EV vehicles

[Bumblebee]

Looks like that is where it is going after Super Tuesday.

I think we are having a wild time right now, open borders, migrants everywhere, inflation, war in Israel, Ukraine, two sailors on the Barbados flagged True Confidence at 9:30 GMT today killed, ship abandoned this morning due to another Houthi attack, a President who is kept away from public speaking as it is an embarrasment to the Democrats when he does.

Don't think it can get any worse than this.

Hopefully not.....hopefully Trump can push aside his vengeance for a little while to get what needs to be done.....done....

 

[jellyrug]

This is what happens when you go from 5 guys to 1 and then expect the same level of service and maintenance.....

In the past I'd say transformers don't go but then we have to look at where they are made these days.....

You should be good, the last time I looked you guys in Canada spend around $1.4 Billion a year on transformers and they all come from reputable suppliers. That is not someting we screw around with.


Siemens AG, Schneider Electric SE, Electric Power Inc., Northern Transformer Corporation, and Eaton Corporation Inc., among others.

 

[Bumblebee]

You should be good, the last time I looked you guys in Canada spend around $1.4 Billion a year on transformers and they all come from reputable suppliers. That is not someting we screw around with.


Siemens AG, Schneider Electric SE, Electric Power Inc., Northern Transformer Corporation, and Eaton Corporation Inc., among others.

After a quick search, it appears we get transformers from China as well

 

[TallTom]

@TallTom I’m if I remember correctly we were talking about EV’s however I will entertain you briefly with saying that the current generation “millennials” are not the cause of americas income decline. I’m not in economics but something tells me that if EV’s were not the future investments in
the space would cease. Maybe education in conjunction with a health dose of respect for trades could help some on the financial front. I don’t have the answers for why my kids may not be able to purchase a home with the same income that I currently make and that in it of itself is worrisome. What I do know is, the money pouring into BEV and infrastructure R&D has allowed many Americans to still obtain the “dream” (this includes myself). It wasn’t long ago where you could buy a home for less than 1 years salary in a decent neighborhood with good schools. Those times are long gone. I hope we can fix the mess that has been left for us to clean up.

The point I was highlighting is an EV has to be obtainable as a practical economic solution they can access. If your or my govt believed that climate change is the end of mankind, and EVs provided a major impact on this, they would provide them at no cost to those that couldn't access public transportation.

My philosophy on EVs and climate change solutions is, once it becomes profitable, industry will all pile on to capture those profits.

In the meantime the average car payment in America is $750. Tesla are economically unreachable for most of the driving public.

Nevermind whole nations that are burning trees and coal and waste oil for heat.

 

[Oz22]

I enjoy firsthand data. The difficulty that some have with posted data, is they either A) Claim the data is a propaganda link or B) the data doesn't agree with their data and they want their data to be right or C) the source of the data doesn't understand the problem like they do.

Yes that data is all over the place, and largely depends on whose paying for the study. Scientific reporting is not what it used to be I am afraid, it's more a tool of politics now. When it comes to the EV transition though common sense goes a long way in making the analysis. People cite the transition from wood to coal to oil, as though that implies we will naturally go to electric, but each step of that earlier chain was a transition to higher density, more portable fuel. Electric is actually a step way back in this process since it's not a fuel, but an end product of burning fuel. Electricity is actually the most inefficient way, in terms of energy losses, to get anything done! We only use it because it's super convenient and because we had, Had, abundant cheap energy to generate it and to build and maintain the networks it runs along.

Back of all this is the idea that we somehow need to keep the cars rolling into wallmart and KFC, our suburban culture. It's a non-negotiable at this point, no one wants to give up their personal cars. But planet Earth and the laws of thermodynamics don't care about suburban lifestyles. Unless you can admit the possibility that all this could go away some day, disappear down the rathole of history like the massive Roman infrastructure of 2000 years ago, unless you can admit that possibility then you will never be able to look at this objectively. There are people all over the Earth today, tens of millions, more probably, who one had access to cars but now don't because they can't afford them. And not just in the developing world either, millions of people in the advanced nations simply can't afford to run them. That's an inexorable trend.

