Curious...

[Robert Latest]

Rick C wrote:

I don\'t think it shows any such thing. You compared the impact of making the
lithium battery (in the largest car, not the model that sells well). Even
then your basis is an estimate you give no basis for. Then you ignore the
impact of building the alternative, an ICE vehicle or any other battery.

So your analysis is completely bogus. Did you create this yourself or did
you pull it off the web?

Doesn\'t really matter. Encapsulating single individuals in tons of short-lived
vehicle is clearly unsustainable, no matter how it is propelled.

 

[John Larkin]

On 21 Dec 2021 18:36:18 GMT, Robert Latest <boblatest@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Rick C wrote:
I don\'t think it shows any such thing. You compared the impact of making the
lithium battery (in the largest car, not the model that sells well). Even
then your basis is an estimate you give no basis for. Then you ignore the
impact of building the alternative, an ICE vehicle or any other battery.

So your analysis is completely bogus. Did you create this yourself or did
you pull it off the web?

Doesn\'t really matter. Encapsulating single individuals in tons of short-lived
vehicle is clearly unsustainable, no matter how it is propelled.

It\'s been popular since horse-drawn carts. People like going places
and being warm and dry.

--

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end with doubts,
but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Francis Bacon

 

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 6:35:23 AM UTC+11, John Larkin wrote:

On 21 Dec 2021 18:36:18 GMT, Robert Latest <bobl...@yahoo.com
wrote:
Rick C wrote:
I don\'t think it shows any such thing. You compared the impact of making the
lithium battery (in the largest car, not the model that sells well). Even
then your basis is an estimate you give no basis for. Then you ignore the
impact of building the alternative, an ICE vehicle or any other battery.

So your analysis is completely bogus. Did you create this yourself or did
you pull it off the web?

Doesn\'t really matter. Encapsulating single individuals in tons of short-lived
vehicle is clearly unsustainable, no matter how it is propelled.

It\'s been popular since horse-drawn carts. People like going places
and being warm and dry.

Popularity and sustainability are two entirely independent concepts. A lightweight electric vehicle could offer the same services in a more sustainable way. I saw somebody zooming along our footpath on what looked like a motorised unicycle yesterday. Put an transparent egg-shell around the rider, and he\'d have stayed dry.
Warm isn\'t usually a problem in Sydney.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Tue, 21 Dec 2021 17:39:47 +0100) it happened David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in <spt00j$i6b$1@dont-email.me>:

On 21/12/2021 16:22, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 4:19:11 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 20/12/2021 19:32, Rick C wrote:
Hey! Check this out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

You forgot the < > brackets

No brackets required.


Did you miss the other threads about links? Or the smiley?

Brackets around URLs are not required - but they are a good habit, and
they /are/ required if the URL is long enough to be mangled by line
breaks (and you want people to bother to click on the link).

Usenet rfc does not specify a maximum line length.

 

[David Brown]

On 22/12/2021 09:16, Jan Panteltje wrote:

On a sunny day (Tue, 21 Dec 2021 17:39:47 +0100) it happened David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in <spt00j$i6b$1@dont-email.me>:


Brackets around URLs are not required - but they are a good habit, and
they /are/ required if the URL is long enough to be mangled by line
breaks (and you want people to bother to click on the link).

Usenet rfc does not specify a maximum line length.

It does not specify a lot of things. The RFC\'s are starting points,
giving the basic protocol information for clients and servers. They
don\'t cover the the way people /use/ Usenet - the \"human protocol\", if
you like. That includes things like line length, quoting, snipping,
topic, language, politeness, and countless other things. There are no
RFC\'s here, no written specification - just a collection of common usage
and expectations. No one forces you or anyone else to put brackets
around URL\'s (especially long ones). No one forces people to snip
appropriately, follow standard Usenet line lengths, or write as though
they were human beings and not pond scum that has learned to type.
Equally no one forces people to pay attention to your posts, click on
your links, or answer your questions.

Following communication standards for a given medium is basic
politeness, and costs nothing. The standards for Usenet are not written
or well-specified, but neither are they hard to grasp or use. Much of
this group, unfortunately, seems to view politeness or respect as a sign
of weakness.

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Wed, 22 Dec 2021 09:43:05 +0100) it happened David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in <spuoeq$271$1@dont-email.me>:

On 22/12/2021 09:16, Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Tue, 21 Dec 2021 17:39:47 +0100) it happened David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote in <spt00j$i6b$1@dont-email.me>:


Brackets around URLs are not required - but they are a good habit, and
they /are/ required if the URL is long enough to be mangled by line
breaks (and you want people to bother to click on the link).

Usenet rfc does not specify a maximum line length.


It does not specify a lot of things. The RFC\'s are starting points,
giving the basic protocol information for clients and servers. They
don\'t cover the the way people /use/ Usenet - the \"human protocol\", if
you like. That includes things like line length, quoting, snipping,
topic, language, politeness, and countless other things. There are no
RFC\'s here, no written specification - just a collection of common usage
and expectations. No one forces you or anyone else to put brackets
around URL\'s (especially long ones). No one forces people to snip
appropriately, follow standard Usenet line lengths, or write as though
they were human beings and not pond scum that has learned to type.
Equally no one forces people to pay attention to your posts, click on
your links, or answer your questions.

