GM Will Sell Only Zero-Emission Vehicles By 2035 (nytimes.com) 334
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: General Motors said Thursday it would phase out petroleum-powered cars and trucks and sell only vehicles that have zero tailpipe emissions by 2035, a seismic shift by one of the world's largest automakers that makes billions of dollars today from gas-guzzling pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles. The announcement could put pressure on automakers around the world to make similar commitments.
G.M. said that its decision to switch to electric cars was part of a broader plan to become carbon neutral by 2040. Its announcement came a day after Mr. Biden signed an executive order to step up the fight against climate change, including a directive for the federal government to electrify its large vehicle fleet. "General Motors is joining governments and companies around the globe working to establish a safer, greener and better world," Mary T. Barra, G.M.'s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. "We encourage others to follow suit and make a significant impact on our industry and on the economy as a whole."
G.M. said it would increase the use of renewable energy, and would eliminate or offset emissions from its factories, buildings, vehicles and other sources. The company plans to spend $27 billion over the next five years to introduce 30 electric vehicles, including an electric Hummer pickup truck that it expects to start delivering to customers later this year. The company said it was working with the Environmental Defense Fund to build charging stations for electric cars and to convince drivers to switch to electric cars.
G.M. said that its decision to switch to electric cars was part of a broader plan to become carbon neutral by 2040. Its announcement came a day after Mr. Biden signed an executive order to step up the fight against climate change, including a directive for the federal government to electrify its large vehicle fleet. "General Motors is joining governments and companies around the globe working to establish a safer, greener and better world," Mary T. Barra, G.M.'s chairman and chief executive, said in a statement. "We encourage others to follow suit and make a significant impact on our industry and on the economy as a whole."
G.M. said it would increase the use of renewable energy, and would eliminate or offset emissions from its factories, buildings, vehicles and other sources. The company plans to spend $27 billion over the next five years to introduce 30 electric vehicles, including an electric Hummer pickup truck that it expects to start delivering to customers later this year. The company said it was working with the Environmental Defense Fund to build charging stations for electric cars and to convince drivers to switch to electric cars.
Gas is Too Cheap (Score:2, Troll)
I'm curious, in the USA, gas is around $2 or $3 a gallon, yes? If you haven't already, how high would it have to go for you to seriously consider abandoning ICE vehicle(s) forever and switch to electric only (or even no vehicle at all) ?
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I want readily replaceable batteries, minutes to swap over from low charge to high charge battery, pay for the swap and the charge. Fixed batteries is stupid, especially for trucks. Who will be the first manufacturer to swap from fixed to swappable batteries, better for them (long term income) better for us, car charged in minutes and never have to worry about replacing old batteries.
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Re:Gas is Too Cheap (Score:5, Interesting)
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They'd also need massive infrastructure buildup of places able to swap large batteries in a couple minutes. Large robots? It seems extremely impractical and expensive for something that would be of limited benefit. It would also limit how cars could be built...they'd need to be created in a way where the battery is easily taken out.
I guess I could imagine it happening for a secondary battery, much smaller than the first. But really, it's a stupid idea that has already been brought up and abandoned.
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I want readily replaceable batteries, minutes to swap over from low charge to high charge battery, pay for the swap and the charge. Fixed batteries is stupid, especially for trucks. Who will be the first manufacturer to swap from fixed to swappable batteries, better for them (long term income) better for us, car charged in minutes and never have to worry about replacing old batteries.
I love listening to people hype this kind of bullshit solution, especially when they realize it's going to cost them $100 to do a "quick refill".
You're an idiot if you don't think Greed will fuck you in the ass with the shit you're demanding. Have you seen the mock market lately? Investors demand profits. Good luck.
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Which one of you fucking idiots modded this a troll? The OP is correct, fixed batteries are stupid. We should have a standard battery pack for cars that can be swapped out in a few minutes.
Re: Gas is Too Cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
It may not be a troll, but there is no moderation option for "stupid" so I presume that is what went on there.
Anyone who thinks that lack of battery swapping is holding up EV adoption is as dumb as a box of AA batteries. Quick charging is almost as fast as a swap, and doesn't require compromising the rigidity of the vehicle by not using the battery pack as a stiffener.
