Israel Aims To Ban Gasoline, Diesel Vehicles By 2030 (cleantechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CleanTechnica: 2030 seems like a long way off, but it's really just around the corner. And when the bell tolls at midnight on December 31, 2030, you may not be able to buy a gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicle in Israel. After that date, all passenger cars will be electric and all trucks will be powered by electricity or compressed natural gas, if a proposal currently under consideration gets approved by the government. A final decision is expected by the end of this year. Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz [told Reuters last month] the biggest challenge will be creating a "critical mass" of electric and CNG powered vehicles before the deadline arrives. "We are already encouraging [the transition] by funding ... more than 2,000 new charging stations around the country," he says. The plan was set in motion one day after the United Nations issued its latest climate assessment that finds nations must do far more than they are currently doing in order to stave off warmer global average temperatures that will put the environment at risk. In order to reach the goal, the Israeli government will "reduce taxation on electric cars to almost zero, so they are going to be much cheaper," Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said. He expects there will be about 177,000 electric cars on Israeli roads around 2025. By 2030, the expectation is that there will be nearly 1.5 million EVs in the country. The country has a ways to go though, as there are less than 100 electric cars on the roads today.

Comments

Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump is a whiny little bitch. His supporters are millionaires voting their own economic self interest and uneducated imbicles who believe itâ(TM)s fine that millionaires pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than they pay. Trump loves the uneducated!

Re:Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump is a whiny little bitch.

-

From here, it is YOU who looks like the whiner. Trump is president and you are posting on Slashdot. Trump is the leader of the free world and the nuclear football follows him where ever he goes. I don't see any football near you.

I am a EE and I also have a JD ( law degree, patent law ) and I voted for Trump. Not all who voted for Trump were idiots, but only an idiot would attempt to sell such an absurd oversimplification that only idiots voted for Trump. I voted for Trump because I wanted to see someone from outside the system take the reins for a while and shake things up. I remain glad I voted for Trump, and every time I see twerps like you whine I am even more glad. Douche bags like you don't deserve to be happy. Happiness is EARNED, and it doesn't come as a result of whining.

Maybe instead of whining you will someday get off your ass and make something of your life.

You should try it.

Re:Trump

[shilly]

Soooo....you know how you don't like absurd over-simplifications? And you know how you then said "Happiness is EARNED"? Don't you think that might be an, um, absurd over-simplification? Or do you think babies should not be happy?

Re:Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump is a faggot, Trump supporters are morons, your JD just means you know more about the law than his entire administration, but yes you are a fucking idiot. Yes, you are. And a nazi enabler. You should hang next to him.

Re:Trump

[Joce640k]

I wanted to see someone from outside the system take the reins for a while and shake things up.

How's that going? Is the swamp drained yet?

Re:Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

He's creating a new one next to it. bigger.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

I made over a million last year, will again the next 3 years. I paid over 50% in taxes. That means I paid more percentage and more absolute dollars than 99% of the country. Yes I am a 1%er. You are an ignorant propagandist.

You are a troll but I had to respond because I am so damned tired of useless assholes like you who want to dig even deeper into my pocket and give my hard earned money to yourself and other useless shits.

You are why I will vote for anyone promising to cut taxes. Taking more than half of what I earned is simply unjust. Go earn your own and leave me the fuck alone, you leech.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

You can probably afford to hire an accountant. Why don't you?

Re: Trump

[c6gunner]

Nobody who can actually afford an accountant would be stupid enough to ask that question.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

I have one. Where do you get the false idea that an accountant can magically make taxes just go away? It is complete nonsense. Again: I am a 1%er and pay over 50% of my earnings in taxes. There is no legal way to avoid this. I do not own a Senator or any other such silliness you may have been told about the rich.

Oh god, evermind. It is hopeless. Yes, in a tax system where the more you make the higher the percentage of your income is taxed, you pay less by earning more. *eye roll*

No. I pay over 50%. It is unjust and unfair and discouraging me from continuing to produce once my current project runs its course. Then I will be a zero income leech like so many others and collect my checks while contributing nothing.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Want some cheese with that wine?
I highly suspect you're lying but if you're not please shut up and accept your good fortune to earn that much in the first place. And on the off chance you're not lying, you also need to fire your accountant.

Re: Trump

[Kiuas]

Where do you get the false idea that an accountant can magically make taxes just go away? It is complete nonsense. Again: I am a 1%er and pay over 50% of my earnings in taxes. There is no legal way to avoid this

You're seriously claiming that legal tax-evasion via tax-havens is not a thing? Are you living under a rock? Sure, if you make all your income as a salary from a corporation, then reducing taxes on that is difficult, If you however own a corporation tax-evasion becomes easier the larger that corporation is. I mean, what do you think is the reason for basically all major multinational companies owning subsidiaries in the Caymans or other small nations with low taxes? Why do you think it is that basically all megacorps have a lower effective tax-rate on their billions of profit than you do as a employee making a million if creative accounting doesn't exist?

The way the game works when you get to the big-league depends a bit on where you're located and what you're selling but the basic idea is pretty simple and same everywhere: you setup a couple of companies, one in whichever country you're conducting business in (company A), another in a country with suitably lax tax-laws (company B). You then for example make sure that the licensing rights of the software or whatever it is that you're selling are held by the company in the tax-haven. You then do some math and figure out that after operating expenses and salaries and all, the profit of your actual company (company A) is say 100 million. Okay, you don't want to pay taxes on all of that. Well great, you just make a contractual arrangement so that company A has to pay licensing fees to company B to the tune of say, 95 million, and suddenly the profit of company A goes down to 5 million, and the 95 million gets moved to your tax-haven company that pays next to no tax on it.

Variations of this model are so common it's basically a public secret. It's how Apple & al have been dodging billions in taxes for years now. The most common of these arrangements used by US corporations especially to shield around a hundred billion from american taxation a year was known as the Double Irish that used to be combined with what the accountants call a Dutch sandwhich. Basically using Irish and Dutch tax and IP law to move massive amounts of profits from the EU to Bermuda and other tax-havens.

These schemes were forced to be closed by the European Union (American officials and government seemed not to care one bit even though the existence and use of these schemes was known for decades and even though it cost the US a lot in lost tax-revenue.) in 2014. However, Ireland, not wanting to lose all the corporate business especially on the IT-side that this loophole had brought them basically just re-instated the loophole (now known as the 'single malt' arrangement and used by for example Microsoft and probably Facebook) with slightly changed wording and application, but it's essentially still there and still used.

Hell, there's an entire wiki article on Ireland as a tax-haven, which states at the very beginning:

Ireland's base erosion and profit shifting ("BEPS") tools give foreign corporates Effective tax rates of 0% to 3% on global profits re-routed to Ireland via Ireland's tax treaty network.

And Ireland is by far not the only country with such (intentional) loopholes in the laws, it's just the most commonly used. But yeah, clearly because you personally cannot avoid paying taxes on your million or so of (presumably wage) income, that means it must be impossible,

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Try living in Europe... THEN come back and complain about taxes... We make you pay high taxes of the same money atleast 3 times in some situations.. So you pay one, pay again with the money that is ledt and then pay again

Ie. You inherit money your dad payed taxes from, you pay again for inheriting, you pay again when spending some of it

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree partially, but also disagree. Is taxation a good method of wealth distribution? Hell no! It's a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. But-- does that mean we should simply sit back and do nothing? No.

If we had a healthy, vibrant free-market, then competition amongst business owners would be such that there would be few or no [m/b]illionaires. We need caps on size of businesses in order to encourage more entrepreneurship and reduce corporate consolidation.

But of course, everyone would rather argue about whether to prescribe whisky or pills for the pain.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

I made over a million last year, will again the next 3 years. I paid over 50% in taxes.

The highest federal tax rate is 39.6%. That rate is only applied to amounts over $500k, probably giving you an effective federal tax rate of around 29%. You would have had to pay over 21% in state and local taxes to pay over 50% total. So a large part of your problem with taxes is that you choose to live in an area with higher local taxes than typical.

Re:Trump

[Freischutz]

I wanted to see someone from outside the system take the reins for a while and shake things up.

How's that going? Is the swamp drained yet?

Yup, he drained it straight into his administration. One of Trump's greatest achievements.

Re:Trump

[drinkypoo]

I am a EE and I also have a JD ( law degree, patent law ) and I voted for Trump. Not all who voted for Trump were idiots,

True. Some were merely morally corrupt shitbags who figured he'd make them richer, and who didn't give a crap anyone anyone but themselves. Every single person who decided to support Trump is also supporting racism and rape, and there's literally no way around that simple fact.

I voted for Trump because I wanted to see someone from outside the system take the reins for a while and shake things up.

And it was okay with you if they were a racist rapist who even before they became president cost the USA millions of dollars in court costs through deliberately manipulative and fraudulent business practices.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not under a rock he's in his moms basement he's not a millionaire.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if you didn't, everyone would "inherit" all the time. No loophole for you.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

No joke, no irony.. It's going so much better than I possibly imagined.

48 RINOs were ejected from office or "retired" because they are unelectable.

The Democrats couldn't retake the Senate, and barely took the House. Obama lost 69 House seats and 13 Senate seats under identical conditions, and he wasn't even literally Hitler.

Two Supreme Court justices.. Maybe 3?

More judicial appointments in two years than Obama's 8?

Our government is no longer talking about prosecuting people for misgendering the mentally ill.

The economy is the best it has been in over 50 years.

You are fucking retarded if you think things are going badly.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

> Voted for Clinton
> Believes he doesn't support racism and rape

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a 1%, but I have made several million in software development.

Can confirm, taxed over 50% in real dollars, and definitely very discouraging.

Also straight ticket Democrat voter. Just hate their fiscal policy.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, racism and rape. I'll give you prostitution for sure. But racism and rape? Help me out with that one.

Let's talk about the Clintons though. You know, Bill who paid all that hush money to the many women he raped over the years. Or Hillary to this day who lets a racist comment slip every now and then.

"I know they all look alike." -Clinton on blacks, Oct. 2018

Re: Trump

[Darinbob]

RINO is an odd term. Nothing defines what a Republican really is, so we have today a president with almost zero resemblance to classical Republicans with fans who accuse everyone who disagrees with him to not be a real Republican. Ronald Reagan would be a RINO in your eyes I suspect.

The economy is based upon the previous decade for the most part. In two years nobody can turn an economy around. It started bad at the start of Obama's presidency and was slowly making gains through today. When the economy looks good, Trump makes tax cuts which is bizarre because that's something done when times are bad to give a short term boost. But the cuts just aren't very large and there's no way to pay for them (tariffs may do this in a roundabout way but will hurt the economy in turn). And the economy is not the best in 50 years, the economy sucks unless you only look at official figures which discount a lot of real world effects - homelessness seems to be up and salaries have stayed stagnant in relation to inflation.

Re: Trump

[Darinbob]

I think a key difference is that after paying taxes in Europe you generally have something to show for it - education, healthcare, economic safety nets, and a higher standard of living. In the US you don't see as much coming back to you.

Re: Trump

[TheMeuge]

The fact that your comment was modded insightful is testament too exactly how far our society has fallen.

Guess what. I'm a first generation immigrant Jew who at one point was on welfare and Medicaid. I also voted for Trump... not because I liked him, but because I moved out of the Soviet Union, and don't really fancy the US turning into it's equivalent.

Re: Trump

[TheMeuge]

Auto correct sucks btw. Its vs it's etc...

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Soooo....you know how you don't like absurd over-simplifications? And you know how you then said "Happiness is EARNED"? Don't you think that might be an, um, absurd over-simplification? Or do you think babies should not be happy?

Yes, I think you are an adult baby and you earned happiness with this post. Beyond that I have no idea wtf you are talking about

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody cares. Go away.

Re: Trump

[Joce640k]

The economy is based upon the previous decade for the most part. In two years nobody can turn an economy around. It started bad at the start of Obama's presidency and was slowly making gains through today. When the economy looks good, Trump makes tax cuts which is bizarre because that's something done when times are bad to give a short term boost.

Those tax cuts are costing the USA $1 trillion per year (and counting...)

It's hard for the economy not to go up when you inject $2 trillion into it.

The question is: Who's going to repay that loan?

(You can bet it's going to be the main job of the Democrat that follows Trump, and he'll get the blame for all the bad news).

I only hope that Trump gets reelected and has to deal with the fallout himself in his second term.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

"B-b-but we should have elected Hillary, because the only way to save the economy is to raise taxes and import millions of uneducated welfare recipients," you sniveled.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet you gleefully praised Obama's improving the economy and showered him with Nobel Peace prizes within 2 months of taking office.

I thought you people were supposed to be the smart ones.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of Nazis!

Re: Trump

[drinkypoo]

I'm a first generation immigrant Jew who at one point was on welfare and Medicaid. I also voted for Trump... not because I liked him, but because I moved out of the Soviet Union, and don't really fancy the US turning into it's equivalent.

So in spite of having moved out of the soviet union where the Nazis were primarily defeated, you voted for a white supremacist who is pushing us in the direction of Nazism, because you didn't want to see the USA turn into the USSR? A soviet republic is too much for you, but the Fourth Reich is A-OK?

Re: Trump

[drinkypoo]

Lol, racism and rape.

Wow, you're a shitlord.

I'll give you prostitution for sure. But racism and rape? Help me out with that one.

He's clearly racist, only racists in denial about their own racism are still in denial about that. Trump's a white nationalist, just like his father, who was a known member of the KKK. You can tell he's racist by his racist policies, not just through supposition. We know him by his actions. As for rape, he raped one of his former wives. It only wasn't legally rape because, unlike civilized states, a husband was legally incapable of raping his wife at the time. There are still several states in this country where women give up bodily autonomy when they get married. That's just another way slavery has remained with us.

Re: Trump

[shilly]

You have no idea what I'm talking about? Surely you can't be that stupid. Surely no-one can. The point is blindingly obvious: if happiness is earned, then babies can't have access to happiness, because they have yet to do anything to earn that happiness. And given that you're apparently ridiculously stupid, let me state for the avoidance of doubt that I'm using the word "earn" in the same sense you originally used it: not actual financial earnings, but actions that are deserving of reward (in this case, happiness). Babies can't act in that way. Which goes to show you are a hypocrite, complaining about absurd over-simplification and then making an absurd over-simplification of your own in the very same post.

Re: Trump

[shilly]

All those fancy degrees, and you had to resort to ad hominem because, in your own words, you had "no idea wtf [I was] talking about". I mean, if you're as clever as you think you are, you should be able to figure out what I meant even if it didn't make sense to you at first reading, even if you thought the logic was all twisted -- and then respond to it with some kind of piercingly brilliant argument that lanced straight through the heart of my assertions. Instead, you had to resort to the sort of thing a 5 year old would find a bit childish: "talking about babies? Hah, well you're just a great big baby yourself". I mean, c'mon dude. Have some self-respect: if you're going to use an insult because you can't think of an argument, at least use an insult consonant with your expensive education.

Re: Trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Most my left leaning friends and I were pretty perplexed about the Peace Prize award. Even President Obama was perplexed by it.

Also the Norwegian Nobel Committee selects the winners so Americans can't really shower him with it...

But bombs are okay

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you can't spell war without bomb. (In Hebrew.)

Re:But bombs are okay

[Dog-Cow]

Is there any particular reason for lying? Are you trying to make a stupid joke, or are you just a bigot?

Re:But bombs are okay

[Anonymous Coward]

>I don't understand this, therefore it's racist

Re:But bombs are okay

[shilly]

He means that the word for bomb in Hebrew is , while the word for war is , and as you can see they share only one letter, .

So what did you mean by this? It's like a sub-David Brent witticism. At least he was right about "team" and "me".

Re:But bombs are okay

[jittles]

Because you can't spell war without bomb. (In Hebrew.)

If you think about it, Israel is the perfect country to go all electric. Small enough that you can drive the entire country in one charge. Best of all, none of your neighbors like you so you don't have to worry about taking a road trip to neighboring areas. It's like the US, but on a smaller scale.

Re:But bombs are okay

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you can't spell war without bomb. (In Hebrew.)

If you think about it, Israel is the perfect country to go all electric. Small enough that you can drive the entire country in one charge. Best of all, none of your neighbors like you so you don't have to worry about taking a road trip to neighboring areas. It's like the US, but on a smaller scale.

Yeah, except there are way more crazy racist religious fanatic gun nuts per square kilometre.

Re: But bombs are okay

[Type44Q]

Best of all, none of your neighbors like you

Tell that to our neighbors who're so desperate to come here; apparently they didn't get your memo.

Real Reason

[mentil]

Fossil fuels were put in the ground by Satan to confuse innocent God-fearing creationists. Emissions such as sulfur dioxide are harmful to humans because they originate from Hell. Global warming is actually a plot by Satan to terraform Earth to more resemble his domain. /s

Re:Real Reason

[Narcocide]

I give you full points for effort.

Re:Real Reason

[Anonymous Coward]

But Trump won. That means Hell is actually frozen, not hot anymore.

