
Enough with The "Electric Cars Pollute More" Bullshit Already - gok
https://jalopnik.com/enough-with-the-actually-electric-cars-pollute-more-bu-1834338565
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makomk
"And while yes of course, Germany’s energy policy is “ruinously” expensive, as
anyone who has waded through the decrepit ruins of the once-proud city of
Stuttgart can attest, that makes total definite sense and is true, the entire
argument falls flat on its face in a bizarre pratfall just as soon as an ounce
of thought is put into it. Electrical grids powered by wind and solar do not
just completely collapse as soon as the wind stops blowing or the sun stops
shining. Not only are there stacks of traditional batteries to store excess
energy for those low times, humanity has devised ingenious ways to store
massive amounts of power in ways you might not think, just to get around this
notion"

The author of this article doesn't know what they're talking about. The amount
of energy we can store just isn't enough to supply the grid when wind and
solar stop, and probably won't be for quite a long time if ever. (The
"ingenious ways" they're referring to is pumped hydroelectric, which suffers
from a severe lack of suitable sites, most of which are already in use. It's
also probably one of the first things people think of as a solution.)

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mikelward
What about batteries in the cars themselves? And residential batteries such as
Tesla powerwall?

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Junk_Collector
This keeps getting brought up but the power stored in your car battery is
usually there so you can, ya know, drive. If grid uncertainty can deplete your
car battery to smooth the grid out, then you have to accept that you could
very likely not have your car on demand which is pretty unacceptable for most
people. I mean can you imagine that on a particularly hot day, the car you
took to the office and expected to charge at the charging station instead has
a lower battery at the end of the day than when you arrived and now you can't
drive home?

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linsomniac
I had imagined they were talking not about depleting the battery into the
grid, but rather choosing when to charge them. Right now Tesla is pretty
primitive about when to charge, all you can do is give it a time to start
charging.

But it is easy to imagine something much more advanced. Given some input like
how long we've been plugged in, if we use the app to say "charge now", what
utility we have (by selection or by GPS possibly), interact with the utility
to adjust the charging rate.

At the moment I'm just set to charge starting at midnight. This is for 2
reasons: We recently switched to a 3x higher utility cost from 7pm-10pm, and
also the car charging when I plugged it in made it hard to read my bill. We
have these bills that say "You use X% more energy than your neighbors, can you
think of anything you do from 5pm-7pm that you could cut back on?"

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mpweiher
While the WSJ take may have presented a somewhat one-sided take on the
findings, those findings do exist and his presentation is just as one-sided.
For example, his comparison to his Tesla is a vehicle with 384 grams of
CO2/mile.

Well, that's probably a gasoline powered SUV or truck in the US.

In Germany, you typically have smaller cars, much smaller engines and, well,
Diesels, which these days easily manage around 5l / 100km, and that's in the
range of 120 g of CO2/100km. So definitely competitive with the Tesla and with
those small differences, differences in production become more relevant.

The studies I saw indicated that when driven long distances, Diesels are
(still?) somewhat more efficient than EVs. Over short distances, EVs are
better, but then you typically aren't driving a lot, so the extra production
costs may not be amortised over the life of the vehicle.

The best case for EVs are vehicles that are constantly moving, but only small
distances with lots of stop-and-go. So public transit, taxis, etc.

That said, I'd still prefer an EV if possible: quieter, fewer/no emissions at
point of use (so less concentration of emissions in the cities), amazing
torque, fewer parts, etc. And once we go fully nuclear/fusion it becomes a
real no-brainer.

And electric propulsion for airplanes is also really interesting: short power
bursts possible without much weight penalty for cruise, cost, reliability,
noise (big issue in Germany, the only country in the world where people can
_see_ airplane "noise")

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perardi
"(big issue in Germany, the only country in the world where people can see
airplane "noise")"

Can you clarify?

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mpweiher
People will complain about airplane "noise" if they can see a plane in the
sky. (A small black moving dot is enough).

It's really quite silly.

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shereadsthenews
It’s a mistake to engage in debate with, or even to read, the editorial pages
of the WSJ. It is a propaganda operation.

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sl1ck731
This article made me wonder, if overnight everyone switched to electric
vehicles what would happen to the coal industry? I'm not advocating for
either, but would we see a significant resurgence? I'm unsure if electric
vehicle use is factored into the daily requirements for places that are
ramping up renewable energy...and if not I can only assume the requirement for
every household charging their cars is massive.

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alex_duf
I'm not sure the question is useful, but yeah if everyone were to shift to
electric propulsion tomorrow, most electric grids wouldn't be able to cope.
You'd have to throw any mean of production that is still working, coal plants
being one of the probably still available but under-used means of productions.

But it's not happening tomorrow, it's happening in the next decade and any
respectable grid operator is already planning the changes such that it isn't a
problem.

