Tesla Achilles Heel

[Eddie_T]

We're just speculating and the real problems will probably be worse than we can imagine. It might be a good time to start a towing service and maybe have a generator/charger on board. The only one I heard off getting to low to charge had a dealer haul it away supposedly to be reset for around $3K. Too many people are believing all the answers are just around the corner.

There was a house in my neighborhood with a solar water heater. I am thinking the panels have been gone from the roof for more years than they were present. It's for sure they didn't enhance the curb appeal of the house.

 

[Tailgunner]

The average cost to install solar panels is from $10,626 to $26,460 (after tax credit) for a 6kW to 12kW system to power an entire house. The average solar panel payback period is 7 to 12 years, and solar energy saves $600 to $2,000 per year on electricity costs. Makes more sense in Arizona, less so here in Michigan where it is overcast from November until April, or so it seems.

 

[Spicoli43]

We're just speculating and the real problems will probably be worse than we can imagine. It might be a good time to start a towing service and maybe have a generator/charger on board. The only one I heard off getting to low to charge had a dealer haul it away supposedly to be reset for around $3K. Too many people are believing all the answers are just around the corner.

There was a house in my neighborhood with a solar water heater. I am thinking the panels have been gone from the roof for more years than they were present. It's for sure they didn't enhance the curb appeal of the house.

There's 2 houses down the block that have Solar panels, one on the roof and one operating from a spot on the edge of their yard, about the size of a HS stadium scoreboard. Either way like you say, it's ugly. If I see the people outside, I will ask them if there's any benefits, but like Tailgunner says, up North with at least 6 months of Winter, I doubt it.

 

[68bucks]

There's 2 houses down the block that have Solar panels, one on the roof and one operating from a spot on the edge of their yard, about the size of a HS stadium scoreboard. Either way like you say, it's ugly. If I see the people outside, I will ask them if there's any benefits, but like Tailgunner says, up North with at least 6 months of Winter, I doubt it.

I was just reading that solar panels produce 10-25% of capacity with heavy cloud cover. So some benefit but greatly diminished. Seems like you would want a battery for storage. I'm sure that adds a lot to the cost.

 

[Spicoli43]

I was just reading that solar panels produce 10-25% of capacity with heavy cloud cover. So some benefit but greatly diminished. Seems like you would want a battery for storage. I'm sure that adds a lot to the cost.

There would have to be some kind of backup storage. I'll have to check into that. I'm wondering if it would add resale value, considering that the new owners wouldn't have to pay for the system.

 

[Eddie_T]

We may just have to get used to ugly as the indoor stuff is kinda bulky too.

 

[Sparky617]

We may just have to get used to ugly as the indoor stuff is kinda bulky too.

View attachment 27772

You don't need to put it in your living room. There are big challenges moving to a carbon free future and it isn't going to happen in my lifetime. Storage is a big part of the problem and frankly having small, factory built, standardized, modular nuke power would probably be a better solution than utility grade battery back-up. EVs will be main stream in the next 10 years as the major car companies have committed to the technology. Battery technology will improve. The reason EVs didn't work in 1905 was the only battery technology at the time was lead/acid batteries that were heavy and had very limited range. EV semi trucks face huge challenges because the weight of the current battery tech eats into their cargo capacity. They can put enough batteries on one to take it as far as a driver can go in a day of driving, but it will reduce his capacity.

As to the weight of the batteries and tire life, it probably will cause them to wear faster but I doubt it would be a 50% reduction in life, maybe 10%.

 

[Eddie_T]

All this and they have yet to prove carbon is our enemy. Consensus science rules the day now and the government is our biggest enemy. A warmer ocean gives off more CO₂ but does more CO₂ cause a warmer ocean? Unfortunately the answer one gives depends largely on politics rather than data.

Carlos Tavares is not just a successful car company boss, but also one of the industry’s great commentators.

The Stellantis CEO questioned the automotive industry’s all-in approach to EVs, saying governments were simply “surfing on public opinion” by legislating in their favour.

His concerns are threefold. First, EV affordability. How, he asked, can the industry “protect freedom of mobility for middle classes who can't afford a €30,000 EV when today they pay half of that? If they can’t afford a new EV, they’ll just keep driving their current, polluting car.”

