smaller degree. “You use 20 pounds of cobalt? You have no right to complain. Might as well mine a hundred tons more!”

ah yes, the classic “it’s got smart/lowercase I in the name, it must be good” argument. What smart charging is is it reduces how much charge is being put into a battery depending on the load at the time. It doesn’t reduce the amount of energy being used overall, just redistributes the power output to avoid peak times. Easy to do when 3% of cars on the road are EVs, so their impact is minimal. What about when it’s 30%? 50%? 100% of all cars are EVs? I know your response: “upgraded infrastructure!” The abstract gibberish that literally no one has actually concretely spelt out how it’s gonna happen. There’s a big difference between wishy washy “let’s do something” and actually having a plan, so you know.
Except I didn’t ignore them, I read all of them and provided a detailed and accurate rebuttal on them.

The very first one as an example blatantly ignored the vast bulk of both the reports it used, and did so to support a biased and predetermined outcome. The parts it did use it then reported on in a misleading and inaccurate manner (you didn’t answer the question I raised about which ICE cars get real-world 50mpg).

So to claim I ignored them is simply a lie, add in the repeated quote mining and misquoting people.

This is clearly a subject that you don’t know as much about as you believe you do (that you thought ICE hydrogen conversion would give zero emissions Motorsport made that much clear) and have limited your ‘research’ to an echo chamber.

Another example of this is in your issue with rare earth metals in EVs batteries, yet seem to forget that in a true HPV batteries are still required. So HPVs don’t actually solve that issue at all.
 
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You: “I didn’t criticise you for ‘alternative media sources”

That "alternative" nature is an inference that you're bringing. I pointed out to you why those sources don't offer a very good balance, particularly those that use a political thrust to light an engineering argument, and those whose content is paid for by oil companies themselves. What an obvious cant.

Furthermore, the sources weren't dismissed, they were read and their arguments rebuffed. Their main thrusts are that the grid can not be brought up to spec when it can, that emission improvements exist with EVs but are probably not worth it, and that the democrats will force "you" to eat more vegetarian hamburgers.

Many people here are pointing out a simple economic truth which you seem determined to ignore: where there are customers there will be sellers. Just as today's petro-chemical grid pops up right where you need it (at a nice profit for the provider) so will electrical points. It's already happening in places around the world, and development is ramping up. With scaled development comes the economy of scale, as demand rises so does supply, and those energy companies keep making a profit. And so the world continues to develop, just as it should.
 
That "alternative" nature is an inference that you're bringing. I pointed out to you why those sources don't offer a very good balance, particularly those that use a political thrust to light an engineering argument, and those whose content is paid for by oil companies themselves. What an obvious cant.

Furthermore, the sources weren't dismissed, they were read and their arguments rebuffed. Their main thrusts are that the grid can not be brought up to spec when it can, that emission improvements exist with EVs but are probably not worth it, and that the democrats will force "you" to eat more vegetarian hamburgers.

Many people here are pointing out a simple economic truth which you seem determined to ignore: where there are customers there will be sellers. Just as today's petro-chemical grid pops up right where you need it (at a nice profit for the provider) so will electrical points. It's already happening in places around the world, and development is ramping up. With scaled development comes the economy of scale, as demand rises so does supply, and those energy companies keep making a profit. And so the world continues to develop, just as it should.
It’s happening regardless of if the US wants to be on board or not.

As despite one Franks sources inaccurately claiming China wasn’t doing anything, it’s actually already the world leader in the production and sale of EVs. And given that it’s move to green power generation is at a world leading pace, it’s also clean EVs.

The US had the opportunity to be a world leader in all of these fields, yet the exact same anti-green agenda has actually lost the US the ability to lead in this field and the associated business and financial opportunities that come with it.
 
