-
Welcome, Guest! We hope you enjoy the excellent technical knowledge, event information and discussions that the BMW MOA forum provides. Some forum content will be hidden from you if you remain logged out. If you want to view all content, please click the 'Log in' button above and enter your BMW MOA username and password. If you are not an MOA member, why not take the time to join the club, so you can enjoy posting on the forum, the BMW Owners News magazine, and all of the discounts and benefits the BMW MOA offers?
The future of ICE auto's is emerging sorry off BMW topic
- Thread starter vtbob
- Start date
taran1900
Member
California is run by people who have no clue about cause and effect and Mass is tiny. Much easier for Mass to put enough charging stations to ensure you can get anywhere in an electric car. Texas or say, Wyoming? Not so much.
The California power grid cannot even run under high load in summer without the old power lines setting the state on fire, and then there's the renewable power situation there. California like Vt, relies heavily on hydro power. California is running out of water as is the Hoover Dam. Hydro is roughly 11% of the base load generation there and 11% is not an insignificant number. They don't think things through. You can't have any significant number of all vehicles be battery powered with have enough energy to charge them. Cart before the horse comes to mind.
Unless we see an huge advancement in battery technology reducing their weight, volatility (fires) and impact on the environment, battery powered electric vehicles are just a stop gap solution. A recent Tesla S Plaid fire took something like 200 thousand gallons of water to extinguish. Does the west have enough water to put out battery powered car fires? Fuel cell powered vehicles are a much more viable option but you still have to use significant amounts of electricity to produce the hydrogen fuel. The base load of the power grid would still need significant upgrading but you would not have to have massive infrastructure upgrades as the hydrogen production can be located in specific areas. It doesn't have to everywhere like fueling stations. And variable renewable energy would be perfect for generating the energy needed to extract the hydrogen. There are some possible alternates to using pure hydrogen fuel like ammonia which is mostly hydrogen and it would require far less energy to produce.
Oh, and capitalism will not build an upgraded power grid or new generation. Why? The profit margin, if there is any, is tiny. Only when it becomes more profitable will it be done. Unless we the tax payers pay for it. With the current state of corruption in the US it's likely that most of the tax dollars for infrastructure upgrades will line the pockets of the powers that be making them richer and us poorer. And not make any significant infrastructure progress.
Fiats like declaring all vehicles sold in year X sound great at first, but really are kind of meaningless because they don't address the horse that powers the cart. ICE will be here longer than you think. Or we are destined to be imprisoned in the place we live because we will not have the means to travel in or on our own vehicles.
Visian
look out!!!
A better strategy would be so seek alternative means of producing fossil fuels until the renewable/alternative fuel/power technologies catch up. I am talking about things like capturing carbon from coal/oil/gas power plants and feeding it to algae reactors to produce biofuels.
Can you imagine how much smaller these problems would be if we had not basically killed the nuclear power industry?
A little off topic but..
I just finished "BLOWOUT" by Rachel Maddow.
Its about the global history of the gas and oil industry.
Its THE most lucrative business in the world and we taxpayers in the USof A subsidize it, still today.
Great read if your into history and current events.
Non Partisan.
Nick
1990 K75RT
I just finished "BLOWOUT" by Rachel Maddow.
Its about the global history of the gas and oil industry.
Its THE most lucrative business in the world and we taxpayers in the USof A subsidize it, still today.
Great read if your into history and current events.
Non Partisan.
Nick
1990 K75RT
Visian
look out!!!
Pertinent to the discussion.
“China controls most of the market for the raw-material refining needed for the batteries and dominates component manufacturing; industry analysts warn the monopolization presents not only an economic risk, but also a national security one.
The cost of finding new sources for raw materials and loosening China’s grip on the supply chains is large. That much is clear in Thacker Pass, a windswept pocket of northern Nevada where the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe has for centuries hunted sage grouse, collected plants for medicine, and gathered for ceremonies. It is also the largest reserve of lithium in the United States.”
“In far-flung patches of the ocean floor, at Native American ancestral sites, and on some of the most pristine federal lands, extraction and mining companies are branding themselves stewards of sustainability, warning the planet will suffer if digging and scraping are delayed. All the prospecting is giving pause to some of the environmental groups championing climate action, as they assess whether the sacrifice needed to curb warming is being shared fairly.”
