Electric vehicles and alternate fuel sources

Guess I'm potentially the new joke around here.......but

Even though its 2022, EV's are at the model T ford level of advancement. Think the model T had a range of 20 miles to start with. I assume the supporting fuel station network slowly grew as the horse breeders, farrier's, cart builders, and black smiths all commented on how stupid it all is.

I'm sure all the horse and cart people compared the short comings of new technology to their tried and tested. Just curious who still has an old school dial up land line phone? Are we not all here on computers, internet, or smart phones.

In the 70 there was the BP challenge, Australia was leading the world in solar technology. In the 70's John Howard also announced coal is Australia's future. Its a shame he didn't back both. I guess one poured money into the bank, the other required it. Now I am grateful for the life coal has paid for in this country, but we will see who pays the bill if climate change is fairdinkum. Scientist in the 70's were also talking about significant weather changes from humanities industrial activities.

I notice people accept the science of medicine for most part in their daily lives, however people often debunk climate science. Medicine is an evolving science and has been wrong a few times over the years, why is it such a problem for climate science to evolve as well.

Our coal based grid network is not set up for mass renewables. I presume governments and energy companies have sat on their bums counting the coin since the coal future was announced, doing nothing about preparing for any other future. Imagine if every house and industrial roof space in the country had solar, and a network set up for it. Perhaps we would need substantially less traditional energy for industry during the day, or largely only for evenings and grey days.

Two cars a week in Brisbane catch fire, and that is based on information from the late 90s. Dad was in the fire brigade. So the odd EV hardly seems a worthy headline unless......

I put a 13kw solar system on for $6500, my power bill was + for a while till feed in tariffs changed, I still only now pay $150 a quarter. 5 occupants two of which are teenagers. Given a percentage of my power comes from the sun, how can that be so bad. I am upgrading to 3 phase and will install a 30kw system to help with pool heating. When batteries come down in price I hope to install them to one day charge the house at night, but also an EV as well. The family run around car or wife's car barely does 50km a week, any EV can cope with that. The cost of EV's also needs to come down.

The wife's current 2015 hybrid PriusC is a 1.5lt singe speed thing. It does 730km on $30 on E10 It travels comfortably at 110km Bris to Sydney averaging 5lt/100 with 4 occupants and bushwalkers rucsacs on the roof. Sure it is a city car, but Toyota's Hybrid Rav is the 3rd biggest selling car in the county after Hilux 1st, Ford Ranger 2nd, both 4x4 twin cabs. In its 8 years and 180k kilometres I have replaced tyres, 1 set of front brake pads, oil and filter every 15k. It still has it two original batteries and is worth 8 - 10K. Mockers around me are waiting for the hybrid battery to fail. When that times comes a genuine replacement cost $2500, not the rumoured and often believed $8000. I guess $2500 is around 8 years saving in fuel. But compared the wife previous car, a Ford Focus which practically perished before our eyes over a similar time with far less kilometres, and we got $500 trade in, the hybrid is clear winner on all fronts. I do not think either car would be good for towing, but what city run around is.

It seems to me many compare or expect emerging technology to be far better than long standing accepted. Often overlooking the failing of existing technology with things like combustion motors at 20% efficiency, huge networks of diesel trains, trucks, ships, cranes and whatever else required to feed a power station that last 50 years, or fill a fuel refinery. Its a one way process of one use materials that have a very shot life span. Then there is maintenance to keep feeding it all. A solar installation is not the be all, but once built it's a 20 to 25 year passive two way relationship. A battery is the same. Yes renewables sure need better recycling, but that applies across the board with everything humans make and use. New is always cheaper though it burns the candle at the other end.

just my 10c. Maybe I'm niaeve and gullible.

I can not come to grips with the way this straight mathematical truth is ignored. No matter how efficient or widespread electric vehicle use becomes nothing can change the amount of effort required to provide the materials. There is no economy of scale or technology advance possible to overcome the basic fact every battery requires vast quantities of earth to be dug, moved and processed. Most people would be astounded by the material effort required to build a wind generator or solar panel. God or whoever was in the chair at the time distributed the required ores in such a manner that we are forever locked into a fixed overburden, ore, refined product ratio.

It still may be better for the climate - I do not know - but let us get real on the total cost/benefits and not believe like small children that milk starts its life in a plastic bottle on the shelf at Woolworths.

