Toyota Mirai Fuel Cell

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
The fact that you recognize the current mindset as being a "conditioned" expectation and yet expect it to continue is astounding!
No, it's realistic. Yes, it's conditioned behavior, but it's far easier to get people to change their conditioning if you aren't asking them to accept less than what they're used to, but instead giving them everything they're used to, and more.

Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
Conditioned behavior just makes it easier to continue the status quo, but does not preclude the adoption of new behavior. Your reply to downeykp points to a logical inconsistency that you're not recognizing. 95% of driving public aren't refusing to drive an EV due to a lack of charging when 67% of americans have a dedicated garage or car port: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-958-january-2-2017-sixty-three-percent-all-housing-units-have-garage-or-carport.
Which is great, but unless that garage/carport also has convenient electricity of the necessary voltage, its doesn't pass the hassle-free test. Here's some more stats from memory, but I've posted them elsewhere on this forum: 56% of American households can charge at home, i.e. 44% can't. And how much of that charging is limited to 120V, which is the norm? Of the 3 LEAFs in my neighborhood, two of them have to charge the same way I would, by running an (120V) extension cord out of a window, and these are all for people with parking pads or drivewaysliving in detched single-family homes (or in-law units, in my case). In San Francisco, 67% of households are in MUDs, and even in Los Angeles the % is over 50% (forget the exact figure). As the incomes that allow people to afford more expensive cars like BEVs are concentrated in urban areas, and that's where the need for reducing air pollution is greatest and the suitability highest, we've got a major mismatch. And that's in the U.S., where the housing mix is hardly representative of the rest of the world.

Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
No, the lack of acceptance is due to either the higher purchase price, or the "perceived" shortcomings of EV's. Once people try it, they get it. I have 2 recent converts who are helping to spread the word after they spent almost a year worrying that there weren't enough chargers along their driving route, or that they'd forget to charge their car and would be stuck, or that 30 minutes for a fast charge was too long a wait. Perception and money are the only things holding people back, and the price of EV's are dropping and making the money issue moot.
Yes, higher purchase costs are a major factor, and perceptions are also crucial. But many of the those perceptions are based on fact, which is why we've had more than a few MNL members revert back from short-range BEVs to PHEVs, HEVs or even ICEs.

Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
The rest of your argument about how often one is forced to stop to recharge is pure sophistry. My point was about what's available now and whether it's acceptable (even accounting for self-selection), not about equipment design.
How is reality sophistry? Customer acceptance is the determining factor, and equipment capability (and costs, infrastructure etc.) are the critical factors in achieving that.
 
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
GRA said:
RegGuheert said:
No, they cannot. While you find it convenient for your argument to ignore the horrendously-low efficiency of H2 FCVs, physics does not care about your belief system. Simply put, in a world that has managed to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels from 83% of its needs to only 81% of its needs in 50 years, the idea that we can GROW the amount of electricity produced in the US by over 50% just so that most of that electricity can be wasted by H2 FCVs is ludicrous.

It will be enough of a challenge to grow it by 25% to enable BEV-based transportation. Simply put, the renewable resources that we currently can access are extremely limited in much of the populated world. Destroying our landscapes with wind generators is NOT the answer.
As opposed to destroying our landscapes with say lithium or cobalt mines? All tech solutions have environmental costs, and Nimbyism will always be with us.

This argument is so wrong and flawed that I can't leave it be.

Most of the cobalt is produced as a by-product of nickel and copper mining. There aren't any dedicated cobalt mines. Go ahead and research this. As for the lithium, most of that come from the brine pools in Chile (look up the top 10 producers: https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/energy-investing/lithium-investing/top-lithium-producers/ and research how they produce lithium: https://www.thebalance.com/lithium-production-2340123). It's significantly cheaper to extract lithium from the brine pools (and even seawater) than to extract it out of minerals.

You should drop that fossil-fuel FUD so that you don't look like a fool.
Yes, most of the cobalt is a by-product of other mines, like the ones in the DRC that employ child labor. And since we can't see them, that's so much better. Of course, the mine tailings still exist and cause their own environmental issues.

