California bans new internal combustion engines, starting in 2035:
On Wednesday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order requiring that all new passenger cars and trucks sold in the state from 2035 be zero-emissions vehicles. Additionally, all drayage trucks—the ones that move containers around at places like the Port of Los Angeles—must also go emissions free by this date, as well as off-road vehicles and equipment. Medium- and heavy-duty vehicles get an extra decade to comply, but by 2045 these too must ditch internal combustion engines.
Although this is the first such ICE ban in the United States, Governor Newsom is following in the footsteps of policymakers in Europe, China, and elsewhere. In 2016, Paris, Madrid, Athens, and Mexico City announced bans on new diesel vehicles from 2025. The same year, Germany's Bundesrat voted to outlaw new ICE vehicles from 2030, although this was not a binding resolution.
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General Motors Says It Will Stop Making Gas-Powered Vehicles by 2035:
General Motors announced Thursday that it will stop making gas-powered cars and trucks and exclusively produce zero-emissions vehicles by 2035, upending the American automaker's decadeslong reputation for producing gas-guzzling SUVs. GM's articulation of an electric future is a seismic shift for the auto industry, particularly the American auto industry, which had lagged behind competitors in the transition to more environmentally-friendly makes and models.
GM said the goal of phasing out petroleum-powered cars and trucks over the next decade and a half in favor of electric and possibly hydrogen-powered vehicles is part of its larger ambition of going carbon neutral in its global production by 2040. "General Motors is joining governments and companies around the globe working to establish a safer, greener and better world," CEO Mary Barra said in a statement. "We encourage others to follow suit and make a significant impact on our industry and on the economy as a whole."
Previously: California Bans New Internal Combustion Engines, Starting in 2035
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @09:00AM (22 children)
He can't stay in office. Future politicians won't even keep their own promises. Some other dude's promises are worth nothing at all.
California being California, the people will undo it with a constitutional amendment as soon as they realize that car selection is terrible.
I do like how, at least in the summary here, it appears that a coal-fired steam engine would be fine. It's external combustion. If there is something against fossil fuels too, a steam engine can be adapted to burn trash. It's like Mr. Fusion but with more smog and lower fuel efficiency.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @09:12AM (20 children)
Can't they just ban the wildfires instead? We should also ban wokeness and virtue signaling. Maybe we can even ban bans!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @12:28PM (19 children)
I know you are hard attempt at trolling, but California is still living in land of sanity and they know what they can and cannot control. If you want insanity, you have to visit North Carolina
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/12/north-carolina-didnt-like-science-on-sea-levels-so-passed-a-law-against-it [theguardian.com]
California did nothing different than saying they would ban horse buggies on the roads by 1935 in 1920, 12 years after model-T was released. And here we are, 8 years after Tesla Model S was released. So I'm sure there were trolls in 1920 that were all about horse buggies, horse drawn carriages and whip selling too, trolling hard.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by legont on Friday September 25 2020, @01:05PM (7 children)
California is historically an insane place. It's a desert that propaganda made a paradise. Many nice states were sacrificed to achieve this goal. The time to face the reality will unavoidably come.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 4, Informative) by HiThere on Friday September 25 2020, @01:36PM (4 children)
That's not the version of history that I learned. No other states were sacrificed by California, they were sacrificed by (among other things) the dust bowl to poor farming methods. There were a few disputes over the allocation of water...but that was about distribution of new water (see Hoover Dam), and all the states involved got *something* out of it, if not a fair share. (Figure out how to define fair in that context.)
Or perhaps you're talking about something else? If so, I couldn't figure out what.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by khallow on Friday September 25 2020, @02:36PM (2 children)
Arizona in the US and Baja California and Sonora in Mexico - all downriver from where California takes water out of the Colorado River.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @02:47PM (1 child)
I thought you said nice states?!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday September 25 2020, @08:01PM
I like how California made up 1/3 of that list!
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday September 25 2020, @11:02PM
This is an excellent serious book on the subject https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadillac_Desert [wikipedia.org]
And this is a science fiction sequel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Water_Knife [wikipedia.org]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @03:42PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @07:51PM
Yup. It used to be sand dunes and scorpions [nps.gov] look at it now!