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An you are pretty much wrong on every thing you can possibly say there. Quick charging won't be as fast as a swap nor would it compromise the rigidity of vehicle in any way. An here is why. Because the vehicle would be designed around the process of replacing the battery pack, quickly and efficiently.
See there? its not a stupid or a dumb ideal. There are plenty of other advantages to easily swappable battery packs but I think you can figure them out.
Oh and while it may not be the only thing holdin
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I'm curious, in the USA, gas is around $2 or $3 a gallon, yes? If you haven't already, how high would it have to go for you to seriously consider abandoning ICE vehicle(s) forever and switch to electric only (or even no vehicle at all) ?
Gas (depends on how far you're driving) plus insurance ($500-$2000 a year depending on coverage and your driving record) $50-100 for registration, $20 for yearly inspection.
On non-warranty repairs, figure another $600-$1200 a year for general upkeep, brakes, emission system, tires...
I know people in other cities paying upwards of $1k a month for a parking spot
It all adds up pretty quickly.
I haven't had a car for about 6 years, had one owned or available for ~40 years before that. I was driving about 50 mile
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About the same as in the UK, which, as I understand it is about $6.00 per gallon right now. (By all mans with in for the cost where you live.) The only reason it is so high in the EU is because those countries tax the crap out of it. The underlying cost is close to the same. I'm guessing you would not see a significant change until it reached $10.00 per gallon equivalent and started affecting the pocketbook more adversely. EVs are ALREADY cheaper to run than ICE vehicles; it's just that there are not a lot
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"By all means weigh in with the cost where you live." Never use the slashdot editor.
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I think 100 dollars for a fuel tank fill up will make people come back to senses. Right now everyone is driving ginormous rigs like there is no tomorrow, massive raised pickup trucks, wranglers, and three row SUVs mostly used a grocery getting commuter rig.
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I'd still buy gasoline for some uses even if it was $10/gal. In fact I pay quite a hefty premium for small cans of ethanol-free or stable premix 2-stroke blends for us in small engines and recreation. And those don't even have the usual gas (road use) tax on them. It's not like an electric motor will be practical for a seaworthy fishing boat, and retrofitting will be prohibitively expensive for decades. This of course probably makes up less than a fraction of a percent of the fossil fuel use in the US, and
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During the first few years of Iraq war right until the financial crisis of 2009, there were record high oil and gas prices even in the US, and populist politicians were whining about the damn "speculators" driving up the gas prices. Anyways, this was the time when Americans started abandoning pickup trucks and SUVs in masses and started buying compact cars. This was the time when even a "tiny" by American standards Ford Fiesta returned to America. However, the post-2012 fall in oil prices made everyone swit
Re:Gas is Too Cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for drive train rest of the car is basically the same. 90% of the cost of the electric drive train is the battery. Its price has been falling 15% per year for the last 20 years or so. Or to use Tesla's Moore's Law, half the price in 7 years. So electric drive train will cost 55% of todays electric drive train in 7 years.
On the ICEV side, the drive train (engine+transmisstion+emission control+fuel tank) nothing is going to cost half of today's prices in 7 years.
Already electric and icev drive trains are competitive for F, E, and D segment cars. Scroll down for the chart and definitions [cleantechnica.com]
In 7 years C will be in the bag and Electric will be seriously challenging B. By that time A segment would have been flooded with used ICE from all the expensive models and some electrics too.
It will be the raw price off the dealer's lot for Electric cars that will spur mass adaption. Gas price spikes might help, but they are transient.
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90% of the cost of the electric drive train is the battery.
Not really. Tesla Model 3 battery cost is apparently $9000 for the 75kWh long-range version.
Re:Gas is Too Cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
I live in CA, we pay about $3.40 per gallon. I have a 2019 motorcycle, and my wife has a 2015 car. Both have another 10+ years in them, easily. There is no realistic replacement for the motorcycle - so that won't get changed. The car? It would be another $40,000 to replace it. Assuming 15,000 miles a year, for 10 years, at 25 MPG, that is 6000 gallons of gas. Assuming a 6% effective return on my money, electricity at $0.24/kwh (what we pay in SoCal), and 3 kWh per mile, gas would have to be around $13/gallon to make it a viable move.