As for brine, the majority of lithium in ther past has come from such sites, in Chile and Argentina ( Bolivia actually has the largest reserves), but that is apparently changing. Via GCC:
Roskill: predominance of lithium production shifting to mineral vs brine, driven by volume requirements of EVs
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2018/07/20180709-roskill.html

Global lithium resources have increased significantly over recent years, driven by a marked pickup in exploration activity since 2015. The collective lithium resource (including reserves) of assets tracked within Roskill’s Lithium Cost Model Service has risen by some 75% since end-2014. In large part, this has been driven by investment in exploration within the mineral sector, and the hunt for lithium-bearing pegmatites in Australia, Canada and Europe, and lithium-bearing clay deposits in the US and Mexico.

Brine resources have also grown, the result of significant investment in Argentina, the nation that has seen the greatest exploration activity of the three countries covering the lithium triangle in South America.

As a result, global resources currently exceed 200 Mt of contained lithium carbonate equivalent (LCE); to put this scale into perspective, Roskill forecasts that lithium demand in 2027 will fall just short of 1.0 Mt LCE. However, given the general low grade of these lithium deposits, the greater challenge lies in the economic extraction of these resources.

Over the past two decades, brine deposits (as opposed to mineral ones) have been the predominant source of lithium supply globally. However, this dynamic has shifted significantly in recent years as a new wave of Australian mineral projects has come online. As a result, in 2018 some two-thirds of lithium mine supply is expected to come from the mineral sector.

Going forward this predominance of mineral production is expected to continue, with potential new mineral production capacity within the project pipeline currently notably greater that of brine
. Although, given the nature of the mining sector, the cost structure of the industry, and the significant volume of capacity currently being commissioned and ramped-up, it is very unlikely that all this potential greenfield mineral production capacity will be realized, Roskill cautions.

The shift to greater mineral production has been driven by several factors. Most significantly, higher lithium prices have made a wider population of mineral projects economically viable. As highlighted by the historic cost curves, prior to 2015 (the point at which lithium carbonate prices rallied above $5,000/t) Talison Lithium’s Greenbushes mine, with its favorable grade and strip ratio, was the only major hard-rock operation able to compete with the lower-cost brine operations in the production of refined lithium product.

Secondly, given their relatively simpler (more conventional) development pathway, lower capital cost and concentration in mining-friendly Western Australia, companies have been able to bring this new mineral capacity online quicker than their peers with brine projects.

When analysing of the cost structure of the lithium industry, with brine producers dominating the lower quartiles of the cost curve, it would seem a no-brainer that brine projects would be developed preferentially over mineral ones. However, operating costs are only part of the story.

The significant upfront capital costs associated with many brine projects, along with the technical challenges of processing brine into battery-grade chemicals means that investment in the sector has to-date lagged that of spodumene projects and their associated downstream mineral conversion facilities, Roskill notes. . . .
 
mux said:
GRA said:
I think the major cost issues of high-speed QCs will be due to demand charges, as well as having the necessary service capacity in remote areas. The former and to some extent the latter can be reduced through storage, but that requires cheap batteries or some other type of inexpensive storage; either way, capital costs go up.
I hate these kinds of comments, because you shift the burden of proof here. Quantify these things! Because that's the whole point, we're not talking about feasibility in the 'can we ever do it' sense, we're talking about feasibility in the 'is it cheap enough' sense. So if you want to argue a point, argue quantities!

Batteries are *really* fucking cheap. Capital costs are basically a non-concern here. Installing 200kWh of brand spanking new batteries underground, including a liquid cooling system, is maybe $50k at the most. Compared to, for instance, a gasoline/CNG/diesel/hydrogen tank, that's basically nothing. Even with battery buffers, a DCQC station will be significantly cheaper than any alternative fueling station and will be able to provide similar charging speeds. And regardless; most likely DCQC stations will use decommissioned batteries for buffering.

Even if you go and factor in running a brand new overhead line to the station to allow for more cars to quick charge on a day (without needing the time for the batteries to recharge in between), you're looking at maybe $100k/mi. You can run these lines for 30 miles before you even start to approach the capital cost of putting down a different kind of fueling station. If you include the cost savings on continued distribution, it's even better. There are very, very few places even in the most rural places in the US where you're more than 15mi away from a 72 or 145kV line (and there is a road that needs a fueling station).