Following communication standards for a given medium is basic
politeness, and costs nothing. The standards for Usenet are not written
or well-specified, but neither are they hard to grasp or use. Much of
this group, unfortunately, seems to view politeness or respect as a sign
of weakness.

It all depends, a good usenet news reader (I mean the program) should be prepared to handle some things..
This is your posting on my screen:
http://panteltje.com/pub/usenet_on_my_screen.gif
As you can see plenty of horizontal character space.
But I can set fontsize (+ and - button bottom left), so smaller font more on one line.
But if somebody does a super long line I can press the \'H\' button top right and the posting is
then reformatted to fit the screen (\'H\' is actually html mode from the times people liked to post html to usenet). (char 127)
http://www.panteltje.com/pub/usenet_editor_screen.gif
see top right for row and column cursor position
I actually have NewsFlex working on raspberry pi 4 now too..
But you are right, I try not to do very strange things when posting
but my text editor is set to 128 chars per line, same one I use for programming.
These days with all those big monitors and \'latest browser jive\' that should be no problem.

One could argue older screens were a bout 24x40 (like ceefax / videotext) or 40x80 or whatever was in those days.


grin

 

[Jasen Betts]

On 2021-12-21, David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 20/12/2021 19:52, Jan Panteltje wrote:


Angry owner blows up his Tesla (VIDEO):
https://www.rt.com/news/543738-tesla-explosion-musk-finland/

20,000 Euro for a new battery is a bit much I think.


Tesla battery : 100 kWh
CO₂ per kWh for Li-ion battery manufacturing (estimate) : 73 kg
CO₂ released when make battery : 7300 kg

CO₂ per litre petrol : 2.4 kg

Litres petrol equivalent per Tesla battery : 3041 litres

Fuel consumption Toyota Yaris Hybrid : 3.3 l per 100 km

Total distance for a Yaris to release the same CO₂ from petrol as it
costs to make a Tesla battery : 92,000 km or 57,000 miles.

The tesla battery is good for over 400 000 miles, so it seems about 4
times better. (not including resources recovered from recycled
batteries, or saved by their reuse)

Of course that doesn\'t take into account the CO₂ equivalent costs of
making the rest of the car, making the charging infrastructure,
generating the electricity, or any of the many other factors involved.

finding, drilling, pumping, transporting and refining the oil, transporting
the gasoline, manufacture of the toyota, building the refineries,
pipelines, and tankers, spillages...

yeah, partial comparison like above is going to give incomplete results.

And there are many other environmental factors about mining Lithium.
Any attempt attempt at finding the \"cost to the environment\" for
something is always more complicated than you think, even when taking
into account that it is more complicated than you think. And of course
these are estimates, and of course there are other factors - other kinds
of pollution, comfort, convenience, personal preferences, etc., that
affect suitability of particular types of car.

But it /does/ show the ridiculously high environmental cost of lithium
batteries - and the price of the batteries should reflect that, just as
the price of petrol (in most countries) is artificially high to
discourage CO₂ emissions.

Indeed if they can reduce emissions by a factor of 4 as your figures
suggest they should be subsidised.

(Roll on sodium, aluminium or carbon based batteries - the sooner we
stop using lithium, the better.)

Meanwhile lithium batteries are good motivation for deploying charging
infrastructure, if there\'s something better that\'s good. but curretly
they seem least bad.

--
Jasen.

 

[David Brown]

On 22/12/2021 12:21, Jasen Betts wrote:

On 2021-12-21, David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 20/12/2021 19:52, Jan Panteltje wrote:


Angry owner blows up his Tesla (VIDEO):
https://www.rt.com/news/543738-tesla-explosion-musk-finland/

20,000 Euro for a new battery is a bit much I think.


Tesla battery : 100 kWh
CO₂ per kWh for Li-ion battery manufacturing (estimate) : 73 kg
CO₂ released when make battery : 7300 kg

CO₂ per litre petrol : 2.4 kg

Litres petrol equivalent per Tesla battery : 3041 litres

Fuel consumption Toyota Yaris Hybrid : 3.3 l per 100 km

Total distance for a Yaris to release the same CO₂ from petrol as it
costs to make a Tesla battery : 92,000 km or 57,000 miles.

The tesla battery is good for over 400 000 miles, so it seems about 4
times better. (not including resources recovered from recycled
batteries, or saved by their reuse)

Lithium batteries are have barely any recycling at the moment. (And it
does not seem reasonable to count the lifetime of the battery until it
is \"dead\", and also count reuse.)

I do think large battery electric cars can work out as environmentally
positive if they are drive a lot. Average commutes in the USA are often
long, and so you can potentially get good overall millege from the
battery - /if/ you can keep the car and its battery working and damage
free long enough. The practice we see over here is that it takes
extremely little damage to an electric car battery before it is
considered a safety risk and the battery is replaced.

We also see entire electric cars being scraped because even minor fixes
are often too costly to repair, based on insurance company standards
(using new manufacturer parts, particular repair shops, etc., rather
than mashing together something from scrap parts that is cheaper and
more environmentally friendly). The trend exists for non-electric cars
too, but not quite as badly.

