California's climate change policy was initially instigated by ex-Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger. Governor Jerry Brown and other senior lawmakers had included the proposal in a climate change bill, but were forced to retreat amid growing opposition.
State senate leader Kevin de Leon, who supported the cut, accused oil firms of deploying "scare tactics". The leaders have vowed to push ahead with other reforms, including boosting renewable electricity use. The plans to require a 50% reduction in petroleum use in motor vehicles by 2030 were met with fierce opposition from business groups and oil companies, who warned of negative consequences for California's economy. California is the second-biggest producer of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels among US states.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday September 11 2015, @04:42PM
If you're among the politicians that are not bought and paid for (yet), why would you believe business groups or an affected company's claims about, well, anything?
Really, anything:
- Labor laws: Highly profitable companies are guaranteed to whine about how complying is too expensive, while turning around and bragging to their investors how they've been able to keep the cost of their labor force low.
- Environmental laws: Ditto.
- Taxes: Companies, like individuals, don't want to pay any of these. It's entirely predictable that they'll complain about it. So what? Everybody complains about them, and the only option is to pay up like everybody else.
- Federal Reserve rates: Companies who owe money to somebody like inflation because it lowers their costs in repaying those loans. Companies who are owed money hate inflation because it lowers the amount they get back in repayment. Both sides of this are sound and fury signifying nothing: actual economists just focus on real unemployment versus inflation.
- Criminal investigation: Companies would really much rather that law enforcement put their resources towards investigating somebody else. Again, just like everybody else. Which doesn't matter, what matters is whether they've committed a crime.
- Trade: Companies would like to be able to sell their stuff anywhere in the world tax-free. And make their stuff anywhere in the world tax-free. That's because they don't like paying minimum wage to their own workers, and do like selling to consumers who have money, and want to take advantage of the difference in location between where they can find those two kinds of situations. Their complaints, again, don't matter to anyone besides themselves.
And as Dilbert brilliantly pointed out, in any company the vast majority of the organization (sales, marketing, finance, human resources, etc) are made up of professional liars. The correct thing to do is always ignore them, and instead look for independent information on the effects of the proposed policy (i.e. what happened when another country/state/city tried something similar).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 12 2015, @05:57AM
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday September 12 2015, @06:55AM
Do you think Climate Disruption is a bluff? Seems we're going to call, and find out whether ocean levels really will rise.
Further, propaganda about cutting petroleum use harming the economy is wrong. On the contrary, it would help to move to other energy sources. Doing something is always a job creator. About what doesn't matter. If there were no other options, if oil was irreplaceable, then it would be a job killer to cut back. In this case there are many other options. Every industry tries to say any policing, advance, or change whatsoever is a job killer, haven't you realized that by now? Time and time again, they've been wrong, wrong, wrong. Many realize it themselves, but they don't care, they're just trying to push our buttons, scare us, so that they won't have to change.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 12 2015, @02:44PM
Do you think Climate Disruption is a bluff?
Using the term, "climate disruption" capitalized? Yes.
Seems we're going to call, and find out whether ocean levels really will rise.
How much and over how long? I'll note that use of the word, "disruption" implies an acute, even catastrophic change. There's no evidence to back that assertion.
Further, propaganda about cutting petroleum use harming the economy is wrong. On the contrary, it would help to move to other energy sources.
Only if the cost/benefit justifies that.
Doing something is always a job creator.
Let's take this argument to an absurd extreme. A full blown nuclear war with an aim to reduce the global population would solve global warming for at least a few generations (until humanity nears its old numbers again). That is definitely doing something about climate. But how many jobs does it create?
Every industry tries to say any policing, advance, or change whatsoever is a job killer, haven't you realized that by now?
And I think they're usually right too even if the claims are self-serving. The question is whether the benefit outweighs the costs. And that's the point you miss here. They aren't lying about the costs. They're just omitting possible benefits, which is the usual propaganda tactic. But in this case, what benefit really is California going to receive? They'll just impair, possibly cripple, their economy so that others can emit more CO2 before having to do anything.
If you can't even recognize that doing anything, even a strongly positive action, will have negative consequences, then you don't understand economics well enough to make an informed decision about global warming and whatever other problems we face. It's not just the fact of global warming, but we also need to consider relative cost/benefit of all our choices, not merely assume without rational bias that CO2 emission reduction is good and laissez faire is bad.