Incidentally
And unlike maize or other crops capable of producing biofuel, solar and wind farms don’t actually contribute to the environment. No soil fertilisation, no pulling of CO₂ from the air.
I'm certainly curious (even ignoring the... uh... dubious assertion that humongous countrywide mass scale farming for the purposes of energy production is actually good for the environment (honest), and also completely sidestepping the refinement costs of biofuels from their base form into actual usable energy sources): How much CO2 is pulled from the air burning E85 in a gas engine?
 
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“Maybe if I keep quoting my opponent and projecting on him, it’ll make me look smart” How about you do me a favour and name a single cyclical argument I’ve made. I’ll wait
This entire thread is evidence of your dumb claims & poor arguments.

Now post up another over-used, sarcastic, mocking remark in quotations to make up for your lacking ability to actually debate anyone.
 
Incidentally

I'm certainly curious (even ignoring the... uh... dubious assertion that humongous countrywide mass scale farming for the purposes of energy production is actually good for the environment (honest), and also completely sidestepping the refinement costs of biofuels from their base form into actual usable energy sources): How much CO2 is pulled from the air burning E85 in a gas engine?
It also ignores the fact that biofuel actually produces more NOx emissions than regular fuel.

So while it can be carbon neutral, it’s certainly not a zero emissions fuel, a long way from it.

NOx is also really unpleasant stuff, so no, biofuels are not an answer at all.

https://phys.org/news/2015-09-nox-gases-diesel-car-fumes.html

ICE conversation hydrogen vehicle are also not ZEV, and run so lean as to be gutless for everyday driving.

Pure HPVs are appallingly inefficient, as you need to use huge amounts of electricity to obtain the hydrogen, use a none existent network to distribute and store it, put it in a car, only for the car to then turn it back into electricity and store it in batteries to power the car. It makes far more sense and is massively more efficient to improve the existing network (much of which globally is already fine) and stick that electricity straight into the dam cars.

The science comes down easy on this, if we want to stop climate change in terms of vehicle emissions, passenger cars, bikes and LCVs go pure electric, with HGV going electric with the possibility of HPV in the future (but quick swap batteries may made that redundant).
 
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There's also the fact farming doesn't have consistent results and farm land is very finite and diminishing with urban sprawl (in the U.S. at least). Any issue with relying on electric power for vehicles would only be magnified by relying on biofuels.
 
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and farm land is very finite and diminishing with urban sprawl (in the U.S. at least)

Saw this map the other day. Only posting for interest, rather than taking a stance...

How America uses it's land, from Bloomberg.


2018-us-land-use_twitter.png
 
It's actually kind of odd that suddenly biofuels are being parroted around as 100% definitely the solution to everyone's problems. We knew they were a joke in mass production form over a decade ago, when everyone realized that if you lived outside of Iowa even the huge government subsidies at the pump weren't even enough to offset the horrendous hit to fuel economy you got; so all they functionally do is damage fuel systems in older cars. Not everyone owns a 90s diesel Jetta that they can alternate filling up with used french fry oil and weed.



I know it's just knee-jerk "Buying a new electric car is actually worse then driving a car from the 1970s forever" logic, but still.
 
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It’s significantly easier and cheaper to build infrastructure for a new technology hardly anyone is using than it is to gut, level, and rebuild from scratch infrastructure that is deeply integrated in society and is in use 24/7 by hundreds of millions of people. Compare: building the new bridge next to the old one and diverting traffic to the new one after completion, and tearing down an old bridge before building the new one in its footsteps.

It might be cheaper, but it's not profitable. You need the hydrogen stations in order to have hydrogen cars, but you need hydrogen cars in order to make hydrogen stations profitable. You'd need a simultaneous adoption on a massive scale to make it make sense for any company to invest the money. It doesn't make sense economically.

“Hydrogen isn’t all that efficient” you mean to tell me a technology that has only just started to be toyed with isn’t as advanced as the tech that has a 150+ years head start on it? Nawww...

Hydrogen as a fuel has been around for a long, long time and hydrogen fuel cells were first developed in the 1950s during the Cold War. It's not like someone just came up with it in the last ten years. The first fuel cell vehicle was made by GM back in the late 60s called the Electrovan. The hydrogen supply chain was also first developed back in 1970.

