According to the Sydney Morning Herald it would take more than a decade to receive any benefit from driving an electric car instead of a petrol one. Up to 16 years, in fact.

EVs are more “emission-intense” to manufacture;
EVs are more expensive to manufacture;
By 2030, the average price will still be around $41,000;
The government has found that subsidising EVs, as their manufacturers and their pushers are demanding to make them “cheaper” (dearer for taxpayers who might not be able to afford one) does not represent value for money, and
the whole EV thing is a very expensive form of emission reduction.

No mention of the ridiculous claim of one major car manufacturer claiming in a TV ad that their vehicles in ‘the future’ (by 2050, like the other wild claims?) will actually improve the atmosphere as you drive them.

Unless you are a wealthy climate fanatic who believes the hype and the possible lies about what effect you can have on the world’s temperature by slinging your own money around, you should do the same thing you, hopefully, did with solar roof panels: ask how long it will take you to recover the money you outlay on an electric car before you can benefit from the touted advantages of such a vehicle, which is going to cost you a lot more than a petrol one initially.

I don't care what powers the engine so long as the car has no computers onboard and I remain its driver.

For now I must do with old cars: if and when a new car comes out that is indeed just electric rather than electronic, then I will go for it.

It takes time for all new innovations to be fully
accepted for a variety of reasons. When cars first
came - they were looked at with some apprehension.
I remember my
gran thinking radio was a miracle. My husband
saying he'd never watch television. People
not trusting plane travel, (many still don't).
and so on. But with time we all move on. Who knows
what further "miracles" await us?

I confess that I'm not too keen on "electric" cars,
yet.

Yuyutsu,

I know how you feel. I had to buy another car recently, and it has what looks like a TV screen with all sorts of unnecessary information on it. I tolerated the distraction (they should be banned as with mobile phones while driving) for a while, then switched it off for good. The only useful thing, the reversing camera, still works. and I can chose who I back over.

I can't see EV's being the big deal that is claimed. I will certainly never own one. I will be one of the 'poorer' people who won't be conned into spending money on gadgets that will make no difference whatever to the world's climate.

yep, my touchscreen radio does not work, would rather old style radios any day.

went after just three years in brand new subaru.

I would really love to know more about what happens to old batteries from these new cars, as I would old solar panels.

On average it is 85,000 Kilometers before the total emissions from manufacturing & driving a battery powered car are equaled by an ICE car. Of course that is about the time that it requires new batteries, if it is to be used for longer.

The rare earth minerals required to make those new batteries are hugely toxic in their mining & refining, so a no win situation. They are also so expensive that battery cars are likely to be scrapped because new batteries cost more than the car is worth, unlike ICE cars which can go for decades.

Incidentally General Motors have told owners to keep their Chevy Bolt at least 25 Ft from anything valuable, due to their tendency to self ignite. GM have spent over a billion dollars in recalls, trying to cure it of this habit.

Don't fall for the story that batteries will get cheaper. I use the same tech batteries in my remote control planes. Those that cost $12, 4 years ago are $25 today. Chris they are notoriously difficult & expensive to recycle, definitely not a proposition unless subsidised by the long suffering tax payer.

Yuyutsu you would like my 1980 Triumph TR7. Built from 2 wrecks that cost $1200 the pair in 2002, it has no electronics or power steering, & is a joy to drive. The only breakdown in 77,000 kilometers was the air conditioning compressor which started leaking gas. AC is an essential at my age in the Queensland summer.

The 2001 Honda S2000, & the 2002 Mazda SP20 are OK, but do suffer from ABS braking systems. Great for the incompetent driver, it does prevent the technique of flicking the car sideways & locking the brakes solid. This saved me from becoming involved in other peoples accidents in my Formula 2 Brabham, & the F 1 Brabham I drove, on a number of occasions. They do slow quicker that way, regardless of what the Physics says. I'm alive to prove it.

Hasbeen, did you see Ford v Ferrari movie? I thought it was pretty good.

Yes, cost and disposal of batteries needs to be discussed much more

Chris I believe that, if we are still allowed private ownership of transport, ultimately it will be the full circle, & back to steam power. The steam will be generated by a chip of nuclear material, installed for the life of the vehicle on the assembly line.