One of the things I noticed about this debate is the incredible mild nature of climate disruption - even as predicted by the staunchest advocates of the theory. If we're going to do a great deal of economic disruption in order to avoid climate disruption, there had better be solid evidence that the climate disruption is really bad. That just doesn't exist. A few meters sea level rise over a few centuries just doesn't strike me as a credible risk to society.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @05:03PM
The same clowns in the oil lobby pocket mandated special CA gas formulation, ostensibly to reduce smog. The bright idea? A special additive that actually reduce mileage, which in turn causes greater gas consumption, so net pollution reduction is dubious at best. Worse than that, the industry lobbied for MTBE. Guess what, after a few years, MTBE was found to contaminate groundwater. So MTBE is replaced with ethanol, after the damage had already been done.
The point is, lefties, righties, these buggers in Sacramento are all crooks.
That's because CA is the biggest economy among the 50 states. "Scare tactics"/bullshit tactics all around, eh.
(Score: 2) by mendax on Friday September 11 2015, @06:58PM
You got that right. Sacramento is situated within one of the inner rings of Hell. The Sacramento County jail is only a few blocks from the Capitol and I'm sure they can make room for the members of the Legislature.
But I think you pointed out something important. California is the second-biggest producer of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels, yet it is the biggest economy. To me, it seems it's already doing something right. I think the fact that gasoline in California is much more expensive than most of the rest of the country may have something to do with it, and even in different parts of the state. For example, I returned from a short trip to the Los Angeles area yesterday. I filled up the tank of my little pickup truck for $3/gallon at the local Costco. Most filling stations sold gasoline at significantly higher prices. 160 miles north on I-5 at the CA 46 exit gas is selling at $2.83/gallon. At the CA 33 exit just north of CA 152 it's selling at $2.77/gallon. When I left home on Tuesday I filled up for $2.59/gallon. Yet, this is far more expensive than the $2/gallon gas being sold in other parts of the country.
Economics is the key: make gas more expensive and people will drive less.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Tork on Friday September 11 2015, @05:10PM
State senate leader Kevin de Leon, who supported the cut, accused oil firms of deploying "scare tactics".
This is true. In the radio ads they've been running they made it sound like they were going to instantly cut gas usage by 50%, on a whim, like tomorrow you're going to get up and go to work and find out your car cannot be driven today. It drives me crazy that this is legal.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 11 2015, @05:18PM
"It drives me crazy"
Well, if you haven't already, you'll soon be joining a political party. That's what all the crazies do!
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/55/2e/fb/552efb0575ca5025d14ec27e4e7825cf.jpg [pinimg.com]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Friday September 11 2015, @05:41PM
Let's just say there are certain times of year that my Facebook feed is a strange combination of uninteresting and dramatic.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by K_benzoate on Friday September 11 2015, @10:47PM
I don't like his politics as a whole, but Rand Paul is actually vehemently against the NSA's unconstitutional activities and a supporter of 4th Amendment due process. Of course, the Police State hawks in the mainstream party treat him like a kook--which he somewhat is on other issues. My politics are classical liberalism + social welfare state + environmentalism, so I'm about as far from Rand as you can get, but I'd be OK with him as President. He'd at least work to make life hell for the NSA/CIA. It would be nice to have a President that believes neither agency should exist in its current form.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday September 11 2015, @05:33PM
While I don't have the Governor's ear, he is a close friend of a close friend of mine; I'll drop a dime to my friend.
The State of California purchases a great many motor vehicles for many good reasons. Just for driving around town on official business, zero-emission vehicles would do just fine.
It is important that the rules behind government contracting and equipment purchases present a level playing field; that is, Jerry Brown can't just sign an order that says "Buy Teslas" but he _can_ sign an order that requires certain types of state-owned vehicles to be zero-emission.
I expect it would be cool to require that the electiricity purchased by the state for its offices and the like be from renewable sources.
While of course there are many other consumers of energy in California, for the state to purchase so many electric cars and so much wind and solar would encourage others to purchase it too, as economies of scale lead to lower prices, establishment of local distribution and the like.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by penguinoid on Friday September 11 2015, @06:28PM
Excuse me while my self-driving electric vehicle dances on their graves.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TrumpetPower! on Friday September 11 2015, @07:01PM
First, there's the fact that cars made 35 years from now will be at least as different from today's cars as cars made in 1980 are from today's cars. In 1980, the Prius was 17 years away from its initial sales in Japan, and 20 years away from its global debut; today, hybrid cars are about as ubiquitous as automatic transmissions were in 1980.
