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Volkswagen To Build Electric Versions of All 300 Models By 2030 (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Volkswagen AG Chief Executive Officer Matthias Mueller announced sweeping plans to build electric versions of all 300 models in the group's lineup as the world's largest automaker accelerates the shift away from combustion engines and tries to draw a line under the emissions-cheating scandal. Speaking on the eve of the Frankfurt auto show, the CEO laid out the enormity of the task ahead, vowing to spend 20 billion euros ($24 billion) to develop and bring the models to market by 2030 and promising to plow another 50 billion euros into the batteries needed to power the cars. Volkswagen is throwing the fire power of its 12 brands behind the push, aiming to catch up with the likes of Tesla Inc. and transform from a battery-vehicle laggard into a leader. Underscoring the enormity of the shift taking place in the industry, Mueller said VW will need the equivalent of at least four gigafactories for battery cells by 2025 just to meet its own vehicle production. At 50 billion euros, the CEO announced one of the largest tenders in the industry's history for the procurement of batteries. By 2025, VW aims to have 50 purely battery-powered vehicles and 30 hybrid models in its lineup, with a goal of selling as many as 3 million purely battery-powered cars by then. The transformation will pick up speed after that to reach the 2030 goal as economies of scale and better infrastructure help bring down prices and accelerate sales.
...but by 2040 we're going to find out those plumes of black smoke coming out of the electric cars weren't actually delicious all-nature chocolate powder.
....honestly my first, second, and third impressions was "what do the HECK do they have *300 models* for?!?!?!?!
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
You say that as if batteries are the only means of energy storage.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Energy storage for an electric grid on an industrial scale is a HARD and environmentally messy thing to do. Doing it efficiently, depending on what efficiency you think is good enough, is not financially viable for much more than just peak load offsetting where the spot prices of power triple or more from base load costs..
We will be keeping those fossil fueled power generators around for a long time yet, or learning to live in the dark.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
They'll just have a large "lubrication oil" tank. People will just have to refill it every 300 miles or so.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
"In 10 plus years, we are going to have a half-baked approach to what we thought was the future more than 10 years ago and now realize _was_ the future! Dang!!"
=-+
If I were a big auto CEO, I'd go all in for synthetic fuel.
How hard can it be to make an engine compatible with burning ethanol or bio-diesel? I guess it must be more than trivial or else every new car would have it by now. Still, that's got to be easier to do than switch all of your manufacturing to a whole new kind of power plant.
The way cars are built now are to accommodate an internal combustion engine. Change that and the shape of the vehicle should shift with it. If you bolt an electric drive train to a vehicle built for an ICE then you're making compromises. The compromise will be in costs, efficiency, safety, etc. Having a whole fleet of vehicles available in ICE, electric, and hybrid versions means more compromises. This is a very bad idea.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
This is really quite remarkable, and shows just how much Musk has gotten right and how much the future is falling right into his hands. The cool thing, however, is it's less about the competitiveness and his desire to "win" and beat out Volkswagen as I'm sure Musk is more than happy to have them join the push to electric. The last thing we need is only one car manufacturer going all electric, leading to a monoculture of design and a monopoly on service.
This really couldn't be more fantastic news for those who want to see a plethora of electric car companies succeed and drive the transition away from fossil fuels, with the rest of the companies who don't being relegated to the dust bin of history as soon as possible, the writing is on the highway.
Ethanol and bio-diesel are essentially trivial.
For ethanol, you just need a bit of programming and compatible rubber parts. For bio-diesel, that's essentially nothing. Older diesel engines can burn almost anything, from rocket fuel to vegetable oil and used motor oil. Newer engines may be more picky, especially about impurities, but for the rest, that's just a matter of programming again.
In France, there is already ethanol mixed with gasoline (usually 10%). I don't know about diesel but some people illegally put vegetable oil in their car with little ill effect.
The problem is that biofuels are expensive and compete with crops for food. And 3rd generation fuels based on micro-algae, not competing with food crops are not commercially available yet.
Make a lot of Chevy Volt-type cars, minimum all-electric range of 50 miles EPA & a turbocharged 2-liter engine engine.
BMW gets 230 HP out of a B38 3-cyl 1.5 L.
Use the electric motor to power the rear wheels; should make for a car that's fun to drive at legal speeds.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
No, that's not true. And, it's so wrong, you can only be making things up.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Biodiesel & Ethanol are boondoggles
I know that. You know that. Lots of people know that. You know who doesn't know that? Or, more likely, know it but would rather not admit it publicly? Legislators. They'll let this slide so long as voters will cast a vote for them over it.
Same for electric vehicles, they are a boondoggle too. Volkswagen will go for it so long as it makes people feel better and covers up past sins.
which leaves us with walking, horses or electric vehicles.
I believe electric vehicles will fall out of favor soon. We'll see some sort of synthetic fuel replace it. It might be hydrocarbons, or ammonia, or something else. It's not like we need a new energy source, electricity is already an energy sink when produced, not a net gain like petroleum. Electric vehicles make sense now because it uses cheap coal, nuclear, and natural gas, fuels that don't pour into a tank easily like gasoline. Find a way to convert the cheap energy into a liquid fuel and electric cars look real inconvenient, and no more "green" than anything else.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Vinod Khosla, who's famously referred to EVs & fuel cells as "just toys", has been touting biobutanol for some time
"Advantages/Disadvantages
Due to its low vapor pressure it can be easily blended with gasoline
It contains nearly as much energy as gasoline (ethanol only contains 66% as much.
