Tesla Achilles Heel

[bud16415]

Well, to muddy the water even more, they are predicting a gas shortage this summer because there are not enough truck drivers available to bring the gasoline to the gas stations.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/27/business/summer-gasoline-shortage/index.html

A sensational headline for sure but you have to look at the news source as well. The story boils down to covid19 caused people to stay home and not drive. That sounds like a good thing. The lack of demand impacted the supply chain and the tank truck drivers took jobs with Amazon a company that prospered by people staying at home. Seems logical the factors of the free market will reverse and when people start driving more again they will be shopping on their own and Amazons need for more drivers will lessen and fuel truck drivers will return to the jobs they had that likely paid more to start with.

Has Covid19 been disruptive to our economy? Of course it has. Maybe even more disruptive than needed in some cases. Will there be gas shortages and also brown outs this summer? Of course there will we have them every summer. Markets correct but they also lag and are not always set up for peak demands and have to balance with market forces. So we will hear about gas shortages gas prices will jump and EV minded folks will point out if we all drove EV all would be well.

 

[bud16415]

They already recycle the thousands of pounds of steel and aluminum in a car. Batteries will be easier because there is less mixture with unwanted materials. Companies are already popping up that recycle the battery materials.

Lets not forget the impending plastic shortage I have been reading about in my canoe/kayak forum. Seems the diminishing use of oil will put a hurting on all the byproducts of oil plastic being one. They are saying buy a canoe now as the poly most are made from will be going away.



Won’t be long milk will be back in glass bottles with paper caps who knows maybe the milkman will come back only driving a EV milk truck this time. All the other plastic garbage will go back to steel, glass, wood/paper like it was when I was a kid. Massive job losses in the plastic industry but huge upturns in steel and glass.



EV batteries likely wont be plastic boxes like we see today as plastic will be a bygone product of the oil age. Cars without plastic I remember that. Rubber tree plantations will be booming again to make all the tires we need. Diesel trucks, locomotives, airplanes will have to be switched to become EV also as Diesel fuel is a separate product cracked out of oil along with gasoline. Even the stuff we make our roads from will have to change when we stop pumping crude out of the earth.

One thing that will be nice is to go shopping and get paper bags again. I kind of miss them.

 

[Eddie_T]

As we get more wind power there ill be more raptor kill. Maybe dead birds can be recycled into pet food. As the number of EV batteries to be recycled grows I wonder how they will be stored and protected, the logistics of recycling may present a significant challenge. They are classified as hazardous waste thus governed by restrictions in transportation and storage. The costs and challenges for transporting and aggregating used batteries may represent a barrier to widespread reuse.

 

[Eddie_T]

I guess batteries aren't the only problem we face.

 

[bud16415]

I guess batteries aren't the only problem we face.

Maybe they should only run them at night when the birds are sleeping.

 

[Flyover]

That complaint about birds getting fried by solar plants is years, maybe decades old. It reminds me of a point Ted Nugent made about how buzzards and hawks follow the combines that are harvesting vegetables for vegans because of the hundreds and hundreds of mice and other rodents killed by the equipment.

 

[Eddie_T]

A moot point either way but I thought the earlier reports of bird carcases at solar fields were a mystery being studied rather than streamers (sizzled birds).

 

[Sparky617]

The steamers issue is fairly recent, not decades old.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility

 

[BuzzLOL]

Well, to muddy the water even more, they are predicting a gas shortage this summer because there are not enough truck drivers available to bring the gasoline to the gas stations.

Right now we don't need much gas because nobody is going to work... maybe IF the Welfare/Stimulus/murder survivors VOTE BUYING dollars run out, people will once again feel a need to apply for jobs and go back to work to support themselves...

 

[Flyover]

Huh. I thought I remembered first reading about those birds getting fried in a book, "In the Bubble" by John Thackara, published in 2006. It's possible I'm misremembering where I read about it I guess.

 

[Steve123]

Lets not forget the impending plastic shortage I have been reading about in my canoe/kayak forum. Seems the diminishing use of oil will put a hurting on all the byproducts of oil plastic being one. They are saying buy a canoe now as the poly most are made from will be going away.