Oil was the key, it built everything we see, from the roads to the bridges to the factories to the cars, you can't replace that with electricity I am afraid. Once the oil goes this 100 year experiment in suburban sprawl must transition into something ...else. All this is well documented and you only need common sense at this point to connect the dots. For example, cement clinker, the essential ingredient in concrete is produced by sintering (fusing together without melting to the point of liquefaction) limestone and other elements at 2,640 °F Between one and two billions ton a year is needed for the concrete we use. Then there is the steel we put in the concrete, an even more energy intensive product. In 2022, a total of around 1.9 billion metric tons of crude steel were produced worldwide. (with coal and oil)

Think about that next time you drive your $60,000 EV over an aging bridge or down a bumpy concrete interstate. Ask yourself how they are going to rebuild them when all we have is solar panels and windmills, made from oil. You ever wonder why the government is so behind in repairing all the nations infrastructure? The answer is simple, it's simply unaffordable. It will never happen without an abundant cheap energy supply like oil.

This is the past

This is the future

 

[Oz22]

I have a neighbor who responds to these outages and he says it is mostly outdated infrastructure that causes the outages....transformers, switches, etc....

We have an app that tells us how long the outage is expected but like most things that is an unreliable means

I do know that the Home stand by generators and Generlink systems have been selling quite a bit lately.....

I can remember a day when there were NO outages, that was the 1970's, what I consider the peak of civilization for many reasons. It was the peak of per-capita energy consumption globally too I believe, at least it was in the US. We had good reliable systems, low prices for gasoline and electricity, energy consumption is a good proxy for lifestyle too.

Did you ever read about the promises made back in the 1950's about nuclear power? All the experts claimed it would be too cheap to meter so everyone would get free electricity lol. That's how they get past people's resistance to things, make up a crock of lies about how perfect the world will be then push ahead into the corporate profit zone.

Years later the truth comes out. Look at the roll back of all the EV subsidies worldwide, the rug is being pulled out and if EV charging companies can't make a profit now they will have to up the fee they charge for electricity. Every times someone in the EV industry tells me how great the transition will be I have to ask myself are they biased? Does their job, their future depend on mass uptake? They call that a conflict of interest.

 

[TallTom]

Yes that data is all over the place, and largely depends on whose paying for the study. Scientific reporting is not what it used to be I am afraid, it's more a tool of politics now. When it comes to the EV transition though common sense goes a long way in making the analysis. People cite the transition from wood to coal to oil, as though that implies we will naturally go to electric, but each step of that earlier chain was a transition to higher density, more portable fuel. Electric is actually a step way back in this process since it's not a fuel, but an end product of burning fuel. Electricity is actually the most inefficient way, in terms of energy losses, to get anything done! We only use it because it's super convenient and because we had, Had, abundant cheap energy to generate it and to build and maintain the networks it runs along.

Back of all this is the idea that we somehow need to keep the cars rolling into wallmart and KFC, our suburban culture. It's a non-negotiable at this point, no one wants to give up their personal cars. But planet Earth and the laws of thermodynamics don't care about suburban lifestyles. Unless you can admit the possibility that all this could go away some day, disappear down the rathole of history like the massive Roman infrastructure of 2000 years ago, unless you can admit that possibility then you will never be able to look at this objectively. There are people all over the Earth today, tens of millions, more probably, who one had access to cars but now don't because they can't afford them. And not just in the developing world either, millions of people in the advanced nations simply can't afford to run them. That's an inexorable trend.

Oil was the key, it built everything we see, from the roads to the bridges to the factories to the cars, you can't replace that with electricity I am afraid. Once the oil goes this 100 year experiment in suburban sprawl must transition into something ...else. All this is well documented and you only need common sense at this point to connect the dots. For example, cement clinker, the essential ingredient in concrete is produced by sintering (fusing together without melting to the point of liquefaction) limestone and other elements at 2,640 °F Between one and two billions ton a year is needed for the concrete we use. Then there is the steel we put in the concrete, an even more energy intensive product. In 2022, a total of around 1.9 billion metric tons of crude steel were produced worldwide. (with coal and oil)

Think about that next time you drive your $60,000 EV over an aging bridge or down a bumpy concrete interstate. Ask yourself how they are going to rebuild them when all we have is solar panels and windmills, made from oil. You ever wonder why the government is so behind in repairing all the nations infrastructure? The answer is simple, it's simply unaffordable. It will never happen without an abundant cheap energy supply like oil.

