WRC future

[cali]

No you are competing with reality. When it doesn't follow your dreams you keep hoping a miracle happens.

I was skeptical to electric cars for whole lots of reason, but I am not blind to the reality right outside of my window (literally, parking spot with 40 cars, 18 are electric right now + 7 hybrids).

You have some serious reading or understanding disabilities.

Where did say that electric car sales isn't a reality? Oh it's very real. As it is very real that soon we have a huge ecological footprint from electric cars.

They are not green, just electric and doesn't solve any existing problems but generating new ones. That's where you're fantasizing. Capiche?

Now don't twist my words anymore (I know your'e very good at that)

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[denkimi]

The only reasonable thing to do would be building many new nuclear power plants and use the excess power to produce hydrogen.

Combined with wind and solar power that would be the most "green" solution.

[Tanelv]

Now you are starting to mix things together and even contradict yourself:

- primary power source is an issue. I guess most people agree that pumping dead dinosaurs is not sustainable in the long term.
Electricity in a battery, hydrogen or synthetic fuel is just a transport medium. Out of these batteries are at the moment most efficient and I don't see that changing in near future (15-20 years), but off course it's possible it will change at some point.

- "cabling" is an issue that can be slowly compensated for, as the demand grows. Load balancing is in many ways the fastest solution (no charging when energy demand is highest in the evening or early morning). To compare with hydrogen you would need to include distribution (by lorries?), production is already handled in previous point. Thing is, there is an existing electric grid that you can use and upgrade... there is no "hydrogen grid".

- battery production and end of life, that is the area that experiences most changes. Some problematic minerals are less and less used in battery production already. On the other end of the line old batteries are not thrown to trash after few years but often used for many years for other uses (for example for solar/wind power balancing) after they are taken out from the car. In the end you have a concentrated "brick of pollution" of some 200kg in 4x2x0,2 m instead of "tiny" pollution distributed all over the atmosphere (CO2, NOX...) and inside people's lungs (particles).

Agreed completely.

About the grid throughput - an expert from the grid company here in Estonia said that each car in our capital Tallinn could be changed to EV and have sufficient electricity available (even with electricity surplus) for charging just by changing the street lightning to LED-s. Average distance driven in a day is just 40 km.

Also, does anyone here have real world long-term experience with an EV? I have had an EV for nearly 3 years now and it has driven 70 000 km so far. Still 100% of the battery capacity that was useable when it was new is useable now because the top buffer is large enough so degradation is not noticeable to the user for quite some time. I will probably see some degradation in the coming years, but the battery easily outlives the car as does the electric motor. And when it finally reaches its end it can be recycled at about 95% efficiency. And as mknight said the battery tech will keep evolving and less and less problematic minerals are being used. Hydrogen seems sexy from a far (I can actually understand it - it is relatable to the people that are used to put petrol in the cars) thats why some politicians also seem to like it, but in reality it is a very inefficient way and only has point when there is electricity surplus.

Finally cali has a fair point that EV-s or any other type of cars can not not save the planet, we generally need less cars on the road, that's the ultimate solution.

[NickRally]

Finally cali has a fair point that EV-s or any other type of cars can not not save the planet, we generally need less cars on the road, that's the ultimate solution.

This last point is the most important of all - we, as a humanity, can make a larger positive impact on environment by changing our habits than any switch to electric or other propulsion using existing technology. As I like saying, even the most polluting car is cleaner than the most environmentally friendly one, if the former is just left on the drive and the latter is driven for millions of miles.

I am not saying everyone should suddenly stop driving, simply that we should avoid driving whenever we can.

[Franky]

For people to drive less, there needs to be another reasonable, reliable and fast transport option.

[denkimi]

When people talk about being green and renewable, i always like to remind them that the global population grows by 80 million each year and the number or cars in the world by 70 million.

Every 4 year an entire EU worth of vehicles extra appears on the planet.

But hey, why should we worry about the reality when we can just pretend we will save the world by making ourself poor.

[lmmjvss]

TBH I thought the idea behind this "green" thing was not to simply head into "selling electric suvs" but to make "transportation" a completely different thing. Like fully Shared and possibly Autonomous mobilty. Like electric-autonomous "buses" and shared ride - like 2 or 4 or 6 or 8 seat "vans" that are owned by the "manufactures", running away from the idea of "individual's cars". (So we could have WAY less cars on road and the ones that are out there would be always being used by people, so you can erase the concept of "parking" from out daily lives) And with more room for bikes and e-motos, e-scooters and things like that.
Just selling a billion electric suvs will not change a thing in this planet so I agree with the idea of "Its just a lie" when "they" say we need to have only electric cars in the streets.
Humans will never restore the environment by PRODUCING more and more things. This is what took us to "this". Humans cannot save the environment because we are the ones ruinning it.

[cali]

Agreed completely.

About the grid throughput - an expert from the grid company here in Estonia said that each car in our capital Tallinn could be changed to EV and have sufficient electricity available (even with electricity surplus) for charging just by changing the street lightning to LED-s. Average distance driven in a day is just 40 km.

Also, does anyone here have real world long-term experience with an EV? I have had an EV for nearly 3 years now and it has driven 70 000 km so far. Still 100% of the battery capacity that was useable when it was new is useable now because the top buffer is large enough so degradation is not noticeable to the user for quite some time. I will probably see some degradation in the coming years, but the battery easily outlives the car as does the electric motor. And when it finally reaches its end it can be recycled at about 95% efficiency. And as mknight said the battery tech will keep evolving and less and less problematic minerals are being used. Hydrogen seems sexy from a far (I can actually understand it - it is relatable to the people that are used to put petrol in the cars) thats why some politicians also seem to like it, but in reality it is a very inefficient way and only has point when there is electricity surplus.

