Chevy Bolt - 200 mile range for $30k base price (after incentive)

[abasile]

With a BEV, a double sized battery (compared too 28kWh which seems to be very workable for actual owners who do also go beyond local errants) just adds one to three years before you even break even on your pollution compared to say a petrol Golf or Civic.

That may be true today, but it's reasonable to expect that battery production emissions will continue to drop with mass production, efficiency improvements, and the growing use of renewable energy in the process. Actually, for this reason, because this is a moving target, the footprint associated with a Model 3 or Bolt battery pack may already be significantly better than some of the studies seem to indicate.

Even so, if a given vehicle is likely to remain on the road for 15 years or so, the EV battery will "pay for itself" multiple times compared to an ICE in terms of emissions. Further, a large battery EV is likely to have a longer useful life and displace more ICE miles/kilometers than an EV with a barely-adequate battery.

If one can live without a car at all, and rely instead on highly-utilized, ground-based public transportation, then that would indeed be better for the environment. (I say "ground-based" because driving an EV beats flying in terms of emissions.) However, we're quite frankly not willing to give up on the quality of life benefits of owning cars and driving wherever we want, door to door, whenever we want, carrying whatever we choose to fit in the car. If we were in Europe, we'd make more use of public transportation, but we'd still want to own at least one car.

Tesla might want to list environmental impact of their products and especially break-even mileage vs a sensible Polo 3-cylinder or Prius Prime.

It's been said that a world in which everyone drives a Prius (even a Prime) is still a world that is addicted to oil. It is possible to power a BEV with 100% renewable energy today, and most electrical grids are continually getting cleaner. It is time for us to push the BEV adoption curve forward as much as possible, and simultaneously work to clean up our electricity generation. This will yield better long-term results than if people continue to buy "efficient" ICE vehicles and neglect to participate in the growth of the BEV market and development of charging infrastructure.

 

[abasile]

I'd personally love to see more resources allocated to bicycle infrastructure. E-bikes and e-scooters are probably about the most environmentally friendly forms of transportation that exist. Unassisted walking and bicycling have more impact than e-bikes because of the consequent additional food consumption, but it's worth burning some calories for physical fitness anyway.

Rather than directing resources away from BEVs, however, it'd make more sense to reduce oil-related subsidies.

It's easy if you have a good infrastructure where you live. It's also easy to just accept the local situation as reality.
2 generations before mine, someone did a great job building roads and railways. Actually, there used to be a tram down my street which has long been decommissioned and removed.
Perhaps rather than focusing only on which politician will shift a bit of cash to new BEV owners, you could also quiz them on what they're going to do for the (green) infrastructure. It's a huge part of citizen wellness. Is it a luxury I can just hop on a bike to get to the train station, across a city? Or should it be the world standard? With the worst infrastructure in the world, I'd be walking. A little better, and I'd be driving and paying for parking. Now, I am cycling.
If we want to be part of change, we need to be part of change. Beyond making a choice of which car to buy or where to live.
Hold your administration to a higher standard.
Many here are from the USA. Last time I checked, half the national budget is digitally printed and exported debt. All of this is effectively spent on "Defense". Perhaps a good bit could go towards better infra, especially downtown? Why should there be 4 lanes of yellow cabs? Isn't that outright 3rd world poverty by 2019's standards? One thing I'll say, it's effectively ride sharing thus better than ownership. Some of those riding the cabby network do so to save themselves the pain of a car.
I dated a lady, she'd take a taxi to work every day, local infra was very so-so and weather dreadful all winter. She'd worked out she'd save lots of money over ownership. And it worked amazingly well for her. For a day outside town she'd borrow from her folks.
My current GF rides her bike or takes the bus when it rains. In her childhood, 18 mile cycling days were the norm, not the exception. She feels it's OK for her to ave herself the agony. You'd not believe her age for her fitness and energy, largely thanks to that upbringing.
I suppose e-assist bikes are making that lifestyle doable for more and more people. You can take short cuts off-road to avoid traffic and just have fresher air. Hills or wind at no longer a real issue. Range on e-bikes is crazy good. Charging too easy.

The world needs a new personal transportation paradigm. And just going electric will not get A scores.

 

[Cloxxki]

It's true that 15 years on the road puts most BEVs ahead of most ICEVs.
Of course we need to take recycling into account by that point. This may well be a win for BEVs actually, but I don't know how much energy recycling would take.

