Instead of the overhead wires for trains, what about an electrified third rail like a New York subway?
Instead of the overhead wires for trains, what about an electrified third rail like a New York subway?
Joe Gearin wrote: I'll also refer to alfadriver for expert opinions on this, because he works in the industry and is......well, an expert.
He's an expert in ICEs. You should probably also get an opinion from an expert in EV powertrains. I guarantee you'll get a very different opinion.
outrageous claim that can't be backed up by anything other than "I know more than you:
I think the resolution is meaningless that far out, and they know it. It's pure posturing. One of two things will be true when 2040 rolls around...
EV's will have solved their capacity, recharge rate, and cost issues, they will surpass IC cars in the free market, and the resolution will be a non issue.
Or, in my opinion much more likely...
EV's will not yet have captured enough market share, the resolution will been seen as a hardship on the poor, and it will be pushed back.
I think the either/or is a bad requirement. I see plug in hybrids as having the largest market share by then, as they offset the weaknesses of both. Assuming they can keep the costs in line.
It would be cool if they can figure out how to increase the power density in Radioactive Diamond Batteries... ...makes me day-dream about the ZPM's from Star Gate... 
The US is very much a market-driven society. The Dollar rules all. EV's will surpass ICEV's if/when they become the cheaper option to use (without excessive tax incentives). In some situations that may happen - denser cities and suburbs. In others it will not - rural areas with less power grid and population density. Unfortunately, this situation may increase the "us vs. them" mentality that has become so divisive in recent times. Plug-in Hybrids are a reasonable compromise.
Well if the frogs aren't stupid and don't move away from nuclear they'd likely be able to provide the power for nothing but electric stuff. Other Euro countries I dunno about.
In reply to David S. Wallens:
What, all over the place? I can't imagine how many dead animals they'd have to scrape off the tracks, people included. Or accidental brush fires it would start. You'd really have to shield it from all sorts of stuff while making sure the train can still connect to it Seems like it's really only feasible in an enclosed tube like subways.
Where do we think gas prices will be in 20 years? Here in the states, they've been low enough in recent years that fuel economy has gone on the back burner. What happens when fuel prices increase by 2x? 10x?
GameboyRMH wrote:volvoclearinghouse wrote: I'll take your bet. You say: 2027- 1/2 of new car sales (by volume) will be something other than ICE. I'll bet you they won't be. What should the wager be? How about a tank of gas (or charge of electrons) for the winner's car?I'd wager a charge for the EV of the future, or a tank of gas for today's average car, adjusted for inflation...who knows what gas could cost 10 years from now!
It's a bet. I don't know your name, or where you live, but I'm good for my word...and I expect you are to. In 10 years I'm gonna hunt you down...either to get my payment, or to pay up on my end.
GameboyRMH wrote:tuna55 wrote: Sorry, lawn tractor. I want to be mowing my lawn for as little time as humanly possible.Like an electric car or motorcycle, it costs more up front, but it never needs gas... http://www.homedepot.com/p/Ryobi-38-in-Battery-Electric-Riding-Lawn-Mower-RY48110/300246266
GE came out with one in the late 1960's.
I've looked into home-brewing one, but the truth is...gasoline (and small ICEs) are just so darn cheap. I can mow 2 acres on about 2 gallons of gasoline.
David S. Wallens wrote: Instead of the overhead wires for trains, what about an electrified third rail like a New York subway?
Safety concerns on that. It only really works in subways and other highly controlled environments. Also, 3rd rails generally only run at around 750 VDC. Overhead lines are 20,000 VAC- much more efficient for long-distance power transmission.
GameboyRMH wrote:Joe Gearin wrote: I'll also refer to alfadriver for expert opinions on this, because he works in the industry and is......well, an expert.He's an expert in ICEs. You should probably also get an opinion from an expert in EV powertrains. I guarantee you'll get a *very* different opinion.
I worked for an EV company a few years back, I was a powertrain engineer. They were on the bleeding edge of battery technology and quick charging, and there were...hurdles. Bottom line: E-motors are awesome. Finding a way to store the energy to run them....is not.