Finally cali has a fair point that EV-s or any other type of cars can not not save the planet, we generally need less cars on the road, that's the ultimate solution.

Hi Tanel,

By no means my intention is to start a pissing contest with you as your answer was quite reasonable.

- I have an engineer (ABB, EstLink as a reference) who says quite the opposite, that current infrastructure has to be revamped in order to avoid nightmare with EV's and their draw from the system. Keep in mind that this guy has been designing substations tens of years by now. Also keep in mind as electricity available is only one small factor. Current infrastructure is not designed for EV's and needs big investments. That alone is costly and certainly not green.

- I have only experience with EV's as a passenger in taxi's. Nice cars and certainly a nice power delivery. Nothing bad to say about that.

- as you know yourself, we currently in our banana republic are unable to recycle plastic or any other waste properly. Adding EV batteries to that list makes me feel very uncomfortable knowing how stupid human race can be what concerns making up ideas how to "go around the system".

- at some point we need to utilize this waste. If 10 or 15 years is OK with you I say it's quite naive thinking. Even if it would be in 50 years, we still have to do it. And the more EV's being sold we will pile up a completely new issue which needs again new resources to be partially recycled and partially dumped. That alone needs completely new ways of thinking, I would even say a completely new industry. So we the human race on top of all of our problems are creating a new complex problem on top of it.

- my avg yearly distance is approx 45 - 50 000 kms. I would be in deep-deep trouble with EV's. Also I do not feel comfortable paying charging fees for my car which I use 80% for work. No, I'm not a truck nor a taxi driver, currently own Merc V-klasse. Need the space for my family and work. How much would currently cost me to buy a electric van like that? And I'm not even going to touch long distance driving. All is doable but inconvenient and time consuming.

- we currently burn (or best to say burned) oil shale to get electricity. That's about the longest way from green if you also keep in mind that most of the resources goes to mining oil shale.

- as what goes to battery tech do you honestly believe that energy storage doesn't need minerals like Li, Ni or Co in the future? My experience has shown that all new stuff keeps exploiting even more rare minerals. History has shown on that end things tend to go worse and not for the better. I would not be that naive to hope that we will suddenly have some magic mineral for energy source or as a energy storage, probably it will be the opposite.

This all in all not even close to green as some other folks wrote, only if we are able to find a different ways of transportation we can mention it being green. Today's options are going to be million miles away from sustainable and green.

PS! If read carefully I mentioned hydrogen or smth similar. I have no illusions about hydrogen either but it currently feels more of an option than EV's. But still we need to come up with something more radical and different to reduce ecological footprint. And by no means I'm anti EV, but I don't like the current propaganda image of them as it isn't even remotely close to environment friendly.

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[mknight]

So what's your solution? Keep burning oil and drive 50k/year or build up hydrogen infrastructure from absolute zero?

Electric infrastructure is there in every country already, even without without any upgrade it can support sizable number of EVs (10%+). This is confirmed by facts here right now
not "someone said".

Electric cars, battery production and above all renewable electricity generation have seen huge development last 10 years. Sure that rate won't last forever, but it's still going the right direction compared with very little developments in combustion engine efficiency (thumbs up for Toyota, though they also use batteries in their hybrids) and mostly more and more energy-hungry oil extraction.

Driving electric battery car doesn't automatically make it ecologic, but it's right now the only near-future (10-20 years) way to reduce car emissions of all kind. Obviously even in the most dramatic scenarions there won't be more than some 20% electric cars on the road in 10 years in Europe.

Going back to the very start here and my starting point , people totally ignore the "local" pollution effects you get from combustion engines everywhere they go. Yes latest Euro6++ cars have little coming out of their exhaust....once they get warm and when it's not below zero (6 months here), and when the "chemical factory" in the back works fine and in case of trucks when the driver doesn't cheat with AdBlue. That chemical factory now uses similar ammounts of rare metals like batteries.

[cali]

So what's your solution? Keep burning oil and drive 50k/year or build up hydrogen infrastructure from absolute zero?

Electric infrastructure is there in every country already, even without without any upgrade it can support sizable number of EVs (10%+). This is confirmed by facts here right now
not "someone said".

Electric cars, battery production and above all renewable electricity generation have seen huge development last 10 years. Sure that rate won't last forever, but it's still going the right direction compared with very little developments in combustion engine efficiency (thumbs up for Toyota, though they also use batteries in their hybrids) and mostly more and more energy-hungry oil extraction.

Driving electric battery car doesn't automatically make it ecologic, but it's right now the only near-future (10-20 years) way to reduce car emissions of all kind. Obviously even in the most dramatic scenarions there won't be more than some 20% electric cars on the road in 10 years in Europe.

Going back to the very start here and my starting point , people totally ignore the "local" pollution effects you get from combustion engines everywhere they go. Yes latest Euro6++ cars have little coming out of their exhaust....once they get warm and when it's not below zero (6 months here), and when the "chemical factory" in the back works fine and in case of trucks when the driver doesn't cheat with AdBlue. That chemical factory now uses similar ammounts of rare metals like batteries.

You have valid questions and points.
My idea from start has been not to treat EV's as THE Solution or people to actually think that now we suddenly have "green" vehicles.
As long as we acknowledge the shortcomings I think it's the way forward to the right direction. Currently we do not have a good solution to it.
My sole problem has been the image of EV's that has been painted to the general public. Like after Dieselgate VW went "green". It's laughable. It's business. It's naive to think businesses really care for the environment.

I think the end goal for both of us is the same, we just look at it from different angles.