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @01:22PM (9 children)
The wildfires are the direct result of mismanagement of the land.
All that undergrowth and dead trees and lack of clearing out overcrowded trees means you are sitting on a tinderbox. It didn't have to be this way. But nobody will "do the needful" because they think it's NATURAL to let it build up like this. Well, it's also NATURAL for fire to clear it out. Actually, they have been putting out the small fires so that the inevitable result is a massive fire that they can't put out. Fire has always been part of the Western ecosystem. Best realize that and manage it appropriately because fire potential never goes away.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Friday September 25 2020, @01:45PM (3 children)
Fair points, but they've been trying to do something about that for the last few decades. Unfortunately people who live in wooded areas demand that fires be put out even when the rangers don't think that's a good idea. So progress has been a lot slower than ideal. And then climate change came stomping through in hobnailed boots, and even the well managed forests turned into tinder boxes. Climate change allowed pine beetles, and possibly gypsy moths, to spread and kill lots of trees that then turned into tinder in medium dry weather. There *IS* no natural way to deal with that that doesn't involve massive fires, and nobody (including the lumber companies) is willing to go in an remove the dead trees, and deal with the damage that creates. (They aren't generally concentrated in one place, they're spread out. There aren't any roads leading to them, or often even close to them.)
Right now everybody is blaming someone else, but there's plenty of blame to go around, lots of it to people who were saying "Don't tell me what to do on my land!". (But by not means all. Fire suppression was public policy until around a decade or two ago.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday September 25 2020, @03:37PM
You don't worry about roads in logging country. If conservationists won't allow you to run over healthy trees to get where you're going, you go in with a bunch of mules and pack the logs out. That's how it was done before those big hydraulic skidders were designed and built. A lot of farming and forestry happen where there are no roads.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @08:23PM (1 child)
Is climate change responsible for those insects killing trees, or globalization?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @09:42PM
White privilege. The answer is always white privilege.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @02:52PM (4 children)
Dumb.
1. Federal land = not CA
2. Houses built right into the forests = no burns allowed
3. Paltry budget = fuck you don't raise MY taxes
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @04:22PM (3 children)
California has the highest tax rate in the country already.
Tax revenue is not their problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @06:37PM (2 children)
oh no! if they would have let the parasites steal a little more, then they would have spent it on what they were supposed to spend it on. poor gubbermint.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @06:54PM (1 child)
Great job, you solved the problem. Now what? Drain the swamp? Put Jared in charge?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2020, @02:29AM
Think you can just drain the swamp into one body and pretend it's not a swamp anymore?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Friday September 25 2020, @02:28PM
Indeed. Think of how crazy the place would be, if the benevolent, invisible pink unicorns weren't in charge.
Governor Newsom != California. And I don't actually see a section where anything gets banned. Instead we have stuff like:
I had to type that by hand (screwy PDF) so there might be typos in there. The rest reads much the same with a bunch of "whereas" clauses at the front and various statements of vague goals and calls for paperwork from various departments in alleged support of the goals. There's no ban there. And of course, the next governor can deep six whatever efforts come out of this, assuming Newsom doesn't do it first.
Now, the legislature could pass laws that actually implement such a ban legally. We'll see if that happens.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @02:12PM
I would guess that trash burning would be considered 0 emissions as that carbon was already slated to be emitted by the trash.
(Score: 2) by dltaylor on Friday September 25 2020, @09:23AM (7 children)
While I wouldn't mind an electric as a city bike (the ones I've had a chance to ride are fun), I already have a Ductati M1000S https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http://mototribu.com/constructeur/ducati/monster/wallpaper/originalimages/011_2003_m800.JPG&f=1&nofb=1 [duckduckgo.com] for that, so I'm in no hurry to replace it.
2035 is a few years down the road, though, and parts may begin to be scarce by then.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @10:12AM (4 children)
To eliminate the freeze on 1975 smog checks and start jumping that forward. Once we have that done we can start working on preserving cars from the 1970s to the 2020s which should take care of any person who still wants an internal combusion engine, and even better, any person who wants a manual transmission car for the enjoyment of the open road.
