[HN Gopher] Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses...
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Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse
logic
Author : MaysonL
Score : 88 points
Date : 2021-12-25 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (timharford.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (timharford.com)
| bargle0 wrote:
| I don't buy the queue argument. It would devolve in to a bunch of
| churn inevitably resulting in thrown hands and black eyes.
| mgrund wrote:
| It's a good lesson in the importance of picking the right
| things to measure/optimize for. Queue length is not a good
| thing to optimize for by itself.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Exactly, I don't get how that would increase throughput.
| boffinism wrote:
| It's not about increasing throughout, it's about increasing
| user satisfaction. A system where 60 customers are served
| an hour, and none of them has queued, is theoretically
| better than one where the same amount are served, but each
| has queued for 10 boring minutes. You achieve this by
| disincentivising queueing.
| luckylion wrote:
| So people would only go to a stand if there's nobody
| being served, because being behind the person currently
| being served is discouraged. Essentially, you'd just move
| the queue: people would wait for a "spot" to open up (a
| stand with no customer) and then go there.
|
| If it's orderly, they kind of queue in the middle. If
| it's not, you'll have a large brawl as people try to get
| in front of each other.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I think you misunderstood the proposed queueing
| system.... The stand will never be 'open'.
|
| People who arrive join the _front_ of the queue, and are
| either served next, or someone else joins in front of
| them, pushing them back. When they 're position 2 in the
| queue, they will only be served if 2 people are served
| and 0 arrive (low probably). If another person arrives,
| they're now position 3 in the queue, so 3 need to be
| served before any arrivals (even lower probably).
|
| At some point, they decide the probability of being
| served drops low enough that they give up and leave -
| this will usually happen quickly.
|
| The only way to 'game' this system is to look up the
| street and join the queue when it looks like nobody else
| is coming. If many people try to do this, then those
| people will be waiting forever (both want to join last -
| stalemate), and anyone who doesn't employ the tactic gets
| served.
| becuzThrowaway wrote:
| In practice, you would just replace the queue with a
| disorganized rabble of people standing around, where as
| soon as the person currently being served leaves, there
| is a mad dash at the one secure spot, which is at the
| very front.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Those who _really_ want your product now have to mob up
| outside your stall and hope they 're the next lucky
| random fucker. They're still waiting.
|
| Those who don't really want your product don't wait in a
| line for it anyways - the length of the line itself is a
| natural filter for availability of the good.
|
| Basically - has satisfaction actually gone up if those
| who would be extremely satisfied by your product no
| longer receive it, and random folks who may or may not
| want your product do? I'd bet money the answer is a solid
| "NO".
| jfengel wrote:
| I don't even see how it does that. Unless there is some
| factor that prevents you from leaving and immediately re-
| entering the line at the front.
|
| I feel like I missed something.
| ratsbane wrote:
| The queue proposal sounds like a Monty Python skit.
|
| If we adopt the rule that the next person to be served is the
| most recent person to join line, it's inevitable that a second
| line will form with people waiting to go to the first line and
| if someone tries to go to bypass the second line and go
| directly to the first line, the crowd in the first line will
| direct their rage at this person and compel him or her to queue
| in the second line - it's just as if there were only one line
| and the person had cut in that.
| folli wrote:
| I think I didn't really get the idea behind it. Wouldn't that
| be the same as just prohibiting of forming queues altogether?
| I.e. you're only allowed to order food of noone else is at the
| cashier?
| becuzThrowaway wrote:
| Pretty much, yes.
| SilasX wrote:
| I wonder where people will queue for the chance to pounce on
| that ...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29687474
| 8organicbits wrote:
| > Alas, the Landsburg rule can only be imposed in controlled
| environments such as a theme park, perhaps. But you might
| consider applying a dose of Landsburg's logic to your own "to
| do" list: don't add a new item to the list unless you're
| willing to do it immediately.
|
| I've got to ponder the to do list example though.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| I think you'd end up with a similar amount of person-minutes
| of waiting overall, it just wouldn't be as apparent who is
| waiting for what.
|
| As for the to do list, to me that suggestion amounts to
| nothing more than splitting my to do list into two, a "to do
| now" list, and a "to do eventually" list (well, I would call
| it a "two do" list), where I just move items from the second
| one to the first. That might have some value, but it's not a
| mind-blowing reversal of logic.
| becuzThrowaway wrote:
| I feel like I've been a part of a queue like this -- at the
| airport in San Jose, Costa Rica. It was asinine and
| infuriating, and just thinking about it makes my blood boil.
| FooHentai wrote:
| It has an obvious flaw, aside from being super annoying - just
| leave the queue and rejoin in front of the other person. Then
| they'll do the same to you. Get it going fast enough and
| perhaps the spin will generate free energy.
| SilasX wrote:
| Agreed. I have a comment from a while ago unpacking the idea
| where I note that it will probably a) devolve into meta-queues
| that reproduce the original queuing system, and b) encourage
| anti-social behavior because people no longer value their
| position in line and have nothing to lose by not playing nice.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182781
|
| The whole article is embarrassingly bad, a bunch of stuff that
| sounds clever at first but wasn't seriously researched or even
| pondered. Like the requirements to develop resources you buy or
| the incentive effects of paying off malicious behavior.
| aaron695 wrote:
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Clearly anyone who is pushed back in the reverse queue (can i
| call it a stack?) can just rejoin at the front. You would end up
| with a spinning "musical chairs queue".