The bigger issue is we do not have a hope of moving our economy to electricity by 2050. To replace all the fossil fuel consumption used for energy (not refining into pharmaceuticals, plastics, etc), we'd need to make a 2 GW nuclear plant every day, from now to 2050. Or build 3000 2 MW wind turbines a day. Or about 100 square miles of solar panels every day.
In other words - it's a pipe dream that has zero chance of actually be achievable, as even if you could move all transportation from fossil fuel - you cannot generate enough replacement electricity. We use 193 PWh of fossil fuel energy a year - that is a massive, massive amount. Replacing that by 2050 - or even 2100 - is a complete pipe-dream. The only way to get close would be nuclear - and that is just not going to fly in most places.
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Like you, I lost power for 2 whole hours this summer thanks to California's energy crisis. It's a wonder we didn't die. Everyone in the state using their air conditioners full blast at the same time is surely just as easy to load balance as car charging, there's no incentive system that can make people not charge their car at 5 PM on a hot day, so we're doomed.
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This calculation is absurd. It assumes you would give away your current car for $0 (or just jump it off a cliff) and buy a new electric car to recoup that loss on fuel savings. You're just being silly to get the result you'
Re:Gas is Too Cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
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In 1930 it looked like coal. Cheap and plentiful and easy to build.
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I'm curious, in the USA, gas is around $2 or $3 a gallon, yes? If you haven't already, how high would it have to go for you to seriously consider abandoning ICE vehicle(s) forever and switch to electric only (or even no vehicle at all) ?
American born and raised. My guess is it would have to get at least to $10 a gallon to get a significant number of Americans to give up on gasoline powered cars. GM and other manufacturers will simply have to do this because otherwise most Americans will never choose electric cars. I leased a Nissan Leaf for 3 years and I loved it. I was paying about $1 a day in electricity to drive 40-something miles round trip to and from work vs. about $6 a day in gasoline (my car did not get great gas mileage). M
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I'm equally curious, where are you? And if your fuel is heavily taxed, and the entire fleet of vehicles switches to electric, how long before the electricity price rises and you get new taxes either on electricity itself or perhaps taxes on mileage via odometer readings/gps tracking.. or both?
You don't really think the government is going to let that tax revenue just go away do you? In civilized countries at least those fuel taxes fund the transportation infrastructure. That maintenance is required, and tha
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States are already moving to odometer charges and/or EV surcharges.
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I'm curious, in the USA, gas is around $2 or $3 a gallon, yes? If you haven't already, how high would it have to go for you to seriously consider abandoning ICE vehicle(s) forever and switch to electric only (or even no vehicle at all) ?
I drive a 21 year old SUV. My kids drive 10 and 11 year old SUV's. The price of gas would have to go up to $10/gal before I'd look to replace any of them with new EV's. But when I do, I will need to install charging and switching gear to support three cars in my garage.
My motorcycles will never be replaced by electrics. Engine noise is part of the fun!
Re: Gas is Too Cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, from what I hear, everyone makes up some ridiculous use case where they can't drive an EV as an excuse instead of looking to see how they can make it work. When people start with the assumption that it won't work, they find an excuse.
Having driven only EVs for three years now, I can't imagine ever wanting to go back.
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Scooters, motorcycles, buses, taxis, trains all of the have very real non-ridiculous use cases where they wont work. That does not make these unviable. It is the use cases where the work, that justifies their existence. How wide the use cases are will determine how big a market they will get. Heck, there is a viable market for unicycles. Then, why not for BEVs?
Re: Gas is Too Cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, from what I hear, everyone makes up some ridiculous use case where they can't drive an EV as an excuse instead of looking to see how they can make it work. When people start with the assumption that it won't work, they find an excuse.
Having driven only EVs for three years now, I can't imagine ever wanting to go back.
Exactly. And those use cases are becoming edge cases. I've heard so many claims that it becomes ludicrous.
Like the one about how you can't use EV's in cold climates, while yes it does affect them, ever see people starting a fire underneath a diesel engine to get it to start in the winter?