Because it separates less easily in the presence of water it is better adapted to be used in the present distribution system than ethanol
Because it is less corrosive, it is also expected to be more suitable for use in existing oil pipelines.1
It can be used in existing vehicles in higher blends than ethanol."
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Bugatti holds various records for the fastest cars on the road. I cant wait to see how bonkers fast the Bugatti EV (whatever they come up with) ends up being.
Your post negates nothing I've said. As soon as someone figures out how to turn a cheap and green energy source, like hydro, into a valuable liquid fuel then electric vehicles aren't any more green than any thing else. They also start to look real expensive and inconvenient.
Turning wind and solar energy into a liquid fuel also solves the problem of storage. You might have hydro but not everyone else does. What people do have, almost by definition, is land to build a fuel synthesis plant. I say by definition since the land that a fuel synthesis plant would take is "free" since it can be put under solar panels or windmills. Even New Zealand has a use for synthetic liquid fuels.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
they hint they might also have a cold fusion convertible model. Zero emissions.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
We will be keeping those fossil fueled power generators around for a long time yet
There's usually an eye roll that goes along with these kinds of pedantic statements, because people who actually understand how things work (and I am not saying you are not one of them, you more than likely are just really simplifying the whole topic, and I understand and respect that) know we're not bringing fossil fuels to 0% anytime soon. The simplicity of your comment might as well have been, "ending usage of fossil fuels won't end hurricanes." That statement isn't incorrect, but it is a really simplified response full of snark to a really general way of thinking of a problem we now face. Which I get, it's bad for people to blame global warming for hurricanes that are happening now because it is not a 100% accurate way of talking about global warming. But I digress before we go down that rabbit hole any further.
Now one day, and that day is long after everyone here reading this comment is dead, we will have ended the usage of fossil fuels for the majority of industrial and metro power generating. It will have more to do with the increasing difficulty of extracting fossil fuels and less to do with some holy war of clean vs dirty power. That doesn't mean the latter will have nothing to do with it, just in case you get the wrong idea here. I'm not standing on a economically reasonable only platform, its a light mixture of the two ideas I just stated, plus a whole lot of global politics mixed in there that I'm going to not be bringing up. But all of that I just stated plus a bit more ultimately will be guiding the world as to what we move to next. But to keep it simple, as it stands, coal is the first causality of this ever increasing difficulty of "access to." Will we ever use 0% coal? More than likely not, but as time goes on we will be less inclined to burn it for lighting someone's light bulb or cooking their Hot Pocket, we will all think that's just stupid considering it has a way better use in something like steel production. That's not today, but I would wager that it is sooner rather than later. So when I say causality, I don't mean death of coal absolute. I and many others mean it in these terms of being more conservative with the resource than we previously have been.
Eventually, all fossil fuels will come to this point. It will seem really silly for us to use natural gas to heat someone's water, or for us to use oil to lubricate someone's car when both of those will be better used for heating a hospital or lubricating a wind farm or whatever. It's about the same state of mind that Slashdot seems to get into when we think about using Helium in balloons. It is a really silly usage of a resource that is limited that can be better used elsewhere. Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not attributing to humanity the notion of always picking the "better" for whatever terms that might mean, method of using a resource. However, the economics of things being an awfully powerful force for changing people's minds.
So that said, I just want to touch real lightly on coal for a second, since it is the first one on the chopping block that we rely on for a majority of our current power production. Again, by chopping block, I mean that in terms of having to rethink its usage, not it's absolute demise. About 53% of the coal that we know about is still left for us to extract and is slightly economical to pull out of the ground. The remaining 47% of the coal that we do know about is just not feasible to extract economically and maybe that will change with some sort of technological leap. Even still, the coal we do know about is but only 30% of all the coal that is thought to exist on the planet. So that 53% roughly represents about ~15% of all the coal we think is out there. At some point as we get close to the bottom of that 53%, with out any clear change to getting at that 47%, we're all going to really be rethinking if we should be burning the stuff for powering homes ver
And yet you're missing the biggest actual reason all of these manufacturers are eyeing electric. Hint: it's not global warming. They want to get in on power sources which specifically do not release pollutants because pollution from exhaust pipes is becoming a major issue in just about every large European and Asian city. Synthetic fuels would change fuck all to that, so nobody's investing in it. If you're not going electric, your only other real option is hydrogen, but that's got even more problems.
As a general rule, if you, average Slashdotter, think you've figured out something nobody in the entire world has, you're probably just missing something.
The U.S. has 20,000 MW of pumped storage on the grid right now (2% of U.S. grid capacity) and another 5% have been granted permits for construction.
Add 800 KV DC long distance transmission lines and electricity can be moved coast-to-coast with losses of only a few percent. Pumped storage can store electricity from anywhere in North America, and then supply it to anywhere in North America.
In fact, with 800 KV DC lines much of the need for storage disappears entirely. Grid supply can be balanced simply by moving electricity from where the sun is shining/wind is blowing to where demand is currently high.
Yeah, you can throw some batteries on to the grid, and may be attractive in certain specialized situations, but they aren't really needed with an revamped North American grid.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Are you claiming that the Tesla model S is a hoax?
These long term plans make me laugh out loud!
It looks like "someone else's problem/project".
Or just investors' bait.
