Capacity to travel, electrically

Capacity to travel, electrically | Ecency

It seems that we hear about a new battery technology every few months. The Guardian had this yesterday about super capacitors that can charge in minutes. These sort of posts seem to attract the trolls who come out with the same old arguments about most of the energy a car uses being in the manufacture. MInd you, the same paper had this a few years back saying something like this. Well it is a valid point that we should make manufactured items last as long as possible as their creation and disposal have a major impact.

I also found this discussion quoting 10% of all emissions or the equivalent of one year of driving, and this discussion quoting a paper saying 68% of the lifetime emissions are from the tailpipe with 11% from manufacture and 22% from producing the fuel! I expect there are some more authoritative studies of the true costs. That last figure is interesting. I'd previously seen this video from the excellent Fully Charged series that talks about this. You never seem to see this mentioned by those who say burning oil is the only viable way to power cars. You have to look at the whole picture.

If we weren't burning coal to make petrol we could be charging a lot more electric cars with the same emissions. Of course those cars would not emit anything as they drove. I haven't even touched on the politics of who controls the oil. Many countries could build their own renewables generation capacity if they didn't have to buy oil.

You also see comments in such discussions saying things like 'my petrol car can do 500 miles on a tank'. That's great, but most people never go that far in a day. Most commutes are probably under 50 miles each day. There will always be exceptions, but we should face the fact that we cannot burn oil forever and have a nice planet to live on. Cities are choking on smog. I think some people just like to troll in comments for the sake of it. You just see them bringing up the same discredited arguments each time.

In the long term we need to get more efficient at getting around as the roads are already clogged up. Trains are great if they can keep up with demand. Maybe there will be a Hyperloop some day. More car sharing schemes would mean we need less cars. A lot of people don't have a good place to park anyway.

We need smart solutions to difficult problems. Using cars to support the grid can make it easier to get by with erratic supplies from renewables. It would help if we drastically cut all the waste that goes on.

The issues have been known about for decades, but vested interests tend to slow down change.

I should say that I do not yet have an electric car, but I think there's a high change my next one will be electric. I just don't drive too much since I changed jobs last year. We're a two car family and could easily get by day to day with an electric.

Thanks for reading. What are your thoughts?

Steem on!