We even had a case where a Tesla caught on fire, and the anti-EV'ers were braying like it was a death knell, yet ICE vehicles burn up all the time.
We had a guy doing a review who purposely drove the thing around in circles to cause it to run out of juice - but turned out the car he was testing was instrumented, and he was caught.
I'm an old gearhead from way back, and I'll miss a lot of the cool ICE vehicles. I'll miss my big twin motorcycle. But After taking my first spin on an EV bike, I'll enjoy that too. The bike had a regular and an eco mode. Salesman said I should keep it in eco mode for the first half of the ride. gotta get used to the acceleration. It's quiet, so you think you're on a scooter until you goose it.
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The current generation of EVs is generally with a 200-mile range minimum. Yes, I had a used Leaf for two years, and most of the time it was fine, but there were a few days where it was challenging.
My point is that I've heard many people even looking at Tesla's specs stretch as hard as they can to find ways there it won't work for them.
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I was talking to someone who kept saying range was a problem with EVs. And we were talking about in 2040, when some of the government mandates kick in.
I noted that a current ER Tesla currently goes further than my high efficiency subcompact gasoline car on a tank. The new model S goes even further.
There are some niches where fuel vehicles probably will hold on for quite a while. Very small ones.
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When I priced out my current car versus a Tesla, TCO looked like it came out pretty close to the same. I got the gas car because there aren't currently enough charging stations on the way to a few of the places I drive frequently.
Batteries are the major component of an EV; the rest of it is considerably cheaper than a gas car. The cost of batteries is dropping exponentially, by nearly an order of magnitude in the last decade. So in another decade or two it's pretty unlikely the gas car is going to be cheape
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I think electrics are likely to be better in extreme cold environments. Below about -30 C a gas car won't start if the engine block and/or oil pan aren't heated, so you pretty much have to plug them in anyway. Before glow plugs were common, the diesel transport trucks used to pull over in my home town and run all night, because if you shut them down they wouldn't start again.
The EV loses some range because you have to heat the batteries and the cabin, but it's only likely to affect you on long trips, and fu
Re: Gas is Too Cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that's an issue right now. EVs are a better solution for homeowners than renters. Newer apartments are being built with charging in mind, at least in my town. As EVs increase in popularity, those building owners will be installing charging so that they can attract tenants.
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There are 200-mile and longer range EVs that are around $30K new. If you're on minimum wage in low-income housing, then you're not in the new car market. If you are looking to buy a new car, then there's a good chance there's an EV option in your price range.
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If you're on minimum wage in low-income housing, then you're not in the new car market. If you are looking to buy a new car, then there's a good chance there's an EV option in your price range.
It might surprise you to learn there are income brackets in between "poverty stricken" and "able to afford a Tesla". This is why cars such as the Nissan Versa, Hyundai Accent, and Mitsubishi Mirage exist. There is presently no EV equivalent in that price range.
Well, that's nice. I never know what to make of that argument. I can't afford a McClaren or Bugatti. Well, at least I'm not going to spend the money.
But I don't use it as an argument for people who can and want one.
The problem with that argument is that many people have vehicles that cost a lot more than say, a Tesla. There are some pickup trucks running around our ville that are around 80 K, but I don't hear people complaining, many of these people went way into debt to buy them.
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It's a good point.
Yeah, lots of people would love to go out and buy a brand new $35,000 car or even a $25,000 car. But when I can get a good used car for half that price or less, I'm not sure I'd be buying a new electric car. I still need a place to live, food to eat, etc.
In 2019, 17 million new cars were sold and about 40 million used cars were sold. You're not going to see EVs take off until there are inexpensive used cars.
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But when I can get a good used car for half that price or less, I'm not sure I'd be buying a new electric car.
You can buy a used electric car. That is what my daughter did.
Re: Gas is Too Cheap (Score:3)
"Try covering 2000 miles in 3 days in an EV. Even the upcoming Model S refresh only has a 520-mile range. You could take 4 days to make the trip, but why should you allow your vehicle to force you into that?"
That trip can be done in two days with a couple of quick charges and one overnight charge. You can't safely do 2000 miles in one day anyway.