For people who aren't aware: This is ending the production of internal combustion cars for sale in the state, not ending their use on the road. By that point in time almost everyone will want an electric motor driving the wheels, and likely a 30-60kw generator recharging the batteries if they need more range than a battery offers (hint: under cruise conditions most cars even at 70mph only use 30-60kw of energy to maintain speed, unless going uphill or towing a trailer.)
Being able to eliminate emissions testing, or dial it back to a simple tailpipe test against the average of that model of car and eliminating the cash for clunkers style programs so fewer cars go to the junkyard will help preserve most of California's automotive history even going into the next century.
(Score: 3, Informative) by acid andy on Friday September 25 2020, @11:53AM
The interests that caused cash for clunkers schemes to happen clearly don't give a shit about automotive history. I don't see that changing any time soon.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 25 2020, @02:40PM (1 child)
What's the power source for that generator?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday September 25 2020, @04:11PM
You're gettin' a little slow there, buddy [generatorsource.com]
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @02:49PM
I'm thoroughly baffled by this statement. A 30–60kW generator is sufficient to power an entire building (a typical 200A electrical service in the US would fall right in the middle of that range at 48kW of available power), including electric car charging and electric heating.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @10:20AM
By that year, commercial CNC and 3D printing of the required parts should be common, the classic car and bike people already machine replacements for their beasties, ISTR a documentary a few years back about an outfit that restores old Jaguars where they were getting parts from a machine shop somewhere dedicated to making parts for old cars & bikes from the manufacturers original drawings, the amusing part was that the tolerances of their replacement parts were a lot better than the original factory ones, and this was without any CNC equipment being used at that time.
Long may your Ducati run!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Friday September 25 2020, @03:35PM
I already have a Ductati M1000S for that, so I'm in no hurry to replace it.
I haven't actually read the executive order, but it sounds like it's only banning *new* fossil-fuel engines. Usually, stuff like this, just like emissions standards, grandfathers in old vehicles, so you can keep your Ducati as long as you like, you just can't buy a new one after 2035. But 15 years from now, are you really going to care? 15 years ago, Tesla cars were just expensive toys, and now they're pretty commonplace around me. By 2035, I fully expect gas cars to be dinosaurs.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday September 25 2020, @09:42AM (2 children)
So this is just for NEW vehicles then? Or when will it be forbidden to own and operate a combustion engine vehicle? I guess there might be a new market then for keeping old combustion engine cars alive and on the road indefinitely then. I guess eventually it will be problematic, cause if/when the phase out the engine eventually they'll start to phase out the gas-stations and such to and it will become a niche market and then the prices go up and I guess an electric car becomes more and more viable by a process of elimination.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crb3 on Friday September 25 2020, @10:03AM
That, and booming dealerships on the Nevada side of Tahoe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @01:07PM
Apparently it already happened 5 years ago:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Dl9whQTTo [youtube.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @10:03AM (25 children)
In 15 years there may be some pretty dramatic battery improvements, but for this to work there will also have to be some major grid improvements to deal with all the high power chargers turning on and off all the time.
Maybe hydrogen fuel cells will be more than a curiosity by then?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by inertnet on Friday September 25 2020, @11:56AM (12 children)
But do fuel cells count as zero emission? Although the entire 'zero emission' concept is heavily flawed, because electric vehicles indeed don't emit anything directly, but the electricity they use is still largely generated in power plants that do.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Friday September 25 2020, @12:35PM (11 children)
Power generation is changing radically. Drive around the countryside, and you'll see lots and lots of new windmill installations, where before 2000, there was nothing. NW Iowa is covered in them now. (NW Iowa was one of the regions evaluated as having a lot of wind, and was covered in them sooner, but now, they've pushed windmills into less windy areas such as NE Iowa.) They're all over the high plains from Texas to the Dakotas, and probably well into Canada. Last time I drove California highway 58, saw bunches of windmills. But they were all the older, smaller, less efficient kind. I would not be surprised to learn they've since been upgraded.