“China controls most of the market for the raw-material refining needed for the batteries and dominates component manufacturing; industry analysts warn the monopolization presents not only an economic risk, but also a national security one.
The cost of finding new sources for raw materials and loosening China’s grip on the supply chains is large. That much is clear in Thacker Pass, a windswept pocket of northern Nevada where the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe has for centuries hunted sage grouse, collected plants for medicine, and gathered for ceremonies. It is also the largest reserve of lithium in the United States.”
“In far-flung patches of the ocean floor, at Native American ancestral sites, and on some of the most pristine federal lands, extraction and mining companies are branding themselves stewards of sustainability, warning the planet will suffer if digging and scraping are delayed. All the prospecting is giving pause to some of the environmental groups championing climate action, as they assess whether the sacrifice needed to curb warming is being shared fairly.”
I used to travel all over North Dakota and plug ins are getting harder to find. If a motel had them, there was limited access to them. Modern automobiles will start much more reliably than those built 30-40 years ago. I never plugged in my work truck even when it hit -30F.
I can see most people having one electric and one gasser. The electric can be used to commute the few miles to work and back and the gaser for longer trips. For us west of the Mississippi it is not unusual to run a few hundred miles in a day and if I could find a charging station I really don't want to sit for an hour or two just watching electrons flow.
Some time age I saw a video and the person speaking claims in a few years, at least in the big cities, most people will not even own a car. For one reason real estate is too expensive to park one. You will get up in the morning and hop into a Uber for your ride to work. He figured there will be many companies like Uber with fleets of vehicles.
Electric cars in large numbers will happen some day, but I seriously doubt it will be as soon as planned.
This is probably closest to the truth. In the cities, with Uber and Lift, kids today aren't even interested in getting their drivers license at age 16. Man, when I grew up, that's the very FIRST thing you did on your 16th birthday!
PGlaves
#13338
14th in 1959 in North Dakota
88bmwjeff
SF Bay Area
I noticed a shift in zoning laws in the big cities in the San Francisco Bay Area from minimum parking requirements to maximum parking requirements. Those in charge are hoping to get people out of their cars into public transit. And, use a carsharing service (e.g. Zipcar) for the few times when a car is needed. I've seem a parking requirement for a minimum number of parking spaces for a carsharing services in newer apartment buildings. The main thought is to have an impact on traffic.
ISE magazine (magazine for members of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers) has a great article on the problem of getting the power grid "clean" and the problems that cleaning the grid will cause. I tried to link to the article on-line, but you must be a member of IISE to access the article. If you can find a friend who is an industrial/systems engineer and a member of IISE.org, ask him/her for a copy of the article. In short, the article correctly states that the nation's grid must be fully converted to "green" carbon-free renewable fuels to generate power (and gives examples of how this might be attained) before even considering weaning the country from fossil fuels. If this isn't done first, then the country will only be shifting the problem from the end-user (ICE vehicles) to the power companies.
nyfty
New member
Cross country in a Tesla
At Great Falls I met a young family from the Denver area. Father and Mother, two young girls and a dog. Dad rides but they drove their Tesla so the whole family could attend. I asked them how that worked out, Mom immediately responded that she planned the trip so they could recharge....the car. I asked how long it took but didn't get a firm answer. I can only guess how much time was spent in planning the route. And recharging the car.
At Great Falls I met a young family from the Denver area. Father and Mother, two young girls and a dog. Dad rides but they drove their Tesla so the whole family could attend. I asked them how that worked out, Mom immediately responded that she planned the trip so they could recharge....the car. I asked how long it took but didn't get a firm answer. I can only guess how much time was spent in planning the route. And recharging the car.
This is an excellent point.
Our electrical system is legacy tied to the "tree like" concept of large power plants distributing power out like branches to large areas of users. When we had the Black Outs we learned that this centralized concept could fail and take down large populations of users all at once. This forced the establishment industry to build , some what reluctantly because of the expense, some redundancy in paths so they could reroute power in an emergency.
Now technology is rapidly changing, there are many more power producers, from those of us who have home solar panel, to small solar and wind farms, small digesters make fuel/power scaling to the large renewables like wind / solar / hydro. Also to this mix we have "peak load plants" that can come on line to supply power usual expensive, in time of high energy consumption. The complexity of the grid has and will need to change more. It needs to become a "mesh" or distributed power / switch grid.This is a very expensive but necessary change. Some areas are embracing the future and working toward this. The recent power disaster in Texas last winter document areas that are more reluctant to make these changes.