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Try covering 2000 miles in 3 days in an EV. Even the upcoming Model S refresh only has a 520-mile range. You could take 4 days to make the trip, but why should you allow your vehicle to force you into that? The current crop of EVs are even worse than that, with maybe a 300-mile range. I rode shotgun in a Model 3 once from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas; we made two stops of 30-40 minutes each to recharge, while in a normal car you might only need a 10-minute stop for gas.
(That "2000 miles in 3 days" wasn't a hypothetical. I drove that about a month ago, returning to Las Vegas from visiting my parents near Dayton, OH. The drive out to visit them was even longer: 2500 miles in 4 days, visiting friends along the way who were a little bit off the direct course. Day 1 of that trip ended in Bisbee, AZ (far southeast corner of the state), and the end of day 2 was over 800 miles away in Georgetown, TX (near Austin), with a whole lot of nothing in between. I'd be surprised if there were charging facilities sufficiently close along my route. Even gas stations were sometimes a bit sparse.)
The Bisbee to Georgetown route has a bunch of fast chargers available. A quick check at plugshare.com shows at least 9 locations along I-10 between Bisbee and Georgetown (assuming you don't backtrack to Benson, which also has one), not counting the dozens in the Austin area. That's just the ones that have 50KW or higher fast-charge systems, there are a lot more with lower charge rates. The span from Vegas to Phoenix would be the tough one for any EV with under 350 mile range - you'd need to take a somewh
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My biggest issue isn't the cost, it's the convenience. There's a gas station on every corner. Charging stations, not so much. Get the infrastructure in place, and I don't care what my car runs on, as long as it runs.
The alternative, when driving somewhere for a trip (assuming you can get there on a single charge) is to (a) mooch electricity from destination's house or (b) pay them for the electricity to recharge (at 120v). Until improvements in batteries/recharging and/or infrastructure are available a ICE/EV hybrid is as far as I'm willing to go in "going green" with my vehicle.
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Looks like you don't even have an elephant table and you are keeping it in the living room?
Re:Gas is Too Cheap (Score:5, Informative)
Gas stations are inconvenient. Charging at home is 3000% better. Charging at a shopping center is 228% better.
The infrastructure is never coming because it isn't needed, and charging at a corner station isn't as convenient as plugging in at home.
(Yeah, there will be some charging stations along the highway etc. for road trippers. But it will be the exception, not the rule)
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Gas stations are inconvenient. Charging at home is 3000% better. Charging at a shopping center is 228% better.
Except on a long all-American road trip. Spending two hours on charging stops (even if there were enough charging stations) is just not very convenient on a 700-900 mile trip. I personally stop for gas when the car used 90% of fuel, which is about 400 miles. Even a tin can dirt cheap Toyota Camry can have this range.
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We cannot switch till there is sufficient range (400-500+ miles) per charge
You know how idiotic this claim looks to everyone else, right? Why would you need charge for *two weeks* of average US car mileage? Are you expecting to not be in the vicinity of any usable plug for two weeks with any regularity?
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Right now gas cars are cheaper than electric and the quick refueling is the only use case where gas beats electric. Pretty soon electric cars would be cheaper. You have to actually pay more for the convenience of quick recharge. Let us see if you still feel this way or or not.
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... even if there were enough charging stations...
Gas stations require special zoning, insurance, and construction costs because of those huge tanks of highly combustible toxic chemicals buried there. There are a lot of convenience stores with gas stations, but most stores can't equip themselves with gas pumps to attract car drivers as customers.
Do you know what they call a retail related space that be equipped with car chargers? A parking lot. Any place with a parking lot can install a car charger at one or more of the spaces. Any business interested in g
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What about the millions of people living in cities, or inner-ring suburbs that only have street parking? What about apartment buildings?
Shopping centers will still need EV charging stations to be installed, even if they're 120v. How many currently have them? They'll also probably need to be located as far from the building as possible; otherwise people will just use them as close parking spaces (even if they don't need to charge their vehicle.) This means digging trenches, laying conduit, pulling wire, poss
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Gas stations are inconvenient. Charging at home is 3000% better.