I also keep tabs on residential rooftop solar. Still expensive, but has come way down in recent years and is still coming down though not as fast, and there are getting to be a lot of options and competition on that. As of 2019, renewables are 17% of our power generation, and still growing fast.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @01:32PM (3 children)
Have you considered WHY you see so many windmills? It's because they generate so little power, that it takes a pile of them to still not come close to what a single gas, coal, or nuclear power plant generates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @02:58PM (2 children)
Well let's factor in the externals... A coal mine or uranium mine, shipping of material, shipping of expended material, storage of such, life-long management of such. Dumbass.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @04:19PM (1 child)
Dear commenter, you didn't respond to my point. Saying wind is taking over electrical power generation because you saw acres of windmills is a mistake. Seas of windmills add up to but a mousefart, and that's only when the wind is blowing. The power density is quite low and there is no way you can build enough unreliable wind power to power the country. The math doesn't lie. People need power NOW.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday September 26 2020, @03:29AM
Well, not if they all return to a stone-age lifestyle...
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday September 25 2020, @01:47PM (4 children)
There's also the fact that cars average something like a 20-year lifetime on the road - eliminate new gas cars in 2035, and you won't get the (then-)current ones off the road until around 2055.
Meanwhile those electric cars automatically get instantly and invisibly upgraded to cleaner power as the source of grid power shifts.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Saturday September 26 2020, @08:31AM (3 children)
> Meanwhile those electric cars automatically get instantly and invisibly upgraded to cleaner power as the source of grid power shifts.
Except that batteries wear out. I have a 40 year old car that still holds the same amount of fuel as new (and I still get the same mpg out of it, which is better than my modern cars). I highly doubt an electric car will reach 1/4 of that lifespan without needing a new battery pack, which will involve more energy investment. Not to mention as the battery degrades, the (already relatively inefficient) charging gets less efficient (more energy is lost in the charging process as heat).
Batteries are a dead end IMO, they were discovered to be a dead end over 100 years ago, when people switched from electric to combustion engined cars. One potential revolutionary energy storage device are super-capacitors. If they can get one of those small enough and storing enough energy for a 400 mile range, then I would be sold on the concept.
At the moment battery electric vehicles are worse than the current ICE technology, which is why government have to force people out of ICE, by banning their use/manufacture/sale/etc.... When ICE first came out, government didn't need to ban electric cars (or horse and carts). In fact the opposite, they had to use laws to massively slow down the uptake of ICE vehicles to prevent them bankrupting existing industries before the economy could adapt.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday September 27 2020, @04:21AM (2 children)
So you replace the batteries, they're getting better and cheaper all the time. Or you just don't buy a 30yo EV unless you just need it for getting around town.
Or, you just don't worry about it - batteries age mostly with the amount of energy cycled through them (a.k.a. mileage, roughly), and we've already seen some commercially-purposed Tesla's hitting the million-mile mark on the original battery with most of its original capacity intact. It's a rare ICE car that makes it to a million miles. Batteries have a *lot* of room for improvement, but have also already done a lot of improving already, with a lot more big improvements promising to reach the market in the next few years.
Supercapacitors would be wonderful, and I can't wait until someone cracks that nut - but last time I checked the best cutting-edge laboratory models had around 1/10th the energy density of lithium ion batteries - you want to talk range anxiety? Someday, I hope, but right now we just don't have any remotely viable candidates on that front. Though, if they could at least be made cost-competitive with batteries, they might serve as a wonderful buffer that would save the much larger battery from most aging - even 10-20 mile range on supercapcitor would almost completely eliminate a lot of people's daily battery wear.
Meanwhile, ICE is a dead end for most things as well - it's only environmentally sustainable if we switch to a biofuel, syngas, or other carbon-neutral fuel, and thus far nobody has managed to create one of those that's remotely cost-competitive with oil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 27 2020, @02:52PM
Cost competitive with oil is way too high a bar, oil is not even cost competitive with oil.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Sunday September 27 2020, @04:15PM
> So you replace the batteries, they're getting better and cheaper all the time. Or you just don't buy a 30yo EV unless you just need it for getting around town.
Yes, but it is an extra cost, and offsets whatever energy efficient advantage you get from a BEV in the first place, not to mention the toxicity of handling. Something that is not an issue currently, as fuel tanks are basically steel containers.
> Or, you just don't worry about it - batteries age mostly with the amount of energy cycled through them (a.k.a. mileage, roughly), and we've already seen some commercially-purposed Tesla's hitting the million-mile mark on the original battery with most of its original capacity intact.