Second, making EVs profitably. “If we cannot protect margins, there will be restructuring and there will be social consequences, “he said. In other words, factory closures and job losses.

Third, “in one decade, mobility devices will be 300-500kg heavier than today. That will bring to the table the topic of materials. The scarcity of them, and renewable ones.”

Tavares’s solution? “We could have been more efficient with multiple technologies, not one. The choices have not been made by the automotive industry. We should keep that in mind for the future.”

 

[Sparky617]

EVs are very likely to be the winning technology for our lifetimes. Hydrogen fuel cells are a neat concept but until you figure out how to economically separate hydrogen from oxygen in water doesn't do much to mitigate CO2. Nuke power is one way to do it. CNG could have been a great bridge technology as it does emit significantly less CO2 and in transportation has a very good weight to power ratio and adding fueling stations wouldn't have been a big problem. It works very well for fleet vehicles like trash trucks, city buses and other types that go back to a central storage space every night. But that can be said of EVs too.

The USPS is missing the boat on their next gen postal truck. Their fleet could go 75% EV easily for all the suburban routes, even many rural routes could be done with an EV, maybe not out in the very rural Midwest and Mountain West. But as I watch my mail truck stop at my neighbors house, speed up to my house a distance of 100 feet, stop, speed up to the next house, and so on, an EV is a natural for this. Regenerative braking will capture most of the energy used to get up to speed between houses. Instead we're going to have trucks that get less than 10 mpg in actual use.

 

[Eddie_T]

I tend to respect Carlos's opinion over ours. Quenching other approaches by government mandate gets my hackles up. And we still don't have proof that CO₂ is our enemy (it makes the grass grow).

The next generation of mail trucks can be fitted with electrical or gasoline drive trains.
This is the Postal Service’s new mail truck

 

[Eddie_T]

As for our plethora of smaller lithium batteries the government has declared them as non hazardous so they can (and do) go into the landfill.

The reason why more lithium ion batteries aren't recycled boils down to simple economics: the scrap value of batteries doesn't amount to much - perhaps $100 per ton, Cheret says. In contrast, the cost of collecting, sorting and shipping used batteries to a recycler exceeds the scrap value, so batteries tend to be thrown away. Unfortunately, the market does not factor in the social cost of disposal, nor does it factor in the fact that recycling metals such as cobalt has a much lower economic and environmental cost than mining raw materials. So we throw them away by the millions.​

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[Spicoli43]

Well, first off, even if the Liberals in the US were successful in getting rid of Carbon, China never will. It has nothing to do with "Global Warming", it has to do with "United States Warming according to the Green New Deal Preachers"...

Second of all, Carbon is required for LIFE on Earth, don't understand why the Liberals skip that one.

Third, the Human impact on "Rising CO2 levels" is minimal.

https://www.westernjournal.com/glob...al-impact-atmospheres-carbon-dioxide-climate/
And Fourth, even NASA admits that CO2 makes the Earth green... They tried to kill this webpage, but the Internet remembers everything..

https://web.archive.org/web/2022040...6/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth

 

[Spicoli43]

I tend to respect Carlos's opinion over ours. Quenching other approaches by government mandate gets my hackles up. And we still don't have proof that CO₂ is our enemy (it makes the grass grow).

The next generation of mail trucks can be fitted with electrical or gasoline drive trains.
This is the Postal Service’s new mail truck

Good God! that truck is UGLY! Besides that though, if anything hits it, the postal worker will perish, or have 8 million pieces of glass in their body and wish they had perished.

 

[Eddie_T]

But for me the bottom line is you cn't do this with an EV.

 

[Sparky617]

Good God! that truck is UGLY! Besides that though, if anything hits it, the postal worker will perish, or have 8 million pieces of glass in their body and wish they had perished.

The glass is safety glass just like all windshields. Mail trucks spend the vast majority of their miles going less than 25 mph. The large glass is for visibility and the design follows the function of what the USPS is doing these days. They needed a vehicle to carry more packages and be able to roll up to roadside mailboxes and put the mail in the mailboxes. FedEx, UPS, and Amazon don't have to deal with the mailbox issue so they can use normal left drive trucks. Rivian is building 100,000 EV trucks for Amazon.

