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'Electric Buses Now Cheaper Than Their Diesel or CNG Counterpart, Could Dominate the Market Within 10 Years' (electrek.co)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Transit vehicles today are mostly powered by gasoline, diesel, and CNG, while batteries only represent about 1 percent of the market. It is currently a small part of the industry, but it's also the fastest growing fuel source in the sector and it's starting to become highly competitive. Electric bus maker Proterra is ramping up production and currently claims to be cheaper than diesel and CNG. It leads CEO Ryan Popple to make a bold prediction that battery-powered buses will dominate the transit bus market within 10 years. More specifically, he says that the majority of new bus sales will be electric by 2025 and all new bus sales to transit agencies will be electric by 2030. Proterra has so far only delivered a few hundred all-electric buses, but they have been announcing several major deals lately, like 73 buses from King County's Metro Transit, that seem to indicate there's a shift in the transit industry.
Too much gets said about how great electrically powered vehicles are, but they're only zero emission at point o suse. Not enough gets said about where the electricity to charge those batteries comes from - unless it's wind/solar/wave, then it's actually quite a lot of emissions in the overall system.
As a local boy, King County (Seattle, WA) makes sense for this. The downtown bus routes have overhead wiring. The city already has a vast network of electric buses running, so adding battery operated buses to transition on/off the connected wired network makes sense. They're probably one of the easiest metros to make such a transition.
This isn't possible. God simply will not allow electric-powered vehicles to gain that market share. Everyone knows Jesus wants humanity burning fossil fuels, the safe energy that He would never allow to harm us.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Electric scooters and cars, and now busses, are very quiet. Great, until you a walk in front of one while looking down at your phone, or talking with someone.
Will they add an engine sound?
Buses are communist already and now you want to make them run on sunshine? Stupid libs!
Of course electric busses are cheaper. So are electric taxis and other high mileage commercial vehicles. Busses are an even more obvious target for electrification because they are big enough to encompass large battery packs, follow predictable routes and timetables, tend to taxed heavily due to creating a lot of pollution, and cost a lot to start with so the extra for a battery pack is a lower proportion of the overall price.
China is really leading the way here, on track for near 100% EV bus sales by 2020.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Sorry to be daft, but shouldn't you describe this acronym at least once in the posted article?
I'm always dubious of claims like this. There's an XKCD out there conveying exactly why we shouldn't put much stock into this CEO.
However, I will say that I am deeply impressed with the electric buses that run off of an overhead catenary wire. Cities should seriously look into electrifying heavily used bus routes. Easy way to save fuel cash and cut pollution down too.
I can't imagine the batteries can last all day, do they have swappable battery packs?
Going from one electric bus to two electric buses doubles the market share.
Really? I know a good size brand new diesel engine can cost upwards of $50,000, but the rest of the bus remains around the same price. This bus includes 660 kWh of batteries, giving 350 miles of range. Last I checked, $750 was the going price per kWh of Lithium Ion batteries. That's $495,000 in batteries alone.
Perhaps they're including long term use of fuel costs, in which case it might be cheaper somewhere. Here in Ontario that 660 kWh would cost $100 - $200 (depending on when they charge the buses). Propane sells at 46 cents a litre here, and an LPG bus gets about 4 mpg... or $152 for a 350 mile fillup. I hear electricity costs even more in California and some other US states.
Sooooo... how are they figuring on cheaper? I want to see the numbers.
Busses drive all day long every day. When are they supposed to recharge the batteries? At night? Are they going to lug around enough battery to keep a big heavy bus running all day long on its stop and go route? Even with regenerative breaking that's a huge ask for current and near term foreseeable battery technology.
I can't see cities jumping on the idea of busses that have to come back to the depot to be swapped out every 4 hours. It's also not clear to me how a vehicle carrying literally tons of high capacity batteries will be cheaper than a diesel/CNG vehicle of similar design.
I read the internet for the articles.
It's well known for homes that electrical heat is the most expensive form of heat, by far. Cars have relatively small cabins but even in places like Finland they add (aftermarket?) kerosene heaters in the engine compartment so the driver doesn't kill the battery range in the cold heating himself. Otoh, heat is just a excess byproduct in a normal engine.
How're these buses going to do it?
They have been tried. The experiment failed miserably. This was typically 2 or 3 years ago. Now, I know technology improves but not that fast. It's going to be another 10 years at least before reality catches up to marketing hype.
Bullshit. Electric busses do not have the range necessary to replace gas or diesel, except on very short routes. That's why the tree-huggers in Los Angeles are only buying a few, for selected short routes. Battery technology is just not there. 185 pounds of gasoline (30 US gallons) will take my work van about 570 miles (at 65 miles per hour), and can be "recharged" in less than 10 minutes. Make a 185 pound battery that will go the same distance, at the same speed, and "recharge" in the same time; THEN you've got something. I know, I know, they're working on it. Some people have been working on anti-gravity propulsion and perpetual motion for a long time, too. With as much success.
Someone needs to google "fuel source"
batteries going to come from? Metals are actually rarer than oil and gas and mining them is environmentally way more destructive than oil drilling. Lithium is going to run out way before coal. How are electric vehicle fleets that burn through our lithium reserves at 5000% the current rate going to be sustainable? Anyone have any stats on this?
I had to look it up, thought I'd post it here for anyone else who was wondering what the heck CNG is.
I have seen the mess of cables necessary to support electric trolleys in Seattle and elsewhere. With batteries, you could reduce the overhead wiring to straight streets and above bus stops,where it is cheap to install and power, allowing charging during normal operation. At stops, the bus stops for a while to take on and let off passengers, and buses have stops for a few minutes at the beginning and end of routs at terminals to allow the drivers to get up and use the facilities. All are good opportunities for high rate charging.
Some buses run on batteries, but I've seen several systems now for buses that get power from overhead lines (similar to trains). The summary seems to be overlooking these vehicles.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Too much gets said about how great electrically powered vehicles are, but they're only zero emission at point o suse.
And what is your point? Electric vehicles can be powered by both/either fossil fuels or non-emitting sources of power. Nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, etc are all potential sources of generation, none of which emit substantial carbon during normal operation. Roughly 1/3 of power in the US comes from non-fossil fuel sources so right off the bat your emissions drop by up to 1/3 per vehicle. And it's a lot easier to control emissions from 1 power plant than millions of little engines. Electric vehicles give you a choice of power sources and make it easier to control your pollution. Internal combustion vehicles do not.
