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posted by martyb on Sunday November 06 2016, @01:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the fewer-excuses-to-burn-dead-dinosaurs dept.

Wisconsin Public Radio reports

It's easy to forget how vast and complex the existing infrastructure for gas vehicles is. Not having that convenience is a problem the sellers and proponents of electric vehicles [have] been working to change.

Now, the Obama administration says it will significantly expand the nation's infrastructure for electric vehicles. The U.S. Department of Transportation is establishing 48 national electric vehicle charging corridors. Those vehicle routes dotted with charging stations are intended to cover 25,000 miles of highway in 35 states.

[...] The idea is to add thousands of electric charging stations around the country. In addition, states and local governments signed up to increase electric vehicles in their fleets.

[...] This all comes as consumers are turning away from sedans and moving toward SUVs and pickups. David Shepardson of Reuters looks at the problem of slow electric adoption by consumers.

[...] In August 2008, Obama set a goal of getting 1 million plug-in electric vehicles on the roads by 2015. Only about 520,000 electric cars have been sold in the United States since 2008, out of about 250 million cars and trucks on U.S. roads.


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  • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday November 06 2016, @02:08AM

    by Snotnose (1623) on Sunday November 06 2016, @02:08AM (#422981)

    IMHO, the government should look to converting long haul truckers to natural gas. Those trucks get less mileage but also have much lower pollutants and the gas is cheaper. Encourage natgas fueling stations, tax breaks on trucks that run on natgas.

    Compare and contrast. How many long haul truckers go more than 300 miles a day, vs how many electric cars do? We won't even mention how often we've been behind semi's that for whatever reason belch out a huge amount of soot, usually when slowing down or speeding up.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @02:17AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @02:17AM (#422987)

    Poor coot, does the soot give your nose black snot?

    • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday November 06 2016, @02:51AM

      by Snotnose (1623) on Sunday November 06 2016, @02:51AM (#422997)

      Natural gas doesn't leave the black soot diesel engines do, it's all water vapor and CO2.

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      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Sunday November 06 2016, @03:51AM

        by Nerdfest (80) on Sunday November 06 2016, @03:51AM (#423006)

        We're currently having a problem with CO2.

        • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Sunday November 06 2016, @01:47PM

          by Pino P (4721) on Sunday November 06 2016, @01:47PM (#423092) Journal

          A problem with CO2 is still less bad than a problem with both CO2 and soot.

          • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday November 06 2016, @03:28PM

            by Nerdfest (80) on Sunday November 06 2016, @03:28PM (#423130)

            That probably depends on how much CO2 and how much soot. Soot does cause damage, but as a form of carbon, does not contribute to the greenhouse effect. It can also be filtered. I assume there's a lower efficiency because of the soot though.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @04:29AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @04:29AM (#423016)

    Natural gas conversions for heavy duty truck diesels have been engineered. According to this page, http://wwcleancities.org/can-you-convert-a-diesel-truck-to-run-on-natural-gas/ [wwcleancities.org] there are at least two different approaches -- convert to spark ignition (dedicated) or keep the compression ignition which means starting on diesel (normal compression ignition), then mixing in CNG while reducing diesel once in operation (dual fuel).

  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday November 06 2016, @06:06AM

    by frojack (1554) on Sunday November 06 2016, @06:06AM (#423034) Journal

    Electric cars can't do more than 300 a day for the most part. So the comparison is bogus from the start.

    CO2 is the problem and nat gas is not much better than diesel in that regard.

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  • (Score: 2) by Username on Sunday November 06 2016, @07:28AM

    by Username (4557) on Sunday November 06 2016, @07:28AM (#423055)

    The government shouldn’t force anyone to use CNG trucks.

    Truckers don’t like CNG because the tanks are right behind the cab. So if anything comes loose and hits the tank, it explodes and kills you.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday November 06 2016, @01:35PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 06 2016, @01:35PM (#423089)

      Given enough refueling stations a leaking tank should be quite survivable because it would be very small.

      The trick would be not making independent stations but putting a small filling system at every commercial delivery point.

      "but doesn't it take hours to pump up a tank?" Yeah sure does if you demand 200 mile range, but if all you need is 5 miles to the next retail delivery, keeping it topped up shouldn't be technologically difficult. 0 to 100% full on a large tank takes awhile, but 95% to 100% full on a small tank isn't a big deal.