Re:Real Reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Mental models don't have to be scientifically accurate to be effective.

Re: Real Reason

[Anonymous Coward]

The 9th circle of Hell has always been frozen. The idea of Hell came from Christianity, who cribbed it from other religions.

Re:Real Reason

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Fossil fuels were put in the ground by Satan to confuse innocent God-fearing creationists. Emissions such as sulfur dioxide are harmful to humans because they originate from Hell. Global warming is actually a plot by Satan to terraform Earth to more resemble his domain. /s

Albert Einstein: "God does not play dice!"

Niels Bohr: "Stop telling Satan what to do!"

Re: Real Reason

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of Hell came from Christianity, who cribbed it from other religions.

Can you see how that statement doesn't make any sense?

Re:Real Reason

[drinkypoo]

Fossil fuels were put in the ground by Satan to confuse innocent God-fearing creationists.

Satan? You still believe in that kid stuff? It's actually aliens.

Re:Real Reason

[Rick Schumann]

You're being sarcastic but the real joke here is that there are more people than you'd be comfortable with that actually believe things like that. Hint: they're the same people who tend to be anti-vaxxers and anti-science in general.

Re:Real Reason

[SCVonSteroids]

Fuck. Put it that way and you might get more people onboard to fight this.

Ban ZIP & c6gunner for impersonating me... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: I'm so sick & tired of /. BULLIES. You shitweasels have nothing better to do than HARASS, STALK & IMPERSONATE little ol' me. I've done absolutely NOTHING wrong & just try to make everyone's lives better w/ my work that stops ads & malware.

* As soon as I post, I'm CENSORED to -1 w/ ABUSED downmodpoints by bullies like ZIP, who even admit to this. I caught c6gunner mocking then IMPERSONATING me when he forgot to log out. Zontar mailed me a postcard w/ THREATS on it, then LIES & STALKS me. All because you JEALOUS JOWIE "ne'er-do-wells" KNOW I'm World-Class & you're shit. It's why you hide behind FAKE names & UNIDENTIFIABLE ANONYMOUS.

I'm even improving my already GREAT PHYSIQUE by getting calf implants while you weezils sit around all day on /. STALKING & HARASSING your BETTERS. I repeatedly dust the no-mind bullshit blatherings you BULLIES post to attack me. Like always I WIN & YOU LOSE.

APK

P.S.=> This BULLYING of me is SO UNFAIR. GROW UP... apk

Re:Hitlery H. Hamas

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Go Israel!

[b0s0z0ku]

Way to stick it to the Saudis and Iranians. Be on the forefront of making their primary product worthless while helping your own environment...

Re:Go Israel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to stick it to the Saudis and Iranians. Be on the forefront of making their primary product worthless while helping your own environment...

.

Obviously you don't know much about the various ways petroleum is used, which have nothing to do with internal combustion engines.

Petroleum, unlike you, will not be worthless in your lifetime.

Re: Go Israel!

[AvitarX]

This is exactly why we should be switching out its use where we can.

Re:Go Israel!

[drmaxx]

Electricity - from fossil fuels: 95.5% of total installed capacity (2015 est.) (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/is.html) Not exactly the best way to "stick it to the Saudis".

Re:Go Israel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hezbollah rejoice. You think LNG trucks will not be errr prized, LNG filling stations, and a loose cigarette.
Electric is good too. Free electricity - easy to tap into, and liberate o2 and H2 in tunnels using water.
On the plus side, single engine electrics using 415 volt AC 3 phase driven from lead acid is cheaper.
Besides Thailand beat the ROW with LPG decades ago,

Re:Go Israel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider that Israel has only three cities and two roads, it is easy enough to do there.

The only place it will be easier, is Iceland, since they have only one town and no roads.

Re: Go Israel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi Ivan.

Re: Go Israel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Most electricity generated by fossil fuels is from coal, which Saudi Arabia doesn't have. A significant fraction is now from gas, but exports of that tend to come from Russia, Qatar, and Norway, and to some extent the USA.

Re:Go Israel!

[rkordmaa]

Volumes of oil products used in chemical industry, plastics and everything else, pale in comparison to use as fuel. Sure, oil will be useful forever, but the price will be next to nothing if / when electric transport takes over. And at current pace, ~2030 seems like a reasonable tip over point, give or take 5 years. If electric transport keeps taking off like it does right now, then in a decade oil economies will be gutted, majority of income will just be gone, leaving only gaping holes in the budget. On the other hand, anyone who is today in battery manufacturing business will be stinking rich.

I wouldn't have said so even a few months ago, but a recent visit to Shenzhen forced a mental recalibration. Anyone visiting there, keep an eye out for green number plates, all these buses, cars and small delivery trucks are electric and most of them weren't there a year ago. Blue is gasoline and yellow is diesel. Never mind the electric bikes etc, these are old news. When we look back at history a decade from now, we'll mark 2018 as the year that electric cars really started going mainstream. It'll take years to get to world scale and reach every corner, never mind phasing out majority of gasoline cars, but right now is the moment this process really takes off.

Re:Go Israel!

[thegarbz]

Petroleum is too valuable to burn. It may not be wortheless in our lifetimes but at the rate we are going it may become priceless.

Re: Go Israel!

[c6gunner]

As the other guy pointed out, the vast majority of that comes from coal and natural gas. Israel has control of some rather large NG reserves, so it's mostly self sufficient for electrical production.

Those figures also don't account for solar-thermal water heating which eliminates a significant chunk of a typical households electrical needs.

While solar photovoltaic production in Israel is minimal due to cheap NG, they do have a stated goal of increasing PV usage over the coming decades.

Re: Go Israel!

[houghi]

Yeah. Down with Alaska and Texas! (Well, that is where a lot of oil is coming from, so ...)

Re:Go Israel!

[jabuzz]

Something like 97% of the value of crude oil comes from the 3% we don't burn. That is turning oil in products like plastic etc. has far more value than burning it.

Re:Go Israel!

[Bert64]

Just like the market for blacksmiths and horse feed dried up and became a small niche, but it won't happen overnight... Currently a lot of electricity is still produced from fossil fuel sources.

Re:Go Israel!

[rkordmaa]

Fossil fuels are going nowhere unless we get a major attitude shift towards nuclear reactors or by some miracle fusion becomes viable. So not any time soon. That doesn't help saudis any though, power stations do not burn oil. Gas, coal, wood mash, garbage, whatever they can get their hands on really, but oil is too expensive. What keeps oil economies going are gasoline cars, and at current pace these are going the way of the dodo over the next decade or two.

Re:Go Israel!

[DigiShaman]

Personal automotive EV transportation will never go mainstream. It's delusional to think so. If anything, renewable sources of energy (solar, wind, nuclear, hydroelectric) will go into the making of synthetic hydrocarbons. There's already the transport infrastructure (pipelines), and hydrocarbons offer the densest form of energy per volume. It's also quick to refill. With electric, you're looking into a complete overhaul of the grid in addition to a societal change of accepting long recharge times as the "new normal". And then there's the whole range aspect which is crucial for rural transport.

Re:Go Israel!

[rkordmaa]

Personal automotive EV transportation will never go mainstream

Already happening, perhaps not everywhere at the same pace but it's happening. In the end it will boil down to cost, the cheapness of charging vs fueling is what will sell it for most of the world. It certainly is making the sale in China and you won't find a bigger lot of penny pinchers anywhere in the world.

Re:Go Israel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, oil will be useful forever, but the price will be next to nothing if / when electric transport takes over.

Well not quite. What happens in a case like this is the oil companies you have today become much smaller, go out of business, or transition more of their business to something else. The supply will go down because it isn't profitable to spend all the money required to actually go drill for and produce oil when the demand is too low to support it. The price will slide dramatically at first. No doubt. But it will stabilize at something high enough to support the actual requirements to produce it. I remember years back - somewhere around 1995 or so - the price of oil dropped to $11. Most of the oil producers had to shut in production because you could not produce oil at that price - you'd be selling it at a $5 a barrel loss at the time at most locations production economics (there were some like the Saudis and Iran that could still make some money at that price). The dip in production caused a new balance with demand and the price stabilized at a rate where you could open most of your production again and bring back the workers. This will happen in big waves as oil for transportation begins to decline. But when it is done, oil won't be super cheap. People still have to drill for it, produce it, refine it, etc. And those things have fixed costs that will actually go up once it isn't being done at huge scale anymore.

Re:Go Israel!

[rkordmaa]

Hmmm yeah, you got a point, price will of course stabilize at whatever is required to meet the remaining demand. But still, the entire thing will be downgraded to just another industry, instead of an entire world turning economy.

Re:Go Israel!

[Ryn]

You can't run a country full of people used to entitlements on "small niche".

Re:Go Israel!

[Anonymous Coward]

We have mainstream 200+ mile batteries right now that can be charged to 80% in a half hour for less than $40,000. Pay a bit more and you're seeing 300+ mile batteries. A decade ago there was a single electric car being manufactured for over $100,000 that could go almost 175 miles and be charged in 12 hours. Electric cars failed a century ago because rural regions had no electricity. They got electricity now with few exceptions and it is almost trivial to put in a plug that can charge these vehicles overnight. Same plug as for stoves. High energy charging stations are numerous and only growing with each passing year.

Where will we be in a decade? 500+ mile batteries? At volume, batteries will be very cheap to produce as will electric motors. The cost is already less than half it was a decade ago now that volume is up. Numerous technologies are being developed right now to increase energy density and reduce cost. Add to all this the maintenance of EV transportation: you need new tires every about as often as current transportation, brakes less often as compared to current transportation. There's a very long list of things you don't need: no oil, no oil filters, no urea (where applicable), no belts, no transmission, no exhaust system, no engine air filters/sensors, no fuel pump, no spark plugs... the list goes on and on. Fleet maintenance is a big line item for folks in the transportation industry and by a certain point you'll be a fool to keep maintaining combustion engines while low maintenance vehicles are on the market.

Yes, we will still need fossil fuels for the time being generating electricity. But electricity is a flexible energy source. An EV can get cleaner over the lifetime of the vehicle as the electric sources change. No internal combustion vehicle will get cleaner over the lifetime of the vehicle. There's also something to be said for operating a huge facility at peak efficiency. An internal combustion engine must make many compromises to make up for its limitations, such as poor torque at low RPMs and having to be small to fit in a mobile situation. An internal combustion engine is very often unable to operate at peak efficiency and its peak efficiency is limited by its size and operating demands. Given that, even coal is cleaner than burning gasoline/diesel in a vehicle because coal can be burned most efficiently and economically in a big power plant. (Gasoline/diesel would be cleaner than coal in a big power plant.)

Re:Go Israel!

[drinkypoo]

"Fossil fuels are going nowhere unless we get a major attitude shift towards nuclear reactors or by some miracle fusion becomes viable."

Such a stupid thing to say. Renewables are cheaper than nukes, so nukes won't help more than they will. The obvious solution is to put solar panels over parking lots. It's cheap to put them there, and doing so actually extends the life of the paving surface. This would work especially well in Israel, where there is plenty of insolation. And you don't need storage to go with it, because the cars are the storage.

Re:Go Israel!

[Dan1701]

Nukes are useful, necessary even for a number of reasons. First and foremost nukes deliver power and lots of it all the time, which heavy industry absolutely requires; batteries are not yet capacious or cheap enough to store power in sufficient quantity to make up for the patchiness of renewables.

Secondly, the world still has a lot of high-level nuclear waste that really needs destroying in fast-neutron reactors; it also has a lot of plutonium which ought really to be classified as "Really dangerous high-level waste". Plutonium is useful mostly for making bombs, so the less of it about the better.

Finally, apart from vehicle fuel much of the world's energy requirement is heat, rather than electrical or chemical power. Small, sealed-for-life nuclear reactors powering district steam heating would go a long way towards replacing gas as a heating fuel.

Re:Go Israel!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Personal automotive EV transportation will never go mainstream.

There's a lot of "X will never happen" quotes that became famous for the wrong(ness) reason, but it really takes a special person to make such a comment just as that X in question is slowly happening.

Re:Go Israel!

[drinkypoo]

Nukes are useful, necessary even for a number of reasons. First and foremost nukes deliver power and lots of it all the time, which heavy industry absolutely requires;

Bullshit. And also bullshit.

batteries are not yet capacious or cheap enough to store power in sufficient quantity to make up for the patchiness of renewables.

Bullshit.

Secondly, the world still has a lot of high-level nuclear waste that really needs destroying in fast-neutron reactors;

They are expensive and dangerous. It would make more sense to just drop the waste into a subduction (The word "subduction" is not in the Moz dictionary... WTF) zone and wave goodbye to it.

Finally, apart from vehicle fuel much of the world's energy requirement is heat, rather than electrical or chemical power. Small, sealed-for-life nuclear reactors powering district steam heating would go a long way towards replacing gas as a heating fuel.

Heat comes from a number of sources. Much of that energy requirement could be substantially reduced by simply implementing more insulation, which doesn't have to be done every day like heating a space does.

Re:Go Israel!

[Dan1701]

I would rather beg to differ on this point. At the moment personal automotive transport is sticking with hydrocarbon fuels because they are so convenient, and because batteries are slow to charge, hold too little power and worst of all, are hideously expensive.

Once battery costs are reduced somewhat, possibly by the development of effective flow batteries or possibly by some other innovation, then personal EVs will start to become more commonplace.

Re:Go Israel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Already mainstream in Norway - where taxes on fuel-powered vehicles are high and no taxes on the electric ones. Hence, 50% of all new cars sold are electric. People like them - gas powered is simply too slow compared to an electric of similar price. Almost no acceleration at all, with gas. Fuel is for tractors and such. I wouldn't go back even if every tax incentive disappeared. Electric is an easy way to have nice acceleration - and running cost is low. Slow 'refills' are true, but not something I run into every month. The car charges to 100% overnight, I rarely need 100% in a day. For those rare long trips I usually eat something while the car charges.

Apparently, Israel is now doing the same as Norway did. With the current political situation, they surely don't want to depend on oil from Arabs or Iran. And they have nuclear plants, so electricity won't be a problem for them. Overhauling the grid is easy - new power lines are so much cheaper than pipes for oil/gas. Such overhauls are coming anyway, with all the wind/solar stuff popping up in unexpected locations.

Re:Go Israel!

[Socguy]

We're all entitled to our opinions. I don't see synthetic hydrocarbons winning vs pure electric for 2 main reasons.

First, charging is far cheaper. Converting electricity to hydrocarbons is very inefficient as it has the same problem as hydrogen, you must create the product, ship and handle it before putting it in the car, all of which adds to the cost of fueling your vehicle. Internal combustion vehicles are also maintenance hogs as compared to EV's. All of which means that your cost of ownership over the lifetime of the car favors the EV and the gap is only going to get wider with time. That you can generate your own power for your car at home is a huge thing for lots of people as well.

Second: Convenience. What could be more convenient than only having to only stop for 5 minutes to refuel? ... not having to stop at all! The cognitive hurdle that most folks who've never owned an EV can't seem to get over is the fear that you're going to be spending 10mins - an hour at a charger to add meaningful range back to your car. It's not till they own an EV that they realize that starting each day with a full charge means that stopping to charge outside your home or workplace is a very rare occurrence. Yes, there are issues with folks who don't have their own garage but those can largely be resolved through policy changes since there's no technical reason we cannot have a robust on street charging network. Those people who do drive 500Km daily and would thus require significant recharging delays are a minuscule portion of the motoring public and those folks may opt to say with liquid fuel despite the added cost. That's entirely fine. As the public gains more experience with EV's the fearmongering will fade and more and more folks will make the switch.

Re:Go Israel!

[Gilgaron]

At the very least, every two car household could switch to one being an EV now and be happy about it. Switching the other to a hybrid probably covers the remaining use cases until the tech improves to make even that not needed. Eventually you'd be best off just renting a gas powered car for road trips (or an EV you could swap midway at a rental facility with a fresh EV).

Re:Go Israel!

[neonfrog]

How will you get the waste to the subduction zone? Asking for a friend.

Re:Go Israel!

[drinkypoo]

How will you get the waste to the subduction zone? Asking for a friend.

That's a good and valid question, although it's probably more solvable than the real issue — being sure that it won't be carried directly to an active volcano by a magma current in the mantle.

Re:Go Israel!

[DigiShaman]

Do you have any idea how many amps it take to charge an EV?! The gauge and amount of copper or alluminum would be astounding in the infrastructure needed to allow everyone to put a load on their EVs after rush-hour coming home. And we're not even addressing the typical brown-outs that occur in the summer time from everyone turning on their AC.

There's no nice way of putting it, so I'll say it - you're a fucking moron if you actually think EV is the future. NO FUCKING WAY!

Re:Go Israel!

[Anonymous Coward]

Renewables are cheaper than nukes

Renewables can be divided into those that produce power inconsistently (solar, wind) and those that have limited opportunities for installation (hydro, geothermal). If you want a megawatt-hour of electricity while the sun is up or the wind is blowing, renewables are cheaper than nukes. If you want a megawatt-hour of electricity on a calm night, renewables are still cheaper than nukes, up until you've dammed all your rivers and drilled pipes into all your volcanoes. After that, nukes are far cheaper than renewables, because the latter need power storage, which is impractically expensive.

