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bye bye gas powered cars


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At least in England in roughly 20 years.

 

 

Britain will ban sales of new gasoline and diesel cars starting in 2040 as part of a bid to clean up the country's air.

The decision to phase out the internal combustion engine heralds a new era of low-emission technologies with major implications for the auto industry, society and the environment.

 

 

http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/26/news/uk-bans-gasoline-diesel-engines-2040/index.html

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I don't know where we're at currently with electric technology, but one of the biggest problems with this for years has been feasibility. We already have an energy crisis in many parts of the world; injecting another thing we have to charge with electricity to use is only going to make the problems worse.

 

Hydrogen is an interesting alternative, but there are few if any fueling stations in most parts of the United States.

 

I'm all for taking bold steps to address the problem of oil/gas, so long as those steps don't make something else worse.

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I don't know where we're at currently with electric technology, but one of the biggest problems with this for years has been feasibility. We already have an energy crisis in many parts of the world; injecting another thing we have to charge with electricity to use is only going to make the problems worse.

 

Hydrogen is an interesting alternative, but there are few if any fueling stations in most parts of the United States.

 

I'm all for taking bold steps to address the problem of oil/gas, so long as those steps don't make something else worse.

Necessity is the mother of invention. Twenty-three years is plenty of time to find a feasible solution, IMO. Better than the "kick the can down the road" approach we have taken with fracking.

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I don't know where we're at currently with electric technology, but one of the biggest problems with this for years has been feasibility. We already have an energy crisis in many parts of the world; injecting another thing we have to charge with electricity to use is only going to make the problems worse.

 

Hydrogen is an interesting alternative, but there are few if any fueling stations in most parts of the United States.

 

I'm all for taking bold steps to address the problem of oil/gas, so long as those steps don't make something else worse.

 

There isn't an energy crisis though.

 

Granted, there's an infrastructure and planning crisis (see Australia) due to poor planning and conservative/fossil fuel interference when the country was trying to switch to renewable energy--and Elon Musk has offered a solution that, while it won't resolve things completely, is a very viable, functional, and expedient workaround.

 

There's also the Gaza 'crisis', which is more (say, 55-60%) because of Israeli interference in Gaza being able to obtain fuel and less of Gaza mismanagement (40-45%). But even then, Gaza only fired up their plant for ~4-6 hours a day, and wasn't on 24/7.

 

Then there's Texas, which is an exercise in conservative political cronyism and how it fails the people time and again. Texas has one of the worst infrastructures of all of the states (save Alaska and Hawaii), and it *STILL* doesn't have enough redundancy in the state electrical grid to fall back onto neighboring states (e.g. Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico) for backup power. This is despite the Federal Government telling Texas this for decades and Texas ignoring the reports because...reasons.

 

This is why Texas went all third-world years ago (energy-wise--they went third world politically decades ago) and had rolling brownouts/blackouts, and whenever there's a stretch of 100+ degree weather (read: common Texas summers), the dreaded discussion re: brownouts/blackouts comes up. The only saving grace is that non-fossil fuel tainted investors started investing heavily in wind and solar in Texas (lots of solar/wind farms in Texas now, with lots more to come) to the point where the Kw/h price of wind is now cheaper than fossil fuels, which drives more demand for renewable, which is driving more investment, which drives the price down, so on. But unless redundancies are built into the electrical grid in Texas, we'll see another brownout/b******* scenario again soon--it's inevitable.

 

TL;dr version: it's not an energy crisis, it's a lack of infrastructure planning crisis.

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Perhaps I should rephrase - it isn't so much of a crisis, but it is a problem that electric cars will exacerbate should considerable changes not be made.

 

The world simply isn't capable, right now, of complimenting exorbitant amounts of electric cars. The technology/infrastructure isn't there. I'm all for doing what we can to move towards non-oil related vehicles and finding alternatives to coal.

 

Unfortunately, nuclear power is getting regulated into hell and is one of the biggest reasons the Fort Calhoun plant is closing.

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Unfortunately, nuclear power is getting regulated into hell and is one of the biggest reasons the Fort Calhoun plant is closing.

 

Yes, but most of that mess is because everyone turns into NIMBY twits whenever the discussion of what to do with the waste comes up. We've got some disposal sites that have been neglected for decades that may come back to bite us in the ass rather soon, so it's somewhat understandable that no one wants to open a new waste site in their backyard. If we had a way to reduce/resuse the waste as well as an ongoing fiscal commitment to shoring up existing sites, then I think people would be fine with nuclear again.