And the same goes for your demand charge argument at face value; even the highest demand charges don't exceed 100%. This is simply not an issue, the customer can just pay more? If they need to fill up NOW, you just charge the extra cost of the convenience. Gas stations along interstates already do this.
I'd love to provide detailed cost breakdowns, but since few companies are willing to provide them and most of the info we do have is generic, it's more or less impossible to do. But you say, "people can just pay more" for faster charging, but the higher the cost, the fewer people who can pay, and so on. We've had members here who've been involved with setting up charging stations, and who have all cited demand charges as being deal breakers, I've also cited studies that say the same. And so far, AFAIA no one in the U.S. has been able to make QC'ing profitable (most companies trying it haven't made L2 charging such) unless they charge higher prices (on a per-mile basis) than gasoline.

As to the cost of running lines, depends on whether or not there will be enough demand to make it profitable, don't you think? I know Tesla decided not to put an SC in St. Regis, Montana at the turn off to Glacier National Park from I-90 because they didn't have the electrical capacity for it, and instead put it 14 miles east in Superior, which is nuts.
 
GRA said:
but it's far easier to get people to change their conditioning if you aren't asking them to accept less than what they're used to, but instead giving them everything they're used to, and more.

Perhaps.

But it didn't happen that way with horses to cars. Horses had things that cars didn't, like autopilot.
 
GRA said:
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
The fact that you recognize the current mindset as being a "conditioned" expectation and yet expect it to continue is astounding!
No, it's realistic. Yes, it's conditioned behavior, but it's far easier to get people to change their conditioning if you aren't asking them to accept less than what they're used to, but instead giving them everything they're used to, and more.

This is the perfect example of sophistry. Giving them exactly what they're used to isn't changing their expectations.

GRA said:
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
Conditioned behavior just makes it easier to continue the status quo, but does not preclude the adoption of new behavior. Your reply to downeykp points to a logical inconsistency that you're not recognizing. 95% of driving public aren't refusing to drive an EV due to a lack of charging when 67% of americans have a dedicated garage or car port: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-958-january-2-2017-sixty-three-percent-all-housing-units-have-garage-or-carport.
Which is great, but unless that garage/carport also has convenient electricity of the necessary voltage, its doesn't pass the hassle-free test. Here's some more stats from memory, but I've posted them elsewhere on this forum: 56% of American households can charge at home, i.e. 44% can't. And how much of that charging is limited to 120V, which is the norm? Of the 3 LEAFs in my neighborhood, two of them have to charge the same way I would, by running an (120V) extension cord out of a window, and these are all for people with parking pads or drivewaysliving in detched single-family homes (or in-law units, in my case). In San Francisco, 67% of households are in MUDs, and even in Los Angeles the % is over 50% (forget the exact figure). As the incomes that allow people to afford more expensive cars like BEVs are concentrated in urban areas, and that's where the need for reducing air pollution is greatest and the suitability highest, we've got a major mismatch. And that's in the U.S., where the housing mix is hardly representative of the rest of the world.

Not going to bother addressing this non-sequiter. Not my point, so I refuse to take the bait.

GRA said:
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
No, the lack of acceptance is due to either the higher purchase price, or the "perceived" shortcomings of EV's. Once people try it, they get it. I have 2 recent converts who are helping to spread the word after they spent almost a year worrying that there weren't enough chargers along their driving route, or that they'd forget to charge their car and would be stuck, or that 30 minutes for a fast charge was too long a wait. Perception and money are the only things holding people back, and the price of EV's are dropping and making the money issue moot.
Yes, higher purchase costs are a major factor, and perceptions are also crucial. But many of the those perceptions are based on fact, which is why we've had more than a few MNL members revert back from short-range BEVs to PHEVs, HEVs or even ICEs.

I never claimed that short-range EV's work for everyone, only that it CAN work for most. Your citing of MNL members reverting is countered by the many who stay and the new members who joined.

And again, you've diverted the focus on the point that BEV's, especially the model 3 are at the point of being able to replace ICE's with their 130kw superchargers.

