Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
If the goal is to reduce national fuel consumption and we can make a stack of 24 kWh of batteries, making a fleet of 15 Prius-class HEVs will save 2,400 gallons of fuel a year and making a single Leaf will save 400 gallons a year. There is no way to get around the striking declining marginal utility of batteries. There is also no avoiding the fact that batteries for electric drive are huge consumers of relatively scarce natural resources that have been climbing in price every bit as quickly as oil.
Last time I checked using prodigious quantities of relatively scarce resources in the name of conserving modest quantities of relatively plentiful resources was neither sustainable nor economic.
As soon as you take an analysis of EVs away from a single vehicle comparison and look at the national supply chain issues the sophistry becomes clear.
Israel is a very interesting experiment. The country is about 170 miles from north to south and about 46 miles wide on average. It's neighbors are not generally considered friendly. The average gasoline price is roughly $8 per gallon. Battery swapping may well work in Israel if the largely untested batteries perform as everyone hopes they will. Time alone will tell.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
But if you have a 24 kWh stack of batteries and your goal is to reduce national oil imports it makes more sense to make a fleet of 15 HEVs that will save a total of 2,400 gallons per year than to make one Leaf that will save 400 gallons.
Any way you look at them, plug-ins are suboptimal users of scarce resources in the name of conserving more plentiful resources.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
They started implementing the interstate highway system during the Eisenhower Administration and it's not done yet. It would be foolish to expect the smart-grid to happen any quicker.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
The other reason for your cost figure of 2.5 cents per mile is that coal is a darned cheap source of thermal energy. Any time you're willing to use a relatively dirty fuel instead of a relatively clean one the economics run in your favor.
They don't, however, run in your favor in any comparison between a plug in and a Prius class HEV that costs a third less, gets over 50 miles to a gallon of gasoline, and has emissions that are equivalent to a plug-in on the American average grid.
Understanding Stop-Start Idle Elimination and Emerging Energy Storage Solutions [View article]
Happy to help. To put things into perspective a 90 Amp Hour battery can store 3.9 million watt seconds of energy and a typical engine-off cycle requires about 39,000 watt-seconds, or 1% of the total energy. With a battery like the PbC that recharges several times faster, the depth of available energy becomes irrelevant.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
With due respect tellurium is one of the rarest metals on the planet. It's so rare in fact that you can't even find production statistics for it. Annual production is measured in pounds rather than tons.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
Attributing the virtue of a solar panel to an EV is like attributing the virtue of a solar panel to a refrigerator or plasma television. The use of electrons once their produced is irrelevant and you can't make an EV something other than a pig by tying a solar panel around its neck.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
It will be fascinating to see how many of those $99 deposits turn into $33,000 purchase contracts. The DOE is predicting sales of 112,000 BEVs a year by 2030. That sounds like a quirky niche market to me.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
Other businesses don't lie about their emissions. They own them and take whatever steps are necessary to mitigate them.
EVangelicals on the other hand pretend that since their car doesn't have a tailpipe the emissions associated with producing electricity to run the darned things are somebody else's fault and problem.
It has all the intellectual integrity of a no peeing zone in a swimming pool.
When EV manufacturers and drivers own up to the fact that their emissions profile is no better than a Prius that costs a third less and uses all raw materials in a more sustainable way I'll stop mentioning that the emperor has no clothes.
Power producers run their nuclear plants 24/7. For the next tier of demand they bring up their coal fired plants. Cleaner natural gas is used primarily during daytime peak demand hours. Raising electric use at night will increase the amount of coal burned, not decrease it.
Investment decisions should never be made on the basis of gut instincts or vague hunches unless your gut has worked full time in the field for at least 25 or 30 years like mine has. All others do their homework, double check their assumptions and remain humble enough to avoid public arguments if they can't prove their point.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
Small company corporate finance work - guiding development stage companies through the valley of death to a point where they become self-sustaining business enterprises. After 30 years in my specialty I've seen just about every mistake a small company can make. Investors who choose to ignore my cautions do so at their peril.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
It would take far more than you offered to fluster me. I spoke in disparaging terms of eco-religious orthodoxy because it's refusal to accept reality disgusts me. I said nothing about you as a person because I'm sure you're a prince of a fellow.
I cite studies and you attempt to discredit me and the studies on the basis of vague suspicions.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
Last time I checked using prodigious quantities of relatively scarce resources in the name of conserving modest quantities of relatively plentiful resources was neither sustainable nor economic.
As soon as you take an analysis of EVs away from a single vehicle comparison and look at the national supply chain issues the sophistry becomes clear.
Israel is a very interesting experiment. The country is about 170 miles from north to south and about 46 miles wide on average. It's neighbors are not generally considered friendly. The average gasoline price is roughly $8 per gallon. Battery swapping may well work in Israel if the largely untested batteries perform as everyone hopes they will. Time alone will tell.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
Any way you look at them, plug-ins are suboptimal users of scarce resources in the name of conserving more plentiful resources.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
They don't, however, run in your favor in any comparison between a plug in and a Prius class HEV that costs a third less, gets over 50 miles to a gallon of gasoline, and has emissions that are equivalent to a plug-in on the American average grid.
Understanding Stop-Start Idle Elimination and Emerging Energy Storage Solutions [View article]
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
Eco-bling for the philosophically committed and the mathematically challenged.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
EVangelicals on the other hand pretend that since their car doesn't have a tailpipe the emissions associated with producing electricity to run the darned things are somebody else's fault and problem.
It has all the intellectual integrity of a no peeing zone in a swimming pool.
When EV manufacturers and drivers own up to the fact that their emissions profile is no better than a Prius that costs a third less and uses all raw materials in a more sustainable way I'll stop mentioning that the emperor has no clothes.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
"Estimating marginal CO2 emissions rates for national electricity systems"
Energy Policy 38 (2010) 5977-5987.
Another commenter offered this one that shows exactly the same thing.
iopscience.iop.org/174...
Power producers run their nuclear plants 24/7. For the next tier of demand they bring up their coal fired plants. Cleaner natural gas is used primarily during daytime peak demand hours. Raising electric use at night will increase the amount of coal burned, not decrease it.
Investment decisions should never be made on the basis of gut instincts or vague hunches unless your gut has worked full time in the field for at least 25 or 30 years like mine has. All others do their homework, double check their assumptions and remain humble enough to avoid public arguments if they can't prove their point.
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
Plug-in Vehicles and Their Dirty Little Secret [View article]
I cite studies and you attempt to discredit me and the studies on the basis of vague suspicions.
I win!