4 ms·

I think this is a good insight, and I hope this comes to pass, but a couple points: > the world's largest vehicles (huge mining trucks) are electric What abou

by feoren 4y ago

I think this is a good insight, and I hope this comes to pass, but a couple points: > the world's largest vehicles (huge mining trucks) are electric What about cruise ships, freighters, freight trains, and aircraft carriers? They're diesel or nuclear-powered. Or maybe nuclear still counts as having an electric motor, just with a nuclear generator instead of a battery? > only EV's that are half the width of a normal car lane will be allowed in the downtown core Honest question: wouldn't tipping be a major problem for half-width cars? And the amount of space needed between cars wouldn't go down much, so if you need at least 4 feet of clearance on either side, and your lane is 5 feet wide, your cars can only be 1 foot wide. This explains why most vehicles thinner than a car are motorcycles or electric scooters.

entropicgravity 4y ago
Yes there are a lot of corner cases that I didn't belabor in my post. Most of the very heavy vehicles you mention are in fact already diesel electric. ie a diesel motor operates as a generator to provide electricity for the electric motor that moves things along. Just replace the diesel with a battery and you're there. (not as simple as it seems but right in theory) With small cars in a city core these cars rarely go faster than 40 mph and on average about 30mph with traffic lights so you don't need the separation that you would want on a freeway. Several vehicles like this are already available or under development. I suspect that a Smart Car would come very close to meeting this spec already.
mdip 4y ago
> Honest question: wouldn't tipping be a major problem for half-width cars? And the amount of space needed between cars wouldn't go down much, so if you need at least 4 feet of clearance on either side, and your lane is 5 feet wide, your cars can only be 1 foot wide. This explains why most vehicles thinner than a car are motorcycles or electric scooters. Probably would be a problem. I don't know that the author was thinking "a car that is half the width of a normal car" as "a vehicle that takes up substantially less space". Perhaps we'll all be riding around in Go-Karts, who knows? :)
salmo 4y ago
Freight trains are also electric, just with diesel generators. I'll completely speculate 2 things that stand in the way of them going fully electric: 1. Trains derail, crash, etc. I live in a city that's a rail hub. We probably have a derailment every couple years even with annual rail/rail bed maintenance. They will fix the rail, the roads around it, and have everything back up and running in less than 2 days. You spill some diesel and it sucks to clean up. You spill Li and you walk into "environmental disaster." 2. Money. When it's cheaper, then they'll get serious. To the last point it's similar to fleet vehicles for large fleets. You see a lot of pledges to go all-electric by 20XX. That's because replacing a fleet requires a TON of capital already, and fundamentally changing the vehicles is an order of magnitude higher. Think about a delivery hub like the post office. They have a network already established for purchasing gasoline, delivering it, local storage, refueling process, etc. They have operations built around it. You now likely have to have parallel infrastructure for electric, which means negotiating major power consumption with each local power company, purchase of new or adjacent land, buildout, etc. Can you refuel in the same time window to not effect operations? If not, can you shift operations without impacting customer experience? Now, you will see companies deploying all-electric in niches, especially when it opens up new market opportunities. Those tiny urban vehicles could enable vehicles to go where they could not before, reducing time spent walking. And that might have a shorter timeline than autonomous drones that don't run old ladies over. I think even more than cruise ships and freighters, the biggest all-electric vehicle impact would come from all-electric airplanes. They still haven't gotten off of leaded fuel (see #2). The emissions there are massive. But I think #1 will be a barrier there too. And the bureaucracy will slow it way down just like it did with unleaded jet fuel, which exists now, but is essentially unused. And I guess a theme I'm coming up with is that electric is cool and all, but won't impact big % points of emissions until it's adopted by cargo, not human transport. And cases like trains and large ships that are electric, but fuel the local electric with local power generation bring up the other big point: How would we even begin to power cargo? It's orders of magnitude more massive than consumer vehicles and it's growing so fast that supply can't meet demand. Anyway, whatever. I know enough to be dangerous but not enough to be an expert on any of this, and I'm rambling.
- fuzzzerd 4y ago
mambru 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy Available in Europe since 10 yrs ago. Not a rare sight, but not super-popular either. Also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Ami_(electric) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Ami_(electric)
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Many diesel trains and ships are using the engine as a generator to drive electric motors. It provides a lot of flexibility.

