You don't need an EV to cut your carbon emissions from oil

None of these things end car culture, but switching away from gasoline may help to de-fang it by reducing the macho attraction. If cars become just about getting from A to B, then alternatives may start to look more viable.

I’m strongly in favor of nationwide electric rail, but I also know that accomplishing that will be nearly impossible short of the federal government steamrolling it through, which itself is unlikely due to oil and auto lobbying.

So I see it as a sort of, “take what you can get” situation.

Theres batteries for that. And you can even use your EV as an a battery for your solar panels.

That's one of the things I'm concerned about - most people want to charge their EVs at night and drive them when there's solar power.

That hasn't stopped utilities from deploying wind and solar for 40% of their new generation over the last year or two, while shutting down coal plants left and right. For half a decade it's been considered settled fact that solar and wind are cheapest and the way forward. So, maybe this isn't as big a deal as you think it is.

Attention long ago shifted toward planning the grid to accommodate that, and also on grid-scale storage projects. Pumped hydro has been used extensively in the UK for decades because every time the BBC finished a program, everyone watching TV would fire up their electric kettle at the same time. There are several pumped hydro installations in Canada and the US as well.

Most EVs can schedule charging cycles and numerous utilities provide special rates for customers who agree to some level of utility control on their charging similar to how utilities provide discounts to people who let them tweak their AC thermostat; you can still override it, in most cases. In Australia, going back several decades, there was a grid load reduction signal system that worked by generating a harmonic that load reduction switches would look for.

An increasing number of EVs are set up to be able to backfeed power into the grid, and the idea is that they could do so on request from the utility.

Lots of utilities offer off-peak billing incentives. Imagine a world where your fridge does most of its cooling during the day, and "rides" through the night, etc.

EV charging stations are starting to come with their own local battery systems because DC fast charging, particularly at 800V, is enough power that it can be difficult to get enough electrical service and in some locations the station sits unused for a fair period of time.

Add in the fact that lithium ion battery prices continue to plunge following expected rules about production costs, as well as other technologies maturing; there's an iron salt based flow battery that looks really promising, made of very cheap and extremely prevalent materials (salt, iron, and water mostly) and scales fairly well.

And so is jetting off somewhere for holidays.. realistically we need to cut down so much to survive, but so far everyone is working on "it's future society's problem".

Only when the threat of death was within weeks did humans actually react with lockdowns, etc...

Cars can be popular and not be a necessity for the majority of the population, and that will still drastically cut emission, pollution and traffic congestion.

Europe where? Suburbs are mostly an American thing, and the closest equivalents in most European cities are dense-ish, and usually have some form of public transit connection. Many cases can be improved a lot, but it isn't even close to being comparable to the thoroughly unsustainable very low density American sprawl.

There's no silver bullets, but if the average person winds up driving X% fewer miles because they have the option to walk, that's a meaningful win.

Never considered that point but, as a rebuttal, consider that trip time vs speed is extremely non linear and stochastic (due to traffic, lights, etc).

In my experience you have drive much faster than x% to increase your average speed x% and it doesn't appear to be a linear scaling at all.

Of course, you shouldn't be doing 80 in urban roads

Secretly, I hope that range anxiety in EV sticks around a little longer so that people lower their average speeds on the freeway to max out their range.

That, coupled with a growing realization that most of the fun with driving is in the peppy acceleration and good handling which is pretty much table stakes for modern EVs across the price spectrum.

High sustained top speed in a straight line with an overpowered ICE car is boring and should be buried with the Lamborghinis and Ferraris (among other trends from the 80s).

In general your otto-cycle (diesel is different) engine is most efficient at full throttle near its peak torque. However, this is far more power than is needed at cruise.

So the lowest speed your highest gear can go?

Not quite. First, engines are so powerful that you’re probably well in a range dominated by aerodynamic forces. With modern 10 speed transmissions you are probably several speeds too high.

Like I said, it depends on the car, you’d have to test it on an empty flat country road. But I’d guess 50 kph or less.

I’m a pretty staunch Republican, but Jimmy Carter was a great president. And his 55 mph interstate speed limit is the most sensical fuel economy policy of any president.

Then again, Jimmy is an engineer :)

Why not?

Sustainable, effective storage solutions won't be realized with lithium or any other relatively inaccessible, relatively rare material. The combination of sodium-ion or graphene-based stationary storage plus graphene-based supercapacitors (maybe with some nuclear sprinkled in to smooth out the peaks and valleys) is going to be the sustainable way forward.

Sodium is 7th most abundant on Earth, 11th most abundant in the universe.

Carbon is 15th most abundant on Earth, 4th most abundant in the universe.

Lithium is 25th most abundant on Earth, 44th most abundant in the universe.