Electric Cars

The Eskimos are in a bit of a pickle then with their ES (Electric Snowmobiles).

 

Well, I'm no expert in alternative energy sources, but I have a science background. I can tell you that alternative energies are becoming increasingly more efficient. Solar cells produced today are far more efficient than cells produced a only a decade ago, and with more funding and research, this will continue.

There is also some really promising research into creating plastics without the need for fossil fuels. There is an amazing new process in the lab that can actually make polyesters without needing crude oil at any step in the process, opting instead for ethylene, which can be made from natural gas liquids and shale gas.

This sort of thing requires research in the universities, which requires federal funding. I know that Trumpers hate universities and spending money on alternative energy research, but it's so vital. Our planet simply cannot sustain our lifestyle, and unless we progress into alternative energy sources, the stone age you mocking warn of will become fact.

 

A major argument made by scientists I'd that our finite supply of oil is bring wasted on fuel, when we should be using it to make carbon based products.

 

Why not? A driver is only allowed to drive 10 hours a day. Assuming a range of 300 miles, which is about 5 hours of driving, a large trucking company could strategically place stations where batteries could simply be switched out. A driver could drive half a day. Stop and have his batteries switched out while he had lunch. Then, at the end of his day, stop and recharge.

An uncle of mine lives in this interesting community. In the center is a lake. Circling the lake are two 18 hole golf courses, intertwined with homes. My uncle, retired and an avid golfer, often leaves in the morning to golf, using a battery powered golf cart. However, the batteries won't last all day. So rather than cut his excessive golfing down, he bought himself a second cart.

So now, he goes home for lunch, and swaps carts. Allowing him to golf all day if he wants.

 

I did some rough checking and the batteries are likely to weight between three and five tons. I think "simply be switched out" is a bit of a simplification.

Also, having some experience with lithium batteries, this is not the kind of thing you just want any old person doing. A miscalculation and you will get a very big fire and explosion..

 

I come from Colorado and lived at an elevation of a little over 6500 ft. In the winter it often got down below 0. Snow came in spurts, but it always came.

However Colorado gets a lot of sunshine. It is said that Colorado gets more days of sunshine than any other state, though I'm sure New Mexico gets just as much.

My water was heated from solar panels that were built into the roof. Just to be clear, these were panels that just heated water. My home was specifically designed to capture heat from the sun, in an entirely passive way. I had no furnace, but did have a high efficiency wood stove that could turn my home into a sauna, in no time at all.

I always had hot water, even on days when the high was only 20. I had one room, where the floors and walls were all sandstone, with big south facing windows. Same thing. The temps outside could be well below zero, but as long as the sun was shining, it was warm and stayed warm all night.

By the way, the best angles to position solar panels, is at such a slope, that snow just slides off, being as the sun is low in the sky when the most heating is needed.

 

Could YOU really create enough power to charge up

your EV? How many acres of solar cells


Moi

Across an immense, unguarded, ethereal border, Canadians, cool and unsympathetic,
regard our America with envious eyes and slowly and surely draw their plans against us.​

 

Well, you're not very well versed on fossil fuels either. I don't mean to be a total dick....well yes, I probably do since you are popping off about 'Trumpers' and crap, but you're not going to get any shale gas without fracking either. The Democrats want to ban all fracking, PERIOD. Yeah yeah, ethylene....can and is made from what the industry calls 'condensate'. Back in the day, they called it 'drip'. People would mix some of it in with gas in their trucks....but it was hell on valves and detonated....not good for combustion engines (but they got it for free). But back to plastics being made out of drip.....you need fracking. No fracking = no plastics. No plastics = no computers; no batteries for your fancy EV; no shielded wiring of any sort; practically everything has plastics in it....anything from tires to tampons.

And no, federal funding is not needed. Capitalism takes care of itself. If there is a cheaper way to make plastics out of another product, the market will figure it out. We don't need our tax dollars being flushed down the toilet. Did the federal government fund the discovery of oil in the United States? Nope. Did the Feds fund the discovery of the Great East Texas Oilfield? Nope. Spindletop? Nope.

Go back to spending tax dollars for shrimp on treadmills.

 

There are already trucks out there with 300 gallon fuel tanks. That is over a ton. Adding another 2-3 tons to a 40 ton vehicle is not a deal breaker. Especially if it frees one from having to pay gas companies for fuel.


However, this brings up another important point. That is the difference between the way conservatives think and the way liberals think. Notice how when confronted with a novel idea, a conservative is more likely to resist and to mock the idea, claim it can't be done. Even claim those expressing the idea are only dreaming, or delusional.

Yet, in the liberal brain, the wheels start a churning, trying to figure out how all the obstacles can be overcome. It is why all the great innovators have been liberal leaning.

One if the central themes of liberal thought is the continual improvement of the human condition. That and the scientific worldview. That the more we investigate the more we know. Possibly the current batteries aren't ideal, but they are a great deal better than batteries of the past, and I'm sure in the future they will be even better.

 

If you noticed, I was talking about how I was using solar energy to heat my home and water, mostly for free. Incidently, my vehicles stayed warm in the garage. Making it easing to start them in the cold of winter. Heated by solar energy.