What this debate really comes down to is, what do you really want? Are you trying to eliminate pollution, or reliance on fuel that comes from dead dinosaurs and is pumped out of the ground? There's many ways to obtain forward motion that don't rely on DDJ (Dead Dinosaur Juice) but they have widely varying levels of pollution and other environmental costs. One can run an ICE off of a lot of different stuff- or power an e-motor in a lot of different ways. Trying to legislate that is somewhat akin to the government dictating what I eat every day.
volvoclearinghouse wrote:GameboyRMH wrote:GE came out with one in the late 1960's. The Elec Trak I've looked into home-brewing one, but the truth is...gasoline (and small ICEs) are just so darn cheap. I can mow 2 acres on about 2 gallons of gasoline.tuna55 wrote: Sorry, lawn tractor. I want to be mowing my lawn for as little time as humanly possible.Like an electric car or motorcycle, it costs more up front, but it never needs gas... http://www.homedepot.com/p/Ryobi-38-in-Battery-Electric-Riding-Lawn-Mower-RY48110/300246266
A colleague bought one of those as a box of parts and assembled it but it wasn't very useful when it was done. He even had the advantage from being an employee.
We also built the gau-8 but we can't find its drawings either.
My sailboat is getting a Torqeedo for it's auxiliary power. Between the 24v lithium battery and the solar cells I am building into the main companionway hatch, I should not need to plug in at all.
Just let me decide for myself. If, as a majority of Americans, we decide electric cars make the most sense then we'll buy them and ignore the alternatives. 2-3 cycles of that and no laws need to be made. Infrastructure will shift to match demand and ICE will be the quirky niche technology.
Gasoline may be the Moller SkyCar of 2040. If that makes sense.
David S. Wallens wrote: Yesterday's big news. So, do we care? Without getting too political, think that will happen here?
The French have proven many times that they see the world differently and value different things than the US. They take long vacations. They have a national health care system. Their labor laws give employees more rights. They use the metric system.
None of these have been adopted in the United States. Like everything I listed above, whether it would be a good policy for the country or not, I don't see a policy to take gasoline and diesel powered vehicles off the market happening anytime soon.
tuna55 wrote:GameboyRMH wrote:Sorry, lawn tractor. I want to be mowing my lawn for as little time as humanly possible.tuna55 wrote: With this premise, the real question is why there are not super affordable electric lawn mowers.These prices aren't bad. The corded models are super-affordable, and they're not much trouble for mowing a small yard.
Google "robotic electric lawn mower".
They exist, and they are cheaper than your lawn tractor.
France. That's over there in Europe, right?
The French have proven many times that they see the world differently and value different things than the US. They take long vacations. They have a national health care system. Their labor laws give employees more rights. They use the metric system. None of these have been adopted in the United States.
Excellent points! haha
I don't think legislating to ban ICEs is the best approach. I think legislating fleet fuel economy and emissions as the US already does can achieve the end goal anyway if we simply push harder. It's pretty clear looking at the last 10 years or so that FINALLY enacting a big jump in CAFE requirements got us huge fuel economy gains with not much in the way of added cost to consumers, and the cars are still delivering pointlessly excessive levels of performance to customers that are more or less ok giving up all driving enjoyment to autonomy anyway. I can't see that we've lost anything. Industry always threatens doom and gloom whenever talk of raising regulatory standards is in the air, but history shows pretty clearly that when financial elites are forced to choose between not getting any richer and just paying their hordes of lower and middle class workers to innovate solutions, they consistently choose to pay their hordes of lower and middle class worker to innovate solutions so that they can continue to get richer. The trick is mostly in getting the 1%'ers in Congress to play hardball with the 0.1%'ers in industry that they're also trying to get cushy retirement postings from. Besides, regulating the automakers to produce more efficient vehicles is good for them anyway. It's pretty clear that the way the US domestic automakers nearly crumbled from being unable to sell competitively efficient vehicles in the late 00's is because their shortsighted capitalist business model wasn't regulated ENOUGH! Even by 2008 the economy was sufficiently globalized that you couldn't win financial safety anymore merely by buying off ONE government to let you act ignorant, and no automaker is large enough to buy them ALL off. Especially not in a world where the 'free' market says Ford is worth less than Tesla.
"French to ban fun times".
In reply to Vigo:
I think you left a lot out, and the cause and effect of regulation and result are not as clear cut as you portray. You need to look at the path of how and why we got to where we are today. Many regulations were enacted that were not met, as the government tried to legislate new technological advancement. Many regulations had to be walked back to reality when they couldn't be met (looking at you California.) The end result is usually a compromise between auto makers and the regulators. I think you got it backwards- increased regulation did not lead to the technological advancement, the advancement led to the increased regulation.
