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We're almost at the end of the first month of the Volkswagen scandal, which now includes 11 million cars and Leonardo DiCaprio. VW's US boss has testified to Congress, blaming a few rogue software engineers. All the while, questions have raged about VW Group's future: which projects are safe, which ones are on the chopping block, and how exactly will the company recover from this?
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VW's board has finally started to answer some of those swirling questions. For starters, there's going to be much more emphasis on electrification. Electric vehicles and hybrids have played more of a bit part at VW, compared to Toyota, GM, and domestic rivals BMW and Mercedes-Benz. That's going to change with a standard electric architecture that can be used across multiple vehicles and brands.VW Group isn't devoid of hybrid and EV know-how. Audi's Le Mans program has taught it a lot about high voltage automotive systems, and Porsche has a wealth of experience from the 918 Spyder, Panamera Hybrid, and even the 919 Hybrid racer. VW would be smart to leverage all these programs.
VW is the largest car company in Europe. This is what sudden, disruptive technological change looks like.
(Score: 5, Informative) by gnuman on Friday October 16 2015, @03:44AM
Though solar technologies are improving, meeting current US electricity needs with today’s photovoltaic technology would require about 10,000 square miles of solar panels
And what is the area of roofs in America? Let's do a back of the envelope calculation
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/units.html [census.gov]
So, about 80 million regular houses, conservatively taking that number. Let's say that conservatively, average roof size is about 250 sq. meters (about 2700 sq. ft., or about 1500 sq. ft. house). That gets us an area of 20 billion square meters. And since this is metric, I can just chop of 6 zeros to get to square kilometers. 20,000 sq. km. And that is apparently 7700 square miles.
So, I don't know, but just putting some solar panels on roofs instead of regular asphalt shingles seems to be somewhere in the ballpark, even when using some outlandish numbers. And this doesn't include commercial roof installations, like ginormous box stores and their infinite parking lots (eg. putting PV on "roofs" of parking lots). Furthermore, this reduces heat island effects.
In reality, we "all" know that there is more to power than PV solar. Wind is kind of advanced along with hydroelectric. Then there is nuclear - another no-CO2 emitting option. Rooftop PV, as used during peak hours, should be sufficient to charge significant portion of electric cars and run air conditioning and other things. And as illustrated above, there is no need to coat Nevada with solar panels - just coating rooftops is a major step in the right direction.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Friday October 16 2015, @03:50AM
I'm glad we independently took two different approaches to the estimation and came up with figures that round to the same significant digit....
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday October 16 2015, @05:59AM
Not to diminish your point, but it seems to me that the elephant in the room with regard to "green" energy sources is the task of heating buildings during the winter. Here we are talking about energy consumed in the form of metered electricity and fuel for vehicles. In my case, both of these things combined are less than the energy used to heat my house.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 16 2015, @07:36AM
Natural gas is renewable: caused by anaerobic decomposition of plant matter.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 16 2015, @11:19AM
Good insulation and a ground source heat pump will get you there. Radiant floor panels instead of forced air or radiators make it even better, and when you first experience them on a winter day you'll think you've died and gone to heaven. People who use GSHP's regularly report trading heating bills of thousands of dollars for an electricity bill of $100 for the entire winter. If you have solar panels, then you wouldn't even have that. Unless your house sits directly on a rock slab, you can use either the column- or trench method to sink your heating loop, depending on how much subsoil you have.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday October 16 2015, @01:56PM
Insulation, and new windows. Almost any home can be bricked. Any home with an attic can probably take some additional insulation, unless you've already filled it to the rafters.
We really need now construction methods that are inherently more energy efficient. Typical walls in the US are about 6 inches thick. Thicker walls, with more dead air space goes a long way toward insulation. There's little reason that your exterior walls can't be a foot or more thick. Concrete slabs are usually poured on the ground. Digging down a couple feet, then putting styrofoam on the ground, and finally using concrete with air mixed in will reduce energy consumption even more. Concrete roofs capable of supporting sod, and possibly some shrubs and bushes, really reduces your energy needs.
All we need do is thing outside the box, and we can cut energy consumption far more significantly than most people think.
“Take me to the Brig. I want to see the “real Marines”. – Major General Chesty Puller, USMC
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 16 2015, @03:10PM
Exactly. The biggest bang for the buck with energy savings is insulation. Now with blown-in or spray-in insulation it's dead easy. They show up in the afternoon and a couple hours later you are good to go. Then you win in the summer and the winter. I threw in GSHP (ground source heat pump) up-thread because it's such an excellent off-grid replacement for natural gas, oil, or wood. But even if you don't do that you save tons because you simply don't have to burn as much of the stuff to get the temperature you want.
If you're building something new then a Passiv house design will save hundreds of thousands of dollars over the life of the structure ($5K * 30 years). Consider what that money would turn into if you put it into an index fund instead of handing it to Big Fossil Fuel/Big Power and you've suddenly paid for some kid's college or built a nice retirement nest egg for yourself. It would be a massive shot in the arm for the economy, too. The US spends $365 billion on oil alone every year. If we didn't do that it would be like giving the economy an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ($800 billion)-size stimulus every other year.
Washington DC delenda est.