Due to efficiencies of scale the worst coal power plants to EV systems are still likely to be twice a pollutant efficient as a ICE vehicle.
Citation needed. That also isn't a particularly meaningful comparison since only about 1/3 of US power comes from coal. It's quite possible to power an EV entirely with non-fossil fuel sources.
Yes I am using hyperbole and I would welcome someone with enough time to disprove me.
No thanks. You made the claim. Cite your source and prove your case. Don't ask us to do your homework for you.
I can't imagine the batteries can last all day, do they have swappable battery packs?
They could be swappable. However they also are big enough to have very large battery packs which should last a good long time presuming the power to weight ratio make sense. Also remember that electric does not necessarily mean battery powered. You can draw power from a tap like many light rail systems do and it's still electric.
Yeah. I get it. You're being foolish and shortsighted.
Renewable energy is the way of the near future. But that is no reason to oppose the Keystone Pipeline. We need carbon based fuel in the now. Let's produce it here. Make jobs here. Don't send money to the Saudi religious nuts. And use the tax revenue from said production to fund alternative solutions.
Re immigration? When do you say no? When we have a 500 million people (in 30 yrs) or 1 billion people (in 70 years)?
Who gets to decide? The people living here? Or do they have no say?
It's foolishness to say that the people here have no say.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
This AC is a flaming jerk, like most ACs are, but in this case he's not wrong on some points. The vast majority of people don't want to use public transportation. Aside from the various inconveniences of it, personal safety risks, personal health risks, etc, it's viewed as something that poor people use, and even poor people tend to want to maintain at least the appearance of not being poor. This is nothing new, either, humans have always been this way, and I see no reason that will ever change about humans, either; people want personal transportation. Has nothing to do with 'Americans' or any other nationality, has nothing to do with 'greed, avarice' or any of the other nonsense that this AC is spouting, it's just pure and simple human nature.
Public transportation will always have a place in civilization, but it will never replace personal transportation. Electric vehicles are not only more efficient and non-polluting in and of themselves, they're also lower maintenance and quieter; they are the future and we should embrace it. Concerns about where the energy comes from are temporary problems; re-introduction of nuclear power, in the form of redesigned, safer fission reactors, is also something we need to embrace, rather than succumbing to the 'nuclear boogieman' of the past. Continuing to research and develop energy storage systems will also help. So-called 'renewable' sources like solar and wind will supplement and tide us over until the new generation of reactors can be brought on-line. Meanwhile we'll continue to chase practical fusion power, and other more exotic sources of energy.
Never forget the General Motors streetcar conspiracy
Don't let history repeat itself.
As a frequent pedestrian and also motorcyclist, I really hope this catches on, will beat choking on diesel fumes whenever a bus goes by, or am stopped behind one.
So why are coal powered buses and cars so popular with the environmental crowd. I dont get it.
I wish the article had a little more analysis and technical detail. Anyone know what drives the competitiveness of electric buses vs other vehicles? What technology changes are changing this cost equation and how do they impact other vehicle markets?
Why are buses more competitive but cars aren't?
Is this about the ability to recapture energy when braking on electric vehicles? For buses used in cities stopping regularly, I could see this being a big deal.
Do form factor differences allowing better engineering decisions?
Does the high usage of buses make the fuel cost difference more dominant in the equation, making up for the higher capital costs? Would that mean that electric vehicles will come to dominate the taxi market too (until the taxi market is overwhelmed by self-driving vehicles)?
I am not a green Nazi.
However IMHO school buses should be hybrids or electric. The kids are standing at a bus stop when the bus pulls up in a cloud of gas.
Then when it pulls away, the kids, waiting for the next bus, get gassed.
Putting a bunch of batteries in a little vehicle may make a BIG mileage number for someone's ego, but does not make cents.
Adding $10k to go from 40mph to 50mph does not pay off for years. and it raised the price of an econo box by a third.
Add $10k of batteries to a school bus it is a small percentage of cost and going from 8 to 9 mpg on a vehicle that goes 100k miles a year, pays off quick.
BAM 2 good reasons, the left and the right can agree on.
With how global infrastructure & battery tech these days, there is NO EXCUSE to doubt we will be 100% clean energy in a matter of a few years.
Define "Clean Energy" because if you mean 100% from wind, solar and other renewables, there is zero chance that's happening. Now if you allow for some kind of CO2 emission in your "clean energy" equation. We can do that if you allow CO2 emissions, but otherwise it isn't happening. We don't have the technology to do 100%.
BTW, Batteries are NOT the solution. They may help, but they won't solve the electric energy storage problem that 100% renewables presents the electrical power industry. They are not very efficient ways to store electrical energy, they are horribly dirty to manufacture and to get rid of when they wear out. So batteries are not "clean" either....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
re-introduction of nuclear power, in the form of redesigned, safer fission reactors, is also something we need to embrace, rather than succumbing to the 'nuclear boogieman' of the past.
You talk about human nature wanting personal vehicles and then take exactly the opposite argument here. Human nature doesn't change just because its convenient for your argument. People are afraid of nuclear fission whether or not those fears are justified. That is human nature and it is unlikely to change. And their fears are not without some rational basis in many cases. The problem with fission as a power source is simply that when it goes wrong it can go REALLY wrong. Given that humans are imperfect sooner or later you are going to have a major catastrophe if we rely on nuclear fission. We've already had two good sized disaster and they are unlikely to be the last. There has been no breakthrough that eliminates the problems and risks associated with it. Are modern reactors safer? Probably. Does it matter? Not really. Should we use more fission? Perhaps but it probably won't happen.
I think fossil fuels are a clear and present danger to us as a species but thinking that we are just going to switch over to fission to replace fossil fuels is mostly just wishful thinking. Nuclear fission simply has become to big of a boogey man and a political hot potato to be a realistic alternative any time soon.
The majority of people are poor, so using a form of transportation that poor people use is pretty natural for them. However, the main problem with most public transport is that it sucks. Where it doesn't, everybody uses it, rich and poor, just like they do the sidewalks.
Re immigration?
