Hurricanes, Sea water, Corrosion and EV's 13

[enginesrus]

https://nypost.com/2022/10/06/electric-vehicles-catching-fire-in-florida-after-hurricane-ian/

It appears Li Ion battery's don't do so good with sea water, corrosion, and hurricane's. Many other threads on the net explain the tons of water
that the fire people need to attempt to extinguish the fires. I would like to see the pollution figures of an EV fire.
And on topic the pollution figures of all operations required to manufacture those battery's.

 

[stcbus]

Reading this forum that’s supposed to be “engineers” and I feel like I’m watching Fox News. Educate yourself please.

Fires? Far more likely with regular ICE.

vehicles that operate using gasoline are tenfold more likely to catch fire compared to EVs. Link

Each Tesla story you hear about such as hurricane Ian? There’s several from ICE vehicles you can easily find as have been pointed out when biased people post it on Reddit.

It’s hilarious people are advocating continuing to use a dwindling resource and with a dependence on crazy man babies intent on making themselves look tough instead of something sustainable. Let’s continue also ignoring the very REAL climate change too.

The normal commute and then some is covered by EVs today where fast charging is not a usual occurrence it’d be for longer road trips that are NOT common. It’s a red herring straight out of Oil propaganda memes on Facebook even mentioning fast charging like it’s something needed all of the time for an EV owner. I plug my car in at night to a normal dryer outlet.

Not to mention no yearly maintenance, no oil changes, no ridiculous spark plug fixing and other nonsense. Much less ware on brake pads, etc.

The world will move on just as they did to electricity, automobiles themselves, and more despite curmudgeons showing themselves.

 

[TugboatEng]

The normal commute and then some is covered by EVs today where fast charging is not a usual occurrence it’d be for longer road trips that are NOT common. It’s a red herring straight out of Oil propaganda memes on Facebook even mentioning fast charging like it’s something needed all of the time for an EV owner. I plug my car in at night to a normal dryer outlet.

It's not a meme. Some of us live in a state where we are literally asked to not do laundry when we're at home, let alone charge our cars.

I guess that's a compliment. You could have compared us to MSNBC or CNN.

 

[hokie66]

"Dwindling resource", indeed. The resources which are dwindling are the ones used to make batteries. Cobalt, lithium, manganese...

 

[Factoter]

The director of a local automotive program, related to me the reasons the school administration used, (edit) for closing it down, besides the gender bias, was the simple fact that in the future, California will not need mechanics, because all cars will be electric. One irony perhaps lost on thèse admins was that their program was entertaining véritable Tesla mechanics, right under their noses. Needless to say that program is gone, no doubt now used to train firefighters in the art of subduing light metal fires.

 

[stcbus]

I guess that's a compliment. You could have compared us to MSNBC or CNN.

How any engineer could find either of those two worse than Fox who outright lies and has to defend itself in court by saying “no reasonable person” would believe them is beyond me.

Lithium is numerous and alternatives are being worked on as is the other problematic materials along with recycling. Unlike the oil which is completely destroyed by ICE engines dirtiness.

I am guessing you don’t have laundry facilities either, then? Oh wait, you do. Maybe there should be more time spent regulating bad power companies instead of removing it all or allowing crappy companies to run (Texas, CA) there wouldn’t be issues. That’s what you get when you don’t hold companies accountable and choose to worship business and the unchecked “free” market

Oh and choosing to live in areas where the climate is worse or was once a desert.

 

[hokie66]

Spoken like a true 'computer engineer'. Cobalt and lithium are not "numerous".

 

[TugboatEng]

It’s a red herring straight out of Oil propaganda memes on Facebook

You led off right away with a conspiracy theory and then called people stupid for broadening their information sources? Then you make some completely unsupported claims about resources? What do you want us to think?

 

[BrianPetersen]

The director of a local automotive program, related to me the reasons the school administration used, (edit) for closing it down, besides the gender bias, was the simple fact that in the future, California will not need mechanics, because all cars will be electric. One irony perhaps lost on thèse admins was that their program was entertaining véritable Tesla mechanics, right under their noses. Needless to say that program is gone, no doubt now used to train firefighters in the art of subduing light metal fires.

LOL

I work in automotive parts manufacturing.

I've heard the EV fanatics and critics alike go on about how the service industry is doomed, how absurdly-high-percentage of people working in the auto industry will lose their jobs because EVs are so much simpler and have so few moving parts, etc.

90% of an EV is built the same as any other car. It goes through the same assembly process, it's just that some of the bits and pieces that used to go in aren't there any more and have been replaced by other different bits and pieces.

Simpler? No. If it were, they'd be cheaper, and they're not. (The one people seem to forget about is the thermal management system - my car has 3 separate coolant loops, each with its own little reservoir and pump and associated bits and pieces.) Maintenance-free? Well, no oil changes or timing belt changes, but they've still got tires, brakes, suspension, wheel bearings, HVAC, locks and latches and hinges, windscreen wipers, and so on that need attention now and again. And they'll still crash into things and into each other from time to time.

Service industry and dealer service departments will change, but that's been a continuous evolution anyhow. Modern vehicles already require less general maintenance than in the old days but require more specialised knowledge when something does go wrong.