Electric vehicles only have two disadvantages over their petroleum-burning counterpoints: initial purchase price and driving range. Even the purchase price isn't much of a factor any more; you can buy a mint-condition used Leaf for under $15,000, and there're other electric vehicles readily available in every price class from that all the way up to supercars.
And range is much less of a factor than is commonly believed. Few people drive more than 80 miles in a single day, and said $15,000 Leaf will always start every day with at least 80 miles in the "tank." Considering how many people with petroleum-burning cars rent a car for road trips already, even that $15,000 Leaf is suitable for most people.
But that's today's cars...and next year's models are already slated to get a substantial boost in range, maybe even 50%. And prices are dropping, too. In no more than a decade, possibly much less, electric vehicles will reach both price- and range-parity with petroleum-burning alternatives.
...and, by any other metric, electric vehicles already absolutely mop the floor with the petroleum-burning ones. Quieter than the quietest Rolls Royce. Even the econoboxes have better acceleration over the first 60 feet than most sports cars. There's basically no maintenance and very little to break down. No toxic fumes, no mess. Operating costs are negligible. You don't have to stop to fuel up, and you start every day with full range.
In short, if you can afford an electric vehicle with enough range for your driving habits...you'd be nuts to buy a petroleum-burning alternate. And, soon, new electric vehicles will be no more expensive than the petroleum-burning alternates, with just as much daily range...
...at which point the entire market for new petroleum-burning cars evaporates overnight. Why spend more for so much less?
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @07:52PM
> Considering how many people with petroleum-burning cars rent a car for road trips already, even that $15,000 Leaf is suitable for most people.
I'm surprised nissan and the other lower volume electric manufacturers haven't teamed up with the rental agencies for promotions like 10 free/discounted rental days per year for as long as the EV is under warranty.
> But that's today's cars...and next year's models are already slated to get a substantial boost in range, maybe even 50%.
More like 100% - the $30K chevy bolt is expected to have a 200 mile range. [cnet.com]
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday September 11 2015, @11:48PM
I'm surprised nissan and the other lower volume electric manufacturers haven't teamed up with the rental agencies for promotions like 10 free/discounted rental days per year for as long as the EV is under warranty.
I would suspect that they don't because that is a tacit admission of a failure of the car - the inability of the car to do long trips.
Advertising is targetted to always list only the positives, even if addressing the negatives would make sense to a normal person.
It's all about the subconcious impression they leave:
Have a bikini model list only good points = "Leaf Good. Driver Buy. Get Sexy Girl" .
Have an engineer list the bad points and solutions to them = "Leaf Bad. Look Like Dork. Buy Big V8."
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2015, @08:15PM
And who would pay for those "free" rental days? If they were to do that the manufacturers would have to put up prices to account for it.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Friday September 11 2015, @10:45PM
there's the fact that cars made 35 years from now will be at least as different from today's cars as cars made in 1980 are from today's cars
Most new cars today are not much different from cars of 1980, and mine certainly isn't. There are more electronic gadgets riding along now, like tyre presure monitoring and satnavs, but underneath they are the same in principle.
(Score: 3, Informative) by snick on Friday September 11 2015, @11:45PM
The crossover from carburetor to fuel injected was well under way in 1980, but it continued through the 80's with the last new model cars with carburetors hitting the lots in the 90's:
1990 (General public) : Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser, Buick Estate Wagon, Cadillac Brougham, Honda Prelude (Base Model), Subaru Justy [wikipedia.org]
1991 (Police) : Ford Crown Victoria Police Interceptor with the 5.8 L (351 cu in) V8 engine.
1991 (SUV) : Jeep Grand Wagoneer with the AMC 360 cu in (5.9 L) V8 engine.[10]
1993 Mazda B2200 (Light Truck)
1994 (Light truck) : Isuzu[11]
Standard transmission still deserved the title "standard" in 1980
Catalytic converters ... again phased in through the 90's
So yeah, there were fuel-injected automatic transmission cars with catalytic converters in 1980, but the fleet as a whole looked _very_ different from most new cars today.
And then there's hybrid, which was nowhere in 1980, and electric, which was limited to golf carts and experiments back then.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Saturday September 12 2015, @12:46AM
...and let's not forget anti-lock brakes, airbags, lane-keeping and self-parking, variable timing, all sorts of advancements in aerodynamics and materials and assembly and the rest....