One can put solar panels on a roof and claim "CO2 neutral" production, but to me that only flies partially. That energy could have been used differently. Still there was heat emitted, a tiny little detail largely brushed aside by pretty much everyone in these types of topics. Where does the heat go? Should we worry more about the CO2 will end up helping a tree or our food grow, or heat that is bounced off the atmosphere to make us crank up the A/C?

I think we owe it to those who drive PHEVs and plug them in overnight or at work to not call them oil addicts. They may well emit less per mile traveled than you or I. They may never fly because their whole life is localized. They may have a caravan on a nearby site rather than go on long road trips every month.
An ICE is a cost effective (OEM costs are shockingly low) range extender. In many cases, thanks to clever EM integration, even the complex gearbox can me largely omitted.
Ideally no car would ever have tail pipe emissions, but they all wear out tires which will make it to someone's lungs.
Until one manages to keep their car on renewable energy only, and drives as little as possible, it's unfair to throw a consumerist designation to anyone. To own a car is to be an industrial era junkie, really ;-)

 

[Cloxxki]

I'd personally love to see more resources allocated to bicycle infrastructure. E-bikes and e-scooters are probably about the most environmentally friendly forms of transportation that exist. Unassisted walking and bicycling have more impact than e-bikes because of the consequent additional food consumption, but it's worth burning some calories for physical fitness anyway.

Rather than directing resources away from BEVs, however, it'd make more sense to reduce oil-related subsidies.

It would be interesting to do a calc for the various forms of low emission transport. Do the calories I burn by walking to a hypothetical job everyday really count heavier than those of an electric scooter or e-assist bike? And when factoring in production and life span?

 

[jgs]

One can put solar panels on a roof and claim "CO2 neutral" production, but to me that only flies partially. That energy could have been used differently. Still there was heat emitted, a tiny little detail largely brushed aside by pretty much everyone in these types of topics. Where does the heat go? Should we worry more about the CO2 will end up helping a tree or our food grow, or heat that is bounced off the atmosphere to make us crank up the A/C?

I presume "still there was heat emitted" is in respect to your scenario of operating a car that was charged using rooftop PV. If so, you may want to ask yourself where the heat that was emitted came from, and what would have happened to it under other circumstances. (I'll answer for you: the heat came from sunshine. The sunshine hit the earth regardless. In the best possible case, if you'd used reflective roofing materials, a bit of it might have been reflected back into space, but in the main, the heat was here anyway, something that can't be said of fossil-fueled cars.)

The sentence about "should we worry more about the CO2..." with appeal to trees and food sounds rather like standard global warming denial talking points. Other than observe that, not touching it.

it's unfair to throw a consumerist designation to anyone

You may want to reflect upon whether you have been following your own advice.

Edited to add: Regarding "energy could have been used differently", at least in most U.S. markets (including mine) the incentive and indeed permit structure for domestic PV discourages or outright prevents homeowners from installing PV capacity greater than 100% of their net usage.

 

[abasile]

I think we owe it to those who drive PHEVs and plug them in overnight or at work to not called them oil addicts. They may well emit less per mile traveled than you or I. They may never fly because their whole life is localized. They may have a caravan on a nearby site rather than go on long road trips every month.

I agree. My intention wasn't to judge individual people, as I myself am still a fossil fuel addict because our family uses more electricity than our solar panels produce and, for now anyway, we still have a natural gas heater and water heater. However, PHEVs (and standard hybrids) are really a stopgap and not a long term solution, simply because most PHEVs rely on oil for a significant fraction of their miles/kilometers. Also, we have many friends who cannot afford a BEV that meets their requirements. If they replace an old gas guzzler with a used hybrid, that's still better than doing nothing.

It would be interesting to do a calc for the various forms of low emission transport. Do the calories I burn by walking to a hypothetical job everyday really count heavier than those of an electric scooter or e-assist bike? And when factoring in production and life span?

The human body is not very efficient at converting food calories to physical work, and food production and delivery typically has a significant footprint as well. If you assume 20% efficiency for food-->work and also 20% energy efficiency for farm-->food, then 1 kWh of energy at the farm would convert to 40 Wh of human work, and walking takes more energy than biking/scooting, so that 1 kWh at the farm wouldn't take you very far walking to work. But it would be good exercise, so it's worth walking for your own fitness! Those numbers are very rough guesses, of course.

