With The Tesla Model S, Elon Musk Has Created A Nice Fossil Fuel Car | Hacker News Reader

With The Tesla Model S, Elon Musk Has Created A Nice Fossil Fuel Car

forbes.com

10 pointsdmor36 comments

The article misses a simple point -- if present trends continue and if we act wisely, there will be fewer fossil energy sources in the future, and more renewable sources. And in the long term this change will be forced on us -- we will be required to move to renewable energy sources. When that happens, gas-fueled cars will stop running, and electric cars will become the norm.

The author is right -- at the moment, in most places, the Tesla is a fossil-fueled car. In principle it could be powered by renewable energy sources like wind, solar, hydroelectric and (eventually) fusion power. But take note -- in the long term that principle will become a fact.

Also, because electric cars powered by centrally generated electric power create less pollution per watt than gas-powered cars, while we're waiting for renewable energy to take over, it's still more environmentally sound to drive an electric car.

http://content.sierraclub.org/evguide/myths-vs-reality

Quote: "According to a range of studies doing a ‘well to wheels’ analysis, an electric car leads to significantly less carbon dioxide pollution from electricity than the CO2 pollution from the oil of a conventional car with an internal combustion engine. In some areas, like many on the West Coast that rely largely on wind or hydro power, the emissions are significantly lower for EVs. And that's today. As we retire more coal plants and bring cleaner sources of power online, the emissions from electric vehicle charging drop even further. Additionally, in some areas, night-time charging will increase the opportunity to take advantage of wind power -- another way to reduce emissions."

In an interview on Dutch TV this week Elon Musk talked about "super charger" stations that were being built in the US and soon in Europe, and that the plan was to use solar panels at the station's sites to generate the electricity needed to charge the Tesla cars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMYmSuicTXE

You mean the trend where fossil fuel resources have increased dramatically every decade? That trend?

Recoverable oil reserves in the US increased 15% this year.

http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/blog/index.php/2013/08/f...

Let's use the best energy source (for transportation) that we have access to. I want to live fully today, rather than bang my head against time and try to live in the future before it is time.

Terrible article in that it does not supply actual facts about the U.S. energy grid:

Electricity generation by source 2012 [1]

Coal - 37%

Natural Gas - 30%

Nuclear - 19%

Renewables - 12%

So, it's only 37% correct to call the Tesla a "coal car."

[1] http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/tables/?tableNumber=22#

I looked at your source, and it includes hydropower as a renewable source of energy. I'm not going to argue that we'll run out of gravity to pull water through turbines, but the gigantic dams that come with hydropower are hardly something that the Sierra Club and their kind get excited about.

So if we present your numbers honestly without inflating the "green" sounding category, we find that 4.4% of power comes from wind, and 0.3% of energy comes from solar. If turnabout is fair play, it's only 4.7% correct to call the Tesla solar & wind powered (rounding up).

This has been argued a multitude of times already. Cars are massively less efficient than coal power plants at converting fossil fuel to energy. Massively.

More concerning to me about 100% electric cars is the dependence it places on the power grid. The 2003 NE Blackout(1) was caused by a software bug in a small office in Ohio. Two days without power. At this rate, it's really only a matter of time until our electric grid is compromised by someone with an agenda. I hope you have at least a few gallons of gasoline lying around and a gasoline-powered car to maintain locomotion.

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003

If the cars are charged at night, it's not a big deal.

TOU metering should provide some evidence of that.

"I hope you have at least a few gallons of gasoline lying around and a gasoline-powered car to maintain locomotion."

Although during the last blackout in NYC, when the power was out in some parts of the city for over a week after Hurricane Sandy, gasoline was also hard to come by since (1) gas stations rely on electricity to run their pumps and had no backup generators, (2) gas hoarding disrupted supplies (gas stations would run out of gas shortly after they received a shipment because everyone ran to top off their tank), and (3) supplies were limited due to damage to shipping terminals. So having a gasoline car is useful, but it won't get you through an extended natural disaster or an attack that disables the electrical grid for an extended period of time.

It's already been touched on elsewhere in this thread, but considering the market affluence of Tesla vehicles, it's equally valid to argue that a solar garage (see: http://www.instablogsimages.com/images/2009/09/18/ex20090910...) would provide that same emergency power source for transportation. In fact I would make the case that it's better, because it can be replenished without relying on infrastructure. It's not feasible to secure automobile-grade petrol from your backyard.

