Electric Cars - really?
03-09-2019, 04:59 PM
#1
Le Mans Master
Thread Starter
Electric Cars - really?
I sometimes wonder if given GM's toe-in-the-water attempts at electric, they might not overlook Corvette as a benefactor of the technology, as Ferrari has (to a ver small degree) A friend of mine sent me this article and while it might be more germane to an off-topic, inn topic, I didn't;t think it would get the read - or the response - from the NW Forum. Is the advent of the electric car a political issue or an environmental issue? I confess, I do not know the original source of the article, but...
After all, this is a Forum, right?
After all, this is a Forum, right?
Interesting Take on Electric Cars This is for Engineers out there, surely there should be a rebuttal to this article. Say it isn't true!As an engineer I love the electric vehicle technology. However, I have been troubled for a longtime by the fact that the electrical energy to keep the batteries charged has to come from the grid and that means more power generation and a huge increase in the distribution infrastructure. Whether generated from coal, gas, oil, wind or sun, installed generation capacity is limited. A friend sent me the following that says it very well. You should all take a look at this short article.INTERESTING - ONE OTHER QUESTION. IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE, THEY WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN PAYING A GASOLINE TAX ON EVERY GALLON THAT IS SOLD FOR AUTOMOBILES, WHICH WAS ENACTED SOME YEARS AGO TO HELP TO MAINTAIN OUR ROADS AND BRIDGES. THEY WILL USE THE ROADS, BUT WILL NOT PAY FOR THEIR MAINTENANCE!In case you were thinking of buying an electric car:Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of those things has never been discussed. All you ever heard was the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it . This is the first article I've ever seen and tells the story pretty much as I expected it to .Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things yet they're being shoved down our throats. Glad somebody finally put engineering and math to paper.At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious. If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla, each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an 'OOPS...!' and a shrug.If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the following. Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. It's enlightening.Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes, "For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine ." Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned , so I looked up what I pay for electricity. I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.The gasoline powered car costs about $20,000 while the Volt costs $46,000-plus (($8,000.00 subsidized by you!) So the American Government wants loyal Americans not to do the math, but simply pay three times as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run , and takes three times longer to drive across the country.[img]blob:https://www.corvetteforum.com/22f810...c-abb55a078daf
Last edited by last901; 03-09-2019 at 05:00 PM.
03-13-2019, 07:29 PM
#2
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St. Jude Donor '11-'12-'13, '16-'17-'18
I don't think a CorVolt will sell all that well
Last edited by KenHorse; 03-13-2019 at 07:29 PM.
03-14-2019, 06:47 PM
#4
Le Mans Master
Thread Starter
The point I was trying to get across, Ken, was simply to share some information that appeared to be factual and worth sharing. If valid, it appears we've been elected some good people, based on false promises. I sometimes wonder if I should care since I'm an old pensioner, but I have grandkids who serve better and that I hope will be smarter than me.
Just Sayin'
Just Sayin'
03-14-2019, 07:03 PM
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St. Jude Donor '11-'12-'13, '16-'17-'18
The point I was trying to get across, Ken, was simply to share some information that appeared to be factual and worth sharing. If valid, it appears we've been elected some good people, based on false promises. I sometimes wonder if I should care since I'm an old pensioner, but I have grandkids who serve better and that I hope will be smarter than me.
Just Sayin'
Just Sayin'
But one has to wonder with GM going the route of a ME version, that would seem to fly in the face of a "green" 'vette
03-18-2019, 11:20 PM
#6
On a related note, gasoline-powered vehicles are completely impractical. You'd have to pepper entire cities with giant storage tanks for this toxic liquid that's so incredibly flammable that you'd have to completely bury the storage tanks. And if you run out of fuel, you're just screwed. So you'd need these "fueling stations" pretty much everywhere - not just in the cities but regularly spaced on the roads between the cities, too. Who is going to pay for all that infrastructure? Horses just need grass, which grows everywhere, pretty much for free. This "horseless carriage" nonsense will never catch on I tell you.
On the other hand...
Power demands peak during the day, and the grid goes almost idle overnight, which is when people will be charging their cars. We have lots of unused generation capacity at night. The residential distribution grid will probably need to be upgraded eventually but that doesn't need to happen overnight. It's not like everyone is going to simultaneously buy an electric car and drop their fuel-powered cars at the dump on April 1. It'll take years, probably decades, for the changeover to happen. If overnight demand grows to the point that the grid can't handle it, overnight power rates will go up. This will both discourage people a bit from buying electric cars, and provide funding for upgrades to the grid. Problem solved... over the course of a decade or three.
On the other hand...
Power demands peak during the day, and the grid goes almost idle overnight, which is when people will be charging their cars. We have lots of unused generation capacity at night. The residential distribution grid will probably need to be upgraded eventually but that doesn't need to happen overnight. It's not like everyone is going to simultaneously buy an electric car and drop their fuel-powered cars at the dump on April 1. It'll take years, probably decades, for the changeover to happen. If overnight demand grows to the point that the grid can't handle it, overnight power rates will go up. This will both discourage people a bit from buying electric cars, and provide funding for upgrades to the grid. Problem solved... over the course of a decade or three.
03-18-2019, 11:41 PM
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St. Jude Donor '19-'20
Getting their feet wet? GM built the moon buggy!
But seriously that was good reading OP. There are lots of problems associated with electric vehicles Beyond generation... storage it's a serious problem currently there is no real solutions to recycling all the batteries needed for electric vehicles and fire departments Across the Nation are not equipped put out electric vehicles on fire! I could go on and on about infrastructure, taxes, HOV lane usage, environmental impact, footprint, excetera excetera but I'm not going to. Electric vehicles are a very slow transition into the future. Thanks for sharing that story
