Ridiculous Forbes Article - Tesla Model S A Nice Fossil Fuel Car

[JRP3]

Barring a technological breakthrough in the very near future, electric cars are fossil-fueled. Worse yet is that the use of electricity to power automobiles is a far less efficient means of powering them than internal combustion is. Fossil fuels must be burned to both generate electricity and then to transmit that electricity over vast distances where that energy is just "lost" to the ether via resistance. If you look at BTU comparisons, you'll find that it takes more to propel an electric car one mile than it does a car powered by internal combustion.

Let's run some quick, basic numbers. Combined cycle NG plant 60% efficient, 7% transmission losses, EV has 10% charging losses, 10% operating losses, = 45% efficient. Petroleum extraction + refining 80% efficient, ICE 20% efficient, = 16% efficient. I assume you will now be buying an electric vehicle....

 

[richkae]

It's rather a good thing that conventional nuclear did not win out worldwide, if it had there would have been a much higher number of Fukushima and Chernobyl type events, not to mention even larger amounts of nuclear waste that we don't know what to do with. However there is good evidence that Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors, LFTR's, might be a better more viable alternative.

Nuclear done right would be much better for mankind than coal. The reactors can be designed to consume the fuel far more effectively and leave less waste. They can also be built to operate safely. I am confident there were engineers who built and operated Fukishima and Chernobyl that raised safety issues about the design but were ignored by the bean counters. LFTR may be better and may provide less opportunity for catastrophic failure, but whenever humans are involved we have the possibility of some bean counter shaving the safety margins and causing a huge disaster.
Coal has been killing millions quietly while nuclear has harmed fewer in much more dramatic fashion.

 

[jerry33]

Nuclear done right would be much better for mankind than coal. The reactors can be designed to consume the fuel far more effectively and leave less waste. They can also be built to operate safely. I am confident there were engineers who built and operated Fukishima and Chernobyl that raised safety issues about the design but were ignored by the bean counters. LFTR may be better and may provide less opportunity for catastrophic failure, but whenever humans are involved we have the possibility of some bean counter shaving the safety margins and causing a huge disaster.
Coal has been killing millions quietly while nuclear has harmed fewer in much more dramatic fashion.

Quite right with the exception that Fukushima's problem was that it was a 35 year facility that was operated longer than the engineers designed it to be operated (mostly because the anti-nuclear crowd didn't allow new ones to be built). The big problem here was "old" and not "nuclear". Also what harmed folks at Fukushima was not the reactor but the government's handling of the problem. The Fukushima reactors were hit by an earthquake 5X the size they were designed for. Even so they shut down properly. Then the tsunami hit wiping out the emergency generators. Battery backup still worked for the eight hours it was designed to work for but they couldn't get power to replenish the batteries in time. No one has yet been harmed by radiation from Fukushima. (Two workers died during the non-nuclear tsunami, and a third died from a heart attack.) In other words, this was a worst case scenario and there were only minimal problems. The coal industry kills tens of thousands of people a year, but it's subtle so it doesn't make headlines. Fracking will kill even more with its earthquakes and ground water pollution.

 

[doug]

Barring a technological breakthrough in the very near future, electric cars are fossil-fueled. Worse yet is that the use of electricity to power automobiles is a far less efficient means of powering them than internal combustion is. Fossil fuels must be burned to both generate electricity and then to transmit that electricity over vast distances where that energy is just "lost" to the ether via resistance. If you look at BTU comparisons, you'll find that it takes more to propel an electric car one mile than it does a car powered by internal combustion.

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Until John Galt comes along and builds a motor that can efficiently grab static electricity from the air, AC will never be as efficient as internal combustion. Until that day, I will never own one because they are less economical (both in terms of sticker price as well as operation) than internal combustion-powered vehicles. Yes, I realize that the electric cars actually run on DC power, but the DC is supplied from AC stations and transmission lines.

I understand the rationale behind what you believe here, but it's a flawed rationale based on partial understanding and comes to an incorrect conclusion. You have to do the math (with a basic understanding of thermodynamics) to actually make the comparison. Not just what you feel should be true.

