Ttxgp @ iomtt

[James Deuce]

Oh tosh. More petrochemicals/hydrocarbons are used in manufacturing "stuff" and generating electricity than used to power transport.

Out biggest problem in regard to dinosaur juice running out isn't vehicular modes of transport. All the basic building blocks of "western" life rely on hydrocarbons for manufacture.

Battery powered vehicles simply push the consumption of petrochemicals and hydrocarbons back to the generation point. They're still needed to make the vehicles as well. Everything from circuit boards and plastics, to tyres and bearings require the use of petrochemicals.

Battery powered EVs are for shallow conservationists who believe the crap clipboard carrying hippies spout in the street in an attempt to empty your wallet.

[GSVR]

Excellent post Jim. Nice to have someone balancing out the pros and cons.

Do you reacon the smog cloud over most large modern cities is caused by vehicles or something else!

Once you look into this EVs make sense for most motorists that sit in traffic jams to get less than 30km to work and back. Hybrids for people that aren't in a hurry and GSXRs for people that do trackdays or want to collect speeding tickets!

Yours sincerely,
Socialist Recluse

[wharfy]

Oh tosh. More petrochemicals/hydrocarbons are used in manufacturing "stuff" and generating electricity than used to power transport.

Out biggest problem in regard to dinosaur juice running out isn't vehicular modes of transport. All the basic building blocks of "western" life rely on hydrocarbons for manufacture.

Battery powered vehicles simply push the consumption of petrochemicals and hydrocarbons back to the generation point. They're still needed to make the vehicles as well. Everything from circuit boards and plastics, to tyres and bearings require the use of petrochemicals.

Battery powered EVs are for shallow conservationists who believe the crap clipboard carrying hippies spout in the street in an attempt to empty your wallet.

Yes more oil is used to manufacture a modern car or motorcycle than it will ever burn in its life.

Excellent post Jim. Nice to have someone balancing out the pros and cons.

Do you reacon the smog cloud over most large modern cities is caused by vehicles or something else!

Once you look into this EVs make sense for most motorists that sit in traffic jams to get less than 30km to work and back. Hybrids for people that aren't in a hurry and GSXRs for people that do trackdays or want to collect speeding tickets!

Yours sincerely,
Socialist Recluse

Yes vehicles do cause pollution. Wellington is a great place to see this. Normally it is pollution free as the wind blows it all away. On the odd still day you can see a brown haze form along the motorway from the Hutt that coincides nicely with rush hour traffic.

NZ is in the enviable position of having the opportunity to use renewable electricity generation for the majority of it's requirements and cleaning up the coal fired station at Huntly even more (as it is it is pretty hard to tell just from looking whether it is operating or not).

Electric vehicles make a lot of sense - they are clean and quiet and cheap to run (a guy at work here has and electric scooter - looks just like a vespa and is VERY cheap to run)

The big push in trying to solve the waste disposal problems that vehicle manufacture creates is in recycling CRADLE to CRADLE. That is instead of trying to re-cycle manufacturing waste back into the biosphere it is recycled in the technosphere - last years TV becomes next years washing machine. The cost will be in the purchase price - the manufacturer has to take back the product when it's life is over and recycle the materials. A bit like the deposit on glass bottles (I remember when you could get $0.02 from the dairy for an empty drink bottle) I does mean we will pay more as the cost of a fridge will include shipping it back to Germany as well as shipping it here. (Fisher and Pykle might be able to keep manufacture here for the local market).
The other part is to make technology do more than one thing. I. E. a vehicle should not only not cause any pollution while it is running but should actively be cleaning the air. This may sound far fetched but already airline seats are being developed from materials that act as air purifiers so that aircraft don't need to use power to "condition" the air.

I for one am looking forward to the day I can cruise over to Martinborugh for a latte and know that I have scrubbed the carbon from a 1000 cubic meters of air on the way

Oh... and the battery powered EV user I know is not shallow about his conservation (or anything actually) and is has a BSc (Hon) in Physics.

Personally I do try to do my bit in re-cycling/conservation but am a naturally lazy bastard so I don't always do as much as I could/should/would.
Like the old hippes say - "If your not part of the solution, your part of the problem"

ps. almost half of this post is re-cycled "quoted"

[bogan]

Oh tosh. More petrochemicals/hydrocarbons are used in manufacturing "stuff" and generating electricity than used to power transport.

Out biggest problem in regard to dinosaur juice running out isn't vehicular modes of transport. All the basic building blocks of "western" life rely on hydrocarbons for manufacture.

Battery powered vehicles simply push the consumption of petrochemicals and hydrocarbons back to the generation point. They're still needed to make the vehicles as well. Everything from circuit boards and plastics, to tyres and bearings require the use of petrochemicals.

Battery powered EVs are for shallow conservationists who believe the crap clipboard carrying hippies spout in the street in an attempt to empty your wallet.

I disagree, electricity generation does not rely on hydrocarbons, hydro, geothermal and wind are big contributors to the nz supply. And as the dinosaur juice runs out itll be more and more profitable to generate power this way as well. This is for both manufacturing, and power required to run the electric vehicles. Also worth noting is that even at the current state, generating power from hydrocarbons is far more effecient than using it in cars.

And those clipboard carrying hippies have a point you know, beijing banned 1.15m cars before the olympics to reduce smog http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...ympicgames2008 would this have happend with evs? i think not. aaannnd the money side of things is attractive as well, evs are far cheaper to run than gas guzzlers, so those hippies may indeed be filling your wallet.

[James Deuce]

I disagree, electricity generation does not rely on hydrocarbons, hydro, geothermal and wind are big contributors to the nz supply. And as the dinosaur juice runs out itll be more and more profitable to generate power this way as well. This is for both manufacturing, and power required to run the electric vehicles. Also worth noting is that even at the current state, generating power from hydrocarbons is far more effecient than using it in cars.

