[Fundguy1]

Are they superior economically, environmentally, convenience wise, range? All no. Where's the catalyst besides government intervention? The government intervention is due to the false narrative of global warming, I'm sorry, climate change, as global warming has been debunked, which has been pushed by socialists as a way to disguise wealth redistribution. Not much else out there in ways I see it being superior.

[Sedoy]

Accidentally saw those pictures and thought of you guys:




Acid baths for rare metals mining in China:

[c1pher]

Originally Posted by Fundguy1

Are they superior economically, environmentally, convenience wise, range? All no. Where's the catalyst besides government intervention? The government intervention is due to the false narrative of global warming, I'm sorry, climate change, as global warming has been debunked, which has been pushed by socialists as a way to disguise wealth redistribution. Not much else out there in ways I see it being superior.

I believe in climate change. It is constantly changing. I also believe humankind impacts the climate. The part I struggle with is that there are many contributing factors, like sunspot activity, variations in the poles, ozone, asteroids etc. I am obviously no climatologist, but I think it's difficult to pinpoint one specific thing that causes places to warm up or cool down and then turn it into a mathematical equation to say if we reduce x or modify y, we will get this result. For us to then spend trillions to keep the temperatures the same or not change as much, seems somewhat futile at best.

Now if you told me we need cleaner air and water, I am all for that. But combustion engines are getting cleaner all the time.

I slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

[RM7]

Originally Posted by Sedoy

Accidentally saw those pictures and thought of you guys:




Acid baths for rare metals mining in China:

Let me help you with that meme,

Canadian oil sand site:



Heck, just do a google image search for Canadian oil sands.

[Sedoy]

Damn those canucks, ruined a good meme...

Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes

Let me help you with that meme,

Canadian oil sand site:



Heck, just do a google image search for Canadian oil sands.

[Red Bread]

I'm no fan of heavy metal batteries, but my office in DFW has had a number of earthquakes that anyone but the most ardent nut attributes to fracking. Time to buy a hydrogen car, what could go wrong?

[img]https://d1w9csuen3k837.cloudfront.ne...ter---Hero.jpg[/img]

[Fundguy1]

Originally Posted by Red Bread

I'm no fan of heavy metal batteries, but my office in DFW has had a number of earthquakes that anyone but the most ardent nut attributes to fracking. Time to buy a hydrogen car, what could go wrong?

[img]https://d1w9csuen3k837.cloudfront.ne...ter---Hero.jpg[/img]

Fracking is only being done because of Obama. The tech was there outfit wasn't economical until we were iver $75 a barrel. $75 a barrel happened because he shut down federal lands to oil exploration. After the trackers made tons of money the Saudis flooded the market with oil which lowered the price back down. What did the trackers do? Developed cheaper methods with their profits to make fracking viable again. If Trump opens up all the lands I don't think they will go away now. Thank you Obama.

[Fundguy1]

Originally Posted by MGM135is

I believe in climate change. It is constantly changing. I also believe humankind impacts the climate. The part I struggle with is that there are many contributing factors, like sunspot activity, variations in the poles, ozone, asteroids etc. I am obviously no climatologist, but I think it's difficult to pinpoint one specific thing that causes places to warm up or cool down and then turn it into a mathematical equation to say if we reduce x or modify y, we will get this result. For us to then spend trillions to keep the temperatures the same or not change as much, seems somewhat futile at best.

Now if you told me we need cleaner air and water, I am all for that. But combustion engines are getting cleaner all the time.

I slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

This. ^^^ I did too. Was that you in room 1002?

[Red Bread]

Enter ardent nut...

[Fundguy1]

Enter kool aid imbiber.

[Red Bread]

Originally Posted by Fundguy1

Enter kool aid imbiber.

More a g&t or neat Scotch kinda guy.

[Fundguy1]

Titos martini up 3 olives or jack and diet.

[ron_jeremy]

Originally Posted by Fundguy1

Are they superior economically, environmentally, convenience wise, range? All no. Where's the catalyst besides government intervention? The government intervention is due to the false narrative of global warming, I'm sorry, climate change, as global warming has been debunked, which has been pushed by socialists as a way to disguise wealth redistribution. Not much else out there in ways I see it being superior.

Electric engines provides super efficiency, it's in the 90'ish. Diesel is the 30'ish, petrol is even below these numbers. Beeing charged at the most "dirty" way (charcoal) EV is more clean than ICE.
Economically, not at this stage, EV is not a mature tech, it will be industrialized within 5 years or so. And beeing a simpler, faster car to manufactor, less workers are needed to assemble it, so it will be cheaper within the next 8-10 years.
For current EV owners, they enjoy a far cheaper ownership from their EV than any former ICE ever has.
And because of this, insurance is cheaper as well.

The beauty is in the EV simplicity, an ICE is made from several thousand parts, and transmission as well.
Convinience, no noise is comfort, no exhaust is a joy also.
Range, no, but within 3-5 years it's "enough".

A ICE is hopelessly outdated these days, it's best days are behind it.