|
| The other examples seem pretty interesting and it has a
| freakinomics feel about it.
|
| The queue solution is simple - using tech: use the buzzers they
| give you in some restaurants that tell you your meal is ready
| when you are next in the queue.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| I don't think the idea of reverse logic is even clear. Exactly
| what aspect should you choose to reverse? A better name would be
| unintuitive logic, but we already know some things are
| unintuitive.
| ganzuul wrote:
| Incentive.
|
| When you are given something I want it too. I might even want
| you not to have it if I can't have it. However, if I am the one
| giving you the thing it becomes important for me that you have
| the thing even if I no longer do.
|
| This is intuitive even if it is logically an eyesore.
| gabesullice wrote:
| A different way to get to the same result as a minimum fuel
| requirement would be to raise base prices and offer steep bulk
| discounts. This would be easier to enforce than a minimum fuel
| requirement. Unfortunately it might raise "price gouging"
| complaints.
| gumby wrote:
| > Here's a thought: environmentalists should fight climate change
| by buying coal mines.
|
| Matt Levine wrote about this recently (unfortunately I could not
| find the reference but it was in the last month). One of the big
| bank tried to launch a fund for this but it was met with a
| hostile reception.
| scatters wrote:
| 20 December newsletter:
|
| > When you go to an ESG fund manager and say "hey wanna buy up
| all the coal mines" she is going to say "what no absolutely
| not." And then you say "no hear me out, you are a better owner
| of coal mines than the alternative, this is better for the
| climate in the long run," and you explain how, and she says
| "hmm yes your logic is impeccable," and you say "so you're in?"
| and she says "no absolutely not".
|
| The bank was Citi, and the fund was to have been called "Coal
| to Zero".
| tarr11 wrote:
| The "Cash for Clunkers" program was actually instituted over a
| decade ago in the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System
| Syonyk wrote:
| And having been "grad school broke" during that era, it
| absolutely destroyed a decade's worth of cheap "runs and
| drives" grade cars that I drove and most of my friends drove.
|
| $100 cars were suddenly $1000 cars in a few months, which was
| fine if you owned one, bad if you were looking for another
| backyard project you could limp home and work on for a while.
|
| "Destroying the long tail of cheap resources for political
| points" is the sort of "reverse thinking" that we need less of,
| especially by politicians who make the right noises about
| caring about the poor. Great, a bunch of older cars are off the
| road... sucks to be someone who used those for transport if you
| couldn't afford the payments on a new car (or didn't have
| reliable enough income to even consider that option).
| nine_k wrote:
| On one hand, it's cheap transportation for less well-off. On
| the other hand, it's one of the worst pollutants, per person-
| mile traveled.
|
| A lot if America was built on a presumption of cheap car
| transportation, when the exhaust was considered free. Now we
| are starting to pay the price of it, and such places start to
| look less and less sustainable. But a lot of people lives
| there, and won't easily move to a metro area and start
| relying on public transport.
| anamax wrote:
| Eggs, comrade, eggs. Specifically your eggs.
|
| No, there won't be omelets. What are you, some sort of kulak?
| lucian1900 wrote:
| We communists frequently argue against such programmes and
| instead for cheap and rational transportation for the
| working class, like trains, light rail and biofuel cars for
| rural areas.
|
| And kulaks had it coming, even my great-granddad.
| Destroying food during a famine is inhuman.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Cheap trains and light rail require very high levels of
| automation. As long as you argue in favour of that as
| well it makes sense.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| Of course. Such automation wouldn't be sustainable under
| capitalism because the rate of profit would drop even
| further, but it would be entirely possible under a
| socialist economy that produces for use instead of for
| profit.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >And kulaks had it coming, even my great-granddad.
| Destroying food during a famine is inhuman.
|
| Don't take people's property by force and not expect them
| to fight back. And especially don't use their fighting
| back as an excuse to oppress and slaughter them, that's
| what's truly inhuman. And the famine was caused by
| collectivization policies in the first place, you're just
| blameshifting your failed policies onto the victims of
| it.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| When some starve and others hoard food, is property more
| important than hunger?
|
| The famines were environmental, for centuries. It was
| only collectivisation and industrialisation of
| agriculture that stopped the famines.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >When some starve and others hoard food, is property more
| important than hunger?
|
| Yes, because destroying private property rights will lead
| to further famines. It's something called second-order
| effects, which Communists seem utterly incapable of
| understanding.
|
| >The famines were environmental, for centuries.
|
| None were ever on the scale of those caused by the
| Soviets, Mao, and others, so they clearly weren't just
| environmental.
|
| >It was only collectivisation and industrialisation of
| agriculture that stopped the famines.
|
| Industrialization is doing some Atlas-tier lifting for
| the rest of your argument in that sentence.
| Collectivization did nothing to stop famines unless you
| count causing millions to die and thereby having fewer
| mouths to feed in the following years. _Reversing
| collectivization_ , on the other hand, increased food
| output six-fold in Xiaogang, China: http://www.china.org.
| cn/china/features/content_11778487_2.ht...
|
| Edit: Note that the villagers of Xiaogang had to undo
| collectivization in secret because they risked literally
| life imprisonment and execution. They even made pacts
| with each other to care for the others' children until
| adulthood if any of them were caught and executed.