 

You seem to be missing the deeper ideological question at hand.


Are you free, can you truly be free if you are tied to fossil fuels. If every week, you have to lay down your hard earned dollars, just to buy fuel. Or when they jerk you around with price hikes and causing our country to go to war over. Or how it fouls our air and water.


In Colorado, there is an area that the locals call Smelly Valley. It first got its name from the rendering plants that had been there during Denver's hey day as a cattle town. The cattle industry has been replaced with oil refineries. Even driving along the highway, the smell can gag you, if your windows are down. Smelly dirty business.

 

When are you people going to get it through your heads that your little fancy wind turbines are made from fossil fuels......YOU CAN'T EVEN MAKE YOUR DAMN WINDMILLS WITHOUT OIL. Jeezus. You can't even plug in your EV without oil because the damn cord is insulated with fossil fuel based sheathing. What are you gonna do? Plug in a bare copper stranded wire?

I'm not missing ****! If you get rid of fracking, you best go buy yourself a horse and plant yourself a nice garden....since we will all ****ing starve because tractors don't run on unicorn farts.

 

Why use oil for fuel? Why not just use it for plastics? There will always be a use for oil. If we used a cleaner, renewable energy sources, there would be no need to frack, as there would be plenty of oil available without it.

They were making windmills hundreds of years ago, all without petroleum products.

Ever so often I will see a company's sales literature. And it will have a picture of what appears to be clock gears. The caption will then go on, something about a well oiled machine.

This is so ridiculous. Clocks and watches don't use oil, don't need oil, and if oiled, the clock's performance will be degraded.

 

Ironic PROJECTION duly noted FTR and ignored for derogatory reasons.

 

Having traveled, and still do, I have to agree that America is not what it once was in the past for a variety of reasons, not least being a dearth of leadership with vision.

Back on topic the world is NOT waiting for America to achieve all of the necessary technological breakthroughs. Instead they are all coming up with a variety of solutions so it is akin to a Manhatten Project but on a global scale and without the same secrecy since a great deal of these breakthroughs are being shared via the Internet. Scientists were some of the first to see the advantage of online information sharing and were the early pioneers doing it. Nowadays it is routine.

The heavy vehicles are already for sale and some are on the roads hauling freight. While you do need horsepower to pull a load over a mountain range an EV motor does NOT suffer the same HP depletion due to lack of oxygen that occurs with ICE. Granted there will be a greater drain on the batteries but some of that will be replenished on the downside and given the consistent torque of an EV the odds are that the battery drain will not be as significant as anticipated. Tesla's Semi prototype hauling 75,000 lbs is obtaining better than expected range by around 20%. Ford's F150 EV prototype was demonstrated pulling 10 railroad freight cars comprising 1 million+ lbs.

Just because America is lagging does not mean that everyone else is just hanging around waiting for it to happen. Southern Australia now has grid sized battery backup system thanks to Elon Musk. Things are happening and will continue to happen regardless as to whether or not We the People are willing to participate in these changes.

Perhaps the best thing about the Green Revolution is that you can do it for yourself. I installed solar hot water and it is going to be paid off in just 30 months by the end of this year. That means that I will have already recouped my capital investment and will also have ongoing savings to invest in the next stage of going green. My goal is to be independent of the grid by the end of next year and that is both feasible and makes economic sense because the fewer bills I have to pay the better. I am far from being alone when it comes to making these changes.

It will only be a matter of time before selling a home WITHOUT solar power will be a serious handicap to closing the deal. Those homes will be perceived as "fixer-uppers" and discounted accordingly. The world is changing and America can lag behind or get with the program. Our choice and I have already made mine.

 

Thank you for establishing that your math was WRONG!

Did you NOT know that solar panels still work on cloudy days?

 

Projecting your own failure to "think that one through" duly noted FTR!

There are these things called BATTERIES that STORE solar power so that there is energy available for BOTH day AND NIGHT!

There is no problem at all charging the EV overnight from the storage batteries.

On top of that there is always the FACT that with any EV with a range greater than 160 miles would ONLY need to be charged over the weekends in which case it could EASILY be FULLY CHARGED over those days if they did not want to use the battery option.

ALL of these issues have already been thought through and RESOLVED. Doing your own research into the subject matter is probably a smart move in order to find out for yourself.

 

Abject FAILURE to substantiate your BOGUS allegation duly noted FTR and ignored for obvious reasons.

 

I was not talking about the capability of the truck carrying the battery weight. I was pointing out the difficulty of changing the batteries twice a day or even four times a day if they are using multiple drivers.

 

At no time have you proved that a single thing I wrote was wrong.

 

By the logic the OP uses, we should do away with all electric devices.

 

Kneejerk denialism non sequitur inanity duly noted and ignored for obvious reasons.

 

It is a stretch to call it logic IMO!

 

They can drive 12 hours a day and then "go on the law" and must rest for 8 hours, what happens with over the road trucking is there are two drivers one bunks up in the sleeper and get his rest while the other drives, then when that driver goes on the law the other driver takes over, the truck is never shut down between origin and destination.

So unless someone can build a EV cab on chassis that has a 3K range EV will be relegated to local deliveries only.