This is the past

View attachment 1679780

This is the future

View attachment 1679781

I'm not quite the end of the world is up to us camp. There is sufficient scientific evidence to suggest this blue marble has heated and cooled itself over and over for millenia. We just happen to be inhabiting it now in this cycle. And yes we contribute in negative ways to it. But the heating won't stop if we all quit using oil and become vegetarians.

Meanwhile the world (mankind) has to act in unison to stop contributing.

I think what we both seem to agree on is we can't expect that to happen.

Poor nations are simply trying to survive as humans. You can't take away a source of survival simply because we don't want them to pollute.

For many people, a car, even a crappy old polluting one, is a means for survival. It won't bode well for the rest of us to attempt to take that away from them.

 

[TallTom]

I can remember a day when there were NO outages, that was the 1970's, what I consider the peak of civilization for many reasons. It was the peak of per-capita energy consumption globally too I believe, at least it was in the US. We had good reliable systems, low prices for gasoline and electricity, energy consumption is a good proxy for lifestyle too.

Did you ever read about the promises made back in the 1950's about nuclear power? All the experts claimed it would be too cheap to meter so everyone would get free electricity lol. That's how they get past people's resistance to things, make up a crock of lies about how perfect the world will be then push ahead into the corporate profit zone.

Years later the truth comes out. Look at the roll back of all the EV subsidies worldwide, the rug is being pulled out and if EV charging companies can't make a profit now they will have to up the fee they charge for electricity. Every times someone in the EV industry tells me how great the transition will be I have to ask myself are they biased? Does their job, their future depend on mass uptake? They call that a conflict of interest.

View attachment 1679782

Yep. This EV house of cards collapses when the govt. stops subsidizing it.

 

[TallTom]

We only use it because it's super convenient and because we had, Had, abundant cheap energy to generate it and to build and maintain the networks it runs along.

The answer is simple, it's simply unaffordable. It will never happen without an abundant cheap energy supply like oil.

Coal is also still cheap energy. I made my living in coal in two capacities. When I was in Med School to pay the rent I drove a coal dozer at a coal export facility. One of 3 in the country. It was, and is, mind boggling how much coal the U.S. has. We had mountains upon mountains of it passing through our facility. 90% of all that passed through was exported to China and India. We retained the 10% for our domestic applications. Which was still mountains of it.

The economy of coal is not a trivial to the world's economies.

My next job was making fuel augmenters for coal fired factories. In our case our biggest customers were 3 cement plants in Midlothian TX. Most people have no concept the scale of size these facilities are. They are massive. They all burned coal to fire the kilns. Mountains of it. Conveyed in 24/7. As one mountain was reduced the suppliers would build a new one to take it's place. It all very well organized and it's an economy.

It's not a simple task to convert them to a different fuel source. Aside from the massive cost, they would have to scale back or completely halt cement production for months at a time.

Try cutting off the cement supply to the U.S. market and see what happens.

All of these green ideas are great in theory. But in practice, we'd collapse economically getting there. We weren't a green solution. But we were a less dirty solution. That saved $ and reduced the amount of coal consumed for the BTU production needed.

We can transition but not suddenly. You have to create an economy to replace what you are destroying.

And if we as a country didn't continually grow a deficit we could pull off infrastructure rebuilding a little sooner. So it's not just about cheap energy.

 

[Oz22]

I'm not quite the end of the world is up to us camp. There is sufficient scientific evidence to suggest this blue marble has heated and cooled itself over and over for millenia. We just happen to be inhabiting it now in this cycle. And yes we contribute in negative ways to it. But the heating won't stop if we all quit using oil and become vegetarians.

Yes, well I haven't commented on the AGW issue and don't want to, I began investigating that over a decade ago on pods like RadioEcoshock where the caster interviewed the leading scientific minds on the planet. Real scientists, not political scientists, the sort of men and women who would never be allowed in front of a camera lol. Anyway it became a totally devise issue, as one would expect from something so important, it even became a major division between the the American political parties, and many weather related websites I frequented closed down their subs on the issue or went off-line all together. On many the rules are specific, you are NOT to discuss it.