Some links on that would be interesting to read. I've never heard of batteries not degrading with cycling use. It is a core constraint of the technology, from the lowly phone battery all the way up to stored-energy systems used for grid balancing. Unfortunately Tesla seems to be experts in lying convincingly to people more than anything else, so I take whatever they say with a large grain of salt.
> It's a rare ICE car that makes it to a million miles.
Is it? Seems pretty standard in Europe, for Taxis in particular. None of my cars have done it, but then I don't drive that much. A friend has a car with around 350,000 miles on it, still with the original clutch, engine and, well everything really.
> Batteries have a *lot* of room for improvement, but have also already done a lot of improving already, with a lot more big improvements promising to reach the market in the next few years.
I wouldn't hold my breath. Batteries have had "a lot" of room for improvement for the last 100+ years, but very little of it seems to actually hit mass production. I've been hearing about "massive revolution in battery capacity/recharge time/longevity" for decades now, with no real revolutionary change. They still suffer from the same limitations they always did, and those that are good (like silver-cadmium, or sodium-sulfur), are either too expensive, or too dangerous to be used in portable/mobile devices.
The science just does not add up. There is no way you can reach the energy density of liquid fuels with battery tech. The energy stored in the liquid fuels is in the actual molecular bonds. Liquid fuels are the densest portable energy storage medium we have, and it seems illogical to refuse to use it (just like it is illogical to refuse nuclear power, despite it being the densest energy source we know).
> Supercapacitors would be wonderful, and I can't wait until someone cracks that nut - but last time I checked the best cutting-edge laboratory models had around 1/10th the energy density of lithium ion batteries - you want to talk range anxiety?
Oh I agree they are not there yet, but the potential, wow! A recharge time on par with liquid fuels, low resistance (so efficient in charging), much lower degradation with charge/discharge cycles, no need to deal with toxic chemicals. The only issue would be risk of explosion if shorted, but that exists with Battery EVs anyway.
I think the range anxiety comes in two parts. It is the range itself, but also the painfully slow recharge time. A short range it like a small fuel tank, the reason people don't have similar range anxiety with small fuel tanks is because a refill takes just 5 minutes, while a charge takes at least an hour, usually much much more (if you don't want to damage the battery by a fast charge).
To put it another way, I would not mind a BEV with only a 100 mile range, if I could recharge it in 5 mins to full range. I would not have range anxiety, unless I was doing a long trip and concerned about not reaching a charging station in time.
> Though, if they could at least be made cost-competitive with batteries, they might serve as a wonderful buffer that would save the much larger battery from most aging - even 10-20 mile range on supercapcitor would almost completely eliminate a lot of people's daily battery wear.
Indeed, and it would make regenerative braking far better as well. I am sure that nut will be cracked eventually, it is mostly a case of engineering a dielectric that can be made thin enough while providing a stable and strong charge barrier. Theoretically nothing is stopping it, so it is primarily an engineering problem now.
> Meanwhile, ICE is a dead end for most things as well - it's only environmentally sustainable if we switch to a biofuel, syngas, or other carbon-neutral fuel, and thus far nobody has managed to create one of those that's remotely cost-competitive with oil.
ICE are limited by the carnot cycle efficiency, although modern engines are reaching approx 55% efficiency (energy translating into driving wheels). In reality they are more efficient, because it is a narrow definition of efficiency that ignores other benefits it brings.
BEV efficiency however does the opposite, it only considers the efficiency of the "prime mover", namely the electric motor. While they say it can reach conversion efficiencies of 80%, they ignore the losses in the motor drive, the electronics, the auxiliary pumps, etc... needed for the car to function (that are considered "parasitic losses" in the ICE efficiency calculation), the losses in charging, as well as the losses in power transmission, all the way to the losses at the power generation end.
There have been studies showing that BEVs, over their entire cycle, are less efficient and more polluting that ICE vehicles. The problem is that the whole topic has gotten so politicised it is very hard to have a discussion about it without being accused of being for "big oil" or "green lobby", etc... so most debate is shut out, and a lot of it is twisted to fit a narrative to push a particular point.