Of course that doesn\'t take into account the CO₂ equivalent costs of
making the rest of the car, making the charging infrastructure,
generating the electricity, or any of the many other factors involved.

finding, drilling, pumping, transporting and refining the oil, transporting
the gasoline, manufacture of the toyota, building the refineries,
pipelines, and tankers, spillages...

yeah, partial comparison like above is going to give incomplete results.

Electricity generation is not CO₂ free, in most countries. Even if you
can say \"I\'m getting /my/ electricity from a windmill\", every kWh you
take from the windmill and put in your car is a kWh less on your
national grid, which means a kWh more of average CO₂ generated power
needed by someone else. In the EU, each kWh generated produces an
average of about 300 g CO₂. (As always, there are always more factors
that could be considered.) Let\'s guess that the USA is similar.

A litre of petrol produces 2.4 kg CO₂, and is equivalent to about 8.7
kWh. So with petrol, each kWh of energy equivalent produces 275 g CO₂.


Now, I will happily agree that the figures for electricity generation
are estimates and approximate - all we can see here is some ballpark
figures. But it\'s quite telling that the figures here are quite close -
driving your car produces a similar amount of CO₂ whether it is petrol
or electric.


As I see it, electric cars of today, taken alone, would be a significant
step backwards for the climate. But I believe they are a necessary evil
in order to push the technology, economy, politics, infrastructure and
society forwards towards a point where they become a positive thing.
The key point for the cars themselves is to get rid of the lithium -
that will happen, but the research needed to make sodium, aluminium or
carbon alternatives (or hydrogen, ethanol fuel cells, or whatever) would
not happen without there first being a large fleet and market of
lithium-based electric cars. And the key point overall is to generate
electricity from sources that don\'t emit CO₂ - nuclear is really the
only good, scalable global solution here.

And there are many other environmental factors about mining Lithium.
Any attempt attempt at finding the \"cost to the environment\" for
something is always more complicated than you think, even when taking
into account that it is more complicated than you think. And of course
these are estimates, and of course there are other factors - other kinds
of pollution, comfort, convenience, personal preferences, etc., that
affect suitability of particular types of car.

But it /does/ show the ridiculously high environmental cost of lithium
batteries - and the price of the batteries should reflect that, just as
the price of petrol (in most countries) is artificially high to
discourage CO₂ emissions.

Indeed if they can reduce emissions by a factor of 4 as your figures
suggest they should be subsidised.

(Roll on sodium, aluminium or carbon based batteries - the sooner we
stop using lithium, the better.)

Meanwhile lithium batteries are good motivation for deploying charging
infrastructure, if there\'s something better that\'s good. but curretly
they seem least bad.

As far as I can see, they are currently worse than petrol - but those
steps are the only way to get to something better.

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 12:56:34 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:

On 21/12/2021 16:20, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 5:46:27 AM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 20/12/2021 19:52, Jan Panteltje wrote:


Angry owner blows up his Tesla (VIDEO):
https://www.rt.com/news/543738-tesla-explosion-musk-finland/

20,000 Euro for a new battery is a bit much I think.

Tesla battery : 100 kWh CO₂ per kWh for Li-ion battery
manufacturing (estimate) : 73 kg CO₂ released when make battery :
7300 kg

CO₂ per litre petrol : 2.4 kg

Litres petrol equivalent per Tesla battery : 3041 litres

Fuel consumption Toyota Yaris Hybrid : 3.3 l per 100 km

Total distance for a Yaris to release the same CO₂ from petrol as
it costs to make a Tesla battery : 92,000 km or 57,000 miles.


Of course that doesn\'t take into account the CO₂ equivalent costs
of making the rest of the car, making the charging infrastructure,
generating the electricity, or any of the many other factors
involved. And there are many other environmental factors about
mining Lithium. Any attempt attempt at finding the \"cost to the
environment\" for something is always more complicated than you
think, even when taking into account that it is more complicated
than you think. And of course these are estimates, and of course
there are other factors - other kinds of pollution, comfort,
convenience, personal preferences, etc., that affect suitability of
particular types of car.


But it /does/ show the ridiculously high environmental cost of
lithium batteries - and the price of the batteries should reflect
that, just as the price of petrol (in most countries) is
artificially high to discourage CO₂ emissions.

(Roll on sodium, aluminium or carbon based batteries - the sooner
we stop using lithium, the better.)

I don\'t think it shows any such thing. You compared the impact of
making the lithium battery (in the largest car, not the model that
sells well). Even then your basis is an estimate you give no basis
for. Then you ignore the impact of building the alternative, an ICE
vehicle or any other battery.

So your analysis is completely bogus. Did you create this yourself
or did you pull it off the web?

If you read my post, you\'d have answers to most of these points. My
intention - very clearly stated, I thought - was to point out that
making large lithium-ion batteries has a CO₂ equivalent cost that
matches a very significant driving distance in a modern efficient petrol
car.

Yes, apples and oranges! What meaning is there to such a comparison? None!

Compare life cycle CO2 emissions if you want. That would be valid. But why compare driving emissions of one car to construction emissions of another car??? That makes no sense and is invalid.