We had a big kerfuffle last night on the news about a big hydrogen plant to be established near Gladstone. They did not fully disclose the means of generating the hydrogen, but it is just another way of milking the taxpayer of subsidies, which ever way is used. It is not economically viable, & is no more ecologically helpful than plant based ethanol.

Any current technology using electricity to generate this problem material has a net loss of near or above 50% loss on the energy input to the energy contained in the hydrogen produced. The losses in converting electricity to hydrogen, then the hydrogen back to electricity are huge. It makes more sense to use the electricity to power the cars, but not as much sense as to use petroleum. Using the steam conversion of natural gas method produces even more CO2 than simply burning the gas in an engine.

It doesn't take all that much math to be able to see that CO2 can not do what the warmists claim it does, so we must have millions who know it can't happen. I wonder why they go along with the scam?

Hydrogen will never be a source of energy. Unlike coal, oil or natural gas, hydrogen rarely occurs naturally – it must be manufactured, and that process consumes far more energy than the hydrogen fuel can recover. It's also dangerous; and environmentally unsound: for every ton of hydrogen generated 9 tons of fresh water would be removed from the area.

Also hydrogen cars cannot be parked in underground car parks.
My son's father in law in the UK managed a factory building busses.
They started building hydrogen buses and had to rebuild the roof of the factory.
Gave that business away, the fuel cell lifetime was too short.

However that was an aside, four years ago at the AGM of Royal Dutch Shell the CEO
announced the company had formed a development group to study how the
company is to exit the oil industry !
A google search revealed a number of steps have been made on that path.
British Petroleum have aslo made similar moves.
Their stated reason is that it has become do difficult to finance
exploration and development of new oil fields. It just wasn't worth it.

Then perhaps, no coincidence, a couple of years later all the motor
companies started announcing their electric car plans.
Do you think someone had a word in their ears ?

A lot of people are using ex EV batteries as home batteries with their
solar cells for off grid systems as they still have a lot of useful life left.

There is no way of turning every vehicle in the World to other than fossil fuel. Life itself is dependent on carbon, its consumption and discharge. Take India with a population of 1,390,537,387 people, to put everyone of them on electric bikes, will reduce their standard of living.

Joesphus, they are all on bikes now so do they reduce their standards?
With low cost bikes I don't think it would make much difference either way.
There are companies already recycling batteries and in the future I
would expect it to become more productive. There will be no progress
in Australia on that business as it is too small at present.

It is said that EVs will become same as ICs by 2025 but---.
The cheapest at present is the MG at $42,000. It is Chinese made as
they bought the company.

Here was a laugh, California is banning petrol lawn mowers, edge cutters,
whipper snippers etc etc.

Only 30 out of every 1,000 Indians own a car. I don't think EVs will be high on the list of India's too-solve projects.

No more gas BBQ, gas cooking at home and in resturants, so it is going to take a little longer to get your meal, and food producers using gas to cook will have to renew their ovens. The raw products that currently drive Australia and keep us in the black will give way to expensive manufacturing that has to be continually subdised by the tax payer, or in the case of solar owned and replaced by the taxpayer. I have friends who put in solar about 10 years ago, and they are replacing the panels already

An engineering company in the US assessed the maintenance requirements
if the US went 100% renewables.
They would need teams of people to change 100,000 solar panels each
and every day based on mtbf of solar cells.
Wind turbines were not mentioned.
The maintenance requirements are never spoken about when people are
telling us how cheap are renewables.
With wind turbines spread all around Australia how mant teams of
maintenance people and their trucks would be needed.
They would have to be based everywhere, Broome, Cape York, Pt Stanley
everywhere except Manly. There would be literally hundreds of them.

Bazz said- They would need teams of people to change 100,000 solar panels each and every day based on mtbf of solar cells.

Answer-

As Professor Greene says "Post Grads need something to do".

Terapinn recently held the MOVE Asia 2021 virtual conference, and I got a free ticket - so I can tell you that in many Asian countries, including India, EVs are more popular than they are here. But it's mostly motorcycles rather than cars. And rather than having huge batteries and fast charging infrastructure, if the battery's running low they just go to a service station and swap it for a fully charged one.