Totally agree that charging at home is much more convenient. But with a huge caveat. You have to be able to charge at home. I would have to rewire my home and install a charger for several thousand dollars. That's doable for me. However, many people with no garages or driveways can't pay any amount of money to install wiring and a charger, so for them charging at home is impossible.
Charging at a shopping center is 228% better.
I disagree. I would love to charge for free at a shopping center, but those parking spaces are always occupied (well, at
Re:Gas is Too Cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
Not everyone lives in a single-family home with a garage into which you can have an electrician add a NEMA 14-50R outlet to plug in your "fast" charger that still takes overnight to charge to 100%. I live in a condo. Am I supposed to ask the HOA if I can tear up the lawn, sidewalk, and parking lot to run a 50-amp circuit from the meter panel to my assigned parking space? Are we supposed to go to all this inconvenience every time someone wants to buy an EV and keep it here? New condo/townhome/apartment complexes could theoretically be built with EVs in mind, but there's a shit-ton of inventory of older complexes where this would be a major undertaking.
Re:Gas is Too Cheap (Score:5, Informative)
Am I supposed to ask the HOA if I can tear up the lawn, sidewalk, and parking lot to run a 50-amp circuit from the meter panel to my assigned parking space?
Yes. Why not? Ask the HOA to install metered chargers for all the parking spots. My HOA did just that, we paid collectively for cable conduits and then people with EVs installed meters and charging equipment.
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Not to mention, going out on a great american western trip. Half hour stops every 200 miles just won't cut it for me on a day when I need to cover 700-900 miles, even if there were charging stations. But out in the Rockies, there are areas you can drive 100+ miles until the first gas station, forget the charging stations.
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Someday you may have to search for gas stations and plan your trip based on it the way BEV folks do today. As soon as BEVs are freely available and cheaper, cities will review letting 2000 gallon tankers plying through concrete canyons of down t
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Your real environmental savings come in owning a car for a half-century.
Actually, the pollution from making a battery EV if offset in just under a year and a half.
https://dubucmotors.com/debunk... [dubucmotors.com]
Offsetting the emissions from manufacturing BEVs takes between 6 and 16 months on average, compared with never! Gas powered vehicles will never offset their manufacturing emissions.
Seems short-sighted (Score:2)
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when you have no idea what your options will be?
Tesla shows there is enough demand for electric cars. They have plenty of ideas what the options will be, and burning things, not even synthetics, to move is not one of them anymore.
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Well there are plenty of ways for battery technology to go, but in general it's probably going to be an electric charging solution. It makes so much more sense than relying on a single fuel source since electricity can be generated in lots of ways and it's already being distributed
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Using electricity and the air to create synthetically generated liquid fuels is an extremely inefficient process. Burning fuels to move a car is less inefficient than using batteries. Ultimately, it would take maybe 20 times as much electricity to do it this way as just charging a battery powered car. So it doesn't make sense except for niche applications.
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I imagine "zero emission" means "zero net emission".
Synthetic gasoline isn't likely to be big for personal vehicles though. Battery electric vehicles are pretty much superior in all areas except up front cost now, and will likely be overall superior by 2035. Synthetic fuel is going to inherit all the problems of current gas vehicles plus the extra inefficiency of making the fuel in the first place.
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I would interpret this as ruling out synthetic gasoline, but not ruling out hydrogen, since the air and water "emitted" from that are not pollutants.
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What about synthetically generated liquid fuels that are "carbon neutral?"
Gas engines are overall about 20% efficient. So you'll be wasting 4 times the energy you get from fuel.
This simply is a bad idea. It might be acceptable for airplanes, as they are MUCH more efficient and batteries are nowhere near energetically dense enough. Maybe for ships as well.
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Dude, Elon doesn't become the richest person in the world if you just spend $2K to convert your F-150 to run on ammonia.
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What about synthetically generated liquid fuels that are "carbon neutral?"
That requires more energy to produce than it's worth. Also, ICE cars are highly prone to mechanical failures because both the engine and transmission have lots of moving parts. You go a million miles in an EV before mechanical issues arise. Batteries are improving to the point where they will be sufficient to reach the million mile point before needing to be replaced. Soon there will literally be no advantage to using a car with a combustion engine.