Tesla will bury them all.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
An interesting article, to be sure, but WHAT THE HELL just happened to Slashdot? I just refreshed this page and Slashdot disappeared, and I instead got some mobile version of Beta on steroids. On a desktop.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Merely even refining transportation fuels is a much less efficient process than charging li-ions.
Li-ions don't work by oxidation processes, they work by intercalation processes. On one side you have graphite and/or silicon, and on the other you have nickel/cobalt/aluminum oxides. One or both of them are infiltrated with lithium ions in the interstitial space; the charge state is defined by which side the lithium is on.
You seem to be under the mistaken concept that energy density corresponds to safety. Tell me, which is more of a hazard, 100kg of aluminum or 100kg of nitroglycerine? Now tell me, which is more energy dense?
Here's the reality of fire safety in Tesla battery packs. They're so non-flammable that you can generally burn the rest of the car to the ground without burning the pack. Try that with a gasoline car. Gasoline fires in cars are extremely common. 152k gasoline cars catch fire in the US alone every year. Tesla rates of fires are far less than those in gasoline cars.
What boggles the mind *to me* is that gasoline vehicles are allowed to store such huge quantities of a highly flammable fuel in just a big tank. No compartmentalization / isolation system, just pour it in, and there you go!
Simply not true. ICE efficiencies decline over time, and the level of cost required to keep them running at as-of-manufactured efficiency makes it impractical to do for most consumers. Older ICE vehicles are generally much less efficient than new ones. Which also, BTW, reduces range. Proper li-ion packs, like Tesla's, do lose range with time, but only slowly. Click on "charts". Typical degradation is about 4% in the first year, but much slower thereafter. A typical 5-year old car has only about 6-7% total degradation. It's hard to know at this point whether you can continue extrapolating such a slow decline slope over time, but it's at the very least extremely promising. Typical results from Tesla taxis with hundreds of thousands of miles on them are less than 10% degradation.
We're talking "Now, not in a hundred years."
BTW, it also sounds like you're under the impression that EVs remain unusually heavy. Check out the curb weights of the Model 3 variants. SR is 3549lbs (1609kg) and LR is 3814 lbs (1730kg). Its ICE class competitors (BMW 3-series, Audi A4, Mercedes C300, etc) come in a wide variety of configurations:
BMW 3-Series: 1475-1770kg
Audi A4: 1410-1695kg
Mercedes C300: 1630-1715+kg
There's nothing unusual about the Model 3's weight versus its ICE competitors. The LR is a bit on the heavy side, but the SR slots right in the middle.
"Casual hello, it's me, Zoidberg, act naturally."
I would think they would have had better impact and a better impression of credibility if they committed to making 2-3 models successfully. Do the others once you have proven yourself.
The already have, both... :
- ultra small and low cost VW UP!
- the iconic VW Golf
are available as electric variant as VW-eUP! and VW e-Golf.
But you probably haven't heard much about them because VW only taugh about putting marketing money and massively advertising them in the wake of the diesel scandal.
Another problem -- at least for alert observing engineers -- is that both Musk and Nissan have shown that in order to make a successful EV one of the best practices is to design it as an EV from scratch. VW's announcement makes it sound like they are going to squeeze batteries and electric motors into their existing ICE designs.
(And you can add Renault to the list, they share their EV R&D with Nissan - they developped the "Zéro émission" platform together).
Yup, the current 2 above mentionned vehicles seem to me a little bit like "EV motor slapped on classical ICE cars" experiment quickly done to probe the market to see if there's interest.
(Which then were subsequently re-advertised as serious EV business goals after the scandal)
But I have to admit that I haven't much experience driving these.
Citroën C-zero also seems in my own driving experience like this - with a battery bank stuck in the trunk of an otherwise re-purposed ICE car.
(Which is weird, given that Citroën has nearly 4 decades of successful electric utility vehicle used among other by the french post on their delivery routes).
This as opposed to Renault Zoé which are modern Twingo design bolted onto the specially designed "Zéro émission" platform that they designed together with Nissan for this special purpose.
Smart is another European brand that reuses part of Tesla's battery platform for their electric variant. (Haven't driven one though - only seen them around).
(Both these last have batteries under the car like other "from the ground up" EV designs. Not batteries occupying whatever space happened to be free in the converted ICE such as the trunk as in the former).
Yeah you can make it work somewhat but it doesn't sound like you will get a superior product that way. In effect they have announced that they are going to strive for mediocrity.
...or that they want to be the quickest to market.
See how long it took Nissan and Renault for their "Zéro émission" platform.
See how long it is still taking as of today for Tesla who are still in the process of extending their platforms range to cover Model 3.
Designing from the gound up take time. A lot. And costs. Again a lot. During which time you'll still have to sell the old cars.
VW's old cars got a horrid reputation after the scandal (in practice they're not the worst. There are other offenders cheating even more. VW just happen to be the one who didn't pay enough brib... huh.. sorry "who happened to get caugh by chance").
They need to move fast and cheap.
(They've always have been about producing cheap cars fast, all the way back to the first beetles and minivan)
Repurposing ICE cars is a quick cheap solution that can work RIGHT NOW.
Then they can take time to specially built new platforms at a later time (as the upcoming 2018 electric rebirth of the VW minivan - which seem to be built on a newer platform)
That also explains clearly the Citroën C-zero : cheap, fast to produce entry-level car now.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Really? So when you discover that you need gas on your way home, you arrive home only 2 minutes later than you would have otherwise? I'm going to call BS on that one.
