Was looking something up and this was the banner on top of the screen. Wow!
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Was looking something up and this was the banner on top of the screen. Wow!
I wonder why they didn't detail any of the ways people believe Trump is endangering Earth's precious natural resources. Looks like donation click-bait to me.
Not to derail the subject, did you find the cover story's lament about how unfair it was for electric vehicle owners to be assessed fees en lieu of gas taxes to be as interesting as I did? My state recently gave us a dramatic increase in gasoline taxes for road and bridge maintenance and repairs, I wonder why the Sierra Club thinks owners of EV's should be excused?
Don't EVs use the road too? And roads require maintenance, which is, in this state, from the fuel tax.
Not sure why they should get a free ride.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bae
from the article
”...drivers of gas-fueled cars are not charged a fee on the public costs of the pollution they create, including to our climate and our public health. It is rather disingenuous to claim seeking “fairness” for the costs of road usage but then not to seek fairness for the costs of unhealthy air that harms everyone...”
So there!:~)
I wonder what the full life-cycle analysis of an all-electric vehicle looks like these days? What with the mining and refining needed for the batteries, and the battery production itself, and all that.Quote:
Originally Posted by iris lilies
Asking for a friend...
I was looking up about the fee because someone was lamenting who actually proposed the fee.
The point of this post was the donation aspect.
If the electricity that recharges the car is made from fossil fuels as it is on my area how is it any better than a gas powered car? I've never gotten the whole concept of why these cars are supposedly good for the environment.
In theory tge centralized burning of fossil fuels at a power plant is more efficient than burning them in the car. I’ll leave it to someone else to google whether thus is actually the case or not.
But there are also people like my friend who sized the solar panels on his house a few years ago to accommodate not just household use but also charging the nissan leaf he had just bought.
Yours is an inconvenient question.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
But that's not interesting. The internet is full of "Orange Man Bad! Send Money!!" appeals. Maybe if one of them could tell us what we're actually being protected from.Quote:
Originally Posted by frugal-one
The story about EV owners is interesting. Who doesn't enjoy exhibitions of "I'm so special all you other yokels should pay for my services". That's good stuff there!!!
This
Attachment 2946
It's a matter of efficiency also and electric cars are more efficient:Quote:
If the electricity that recharges the car is made from fossil fuels as it is on my area how is it any better than a gas powered car? I've never gotten the whole concept of why these cars are supposedly good for the environment.
In theory the centralized burning of fossil fuels at a power plant is more efficient than burning them in the car. I’ll leave it to someone else to google whether thus is actually the case or not.
https://www.theguardian.com/football...-electric-cars
As things stand right now, you can search up the answer as easy as me. However, I don't think the future of power plants is necessarily fossil fuels. It will probably be a mix of renewable and other sources. Even now, I select my public service energy source for billing as wind power and pay a little more. It's more a juggling of books rather than wind power actually coming to my house. When it comes to fossil fuels, coal is going out and natural gas is in, so it probably depends on the source, too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yppej
As to the total environmental impact of the life cycle of an EV vs conventional, that too seemed like an easy answer to find. If you are only talking greenhouse emissions. Or at least so wiki claims. It gets muddled for me when you get into the mining of rare earths and other metals and also disposal costs. Maybe it depends on the greater or lesser of evils?
That's my concern. Batteries are terrible terrible things to make, much like semiconductors.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
The electric production site can have better controls on pollution discharges into the air, as opposed to depending on thousands of cars to maintain their exhaust systems.
Many electricity plants are run off dams or wind out here in the west, so obviously that’s better than individual gas combustion car engines.
However there was a cost when flooding the valleys.
In my case we have solar on the roof so we run our car on sunshine.
There’s not a lot of perfect answers out there other than stop driving. Become like the Amish.
A recent report from Germany found that a Tesla Model 3 releases more CO2 into the air than a Mercedes C220 Diesel when battery production is taken into account.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany...rs-11556057770 (I know the article is behind a paywall, excerpts follow):
"Driving a Tesla Model 3 in Germany, for example, is responsible for 156 to 181 grams of CO2 per kilometer, compared to just 141 grams per kilometer for a diesel-powered Mercedes C220d — that includes emissions from producing diesel fuel."
