[HN Gopher] You're Being Lied to About Electric Cars
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You're Being Lied to About Electric Cars
Author : doener
Score : 11 points
Date : 2022-12-11 21:16 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.motortrend.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.motortrend.com)
| cable2600 wrote:
| I heard that California's electric grid could not handle charging
| them all at once. They had to say don't charge your EV. It takes
| a lot of lithium to make batteries for the EVs. Which ruins the
| environment. Might as well drive a gas powered car until they can
| fix the problems with EVs.
| eesmith wrote:
| From the first paragraph of the article:
|
| > You've probably heard it all, too: A Prius is worse for the
| planet than a Hummer. EVs are coal-powered cars. Electric cars
| produce more CO2 than internal combustion engine (ICE)
| vehicles. Lithium mining is uniquely bad for the environment.
| Cobalt mining relies largely on slave labor, if not child slave
| labor. Actually, that last part is sadly true. But the rest?
| Lies.
|
| Later:
|
| > Sure, more EVs will mean more batteries, but unlike gasoline,
| which always has to be burned, battery production can become
| (and is becoming) greener. Another way to look at it is the
| energy required to produce an average EV's battery is
| equivalent to about 74 gallons of gas.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Was that intended as irony? Those are exactly the kind of
| arguments the article is debunking - so I think we'd at least
| need to see references...
|
| Clearly the grid in Cali couldn't handle charging all the EVs
| if every ICE vehicle on the road today was magically replaced
| with an EV, but that will take decades to happen, during which
| the grid will be built up.
| jleyank wrote:
| But who will pay for the upgrade in today's economic climate?
| Do politicians have the will or even the interest to put
| their seat on the line?
| ehutch79 wrote:
| How does this have anything to do with politicians? The
| grid is run by private companies. If there's profit, it
| will happen.
| lttlrck wrote:
| You have too much faith in PG&E and SDGE. They have,
| through politics, gained long term contracts, increased
| prices, plenty of profit yet maintenance is still poor
| and flex alerts are frequent. And are squeezing the
| benefit of solar to customers that bear to cost to
| benefit themselves.
| phs318u wrote:
| You(we) are already paying right now by delaying, deferring
| and not acting. We are all paying in terms of environmental
| climate and all the consequences of that, to the
| environment, human health and yes, the economy too.
| melling wrote:
| I heard that all you have to do is skip the facts and offer
| innuendo on the Internet.
|
| What happens when everyone pulls into a gas station "all at
| once?"
| jleyank wrote:
| Hey, google before commenting:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/01/us/california-heat-
| wave-f...
|
| Throwing a load on a system at max is a bad thing.
| Switzerland is trying to make preparations:
| https://www.electrive.com/2022/12/02/switzerland-rumoured-
| to.... There's only so much power out there right now and
| it's often "elsewhere" than the major population centres (or
| mountain fastnesses).
| Retric wrote:
| It's way overblown as air conditioning was a larger issue
| for the electric grid than EV's will be. Average demand for
| an 15k mile per year EV is only 430 watts, and people don't
| all fast charge them at the same instant. Generally people
| charge when costs are low because demand is low to save
| money.
|
| Meanwhile everyone's AC is going full blast at noon on a
| hot summer day.
| jleyank wrote:
| There's a units problem, as googling this finds :
| Generally, electric cars charged at home use about 7,200
| watts (W) of electricity, which can vary depending on the
| mode and home charger. Most electric car chargers use
| between 32 and 40 amps, and connect to a 240 volt outlet
| in your home's breaker box.
|
| A microwave takes 1000+ watts.
| black_13 wrote:
| originalvichy wrote:
| It's worth reiterating the author's short point about the future
| of EVs. ICE vehicles have been refined for decades now and no
| technological leap has been found that increases their
| efficiency. EVs have a greater amount of foreseeable improvements
| from improvements in battery tech to improvements in the
| recycling and reusing of the batteries.
|
| It is a worthy investment to steer more money to EV production
| due to the simple fact that the stagnating effect innovation was
| not gonna go away. We should save petrochemicals for actual long
| term usage or actual critical uses like air travel.
|
| It would be absolutely devastating for our future development if
| a major chunk of our fossil fuels was quite literally wasted on
| routine traffic when we could be using it to create novel
| materials out of it in 200 years' time.
| labrador wrote:
| Modern gas powered auto engines are a marvel of engineering, so I
| can understand why some enthusiasts are sad they are going the
| way of the Dodo bird. Skilled workers to design and build gas
| engines will eventually be hard to find. But cheer up, there's a
| lot of opportunity for them to build rocket engines.
|
| 10 Greatest Car Engines Currently In Production
|
| https://www.hotcars.com/best-car-greatest-engines-in-product...
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I don't like these comparisons because they're super reductionist
| about what "The Environment" is supposed to be. Apparently the
| only form of pollution is CO2. There are lots of types of
| pollution and secondary effects from manufacturing that are worse
| than CO2.
|
| Industrial mining activities leach chemicals into the soil, cause
| lead and mercury contamination, groundwater contamination,
| habitat destruction, and so on. Using dirty coal plants to power
| assembly lines puts smog into the air, ruining people's quality
| of life, causes lung cancer and birth defects. The list of
| secondary effects is a mile long. On the other hand, driving a
| used car might produce more CO2 (Which the author is alluding to
| as being dirtier after X years of ownership) but has none of
| these secondary effects.
| jleyank wrote:
| Couple of things have to be solved for EV's: battery recycling,
| power transmission and power generation infrastructure. There's
| only so much of the funky metals in batteries and we can't just
| use it once. Switching from chemical to electrical energy will
| take a significant investment that the nimby's and the
| conservatives have to permit. And we need more amps without
| burning carbon.
|
| There has to be some help transitioning "everybody" from ice to
| Ev. That's way easier than pulling and making the power. But
| this, too, must be paid. I hope the political will is there.
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