If you want non-greenhouse-gas power, you have two main options. The first is to go with solar and wind, plus some natural gas plants to deal with the gaps; this gets you to about 80% green energy. The second is to go with nuclear; this gets you 100% green energy, but is more expensive.

Re: Go Israel!

[AvitarX]

Sure, let's run out of oil using it for fuel because Texas, Alaska, North Dakota, and Canada have lots. Good call.

Re:Go Israel!

[LunaticTippy]

You are awfully emotional about how people power their cars! I'm not sure an emotional response is helpful in this case. If you can set aside your hostility, panic, and resistance to technological changes for a moment you might see a way for this to work.

For example, if people charge their cars on a timer at night it won't require any additional infrastructure! It will simply make more efficient use of existing wiring. People could even sell power back from their car batteries during power shortages, making a bit of money and preventing brown-outs.

Re:Go Israel!

[Big Boss]

Most mainstream EVs charge fine on a 15A 110V circuit. That's really an overnight charge, but it works. At home fast-charge is about 4 hours, 30A 220V. An oven or electric clothing dryer outlet. Nothing special.

There are high energy chargers out there that can push 100A or more. They are usually only used if you need to charge on the go. Most EV users don't bother with them most of the time. >90% of the time my driving for a day uses less than half the capacity of my battery. I've used public charging twice, more out of curiosity than anything else.

In my garage, I installed a 30A/220V unit. Easy. It takes #8 copper wire. Nothing to it. About 6 months ago, my employer installed a bank of 6 of these in the parking garage, most of us are able to charge either in the morning or afternoon with these. Assuming someone doesn't leave their car there all day. There are a couple jerks most days.

As for the grid, if you're getting brownouts from AC, your power company and local government are doing it wrong. In my area, we have no such issues. AC+EV is about the same as AC+Oven. Likely better as it isn't adding heat to the room you're trying to cool. And the power company could offer time based metering to encourage people to charge in the low times etc.. It's also not like everyone is going to switch overnight. There will be decades for things to get sorted out.

Current EVs are not 100% solutions. They are likely able to be close to 80% though. Combined with natural gas and propane, you probably could convert a small country like Israel without too much hassle. And that doesn't even attempt to take advancements into account.

Re:Go Israel!

[DigiShaman]

My point is that the electric grid is already overloaded; specifically in California and the North East. The infrastructure upgrade project would be a massive undertaking not like the interstate highway project. It would be very costly too.

I'm sorry, but I don't see ever happening. With baby boomers retiring, nationalized healthcare on the horizon, wars, unfunded liabilities, more frivolous pork spending.... Yeah, just don't see it happening.

I suppose the only thing that would get congress off their ass to do something would be from the aftermath of an EMP or CME event. Maybe then there will be a grid "refresh" and the scope included to handle future EV.s

Re:Go Israel!

[Areyoukiddingme]

Do you have any idea how many amps it take to charge an EV?!

Yes. It takes 40 amps @ 240 volts to charge a Tesla Model S overnight from dead empty. A larger modern home is typically built with 200 amp service. Your typical electric clothes dryer is on a 30 amp circuit @ 240 volts. Charging a modern battery electric vehicle takes just 33% more than running a dryer, and is well within the capabilities of the main service panel for any home likely to have a Model S parked in its garage.

There's no nice way of putting it, so I'll say it - you're a fucking moron if you actually think EV is the future. NO FUCKING WAY!

If you could actually do basic arithmetic, you might be able to construct some sort of argument. Fucking moron.

Re:Go Israel!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It takes 40 amps @ 240 volts to charge a Tesla Model S overnight from dead empty.

...but most people don't drive 100000 miles per year. So that's more of a fringe case.

Re:Go Israel!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Do you have any idea how many amps it take to charge an EV?! The gauge and amount of copper or alluminum would be astounding in the infrastructure needed to allow everyone to put a load on their EVs after rush-hour coming home.

Charging in places outside of people's homes during the day from excess solar power sounds like a much more reasonable proposition than loading the grid in the late afternoon. In any case, your concerns about the metals are moot since the grid is not fully loaded most of the time, so just intelligently taking advantage of that goes a long way towards realizing proper charging infrastructure.

And we're not even addressing the typical brown-outs that occur in the summer time from everyone turning on their AC.

It also eliminates this nitpick of yours, as does AC with thermal storage powered from the same source.

There's no nice way of putting it, so I'll say it - you're a fucking moron if you actually think EV is the future. NO FUCKING WAY!

We'll see in twenty years who was the moron here.

Re:Go Israel!

[Agripa]

Renewables are cheaper than nukes, so nukes won't help more than they will.

They may be until distribution and storage costs are accounted for.

The obvious solution is to put solar panels over parking lots. It's cheap to put them there, and doing so actually extends the life of the paving surface. This would work especially well in Israel, where there is plenty of insolation.

The panels would have to provide enough energy during the time the vehicle is parked which is not going to happen unless the area taken up by the panels is much larger than the area taken up by the vehicles in the parking lot. So now the parking lot takes up several times as much space.

It would be more economical to use the panels to feed the power grid displacing the variable costs of fuel in fossil fueled power plants (not nuclear) and put them where it is convenient albeit with an additional distribution cost to charge the cars. Distributed solar might even be more economical although oddly enough it comes with distribution costs as well.

And you don't need storage to go with it, because the cars are the storage.

I hope you were not referring to the terrible idea of using traction batteries for grid storage. Centralized interests like the power company will make sure it just becomes another way to extract rents. It will be a terrible deal for whoever owns the battery.

Re:Go Israel!

[Agripa]

Nukes are useful, necessary even for a number of reasons. First and foremost nukes deliver power and lots of it all the time, which heavy industry absolutely requires;

Bullshit.

"Advanced grid management technology" is a nice way of saying shutting off the customer's power. Very few heavy industries can put up with that. Very few people will put up with that.

And also bullshit.

The dilemma of cooling nuclear power plants is an artificial one. "Ecologically sensitive" is code for animals are more important than people. A choice between rolling backouts and a lower standard of living versus insignificant ecological damage is not going to be good for the ecology.

Why not apply a Pigovian tax to encourage a market friendly solution which prevents ecological damage? Because they have no interest in such a thing; they just want nuclear power gone at any cost. Isn't it odd that a Pigovian tax is not used on fossil fuels? I wonder why that is.

batteries are not yet capacious or cheap enough to store power in sufficient quantity to make up for the patchiness of renewables.

Bullshit.

Others disagree and it is difficult to get trustworthy numbers.

Electro-chemical storage has always been very expensive but with high power density making it suitable for load balancing once the power electronics became economical but not so good for bulk storage and this is *with* the advantages of flow batteries in bulk applications. Maybe the economy of scale available to lithium batteries in traction applications will change this.

Secondly, the world still has a lot of high-level nuclear waste that really needs destroying in fast-neutron reactors;

They are expensive and dangerous. It would make more sense to just drop the waste into a subduction (The word "subduction" is not in the Moz dictionary... WTF) zone and wave goodbye to it.

I agree but it would be wasteful. High level radioactive waste has almost all of the original nuclear energy in it and it is not that difficult or expensive to store compared to dumping it into subduction zone.

Re:Go Israel!

[Agripa]

How will you get the waste to the subduction zone? Asking for a friend.

Drop it from the surface inside of an armored and guided perpetrator with high sectional density.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Because of the surrounding hostile muslim countries it's inefficient to get fuel to Israel anyhow.

Re:Good

[Harlequin80]

Hardly. There is a pipeline that runs right across the middle of Israel and is the primary method that Russia exports oil to Asia. They bring it in by tanker at Ashkelon, run it through the pipe right across Israel and then load it onto a tanker at Eilat.

And then there is the Bazan group which has an absolutely massive oil refining complex in Israel.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. But it has to come in via port (and I'm pretty sure the fuel comes in to Ashdod, not Ashkelon). But it would be easier if Israel's neighboring countries were a little less hostile. It's the long distance shipping via port that's costly.

Re: Good

[Harlequin80]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

Definitely Ashkelon. Its the location the trans-israel pipeline.

Also that path is shorter and cheaper to operate than going round africa or via the Suez so it carries huge quantities of oil.

Re: Good

[ShanghaiBill]

It is only cheaper than Suez because the Egyptians charge exorbitant transit fees. An oil tanker pays a transit fee of about $400k.

Neat

[Anonymous Coward]

Soo, there's this old book that says my peeps like, totally owned North America, it's like, our land as ordained by like God and stuff, soo, going to need y'all to leave. It's cool though, Texas wasn't part of that whole deal, so...off you go. Oh, did I mention, going clean energy, and I'm pretty sure you are siding with Iran. You know what? You don't get Texas. GTFO.

Israel blows up a TV station in Gaza, yet SD...

[Anonymous Coward]

Want to know just how sick and twisted the owners of Slashdot really are?

Go read actual quotes from the satanic js who are the current 'ministers' in Izrael's goverment. Almost all of these demons have first hand experience of raping, torturing and murdering those the js call 'sub-Human'.

These depavaties are open about wnating hundreds of thousands of palestinians MAIMED for life- which is why the current j-ish hitler implemented his free fire sniper policy on demonstartors.

Google "ONE SHOT TWO KILLS". The satanic js awarded graduates of the izraeli sniper schools with clothing that depicted a j-ish sniper cross-hair on the belly of a pregnat 'sub-Human'. This was no prank, but widespead policy by the j-ish military. The very thing the js accuse the original nazis of doing, they themselves boast they have perfected in izrael.

The self-described 'enemy' of the js were the modern secular nations of the Middle East, like Libya, Syria and Iraq. Wahhabi sh-tholes were the allies of Izrael, for the despots that ruled to keep their people down in the name of 'Islam' suited the js just perfectly. This is why Izrael assisted saudi Arabia in its wahhabi invasion of Syria. And why the current butcher whole rules in Saudi arabia boasted of his eternal friendship with Izrael.

Slashdot will lionise Izrael whenver it can, and demonise Iran, russia and China whenever it can.

Izrael is the purest example of evil imaginable. As I type, the j-ish conbtrolled houses of Congress in the USA will be voting to offer absolute support to the demonic js for their new atrocities in Gaza. Even in the UK and France this never happens in their parliaments. But 100% of members of the US congress are j-ish owned. Are you Americans proud to be slaves to such a death cult?

Izrael's j-ish hitler wants American to wage war on Iran. And america is preparing to do just this. What sick sadistic monster could support such a situation to any degree? The j-ish control of America = the murder of millions of Iranians.

Clinton promised immediate war on Russian forces in Syria in support of the wahhabi terrorists if she were elected, and a quick path to the Iran war shortly afterwards. THAT is why Trump won. Now Trump is just as much pro-war. A consequence of the stranglehold the death cult holds over America.

Now think about the REAL reason Slashdot hosted this story.

Re:Israel blows up a TV station in Gaza, yet SD...

[BeuHD]

Uhhh, because the ARABS that now run Slashdead, and look it up, BizX is Arab-owned, purchased the site to push SEO/UN Agenda 21 propaganda instead of tech news. Look how all the editors flock to certain types of stories each week like seagulls to a handful of popcorn on a different part of the beach. It's all propaganda, and it shifts slightly every week or two or three when they have their meetings/rounds of emails on fake news to spam.

Re:Israel blows up a TV station in Gaza, yet SD...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a fan of one shot, two kills. If the palestinian is pregnant with twins then it's three kills! That's three fewer terrorists in the world. (I'm not Israeli, I just hate muslims)

Re:Israel blows up a TV station in Gaza, yet SD...

[Anonymous Coward]

so the same religious fundamentalist policies are perfectly when it's Jesus instead of Allah?

Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Solandri]

Switching to EVs does very little good if 95% of your electricity generation is via fossil fuels. All you're doing is shifting the CO2 emissions from the tailpipe to the smokestack. The overall energy efficiency of EVs powered by fossil fuels is barely better than ICE vehicles - the main reason EVs are cheaper to operate is because coal is an order of magnitude cheaper per Joule than gasoline.

For EVs to be effective at combating CO2 emissions, you have to first switch your electricity generation so it's predominantly nuclear and renewables.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

All you're doing is shifting the CO2 emissions from the tailpipe to the smokestack.

So what? You put the smokestack in occupied territory...

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Harlequin80]

Doesn't necessarily require the renewables / nuclear first. If you have more and more EVs on your network they act as storage capacity. Combine with smart meters and you can use EVs for load shedding vs dumping to heat. Even if you don't ever recover any energy from the evs increasing or decreasing charge rates will allow you to stabilise the network.

Once you have that stabilisation effect in place you can increase your % of renewables.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

watt for watt the cleanest cars are dirtier than the dirtiest coal plants, dipshit.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

This is does not make sense. The cleanest cars are as clean as the power supply as an electric car has no emissions. The power supply gets cleaner every day as more renewables are put in place around the world for electric power production. The electric car + renewables is as clean as the sun and wind.

Yes, there is energy used to produce the car, solar panels, and windmills. That doesn't really matter when the source is 100% renewable energy. Then you have clean power making more clean power. The materials in the batteries are recyclable and not terribly toxic (no heavy metals). And electric cars last a lot longer than combustion engine cars. No one talks about it, but auto sales will go down when all cars are electric. There will simply be no reason to replace them. Maintenance will also be very little. Electric engines can last for years and years with no maintenance.

What you WILL see is a need for regular inspections to make sure people give the car some maintenance. The brakes are regenerative, so they won't wear down anywhere near as much as in current cars. But they will eventually. The same is true of the tires, maybe the suspension. I think there will be poor people who inherit their cars from their grandparents and get in accidents because no one did a safety check or maintenance on the cars for 20 years.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[whoever57]

Switching to EVs does very little good if 95% of your electricity generation is via fossil fuels [www.lnrg.technology].

Bullshit!

CO2 emissions are lower for EVs that are charged using power generated using natural gas than ICE vehicles power by gasoline.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, so not only does your car take hours to fuel up, it might even take double that if the power company decides it wants to reduce load.

Every time I think I've found every reason to not want an electric car, someone surprises me and finds some new ones.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

You're apparently an idiot, you think you control local gasoline any more than you do local electricity? Get a solar setup and pump your own watts, crybaby idiot. You're not going to get a similar deal with gasoline. Be a fool, IDC.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Harlequin80]

Ev cars are full everytime you get in them in the morning.

Theres no getting in the car with the fuel light on. For most people and most usage cases a daily range of 450km is more than enough. It doesnt really matter if it takes 6 hrs to charge if youre asleep.

The only time charge time matters is when you exceed 450km in a day.

You would also get a choice. Cheaper power to allow car to be storage or more expensive for not. Same options as ive got for hotwater systems and aircon

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

What he's saying is that Internal combustion engines for cars are inherently less efficient and more polluting than coal-fired generators.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[shilly]

All you're doing is shifting the CO2 emissions from the tailpipe to the smokestack.

Think about that "all" for a bit. Also the "CO2" in front of "emissions".
You get to shift 100% of tailpipe emissions of all types, not just CO2, out of city centres and suburbs to large scale powerplants that can run at maximum efficiency with much more effective scrubbers. That's a set of major gains right there.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[jjjhs]

For EVs to be effective at combating CO2 emissions, you have to first switch your electricity generation so it's predominantly nuclear and renewables.

Why do you necessarily have to do one before the other? Changing/transitioning the source of the electricity through renewable (or lesser emitting) sources can be done at the same time as advancing energy storage, particularly towards Electric Vehicles.

Laptops, phones, IoT devices, etc, don't care if they're recharged by renewable or fossils fuels. The companies making the batteries will worry about storing the energy and others the end-of-life recycling of the batteries; the energy companies will worry about providing renewable energy sources.

We don't give a second thought to those other, smaller rechargeable devices especially in the combination of advances in hardware & software to maximize battery life, reducing the need to recharge in the first place. I bet if you had a time machine and went back 20 years you'd have laughed your a$$ off to their ignorance. When asked "What would you have done different?" and your response would be "LOL IDK Emoticon Hashtag #PeopleInthePastArestupid

I see cars as a more scaled up version, everything happens in 'baby steps'.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[blindseer]

Ev cars are full everytime you get in them in the morning.

Theres no getting in the car with the fuel light on. For most people and most usage cases a daily range of 450km is more than enough. It doesnt really matter if it takes 6 hrs to charge if youre asleep.

The same thing applies for natural gas cars. A natural gas car can fill up at home with the low pressure lines common in many houses by using a pump. They take a while to fill up this way but it doesn't matter if you are asleep.

The only time charge time matters is when you exceed 450km in a day.

With a high pressure NG fill supply at a filling station the fill up times can be kept to a few minutes. I know there's claims of getting 80% charge in 20 minutes but a natural gas car can get 100% fill in 5 minutes, and not have the problem of wear on a battery for a quick charge.