________________________________________________________________________________

Bazz, your figure sounds rather high. Do you have a link?

It was actually a simple calculation;
Amount of solar power needed for US divided by amount of power
expected per panel equals number of panels.
Divide number of panels by mtbf and that tells you how many you will
have to change every day.
As Aus is about 1/10 of US demand so 10,000 panels a day would need to
be replaced by that calculation. It would be roughly in that range, a
big number no natter what.
I wonder how they survive hail storms ?
Perhaps someone already has such figures stored away.
Whoops mtbf = Mean Time Between Faults

Bazz that is a big bitch around here.

We have 139 new McMansions built on from 4000SqM to 7 acre blocks between us & the main road in the last 5 years. Most have solar panels, & most are bitching about hail damage, & tree branch damage, from flying branches in the occasional gale.

The last big one dropped 7 large trees across our road. It took over a dozen of us with 10 chain saws & a few 4WD utes with winches, 2.5 hours to clear them enough off just 2 kilometers so people could get cars through to their homes. An estimate was 15% of solar panels went that night.

Many of these people are tree change folk, although as many simply wanted living & breathing denied in ever growing cities. Most had left too many trees, & large numbers of then disappeared into the back of chipping trucks over the next few months. It helped, but there were still a number of tarped roofs after the next one.

Another big bitch was they could not use undamaged panels when the power was out for up to 5 days, they were useless. We had a couple of neighbors bring fridges & freezers to our place so we could run them off my 10KVA diesel gen set. We loaned the little 3KVA to another. We always have 200 liters of diesel in storage in spring to cover running the gen set when required. There are a lot of 5KVA gen sets in the area today, but I don't see many converting to electric cars around here.

No as I said a year or so ago, I did not save it and I could never
find the site again. Seems very likely +- 30% considering the millions
of solar panels needed to keep the US going on a sunny still day.

Up to 16 years, in fact.
ttbn,
Well, at least that'd bring us to 2037 well ahead of 2050.

I don't care what powers the engine so long as the car has no computers onboard and I remain its driver.
Yuyutsu,
Well said !

Bazz, replacing 10,000 a day on average in Australia wouldn't be that big a deal. Let's say that one person could comfortably replace 25 panels a day (Note: this is just replacing panels not installing the whole system. I expect that a replacement typically doesn't require re-installing support brackets/rails nor mounting the converter and wiring it into the house mains switch-board. These tasks have already been done). So that works out at 400 people/day, which allowing for the weekends and holidays is about 600 employees directly involved with replacement. So let's say 1000 people for the installation businesses, when allowing for sales people, office staff, bosses, etc.. And let's play it safe and quadruple it to 4000 people all up- this gives us a large error margin for the above guess and also allows for the people involved with the supply to the installation businesses, eg: import, delivery, warehousing, sales, office, etc.

Now, compare that to the number of people employed by the coal mining industry, which this webpage: http://www.statista.com/statistics/692159/australia-employment-in-coal-mining-industry/ puts at approx 40,000. An order of magnitude more people.

By-the-way: I'm not an environmentalist, nor do I really care much about the current global warming scare campaign. What I'm interested in is making money from investing. And anyone who bothers to look can see that transportation is going to undergo massive change over the next decade and primarily not because of Government policy but because of technology improvements and economics. Very soon, electric cars will dominate new sales simply because of economics- it will be cheaper for the general public to own an EV over the life of the car within years (especially if you already generate excess electricity from home solar).

Thinkabit, the situation may be better than you considered.
You were using home installations, whereas I was talking of solar farms in country areas.
There would be perhaps hundreds of panels on a site.
The work would be in many cases in remote areas requiring much
travel and staying away from home for numerous days.
Ultimately the sites will be spread along the most advantage latitude
to take advantage of time difference across the country.
The more spread out the higher the maintenance costs.
Having once been involved in a similar arrangement I know how costs escalate.