|
| Edit2: Since HN won't let me reply to your response
| directly, here it is. I lived in the Czech Republic and
| befriended countless people rich and poor who suffered
| under the evils of Communism. Communism has led to
| political violence in every single country that has
| adopted it, without exception. For a good historical
| overview (since you implied I haven't read any boons on
| the matter) I would recommend _From the Gulag to the
| Killing Fields_ , which contains excerpts of historical
| accounts from every single country that established
| Communist regimes. You support a Godless ideology of
| murder, oppression, and lies.
| lucian1900 wrote:
| First order effects surely should not be ignored merely
| because second order effects exist. Starving because
| someone might be upset they are no longer a lord is
| illogical.
|
| You should read some history books, you appear to have
| instead accepted western propaganda.
| DontGiveTwoFlux wrote:
| I was curious to see if anyone had tried the coal mine bit. This
| is the closest I could find, a business plan to sell coal
| attached to carbon credits. Not sure what's happened since 2016.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/business/energy-environme...
| hannob wrote:
| Greenpeace had claimed that they tried to offer Vattenfall to
| buy their coal mines in Eastern Germany to shut them down (they
| were later sold to czeck company EPH), but it's a bit unclear
| how serious that offer was:
| https://www.fr.de/wirtschaft/greenpeace-bietet-kohle-tagebau...
|
| Though maybe that's also a cautionary tale. Back when that
| happened (2015) the political discussion around coal in Germany
| was that a coal exit wasn't really part of the discussion and
| local politicians would say things like coal will be mined
| until the 2040s. Since then the debate has moved to "Coal exit
| in 2038", and more recently to "Coal exit very likely in 2030".
|
| What I'm trying to say: Even if you're successful with such a
| project, it's not exactly clear how much you gain. The
| political discourse on climate is moving fast (though still not
| fast enough).
| throwawaysea wrote:
| I think I am not very clear on how 'reverse logic' is being
| defined here, but it may not matter. The problem is that real
| life is much more complex than these simplistic mental models we
| describe when we talk to each other. People's needs, desires, and
| values are not interchangeable. While that one person who drives
| less could drive a gas car, maybe they prefer the convenience of
| charging at home. Likewise, the person who drives a lot may
| require the convenience of filling up gas in five minutes, or
| maybe they are doing longer trips or carry cargo/passengers
| (amplifying range anxiety).
|
| As for the notion of reversing queues - this doesn't make sense
| to me, but maybe I am missing something. People who join a queue
| earlier are signaling a price, in effect. Overriding that is
| creating an inefficiency in a sense, and is an imposition of
| someone else's valuations in place of individual people's
| valuations. Apart from that, the methods mentioned here simply
| feel a bit antagonistic rather than cooperative. I don't think
| sustainable societies are built on those types of adversarial
| tactics.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > Under the Landsburg system, the stalls still serve one seasonal
| treat a minute, but the queues are short. Alas, the Landsburg
| rule can only be imposed in controlled environments such as a
| theme park, perhaps.
|
| Poor example. This would annoy the hell out of customers. Theme
| parks also almost always have excess demands for rides. This
| system would only work at a failing theme park that couldn't fill
| up the ride to capacity.
|
| I could imagine this working with decentralized robots performing
| similar tasks independently, but usually a system that uses
| robots would be centralized.
| kansface wrote:
| If environmentalists made major impact shutting down mines, the
| price of coal would go up incentivizing new ones or at least to
| increase the output of existing ones - demand hasn't changed.
| Just the same with buying gas stations and shutting them down,
| too.
| jsmith99 wrote:
| There's a counter argument on the Marginal Revolution economics
| blog which points out that supply of coal mines is inelastic
| and environmentalists can simply purchase mining rights for
| mines that are currently uneconomical to prevent it.
|
| https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2021/10/be...
| pksebben wrote:
| thanks for posting this. had no idea about the "use it or
| lose it" clauses! what the hell, america?
| luckylion wrote:
| It's pretty much what environmentalists have done with dams,
| right? They buy them and then dismantle them to restore the
| natural flow of rivers. It's more effective than lobbying the
| government to pass legislation forcing the removal of the dam.
| themitigating wrote:
| Has this happened frequently?
| luckylion wrote:
| I don't know. It was a thing a few years ago, I believe I
| learned about it in the documentary Dam Nation (but I might
| be mistaken).
|
| Google no longer works for me to find things again that I
| vaguely remember. What I do remember was that they had
| taken out multiple smaller dams on a river, and if memory
| serves me right, a group had bought them for a reasonably
| low amount as the previous owners had no more use for them.
|
| Most of what I found with a quick search from what I
| remembered were public/private partnerships to remove
| obsolete dams (Riverkeeper seems to be a larger player).
| Sharlin wrote:
| A small-ish scale recent example in Finland:
| https://hiitolanjoki.fi/en/category/hiitolanjoki-river-
| resto...
| themitigating wrote:
| But there's other products that compete and it takes time for
| products to get to market.
|
| If you shut down some number of oil production the price would
| go up quickly but it would take much longer for alternative
| sources to come online.
|
| Also when prices of gas goes up, unlike in the past, there are
| now alternatives in EVs.
| KarlKemp wrote:
| Not if environmentalists also managed to shut down or replace
| consumers of coal, such as power plants.