Do you know how long it takes to fill up an EV? 20 seconds. Ten to connect the cable and ten to disconnect. The fact that the charging at home happens while you sleep doesn't affect you one bit. And that's the vast majority of a person's usage. For the minority - long trips? Supercharging happens while you eat lunch and on bathroom breaks. During those stops that you're supposed to take (and which EU commercial drivers can lose their license if they don't take). But to reiterate: that's a solid minority of travel for most people. In your everyday life, charging an EV takes 20 seconds.
Which affects your everyday life how? Oh, that's right, it's to help you avoid those periodic inconveniences of having to detour on the way home to a gas station.
Not that Tesla ranges are short. The cheapest Model 3 has an EPA range of 220mi (same 5-cycle or equivalency as gasoline cars), while the long range version is 310mi.
1) That's not true. ICEs also lose range in the winter, and to a lesser extent when running the AC in hot weather.
2) Teslas lose about 20% range in the winter. See the extensive driving data gathered by Björn Nyland's work as a courier in Norway. Other EVs with less efficient heat recapture may lose more, but Teslas do not.
3) ICEs lose a lot of range idling in traffic; EVs lose nearly an order of magnitude less. ICEs lose significant range driving at low speeds due to congestion; EVs gain significant range in such conditions.
Ahem.
Lastly: I'm going to take a wiiiiild guess that you've never gotten behind the wheel of a Tesla. ;) Try it some time. Seriously, just call up a Tesla store and ask if you can.
"Casual hello, it's me, Zoidberg, act naturally."
I don't know who this VW joker is, but he probably didn't work his way up from the engineering shop.
Matthias Müller started out as an apprentice tool and die maker at Audi and then studied engineering at Munich University of Applied Sciences. After that, he got a job in the product planning at Audi and gradually worked his way up to become the manager in charge of product planning. After that, he subsequently became coordinator of sports brands for the VW Group, CEO of Porsche and, after the resignation of prof. dr. Martin Winterkorn in 2015, CEO of the VW Group.
However, please don't get readily available facts get in the way of your presumptions.
They're giving themselves plenty of time on diesel and petrol, although I guess we'll see more 'stop the engine at the lights' in the near future.
From TFA, "By 2025, VW aims to have 50 purely battery-powered vehicles and 30 hybrid models in its lineup, with a goal of selling as many as 3 million all-electric cars by then."
'hybrid' can mean 'stop the engine at the lights', or it can mean something more like a Prius. There are a lot of years between then and now, so there's plenty of time for Nissan to beef up the Leaf, or Tesla to find an Italian to style their cars. Hell, we might even see another new start company jump in - some googling suggests Tesla started in 2003 and showed the Roadster in 2008 (so 5 years from nothing to demo). By 2025 there's be exponentially more places to charge an EV than today, access will be more aggregated than today, and so owning an EV by then will be much easier than today - selling 3 million by then doesn't sound too hard (wikipedia says 250,000 Leafs have been sold to December 2016). VM group has far better 'reach' than Nissan, so should be able to do this comfortably.
One thing batteries are really nice for is voltage maintenance on long feeder lines. Things like the old Castle Valley battery on the Rattlesnake #22 line. When you have one long line serving a sparse population of customers, having a battery buffer halfway along its length lets you use a smaller, cheaper line (the buffer charges at night and then discharges during the day).
"Casual hello, it's me, Zoidberg, act naturally."
For your somewhat less common requirement it may not be better, but for most people it is. Charging at home is so much more convenient than having to go and pump smelly liquid at a dirty petrol station (not to mention the cost), and it's better for everyone's health too.
There will always be some uses where ICE is more suitable I imagine, the question is not if EVs are "better" it's what percentage of people they are better for.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
>fills up in two minutes
but can't be filled up at home, can't be filled up overnight, can't be filled up on a delay switch when fuel is particularly cheap, can't be ready with a full tank every morning, etc etc
>can be filled up out of a man-portable container of gasoline in an emergency
but can't be filled up from a plug point in an emergency
>goes at least 400 miles between fill-ups
about 90miles more than a Tesla, 160 more than a Bolt, and about twice the range of a Renault Zoe, so a genuine advantage but not as big as you think
>has roughly the same range regardless of whether it's hot or bone-chilling cold
true
would cost new about a quarter of what a Tesla costs sans federal and/or state bailouts and subsidies.
>cheaper electric cars are available. It's new tech. The price will drop much further
Oh and look, you forgot to list the advantages of EVs compared to your car:
- no tailpipe emissions
- instant torque
- pre-warmed and de-iced before you get in on those bone-chilling cold mornings you mentioned
- no engine noise or vibrations
- full range every morning
- low fuelling costs
- possibility of generating your own fuel at home
- potential to run power tools off your battery if you're out doing manly things in the woods (you strike me as the kind of guy who prides himself on his manliness) -- see http://bollingermotors.com/
- new car configurations possible thanks to the absence of the engine and transmission, e.g. a hole from front to back of your truck to carry 24 2X4s -- see http://bollingermotors.com/ again
- ability to be part of a closed-loop home power / transport storage-and-use system
etc etc
Not hard at all, but there are tradeoffs. And what are you trying to accomplish? It certainly wouldn't eliminate exhaust emissions. And ethanol gives absolutely terrible fuel efficiency, and sky-high cost. Biodiesel is a much, much better choice, except that it is a problem with the insanely high-tech, high-strung injection systems that have replaced the dead-simple diesel injection of yore.
