babble is rabble.ca's discussion board but it's much more than that: it's an online community for folks who just won't shut up. It's a place to tell each other — and the world — what's up with our work and campaigns.
Support rabble | Advertise with us | Contact our staff | About rabble | Log-in or Register for a new account | Corrections | Privacy policy | Newsfeeds | Mailing lists
rabble: Features | Columnists | In Cahoots | Blogs | Books | Photos | What's Up | Polls
babble: Forum Topics | Active Topics
The rpn: About the RPN | Become a podcaster
rabbleTV: Program Guide | Features | Indie Inside | Best of the net
Copyright © 2001-2013 the authors
Syndicate
Yeah, I remember Ron White - saw a concert movie of the three Blue Collar Comedy guys. But it was still Lewis Black who made the comment I referred to - I saw it on HBO just a few weeks ago.
The more things change the more things stay the same. I spent the weekend watching a couple of shows where some historians spent a year living on a farm circa 1850's to 1880's in Britain. Really interesting show. What I found the most fasicnating was what was going on technologically at the time in terms of the gidgets and gadets that were appearing around the dawn of steam power and before electricity due to the industrial revolution. The focus was mostly on farm equipment and gadgets but there was a lot of looking at what the women were doing around the house. At first it was hard to look at the things as the height of new tech (as we look at it today) but the show did a pretty good job transporting the viewer back in time to illustrate how many of these things, even for the the poorer rural folk were highly desireable and sought after. Many things had their detractors as well. It wasn't long before I was drawing parallels to today. My conclusion...not a whole lot has changed on this front. New and sometimes better and quite useful tech and sometimes not, appear and people want it. Then time moves on the useful tech is kept or evolves and the less useful or more novelty tech gets junked. The desire itself nothing new. The differences between then and today is the amount of stuff and the number of people that can reasonably afford more of it. The drive isn't much different though.
At one point they talked about the mechanical sewing machine, in this case a tredle machine. It was considered a novelty when it first appeared but soon and mostly for women was considered a technological marvel and most every woman desired one for their households. Now they're just a common appliance that's taken for granted and many spend more time in closets or stashed in a basement whereas in a victorian household, especially in the lower classes it would have held a place of honor and cherished the same way many cherish their high tech electronics or appliances today. Coal stoves, hand powered sheep shearers, funky mechnical food processing equipment and all sorts of other fascinating gadgets I'd never seen before all came into existence at that time and then relatively (compared to other eras) quickly progress on different tech continued on from there.
My nephew has used a computer since he was two. I'm old enough to remember being awestruck by this amazing new thing. It still boggles me at times when I think back to how much it's coming to the masses has changed things. I also remember the VCR(you mean I can choose when I want to watch something, wow!) the microwave and the cordless phone. And cell phones! For my nephew these things are all just the way things are and are just fairly mundane tools. Kinda how I think of my sewing machine and washer and dryer. For the victorian era, rural woman who spent on average FOUR DAYS!! doing laundry, by hand, the thought of being able to throw a load in and actually leave it to do something else would likely have been unimaginable or at least the stuff of dreams.
Loved that post of yours, ElizaQ, puts things in context. Imagine a two-year old using a computer! My goodness. I was 43 when I brought my very first computer to use at home.
Hey! You from the Future reading this post! Do you have flying cars yet???
I remember being a teen and going to my nieghbours to play his Apple IIe computer which I thought was fucking amazing (he was a programming wizz at UofT at the time)
I remember getting a Atari ST for christmas when I was in University and it was the most amnazing thing I had ever seen or had. And its hard to believe that was over 20 years ago and now I have a computer with a hard drive bigger than all my previous computers put together
My satellite dish receives more TV programs than all the televisions (cable and antenna) I've watched in the past put together.
I still can barely ever find anything good to watch.... :)
I had a Vic 20. Some of the games came on a cassette tape and I thought that was amazing. I spent hours learning how to program the thing and performed the amazing feat of getting the screen to flash different colors in time to some midi music. Kids from the neighborhood came over to watch it. Makes me laugh now compared to what games are like now.