Bio-fuels hold promise, and at least in Europe they have reached parity with fossil fuels (indeed after the higher taxes applied to fossil fuels, in some european countries biofuels are cheaper). The problem is that many people forget liquid fuels are energy storage mediums, not energy sources.
They only consider it an "energy source", because they are digging it out of the ground. However that is just energy stored from the past. What that means is that:
(a) all the CO2 emitted will never exceed what was originally on the earth, so the cycle is still a closed carbon cycle, although across a long time frame.
(b) eventually we will exhaust the earths storage of fuel, at which point either we wait for the earth to regenerate that fuel through natural process (could be a while), or we start generating it ourselves from energy sources.
So the research is useful. Even beyond just burning it in engines, being able to synthesize hydrocarbons will mean we can continue our developed, industrialised world, with plastics, rubbers, oils, greases, etc... all of which are made from hydrocarbon chains.
The main problem is by digging out the stored fuel, we are getting it for less than it would cost to generate it, and nothing can compete with that on price.
For the moment, I think the most logical system is a "series hybrid". A small ICE with generator, for long trips and quick refuel time, and a battery for stop-and-go urban traffic. That way you get the best of both worlds.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 25 2020, @08:01PM (1 child)
I can confirm their ubiquity in America, but sadly they are not prevalent in Canada. Fracking operations are everywhere now, too, though. So we've won with renewable energy, and have had setbacks with fossil fuels. However, if a person wants to look at that from a glass-half-full perspective it means America has made big gains toward energy independence.
I think the biggest gains with residential solar would be to make it easy enough to do self-installation; labor costs are now, I believe, the greater share of a solar installation than the panels themselves are.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @09:39PM
Since 2013, America has been the world's #1 oil producer.
OPEC can finally kiss our ass. That's not even counting the natural gas!
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday September 25 2020, @12:14PM
How Tesla plans to make batteries cheap enough for a $25,000 car [arstechnica.com]
Here’s what Tesla will put in its new batteries [arstechnica.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 25 2020, @12:26PM (9 children)
Battery improvements is just enough.
Get a large buffer battery (instead of the underground tanks) and recharge it stepping down from a medium voltage line. Use to draw from it at low voltage high current when recharging cars.
Use a couple of them, alternatively, and the result will be a much smoothed out grid load.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @01:28PM (4 children)
You're not an electrical engineer, are you?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 25 2020, @01:42PM (2 children)
I'm not, but I dabble in electronics as a hobby. Why do you ask?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @05:49PM (1 child)
Different AC. One problem with underground for your big "buffer battery" is cooling--these things have resistance and get hot. If you put it underground, you will probably have to arrange water circulation and radiators...and more energy lost to heat. It will also require inverters to match required voltages, another loss to heat.
The other problem is that a large enough battery will be expensive. At $100/KWh (Tesla projected price--from memory?) the larger Tesla car batteries cost USD $10K or more. So I'm guessing 6 figures, maybe 7 figures at current prices for your in-ground buffer battery. This is a whale of a lot more expensive than an underground gas storage tank.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 25 2020, @10:57PM
There are problems, yes, but none of them are technologically hard (do not require unobtanium).
E.g. buffer battery does not need to be on the same technology as the car batteries. Molten salt batteries [wikipedia.org], flow batteries [wikipedia.org] are too bulky/heavy to be used for transport application, but deliver higher storage efficiency/energy density.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday September 25 2020, @06:48PM
No, but he plays one on S/N.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday September 25 2020, @01:51PM (3 children)
That's got to be the first time I've heard ~400V referred to as low voltage... though I suppose it qualifies compared to the kV transmission voltages.
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Friday September 25 2020, @02:01PM (2 children)
Well, indeed, we aren't talking in terms of computer electronics voltages.
Quick and dirty, just-pick-the-first-result, search [generatorsource.com]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @05:55PM (1 child)
DC voltage descriptions might be different? Anything above about 30 VDC will sustain an arc (like an arc welder). Thus mechanical switches, relays, contactors have special construction to quench the arc...otherwise the switches have a *very* short lifetime.
Solid state switches are used, but I believe these are also expensive once the voltage goes up?