My analysis is no more and no less than that - since the
discussion was about the battery. Yes, I ignored the cost of making the
petrol car - I also ignored the cost of making the rest of the large
electric car. (It might have been worth getting figures for these too,
as it would probably surprise a lot of people.)

So what would a valid comparison be? Battery vs. gas tank? Do the whole enchilada or nothing at all.

And yes, fairly obviously I got the key figures from the web - that\'s
how you get data in the modern world. You can do some googling of your
own if you like. The 73 kg CO₂ per kWh for the lithium ion battery is,
as I said, an estimate - and you\'ll easily find others ranging from
about 50 kg to about 200 kg, depending on many factors such as the
source of the lithium salts.

\"The web\" is not a source. I\'m not going to google anything. Your comparison is pointless. Do something useful like comparing life cycle CO2 emissions perhaps, instead of bogus comparisons that may be emotionally satisfying, but mean nothing.

--

Rick C.

-++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 2:36:24 PM UTC-4, Robert Latest wrote:

Rick C wrote:
I don\'t think it shows any such thing. You compared the impact of making the
lithium battery (in the largest car, not the model that sells well). Even
then your basis is an estimate you give no basis for. Then you ignore the
impact of building the alternative, an ICE vehicle or any other battery.

So your analysis is completely bogus. Did you create this yourself or did
you pull it off the web?
Doesn\'t really matter. Encapsulating single individuals in tons of short-lived
vehicle is clearly unsustainable, no matter how it is propelled.

What part of 7 billion people on earth *is* sustainable?

--

Rick C.

+-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Wednesday, December 22, 2021 at 11:46:43 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:

Lithium batteries are have barely any recycling at the moment. (And it
does not seem reasonable to count the lifetime of the battery until it
is \"dead\", and also count reuse.)

I do think large battery electric cars can work out as environmentally
positive if they are drive a lot. Average commutes in the USA are often
long, and so you can potentially get good overall millege from the
battery - /if/ you can keep the car and its battery working and damage
free long enough. The practice we see over here is that it takes
extremely little damage to an electric car battery before it is
considered a safety risk and the battery is replaced.

We also see entire electric cars being scraped because even minor fixes
are often too costly to repair, based on insurance company standards
(using new manufacturer parts, particular repair shops, etc., rather
than mashing together something from scrap parts that is cheaper and
more environmentally friendly). The trend exists for non-electric cars
too, but not quite as badly.
Of course that doesn\'t take into account the CO₂ equivalent costs of
making the rest of the car, making the charging infrastructure,
generating the electricity, or any of the many other factors involved.

finding, drilling, pumping, transporting and refining the oil, transporting
the gasoline, manufacture of the toyota, building the refineries,
pipelines, and tankers, spillages...

yeah, partial comparison like above is going to give incomplete results..
Electricity generation is not CO₂ free, in most countries. Even if you
can say \"I\'m getting /my/ electricity from a windmill\", every kWh you
take from the windmill and put in your car is a kWh less on your
national grid, which means a kWh more of average CO₂ generated power
needed by someone else.

Uh, that\'s bogus. As more renewable energy is utilized, it results in installation of more renewable generation. You can get incorrect results if you consider the wrong scale of the problem.

In the EU, each kWh generated produces an
average of about 300 g CO₂. (As always, there are always more factors
that could be considered.) Let\'s guess that the USA is similar.

A litre of petrol produces 2.4 kg CO₂, and is equivalent to about 8.7
kWh. So with petrol, each kWh of energy equivalent produces 275 g CO₂.

So I guess all that nuclear power in France is being wasted somehow. Better get more renewable and fix your carbon problem.

Now, I will happily agree that the figures for electricity generation
are estimates and approximate - all we can see here is some ballpark
figures. But it\'s quite telling that the figures here are quite close -
driving your car produces a similar amount of CO₂ whether it is petrol
or electric.

In the EU. The EU needs to address their carbon problem soon! EVs allow the use of renewable power for transportation. That doesn\'t happen if you keep fueling with gasoline and diesel.

As I see it, electric cars of today, taken alone, would be a significant
step backwards for the climate.

Your numbers are all self-admittedly \"estimates\" and not accurate. The analysis of CO2 released from battery manufacture is totally bogus. So not much to support your conclusion.

But I believe they are a necessary evil
in order to push the technology, economy, politics, infrastructure and
society forwards towards a point where they become a positive thing.
The key point for the cars themselves is to get rid of the lithium -

Again, a bogus conclusion from a flawed analysis.

that will happen, but the research needed to make sodium, aluminium or
carbon alternatives (or hydrogen, ethanol fuel cells, or whatever) would
not happen without there first being a large fleet and market of
lithium-based electric cars.

That remains to be seen since you didn\'t provide an analysis of other battery construction.

And the key point overall is to generate
electricity from sources that don\'t emit CO₂ - nuclear is really the
only good, scalable global solution here.

Here you are right on the mark (except for the nuclear part)! But without EVs, there\'s a huge segment of CO2 emissions that is hard to otherwise mitigate. With EVs, renewables are not only usable, but EVs complement the use of non-dispatchable energy sources like wind and solar by essentially providing storage for the periods of poor availability. They are a GREAT combination.