The USPS is only buying 10%? of them in EV. Despite pleas from the EPA and others they aren't changing the mix. Part of the problem there is they started the process like 10 years ago and EVs weren't as mature as they are now.

 

[Sparky617]

But for me the bottom line is you cn't do this with an EV.

No but an EV will beat it off the line.

 

[Eddie_T]

No but an EV will beat it off the line.

I found that pic and I had a 50 Merc at one time and a Model TT Fordson spark coil that had buzzer points that provided a continuous spark. The Model-T had four spark coils. Nowadays they use one transformer per cylinder (or they may be coils I have never worked on one).

 

[Sparky617]

Here is a decent article and associated video on whether or not the grid can handle EVs. Jason has a number of good engineering videos out there. He has a pretty good one on the problems with towing with an EV. Towing is one area where EVs just don't cut it today.

Engineering Explained: Yes, The Grid Can Handle EVs - CleanTechnica

 

[68bucks]

Well, first off, even if the Liberals in the US were successful in getting rid of Carbon, China never will. It has nothing to do with "Global Warming", it has to do with "United States Warming according to the Green New Deal Preachers"...

Second of all, Carbon is required for LIFE on Earth, don't understand why the Liberals skip that one.

Third, the Human impact on "Rising CO2 levels" is minimal.

https://www.westernjournal.com/glob...al-impact-atmospheres-carbon-dioxide-climate/
And Fourth, even NASA admits that CO2 makes the Earth green... They tried to kill this webpage, but the Internet remembers everything..

https://web.archive.org/web/2022040...6/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth

That first article doesn't debunk the idea that CO2 is contributing to global warming IMO. It just states various sources of CO2 generation and trys to conclude that because human emissions are a small part compared to some sources it doesn't matter. The environment is a complex intertwined system. All those sources he lists, people breathing, animals, microbiological sources, etc. have always been present and the earth worked to balances those imputs. Adding another large input changes the balance and at some point natural systems may be unable to provide that balance in a way favorable to our lives as they are today. There is always "the straw that broke the camels back ." Just because CO2 levels were high 20 million years ago doesn't have any bearing on today at all, there weren't 7 billion people on earth with many living in areas that will be inundated with a significant change in the level of the oceans for example. If the glaciers all melted 20 million years ago and sea level rose 5' or whatever nobody cared because we weren't here. I tend to agree with the concept of human activity impacting the climate negatively based on the close correlations between CO2 levels and global temperatures since the industrial revolution. The ocean both absorbs and releases CO2 and I have read studies that express concern that if the ocean absorbes too mush CO2 it could seriously impact the food chain. The pH of the water will drop as the CO2 increases because it makes carbonic acid. A major collapse in the ocean food chain would be an incredible disaster for humans.
For me the whole EV thing is more important due to the finite amount of fossil fuels in the ground and the growing expense of extraction, particularly oil. I think the lines of cost to extract and produce gasoline and the cost to produce and operate an EV are converging and at some point will cross, without government influence. As I have said before I don't think the current effort to get it done tomorrow is the best idea. It's a complex issue with complex solutions but I do think it is the right direction. Probably not for me but for my grandchildren or great grandchildren.

 

[Spicoli43]

CO2 could contribute to "Global Warming", but "Global Warming" or the new tag of the Left, "Climate Change" won't exist for us or your Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandchildren. The Earth naturally warms and cools, and it takes Thousands of years each cycle.

Humans have absolutely nothing to do with any change to the planet. The thought alone that people believe AOC, a BARTENDER turned member of Congress, that the Earth will explode in then 10 years (7 or so now) is insane.

The Earth has been through Millions of Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Floods, Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Meteor strikes, whatever killed the Dinosaurs etc., and it's still here. The Natural Gas that is PART of the Earth is not going to kill the Earth.

YOU might see Climate Change in 17000 years if YOU are an Immortal Highlander. For the rest of us, it's not happening. Ever.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/15/four-climate-scientists-destroy-climate-change-alarmism/