Yes, tech can and will advance, but it's not like in its current form it solves any issues. Right now nearly 95% of all hydrogen is made by using methane, you know a non-renewable natural gas.

And the area required to create a wind farm capable of powering the US would take up about 1,000 square miles, and that’s with each turbine operating at peak capacity 24/7, 365. A solar farm is even worse; to be capable of powering the USA it would require enough land to roughly equal the size of Arizona. And again that’s if said farm is the absolute cutting edge of solar tech operating at peak capacity 24/7, 365. Obviously, neither form of power operates at anywhere close to that level of efficiency for anywhere near that amount of time, so the space necessary is many times greater. And that’s not even addressing the costs involved. A 500-turbine windfarm costs billions. Multiply that up to national levels and you’re suddenly looking at 11 figure setup costs and 9 figure maintenance costs. Multiple times the federal budget of the US. It would, by many orders of magnitude, be the most expensive federal project in American history. Now imagine what it’d be like for countries that AREN’T swimming in cash like the US is. You can maybe make the argument of stretching the costs out over time, but places like the UK and EU are set on banning sales on fossil fuel vehicles in less than 20 years. Setting aside trillions of dollars/pounds/euro over a few years to pour it into a SINGLE project doesn’t make much economic sense now does it.
And unlike maize or other crops capable of producing biofuel, solar and wind farms don’t actually contribute to the environment. No soil fertilisation, no pulling of CO₂ from the air. Instead, they require pollution and heavy industry and environment destruction to produce. There’s hot debate on whether they even generate enough energy during their lifespan to actually offset the pollution used to produce them in the first place. If a solar panel requires more pollution to produce than it offsets in its lifespan, that’s a net NEGATIVE.

I didn't say anything about wind power. I was talking about the land use required in order to grow enough crops in order to make vehicles run on a plant-based fuel source. If the US really wants to have abundant clean energy using current technology, it needs to be a combination of nuclear, wind, geothermal, and solar power. Nuclear should be used to power major metropolitan areas while other sources should be used to power small communities.

Crops also don't contribute to the environment. Between the pesticides and herbicides that are dumped on them, it's not like it's good for the eco-system. Also, they pull a ton of nutrients out of the soil and need to be supplemented with fertilizers that leech into the groundwater. They also take an incredible amount of water as well.

Crops also require heavy industry as well. You need to have heavy machinery to plow, till, sow, fertilize, reap, and process all of the crops, and that's before it even gets to the place to turn it into fuel.

Still, none of this addresses the fact that in order to supply the US with enough crops to produce enough fuel would require more land than exists in the US.
 
It might be cheaper, but it's not profitable. You need the hydrogen stations in order to have hydrogen cars, but you need hydrogen cars in order to make hydrogen stations profitable. You'd need a simultaneous adoption on a massive scale to make it make sense for any company to invest the money. It doesn't make sense economically.



Hydrogen as a fuel has been around for a long, long time and hydrogen fuel cells were first developed in the 1950s during the Cold War. It's not like someone just came up with it in the last ten years. The first fuel cell vehicle was made by GM back in the late 60s called the Electrovan. The hydrogen supply chain was also first developed back in 1970.

Yes, tech can and will advance, but it's not like in its current form it solves any issues. Right now nearly 95% of all hydrogen is made by using methane, you know a non-renewable natural gas.
Hydrogen is also more expensive per mile than petrol or diesel, and massively more expensive than a pure EV, despite in the UK being subsidised.

In the UK HPV is around 17ppm, petrol 16ppm and EV 4ppm!

A fact that is an immediate turn off for your average consumer, as the OEMs know full well.

https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/motors/how-much-does-a-hydrogen-car-cost-to-run-a3595841.html

https://www.buyacar.co.uk/cars/economical-cars/electric-cars/650/cost-of-running-an-electric-car
 
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