Battery based electric vehicles of today and tomorrow.

[Industrial Toys]

I'm sure the self driving cars will work perfectly, until they don't. Just like pretty much all other technology.

"RESEARCH" is most often heavily prejudiced. Often a case of whoever pays the bills get what they want.

 

[kenmac]

More and more foundries are electric.

''Coal is the leading fuel used for electricity generation in Wisconsin. In 2018, coal-fired power plants provided 49% of the state's net generation''.

You might want to make plans to move from your dirty coal state...
In your state, coal is the leading fuel used to generate electricity to power those electric foundries

 

[drssg]

I'm sure the self driving cars will work perfectly, until they don't. Just like pretty much all other technology.

"RESEARCH" is most often heavily prejudiced. Often a case of whoever pays the bills get what they want.

I read an interesting philosophical and somewhat rhetorical question a while back: Can we accept a self-driving car that occasionally malfunctions and kills someone, as long as the average performance is better than a human?

A self-driving car can instantly eliminate the possibility of drunk driving, distracted driving, tailgating, speeding, improper lane changing, etc..

For all that benefit, can we accept a car that occasionally runs into a tree for no apparent reason?

 

[Industrial Toys]

The public is generally too reactive and emotional to have that discussion. In India, the train hits someone and they don't bother to stop. Just radio and send the cleanup people. No "Investigation". What happened? Got hit by a train! End of story,

 

[airbiscuit]

You're right Kenmac, Minnesota is much more forward looking regarding eliminating coal fired power plants. Thankfully, Dairyland Power has finally got the memo that coal is yesterday's fuel resource. Each year, a smaller percentage of their power comes from dirty coal. They're just a little slow in converting their dirty coal fired plants to natural gas. Across the country, DIRTY Coal is in its death spiral.

 

[buickanddeere]

One thing I've learned is that you can't fight the future. Home phones give way to cell phones. Flip phones give way to smart phones. EV cars begin to be on par with ICE cars. Batteries get more energy density (range) and lighter and cheaper.

I anticipate that as more EV's come online gasoline demand will go down and thus gas will become cheaper in the future. At some point it should just be about personal preference about which one to buy, ICE vs EV. Younger people will choose EV's, older folks will stick with what they know.

Youth today don't see driving the way the previous generations did. Many choose not to get their license as early as they can, some even delay for a year or two.

You are not understanding that battery tech has it痴 limits . Lithium ion is peaked out now .
There has been no improvements to lead acid , nicad or alkaline batteries in decades . How does anyone expect existing lithium ion types to double or triple capacity .
Lithium Sulphur is being researched . However the price , reliability , number of charge cycles , charge rate and discharge rate make lithium Sulphur only useful and for specialized military equipment .
Lithium ion are dangerously reactive already . Lithium Sulphur contains 2X-3X the amount of energy to release during a thermal run away or physical damage .

 

[buickanddeere]

Your article doesn't say any of the 24 was an environmentalist. The 183 (your 'hundreds') was total police contacts, such as people caught and admonished for going past the fire lines. None of those were identified as environmentalists either. More likely landowners refusing to evacuate or sneaking back in, out of concern for their structures and animals.
Police contradict claims spread online exaggerating arson's role in Australian bushfires | Australia news | The Guardian

Rather
Me, I'll choose to believe research, vs Twitter.

Believe what you want.

You do take your own advice and only believe what you want to.

 

[buickanddeere]

You're right Kenmac, Minnesota is much more forward looking regarding eliminating coal fired power plants. Thankfully, Dairyland Power has finally got the memo that coal is yesterday's fuel resource. Each year, a smaller percentage of their power comes from dirty coal. They're just a little slow in converting their dirty coal fired plants to natural gas. Across the country, DIRTY Coal is in its death spiral.

Natural gas is still fossil .
Someday the glut of cheap NG will be gone and coal will be the fuel of choice . Both for power generation and to covert to liquid hydrocarbon fuel for vehicles .
Solar, wind and hydraulic can not meet the electrical demand .
Anyone who thinks coal is dirty . They have no clue what fluidized bed combustion , lime injection , low Sulphur powder river basin coal and precipitators can do.
Quit looking at those green weenie videos of 1960’s era coal power plants . Look around , it is The year 2020.

 

[airbiscuit]

All one needs to do is look at mountain top mining, choked streams, contaminated ground water, etc. Coal is DIRTY and obsolete.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

I'm a little baffled as to how the technology will eventually handle a fully self-driving car, with no human backup behind the wheel. Mercedes and Cadillac currently have features similar to Tesla's Autopilot, there may be more. They all consist of adaptive cruise control and an attempt to keep the car in it's lane by using cameras to watch for the lane markers.

Just the comparatively simple process of keeping the car in the current lane is nowhere close to perfect. The dash displays indicators to show whether the car can currently see the lane markers, and they quite frequently go out. Rural roads are not marked well. Highways have construction zones with messed up lane markers. It is nice as a convenience function, but I'm not seeing how it will make the leap to be able to stake your life on it working correctly.

There are a lot of unanswered questions about how and where autonomous driving will happen and when. I expect rural roads with be one of the last places to support self driving vehicles but the self driving farm equipment has been around for a while.

I have noticed the price of gas locally has been just under $2 a gallon for first time in many years. The failure so far to destroy Tesla in the market place the price may be dropping to encourage the sales of gas hogs to help longer term gas sales. Cutting prices in like China and the EC is not going to help car sales much because the option to buy gas/diesel is going away more and more in those car markets.

Who is buying these flipping things anyway?

Which Generation Is Buying the Most Electric Vehicles? - TrueCar Blog