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An Unexpected Argument for Electric Cars
Leaving all the politics of climate change and all that aside, here is something to take notice of.
An all-electric car that is faster than a Formula 1 car. In certain configurations, it produces more downforce in kilograms than it actually weighs.
Published in General
Ah. You should have come over at Christmas the year I got a slot car set!
I’ve gotten as far as a battery-powered lawnmower, and it works just fine. But one battery won’t get me through the entire lawn, so I always have to swap in a different battery about 60% of the way through.
We are. As of last September and October, actually. That’s when we became a sustained net oil exporter. (We’ve been a net natural gas exporter for a two-three years, now, IIRC.) Note the “net”. We import cheap thick oil and export pricier light, sweet oil, since we have specialized refinery capacity for the former.
And mass-produce hydrocarbon liquid fuels.
My crystal ball says pure-electric over-the-road trucking is a pipe-dream, and plug-in hydrids (the kind with just a genset) will dominate in the end. There’s just no way battery chemistry can ever compete with liquid fuels, both in energy density and safety of storage.
My first LI tool was a Black and Decker pole saw that I got back in 2013. It far exceeded my expectations and opened my eyes to the world of LI battery tools. I had a few NiCad tools before; those are all replaced now. I’ve added a lot of tools since then for my workshop and yardwork. I use DeWalt in my workshop and Greenworks for yard work. The 19″ lawn mower I bought in 2017 has been great. I also have a Simplicity tractor-mower with Briggs and Stratton Twin-V engine that sucks a lot of gas and makes a lot of noise. My lawn is too big to do just with my little Greenworks mower, so the riding mower still gets a lot of use. Doing the whole thing with the little Greenworks mower would take 3 times as long. I don’t have that kind of time, even though I enjoy the work on foot more. I listen to books while mowing with either one, but I don’t need any special ear protection while using the Greenworks mower. I also have a Greenworks chainsaw, which is all the chainsaw I need nowadays. A few years ago I hired some tree removal, and while the crew had their backs turned I sawed up some of the downed limbs for them. The largest of those were about 16 inches in diameter. The guys were suitably impressed, but if I were in their shoes I wouldn’t give up on the gas-powered chainsaws just yet. I’d add one or two battery saws to the arsenal, though.
And there are various other tools, including a brush-whacker that I got last summer.
There is such a thing as a LI battery-powered riding mower. If my lawn was a little smaller, I’d seriously look into it, and maybe will get one some day.
Before 2013 I never would have thought I could be doing all I do with battery tools now. I’ll admit that it has helped me take more seriously the notion of battery-powered cars.
I badly want a robot lawnmower. I might just get one when I move to Pennsylvania.
That’s a fair point but I’ll just say a couple of things:
I once made the boneheaded comment that digital cameras could never replace film cameras for anyone serious about photography. Wrong. Both my Leicas and even my Nikon DSLR sit in the closet. I shoot with a Galaxy S10 with fantastic results. (I still take the M2 out and fondle it from time to time, though.) The point is you never know what is around the corner. You may be right…but you may be wrong. And it just may be a lunatic yer lookin’ for.
Your point about battery chemistry is accurate, but if we can get to a point where most of our electricity is produced by nuclear, and storage products get more efficient (in terms of cost / kwh), then we might be an a position where it is generally better for most commuters to run electric or plug-in hybrid. There are big mights, for sure…but see my first paragraph.
Yup. Like any sport, auto racing in general may seem like a bunch of nonsense to people who don’t care for it. But things are learned in racing that eventually trickle down to the consumer market. I doubt we would have plain-Jane economy cars making 80 hp/liter or more if there had never been auto racing.
That’s on my list, too. Roomba is supposed to be coming out with one this year that won’t require one to put a wire around the property line – most of the others do.
Poor analogy. Revolutionary advancements in digital technologies only affect other fields to the extent the core task of that field can be miniaturized and digitized. That doesn’t apply to transportation. Our body masses (and vehicles) are getting more massive as the decades pass, not shrinking by orders of magnitude. The amount of energy needed to sling our vehicles around the country isn’t getting smaller.