So much for Fossil fuel and electric cars.
http://www.advanceaustralia.org.au/un_climate_conference_buys_oil_generators_to_power_their_electric_cars?fbclid=IwAR35uv4BTCQf3UPDpnYFsy9w55_0SkYcl_-0N0d9R_eK6jam1QPqAuXRKaQ

Josephus,

A good link, which we both know will be ignored.

At least the coal etc., will still be there for future generations.

Hasbeen

Have a look at thedriven-io.cdn.ampproject.org.

You can get your TR7 converted to electric.

In the meantime, the same rag (SMH) that vowed that it would take up to 16 years to crack even on an EV, has now produced a woman who says she did it with her Leaf in 12 months.

There is no doubt that climate/renewables propaganda is meant to bamboozle us.

ttbn I would drive the TR7 & the TR8 off a cliff before I would let them be converted to battery electric propulsion.

There has been a lot of talk on the hydrogen energy system.
I have had negative feelings it about because I have memories of
reading articles about the conversion losses.
From memory there is basic loss in converting energy from one form to
another, eg electricity to hydrogen and oxygen.
I did a search for an explanation but could not find a simple example.
I had an idea the loss is greater than 50%, ie the energy in
the hydrogen is less than 50% of the input to the electrolyser.
My understanding is that when losses in the fuel cell are added in
it means that hydrogen is a dud for electrical generation and that
batteries are a better solution.
For vehicles the grid is a more efficient source and batteries the
the better storage device.

So have I got it right ? Hydrogen starts with a major loss in
efficiency that can never be overcome because of fundamental physics.

I see trains in the future going to magnetic tube to reach high speed but cars will be slowed down because of the energy to drive an electric motor. Heavy machinery will go to hydrogen, but it will be expensive and prone to explosion.

Hasbeen

I'm sure you would, and rightly so. My message was to highlight how even people claiming to be purists are throwing in the towel. They have no souls. The future is looking increasingly shallow and meaningless.

Josephus; one of the current crop of billionaires had proposed just
your suggestion. It was to first to be installed between Los Angeles
and San Francisco. All quite practical but financially ?
Such techniques on a smaller scale were used for donkeys moving
telegrams around Sydney. The carrier is sent along by air pressure
so the speed might be limited to the speed of sound.
Nothing heard for a long time, probably dies on the vine.

For a moment there Bazz I thought you were talking about the pneumatic system used in department stores of old, for sending the sales docket & money from each point of sale to a central cashier to make change & send it back. A great system, but probably not very efficient.

Yes Hasbeen, I was talking about that system.
The Post Office had such a system, it ran from the Sydney GPO where
the telegrams arrived typed up by the operators sorted into the post
offices on the system.
It ran from the GPO to Haymarket PO and also to Kings Cross PO.
It may have gone elsewhere also. The pipes ran under George St through
the cable ducts which were standup and walk height.

Magnetic fields are used on Aircraft carriers to launch planes at high speed, more effective and faster than pure jet power. Sinilar with launching projectiles from large guns, much more powerful than explosives. and have no residue, or smoke.

Josephus said- "Magnetic fields are used on Aircraft carriers to launch planes at high speed, more effective and faster than pure jet power. Similar with launching projectiles from large guns, much more powerful than explosives. and have no residue, or smoke."

Answer- Coil or rail gun technology requiring huge capacitor banks to drive them- probably due to the relatively short barrel- web videos explain similar builds. A transport system using this technology would probably be designed differently. It's often interesting to see people without any engineering knowledge- and no inclination to learn- trying to solve engineering problems- Hawking talked about the guy up the back of the theatre claiming that the world sat on the back of a turtle- Movie Idiocracy talked about pouring water on a nuclear reactor. This technology is like prohibitively expensive maglev- eg. Transrapid- nations have maglev to promote national prestige. Generally rolling friction is low so these technologies are unnecessary. Nicola Tesla transmitted power over distance- other ways of transmitting power over distance is by laser or microwave- and potentially power electric motors in cars- would require large changes to roads- and would limit cars to certain roads. It's possible that over a fifty year period that small scale systems could be developed. Sub-orbital gliding missiles could be used for mass air transportation systems over long distances but the acceleration perhaps wouldn't be ideal. Elon Musk's tube based system which has been around in various forms for about 150 years- though a few of the features of his system are novel. He envisaged an electric skate board system which hasn't materialised at this point.