Now we just had one of the oddest summers here, daytime temps were not that high by historical measures but humidity was greater and overnight lows beat all records. It was quite uncomfortable though being a man who hedges his bets I had a lot of A/C installed here and a lot of solar. I also have a cool room downstairs with an old 'window-rattler' aircon unit and a 2kVA Honda to run it if I want. I never did Boy Scouts but I adhere to their motto. This business of global warming though was instrumental in masking the real issue with cars, oil depletion, or the peak of oil production. That was the topic in the 2000's and it had a lot of traction. it was the original push for solar wind and EV long before AGW went mainstream and it's still the major issue to my mind. Frack oil and all that crap was simply a smoke and mirrors game, never made a red cent for the companies and had little effect on the price of oil which had already collapsed after the great recession.

But oil depletion is still a real thing and conventional oil production globally is well down. Unconventional? When you look into Gas you discover that the "oil equivalents" that they count as oil mostly goes into making plastic bags because that's all it's good for. The actual oil is good for cars, not Diesel, but comes out at great cost, millions of tons of sand trucked in, and chemicals, and endless holes because they tap out quickly. If it was the bonanza they had promised gasoline would be cheap like in the 1990's and before. 2040 at current rates of consumption is what they predicted would be the point at which oil would be all gone! But of course we haven't stayed at those levels and as time passes our consumption will decline and people struggling to just put food on the table and pay their rent will turn in their keys. It's hard for us here to see this because we are all relatively wealthy but go talk to an average Sri Lanken and you'll get a better picture.


France offers citizens EUR 4,000 grants to switch from cars to bikes. The country aims to boost the numbers of its citizens using bicycles to get to work and move around to 9% by 2024. French transition

What's going on there? Fear of global warming? Simply put, when they buy oil abroad money flows out of the French economy, lotz of money. They clearly are finding it cheaper to give people thousands to stop burning it. It's the same reason I believe the Western Europeans were happy to see the energy flows from Russia curtailed. The politicians, not the people! Energy moves West but money must move East and their debt mired economies would have to give up buying it in the future anyway so why not start now and blame the austerity on the Russians rather than their own corrupt and inefficient economies.

That's how the world really works, the stuff people are fed on TV is just to keep them quiet and consuming. keep them quietly toiling in the factories and offices and investing their life savings into whatever the current bubble is being promoted. Of course if you've spent your life sitting in front of one, being told what to think at every level, how could you possible believe any of that. But some people are starting to wake up, and that's dangerous, for them, because they tend to think that having an awareness that they have been dumbed down all their lives, now somehow makes them smart...

 

[Oz22]

Coal is also still cheap energy...

We can transition but not suddenly. You have to create an economy to replace what you are destroying.

And if we as a country didn't continually grow a deficit we could pull off infrastructure rebuilding a little sooner. So it's not just about cheap energy.

So go back to coal. I think they will do that anyway, but it won't solve the Diesel issue or the Gasoline issue. And of course you're right about the US debt, on which a trillion in interest must be repayed every year now. If they curtailed military spending by 80% or whatever they could possibly rebuild it all, over some years, but the demand for all the product would also push the price of those products up, and at the end of the day in 30 years you'd have to rebuild it all again anyway. Sooner or later the party has to end, all civilizations rise and fall.

 

[Tony Nitrous]

Australia is an interesting one. I’m pretty sure we will lag way behind with EV’s. Not only is the government lacking any motivation to promote them, but it’s a very different market with very different infrastructure.

Imagine a county the size of the US, but only having a population of 27 million, and 85% of them live on the East, South and West coast city’s.

EV’s are selling and getting a foothold in the coastal city’s and suburbs, but driving around the coast and more so inland there are huge black spots where you aren’t going to charge anything.

I went over 100 miles away to fetch a tyre, over 100 miles the other way to fetch some GSXR parts, 200 miles inland to fetch my pup, can’t remember ever seeing an EV or anywhere to charge one.

The UK deals with much smaller distances and like the US has a more distributed population on the whole. Australia is going to be way behind in this, until the government supports it, and infrastructure improves, technology improves, there isn’t a huge interest. EV’s will happen here but they will need to run alongside petrol / diesel for quite a while.

 

[–0——0–]

Yep. This EV house of cards collapses when the govt. stops subsidizing it.

Just like farming

 

[–0——0–]

So go back to coal. I think they will do that anyway, but it won't solve the Diesel issue or the Gasoline issue. And of course you're right about the US debt, on which a trillion in interest must be repayed every year now. If they curtailed military spending by 80% or whatever they could possibly rebuild it all, over some years, but the demand for all the product would also push the price of those products up, and at the end of the day in 30 years you'd have to rebuild it all again anyway. Sooner or later the party has to end, all civilizations rise and fall.