One planet, one people. Quit your bellyaching and live with it! Be a xenophile (xenophiliac?), not a xenophobe. More sex, better variety. What could you possibly have against that?
Power plants have been switching to cheap natural gas for years now - even when they are not legally required to do so. It's all about cutting costs - regardless of the lies told by Mitch McConnell and other Republicans that say there is a "war on coal."
Power is mostly natural gas in the USA now - thanks to mostly fracking. And as China continues with her breakthroughs in solar, we'll be seeing even more of that in the future. Thank the gods for that! But due to our shortsightedness and resistance from the uninformed and ignorant half of our electorate, China and the rest of the World is leading the World into the future; while we the USA sit around and bicker with people who insist on believing the lies of people who are heavily invested in old outdated technologies and bribe Republicans to convince their moronic base that they are right.
EVs are the future and so is green energy It's going to happen and all the global climate change deniers, sketpics, conservatives, etc... are just irrelevant.
Green energy and renewables are better, more efficient, cleaner, and will allow for the economic growth that we desperately need.
Fossil fuels are dirty, old, inefficient, and obsolete. Besides, we'll be needing them for the raw materials for polymers and whatnot.
It's simple economics.
As is usually the case, conservatives are on the wrong side of progress into the future. They want to keep things the same but that is an impossibility. Life is change and therefore will always be at odds with conservative values.
Ten years? Just in time for the return of disco, flying cars, a cure for Alzheimer's and unlimited free nuclear power.
Lithium is more common in Earth's crust than lead. Plus unlike coal and oil, you use it over and over again and can be reclaimed after batteries are no longer rechargeable (or obsoleted by newer technology). Any shortages are just because we haven't ramped up mining/recovery of it. Once demand is really there we will probably extract it from sea water where it is in relative abundance (and fare less destructive than your apocalyptic mining hyperbole would be).
Letter To Iran
Electric busses may make a lot of sense in city traffic. How do the long "refuel" cycles impact fleet availability?
"Fastest Growing" is a meaningless term without context...
Yeah, but thing is....it is still a BUS.
Doesn't matter what you do to the engine or externals of it...who wants to ride a public transportation bus around sitting next to some smelly bums?!?
In Toronto, Canada, about 2.75M people per day. The entire city basically shuts down if the TTC is not running, and there's major chaos if the subway has issues.
For some deranged reason you think only poor people who cannot afford bathing ride public transit. In Toronto at least, every aspect of society uses it. There are professional sports players (Blue Jays, Raptors) that take transit to work and practice. There are Bay Street (think WallStreet.ca) high rollers that take the TTC (and GO, the regional rail system) to work.
Perhaps if you lived in an area that has infrastructure that is non-third world quality you'd have a different opinion. The TTC has many problems with it, but Toronto probably has better transportation options that 90% of American cities.
What a beautiful world this will be
-- Cheers!
Joe sixpack doesn't give a damn about what makes his car move as long as it's cheap.
-- Cheers!
Buses will be replaced by autonomous vehicles on tracks the vehicles will take you to your final destination without ever having to stop. They will travel 10 times faster and use one-tenth the amount of energy. Our current system is unsustainable, which means it will end in the extinction of our species.
This is not the time to buy new buses. Don't buy capital items that will soon be made obsolete by self-driving vehicles. Some combination of self-driving cars, buses and passenger drones will soon be the way to go. Save the $ for that.
As long as the wheels on the bus go round and round, I think we will be fine. Now all we need are 99 bottles of beer on the wall.
this is what you are talking about. https://cleantechnica.com/2017...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
So you allege greed, avarice etc aren't part of human nature? They are a result of conditioning living in Western style society?
World wide that may be true.
But in the first world, you have to use an absurd definition of poor.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Right now a tesla battery would cost around $190/kWh and gm $145/kWh. One kWh can power a one horsepower electric motor for just over an hour. A horsepower is 746 watts, and despite common misconceptions not nearly 100% efficient - they tend to be 50% at peak power, near 10% efficient at peak torque at low speed and 90% at low torque high speed. This is true for pmdc and induction motors. City busses get about 4mpg average and often run for long periods. A electric pack for a bus would easily run 10-20x the size for a ev like a car. So we are talking about costs of up to half a million dollars for a good lithium pack before subsidies and sold at a reasonable profit margin.
Since a large chunk of emissions comes from manufacture simply throwing busses away after 10 years because of a half million dollar battery would be disasterous. The cost to subsidize them would be significant. The real push needs to be lowering the cost of the battery to a much more manageable up front cost.
Define "Clean Energy" because if you mean 100% from wind, solar and other renewables, there is zero chance that's happening.
Norway has 100% hydroelectric.
Sweden is half nuclear and half hydroelectric with some wind power supplement.
The great thing is that the hydroelectric already is in place. Coal and nuclear are great at providing constant power, but since the load varies we need a power source that can follow the load.
Coal and nuclear causes the same problems for the grid that wind and solar does in that neither of them can follow the load.
Hydroelectric doesn't care if the rest of the energy comes from coal or wind. The only thing that matters is that the average from other sources is large enough to keep the dam size down.
It is perfectly possible so the only reason to why it wouldn't happen is because of naysayers.
whats your definition of poor? if you think everyone in the first world can afford to run a car then you must be living in a different world to most of us
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Even if all electricity were to come directly from coal, which do you think would add more pollutants to the atmosphere? A million cars, each with a little dinky catalytic converter on them, or a few coal plants with gigantic industrial scrubbers that are not limited by size/space/weight constraints?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
you can't accuse someone of being shortsighted then keep banging on about needing an old tech.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Getting smog out of the valley I live in is a huge benefit of electrical vehicles. There is something about certain cities where air pollution tends to accumulate. Most big power plants, even coal, tend to be in locations where there are not many people and where there air currents and climate don't cause a huge lingering cloud to form.
California gets 7% of their power from hydroelectric. While a conventional automobile gets 100% of it's power from combustion of fuel and that means emissions.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Under the new EU and other nations (e.g. Canada/Mexico/Japan/China) requirements, all-electric busses are required in all markets for all fleets.
The average cost to fuel (electricity) such fleets is 1/10th to 1/20th the cost of an equivalent diesel bus. The maintenance is, on average, about half that of a diesel bus.
