EV Movement, Plastic Bag Bans, etc. - Is Motive Really Environment or Control? (solar, recycling)

[exchemist]

To what end? To impoverish ourselves?

Even you are not so ignorant as to be unaware of the reason.

 

[Nimos]

I have my doubts about, and seriously distrust the motives of the push for conversion to electric vehicles ("EV's). The goal of the EV movement is to restrict the freedom of movement. The environmental benefits are minuscule. We will not be generating nearly all our electricity by wind and solar in 2035. Europe's approaching disastrous winter shows that you cannot simply decree away hydrocarbon use. In addition, in order to make the required batteries, other major environmental damage is required. See, e.g. Electric Cars Are Not Particularly Green - Blowing Up Mountain Not Environmental Virtue. See also the article, The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles in the far from "denier" New York Times (link), points out that there is much environmental damage from manufacturing electric automobiles. The people and powers that are pushing the EV movement are either incredibly dumb, which I do not believe, are childlike, i.e. implicitly saying "we have to do something", or are willfully deceptive.

Personally, I don't think electric cars are going to solve anything, in fact, I think it is the wrong approach.

Sure, the cars might pollute less, but the mere amount of infrastructure required, which includes millions of charging stations that have to be constructed and new powerlines having to be laid all over to make it work and the number of cars needed to be produced with batteries etc. are insane. This should have been done 50 years ago, then it might have worked

It is fine to make a switch to electric cars, but without a "car on demand" system that is based on self-driving cars, where you simply call a car whenever you need one, I think it will be a complete disaster, to be honest. We need to reduce the number of needed and the only way to do that is to share them. Most cars spent the majority of their time just standing parked and taking up space.

 

[Subduction Zone]

To what end? To impoverish ourselves?

What makes you think that doing the right thing will cause us to impoverish ourselves?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Personally, I don't think electric cars are going to solve anything, in fact, I think it is the wrong approach.

Sure, the cars might pollute less, but the mere amount of infrastructure required, which includes millions of charging stations that have to be constructed and new powerlines having to be laid all over to make it work and the number of cars needed to be produced with batteries etc. are insane. This should have been done 50 years ago, then it might have worked

It is fine to make a switch to electric cars, but without a "car on demand" system that is based on self-driving cars, where you simply call a car whenever you need one, I think it will be a complete disaster, to be honest. We need to reduce the number of needed and the only way to do that is to share them. Most cars spent the majority of their time just standing parked and taking up space.

The car on demand concept may be coming yet. Changing to something besides petroleum powered cars is long overdue. It is the single greatest contribution to AGW. And even without electric cars our power grid is decades out of date. Just ask Texas. They went independent a while back and that has not worked for them. Increasing the capacity so that people can charge their own cars at home will only mean that if we do get cars on demand in the future that our improvements will last longer. The money making those improvements will not be wasted.

Right now we probably could implement autonomous driving worldwide. It is still not perfect. But demanding perfection can be detrimental. We should be more than happy with what is available now. Self driving cars are already much safer than human driven ones. If somehow the change could happen over night there would be a huge drop in accident rates. It would not drop to zero. How many people need to die needlessly while we are waiting for even better? We are far past "good enough" right now.

 

[Nimos]

The car on demand concept may be coming yet. Changing to something besides petroleum powered cars is long overdue. It is the single greatest contribution to AGW. And even without electric cars our power grid is decades out of date.

The same here in Denmark.

They have an idea that the majority of people should be driving electric cars, yet our power grid can't handle it so that would need to be fixed, also there would need to be built probably one charging station per every two parking slots. The amount of resources needed to do that is insane and can only imagine if all of EU and the US etc are going the same way.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The same here in Denmark.

They have an idea that the majority of people should be driving electric cars, yet our power grid can't handle it so that would need to be fixed, also there would need to be built probably one charging station per every two parking slots. The amount of resources needed to do that is insane and can only imagine if all of EU and the US etc are going the same way.

In the US we will need far fewer charging stations. over 65% of Americans live in their own homes. If one is a homeowner a simple heavy duty line will charge a car overnight. Very very few people drive further than an electric car can go in a day. If one was planning a road trip one would rely on charging stations. If one lived in an apartment one would probably rely on them too. On a per capita basis we would probably need less than half the number that you would need.

 

[Nimos]

In the US we will need far fewer charging stations. over 65% of Americans live in their own homes. If one is a homeowner a simple heavy duty line will charge a car overnight. Very very few people drive further than an electric car can go in a day. If one was planning a road trip one would rely on charging stations. If one lived in an apartment one would probably rely on them too. On a per capita basis we would probably need less than half the number that you would need.

You would still need a lot more. Our biggest city, Copenhagen if you stretch it, there live 1.3 million. There are living more people in New York than in all of Denmark combined. And I assume all people there, would need to be able to charge their car, so like us, you would have to place charging stations all over the place.

 

[metis]

To what end? To impoverish ourselves?

How does being environmentally conscious impoverish us? Is money more important than people?

 

[jbg]

Even you are not so ignorant as to be unaware of the reason.

Do you really think by tying a tourniquette around the economy we are going to prevent one heat wave, drought, flood, or the common cold? This is the logic of a Fourth Grade civics project, collect a few bottles and cans and make the world a better place.

Nice symbolism with lots of suffering.

 

[jbg]

The car on demand concept may be coming yet. Changing to something besides petroleum powered cars is long overdue. It is the single greatest contribution to AGW. And even without electric cars our power grid is decades out of date. Just ask Texas. They went independent a while back and that has not worked for them. Increasing the capacity so that people can charge their own cars at home will only mean that if we do get cars on demand in the future that our improvements will last longer. The money making those improvements will not be wasted.