Even a base-model 2015 car would have been the luxury car of the year in 1980, with mind-blowing not-yet-invented features and plenty that hadn't made it out of secretive research facilities.
Sure, if you want to take a big picture look at it, my parents's '55 VW Bug has everything: an efficient (~30 MPG) reliable engine, synchromesh gearing (save for first and reverse); hydraulic brakes; pneumatic tires, and so on. Transistor radio, even. And, make no mistrake: it's an absolutely wonderful car, a joy to drive.
But it's also practically neolithic by comparison with today's cars.
And so is even the most iconic futuristic car of 1981 [wikipedia.org] -- even if I would enjoy driving one every bit as much as I do the Bug.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday September 12 2015, @08:24AM
my parents's '55 VW Bug has everything: ......... it's an absolutely wonderful car, a joy to drive.
Despite the racket they make? Presumably you are deaf - perhaps due to a childhood spent riding in its back seat. I had a lift in one once for a long-ish distance and staggered out reeling at the end of it.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Saturday September 12 2015, @03:07PM
The car you rode in must have had an exhaust leak or other problem. A VW in good condition might not be the quietest car ever made to ride in, but they're no noisier than other cars of the era -- and much quieter than most of their American contemporaries with big block V8s.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Saturday September 12 2015, @07:04AM
Even the purchase price isn't much of a factor any more; you can buy a mint-condition used Leaf for under $15,000 ...
It's "not much of a factor" for people that can afford the five-digit prices for a brand-new car. It's a very big factor for the huge number people out there that are limited to the four-digit range.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Saturday September 12 2015, @03:23PM
Oh, give me a fucking break.
Seriously?
Why the hell is this place so full of whiners who can't be arsed to do a goddamned thing unless it comes with free hookers and blow for all?
I mean, really. For the first time in history, if you can afford to buy a new car at all -- and that's most of America -- then you can afford to buy an electric vehicle that may well be the best car you've ever owned. How is that not a big deal!? Are you stupid enough to think that these cars won't soon trickle down even further? And in what hypothetical scenario are the billions on other continents who can't even afford bicycles relevant to this discussion?
Pull your head out of your ass and maybe, just possibly perhaps, you'll realize that that $15,000 car means that, well before California's 2030 deadline, you won't be able to buy a new gasoline-powered car. And if you're too focussed on the hookers and blow nobody's giving you to understand why that's a big fucking deal, then what the hell are you doing on Soylent in the first place?
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday September 11 2015, @07:33PM
Sort of an odd summary of an odd article.
You read this summary and TFA, and you think its all about fossil fuel usage reductions.
Then there is this nugget dropped in TFA:
Catherine Reheis-Boyd, president of the Western States Petroleum Association, welcomed Wednesday's decision to cut the emissions target from the bill.
So what were the actual cuts proposed? Emissions or fuel usage? (Don't tell me they are the same because they aren't. Lots of emissions reductions actually increase fuel usage).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday September 11 2015, @11:55PM
Maybe its specifically CO2 emissions. The only way to cut that is to cut the amount of fuel used. (in the last 5 to 10 years, CO2 has been redefined to be a pollutant.)
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @08:24PM
From the summary: "California is the second-biggest producer of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels among US states."
To put that into perspective, here are some readily available numbers:
1) California has more people than any other state (38.8 million)
2) California has over 11.8 million more people than the second most populated state (Texas)
3) Ohio, the seventh most populated state only has 11.6 million people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population [wikipedia.org]
What would be a much better measure of carbon dioxide generation is per capita so that a comparison between states can be made.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 12 2015, @02:47AM
You forgot California's physical dimensions. From Wikipedia:
Area Ranked 3rd
• Total 163,696 sq mi
(423,970 km2)
• Width 250 miles (400 km)
• Length 770 miles (1,240 km)
That's a LOT of driving compared to east coast states, much less Europe or Japan. Those dimensions also don't include the fact that half the state is mountainous, which adds distance via road or rail.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 11 2015, @08:31PM
I rather think that by 2030 the issue will be a moot point. There's news today that Nissan is giving the Leaf a 25% battery boost in anticipation of a larger Leaf-based suite of vehicles. BMW has entered the market with a very respectable i3 EV. Of course, there's also Tesla, which says it's going to bring their Model 3 mass market car to market in 2017. Meanwhile I've read that hundreds of thousands of Americans are delaying new car purchases until affordable EVs come online in their markets; I haven't seen a lot of data on that, but I do know I'm one of those. I'm waiting on the Tesla Model 3 for the range and supercharger network and will jump as soon as I am able.