 

What we *should* be doing with nuclear is looking to make it smaller and create less waste. Think small, AC-sized units (not unlike the proposed personal hydrogen-powered fuel cell units) that generate electricity for an individual home.

 

Plus, let's not forget that the ideal future state for electrical power is for the grid to be a purely redundant feature--future state is that each property owner has the potential to generate all or most of their electricity needed on their own (e.g. solar, wind, hydrogen fuel cell) and store it when the environment isn't conducive (e.g. no wind, cloudy). Any electrical grid is a strategic point of weakness, and ours even moreso because of the neglect by states and the Federal Government in modernizing it. If we make it purely redundant and not necessary for most property owners in the United States, we make it that much harder for a foreign entity to cripple our country and economy by bringing the grid down.

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Tesla's Model 3 getting a lot of really good reviews, here's a summary:

https://qz.com/1041862/tesla-model-3-reviews-are-exuberant-yes-the-hyperbole-is-necessary/

I looked at leasing a Nissan Leaf a few years ago when gas prices were much higher. I am very interested in the Model 3, although I probably wouldn't be in the market to get one until 2019 at the soonest. The federal tax rebate is nice, and Colorado also offers a state tax rebate. They are both supposed to stick around for a few more years (I think).

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When I got an electric car the school video broadcast did an interview with me. It was heavily edited by the environmentalist editor. All I talked about was how it was not friendly to the environment because you were trading burning gasoline made from middle eastern petroleum for burning American coal to make electricity, and the reason I switched was a geopolitical economic one.

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When I got an electric car the school video broadcast did an interview with me. It was heavily edited by the environmentalist editor. All I talked about was how it was not friendly to the environment because you were trading burning gasoline made from middle eastern petroleum for burning American coal to make electricity, and the reason I switched was a geopolitical economic one.

fwiw...only about 30% of electricity in the US is generated by coal

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Tesla's Model 3 getting a lot of really good reviews, here's a summary:

https://qz.com/1041862/tesla-model-3-reviews-are-exuberant-yes-the-hyperbole-is-necessary/

I looked at leasing a Nissan Leaf a few years ago when gas prices were much higher. I am very interested in the Model 3, although I probably wouldn't be in the market to get one until 2019 at the soonest. The federal tax rebate is nice, and Colorado also offers a state tax rebate. They are both supposed to stick around for a few more years (I think).

 

FYI, the federal rebate is based on the manufacturer and is going to run out for Tesla vehicles sometime next year.
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Tesla's Model 3 getting a lot of really good reviews, here's a summary:

https://qz.com/1041862/tesla-model-3-reviews-are-exuberant-yes-the-hyperbole-is-necessary/

I looked at leasing a Nissan Leaf a few years ago when gas prices were much higher. I am very interested in the Model 3, although I probably wouldn't be in the market to get one until 2019 at the soonest. The federal tax rebate is nice, and Colorado also offers a state tax rebate. They are both supposed to stick around for a few more years (I think).

 

FYI, the federal rebate is based on the manufacturer and is going to run out for Tesla vehicles sometime next year.

 

Dang, that sucks. Thanks for the info.

 

EDIT: This is off a Tesla message board, but the Federal tax credit for Tesla will be reduced and phased out starting in 2018. Probably no tax credit some time in 2019.

 

https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/updated-projection-us-tax-credit-phase-out-updated-070317-after-ems-tweets-m3

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When I got an electric car the school video broadcast did an interview with me. It was heavily edited by the environmentalist editor. All I talked about was how it was not friendly to the environment because you were trading burning gasoline made from middle eastern petroleum for burning American coal to make electricity, and the reason I switched was a geopolitical economic one.

Burning gasoline in your car worse for environment than an electric vehicle: http://grist.org/climate-energy/electric-cars-are-better-than-gas-cars-when-it-comes-to-emissions-study-says/

Here's the original paper from the Union of Concerned Scientists: http://www.ucsusa.org/clean-vehicles/electric-vehicles/life-cycle-ev-emissions#.WX9KlKyGMpg

 

And better than hydrogen fuel cell: http://news.stanford.edu/2016/11/14/battery-electric-cars-better-choice-reducing-emissions-fuel-cell-vehicles/

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