Here are some figures that show how battery costs totally drive the costs, and indications of how those will change.
First of all, not only is no one making money on EVs yet, but they are quite a ways off the sales and production levels for breakeven. And that is true no matter what strategy the either the Nissans or the small companies use.
The closest to breakeven, the most serious, and the most public about their strategies are Nissan and Tesla.
Tesla makes the roadster that is rightfully dismiised as rich man's toy. But thats their entry strategy- essentially for learning production, costs and energy. And other companies are using Tesla as a partner. So they are not a novelty.
Nissan says they can break even with the Leaf at 500,000 per year. They likey figure that they'll never get there with the current car. Because the only way to sell more is when the cost of the battery pack goes down... and changes in that could change the car quite a bit.
Ironically, Tesla has decided to leapfrog the means of getting to the cheaper battery pack. The maker of the ridiculously expensive toy is going to switch to using battery packs made up of existing laptop cells... because the really mass based production application is already there. So the expensive toy is going to have lower priced battery pack than the Nissan Leaf, which is only going to meet its targets by selling more cars to a price driven market.
Tesla says that with the battery pack switch they can break even at 20,000 units. Granted, they have more margin in setting the price of their EV, than does Nissan with the Leaf. But that is a 40% drop in sticker price. The short term logic of the move is a no brainer. But even the longer term- when that battery pack they are switching to is guaranteed to be completey outmoded- that makes sense too.
All that detail bolls down to something simple: why there arent more EVs available is chicken and egg. It costs money- net- to sell all EVs. They can only sell more when they can make LOTS more, and the price is WAY too high to sell in the numbers required. Creeping increase of sales and production volumes will gradually drop the price of the battery packs. But this is a game for DEEP pockets, good strategy, and luck in the strategy choice working.
Most of the automakers are waiting for Nissan and Tesla to take all the bruising, before they get in seriously. [Ford is just keeping its hand in, mostly with Magna initiative and engineering. Ditto for Daimler and Volkswagen.] Nissan/Renault strategy is to catapault into dominance when EVs themselves become the mainstay, by paying their dues now. Tesla isnt a big company and I guess plans on making money much sooner, and then lots by being the venture partner of choice.
If what you say is true, isn't that an incentive for automakers to just improve their current fuel efficiency numbers and build better emissions controls for their gasoline/diesel powered vehicles - instead of funding pure EV research?
ETA: I wonder what research (if any) is being done to study how to make EV batteries less susceptible to failure in sometimes harsh winter conditions? I suspect the reality is that EVs simply will not be sold in the more severe cold weather areas of the world.
That is probably so, in the short term. Very short, since gas prices are going up, and even the tamest of capitalist media pundits are predicting sharp, steep rises (while western average income, if it changes at all, goes down) and they don't even talk about when petroleum runs out altogether - sooner than previously predicted, as per most forecasts, and especially if they keep spilling billion of barrels into the oceans. So, by the time they make traditional cars as efficient as they should have been all along, there won't be a market. No, i really don't think China and India will go the same route as the earlier industrial nations. Can't, for a start, because circumstances are quite different, and might - longshot, but might - learn from others' example.
Thread drift, but i didn't start it: re computers of yesteryear, my first experience was an interactive session with a mainframe computer program called "Lucy," (after the Charlie Brown character). It asked questions, I answered. "Are you happy?" "Why are you unhappy?" "What would it take to make you happy?" "Tell me more," etc., all typed into the mainframe's terminal. This was before 1980, and it seemed miraculous at the time...
How do electric cars do in cold weather? I've read that at -15C or thereabouts the mileage drops by half. Is this true? What about -30? I'd think a lot of the energy produced would go to heating and demisting. Does anyone know?
This bears repeating:
Public transportation and hi-speed rail corridors are much more efficient, and totally feasible (with just a modicum of political courage).
On another thread, there's talk of Quebec Hydro raising their electricity rates - I suspect electric rates are going to go up right across the board everywhere especially as demand intensifies, so there may not be significant cost-savings associated with EV as compared to IC (internal compbustion) vehicles. And length of rechargeable battery life may be a concern as well - what happens to all the batteries that die out, can they be 100% recycled?