Legislators know a lot of things, but DON'T GIVE A SHIT.
If you have enough EV cars, you have a huge pool of grid storage ...
Cars connected to the grid.
Same for PV house owners that chose to also have a big battery. You can join them in a virtual power plant, use them as balancing power pool.
And before you yell your uninformed idiotic counters: we do that in Germany and other parts of Europe since nearly a decade. Every new battery bank house owners buy gets put into a virtual power plant. Unless of course he wants to life isolate, but for that a battery is still to expensive to make sense. You would better have your own Nat Gas fuel cell then.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I am not sure I would want an EV if I was in FL at the moment. Given the grid is toast, exactly where does one fillup? Its not like you could truck in spare batteries to change out. And those long lines to fillup. Given it take a few minutes to fill a tank vs an hour or more to charge an EV, can you imagine the lines at the charge stations before the hurricane hit? ICE engines/tech has been around for a very long time and we know how to handle problem times, extreme cold, extreme heat conditions. How long before we learn how to do the same with EV's. What happens to a EV battery when it is flooded for example. Gas cars yes, its bad, gas & oil leak out but I don't get fried or they don't explode b/c they are shorted. What does an EV do?
Biodiesel is NOT "vegetable oil". It is synthesized from vegetable oil and other bio sources by a complex chemical process of esterification. Idiots who burn SVO (straight vegetable oil) or WVO (waste vegetable oil) or any kind of "grease" in their diesels end up with a disgusting gooey mess in their expensive fuel injection system.
Even true biodiesel has its drawbacks. The viscosity isn't the same as the proper diesel fuel the engine was designed for. That matters when you're dealing with the 1000-bar-plus (15,000 psi-plus) fuel pump of a modern common-rail diesel fuel injection system. It gels and stops flowing at a much higher temperature, and the gelling is harder to deal with than normal diesel fuel gelling. The shelf life is shorter. It is harder on the fuel system seals. Completely unlike normal diesel fuel it is hygroscopic. Once it becomes contaminated with water, bacteria grow and rot filters. Most or all modern diesel engine designs are not rated for any more than 2%, maybe 5% at the most, of biodiesel mixed with regular diesel. The old 1980s-and-before designs were fine with 20%, 80%, or even 100% biodiesel, but those days are gone.
Every new car can run on Bio Diesel. Since 20 years or so.
There are some cars that have problems with the hoses transporting the fuel.
Conversion to Ethanol is simple, too. Basically all old cars that use "normal gasoline" instead of "super", burn ethanol out of the box.
However: in the long run both biodiesel and ethanol production use to much land and produce to much CO2 in the whole processing chain to make it feasible for nations or the planet to got there.
Not far from my house is a gas station that sells bio diesel. It is about 10cents cheaper than diesle made from oil.
If the diesel engine is big enough, e.g. a truck or cough cough, a tank: it burns everything anyway.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Pumped storage is indeed the most usable solution, however, there are two things you simply must have to set up a system.
1. Hills or mountains. You have to pump the water up hill and the higher up you can go the better. This means you need some natural topography that has significant elevation changes where you can build some kind of storage pool up the hill. Usually they take a hill, flatten the top to build a pool. You won't be doing this in the plains, which are nearly table top flat and cover a significant percentage of the country.
2. Water source to pump from. Not only do you need hilly land, you need a ready source of surface water to pump up that hill. Again, this is not a given in the areas of mountainous terrain in the USA. Certainly the southwest doesn't work, it's hilly but there is no water.
So you cannot just build these things anyplace as you indicated. In fact, there are really limited areas that have both things you need for this. Most of the Atlantic seaboard states from Georgia to Maine with the Smokey Mountains could work along with the states just to their west. There is a bit of Missouri (the Ozarks) that could work (actually already do this) and possibly the North West states of OR and Washington but after that, forget it.
Then there is the HUGE environmental impact these things have and the dangers they create for the local area. You don't just take the top off a mountain and pump water up there w/o making lasting changes to the local environment. Plus you need a lower pool to keep the water when it's at the bottom of the hill, which has another huge impact. There is also a risk of failure and accidental uncontrolled release of all that water and the damage that could cause. And yes, that has happened with these things in the past. So, for safety, you cannot build these things upstream from where people are living, or risk killing people should an accident happen. This last requirement puts a HUGE limit on where you can put these things.
Finally, there is the efficiency of pumped storage. By most standards it is abysmal. You get at best 87% efficiency and often no more than 75%. This means that you loose 13-25% of your energy input. Remember this is the BEST we can do and there is HUGE environmental impacts with this. Where I am a great proponent of pumped storage coupled with nuclear base load generation as a cost effective solution, I still do not think fossil fuels are going away anytime soon. However, as a peak shifting tool, buying power at night from base generation capacity then selling it at double to triple the price during peak, they might work out financially. But the start up costs are really high, and the energy storage capacity pretty low for the costs, so the break even point would be 10+ years away. So far, it doesn't seem they are very profitable.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Do you have *any* idea how inefficient battery storage is? The BEST way to store electricity on an industrial scale is about 87% (pumped storage), batteries are barely over half that.... Chemical battery storage has *really* bad efficency ...
Don't miss my point here. Sure, you can have local systems, you can have a battery in your house, use the one in your EV to shift peak loads, but they literally suck power out of the system and waste it, a lot of it. Consuming MORE power is not the best answer here... In fact, I'd wager that we could concentrate on consuming LESS power and make a bigger impact on things though conservation, and not local storage. Changing to LED bulbs, more efficient HVAC and other devices that consume large amounts of power will do more. (Drying clothes, Heating Water, Cooking..)