|
| Since power plants are usually run by utility companies that
| often have governments as major shareholders and the general
| public (including environmentalists and people sympathetic to
| their goals) as direct customers, they are more likely to be
| receptive to pressure than coal mines, which are often
| privately held corporations that sell into the anonymity of
| bulk markets.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| That's not how it works. If the price of coal goes up, other
| generation technologies outcompete it (renewables and natural
| gas).
|
| By disrupting the fossil fuel supply chain, you apply pressure
| to the point where coal generators are taken offline and
| demolished (lots of videos if you Google for coal plant
| demolition). This ensures you can't go back, as the lead time
| is too long to build new coal and no one will finance it in the
| developed world. Natural gas is already marginal against
| renewables in many markets, and will face the same fate as coal
| as renewables build until they're overbuilt.
| nine_k wrote:
| This might work if (1) coal production cannot be increased
| cheaply enough and (2) alternative generation can be deployed
| faster than increasing the coal supply.
|
| I think that the only kind of generation that can quickly
| replace coal would be based on burning LNG and turning the
| same turbines.
|
| Solar is great but unstable, adding a battery is pretty
| expensive yet.
|
| Nuclear is sadly way too slow and expensive to build, even if
| no NIMBY protests would appear.
| H8crilA wrote:
| FYI, coal is still absolutely huge: https://en.m.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_cons...
|
| Don't get fooled by stats from rich countries as those
| countries "cheat" by importing goods and materials with large
| entry footprints embedded into them.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| True, but even China and India are moving to renewables
| rapidly. Renewables are absolutely exploding (confirmed
| even by the growth rate from your wiki reference) and will
| like replace most global fossil generation over the next
| 10-15 years.
|
| > By 2026, global renewable electricity capacity is
| forecast to rise more than 60% from 2020 levels to over 4
| 800 GW - equivalent to the current total global power
| capacity of fossil fuels and nuclear combined. Renewables
| are set to account for almost 95% of the increase in global
| power capacity through 2026, with solar PV alone providing
| more than half. The amount of renewable capacity added over
| the period of 2021 to 2026 is expected to be 50% higher
| than from 2015 to 2020. This is driven by stronger support
| from government policies and more ambitious clean energy
| goals announced before and during the COP26 Climate Change
| Conference.
|
| > The growth of renewables is forecast to increase in all
| regions compared with the 2015-2020 period. China remains
| the global leader in the volume of capacity additions: it
| is expected to reach 1200 GW of total wind and solar
| capacity in 2026 - four years earlier than its current
| target of 2030. India is set to come top in terms of the
| rate of growth, doubling new installations compared with
| 2015-2020. Deployments in Europe and the United States are
| also on track to speed up significantly from the previous
| five years. These four markets together account for 80% of
| renewable capacity expansion worldwide.
|
| https://www.iea.org/news/renewable-electricity-growth-is-
| acc... (IEA: Renewable electricity growth is accelerating
| faster than ever worldwide, supporting the emergence of the
| new global energy economy)
| runnerup wrote:
| That's an expensive bet if your model parameters are off by
| just a little bit.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Most risk is manageable, tail risk is unavoidable. You can
| do everything right and still have a government put you out
| of business or have the market move against you in a way
| you couldn't have predicted.
|
| With that said, the theory is sound based on existing
| economic conditions. 75% of coal generators in the US and
| roughly 45% globally operate unprofitably, for example (per
| Bloomberg NEF).
| [deleted]
| runnerup wrote:
| Yes this is similar to China attempting to corner the market on
| Lithium, but then as soon as they squeezed prices, Chile
| suddenly built out a massive amount of Lithium production.
|
| You cannot "buy all the coal" any more than you can:
|
| - buy all the oil (OPEC vs. NA shale fracking)
|
| - buy all the lithium (China vs. Chile)
|
| - buy all the magnesium (Freeport, TX vs. China vs. get from
| any seawater anywhere)
| nextplease wrote:
| 'Sodic aluminum oxide', anyone? Seems like... it is _um_
| winter !? (-;
| tyingq wrote:
| It seemed to work for diamonds.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There are big differences on the availability of resources of
| all of those. Each one will behave differently if you try to
| "buy it all out".
|
| In particular, relatively rare minerals that have been
| extracted in a relentless scale like coal and oil are harder
| to replace than very abundant ones that have been extracted
| on an opportunistic way like lithium. (Magnesium is also very
| abundant, but has seen more intensive extraction.)
| lkbm wrote:
| People can still start new mines, but the price of coal will
| increase due to the capital costs that incurs (and the time
| it takes to ramp up production). This works the same as a tax
| on coal, or a subsidy on its competitors: some people will
| keep using it, but people on the margins will be pushed to
| the alternative.
|
| The fact that the cost increase is likely front-loaded due to
| the time it takes to ramp up a new mine is probably extra
| beneficial in the case of coal, since it's on its way out as
| a technology. Mining coal might be worth it right now, but
| will it be worth it by the time your new mine is up and
| running?
|
| With lithium, the answer would be yes, because lithium demand
| is growing. With coal, hopefully not so much.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It sounds like you're assuming the price elasticity of demand
| of coal is low.
| [deleted]
| aomurphy wrote:
| Various environmentalists have tried this in the US. Here's a
| reason article about several attempts:
| https://reason.com/2019/11/18/why-dont-environmentalists-jus...
| Kind of frustrating the OP's article doesn't actually do any
| research on why it's hard to actually do this "clever" idea.