And those clipboard carrying hippies have a point you know, beijing banned 1.15m cars before the olympics to reduce smog http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...ympicgames2008 would this have happend with evs? i think not. aaannnd the money side of things is attractive as well, evs are far cheaper to run than gas guzzlers, so those hippies may indeed be filling your wallet.

You've side stepped the biggest issue and focused entirely on transport again. Transport is the smallest problem we face post peak oil, but in the case of EVs the demand for extra electricity will result in more coal burned in the short term, especially in the US, China, and Russia. Assuming China and Russia actually give a crap.

The only reason China reduced Beijing smog was political and perceptual. I guarantee that Beijing's pollution issue will be worse now than it was before the Olympics. China's pollution issues are horrendous. We seldom see the effect that their huge coal fired power plants have on local eco-systems in China, because we're not allowed to see it.

The biggest issue that we face with peak oil is not what sort of energy will power our vehicles, it will be how we even manufacture those vehicles. And clothes, and packaging, and computers, and door handles, dvds, and paper, and so on and so on.

NZ's Electricity generation is not the issue. Our generation and usage capacity is outstripped by any of the Southern counties in the UK.

Battery powered EVs are not the future. It simply shifts the problem of energy generation elsewhere. Anyone who thinks the power companyis will let us get away with recharging our cars overnight (A vehicle that can travel 60 kms and needs 14 hours recharging is not a viable mode of personal transport) for "a few cents" as the men in homespun jerseys keep telling us will be the reality is smoking something. The recharge point will probably require 3 phase power, meaning a new power output installed in the garage on its own meter that spins visibly many times faster than one on the wall outside.

If a vehicle can't transport the energy it uses to generate propulsion then it's a waste of time. The average bicycle is more capable than any pure EV at present.

[oldguy]

Zero emission when they are running but what about the emissions required to generate the power required to charge the batteries, make the batteries etc if everyone wants electric everything. Hmmm nuclear power required

Nuclear power stations, are just oversize battery's, they only have a certain life span, what do they do with the old fuel rods, encase them in concrete and dump them in the deepest part of the ocean, or bury them under ground. how long can they keep doing that.
I got a better idea, sell the fuel rods to North Korea, that will recycle them into nuclear missiles and send them back.

I Watch the hightlights of that TTXGP, about as exciting as watching paint dry, and if you closed your eyes, sounded like you were in a large warehouse where they were racing electric forklifts

[James Deuce]

Nuclear power stations, are just oversize battery's, they only have a certain life span, what do they do with the old fuel rods, encase them in concrete and dump them in the deepest part of the ocean, or bury them under ground. how long can they keep doing that.

Can't use them in NZ yet. They don't make them small enough for our minimum usage.

[bogan]

You've side stepped the biggest issue and focused entirely on transport again. Transport is the smallest problem we face post peak oil, but in the case of EVs the demand for extra electricity will result in more coal burned in the short term, especially in the US, China, and Russia. Assuming China and Russia actually give a crap.

The only reason China reduced Beijing smog was political and perceptual. I guarantee that Beijing's pollution issue will be worse now than it was before the Olympics. China's pollution issues are horrendous. We seldom see the effect that their huge coal fired power plants have on local eco-systems in China, because we're not allowed to see it.

The biggest issue that we face with peak oil is not what sort of energy will power our vehicles, it will be how we even manufacture those vehicles. And clothes, and packaging, and computers, and door handles, dvds, and paper, and so on and so on.

NZ's Electricity generation is not the issue. Our generation and usage capacity is outstripped by any of the Southern counties in the UK.

Battery powered EVs are not the future. It simply shifts the problem of energy generation elsewhere. Anyone who thinks the power companyis will let us get away with recharging our cars overnight (A vehicle that can travel 60 kms and needs 14 hours recharging is not a viable mode of personal transport) for "a few cents" as the men in homespun jerseys keep telling us will be the reality is smoking something. The recharge point will probably require 3 phase power, meaning a new power output installed in the garage on its own meter that spins visibly many times faster than one on the wall outside.

If a vehicle can't transport the energy it uses to generate propulsion then it's a waste of time. The average bicycle is more capable than any pure EV at present.

you have some good points, the ev solution is not going to solve the pollution problem in itself, i still think itll make a large difference though. And changing the transport infrastructure to run on the most commonly available sort of energy (electricity) is a fantastic idea, as it allows generation sites to get more effeciency out of the fossil fuels that would have been burnt inefficiently in cars. As well as passing on the benifits of cleaner power. Power generation is the main source of pollution, but its a lot easier to change a few power plants (when some engineers design newer awesome power) than convert millions of cars to alternate fuel, so we can get started on the cars while we wait for the engineers!

I agree the power companies are gonna want to charge more for electricity used in evs, im not sure how they will be able to do this, most evs can be charged from a single phase power point (well mine will be able to anyway and so do other bikes) so itll probly end up with higher registration tax or summat, but not till evs become the majority so we still got quite a few years of cheap motoring yet.

Im not quite sure what you means by manufacturing the vehicle, you mean the raw materials going into them (most now are recyclable) or the power needed to produce them (again, power can be from clean sources as well).

and if battery powered vehichles arent the future what is? cos we are gonna need an alternative fairly soon

[cheesemethod]

I'm dredging up an old thread here, but I just found this article at work today, was an interesting read:

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23172/page1/

[tee]

Bill the inventor showboats to the media, gets some great hookup, and then slightly misjudges his braking marker..........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9o15E...eature=related

Bill then decided he should stick to R&D and got someone else to ride it.......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVv0N...eature=related