Look at small scale storage as a local "backup power" solution if you like, just don't think it is a viable solution to peak shifting/load balancing for things like solar or wind supply issues. It's really horribly inefficient for that kind of thing.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
A couple of points...
1. Fossil fuels will be used until they are too expensive, on this we agree. However, if history is any indicator, fossil fuels are going to be available for a long time to come. All it takes is a small increase in the market price for fossil fuel and you end up getting large increases in "proven reserves" (those resources which are economically recoverable). The available proven reserves of fossil fuels has generally been rising up though this very day. This tells me we are far from being anywhere near running out. Sure, the price has been slowly rising, but so far, this has only increased available supplies. I don't see this changing in my life time.
2. Nuclear power has been given a really bad rap, again we agree. However, the problem with nuclear power today is actually cost. It's too expensive compared to a Natural Gas powered generation plant, because the cost of CNG is so low and doesn't seem to be going up anytime soon. I think Nuclear power could be cheaper, but it's stuck with 1960's technology for various regulatory, public policy and public relations reasons, which has stopped development. However, CNG is a sure thing, low risk solution.
And... Just in case you are interested.... I AM an Electrical Engineer (College Degreed) by training so I do have better than average knowledge of power distribution systems. It's been 20 years, but the basics of how electric motors, transformers, transmission lines work has not changed since Westinghouse took on Edison. The controlling technology HAS evolved and I don't consider myself "up to date" on that part, but I understand how power gets from source to destination and what factors effect the efficiency of the systems involved. I also have nuclear engineering training (as a minor) and have personally toured multiple reactor sites, including trips inside containment structures as part of my learning experiences. So... Where I don't claim to be an expert in any of this stuff, I'm not just blindly speculating or claiming that "I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express" level of expertise.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
100MW is not a measure of storage... I'll assume you mean 100MW/hour...
I'll point out one thing... I think your numbers are wrong, or the amount of storage nearly pointless... The state of Texas, today, had a base load of 30,000 MW and a projected peak of nearly 55,000 MWh. That's JUST Texas on a 90 degree day. 100 MWh is spitting into the wind, 10X that would be required to have any meaningful amount of storage for one state and 20x that would still be spitting in the wind. Scale that up to nation wide and this is meaningless...
Perhaps your numbers are wrong?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
As the OP is German, I'm sure he'd agree with you on the importance of reducing energy usage first. This is the country that developed Passivhaus, after all.
Do you have a source for that? Because I was looking and can't find an easy source for the relative importance of tailpipe, brakes and tires. And much as I'd like to take your word for it, you're just an AC on Slashdot...
that's about 200 models too many. 200 brand managers and staffs, 200 ad hierarchies, 200 sets of designers and dealerships and headaches too many. use those 12 brands to differentiate types of vehicles, put birds of a feather on the same lot. I bet the savings would just about pay the fines for those illegal stinkpots they pushed the past 8 years.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
So, you're saying that a roughly Leaf-priced car with 200+ miles of range that offers a great driving experience, nice interior and standard features, and a broad network of reliable, super-fast charging stations would be a no brainer?
*cough* Tesla Model 3 *cough* ;)
"Casual hello, it's me, Zoidberg, act naturally."
Battery storage is about 95% efficient.
Significantly above pumped storage.
Go back into your cave, troll!
just don't think it is a viable solution to peak shifting/load balancing for things like solar or wind supply issues.
Actually it is, as Germany and other countries demonstrade since decades, stuoid troll.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Battery storage is about 95% efficient. Significantly above pumped storage.
Go back into your cave, troll!
just don't think it is a viable solution to peak shifting/load balancing for things like solar or wind supply issues. Actually it is, as Germany and other countries demonstrade since decades, stuoid troll.
LOL... Unless they have changed the laws of physics and chemistry in the last decade, 95% is but a figment of your imagination. Chemical based batteries really suck efficiency wise. Lithium Ion batteries (Which are nearly the best rechargeable batteries out there for efficiency) max out at about 90% (dc in dc out), but that's just the battery. If you add in the AC-DC and DC-AC conversion losses and a few percent for I*R unavoidable losses you are well under 80% and likely under 70% for any kind of realistic system (Say the size of what could power a single home.) Industrial sized systems would likely be much worse than this, just because it wouldn't be economical to build systems as efficient as a moderately sized home unit could be.
Heck, the power supply for your PC is 90% efficient at best (AC-DC) and that's pretty much the best efficiency you can find for AC-DC conversion (and is pretty darned expensive being 1KW for about $250. So assume 90% AC-DC conversion, 90% storage efficiency and another 90% going back to AC when you need it and you are looking at (100W - 10W (AC-DC) = 90 W to battery - 9 W (loss in battery) = 81 W (out of battery) - 8.1W (DC-AC) = 73.9 W) making a really GOOD system running about 74% efficient (And that's making some HUGE assumptions like unity power factor loads).... You are claiming 95%?
So have you broken the laws of physics lately? Maybe a thermodynamic law or two? Because there is no way you are getting 95% efficiency (Input power to output power) from a buildable and practical battery storage system that I know of.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
When were you last in a Model 3? Right, you weren't. So all you have to go on are reviews. Very well, start reading them.
"Casual hello, it's me, Zoidberg, act naturally."