 

[jgs]

But it would be good exercise, so it's worth walking for your own fitness!

Not only that, but if we really want to go through the exercise of computing cost of everything (and the value of nothing ) for the "ebike everywhere" option we'd have to also account for the energy footprint of increased medical care statistically attributable to ill health as a result of getting less exercise. [*] I'll wager the carbon footprint of 24h in hospital is phenomenal.

[*] Though sometimes there are surprising results once the data has been crunched, such as (I'm just making this up, mind you) "people who exercise less die earlier so consume fewer medical services overall".

 

[wdolson]

It's easy if you have a good infrastructure where you live. It's also easy to just accept the local situation as reality.
2 generations before mine, someone did a great job building roads and railways. Actually, there used to be a tram down my street which has long been decommissioned and removed.
Perhaps rather than focusing only on which politician will shift a bit of cash to new BEV owners, you could also quiz them on what they're going to do for the (green) infrastructure. It's a huge part of citizen wellness. Is it a luxury I can just hop on a bike to get to the train station, across a city? Or should it be the world standard? With the worst infrastructure in the world, I'd be walking. A little better, and I'd be driving and paying for parking. Now, I am cycling.
If we want to be part of change, we need to be part of change. Beyond making a choice of which car to buy or where to live.
Hold your administration to a higher standard.
Many here are from the USA. Last time I checked, half the national budget is digitally printed and exported debt. All of this is effectively spent on "Defense". Perhaps a good bit could go towards better infra, especially downtown? Why should there be 4 lanes of yellow cabs? Isn't that outright 3rd world poverty by 2019's standards? One thing I'll say, it's effectively ride sharing thus better than ownership. Some of those riding the cabby network do so to save themselves the pain of a car.
I dated a lady, she'd take a taxi to work every day, local infra was very so-so and weather dreadful all winter. She'd worked out she'd save lots of money over ownership. And it worked amazingly well for her. For a day outside town she'd borrow from her folks.
My current GF rides her bike or takes the bus when it rains. In her childhood, 18 mile cycling days were the norm, not the exception. She feels it's OK for her to ave herself the agony. You'd not believe her age for her fitness and energy, largely thanks to that upbringing.
I suppose e-assist bikes are making that lifestyle doable for more and more people. You can take short cuts off-road to avoid traffic and just have fresher air. Hills or wind at no longer a real issue. Range on e-bikes is crazy good. Charging too easy.

The world needs a new personal transportation paradigm. And just going electric will not get A scores.

A number of the Democrats running for president have environmental issues as their top campaign issue, but the country isn't there. Most Americans would agree that climate and the environment are priorities, just not their top priority. It is more of a top priority among the younger end of the electorate though. Any more and this should probably be moved to the Market Politics thread.

Most people don't know, but in the 1940s Los Angeles had one of the best electric street car systems in the world. A consortium of companies who wanted to promote cars (GM and Firestone tire among them) bought up the system and scrapped it.

The human body is not very efficient at converting food calories to physical work, and food production and delivery typically has a significant footprint as well. If you assume 20% efficiency for food-->work and also 20% energy efficiency for farm-->food, then 1 kWh of energy at the farm would convert to 40 Wh of human work, and walking takes more energy than biking/scooting, so that 1 kWh at the farm wouldn't take you very far walking to work. But it would be good exercise, so it's worth walking for your own fitness! Those numbers are very rough guesses, of course.

Humans built machines to replace human and animal labor because they were more efficient. A tractor burning gasoline uses cheaper fuel and uses it more efficiently than draft animals or humans doing the same job. Also the tractor doesn't get tired and need breaks.

Not only that, but if we really want to go through the exercise of computing cost of everything (and the value of nothing ) for the "ebike everywhere" option we'd have to also account for the energy footprint of increased medical care statistically attributable to ill health as a result of getting less exercise. [*] I'll wager the carbon footprint of 24h in hospital is phenomenal.

[*] Though sometimes there are surprising results once the data has been crunched, such as (I'm just making this up, mind you) "people who exercise less die earlier so consume fewer medical services overall".