Getting back to electric cars, our power company is forecasting that electric cars them selves when plugged in can become part of the distribute emergency power back up, just like the Tesla Power Wall which they subsides the home owners purchase now for that reason.
Technology is enabling change, the question is if the government, and the politics that drive government respond in a timely fashion or cling to status quo and the well known ways to profit from that?
Change is always hard, resistance to change is much easier.
Yes, N. D. is farm country!
I was hired out to drive grain truck for the neighboring farms at 6 years old! I started driving for my dad and the neighbors noticed and asked if I could help drive for them too. I couldn't push in the clutch and see over the dash at the same time so I had to make sure where the truck was headed for the first few yards!
I remember at about 7 or 8 years old, driving our loaded grain truck home about two miles on country roads. I got home and backed the truck up to the grain auger. I wasn't strong enough to simply pull start the engine on the auger, but I found I could climb up on one of the tires, grab the rope in both hands and jump off and start it. I was unloading the truck when dad showed with the combine up a few minutes later. Then my mom realized I was out there by myself and my dad got a butt chewing! Early on my dad had showed me to avoid the auger. He dropped a pop can into it and I got to watch it get chewed up and he said imagine that was your fingers or toes!
I remember one winter, dad worked on the railroad so he was gone. My sister and I went out to start the tractor and haul hay out to the cattle. It had stormed so I ended up moving a bunch of snow with the tractor and loader. We got the cattle fed and I cleared snow out of the driveway and yard. My dad came home a couple hours later and was happy the snow was cleared. Mom chewed him out for that too. Again I was maybe 7 or 8 years old.
Funny how times change. We did all that growing up and never thought about it. My daughter never pushed a lawn mower until she was married and they had their own home, at 31 years old!
Some European countries, if you build a new home it will have photovoltaic panels on the roof. I saw pictures of a newer development and every home had panels on the roof. This helps with peak power times, and batteries will get you through the night. Very little reliance on utilities, other than the days with bad weather.
It is just a matter of time before it happens here.
Took me about 20 seconds to plan the route
8 stops were needed over the 1,050 mile trip and (depending on the model), about 2 hours and 25 minutes were spent charging. I'm betting that's less time than needed with 2 small children and a dog
PGlaves
#13338
"Mercedes-Benz will shift its focus entirely to electric vehicles in 2025 and be prepared to sell nothing but electric cars by 2030, the company said Thursday, adding a caveat that the transition depends on “market conditions.”
Mercedes thus joined a growing list of companies including General Motors, Stellantis and Renault that have declared their intention to hasten the demise of internal combustion engines in favor of battery-powered vehicles with no tailpipe emissions."
See: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/22/business/mercedes-benz-electric-vehicles.html
and,
https://electrek.co/2021/07/22/mercedes-benz-teases-super-efficient-electric-car/
And then there is the UK:
"If you thought this electric vehicle trend was a passing fad, it looks like the United Kingdom disagrees and is looking to phase out gas burners of all types by 2040, with no new gas-powered motorcycles available for sale after 2035 ..."
See: https://advrider.com/uk-issues-2040...utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=07_23_2021
They seem to be a bit ahead of Forum curmudgeons.
Mercedes thus joined a growing list of companies including General Motors, Stellantis and Renault that have declared their intention to hasten the demise of internal combustion engines in favor of battery-powered vehicles with no tailpipe emissions."
See: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/22/business/mercedes-benz-electric-vehicles.html
and,
https://electrek.co/2021/07/22/mercedes-benz-teases-super-efficient-electric-car/
And then there is the UK:
"If you thought this electric vehicle trend was a passing fad, it looks like the United Kingdom disagrees and is looking to phase out gas burners of all types by 2040, with no new gas-powered motorcycles available for sale after 2035 ..."
See: https://advrider.com/uk-issues-2040...utm_campaign=editorial&utm_content=07_23_2021
They seem to be a bit ahead of Forum curmudgeons.
Visian
look out!!!
I’m not real interested in “trendy” decisions
OM
I hope we can be making a big move toward alternative fuel vehicles by those trendy dates, but I will be really interested to see how they will move large volumes of goods across medium and large distances (he says after slogging east in his RV trailering a motorcycle and two e-bikes on I90 in South Dakota, battling with over-the-road trucks).