Latest Lucid Air electric car has a 900V battery pack, can be charged quickly...with the correct charger.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday September 26 2020, @06:54AM
When it gets to the grid, no, it's not that different.
See also 1.1MV DC grid (UHV-DC) [ieee.org] - if they managed to do it at this voltage, the low voltage problems aren't that hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @08:07PM
Yeah, you think you have problems with current electric network? Multiply that by a hundred only for the required amount of power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @12:22PM (1 child)
But with cars this time
Forcing people to do what they should have done anyway
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday September 25 2020, @12:29PM
Then it's not about forcing people, is it?
It's just pushing manufacturers to transition faster towards what the people would have done anyway if given an affordable opportunity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Funny) by EJ on Friday September 25 2020, @12:42PM
Problem is a lot of people thought they were banning Immigration Customs Enforcement. They're not going to be happy when they find out they can't buy Ferraris or other Internal Combustion Engine cars anymore.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @01:05PM (1 child)
Somewhere some squinty eyed yellow sacks of crap in a battery making factory just got a big woody because all of their bribe money finally paid off.
I can't wait to wait an hour or more to recharge before I can continue driving. But I guess long trips and freedom to visiting all kinds of places, the thing that made automobiles great in the first place, is already a thing of the past.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @03:00PM
You can ride your lazy fat ass there.
(Score: 2) by Username on Friday September 25 2020, @01:24PM (5 children)
They can all go back to being cowboys.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @04:04PM (4 children)
For legal purposes, a horse is considered a vehicle when ridden on the road. You can be charged with drunk "driving" a horse.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday September 25 2020, @06:38PM (3 children)
At least the horse generally did a better job of getting you home without running people over.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by looorg on Friday September 25 2020, @09:40PM (2 children)
I'm sure there was horrific horsing, and cart, accidents to but sure it's not like being slammed into by another car (or worse a heavier vehicle) going at high speeds. The upside of a horse is that what goes into one end comes out in another form in the other end and said product can be used to fertilize. What goes into a car just goes up in smoke, or I guess if it's electric it just gets ... mmm .. converted to heat ? Since energy can not be destroyed but only converted into something else.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday September 26 2020, @03:37AM (1 child)
https://www.reference.com/world-view/many-people-die-horse-riding-per-year-b68cf99b4894eccd [reference.com]
On a per-mile basis, horse is much more deadly than automobile.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2020, @04:21AM
Per mile is a terrible comparator.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @01:25PM (12 children)
https://babylonbee.com/news/state-with-no-electricity-orders-everyone-to-drive-cars-that-run-on-electricity [babylonbee.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @01:35PM (9 children)
Yeah and the idiots want to close their last nuclear reactor early
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/21/11989030/diablo-canyon-nuclear-close [vox.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday September 25 2020, @01:55PM (1 child)
Diablo Canyon should never have been built. They knew when they built it that an earthquake fault ran down that canyon. So far we've been lucky, but some day that fault's going to move. And, of course, nobody knows when. It's not one of the more active faults, so the odds are decent, but the potential cost is unreasonable.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1, Touché) by khallow on Friday September 25 2020, @02:38PM
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday September 25 2020, @03:44PM (6 children)
Yes, for good reason, as the other responder pointed out: it's on an active seismic fault line! Are you really so dumb that you think it's a good idea to operate a nuclear plant on a fault line?
It'd be great if they'd just build some nuclear plants in nice, safe places. Arizona has one at Palo Verde. But it seems that, out of all of humanity, only the French can really be trusted to build and operate nuclear plants safely. Everyone else seems to succumb to incompetence and/or corruption and build plants in stupid places, with badly designed safeguards, using ancient and obsolete plant designs. Then disasters happen and people don't want nuclear power because it seems too dangerous. This is why we have to move to 100% solar and wind power. Nuclear would be great as a baseline generator, but, apparently, most countries just can't be trusted to do it properly. Just look at Italy: they even voted to ban nuclear power in their country, not because they distrust nuclear power, but because they distrust their own country to do it properly (remember Italy has a lot of corruption, especially with the Sicilian Mafia), so the Italian people wisely chose to ban nuclear plants in Italy and instead purchase nuclear-generated power from France, where they apparently can be trusted with this. Given the utterly incompetent way Americans have handled infrastructure issues over the last couple of decades (and many other issues as well), I don't think we can be trusted with any new nuclear plants either. Perhaps we should just cede some pieces of our territory to France and have them build nuclear plants on them and operate them for us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @04:09PM (5 children)
The incompetent way Americans have handled nuclear power?
