Will Electric Vehicles Be Viable? When?

[Jolle]

@Tommy: Not every country has the same energy mix and policies as UK. In many places anything electrical automatically “outgreens” anything fossil even today. I am sure that a few countries have worse mixes than the UK as well.
When it comes to this issue, the particular energy mix of any given country is just local politics, really. It won’t apply to 90% of the users of the forum.

It's all about the chain and cleaning up the entire chain. For a gas powered car, the chain will always be dirty but for an EV, the chain can be 100% clean. EV's themselves are just the beginning. Countries/societies need to put effort to clean the rest of the chain to minimise impact. That a Tesla is effectively still, at the moment, powered by, lets say coal, doesn't mean we shouldn't switch to EV's but means we should look at alternatives for the production of electricity and replace that coal.

[henry]

@Tommy: Not every country has the same energy mix and policies as UK. In many places anything electrical automatically “outgreens” anything fossil even today. I am sure that a few countries have worse mixes than the UK as well.
When it comes to this issue, the particular energy mix of any given country is just local politics, really. It won’t apply to 90% of the users of the forum.

It's all about the chain and cleaning up the entire chain. For a gas powered car, the chain will always be dirty but for an EV, the chain can be 100% clean. EV's themselves are just the beginning. Countries/societies need to put effort to clean the rest of the chain to minimise impact. That a Tesla is effectively still, at the moment, powered by, lets say coal, doesn't mean we shouldn't switch to EV's but means we should look at alternatives for the production of electricity and replace that coal.

Exactly. BEVs bought today aren’t necessarily bringing an immediate reduction in emissions but they act as seed to demonstrate the feasibility, viability, in the future.

[Tommy Cookers]

in many countries the decarbonising of heating would be more helpful than the decarbonising of long-distance trucks

[Andres125sx]

Sory to say this guys, but it is desperating to contiunue reading this sort of things, even on F1T Those biased reports claiming electricity emissions are similar to ICE when it comes from carbon plants have done so much damage... If you read it properly, they say that, even with electricity coming from a carbon plant, EVs pollute a bit less, or a bit more, that´s irrelevant, the main thing is they´re similar even with 100% dirty electricity!!! And that is an unreal scenario on any country except India and few others. None in first world for sure

But what people keep repeating is, on countries with almost half of its electricity production coming from emissions free sources, EVs are not worth

eg replacing diesel ICE use at 35% efficiency well-to-wheel with mainly fossil-fuel electricity at 40% efficiency w-t-w

Sorry Tommy but that´s wrong

In 2019 the electricity sector's grid supply for the United Kingdom came from 43% fossil fuelled power (almost all from natural gas), 48.5% zero-carbon power (including 16.8% nuclear power and 26.5% from wind, solar and hydroelectricity)

@Tommy: Not every country has the same energy mix and policies as UK. In many places anything electrical automatically “outgreens” anything fossil even today.

Yes, in many, including the UK, today.

Exactly. BEVs bought today aren’t necessarily bringing an immediate reduction in emissions but they act as seed to demonstrate the feasibility, viability, in the future.

But they´re indeed bringing an immediate reduction in emissions, even today, no need to wait.



The sad thing is, even people who defend EVs keep repetaing these lies some petrol companies managed to publish through biased reports. They know how to manipulate us all masterfully

[hollus]

Many posts have been removed... no politics, thank you.

[Stu]

Bit of a re-boot and an attempt to look at this issue from a different angle.

What is considered viable for an electric vehicle?
Is it that they are capable of meeting most peoples day-to-day needs as a mode of transport?
Or do they need to be capable of being used by everyone (all drivers) for their day-to-day transport?
The answer to the first question would be that we are already at a point where this is true, the vehicles that are currently available are very capable of meeting most peoples day-to-day travelling requirements, indeed most vehicle usage (whether for work or travel) is capable of being done by current electric vehicles.
On the second question there is more uncertainty, in that national infrastructure and power requirements need to be addressed before the statement can be true, not to mention the availability of resources to provide the equipment for everyone to do do so.
At the point the second question becomes the key limitation the whole argument ceases to become a technical question and does become a question of politics and geography.

Electric vehicles have been viable for some uses in one form or other for almost 100 years

[Zynerji]

[hollus]

Electric vehicles have been viable for some uses in one form or other for almost 100 years

Arguably they were the only viable form of personal transport, other than horses or bicycles, until 120 years ago. (I'll show myself out).

[Big Tea]

Electric vehicles have been viable for some uses in one form or other for almost 100 years

Arguably they were the only viable form of personal transport, other than horses or bicycles, until 120 years ago. (I'll show myself out).

Underground rail is electric. Arguably the biggest people mover in the western world

[Just_a_fan]

Bit of a re-boot and an attempt to look at this issue from a different angle.

What is considered viable for an electric vehicle?
Is it that they are capable of meeting most peoples day-to-day needs as a mode of transport?
Or do they need to be capable of being used by everyone (all drivers) for their day-to-day transport?
The answer to the first question would be that we are already at a point where this is true, the vehicles that are currently available are very capable of meeting most peoples day-to-day travelling requirements, indeed most vehicle usage (whether for work or travel) is capable of being done by current electric vehicles.
On the second question there is more uncertainty, in that national infrastructure and power requirements need to be addressed before the statement can be true, not to mention the availability of resources to provide the equipment for everyone to do do so.
At the point the second question becomes the key limitation the whole argument ceases to become a technical question and does become a question of politics and geography.

