lunitiks
Cool James & Black Teacher
@Driver Dave the thing that should be obvious to anyone that owns a Tesla, is that all Teslas have a motor - more than one, actually, in many cases. So the articles title sucks.
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This Motor Industry Will Self Destruct In... ?
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brucet999
Active Member
If you are right, Tesla needs to turn their attention to the infotainment interfaces and capabilities as well as a faster web browser. The wave of younger drivers won't be patient with lack of seamless iPhone and Android music integration.
LBusDoor90
Member
I think you might need to look up the word 'nobody' in your dictionary.
Also you probably don't have a cultural understanding, many Australians who live in urban centres travel the Australian outback. The Toyota Hilux, Ford Ranger and Mitsubishi Triton are all in the top ten sold vehicles.
That doesn't take into account mines which largely employ FIFO workers that won't show up in your figures, that's a further 250,000 people.
Farming and mining are two of Australia's biggest industries, if those 'nobodies' you talk of stopped work tomorrow this country would grind to a halt.
I think the gas stations will delay their disappearance like the now mostly gone post offices did, by starting to sell all kinds of stuff.
In fact, I am somewhat offended that at my local gas station one can buy for example a bottle of vodka (I typically cycle over there every once in a while just to visit their fee-less ATM). But then again, maybe they are just already ready for those with a self-driving car.
gavine, currently oil demand is not slated to decrease for the next few years. Populations are growing. Some countries want to increase their middle-classes. Resource demand just continues to go up. If someone can convince sections of world culture (other than Japan) that populations could decrease safely and that helps the planet and sustainability - maybe the demand for oil will turn south. China going from a 1-child policy to a 2-child policy clearly shows that they want to grow their economic profile through population growth. Anyone into sustainability and conservation simply sees this as futile and fails the David Suzuki test tube scenario. Exponential Growth
Every politician, every commercial enterprise, every worker wants to see "continued economic growth". This is not possible in a closed system (earth). Good book on the subject of accepting and attempting to stay within resource limits is Supply Shock, from Brian Czech. Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy Fairly few politicians will get elected if they said "we want the economy to stop growing - for the good of the people."
Every politician, every commercial enterprise, every worker wants to see "continued economic growth". This is not possible in a closed system (earth). Good book on the subject of accepting and attempting to stay within resource limits is Supply Shock, from Brian Czech. Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy Fairly few politicians will get elected if they said "we want the economy to stop growing - for the good of the people."
Read The Population Bomb by Paul R. Ehrlich PhD. One of the leading scientists of his day, and backed by the Sierra Club, the book noted that you would already be dead, and they had proof.
There are a quite significant number of people out there who have little choice in the car they drive. The middle class in the US and a lot of other developed countries is shrinking as well paying factory and resource extraction jobs are going away and people are lucky to replace it with a minimum wage job. When I was a teen, the average age of a fast food worker was something like 19. Today it's 29 and 40% are over age 25.
In a lot of cases, these people making dirt wages need a car to get to work, but they are going to buy the cheapest thing they can find. Unless there is some massive incentive program to get these people into EVs, they will be driving whatever ICE they can get cheap until the used market for EVs becomes saturated enough they can afford them.
When the bottom falls out of the used ICE market, that just means minimum wage workers will be driving 3 year old ICE instead of 20 year old ICE. That means they will be getting more reliable cars and there will be far fewer emissions from those cars, but there will remain a demand for gasoline and the rest of the support network for ICE.
There will probably be fewer gas stations and better off neighborhoods might just have one station for poorer people passing through and the ICE enthusiasts living in the area, so there will likely be fewer gas stations.
I think the gas stations will delay their disappearance like the now mostly gone post offices did, by starting to sell all kinds of stuff.
In fact, I am somewhat offended that at my local gas station one can buy for example a bottle of vodka (I typically cycle over there every once in a while just to visit their fee-less ATM). But then again, maybe they are just already ready for those with a self-driving car.
Post offices are still going in the US. My local post office is frequently crowded with people shipping packages and the next town over tried closing their post office (built in the 1920s and very cramped). They re-opened it a couple of months back.
The US postal service is price competitive with the package carriers for package delivery, especially lighter packages. There are politicians who want to kill the postal service, in large part because they have the largest union of federal employees, but if it wasn't for a poison pill law passed in late 2006 that requires the post office to put aside money for health care for postal workers that haven't even been born yet, they would be financially quite sound.
Back around 2006 I saw something from someone who had analyzed the demographics of economic crashes and he found every economic crash happened when an older generation reached retirement age and there weren't enough people to replace them in the economy. The US Panic of 1873 was caused by the constriction of the working population due to those killed in the Civil War and a larger generation reaching a point where they couldn't work anymore. The Great Depression was also triggered when the generation born in the baby boom of the 1800s that fueled emigration floods from Europe reached a point where they were too old to work and the working generation was smaller due to the carnage of WW I.