There are some deviations from this: very rural areas need to set up either battery swap or rapid charge stations, which are easily fueled with wind and solar. However, almost all fleet bus lines operate in urban centers, where this is not a problem.
One drawback: this cuts pollution in urban centers dramatically. In some places in the Western US, pollution from trucks, bus, and cars is up to 40 percent of all pollution.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Here in Winnipeg the city Transit service has been testing electric buses for a local coachbuilder for quite a few years with what I have heard to be good results.
http://winnipegtransit.com/en/...
King County is also already a large customer for their hybrid diesel-electric buses.
https://www.newflyer.com/buses...
If they can work well here in our cold winters and hot summers they can probably work well in most places in North America.
christ! jaded much?
Really, is it a huge surprise that the CEO of a company claims their product is cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain, carries more passengers, looks better, and an angel gets their wings each time one is sold?
Here's the thing. The value proposition of a fleet purchase is the responsibility of the customers, not the vendor. The vendor is always going to be biased towards their own product! Even if that product is a flaming turd (and I'm not saying that Proterra's is), the CEO is going to defend it and put the best light on it. They sorta have to, it's called a "fiduciary responsibility".
Which is exactly why you don't give the vendors the last word on their own products.
Batteries can easily hold a charge for a day. The question is how much work is that battery doing in a day? Winnipeg says its buses travel 50K kilometers/year, which works out to 85 miles day. Bump that to 100 to account for days off due to maintenance, and that's still within the range of most EVs these days. And that's city driving, so they'll be using regenerative braking to recharge frequently.
Lower fuel costs, less maintenance, I can't see any reason e-buses won't work.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Define "Clean Energy" because if you mean 100% from wind, solar and other renewables, there is zero chance that's happening. Now if you allow for some kind of CO2 emission in your "clean energy" equation. We can do that if you allow CO2 emissions, but otherwise it isn't happening. We don't have the technology to do 100%.
Sure we do. We just don't have the infrastructure. Yet. I mean technically, we do have to allow for some CO2 emissions, with human beings breathing, but there is no technological impediment to eliminating all coal, gas, and other such heavily polluting electrical generation. It's a matter of cost, and willpower.
BTW, Batteries are NOT the solution. They may help, but they won't solve the electric energy storage problem that 100% renewables presents the electrical power industry.
Well, yes, that they won't be able to keep raping us with excessive rates and screw us with pollution could be considered a problem, but why do you advance the causes of the electrical power industry? Are they paying you to post for them?
Why not ask for the issues that 100% renewables solves for the people of the world?
They are not very efficient ways to store electrical energy, they are horribly dirty to manufacture and to get rid of when they wear out. So batteries are not "clean" either....
Oh yes, batteries are so dirty, they're only like 90% recyclable, versus less than 1% for burning gasoline and diesel.
Check what comes out of your exhaust sometimes. Even the waste heat alone is excessive. And you worry about battery efficiency.
They take all night to charge at the fastest charge speed. which means you need to bring in some rather beefy power distribution to your maintenance site. It also means that if you run a 24 hour bus schedule that you'll have to have to have extra buses and rotate them through charging.
Pumping 100 gallons of diesel likely only took about 10 minutes per bus. If a city had a feel of 50 buses, that's still an estimated 8 hours spend on refueling them. (honestly there are usually more than 1 pump, but it's hard for one person to keep an eye on filling up more than 4 at a time).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
We need carbon based fuel in the now.
Don't know about you, but gas is under $2/gallon where I'm at. Natural gas is holding steady over the last 5 years. Hard to justify any desperate we-need-it-right-now measure.
Let's produce it here. Make jobs here.
The Keystone pipeline takes oil from Alberta, Canada and moves it to Port Arthur for sale and shipment. Apart from building the thing, how would this make jobs here?
Global warming is a far more pressing problem. We don't need more oil, we need less. Any money put to this pipeline would pay far greater dividends in renewable energy sources. Wind, solar, tidal, hydroelectric. Oil was great in its day, but just like coal - it's rapidly becoming unnecessary.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Super-Caps are far superior to batteries for a city bus system.
Batteries may hit the price point a year or two sooner, but
Super-Caps are positioned to win the race.
Save your money.
Short sighted re immigration and the belief that Trump wants "nasty smoggy pollutants" because he and the Russians agree on one thing. Money should not go to the Saudis as they spend billions in spreading their religious zeal to mosques around the world.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
They're qualities that are culturally encouraged or culturally disavowed to varying degrees in different parts of the world. What appears to be human nature is highly subject to ones environment.
"Old man yells at systemd"
They don't immediately respond to the accelerator pedal and they momentarily speed up when the brake is pressed, both of which probably have something to do with flywheel energy storage. I wouldn't be surprised if they are involved in more accidents. Increased stress on the operator's nerves and brake foot couldn't be healthy either.
All buses in the US bought by Federal Government or are heavily subsidized. All buses are replaced every 8-10 years. At 4 years all buses get brand new drive trains. Proterra uses its own fast DC chargers on the roof of the bus. Proterra will be a big company soon. Thomson Energy is a start-up that sells electric drive trains for the mid life overhaul. yeah!
From which orifice did you pull that misinformation?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I can, but since I seriously hate driving, public transport it is. My only grudge is that neither buses nor trains are reliably punctual all the time.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
...the main problem with most public transport is that it sucks...where it doesn't, everybody uses it, rich and poor...
I ride with everyone from poor moms with 2 kids in strollers and homeless folks to guys in 3 piece suits with $500 pairs of shoes. In between are everyone else from high school kids to college kids, and the breadth of the middle and upper-middle class workforce.
I bus about 35 minutes each way. I could drive that in 20-25 minutes, and there's an added 5-10 minute walk/wait on each end for the bus. End result is that I spend 80-90 minutes per day commuting on the bus for $50/month vs 40-50 minutes driving for ~$150/month (parking, gas, & wear and tear). The added advantage to busing is that I can do ~30 minutes of work each way, putting out fires before/after work, dropping an hour off my work day in the process.
So the end result is that I spend about as much time away from home busing as I would driving, for $100/month less. And that $100 can go straight into one of the bars or restaurants on the way home, an added perk of not having to drive.
