The inconvenient truth about Tesla’s Semi

[Efthreeoh]

Originally Posted by jmg

Get creative. The wind is always blowing somewhere. Water is constantly flowing, the amount of sun in the day depends on the season and your latitude. You know... use science and common sense.



The ability to get it out of the ground faster and more efficiently does not magically make more oil in the ground. It's finite.



You are arguing against an argument that I am not making. Besides, it's not completely coal powered:



So, a Tesla is only 30% coal powered. Overall that's 64% fossil fuel driven. That's in contrast to the ICE, which is 10% fossil fuel driven.

So I'll repeat AGAIN the advantages of the EV, which is that it has an intrinsic advantage in that it will accept power from the grid, which can be sourced by any way we see fit. Hopefully in the future, it can be more skewed towards clean renewable sources than it is today. An ICE, however, only takes gasoline or diesel.

I did some calculations a while back on land use per kilowatt-hour and posted it in another thread on this topic. While solar and wind are virtually free energy and "renewable" they take massive amounts of land mass and still don't produce anywhere near the power levels generated by coal, natural gas, nor nuclear. In Mt. Storm West Virginia there is a 3-generator coal plant built in the 1960s. About a decade ago the power company began building a wind farm around it on the ridges of the mountains. While a serious eyesore, the 100 or so wind mills produce about one coal generator's worth of electricity and the land footprint is massive. It's nice for renewable energists to love wind mills because the unsightly things are not in their backyard. Solar and wind will never meet the capacity the US needs on a daily basis and are just feel-good exercises.

[jmg]

Originally Posted by Efthreeoh

I did some calculations a while back on land use per kilowatt-hour and posted it in another thread on this topic. While solar and wind are virtually free energy and "renewable" they take massive amounts of land mass and still don't produce anywhere near the power levels generated by coal, natural gas, nor nuclear. In Mt. Storm West Virginia there is a 3-generator coal plant built in the 1960s. About a decade ago the power company began building a wind farm around it on the ridges of the mountains. While a serious eyesore, the 100 or so wind mills produce about one coal generator's worth of electricity and the land footprint is massive. It's nice for renewable energists to love wind mills because the unsightly things are not in their backyard. Solar and wind will never meet the capacity the US needs on a daily basis and are just feel-good exercises.

Living just a drive away from Palm Springs, I'm well aware of how much is needed to generate that much energy from wind. However, technology is always moving forward and we will always get better and better at harnessing renewable energy. That being said, the purpose of that post was to show how even with today's limited use of renewals, the original poster's assumption was wrong that an EV was coal powered. It is not entirely coal powered. Additionally, the kWh efficiency of a car in $/miles is at least 37% cheaper in my particular situation in post #65.

Again, whatever technology we develop, whatever new way to make power, the EV is more adaptable to it than the ICE at this point. The ICE takes one type of fuel: gas. The EV accepts power from the grid, and the grid can accept a wide array of sources we might discover.

[Efthreeoh]

Originally Posted by jmg

Living just a drive away from Palm Springs, I'm well aware of how much is needed to generate that much energy from wind. However, technology is always moving forward and we will always get better and better at harnessing renewable energy. That being said, the purpose of that post was to show how even with today's limited use of renewals, the original poster's assumption was wrong that an EV was coal powered. It is not entirely coal powered. Additionally, the kWh efficiency of a car in $/miles is at least 37% cheaper in my particular situation in post #65.

Again, whatever technology we develop, whatever new way to make power, the EV is more adaptable to it than the ICE at this point. The ICE takes one type of fuel: gas. The EV accepts power from the grid, and the grid can accept a wide array of sources we might discover.

I agree with your last paragraph completely. EVs are far more efficient at converting energy into propulsion. Someone estimated electrical motors as 60% efficient. I think the number is more like 85%. Adding the no idle time of EVs and they are far more efficient than ICE. To counter that, petroleum fuel is far more efficient at BTU storage. From an engineering perspective, we should work on the efficiency of converting BTU from petroleum fuel to electrical propulsion at the vehicle level.

[SharpAndCunning]

Originally Posted by Alfisti

WHat's Diesel cost in Europe? $1.75ish a litre? Let's call it $1.50.

If said rig works 5 days per week, it's chewing through what, 150 to 200 litres a day according to the numbers above, so we call it 175 litres. So you're saving $1,500 per week on fuel less charging costs. NFI what they are but that's a saving of about $75,000 year on gas so even if this thing is twice as much as a regular rig, you'd recoup pretty fast.

except you didn't factor in the cost of the electricity to charge the truck everyday.....