[Fundguy1]

Once it's matured we will see. Its not there yet. And there needs to be new innovations. Those may or nay not materialize. Who says there is a better battery. This isn't a computer where you just miniturize. Just ask the fuel cell guys. They were supposed to be the dominant tech 10 years ago. They had working cars, plans, visionaries too. Until it happens its all speculation.

[c1pher]

Originally Posted by Fundguy1

This. ^^^ I did too. Was that you in room 1002?

Sorry, about that. I can be quite vocal in the throes.

[Efthreeoh]

Originally Posted by ron_jeremy

Electric engines provides super efficiency, it's in the 90'ish. Diesel is the 30'ish, petrol is even below these numbers. Beeing charged at the most "dirty" way (charcoal) EV is more clean than ICE.
Economically, not at this stage, EV is not a mature tech, it will be industrialized within 5 years or so. And beeing a simpler, faster car to manufactor, less workers are needed to assemble it, so it will be cheaper within the next 8-10 years.
For current EV owners, they enjoy a far cheaper ownership from their EV than any former ICE ever has.
And because of this, insurance is cheaper as well.

The beauty is in the EV simplicity, an ICE is made from several thousand parts, and transmission as well.
Convinience, no noise is comfort, no exhaust is a joy also.
Range, no, but within 3-5 years it's "enough".

A ICE is hopelessly outdated these days, it's best days are behind it.

I have to disagree with some of this. You speculate that EV use less parts and therefore are easier to manufacture and use less labor to assemble. Considering the drivetrain is really the only mechanical difference between an ICE and an EV from a mass-production viewpoint, most of the total vehicle assembly process is identical between the two architectures. The idea is that the engine and transmission have far more parts in assembly and therefore takes longer to completely assemble. For argument's sake let's assume both are a mature assembly process, I think the battery manufacture is quite complex and makes up for most of the assembly time you think is an advantage of an electric motor over an ICE/transmission assembly. Automation of course, plays into this, as does UAW contracts; I'm not sure the NUMMI plant is UAW or not under Tesla ownership (I assume it is). Also, I'm not sure if the UAW is present in the Nevada Gigafactory. Union labor contracts heavily influence the level of production automation. Also, batteries, as all manufactured engines are, must be tested upon completion of assembly. Statistical process control helps eliminate a lot of direct after-assembly testing, but batteries would seem to me have a far more dwell time in test than an engine or transmission because the chemical process of the battery needs to be tested vs. a spin and compression test of an engine/transmission. The rejection rate of the battery and the time it takes to determine final assembly quality is a cost factor of the assembly/manufacturing process of the whole vehicle.

It's an interesting subject to ponder.

[ron_jeremy]

Originally Posted by Efthreeoh

I have to disagree with some of this. You speculate that EV use less parts and therefore are easier to manufacture and use less labor to assemble. Considering the drivetrain is really the only mechanical difference between an ICE and an EV from a mass-production viewpoint, most of the total vehicle assembly process is identical between the two architectures. The idea is that the engine and transmission have far more parts in assembly and therefore takes longer to completely assemble. For argument's sake let's assume both are a mature assembly process, I think the battery manufacture is quite complex and makes up for most of the assembly time you think is an advantage of an electric motor over an ICE/transmission assembly. Automation of course, plays into this, as does UAW contracts; I'm not sure the NUMMI plant is UAW or not under Tesla ownership (I assume it is). Also, I'm not sure if the UAW is present in the Nevada Gigafactory. Union labor contracts heavily influence the level of production automation. Also, batteries, as all manufactured engines are, must be tested upon completion of assembly. Statistical process control helps eliminate a lot of direct after-assembly testing, but batteries would seem to me have a far more dwell time in test than an engine or transmission because the chemical process of the battery needs to be tested vs. a spin and compression test of an engine/transmission. The rejection rate of the battery and the time it takes to determine final assembly quality is a cost factor of the assembly/manufacturing process of the whole vehicle.

It's an interesting subject to ponder.

Thank you for a quality respons.
Obviously, you have a point. The EV batteries is not your standard AA battery.
That's a part of the "not mature enough tech and not as industrialized" as the ICE.
And my points is subjective, not facts. I find new tech exciting, the EV have suprised me, after having owned a 16' i3 for 9 months, i think it is the future.
Let's see what happens.

[Efthreeoh]

Originally Posted by ron_jeremy

Thank you for a quality respons.
Obviously, you have a point. The EV batteries is not your standard AA battery.
That's a part of the "not mature enough tech and not as industrialized" as the ICE.
And my points is subjective, not facts. I find new tech exciting, the EV have suprised me, after having owned a 16' i3 for 9 months, i think it is the future.
Let's see what happens.

