Makes sense. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
Plug-in hybrid cars with a decent electric range (let's say 80 km) can achieve 99% emissions reduction compared to current cars. The vast majority of trips people make are short.
Plug-in hybrid cars with a decent electric range (let's say 80 km) can achieve 99% emissions reduction compared to current cars. The vast majority of trips people make are short.
You don't have to deal with the oil supply chain that has issues, from geopolitics, wars, environmental disasters, gas stations. Instead you just slowly upgrade the electrical grid and add more renewable energy production.
If I had to bet, refuelling a car will be a challenge once it will not be economical to have many gas stations everywhere. Fossil car will still exist like we still have horse carriages. I do enjoy the sound of an old internal combustion engine, in some contexts.
Not to mention that hybrid cars are bad electric cars that are more expensive and heavier. Once you have an electric power-train and a battery, it's not much more expensive to have more cells and get rid of the old heavy fossil tech.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/31105/listen-to-the-fake-engin...
right. but then again most of those issues apply to lithium and other stuff needed to manufacture batteries.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/275497/20220516/largest-e...
- eliminates a huge chunk of CO2 emissions (most daily commutes, local travel)
- still takes advantage of the energy density and short refuel time of hydrocarbons for long distance travel
- dramatic reduction in the amount of batteries that need to be produced to electrify the whole vehicle population (this might shift the curve of at least some EV-miles by decades)
- no need for a massive retooling of the filling station network
- series hybrids still eliminate a lot of the mechanical overhead of ICE vehicles, and all else equal (range), a series hybrid is probably a lot lighter than an EV with all batteries
electric doesn't solve any of these. I don't think I have to go into the lithium and rare earth stuff, but you also need charging stations for gas stations, as well as needing to invest substantially in the grid.
I am not anti electric, its just not a utopia its made out to be. its all the same problems of a different flavor. the only real benefit is less smog in cities, which is pretty good.
I don't see gas stations surviving when nobody realistically needs to fill up more than once a year. At that point, the logistics of building and relying on charging networks makes a lot more sense.
The local kwik trips have more cars parked at the parking than at the pumps.
So I'd like to see a new class of EVs with an onboard auxiliary generator. They should use something like a Wankel rotary engine, Tesla turbine, 1 or 2 piston linear generator, Stirling (optionally acoustic) heat engine, fuel cell, etc. They should have more flex fuel options from compressed natural gas (CNG) to alcohol, biodiesel, even wood pellets and ones made from hemp and algae.
All EVs should be able to charge while driving, to create a competitive market for generators, otherwise they'd receive a failing grade from reviewers.
All EVs should come with built-in solar panels capable of adding 7-44+ miles per day (see Aptera and Lightyear 1). Maybe grade A: 40+, B: 30+, C: 20+ and D: 10+.
All EVs should come with 1 or more base platforms where only the body style changes.
All EVs should go through independent review where they're graded on their modularity, to prevent vendor lock-in and unnecessary complexity, to encourage decommodification. Otherwise we'll find ourselves in the same situation we are in now next decade, where EVs break down before 100,000 km and require specialized equipment and training to repair.
I'd also like to see ultracapacitors for ~10 second boosts to at least 100 km/hr, to be used like the hyperdrive in Extreme E, taking most of the load off the batteries to extend their life. Buyers should also be able to choose from a limited mix of energy storage options including sodium-ion.
And please stop it with the tiny motors. Each wheel deserves at least 100 kW, and we should supplement windings with aluminum or carbon fiber, staying above 90% efficiency at max load, to reduce the amount of copper and/or rare earth metals in each motor.
With 1000 W of solar panels costing around $500 wholesale, none of the above add appreciable cost to the vehicle. Most resistance will be political or caused by manufacturers dragging their feet to prevent cannibalizing their current model sales.
I agree with you though, but what if we could sell fully electric vehicles with only ~100km range? I would buy it if I was really saving the cost and weight of a whole engine block. Useless for road trips, but most people don't need to be taking road trips every day.
One of the primary benefits of owning things, as opposed to being a rentoid, is over-allocation to seamlessly handle peak/long-tail demand scenarios. Yes, a lot of people could save money by only riding bikes or taking taxis or whatever, but the extreme inconvenience associated with getting caught in a demand surge makes ownership worth it a lot more than first-order average-oriented thinking would suggest.
Having to get a rental car every time you want to drive more than 100km sucks.
100km is not a useful range. Remember that for best battery life you really need to only charge to 80%, and and never let the battery get below 20%. Now cut that entire range in half for cold weather. You are now down to 30km range that you really can use. That is round trip range unless you really have chargers everywhere you might go.
The average US commute is 40 miles or 65km. Though given you are using km you probably have a shorter distance, but even still your 100km car is cutting range too close for comfort for most people. (and you probably have better access to transit, why not get rid of that 100km car completely)
I don't know how to compare manufacture emissions. I do know that metal shaping has been optimized a lot, while I would assume as new technology modern batteries still have a lot of room for improvement (the older batteries probably not), so I wouldn't trust a comparison if you had data.
The company I work for’s office is 13 miles away, 35 mins max. The in town office is 19 miles. You could grab a train about 12 miles away and add another 30 minutes to your commute but most people would drive 7 more miles and get there quicker.
Living in town is expensive, schools are terrible, and the homes/properties are small.
- 0 minutes (working from home)
- 30-60 minutes each way
- 1.5-2.5 hours each way (I only went into the office 2-3 days per week at this one)
This depends on the cell chemistry. LFP cells don't have this restriction (which is what many low performance EVs use, especially those coming out of China)
E-Bikes exist. But it isn't quite that simple, infrastructure and culture are harder to change than products.