If you look at BTU comparisons, you'll find that it takes more to propel an electric car one mile than it does a car powered by internal combustion.

Which comparison are you looking at?
Here's one from Argonne National Labs: http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/TA/273.pdf

 

[Mike200]

Personally I think the computer models are an earnest attempt to illustrate an obvious point, and while the obvious point remains the computer models are seized upon as though it does not.

There is really not much excuse for a debate about this. We have an energy economy with an unintended consequence of loading up the atmosphere with more CO2 than is getting absorbed. The data is directly measurable and unambiguous. With the burden of proof where it belongs, there is no proof that changing the composition of the atmosphere this drastically outside of natural norms is a good idea. Meanwhile the consequences of it turning out to be a really bad idea are inescapable because we only have one atmosphere. Not a prudent risk profile. We can see a historic correlation between CO2 and temperature, and when the ice caps start melting into the sea in our own lifetimes (in a big way which they are) this justifiably gives pause for thought.

The obvious counter argument to doing anything about it is simply to say that we like the wealth and modern amenity that comes from fossil fuels more than we perceive a real and present danger of biblical-scale problems with agriculture, weather-events and tides. This is all very well but it misses the point of what we really want: Ideally we want the wealth and modern amenity that we associate with oil and NOT have to worry about a biblical scale wipe-out of our species.

Introducing the ideas represented by Tesla and Solar City.

The remaining concerns come down to folk that have gotten comfortable making money from fossil fuels who are too fat, lazy and lacking in imagination to make their next fortune in non-polluting energy technologies.

Quantitative and computer-based methods and models can help - or hinder - the transformation of data into knowledge. Whether they help or hinder depends on how well their designers and users know the strengths and weaknesses not only of computers, but of their own minds. The climate modelers, show what happens when the perils of confirmation bias, and of other defects of intuition, are ignored by those whose job it is to build knowledge from data. They are mired in methodological errors that replicate the errors of historical parapsychologists.

There is plenty of reasons to have this debate least of which is the level of speculation, catastrophism (on the alarmists side of things) and confirmation bias (on both sides) involved in this issue which you seem quit eager to make an excuse for.

On the ideas represented by Tesla and the Solar City, I guess I am not impressed. Solar lacks a serious efficient industrial-scale mechanism to store solar power for later and your Tesla car owes its presence to fossil fuels (the plastics, the fabrics, the metal and the mining and transportation of it all). Given the recent using of fracking and horizontal drilling the ideas presented here are by people who don't seem very much concerned about pollution from fossil fuels but instead like to dabble on the edges.

 

[NuclearPowered]

Nuclear done right would be much better for mankind than coal. The reactors can be designed to consume the fuel far more effectively and leave less waste. They can also be built to operate safely. I am confident there were engineers who built and operated Fukishima and Chernobyl that raised safety issues about the design but were ignored by the bean counters. LFTR may be better and may provide less opportunity for catastrophic failure, but whenever humans are involved we have the possibility of some bean counter shaving the safety margins and causing a huge disaster.
Coal has been killing millions quietly while nuclear has harmed fewer in much more dramatic fashion.

The multiple regulatory agencies, at least in the US, do a good job at preventing the plants from 'shaving safety margins.". Generally, the industry as a whole understands it is under a microscope and behaves accordingly. It is impossible to have a Chernobyl type accident in a US facility.

 

[Julian Cox]

Barring a technological breakthrough in the very near future, electric cars are fossil-fueled. Worse yet is that the use of electricity to power automobiles is a far less efficient means of powering them than internal combustion is. Fossil fuels must be burned to both generate electricity and then to transmit that electricity over vast distances where that energy is just "lost" to the ether via resistance. If you look at BTU comparisons, you'll find that it takes more to propel an electric car one mile than it does a car powered by internal combustion.

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Until John Galt comes along and builds a motor that can efficiently grab static electricity from the air, AC will never be as efficient as internal combustion. Until that day, I will never own one because they are less economical (both in terms of sticker price as well as operation) than internal combustion-powered vehicles. Yes, I realize that the electric cars actually run on DC power, but the DC is supplied from AC stations and transmission lines.