Part of why I chose to live here was the investment in public transportation. When I consider moving jobs, I look at the commute possibilities as one factor. I'm generally not willing to give up my life and sanity driving in rush hour traffic. The year I did that I was far more stressed and angry than I ever was before or after. It's going to take a pretty significant pay raise to make me want to do that again.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Watch for Uber-style ridesharing to become unified with mass transit in areas where this is available, so that with one app you can arrange a ride from single address A to address B, with a single price for both transit modes, and with prices for alternative routes so that users can choose between changing from car to mass transit at stations for less vs taking a car the whole way. Users will make choices based on weather, traffic at time of day, and proximity of a transit station to one address or he other. (How much will I save if I walk a block? If I walk 5 blocks?)
Now envision what happens when the ridesharing part of such trips takes place in self-driving cars.
Getting into a city for work like london on time by car means going about 5:30am and having a large wallet for parking.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
if you are going to count the ecological costs of producing electricity, the study should also take into account the ecological costs of producing fossil fuels, and the costs of fighting wars to keep energy flowing. How many wars have we fought for solar or wind power recently?
"Money should not go to the Saudis" - agreed but so more reason to get renewable home grown power.
"they spend billions in spreading their religious zeal to mosques around the world" - not unlike all the missionaries the catholics sent around the world to indoctrinate
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Ohm's law and arithmetic.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Fewer than 10% of households in the US don't have a car, and the numbers in Europe are comparable. Given that many people in dense cities don't really need a car, the portion of people who can't afford to own a car is even lower. Granted, car ownership isn't the same as being able to afford to run a car, but still...
Running a car is not necessarily the greatest expense in car ownership. If you've purchased an old used car and seldom drive it, the greatest expense is combined government fees (license, registration) and government regulations (mandatory inspection, mandatory insurance).
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Also, I did not include partial charging. It tends to reduce battery life. It's a big marketing point from EV manufactures, but ultimately it's pretty useless to charge 10 minutes every few hours of travel (how ever long it takes to go 40 miles on your route). The ideal is to load up that 100kWh battery to max by the morning, and have most of your buses out all day long.
My math says 1250 A @ 480V to fully charge 100kWh pack in 10 minutes, of course like I said nobody is charging them to the top in 10 minutes and the charge currents for these batteries is not linear.
Medium commercial sites have 800A to 1200A service, a large commercial site can have one or two 4000A services. You'll need that 4000A service if you want to charge more than one bus at a time. I used to work in an iron foundry, and it took over 500kWh per ton of steel, unfortunately I don't recall the size of our service but it was 3-phase for our industrial motors and probably quite substantial.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
And one world government, also. Hard to find a rallying cry that's resulted in more bloodshed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AZjwLhS6jc
The freedom culture of the United States of America is the best in the world for human beings. Let in too many uninformed (and sometimes vicious) immigrants and that culture will be corrupted and destroyed. Don't think it can't happen here; other nations have been corrupted and destroyed from within.
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That's true. They prefer to sit in traffic, as evidenced by the large number of people who sit in traffic every day.
And since public transportation and road construction are both expensive, taxpayers could save a LOT of money by giving people what they "want": less public transportation and more traffic congestion. Right?
Or we could make road users pay 100% of the cost of the roads instead of less than half, and find out if people still prefer to drive.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I live in Clemson SC where Proterra has a small fleet of electric buses used for the CATBus system.
The buses may be cheap, but only if you don't include the cost of installing charging pods at every stop. Seneca and Clemson taxpayers were on the hook for millions of dollars in subsidies to Proterra to pay for the charging stations.
But then, as has been mentioned in another post, the taxpayer ends up paying for the buses too through Federal subsidies. So, really it's just a big shell game.
If it takes 10 minutes to charge one battery, then you can charge lot of busses during the night, one after the other. You don't need to charge them all at the same time.
Your claim about partial charging doesn't seem to be accurate either. In general, what seems to kill today's Lithium Ion batteries appears to be topping them up to fully charged. It's probably better for battery life to max out at 90% charge.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You said 'majority'. That word has a meaning.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"they spend billions in spreading their religious zeal to mosques around the world" - not unlike all the missionaries the catholics sent around the world to indoctrinate
False equivalency.
How many terrorist attacks/car-bombings/mass shootings/suicide bombings have Christians performed in the last 50 years against non-Christians simply because they were not Christian?
The major and most relevant difference between Islam and Christianity in this context is that Christianity went through reformations to be compatible with modern civilization, whereas Islam has not. Christians do not kill apostates nor tax/enslave non-Christians, nor throw homosexuals off rooftops or stone women to death who were raped.
There is plenty to criticize about Christianity, but currently it is far and away more benign than Islam and the two are in no way equivalent in terms of violence against non-believers. Islam needs it's own reformation, but sadly, it looks like the only way that will happen is when enough Muslims bent on violence are eliminated by force.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Actually you have it backward, modern civilization is modern because Christianity went through reformations. It is far easier to live in a manner that doesn't conform to any specific religion when the religious people that live in your town aren't actively trying to kill you and/or each other for it.
Autonomous vehicles will make buses obsolete. Seems like smaller autonomous ride sharing vans would be more practical to group people going to similar destinations.
So the end result is that I spend about as much time away from home busing as I would driving, for $100/month less.
When I lived in Singapore, I had to use public transportation and I was getting sick with a cold every month or two. Now that I live in the USA and drive to work in my own car, I've been able to go at least six months between getting sick.
As a practical matter, it's not ideal to lose days of my life to being sick. But what really bothered me was the psychology of having people cough and sneeze in my face on public transportation and being helpless to do anything about it. Of course, it wasn't just coughs and sneezes. I also didn't like it when people would pick their noses and their acne and absent-mindedly flick the gunk onto people around then - such as me.
And one time, this guy decided to lean over and brush all the dandruff flakes in his hair onto my shoes - when the bus was too crowded to move away.
If there's on thing I feel deeply grateful for in my life it's that my commute to work involves 45 minutes each way of driving in rush hour traffic - as opposed to 45 minutes each way of riding on crowded public transportation.
My math says 1250 A @ 480V to fully charge 100kWh pack in 10 minutes
722 Amps since, at 480V, it's probably going to be three phase.
However, in the scenario you're suggesting, it would be more prudent to do battery swapping.
=Smidge=
They're qualities that are culturally encouraged or culturally disavowed to varying degrees in different parts of the world. What appears to be human nature is highly subject to ones environment.
