

A bold plan for mass adoption of electric cars - bradgessler
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/shai_agassi_on_electric_cars.html

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chancho
A former boss of mine, an old-school metallurgist and a viciously patriotic
Republican hard-ass from the midwest, mentioned this to me

<http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=16620>

Not that website in particular, but the general fact that China has nearly a
monopoly on the raw materials needed to manufacture electric cars. That
website doesn't make quite that statement, just that China currently has all
the production capacity, but he's told me that almost all the rare earth metal
deposits are in China. He's not too keen on mass deployment of electric cars
in the US. Given how the US automakers have pissed away any shot they had at
innovating in this market, it seems unlikely to me that a US company would
ever manage to dominate that industry. The tree-hugger in me says "Screw em:
buy a foreign electric" but the flag-waver in me says "Hey what about
biodiesel?"

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patrickg-zill
There are rare earth metal deposits in the USA, however due to environment
regulations it is not even close to cost effective.

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RiderOfGiraffes
For the US, where will the energy come from? Given current car usage I find it
hard to believe it will come from wind farms.

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frossie
Electric cars aren't inherently green - they are only as green as the local
source of electricity. Depending on where you are in the US, the percentage of
electricity you get from renewable energy varies significantly. If we both
have the same identical electric car, but you live on a mostly coal-burning
grid, and I live on a mostly geothermal grid, I am a lot greener than you,
despite the fact that we drive the same vehicle.

The reasons electric cars are a good idea is that once there is a mass
adoption of them, individuals don't have to do anything more; as the grid
becomes greener, everybody's car becomes greener. So it allows society to
change its fossil fuel consumption much more quickly, vecause bold changes are
made in the infrastructure but are transparent to users.

Electric cars are just one piece of the puzzle.

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CWuestefeld
Right. And the transport of electricity to the charging station, the storage
of electricity (and the attendant need to carry that storage) and the
conversion of that storage back to kinetic energy is inefficient. The internal
combustion engine, for its flaws, has evolved into a fairly efficient device.

I'm utterly convinced that electric cars are a red herring. Look instead at
our insistence on dragging around behemoths of cars. We could save a
tremendous amount of energy by quitting the race-to-the-top phenomena of
escalating car size due to the (largely false) perception of safety.

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ericb
> transport of electricity to the charging station > storage of electricity >
> conversion of that storage back to kinetic energy

I'd love to see actual numbers to back up your statement--I imagine you are
right about efficiency, but I'd like to see how bad the numbers are.

We have to drill, transport, and store oil, also. Efficient and dirty doesn't
help us much if the dirtiness overshadows the efficiency. Lossy and clean
seems preferable, because then you don't have to shed tears over losing energy
bought at a steep price in terms emissions.

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tome
The comparison's not really meaningful, except to oil-burning electricity
plants, but:

"most [internal combustion] engines retain an average efficiency of about
18%-20%"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine#Ener...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine#Energy_efficiency)

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radu_floricica
For all the good ideas, I still haven't heard of a car producer planning to
sell a car with replaceable batteries.

Also what I don't think is said enough: electric cars should be better then
conventional. Much better acceleration, better reliability, less noise... the
list goes on.

edit: clarity. better then conventional.

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misterbwong
What about batteries that are recyclable? BYD has created a plug-in hybrid
with batteries that use nontoxic electrolytes. This should cut out many of the
recycling problems we have with current batteries:

[http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/13/technology/gunther_electric....](http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/13/technology/gunther_electric.fortune/index.htm)

The car goes 60+ mi before needing to use the gas engine. I haven't done much
research on performance/reliability/safety though the article does say the BYD
cars lack the polish of Toyota's.

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radu_floricica
Replaceable as in "gas-station replaceable". With a top that's easy to remove
and a mechanism to take them out and put another set in in less then 5
minutes. Without this, most of the ideas in the video don't really work.