Is battery technology the only solution?
No but it is the most economically solution.
Pre-emptive self-regulation (Score:3)
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True enough. by 2035, this will have disappeared down the memory hole. File this one under more easily said than done.
Re:Pre-emptive self-regulation (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's exactly the opposite. By 2035 nobody will want to buy a gas powered car. If by 2025 Tesla has cut the price of their batteries by 50% then a 300 mile range electric vehicle with fast charging will be cheaper, not just in the long run, but on the sticker at the dealership.
This is like Intel promising that they will only sell x64 CPUs by 2035. No shit, you and everybody else. You're only promising to do what everybody is going to do long before that. This would have been like Canon in 2000 promising that they would only sell digital cameras by 2025.
Nobody is going to weasel into selling ICE cars which just can't sell in 2035.
Taking a cue from Ford (Score:5, Funny)
The 2030 Corvette will be available in two versions: an electric 3-row SUV, or an electric heavy duty crew cab truck.
My how things have changed (Score:3)
just 25 some years ago GM was doing everything in it's power to NOT make electric cars. [wikipedia.org]
I can't help but wonder where the EV market would be today if GM, and the other interests involved, hadn't done so much to kill GM's EV1 in the 1990s.
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The EV1 wasn't really a viable production vehicle. One might suggest that the first actually practical EV was the RAV4 EV. Toyota did their best to murder that one, though, so the industry was consistent back then. Only a few people got to convert their leases to sales. Reportedly pretty much everyone who had one adored it, and it was made mostly out of commodity parts so it actually could have been supported, unlike the EV1.
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where the energy you carry with you is not just miles rolling down the road, it's also power to wedge this tree out of the path
Moving a tree requires an insignificant amount of energy. Less than a couple of miles of a freeway drive.
running your vehicle all day because it's the only source of warmth
What? This is just crazy. A car is horribly inefficient way to make heat. A proper kerosene or propane heater would be an order of magnitude cheaper to run.
LOL (Score:2)
Buy a horse. LOL!
Re:That's only work in the crazy urban areas (Score:5, Insightful)
Being able to carry enough fuel with you efficiently to operate for weeks at a time without convenient access to infrastructure.
"There are dozens of us... Dozens!"
How many people need to use their car for warm for weeks at a time without access to solar or wind or grid electricity?
What a fucking stupid complaint. Nothing constrains you to "infrastructure" (as if the market of people who live in their F-150 for 3 weeks without a power outlet available exists) more than needing gasoline.
You could throw some solar panels in the bed of your truck and just prop them up on a rock and recharge your electric vehicle. You could have a tower and some guide lines to prop up if it's windy. You could throw a water turbine into a creek. You could operate your electric vehicle for the rest of your life without tapping civilization's infrastructure.
What do you do in this absurd, rugged-individualist lifestyle fiction you've imagined when you need to refuel an internal combustion engine? Are you going to mine crude oil and then refine it into diesel?
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, I will fix it for you. (Score:3)
There. Fixed it for you/.
Not a big promise (Score:5, Insightful)
This is going to be one of those funny ones where apparently bold, courageous decisions now turn out to be timid, like claiming "by 2000, every desk will have a computer" in 1985.
I remember looking at a graph of declining prices for both tube and LCD monitors, about 2001. Both were in constant price decline, but the lines were linear enough to plot them crossing about 2007. I predicted to friends that CRTs would vanish in 2008.
Because LCD, of course, was lighter, lower power, less room, looked better - the ONLY positive was cost, so the instant that was lost, CRT was dead. I noted in a story about Denmark selling over 50% EVs this year that the difference between a percent more expensive and a percent cheaper,(due to subsidies) was many tens of percent higher sales.
By the time EVs get cheaper - they already are, for most people, if you figure the five-year TOC - the other negatives, like range anxiety, will be gone, the charging infrastructure will be up. As all that converges, sales will take off exponentially with price reductions.
Bottom line, by 2035, it'll be more like the last internal-combustion fanboys begging them to keep their commitment to keep making them as late as 2035.
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By the time EVs get cheaper - they already are, for most people, if you figure the five-year TOC - the other negatives, like range anxiety, will be gone, the charging infrastructure will be up.