And what are you trying to accomplish?
Being "green".
If the goal is to "greenwash" your line of vehicles then you can do that with bio-fuels. The choice between electric and bio-fuel vehicles is not mutually exclusive so they could do both. As they intend to produce some models as hybrids then they could have bio-fuel compatible ICEs in those hybrids.
They want to make up for past sins of being polluters so they came up with the idea of electric vehicles. They could do that also with bio-fuels. I'm just curious why they aren't doing that. Jumping into electric vehicles with both feet like this seems risky to me.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
1) "will" -> "does". The car already exists.
2) Not according to every review from everyone who's actually been in the car.
Furthermore, I'm going to bet that you've never even been in an S or X (hint: there's two expensive models, and that's if you don't count the Roadster).
"Casual hello, it's me, Zoidberg, act naturally."
Get in line behind me. Those at the head of the line are already getting theirs. Which is nice because it means more and more sightings, videos, pics, etc every day.
Pre- or post refresh, and what interior option? Funny that they've captured a third of the US luxury sedan market, almost 50% more than the next closest competitor, with a "Kia-like" interior, huh?
And FYI, I'll take professional reviewers opinions (who have been in Model 3s) about M3 quality over yours, thanks.
"Casual hello, it's me, Zoidberg, act naturally."
Seriously? Because you can't put your hands on it a second after you say "yes" that means it's not for sale? Is "any product that has a waiting list isn't really for sale" actually your argument here?
Around a hundred, as per the production ramp.
Taxis? Right. So probably pre-facelift / first generation base interior / no PUP.
No, the segment is defined by the form factor and price class. It's not defined by "How AC On Slashdot Wants To Group Things".
Amusing ;)
What sort of idiot would take the word of someone who's never seen the car over the word of literally a dozen professional reviewers who have?
Right, got it. Every major auto reviewer is secretly on Tesla's dole.
"Casual hello, it's me, Zoidberg, act naturally."
Except for the fact that you can actually buy it, and people are at present taking deliveries.
Luxury sedans are a vehicle class. You don't get to make up a new definition for it; it already has one. Model S is in the luxury sedan segment (there's some debate over whether it belongs in the "large luxury sedan" segment or "midsize luxury sedan" segment). Model X is in the luxury crossover segment. Model 3 is in the midrange compact sedan segment. Model Y will be in the midrange crossover segment.
Your opinions of the quality of the seats on the old taxi you rode in have no bearing on what class a vehicle is slotted into.
I have, and I think it looks awesome. But pictures don't capture even the sight like being in a vehicle in person, and they don't capture the feel at all.
There have been around a dozen different reviewers from different major sources who have. Every last one of them raved about it. Find me a single review from anyone who has actually been in the vehicle who said that it felt like a cheap econobox.
"Casual hello, it's me, Zoidberg, act naturally."
Lithium ion batteries and charging systems top out at 97% efficiency.
Sorry to slap it into your face. You are just a stupid american dumb idiot.
What the fuck would have the laws of thermodynamics to do with batteries? Hu?
Before you try to seek for an answer: nothing at all.
All your numbers are completely made up, you are even to dumb to google.
So assume 90% AC-DC conversion,
Yeah, and why do you assume that instead of for funk sake googeling the efficiency? Hae?
Idiot.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Citation please....
My Li Ion numbers came from Wikipedia, which isn't the paragon of factual information but in this case looks correct. The AC-DC/DC-AC conversion numbers come from my knowledge as an electrical engineer. NOTHING is 100% efficient in converting energy from one form to another... And 97% just isn't possible in this case, given my understandings of Thermodynamics.. So where are you getting your information because I think they are wrong?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Wow, still bullshit posts like this?
Still not able to google 'efficiency of lithium ion batteries'?
Wow, go back into your cave, troll.
NOTHING is 100% efficient in converting energy from one form to another
Wow, that is probably the stupids thing I ever heard.
First law of physics ... you might like to google for that too.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
First and second laws of thermodynamics back to you.... How the Newton's first law of motion has anything to do with a battery is a mystery to me. Perhaps you mean the first law of thermodynamics? (Energy is not created or destroyed)...I assume that's what you mean, because if not, what you are calling me applies more to you.
Now that we have that straight...
Lithium Ion battery charge discharge efficiency is 80-90%. Put 10 Watt hours in, get 8 or 9 out. This is straight from the Wikipedia article I found with a Goggle search. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Stop and learn something about this by thinking. There is a reversible chemical process going on in a battery, always is. This means when you charge the thing, there is entropy gain, as you convert energy from one form to another, in this case electrical power to potential energy stored in chemical bonds. Entropy gain is unavoidable and represents that part of the energy that doesn't get converted into the desired potential energy, but is lost to some other form like heat. The same is true for the process of changing chemical potential energy back into electrical power. Again entropy is increased, energy is lost to things other than electrical power. My point, and what you should learn, is that entropy increases represent losses in the system, energy that is not returned back to you when you discharge the battery, but is lost to other kinds of energy (heat and such).
So.... Do you have anything to cite here that says my numbers are wrong?
BY THE WAY... Just incase you are confused with "coulomb efficiency" numbers being bandied about which are 99%, this is NOT ENERGY efficiency, but a measure of current efficiency.. You put X amp hours in, you get X amp hours out (less 1%), however the VOLTAGE is not the same. To charge a Lithium Ion cell you have to apply a higher voltage than when it's discharging, amazingly there is about a 10% difference in those voltages... ;) Imagine that...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Neither the first nor second law has anything to do with electricity (none of them has)
The laws of thermodynamics are about stream engines (I simplified it a bit for you), or in other words: idealized gases under heat an pressure.