If you are in a nation where a large percentage of your electric supply comes from natural gas, such as Isreal, USA, UK, Japan, and I'm sure many more, then electric cars don't seem like a great idea. In fact they seem like a bit of a waste. Electric vehicles might offer more choices on where this electricity may come from, presumably something even cleaner than natural gas. In a tiny nation like Israel where the neighbors aren't all that friendly the ability to use solar and wind is not that great. Rockets and mortars on fragile solar collectors and windmills could lead them to energy problems, and importing this kind of energy is just handing them a rope to make a noose. A nuclear power plant on the other hand can be put inside a sturdy bunker. Use a fuel synthesis process like the US Navy has been working on and they can make natural gas for their cars even if the bombings take out power lines.

I'm thinking electric cars, and I mean pure electrics rather than hybrids of some sort, will be a fad and go out of style at some point. Or if they do hang on then they will be considered a lesser option for those not able to afford something better. Kind of like how aluminum was once considered more valuable than gold but is now cheap once the technology advanced on aluminum refining. If batteries get as cheap as people claim they will then I'm guessing the hierarchy will flip, electric cars won't be for the "one percent" but instead for the commoners.

Natural gas looks to me like a great fuel for cars. I wish Israel success in making this switch.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[angel'o'sphere]

Electric vehicles are 4 to 5 times as efficient as internal combustion engines.
So shifting from gasoline cars to coal powered power plants saves minimum 50% of the fuel (coal powered plants are only ~42% efficient, cars are below 20%)

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[angel'o'sphere]

If you are in a nation where a large percentage of your electric supply comes from natural gas, such as Isreal, USA, UK, Japan,
You lost your audience somewhere between "such as" and UK or Japan ...

Natural gas looks to me like a great fuel for cars.
It is. Most transportation in Thailand is done with LPG. (Technically not the same as "natural gas"), however your "refueling times" are way off. Refueling a Truck takes +30minutes, refueling a bus about 20 minutes.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[mrvan]

From https://www.theguardian.com/fo...: (with a nice infographic :) )

For every 100km travelled in a petrol car ... ... it takes 26 megajoules to get petrol out of the ground and transport it to the car ... ... and the car itself uses 142 megajoules to move itself around.

For the same distance in an electric car, using electricity generated in an oil-fired power plant ... it takes 74 megajoules to generate and transport the electricity to the car ... ... which then uses just 38 megajoules to move itself and its passengers

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Passenger car diesel engines have energy efficiency of up to 41% but more typically 30%, and petrol engines of up to 37.3%, but more typically 20%

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Gasoline engines effectively use only 15% of the fuel energy content to move the vehicle or to power accessories, and diesel engines can reach on-board efficiency of 20%, while electric vehicles have on-board efficiency of over 90%, when counted against stored chemical energy, or around 80%, when counted against required energy to recharge

And finally, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...:

Typical thermal efficiency for utility-scale electrical generators is around 37% for coal and oil-fired plants[4], and 56 – 60% (LEV) for combined-cycle gas-fired plants.

I couldn't find good statistics on energy costs of mining and transporting coal, pumping up and refining oil, and pumping up gas but I'm sure they're on the wiki somewhere :). Also, no idea of the energy cost of assembling the batteries vs an ICE but I would assume over the total lifetime of the car it should be negligible.

In any case, the most "optimistic" comparison (from the EV point of view) it gets total fossil-to-wheels efficiency of .6*.8=48%. The most pessimistic is .37*.8=30%. The former figure is lower than total ICE efficiency, while the latter figure is comparable. The statistics from the Guardian link above (which have the ICE use 3.7 times the energy per distance traveled) seems to be close to the 20% vs 80% comparison.

All in all, there does seem evidence for assuming that an EV will get better total energy efficiency, but it will be more like 1.5-2x as efficiency and not an order of magnitude better. Of course, an EV fleet gives better options for generating power - ICEs can only use fossil fuels or biofuels (which are problematic in many cases), while EVs can use anything that generates electricity. Especially solar seems a good idea for Israel.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[mrvan]

Theres no getting in the car with the fuel light on. For most people and most usage cases a daily range of 450km is more than enough. It doesnt really matter if it takes 6 hrs to charge if youre asleep.

The only time charge time matters is when you exceed 450km in a day.

Also remember this article is about Israel. Haifa to Eilat is 450km, and there's pretty much nothing longer you could drive. Any two places excluding the Negev desert you can do round trip, including e.g. Haifa to Beersheba. The borders to Lebanon and Syria are closed. Theoretically you can drive to Jordan and Egypt, but almost no one ever does. So, while in the US 300 miles might not be all one ever drives in a day, in Israel I'm pretty sure it covers most use cases :)

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

When it comes to converting electricity to motion, yes. Not when you convert chemical energy to electrical energy, transmit the energy to a battery, charge the battery, discharge the battery, run it through a control unit and then run the engine. Then electrical SUCK compared to burning the fuel at the point of use. Sadly this is the way we usually use electricity in car engines. Only way to make electrical car feasible from an emission point of view is if we go massively nuclear but that is not economically feasible with todays regulations... buy a horse!

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[blindseer]

You lost your audience somewhere between "such as" and UK or Japan ...

So sad that the loss of my audience didn't include you.

Refueling a Truck takes +30minutes, refueling a bus about 20 minutes.

That would be relevant if I stated that natural gas was a great fuel for buses and trucks.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Harlequin80]

Well I live in Australia now and almost no houses have direct gas connections, and i lived in the uk for 4 years from 2004 and none of the areas i lived had gas connections to the houses.

So while the concept of home fueling of an lng car would be awesome the infrastructure for large scale fueling at home isnt there and would cost an absolute fortune to deploy.

I even have a gas hotwater system and gas stove and they are run off 45kg bottles.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

LPG is not comparable to filling up your car with natural gas. Look up some photos from WW2 in the UK to understand that, although pressure vessels offset that sonewhat. You definitely don't want to be supplying high pressure natural gas to homes as firstly it would be a huge new infrastructure cost, secondly maintenance would be problematic as failures of the infrastructure at domestic locations would be complex. I suppose you could liquify your own gas at home, but given the efficiencies of such small set ups it might well be better just to use an EV. Finally, a tank of compressed gas that is not liquified? Count me out.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

It's incredibly unusual for houses in the UK not to have natural gas connections. I've lived in places like that precisely twice - student accommodation in both instances (perhaps they don't trust students with it, which is probably wise - I'm amazed we were allowed access to electricity and water).

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, EVs charged from coal plants still have less CO2 emissions that ICE vehicles.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[MrKaos]

A nuclear power plant on the other hand can be put inside a sturdy bunker.

Which is exactly why NPP's have high capital costs, the huge amount of concrete for thermal containment. Now you propose more so basically you're proposing a NPP that will never be built.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[MrKaos]

So sad that the loss of my audience didn't include you.

Maybe he doesn't find you as boring and repetitive as the rest of your audience does.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

The power plant which generates using fossil fuels is significantly more efficient and clean than an internal combustion engine. Not only that but the source of power is getting "greener" all the time with the continual adoption of different generation technologies.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Bert64]

Storage is gasoline is much easier and cheaper than storage of electricity... You can gain some level of control by purchasing it in advance and holding it in containers.
If the grid is using your electric vehicle for storage, then it will increase the wear on your battery and could result in the battery being depleted when you expect to use the car.
If a country is using solar power for generation then not only will it generate nothing at night, the power usage will be higher due to heating in cooler countries, so the last thing you want is for your electric car to deplete its battery overnight and leave you unable to travel to work in the morning.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Bert64]

Depends on the source of power... If a lot of solar is being used, then the grid won't have much surplus power at night - if your car is being used to offset the lack of generation from solar plants then your car could even be empty in the morning.

That results in an unreliable vehicle, that might not be charged when you expect it to be. If your gasoline car has the fuel light on in the morning it's solely because you didn't full it up - entirely within your control.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[jabuzz]

Noting that the longest possible journey you can make in Israel (I just checked on Goggle maps) is from say Eilat on the Red Sea to Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights. It comes in at 540km which avoids the West Bank. I can't imagine that many people in Israel make that journey very often, and it's a 6.5 hour trip so there is going to be some comfort and food breaks in there which will get you over the capacity limit. So unless you like driving around in circles current EV's are more than adequate for Israel which is a fairly small country.

Note I am assuming that the opportunity to take a trip outside Israel in a car are somewhat limited due to the geopolitical situation and as such can be discounted.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Bert64]

The cities and towns all have gas connections, some smaller villages might not, and some apartment buildings might not have the internal pipework to support it.
In a lot of rental properties the infrastructure is all in place, it's just not used because having a gas supply introduces addition liabilities for the landlord and while electric heating is usually a lot more expensive this isn't the landlord's problem as the tenant pays for heating costs.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Bert64]

While they are less efficient than the large generators used in power plants, you are converting chemical energy directly into (mostly) kinetic energy...

For a power plant you are converting chemical energy into heat, converting the heat into kinetic energy, converting the kinetic energy into electrical energy, transmitting the electrical energy a long distance, storing it in a battery and finally converting it into kinetic energy.

Each of these steps introduces inefficiencies, so the overall difference isnt as much as people think.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[vtcodger]

CNG does produce less CO2 per BTU/joule/calorie than gasoline. However Natural Gas powered engines tend to run hot which means more NO2. Unlike CO2, NO2 is visible and fairly toxic. Even with compression, Natural Gas tends to take up a lot of volume -- which often mean somewhat less payload space. One other drawback is that Natural Gas is probably more likely to catch fire in an accident than gasoline or diesel.

Presumably all that can be dealt with.

But all in all CNG is probably a perfectly OK vehicle fuel. It's widely used only in Iran and Pakistan I think.

======
Israel isn't very big -- about the size of New Jersey, and it's neighbors aren't very friendly, so the problem of recharging pure EVs on long trips possibly will be minimal. Israeli's likely won't be taking long trips any time soon?

Maybe this plan isn't as ditzy as it sounds.

But I personally would be a lot happier if my fire trucks were powered by liquid hydrocarbons that can be refueloed from a can or barrel.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

Today you learned: Political motivations are pop culture parasites.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Harlequin80]

Pretty trivial to solve tbh. If its a smart meter for an ev then having it charge to 75% and then go into storage mode would be simple. That gives you a min range level. (Configurable ofcourse)

As for charging at night vs day you would nornally do a mix of renewables with a base load generator. Solar will be offline at night but wind wont be, and power demand is a lower at night as well meaning smaller changes in supply have bigger effects.

During the day there will still be a % of evs connected to the network. Either those ar home or those on work charging systems.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Harlequin80]

Must have been because they were rentals in the uk then.

Its not something used here is aus though

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[DigiShaman]

Unless if it's coal. So basically depends on the local source of power generation. Are Electric Cars Worse For The Environment? Myth Busted

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[atrex]

It should also be worth considering that an EV's power train should be significantly less complicated than that of an ICE vehicle. Less complicated/less moving parts = easier and less costly to maintain. It can also result in a smaller footprint necessary for the vehicle, although most people seem to have a thing against vehicles that don't have the same form factor as traditional cars.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

Switching to EVs does very little good if 95% of your electricity generation is via fossil fuels.

Ah yes. Can't talk about EVs on Slashdot without somebody claiming that they pollute as much or more than gasoline burning cars because, whatever. And again, I point out that there are excellent reasons for moving to electric vehicles that have nothing to do with pollution reduction. I guess I'm going to have to spell this out for you, but given how many petroleum producing countries aren't friendly to Israel and at least one questions its right to even exist, it seems logical to me for Israel to move away from dependence on those countries.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

It turns out that most ICEs convert about 20-30% of their chemical energy into kinetic energy, with the rest going to heat.

To use the numbers in an earlier post, it takes about 112MJ of energy to get from oil in the ground to moving an electric car 100km, but it takes 169MJ of energy to get from the ground to moving a gasoline car 100km. The electric car uses two thirds the amount of oil and puts its polution far away from the city.

Keep in mind that's an oil-to-oil comparison. As centralized power generation gets cleaner and more renewable with solar and wind, the electric car comes out looking even better. When your energy comes from wind it only takes 43MJ to go 100km and there's essentially no pollution.

Obviously there are many variables, but gasoline engines are so inefficient that it's hard for them to come out on top.

dom

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you live in your car? I don't understand the "hurr durr, it takes time to charge" argument. Don't you ever fucking PARK your car? Are you CONSTANTLY driving it every hour of the day? Do you never fucking sleep?

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[crunchygranola]

Switching to EVs does very little good if 95% of your electricity generation is via fossil fuels. All you're doing is shifting the CO2 emissions from the tailpipe to the smokestack.

This move, in the 2018-2030 time frame is not intended to eliminate CO2 emissions from motor vehicles in Israel (though in the longer run it is absolutely the path to get there).

You need to look at Israel's plans for providing electricity in 2030 also. At that point their power will be 80% natural gas, 20% renewables (they are eliminating their use of coal entirely). Natural gas is a fossil fuel, but in a combined cycle plant it drastically reduces CO2 emissions compared to ICE vehicles (see below) to only 38% of the present emissions, so yes it moves the ball way forward.

The overall energy efficiency of EVs powered by fossil fuels is barely better than ICE vehicles

Now you are just making yourself look like a fool. The efficiency of natural gas combined cycle plants is expected to hit 65% in the next decade (i.e. before 2030), whereas ICE vehicles are limited to about 21% efficiency. Throw in a generous 5% transmission loss (small country, short transmission distances), and a 90% charge to wheel efficiency for 2030 era EVs, and you still have an overall efficiency of 55%. "Barely better", sheesh.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[MightyMartian]

The average commute time in th United States is 26 minutes one way. Yes, there are plenty of exceptions, but the fact is that an EV would be suitable vehicle for most Americans. Not all, but most.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Freischutz]

All you're doing is shifting the CO2 emissions from the tailpipe to the smokestack.

Think about that "all" for a bit. Also the "CO2" in front of "emissions". You get to shift 100% of tailpipe emissions of all types, not just CO2, out of city centres and suburbs to large scale powerplants that can run at maximum efficiency with much more effective scrubbers. That's a set of major gains right there.

... and then you can swap out that set of large scale fossil fuel burning power plant for something with a much lower carbon footprint and enjoy an even large set of major gains.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent is talking about NG for electricity generation, not in cars, which is more more efficient.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

There are typically two moving parts in the electric powertrain. The rotor, and the single reduction gear it drives. Usually, a single motor drives two wheels so a few more gears for implementing the differential. Pedants may count some more moving parts in the form of ball bearings and such. Still, the entertainment system has more moving parts than the powertrain - at least if a cd player is involved.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[drinkypoo]

The average commute time in th United States is 26 minutes one way. Yes, there are plenty of exceptions, but the fact is that an EV would be suitable vehicle for most Americans. Not all, but most.

It would be a suitable vehicle for most Americans who have a dedicated commute vehicle. But once you decide to make a trip to pretty much anywhere else, you rapidly find that our population is spread out enough to make EVs a problem anywhere there is not a fast-charging network. Anywhere Tesla hasn't built that network, it doesn't exist, and no other vehicles can use their chargers.

While it's true that a lot more people could be driving EVs than are now, it's hardly the massive percentage for the USA that it is for most other nations, where population densities are much higher and trips tend to be shorter.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumping to heat? Bitcoin mining?

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[drinkypoo]

ICEs can only use fossil fuels or biofuels (which are problematic in many cases),

That's not strictly true. They can also run on hydrogen produced by electrolysis, although it's stupid to do so. Or you can use large amounts of electricity to make fuel from the air, which can be hydrogen or hydrocarbon.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[whoever57]

CNG does produce less CO2 per BTU/joule/calorie than gasoline.

Interesting but irrelevant. I was comparing natural gas burned in generating plants to gasoline burned in ICEs.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[apoc.famine]

should be significantly less complicated...

Should?

Where have you been living over the last 10 years? In a cave somewhere?

They are significantly less complicated. And on top of that, regenerative breaking is extending the life of brakes on the order of the life of the car. Maybe one brake job every 10 years/100k miles. Or even less often.

Talking to some EV owners, they all noted that they had to get used to refilling their windshield washer fluid again. Why? Because they used to take their car in for service often enough that the shop kept it topped off. With their EV, that's the most frequent maintenance that needs to be done. Tire rotations are the next one. After that.....there's nothing. No oil changes, no coolent, no transmission....

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[blindseer]

Which is exactly why NPP's have high capital costs, the huge amount of concrete for thermal containment. Now you propose more so basically you're proposing a NPP that will never be built.

In Israel they have limited choices for energy. The nation is effectively an island because they are not on good terms with their neighbors. Building a "super-grid" like has been proposed in North America and the EU is not politically practical, making the inherently distributed solar and wind power not all that viable. Building windmills and solar panels inside their borders, when they are under near constant bombardment from their neighbors, means they'd have to keep repairing those solar collectors and windmills. I'm not saying they can't have any solar and wind power, only that they know building it within rocket range of its neighbors would be a bad idea for reliable power. Israel doesn't have a lot of oil and coal but they did find a lot of natural gas, as stated in the fine article. Much of the oil and coal they burn is imported.

