Comment by 🐐 boringbbsuser
I've always had a negative view of them, but was a bit shocked with some of what I heard.
They burn for days, if not weeks. Larger departments talk about cutting shipping containers in half to cover the car and try to contain the mess. I guess they would pick it up and drop it into one with some type of crane, like a tub, or they would cover the top of it.
I suspect some chemistries would be better than others for safety, like LiFePO4. I still feel it's a gamble.
I assume you could have mechanical door levers on electric cars, right? Even ones that unlock the locks? Many cars have been like that for a long time.
Mar 04 · 2 months ago
14 Later Comments ↓
🚀 stack [OP] · Mar 04 at 17:10:
I was told that 'some Tesla models' have a mechanical override, but how many people know where and how to use it when the car is filling with toxic black smoke?
There are many instances of towed vehicles reigniting as much as a month after collision... Gasoline is terrifying, but lithium is such a bad idea...
🚀 lars_the_bear · Mar 04 at 17:24:
The terrible calculus of short-term tragedy against long-term calamity...
Lithium batteries occasional catch fire and kill people, but burning hydrocarbons is slowly destroying the whole planet. Which is worse? Switch the trolley or not ? ;)
I'll stick to my bicycle.
👻 darkghost · Mar 04 at 18:02:
In my experience, people find the mechanical override before they find the button and then the car yells at them for using it.
🚀 stack [OP] · Mar 04 at 18:37:
It is questionable if electric cars offer a net benefit, if you include the environmental cost of lithium and weird metals mining, battery losses/lifespan/replacement cost, and the fact that the lithium battery is _not_ fuel -- you still burn hydrocarbons in a power plant in a poor neighborhood.
Add government subsidies to force abandonment of perfectly good cars for new electric/giant cars... And infrastructure projects to expand the grid and install charging stations...
🚀 stack [OP] · Mar 04 at 18:47:
👻 darkghost · Mar 04 at 19:49:
Here's the argument: you're going to mine. You might as well build a durable good from those products. A battery is that. Fuel is disposable energy and the industrial infrastructure produces a single use item. You can mine for more minerals to produce another durable good, such as solar panels. Panels have nearly zero operating expenditure unlike every other kind of power generation. Won't we run out of land? We use a ton of land on corn ethanol, that is corn that is fermented into ethanol to blend into gasoline, and there is enough land there to cover it in solar panels (that exist now) to provide enough power for the US. I'm not taking Arizona sun, I'm taking Midwestern sun.
At end of life for the battery, where is the richest source of more lithium to produce a new battery? It's the old battery and others like it. Economically, it makes sense to recycle. You only need large scale mining if you're growing the numbers of batteries. Solar panels are silica, copper, glass, and aluminum. Some of the most readily available materials, with glass and aluminum being so abundant they're used for beverage containers. Recycle them, sure, when they lose their ability to transfer energy economically in 25-30 years.
If you want your creature comforts and your fast transportation, this seems like a much better way to make use of the resources available. You can live your life using only paper plates, but durable reusable plates you wash make so much more sense in the long run.
🚀 stack [OP] · Mar 04 at 21:46:
I saw a news segment recently. I think it was Australia. People with old (2-3yr) solar panels realized that the promised savings (and profits from selling power back) were nearly non-existant; but new, more efficient panels will save lots, and sell power, and this time it's different. Govmnt. subsidises shiny new panels, no one wants the old ones because subsidies do not apply.
👻 darkghost · Mar 05 at 00:01:
The profits of selling power back are extremely variable and subject to the whims of the service provider. Most don't have long term contacts to sell back out even short term contracts. Even those who can offset 100% of their power still pay a minimum because power line maintenance ain't free.
But I question the motives of the people involved in this story. They're isn't a big efficiency gain between now vs 3 years ago. Maybe a price difference. Maybe better incentives now vs then.
🚀 lars_the_bear · Mar 05 at 07:29:
@stack : "...you still burn hydrocarbons in a power plant in a poor neighborhood"
We don't do that round my way. We find the greenest, most unspoiled part of the countryside, and burn hydrocarbons there.
I would imagine that the long-term environmental benefits of electric transportation will only come when we have non-polluting, sustainable energy sources for everything else. Burning oil to charge your car's lithium batteries doesn't seem to make much sense by itself, and that's what we're doing now.
🚀 stack [OP] · Mar 05 at 14:40:
in the US about 20% of electricity is from burning coal [EPA], 60% from all hydrocarbons...
Driving around in electric cars here is like running a hose from your tailpipe to your underprivileged neighbor's house. All while being all smug about environmentalism.
At least my car burns gas. not coal.
👻 darkghost · Mar 05 at 15:59:
I think about efficiency. A small mobile engine must run over a large rpm as dictated by the driving needs. The efficiency of the engine is full of compromises on size, weight, power, and operating range. A power plant can and has be engineered and fine tuned to run at peak efficiency all the time. Rather than heat being a waste product, it is used to boil water to produce the power.
The electric motor itself is very efficient in converting energy to motion without wasting as much energy as heat. This is why you see efficiencies reported as being >100 mpg equivalent. (Equivalency is calculated as the amount of chemical energy in a gallon of gas, about 33 kWh.)
It's such an energy loss in an engine that it's more energy efficient to burn gasoline in a power plant and use that to charge an EV (accepting all transmission losses and electrical charging/discharging inefficiencies) than it is to burn in an engine.
🚀 stack [OP] · Mar 05 at 16:07:
True. But just to argue a bit more I would guess that gain is largely offset by battery inefficiency. And if replacing a working vehicle any comparison is not good.
👻 darkghost · Mar 05 at 16:14:
Batteries are pretty good if they're actually managed (unlike the Leaf). But you're 100% right. Don't get rid of a working vehicle just because there's something else out there. That's the most wasteful thing you can do.
🚀 stack [OP] · Mar 05 at 16:18:
I was surprised to see 90%+ theoretical efficiency! Things are improving. But enough optimism.
Original Post
The Evil of Action — I was reminded by none.rip to think about stuff, and am still working it out. At some point I am afraid I will have written a manifesto, but here I am just spitballing. I am a crappy anarchist. I don't appreciate governments for the mass-scale murder and suffering (and to a lesser but tangible degree, corruption and lies) they cause and participate in. But I also don't feel a strong need to fight the State, as another and possibly worse State will take its place. As bad...