This from The Sustainable Futures Institute at the University of Technology, Sydney and a World Bank Study. (adapted for an American presentation with lbs replacing Kg)

500,000 Pounds: Total Materials Extracted and Processed per Electric Car Battery

A lithium EV battery weighs about 1,000 pounds.(a) While there are dozens of variations, such a battery typically contains about 25 pounds of lithium, 30 pounds of cobalt, 60 pounds of nickel, 110 pounds of graphite, 90 pounds of copper,(b) about 400 pounds of steel, aluminum, and various plastic components.(c)



Looking upstream at the ore grades, one can estimate the typical quantity of rock that must be extracted from the earth and processed to yield the pure minerals needed to fabricate that single battery:



• Lithium brines typically contain less than 0.1% lithium, so that entails some 25,000 pounds of brines to get the 25 pounds of pure lithium.(d)



• Cobalt ore grades average about 0.1%, thus nearly 30,000 pounds of ore.(e)



• Nickel ore grades average about 1%, thus about 6,000 pounds of ore.(f)



• Graphite ore is typically 10%, thus about 1,000 pounds per battery.(g)



• Copper at about 0.6% in the ore, thus about 25,000 pounds of ore per battery.(h)



In total then, acquiring just these five elements to produce the 1,000-pound EV battery requires mining about 90,000 pounds of ore. To properly account for all of the earth moved though—which is relevant to the overall environmental footprint, and mining machinery energy use—one needs to estimate the overburden, or the materials first dug up to get to the ore. Depending on ore type and location, overburden ranges from about 3 to 20 tons of earth removed to access each ton of ore.(i)



This means that accessing about 90,000 pounds of ore requires digging and moving between 200,000 and over 1,500,000 pounds of earth—a rough average of more than 500,000 pounds per battery. The precise number will vary for different battery chemistry formulations, and because different regions have widely variable ore grades. It bears noting that this total material footprint does not include the large quantities of materials and chemicals used to process and refine all the various ores. Nor have we counted other materials used when compared with a conventional car, such as replacing steel with aluminum to offset the weight penalty of the battery, or the supply chain for rare earth elements used in electric motors (e.g., neodymium, dysprosium).(j) Also excluded from this tally: the related, but non-battery, electrical systems in an EV use some 300% more overall copper used compared with a conventional automobile.(k)

The core issue here for a green energy future is not whether there are enough elements in the earth’s crust to meet demand; there are. Most elements are quite abundant, and nearly all are far more common than gold. Obtaining sufficient quantities of nature’s elements, at a price that markets can tolerate, is fundamentally determined by technology and access to the land where they are buried. The latter is mainly about government permissions.

However, as the World Bank cautions, the materials implications of a “clean tech” future creates “a new suite of challenges for the sustainable development of minerals and resources.”[17] Some minerals are difficult to obtain for technical reasons inherent in the geophysics. It is in the underlying physics of extraction and physical chemistry of refinement that we find the realities of unsustainable green energy at the scales that many propose.

Here you go ED, I'm still on dial up phone service and ADSL internet. Not all of us can have Broadband or even wireless internet. But yes, I do have phone which is smarter than me.

wee-allis wrote:

Here you go ED, I'm still on dial up phone service and ADSL internet. Not all of us can have Broadband or even wireless internet. But yes, I do have phone which is smarter than me.

oh dear, dial up.....you poor bugger. You should only pay half the bill.

Lang wrote:

I can not come to grips with the way this straight mathematical truth is ignored. SNIP .[/i]

Life's a bit like that. Not sure how big an ocean going container ship is compared to the QEII, but it takes 4.5lt of crude to push the QEII either 1 foot to 1 metre. If I had a mathematical mind, all the effort that goes into mapping, drilling, pumping, processing, shipping, storing, then pumping and transporting again probably makes oil a pretty big excursive as well. And their seems no shortage of pleasure cruise liners, container, car, grain, gas, gaol and so on ships.

The energy and effort to clear an acre of land to make way for a kilo of beef also doesn't make sense compared to crops, however consumption of red meat is on the increase globally.

The amount of resources used to build a house for an average Australian family of 4 or less also doesn't make sense.

Kind of just what humans do.

So we shouldn't build houses for four or less. Better keep shaggin!

Zuffen wrote:

So we shouldn't build houses for four or less. Better keep shaggin!

Just tell the missus it has to be done to save the world........

.....................Billy....................

And How many Tonnes of; Iron Ore, Bauxite, Silica, Copper ect. needs to be processed to produce a car...??

Full Electric Vehicles certainly have their Place...

BUT; I reckon the Internal Combustion Engine will be around for fair While Yet.......!!

Zuffen wrote:

So we shouldn't build houses for four or less. Better keep shaggin!

I've already Got 4 Kids........ I'll have to Trade her in If I want any more..:sick:

Hayseed while looking at that Sydney Tech Uni info I saw another comparison. An electric car needs about 75% of the materials of a standard car just to build the basic vehicle without the electrical stuff. The digging up of rare earth minerals puts it up to around 4-5 times that of a fossil fuel vehicle in terms of earth moved not counting processing which is many times the effort of processing oil into fuel.

I am not denouncing electric vehicles but the big picture cost is only marginally improving on current technology once mass production builds up. It certainly is more costly to the environment at the present low production rates. The most common materials such as copper and aluminium will require earth moving to increase around 600% while some of the required rare materials will require increased production of several thousand percent.

It is way beyond my understanding and I suspect 99% of the population, declared experts or not, to make a correct conclusion on the increase in electric vehicles and the equivalent removal of fossil fuel vehicles being of benefit overall or if any or what percentage improvement at the end of the day. Just look at the present situation of crowing "cheap to operate" owners who are paying little or nothing to build and maintain the infrastructure they drive upon.

Lang