Or if you need more: :D
https://courses.lumenlearning....
The Wikipedia article unfortunately regularly gets rewritten in an incomprehensible state and then fixed again
http://batteryuniversity.com/l... :P
Efficiency of lithium ion batteries is about 99%.
Probably some idiot edited the your wikipedia article?
On the other hand some other idiot could have edited the thermodynamics article to my favour
Your pick ....
This means when you charge the thing, there is entropy gain, as you convert energy from one form to another
Wow, another stupid argument.
There is no entropy gain when you charge a battery. You reduce entropy.
Uncharged battery: everything is chaotic distributed.
Charged battery: everything is fine sorted, all charged particles on one side.
Imagine a class of water, drop a sugar cube into it. Low entropy: everything sorted. The cube is in one corner. The rest is clean water. When the cube is gone: high entropy. It is distributed all over the place. With a "gradient" of sugar concentration which is high at the spot the cube was, and the lowest at the most far away spots in the glass. Recharging the cube to its old position: removing the entropy.
Good luck with your half knowledge of Physics (and physics is probably the most simple natural science, until you hit Quantum Mechanics, Relativity Theory and/or String Theory)
I hope for you, that you are never in a life threatening situation were some basic understanding of physics would save your life, and you fail.
Regarding that wikipedia article, it seems that specific battery they used as an example has 80% - 90% efficiency. However that sounds not plausible to me. ... google is your friend.
The Li-ion batteries in a car have close to 99% efficience. With charging equipment etc. that drops to 95% - 957%
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Neither the first nor second law has anything to do with electricity (none of them has)
Anybody who's taking a course in thermodynamics sees the folly in that statement. Thermodynamics has application in ALL cases where energy is transferred or transformed, this means heat, electricity, chemical reactions, and/or potential and kinetic energy even. Just because they teach thermodynamics using heat engines does not mean it only applies to heat engines. The rules are general and discuss energy in all forms, not just a form of energy known as heat. You are gravely mistaken.
You are wrong on your FIRST point... I rest my case because the foundation of your argument is patently incorrect, and thus your conclusions are too.
Next you are going to tell me perpetual motion machines exist.... Because you found some snake oil sales man on Google that says so..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Thermodynamics has application in ALL cases where energy is transferred or transformed
No it has not. Reads the damn wiki article.
A photon hits an electron, the electron changes "orbit". No energy "lost", no thermodynamics involved. The electron jumps back to its old orbit, it emits an identical photon, with same wavelength and energy: nothing lost, no thermodynamics involved.
Last time some school kid with no physics in school wrote such nonsense, I gave two dozens of examples. Perhaps you find my old post.
Thermodynamics has two single laws that have a general purpose application: the sum of the energy in a closed system is constant. Entropy is over time increasing.
The rest of the laws are about ideal gases under heat and pressure. Should be clearly written in the wiki article, which you obviously did not read or someone rewrote it in bad/misleading english again?
The core of the laws of Thermodynamics is a simple realization: if you convert energy to heat then it is hard/impossible to convert everything back into a "useful" energy.
The law of Thermodynamics says absolutely nothing about converting magnetic energy into electric energy into electric fields into kinetic energy etc. p.p. Hint: get a damn clue what the greek introduction syllable Thermo means, aka as in Thermometer.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Thermodynamics has application in ALL cases where energy is transferred or transformed No it has not. Reads the damn wiki article.
Thermodynamics applies to all transfers of energy, which includes electrical power, batteries and heat just to name a few. Until we agree on that, I'm not going further with you because these concepts are fundamental.
Thermodynamic laws you must understand the implications of are:
Energy can not be created or destroyed (Conservation of energy).
Transferring energy from one place to another and/or one form to another (i.e. doing work) increases Entropy.
I go no further with you until we can agree on these fundamental laws of physics.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Thermodynamics applies to all transfers of energy, which includes electrical power ...
It does not
But if you believe otherwise that is your problem not mine.
After all you are not working in electric engineering :D
No, we can not agree on those laws. The first one is not a law, it is an axiom. One of our basic assumptions like conversation of momentum. I believe we only have those two :D
The second one is already wrong. Transfer of energy does not increase Entropy. Why would it?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No, I'm not currently working as an Electrical Engineer... But I have used my Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering as a electronics engineer in the past.
We are at a impasse.. You won't agree to a common view of thermodynamics that I feel is fundamental and beyond debate, so we have no common ground to debate with. In my view you have already disqualified yourself as knowing anything about the topic being discussed, yet you make confident assertions of same which are simply wrong.
So, as it says in Proverbs.. "Answer not a fool according to his folly"
I'm done. Hope it works out for you. Full Stop
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You won't agree to a common view of thermodynamics
Your "ideas" regarding Thermodynamics is not a common view.
At least not amoung scientists/physisicst. No idea what you learn in american schools, though.
Basically every time on /. someone takes refugee to the laws of Thermodynamics, the explainations and references he uses: are wrong
In my view you have already disqualified yourself as knowing anything about the topic being discussed, yet you make confident assertions of same which are simply wrong. :D
If you think so
Funny that you think the physical laws about steam engines have any relevant application in electricity etc. except for running a steam engine to create electricity .... rofl.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.