Mike, sorry that is simple not true. The Tesla Model S is not coal powered now and there is no reason to suspect that the trend of Model S + Solar will not continue to saturation.

The uptake of solar alongside the Model S is anecdotally 85% (private PV installation) and corporately alongside Solar City is very much net carbon negative. The rate of PV install in this group is faster than the rate of Model S energy consumption in for both manufacture and operation. Tesla and Solar City have yet to announce the redeployment of ex vehicle batteries in grid storage. Economically this is inevitable, and with that comes a compete and utter trashing of embedded energy argumentation as well as objections to the indeterminacy of solar and the cost of battery upgrade and replacement for the Model S.

There is absolutely no valid argument in either your point or in the points made by Alex Epstein. Note that Epstein evades the issue of global ice-melt. He is a very clever salesman but we do not need what he is selling nor is there any need for a center for industrial regression.

 

[JRP3]

Nuclear done right would be much better for mankind than coal.

I agree, and I think that nuclear done right means LFTR's, and is probably the way we would have gone if not for the demands of nuclear bomb creation. Now we have an entrenched nuclear industry that has little knowledge of LFTR technology, yet we have access to low cost and inherently much safer Thorium.

 

[Johan]

I agree, and I think that nuclear done right means LFTR's, and is probably the way we would have gone if not for the demands of nuclear bomb creation. Now we have an entrenched nuclear industry that has little knowledge of LFTR technology, yet we have access to low cost and inherently much safer Thorium.

... Or integral fast reactors, which technically, economically and scientifically is bascially a no-brainer. But politically a very hot potatoe due to the fact that part of the integrated concept is a breeder/enrichment facility. And no politician cares about the fact that if you integrate these different stages of the process tightly enough there is no possible way that anyone would be able to ever remove any of the enriched uranium, plutonium etc.

But we're straying here and I once again state what I have already stated in this thread: My Model S will be hydropowered from day one, all year long. That is just a fact that cannot be disputed. Energy in Norway - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[kevin99]

I am utterly appalled by the author. The way he assumed morally and intellectually superiority over the Tesla store rep. Who is the one being ignorant?

"Elon Musk, you’ve created a great coal car. Don’t stop others from creating a great coal life."

If this is his point of the whole article, I can care less what else he is trying to convey. Pointless.

The only author I follow on Forbe is Mark Rogowsky. His latest article is worth reading:

Numbers Don't Lie: Tesla Is Beginning To Put The Hurt On The Competition - Forbes

 

[dsm363]

Barring a technological breakthrough in the very near future, electric cars are fossil-fueled. Worse yet is that the use of electricity to power automobiles is a far less efficient means of powering them than internal combustion is. Fossil fuels must be burned to both generate electricity and then to transmit that electricity over vast distances where that energy is just "lost" to the ether via resistance. If you look at BTU comparisons, you'll find that it takes more to propel an electric car one mile than it does a car powered by internal combustion.

- - - Updated - - -

Until John Galt comes along and builds a motor that can efficiently grab static electricity from the air, AC will never be as efficient as internal combustion. Until that day, I will never own one because they are less economical (both in terms of sticker price as well as operation) than internal combustion-powered vehicles. Yes, I realize that the electric cars actually run on DC power, but the DC is supplied from AC stations and transmission lines.

Not true but ok. Are you including the energy to explore, drill, transport, refine the oil into gas and then transport that gasoline to the gas station as well in your analysis? A power plant is much more efficient than the ICE in a car.

 

[Dave EV]

That is not true. Coal plant's do in fact ramp down overnight, they don't shut off or go below a certain level, but they do indeed reduce their output. Generated electricity always goes somewhere. So in a coal area an EV charging at night means the coal plant will simply not be ramped down quite as much, therefore more coal is being burned.

Yes, exactly. And unfortunately what that also means is that coal is the cheapest source of energy in the middle of the night, meaning charging your car in the middle of the night ends up increasing coal usage. Counter-intuitively, charging during peak hours when coal plants are already maxed out means turning up gas turbines which means that charging your EV during the day can be cleaner than charging at night. One really has to look at their local grid to determine this which is not usually easy to do. In other locations it might be the complete opposite where renewable plants (hydro/wind typically) are being restricted because of too little demand. In this case any additional demand truly is emissions free.