If Israel wants energy independence then they need to produce what they can inside their own borders. Given their options that means lots of natural gas, lots of nuclear power, and a small bit of oil, wind, and solar.

I agree that building a hardened nuclear power plant would be expensive. I don't see a whole lot of other options. If Israel can't have nuclear power then they run the risk of running out of energy real quick. They've been living off of the good relations from the USA, UK, and other allies, for their energy. They must know that this cannot last forever, and their natural gas supplies cannot last forever either. Many of the nations in the Middle East have been stating an intention to build nuclear power, including Iran. This will mean they will want it too.

Any power plant is a prime target in Israel. A nuclear power plant would be no different. I'm guessing that they protect them very well inside bunkers. If they can afford a hardened natural gas power plant then they can afford nuclear power.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

The average commute time in th United States is 26 minutes one way. Yes, there are plenty of exceptions, but the fact is that an EV would be suitable vehicle for most Americans. Not all, but most.

I would think a lot of families could have one of each for a while. Keep the EV for work days and the gas engine for weekend/longer trips.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[apoc.famine]

But I personally would be a lot happier if my fire trucks were powered by liquid hydrocarbons that can be refueloed from a can or barrel.

Why? Do you think they're going to drive 300 miles to a fire?

Fire trucks are one very good example of something that should be electric. Simplified power train so it's far more reliable, will last a lot longer, and requires a lot less maintenance. They don't tend to travel very far, so there's no worry about having to recharge. And they're big and heavy, and need a ton of torque to get moving.

Other than taxis in stop-and-go traffic and garbage trucks, I can't think of something better to have as an EV.

Seriously - in most urban/suburban areas, there's a fire station every few miles. In the little city I live in, I just counted 14 fire stations in a 10 mile radius.

Maybe electric won't work way out in the country where fire trucks have to travel 100 miles to fight a fire, but I can't imagine that there are many places where that's true.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[atrex]

I said should because I didn't feel like researching half a dozen articles to back up my claim and half remembered hearsay. I also don't have empirical data on hand to back up my maintenance claims. You see, when I make assumptions I don't make my statements as if they were facts even if I have common sense reasoning to back them up.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[shilly]

Yup. There's obviously tons of important ancillary benefits that come prior to this stage as well: less noise, less vibration damage, less brake dust, etc. And there's also lower CO2 due to cars lasting longer because fewer moving parts.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[mobby_6kl]

Ev cars are full everytime you get in them in the morning.

Theres no getting in the car with the fuel light on. For most people and most usage cases a daily range of 450km is more than enough. It doesnt really matter if it takes 6 hrs to charge if youre asleep.

Wait what? How the hell does that happen?

I get what you're saying but you know it's not magic, right. You'll need the have the charging station installed and a place where to install it, which many people without their own garages don't have. And of course you also need to pay actual money for the electricity.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[vtcodger]

"Why? Do you think they're going to drive 300 miles to a fire?"

That actually happens sometimes. But the problem is that in the case of major disasters like California's wildfires a truck may be on the firelines literally for days. And if it's pumping water, it'll go through a lot of fuel. It is much better to bring the fuel to the truck than to pull the truck offline to recharge it.

Same with military vehicles BTW

Ambulances, not so much. They need to return to base often anyway. But the long recharge time of current batteries might be a problem in a real disaster.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[AlwinBarni]

Don't spread misinformation, studies showed that electric cars even when powered by fossil fuels generated electricity are cleaner then gasoline - and this is the starting point, which can only get better with more renewable energy, not to mention direct health benefits for all the urban dwellers and commuters.

https://greentransportation.in... From the article: "... Repeatedly studies have shown even if the electricity comes from coal, electric cars are cleaner than gasoline ..."

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Solandri]

In any case, the most "optimistic" comparison (from the EV point of view) it gets total fossil-to-wheels efficiency of .6*.8=48%. The most pessimistic is .37*.8=30%. The former figure is lower than total ICE efficiency, while the latter figure is comparable. The statistics from the Guardian link above (which have the ICE use 3.7 times the energy per distance traveled) seems to be close to the 20% vs 80% comparison.

You're missing electricity transmission efficiency (about 95%), battery charge efficiency (about 80%, less for quick-charges), battery discharge efficiency (can't find measurements for it since it's incorporated into the EPA kWh consumption, but usually it's about the same as charging efficiency), and electric motor efficiency (about 90%).

I did the calculations here.. Based on EPA energy consumption figures (kWh and gallons) for nearly identical vehicles (Nissan Leaf vs Versa), EVs powered with fossil fuels use slightly less energy than ICE gasoline vehicles. About 19%-25% of the energy in the fuel makes it to the wheels for EVs, vs 17%-23% ICE gasoline. Diesel ICE vehicles are slightly more efficient (25%+).

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you have to go to work and then grandmas then the mall then back to grandmas then home. It's good that most Americans only drive to work.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[jbengt]

A natural gas car can fill up at home with the low pressure lines common in many houses by using a pump.

Having designed plans and specs for gas piping systems including gas booster pumps to take the utility's low pressure service (6"WC) to an HVAC system's "medium pressure" distribution (2 psig), I can tell you that a small booster pump can cost around $20,000 to buy and as much as double that including installation. Natural gas pumps for a car would be lower capacity, so smaller, but would need much higher pressure (around 3,000 psig), and would require even more specialized installation, maintenance, and safety requirements. And you'd still might have some range issues, as you can't really store that much compressed gas in a reasonably sized tank.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[jbengt]

You know, fire trucks have pumps in them that might need to operate for hours while putting out fires. And many kinds of fire trucks have hydraulics running off the engines for things like ladders. Operating in rural areas away from easy sources of sufficient electrical power is not that unusual. Also the considerable work that would be required to convert field-proven diesel designs to all electric likely makes the proposed change unappealing to those in the business. So I'm not sure that they're the best example of what can easily be converted to batteries.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Bert64]

Most people won't want their cars to only provide 75% of their intended range, they will turn that feature off.

Wind may be on at night, but there's no guarantee - if it's a calm night you wont be getting any power from wind or solar. If it's too stormy wind turbines are shut down too, in order to prevent damage.

The % of EVs connected to the grid will be highly variable, just like wind and solar power. You will end up having to massively over provision capacity to cope with the worst case scenarios.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[LunaticTippy]

You appear to be motivated to overlook some simple answers. Most homes in Israel have solar hot water heaters - they are cheap, reliable, and nobody blows them up cuz there's millions of them. Why not add a few panels next to the existing solar setups? You could provide energy when it is most needed, not a big target.

It would be smart for a country with a siege mentality to gravitate towards distributed generation. I'd be shocked if Israel didn't embrace this - looks like this new policy is heading in that direction.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Harlequin80]

Owners of EVs do keep their cars charged to less than full. If you own a tesla they recommend keeping it less than fully charged to the batts last longer.

My 2 mates that own Tesla S both have theirs charge to less than full. They have theirs set to about 300ish KM range each morning and if they plan to go further they set it to full charge the night before.

Total capacity of EVs on the network may vary wildly, but they aren't generation sources. They are excess capacity dumps. You would still have heat dumps for use if shedding is required.

There will always be situations where a particular location isn't generating, but when you have a country wide grid the chances of having everything down is low. You also are able to plan for these things. Pumped storage, network level batteries, rapid cycle gas power plants etc are all part of your network design. The challenge with renewables is the storage component. Storage costs are currently too high, but potentially EVs could be the solution to that.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Harlequin80]

Highly unlikely that would come anywhere near close to range of an EV.

Apparantly average annual mileage for americans is ~ 22,500km or 62km per day. A tesla has a range of 7 to 8 times that before you need to charge. Is doing a 450km drive in a day, even a semi-regular occurrence? Thats a full tank of fuel for most cars.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Harlequin80]

Electricity for an EV in Australia is $1 per day to a connection in your house. I assume that people have somewhere they park their vehicles where you live? Garage, Car ports / driveways? Unallocated street parking is more of a challenge and would require either allocation or some kind of municipal connection.

Obviously though my post referred to having the car plugged in over night.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Harlequin80]

I don't think anyone is suggesting having the evs depleted. Having 5% of the total capacity of your EV available for network storage would have a massive impact on the total storage available on the network if all cars were electric.

Also no country is going to only go solar, its a flawed argument to suggest that. There will always be a mix of solar, wind, and others in order to share the generation around. That other will be coal or nuclear or gas for the foreseeable future. But if you can load shift your renewables via storage your requirement for always on baseload will drop.

It's not a silver bullet but it all helps.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

If you travel at 150km/h for three hours you can consume your tank of fuel. I can't really imagine that this kind of driving is a semi-regular occurrence for the majority. The only group that regularly do these distances are delivery drivers.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[stepho-wrs]

"It is much better to bring the fuel to the truck than to pull the truck offline to recharge it.

Excellent idea. Have a trailer of batteries brought by an auxiliary vehicle The new batteries can either be plugged into the fire truck as-is or some form of battery swap could be done.. Repeat as often as necessary. A gen-set trailer is also an option which could use the same electrical connection as a battery trailer. Plenty of options.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[whoever57]

Other than taxis in stop-and-go traffic and garbage trucks, I can't think of something better to have as an EV.

Local delivery trucks, especially USPS trucks.

It's scandalous that the USPS is looking for a new truck and isn't looking at EVs.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[blindseer]

You appear to be motivated to overlook some simple answers.

I did not overlook the simple answers. I've been studying the energy problem for a long time, soaking in all kinds of differing opinions for years. Solar power is simply insufficient to run a first world nation. There's nothing wrong with putting up some solar panels, and there are plenty in Israel. What they will still need is natural gas and nuclear power.

I've seen the math and there is no way to maintain a modern economy without nuclear power. Do the math yourself. Here's a website made by people that did the math and explained why nuclear power must be part of the energy policy of any nation that wants to have a modern economy: http://www.roadmaptonowhere.co...

There are no simple answers. What I've found is that there is no solution to our future energy needs that does not include nuclear power. Distributed generation might sound nice but it destroys any economy of scale. The world will need big efficient power plants or the lights go out, this includes Israel.

Re:Switching to EVs does very little good if

[apoc.famine]

Agreed.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[angel'o'sphere]

That would be relevant if I stated that natural gas was a great fuel for buses and trucks.
If you did not, then you should add it to your arguments list, as it actually is a perfect fuel.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[LunaticTippy]

I like nuclear power, but it isn't feasible in the current political climate. Also wind/solar/bats are becoming so cheap and good they're already cheaper and will continue to become more so.

You can run a boat, RV or house with wind/solar/bats for not much money right now. Entire countries are planning on this in the near future. Try to open your mind to what is possible, and what is already happening. The economies of scale are in the factories making the equipment. You don't need the power to be all in one place, that makes the problem of distribution offset economies of scale.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Agripa]

There is no way the car (traction battery) owner is not going to get screwed by the power companies in this deal.

The other problem is the extra expense of implementing bidirectional power conversion at each charger and car whether it is used or not. At least it gets used with a stationary battery bank.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Agripa]

The average commute time in th United States is 26 minutes one way. Yes, there are plenty of exceptions, but the fact is that an EV would be suitable vehicle for most Americans. Not all, but most.

I agree and the part I find amusing about this is that short range EVs which meet this requirement will make longer commutes less economical. This will hurt rural areas.

Re: Switching to EVs does very little good if

[Anonymous Coward]

I like nuclear power, but it isn't feasible in the current political climate.

The political climate changes, the laws of physics do not. There is no future with our current standard of living that does not include nuclear power.

Also wind/solar/bats are becoming so cheap and good they're already cheaper and will continue to become more so.

Nuclear power will get cheaper too. One problem is that there is a bottom end on all these technologies, and that is the cost of materials. Nuclear power takes less materials for energy produced than any other energy source we have today. Source: http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2018/08/why-i-favor-nuclear-power.html

The only thing making nuclear power more expensive than wind and solar power is the political climate. Given the inherent shortcomings in wind, solar, and batteries, the politics on nuclear power will shift as the materials needed for these energy sources become painfully apparent.

You can run a boat, RV or house with wind/solar/bats for not much money right now. Entire countries are planning on this in the near future. Try to open your mind to what is possible, and what is already happening. The economies of scale are in the factories making the equipment. You don't need the power to be all in one place, that makes the problem of distribution offset economies of scale.

Open my mind? Look in a mirror. You've closed your mind to the option of nuclear power as a future energy source. I agree that there is a political problem with nuclear power but that's really the only problem it has. Nuclear power is safe, inexpensive, reliable, low resource, and low CO2. I've opened my mind to what's possible and if you do the math a world powered by wind, solar, and batteries is not possible. Well, not possible unless we lower our standard of living and/or our population.

I have seen what's happening. Germany, UK, and so many other nations are seeing their plans of a "green" future without nuclear power fail. And fail miserably. There is no future without nuclear power. We can have our wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, batteries, and whatever else too but nuclear will have to be part of that mix or it all falls apart.

Don't open your mind so wide your brains fall out. Do the math on the materials and labor needed for a future powered by wind and sun, compare that to a future with nuclear power in there, and you will see why we cannot rule out nuclear power. Here's a link to a website that did that math: http://www.roadmaptonowhere.com/

You say nuclear power is impossible in the current political climate? Well, the politicians will have to change their minds soon because the global climate can't wait for the wind and sun to save us.

Grammar much. dumbass ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The country has a ways to go though, as there are less than 100 electric cars on the roads today."

.

FEWER than 100 electric cars, you semiliterate fuck.

Re:Grammar much. dumbass ?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not actually a rule in the english language. Some language prescriptivists tried to make it one arbitrarily in the 1800's to make english line up with latin. There is no historical linguistic basis for the two terms having such strict differentiation. The real rule as per historical and actual use is whichever sounds less awkward.

Re:Grammar much. dumbass ?

[iggymanz]

Ah, yet another delusional autistic grammar fuck who is ignorant of the fact that the little book Robert Lowth shat out in 1762 was merely a proposal of restrictions on English grammar using Latin rules and other random brain farts he thought would be wonderful. Creative writing has ignored it often since then to the present day. Loath the Lowth, set your puny little mind free.

Re:Grammar much. dumbass ?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

While that may be true, I think "less than 100" does sound more awkward.

Re:Grammar much. dumbass ?

[Anonymous Coward]

set your puny little mind free.

.
I would rather kick your ribs in and listen to you try to breathe.

Re:Grammar much. dumbass ?

[dunkelfalke]

Long live Stannis Baratheon, the one true king of grammar.

Re:Grammar much. dumbass ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You probably also think you shouldn't end sentences with prepositions or split your infinitives.

Re:Grammar much. dumbass ?

[hcs_$reboot]

Long live Stannis Baratheon

Grammar is an orphan, SB died at the end of season 5.

Re:Grammar much. dumbass ?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I wonder...if you're a programmer, and X and Y are integers, do you pronounce a relational expression of "XY" as "X is fewer than Y"?

Re:Grammar much. dumbass ?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Nope, then "X is less than Y" sounds correct. That's the fun thing; by changing it to "what sounds correct", you lose consistency.

It may be because the fewer/less distinction was drilled into my head at a younger age. But, contextually, one is making a statement, and the other an evaluation.

Re:Ban ZIP & c6gunner for impersonating me...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you get terminal cancer soon, you pathetic little whining bitch.

Ban the SALE

[Drishmung]

Band the sale only. So, no new non-electric (or CNG) vehicles, but there will be existing vehicles. I assume that there will continue to be a large (if diminishing over time) number of 'legacy' vehicles for some considerable time. In fact, unless really draconian regulations are introduced, there will be vintage and speciality vehicles indefinitely. Not to mention military (battery powered tanks?), aircraft, ships, farming and such like.

The interesting point will be when the filling stations are mostly all electric charging stations, and driving your vintage car across the country gets to be pretty challenging.

Re:Ban the SALE

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be vintage and speciality vehicles indefinitely.

Not really, how will they get their gas when all the refineries close and gas stations remove their tanks due to the liability and low profit margins?

Re:Ban the SALE

[Anonymous Coward]

Since we're talking about Israel, which is about the size of New Jersey, driving across the country is a one-tank trip. If you can manage to fill up your tank, you'll be able to get across the country with no problem.

At some point you won't be able to readily get gasoline at retail, but that shouldn't be a huge problem. Remember, there was a time before you could get fuel for your automobile at any corner. Before gas stations were all over you could get it delivered. Before that, you'd make your own by gassifying wood or making ethanol. I'm sure you can quite easily find videos showing how to do it on YouTube.

dom

Re:Ban the SALE

[blindseer]

Burning ethanol in a car engine is alcohol abuse. Ethanol is for drinking, not driving. I cry a little inside when I can't find fuel at a filling station without ethanol blended in. You can abuse alcohol if you must, just don't force me to participate.