I found your comment very interesting regarding the total manufacturing hours for total vehicle assembly, and it was one angle of the EV I'd not considered. It takes thousands of manufacturing hours to build a vehicle, it is just spread out over many suppliers, sub-assemblies, and final production. Being a manufacturing engineer by university-level study (not trade anymore) and my main focus of study was automotive manufacturing, I found your question intriguing. I will have to study this deeper. It's a great observation. Off to the SAE website I will go

I find EVs also intriguing because they drive great and have single-speed transmissions, along with the electric motor torque characteristics, emulates a well driven manual transmission'd car. I'm about as conservative as Fundguy and drive about as much as him too. He has many valid financial and market-based points IMO. I think EVs will have a place in the automotive marketplace. The design tech is pretty mature IMO and has been for a while. Tesla really just made a car with a big-ass battery to get the range. There's not much state-of-the-art tech to it. I think the lithium-ion battery format is close to maximum energy density as it will probably get. The real issue with adoption of the EV is getting the production cost out of it. 300-mile range is probably suitable for most people and the recharge rate acceptable for suburban homeowners (who are the majority of auto buyers), but the cost of the vehicles just does not make them economically viable in the USA at $2.00 gasoline (US). US government incentives really make EVs work for us here in the US. In Europe EVs are far more popular because of $8 gasoline prices and the less need for long-range capability. The head of Fiat-Chrysler said a few years ago that if the market was there, the large manufacturers could produce EVs fairly easily and put Tesla in the dust. I think he is correct. Tesla can be the niche EV manufacturer because it produces no other vehicle type and has none of the costs associated with supporting an ICE-based vehicle portfolio, and it's still not generated a profit.

And from what I've read on the release of the Model 3, the car costs $49,995, not $35,000. And the Model 3s being released for the first 20,000 or so units are the up-optioned 300-mile $50K vehicles. I'd bet a lot of those 400,000 "pre-orders" were made based on the promised $35,000 car. It will be interesting to see how many of the pre-orders (manufacturing slots) hang around, or request their $1,000 back.

I'm not going to shit on the EV concept, but I'm not as enthusiastic as others (although it kept me from buying Tesla stock back when it was $50 ).

[RABAUKE]

Back to the subject line of the thread for one second. "I think the internal combustion engine will be gone in a decade"....

Won't happen. EV's, and hybrids will no doubt be a bigger part of the market but lets face it, cars are not the only ICE's on the road (sky and ocean). So I don't see battery technology being anywhere close to being able to power a transport truck for any distance, nor ocean going cargo ships or airplanes for that matter. Fossil Fuel is here for a while yet folks.

[David70]

Originally Posted by MGM135is

I believe in climate change. It is constantly changing. I also believe humankind impacts the climate. The part I struggle with is that there are many contributing factors, like sunspot activity, variations in the poles, ozone, asteroids etc. I am obviously no climatologist, but I think it's difficult to pinpoint one specific thing that causes places to warm up or cool down and then turn it into a mathematical equation to say if we reduce x or modify y, we will get this result. For us to then spend trillions to keep the temperatures the same or not change as much, seems somewhat futile at best.

Now if you told me we need cleaner air and water, I am all for that. But combustion engines are getting cleaner all the time.

I slept at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

I agree you might be right but there are a lot of scientists which may or may not be right when they say we can affect how hot the earth gets. This I why I have such a problem with some that say we aren't a factor in it happening, saying it is too expensive, or with saying we shouldn't do anything because we may not be the cause. Your argument seems to be that doing something is expensive and we may find out later it wasn't necessary, seem like a risky gamble at this point with the amount of uncertainty we have.

Based on the facts I see two options -
Change nothing and hope we aren't the cause (will really suck to find out 30 years from now we should have done something now).

Develop clean energy and worst case is the air is better to breath and we end up with more fossil fuels for the future (I don't see us ever getting off it 100%). With the rest of the world buying the technology I have my doubts about whether we are better or worse off financially by going along and I haven't seen a lot of evidence that the changes we have made so far have cost our economy much.

I see the downside of being wrong after we did nothing and we were the cause being far worse than doing something and finding out later it wasn't necessary.

[Fundguy1]

Hearing up has already been debunked. That's why they switched to climate change a few years ago. Still bunk but that definition is innocuous enough its hard to debunk.

[SpeedChamp]

Originally Posted by MGM135is

Go for a drive in a Tesla for a couple hours and then you're stuck waiting for it to charge back up. Sure a supercharger can almost top you off in 30 minutes, but just because Elon Musk says you should take a break from driving anyway, doesn't mean you want to. I like that I can go 400-500 miles on a tank of gas in the right car, but even if I can't, I can pull over fill up in a couple minutes and I'm back on the road. I think it was short sighted to get rid of the battery hot swap concept. They said no one used it. I was actually waiting for a solution like that because it negates the fill up advantage.

Plus do we really know all the environmental impact of pulling up all the metals needed for the batteries and the factories that create the batteries? And what happens with the spent batteries? Can they be recycled? I am reading they cannot for the most part.

Do you know you spend much more time refueling your ICE car than EV owners spend charging their Teslas? You charge your car in the OFF time 99% of the time and always have a car with lots of miles available to you. It's not like when you have an almost empty ICE car in your garage and you first need to hit the gas station to fill it up, which is plenty annoying.

And again, there is only such a small percentage that's driving MORE than what this early generation of EVs can already do, it's just nonsense to be so worried about the range. If you really drive a lot of plus 250-mile trips, then you just need to look for another car. I mean I don't tell my 65-year-old mother to drive a GT3 to get her groceries, do I.