      Its the same issue with electric batteries. Sure you can't fast charge a truck to give it 200 miles of energy in a minute. However the last grocery store was 4 miles away and the next grocery store is 3 miles away so arguably you only need to fast charge a couple KWh, not multiple megawatt-hours.

      Obviously this won't help the long haul truckers, but every gallon of diesel the milk delivery truck does NOT use or the bread company delivery truck does NOT use can be burned by the long haul truckers so in a weird way it helps.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @02:49PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 06 2016, @02:49PM (#423119)

        > a small filling system at every commercial delivery point.

        If you are going to put "something" at every delivery point, I think local deliveries should be electric. Delivery service is stop & go, which favors regenerative braking. Also, electric has no startup or shut down time -- when you stop there is no engine idling.

        Over 100 years ago, I think there were small (short range) electric trucks for things like milk delivery in cities.

        • (Score: 2) by Username on Sunday November 06 2016, @10:38PM

          by Username (4557) on Sunday November 06 2016, @10:38PM (#423290)

          It’s the middle of winter. A big storm front moves in and drop 8" of snow in 10 minutes. A little toy electric car slides up on a snow drift and get stranded since it doesn’t have enough clearance or weight to drive through it. Traffic piles up behind him. Now you’re stuck with just enough power to get to the next stop. You turn off the truck so when traffic gets going you might be able to move. After an hour or two a big gas powered truck comes and pulls the toy car off the road. You turn on the truck but it doesn’t move. Your gamble of turning it off failed, since the heat the battery generated by itself was the only thing keeping the current high enough to move your tuck. Now you have to wait for that big gas powered truck to come pull you out.

          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 07 2016, @01:51PM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 07 2016, @01:51PM (#423491)

            Someone doesn't live in the frozen north, a lot of the details are just wrong.

            The first vehicles in the ditch are always the 4x4 pickup trucks and all the SUVs. Once all of those are upside down in the ditch, finally regular cars start going off road. I'm not even nervous when I see pickups and SUVs in the ditch because those are not suitable for winter weather driving and I have car. If an electric car went in the ditch that would imply basically everyone's already staying home or in a ditch so there can't be a traffic jam because there's not enough traffic left on the road to have a jam. Also all SUV and some pickup ditch upside down or at least on their side and it takes a flatbed wrecker to recover them, not just any old towtruck like cars can use (cars rarely flip in the ditch unlike SUVs and trucks so that small detail of the story is correct in that they're easier to pull out)

            No one slides off road in heavy snow, because of ground clearance issues I'm stuck at home until over 6 inch snowfalls are plowed and snow isn't very slippery anyway. Significant offroading happens in ice storms which are a totally different phenomena. Ice storms are when the ditches fill with trucks and SUVs and later cars if its really bad.

            For safety reasons snowplows keep the interstate clear all the time, major roads are passable, down to suburb subdivisions which are only plowed once after the storm ends. So you can't have a major traffic jam because a burb-dweller crashed on a main traffic artery because there's no way to get a car onto a major artery when the weather is bad, they're trapped at home or work until a plow comes thru, at which time they don't get into accidents because "freshly plowed road". With the sole exception of UPS and Fedex there's no reason to send a delivery truck thru my residential neighborhood, so they don't, and if they did, 8 inches of snow means my garaged car can't get on to the roads anyway to make a mess. It sounds very contrived and unrealistic situation.

            Now you’re stuck with just enough power to get to the next stop.

            Same problem as having just enough diesel to get to the next stop. If your tank holds 20 miles and you've only got 2 miles to the next stop, you'll be OK unless you do something spectacularly stupid. If you do something spectacularly stupid, having a 200 mile tank is certainly not going to save you.

            There is the interesting meta argument that the reason the bread shelves at the store empty when there's a blizzard is precisely because the trucks don't roll when there's a blizzard, the employees can't get to work at the bakery or the store and the customer's can't get to the store anyway, etc. So the technology won't work when it isn't needed, therefore it can't sell, hmm I donno about that.

            • (Score: 2) by Username on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:08PM

              by Username (4557) on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:08PM (#424218)

              Where did I say the car went in the ditch? I said it got stuck. Which all small cars do. Every stopngo light there is always some small ford focus looking thing stuck there. They get stuck because they lack traction from being so light. They also get stuck ONTOP of snow while driving. Since it lifts the body of the car off the ground, the wheels just spin in the air, and they don’t have enough momentum to keep sliding over it.

