The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread

[ElwoodBlues1]

While I confess to being a bit of technology advocate, and I love the peak performance of sporty EVs, I have to say I'm a bit disenchanted reading the latest reports on the performance and environmental credentials of current EVs.

It seems if you live inner city, doddle about on 5 or 10 minute trips here or there, on back roads and side streets, they are far superior to fossil fuel vehicles. City or combined cycle is the tag for this, but the minute you step on the freeway (freeway cycle) those green credentials turn into concrete like environmental impact.

(PS; The environmental credentials seem to depend on having previously driven your fossil fuel vehicle into the ground and replaced it with an EV that you intend to keep for at least 120,000k, some say as much as 160,000k. If you replaced your petrol guzzler early before it's use by date, you will never recover the environmental cost of the two vehicle builds, and God help the grid if everybody does it! )

It appears the Lithium ion battery solution is just are not optimised for energy efficiency at sustained freeway speeds, and even more disturbing the longevity of the battery components is slashed for vehicles that operate predominantly in freeway mode. I heard one podcaster make the claim if you care about the environment you must leave your EV parked and hire a hybrid for that long road trip. Not sure that is true, but it's a bit of a tell about the real life performance versus the marketing!

I suppose I should not be surprised, tradies have known for years that Lithium ion batteries are best performed when used in regular short bursts. They deliver heaps of power but to deliver maximum life they should be recharged regularly and not drained if you want them to last and last, repetitive deep cycling / draining or constant demand slashes the longevity figures.

The more I look into this, the clearer it becomes that for heavy transport, long range or freeway operation green hydrogen is the way to go, but we just do not have access to the infrastructure.

It also seems the new big vehicle emissions push is being targeted towards tyre particulates, where your rubber meets the road and pulverises is killing the children and destroying the planet, not even EVs can escape that one. You can see where this is heading!

40% of new carsales are of the ute variety in Aus......there are no EV utes that can do what the present combustion engine type utes do at the moment and the prices are astronomical much like the size of the batteries that take up the base of the car. You are adding a small size car in battery weight as well as asking folk to pay twice as much for the vehicle itself.
I just dont see vehicles like the Ford Lightning, GM Hummer, Rivian etc gaining traction in Aus when conversions are required for the steering assembly etc and the retail price being so high and lack of service and parts.