It appears to me that, worldwide, electricity providers are barely keeping up with current demand. Where will all the new electricity come from to re-charge millions of EVs every night? (not to mention probably the millions of new a/c units needed as the earth continues to overheat...)
Electricity production, distribution and usage will have to change drastically. So will industry in general, and the transporting of goods as well as people, the growing and moving of food and the construction of buildings and cities....
We keep thinking as if the present were going to last - in terms business as usual - even though we see, daily, the air traffic snarl-ups and tornado damage, ice cpas melting and deserts growing, mining accidents and energy production catastrophes. We urgently, desperately need to get our heads around a future - and i don't mean Star Trek, because that's never going to happen; i mean a medium-distance future, in our children's lifetime - that's different. I realize that we have to go from here, from the technology and economy we have right now, but we can't plot any kind of forward path without some realistic idea of a destination.
I think those making decisions as to power generation are thinking more in terms of expanded nuclear, hydro dams, maybe solar, wind, and even more coal plants if desperate enough. I suspect electricity demand in the near future is going to far outstrip today's capabilities.
ETA: I wonder if electrical generation will be the growth industry of the future, and as demand intensifies, will prices for electric power skyrocket?
ETA: If electric power rates skyrocket, I think there will be huge demands by homeowners to get off the grid, and instead rely on their own power production units - such as solar panels, windmills, and whatever new technologies lie around the corner.
Of course. We should have been going in that direction for decades. Centralized energy production is crazy. It requires extensive infrastructure to store and distribute; the grid can break down at any point, for any number of reasons, for any lenght of time; every plant and junction is vulnerable to sabotage, overload and incompetence; the repair and expansion of the overcomplicated system is difficult (esapecially in the kind of weather that's more frequently knocking it out) and far too expensive, and its reliability diminshes, even as dependence on it grows. Decentralizing is the only thing that makes sense, but megabusiness won't allow that to happen: it would give communities and individuals too much aoutonomy.
Wasn't there a thread here recently that explained how to get off the grid with your own power generation and in fact sell your excess power to the hydro company?
Net metering, or selling your excess power back to the power company is not the same as getting off the grid.
Okay, try it from a different angle. If I am somehow generating excess power through solar/wind/etc then what I do with the excess? Or can I simply store that excess power somehow?
A friend on FB just reminded me that Quebec Hydro sells power to the USA - is there a point at which that is no longer feasible given increasing demand here?
There won't be electric cars for the masses. There won't be endless green energy. That is, quite literally, a Deus Ex Machina fantasy where technobullshit will allow us to live our pampered lives without consequence. Demanding electric cars is like a junkie demanding chrystal meth instead of crack. The problem isn't the drug, it's that you have an addiction.
My grandparents crossed northern Alberta with oxen pulling a sleigh. My father hitched and drove the buckboard to school at 8 years old. Later, he worked building highways across Albeta. His kids were driven to school everyday. As energy costs increase, his grandkids will need to use public transit. His great-grandkid (presuming there will be any) will probably have to learn how to hitch up a team to pull their buckboard.
It's been a fun ride, but it'll be a short one.
I think selling electric cars anytime soon before they're able to be sold cheaply, reliably, and with a viable power grid is a huge mistake, because any problems encountered will serve to turn folks off them completely. Internal combustion engines are going to be with us for at least the next twenty years and better emissions controls and better mileage is already being legislated in the US. Twenty more years should be enough development time to get the EV right. The big problem right now are the aging, worse polluting/low mpg cars/trucks already on the road. How do you get rid of them?
I wrote this comment last night before seeing what jungles and BB wrote, which is why it might sound a bit like 'talking over'. But its related, so I'll leave it as is, and address those comments later.
What absentia said in post#40. Plus this, which was already implicit in that answer:
All the auto companies know they will be going more electric. Hybribs as well as pure internal combustion will always be with us, but hybrids as the dominant form of electric propulsion is just a transition.