I suppose that's really the beauty of solar. It has the potential to decentralize energy production.

it's really only a matter of time until our electric grid is compromised by someone with an agenda

Already happened, they were called Enron.

Public utilities (and any other kind of government sanctioned/protected monopoly) are a terrible idea. Any other kind of monopoly has pressure to stay ahead, but government backed monopolies don't sort themselves out. The person who compromised the electric system are those who made utilities public.

Several years ago, I discussed Musk’s anti-fossil-fuel political activism with a close friend his. The man was an excellent engineer, and looked at Musk with pure technological enthusiasm. “I understand where you’re coming from,” I said. “But here’s the thing. If he has any success whatsoever with his political goals, he will do damage to billions of lives. Someone can perform a lot of great engineering feats and still be a negative force in the world.”

You can't quote yourself as an authority like that to close a piece you are writing. Not unless you are a bit mental anyway.

I would also be very interested to know what the private uptake of solar is among the people why own tesla cars. I would suspect a reasonable amount of them are already being charged off rooftop solar.

> I would also be very interested to know what the private uptake of solar is among the people why own tesla cars. I would suspect a reasonable amount of them are already being charged off rooftop solar.

The article also conveniently overlooks the fact that, even when powered by fossil-fueled power plants, electric cars create substantially less pollution than gas-powered cars.

The whole thing with an electric car is that you decouple the car from the fuel, which he acknowledges by calling it a coal fuelled car, he doesn't call it electric fuelled, for instance. So it is an n fuelled car. You could decide to fuel it entirely by setting fire to old socks in the burner of an old steam genset, if you had enough old socks.

This is article was simply terrible. It was written by a guy that calls himself an "energy philosopher." This philosopher does not work off facts, and has not seen the data. The well-to-wheel efficiency for a Tesla is approximately double the well-to-efficiency of a 55mpg Toyota Prius. The efficiency of providing gas to a station from the raw source is much higher than the efficiency of electricity generation and transmission. However, electric motors are so much more efficient that combustion engines, that electric vehicles win in overall efficiency at the end. Don't need to take my word for it, just look at the engineering: http://www.stanford.edu/group/greendorm/participate/cee124/T...

Why does efficiency matter more than price? You seem to hold efficiency as a value beyond what's actually conserved.

When things run on electricity, the power grid becomes ready to be de-centralized, the power can come from anywhere. Right now, it comes from coal and fossil fuels, but things running on electricity make it easier for that to no longer be the case.

Imagine an entirely de-centralized power grid: then, if you could install electricity-generating mechanisms into your home, you could run your Tesla (or other electric car) and home without paying for it. THEN, the incentive to make and sell things that can generate, store, and transfer electricity becomes huge - anything that can do that is like buying people electricity.

You miss a major point. I live in rural Maine and there are plenty of folks trying to live "off grid" and generate their own electricity. Here we sit, 2013, those with solar panels on their house have to make sure not to run the dishwasher more than once a solar cycle in winter. Good luck charging your car on that. I'm sure there are ways to generate more power, but you wind up needing LOTS of panels and that increases the chance of failure and need to replace.

I know the technology will get better, but like AI, they've been promising improvements in solar panels for decades now and they never seem to appear.

Maine isn't representative of the amount of potential solar energy available in other parts of the USA.

That's valid. But I would also argue that solar power has yet to deliver on promises made anywhere in this country. And countries like Germany that doubled down on subsidies for solar are seldom heard from these days (as are wind farms). In fact, most people in may tend to shy away from solar and wind in Maine these days in favor of tidal, which is much more reliable, though harder to keep equipment maintainable.

You not counting the trillions spent on military intervention in the oil-rich Middle East as a subsidy?

Germany just decided to decommission all of its nuclear power generation. That power is going to come from somewhere.

Any argument that implies that the only thing that can achieve the proper energy density is fossil fuels is a dead argument. It's like arguing that computational speed will never overtake the human brain without knowing what Moore's Law is.

"When things run on electricity, the power grid becomes ready to be de-centralized, the power can come from anywhere."