Right now we probably could implement autonomous driving worldwide. It is still not perfect. But demanding perfection can be detrimental. We should be more than happy with what is available now. Self driving cars are already much safer than human driven ones. If somehow the change could happen over night there would be a huge drop in accident rates. It would not drop to zero. How many people need to die needlessly while we are waiting for even better? We are far past "good enough" right now.

A couple of dead pedestrians would beg to differ.

 

[F1fan]

The same here in Denmark.

They have an idea that the majority of people should be driving electric cars, yet our power grid can't handle it so that would need to be fixed, also there would need to be built probably one charging station per every two parking slots. The amount of resources needed to do that is insane and can only imagine if all of EU and the US etc are going the same way.

I think one solution will be solar charging stations at home and parking lots at work and stores. It won't totally charge cars but it will add some energy in a free and clean way, and reduce demand on the power grid.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I think one solution will be solar charging stations at home and parking lots at work and stores. It won't totally charge cars but it will add some energy in a free and clean way, and reduce demand on the power grid.

Well, we live rather to the north, so that has a limit, but yes, it has an effect.

 

[Subduction Zone]

A couple of dead pedestrians would beg to differ.

That is a foolish argument. You did not think through it all of the way.

 

[Nimos]

I think one solution will be solar charging stations at home and parking lots at work and stores. It won't totally charge cars but it will add some energy in a free and clean way, and reduce demand on the power grid.

The problem is fitting in all those charging stations and the time needed to charge the car has to go down by a great deal.

The Tesla Supercharger is the fastest charging option when you're away from home, allowing you to charge your car up to 200 miles in 15 minutes.

Whether that is true or not I don't know as there seem to be a lot of different numbers when you search on it. But still, imagine a motorway where each car has to spend 15 minutes charging, they have to be huge or there need to be a lot of them or they need to charge them in towers like parking buildings or something.

But also the huge amount of batteries needed, one can wonder how eco-friendly they really are and how these exact numbers are calculated. But there seem to be different views on this as expected.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The problem is fitting in all those charging stations and the time needed to charge the car has to go down by a great deal.

The Tesla Supercharger is the fastest charging option when you're away from home, allowing you to charge your car up to 200 miles in 15 minutes.

Whether that is true or not I don't know as there seem to be a lot of different numbers when you search on it. But still, imagine a motorway where each car has to spend 15 minutes charging, they have to be huge or there need to be a lot of them or they need to charge them in towers like parking buildings or something.

But also the huge amount of batteries needed, one can wonder how eco-friendly they really are and how these exact numbers are calculated. But there seem to be different views on this as expected.

Once again, not a problem if a person recharges at his home every night A 220 lead in the US would do it easily. Even a 110 would probably do it for almost everyone. Why assume that people can only charge at supercharging points?

 

[Nimos]

Once again, not a problem if a person recharges at his home every night A 220 lead in the US would do it easily. Even a 110 would probably do it for almost everyone. Why assume that people can only charge at supercharging points?

I don't assume that they can only do it there, but a lot today people might need to charge their cars when going from A to B, including trucks. Sure people would charge at home because you would need to have chargers all over the place where there is a parking lot.

 

[exchemist]

I don't assume that they can only do it there, but a lot today people might need to charge their cars when going from A to B, including trucks. Sure people would charge at home because you would need to have chargers all over the place where there is a parking lot.

Trucks are an issue, certainly. There's a lot of talk about hydrogen for those, as it's hard to get big enough batteries for the power output they require. There is even talk of equipping motorways with overhead power lines and fitting trolleys like those on a trolley bus to the cabs, so they can collect current that way on long haul, then come off the lines onto batteries just for the local journeys into and out of town. But I have not read of a commercial scale solution being trialled for them yet.

Private cars can work though, as the rapid take-up of them shows. As ever with changes of this magnitude it will be progressive, with some drivers finding it acceptable immediately and others not for a while, depending on the usage pattern. Battery and charging technology is nowhere near optimised yet either. Charging points are springing up all over the place. For instance one can now charge cars on the overnight ferry from England to France, which is quite cool.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Personally, I don't think electric cars are going to solve anything, in fact, I think it is the wrong approach.

Sure, the cars might pollute less, but the mere amount of infrastructure required, which includes millions of charging stations that have to be constructed and new powerlines having to be laid all over to make it work and the number of cars needed to be produced with batteries etc. are insane. This should have been done 50 years ago, then it might have worked

It is fine to make a switch to electric cars, but without a "car on demand" system that is based on self-driving cars, where you simply call a car whenever you need one, I think it will be a complete disaster, to be honest. We need to reduce the number of needed and the only way to do that is to share them. Most cars spent the majority of their time just standing parked and taking up space.

Electric cars will pollute more. It's a scam to rig insider trading and profit off companies that are forced to make this garbage.

Also they will never fess up to what to do with the impending discarded batteries and all the noxious chemicals they contain.

Democrats are only interested in profit and control for themselves, not the environment.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Once again, not a problem if a person recharges at his home every night A 220 lead in the US would do it easily. Even a 110 would probably do it for almost everyone. Why assume that people can only charge at supercharging points?

And families with multiple vehicles? How many outlets and how high is their electric bill going to be? That is between brown and blackouts from extreme overload on the grid.

 

[Soandso]

Meh. Gas technology in vehicles has pretty much stagnated over the past 50 years. Electric technology has been exponentially growing with no signs of stopping. It's where the future is going. We can either embrace the technology and build on an infrastructure that allows us to take the lead on innovation, or we can stagnate while the rest of the world passes us by. I'd rather we capitalize on this opportunity