Re:Ban the SALE

[tbq]

Why would all of the refineries close? We use oil for many things besides fuel. The main components of gasoline used to be considered worthless byproducts of refining other petroleum products.

Re:Ban the SALE

[AmiMoJo]

Petrol stations won't become charging stations, they will just go out of business.

Most charging will be done at home or at work or at destinations like shops and restaurants. For long distances there will be rapid chargers at service areas on major roads.

The days of going out of your way just to fill up are coming to a close. 99% of the infrastructure is already there, it just needs the last few metres sorting out with sockets on lamp posts and in car parks etc.

Re:Ban the SALE

[Anonymous Coward]

>99% of the infrastructure is already there, it just needs the last few metres sorting out with sockets on lamp posts and in car parks etc.

Oh, it is?

Tell me how much electricity a 200 car parking lot will consume with all vehicles plugged in and charging? We'll assume the employees actually want to get more than 3 km per h of charging so a medium charge level of 30 A @ 120 v is the minimum necessary to supply. Just 720 kWh is required! Let's see, typically you'd calculate electrical supply at 10 w/sq foot, so this 200 employee building has 72,000 square feet. Yep, my cube is the size of a McMansion alright, I really feel the 3600 square feet of space. And we still haven't powered the lights in the building yet...

In other words, when your typical office building goes to the electric company, along with all their neighbours, and requests a 10x ampacity upgrade to deal with charging employee cars, the electric company will say no, because they don't have that much service. And now the cars are not charged.

And when everyone tries to charge their cars at home, likely at Tesla Supercharger speeds (90 kW) that'll not work either.

The only reason nobody has run into an issue yet is because the vast majority of vehicles on the road are gas powered.

And yes, the electric company can refuse. I worked for a company that located its datacenters in the middle of a city. After datacenter #2 on the same block the electric company said "no". We had to locate them in an adjacent city which wasn't power constrained.

Re:Ban the SALE

[Anonymous Coward]

Ethanol blends have proven that it can be used for drinking AND driving!

Make sure to mention that next time at a RIDE program. :)

Re:Ban the SALE

[drinkypoo]

Why would all of the refineries close? We use oil for many things besides fuel. The main components of gasoline used to be considered worthless byproducts of refining other petroleum products.

That actually raises an excellent point. If we're going to be making plastics out of petroleum, we're going to be making fossil fuels simply as a consequence of making plastics. The only way we're going to do away with fossil fuels is to stop using petroleum completely. We probably could do that, by using plastics derived from plants, but I have to admit total ignorance of what is left behind when we make plastics from plant lipids...

Re:Ban the SALE

[apoc.famine]

Tell me how much electricity a 200 car parking lot will consume with all vehicles plugged in and charging?

Why? That's something that's never going to happen, so why would you need me to tell you that?

Your range anxiety is laughable, and it's clear you've not spent a lot of time driving an EV.

Everyone I know with an EV has no range anxiety. None. They know how many hundreds of miles their car goes on a charge, and when they're considering driving further than that, they plan a stop.

That's it. Done.

Daily driving? Nobody even thinks about it. It's 100% full when they leave in the morning, and they know it will last them through the day and will still be more than 50% full when they get home at night. Plug it in, and repeat the next morning.

There is about 0 reason to plug in your car while at work or while out shopping. Maybe if you're planning a trip where you're leaving from work? Maybe if you're a dolt and have a round trip commute that's more than the range of your vehicle? Maybe if your home charger is broken?

Charging outside of the home is not a thing that people with EVs are likely to do 99% of the time.

Re:Ban the SALE

[drinkypoo]

Tell me how much electricity a 200 car parking lot will consume with all vehicles plugged in and charging? We'll assume the employees actually want to get more than 3 km per h of charging so a medium charge level of 30 A @ 120 v is the minimum necessary to supply. [...] And when everyone tries to charge their cars at home, likely at Tesla Supercharger speeds (90 kW) that'll not work either.

Let's take your 30A@120V as a given, it sounds reasonable if not even conservative — thanks for being realistic there. But I don't think we can take the 90kW as a given, or even if we do, we can't assume that it's going to come from the grid. If the homeowner has a powerwall (or similar), they can get some of the current from their battery pack. The pack [theoretically] gets charged at whatever times are best for the power company.

Also, if there's that much demand for charging in the parking lot, that means it makes all the sense in the world to put solar panels over the parking lots. The panels will extend the lifespan of both the pavement in the lot, and the vehicles themselves, by reducing their sun load. This also reduces the cooling system demand, since the vehicles won't have to be cooled as much for comfort when they are driven since the interior isn't as hot. Everybody wins, especially the business which gets a nearby source of power that isn't interrupted in a grid outage.

All of this isn't to say that we won't have to put some money and effort into upgrading the so-called grid itself. That has its own benefits, though. The interstate highway system was justified by its military applications. A stronger power grid likewise has positive ramifications for national defense.

The only reason nobody has run into an issue yet is because the vast majority of vehicles on the road are gas powered.

We couldn't change overnight, but we couldn't build the vehicles that quickly anyway, primarily since we couldn't build the batteries that quickly at this point. There's lots of room in the system to change a significant percentage of vehicles over already, though, because of how the system is designed. Electric vehicles happen to fit in well already because of the times at which the demand occurs, especially if they are charged primarily at home.

Re:Ban the SALE

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always wondered what was going to happen to all those apartment dwellers who don't have a garage to charge in every night. I also know people who live in neighborhoods so old that their house doesn't have a garage, their garage is too old to have electrical service, or their garage is too small to fit their cars.

Some apartments and shopping centers will have charging stations, but I can't imagine that most will. Certainly poor neighborhoods won't have the infrastructure because even if somebody built it, vandalism would soon render it useless.

Work places that have their own parking may have the money to spend millions of dollars putting charging stations everywhere, but it will be a long time before that's the norm. Imagine having to install 1,000 power outlets, each putting out 2kW. Assuming that half of them are in use at any given time that's an extra megawatt of power you have to install service for -- and that's just regular wall outlets. If you want to install actual charging stations, that's 8kW per station. That's some pretty serious electrical capacity!

Imagine you're a maid whose job entails driving around to different clients' houses and cleaning them all day. A maid can't afford a garage and can't ask her clients to let her charge her car in their garages. Everyday she'll have to probably have to drive to a fast charging station where she'll have to pay and sit around for a couple hours while her car charges.

dom

The poor get screwed

[Powercntrl]

The elephant in the room with EVs is that they become economically unfeasible to keep on the road once the battery pack sufficiently degrades. Unless there's a major breakthrough in battery longevity, we're looking at a future where those with a lower income will no longer have access to inexpensive used vehicles. I'm guessing that's why they're also hedging their bets with CNG vehicles, which will gracefully age into second-hand clunkers. But if the primary market gravitates mostly towards EVs, people looking for a cheap car are going to be totally out of luck. EVs are essentially scrap once the batteries crap out.

Don't get me wrong, helping the environment is a big deal. But giving the middle finger to the poor in the process seems like the wrong way to go about doing it.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get me wrong, helping the environment is a big deal.

.

DO tell us what will be done with all the toxic metals contained in the spent battery packs.

I can hardly wait to hear your attempt to explain how those are going to be "helping" the environment.

You see, when you look at the whole system, electric vehicles are not the panacea that idiots like you assume they are.

Re: The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck the poor. We can end poverty today by just killing everyone that makes less than 40k a year. This will not happen however because the rich make lots and lots of money off of poor people.

Re:The poor get screwed

[MightyMartian]

Shocking story but powertrains in vehicles fail to. And most EVs seem to have warranties on batteries of 10 years

Re:The poor get screwed

[Ichijo]

If they can't afford to get to work, who's going to clean toilets and flip burgers? Will toilets go uncleaned and burgers unflipped, or will employers be forced to pay more for low wage jobs?

Re:The poor get screwed

[Drishmung]

Public transport, ride sharing or some such?

Israel has about a third the rate of car ownership of the USA. I can see that the 'poor', and even the middle-class, might find the cost of a private vehicle becomes uneconomic. Maybe. It's an interesting thought.

And, BTW, what is going on in San Marino? With its land area, pretty everywhere appears to be within walking distance, and yet there's 1.3 cars per person!

Re:The poor get screwed

[thrich81]

Not pure EVs but I've got two 12 year old hybrid vehicles (2006 Toyota Highlander Hybrid and 2006 Lexus RX400H) and their batteries are still going strong. And these are practically first generation electric hybrids so you'd think the batteries have gotten better since then.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect that most EVs will still be commute worthy after a long time (battery degregation is front loaded).

Also, the summary speaks of CNG.

Re:The poor get screwed

[ShanghaiBill]

The elephant in the room with EVs is that they become economically unfeasible to keep on the road once the battery pack sufficiently degrades.

Bullcrap. The first Prius went on sale in 1997, and many of them have more than 300k miles. They are mostly still running fine.

Re:The poor get screwed

[dfghjk]

False choice. You don't have to choose between the environment and "giving the middle finger to the poor", and how is trashing the environment NOT giving everyone, including the poor, the middle finger?

Having the poor drive our most polluting cars hardly seems like the right way to go about it. Cars are an arbitrary solution anyway, not clear why we need to figure out how keep the poor in cars, or anyone else for that matter. Need to see the bigger picture.

Re:The poor get screwed

[unimacs]

This only affects new car sales so there will be used ICE vehicles available for some time. As the number of reliable ICE vehicles decreases there will be solutions for dealing with the battery pack issue. First is that well designed packs with active heating/cooling should have limited degradation for a substantial portion of the vehicle's life.

And once EVs become a significant portion of vehicles on the road, there will be a market for pack replacements. Junk yards will salvage packs from relatively new cars that were totaled in accidents. In order to reduce costs, EV manufacturers will have a big incentive to minimize the number of different pack designs, - which makes it more practical for 3rd parties to manufacture replacements.

There will be pack remanufacturers that will refurbish old packs, just as you can get any number of refurbished parts for cars today.

The bright spot is that the drivetrain in an EV is pretty simple when it comes down to it and should last longer than a combustion engine/transmission. Further, there are fewer wear items like timing belts, plugs, filters, plug wires, EGR valves, exhaust systems, etc. And with regenerative braking, pads and rotors last longer. Oil changes will be a thing of the past.

So even if pack replacement remains relatively expensive, over the lifetime of a vehicle, it could be offset by the lower cost of maintenance in other areas.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Mal-2]

One second-gen Prius I was familiar with made it upwards of 200k. What finally did it in was the piston rings. Considering what it was supposed to represent, death by burning oil is kind of ironic. Can't really complain about the service lifetime, though. I would not be the least bit surprised if the battery pack and drive train were sold before they even got it back to the scrapyard. The Prius uses a very conservative power cycle range, because the batteries were still a bit of an unknown in practice. It turns out the batteries were as good as claimed or slightly better, and Toyota's over-engineering means they'll live decades.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

the poor are always screwed. that's why they are poor. if you want to do something, take the subsidies given to oil and give it to EV companies. But that won't happen. No one really cares for the poor. they just use that as an excuse not to change.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Powercntrl]

Shocking story but powertrains in vehicles fail to. And most EVs seem to have warranties on batteries of 10 years

10 years seems like a good long warranty until you realize the average car on the road in the USA is already older than that. The average age of a vehicle in the USA is 11.6 years (yes, I realize TFA is about Israel).

Yes, the engine/transmission in an I.C. vehicle can crap out, but there's a lot of cheap(ish) ways to get a broken I.C. car back on the road.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Powercntrl]

Bullcrap. The first Prius went on sale in 1997, and many of them have more than 300k miles. They are mostly still running fine.

The Prius is a gasoline-powered hybrid. If you want to see how EVs age, you should look at the Leaf. The early ones already are selling for far below what an I.C. car of the same vintage would go for, specifically because the battery wear has made them nearly unusable (due to loss of range).

I suppose if you wanted to pull it with horses...

Re:The poor get screwed

[Powercntrl]

I can see that the 'poor', and even the middle-class, might find the cost of a private vehicle becomes uneconomic.

Here in the USA that'd be a tough sell. Collectively, we're not too big on the concept of the next generation having a lower standard of living than the previous, even though things certainly seem to be heading in that direction.

Re:The poor get screwed

[unimacs]

You should look at the Leaf if you want to know how not to cool a battery pack.

Nissan Leafs have air cooled battery packs rather than liquid cooled and that's why their lifespan has been relatively short. Teslas and even Chevy Volts have much more sophisticated cooling systems and degradation so far is almost non-existant.

In fact a 2011 Chevy Volt had racked up over 450,000 miles as of this last Summer with no noticeable degradation of battery life.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Dog-Cow]

Israeli law requires employers to pay travel expenses to and from the job site.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Dog-Cow]

Israel charges 150% tax on personal automobiles. Reducing this tax to (near) zero for CNG and EVs will make them cheaper than most new cars currently on the road.

Re:The poor get screwed

[whoever57]

The elephant in the room with EVs is that they become economically unfeasible to keep on the road once the battery pack sufficiently degrades.

What do you call an ICE vehicle with 200,000 miles on it? Typically: "scrap".

EV batteries will last over 200,000 miles and EVs don't have as many moving parts to wear out. EVs are much more likely to be running at high mileage and years than an ICE.

Re:The poor get screwed

[fubarrr]

Nissan suxx because of perfect storm they had: new and untested battery chemistry, hot climate, bad cooling, no over-provisioning.

E6 has air cooled brick batteries, close to no over-provisioning, and manages to do better than Tesla.

Re:The poor get screwed

[fubarrr]

And it is mostly sold in hot places, on top of that.

Re: The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck the poor. We can end poverty today by just killing everyone that makes less than 40k a year. This will not happen however because the rich make lots and lots of money off of poor people.

-

Why don't you come start with me ?

I will enjoy seeing the hogs eat your intestines while you are still alive.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Public transport, ride sharing or some such?

America hates public transportation (which is why taxis are relatively popular) and - just like absolutely every other rent vs. buy situation - hiring an uber driver to drive you to work every day is going to be more expensive in the long run than buying a car. As usual, the poor get poorer so the rich (GM/Tesla/Whoever's making EVs in Israel) can get richer.

Re:The poor get screwed

[iamacat]

You do know that chemicals in batteries don't go anywhere and just need to be separated and re-textured into desired structure again right?

Re:The poor get screwed

[dunkelfalke]

On the other hand, the battery pack of my mother's civic hybrid failed at 68k km.

Re:The poor get screwed

[EnsilZah]

As someone who lives in Israel I can confirm, car ownership is more of an upper middle class family thing.

A monthly pass for public transportation in the local metropolitan area costs about $80, half that if you're a student or senior citizen.
And you'd probably get on the bus you need within 15 minutes if you're in a city.

Re:The poor get screwed

[blindseer]

As usual, the poor get poorer so the rich (GM/Tesla/Whoever's making EVs in Israel) can get richer.

The poor get poorer because of bad choices. The rich get richer because of good choices. There's good data on this.

One such example are that the people that buy a lot of expensive shoes are not the wealthy, it's the people that want to look wealthy. The people that save up for a pair of practical shoes tend to be able to figure out how to save in other ways. The people that buy expensive consumable items, like shoes generally are, will have a harder time getting rich.

I've heard the phrase that the poor are poor because they chose poverty. That might be simplifying it a bit too much. I'm thinking that it's more like the poor are poor because they made poor choices. In a free nation there is often very little keeping someone from attaining wealth. There's simply things that people don't choose that can bring a person to poverty but this is not the rule, only the exception.

Re:The poor get screwed

[blindseer]

Let me know when they figure out how to do that with these new battery chemistries.

The old lead-acid batteries are recycled all the time unlike those used in electric vehicles and laptops. They can be recycled into new raw materials but not always to the purity needed for new batteries. More likely the batteries are recycled into steel alloys than anything. Photovoltaic cells are the same way, they can't be recycled into new solar panels but they might be good for use as metallurgical grade silicon.

Re:The poor get screwed

[dehachel12]

after a few 100K in a car, where they drop to maybe 80%-90% capacity, they get to be re-used as grid storage where they sit a few decades after which they get recycled.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

> The rich get richer because of good choices
and how about the huge tax-cuts they get, and the insane subsidies to - amongst others - the banks ?

Re:The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

I can imagine that civic's battery didn't have modern chemistry or thermal management?

Re:The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Toyota now gives a lifetime warranty on the Prius batteries, even on my old car (they upgraded the warranty). They would never do that if it would cost them real money.

As for my car : my batteries are now a decade old, the car is parked outside in winter and when skiing, as well as in summer. There is no noticeable degradation of the batteries.

The whole fear of battery degradation is overblown.

Re: The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

We can end poverty today by just killing everyone that makes less than 40k a year.

In 2018, you need to earn $32,400 to be in the top 1% of income earners on the planet. https://www.investopedia.com/a... So you want to reduce the world's population to around 50 million people while advocating for the murder of roughly 7.5 billion people?

Re:The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

yes poor choices like getting sick when they can't afford it, or not getting a good education because their parents are poor. All those bad choices?

