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> The climate imperative is poor reasoning because this will be a significant increase in electricity generation demands. Relatively centralized electricity ge

by cure 6y ago

> The climate imperative is poor reasoning because this will be a significant increase in electricity generation demands. Relatively centralized electricity generation can be converted to lower carbon generation. This is happening pretty rapidly in many places for economic reasons; renewable power generation is a lot cheaper than fossil fuel power generation. Doing the same for more than a billion ICE engines distributed all over the world is effectively impossible. > Renewables alone will not be able to keep up Source please?

paganel 6y ago
> Doing the same for more than a billion ICE engines distributed all over the world is effectively impossible. Delivering said energy to over a billion cars all over the world is pretty impossible. As things stand right now that's an entire continent (Africa) which in many places doesn't have reliable power even for basic things like keeping the hospitals running (they have to use diesel generators and the like). But, then again, this EV-vehicle "revolution" is targeted at the Western middle-classes + China, they can afford to not care about the rest of the world as they've done until now.
- theshrike79 6y ago
  You can generate electricity on-site with quite limited resources. What you can't do is drill, refine and distribute liquid fuel. First you drill crude oil in one location, ship it to a second location to be refined, ship it to your country and then someone has to drive tanker to every single gas station to fill them up. With electricity you put up solar panels or wind turbines and add a battery. Now you've got electricity for years to come.
julienb_sea 6y ago
I'm merely making an in my view commonsense point. ICE engines are carefully regulated worldwide, certainly in any nation which would consider mandating a transition to electric vehicles. Subsidies and gasoline taxes encourage societal transition to make transportation as efficient as possible, without mandating a full phase out of gasoline as a power source. Renewables have scalability issues. Grid scale renewable energy is possible but needs to be supplemented by either significant on-demand generation when the renewables are offline (at night, when wind is weak), or very large scale battery storage. Localized in-home energy storage is plausible but expensive to roll out. We are also talking about absolutely gigantic demand for raw materials to produce sufficient battery capacity to smooth out the renewable power generation curve. My point is that in order to feasibly power a society which is heavily reliant on electric cars, power generation via renewables alone is not a viable answer.
- theshrike79 6y ago
  "ICE engines are carefully regulated worldwide" ...Volkswagen would like to have a word :D
  - cure 6y ago
    Indeed. Also Fiat Chrysler, Nissan, Renault, and Mercedez-Benz. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal

by cure 6y ago

paganel 6y ago

> Doing the same for more than a billion ICE engines distributed all over the world is effectively impossible. Delivering said energy to over a billion cars all over the world is pretty impossible. As things stand right now that's an entire continent (Africa) which in many places doesn't have reliable power even for basic things like keeping the hospitals running (they have to use diesel generators and the like). But, then again, this EV-vehicle "revolution" is targeted at the Western middle-classes + China, they can afford to not care about the rest of the world as they've done until now.

theshrike79 6y ago
You can generate electricity on-site with quite limited resources. What you can't do is drill, refine and distribute liquid fuel. First you drill crude oil in one location, ship it to a second location to be refined, ship it to your country and then someone has to drive tanker to every single gas station to fill them up. With electricity you put up solar panels or wind turbines and add a battery. Now you've got electricity for years to come.

julienb_sea 6y ago

I'm merely making an in my view commonsense point. ICE engines are carefully regulated worldwide, certainly in any nation which would consider mandating a transition to electric vehicles. Subsidies and gasoline taxes encourage societal transition to make transportation as efficient as possible, without mandating a full phase out of gasoline as a power source. Renewables have scalability issues. Grid scale renewable energy is possible but needs to be supplemented by either significant on-demand generation when the renewables are offline (at night, when wind is weak), or very large scale battery storage. Localized in-home energy storage is plausible but expensive to roll out. We are also talking about absolutely gigantic demand for raw materials to produce sufficient battery capacity to smooth out the renewable power generation curve. My point is that in order to feasibly power a society which is heavily reliant on electric cars, power generation via renewables alone is not a viable answer.

theshrike79 6y ago
"ICE engines are carefully regulated worldwide" ...Volkswagen would like to have a word :D
- cure 6y ago
  Indeed. Also Fiat Chrysler, Nissan, Renault, and Mercedez-Benz. Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal