Electric cars are a pipe dream

[Skeptical]

On energy useage (and after a bit of googling).

The total amount of energy from sunlight striking the Earth is more than 100 petawatts. 100,000,000,000,000,000 watts.

In 2008, the total amount of energy used by humankind was 15 terawatts. 15,000,000,000,000 watts.

So sunlight alone contains nearly 7,000 times as much energy as humans use.

That does not take into account other sources of energy. Nuclear fission, fossil fuels, nuclear fusion, geothermal, and even extending sunlight energy by putting giant solar cells into orbit.

The world's oceans contain enough deuterium, that if we had energy from fusion of deuterium, it would last over a billion years at current rate of use.

The problem is not lack of energy. It is developing the technology to use it. And we are doing it. Every decade that passes, we have access to more energy than we had the decade before.

For example : Uranium today can be extracted from ores that contain 80 parts per million or more of the metal. However, with improving technology, we can extract it from poorer and poorer ores. It is worth noting that a lot of granite contains 20 ppm Uranium. Granite is the most common rock on planet Earth (it underlies all continents). The total amount of rock with 20 ppm Uranium is virtually astronomical. Nuclear fusion energy from Uranium extracted from granite would last humankind for thousands of years.

So instead of moaning about lack of energy, we should be supporting those who develop the new, and extremely abundent sources that are waiting for us.

 

[X-Man2]

On energy useage (and after a bit of googling).

The total amount of energy from sunlight striking the Earth is more than 100 petawatts. 100,000,000,000,000,000 watts.

In 2008, the total amount of energy used by humankind was 15 terawatts. 15,000,000,000,000 watts.

So sunlight alone contains nearly 7,000 times as much energy as humans use.

That does not take into account other sources of energy. Nuclear fission, fossil fuels, nuclear fusion, geothermal, and even extending sunlight energy by putting giant solar cells into orbit.

The world's oceans contain enough deuterium, that if we had energy from fusion of deuterium, it would last over a billion years at current rate of use.

The problem is not lack of energy. It is developing the technology to use it. And we are doing it. Every decade that passes, we have access to more energy than we had the decade before.

For example : Uranium today can be extracted from ores that contain 80 parts per million or more of the metal. However, with improving technology, we can extract it from poorer and poorer ores. It is worth noting that a lot of granite contains 20 ppm Uranium. Granite is the most common rock on planet Earth (it underlies all continents). The total amount of rock with 20 ppm Uranium is virtually astronomical. Nuclear fusion energy from Uranium extracted from granite would last humankind for thousands of years.

So instead of moaning about lack of energy, we should be supporting those who develop the new, and extremely abundent sources that are waiting for us.

#1 Wow somebody who understands.This is exactly my thinking too.Also we are still in the infancy of this great change and of course it will take longer than is necessary due to many fighting it.It really is just a matter of technology and will power to change over.THE ENERGY IS ALREADY HERE! Happily though as a whole momentum is building a little quicker and quicker with each passing day.Hold on it's going to be a wild ride.

 

[Billy T]

On energy useage (and after a bit of googling).

The total amount of energy from sunlight striking the Earth is more than 100 petawatts. 100,000,000,000,000,000 watts.

In 2008, the total amount of energy used by humankind was 15 terawatts. 15,000,000,000,000 watts.

So sunlight alone contains nearly 7,000 times as much energy as humans use. ...

You have some error here. Sunlight striking the earth is measured in watts, but that is a unit of power, not energy. It could be that the peak power ever used on earth was 15 terawatts but that is not man's daily or annual energy use so your sunlght has "7000 times as much energy as humans use" is not correct. You are dividing apples by oranges and getting nonsense.

I am too lazy to google the numbers and do it correctly and also quite sure that each day the sun delivers to Earth much more than 7000 times as much energy as man uses on that day.

 

[Billy T]

BillyT, It's possible. I don't think we can make or create too many answers for the future generations.

Well we don't really have a choice but to take the best ball we have got and run with it now because it will take at least three decades to change out/ replace the oil energy system. If we don't start to change now and oil becomes $80 a gallon, not per barrel, then the modern world collapses and most people die.

For example, there was a study of the cost of an Idaho potato eaten in NYC some decades ago when oil was cheap compared to today. More than 80% of its cost was traced back to oil cost. Fertilizer, pesticide and transport being the major components. Probably today one could say an Idaho potato in NYC is 98% made of oil. Thus it is not an exaggeration, to say than most people will die if current oil energy discovery rates (and their costs) and energy use trends continue for three decades.

Also note that China, not the US, has the money to buy what oil is for sale and has already locked some up in long term contracts. For example a few years ago China lent Petrobras 10 billion dollars and will get oil, not money, as pay back at rate of 200,000 barrels per day for 20 years, as I recall. Many much larger oil delivery repayment contracts exist between China and some other countries, especially Venezuela.

India will be larger than China in population then and many will be driving the cheap Tata motors Nano. - Probably about the current US demand for liquid fuel, but they should mainly be using sugar cane alcohol as Brazil does. Some countries, not able to grow their own sugar cane, can see already what is coming and are now changing to adapt, but not the US. Japan has bought some part ownership in Brazilian alcohol plants. For example, San Martinho's largest and newest plant is half owned by Japan.

What they will have available to them both technologically and what resources remain etc are not known to us at least on a specifics.

That is true but irrelevant - what they will lack is time to make the conversion when oil prices are climbing a few percent each month.

But the example you gave might certainly become a reality to future generations.

Not if we don't seriously start now.

I do disagree on the electric car part. ...
The issue is the car and what power source for the electricity. ...
it's really about the battery and charge times.

Correct it MAY be possible to make mass produced electric cars to displace the IC engine in a couple of decades, but that is not certain and I doubt it (for reasons about the economics of light weight batteries and electric motors as well as just the inertia in any dominate energy system like oil.)

We are sure alcohol can work as our new, post-oil, energy (and plastics) system and for cars that is still an IC engine with only a couple hundred dollars and a day of car out of service as the conversion cost. Or less than 1% of the cost of converting to electric car system - even much less than just the cost of installation of charging station in numbers comparable to current gas stations... Many more will be needed as gasoline refill of tank takes only a couple of minutes, not a couple of hours.

So what you are doing with gas/alcohol powered cars is adding more consumption into the mix just to get it to it's destination. It's a much more power intensive proposition. Not to mention shipping the crap all over the place. So the only way that you remove that is to have local production only to eliminate the additional drain.

It all comes down to what is cheapest. Ocean shipping is extremely cheap via large tankers so even a 4% advantage of alcohol fuel production cost in the Southern Hemisphere is the cheaper system of liquid fuel for the Northern Hemisphere.

Alcohol, instead of gasoline, is slightly more powerful in any modern engine, especially the higher compression ones as it has a higher octane rating; however you can only go about 70% as far on a tank full. As far as efficiency is concerned, they are essentially the same. Your "power intensive consumption" is confused terminology, like I pointed out to skeptical in my just made post (his mixing watt with energy). You can apply power or consume energy. "power consumption" could be measured (and is with some rate of energy use electric meters but not the common ones that just measure energy consumption in kWh.) or for a car "power production" or peak capacity is meaning full but not "power consumption."

We cannot know what the future holds when it comes to technological breakthroughs but I am very hopefull that we will find them for the electric powered cars.

Yes, in charging rates, quite possibly but not in specific energy density. - That is limited by fundamentals of chemical atomic reaction energies and the mass of atoms, neither of which man can change. Man will never make much more than a 10% improvement in energy density over current Li-ion batteries and what he does make will mainly be by reducing the weight of the packaging.

What is the efficiency improvement expectations for a gas/alcohol powered ICE in the next 30 years? Apply the same question to electrics.

Not much in either case.

On the IC as it has been refined for more than 100 years and they are not far from perfect for an open cycle engine (one that throw out hot exhaust) A Carnot engine could be a little more efficient but would weigh several times more for the same power capacity in part because it doesn't just dump the waste heat but has a massive "recuperator" not need in the IC.

On the electric car not much as they are quite efficient now in the use of electrical energy. Making the motors with twice the copper wire size might gain you 2 or even 3% efficient improvement but is not worth it in initial cost or increased car weight.

There is room for doubling the sugar cane efficiency however. Some as is being done now via genetics to increase the sugar content and a huge step forward if the crushed cane which is already at the distillation plant can be converted into "cellulosic alcohol" also - if it can it will be the cheapest "cellulosic alcohol" as cost of collecting it in the field and transport to the alcohol plant is zero, not the major cost of most other "cellulosic alcohol" proposals such as growing switch grass etc.

 

[Skeptical]

Billy

I admit to making a slight boo boo.

I should have used the word 'power' not energy.

Perhaps I should have said that in one year the sun delivers more than 100 petawatt years of energy, and humans use only 15 terawatt years of energy.

Either way, it does not change my point.

 

[jimW]

Yes 20 or 30 years for a complete changeout, but what about little changes each year, I see very few lately,,approx 20 million barrells a day oil for USA, so approx 200 ships per day of oil,, um thats a lot of ships..where do they unload them all? what if one or 2 got blew up or highjacked on the ocean? Notice Arnie calling washington a bunch of wimps (Treehugger.com) today cause they wont stand up to big oil and allow or help new technology. We tried to order a GreenGas.cc machine to make our own green fuel. They cant build them till the company is financed. Wonder if big oil holds government back on purpose? Status quo, 2000 big oil lobbyists, Status,Quo?

 

[adoucette]

So sunlight alone contains nearly 7,000 times as much energy as humans use.

Total solar energy vs how much man uses is interesting but not very useful.

Total solar energy is drastically above potential solar energy as to be not worth discussing, and indeed, a huge proportion of that total solar energy is being used by us indirectly in the form of vegatation, O2 creation etc. We can't pave our cropland and forests with solar panels, nor is the ocean's surface a suitable surface area for solar installations.

The calculations of potential solar energy are actually fairly complex and anyone who does them with a sound basis in reality will conclude that only a tiny percent of the world's land surface is both available and suitable for generation of solar energy.

BUT

That tiny percent is also enough to satisfy all of our current Electrical energy needs and then some, but that's a big caveat because our energy needs are only about half satisfied by electricity and so at present, if we were to embark on a huge increase in solar energy what we would be displacing would be mainly coal and secondarily natural gas and almost no significant quanity of oil at all.


This paper, from 2002, about available solar power for the Western half of the US is very well done and uses conservative, but reasonable assumptions of the land that could actually be used to exploit solar power. See Solar Energy Potential pg 47 for details.

http://www.nrel.gov/csp/pdfs/32160.pdf

Western solar resources are enormous. According to our analysis, 1,051,466 GWh could be generated by premium solar resources alone and would be commensurate with total western energy demand of 1,092,160 GWh (see Exhibit 24). Premium solar resource areas have the potential of over 480,000 MW of power, yet would occupy only about 0.2 % of western lands.

That would require about 2.4 million acres of land, or roughly 60 sq miles.

Arthur

 

[Dredd]

We once had a fairly vast electric car system in the United States, in the form of public electric train systems of transportation.

These were destroyed by the enemy of public freedom by those having an interest in the oil addiction we still suffer from. :bawl:

 

[Dredd]

That would require about 2.4 million acres of land, or roughly 60 sq miles.

Arthur

Arthur,

Concentrated Solar Power techniques (e.g. solar thermal) use orders of magnitude less land and are more efficient than photovoltaic techniques.

The greatest enemy of electric transportation is propaganda, not technology.

 

[adoucette]

Arthur,

Concentrated Solar Power techniques (e.g. solar thermal) use orders of magnitude less land and are more efficient than photovoltaic techniques.

Read the paper, it didn't suggest PV.

flat panel PV is not the way solar energy will be harnessed in the near term for largescale power generation. While it is the most visible of all solar technologies and for that reason attracts the attention and support of the public and policy makers, concentrating solar power (CSP) is positioned to be the true leader in solar power generation technology today.

And it is silly to think the oil companies had anything at all to do with surpressing electrical cars. Use of oil based fuel was driven by the fact that it was far superior to electricity, as it remains so today. That's likely to SLOWLY change going forward as oil fuel prices continue to climb and electrical propulsion technology slowly comes down in price. But this change won't have anything to do with what the oil companies want or don't want.

Arthur

 

[Billy T]

{post 666 in part}... We tried to order a GreenGas.cc machine to make our own green fuel. They cant build them till the company is financed. ...

Assuming you are not just the banded commercial spammer Mr Greeen, reborn who also directed us to his web site and suggested they need funds (perhaps a $100 contribution) to help convert US to self produced ammonia fuel, please tell me what you know about how that machine can make NH3. Or were you willing to "buy a pig in a poke" not having any idea as to how it was supposed to work? It can't except as explained below.)

I explained why making ammonia in small scale is not economical, is dangerous and illegal do without many governmental permits due to the hazards associate with the high temperature and pressure process and the very toxic nature of NH3 here: http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2635199&postcount=573 where you can read the basic chemical formation requirements:
In 1909 Fritz Haber established the conditions under which nitrogen, N2(g), and hydrogen, H2(g), would combine using

medium temperature (~500 C)
very high pressure (~250 atmospheres, ~25,500kPa)
a catalyst (a porous iron catalyst prepared by reducing magnetite, Fe3O4).
Osmium is a much better catalyst for the reaction but is very expensive.

This process produces an ammonia, NH3(g), yield of approximately 10-20%.

Also explained and given there graphically are the FUNDAMENTAL LAWS for this chemical reaction, which GreenNH3.com = GreenGas.cc can not change:

If you are not part of this scam to collect funds from well meaning, but ignorant people, read here: http://www.ausetute.com.au/haberpro.html
before you send them any money.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

We once had a fairly vast electric car system in the United States, in the form of public electric train systems of transportation. These were destroyed by the enemy of public freedom by those having an interest in the oil addiction we still suffer from.

That's just a tiny bit dramatized, politicized and oversimplified. After WWII there was an unpredicted burst of prosperity. Prosperous people wanted to move out of urban areas into single-family homes with lawns and trees and picture windows to see them from, as well as dogs, swings and slides (not to mention individual bedrooms) for the millions of Baby Boomers they were giving birth to. This mass migration to housing tracts in the "suburbs" destroyed the nice geometric network of commuting routes that were so neatly and economically served by rail lines.

In the past few decades there has been a resurgence of interest in mass transit and cities like Washington and Atlanta have built modestly successful systems, but they require massive government subsidization and have hardly made a noticeable improvement in highway traffic flow. Washington's Metro is, quite literally, on the verge of collapse. Poorly-maintained escalators in the stations have become arguably more dangerous than runaway trains. (See local rapper Remy Munasifi's clever YouTube video "Metro Rap.")

The only answer to America's transportation problem has nothing to do with electric cars and everything to do with a completely different technology: the internet. Here in the Washington metropolitan area, although obviously an extreme case because we're all only two degrees of separation from an information-intensive government office, the vast majority of workers spend their entire day talking on the telephone and huddling over their computer keyboards--two devices which every one of us has at home. Our managers cry, "But we have to have meetings," without acknowledging that most meetings are a complete waste of time whose only purpose is to justify their existence, and also that today's pass-the-mouse virtual-meeting software really works. Especially if you use the money you don't spend on office space to buy everybody a webcam so you regain the communication bandwidth of facial expressions and body language.

The root of the problem is that today's managers are so narrowly trained that they have no idea how to manage people they can't physically spy on--so they've trained two generations of Americans to be real experts at "looking busy."

"Going to work" has become an end in itself, with almost zero correlation to productivity or contribution to the economy. People are paid for the number of hours they sit at their desks, not by the amount and quality of their work.

One could almost yearn for the day when transportation of any sort will be so expensive and impractical that America will be forced to devise an alternative that has nothing to do with clever new kinds of motors.

 

[Billy T]

As I agree with you completely. I liked your entire post but this gem is the high point

... The root of the problem is that today's managers are so narrowly trained that they have no idea how to manage people they can't physically spy on--so they've trained two generations of Americans to be real experts at "looking busy." ...

I think the only thing to be said for the current system is that working from home makes "office romances" hard to achieve and they were fun. Perhaps once a month everyone could meet at a bar and get drunk together to see who went home with whom.

