When more demand for electricity comes, there will also be more demand and political will for generating it. Same reason why we extract more oil than a century ago.
"Political will for generating it" just means taxes through the roof, and you'll have to excuse me if I don't trust anyone involved in this process to have the capacity ready before demand goes into the stratosphere. When you can't even get your daily dose of internet half the time because too many charging EVs brought the grid down again, then you'll understand, but by then it will be too late.
Guessing you've not bothered to read about the plans for using EVs for load balancing the grid, which trials have shown to be more reliable in the first place than the current grid. Then again, the US already has the worst grid in the developed world
No, I haven't. Please enlighten me how "load balancing" will solve the problem of outright not having enough generation capacity to supply everyone. I could tell.
In the US, fuel is already subsidised by the government. So even if that were the case, the only difference would be that your subsidies change from funding the fuel/gasoline industry to the renewable/nuclear industry*. If demand goes up but not capacity, that will create a lucrative market that will be filled. It is quite possible that investment firms will be looking to siphon off some future profits for themselves and their clients, so they may be keen to invest in building out this new infrastructure. *possibly also natural gas etc in the interim? Even if renewables are currently the cheapest form of energy generation, I am sure subsidies will still exist for other fossil fuels in the US for a while.
Essentially one of the plans proposed, tested and proven to be rather effective, at least in countries where electricity generation isn't as janky as the US is to set EVs up so that when at home, and specifically marked by the owner as being available for this scheme. The EV will charge from the grid during off peak hours only (a time where all countries including the US already have major issues with massive overcapacity and struggle to throttle generators back, an issue known as the duck problem), during peak hours, the EV will feed battery back onto the grid to keep up with local demand. Effectively localised buffers of energy storage. Also other schemes have been trialed with again, EV charge rates linked to grid capacity. So you have this major time of day where generation capacity hugely outstrips demand. Charge EVs then, on an opt in basis (and there are financial incentives for doing so), and then discharge EVs backwards into the grid during periods where generation can't match demand. Sure. Electricity generation has to go up and the above is a stopgap only, but with less oil burned on the road, there's more oil available to generator networks, plus oil for power generation even with charging losses works out to be cleaner than plain internal combustion. ICE struggles to reach even 30% efficiency. The grid has hit >80%. Or for those who didn't study in school: you get more than twice as much energy out of oil by burning it for a steam turbine than you do by chucking it in a reciprocating piston engine. Also housemates model 3 has now twice accomplished over 300 miles on a charge, outdoing the stated range, without being grannied (there is little range penalty in those cars to doing sub 5 sec 0-60 pulls off the line). Simply, works out that unlike a gas car where 60mph is more efficient than 30, an EV is more efficient at 30 than 60, yet the official range testing must be performed at 60 still which makes a lot of sense really, but if you're trapped on roads where you can't hit 60, you get massively more range out of them. --- Post updated --- Also fun fact.in the US, having a solar panel or a battery backfeeding the grid from a domestic supply is actually illegal. Yet a petrol generator doing the same is not? Why? Legalised corruption, no seriously, an oil company lobbied for a ban on solar panels backfeeding the grid being outlawed as unsafe and applied battery packs to it, but deliberately worded it in such a way that combustion sources still can, defeating the purpose of their legislation as their proposal was basically that if a power line falls in a storm and solar backfeeds it, the lines will still be live even on the dead side. Well that applies regardless of whether the lines are being fed from a battery inverter, solar inverter or petrol generator, yet one of the 3 is legal. --- Post updated --- Extra fun fact of the day. It is still legal for your house to isolate itself from the grid during an outage (but at no other time, hmm, again, corruption) at which time you are allowed to have your house running on solar or other alternatives, at which point many EVs do support acting as a backup for your domestic supply, at which point, Tesla have 105kWh models available, that is usually enough for most households to survive a 24 hour period with no power.