Quite right with the exception that Fukushima's problem was that it was a 35 year facility that was operated longer than the engineers designed it to be operated (mostly because the anti-nuclear crowd didn't allow new ones to be built). The big problem here was "old" and not "nuclear". Also what harmed folks at Fukushima was not the reactor but the government's handling of the problem. The Fukushima reactors were hit by an earthquake 5X the size they were designed for.

So say Fukushima was hit but a tsumami 5 years after it was built... The real problem isn't that it was old - the real problem is that it was never engineered to be completely fool proof. Just because you design a plant to withstand a 1-500 year event does not mean that a 1-1000 year event may hit the plant and then you are SOL.

 

[jerry33]

So say Fukushima was hit but a tsumami 5 years after it was built... The real problem isn't that it was old - the real problem is that it was never engineered to be completely fool proof. Just because you design a plant to withstand a 1-500 year event does not mean that a 1-1000 year event may hit the plant and then you are SOL.

Your basic argument is that we shouldn't drive cars now because forty years ago cars weren't designed as safe as they are today. Forty years ago (more like 45 now) plate tectonics had only recently been accepted in the scientific community, and the fault lines weren't mapped nearly as well as they are today. I think the engineers did a heck of a job with the information they had at hand at the time. Could they have done better? Sure, but compared to Chernobyl where they didn't design even minimum safety, they did a state-of-the-art job for the time.

 

[brianman]

With the Tesla Model S, Elon Musk Has Created a Nice Fossil Fuel Car

Nothing he said in the reply corrects the ridiculous title of the original article/post/whatever.

...

Tom, nothing in your post refutes my assertion that nothing in Alex's reply corrects the ridiculous title of his original piece.

Read his title above again.

I live in Washington state. Here is some .gov data for this state:

I have solar panels on my roof. Some of my power also comes from that.


Should I then say that my Model S runs on solar fusion and water? No. That's ridiculous. So is Alex's title.

The car runs on electricity. If you want a cleaner profile (by whatever metric you want), then change the grid. The car isn't the problem (if there is one), the grid is.

EVs are the only vehicles that give complete control to address these concerns to the grid and, further, they automatically participate in any improvements made in that grid.

So basically the only conclusion I can come to is that, going by the title of his piece, the rest of what he has to say is -- at best -- suspect given how he opens the discussion. Just like how he opens the discussion with the Tesla representative. Frankly, if I was in that representatives shoes I'd be moving on to any other person on the planet after that opening line. Anything else is just a waste of his/her time.

I can't make it any clearer than that.


"And another thing"...

This has nothing to do with how I feel about this particular societal and global debate. It has to do with journalistic integrity and quality. Without integrity and quality, no useful discussion can be had on any topic.

 

[wycolo]

> Nuclear done right would be much better for mankind than coal. [richkae]

Using nuclear power to boil water is way primitive. There is so much more energy in there (the LFTR references).

Harnessing falling rain to generate electric power is about all you can do with it, unfortunately, from an energy perspective. Then use it for irrigation.
--

 

[neroden]

Solar lacks a serious efficient industrial-scale mechanism to store solar power for later

Solved in the lab. Just waiting to commercialize it.

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On nuclear:

The multiple regulatory agencies, at least in the US, do a good job at preventing the plants from 'shaving safety margins."

Tell it to the state of Vermont regarding Vermont Yankee (same defective GE Mark I design as Fukushima). It is actually true that the state regulatory agencies did a good job, but the federal one didn't and it overrode them.

At least the state finally won. A few days ago. Through economic pressure, not through regulation.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/27/us/vermont-nuclear-reactor-shutdown/

I have nothing against nuclear "done right", but in the US commercial environment, it is generally *not* done right. I get very offended when nuclear shills pretend that it is.

Generally, the industry as a whole understands it is under a microscope and behaves accordingly. It is impossible to have a Chernobyl type accident in a US facility.

