3 ms·

There is just one slight difference: electrification has become an imposed urgency. Sure, cars were cool, but nobody really felt like a Damocles sword was dang

There is just one slight difference: electrification has become an imposed urgency. Sure, cars were cool, but nobody really felt like a Damocles sword was dangling above their head just because they were sticking with horses for a few more years. The car revolution was a lot more organic than what is now electrification

verisimi 3y ago
> imposed This is a world of difference. If you want to spend your money to gain extra travel (by buying a model T), great! If you are forced to pay for this, because the other options are made artificially more expensive, because of taxation etc, this is only a deterioration of life. You get less (or the same) but pay more.
- thfuran 3y ago
  Oil usage has always been artificially cheap due to failure to price in the externalities.
jstarfish 3y ago
It's not going to end well either. See also the urgent push to switch everyone to electric from natural gas. Up until now, energy sources were diverse (oil, gas, renewable). Literally everything is going to depend on a centralized grid for energy delivery. Can't drive, cook, work, or do much else anymore without electricity from The Grid. Your solar panels feed the grid before they feed you. We haven't seen warfare on our home turf since the 1800s and never really had to consider what happens when infrastructure gets attacked. We're only now starting to learn what happens when supply chains are compromised.
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  The energy sources might be diverse, but to think that the gas coming to your house or the petrol reaching the local station is anything but centralized and globalized is extremely naive
- jjtheblunt 3y ago
  You might have overlooked that electric grids can have ‘capacitors’ in the form of batteries at many different levels including individual homes. Is there anything similar for natural gas other than propane tanks filled by trucks?
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > Can't drive, cook, work, or do much else anymore without electricity from The Grid. Your solar panels feed the grid before they feed you. The average single-family home in Germany requires about 6 kWh a day. A single Tesla Powerwall 2 has enough capacity (14 kWh) to last two days under normal conditions, more if you reduce consumption - a home is thermal mass as well, so you can get by without heating or cooling for that timeframe. Add solar to the mix and now you'd go even longer - with a properly installed automated transfer switch you can run in "insular"/off-grid mode just as well. If you're scared about the grid going down from cyber warfare for longer times, which is a valid concern, get such a backup battery that you can also use to sell regulation capacity to the grid, and a small gas generator. There are cheap models that can run on ordinary propane gas as well as petrol (e.g. [1]), so a single 20kg propane bottle can last your entire energy demand for at least a week (and again: way longer if you cut back demand). Your greater concern at that point would be food and clean water, which you should have stacked up anyway if you're in a disaster-prone area, but no matter what there will be no scenario where the government is out of working order for more than two or three weeks. [1] https://ademax-strom.de/KOMPAK-Inverter-2.300W-Gas-Benzin-KGG20i-DF-Dual-Fuel-Stromerzeuger-230V/KP-KGG20Ei-DF https://ademax-strom.de/KOMPAK-Inverter-2.300W-Gas-Benzin-KG...
mturmon 3y ago
This claim could use a fact check. I’ve seen old illustrations of the first Model T driving through a town, and the noise was shown as frightening to horses pulling carriages. This would imply there was a feeling on the part of the “horse crowd” that the cars were displacing them. There also may have been a social push to move off of horses. Possibly reflected in disputes over speed laws, paving of roads, or lane assignments. Unsurprisingly, a Google search shows a broad literature around this, e.g., https://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-03-15/the-big-shift-last-time-from-horse-dung-to-car-smog/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-03-15/the-big-shift-... (there are book-length treatments as well).
- Almondsetat 3y ago
  You are confusing marketing induced demand with doomsday induced demand. It’s not really a fact check of what I said

verisimi 3y ago

> imposed This is a world of difference. If you want to spend your money to gain extra travel (by buying a model T), great! If you are forced to pay for this, because the other options are made artificially more expensive, because of taxation etc, this is only a deterioration of life. You get less (or the same) but pay more.

thfuran 3y ago
Oil usage has always been artificially cheap due to failure to price in the externalities.

jstarfish 3y ago

It's not going to end well either. See also the urgent push to switch everyone to electric from natural gas. Up until now, energy sources were diverse (oil, gas, renewable). Literally everything is going to depend on a centralized grid for energy delivery. Can't drive, cook, work, or do much else anymore without electricity from The Grid. Your solar panels feed the grid before they feed you. We haven't seen warfare on our home turf since the 1800s and never really had to consider what happens when infrastructure gets attacked. We're only now starting to learn what happens when supply chains are compromised.

Almondsetat 3y ago
The energy sources might be diverse, but to think that the gas coming to your house or the petrol reaching the local station is anything but centralized and globalized is extremely naive
jjtheblunt 3y ago
You might have overlooked that electric grids can have ‘capacitors’ in the form of batteries at many different levels including individual homes. Is there anything similar for natural gas other than propane tanks filled by trucks?
mschuster91 3y ago
> Can't drive, cook, work, or do much else anymore without electricity from The Grid. Your solar panels feed the grid before they feed you. The average single-family home in Germany requires about 6 kWh a day. A single Tesla Powerwall 2 has enough capacity (14 kWh) to last two days under normal conditions, more if you reduce consumption - a home is thermal mass as well, so you can get by without heating or cooling for that timeframe. Add solar to the mix and now you'd go even longer - with a properly installed automated transfer switch you can run in "insular"/off-grid mode just as well. If you're scared about the grid going down from cyber warfare for longer times, which is a valid concern, get such a backup battery that you can also use to sell regulation capacity to the grid, and a small gas generator. There are cheap models that can run on ordinary propane gas as well as petrol (e.g. [1]), so a single 20kg propane bottle can last your entire energy demand for at least a week (and again: way longer if you cut back demand). Your greater concern at that point would be food and clean water, which you should have stacked up anyway if you're in a disaster-prone area, but no matter what there will be no scenario where the government is out of working order for more than two or three weeks. [1] https://ademax-strom.de/KOMPAK-Inverter-2.300W-Gas-Benzin-KGG20i-DF-Dual-Fuel-Stromerzeuger-230V/KP-KGG20Ei-DF https://ademax-strom.de/KOMPAK-Inverter-2.300W-Gas-Benzin-KG...

mturmon 3y ago

This claim could use a fact check. I’ve seen old illustrations of the first Model T driving through a town, and the noise was shown as frightening to horses pulling carriages. This would imply there was a feeling on the part of the “horse crowd” that the cars were displacing them. There also may have been a social push to move off of horses. Possibly reflected in disputes over speed laws, paving of roads, or lane assignments. Unsurprisingly, a Google search shows a broad literature around this, e.g., https://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-03-15/the-big-shift-last-time-from-horse-dung-to-car-smog/ https://www.resilience.org/stories/2013-03-15/the-big-shift-... (there are book-length treatments as well).

Almondsetat 3y ago
You are confusing marketing induced demand with doomsday induced demand. It’s not really a fact check of what I said