 

[TugboatEng]

Great response, BP. Electric cars are not some kind of God send. I appreciate what they are but I'm tired of hearing about them being the solution to every problem. Sorry if I represent the anti-electric car side a bit too hard. I live in that state that made the mandate and I think it's going to hurt everybody. It's going to hurt those that want them due to shortages and it's going to hurt those that EV's won't work for due to unnecessary burdens. Nobody is going to win and it's going to sour the population against EV's.

 

[stcbus]

Read. There is enough lithium for expected rises in demand compared to oil and the drilling impacts for extraction. I never said cobalt was sufficient . Again. Read.

However more recycling is being done and new technologies are working on like-for-like replacements. Where’s that research for ICE vehicles to not depend on hostile nations?

 

[BrianPetersen]

The EV recharging infrastructure that is being built out now, is battery-chemistry-agnostic. The charger and the vehicle communicate and agree on what voltage and current to supply, and the charger supplies it. Any battery-management specifics that depend on what the battery chemistry or layout or cooling capacity is, are dealt with on-board the vehicle. If the vehicle needs to slow down the rate of charging, it does it (they all do this - batteries charge much slower near full than they do empty). This means ... We (collectively) are free to develop and implement other battery technologies, and the system will still work.

For battery chemistry - What we have now, is not the be-all and end-all. There are options on the horizon in various stages of development. Some may come to fruition, many will not. No different from any other R&D. If some other tech comes to market, it will be built to interface with the recharging infrastructure that we're building now.

 

[cranky108]

Still this idea that we can get power during the day from solar panels, and store it in batteries for the evening, and night, so people can go home, and charge there car batteries, with energy from batteries, just seems dumb.
Every time you store energy in batteries, you lose something, and I count twice. Unless you charge you electric car during the day. And what are we going to require businesses to have charging stations for workers and customers?
I guess the electric outlet in front of the grocery store is not being used for a kids pony anymore. And they moved the ice machine inside, because people were stealing from it.

I just don't see charging in the evenings as efficient, if the future is solar.

 

[BrianPetersen]

Gotta walk before you can run. At the moment, a situation in which generating capacity gets overwhelmed by EV demand overnight is probably a decade or two away from being realistic.

If you are going to imagine a future in which there is sufficient solar power for all of our daytime needs and not enough to charge EVs overnight (will require an order of magnitude or two more solar generating capacity than is installed now) then perhaps you can also imagine a future in which every workplace and every other parking spot where an EV would be expected to park in the daytime, has a place for it to plug in, and said vehicles have bidirectional charge/discharge capability. (Not necessarily FAST charge and discharge ... slow charge/discharge is all that is needed. Average driver's daily power demand from a sensibly sized EV can be satisfied through a 120V 15A receptacle.)

We know how to do all that. We just need to do it.

My current EV does not have bidirectional charge/discharge. I have it set up to charge overnight when power is the cheapest (from nuclear power plants that can't really throttle down their power output efficiently or quickly). There is a long way to go before overnight demand reaches summer daytime demand.

It is not a big stretch to tell the car "I want to be 90% state-of-charge by 7 AM tomorrow, you figure out how to do that" ... I already do that. Right now, mine simply calculates a start time based on charger capacity and starts charging at the last time that will achieve that state-of-charge ... but a "smart grid" could make use of the car's installed capacity to optimise it by maybe starting sooner if there's surplus grid capacity and varying the charge rate as needed ... even without bidirectional charging.

 

[IRstuff]

Still this idea that we can get power during the day from solar panels, and store it in batteries for the evening, and night, so people can go home, and charge there car batteries, with energy from batteries, just seems dumb.

It may be "dumb" from a pure efficiency perspective, but what's the alternative? Stay using fossil fuels? Wave motion generators? Using EVs as mobile batteries is at least a doable scenario, and if solar/wind/wave motion/whatever were in a large enough quantity, then we might tolerate the inefficiency. We tolerate a lot of inefficiencies right now, mainly because we either are used to them, or they're not immediately obvious; we lose around 10% of our generated power simply in the transmission grid.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list

http://www.eng-tips.com/forumlist.cfm

 

[dik]

This reminds me of the old Avengers, "Luminous sundial."

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[enginesrus]

Charging EV battery's makes me think of growing corn for fuel.
One of them will help sky rocket the electric prices (no power source competition)and the other one takes away food farming lands, and sky rockets food prices.
Its the name of the game, or green. Increase of human suffering based on lies.

 

[stcbus]

More misinformation and FUD. Power only increases due to demand AND the limited resources. The sun is literally free after investment. You are reducing the cost of the more limited resource like coal etc.

And taking farms away? LOL. apparently you didn’t know most of our food is from factory farms and most corn is animal feed.

 

[JohnRBaker]

And keep in mind that not everyone is only charging their vehicles at night. There are many public charging stations that are used by people when they shop or when they're visiting the doctors office, etc. Also, there are employers who're providing charging stations for their employees. When I was still working, for several years they were paying us a monthly incentive to car-pool. It wasn't much, $40 or $50, but it helped (this was paid, in my case, to both me and my car-pool coworker). I know I took advantage of it for a couple of years.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without

 

[hokie66]

"Factory farms"? How does that work?

 

[stcbus]

Meaning big companies that no one is just deciding to take their land lol.