Comment by EngineerBetter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by EngineerBetter | Hacker News Reader

A typical article decrying EVs on the assumption that nothing will change.

If every house ends up with a solar array and an equivalent of a Tesla Powerwall (other brands are available) then there won't be massive demand on the grid.

You don't have to fast-charge a Leaf. You can charge it overnight.

I pay for a "100% renewable" electricity tariff. Of course not all of the energy I draw is from renewables, but it is all reinvested in renewables.

If people continue to adopt EVs, adopt renewable tariffs, and adopt self-generation and self-storage, everything will be fine.

No, an EV is not as green as a bike. But have you ever tried getting furniture from IKEA 60 miles across country on a bike, with a baby and toddler in tow?

Disclaimer: avid cyclist (6 miles a day to commute) and EV driver since 2013.

Also, countries like Norway manage to generate most of their electricity from renewables. Just because most countries don't doesn't mean it's impossible.

It is, in fact, extremely hard, even in theory and more so in practice, for most countries to replace most energy use with energy from renewable sources, unless we go with nuclear energy. See e.g. [1].

With world wide effort, electrical connections spanning the globe, tropical countries selling solar power to colder regions, huge and cheap energy storage facilities, we could maybe achieve that, though I'm really rather rooting for fusion, which should be economically available in only a few decades.

[1] - http://www.withouthotair.com/

That reference is pretty out of date now.

Some people have considered updating it with more recent figures:

https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/3/30/l6qcqgoedse1...

Yes, this is interesting and worthwhile, but doesn't really change the crux of his argument.

I'm not sure you're honouring his memory or his work by suggesting that the numbers that he based his conclusions on changing isn't important.

No, I'm suggesting that the updates to his estimates are small enough to not affect his overall conclusion.

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