If the use of oil decreases, there will be a glut of oil on the market, and the feedstock for making plastics will decrease in price, not increase. I believe significant amounts of the naphtha used in plastic is from oil, but I think mostly it comes from natural gas anyways.

All that sounds like a bunch of BS by somebody trying to convince you to buy his products.

 

[ekrig]

If the use of oil decreases, there will be a glut of oil on the market, and the feedstock for making plastics will decrease in price, not increase. I believe significant amounts of the naphtha used in plastic is from oil, but I think mostly it comes from natural gas anyways.

All that sounds like a bunch of BS by somebody trying to convince you to buy his products.

Actually, naphtha is basically gasoline or very, very close to the final product and you absolutely would not want to use that to make plastics. Plastics are made from a completely different set of carbon molecules. Regardless, I agree with you that this seems unlikely, at least in the next 5 years.

That said, I believe that the comment was about what might happen in the next 10 years if people stop using gas for transportation. And that's complicated... Even if oil is cheap, if refineries are not able to sell naphtha for gasoline at some point in the future, and need to process it to make plastics that is going to make the whole thing a lot more expensive overall. (Loss of revenue from a more valuable byproduct (naphtha), and expense of further processing, mean very likely higher produced cost overall anyway.) If that happens, refineries would have to raise prices or at some point it is just not economic to produce it and they'll just stop or close entirely, which could in time lead to a shortage.

 

[bud16415]

I agree @ekrig. The oil industry was originally set up to refine lamp oil / kerosene and a byproduct gasoline had no usage along with a lot of other stuff. Gasoline was way to flammable to be used in lamps and lamp were the major market. I have read that they were dumping the gasoline and it was getting into waterways and ground water causing quite the problems. Ford came along and figured out gasoline is just what he needed to power his cars. About the same time the country was being electrified and lamp oil was on the fall.



At each level of the cracking process different things are produced and the idea is to use it all splitting the revenue up and ending up with less waste material. I don’t know exactly and I’m not a petrochemical scientist but it’s my understanding plastics come from what would other wise be a waste product.



In general the smaller and lighter an EV the more efficient it is based around fuel weight. It takes something like a 10:1 ratio batteries:gasoline to produce the same energy output. As gasoline is used the weight goes down where a spent battery weighs the same. So in a small sports car the EV can be more efficient than a gas car. If you wanted to build an 80,000lb over the road truck on the other hand you would need 20,000 lbs of batteries compared to say 1,000 of liquid fuel. That would cut greatly into what the capacity they could carry.



We may end up seeing both diesel and gasoline being burned in large trucks, locomotives, farm equipment and airplanes to use the surplus of gasoline EV cars will cause. Ether way the point is reduce oil consumption and with lower consumption that will leave less byproducts for things like plastic. It is all a balancing act.



Will we ever see an electric commercial aircraft or a mainline locomotive? I doubt it.

Like most things a blended approach is most likely the best solution. To many in government see it as white and black and then set a time line that’s super aggressive but just long enough out there that they will miss the end.

 

[Sparky617]

They are working on hybrid aircraft, but given the weight of lithium batteries a pure electric is not feasible with current technology. Or it would take a really long extension cord and a lot of voltage drop.

 

[Sparky617]

Shifting gears slightly on plastics. I watched an interesting albeit depressing documentary last night on Netfilx called Seaspiracy, for all the carping about single use plastics and especially plastic straws the majority of plastics discarded in the ocean are commercial fishing nets and other debris from industrial fishing. Personally I don't miss straws with one exception, when I have a milk shake I want a plastic straw, not some wimpy a-- paper one that collapses after two seconds. I don't tend to drink bottled water preferring to bring my own container and refilling as needed.

Plastics are everywhere because they do the job better and with less material than what they replaced. Unfortunately plastics aren't very economical to recycle. And despite the chasing arrows recycling symbol on the bottom only a few types actually have a viable market. And not even all types of container types are recyclable even if they are made of a desirable plastic #1 PET clam shells aren't readily accepted for example.