Apparently it only takes a very short amount of time in an environment to exhibit "human nature" as illustrated by the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments...
Perhaps it is more accurate to say what appears to be human nature is highly subject to one's societal situation. I probably would not even attribute much to the environment which you grew up in or which you currently live. Probably even less nurture, than simply nature+immediate circumstance. Remember we have quite a bit of so-called "reptilian" brain-functions in our human brains...
Joe sixpack doesn't give a damn about what makes his car move as long as it's cheap.
As long as there's a way to get a "cool" version to impress their friends. If all electric cars look like a Prius, I'm sure many won't give a damn about them (and no, Joe sixpack can't afford a Tesla Roadster or other electric supercar). Make electric cars like a F150, Mustang or Camero, then nobody will care if they are electric...
Just from the summary (because I didn't read TFA):
. . . claims to be cheaper . . .
. . . only delivered a few hundred all-electric buses . . .
. . . make a bold prediction . . .
. . . seem to indicate there's a shift . . .
It's fairly safe to assume that this is just CEO Ryan Popple's dream and he's actually begging for money from investors.
[public transportation] it's viewed as something that poor people use,
Not in England, Washington DC and surrounding metropolitan area, or New York.
I would agree with you if you said "buses" but not if you say "public transportation."
Norway is 15 people per square mile. The United States is 84 people per square mile. 6% of US electricity is from hydropower; if the US were 15 people per square mile that figure would be 34%, and if every brook and trickle were dammed it still couldn't be doubled. Environmentalists in the US tend to oppose new hydropower because the supply lakes tend to silt up. Other people oppose hydropower because they don't want to lose their homes.
So, if you want the US to be 100% hydropower we'll have to shut down aluminum production and almost all other industry, stop heating houses and generally speaking fall into poverty. You're damned right I'm a naysayer.
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The primary material outputs of petroleum burning engines are water and CO2, both of which are 100% recyclable. They don't even have to be transported to a recycling center.
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You DO understand that battery recycling is a messy dangerous and toxic business right?
You are dealing with an input that is a mixture of corrosive electrolytes, metal parts and plastic which is not easily disassembled in a safe way. Once you manage to separate the stuff, you have to then refine the metals, neutralize the corrosive materials and deal with the huge amounts of industrial waste all this creates in a safe and environmentally responsible manner. It's not usually easy..
For instance, lead acid batteries are often recycled for two reasons. First, lead is expensive, second it is REALLY bad to dispose of bad lead acid batteries directly into land fills. Sulfuric acid and lead are both bad bad bad for the environment. The process goes something like this.. Pulverize batteries into itty bitty pieces in a big hammer mill..... Separate metal from plastic by dumping battery chips into a tank of water, lead sinks, plastic floats while the acid dissolves into the water. Treat the water to neutralize the acid being careful to capture any vapors to make sure they are not toxic and of neutral PH. Scrape the plastic off the top of the water and dispose of it, scrape the bottom of the tank to recover lead chips which are then refined in the normal way. Oh, and eventually you will want to change the water in that tank, which will need to be properly treated to remove as much lead as you can...All your employees will need to wear full protective gear including respirators and heavy gloves because it's REALLY dangerous in your factory. Remember all that hazards waste you will be creating will need to go someplace safe and not just buried in your back yard...
Someday, you will also want to shut down that factory too.. Trust me, even knowing in advance, it's a horrible mess to clean up something like this...
It's a similar problem when building new batteries from the recycled lead.. It's a little cleaner, but it still produces toxic wastes, fumes and is a danger to your employees and the local environment...
Batteries are *really* messy sir.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
If they care about battery longevity, they'll keep them between 20% and 80% SoC. (30:80 would last even longer. 80% DoD is still a decade of cycles) Getting to 80% SoC can, indeed, be done in 15-30min -- if you have nuclear power plant in your back yard. (we're talking many MW to charge a fleet of buses. One bus at a time... Just. No.)
The smallest office building I've been in was fed with 6000A 600V (3ph) service. (I don't know about the current office. We didn't have to build anything in it.)
I'm in Indialantic, FL. I have a 0.9 mile walk to work, going from a 4-bedroom home on a half-acre lot (about $350,000) to a tech job that pays six figures.
Across the water is the city of Melbourne, and Palm Bay is just south of that. Over there is more of the same, but with cheaper houses. If you don't want something fancy or big, you could buy a house for less than a year of salary. You would likely commute less than 10 miles, with "traffic" meaning a few cars in front of you at a stop light. There are lots of jobs: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Embraer, Harris, Thales, DRS, GE, a bunch of cyberwar startups, some little NASA contractors, etc.
So my commute is kind of free right now. I pay for food, but not a gym, and the 20 minutes is time I don't need to exercise. Driven, it would be about a dollar (fuel plus car wear) and would take 3 minutes. The worst case for the area would be 10 miles with slightly faster roads, so $10 of fuel and wear done in 15 to 20 minutes of driving.
Oh, and no state income tax.
I would be stressed and angry in your situation. You should reconsider the commute possibilities.
Toronto has had hybrid electric buses and they disabled the electric part because it would fail constantly.
Right, so no one in New York wants to use the subway. You may need to realise that you are you, and you are only you, and you are not everyone else.
Actually you have it backward, modern civilization is modern because Christianity went through reformations.
Interesting.
I personally tend to think they went hand-in-hand in a sort of 'chicken -or-egg' sense, in that neither one was really possible without the other. I also believe that if Islam experienced a similar reformation the ME would experience a 'Renaissance' period somewhat similar to Europe's and become a far more peaceful, advanced, and wealthy region.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Lol anyone that thinks unlimited immigration is ok is fucking insane.
i said nothing of the sort.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
you don't need immigrants to destroy any country, it gets done from the inside by ignorant people.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I ride with everyone from poor moms with 2 kids in strollers and homeless folks to guys in 3 piece suits with $500 pairs of shoes. In between are everyone else from high school kids to college kids, and the breadth of the middle and upper-middle class workforce.
