Anyone own a Tesla (or other electric vehicle)?

[StarMan2112]

 

[speedkilz88]

I think it is great that all technologies are evolving

Just let them play out without govt intervention.... dictating winners and losers through subsides and regulations

Let the best man win......ICE vs EV ..... but either way neither is going away any time soon

There is too much oil under American control to give up on drilling... the World will lag behind for decades and keep depending on fossil fuels

The problem is the vast majority off power plants are still using fuels. Majority of people are scared to death of nuclear power plants. The best vehicles for the environment right now would be natural gas driven vehicles.

 

[Jammer]

My fiancée has a Nissan Leaf. It's a pretty cool car. Has a lot of bells and whistles (heated seats/steering wheel/GPS) and when it's not in "ECO" mode it has amazing pickup and go. We've installed a charging station at the house and we've determined it's about >$2 a day to charge. At 80% charge (recommended for battery life) the car gets 60 miles. At full 100% charge it's about 75 miles. For her job commuting around town it's perfect. My fiancée is completely convinced the electric car is completely green so there is no discussion about how "green" it really is.

 

[gmoney112]

Very interesting.

I never really thought of all the ramifications of EVs.

This is a honest take from Politico which is a left-leaning rag and even they aren’t sold on the true benefits of EVs.

https://www.___GET_REAL_URL___/s/ww...lectric-cars-worse-for-the-environment-000660

I'm not even sure where he made his point. He talks about the grid, and California's rates, then decides to talk about EVs only being marketable to rich people.

It sounded like he wanted a contrarian take and went backwards from there.

There are only a couple of legitimate points about EVs. They're not very "clean" if powered by coal fired electricity, which is true but LNG put coal on life support, renewables pulled the plug. Natural gas in utility scale generation is still much cleaner than gasoline and diesel. Second point, Cobalt is mined a lot in countries that are terrible labor wise. Cobalt is used in cathodes, but Tesla reduced theirs a lot. That's valid, but the industry is trying to move away from it, and the general topography of a battery is pretty easy, it's the chemistry and production that's hard, but minimizing and removing Cobalt is a priority in the industry (it's also more of a humanitarian thing, not an emissions thing)

I worked upstream Oil&Gas for 6 years in the Permian after getting an energy degree. I would like to think I'm not just some random hippy, although I did become a software engineer because the cyclical nature of oil&gas was annoying.

EVs are magnitudes "cleaner". As far as costs, pretty irrelevant, but if a capital intensive emerging technology being expensive is a surprise to anyone, then God have mercy on your soul.

But costs are going to come down, batteries will get more cost efficient. It's one of the most sought after technologies in the world, and we didn't even really understand how electrodes degraded on a molecular level until fairly recently.

The people making these points are usually disingenuous, it always comes back to the grid, which they probably don't understand, or mining conditions, which isn't optimal but is a goal to move away from, and is also a little irrelevant when it comes to "clean energy".

Most people don't understand energy at all, and that's okay. But, in this case, EVs, even if you personally think they're stupid, are still much "cleaner" when you apply scale. Especially if they're already using better chemistries and economies of scale as more renewable capacity is added to the grid.

 

[CalPolyTechnique]

I'm not even sure where he made his point. He talks about the grid, and California's rates, then decides to talk about EVs only being marketable to rich people.

It sounded like he wanted a contrarian take and went backwards from there.

There are only a couple of legitimate points about EVs. They're not very "clean" if powered by coal fired electricity, which is true but LNG put coal on life support, renewables pulled the plug. Natural gas in utility scale generation is still much cleaner than gasoline and diesel. Second point, Cobalt is mined a lot in countries that are terrible labor wise. Cobalt is used in cathodes, but Tesla reduced theirs a lot. That's valid, but the industry is trying to move away from it, and the general topography of a battery is pretty easy, it's the chemistry and production that's hard, but minimizing and removing Cobalt is a priority in the industry (it's also more of a humanitarian thing, not an emissions thing)

I worked upstream Oil&Gas for 6 years in the Permian after getting an energy degree. I would like to think I'm not just some random hippy, although I did become a software engineer because the cyclical nature of oil&gas was annoying.

EVs are magnitudes "cleaner". As far as costs, pretty irrelevant, but if a capital intensive emerging technology being expensive is a surprise to anyone, then God have mercy on your soul.

But costs are going to come down, batteries will get more cost efficient. It's one of the most sought after technologies in the world, and we didn't even really understand how electrodes degraded on a molecular level until fairly recently.

The people making these points are usually disingenuous, it always comes back to the grid, which they probably don't understand, or mining conditions, which isn't optimal but is a goal to move away from, and is also a little irrelevant when it comes to "clean energy".

Most people don't understand energy at all, and that's okay. But, in this case, EVs, even if you personally think they're stupid, are still much "cleaner" when you apply scale. Especially if they're already using better chemistries and economies of scale as more renewable capacity is added to the grid.

Thanks for the post.

I can’t speak to the accuracy of the specifics mentioned in the article. I was just saying he brought up some points I’ve never even really considered. I think most people (myself included) just look at the end product (i.e. the vehicle) and not the larger impacts (i.e. the National Grid).

I agree with you one of your larger points that this is an emerging technology and advancements will come exponentially in short order. I do wonder though if we are sort of in the beginning of the sweet spot; electric is vastly cheaper than fossil but as EVs become more prevalent then usage increases and cost raise.

 

[morasp]

With enough solar panels EVs could be charged at home and still provide the homes energy requirements. I was excited to see this Enphase energy video in terms of a grid tie system during a power outage. Things are really coming around.