As far as I can see, they are currently worse than petrol - but those
steps are the only way to get to something better.

But you failed to actually analyze the issue properly. Do you proper research and return when you have a correct analysis.

Oh, and it would be nice if you trimmed a post once in a while.

--

Rick C.

++- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
++- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Robert Latest]

Rick C wrote:

On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 2:36:24 PM UTC-4, Robert Latest wrote:
Doesn\'t really matter. Encapsulating single individuals in tons of
short-lived vehicle is clearly unsustainable, no matter how it is propelled.

What part of 7 billion people on earth *is* sustainable?

The part that doesn\'t drive is at least more sustainable.

 

[David Brown]

On 23/12/2021 01:39, Rick C wrote:

On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 12:39:54 PM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 21/12/2021 16:22, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 4:19:11 AM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 20/12/2021 19:32, Rick C wrote:
Hey! Check this out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

You forgot the < > brackets

No brackets required.

Did you miss the other threads about links? Or the smiley?

Brackets around URLs are not required - but they are a good habit,
and they /are/ required if the URL is long enough to be mangled by
line breaks (and you want people to bother to click on the link).

They don\'t work, at least not in GG.

That is news to me - and yet another reason not to use GG (or to
encourage them to fix the client - there\'s no reason why they couldn\'t
make an online web-based Usenet client that worked well according to
common Usenet practice).

In the browser I can select the full text of the link even on
multiple lines and right click \"open in new tab\". That works.

Of course selecting, copying and pasting will work. But URL\'s written
appropriately - with angle brackets - will work with a single click from
any decent Usenet client, any browser, any desktop OS, regardless of how
line-breaking is done.

For short URL\'s the risk of line breaks is much smaller, and thus the
usefulness of angle brackets much less. And giving the real URL, rather
than a \"tiny\" URL, is a lot more important than the brackets.

 

[David Brown]

On 22/12/2021 22:14, Jasen Betts wrote:

On 2021-12-22, David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

The tesla battery is good for over 400 000 miles, so it seems about 4
times better. (not including resources recovered from recycled
batteries, or saved by their reuse)


Lithium batteries are have barely any recycling at the moment. (And it
does not seem reasonable to count the lifetime of the battery until it
is \"dead\", and also count reuse.)

Is this unreasonable because it destroys your argument, or for some
other reason?

It does not even dent my argument, much less destroy it. It is
unreasonable because you are trying to count it twice. You are
suggesting that you can get 400,000 miles out of the battery before it
wears out, and then the battery can be reused despite being worn out.
(Almost no lithium from batteries is recycled. Individual cells from
old batteries are sometimes reused, but not if they are worn out.)

There\'s not much recycling because they are mostly still new. once, or if,
the stockpiles build to an ecconomical scale they will be reprocessed.
There are already people re-using cells from old EV batteries.

Re-use is only possible when the cells haven\'t been worn out - i.e., you
haven\'t got your 400,000 miles out of them.

I agree that lithium recycling from old batteries is likely to increase,
and that will change the environmental economic equation. (As I have
said all along, I think the situation is bad /now/, but that it is a
necessary stage towards a better future. However, a key factor is that
we should understand the costs of the current solutions so that we know
that we need something better.)

I do think large battery electric cars can work out as environmentally
positive if they are drive a lot.

I think that\'s probably true of all private automobiles.

Fair point.

Average commutes in the USA are often
long, and so you can potentially get good overall millege from the
battery - /if/ you can keep the car and its battery working and damage
free long enough. The practice we see over here is that it takes
extremely little damage to an electric car battery before it is
considered a safety risk and the battery is replaced.

We also see entire electric cars being scraped because even minor fixes
are often too costly to repair, based on insurance company standards
(using new manufacturer parts, particular repair shops, etc., rather
than mashing together something from scrap parts that is cheaper and
more environmentally friendly). The trend exists for non-electric cars
too, but not quite as badly.

Do you mean something other than \"turned into scrap parts\" when you
say \"scrapped\" above? Because of unreliable supply, scrap parts are
not well suited to mass production. but work well in bespoke products.

Unfortunately, a large proportion of even slightly damaged electric
vehicles are \"turned into rubbish\", rather than \"turned into scrap
parts\". (It happens for non-electric vehicles too, more and more, but
it is worse for electric vehicles and a higher proportion get scraped
rather than repaired.)

Some parts get recycled - most of the steel in cars gets recycled,
AFAIUI. But a lot ends up in landfills or burnt. Very little gets
re-used as complete parts. Maybe this will change in the future, but
there is such a high turnover for models and such specialised parts that
re-use is difficult. A motor, battery or other part from a two-year-old
electric car will often not fit in this years\' model. (Again, this is
also a problem in newer non-electric cars.)

Of course that doesn\'t take into account the CO₂ equivalent costs of
making the rest of the car, making the charging infrastructure,
generating the electricity, or any of the many other factors involved.

finding, drilling, pumping, transporting and refining the oil, transporting
the gasoline, manufacture of the toyota, building the refineries,
pipelines, and tankers, spillages...

yeah, partial comparison like above is going to give incomplete results.