GRA said:
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
The rest of your argument about how often one is forced to stop to recharge is pure sophistry. My point was about what's available now and whether it's acceptable (even accounting for self-selection), not about equipment design.
How is reality sophistry? Customer acceptance is the determining factor, and equipment capability (and costs, infrastructure etc.) are the critical factors in achieving that.

See above, in aggregate, not out of context. That's reality. It might not be right for everyone, but it is real for most.
 
The biggest problem here is that the corollary isn't true either; fuel cell cars won't be able to replace the gas car experience very well either.

There is a lot of focus in the BEV vs FCEV debate on just refueling speed, but that is not what people understand by the refueling experience. In a large part, people assume that you can pretty much fuel up at a hydrogen station much like you do at a gas pump. Pick up the fuel nozzle, put it inside a hole, depress the lever and fuel away. This is a fantasy. Right now, it's already a pretty confusing and cumbersome process with the 3rd gen nozzles, which still often suffer from immobilization through frost build-up and generally require the same kind of proprietary card systems that DC quick chargers require. They also mostly don't allow for arbitrary fuel amounts. If they work correctly, you can't just stop it immediately, there's a procedure to it. This is not a real problem, it's just an experience that much more closely resembles a DC quick charge than a gas pump.

Because like at a DC quick charger, you open your filler flap, plug in a big scary connector, it locks in place and you start filling up. Then you sit in your car for a few minutes until either it signals it's ready or you've had enough, you go to a big touch screen and do some stuff, possibly pay or use a proprietary contactless card, wait a bit, unlatch the connector and go away.

So where's this parity of experience? If people are willing to use hydrogen fueling stations, they're going to accept DC quick charging just as easily. The hurdle has already been taken at that point.
 
RegGuheert said:
GRA said:
I don't ignore the inefficiency; I just don't think the 60% efficiency of current PEM fuel cells (plus all the additional inefficiency of the conversion) is the most important issue or critical issue, any more than I think the 20% efficiency (40% best state of the art) of the typical fossil-fueled ICE has been critical.
You just have absolutely no idea where all that electricity might possibly come from. I promise you it will not come from the electricity fairy. You seem to be confused because of the fact that oil is inefficient and we adopted that fuel source. What you have chosen to ignore, though it has been repeatedly pointed out to you, is that oil was plentiful, cheap, AND more efficient than coal or wood for transportation. Yes, batteries were more efficient at the time, but they were not suitable for the task. That has all changed now.
I'm well aware of the reasons we chose oil, and you've just confirmed that its inefficiency wasn't an issue as long as it was cheap and plentiful (and better than coal/wood, albeit less so than batteries). It's only when we began to be concerned with its environmental and political effects as well as its possible depletion (the imminent end of cheap oil is something that's been predicted regularly since the first gushers in Pennsylvania back in the 1860s, BTW) that we seriously started to look for a better alternative.

RegGuheert said:
Texas has a chance of making all of their *current* electricity from wind and sun in the fairly near future. But Texas is, by far, the exception in this regard. Places like Portugal which have immense hydroelectric resources are even more rare.

So, be my guest: Show us how you can produce enough hydrogen to power New England! No more hand waving about how you "don't think" this is the most important issue. The fact is that it's not even CLOSE to being possible.

And, BTW, the round-trip efficiency for storing energy in hydrogen is on the order of 35-40% compared with the round-trip efficiency of a Li-ion battery which is over 97%.
I have no intention of powering all New England (or anywhere else) solely with H2, it's one of many approaches, and as we both agree its efficiency is lower (although with CHP its efficiency goes up). Energy, especially alternative energy, is most robust and resilient when it doesn't rely on any single source or tech but a mix of them, which is why my sig says "Copper shot, not Silver bullets." I don't believe in the latter. When and if batteries can fully do the job, and whatever unknown environmental problems due to their large-scale use we don't yet know about have appeared and are manageable, I'll be happy to go with the most energy-efficient approach, and that's always to be preferred. But until they show they can do all the ICE jobs, I believe that a number of different approaches which may prove acceptable to the public need to be followed. Which includes nukes, BTW, given the huge increases we can expect in total world energy usage over the next few decades, and nukes having the lowest footprint and the highest capacity factor of any power source. They're god-awful expensive in capital costs, but running costs are low. Not that I like nukes, but I prefer them to coal, and that's where much of the developing world is going to get their high capacity factor electricity from for the next few decades otherwise.
 