It wouldn't surprise me one bit if by 2020 trying to sell a gas powered car will be like trying to sell electric typewriters at the dawn of the PC age was.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 11 2015, @08:49PM
My next car will be a lease for this very reason. I don't want to be stuck with a gasoline vehicle for 10 years, and if I do decide to actually have one, I rather wait till they feel the heat and prices tumble do to competition from EVs.
(Score: 2) by albert on Saturday September 12 2015, @01:52AM
Want more efficient cars? Just mandate it. Law are laws, right? You can just change laws, even if they are laws of physics. Physics doesn't even have jurisdiction over California.
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Saturday September 12 2015, @07:36AM
You're being a little harsh. Physics doesn't prevent us from having the most fuel-efficient cars—but common sense perhaps should. The problem with the latest efficiency standards is that car makers are switching to aluminium cars instead of steel. Over the typical lifetime of a car in a developed country, the reduced CO2 from driving does not cover the increased CO2 from manufacture. Furthermore, aluminium is highly susceptible to fatigue which means that the car has a hard limit on how long you can drive it, unlike steel (which in principle can last forever if you don't exceed the cyclic load limit).
(Score: 1) by andersjm on Saturday September 12 2015, @12:55PM
Let's do the math on that claim.
Suppose you replace 900kg of iron with 600kg of aluminium. Aluminium production energy consumption:
600kg * 198.2 MJ/kg = 118920.0 MJ
Stainless steel energy consumption:
900kg * 73 MJ/kg = 65700 MJ
Extra energy required for aluminium:
118920 MJ - 65700 MJ = 53220 MJ
The lifetime fuel consumption of a typical car is
300,000 km / (15 km/litre) = 20,000 litres
which when converted to energy is
20,000 litres * (44.4 MJ/litre + 6 kWh/gallon) = 1,002,000 MJ
Even if the reduced weight only saves you 10% on fuel consumption, you're still coming out ahead.
Not by much, though. But that's because I left out the kicker: The aluminium can and will be reused. And reusing aluminium uses only 10% as much energy as smelting it from ore.
In conclusion, your claim is just plain wrong. The energy saved by using aluminium is an order of magnitude higher than the energy spent. If you disagree with any of my numbers, you can put in your own and redo the calculation. But I doubt you will come to a different conclusion.
Sources:
http://www.martela.fi/files/environmental_report/spot_environmental_impact_assessment.pdf [martela.fi]
http://business.time.com/2012/03/20/what-you-only-have-100k-miles-on-your-car-thats-nothing/ [time.com]
http://gatewayev.org/how-much-electricity-is-used-refine-a-gallon-of-gasoline [gatewayev.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Saturday September 12 2015, @01:21PM
You're comparing modern aluminium cars to older steel cars. New designs use what the steel industry calls "advanced high-strength steel" or "ultra high strength steel", and weigh much less.
(Score: 1) by andersjm on Saturday September 12 2015, @03:08PM
So what's the energy consumption for producing "advanced high-strength steel"? And what are the numbers for weight in your best estimate? Please do supply numbers, plug them in and see what it gives.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Saturday September 12 2015, @06:30PM
First off, cars aren't primarily made of stainless. Stainless is a very different product from most steels—including high alloy steels—produced in a different type of furnace. It is a very tricky process for the same reason that aluminium production is tricky, namely that the chromium is a very strong reducing agent and tends to want to burn.
The two classes of steel we need to consider are mild steels, which have (ultimate tensile) strengths below about 200MPa, and high-strength (HSS) steels, which are above that. The industry terms AHSS and UHSS refer as the names imply to much stronger steels, which in the case of some UHSS could mean a strength >2GPa. They also have high ductility due to the stamping processes used to make them into cars. Cars in the past were not made of HSS.
I'm going to cheat a little and not use the exact numbers for AHSS/UHSS production because I want to be lazy. (Kinda kidding. The more important reason is that particular companies are not likely to give us exact and correct numbers for each product in actual production while covering all of the overheads, etc. to make themselves look good.) Non-stainless steels have energy consumption not that different from mild steel: about 13-14 MJ/kg if not recycling.* This average includes the much more intensive stainless but is dominated by mild steel, which is around 95% of world production.
For aluminium, I have a smaller number than yours: 175 MJ/kg if not recycling.**
Lazily plugging the numbers above into your calculation, you can see that the extra energy consumption of producing 600kg of aluminium for a car vs. 900kg of steel is around 92MJ/kg, not including the car manufacturing process.