Bother, that was my lurking engineer-brain fear.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
I'm also curious about the overall efficiency of hauling around the 1100 pound Tesla 3 battery pack. That's more than the 800hp hemi+transmission I have in my Hellcat.
Sometimes things are not straight forward.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
and very important in this study, the research was conducted in Germany. The conditions and means by which the batteries are produced must therefore be taken into account. In Germany, on average, more than a third of the electricity is produced from lignite and charcoal, which are by far the largest emitters of CO2 among electricity producers. If we look at Belgium, where the electricity is mainly derived from low-CO2 nuclear or renewable energy, we see that the emission of electric cars there is on average three to four times lower than that of an internal combustion engine. So the claim of the German researchers is not completely wrong as far as Germany is concerned, but it is not at all representative for the whole world.
https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/mos...n-diesel-cars/
EVs release no tail pipe air pollutants at the place where they are operated. They also typically generate less noise pollution than an internal combustion engine vehicle, whether at rest or in motion.[106] The energy that electric and hybrid cars consume is usually generated by means that have environmental impacts. Nevertheless, adaptation of EVs would have a significant net environmental benefit, except in a few countries that continue to rely on older coal fired power plants for the bulk of their electricity generation throughout the life of the car.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electr...#Environmental
That's true. Germany mostly uses coal to power their electricity generation plants while the US coal use is somewhere in the 25% range. Although China seems to be the largest producer of batteries in the world and their electric plants are 65% coal powered. I'm not sure what the current likelihood of more Nuclear Power to match the Belgium comparison might be.Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogar
On the flip side, having owned two clean diesel vehicles recently I can attest that technology has greatly improved as well.
If we go Amish we have all the methane emissions from cows and horses.
I suppose a person could make a study of things. Since I'm driving a fossil fuel burning Tacoma (and a burrito burning human powered bicycle), I can't talk too much. I did learn a few things in the discussion. I don't think the world is quite ready for EVs, but the advances are catching up. Tesla's gigfactory in Nevada is supposedly going to be entirely energy self-sufficient. I'm not sure if it is complete yet, but it's an interesting project in itself.
As of 2019, the Tesla GigaFactory is the largest producer of Lithium-ion batteries for electric mobility at 23GWh, followed by Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) with a capacity of 12 GWh, followed by Panasonic and BYD.[1] CATL produced 11.8 GWh of battery capacity in 2017, an increase of over 74% from 2016. Japan’s Panasonic was the second largest manufacturer with 10 GWh, and BYD was third with 7.2 GWh. Another China-based maker, OptimumNano Energy Co. Ltd., and South Korea’s LG Chem were No. 4 and No. 5, producing 5.5 GWh and 4.5 GWh respectively.
My electric pedal assist bicycle has Tesla cells in it!
Tesla bought out solar city just after we had our solar panels put on the roof. The desert Southwest has plenty of sunshine if we would simply capture it. For us, electric cars are a no brainer.
For some reason I'm not able to see the original banner ad so I don't know exactly what it said. However, I do know the various ways trump has set out to harm the environment/waste resources. Aside from his generalized hostility towards renewables (windmills cause cancer, we're going to make coal great again...) off the top of my head I can think of three concrete actions he's taken/is taking. Pulling the US out of the Paris climate accord, rolling back the CAFE standards, and currently attempting to do away with California's right to set pollution standards stricter than the federal government's, as is allowed under the clean air act.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan
edited to add, I forgot about the fourth thing, the recent rollback of lightbulb efficiency standards.
One of my favorite people shared this on Facebook just the other day--84 things Trump has done to roll back environmental policy:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...llmF8DdbKXH_G8
worse removing restrictions on methane emissions, which there is more and more evidence is greatly contributing to climate change. Opening up of vast public land to extraction, logging etc. People are not being informed of what is really going on with Trump because they are distracted by talk of nuking hurricanes and stuff. This is playing right into Trump's hand, he wants people distracted. When people will wake up and stop playing along with Trump's distraction game, I don't know. Will they ever? Meanwhile the world is not going to survive many more leaders like Trump (and Bolsonaro etc.).Quote:
I can think of three concrete actions he's taken/is taking. Pulling the US out of the Paris climate accord, rolling back the CAFE standards, and currently attempting to do away with California's right to set pollution standards stricter than the federal government's, as is allowed under the clean air act.
I just passed this list on to everyone in my email list. Thanks!Quote:
Originally Posted by catherine