 

[kriminal99]

From a theoretical perspective, cost goes down with established designs, factories etc. Building them is not especially hard compared to combustion cars.

Range - we could eventually have powered roads. It's an option. Nuclear plants could provide the necessary power.

 

[ElectricFetus]

Powered roads is an intriguing idea, though I would not want to run power lines in the roads, but consider the radical idea of solar panels embedded in highways. There is 94,000 km^2 of Highways area in the USA assuming a very low average of just 10w or 32kwh of power per m^2, the highways would produce 3384 Twh or ~85% of the USA electricity production!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiZ5bSntwhM

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

. . . . I think the only thing to be said for the current system is that working from home makes "office romances" hard to achieve and they were fun. Perhaps once a month everyone could meet at a bar and get drunk together to see who went home with whom.

There's nothing wrong with holding a monthly meeting in a conference center, and bars spring up around those places like raccoons around a compost heap. Despite my enthusiastic adaptation to (and career in) the Information Age, I grew up when there were only a few dozen computers in existence and "going to work" was a fact of life to which no one even imagined an alternative. Homo sapiens is still a pack-social species by instinct, despite our creation of a more herd-social civilization, and in our minds and hearts we still have a hard-wired need to directly see, hear, touch, and smell the pheromones of our pack-mates.

My rants notwithstanding, I must acknowledge the sobering statistic that, in my country at least, the majority of people meet the people they will marry at work. This is an ideal milieu, because we see each other as we really are, going unselfconsciously about our daily tasks, rather than in an artificial environment such as a bar, where everybody is half-sloshed and (paradoxically!) self-consciously trying to impress members of the opposite sex.

Couple this with the fact that a great many people cannot conveniently and productively do their jobs at home. Pets, children, deliverymen, neighbors, and even spouses and roommates have little respect for signs declaring "Do not open or bang on this door, or make any noise within 20 feet of it!" Many people don't even have a room they can repurpose as an office.

Also, many people are more extroverted than I am, and are genuinely uncomfortable spending an entire day in solitude, with phone calls, e-mail, NetMeeting, and snoring domesticated carnivores as a poor substitute for human company. They literally can't get much done without the stimulus of their pack. We are, after all, domesticated carnivores too, and like our dogs we are usually much more active when we're not alone.

For these people there are satellite offices with cubicles (or rooms with doors and windows if you can afford them), internet technology and lunchrooms, where they can get their daily fix of human companionship. It doesn't really matter whether the person next door works for our company or does the same kind of work; we just feel happy and at peace that he or she is there and talks to us once in a while! And the benefit of this kind of "office romance" is that if it fails in some really awful way, one of you can move to another satellite office a couple of miles away, with zero impact on the efficiency of your companies and no leftover rumors in the "office politics."

For that matter the same thing applies if the romance is successful and you get married. Most companies don't want spouses working close together, in case of a family disaster or a marriage crisis, which is even worse than a romance crisis.

The solution to America's traffic problem is already available, and requires no Buck Rogers technology or major alteration in people's personalities and habits. Except those of our managers! They are the problem!!!

Of course the corporations want us to keep "going to work" so we can keep buying their vehicles and their energy. They're not going to promote telecommuting. The same is true of a host of other industries, like the fast food joints who take advantage of the fact that we don't have time to cook at home, and probably don't even share meals with our family. Or the fitness centers who take advantage of the fact that we spend too much of our time sitting down. Or the child care services who take advantage of the fact that we never see our kids when they're awake. Or the gardening services who take advantage of the fact that we don't have time to take care of our own yards, and five days a week we don't even get to see them in the daylight. The plumbers, electricians, cleaning ladies, dog groomers, and myriad other service providers whom we hire because we have no time or energy to perform the simplest chores in our own homes.

 

[phlogistician]

Many people don't even have a room they can repurpose as an office.

Ain't that the truth, we were looking to move home, something with a bigger garden, out of town, but you get less and pay more, and nothing we've seen, despite adding £30k to our budget has anything I could use as a home office. Currently, I have an attic conversion, which spans the entire footprint of the building. I was looking at putting a wooden 'Summer House' and laying services in one property we looked at.