              Only reason trucks go into the ditch is because of over confidence and driving too fast.

              Same problem as having just enough diesel to get to the next stop.

              You don’t lose fuel just by turning the car off like you do with an electric. If I turn a diesel off it will have a hard start, but I would still have the fuel required to get going again. The power didn’t get blown away by the cold winds.

              • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 09 2016, @01:13PM

                by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 09 2016, @01:13PM (#424580)

                I donno man you read like a guy in Hawaii trying to write about that white powdery stuff they never seen. You got the general stuff right, maybe good enough for Hollywood, but again the details are wrong. You could sell snow stories to a Floridian or maybe a Texan, but don't try it north of 45 degrees north.

                I admit that in some contrived situation you could leave the continuously plowed interstate, go down a periodically plowed arterial, and get stuck hitting a side road, especially maybe if its strongly uphill, but thats... weird. If you impact unplowed and undriven pure snow you can get stuck, now if the only way to get stuck is have no traffic on that road then how do you cause a traffic jam without traffic?

                If anyone's broken the path ahead of you its easy to keep going, just don't be the first car on that road. That's why I can get stuck in my garage but never on a street.

                If the path is broken your frontend and bumper act like a plow. Its kinda hard on it. I've lost air dam flap things doing that.

                With anti-lock anti-spin brakes since the 90s, you can't get stuck at a stop sign in a FWD car. Maybe you can spin a RWD or 4x4, but you can't get a little commuter car stuck at an intersection. Its just not physically possible, not in snow anyway. The tires will spin and that puts wear on them you don't want, but you'll move eventually.

                On ice you can get stuck, but vehicle doesn't matter to a nice slick coat of ice. Its mostly a southerner problem, up north they dump salt like crazy if there's even a slight chance of ice, which means its only an issue when the weatherman hopelessly Fs up. Maybe once every decade, and only for a couple hours if that.

                The power didn’t get blown away by the cold winds.

                LOL like claiming you can't use gasoline cars in a blizzard because spilled gasoline evaporates in the wind so naturally, etc. Real hybrids and electrics don't work that way.

                There are exceptions. Like when the deep deep south gets its once a decade light dusting and the population goes completely Fing insane for days. But in an area where we have snow maybe 4 to 5 months, snow is just not an issue.

                • (Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday November 09 2016, @09:41PM

                  by Username (4557) on Wednesday November 09 2016, @09:41PM (#424870)

                  Dude, I live in zone 3 wisconsin. I see little cars stuck all the time at intersections, or in drifts. I have got stuck at intersection or in drifts while driving a FWD car. I have had to shovel snow out from underneath my car while trucks drove past me. Even if there is ruts in the road road from traffic, it only takes one guy to leave the path or try the other lane in order to spin out or get stuck. Also when plows go through an intersection they push a giant wave of snow into the intersecting road. If you have to stop for a red light, you’re fucked.

      • (Score: 2) by Username on Sunday November 06 2016, @10:03PM

        by Username (4557) on Sunday November 06 2016, @10:03PM (#423279)

        Yeah, but CNG requires insane amounts of pressure, and they will explode [youtube.com] just [youtube.com] by [youtube.com] overfilling [youtube.com]. or just driving down the hiway. [youtube.com]

        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 07 2016, @01:32PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 07 2016, @01:32PM (#423477)

          CNG requires insane amounts of pressure

          No it most certainly does not. In the heavily monitored and regulated western world you can stuff a hell of a lot of energy into a very dangerous, perhaps acceptably dangerous, perhaps unacceptably dangerous, scuba tank like contraption but in the 3rd world where they have a somewhat more realistic view of reliability they use low pressure tanks (with resulting low range).

          If you want to go 220 miles on a tank you need eye watering 3600 PSI. God help everyone nearby if that cooks off in a fire. If you're willing to drive 22 miles between fills then you need 360 PSI. That lowers the risk from requiring aerospace military aviation hydraulics techs to work on it, down to mere grease monkey traditional hydraulic break type PSI levels.

          The world is full of trucks that go less than 22 miles round trip or less than 22 miles between fill up stations. Yes you need exotic crazy technology to fill up 3600 PSI tanks so there are not many of them. Yes 360 PSI is not a huge deal and you're not going to need the same level of exotic crazy technology.

          Almost but not quite in the realm of propane tanks where every gas station I've seen around here sells propane tanks already.