| There is an actual power structure that is opposed to these sorts
| of actions!
|
| In general in the US it's very difficult to do this on
| state/federal land. You usually _must_ make use of your rights or
| the leases will be revoked. Even when there is a state like Idaho
| where you can buy grazing rights and supposedly not use them, the
| state bureaucracy isn 't interested in it.
|
| I guess you could do this with coal rights but the coal markets
| have been so bad for the last decade it's hard to see this as
| worth doing.
| oezi wrote:
| Why buy coal mines if you could just by oil tankers and let them
| idle? This would drive up oil prices in many places, reduce
| demand demand for oil and make renewables and energy efficient
| technologies more competitive.
| freediver wrote:
| To take the idea a bit further, you make them into floating
| plantations, delivering fresh fruit/vegetables to any location
| in the world.
| roenxi wrote:
| For starters that plan probably wouldn't work. The cost of
| taking that much much oil out of the market and sitting it idly
| would bankrupt the parties involved.
|
| For seconds if the plan did work, the group responsible would
| likely be designated as terrorists and get taken out by the US
| military.
| oezi wrote:
| Why would it bankrupt anybody? Letting it sit idle or
| scrapping it aren't too expensive when compared to the saved
| CO2.
|
| The US would have certainly done something when they still
| were highly dependent on foreign oil.
| rileyphone wrote:
| https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-98...
|
| Im just learning about Jay Forrester, but he wrote the
| foundational paper on this kind of thinking. I also highly
| recommend Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows, which contains
| a lot of other wisdom like this.
| trembonator wrote:
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| This kind of strategy ignores second order effects.
|
| For example, by buying a gas guzzler and not using it much you
| might lower the emissions from that specific vehicle. But supply
| and demand rears its ugly head: you're contributing to the
| increase of similar gas guzzlers' value in the market, which
| means that other people are more likely to maintain those
| vehicles in working order and resell them, instead of scrapping
| them or leaving them unused.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Surely by that same argument scrapping or abandoning any
| automobile instead of reselling it is going to increase the
| value of new cars relative to used cars, which might be a net
| negative for the environment even if the newly manufactured car
| is a zero emission vehicle.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Look at the other side of this: by buying an EV, you're
| increasing the demand and increasing the cost barrier to owning
| one, so people are more likely to buy a cheaper, gas car. An EV
| you're not going to use much that sits in your garage is one
| less on the market to drive the supply up.
|
| Generally, the idea that people toss their cars in the garbage
| is wrong. They enter the secondary market and someone drives
| them either way. Scrapping them only happens when their useful
| lifespan is over.
|
| Buying a _newly made_ gas guzzler is a different story.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Exactly, it induces demand. Same went for efforts to
| reintroduce ivory in a more ethically sourced way back onto the
| market. Demand exploded and kick started poaching again. There
| are other examples too.
|
| As for buying coalmines, typically mining rights are sold to
| miners as licenses that owners expect to get a percentage from.
| When the buyer turns out to be an environmental NGO the license
| gets revoked pretty quickly. This happened in the US earlier
| this year. These strategies will often run into implementation
| complexities.
| sokoloff wrote:
| We drive our cars about 2K miles and 5K miles a year. I've
| argued (so far without success) that it makes no sense for us
| to buy a used hybrid or other high-efficiency car [and divert
| that car from a user who would likely drive it 10K+ miles per
| year].
|
| We've got a couple more years before I have to buy another used
| car, so I still might win the argument.
| olivermarks wrote:
| We need to get used to using the term 'power consumer' instead
| of emotive terms like 'gas guzzler' to describe IC engines.
| Currently coal powered BEVs are considered by some to have
| superior efficiencies to gasoline powered vehicles.
| DenseComet wrote:
| I would expect that to be true. Not the best numbers, but
| Wikipedia puts coal power plants at 37% efficiency and
| combustion engines at 20-35%. This makes sense too, power
| plants have space, money, and an incentive to increase
| efficiency. And in reality, no power mix is 100% coal,
| increasing the overall efficiency to above 37%.
| olivermarks wrote:
| Electricity doesn't transport well over wire. iI don't
| think mass market BEVs are viable until battery technology
| significantly improves and small modular nuclear reactors
| can provide local clean power.
|
| https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Rolls-Royce-
| subm...
| divbzero wrote:
| Buying up coal deposits to prevent mining is new to me, but the
| idea is quite familiar in the realm of buying up rainforest to
| prevent deforestation.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Perfect example of the kind of simplistic and wishful thinking
| which plagues modern economics. They assume that their model of
| the world will solve a problem without bothering to check if it
| does.
| FriedPickles wrote:
| To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will
| drive them the most, the true bottleneck is _batteries_. So, the
| problem is to get _batteries_ on the road in a way that they will
| displace the most gas miles as soon as possible.
|
| This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing
| the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), then in a second stage,
| replace those with full EVs. For most city vehicles, a PHEV will
| electrify the majority of the miles with a fraction of the
| battery capacity.
|
| Driving an EV is a green status symbol now. I wonder if they
| could in the future be viewed as "battery hogs".
| alex_young wrote:
| Do you know how to get more batteries on the road? Make more
| batteries and sell them for less.
|
| This is Tesla's business model and a huge reason Li batteries
| are so much less expensive today.
|
| I'd say the inverted logic is more like buy electric cars now
| even though they don't hold their resale value due to economies
| of scale catching up on you.