Electricity generation is not CO₂ free, in most countries.

Not yet. Plan and prepare for the future, not the past.

Yes indeed - but we do have to understand the present, so we can get a
better future.

[snipped figures]

Now, I will happily agree that the figures for electricity generation
are estimates and approximate - all we can see here is some ballpark
figures. But it\'s quite telling that the figures here are quite close -
driving your car produces a similar amount of CO₂ whether it is petrol
or electric.


As I see it, electric cars of today, taken alone, would be a significant
step backwards for the climate. But I believe they are a necessary evil
in order to push the technology, economy, politics, infrastructure and
society forwards towards a point where they become a positive thing.
The key point for the cars themselves is to get rid of the lithium -
that will happen, but the research needed to make sodium, aluminium or
carbon alternatives (or hydrogen, ethanol fuel cells, or whatever) would
not happen without there first being a large fleet and market of
lithium-based electric cars. And the key point overall is to generate
electricity from sources that don\'t emit CO₂ - nuclear is really the
only good, scalable global solution here.

Nuclear would be good if the numbers made sense long term to the bean
counters, but currently it seems mostly to appeal to zealots.

If only the bean counters took the price of putting dikes around every
continent into account, then nuclear numbers would make sense to them too!

Looking at density and bond energy I can\'t see sodium or aluminium
outperforming lithium in traction batteries.

They don\'t need to outperform lithium - they just need to do well
enough, when combined with fast enough charging and enough charging
stations. (The charging stations themselves can use cheap and bulky
batteries for local storage to avoid huge peaks on their local power
connections. Apparently potassium batteries could be good here, if
their problems could be solved, since they have very efficient
charge/discharge cycles.)

Aluminium has a significantly higher energy density for batteries (my
understanding of the chemistry here is very far from complete, but
basically you get 3 electrons per aluminium ion compared to 1 per
lithium ion). They are apparently used in military applications, but
there are all sorts of complications and issues to be solved before they
would be practical for common use.

There is nothing that can do better than lithium for car use today, but
there are many potential candidates if the technology can be improved.
And it is today\'s lithium-powered electric cars that provides the
economic incentive to invest in this research.

Fuel ethanol seems to
reauire constant corporate welfare. Due to production costs electrolytic
hydrogen will continue to underperform as a fuel, except in density
measures. Biomass hydrogen? sure by why not biomass methane instead?.

For biomass (ideally algae or single-celled organism, or waste biomass -
certainly not corn or other food grown for biofuel!) I think ethanol
would be the right target. Fuel-cell based cars could use it
efficiently, but the real gain is that it could run the majority of the
existing car fleet directly.

As for hydrogen, the efficiency of generating it by electrolysis is
still a bit low but has been improving - if it gets good enough,
hydrogen is potentially a way to store and transport energy. Another
method of producing it is methane pyrolysis from natural gas - you lose
some of the energy from the natural gas in the process, but the carbon
falls out in solid (and therefore easily storable) form rather than CO₂
in the atmosphere.

I think hydrogen has potential as an energy transport for the near
future, until better long-distance grids with high voltage DC give a
more efficient energy transport.

Meanwhile lithium batteries are good motivation for deploying charging
infrastructure, if there\'s something better that\'s good. but curretly
they seem least bad.


As far as I can see, they are currently worse than petrol - but those
steps are the only way to get to something better.

Would you argue against plugging in a PHEV on these grounds?

A PHEV is quite a good balance at the moment. They are certainly very
practical for people (and practicality for owners and users must always
be a big consideration). Their batteries are much smaller - it is only
a minor part of the environmental impact of the car. So for short
journeys, that lets you get the benefit of electric use with little of
the cost. You generally charge them at home, so you don\'t have the cost
of charging stations or the infrastructure needed for the very high peak
currents, and charging is at night when there is often an excess of
electricity rather than peak times during the day. You can have lower
pollution in town driving while using petrol outside of towns. CO₂
emissions are important, but they don\'t cover everything.

A lot of people, however, use their PHEV without plugging them in, which
loses much of the point (you still get regenerative breaking and the
like, but that can be achieved by a non-pluggable hybrid at lower cost).

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, December 23, 2021 at 6:04:21 AM UTC-4, Robert Latest wrote:

Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 2:36:24 PM UTC-4, Robert Latest wrote:
Doesn\'t really matter. Encapsulating single individuals in tons of
short-lived vehicle is clearly unsustainable, no matter how it is propelled.

What part of 7 billion people on earth *is* sustainable?
The part that doesn\'t drive is at least more sustainable.

LOL! So that part of the population is only a little bit pregnant?

If your air is cut to the point where you are only getting 50% of what you need to survive, it\'s better for you to get a bit more so you have 80% of what you need to survive? Tell that to mother earth.

No man is an island.

Even the part that doesn\'t drive depends on the other part to get products and food produced and delivered and support their way of life. Even living off the land in Africa people depend on the rest of the world for the things they get from the rest of us, medicine, produced items like clothes, etc..

How many live that sort of life willingly? Very, very... VERY few.

--

Rick C.