Most people talk about lifespan per country, but there is also a measure of healthy life span, which is how long a person can live a normal life without a lot of assistance and medical intervention. I saw a chart on that measure vs total lifespan. Americans are far worse on the healthy life span than other developed countries. Americans are usually sicker longer at the end of life than other developed countries.

A friend of my SO is 70 and went to a doctor when she noticed her ditziness was getting worse (she's always been a lot like Frankie in Grace and Frankie). Alzheimer's runs in her family, so she was worried. On the intake the doctor didn't believe her when she said she wasn't taking any medication. So many Americans are taking some kind of prescription by that age that it's a rare anomaly to find someone that age who isn't.

 

[Cloxxki]

It's one thing for a politician to recognize a problem, real or perceived, the real problem is how they make business out of it. Or leverage it for other purposes they care more for. Copenhagen Treaty was a sham. Carbon trading is making Al Gore a climate billionaire. Trade Agreements. FDA&Monsanto. EU/USA/UKR&Monsanto.
We can trust a politician to make things worse. And we tend to let them. When was the last serious march to the White House or House of Commons on something less than trivial in the grand scheme of it all?
[/ot]

 

[Big Earl]

Microturbine. No fluids, no cat, no timing or maintenance, far less size/weight to cart around. The traditional turbine problems of poor throttle response and slow starting and horrible idle fuel consumption are irrelevant in the range extender role. Costs are an issue but should come down a lot with mass production. It'll be interesting to see what MiTRE ends up as.

But they’re so freaking loud.

 

[WannabeOwner]

The world needs ...

I think you are far too focused on the minutia and using what you perceive as easy, for you, to be the solution for others.

Why are the Fossil CO2 Emissions per capita in Holland so bad? - 50% worse than EU average, and twice as bad as UK (Wikipedia 2017 data, but I could only find 2015 data for this graph).

 

[Cloxxki]

I think you are far too focused on the minutia and using what you perceive as easy, for you, to be the solution for others.

Why are the Fossil CO2 Emissions per capita in Holland so bad? - 50% worse than EU average, and twice as bad as UK (Wikipedia 2017 data, but I could only find 2015 data for this graph).

View attachment 388008

Honestly I never looked it up, interesting.
Perhaps it has to do with too much red tape to get solar panels on a roof. Incentices long discontinued. No-where can you place a wind turbine. No mountains, no proper hydro power. Also little nuclear anymore I believe.
Rich countries tend to consume a lot. Cold-ish climate, so-so insulation. Lots is on gas. My own house has a tiny electric heater only, BTW.
I'd love to know the pivoting aspects if you know them!

 

[Saghost]

But they’re so freaking loud.

Doesn't have to be. If it is running at a single constant rpm, the sound should be a few predictable frequencies, which can be easily killed with echo chambers or active noise cancellation with minimal impact on efficiency and flow.

 

[WannabeOwner]

No-where can you place a wind turbine

Opposition from local residents? red-tape? or something else? It seems ironic, given that Holland is the land of the wind mills! and "flat" is much better for wind turbines than hilly (no turbulence on the flat). Can you not put some in North Sea like the UK does?

Rich countries tend to consume a lot

Yup, but I think that's OK ... provided that it can be generated cleanly, and cradle-to-grave is environmentally acceptable. No need to live in a cave, in fact that would be a pity given how Man has advanced from Caves through Middle Ages to modern, comfortable, living. We just need to solve the bad habits we have got into recently (and, in fairness, we had no idea the damage we were doing ... a bit like Smoking). Use of energy for comfortable, sophisticated, living seems OK to me ... so long as it doesn't destroy the planet.

Cold-ish climate, so-so insulation. Lots is on gas. My own house has a tiny electric heater only, BTW

My house could have no heater . Its a Passive House. Indeed, I have friends in Passive House who just put a sweater on when its a bit cold ... and when I built mine I was aiming for "zero energy". I actually, now, think that's a really stupid idea. A 3-bedroom Passive House needs 1KW when it is -10C outside (i may have mis-remembered the figures, but its of that order). If I turn everything off and go away for the day in mid Winter it will maybe lose 1C in 24 hours. If I have a dozen people round we have to open a window! So I now think that it is stupid to aim for zero energy Passive House, because it takes SO little energy to be really comfortable and warm ... that energy just needs to be Green. Passive House has significant health benefits too

But ... there is NO legislation in UK to require that level of insulation, so we keep on building rubbish insulation houses, keep on importing Oil from Middle East, and will keep on going to war to protect that oil supply ... all of that is huge cost of course and it would be much cheaper for Government to increase building regulations to force building of Passive House standard for all new houses, and they would have the benefit of fewer sick-days too. It costs about 7-9% more, but then almost no heating cost, no boiler maintenance, no boiler / pipe / radiator replacement every 40 years ... for the lifetime of the building.