| tw04 wrote:
| >This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing
| the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs)
|
| The performance of pretty much every PHEV I've seen is abysmal.
| The people buying a Model 3 or Model S to replace their BMW or
| Mercedes aren't interested in something with the performance of
| a geo metro. So, while on paper a PHEV solution might look
| better, in the real world it would result in those people just
| going back to regular ICE. If you outlaw ICE/make those cars
| unavailable, you'll find plenty of political headwinds and set
| the entire movement back a decade IMO.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| My Volt has 300lb/ft of torque and accelerates quite lovely.
| Sport mode is a fun drive. Much more pep than the VW diesel I
| used to have. And the car drives for 80-90km on battery
| without touching the ICE. I go months without filling. I
| drive 93% electric, only using gas for road trips. You've
| looked at the wrong PHEVs.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > You've looked at the wrong PHEVs.
|
| You're looking at a PHEV that no longer exists.
| afbadfatdh wrote:
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > The performance of pretty much every PHEV I've seen is
| abysmal. The people buying a Model 3 or Model S to replace
| their BMW or Mercedes aren't interested in something with the
| performance of a geo metro.
|
| How many people take their cars to race tracks to be able to
| tell the difference in performance? If it can get to 70 mph
| in some reasonable time, which almost any production car can,
| then what more is there to ask for on a public road?
| usefulcat wrote:
| I guess that's a rhetorical question? Because clearly many
| people do actually prefer a BMW to a geo metro, despite the
| price difference.
| tshaddox wrote:
| There's a wide range of "reasonable times" a car can get to
| 70 mph and the differences can definitely be noticed by
| normal drivers on public roads.
| [deleted]
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Armisael16 wrote:
| There's an extremely obvious difference in 0-60 times
| between a Prius and a Model 3, and that matters on an on-
| ramp. (Replace 0-60 with 5-60 or 25-60 or whatever you
| measure of acceleration you prefer).
|
| Is it necessary? No, obviously, people aren't dying left
| and right trying to merge in Priuses. It is very
| noticeable, however.
| zenexer wrote:
| I have been driving Priuses for a good chunk of my life
| now, and there's really no way I could safely max out
| their acceleration while merging. Typically the right-
| lane traffic on highways here flows at 75 MPH when there
| isn't much congestion. Why would you benefit from greater
| acceleration?
|
| It makes very little sense from my perspective. What am I
| going to do, cut someone off? Floor it and merge with no
| consideration for the trajectories of other vehicles?
|
| It's not that difficult, and I live in an area with
| notoriously short on-ramps. You've still got plenty of
| road to match the speed of the cars on the highway and
| shift your position so you land between two cars.
| Accelerating as you're about to merge just makes that
| more difficult, especially with a short on-ramp.
|
| Yeah, sometimes people don't know how to drive and stop
| or slow down on on-ramps. I don't care how fast my car
| can accelerate; if the person in front of me isn't
| reaching the same speed as the cars on the highway, I'm
| going to stop much farther back on the ramp, wait for
| them to do their thing, and resume proper merging once
| they're out of the way. I don't want to have to deal with
| flooring it and trying to time everything while
| accelerating.
| pandaman wrote:
| You don't have metered on-ramps? These are ones with a
| traffic light at the start where one has to come to stop
| at the light and then accelerate to match your speed with
| the traffic.
| philistine wrote:
| Have you ever driven a plug-in Prius (the Prius Prime
| here in Quebec)? It's got wonderful acceleration when
| using the all-electric mode.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| What opportunity do you have for dramatic acceleration
| driving legally on a public road? 0-60 in 3s vs 20s how
| much time can that really add up to shaving off your
| drive?
| gifnamething wrote:
| Driving for fun on public roads is safe, legal, and
| popular. You won't wish it away.
| [deleted]
| brightball wrote:
| Our Pacifica plug-in hybrid minivan is fantastic. We go
| months without refueling.
| multjoy wrote:
| The met police use a variety of PHEVs as response vehicles
| including BMWs and Mitsubishi. Performance is not an issue.
| pandaman wrote:
| BMW's and Porsche's PHEVs are pretty good, why other
| companies cannot follow the same formula (add batteries and
| electric motor to a regular car without crippling the
| existing drivetrain) is a mystery. It appears most want you
| to buy their BEV so they intentionally make PHEVs
| unappealing.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Many I've seen in Europe are pretty fast - Merc 350e for
| example has 0-62mph of 5.9s and top speed of 155mph. BMW 330e
| is 6.1s and 140mph. Granted some are slower, but no one ever
| bought a brand like Toyota etc expecting high-performance, so
| it is not surprising if they are slower (FWIW my Toyota non-
| plugin hybrid is actually pretty fast from a standstill, but
| won't win any races beyond 20mph)
|
| 6s to 62mph is pretty nippy - if you _need_ faster than 6s
| 0-62mph then you are likely in a fairly small niche group.
|
| Looks like the base Tesla 3 is 0-62 in 5.8s and 140mph top
| speed so pretty comparable.
| tw04 wrote:
| A model 3 performance does 0-60 in 3.2 seconds with some
| guys going faster on a track with sticky tires. Someone
| looking at a Benz (at least in the US) isn't buying the
| base model 3.
|
| The Benz starts at $54k in the US, that's definitely model
| 3 performance territory.