+++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[server]

On 23 Dec 2021 10:04:14 GMT, Robert Latest <boblatest@yahoo.com>
wrote:

Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 2:36:24 PM UTC-4, Robert Latest wrote:
Doesn\'t really matter. Encapsulating single individuals in tons of
short-lived vehicle is clearly unsustainable, no matter how it is propelled.

What part of 7 billion people on earth *is* sustainable?

The part that doesn\'t drive is at least more sustainable.

Do you drive?


--

I yam what I yam - Popeye

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, December 23, 2021 at 7:23:13 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:

On 23/12/2021 01:39, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 12:39:54 PM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 21/12/2021 16:22, Rick C wrote:
On Tuesday, December 21, 2021 at 4:19:11 AM UTC-4, David Brown
wrote:
On 20/12/2021 19:32, Rick C wrote:
Hey! Check this out!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

You forgot the < > brackets

No brackets required.

Did you miss the other threads about links? Or the smiley?

Brackets around URLs are not required - but they are a good habit,
and they /are/ required if the URL is long enough to be mangled by
line breaks (and you want people to bother to click on the link).

They don\'t work, at least not in GG.

That is news to me - and yet another reason not to use GG (or to
encourage them to fix the client - there\'s no reason why they couldn\'t
make an online web-based Usenet client that worked well according to
common Usenet practice).

You miss the point. Brackets are not needed in GG. Just select the multiline text and right click to open the link. Even better than screwing with brackets.

In the browser I can select the full text of the link even on
multiple lines and right click \"open in new tab\". That works.

Of course selecting, copying and pasting will work. But URL\'s written
appropriately - with angle brackets - will work with a single click from
any decent Usenet client, any browser, any desktop OS, regardless of how
line-breaking is done.

Nobody said anything about copy or paste. Just select, right click and say open!

For short URL\'s the risk of line breaks is much smaller, and thus the
usefulness of angle brackets much less. And giving the real URL, rather
than a \"tiny\" URL, is a lot more important than the brackets.

To some.

--

Rick C.

---- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
---- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, December 23, 2021 at 8:24:32 AM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:

On 22/12/2021 22:14, Jasen Betts wrote:
On 2021-12-22, David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:

The tesla battery is good for over 400 000 miles, so it seems about 4
times better. (not including resources recovered from recycled
batteries, or saved by their reuse)


Lithium batteries are have barely any recycling at the moment. (And it
does not seem reasonable to count the lifetime of the battery until it
is \"dead\", and also count reuse.)

Is this unreasonable because it destroys your argument, or for some
other reason?
It does not even dent my argument, much less destroy it. It is
unreasonable because you are trying to count it twice. You are
suggesting that you can get 400,000 miles out of the battery before it
wears out, and then the battery can be reused despite being worn out.
(Almost no lithium from batteries is recycled. Individual cells from
old batteries are sometimes reused, but not if they are worn out.)

You don\'t seem to understand. Lithium batteries don\'t wear out. They wear down. Think of surgeon\'s tools that are no longer good enough for surgery, but are good enough to tie fishing lures. Not many want a battery in their car that only gives them 60% of the original range, but that\'s plenty good enough for a power wall or other stationary application.

There\'s not much recycling because they are mostly still new. once, or if,
the stockpiles build to an ecconomical scale they will be reprocessed.
There are already people re-using cells from old EV batteries.

Re-use is only possible when the cells haven\'t been worn out - i.e., you
haven\'t got your 400,000 miles out of them.

What do you think happens at 400,000 miles? Do they melt down? Do they throw an error flag? They still work... unless they don\'t at which case they probably didn\'t make 400,000 miles and are a failed battery, not a worn out battery.

I agree that lithium recycling from old batteries is likely to increase,
and that will change the environmental economic equation. (As I have
said all along, I think the situation is bad /now/, but that it is a
necessary stage towards a better future.

I think that case is vastly overstated. The problematic source materials for most lithium batteries is cobalt which is hard to find other than in problematic regions of Africa. That\'s why most are designing out cobalt. There\'s LOTS of research in this area and Tesla currently shipping batteries without cobalt.

However, a key factor is that
we should understand the costs of the current solutions so that we know
that we need something better.)
I do think large battery electric cars can work out as environmentally
positive if they are drive a lot.

I think that\'s probably true of all private automobiles.

Fair point.

Not sure what it means, \"drive a lot\". All that matters is the total mileage on a car, not how fast it is accumulated. Most cars are driven lots of miles before they are scrapped.

Unfortunately, a large proportion of even slightly damaged electric
vehicles are \"turned into rubbish\", rather than \"turned into scrap
parts\". (It happens for non-electric vehicles too, more and more, but
it is worse for electric vehicles and a higher proportion get scraped
rather than repaired.)

Yeah, I think you are making up facts here. I\'ve never heard anything like this. The battery and motor would be separated. The motor has lots of good copper which is well worth recycling. The body has lots of good metals in it too.

Looking at density and bond energy I can\'t see sodium or aluminium
outperforming lithium in traction batteries.
They don\'t need to outperform lithium - they just need to do well
enough, when combined with fast enough charging and enough charging
stations. (The charging stations themselves can use cheap and bulky
batteries for local storage to avoid huge peaks on their local power
connections. Apparently potassium batteries could be good here, if
their problems could be solved, since they have very efficient
charge/discharge cycles.)

