Quote:
Originally Posted by PKFFW
I never said anything about wanting a breakthrough to allow manufacture. By all means, let there be electric cars. I've got no problem with that. Let all who find EV's suit their needs buy one. I've got no problem with that. If one comes along that suits my needs at a price I can afford I will even buy one. Presently, they do not. The type of breakthrough I would be looking for is one that allows a car to do what I want it to do. What 95% of other people do with their cars doesn't interest me.
Another thing to consider is whether EV's are really all that better for the environment. As has been pointed out, PV cells currently can't possibly be used for full recharging requirements. Even if they can in the future they require that there never be a cloudy day when you want to charge your car. Mother nature is unlikely to be so accomodating. Therefore electricity produced in other ways is going to be needed. Pretty much every electricity production today is "unclean" in some way. And those production methods that are clean are not available in such quantities needed to recharge all these electric cars. So we are swapping one type of harmful emmissions for an increase in another type. Will the trade off be better for the environment? I don't know.
EV's would reduce relience upon oil which is a good thing but they shouldn't be considered the pancea for all the worlds ills.
Cheers,
PKFFW
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Very nice reply and thank you for being so tactful. I'll do my best to return the respect.
First off when I read your preceding post I must admit I saw in it all the symptoms of misinformation I usually encounter in most discussions on the topic. I can see you've also been programmed by a certain lobby's malfeasance and insistence on preserving their turf for them alone till the end. Not your fault. Just a victim of efficient PR.
A well designed car is not what we've been trained to think it is. We have to make the effort to think differently. Electric IS the solution because it leaves no residues. It will not be cleaner if the source of the electricity is not from a clean source. At the risk of repeating myself, an EV must be sold with its power source. This power source must be the most natural possible. There are many; Solar PVs, wind generators, micro hydro plants, wave power, anything that has the less impact possible. Of all the choices given, the one that stands out is solar. Why? It's been calculated that if every roof of every manmade building was covered with PVs, their impact would not change what the actual buildings already have had so far and that the power they would generate would be 4 times the amount of power the whole of this planet's humans need...
PVs still continue to work on cloudy days at slightly lower efficiency. When an installation is calculated for an array of PVs with a precise duty to perform, tables are used for sunshine averages and the correct number of panels + contingency is installed. The overproduction is sold back to the grid and vice versa when you need it.
There are two types of hydrogen vehicles. Hydrogen combustion and fuel cells. There are only two companies insisting on burning hydrogen in an ICE. Mercedez and BMW. This way of using hydrogen is wasteful because of the low 30/35% efficiency of ICEs. The other, fuel cell, is the more promising but it's really far away from the tangible goal of an autonomy of 300 miles. And their main propulsion is ... the electric motor...
The biggest trucks that we use in mines have electric motors.
The newest and most efficient propeller systems on huge ships are driven by electric motors.
Many trains use electric motors.
It's the source of power used to drive an electric motor that is critical.
Hydrogen has difficulties to contend with such as containment. Hydrogen being one of the smallest particle goes through most materials like wind through a bug screen
. The best tanks let a small part of their difficultly production content loose every day. With that in mind, it has to be used as soon as possible. Flammability? Skip... well, it's not worse than petrol...
The idea of any panacea is only good for binary people, it's impossible in reality. They've almost reached it with oil but where is it getting us?