Posted on 02/19/2022 3:25:07 PM PST by DUMBGRUNT
Reality makes it so.
I remain skeptical that a majority of vehicles purchased anytime in the next 20 years will be strictly electric. The largest reason is the present state of battery technology.
We have yet to figure a way to safely dispose or recycle the batteries. Not only do these batteries require large amounts of raw materials, including lithium, nickel and cobalt – the mining of which has serious climate, environmental and human rights impacts – they also threaten to leave a mountain of electronic waste as they reach the end of their efficient life-cycle.
Environmentally speaking, electric vehicle batteries are far from perfect: assembling them depletes the earth of its natural resources, manufacturing them is energy-intensive, charging them requires dirty energy (we have a 100 year old electric infrastructure mostly powered by fossil fuels like coal & natural gas) & recycling them is nearly impossible.
I’m not saying the EV market with fail, as it did 100 years ago. I’m saying it will take much longer than most people think to convert to all electric fleets. Until the battery shortcomings are solved, infrastructure is upgraded & increased exponentially, it will remain a niche market maybe getting to 30% like EV’s did in the early 20th century.
That being said. IF new technology allows for batteries to become smaller, more powerful, more environmentally friendly to produce, dispose of, recycle & recharge in a matter of minutes, the technology will be much more accepted & overtake internal combustion vehicles.
EV’s are cool. They have their advantages. Particularly, as they have a better motor with fewer moving parts that should last significantly longer than combustion engines.
Cold weather reduces EV battery range. AAA tested the range effects of 20F degree weather on several popular EVs and found that temperature alone could reduce range by 10-12%, while the use of in-vehicle climate control could amplify range loss to 40% or more. Also, cold weather can increase charging times by almost threefold.
Let’s assume a commuter in Barrington is employed in Chicago. Will they comfortably make a 50 mile drive in 15 deg weather in a car that may or may not get half of a full range of 300 miles? What about during rush hour when the 50 minute trip takes 2 1/2 hours?
Let’s do Houston or as I like to call it, the Third Circle of Hell.
It’s 99 deg 99% humidity 9 months of the year. We know that high heat & humidity can reduce battery ranges by almost 20% as well as reduce their lifespan significantly. That would make a round trip from Sugar Land to The Woodlands to visit grandma a little dicey. Add in the traffic Houston gets & the hour drive could take two or three times as long. All while running the AC in a vehicle with lots of glass.
Battery technology is many years, probably many decades, away from solving these legitimate, everyday real world scenarios.
The worst thing about internal combustion engines used in cars is that they have to work at all speeds, to allow them to accelerate from 0 to whatever. There are compromises that must be made for that.
But for any design there is an ‘optimum’ efficiency.
If you were to design an engine to run ONLY at that speed, and its one job was to recharge the batteries, you could improve MPG significantly, with much smaller engines, and then improve electrical and battery technology.
We’d probably get to room temperature superconductivity faster too
—”If you were to design an engine to run ONLY at that speed, and its one job was to recharge the batteries, you could improve MPG significantly, with much smaller engines, and then improve electrical and battery technology.”
NOW ON SALE!
No waiting!
Get them while they are hot.
Under the hood of every Prius and most hybrids:
The Atkinson cycle delays the intake valve’s closing until the piston has completed 20 to 30 percent of its upward travel on the compression stroke. As a result, some of the fresh charge is driven back into the intake manifold by the rising piston so the cylinder is never completely filled (hence the low-speed power reduction). The payoff comes after ignition when the piston begins descending on the expansion (also called power) stroke. Consistent with Atkinson’s original thinking, the shortened intake stroke combined with a full-length expansion stroke squeezes more work out of every increment of fuel.”
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