| aserr wrote:
| I would guess that performance isn't the main consideration
| for most folks, but you should check out the BMW 330e and
| 530e. Both are plug-in hybrids with very respectable
| performance numbers. You can even get them with the M-sport
| package (not that it makes them faster, but it makes them a
| little sportier).
| gpm wrote:
| Plug in electric hybrids strike me as insanely complex machines
| compared to Ev's. It strikes me as highly unlikely that from an
| environmental standpoint our (societies) time is better spent
| building them, than it is spent increasing the rate at which we
| can build batteries.
| tshaddox wrote:
| PHEVs are more complex, but arguably not more complex than
| having _both_ a BEV and an ICE vehicle. If a BEV covers 95%
| of my driving needs, that sounds great, but it still means I
| need two cars if one is a BEV.
| philistine wrote:
| 5% of your drives sounds like a problem solved by a car
| rental, not by owning two vehicles.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Unless those 5% of rides start an airplane flight away, I
| can't imagine very many people are going to pay all the
| costs to own a car _and_ all the costs and time-wastage
| of renting a car once or twice a month. They 'll buy a
| PHEV, hybrid, or conventional car and wait for the BEVs
| to improve. (I'm a LEAF owner, but can trade cars with my
| spouse when I need to. I think twice in 7 years we've
| both needed to drive a distance in a single day where the
| shorter drive would stress the LEAF.)
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| Plug-in hybrids are, in the US, at average car cost now, but
| this may be because of EV credits.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Internal combustion engines are very complex. Yet they can be
| produced really cheap.
|
| It's a bit like microchips.
|
| Vast sums (think tens to hundreds of billions) have been
| invested into the "machine that makes the machine". Cranking
| out engines at this point is relatively simple.
|
| Path dependency is a very powerful force.
| codazoda wrote:
| And, not being in the industry, I don't quite understand why.
|
| Look at diesel electric locomotives. They run the diesel only
| for power and they use the electric motors for drive. Why
| doesn't this model work in cars and allow us to get rid of
| the transmission like a full EV does?
|
| Gas engines have an optimal RPM. Why wouldn't a hybrid run
| the engine at exactly that RPM to generate the best charge?
|
| Instead, they are complex vehicles with EXTRA transmission
| like components.
| alexose wrote:
| The only car I know of that works this way is the BMW i3,
| which came with an optional 'range extender' that's
| essentially a little gas generator with a 2(!) gallon tank.
| One complaint I've heard is that it doesn't necessarily put
| out enough wattage to fully drive the car under certain
| (hilly, cold) conditions. (But, I have to imagine that
| could be solved with a bigger generator)
|
| The problem as I understand it is that California's
| regulations require that the range extender isn't allowed
| to provide more range than the car's internal battery. How
| this ended up the case I have no idea.
| afbadfatdh wrote:
| willcipriano wrote:
| I'd expect EVs to be cheaper if they are actually simpler,
| last time I looked that wasn't really the case outside of
| cars produced in China that most western customers wouldn't
| buy.
| natch wrote:
| You can get a Bolt for around $11k after incentives. OK the
| incentives part is a wrench in the equation to be sure, so
| it may be hard to answer my question...
|
| Are you saying hybrids cost less than that?
| mulmen wrote:
| How do the EV incentives compare to fossil fuel
| subsidies?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Where are the incentives taking the price of a Bolt that
| low? My LEAF just turned 7 and I'd probably buy a Bolt
| immediately if I could get one in the $11K range. (The
| LEAF has been great all around, but only being able to
| count on 75 miles is annoying from time to time.)
| buran77 wrote:
| What is that $11k price tag supposed to say about any of
| the 2 types of cars? Complexity is only part of the
| manufacturing cost, and that cost is only a part of the
| retail price. Price is only useful when used in some sort
| of ratio - price/quality, price/performance,
| price/features. A PHEV probably starts at $20k but comes
| with some extras that people value and aren't available
| on an EV (near instant refueling prety much anywhere you
| can drive the car).
|
| The cost of the EV part of a PHEV may very well be offset
| just by the incentives or subsidies alone. If you can
| charge the thing at home it's a great way of getting a
| car that's an EV in the city where it matters more
| regarding the environmental and health impact (less burnt
| fuel where people actually live and breathe), an ICE for
| long trips where the impact is lower than in the city and
| still get the convenience, and all for probably the same
| price as the baseline ICE. This would cover the entire
| range of driving needs.
|
| Of course if you can't charge at home you wiped all the
| advantages because now you just lug around extra dead
| weight or worse, you charge the battery inefficiently
| from the engine. Unfortunately many PHEVs of recent years
| were compliance cars that made unfortunate compromises to
| tick a box. Perhaps if charging infrastructure
| investments boom there'll be no need to build PHEVs. I'm
| not seeing this though.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Cost isn't the same thing as complexity. EVs are probably
| more expensive because batteries are expensive.
| rileyphone wrote:
| Quality over quantity - and if prices indicate anything it's
| a more efficient approach. Battery building is also limited
| to lithium availability, so there's many more cars you can
| convert if you put 1/5 of the battery in each one. Fuel is
| much more energy dense than batteries so the removed weight
| is making the car more efficient as well. Ultimately I think
| it's important to value flexibility and maximizing tradeoffs,
| which I feel plug in hybrids achieve.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Almost all affordable PHEV are not very good cars though.