RegGuheert said:
GRA said:
A large majority of the remaining ~99% of the world's car owners who haven't bought a PEV and who might consider one, don't have that option currently, so a PEV is a poor fit for them (barring convenient workplace or other charging).
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
95% of driving public aren't refusing to drive an EV due to a lack of charging when 67% of americans have a dedicated garage or car port: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-958-january-2-2017-sixty-three-percent-all-housing-units-have-garage-or-carport.
Simply put, nearly 2/3 of those in the U.S. who haven't yet purchased a BEV have the ability to charge a BEV. And, guess what? You don't have to have a garage OR a carport to charge a BEV, so there are actually more than that 2/3 who could charge a BEV.

Since the US is 21% of the world's automobile market, even if we ignore ALL the other people in the world who could purchase a BEV and charge it at home, then GRA's estimate that only ~1% of the world's non-BEV car owners could purchase one and charge at home is off by a factor of at least 12X. In reality, it appears that he is off by a factor of about 50X, if not more. In other words, he is living in another world than the rest of us.

So, please, GRA, stop making up nonsense to try to support the most polluting automotive technology the world has ever seen.
GRA said:
Isn't education fun? :D
It appears that must be an honest question, so I'll answer it: Yes, those of us who have educated ourselves on this topic found it very beneficial. Give it a try sometime.
As noted in another reply, the total in the U.S. was 56% of U.S. households who can charge at home, not 2/3rds. IIRR the source was a survey down for Plug-in America. As for your absurd claim that I was saying that only 1% of the world's drivers can charge at home, you need to re-read what I wrote. I said that 99% of the world's car-owning population have not yet chosen to buy a PEV, and that a large percentage can't charge at home. That percentage varies by country, region etc. depending on housing mix, income and lifestyle. To take one example of such a mix, 70% of Manhattan households are car-less, and it's not as if most of those people can't afford one. Manhattan has the highest rate of car-free households in the five boroughs, with Staten Island being the lowest, and the average for NYC as a whole is about 50% car-free. Now, is Manhattan's high-density, mixed-use development more representative of most of the rest of the world's cities, especially those in the developing world where most of the growth in the world's car fleets will occur in the next several decades, or do those cities more resemble the low density car-dependent suburbs of say L.A. It was to my great surprise that in L.A. itself, over 50% of households lived in MUDs.
 
WetEV said:
GRA said:
but it's far easier to get people to change their conditioning if you aren't asking them to accept less than what they're used to, but instead giving them everything they're used to, and more.

Perhaps.

But it didn't happen that way with horses to cars. Horses had things that cars didn't, like autopilot.
Okay, let's try another example. Which group will be more willing to change: omnivores who've previously been able to have meat to change to being vegetarians because it's good for the environment; or vegetarians by circumstance (i.e. they couldn't afford meat before) to become omnivores when they can? In the former case, you're taking away something that people want, for the greater good. In the latter case, they give up nothing, and gain more choice and more options. If they don't want to eat meat, they don't have to and can continue as before. They have everything they already had, and have added something extra which they may or may not value, rather than taking something away which they did value.

This is not an academic discussion, because throughout human history, as people move up out of poverty and gain affluence they eat more meat (until recently at very high levels of affluence, when they start to cut back over health/lifestyle concerns). Do you think the world's middle classes would voluntarily go vegetarian en masse, if by doing so we would provide adequate nutrition to everyone, not to mention reducing the environmental effects of livestock? I mean, livestock requires huge amounts of grain for feed; land and energy requirements are similarly greater, then there's the pollution. I'm not holding my breath expecting the world's haves to make that choice for the benefit of the have nots. If enough meat can be produced to feed everyone then fine, but accept less so someone else they've never met can benefit? Not likely.
 