Generally I've found the people who complain most about public transport are the ones brought up in towns/suburbs designed around the car, and hence the public transport options do suck. I lived in Singapore for a couple of years and hardly anyone owns a car because there is no point. Public transport is faster, cleaner, safer, cheaper and more reliable than any other option. And it is the only transport option that scales in larger denser population centres.
no, its not a false equivalency. the christian violence problem may have earlier with things like the crusades and inquisitions but movements/advancements like the Enlightenment and science helped quell the christian nonsense. The crusaders way the crusaders acted cold be seen as the model for ISIS idiots. Post crusades the christian nonsense was driven by the "normal" god- fearing person whereas the current violent islam problem is being done by extremists who are basically gangsters using the religion as an excuse.
.
"Christians do not kill apostates nor tax/enslave non-Christians, nor throw homosexuals off rooftops or stone women to death who were raped." - yeah, right, they never burnt or drowned witches or anything like that, people were never stoned to death even though its an instruction in the bible, people were never enslaved, check how the cathars were treated in france,
anyway its off topic
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Remember that guy Breivik? He has a body count quite comparable to the worst islamic terror attacks on European soil.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
But so is the whole petrochemical industry. Batteries are the lesser evil.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Hilarious story bro
Lol USA is the best always and forever. Our fake freedoms can beat up your fake freedoms!
It's no longer 1946. Modern fear of nuclear fission is due to media sensationalism.
Three problems with that argument. 1) Even if you are right and the fears are purely out of media hype, the fears still are real and they still matter. In politics perception is reality and politics matter here. If people are afraid of something they are going to fight it even if those fears are completely unjustified in the face of objective facts. 2) Even the most advanced reactors we have today are still not fail-safe with zero risk. They still depend on substantial amounts of human intervention to operate safely and any time humans are required there are risks. 3) Engineers still make design mistakes. Fukashima happened in large part because of engineering mistakes. There is no way to prove that the engineers have build a perfectly safe fission reactor given the state of the art in technology. Engineering mistakes are the most dangerous types of mistakes because they are the ones you are least likely to know about ahead of time and the hardest to mitigate against.
There also still is the waste disposal problem which hasn't been solved but that's a separate issue from safe operation.
Immediately after the end of World War II, the Greatest Generation was absolutely convinced that they were entering the Atomic Age and that it was going to be the best thing since sliced bread.
That's because they didn't know much/anything of the problems/risks with nuclear power plants. Nuclear power did seem like this amazing new technology straight off the pages of a science fiction novel and it had ended the war. Of course they were interested. There was a substantial lag between learning about it and what it could do and then figuring out what the risks and problems with it were. Over time we learned that there were significant practical problems with fission as a power source and some very real risks and it took a while for the public to absorb this argument.
People are by nature bad at evaluating risk (we tend to be risk averse) so it's hardly surprising that eventually public opinion in many places swung against nuclear power over time. Public opinion of the risk of nuclear power demonstrably is at odds with the real objective risk but if you want to build more nuclear fission plants then you need to deal with that very real fear in the political arena.
Then Green Peace set themselves against it. They spent the '60s and '70s telling the world how dangerous nuclear power was...
Greenpeace was a small player in a much bigger drama and I think you hugely overestimate their influence in this debate. But even if we stipulate to what you are saying, it is absolutely true that nuclear fission as a power source does carry substantial risks. To pretend that these risks don't exist would be foolish. You cannot argue that fission is 100% safe or that catastrophes cannot happen and remain credible. There isn't a fission power plant we've ever made that doesn't carry real risks and doesn't required oversight and maintenance from humans. Even simple designs like RTGs carry meaningful risks.
Then in 1986, the Chernobyl disaster happened, the greatest gift to anti-nuclear forces since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The reason Chernobyl was/is scary is that there is currently no way to prove that a similar disaster couldn't happen again elsewhere. It was confirmation of an already existing fear. There is not a single fission plant in operation today that does not have failure modes with potentially severe consequences. The failures are mostly remote but potentially very severe and that is the sort of risk we as humans are worst at evaluating. Use airplanes as an example - they are objectively very safe and yet many people are absolutely terrified of them because some of the failure modes are potentially quite severe and out of their control. Until you can trot out a scientist that can show that a meltdown or radiation release or similar disaster is provably impossible you're going to have a hard time getting public opinion back in favor of nuclear fission in many parts of the world. And even then a lot of people won't believe the evidence. I probably find that as disappointing as you do but it's the reality we live in thanks to human nature.
Human nature is to be scared of the things we're told to be scared of
And we've been told (with some justification and evidence) to be scared of fission for decades now. That's already done and reversing it is going to be really hard thanks to human nature. Getting people to accept something new is a lot easier than getting them to stop fearing something familiar that they think (rightly or wrongly) is dangerous.
For the record, I'm actually in favor of increased use of fission to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. But to pretend that it is without risk or that it will be politically easy is just foolish naivety.
They are not dirty relative to petrochemical harvesting and processing , this is a ridiculous equivelency. Your either a fool or a liar. The lca's are publicly available.
Regardless of the technology driving them, the fact remains that public transportation is inconvenient for many.
As an example, I would need to drive nearly half an hour just to get TO the bus terminal, only to find out it doesn't even have a route to get to my office at all.
Whereas my personal drive to the office takes twenty minutes one way.
I gladly bear the costs of a personal vehicle for several reasons:
I don't have to endure the lady / guy wearing a gallon of perfume / cologne.
Same folks who smell like they smoked two packs before they got on.
Folks on cell phones and those who think I want to listen to their music outloud.
I come and go when and why I want. I'm not beholden to the bus schedule.
I don't get exposed to whatever illness the person next to me has because their employer doesnt believe in paid sick time.
I trust my driving skills and awareness far more than anyone else's.
Bottom line: The personal vehicle allows you the freedom to go where, when and why you want. I have no intentions on giving that up.
towns/suburbs designed around the car
tows/suburbs designed around public transit can be very nice. It does not have to be a major city. There's one prerequisite, though:
- that public transit must not be busses.
streetcars, subways, commuter rail, monorail, water taxi, overhead cable car---all good. Busses are awful. The stops are awful, getting on and off is awful, the sinage and schedule compliance is awful, dealing with the driver and his stress and creative route changes is awful, the time to destination is awful, the ride smoothness is awful, the ability to do work is missing because reading on a rolling street vehicle makes one nauseous, the noise and pollution are awful, the seating pattern is awful. Only one of these things is fixed by electrification. Conclusion: busses, still awful. Use them to get home to your mother's village in India. Keep them out of your plans for utopia.