More accurately, it can only come from anywhere that has adequate transmission line capacity to get it to you. Even if you had unlimited solar energy available in California, you couldn't get enough of it to New York to make a difference there. And very few people want to have new high voltage power lines (huge steel towers) built on or near their property, so that limits the ability to add more capacity to the system.

Wake me when an electric ambulance demonstrates a proven track record of traveling long distances in cold weather in rural America. Never mind electric helicopters and airplanes.

Embrace energy freedom (which we don't have now--eliminate all subsidies, controls, and taxes for all businesses--no loopholes or special favors) instead of a centrally planned or mixed economy energy policy.

I believe both sides are missing the point, that we should allow the market to dictate how technology develops and use all our resources ( ie, fossil fuels and sustainable ). We don't need the government to determine our future for us. When sustainable technology becomes more viable as a energy source it will naturally turn away from fossil fuels. As of right now fossil fuels allow for people to buy cheap cars, get to work. buy food because we are able to produce more food then ever before. And that extra income will naturally be invested into technology, things that allow people to save money. Right now the electric car who can afford it. Does anyone in this forum own one? Is it able to sustain the logistics such as Semi's moving produce and products across this nation? The real revolution will be when they can create a electric engine that can haul 80,000 pounds in 5 days across the country. Until then, the electric car is a gimmick that only rich people can afford.

Yes, it is true that the carbon footprint on a Tesla right now is just as shitty as on a gas automobile. What the article overlooks, however, is that it costs extraordinary amounts of MONEY to pull carbon out of the ground (whether in the form of gas, coal, or whatever else) and pump it in the air... we just don't have any better solutions yet.

This means it is likely civilization will eventually migrate to cheaper ways of generating energy without the expense of pulling carbon reservoirs out of the ground.

Even if most electricity is currently generated by burning carbon sources, this won't always be the case, and electric cars will eventually be decoupled from fossil fuel sources.

Thank you for pointing out that fossil fuels are the best solution we have for generating power today.

A lot of people pair their electric cars with solar panels on their houses so it's not the best argument.

FYI - here is the author's response to various BBS comment: http://industrialprogress.com/2013/08/22/the-tesla-debate/

Is it Tesla's fault if the electricity is generated from coal?

Author of that article runs a coal/oil propaganda organization called "The Center for Industrial Progress".

You can take a wild guess who pays his bills.

I’m the author of the Forbes piece. I elaborated on the issues in a recent post I submitted to the Tesla forum in response to many of the criticisms raised here. You can read it here or pasted below. http://industrialprogress.com/2013/08/22/the-tesla-debate/

The fundamental question being argued on both sides is, as I see it, whether the government should severely restrict fossil fuel use–and, as part of that policy, promote electric cars as an alternative.

In my view, because cheap, plentiful, reliable energy is so important to technological and human progress, and because fossil fuel technology is essential to providing that caliber of energy for a long time to come, governments should absolutely not be restricting fossil fuel use. (For those interested in seeing how this case stacks up in an open debate, see my recent Stanford debate with Sierra Club Senior Director Bruce Nilles.) Making this case requires addressing concerns about climate head-on, which I did.

“Perhaps the most neglected benefit of fossil fuel energy is in making us safer from the climate. Our cultural discussion on ‘climate change’ fixates on whether or not fossil fuels impact the climate. Of course they do—everything does—but the question that matters is whether it is becoming safer or more dangerous. Here, the data is unambiguous—in the last 80 years, as fossil fuels have increased the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere from .03% to all of .04%, we have become 50 times less likely to die because of climate-related causes. Give thanks to the proliferation of climate-protection technology (climate control, sturdy homes, weather satellites, drought-relief convoys, modern agriculture), which are made possible by fossil fuels.”

Most of the posts on this forum assume that climate change is a basis for government action, but none even attempted to address my case about the actual effects of CO2 emissions on climate safety. The underlying data here place an enormous burden of proof on anyone claiming future catastrophe. And that burden cannot be met as the catastrophic climate models are demonstrable failures at predicting climate. (As I will argue later, even if there was a big problem, advocating solar as the solution would not be logical.)