Many people have chased the holy grail of mass transport some with more success than others- the British and French rail systems were successes- Henry Ford- others less so.

These successes relied on the carbon economy- wood and steam engines/ oil and ICE engines. We really haven't come up with a better way to store energy than carbon.

There are too many people in the world.

Josephus, I think the nonsense in Glasgow is because they have brought
in a flock of electric range rovers etc so there is not enough public
chargers installed because they are not needed normally.
Most EV owners charge at home and have freed themselves of the pain of
having to get to a service station at inconvenient times.
The other reason for the generators might be to keep the lights on in
the meeting halls etc.
How embarrassing would it be if the wind failed again during the
conference ! You would hear the laughter in Glasgow all the way from Sydney !

LOOK ! to make it clear, electric cars are not about global warming
or being green or any of that nonsense.
It is a better technology and petroleum has run into the cost problem
of producing it in the quantities needed.
It started back in December 2005 when peak crude oil occurred.
It has been hand to mouth ever since by topping up with fracked oil
and cars with lower consumption.
It cannot go on forever and the oil companies know it. That is why
they are investing in other forms of energy.
Royal Dutch Shell CEO made it clear to his shareholders.

The problem with that Bazz is that while it stays a boutique industry it may work, but the only way we can possibly generate enough power to charge even 10% of cars if they go battery electric is to use Coal, gas or Nuclear.

You are going to have a pretty big chore getting either up & running against the ratbag green oposition.

Don't think so Hasbeen.
Visualise it; Kids rush in from school, hungry, hot and want the telly on.
Mum, or perhaps Dad is starting the evening meal prep.
Something on the stove bubbling away. The power goes off as Dad plugs
his car in. The last one home in the street.
Because it has been an overcast day, and no wind for a few days,
the fancy battery backup wasn,t in the race, the kids go beserk and
Mum screams at the kids and Dad and wants nuclear power by tomorrow
so to speak.
In a nutshell that is what will happen.
I believe there are 20 million cars in Australia, about 1/3rd will be
plugged in each night.
Guessing a bit, about 5Kwhrs over 10 hours for say 6.6 Mill cars
is something like 30Megawatt demand over whole country.
However there are a lot of cars like mine that do not move for a
couple of days at a time and can be charged during the day anyway.
Norway must have some figures on that.

It is not just cars that use rechargable batteries, all independant vehicles use batteries, fork lifts, Mopeds, lawn mowers, power tools the list is endless.

Woops, think I dropped some bits there, I think it is 30Gwatt.
Seems more reasonable. Still spread over the states a few power stations
could eat that for breakfast.

Josephus, all the things you mention are just p%$%^dling load compared
to cars. As the change to EVs takes off the governments will have no
problem getting Nuclear or coal powered stations built.
Already by that time it will be obvious that
"When the Wind Doesn't Blow----"
Something else will be installed. Even now over 50% want nuclear.

No one wants to go back to freezing in the dark. (like Europe).

Yawn.

A few facts for the fact free zone perhaps.

"So on the basis of recent studies, fossil-fuelled cars generally emit more than electric cars in all phases of a life cycle. The total life cycle emissions from a fossil-fuelled car and an electric car in Australia were 333g of CO2; per km and 273g of CO2; per km, respectively. That is, using average grid electricity, EVs come out about 18% better in terms of their carbon footprint.

Likewise, electric cars in New Zealand work out a lot better than fossil-fuelled cars in terms of emissions, with life-cycle emissions at about 333 g of CO2; per km for fossil-fuelled cars and 128g of CO2; per km for electric cars. In New Zealand, EVs perform about 62% better than fossil cars in carbon footprint terms."
http://theconversation.com/climate-explained-the-environmental-footprint-of-electric-versus-fossil-cars-124762

So the higher the renewable energy generation in a country the greater the benefit of electric vehicles.

No brainer really, except for the brainless that is.

What have electric cars got to do with reducing co2 generation ?

Has been,
Just as a point of interest the pneumatic systems in Sydney used mostly double rotor car superchargers as air pumps, I forget which breed.

The conversation, come on SR.