Re:The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

> Israel has about a third [wikipedia.org] the rate of car ownership of the USA

And anyone who has significant experience trying to find parking in (central) Tel Aviv understands why.

Re:The poor get screwed

[shilly]

Run me through the logic of EVs becoming economically infeasible once the pack degrades again? Because packs that have been going for 100k miles are still showing 80% or better SoH, and charging is still something a large proportion of folks could in principle do at home with off-street wall-boxes, and night-time electricity is pretty damn cheap.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you call an ICE vehicle with 200,000 miles on it? Typically: "scrap".

Stop buying crap American car brands and/or skipping regular maintenance. I've got a Honda Pilot with 215,000 miles on it that runs like the day we drove it off the lot.

Re: The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately for your plan, assassins only make $35k a year.

Re:The poor get screwed

[dasunt]

Public transport, ride sharing or some such? Israel has about a third the rate of car ownership of the USA. I can see that the 'poor', and even the middle-class, might find the cost of a private vehicle becomes uneconomic. Maybe. It's an interesting thought.

And, BTW, what is going on in San Marino? With its land area, pretty everywhere appears to be within walking distance, and yet there's 1.3 cars per person!

Been poor in the US before, still have poor friends, and even in car-centric US, poverty makes car ownership hard. The estimate is that a "cheap" car still costs $0.25/mile for all the expenses incurred while it is being used for transportation. That's not cheap on poverty wages.

I've still kept the view that automobiles are a money sink. Far from poverty now (knock on wood), but we're driving beaters.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually the power controls (inverters, voltage step adapters, etc) failing are a bigger issue than the motor and batteries.

Re:The poor get screwed

[drinkypoo]

People also don't appreciate that ICEs experience a drop in capacity over their lifetimes, too, which requires service to restore. Worn piston rings, worn valves, aged O2 sensors, aged coil packs, carbon buildup on the intake valves of vehicles with direct gasoline injection, dirty fuel injectors... All of this stuff WILL happen to vehicles over time, and DOES result in loss of efficiency. It used to be that vehicles didn't have any spare power to lose, either, so you'd actually notice the loss of performance. What happens these days is that the vehicle has unused headroom, and it self-tunes. As a result, you may not even notice any decrease in performance, but you will still experience a drop in fuel economy — and as a result, range. It's not unusual for older vehicles to have lost 10% or more of their performance...

Re:The poor get screwed

[Bert64]

Public transportation is not economical unless you have large numbers of people travelling to/from the same locations at the same time. A bus or a train requires significantly more energy to move than car, so it needs to carry more passengers to break even - plus the expense of hiring the driver. And then the routing, a bus will travel around a route which is very inefficient at getting from point to point because it wants to collect passengers along the way, so a bus passengers will be travelling more miles than if they drove a car to the same destination.

And then there are situations where the bus does not go where you want, and you end up having to take multiple buses or trains with a period of waiting in between.

Also when you do end up with lots of people going to the same place at the same time, you end up with massive congestion and severely unpleasant travelling conditions.

Forcing everyone onto public transport doesn't help anyone, it just reduces everyone's quality of life. Instead measures need to be taken to reduce the need for travel, so provide residential areas and workplaces in close proximity and also allow remote working when possible etc... If most people can have a 5 minute walk to work, not only does their quality of life improve but the energy use decreases significantly too.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Bert64]

That's largely a third world problem, in civilised countries education and healthcare is provided by the government for everyone that wants it.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a nice 2 stroke electric generator and strap it to the trunk lid and charge as you drive!

Re:The poor get screwed

[stepho-wrs]

A bus or a train requires significantly more energy to move than car, so it needs to carry more passengers to break even - plus the expense of hiring the driver.

Granted that the train takes more energy to move than a car. But that energy should be compared to all the cars it replaces, not just a single car. If it takes 100 times the energy of one car but transports 1000 people (vary the numbers if you will, depending on the size of your train) then you should compare it to the the energy required to move 1000 cars.

Re:The poor get screwed

[No Longer an AC]

I've heard that shoe story before, but it was spun a little differently.

In the version I heard I think they were actually work boots and it wasn't because the poor person didn't save up enough to buy the ones that would last, it was that he couldn't afford them in the first place and he couldn't earn money without a pair of work boots.

But it is a fair point that a lot of seemingly minor choices can have a major impact much later on.

Re:The poor get screwed

[Powercntrl]

Nissan Leafs have air cooled battery packs rather than liquid cooled and that's why their lifespan has been relatively short. Teslas and even Chevy Volts have much more sophisticated cooling systems and degradation so far is almost non-existant.

That's exactly the point: cheaper electric cars have batteries that don't last. I'm not saying the first or even second owners of an EV are going to have major issues with it. I'm saying the era of cheap buy-here-pay-here lot cars that still provide transportation so long as you keep 'em full of oil, might be coming to a close.

Re:The poor get screwed

[unimacs]

Nissan Leafs have air cooled battery packs rather than liquid cooled and that's why their lifespan has been relatively short. Teslas and even Chevy Volts have much more sophisticated cooling systems and degradation so far is almost non-existant.

That's exactly the point: cheaper electric cars have batteries that don't last. I'm not saying the first or even second owners of an EV are going to have major issues with it. I'm saying the era of cheap buy-here-pay-here lot cars that still provide transportation so long as you keep 'em full of oil, might be coming to a close.

Maybe.

It could be though that going forward the Nissan Leaf's passive cooling will be seen as a critical design flaw that even the cheapest EVs will not implement in the future.

It's really hard to know how this will all play out. Our assumptions are based on how cars are built and used today which may not apply in future. For example, a Chinese company is working on a Tesla clone whose battery pack can be swapped in a few minutes at a properly equipped station. So rather than having a semi-permanent battery that you charge, when traveling long distances you merely swap it with a freshly charged one. At that point the life of a single battery pack isn't so much of an issue for the owner of the car.

And remember, we're talking 2030. Figuring a decent ICE vehicle can last 15 years, if not more, that takes us to 2045 before the poor start running out of ICE cars to buy. By that time autonomous vehicles will likely be the norm. Which means services like Uber or public bus service can be really cheap since they won't have to pay drivers. Plus we're not just talking about electric cars, but electric motorcycles, bicycles, scooters, etc. An electric motorcycle or scooter seems like a pretty good choice for a poor person vs an old clunker ICE vehicle. Smaller, cheaper batteries that are quick to charge and a drivetrain that's relatively maintenance free.

Finally, Israel has the 3rd highest gas prices in the world. Operating an ICE vehicle of any stripe there isn't cheap. I'm guessing the really poor simply may find car ownership too expensive as is and the change to electric vehicles will only improve things for them.

This is the *MOST STUPID* article, ever !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you telling us that the Israelis going to turn all their military vehicles, including tanks, trucks, and bulldozers, into EV?

Are you going to tell us that the Israelis gonna convert their fleet of fighters into solar planes?

Are you going to tell us that the Israeli missiles going to be propelled by electricity?

This is STUPID !!

Re:This is the *MOST STUPID* article, ever !!

[Anonymous Coward]

Israel doesn't have tanks. They are a peaceful country! :^)

This has nothing to do with climate

[Pinky's Brain]

This is about autarky, but autarky is a dirty word when spoken by non-Israelis ... so lets say climate instead.

Re:This has nothing to do with climate

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a moron.

Re:Hitlery H. Hamas

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh look, a retard.

IMPERSONATING me AGAIN? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

You're caught impersonating me c6gunner (your name's the submitter signing "APK") https://linux.slashdot.org/com... & you ALTERED /.ers PRAISE of my work (not yours you don't even HAVE).

(Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house vs. me: RIGHT ZIP? https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... )

LIAR ZIP says he has no account "I don't have an account, so I don't have mod points" https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

Yet LIAR ZIP says he downmods my posts (IMPOSSIBLE MINUS AN ACCOUNT on /.): "I down-modded a few of your post on other threads" - by Anonymous Coward "ZIP" on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:31AM (#57461058) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

APK

P.S.=> GROW UP weezils - you do it to yourselves trying to "take me on" & FAILING like you always do (especially on tech) + so then you start STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts OR by IMPERSONATING me (weak BITCH tactics only a HOMO would do, lol)... apk

Makes sense

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Israel is small enough that current EVs should be able to go border-to-border on a single charge. Given that range anxiety is one of the major reasons why people don't want EVs, it seems a small country can convert much more easily.

Re:Makes sense

[Mal-2]

It also pins their hopes on a proven but not entirely mature technology, and it just happens they've got a pretty big investment in battery chemistry research. Maybe they know something the public doesn't, or maybe they just like the idea of selling more domestically made vehicles and shutting down the purchase of vehicles from neighboring countries -- unless those countries are also going electric. They have enough financial pull in the region that others might lean the same direction for purely pragmatic reasons. Even if nearby nations don't, individual businesses will, if they can sell across the border.

Twenty years ago it was stupid to drive an EV unless you were out to prove something, or you lived in Avalon. Now it's viable, but not ideal for everyone. By the end of the 32-bit Unix time epoch, 20 years hence, internal combustion vehicles will be like CD players or chrome tapes. We'll remember what they're for, and be glad we no longer require them, even though they were nice at the time.

Re:Makes sense

[David_Hart]

Israel is small enough that current EVs should be able to go border-to-border on a single charge. Given that range anxiety is one of the major reasons why people don't want EVs, it seems a small country... surrounded by enemies... can convert much more easily.

There, fixed that for you... Somehow I think that the family vacation to the outback of Iraq is not a frequent event.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

By the end of the 32-bit Unix time epoch, 20 years hence, internal combustion vehicles will be like CD players or chrome tapes.

-

Would you be willing to stake your life on your above claim ?

Because if you would, that would mean that in 20 years there will be one less dumbass in the world.

Cars will be using gasoline in 20 years. Just wait and see, you silly clueless cunt.

Re:Makes sense

[Dog-Cow]

I haven't yet seen a domestically-manufactured car in Israel, and I've been living here for 6 years now, as of today.

Re:Makes sense

[Mal-2]

You will probably see domestically assembled cars once the market turns electric though. The batteries could be produced locally while the rest of the car comes from China or whatever, because they are heavy, and critical to performance, and the first place an unscrupulous Chinese company will cut corners, knowing it may be years before people notice.

Re:Makes sense

[mishehu]

Much of Israel is mountainous, so I'm not sure if that affects range in any very meaningful ways (but I suspect it does). But yeah, if you drive from Katsrin in the Golan to Eilat, it's under 500 km.

Re:Makes sense

[mishehu]

I used to see a susita over by the qiriyah... That was a couple decades ago so no idea if it's still there. But no, there's currently no domestic vehicle industry to speak of.

Re:Makes sense

[Mal-2]

There are people with CD players (and they use them) even now, so yes, there will still be internal combustion vehicles. They just won't be what most commuters want or need.

And don't be a fuckwad. I can be a dick too, but I try very hard to aim it only at targets that deserve it. Fuck off, you puling, pusilannimous pissant.

Re:Makes sense

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Mountainous terrain will hurt distance, but with regenerative breaking, it hurts an EV's mileage significantly less than a gas powered car.

Re:Makes sense

[tbq]

Israel is small enough that current EVs should be able to go border-to-border on a single charge. Given that range anxiety is one of the major reasons why people don't want EVs, it seems a small country can convert much more easily.

For a size comparison Israel is roughly the size of New Jersey. According to Google Maps, driving from the nothernmost tip to the southernmost tip of the country is 520km. Tesla's Model S 100D has a range of 540km, so there are no locations in the country that you cannot travel to on a single charge with today's technology. In 11 years battery technology will likely be better and cheaper, making this a practical move for the country.

Re:Makes sense

[jabuzz]

Google maps tells me 540km from Eilat to Mount Hermon. But it's over six hours so a comfort break and a supercharger will see you through no problem.

Re:Makes sense

[jabuzz]

Nope it's 570km to drive from border with Egypt just south of Eilat to the car park at the Mount Hermon ski area according to Google Maps. Remember you can't just zip through the West Bank. Well you probably can but it is not terribly sensible. You can even go a bit further north in theory to the Shebba farm area, though I have no idea if this is open to the public (being disputed Syrian/Lebanese land currently occupied by Israel). However as Google Maps won't let me drop the pin in the relevant location I am guessing it's closed.

Re:Makes sense

[crunchygranola]

Much of Israel is mountainous, so I'm not sure if that affects range in any very meaningful ways (but I suspect it does). But yeah, if you drive from Katsrin in the Golan to Eilat, it's under 500 km.

Other countries would describe it as "hilly". Although there is an extreme at Mount Hermon at 2230 m (no one drives to it, it is on the Syrian border), the highest elevations found in the country are about 750 m, which is where Jerusalem is located, and marks the summit where much driving will be done. If you are living in the Greater Jerusalem area you are driving around on a plateau with much smaller elevation changes (200 m or less), but the large majority of Israeli driving is on the coastal plain, and usually passes to go elsewhere in the country do not take you over 500 m. About the only time you would see regular elevation changes as large as 750 m is driving up to Jerusalem and down again.

Similar elevation changes in Southern California, where I drive a Prius have no overall impact on mileage. None. You worse mileage going uphill, better going down, it evens out. The effects of traffic (braking) erase any ability to see an elevation difference.

Re:Makes sense

[drinkypoo]

Maybe they know something the public doesn't, or maybe they just like the idea of selling more domestically made vehicles and shutting down the purchase of vehicles from neighboring countries -- unless those countries are also going electric.

Israel has exactly one automaker and their business is building vehicles for their military. Essentially 100% of these new vehicles will be imported.

By the end of the 32-bit Unix time epoch, 20 years hence, internal combustion vehicles will be like CD players or chrome tapes. We'll remember what they're for, and be glad we no longer require them, even though they were nice at the time.

I believe they will still be the primary motive force for non-sailing sea vessels, but I have high hopes that automobiles will go the way you describe.

Re:Makes sense

[mishehu]

Tsfat has an elevation of 900m above sea level, but it's not height above sea level itself that makes something mountainous. It's the overall variance in topography. Let's not forget that part of the country is actually below sea level. And nobody drives to the Hermon? What about the skiing there in the winter time? I've ridden buses, taken taxis, ridden the train, and driven both cars and vespas around Israel, so I'm quite familiar with the country and the terrain.

Jerusalem is on a plateau? Funny, Jerusalem itself might be the holy city, but it's twelve levels of hell to drive in due in no small part to the fact that it is not very plateau like. If anything, the Golan far more qualifies as a plateau.

The fact that Nepal would say "those aren't mountains, they're hills" isn't really relevant to me. Yes, parts of SoCal have more pronounced mountains. But there really isn't a hard definition of what is a hill versus a mountain.

As for your Prius, what year/generation is it? I've got a pretty steep hill that if I come into it at around 70mph by the time I reach the top the '05 Prius is barely able to keep it up to 50mph. A typical Corolla will be able to keep between 60-65 mph at the top of this hill. This is in one of the hillier parts of the Texas Hill Country, but at a height of between 900-1100 ft above sea level, these are definitely hills in my book.

Re:Makes sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonetheless, hills are not really a problem for range because gravitational potential energy is a great storage technology.

You drive up, you convert battery charge into gravity charge. To drive down, you deplete gravity charge instead of battery and quite possibly recharge the battery too if you need to do some regenerative braking rather cruising at your terminal velocity due to aerodynamics and rolling friction.

I've seen this effect with some of my turbocharged gasoline cars too. Going up a mountain and down actually gave me equal or better average MPG for the trip than a similar trip distance on more or less flat ground. The engine was in its peak efficiency band powering me up the mountain and basically coasting on the way down. Because I cannot account for all other conditions like head/tail winds, I cannot be sure if it was really more efficient going over the mountain, or just efficient enough to not matter...

Re:Hitlery H. Hamas

[Anonymous Coward]

Another dumb sack of Socialist SHITler.

Hybrid is the Best Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

A Hybrid - Gas/Electric is the best answer.

When batteries are drained, run with gasoline (NOT "petrol").

IMPERSONATING me AGAIN? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

You're caught impersonating me c6gunner (your name's the submitter signing "APK") https://linux.slashdot.org/com... & you ALTERED /.ers PRAISE of my work (not yours you don't even HAVE).

(Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house vs. me: RIGHT ZIP? https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... )

LIAR ZIP says he has no account "I don't have an account, so I don't have mod points" https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

Yet LIAR ZIP says he downmods my posts (IMPOSSIBLE MINUS AN ACCOUNT on /.): "I down-modded a few of your post on other threads" - by Anonymous Coward "ZIP" on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:31AM (#57461058) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

APK

P.S.=> GROW UP weezils - you do it to yourselves trying to "take me on" & FAILING like you always do (especially on tech) + so then you start STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts OR by IMPERSONATING me (weak BITCH tactics only a HOMO would do, lol)... apk

Wasn't ME (Real APK) you replied to... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See my subject:... but you KNOW that Mr. UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous STALKER of myself: I'd never whine that way, LEAST OF ALL to "your kind" here & as to YOUR "fine advice" you so freely dispense (like shit is & if I wanted any shit? I'd squeeze your head, lol)?