He also said Japan had hit the economic skids 20 years ago right at the point where the older, larger generation reached retirement age and the younger generation was too small to support them all. He predicted Japan would be in the economic dull-drums until the older generation has died out and they re-stabilize with a smaller population. China eased the 1 child policy in part because they realized they were headed for the same demographic cliff Japan had gone over.
The crash of 2008 happened right about the time the majority of Baby Boomers in developed countries reached the point in life where they quit spending money (around age 53) and the next two generations are too small in the case of Gen X and too poor in the case of Millennials to pick up the slack. In the US the staggering college debt many Millennials have is making the problem worse.
It's been very unpopular in a lot of European countries, but many countries that have never had much immigration have had to throw open their doors to immigrants to prevent their economies from going into terminal decline as their birthrates have been very low for more than a generation. The native population in the US has had a negative birthrate for some time too, but the US has usually been more open to immigration.
Working against this need is the strain on world resources all these people cause. Worldwide we are struggling to grow enough food to feed everyone and both China and India will be facing water crises in the next decade or so. Both countries are just barely able to feed their own populations, but they do so by pumping ground water to water crops and the aquifers are getting very depleted. In places in China if they go any deeper for water they will start pumping steam.
Automation of industry is also eliminating a lot of jobs, leading to large unemployment problems in some places. Countries like the United States could use more skilled technical workers, who do make good incomes and pay a lot in taxes, but the people who are currently unemployable can't be trained to take those jobs.
You are thinking that tomorrow is going to be just like today, which it isn't. In two or three years, there will be several EVs to choose from. In five years there will many EVs to choose from. And somewhere in there the transition will accelerate, and all the other things mentioned on this thread will happen.
I might be in the minority, but I believe ICE will be around a LOT LONGER than most could even conceive (unless of course banned, which I also do not see). Look how many old or vintage cars are still on the road today. Gear heads want to play with gears and valves and dirty, greasy things. Tweaking battery software just won't be enough. I'm probably wrong, but I sure see ICE being here quite a while. There are plenty of people who don't care about EV, carbon, or whatever. They want to put gas in the car and drive until the gauge says zero, fill it up and do it again. Not possible with EV and wont be for a while. Flame suit on...
ICE will be banned in many areas. This will start in 10 years. Tesla makes now about 0.1 % of worlds cars. With 50 % yearly growth they get to 20 % about 2030. Others will also make EVs. So after 2030 gas stations will be closing one by one. Then ICE will have range anciety, not EV.
Landcruiser, Patrol, etc are among last ICE to die in northern Canada, Alaska and Russia. Cost of stationary storage of electric energy will drop to fraction of current price. That problem will go away. In Australia running out of energy could be dangerous. So an EV with at least two motors and batteries, with separate electronics, is needed. Also emergency battery charging with portable solar cells or small generator. With it you could drive across the continent without range anxiety.
100 m² of solar cells in Australia would produce 10 - 20 kW. Current cells (in lab) are very thin. Weight comes from support material. I believe in near future 100 m² collector could easily fit into car.
A huge increase in the energy density of EV battery is possible with metal-air batteries. Energy density will be high enough that jerrycan size battery will take you as far as jerrycan full of diesel, because EV is more efficient. Perhaps those will be only 'charge at factory' batteries, because of impurities in air.
EV will create much less waste heat and noise. For military this is important.
Energy density will increase. So price/kWh will drop. But I don't expect fast increase. Increase of battery production requires increase of whole supply chain starting from mining. So EV growth will be about 50 % yearly, not much more.
2-child policy does not cause population growth in long term. 1-child policy was very extreme, but necessary.
Continued usage of non-renewable resources is not possible in a closed system. Continued economic growth is possible very long time into future. It must be based on quality instead of quantity and on recycling. Because of Sun Earth is not a closed system. If instead of cheap ICE you buy a Tesla, economy grows, planet is not harmed.
brucet999
Active Member
I appreciate that you are bullish on electric transportation, but lets play with the numbers here. The factory kerb weight of my Landcruiser Wagon is 2265kg. Add a bullbar, winch, under body protection, recovery equipment, servicing tools, an extra spare wheel, cargo, 2 - 3 people and you get the vehicle up to 3000kgs easily.
Now for comparison, the kerb weight of a Model X P90D is 2440kg - add all of the above recovery equipment on the landcruiser and you are pushing up to 3200kgs. Not that the Model X is comparable to a Landcruiser - just trying to show you the wight impact of the battery. Even when one is an all steel rail chassis vs a monocoque aluminium family car.
