Gatecrash... Basingstoke: Please dont buy an electric car! - CafeSci-Basingstoke (Basingstoke, England) - Meetup 28th Jan
Can you hit the highlights now in summary form so us Yankees don't have to use our frequent flyer miles?
Al Summary form? It's not happened yet! Jan 28. I would like to be a fly on the wall. 6 members ... a lot of influence. And the organizer is a ColdFusion developer. CF is used a lot by the government (esp. in the USA) ... so I suspect CIA / MI6 involvement ... maybe SAS? And, no, I am not paranoid ... nor a conspiracy theorist ... am I?
Yes please. With apologies to sp4rk, that is what I was asking. I should have been more specific/clear.
Umm, Grid can't hack 30 millions EVs. Burns coal. Wait for hydrogen. Life cycle analysis shows higher CO2 emissions. etc I've just noticed that this guy has two twitter followers - one is the official HM Treasury account ?!?
Grid: Nearly all charing is done at night. Tons of spare capacity at night since businesses aren't running, less A/C needs, etc. There's a report from the US grid operators association that says we can have 150 million EV's charging at night w/o doing anything to the grid. Coal: Depends on where you live. Here in NorCal we are 24% coal worst case. I say worst case because it's 1% coal and 23% "unknown/imported/other" So even assuming all of that is coal which it probably isn't. EV's are WAY better than ICE's or hybrids at 24% coal. I can't recall the cutover coal %. Also keep in mind that EV's are more efficient so even if you're burning coal you're burning way less to get you down the road than an ICE has to burn gas. Finally, the future of oil is dirtier and dirtier. We are drilling deeper, fracking, going after more sour crude, etc. See Deepwater Horizon. The energy return from something like the tar sands in Canada is almost 0. It takes as much energy to separate the oil from the sand as you get out of the oil. Whereas the future of electricity is cleaner and cleaner. Yes there's still a lot of coal and nat gas but the percentage of coal has been dropping steadily. An EV is the only car you can buy that gets cleaner the longer you own it. Hydrogen: Ask them where the hydrogen will come from. Hydrogen is not a source of energy, it's a transmission/storage medium. Today, effectively all hydrogen is "refined" from fossil fuels and nat gas so you're not much better off than driving a nat gas car. It takes a boatload of electricity to crack water so you might as well just put that electricity into an EV and use it to get yourself down the road.
Thanks. Excellent. I'll take as many responses as I can get. I'm already meeting the naysayers. When they are random strangers it's annoying. When they are friends/aquaintances that know how excited I am it's really annoying.
I suggest if you want to get material to counter naysayers, read the anti-EV gibberish thread. In the meantime can we keep this one for the Basingstoke event? Thanks.
Here is the drivel we can expect. Video Playlist: Fuel for the Future This woman is well connected by the way and takes this lecture around secondary schools. Averil Macdonald : Education Consultant
Nick Bucher wrote a GREAT series of articles exposing much of the FUD around electric cars. I would strongly suggest you read his articles to combat most of the anti-EV garbage out there. EV Myths And Realities, Part 1: The Battery Crisis - Seeking Alpha EV Myths And Realities, Part 2: Green As The Grid - Seeking Alpha EV Myths & Realities, Part 3A: TCO And Kicking The Subsidy - Seeking Alpha EV Myths And Realities, Part 3B: EVconomics - It's The Stupid Battery - Seeking Alpha
Please let us know how it goes. I find myself in the UK for business, and if I didn't already have a dinner planned for that night, I would definitely go. However, I sort of hate to give these folks more exposure than they deserve.
Well I don't think that 3 multinationals released this news to coincide with a talk at a small provincial science club, but it's worrying that we are getting hydrogen deja-vu all over again.
Any news on an audio or video link for those not able to attend? dpeilow ... I was being tongue in cheek.