Comment by JulianMorrison | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JulianMorrison | Hacker News Reader

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From the comments on Charlie's site, and not by me:

Wyvernsridge | January 9, 2022 19:06 | Reply 8:

I love these kinds of posts! I would, however, caution about thinking that the end of ICE car manufacturing will be dictated solely by government diktat. It will most likely come earlier and more chaotically because of manufacturers being unable to source parts and components to continue making those cars.

The auto industry is basically a pyramid where OEMs [ie the car companies] depend on module/system [Tier1] suppliers as well as component suppliers [Tier 2] and Parts suppliers [Tier 3]. Those relationships are built on contracts that span out to five years and beyond. Today, contracts are being negotiated for 2025-2030. Those contracts, if happening at all, are being done for much lower quantities of units. After all, an EV does not need a cast-aluminium gearbox assembly. The manufacturers within those tiers are highly competitive among themselves and they know they need to find alternative to manufacture and remain viable well in advance of 2030. For OEMs this means trouble finding components, and paying much higher prices for those than they used to [ie the suppliers are costing in the risks]. This means that ICE car prices will skyrocket at the same time that EV prices go mainstream.

I don't think it's unlikely that ICEs will be phased out as quickly as the optimists are suggesting. Once there's critical momentum things move quickly, so +1 from me.

However, all that new electricity demand needs to come from somewhere. Drawing power from the grid at night works great today, but that's because of a coincidental uneven energy demand, which I doubt will last for too long. Once EVs are truly mainstream, it will (1) saturate the grid at all times of day and (2) make the grid more critical than it already is (meaning mitigations like rolling blackouts are gonna be even more infeasible). Sprinkle some demand surges from A/C and heaters from extreme weather events on top of this, and while we're add it let's decommision nuclear prematurely for political points (see e.g. Germany and Sweden).

Anyway, what I mean to say is that electricity supply will be a real problem (especially in the US due to car centrism) and short sighted politicians will need to provide immediate duct-tape fixes. Fossil fuels are sinfully well suited for fast energy injections, and I'm afraid that will often be the only option.

In other words, I worry little about the ICE-EV transition, but that doesn't mean anything for the fossil-renewables transition in general. I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow's electricity will be dirtier than today's.

In a worst case you could just burn gasoline in some turbine supplying the grid and it would probably still be more efficient and cleaner than ICEs.

That's true for gas fired plants so I expect it would be the case for light liquid fuelled ones. You wouldn't burn petrol in them, because that fuel is very specific to piston engines (turbines don't need toxic anti-knock additives, for example).

As far as grid stability though, in more advanced countries it's relatively easy to build out more grid capacity, just expensive. Only in politically troubled countries like Australia and the USA does the "but how do we create an effective market for building the grid" dominate that discussion, and result in a poorly functioning grid but also (obviously) a badly broken market in providing a grid. Back when I was exposed to economics electricity grids were a cliche example of things where markets are inappropriate and inherently unworkable - they're a natural monopoly. Even the most die-hard capitalist isn't going to suggest two or three independent grids supplying every building... well, maybe in Texas :)

I'm in Australia, and the big advantage we have over much of the USA is being closer to the equator... only about half our current houses have solar PV on them, and less than a third of commercial buildings. We could get 20% more electricity just by fixing that, and it would be conveniently close to demand as well.

In that case, you could just skip the grid and put the turbine in the car.[1]

Yes, the vehicle is heavier (=less efficient) when you carry the range extender around with you, but that's compensated for by not needing as heavy a battery. Eliminates dependence on the grid; replaces it with dependence on the current refuelling infrastructure. Which latter, at the moment and in most places, certainly is better than the currently available EV charging infrastructure. Crossover point where pure EVs become more efficient TBD by how fast fuel infra is reduced and how fast charging infra is improved... With an additional confounding factor introduced by GP's hypothesized grid instability.

___

[1]: Wow, what a genius I am, look what a great new idea! ... Or, well, maybe not so new after all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner%E2%80%93Porsche

Worth remembering that one reason electric cars are cheaper to run is that they're more efficient. More of the energy added to the car translates into moving you somewhere and less is converted into waste heat etc.

As a result 1MJ of petrol consumption replaced with electricity when somebody replaces their car with an EV is not 1MJ more electricity to deliver but perhaps 600kJ. This can mean guesses of the necessary infrastructure investment to deliver a fit-for-purpose supply network are significant over-estimates.

Cars are also an excellent target for "demand side control" in electrical grids. You'd be very angry if your refrigerator shuts down temporarily when the grid load is high, and pretty unhappy if your lights or TV shut down, but how about the tumble dryer? Most days you wouldn't care, and if you got paid for the option you might jump at the chance. However charging your car overnight who cares whether it charges from 1830 (when you arrive home) to 0340 (full) or from 2230 (as people go to bed and the network is less strained) to 0740 (just before you get in the car to drive to work) ?

ICE cars are still needed because battery tech is not good enough.

There are plenty of studies showing that an hybrid car is much better for the environment on the long term than the current state of lithium battery electric cars. Long range EV are a pest. Lithium mining is way worse for the environment than people believe, and there is the whole other issues related to mining in general.

We still need ice cars

Source? This sounds awfully lot like the ICE manufacturer backed FUD about EVs.

Cars are a bad option for long-range transportation anyway. I'm not convinced at all by this argument.

That is true, but it's also true for EVs.

Changing every car to EVs is missing the point. We need much better transport for both inter-city transportation, and for intra-continental goods transportation.

EVs are just going to change the location of the pollution.

EVs make the polluting energy sources fungible - you no longer have to modify the car to replace them with something better.

The metals in the batteries can be recycled into better batteries for increasingly efficient cars. I see it becoming like steel where the vast majority is recycled. Unlike plastic, it's just metals, so they can be remade endlessly

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