The time frames involved mean there is still plenty of requirement and incentive for improving conventional fuel economy. And FINALLY they are starting to lighten all categories of vehicles, when previously it was only the sub-compact and mini-car segment doing that. [Sick: as materials for engines and bodies got ever lighter, the vehicles got HEAVIER.]
For the forseeable term- investment in EV development for big auto is seperate and on top of that. Like I said, because of the amounts of money and time until payoff comes, most of the majors are playing some degree of follower when it comes to EV development. I have not heard it said, but I would bet that to some degree Renault/Nissan is the only one doing the opposite: doing a little bit of cannibalizing of development in the conventionals so they can concentrate on being the big dog in EVs. It's not hard to play follower in vehicle development. Renault and Nissan would just need to do a little more of the junior end of the joint venturing they all do. Not a viable long term strategy to depend on for any of them. But it works for a while, and the plan would be that it gets Renault/Nissan through until the EV age takes off.
You guys think too much in the ruts of where we are now. I'm not talking about 'think big' or 'think outside the box'. I mean literally, dont think SO much stuck in how things are.
You can already get EVs that are not expensive toys and are reliable. A Leaf doesnt cost that much more, and its operating costs are a LOT lower. It isnt convenient enough for most people. But since they lose money selling them, there are plenty of people for whom they are the right thing even now.
Yes, you cant throw a switch and EVs are suddenly the dominatant mass car.
Thats just looked at through the lens of consumerism and capitalism as it is. As noted above, big auto knows that pure EVs in huge numbers are coming. They are all moving that direction.
It has been noted above that transportation and energy usage is a huge issue- and method of propulsion is not even the primary issue. If nothing at all changes at the higher then more general levels, then electrification of transportation [people and goods] can't do much good. But thats not a problem of EVs per se, anf for all the dire talk about the state of the grids and burning coal, at the pace they are coming EVs are not likely to be a problem even with an energy production and transmission system that is changing too slowly.
Its the "big picture" that is the problem, not what EVs might do. Electrification of transportation is part of the overall solution; and to the degree we fall short on, EVs themselves are not very likely to exacerbate the problems we have. And they can only become part of the larger solution 20 years after we go ahead and get them into the existing as is system. If we dont do that now, we dont get the benefits later. And we have to 'fix' the overall electrical production and distribution system in that time frame anyway... or that will be another reason that we will not survive as a species not forced to live a miserable existence on a planet it has made hostile to it.
The only way to store it is some sort of battery system whether it's a overall power storage bank or some piece of equipment. The same is true with most large scale production as well.
So being completely off the grid mean no connections to the large grid whatsoever. It's just as if you were a self contained power unit, Any excess that doesn't make it into a battery is just that, excess and does nothing.
This is one of the reasons that in jurisdictions where the option is there people who are moving towards self sufficiency in individual power generation choose to maintain the connection and have a grid tied system where any excess is able to go into the larger grid. They could function "off the grid" if the connection was cut or the larger grid went down for some reason but they are running a 'grid tied system'.
@ Jingles:
Moving around less will be part of it.
But you put that out as the entire solution. And that is no more what it will be than the false deus ex machina of endless green energy.
The engineers and th capitalists and the promoters will always sell everything as silver bullets. That they do, doesnt mean there is no value in the 'box' they sell and promote from.
Clearly, as you promote EVs as a part of the solution without ever mentioning public transportation, they are a HUGE part of the problem.
They allow the self-involved to go on believing that there's a technical solution around the bend that will allow them to continue their current lifestyle without interruption or any more inconvenience than getting out of their Hummer and into their new EV.
I chuckled a bit when I saw LTJ mention "Hummer". I think they're out of production now, but old models are still on the road - it's amazing to me that folks still drive these mastodons. In my nearest city (Sept-Iles), the owner of a sporting goods store that specializes in selling bicycles for physical fitness and as a motor vehicle alternative - he himself drives a yellow Hummer SUV. I guess he claims it's necessary to get up the hills where he skiis in the winter. Sheesh - a sporting goods guy that drives a Hummer. Anyone see something wrong with this picture?