Take a track like the Madigan Line, 800km over sand dunes - conservatively this would take 14 days. The recommended fuel load for a diesel 4WD is 220 litres as there is no infrastructure.
Let's say your theoretical Electric Landcruiser has a 200kwh battery - that is 720 MJ of energy
For perspective the aforementioned 220 litres of diesel fuel is 8580 MJ of energy - almost 12 times more energy.
Now here is an advantage you describe - you can set up your 100msq solar away and grab solar energy. Well first of all you would have to be stationary to collect that energy. So lets say you collect 20kwh - that's 72 MJ of energy collected - put that in perspective against the 8580 MJ of diesel for the trip. You are going to be doing a hell of a lot of daytime camping.
So all that said - you are now proposing that the military would use electric power for vehicles - a Busmaster PMV has a kerb weight 11400kg, I don't know what sort of battery capacity you would need to power one of those for any sort of decent range but I imagine you would need a trailer full of cells. Where are you proposing these electric PMV's charge?
Some suggested reading that helps inform this discussion:
Energy density - Wikipedia
Electrochemical energy storage is unfortunately limited vs chemical energy storage - a ham and cheese sandwich provides better energy density than the very best litium battery. By far.
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gavine
Petrol Head turned EV Enthusiast
Electric drive is MUCH more efficient than ICE, so comparing the amount of energy stored in Diesel fuel vs battery without accounting for the efficiency differential does not a valid argument make.
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Being generous, an electric drivetrain is around 3 - 4 X as efficient as an ICE (of course this is a general statement as opposed to a specific comparison) Even then it doesn't tip the scales in favour of electric drive for this application.
This serves to illustrate that even with such an inefficient energy conversion - fossil fuels have a distinct advantage in energy density.
Electric drive trains higher efficiency is the only thing that allows electric cars to work at all right now. The battery pack for the Model S/X is 96 gallons in size and the real world range has just cracked 300 miles.
A Ford Explorer has an 18.6 gallon tank and gets 27 mpg highway which works out to a 502 mile range. That's 50% more range than the S 100D with 1/5 the volume for fuel storage.
The range per gallon of space with even a poor gas mileage ICE is still much greater than the best EVs in the world.
Fossil fuels are going to be around for some applications for some time. Aviation is one area where electric planes are likely going to be a short range novelty until batteries advance dramatically from where they are now.
With aviation it's also a big advantage the plane gets lighter as you burn off the fuel. With an electric, it weighs the same "empty" as it does "full". With long range aircraft, the take off weight can be considerably more than the landing weight and the fuel efficiency at the end of the flight will be much better than at the beginning because of it.
There isn't even anything in the lab right now that would be useful for aviation beyond hobbyists flying short range.
We can still drastically reduce our fossil fuel use through electrifying where it makes sense. The easiest will be passenger vehicles and short range delivery vehicles. If we had enough batteries and infrastructure, it would be doable with off the shelf technology. The hurdles in those areas are logistical rather than technological. The logistical hurdles are very big and will take time to accomplish, but it's doable now.
Long range commercial vehicles are probably not going to be fully electric for some time to come. Aircraft and ships will probably be last. Ships look like they can hold a lot of batteries, but filling up the ship with batteries eliminates payload capacity. Back in the 1950s a nuclear powered freighter was built, but so much room was taken up by the power plant, the cargo hold was too small to make the ship viable. It would be a similar problem with electric cargo ships, though fuel use could be reduced with computer operated sails. These hybrid cargo ships might be slower, but they would be much cheaper to run which might offset the speed issue.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
I know his work was disputed and even if you look at today as "we're nearly full" may be incorrect. But two or three things are generally accepted. There is not an unlimited amount of oil. And that easy oil has help us blossom population from 1 Billion around 1900 to 7.5 Billion today with 2-3 Billion more to come due to easy oil. Once oil is gone it is going to be fairly hard for humanity to consume at the levels it does today. If we learn a bit to live smaller, maybe like they do in Hong Kong (big apartment buildings full of small living spaces to stuff as many as possible per acre) this is scaleable to an extent. But if Asia wants to have the American middle class lifestyle but is 10x bigger, things look bleak long term. Think about how Autonomous activity is already marginalizing millions worldwide. Add drivers to that level and it looks like we will need to move to a larger welfare state to support those who cannot find work.
The "misleading" view that is repeated a lot about Ehrlich is discussed in this video.
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There isn't EV production capacity available for that to happen. As far as the Chinese, how many Chinese designed high tech products do you own? How much Chinese software do you use?
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