Yes, I am discounting politics and climate change, too, as reality eventually wins in both cases. My crystal ball is looking fifty-ish years down the line. Plug-in hybrids for the win!
I took his analogy to be an example of technology, not of digital technology. I thought it was a good analogy. Technological improvements made a potentially marvelous, but technologically blocked replacement, a reality.
I strongly disagree. Digital photography displaced film because image capture was possible with arrays of ultra-miniture transistors (arranged as a charge-coupled device). As transistor miniaturization proceeded, those capture elements followed the cheaper and more capable development pattern of other electronics. Simply not happening with energy expenditure in transportation.
Which is one of the reasons we don’t have flying cars like the Jetsons.
So, you’re saying that you are speculating that there will some day be an everyday application? Dreamer.
I took Spin’s comment literally. You’ve assigned him a different belief than the one he wrote down.
Spin was responding to the claim…
The claim he was disputing made no reference to the amount of energy expenditure in transportation.
Once again, nothing about decreases energy expenditure in transportation.
So it is clear that Spin is saying that the cost/kWHr could come down, due to future technological breakthroughs that we in the public (or even the engineers and scientists) don’t know about now. Exactly as the miniaturization of charge-coupled devices overcame the limitations of early digital cameras.
Once again, the statement you’ve imputed to him is entirely different from the one he wrote.
Actually, it was an example of being narrow minded about what the future might hold. The thing that might surprise Phil is the thing he doesn’t know is coming, that many or most of us do not know is coming.
In the end, it is what we know can’t happen that keeps us from moving forward.
I would never have though a construction guy would use a cordless skilsaw all day every day, and a table saw that used the same battery, all day every day. But they do. Because someone who isn’t me is sitting in a development lab somewhere making the impossible happen.
Spin, it’s not just an engineering problem. It’s a physics problem. The laws of physics are not going to change to favor electric cars. Just like they have never changed to favor any number of other schemes. There are no perpetual motion machines, and there never will be one. There are going to be future developments. Electric vehicles are going to get better. But there are limits, not due to current technologies, but due to the laws of physics.
I’m an not saying either of the following two things:
That this is merely an engineering problem.
That the laws of physics will change.
What I AM saying is:
The future of automobiles will look different than it has, and it might be wise to look to the guys who know the most about it. Because they are investing in electric and hybrid vehicles. You can say whatever you want to say, in the end, Volkswagon made a car that does the Nordschleife in just over 6 minutes. Which is cool, and says something about the future.
That’s how I took it.
Often because of governmental subsidies and other regulations.
You pull up to the traffic light, next to the guy in the hot car. He revs his engine, you rev yours.
*whee-whee*
Just not the same.
This is a nice little essay discussing in lay terms the limiting physic of the batteries and an energy economy. I leave it here for your perusal.
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf
Arahant,
What laws of physics say that there will not be large increases in gravimetric energy density of batteries, and large decreases in manufacturing costs, compared to today?
Mark,
I am essentially a very lazy man. So let me just point you a couple of comments back to what @gldiii posted:
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf
Read it. It will explain things much better than I would, because they bothered to write it up thoroughly.
Now, I have nothing against anyone’s exploring and developing new technologies. I’m a science fiction writer, for goodness’ sake. But believing it is going to go beyond what the science allows is as ridiculous as my SF books. They are not going to become reality, either.
So, let me ask you three questions:
When was the first electric automobile invented?
When was the first internal combustion automobile invented?
Which technology has changed more in that time?
They call that ‘purring’, son.
“I cannae change the laws ay physics!” ~Scotty, just before he changes the laws of physics.
This question has some parallels to the Solar Roads concept. Although the direction of energy transfer is reversed, I think the same basic infrastructure challenges exist in both cases. Watch this video from 7:49 to 10:16:
We can kill more birds with one stone or maybe just kill a lot of birds if we make the roads radioactive instead.
Thanks for the article. I saw nothing in it that supports either of your claims. I agree with everything the article said but there was nothing new in it for me. I suspect that you have not read my two questions carefully, and have substituted two unrelated questions which are addressed by the article.