I'd love to see your calculations for cost to boost charging infrastructure globally to all GM markets to support the 8 million vehicles they sell each year.
Where will the electricity come from? (Score:2)
Has anyone calculated how many power plants (solar, wind, nuclear, whatever) will need to be built to charge all of these vehicles?
Re:Where will the electricity come from? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe zero.
Most charging is done at night when current power plants are operating below capacity. Also, we're just starting to see people installing batteries with solar, which will further reduce the need for new power plants.
In any case, we'll continue to see lots of wind and solar being added, as they're cheap. And we'll see both residential and grid-scale batteries that will reduce peak demands and shift renewables to be available around the clock. The extent to which that new production is consumed by new demand or results in closure of fossil fuel plants is yet to be determined.
Re: (Score:2)
Small fry but presumably offices will blanket their roofs with solar panels so that workers can charge their vehicles while the sun is shining.
But do projections for companies becoming carbon neutral include their employees' energy needs too? :)
Re:Where will the electricity come from? (Score:4, Informative)
Even doubling that (to account for commercial traffic, etc.) would not change much. Of course, some places might need local improvements but overall we'd be fine.
Spin off GMC Truck (Score:2)
No way they're replacing a 3500 diesel with an electric any time soon, though I want to live in the world where that's feasible.
So they will spin out GMC Truck as its own company and probably hold a controlling interest. Corporations lie with shell games.
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Someone archive this. (Score:2)
Because when we're still buying GM ICE vehicles in 2036, we'll point and laugh.
One-sided thinking is dumb. (Score:3)
Some form of hybridization is going to make sense for a lot of vehicles for a long time.
And I say this as someone who drives an electric car.
For instance, electric cars do poorly in bitter cold. Lots of reasons why - battery performance in the cold, the need to get working components up to temperature, the need to keep the occupants at temperature.
Some enterprising DIYers have discovered ways to add tiny fuel-burning heaters to their electric cars (largely, using aftermarket heaters intended for diesel trucks). It makes complete thermodynamic sense. Use electricity - pure low entropy energy which took a lot to generate - for doing work. Use a fossil fuel for generating your max-entropy heat.
The efficiency losses in electricity generation and transmission and storage and the coefficient of performance of a small heat pump just mean it's vastly more efficient to have a fossil fuel do some of that. It could substantially improve the car's "eMPG" in severe winter conditions. You'd be using maybe a tenth of a gallon of gas an hour (as compared to say 2 gallons per hour used by a conventional car) while saving a *ton* of your electricity for propulsion. In some cases people report nearly doubling winter range.
But you won't see manufacturers adopting it, simply because "all-electric" is the sales pitch and too many "green buyers" don't know what actually makes things efficient and environmentally-friendly.
There's a whole range of ways to better use our energy options, and saying you'll only produce zero-emission cars (which, there's no such thing really till grid is 100% renewables) is almost as silly as people still producing gas-only cars. (At least some mild hybrid features like stop-start should be completely universal by now.)
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I've got doubts GM will be selllng anything in 2035....
Thank you. Probably the most underrated and overlooked comment here.
No way in hell Chevy is going to last another bad round of shitty decision making, even with a Too Big To Fail card in their back pocket.
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As long as the chicken tax exists, the pickup up truck marketplace will remain protected enough (Only GM, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler, Nissan and Toyota build trucks for American market) for all of these companies to make a good profit. Ford is already proving this by abandoning all cars in the US, Chrysler and GM will follow, releasing the car market entirely to the Japanese, Koreans, and Germans.
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I've got doubts GM will be selling anything in 2035....
GM doesn't need to sell anything . . . they can survive on government bailouts. They're too big to fail, and no politician will ever have the courage and will to break them up.
Think of government bailouts as a form of UBI for lazy, mismanaged companies.
What incentive to they have to work hard to develop a product that people really want to buy . . . ? . . . When their bailout is guaranteed anyway.
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Becoming carbon neutral is a two part problem. One part is cars, the other part is power plants. Both have to be replaced, and it doesn't much matter which happens first as long as the destination is the same.