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Comment by Reason077 | Hacker News Reader

The transmission issues will be solved: more and more HVDC interconnections start construction in Europe every year. Grids that still rely heavily on coal and natural gas can, and will, be improved.

An EV bought today will only get cleaner as the grid gets cleaner. A new fossil-fuel vehicle today will always be dependent on fossil fuels, and will always pollute at least as much as the day it was purchased.

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How many neighbors on a block of houses can have simultaneous charging?

All of them? The typical car is moved less than 100km per day and is parked upwards of twenty hours a day. With a kilowatt or two you car charge the car.

There's 10 houses on my street, if every house had 2 cars and each drove 50 miles a day at 3 miles per kWh, and the cars are parked 10 hours overnight, that's 3kW per house

As we can all boil a kettle (3kW), or have a shower (10kW), or cook a sunday roast (5kW), and indeed do those at the same time, it's not a problem.

This response is correct. Be sure to forward it to the folks in the EU this winter when they're unable to charge their cars or heat their homes.

We should be thinking long term, but we can't forget about the present and the path to the glorious future. I think in hindsight we'll soon admit that we botched the transition to a greener world and caused needless suffering by putting ideologies before engineering.

You’ve got it backwards. The current energy problems in Europe are due to a reduction in the supply of imported natural gas, nothing to do with renewables.

By reducing Europe’s dependence on imported fossil fuels, renewables are part of the solution to energy security.

even if it ran on gasoline created from carbon dioxide extracted from the atmosphere?

We don't have perfectly impact-free ways of creating energy. So using less energy to achieve the same goal is always better. And carbon dioxide is not the only pollutant that cars emit.

we dont have any way of 'creating' energy

Technically correct but missing the point. Conventionally, burning things, PV, wind, etc. are all classified as "creating energy" even if it makes thermodynamics pedants unhappy.

That gasoline wouldn’t be an energy source, it’d be an extremely crappy battery.

Far better to just send the power via grid to an EV @95% then toss 60% or more of it to make a gallon of gas

it’s a more practical solution for right now though. we can’t expect the world to switch its entire infrastructure overnight, or even quickly. yes, the rich nations might get a head start, but they represent such a small fraction of emissions.

>yes, the rich nations might get a head start, but they represent such a small fraction of emissions.

Not really for automotive emissions. The US alone accounts for almost half the world's road CO2 emissions.

and automotive emissions account for ~10% of all CO2 emissions. 20% if you want to include all transport (e.g. sea shipping, planes, etc.)

there’s been a lot of media attention on how individuals need to make an effort to beat climate change, but the reality is that industry is the only sector able to make a meaningful impact.

This thread is discussing EVs vs gasoline so not sure why you're changing the topic suddenly.

apologies, i don’t understand. you seemed to suggest cars are a significant contributor to CO2 emission.

10% is huge though.

Exactly. If we could cut global emissions by even 10%, it would make a pretty meaningful dent in climate change. Unfortunately, as of now, global emissions are still rising!

Its not practical. The extra energy costs act like a high tax.

It might make sense, for a while with aircraft, or for a classic car that rarely gets used, but would be too expensive for developing nations to use when they have other options. They'd save lots of money by using the same energy directly in newly built (or converted) EVs.

I really hate this "overnight" argument, because it's used to avoid starting. Nobody claims that we can switch to EVs over night. We could however switch to only producing EVs in like two to five years and fifteen to twenty years later almost all cars could be EVs. That's plenty of time to fortify the electric grid for the extra demand and build adequate numbers of charging points for people without garages.

Exactly or simply biogas/biomethane as fuel.

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