Technically true since the US doesn't have graphite reactors, but it's really really easy to have a Fukushima type mega-disaster in many US facilities: Fukushima was a GE Mark I, which are a horrendously bad design with no fail-safe features. There are 23 of them operating in the US, and they're all time bombs.

https://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5502/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6111

They are well past their original planned lifetimes, and GE Mark I is certainly one of the worst nuclear reactor designs ever -- the control rods have to be shoved up! (Chernobyl and Windscale were arguably the only worse designs). The fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not ordered the GE Mark Is shut down, and instead keeps extending their licenses, shows that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently not to be trusted and that's why I will not support any nuclear facilities in the US at this time -- we need a competent regulator first.

 

[JRP3]

Solved in the lab. Just waiting to commercialize it.

How's that going, any progress?

- The fact that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not ordered the GE Mark Is shut down, and instead keeps extending their licenses, shows that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is currently not to be trusted and that's why I will not support any nuclear facilities in the US at this time -- we need a competent regulator first.

LFTR's, immune from even incompetent regulation :wink:

 

[huntjo]

Articles like this are interesting to me. It is good to hear all the different perspectives and compare the data and variables that each side is using. What astounds me is that someone can say with a straight face that it is more efficient to haul oil out of the ground, transport it to a refinery, transport it to gas stations, then put it in a tiny engine and not expect that the losses will be way higher than loss of electricity across a wire from a utility station (with any of several more efficient sources of power: coal, solar, geo, hydro). It is just plain willful ignorance to think ICE cars consumption of energy is anything close to a battery powered electric. Regardless, these rants are always good to hear, because i get to hear the counter arguments which I consider educational.

 

[Mario Kadastik]

Your basic argument is that we shouldn't drive cars now because forty years ago cars weren't designed as safe as they are today. Forty years ago (more like 45 now) plate tectonics had only recently been accepted in the scientific community, and the fault lines weren't mapped nearly as well as they are today. I think the engineers did a heck of a job with the information they had at hand at the time. Could they have done better? Sure, but compared to Chernobyl where they didn't design even minimum safety, they did a state-of-the-art job for the time.

Oh they had safety systems in Chernobyl, even three of them. However on the night of the incident one of them was undergoing repair and the other one failed. The third if I remember right caused the plant to start to die down, but the operators being afraid of their new rods going to waste and getting shouted at by their bosses slammed the rods in causing the process to restart .. and go out of control. Oh and they were conducting experiments at the time, Chernobyl you have to understand was a military source of nuclear weapon material first and a power plant secondly. So it was repairs, failure and operator idiocy combined that caused the disaster.

I, being a nuclear physicist, consider nuclear power to be the only high scale energy source that is reasonable and cheap. Solar and wind are good energy sources only in certain locations and I agree that California fits the bill for solar usage as it does get a lot of the solar radiation year-round to be used. However during the night it has to be utilized from other sources and I would prefer that the nuclear plants were the main backbone with solar and wind providing extra power during their working hours hopefully in correlation with actual higher usage during daytime.

 

[neroden]

Your basic argument is that we shouldn't drive cars now because forty years ago cars weren't designed as safe as they are today. Forty years ago (more like 45 now) plate tectonics had only recently been accepted in the scientific community, and the fault lines weren't mapped nearly as well as they are today. I think the engineers did a heck of a job with the information they had at hand at the time. Could they have done better? Sure, but compared to Chernobyl where they didn't design even minimum safety, they did a state-of-the-art job for the time.

Are you seriously talking about Fukushima? That's a GE Mark I. No, it was NOT a state-of-the-art job for the time. Simple example: The control rods have to be forcibly shoved up in order to shut down the nuclear reaction. The experimental reactors used during World War II had safer designs than the GE Mark I -- for one thing, the control rods *dropped* to shut down the nuclear reaction. The GE Mark I is a slipshod design which should never have been permitted in the first place.

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How's that going, any progress?

Gah. I'm not even sure what the current delay is.

Apparently, in the meantime, my friends are publishing the mechanism for stabilizing the electrical grid so that arbitrary amounts of renewables can be added to it without trouble (yes, that seems to be solved too). That should be published first.

LFTR's, immune from even incompetent regulation :wink:

I'm in favor of anything which is immune to "regulatory capture" failure.