But we where discussing "Clean Energy" and I was making the point that there is no such thing, especially on an industrial scale....
Making and recycling batteries is a huge environmental mess.... Photovoltaic Solar is it's own kind of environmental nightmare as are other solar technologies (to a lesser degree). Wind is more of an environmental problem than most people imagine, with huge fiberglass assemblies we will eventually need to get rid of not to mention the impacts of building towers and the birds that die..
Nothing is 100% clean.... Some things are cleaner than others, but all have their issues.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
Laws are decided by the people who live in the country. Not the rest of the world.
I'm an atheist. How about you insist (and get Saudi Arabia to agree) that all people can go everywhere and we all follow our own rules. Why? Because we're all one people.
Stop making things up and then calling other people bigots for not following it.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
The majority of people are poor, so using a form of transportation that poor people use is pretty natural for them.
Gee, you sound like you think you know a lot about the poor and what they think, but in reality you're not a poor person, never have been a poor person, and never will be a poor person. So then you sound like a rich person saying "..oh, they're used to being poor and are perfectly happy with their little lives the way they are." which is a bunch of baloney. You really think the poor don't see middle-class and richer people in their cars and wish that was them? Or envy them? Or hate them because they're 'the lucky ones' while they comparatively have nothing? Think again.
Let's see how you feel about that 'plan' of yours when the Fire Department can't get to your house fast enough because all the roads between the fire station and your house are so full of potholes because nobody can afford to pay to maintain them, or how you'll feel about paying $10 for a head of lettuce and $20 for a loaf of bread at the grocery store because there's no government-maintained system of highways for trucks to transport goods on, and the cost of transport goes through the roof. You're probably also one of those 'self-driving car' faggots who want to be slaves to the machine instead of the machine serving YOU. Are you also Vegan? That would explain quite a bit of why your brain doesn't work right.
So you live in NYC and poll people on the subway all the time, and know beyond a reasonable doubt that ALL of them are perfectly happy with the subway? LOL, no, you don't live in NYC, you don't talk to anyone, so you know nothing. Bet anyone $5 that if you polled 100 random people on a NYC subway, the majority would say "The subway is OK, but if I could get driven around in a car? Sure, that would be great!". Why do you think taxi drivers can make a living in a place like NYC? Because not everyone likes or wants to use the subway or buses. The only reason more people in NYC don't drive cars is it's expensive to park one there, enough so that it's not practical, and the traffic can be bad. But huge urban environments like NYC are the exception and not the rule, the majority of the people in the U.S. don't live in huge cities, therefore they own cars -- and like it.
There are new reactor designs that haven't even been built yet
Which means they are nothing more than an unproven idea whose flaws have yet to be uncovered.
that are inherently safer than the current generation, and that are much less complex designs
I'm sure they are safer. But marginal gains in safety unfortunately aren't enough. They still have a meaningful chance of catastrophic radiation release and that is even assuming they work perfectly as designed. If there is a manufacturing flaw or an engineering flaw then the risk is multi-fold worse. We have no reactor design that solves this problem even in principle much less in practice. So far it is a problem with fission that has proven to be irreducible.
Then there's using Thorium instead of Uranium. All would be better than the current generation of reactors.
Thorium is fine but it doesn't solve the fundamental problems with using fission as a power source. The problem is that we have no way to be completely certain that catastrophic failure and accompanying radiation release is impossible. We have no known reactor design that can safeguard against this possibility. It's the fatal flaw in the technology. Add on the fact that fission also creates a pretty nasty waste disposal problem and it's pretty easy to see why the technology hasn't progressed further.
The primary material outputs of petroleum burning engines are water and CO2, both of which are 100% recyclable. They don't even have to be transported to a recycling center.
So you're relying on the existence of matter to assert it can be recycled?
Ooh, sorry, ChrisMaple, you failed to do your science properly, because while they are certainly not removed from the universe, the truth is that you can't directly recycle it into gasoline, or fossil fuels. At best, you can hope some of it is recaptured into the biological cycle, and that still doesn't get you useful petroleum. Unless you have a few million years to wait. And even then, it's not likely to work out, due to changing conditions that cause most plant matter to be digested now.
Sorry, but the fact is, you would have to put significantly more effort into recycling gasoline exhaust than recycling batteries, and even then, you'll most likely work with Ethanol instead. And use whatever hydrogen and carbon falls into your lap.
And that isn't even factoring in the effects for the other things that come out of your exhaust. Lots of fun stuff in there. Those too have a cost.
PS, Jerry Pournelle didn't originate the concept of space-based solar power. Isaac Asimov did it before him. Not sure if A Step Further Out credited Asimov, been a while since I read it.
You are just nitpicking. It is obvious to everyone who isn't an imbecile that 100% clean energy is physically not possible. Hence clean energy means "far cleaner than fossil fuel". And this is what counts, because waiting for a perfect solution that might never come while continuing to use a bad one is worse than continuously updating to a slightly better solution.
And besides, IC production is very much the same "nightmare" as photovoltaic production but I see you posting on Slashdot, using a lot of semiconductor technology in the process. Looks like a double standard from here.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Cleaner than Fossil fuels eh? In what way cleaner?
Natural Gas is clean, nearly squeaky clean actually. The worst part is getting the wells punched and the distribution pipes buried. After that, you are pretty much going to get CO2 and water as a byproduct of energy production.
OH... I'm guessing you mean CO2 emissions means it's dirty.... Which is a whole pack of lies and points to what I consider an unfair description "Clean Energy" in trying to advocate we not use fossil fuels. "Clean Energy" is more of a PR campaign than reality or even a possibility. Which, if you read between the lines on my posts here, is my actual point.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Your borders are nothing more than global Jim Crow. All people have the right to live where they want. It's time to force all the bigots to accept that. Those that don't should be bombed into oblivion.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
So if road users paid 100% of the cost of the roads, we wouldn't have roads?
I think you need to think about that one a little more.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Did you know that before we started massively subsidizing (socializing) the trucking industry, grocery stores used to have their own railroad spurs? True story. So capitalism can work perfectly well when we allow it to.
"The trouble with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." --Margaret Thatcher
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
No, I'm saying people who don't directly use roads still benefit from them.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u