Tesla truck running on diesel. Alot more to come

Fallacy of composition.

 

Looking at it OBJECTIVELY, the transition from internal combustion engines to electric propulsion comes down to the efficiency of the system. Burning fossil fuels, the ICE is about 30% efficient, less the cost of mining, refining, and distributing the fuel. Burning fossil fuels, electric vehicles are about 60% efficient, less transmission and battery storage inefficiencies. Using sources such as hydro, geothermal, wind, or solar, efficiencies are in the 80% plus range.

Li-ion batteries are now routinely recycled, profitably, so the mining thing becomes a red herring: it's not like pumping oil, strip mining coal, or smelting aluminum for engine heads is environmentally neutral.

The answer will come from economics, and economics comes down to efficiency. You can't ignore the doubling of the energy efficiency of even the current early generation electric vehicles. Cutting fuel cost in half in today's trucking environment is enough to determine the winners and the losers.

 

True.

As I've mentioned in the past the kicker for me is the lack of range and the charging times. I can dump enough fuel in my pickup's tank in under 10 minutes to cruise the highway for a solid 8-10 hours. Electric vehicles just aren't there yet. Until the range comes up and charge times drop they really aren't useful to me at all.

 

The transmisión of electricity to that "more efficient" electric vehicle is still sourced from combustion which is conveniently left out of your equation when comparing the two.

It's a false dilemma as it's presented at this point because the reality is where do you want your combustion to take place? In your vehicle or at a power plant?

 

Let's look at flight to simplify things.

At the same time the Wright brothers were doing their thing governments and ngos around the world were putting money into powered flight. Then after the first flight, the money poured in - particularly after the start of WWI. In the inter war years it was the US government that subsidized air plane development through both the post office and the military. During and after WWII the government spent excessive amounts building and maintaining airports and air traffic control systems

Remove government spending and air travel wouldn't have got off the ground.

Ideas exist, their ability to become reality depends on market conditions. Governments are part of market conditions and have been since the "invention " of capitalism.

 

Haha absolutely hilarious "let's completely shift to a different scenario that takes paragraphs to explain...to simplify things"

Arguments are like nipples they're best when they get to the point.

1. You make over generalized statements that misrepresent a given subject.

2. Then you rou reach a conclusion through a fallacy of composition.

 

Battery salesman told me one time heat is worse on them than cold and states like Florida, Arizona, etc always have higher battery sales numbers than Michigan, Minnesota, etc. Taoe that for what that's worth, he may have been full of it.

 

Now you're just being obtuse.

Of course I took the fact that electricity comes from fossil fuels (57% of it, in this country, today, anyway, the remainder is renewables and nukes).

I literally said: "Burning fossil fuels, electric vehicles are about 60% efficient, less transmission and battery storage inefficiencies." That statement comes from the (very generous assumption) that electricity comes from the most up to date combined cycle natural gas plants, which operate at 60% maximum efficiency. Not counting startup, cool down or flywheel reserves. That 60% is higher than coal plants, whose average thermal efficiency is a lousy 33%, barely more than an ICE.

Of course the whole argument is spurious, because you CAN"T BURN COAL or USE NUKES OR HYDRO OR SOLAR OR WIND in an ICE vehicle. So the only way to diversify our energy requirements for the transportation industry is to turn that coal or nuke into something else, like electricity, or hydrogen, or coal-gas. Or remain completely dependent on oil -- which, like being completely dependent on one customer, is great, until that customer / oil market goes haywire, and you're screwed nine ways from Sunday.

Is current battery technology optimal? Of course not. Is it good enough for a pretty significant part of the trucking industry? Like P&D, local distribution, even some line haul? Absolutely.

That said, there are other options than the current Li-ion configuration. Xpeng in China has demonstrated a battery configuration that can charge at 800V and 450 amps, loading the batteries of their G9 SUV from 10% to 80% in 15 minutes for about 400 miles of range. Stopping for 20 minutes every 400 miles doesn't seem to be a big hurdle to adoption in the trucking industry, in my mind, especially if you start out with a full 500 mile range every morning.

Xpeng launches fastest charging electric SUV, with range of 700km

 

i’m not against green energy, but electric vehicles does nothing on the so-called carbon footprint. In fact many scientists think it actually makes it worse. It just isolates the pollution a bit. But it’s still there in the same volume. I think what most of us are against is all this changing when the world isn’t ready for it. It’s being forced. Rather than letting private enterprise innovate and bring ideas and gradually change things over. I.e. when the infrastructure is ready for it. It’s not ready now. We need another good 30 years. I welcome Tesla to take a swing at this. But it’s not going to take over the market. Far from it.

 

Cant figure out why dont work more on the hybrid concept?