Electric vehicles have been viable for some uses in one form or other for almost 100 years

It's interesting that in the debate about whether EVs are useable, there are some that expect EVs to be suitable for every use possible, but don't necessarily put the same requirement on ICE.

Both have pros and cons. It seems to me that "petrolheads" seem to require EVs to jump through every hoop because they want EVs to fail - or at least they want to keep running their particular favourite version of ICE.

The usual tack is to put forward a marginal use case and then say "well an EV can't do this therefore EVs aren't the right answer". S'funny, but applying that type of argument to ICEs, I could say that Porsche 911s aren't viable because they can't tow 3.5 tonnes and wade through waist deep water. And yet no one would consider such an extreme requirement to be a valid reason why sports cars aren't viable. Just as the majority of car drivers don't need to have 3.5 tonne tow capacity, so the majority of drivers don't do 3-400 miles a day. Yes, some people do and for them EVs currently aren't the answer, but that's not to say they can't be the answer. But for the majority, being able to do 100 miles a day would be more than they actually need - based on the fact that they don't do those sorts of miles in their ICE car.

[gruntguru]

It's interesting that in the debate about whether EVs are useable, there are some that expect EVs to be suitable for every use possible, but don't necessarily put the same requirement on ICE.

Both have pros and cons. It seems to me that "petrolheads" seem to require EVs to jump through every hoop because they want EVs to fail - or at least they want to keep running their particular favourite version of ICE.

The usual tack is to put forward a marginal use case and then say "well an EV can't do this therefore EVs aren't the right answer". S'funny, but applying that type of argument to ICEs, I could say that Porsche 911s aren't viable because they can't tow 3.5 tonnes and wade through waist deep water. And yet no one would consider such an extreme requirement to be a valid reason why sports cars aren't viable. Just as the majority of car drivers don't need to have 3.5 tonne tow capacity, so the majority of drivers don't do 3-400 miles a day. Yes, some people do and for them EVs currently aren't the answer, but that's not to say they can't be the answer. But for the majority, being able to do 100 miles a day would be more than they actually need - based on the fact that they don't do those sorts of miles in their ICE car.

Nailed it!

[Greg Locock]

As it happens I just worked out that the road from Melbourne to Sydney will need 350 MW of solar panels to power the cars that drive there, on average (double that in winter), about 1.4 million standard rooftop panels.

That's for one road.

Plus batteries, about 7 of the world's biggest as installed in South Australia, or 11 as it was originally constructed.

[Just_a_fan]

As it happens I just worked out that the road from Melbourne to Sydney will need 350 MW of solar panels to power the cars that drive there, on average (double that in winter), about 1.4 million standard rooftop panels.

That's for one road.

Plus batteries, about 7 of the world's biggest as installed in South Australia, or 11 as it was originally constructed.

Or just 25 of the largest off shore wind turbines currently in use.

But the point is that at current technology levels, EVs aren't suitable for every use. No one with any sense would claim otherwise.

But EVs are very good in some use cases already - particularly in urban environments where tail pipe emissions have the potential to cause long term health issues. And yes, EVs aren't devoid of in-use pollution e.g. tyre particulates, but ICE also produce those so the EV is still better in that comparison.

As already said, it's easy to come up with an extreme example and say "EVs are rubbish here so they're rubbish full stop", but the same can be said for ICEs too if one so wishes. The ICE as personal transport motive power is heading towards extinction. In some places it will hold on longer than others. Perhaps Australia, as one of the kings of CO2 production, will be one of the hold outs. Ironic given the renewable resources they have available.

The Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre said Australia was yet to capitalise on significant offshore wind capacity despite the International Energy Agency nominating it as one of the “big three” likely sources of renewable energy globally alongside solar and onshore wind.

It found more than 2,000GW of offshore wind turbines – far more than Australia’s existing generation capacity – could be installed in areas within 100km of substations. Environmentally restricted and low-wind areas were excluded from the assessment.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... eport-says

Or just carry on using and exporting coal. The latter is the key issue for Oz, of course, but that's politics and we're not allowed to go there.

[gruntguru]

As it happens I just worked out that the road from Melbourne to Sydney will need 350 MW of solar panels to power the cars that drive there, on average (double that in winter), about 1.4 million standard rooftop panels.

That's for one road.

Plus batteries, about 7 of the world's biggest as installed in South Australia, or 11 as it was originally constructed.

Scary how much petrol and diesel fuel must be consumed travelling that one road.

[FW17]

As it happens I just worked out that the road from Melbourne to Sydney will need 350 MW of solar panels to power the cars that drive there, on average (double that in winter), about 1.4 million standard rooftop panels.

That's for one road.

Plus batteries, about 7 of the world's biggest as installed in South Australia, or 11 as it was originally constructed.

Scary how much petrol and diesel fuel must be consumed travelling that one road.

You can worry less by putting a nuclear plant