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
GRA said:
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
The fact that you recognize the current mindset as being a "conditioned" expectation and yet expect it to continue is astounding!
No, it's realistic. Yes, it's conditioned behavior, but it's far easier to get people to change their conditioning if you aren't asking them to accept less than what they're used to, but instead giving them everything they're used to, and more.
This is the perfect example of sophistry. Giving them exactly what they're used to isn't changing their expectations.
Of course it's not changing their expectations. They want what they have, and something extra. See my immediately preceding reply to WetEV. That's how people really behave. Expecting mass altruism is unrealistic.

Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
GRA said:
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
Conditioned behavior just makes it easier to continue the status quo, but does not preclude the adoption of new behavior. Your reply to downeykp points to a logical inconsistency that you're not recognizing. 95% of driving public aren't refusing to drive an EV due to a lack of charging when 67% of americans have a dedicated garage or car port: https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/fact-958-january-2-2017-sixty-three-percent-all-housing-units-have-garage-or-carport.
Which is great, but unless that garage/carport also has convenient electricity of the necessary voltage, its doesn't pass the hassle-free test. Here's some more stats from memory, but I've posted them elsewhere on this forum: 56% of American households can charge at home, i.e. 44% can't. And how much of that charging is limited to 120V, which is the norm? Of the 3 LEAFs in my neighborhood, two of them have to charge the same way I would, by running an (120V) extension cord out of a window, and these are all for people with parking pads or driveways living in detached single-family homes (or in-law units, in my case). In San Francisco, 67% of households are in MUDs, and even in Los Angeles the % is over 50% (forget the exact figure). As the incomes that allow people to afford more expensive cars like BEVs are concentrated in urban areas, and that's where the need for reducing air pollution is greatest and the suitability highest, we've got a major mismatch. And that's in the U.S., where the housing mix is hardly representative of the rest of the world.
Not going to bother addressing this non-sequiter. Not my point, so I refuse to take the bait.
How is discussing actual facts directly related to the subject a non-sequitur? Here's some more. My block in a bedroom suburb of the Bay Area is made up almost entirely of detached single-family homes with garages, with one small apartment building with its own off-street lot. In other words, it's exactly the sort of household demographic that is theoretically the best fit for PEVs. Yet, every night, both sides of the block are lined with the parked cars of residents, in addition to those parked on their driveways and/or in their garages. I have no doubt that the majority of garages are filled with people's stuff instead of being used for their cars, but the fact remains that's what people use their garages for. Now, how are all these cars to be charged? At least the people who can park a car on their driveway have a possibility of charging, if they're willing to run an extension cord and risk the theft of their portable EVSE, but on-street parking requires running a cord across the sidewalk, and that's not safe even if you have an outlet reasonably close by.

As for the apartment building, it has three or four garages plus parking spots with carports (and some residents undoubtedly park on the street). There's not a single receptacle serving any of the open spaces in the lot or in any of the carports, and I can't say whether the garages have them, but if they do they're undoubtedly L1.

I'll note that there isn't a single PEV owned by anyone in this block, despite what should be the ideal situation. Walking around the wider neighborhood (say eight to ten blocks), which has a similar single-use zoning limited mix of housing, I know of three LEAFs (one of which, charged through the house window by L1, was just replaced with a 2018), two Volt 1s, a Model S, and an A3 e-Tron; all are at single-family homes, all but one with garages (but all but two charged outside), and four of them are charged via extension cord/L1, usually having to be run out a window or door in the house. One of the Volts and the Model S are owned by the same family, and are the only ones that have an EVSE inside the garage; one of the LEAFs has than L2 EVSE mounted outside the garage and charges there. And this is in a wealthy major urban area with a strong environmental ethos, in the most car-saturated country with probably the highest rate of people living in detached single family homes in the world. These real world charging limitations are why I favor PHEVs with limited size packs that can be fully recharged via L1 within the off-cap window as the only realistic choice for most people for now, until the charging infrastructure is far more extensive. That will take decades, so what do we do in the meantime? We already have real estate dedicated to gas stations, so putting H2 in at those locations is easier than other places, but any widespread deployment of that requires even greater cost reductions than BEVs do.

Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
GRA said:
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
No, the lack of acceptance is due to either the higher purchase price, or the "perceived" shortcomings of EV's. Once people try it, they get it. I have 2 recent converts who are helping to spread the word after they spent almost a year worrying that there weren't enough chargers along their driving route, or that they'd forget to charge their car and would be stuck, or that 30 minutes for a fast charge was too long a wait. Perception and money are the only things holding people back, and the price of EV's are dropping and making the money issue moot.
Yes, higher purchase costs are a major factor, and perceptions are also crucial. But many of the those perceptions are based on fact, which is why we've had more than a few MNL members revert back from short-range BEVs to PHEVs, HEVs or even ICEs.
I never claimed that short-range EV's work for everyone, only that it CAN work for most. Your citing of MNL members reverting is countered by the many who stay and the new members who joined.
There's a huge difference between can and will. We all know that they CAN work for many in the U.S. and some other affluent countries (assuming they're rich enough to afford another car for the rest of their needs), but we also know that most people aren't willing under current circumstances to accept the limitations. But the fact that we've had numerous early adopters, most of whom had far more knowledge and were more willing to put up with compromises than the general public, decide to go back to non-BEVs (and many of those who've stuck with BEVs have opted to upgrade to longer-ranged ones with the fastest possible charging) is indicative of the need to come much closer to matching ICE capability for BEVs to be generally acceptable.

Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
And again, you've diverted the focus on the point that BEV's, especially the model 3 are at the point of being able to replace ICE's with their 130kw superchargers.
No diversion intended. I contend that they aren't yet there. Certainly a car that doesn't even reach the low end of an ICE's range, which still has limited charging opportunities and constrains the type of housing you can live in, and which starts at $45k doesn't replace a much less expensive ICE which can be refueled anywhere. Get that down to $30k at 350kW and add another 50-100 miles of range (real world), and we'll be pretty close. But that doesn't help the people who can't afford more than $10k for a new car, which is a fairly common price in places like India or China.

Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
GRA said:
Oils4AsphaultOnly said:
The rest of your argument about how often one is forced to stop to recharge is pure sophistry. My point was about what's available now and whether it's acceptable (even accounting for self-selection), not about equipment design.
How is reality sophistry? Customer acceptance is the determining factor, and equipment capability (and costs, infrastructure etc.) are the critical factors in achieving that.
See above, in aggregate, not out of context. That's reality. It might not be right for everyone, but it is real for most.
What's real for most is that the general public isn't willing to accept current BEVs without bribes and mandates. Until the prices, capabilities and infrastructure all reach the point at which they make sense to the mass market without all the crutches, BEVs will remain a niche. A growing niche, but still a niche. And I don't think a $35k base Model 3 SR that takes 30 minutes to replace 130 miles of range (ideal) and which still can't even do that on every freeway (never mind the more rural routes) in the U.S. yet, is enough to get BEVs beyond a niche.
 
So if BEVs are a niche, what would we call the very limited number of hydrogen vehicles? Hardly worth the money being invested.
 
At this point, GRA, you' re just arguing in bad faith. You can't expect us to take your points seriously if you don't engage meaningfully with our critique of them. Every point you make against BEVs is so much worse with FCEVs. People don't accept BEVs without incentives? What about the more than $100k worth of incentives given on each single Mirai? Like, these kinds of arguments are idiotic.
 
downeykp said:
So if BEVs are a niche, what would we call the very limited number of hydrogen vehicles? Hardly worth the money being invested.
I'd call them a developmental tech with a highly uncertain future and several competitors. We differ as to whether they are worth the money being invested. The risks against any new tech succeeding against the prevailing one(s) are enormous, and there is always lots of money wasted along the way until we know which one(s) will win. See my next post.
 
mux said:
At this point, GRA, you' re just arguing in bad faith. You can't expect us to take your points seriously if you don't engage meaningfully with our critique of them. Every point you make against BEVs is so much worse with FCEVs. People don't accept BEVs without incentives? What about the more than $100k worth of incentives given on each single Mirai? Like, these kinds of arguments are idiotic.
No, I'm not arguing in bad faith. This is an argument that has been going on for years here, and you're coming in to it late. At no time have I said that FCEVs are commercially viable now, in fact I've said repeatedly that they have farther to go than BEVs (FCEV and H2 price and infrastructure-wise) to get there. What I have said is that their main advantage compared to BEVs is that they already provide essentially the same capabilities and have the same requirements as people are used to now with ICEs, thus a transition to them will be easy for the customer, the dealer and the fueling infrastructure, as the business models are all familiar. It's for that reason that I believe it's essential to continue with their development and limited deployment until such time as they, BEVs and/or biofuels solve their issues and become commercially attractive without direct customer subsidies or mandates and we can kiss fossil-fueled ICEs goodbye, not because I think FCEVs and H2 are viable now and everyone should get one.