No thanks - I don't want to be the GNARLED FUCKWEEZIL you are which EXPLAINS YOUR PATHETIC WHINING, bitch (lmao @ U).

APK

P.S.=> I'd rather be ME & keep EXPOSING your bs games https://hardware.slashdot.org/... & letting you CONTINUALLY make FOOLS of yourselves instead, lol - thanks in a way - your reaction PROVES it works... apk

Re: Wasn't ME (Real APK) you replied to... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why are you whining so much about supposed impersonation by c6gunner and ZIP? You've been whining about a single c6gunner post for weeks. There were over 10 threads today with posts from you whining about impersonation. If you don't want to be criticized for whining, then stop whining.

I stated facts about c6gunner & ZIP... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not whining. YOU are whining. I stated facts on c6gunner caught impersonating me & ZIP being a blowhard lying fool https://hardware.slashdot.org/...

* So STOP your whining - bitch.

APK

P.S.=> Facts ARE facts - immutable truth QUOTING them both - no denying it (you're obviously 1 of them & don't like the EXPOSURE) - well, keep impersonating me LIKE YOU DID HERE https://hardware.slashdot.org/... (no way I'd ever say any of that, least of all to weezilz, lol, like YOU here)? I keep this up... apk

IMPERSONATING me AGAIN? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

You're caught impersonating me c6gunner (your name's the submitter signing "APK") https://linux.slashdot.org/com... & you ALTERED /.ers PRAISE of my work (not yours you don't even HAVE).

(Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house vs. me: RIGHT ZIP? https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... )

LIAR ZIP says he has no account "I don't have an account, so I don't have mod points" https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

Yet LIAR ZIP says he downmods my posts (IMPOSSIBLE MINUS AN ACCOUNT on /.): "I down-modded a few of your post on other threads" - by Anonymous Coward "ZIP" on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:31AM (#57461058) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

APK

P.S.=> GROW UP weezils - U do it to yourselves trying to "take me on" & FAILING like you always do (especially on tech) + so then you start STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts OR by IMPERSONATING me (weak BITCH tactics only a HOMO would do, lol)... apk

That's nice but

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the military ?. I can't see an electric tank being that viable.
O.K. they have their own supplies but if you aren't making and selling the fuel for civilian use supply chains are going to get very fragile.

Re:That's nice but

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if someone ever managed to build a viable electric tank, would it be quieter than a conventional tank?

Stealth tank, anyone? How cool would that be?!

Wasn't ME (Real APK) you replied to... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See my subject:... & you KNOW that Mr. UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous STALKER of myself: I'd never whine that way, LEAST OF ALL to "your kind" here & as to YOUR "fine advice" you so freely dispense (like shit is & if I wanted any shit? I'd squeeze your head, lol)?

No thanks - I don't want to be the GNARLED FUCKWEEZIL you are which EXPLAINS YOUR PATHETIC WHINING, bitch (lmao @ U).

APK

P.S.=> I'd rather be ME & keep EXPOSING your bs games https://hardware.slashdot.org/... & letting you CONTINUALLY make FOOLS of yourselves instead, lol - thanks in a way - your reaction PROVES it works... apk

Don'tt fret... for internal consumption only!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is pure internal Israeli politics/propaganda. Nothing to do with transportation. The country is heavily dependent upon fossil fuel taxation -- NOTHING is going to happen. Fortunately, Yuval Steinitz did get his headline.

I stated facts about c6gunner & ZIP... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not whining. YOU're whining. I state facts: c6gunner caught impersonating me & ZIP = blowhard fool liar https://hardware.slashdot.org/...

* So STOP your whining - bitch.

APK

P.S.=> Facts ARE facts - immutable truth QUOTING them both - no denying it (you're obviously 1 of them & don't like the EXPOSURE) - well, keep impersonating me LIKE YOU DID HERE https://hardware.slashdot.org/... (no way I'd ever say any of that, least of all to weezilz, lol, like YOU here)? I keep this up... apk

Intriguing Approach!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done Israel!

Ferret

I stated facts about c6gunner & ZIP... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not whining. YOU, are whining. I state fact: c6gunner caught impersonating me & ZIP = blowhard fool liar https://hardware.slashdot.org/...

* So STOP your whining - bitch.

APK

P.S.=> Facts ARE facts - immutable truth QUOTING them both - no denying it (you're obviously 1 of them & don't like the EXPOSURE) - well, keep impersonating me LIKE YOU DID HERE https://hardware.slashdot.org/... (as no way I'd ever say any of that, least of all to weezilz, lol, like YOU here)? I keep this up... apk

IMPERSONATING me AGAIN? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

You're caught impersonating me c6gunner (your name's the submitter signing "APK") https://linux.slashdot.org/com... & you ALTERED /.ers PRAISE of my work (not yours you don't even HAVE).

(Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house vs. me: RIGHT ZIP? https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... )

LIAR ZIP says he has no account "I don't have an account, so I don't have mod points" https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

Yet LIAR ZIP says he downmods my posts (IMPOSSIBLE MINUS AN ACCOUNT on /.): "I down-modded a few of your post on other threads" - by Anonymous Coward "ZIP" on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:31AM (#57461058) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

APK

P.S.=> GROW UP weezils - you do it to yourselves trying to "take me on" & FAILING like you always do (especially on tech) + so then you start STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts OR by IMPERSONATING me (weak BITCH tactics only a HOMO would do, lol)... apk

I finally get it

[Anonymous Coward]

Electric cars are a Jewish conspiracy aimed at neighboring Arab countries that live off oil.

No, Israel doesn't have that aim

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been no public discussion of this matter in Israel - and I should know since I live here and follow the news.

While it's possible that such a measure will be taken, considering the natural gas reserves discovered off the coast - this is just fanciful thinking on the reporter's part. I challenge you to find this story in Israeli news media.

Effect, not a particular technology

[Anonymous Coward]

The law should concentrate on the effect (pollution and renewable energy), instead of concentrating on the type of engine. The law should state that starting in 2031, all vehicles that are sold must be non-polluting, and must use renewable energy, instead of forbidding or mandating a particular technology.

What if someone came up with a way to move a vehicle, which used renewable energy, and was non-polluting, but was not powered by electricity or compressed natural gas? Should that vehicle be forbidden, because it's not an EV or CNG vehicle?

Little too optimistic I think

[Anonymous Coward]

I have my doubts that by 2030 EV vehicles will even be a thing anymore. Yes I do think fossil fuel vehicles will eventually be replaced. But its going to be by a technology much better then EV's. Because EV's require way too much infrastructure to be practical and unless battery technology improves greatly. Its not the holy grail of the future.

typical

[gDLL]

by good fortune you mean hard work? Ofc there is always an element of fortune but that is useless if no work has been done.

Re: typical

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people work hard and most likely harder, and don't get that kind of reward for it.

Re:typical

[drinkypoo]

by good fortune you mean hard work? Ofc there is always an element of fortune but that is useless if no work has been done.

The strongest correlator to financial success is who your parents are and what their social status is. It has little to nothing to do with hard work. If hard work were the best predictor of success then the world would be dominated by single mothers, maintenance workers, and jizz moppers.

Re:typical

[gDLL]

you seem to read effort == hard work. In my language there is a difference. We were talking about the people that work for their success, why are you talking the ones with rich parents who had at some point some parent that worked hard ? Please stay on subject.

Re: typical

[gDLL]

I am very inclined to think that if you do more or less what I do then you will get more or less good results. I do not play the lottery or gamble btw. If by "most people work hard" you mean they dig ditches with spoons then that doesn't count as work.

Re:typical

[drinkypoo]

I am a 1%er and pay over 50% of my earnings in taxes.

I highly suspect you're lying but if you're not please shut up and accept your good fortune to earn that much in the first place. And on the off chance you're not lying, you also need to fire your accountant.

by good fortune you mean hard work? Ofc there is always an element of fortune but that is useless if no work has been done.

The strongest correlator to financial success is who your parents are and what their social status is. It has little to nothing to do with hard work.

you seem to read effort == hard work. In my language there is a difference.

As you can see from the above quotation (I went back and put in the effort to quote for context) you are the one who brought up "hard work". If you don't want to discuss "hard work", perhaps you shouldn't mention "hard work".

We were talking about the people that work for their success, why are you talking the ones with rich parents who had at some point some parent that worked hard ?

Because they are in the minority. Most people don't become wealthy through hard work. They get lucky, or they take advantage of someone. The percentage of people who actually got wealthy because they worked hard is minuscule.

Now let's venture over to your neighboring comment, which proves you don't actually get it:

I am very inclined to think that if you do more or less what I do then you will get more or less good results.

And that is why you are very wrong. Opportunity is more important than how hard you work, and opportunity is extremely unevenly distributed.

Re:typical

[gDLL]

I don't understand why you keep trying to drag the discussion towards something else, yes some people get some good inheritance/blue-eyes/full-hair good on them. They WERE NOT the focus (or mention) of my hard work argument. My neighbours finances does not concern me, *MY* finances concern me. It's like you are saying look the neighbor won the lottery therefore why do you work when you too can play the lottery or something....we were talking about the hard working people.

If you want to have good fortune in life (not Bill Gates level wealth but say above average) you should work hard and, get this, create your own opportunities. If you want to be a programmer go to silicon valley and it will increase your chances 10x. As I said in the beginning ofc there is an element of hazard, but if those who had it would not have been primed and ready for it when the moment came then it would have been wasted.

Instead I suspect *some* prefer to woe woe woe is me, and go take a snooz. Btw how many of those chinese millionaires are "inherited", wasn't China dirt poor like 40 yrs ago ?

and Palestinians

[Tsolias]

by 2020

Re:and Palestinians

[Anonymous Coward]

They can power their vehicles with the spinning bodies of children and foreign journalists that have just been shot by snipers just to keep the conflict going and the two year military service justified to the Israeli population, in a war-crimy way. The force of bullets beyond the wall shall lead to rapid CO2 emission cuts.

12 years

[cascadingstylesheet]

It always seems to be 12 years off ...

Well, hopefully all the pieces will be there and it will be affordable for most by then. We're getting there.

I've dreamed of electric vehicles since I was a kid; nothing against them. I do have something against commissars ordering me into one though.

Looks like they'll in reality eventually become pervasive by actually being better, not truly by fiat, which is good. 12 years from now they'll either be actually affordable and have all the pieces in place, or else the deadline will get moved out again.

Liquid fuels generally unavailable

[Paul Neubauer]

Israel has a good case for eliminating readily used and transported flammable fuels - her neighbors. Not about sticking it to the oil-rich, but denying* those who would make firebombs a common fuel for such things. It won't solve everything, but it makes sense to take away what can be taken away. And auto/truck bombs don't work so well if the answer to them is to cut power so EVs cannot be (re)charged in lawless areas.

* or at least making acquisition more difficult for...

Odd...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't remember seeing a 100% tank before.

They'll Kill All Muslims By 2020!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking Heebs turned into Nazis. FREE PALESTINE!

I am APK the LORD of HOSTS

[Anonymous Coward]

I am APK the great "LORD of HOSTS", a.k.a. AlecStaar from ArsTechnica or Alexander Peter Kowalski.

See subject & APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux h t t p : / / I . a m . a . f u c k i n g / a s s h o l e . r e t a r d . z i p (remove spaces between characters & download).

I am the godlike creator of various GUI front-ends for other people's configuration files.

Watch as I claim I win every argument when in reality I know I lost but that won't stop me from proclaiming my victory.

When presented with facts I rebut them with wild speculations, false support, and out of context quotes

See me lash out at one person for many weeks and claim everyone who mocks my retarded ass is actually them.

You must be conspiring with the Jews and Soros if you disagree with me.

Mistaking mockery and parody for impersonation is how I think people flatter me because I can't possibly understand that they detest me.

Bask in my debilitating mental illness

I just don't understand why every site I post on everyone makes fun of me, it can't be because I am a shit stick but instead because they are all Ne'er-do-well SOYboy Jealous JOWIEs.

Witness my descent into madness

APK

No mention of this in hebrew speaking newspapers?

[lucasnate1]

This is the first time I hear about this. Has anyone written about this in our own country's newspapers in hebrew?

Re:No mention of this in hebrew speaking newspaper

[lucasnate1]

Ok, found one http://www.bizportal.co.il/gen...

Only 100 EVs?

[Freischutz]

Israel is small enough that current EVs should be able to go border-to-border on a single charge. Given that range anxiety is one of the major reasons why people don't want EVs, it seems a small country can convert much more easily.

It's amazing that they have only 100 electric cars in the entire country, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg has more EVs that that.

My car's pushing 25

[rsilvergun]

and it's just about to go kaput. That's 15 years more. When it dies there's a good chance it'll be parted out to keep other 25 year old cars running. It might even make it down to Mexico. Ever see those pictures of cars in Cuba? Those things are from the 60s and still going.

It's not impossible to do that with an EV, but it requires a lot more tech that poor don't necessarily have access to. About the only thing I can't do on my car is the engine & transmission overhaul, but that's mostly due to a lack of skill. I knew lots of poor blue collar guys who could do their own engines and a few that did their own transmissions. The trouble with Battery packs is cost. Lots of specialized gear and chemicals. It's not just steel and iron. You can't just brute force it with welding and ingenuity. You need the tech, which the poor don't have. So when that car dies instead of spending 2 or 3 weekends rebuilding a transmission they'll have to come up with $2k+ to get a battery professionally rebuilt.

IMPERSONATING me AGAIN? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

You're caught impersonating me c6gunner (your name's the submitter signing "APK") https://linux.slashdot.org/com... & you ALTERED /.ers PRAISE of my work (not yours you don't even HAVE).

(Don't throw stones if you live in a glass house vs. me: RIGHT ZIP? https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... )

LIAR ZIP says he has no account "I don't have an account, so I don't have mod points" https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

Yet LIAR ZIP says he downmods my posts (IMPOSSIBLE MINUS AN ACCOUNT on /.): "I down-modded a few of your post on other threads" - by Anonymous Coward "ZIP" on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:31AM (#57461058) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

APK

P.S.=> GROW UP weezils - you do it to yourselves trying to "take me on" & FAILING like you always do (especially on tech) + so then you start STALKING me by UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts OR by IMPERSONATING me (weak BITCH tactics only a HOMO would do, lol)... apk

2030 is perfect, though it needs exceptions

[WindBourne]

By 2023, legacy car makers should be in deep trouble. I doubt that ppl will buy many new gas/diesel vehicles. With that said, we really should make exceptions for military, EMS, and true off-road vehicles. But, we should require they be series hybrid.

Re:2030 is perfect, though it needs exceptions

[Anonymous Coward]

That long? Last week you were telling us in only 2 years people will stop buying them anyway. No need to ban...

reduce taxation on electric cars to almost zero

[Anonymous Coward]

reduce taxation on electric cars to almost zero, so they are going to be much cheaper,

until they jack up the taxes again once adoption rates reach 50% "Where did our revenue go!?"

Some thoughts on the absence of electric cars

[EnsilZah]

Here are a few possible reasons why we have so few electric cars in the country currently:

- We had this company called 'Better Place' that was building an electric car infrastructure, gas cars converted to electric, battery swapping stations, charging stations, etc.
It ended up going out of business, which I guess left a bad taste in people's mouths.

- A lot of tax money comes from gas and car sales, so the government is not incentivized to encourage EVs.
Plus, cars are expensive already, without incentives you'd have to be really rich to be able to afford something like a Telsa Model S.

- Most people live in apartments and park in the street, so they don't get the advantage of charging overnight, and would have to wait the half hour it would take to charge an EV a reasonable amount at a charging station.

- I guess for a company like Tesla, who does business with our neighbors, it might be more trouble than it's worth getting bad press in the Arab world for doing business with us.

ICE advocates will howl bloody murder over this

[Rick Schumann]

Israel is a tiny country, really, so it's not a big deal really, but face it: internal combustion engines must go the way of the (dead) dinosaurs (that have been fueling them). Fossil fuels were always a limited resource, it'll run out eventually, and we see how destructive using it is in the long run. Just relax, ICE fans, you'll still have high-horsepower vehicles, and easier than with ICEs, and the maintenance will be a tiny fraction of what it used to be. Trust me, you'll like it just as much if not more so.

Ten years too late

[WillAffleckUW]

British Columbia will be at 80 percent electric vehicles for all new car and truck purchases by 2020.

2030 means Israel will be way too hot.

No, hotter.

For everone or just Palestinians?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really. Another way to marginalise the oppressed.

Trumponomics!

[Anonymous Coward]

The right get richer and everyone else gets stuck footing the bill.

Why do we care when Israel continues to be vile?

[bitfist]

Stop mass murder, mass incarceration and violation of every human right there is. Israel needs to be dismantled. Send Israelis home to Europe, Russia, North America, wherever and leave the indigenous populations alone. The white Sparta colony is not wanted nor needed.