by feoren 4y ago

entropicgravity 4y ago

Yes there are a lot of corner cases that I didn't belabor in my post. Most of the very heavy vehicles you mention are in fact already diesel electric. ie a diesel motor operates as a generator to provide electricity for the electric motor that moves things along. Just replace the diesel with a battery and you're there. (not as simple as it seems but right in theory) With small cars in a city core these cars rarely go faster than 40 mph and on average about 30mph with traffic lights so you don't need the separation that you would want on a freeway. Several vehicles like this are already available or under development. I suspect that a Smart Car would come very close to meeting this spec already.

mdip 4y ago

> Honest question: wouldn't tipping be a major problem for half-width cars? And the amount of space needed between cars wouldn't go down much, so if you need at least 4 feet of clearance on either side, and your lane is 5 feet wide, your cars can only be 1 foot wide. This explains why most vehicles thinner than a car are motorcycles or electric scooters. Probably would be a problem. I don't know that the author was thinking "a car that is half the width of a normal car" as "a vehicle that takes up substantially less space". Perhaps we'll all be riding around in Go-Karts, who knows? :)

salmo 4y ago

Freight trains are also electric, just with diesel generators. I'll completely speculate 2 things that stand in the way of them going fully electric: 1. Trains derail, crash, etc. I live in a city that's a rail hub. We probably have a derailment every couple years even with annual rail/rail bed maintenance. They will fix the rail, the roads around it, and have everything back up and running in less than 2 days. You spill some diesel and it sucks to clean up. You spill Li and you walk into "environmental disaster." 2. Money. When it's cheaper, then they'll get serious. To the last point it's similar to fleet vehicles for large fleets. You see a lot of pledges to go all-electric by 20XX. That's because replacing a fleet requires a TON of capital already, and fundamentally changing the vehicles is an order of magnitude higher. Think about a delivery hub like the post office. They have a network already established for purchasing gasoline, delivering it, local storage, refueling process, etc. They have operations built around it. You now likely have to have parallel infrastructure for electric, which means negotiating major power consumption with each local power company, purchase of new or adjacent land, buildout, etc. Can you refuel in the same time window to not effect operations? If not, can you shift operations without impacting customer experience? Now, you will see companies deploying all-electric in niches, especially when it opens up new market opportunities. Those tiny urban vehicles could enable vehicles to go where they could not before, reducing time spent walking. And that might have a shorter timeline than autonomous drones that don't run old ladies over. I think even more than cruise ships and freighters, the biggest all-electric vehicle impact would come from all-electric airplanes. They still haven't gotten off of leaded fuel (see #2). The emissions there are massive. But I think #1 will be a barrier there too. And the bureaucracy will slow it way down just like it did with unleaded jet fuel, which exists now, but is essentially unused. And I guess a theme I'm coming up with is that electric is cool and all, but won't impact big % points of emissions until it's adopted by cargo, not human transport. And cases like trains and large ships that are electric, but fuel the local electric with local power generation bring up the other big point: How would we even begin to power cargo? It's orders of magnitude more massive than consumer vehicles and it's growing so fast that supply can't meet demand. Anyway, whatever. I know enough to be dangerous but not enough to be an expert on any of this, and I'm rambling.

fuzzzerd 4y ago

mambru 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy Available in Europe since 10 yrs ago. Not a rare sight, but not super-popular either. Also https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Ami_(electric) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Ami_(electric)

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

Many diesel trains and ships are using the engine as a generator to drive electric motors. It provides a lot of flexibility.