Of course they have to outperform lithium batteries. Lithium batteries have to outperform lithium batteries because they aren\'t good enough yet for the general market. We need EVs with 400-500 mile range because unlike an ICE vehicle the EV can\'t use it\'s full range. A 400 mile range is needed to drive for four hours before charging. 500 miles is needed so it can do this over the life of the battery.

Aluminium has a significantly higher energy density for batteries (my
understanding of the chemistry here is very far from complete, but
basically you get 3 electrons per aluminium ion compared to 1 per
lithium ion). They are apparently used in military applications, but
there are all sorts of complications and issues to be solved before they
would be practical for common use.

Someone is proposing an aluminum-air battery, but it\'s not rechargeable. It has to be replaced every 1,000 miles or something. Then it is not clear if it can be recycled in a useful way. This sounds terrible to me.

There is nothing that can do better than lithium for car use today, but
there are many potential candidates if the technology can be improved.
And it is today\'s lithium-powered electric cars that provides the
economic incentive to invest in this research.

Lithium is one of those potential candidates.

Fuel ethanol seems to
reauire constant corporate welfare. Due to production costs electrolytic
hydrogen will continue to underperform as a fuel, except in density
measures. Biomass hydrogen? sure by why not biomass methane instead?.
For biomass (ideally algae or single-celled organism, or waste biomass -
certainly not corn or other food grown for biofuel!) I think ethanol
would be the right target. Fuel-cell based cars could use it
efficiently, but the real gain is that it could run the majority of the
existing car fleet directly.

How does it matter what crop you use? Burning corn in a car will never compete with food corn because it\'s not the same crop. Have you ever seen cow corn? Not the same as what we eat either. Not many cars are set up for running 100% ethanol or even 85%.

As for hydrogen, the efficiency of generating it by electrolysis is
still a bit low but has been improving - if it gets good enough,
hydrogen is potentially a way to store and transport energy.

Yes, a really crappy way that we would have to construct from scratch. It\'s really hard to compete with EVs when the grid is already adequate. We just need more ways to connect EVs to the grid. Actually, many people can just plug into a 120V outlet which gives you 50-70 miles overnight. The US has never been very good at considering small cars for local driving (99% of what we do), but with those a 120V outlet could give 100+ miles overnight. Much of the rest of the world would manage that quite well. That\'s a lot of what the Chinese are building.

Another
method of producing it is methane pyrolysis from natural gas - you lose
some of the energy from the natural gas in the process, but the carbon
falls out in solid (and therefore easily storable) form rather than CO₂
in the atmosphere.

Yet another unworkable solution to a problem we don\'t have. Hydrogen has many, many problems and is not needed. Nothing wrong at all with EVs. We can continue to work on the batteries and in 10 or 20 years no one will be giving hydrogen a second thought.

I think hydrogen has potential as an energy transport for the near
future, until better long-distance grids with high voltage DC give a
more efficient energy transport.

??? Again, solving a problem we don\'t have. Actually, NOT solving a problem we don\'t have.

A PHEV is quite a good balance at the moment. They are certainly very
practical for people (and practicality for owners and users must always
be a big consideration). Their batteries are much smaller - it is only
a minor part of the environmental impact of the car. So for short
journeys, that lets you get the benefit of electric use with little of
the cost. You generally charge them at home, so you don\'t have the cost
of charging stations or the infrastructure needed for the very high peak
currents, and charging is at night when there is often an excess of
electricity rather than peak times during the day. You can have lower
pollution in town driving while using petrol outside of towns. CO₂
emissions are important, but they don\'t cover everything.

You really do know how to distort facts.

PHEVs do nothing useful for the environment that EVs don\'t. PHEVs have small batteries that get a full use pretty much every day if used like an EV. That means they wear down in a very few years and create just as much waste batteries as a proper EV. In fact, an EV driven 30 or 40 miles each day and charged to around 50% each night could last 30 years. Chose your poison.

A lot of people, however, use their PHEV without plugging them in, which
loses much of the point (you still get regenerative breaking and the
like, but that can be achieved by a non-pluggable hybrid at lower cost).

How do you know this? Is this anecdotal?

--

Rick C.

---+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
---+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Robert Latest]

Rick C wrote:

Even the part that doesn\'t drive depends on the other part to get products
and food produced and delivered and support their way of life.

Not as much as our lifestyle depends on their being paid so little that they
won\'t ever be able to afford to significantly pollute the planet.

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, December 23, 2021 at 1:05:20 PM UTC-4, Robert Latest wrote:

Rick C wrote:
Even the part that doesn\'t drive depends on the other part to get products
and food produced and delivered and support their way of life.
Not as much as our lifestyle depends on their being paid so little that they
won\'t ever be able to afford to significantly pollute the planet.

What??? Have you gone off the deep end???

What part of 7 billion do you not understand? No one needs to drive cars or sit in hot tubs to pollute the planet when there are 7 billion of us all working to the same end. Even the process of 7 billion people taking a shit significantly pollutes the planet. Insisting on eating meat adds to that.. The list of polluting activities is long and you have to go a fair ways down to find driving cars.

--

Rick C.

--+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209