|
| They are basically shitty electric cars and a shitty fossil
| cars combined.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| > Driving an EV is a green status symbol now. I wonder if they
| could in the future be viewed as "battery hogs".
|
| Yes, but this exists now, with the government handouts and tax
| credits. They overwhelmingly go to affluent people who need
| these things the least.
|
| There are unsexy trades like replacing oil burning heaters for
| gas or wood pellet stoves but these often aren't viewed as
| green enough and the people who would benefit have no one
| advocating for them.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| brightball wrote:
| You need lighter, more energy dense batteries that can charge
| faster.
|
| You get all of that with Graphene. It's just a question of
| cost. I'm honestly shocked that they haven't put them in the
| top end Tesla's yet to showcase the technology.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Yes, exactly.
|
| One can think of it this way also: if 85 kWh of battery modules
| is made, how should they be placed to reduce the most CO2.
|
| You can put them into 8 plugin hybrid cars with 10 kWh battery
| in each, and it's used for commuting in each of them, replacing
| 80% of yearly kilometers with electric ones, that's maybe 10 x
| 20,000 x 0.8 = 160,000 km electric driving. Those cars still
| drive 10 x 20,000 x 0.2 = 40,000 km with gasoline (for long
| road trips etc).
|
| Or you can put them all into one Tesla. If it's a regular
| private car, it drives 20,000 km per year and thus we have
| 20,000 km of electric driving.
|
| So in this calculation, it would make more sense from
| environmental point of view to put the battery modules in
| hybrid cars.
|
| Now, maybe the Tesla is a Taxi and is actually driven 100,000
| km per year, then it's different.
|
| Or maybe the luxury Teslas that sit on driveways as status
| symbols are changing how people think, or are driving
| innovation and have massive leverage that way.
|
| But it's complicated.
| Retric wrote:
| Plug in batteries don't last very long because they charge
| and discharge every day. Due to this they end up either
| costing several times as much manufacturing capacity as
| you're assuming or they simply get driven as non plug in
| hybrids which makes them less efficient than EV's.
|
| Further ramping up battery production isn't any kind of long
| term barrier, so plug end hybrids just result in less
| investment in battery manufacturing and thus slower adoption
| of EV's.
| hannob wrote:
| > For most city vehicles, a PHEV will electrify the majority of
| the miles with a fraction of the battery capacity.
|
| There have been studies on how PHEVs are used in the real world
| and this is just not what's happening, see e.g.:
| https://theicct.org/publications/phev-real-world-usage-sept2...
| KptMarchewa wrote:
| On the other hand, the study proves that PHEVs with decent
| battery capacity actually do that, the average is just too
| low:
|
| >. Most PHEVs have type-approval all-electric ranges of 30-60
| km and electrify 5,000-10,000 km a year. PHEVs with high all-
| electric ranges of 80 km or more achieve 12,000-20,000 km
| mean annual electric mileages, which is comparable to the
| annual mileage of the car fleet in Germany and the United
| States.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| _> For private cars, the average utility factor (UF)--the
| portion of kilometers driven on electric motor versus
| kilometers driven on combustion engine--is 69% for NEDC type
| approval but only around 37% for real-world driving_
|
| Not a majority, but 37% of your driving on electric is a
| significant chunk. Would
|
| And to take a Prius Prime for an example, you can still have
| a very efficient vehicle when you're running in normal hybrid
| mode:
|
| _> C /D observed 75-mph highway driving (hybrid mode): 47
| mpg / 49 mpg / 47 mpg_
|
| If you're trying to make the most difference with limited
| battery production, that's 8.8 kWh of batteries for a Prius
| Prime. You can make more than 6 of them with the batteries
| that go into a single "low range" Model 3 (54 kWh).
|
| Six cars doing a bit over 1/3 of their miles in electric
| mode, or one car doing all of its miles in electric mode?
|
| That's a relatively short electric range car, if 25 miles
| isn't doing enough for most people there's probably a good
| middle ground where you use half the batteries of a long
| range EV but cover 90% of your milage in EV mode.
|
| This is of course ignoring that the Model 3 is a lot more fun
| to drive than a Prius Prime, but just to make the point about
| battery usage.
| saalweachter wrote:
| You can also fully charge a 10kWh battery overnight on a
| 120V charger.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| It was kinda my dream to have drop-in kits that would turn
| any ICE into a plug-in micro-hybrid and just run the
| electric system off extra batteries for as long as
| possible, and then kicking in the alternator once finally
| required.
|
| Could work as more and more stuff becomes electric in cars
| instead of running off accessory belt.
| afbadfatdh wrote:
| fny wrote:
| If you want to cause tremendous inflationary pain to the working
| class and rolling blackouts through an energy transition this is
| how you do it.
|
| We are not at the stage where we can bootstrap green yet. You
| still require fossil fuels to build a green economy. Sure, coal
| is bad as an energy source, but that EV you want has a ton of
| steel inside and that requires metallurgical coal. The copper
| required for a green economy needs to be mined, and the machines
| used in a mine require a portable, dense fuel source like oil.
|
| To make matters worse, energy prices feed into other areas of the
| economy. Ammonia costs have skyrocketed due to the energy issues
| and that's causing the price of wheat and corn to skyrocket.
|
| The proper policy is carbon credits and a measured transition
| unless you're ready to punish the working class and developing
| nations.
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