 

[bud16415]

Shifting gears slightly on plastics. I watched an interesting albeit depressing documentary last night on Netfilx called Seaspiracy, for all the carping about single use plastics and especially plastic straws the majority of plastics discarded in the ocean are commercial fishing nets and other debris from industrial fishing. Personally I don't miss straws with one exception, when I have a milk shake I want a plastic straw, not some wimpy a-- paper one that collapses after two seconds. I don't tend to drink bottled water preferring to bring my own container and refilling as needed.

Plastics are everywhere because they do the job better and with less material than what they replaced. Unfortunately plastics aren't very economical to recycle. And despite the chasing arrows recycling symbol on the bottom only a few types actually have a viable market. And not even all types of container types are recyclable even if they are made of a desirable plastic #1 PET clam shells aren't readily accepted for example.

I always liked the story behind McDonalds and their foam food containers. The foam container kept the food warmer and cleaner. Cost about 1/10 the paper box used about 1/100 the power to make and broke down in the environment faster and was good for the soil. Kind of like the foam they put in potting soil to retain water.



But it was plastic and plastic is bad paper is good and they caved to the pressures and went with cardboard containers. It is still ok to put eggs in foam containers for some reason.

I knew a guy whose father had a patent on a wax-coated cardboard container that folded to a peak and could be opened to make a pour spout, for holding milk. He said he never saw a penny from it as all the milk processing plants said it wouldn’t be as clean as glass bottles. Years after the patent expired guess what milk comes in as a throwaway container.

 

[Eddie_T]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't want any 1200 lb batteries in my life. There has to be a better answer, That's more than the weight of my Prism engine, tranny and 11 gallons of gas combined The inertia of that is just an accident waiting to happen.

 

[68bucks]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't want any 1200 lb batteries in my life. There has to be a better answer, That's more than the weight of my Prism engine, tranny and 11 gallons of gas combined The inertia of that is just an accident waiting to happen.

I read that an EV will weigh about 20-30% more than a comparible ICE vehicle but much less range of course. I'm not sure why you are hung up on the weight issue though. The weight wouldn't be any different than comparing a smaller car to a SUV. The SUV could easily weigh another 1000 lbs but you can still stop it fine. The vehicle braking system just needs to be adequately designed. I mean of course a 6000 lb car or truck will take longer to stop than a 3000 lb car but I don't know anyone who researches stopping distance when selecting a vehicle.

 

[Sparky617]

I read that an EV will weigh about 20-30% more than a comparible ICE vehicle but much less range of course. I'm not sure why you are hung up on the weight issue though. The weight wouldn't be any different than comparing a smaller car to a SUV. The SUV could easily weigh another 1000 lbs but you can still stop it fine. The vehicle braking system just needs to be adequately designed. I mean of course a 6000 lb car or truck will take longer to stop than a 3000 lb car but I don't know anyone who researches stopping distance when selecting a vehicle.

The braking systems all use regenerative brakes to charge the batteries rather than just creating heat and brake dust. The brakes themselves last nearly the life of the car because of this. Musk is saying his semi truck will have million mile plus brakes on it because of regenerative braking. The weight in a EV is also located very low in the vehicle giving them a very low center of gravity even in a truck or SUV so they are very hard to flip over. The batteries are highly recyclable. Range on many is pretty good even for a long trip. Stop for a break and plug into a charger for 30 minutes and you've bought another 100 miles. For my lifetime I'll probably always have an ICE or hybrid car, but I can definitely see an EV in my future. I'm wiring an outlet for a yet to be purchased EV. Given his build issues I don't see me buying a Musk-mobile. He has some great tech on his cars but he really needs some car guys in there to get the automobile part right.

 

[Eddie_T]

I read that an EV will weigh about 20-30% more than a comparible ICE vehicle but much less range of course. I'm not sure why you are hung up on the weight issue though. The weight wouldn't be any different than comparing a smaller car to a SUV. The SUV could easily weigh another 1000 lbs but you can still stop it fine. The vehicle braking system just needs to be adequately designed. I mean of course a 6000 lb car or truck will take longer to stop than a 3000 lb car but I don't know anyone who researches stopping distance when selecting a vehicle.

I was thinking more of the 1200 lb battery being the hazard with it's inertia in an accident though stopping distance may be a problem too.