I'd love to know the pivoting aspects if you know them!

I've got one, but it is slightly facetious :

I hate driving in Holland. Most of the main roads are single carriageway, and journeys are slow / long. Of course that is good, because it discourages car use, but maybe?? it increases pollution (compared to highway at more constant speed)

 

[Big Earl]

Doesn't have to be. If it is running at a single constant rpm, the sound should be a few predictable frequencies, which can be easily killed with echo chambers or active noise cancellation with minimal impact on efficiency and flow.

There's a lot that needs to be done to control the high frequencies of the turbine. This is a prototype Wrightspeed electric truck with turbine range extender. She shuts the turbine down at about 1:40 in the video and from there on, you get a good feel for how the EV drivetrain performs. Note the 2-speed transmission not shifting very smoothly.

 

[Cloxxki]

I've got one. Lots of large industry and transport, for a tiny nation.
In highschool I was taught 5 non-optional foreign languages. At the same time. Trading nation. Until relatively recently the largest sea port. Plus many refineries.

 

[wdolson]

I've got one. Lots of large industry and transport, for a tiny nation.
In highschool I was taught 5 non-optional foreign languages. At the same time. Trading nation. Until relatively recently the largest sea port. Plus many refineries.

I saw a map once of Europe with the average daily caloric intake for each country in Europe in 1939. The Netherlands was the only country that approached what we consider "adequate" today. I think it was around 1500 or 1800 calories a day. Many European countries were under 1000 calories. It probably has contributed to the Dutch being the tallest people in the world, but I'm not sure how the Dutch diet compares to the rest of Europe. I'm sure other European countries are far closer than they were 80 years ago.

 

[WannabeOwner]

In highschool I was taught 5 non-optional foreign languages

I always fine it phenomenonal, and as a Brit depressing, how fluently the Dutch speak English, I had no idea about all the other languages ... the Dutch language, in particular, seems unachievable to me; I had an interesting discussion with some Dutch folk (strangers) in a ski lift about the difficulty of pronouncing of Scheveningen and its use as a wartime password as even Germans could not pronounce it, let alone the English

I wonder how your greenhouse production fairs in terms of energy use. Of course the UK is eating much of that product (well ... until BRExit!) , but your country has the "climate cost". I have never understood (apart from government subsidies for horticulture, many years ago) why the Dutch didn't just use their growing-skills and set up greenhouses in UK in order to reduce the haulage costs.

Lots of large industry and transport, for a tiny nation

It illustrates how difficult comparison is ... "Lies, Damn lies, and Statistics" ... I know the UK is doing well on Wind generation, and I am led to believe we score well (relative to other countries) on Carbon Reduction, but from where I look there are plenty of obvious things (like more stringent new-build house insulation as I said earlier) that could be done. I am sure we can all cherry-pick good bits our nations are doing well ... and are painfully aware of shortcomings which would be easy to fix ... and the morons around us who could so easily do a bit more but aren't, or are ICE'ing Superchargers with their pickup trucks ... Sadly all these things take a couple of generations to fix ... my parents generation paid lip-service to non-drink-driving, I would guess that my generation is probably "one over" after a party, but the next generation is much more strict designated-driver. Smoking killed by Father and a number of his peers in their 70s, only a few of my contemporaries smoke, but I have lost several in their 50s, although others are being kept alive by modern medicine, but I can't think of a single youngster amongst my childrens' friends who smokes at all (obviously that's not universal !!). Seat Belts ... that took quite a while for people to stop saying they were better off "being thrown out of the car in a crash" <sigh> ...

Time is not on our side with Climate though ... and people are not just harming themselves.

Sorry, Preaching to the Choir ...

 

[scottf200]

Title of the thread for those who forgot is below. People remember there are people that subscribe to threads based on the title and expect content to be about that title. Please and thank you.

Chevy Bolt - 200 mile range for $30k base price (after incentive)

 

[bro1999]

Hmmmmmm

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?