Other posts on the forum assume that the finite nature of fossil fuels implies some sort of necessary government support of electric cars. But basic economics tells us that the price of the finite commodities involved in every mode of transport will signal if and when a change is necessary. (Note: price is more important than “energy efficiency.” Energy efficiency is just one form of resource efficiency, and often not the most important. If you’re admirer of solar, note that an excellent solar panel is “20% efficient”–should that disqualify it?) Given that electric cars are currently a tiny, luxury, resource-intensive niche of the transportation market, it is odd to assume that all the resources involved will smoothly and economically scale globally. We have no idea, just as we have no idea whether there will be a revolution in coal-to-liquids or gas-to-liquids will mean superior hydrocarbon fuels for hundreds of years to come. Or even whether synthesizing methanol from biomass and burning it using standard internal combustion engines will be more efficient than powering cars with energy-intensive batteries. If we’re free to choose along the way, we don’t have to know in advance.

Although I do not believe that CO2 emissions are a problem, even if it was the public approach of Elon Musk, Tesla, and much of Tesla’s following would be counterproductive–because any constructive approach requires taking on the leading opponents of cheap, plentiful, reliable, non-carbon energy: the environmentalist movement.

I am an adamant supporter of nuclear power and hydroelectric power, as are some of you; the environmentalist movement is the leading opponent of both forms of power–the Sierra Club being a particularly egregious example. These organizations are the ones who made nuclear power uneconomic; without them, there is a strong case nuclear would have won out worldwide on the free market. (For more on this issue, see my pro-nuclear Facebook page, I Love Nuclear,” as well as Petr Beckmann’s classic “The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear.”

Elon Musk should use his public position to every anti-nuclear group. Instead, he endorses their empty promise that solar can power our civilization. That’s why in my article I focused on solar–that’s what Tesla assures us will replace the fossil fuels it opposes (but uses).

To be solution-oriented means to advocate the best options–and that could also include geo-engineering, also opposed by environmentalists–not just the politically correct ones. To be solution-oriented in this context also means to look for global solutions that would actually work. In my article I cited the fact that globally solar and wind produce less than 1% of the world’s electricity–and that must be backed up by a reliable source, usually fossil fuels. Several posts on this forum took me to task because their Teslas run on a higher percentage of solar and wind. No one addressed the point about requiring backup–usually “100% solar means a reliable source of energy is providing 100% backup (which doesn’t scale). And more broadly, no one acknowledged that solar/wind is a luxury good. It’s very expensive and it scales very, very poorly. If we’re talking 80% global CO2 reductions, the fact that your particular Tesla uses X% solar is completely irrelevant because few can afford it and the “solution” wouldn’t scale if more could.

If you believe that catastrophic global warming is the problem of our age, then the solution is to take a hard line against the environmentalist movement and look for global solutions on the scale of the problem. It is not to, forgive me, be self-righteous about your Tesla.

I bring up the self-righteous point because I very much admire the Tesla, and I think it deserves to be supported in a spirit of pure enthusiasm for technology and humanity–not defensiveness and partisanship.

When I write an article trying to convey that the Tesla S is testament to the unacknowledged virtues of fossil fuel energy, and the response I get in the Tesla forum is to be labeled a “hater,” that is partisan.

It is also partisan to dismiss me because I support fossil fuels. A few people wrote me off for wearing an “I Love Fossil Fuels” shirt to a Tesla store, or period. Well, I do love fossil fuels and the fossil fuel industry and I came to that love honestly, for reasons that I hope are clear. (For more reasons, read my book.) I believe it was an incredibly appropriate shirt to wear to the Tesla store. Incidentally, it was not premeditated–I just happened to be wearing it at the Fashion Island mall, but I’m glad I did.

I hope that clarifies where I’m coming from. If you’re interested in learning more about how to think about environmental issues from a consistently humanist, technological perspective, I hope you’ll take a look at my book and my essay “The Industrial Manifesto.” (Both are at http://industrialprogress.com)

This guy is so biased he can't even see straight.

The author is missing the bigger picture.

1) Generating electricity through coal and sending it over the power lines is WAY more efficient than transporting liquid gasoline to your local pump and burning it in your highly inefficient V6 engine. Electric cars do an equal amount of work with less fossil fuels burnt.

2) Given current technology, solar, wind, water, nuclear, etc. can only be practically harnessed on a large scale and can only be practically converted to a transportation energy as electricity to be piped to electric cars. Therefore this is a two-step process: (1) build renewable plants, (2) build electric cars. Tesla is working on 1/2 of the equation.

sadly, if the author would have done some research and seen some interview he would have known that.

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