Go electric now. Save yourself the hassle in the future. Jk but again, it ain’t for everyone

 

[–0——0–]

Australia is an interesting one. I’m pretty sure we will lag way behind with EV’s. Not only is the government lacking any motivation to promote them, but it’s a very different market with very different infrastructure.

Imagine a county the size of the US, but only having a population of 27 million, and 85% of them live on the East, South and West coast city’s.

EV’s are selling and getting a foothold in the coastal city’s and suburbs, but driving around the coast and more so inland there are huge black spots where you aren’t going to charge anything.

I went over 100 miles away to fetch a tyre, over 100 miles the other way to fetch some GSXR parts, 200 miles inland to fetch my pup, can’t remember ever seeing an EV or anywhere to charge one.

The UK deals with much smaller distances and like the US has a more distributed population on the whole. Australia is going to be way behind in this, until the government supports it, and infrastructure improves, technology improves, there isn’t a huge interest. EV’s will happen here but they will need to run alongside petrol / diesel for quite a while.

There was a time where gas rations were sparse. This too will change.

 

[–0——0–]

Look at the end of the day I’m not one to say that EV sales are booming. There is major financial backing that suggest this is the path forward. I hope things turn out in favor of BEV. If they don’t, I’ll let you know as I will be seeking gainful employment outside this industry. If any of you sit on the board of directors of a major OEM I’d love to have a chat outside this thread.

 

[–0——0–]

I’m sorry I just don’t subscribe to all the tin foil hat propaganda that’s been prolific in this thread. And to that point, I say let’s just agree to disagree and should one of us be proven wrong I hope we are graceful in our acceptance of the outcome.

 

[Oz22]

Australia is an interesting one. ...Imagine a county the size of the US, but only having a population of 27 million, and 85% of them live on the East, South and West coast city’s.

EV’s are selling and getting a foothold in the coastal city’s and suburbs, but driving around the coast and more so inland there are huge black spots where you aren’t going to charge anything

Correct.

The government here went along with the song and dance to a degree but at the end of the day if people don't want to put up with the hassle of one they won't. There is something to said for having a tank full of gas that will take you 800km and if it's half empty, so what. A five minute stop at any gas station fills it up and you're on your way. Convenience, that's what the Western culture is all about now. Dishwashers, fast food, touch and go payments in shops. And they expect people to happily wait at a recharge station for two hours or eight hours? Forget it. They have 2% or so of the driving public, they should be happy if they can keep those.

There are 21 million registered cars in Australia, and 130,000 are EV's. About 1/2%. Quite an achievement really when you think about it, and a credit to the marketing teams and salesmen involved.

EDIT: Of course those figures could include gasoline powered plug in hybrids too, they have been very good at manipulating the stats in that regard.

 

[Bumblebee]

I can remember a day when there were NO outages, that was the 1970's, what I consider the peak of civilization for many reasons. It was the peak of per-capita energy consumption globally too I believe, at least it was in the US. We had good reliable systems, low prices for gasoline and electricity, energy consumption is a good proxy for lifestyle too.

Did you ever read about the promises made back in the 1950's about nuclear power? All the experts claimed it would be too cheap to meter so everyone would get free electricity lol. That's how they get past people's resistance to things, make up a crock of lies about how perfect the world will be then push ahead into the corporate profit zone.

Years later the truth comes out. Look at the roll back of all the EV subsidies worldwide, the rug is being pulled out and if EV charging companies can't make a profit now they will have to up the fee they charge for electricity. Every times someone in the EV industry tells me how great the transition will be I have to ask myself are they biased? Does their job, their future depend on mass uptake? They call that a conflict of interest.

View attachment 1679782

I'd say the power draw in the '70s was less-at least here....very few if anyone had A/C in their homes and lots of people heated with wood and much less electrical loads in their homes.....

Now the average home has far more electrical load than in those days....add in home based power stations in the future and I honestly don't think the grid can support this.

 

[Bumblebee]

I just read this......kind of funny considering the Canadian government just gave them 7 billion taxpayer dollars to build a battery plant and employ off-shore workers....

Stellantis Spending $6 Billion On New Gasoline Engines That Run On Ethanol​

MSN

www.msn.com