[RABAUKE]

Originally Posted by Efthreeoh

I did some calculations a while back on land use per kilowatt-hour and posted it in another thread on this topic. While solar and wind are virtually free energy and "renewable" they take massive amounts of land mass and still don't produce anywhere near the power levels generated by coal, natural gas, nor nuclear. In Mt. Storm West Virginia there is a 3-generator coal plant built in the 1960s. About a decade ago the power company began building a wind farm around it on the ridges of the mountains. While a serious eyesore, the 100 or so wind mills produce about one coal generator's worth of electricity and the land footprint is massive. It's nice for renewable energists to love wind mills because the unsightly things are not in their backyard. Solar and wind will never meet the capacity the US needs on a daily basis and are just feel-good exercises.

I was just listening to the news and surprise another government scandal, Ontario has been selling and giving away surplus energy to NY and Michigan, this energy is the stuff our wind power generates and the cost to Ontario tax payers is in the billions of lost revenue as Wind cost us 80cents/Kw Hour. Our "Green Energy Policy" had our government committed to billions for solar and wind moving forward, we already have lots of hydro electric and nuclear but in order to save the planet we needed wind and solar, so again, electricy to power your tesla is very expensive.

[CO_Steve]

So if your EV uses more of the finite energy in the ground (today) than an ICE why is it a good idea? Because some point down the road it will make sense? I'll wait, while burning less fossil fuels today.
Oh yea, I forgot about the virtue signaling factor. Never mind.

[CO_Steve]

Originally Posted by Efthreeoh

I agree with your last paragraph completely. EVs are far more efficient at converting energy into propulsion. Someone estimated electrical motors as 60% efficient. I think the number is more like 85%. Adding the no idle time of EVs and they are far more efficient than ICE. To counter that, petroleum fuel is far more efficient at BTU storage. From an engineering perspective, we should work on the efficiency of converting BTU from petroleum fuel to electrical propulsion at the vehicle level.

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/fi...5/10097517.pdf


And since the Tesla's max power is so high most of the time it will be operating in the <20% load part of the curve.

[jmg]

Originally Posted by CO_Steve

So if your EV uses more of the finite energy in the ground (today) than an ICE why is it a good idea? Because some point down the road it will make sense? I'll wait, while burning less fossil fuels today.
Oh yea, I forgot about the virtue signaling factor. Never mind.

No one said that. Again:



The EV can potentially use whatever we put into the grid. Inherently, the EV is more flexible towards cleaner, renewable energy, while the ICE is restricted to fossil fuels only.

[jmg]

Originally Posted by CO_Steve

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/fi...5/10097517.pdf


And since the Tesla's max power is so high most of the time it will be operating in the <20% load part of the curve.

But that's only a fraction of the total kWh.

[Efthreeoh]

Originally Posted by CO_Steve

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/fi...5/10097517.pdf


And since the Tesla's max power is so high most of the time it will be operating in the <20% load part of the curve.

Thanks for that link. Interesting read. We used to use those and similar equations to determine electric loads for the Lock Mart plant in B'more when buying machine tools.

I never understood Tesla's over-powered approach to designing its Model S. I get it was some part marketing strategy and some part braggadocios. When you look at the Chevrolet Bolt, it is more efficient than the Model S and provides the same size passenger space and about half of the cargo capacity. The Bolt is right-sized powerwise as is the i3. My opinion is if you are going to dictate that EV mobility is correct for the planet as Elon Musk does, why not take the design approach Chevrolet took with the Bolt.

[Efthreeoh]

Originally Posted by jmg

No one said that. Again:



The EV can potentially use whatever we put into the grid. Inherently, the EV is more flexible towards cleaner, renewable energy, while the ICE is restricted to fossil fuels only.

This is the point most people fail to understand with EVs.

[CO_Steve]

Originally Posted by jmg

The EV can potentially use whatever we put into the grid. Inherently, the EV is more flexible towards cleaner, renewable energy, while the ICE is restricted to fossil fuels only.

The entire power grid is infinitely flexible to whatever you feed it with. My point is that today you can feed your car 15 gallons of gas or feed the grid 19 gallons of gas to make the electricity. For the near term any "green" energy available can easily be absorbed by other than car charging so we don't need a bunch of Teslas to use what green energy we have, we have plenty of other needs. When we're supplying near 100% of our non-transportation needs with non-fossil fuel energy then I'll buy an EV.

[jmg]

Originally Posted by CO_Steve

The entire power grid is infinitely flexible to whatever you feed it with. My point is that today you can feed your car 15 gallons of gas or feed the grid 19 gallons of gas to make the electricity. For the near term any "green" energy available can easily be absorbed by other than car charging so we don't need a bunch of Teslas to use what green energy we have, we have plenty of other needs. When we're supplying near 100% of our non-transportation needs with non-fossil fuel energy then I'll buy an EV.

I can only repeat the same thing so many times.