In the entire history of American nuclear power, the worst accident, Three Mile Island, resulted in venting a very small amount of gas. Worst case radiation exposure? Equivalent to one chest X-ray. Number of deaths? ZERO. And that is for THE WORST American accident.
The safety of nuclear power in America in unrivaled.
If you are SOOOOO worried about the theortical impact of an earthquake in California causing death, we should evacuate the entire state REGARDLESS of a nuclear power plant.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday September 25 2020, @04:51PM (4 children)
Um, yeah, I wanna chime in here because I got to hear a first-hand account of what happened in Porter Ranch. If you're unfamiliar with it. it's worth looking up. In short a methane well there was neglected and started leaking so bad it was actually causing bloody noses to the nearby residents. It took SoCalGas forever to get them to admit they were the source of it. It took forever to get them to DO anything about it like provide housing so they can evac the town. The company involved in storing the methane fought legal battles to avoid paying reasonable amounts of money for hotel rooms needed by people who cannot thrive in a methane-rich atmosphere. Never mind the willful neglect that led to the leak in the first place.
Make fun of me for being a NIMBY if you like, but my concerns with nuclear power in the USA aren't about the technology or even the statistical safety of it. Penny pinching, risk taking, litigious when it comes to doing the right thing.... I frankly don't trust a service like that which relies on profit to operate. Not because of fear of what might be, but fears over what has actually happened. The thought of something like Porter Ranch happening but with radiation is quite sobering.
It's not just about building nuclear power plants, it's about operating and maintaining them. And gee, the operator's biggest hurdles to turning over profit with it are the salaries of the maintenance workers and the endless maintenance and checking that has to be done.
🙄
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @09:33PM (3 children)
As I said, *nuclear* power has a long record of operating plants all over the country. It has been remarkably safe. It would be even better if we built new reactors of next generation design like the Westinghouse AP1000 which incorporate simple, passive safety mechanisms as one of the primary design criteria.
I don't know what a gas storage plant has to do with nuclear. Nuclear is held to an unbelievable safety standard.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday September 25 2020, @09:47PM (2 children)
I addressed that in my original post. Even gave you the opportunity to make fun of me. 🙄
Now if you want to tell me how Nuclear Power is automatically safer than menthane storage when run by idiots you'd be doing me a huge favor.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 26 2020, @01:55AM (1 child)
As I said, the safety standards are higher for nuclear (regulations).
For gas, well, the standards are lower because "it's not as dangerous."
This attitude can paradoxically lead to it being more dangerous in practice.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Saturday September 26 2020, @02:42AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday September 25 2020, @03:53PM (1 child)
There doesn't have to be blackouts.
California could mandate that people do not recharge their EVs.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Saturday September 26 2020, @03:41AM
That may have been a jest, but that's probably how it will work in practice -- pretty much like when gas was 'rationed' and cars with odd-numbered plates could get gas on odd-numbered days, and v.v. for even-numbered. Except knowing CA you'll probably get one or two days per week.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday September 25 2020, @04:19PM (1 child)
Maybe U-Haul can rent out range extenders [topnewscorner.com] for those long trips.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @05:59PM
Sure, you can design, qualify and build the adapters that will let battery electric cars charge while moving. They aren't set up that way now.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @06:50PM (1 child)
According to the daughter of former WA state governor Christine Gregoire, the internal combustion engine is offensive to females. Must be the same in CA.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2020, @11:52PM
wat
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 25 2020, @08:18PM
California has made a lot of policy mistakes in the last decade, and has been driving out residents and businesses. Its policies toward EVs, though, have been driving innovation across the world because it is such a large car market. Having watched Tesla, Nissan, and the one-offs from GM and Ford for years now, I suspect that 2035 will not wind up being too aggressive a date for full electrification of California's auto sales. Nearly every major auto manufacturer now is seriously developing their own EVs.
Washington DC delenda est.