Yeah, I heard of that. Most recently when the corn lobby had a hissy fit over an attempt by Trump to make it easier to find non-ethanol-adulterated gasoline. I never said I was in favor of subsidizing liquid fuels either, and in all likelihood they wouldn't actually need subsidies to be successful, because they work Great. So instead of my money being taken to fund crony capitalism, it's taken to fund crony capitalism which actively harms car culture, and in the case of the "renewables" "industry", doesn't work worth beans and never will. As for nuclear, well... good luck, you greenies will be fighting yourselves on that one. If the changeover to EVs were gradual and wholly market-driven, I could see this happening. But if it is sudden and forced - which is more likely, as EVs will probably continue to be compromised right up until our (un)elected "betters" start legislating combustion off the road - then that changeover is going to hurt until capacity catches up. But that highlights the other issue with trying to expand generation capacity. It's quite often a political impossibility because of the same exact people who are trying to push EVs. New capacity can't come in the form of coal or natural gas because those involve combustion and combustion = evil in leftist orthodoxy, it can't be hydroelectric because of the fish, and it can't be nuclear because... well... I kind of agree with them on that one. That leaves wind and solar, which are plagued by spotty and wholly inadequate output among many other problems. Oh. So it's energy communism, but technically voluntary to get people used to it. The problem is, once you get this going, there won't be any such thing as off-peak hours. Especially when you consider that most people are going to come home from work and plug in at about the same time... yeah, how's that going to work out? In the end, it doesn't matter; you're always going to end up with either too many EVs charging at once or someone getting the short end of the stick. This is all janky, finnicky BS to solve problems that, by and large, would not exist in the first place if it weren't for the powers that be constantly messing with everyone and everything. Oh look, efficiency fetishism. The problem is, while electrical generation is very efficient, batteries are a hugely space- and weight-ineffeicient way to store energy. That's assuming you've accounted for transmission and charging losses, the latter being higher during "fast" charging. (Which is still agonizingly slow relative to a liquid refuel.) Well frick-a-doodle-doo, how much juice was left at the end of that? How long did it take to get that charge back so they could go back the other way? In a gasoline car, those are things you don't even have to think about. I never said I was in favor of this either. Assuming it's already fully charged and you don't need to go anywhere. Reality rarely works out that cleanly.
20% and about 45 minutes on a public access supercharger, about 7 hours at home --- Post updated --- And yes, efficiency, battery losses stand around 20% so 80% efficiency. 80% compounded against 80% of power generation leaves you at 64%, still greater than ICE has ever reached. That and you can say it's fetishism, but you really have to be some backwater moron with their head 90 yards up their own asshole to think that somehow doing more with less is worse, jeez. If I could make a car that ran on gasoline, does 3.2 second 0-60 pulls and achieved greater efficiency than that, would you still find a way to criticise the efficiency? Rhetorical question, probably, you'd complain that the only way anywhere near that efficiency has been achieved under ICE is with hybrid systems and turbocharging both used at once along with ethanol added to the fuel.
While the UK is thinking of Upping the speed limit here in germany were thinking about lowering it wich is pretty stupid if you ask me.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume that tourists are likely a big part of the problem. The people who live there will be used to it, and will drive appropriately. Then you get the people who travel there with the goal of achieving 'x' speed, but turn up on a day where the traffic/weather/road conditions don't really allow for it, but due to limited time they go for it anyway, causing problems for everyone else.
There's also the issue of the high maintenance standards you need to have in order to safely abolish speed limits.
Its weird seeing a new car on the driveway. Especially when the old one was gloss black, and the new one is metallic red and reflects that red light into the house. Every time I walk down the stairs it takes me by surprise It'll ware off eventually. Nice
Pep Boys, 2:00 AM A tow truck arrives carrying a 2009 Chrysler Town and Country LX with a brake fluid leak Yep, Chrysler is at the shop again. At 60,000 miles.
This is good. This is very very bad, it'll cost more, way more to replace dead batteries. And vehicle consumers are gonna pay for it. Unless they use supercapacitors
Eh, probably not, discharge rate is limited, current schemes also limit to maintaining a charge between 20 and 80% which makes battery wear beyond negligible. You'll also notice EV fast charging is always about time to 80%, for same reason, almost no wear til then, you then slow down the charge rate above 80%. Super capacitors have a tiny capacity. Wouldn't even go a mile on one
