

Our Electric Future - Andy Grove - harshavr
http://www.american.com/archive/2008/july-august-magazine-contents/our-electric-future

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cmos
Wow. Read this. Completely. This is exactly the kind of news I hope to pick up
in this group... (the dot dot dot is indeed a reference to the watered down
crap that has been posted here recently)

How refreshing is to to get a perspective from a former CEO of an enormous
corporation. He writes for a large audience, beyond the easy geeks and
enthusiasts.

He brought 'global warming', an issue that not everyone agrees with, out of
the picture, and more into the 'free benfit' category, a necessary move for a
national (i.e. midwestern) debate. He challenged the current and previous
leaders of our free world as to why they have not even come close to upholding
the degree of nixon. Brilliant.

We have a problem people should want to solve. This is a good step in letting
people know exactly what will help their kids to be truly free.

(I'm sorry for saying the word 'crap' up above but seriously, only 1/4 of the
posts here have to do with innovation, hacking, and making something from
nothing. I really don't care about twitter's issue of the day. Let's do a
weekly summary.)

ok. out of my system.

geekworld ignite!!

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comatose_kid
If HN had a 'best submission of the year' award, this article would be a
contender.

What an impressive, thoughtful analysis of a huge problem.

ps - I recommend reading his bio (Swimming Across: A Memoir.).

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binglo
Regarding battery technology, if I'm not mistaken, that's already a solved
problem: Lithium-Ion batteries have great capacity and are quite light. Their
only problem is "venting with flame" if you don't charge/discharge them within
their limits, but electronic control can mostly eliminate that.

Now we just need a battery company to start making car-battery-sized Li-Ion's
and sell them for a reasonable price. When that happens, I think you'll see
some serious action.

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ligniteman
A really excellent analysis of our current dilemna.

We gotta get off the fossil fuel bandwagon and start using things that can be
produced at home. Andy explains how to do that.

Great post.

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kingkongrevenge
Electrification is critical, but this article fails to adequately explore the
issue of where all this electricity will come from. North American natural gas
will be in rapid depletion within 15 years, probably sooner. The high quality
anthracite coal is pretty much gone. Claims of the US being the "Saudi Arabia
of Coal" are unfounded and net energy from coal mining will probably start to
decline within 20 years. Never mind that coal mining is extremely oil
intensive. Talk of more electricity starting right now basically means
nuclear, and some say the uranium situation isn't as simple as you might
assume. You could also begin highly uncertain bets on solar and tidal
technologies. He kind of understates the challenge.

This talk of electric cars is also a bit silly. Electrifying transport means
RAIL. Don't open the issue with electric cars. Electric cars will probably
only ever be good as short commuters due to the physics of battery energy
storage density. That's just a small piece of the transportation challenge.
Might as well just get people to drive much smaller, more efficient cars, and
more mopeds and motorcycles; that's just as good a solution. There will
probably never be electric trucks. There will never be electric passenger
planes. As indicated above, our capability to substitute electricity watts for
our current gasoline watts is not nearly as certain as he seems to assume.
Rail is far more efficient and lessens this risk. The proposition of sinking
massive amounts of capital into new experimental infrastructure for mass use
of electric cars just as we're taking trillion dollar write-downs on gasoline
and car related infrastructure is a also bit far fetched. There are no ifs or
buts about rail. It's a simple, known quantity.

Anyone talking about electric cars and not rail deserves to be hit in the face
with toy train.

~~~
coryrc
Electric rail is completely orthogonal to electric cars. Gasoline, used almost
only in personal vehicles and light trucks, was responsible for 9 million
barrels per day in 2004:

[http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_public...](http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_publications/oil_market_basics/dem_image_us_cons_prod.htm)

Electric cars are suitable to replace at least two-thirds of those vehicles,
yielding a savings of 6 million barrels/day. I say this because the commute
for 68% of people is under 30 miles round trip:

[http://www.bts.gov/publications/omnistats/volume_03_issue_04...](http://www.bts.gov/publications/omnistats/volume_03_issue_04/html/entire.html)

Even if trains were the only use for diesel fuel and you converted every
single one to pure-electric, that is less than 3 million barrels per day (the
transportation section of the "distillates" column).

YOU can convert your car today. See <http://www.evdl.org> and
<http://www.evalbum.com> for help and examples.

However, I would love to have high-speed electric trains for cross-country
travel instead of flight.

EDIT-I've heard it alleged rails are not electrified because the property tax
increases, see

<http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2006-05a.htm>

~~~
kingkongrevenge
I'm questioning your premise that it's possible to substitute electricity for
gasoline on the scale you're indicating. The generation isn't there. Much
smaller, much slower cars used a lot less are far more plausible than huge
numbers of electric cars.

~~~
coryrc
The electricity used to refine a gallon of gasoline can propel an automobile
between 10 and 30 miles. I'm sorry I can't come up with a link at this moment,
but see this one to notice a strong dependency of refiners on electricity:

[http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/special/california/june...](http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/special/california/june01article/caoutside.html)

In addition, electric cars are 10x more efficient from their "fuel", 3x more
efficient if the source is dinosaur juice. 33kwh/gallon of gasoline, 30mpg is
3kwh/mile. Converted, that car would use 0.3kwh/mile of electricity.

~~~
coryrc
Err, I b0rked the numbers:

36.8kwh/gallon of gasoline yields 1.2kwh/mile @ 30mpg, four times the electric
version. If the energy comes from combined-cycle coal plant (50% efficient),
then your advantage is two times. The comparison with nuclear, hydro, etc is
difficult to make.

The best advantages are the ability to be energy-independent -- on a personal
AND national level. An electric car will be zero-polluting for its entire life
(no catalytic converter needed!) and, with fewer moving parts, can last
longer.