Now you have to keep in mind that steel cars are being redesigned largely due to new efficiency standards. (Which aren't all bad, for this reason in part.) Actual weight reductions are anywhere in the 10%-35% range for newer steels depending on what exactly you're looking at. If memory serves correctly, the numbers I've seen quoted in press releases of prototypes are around 700kg vs. 600kg for aluminium.
You did an energy consumption calculation while holding fuel efficiency constant at 15km/l, which makes me want to stress: New steel cars are also made to meet the standards. 15km/l with aluminium is the same as 15km/l with aluminium. The problem is not that standards cannot be met with steel, but that the automotive industry has been caught with its pants down having to reduce weight quickly and some are shifting to aluminium because they are afraid they won't otherwise be ready in time.
And recycling steel still uses much less energy than recycling aluminium. I'm not that impressed by the fact that it can be recycled because switching cars to aluminium will require an increase in the amount of aluminium in circulation whereas steel in the developed world is already a recycling process. (Considerable blast furnace-based production still exists but new furnaces are electrical. Conventional wisdom is that no-one in his right mind will build another oxygen steel-making furnace.) With steel you can also mix ore and rust in when melting down scrap, whereas aluminium doesn't allow you to get rid of the oxides quite so easily.
With these rough back-of-the-envelope calculations, you can see that the numbers are fairly close together in either case. I know that others have done more accurate calculations in favour of steel—but of course these things need to be taken with a grain of salt given the financial stakes involved.
Look, I should have said in my post above that I do have an interest in the industry so you don't have to believe me if you don't want to. (Your efficiency standards don't affect me in any way, so perhaps it isn't important.) I think, based on the articles I have read in the past, that the data still comes out in favour of steel. I am additionally concerned about fatigue in aluminium cars shortening the lifetime, possibly creating cracks in places where they aren't visible and especially when I think of how many people I see getting themselves in minor accidents. Around here, where people are poorer and drive cars for much longer, I see aluminium cars as a ticking time bomb.
Feel free to call me an idiot or shill or whatever if you think I'm being deliberately dense.
*International Energy Agency (2008). p. 484 [iea.org]
**International Energy Agency (2007). p. 208. [iea.org]
(Score: 1) by andersjm on Saturday September 12 2015, @11:23PM
Let's keep it very, very simple: Let's assume that steel car manufactory does not use any energy to produce the steel at all. 0. Nothing. Nada. That way there's no risk of selling your modern super-steel short.
Now using your 175 MJ/kg number for aluminium and a 600 kg weight, that's:
600kg * 175 MJ/kg = 105,000 MJ
And, as you say, this is also introducing aluminium into circulation, so let's assign another 10%, no let's make that 20%, as a contribution to production costs. That's equivalent to throwing the aluminium into the garbage after just 5 uses, but hey, I'm feeling generous. Including the 10% for recycling, the average aluminium energy cost per car is then
105,000 MJ * (20% + 10%) = 31500 MJ
Now, you think my 10% energy savings from using aluminium is too high? According to http://www.iea.org/media/workshops/2013/egrdmobility/nylund_vehicle_en [iea.org]: "For passenger cars a weight reduction of 10 % reduces fuel consumption some 6 - 7 %." So let's call it a 10% weight reduction, as you're saying that the weight reduction is more likely 700->600 instead of my 900->600, and let's round the 6-7% down to 6%. Also, you're saying that 15 km/l is too low a starting point, because steel cars are also held to new standards. OK, let's make it 20 km/l. Now the energy savings are:
300,000 km / (20 km/l) * (44.4MJ/litre+6kWh/gallon) * 6% = 45090 MJ
Aluminium is still the winner. 45090 > 31500. I've given you every concession I can think of, including setting the cost of easily recyclable wonder-steel to 0, and aluminium still saves a lot more than it costs.
I don't think you're either. You are clearly very knowledgable, and I thank you for the education about steel types. But you may have been overexposed to one side of the story.
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Sunday September 13 2015, @05:23AM
Perhaps I do see too much of one side of the story rather than re-doing the calculations myself. Personally I also always tend to pick things that last longer (i.e. the fatigue differences between steel and aluminium), which forms the basis of many of my own personal decisions but may not always be correct. Though I don't know if we are leaving out something else that may be important, you are certainly correct for the calculation as we have done it here.