Also, many people are more extroverted than I am, and are genuinely uncomfortable spending an entire day in solitude, with phone calls, e-mail, NetMeeting, and snoring domesticated carnivores as a poor substitute for human company.

I guess it's not for everyone. I spend my days alone, and apart from a few weekly conference calls, don't speak to people. I haven't spoke to anyone today, for example. I wonder if anyone could adapt? I guess I too have dogs, and sometimes they sleep on the daybed in my office, and sometimes stand look out of the window, watching the world go by.

The problem working in IT and working from home though, is it's a job easily offshored to a lower cost country,.... so while environmentally friendly, potentially precarious. This may be why many managers empire build teams around themselves. Making ramparts from people, effectively.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

I guess it's not for everyone. I spend my days alone, and apart from a few weekly conference calls, don't speak to people. I haven't spoken to anyone today, for example. I wonder if anyone could adapt?

I don't know if it's adaptation or simply the way we change as we get older. 30-40 years ago I was a hard-core introvert. When I got home from work I closed the shades, locked the door and took the phone off the hook. Today I'm not a hard-core extrovert but I'm more balanced. If I spend an entire day alone I find myself looking for an excuse to go to a mall.

I guess I too have dogs, and sometimes they sleep on the daybed in my office, and sometimes stand look out of the window, watching the world go by.

We have Lhasa Apsos, which are Dogs For Cat People. They are hardly gregarious at all, perhaps the only breed that is responsible to own if you're going to have just one and leave him alone all day. Still, they are pack-social like our species and provide a certain level of companionship.

The problem working in IT and working from home though, is it's a job easily offshored to a lower cost country . . . .

I've been in IT for more than 40 years. While I see some countries developing real expertise in some specialties--e.g., nobody builds better military software than the Israelis and nobody is better at security than the Russians--in general it's still an industry in which America is the best. Not necessarily our people, because a lot of immigrants come over here and excel, but something about the way we manage our projects and, probably even more importantly, our legendary attitude that innovation is more important than quality.

I think the era of offshore outsourcing is coming to an end. For one thing, the business practices in those countries are different from ours, and while the software they build may be efficient and relatively defect-free, they fail to fulfil the unstated requirements than we take for granted.

Remember the Four E's Of Requirements: Expressed, Expected, Elusive and Exciting. We may not always get the first one totally right, but we dazzle our users with the other three. Offshore companies can only do the first one, even in countries where everybody speaks English. Ya get really tired of having to write fifty pages of requirements, stating things that "everybody knows." Especially since we're notoriously bad at writing requirements at all!

 

[phlogistician]

Remember the Four E's Of Requirements: Expressed, Expected, Elusive and Exciting. We may not always get the first one totally right, but we dazzle our users with the other three. Offshore companies can only do the first one, even in countries where everybody speaks English. Ya get really tired of having to write fifty pages of requirements, stating things that "everybody knows." Especially since we're notoriously bad at writing requirements at all!

Yeah, we have reaped what we have sown there. We drilled into our offshore workforce that they must follow procedure,... but of course, problems aren't caused by things going according to plan, and I deal with problems, security, mostly, and well, they get stuck often, because the procedures can't account for everything.

Let's be honest, we can't program a machine to vacuum our rooms, why would we expect to be able to give people perfect procedures? We need room to innovate solutions within procedures, or we end up with a program that sees us bumping off things, until we find the right path. Not good.

 

[RenaissanceMan]

The follies of electric vehicles are many, including those cited by the OP.

In the U.S., 50% of electricity is generated by what, class?
YES! Burning fossil fuels! And that is bad.

And we have had brownouts over the past few decades why, class?

YES! Because the Leftist Luddites have opposed:

A. Building nuclear power plants
B. Building fossil fuel power plants
C. Building ANY kind of power plants

Lefties think everything is going to magically manifest itself into
environmental purity. All we need to do is hold hands and chant...
AL GORE AL GORE AL GORE.

You think those big, heavy batteries don't wear out faster than internal combustion engines? And they cost a little more than two D cells.