As far as ease of transition goes, if we could produce drop-in zero or negative-carbon biofuels for use in existing ICEs in the required amounts without affecting food production or causing other serious environmental problems, that would be the easiest transition of all albeit the least energy-efficient, and I'd opt for that as the best solution, at least in the short term.

Maintaining multiple separate development pathways is expensive and wasteful and will result in less optimum results over the short-term, but IMO is absolutely necessary given the time constraints I believe we are facing. See my sig.
 
Gra, your post makes it sound like BEVs and FCEVs are equals in the marketplace and that BEV is just getting started. I am not sure what parameters you are using but the former is becoming more mainstream every day. While the latter has seen better days. I, like the majority of the driving public see FCEV as non viable. Infrastructure is going to be way too costly for FCEV to ever make it in the heartland.
 
Only real question left is when will the charade end.... I give it one more year. RIP.

I see no advantage to hydrogen over BEV or ICE except that a few are desperate for EVs to fail.
 
GRA said:
WetEV said:
GRA said:
but it's far easier to get people to change their conditioning if you aren't asking them to accept less than what they're used to, but instead giving them everything they're used to, and more.

Perhaps.

But it didn't happen that way with horses to cars. Horses had things that cars didn't, like autopilot.
Okay, let's try another example.

You seem to be avoiding my point. Not all changes are completely positive, in every detail. It is more the package is compared.

Horses had intelligence, cars did not, until recently. My grandfather liked horses for that and other reasons. Yet horse transportation still lost. Gasoline transportation can still lose, even if charge times are longer than refueling times.

Why? Sure, the time to recharge on a road trip might be longer than fueling time. But if you spend less time recharging in total, might this be acceptable? Sure, the cost to recharge on a road trip might be higher than fueling. But if you spend less in total, might this be acceptable?

Maybe people look at the whole package.
 
WetEV said:
Horses had intelligence, cars did not, until recently.

They could actually go home by command alone, without driver. For long long routes, even as long as few hours.
And car companies are just getting to that level :lol:
 
WetEV said:
GRA said:
WetEV said:
Perhaps.

But it didn't happen that way with horses to cars. Horses had things that cars didn't, like autopilot.
Okay, let's try another example.

You seem to be avoiding my point. Not all changes are completely positive, in every detail. It is more the package is compared.

Horses had intelligence, cars did not, until recently. My grandfather liked horses for that and other reasons. Yet horse transportation still lost. Gasoline transportation can still lose, even if charge times are longer than refueling times.

Why? Sure, the time to recharge on a road trip might be longer than fueling time. But if you spend less time recharging in total, might this be acceptable? Sure, the cost to recharge on a road trip might be higher than fueling. But if you spend less in total, might this be acceptable?

Maybe people look at the whole package.
I am looking at the whole package just as most people do, and so far most people don't find a BEV's whole package acceptable, unless they're bribed or forced. IMO, until that changes we have to keep looking for options that those people will find acceptable. Nothing in this precludes BEVs taking a larger and larger share of the market as their capabilities increase and prices continue to drop, and that will happen. But giving people as many AFV tech options as possible, as early as possible, is essential if we are to transition off fossil fuels as rapidly as we can, and that's my ultimate concern, not achieving the best option more gradually.

As far as that goes, I'd be happy to see HEVs pushed for now, if that got us (the U.S., never mind the rest of the world) to a fleet average of say 40 mpg in say five years, unlikely as that is. I think anything we do now to buy us a little more time is more important than waiting for the best tech to gradually replace fossil fuels. Energy transitions take 60-100 years in any case, so short-term palliatives are called for even if they're relatively expensive and we wind up throwing much of it away.
 
Back
Top