I don't get your greedy 1% tangent. Cars today are better in just about every way yet cost way less than they did 25 years ago adjusting for inflation. Car companies are businesses. The goal of business is to make money. It's not easy, and definitely not guaranteed. If a company cannot make money, it will not be around long. Well, unless the government chooses the use our money to bail it out, but that's another topic.
Your Tesla point is a good- it should not be "worth" more than Ford. It is a gamble by investors that it will some day turn a profit. But when a company is valued way more that it should be, it's a bubble waiting to burst. Will Tesla be able to support themselves off of their sales rather than investment before that bubble bursts? Maybe, maybe not. But it's far from guaranteed.
Many regulations were enacted that were not met, as the government tried to legislate new technological advancement. Many regulations had to be walked back to reality when they couldn't be met (looking at you California.) The end result is usually a compromise between auto makers and the regulators. I think you got it backwards- increased regulation did not lead to the technological advancement, the advancement led to the increased regulation.
I was talking about the federal level of regulation. California deserves some credit for showing what worked better or worse before the federal government could try it on the whole country. Further, if California hadn't taken things into their own hands and had waited for the Federal government to sufficiently regulate, there are a lot of people alive today who would probably be dead. From roughly the mid-80s to mid-00s, US car fleet economy was stagnant while horsepower roughly doubled. Safety items WERE mandated and comparing the safety of mid-80s to mid-00's car shows staggering gains, while our southern neighbor Mexico continued to sell new copies of b13 Sentras and air-cooled Beetles. Regulation is the difference. When the CAFE standards finally jumped, it was a VERY short time until every manufacturer was selling a 40mpg car in our market. The technology was more or less there all along (see my posts about simultaneously owning an 85 CRX HF and 2001 Honda Insight). Even in the 1980s when US manufacturers started to care about fuel economy a little bit, Japan's fleet economy was vastly higher (higher in fact than ours was in the 90s). Fuel costs are a factor, but regulations are a bigger one. There's no viable black market for cars that would give the option of buying a new car that didn't meet regulations, and history already shows that the cars consumers end up with are packed with more and more efficiency and safety technology for almost no more money (after adjusting for inflation). Industry will always say the same things in the face of tightening regulations, but when industry says 'live free or die!' what they really mean is 'please don't undercut my existing profits by forcing me to invest more profits back into r&d'. In the end they do it, and none of them die.
Boost_Crazy wrote: In reply to Vigo: I think you left a lot out, and the cause and effect of regulation and result are not as clear cut as you portray. You need to look at the path of how and why we got to where we are today. Many regulations were enacted that were not met, as the government tried to legislate new technological advancement. Many regulations had to be walked back to reality when they couldn't be met (looking at you California.) The end result is usually a compromise between auto makers and the regulators. I think you got it backwards- increased regulation did not lead to the technological advancement, the advancement led to the increased regulation.
I just lost a big reply thanks to some networking error.
But after seeing 25 years of advancements- I can trace most things that have happened in the engines to regulations of one form or another.
The only real failure in the regulations has been the EV mandate, and it only failed because the OEM's used the California constitution to show that PZEV was more effective than EVs.
Other than that, they have worked very well- and the partnerships between CARB/EPA and the OEM's is a lot closer than most of you apparently think.
Sure, the rules are tighter as both OEM's and regulators see the advancements of technology. But back 20 years ago- it was for sure the other way around.
In reply to Vigo: The only issue I see with your theory is that that CAFE has not really lead to consumers demanding higher FE cars.
That, consistently, follows the cost of gas. People will drive more if they have an economical car to drive. Or just get something bigger.
Things have gotten a lot better, sure. But I personally think a gas tax will drive fuel efficiency better.
tuna55 wrote:volvoclearinghouse wrote: GE came out with one in the late 1960's. The Elec Trak I've looked into home-brewing one, but the truth is...gasoline (and small ICEs) are just so darn cheap. I can mow 2 acres on about 2 gallons of gasoline.A colleague bought one of those as a box of parts and assembled it but it wasn't very useful when it was done. He even had the advantage from being an employee. We also built the gau-8 but we can't find its drawings either.
A GAU-8 would be an awesome if impractical way of mowing the lawn.
alfadriver wrote: Things have gotten a lot better, sure. But I personally think a gas tax will drive fuel efficiency better.
While I agree that the fuel tax should be higher, it would be a highly regressive tax. The benefit of CAFE is that the technology for high efficiency is paid for by the richer populace buying new cars, and as teh fleet ages and gets replaced, the poorer people wind up with the same benefit for a pittance.
The gas guzzler tax should be increased dramatically, though.
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