Well, the obvious solution to that is global warming.
22 thoughts on “EVs”
‘3. EVs driven in regions with a cold winter need to be charged at home. Preferably with a garage. Remember the warnings about batteries charging being extreme fire hazards …What me worry?
When we had a very cold spell around Christmas, TVA implemented rolling blackouts because electricity demand was so high. A high percentage of new homes built in the last 20 years use heat pumps. The problem is that heat pumps don’t work well when the outside temp gets very far below freezing. To make up for the shortfall, they revert to resistance electric heating, which consumes about 3x as much electricity per BTU produced. So, yes, by all means, let’s phase out IC vehicles and demand people can only buy EVs. EVs not only are expensive to buy, they don’t do well in cold weather and increase demand on an electric grid that can’t keep up with demand.
EVs don’t work well in cold weather . . . news at 11!
EV’s can work as an around town car in benign climates like southern California or most of the inhabited parts of Australia. As all round vehicles, not so much.
I do like this, though: https://aptera.us/
Leave it in the sun to charge. There is that nagging feeling though that it could disappear in a puff of smoke and flame at any moment.
The Aptera is a motorcycle, or more properly a ‘reverse or hammer head trike’, and has all the highway crashworthiness of a beer can. I would rather drive a ’67 Volkswagen Bug — even though the Aptera certainly has that Buck Rodgers vibe!
So? Just don’t drive. You shouldn’t be driving so much anyway. Stay in your cube bigots.
On the other hand, anyone living here in Hawaii and not using solar/EV cars is just silly!
This is a big problem for Mars, which is the reason for the existence of Tesla. Electric vehicles are a must there, and if you’re stranded you’re dead. It’s a different pressure but the temperatures are even colder than Canada sometimes.
As someone who grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I can testify from personal experience that internal combustion-powered cars don’t work very well in cold temperatures either. Gasoline-powered vehicles are only such once running. To get them running requires – wait for it – a battery. This is typically a lead-acid battery which, like the much more energy-dense lithium-based batteries powering EVs, loses appreciable power when it’s cold outside. Combine this with the thickening of crankcase oil in cold temps and you get dodgy reliability when the mercury falls. TANSTAAFL.
You folks were intimately familiar with block heaters. In Minnesota parking meters came with electrical outlets. So even your gas cars were plug-ins.
I refuse to live anywhere that in the winter time requires SCLABA re-breathers to evaporate and heat the liquefied air before you can breathe it.
When I lived in NH, I used an electric dipstick heater. My grandfather (who lived in MA) used to put a droplight under a blanket under the hood. My dad simply had a heated garage, of course.
Interesting point about battery electric cars on Mars upstream. Compressed gas energy storage would not suffer from the cold, though compressing Mars’ thin atmopshere might be an issue. Somewhere in between, there’s flywheels.
I have two BEVs, like them a lot. (And I got zero tax credits or other government incentives for either of them.). They work great for us here in the very moderate climate of coastal SoCal. But I did my research and knew exactly what I was getting into with them, including issues with cold weather. Were I taking a road trip in significant below-freezing conditions, I’d rent an ICE vehicle.
I think BEVs are great for certain use cases, but I can’t imagine how they will meet the needs of a sizable fraction of the US population in the next 15+ years. But our feckless betters won’t stop until humanity is in irreversible decline, because that’s the real agenda for many of these loons – exterminating humanity because we’re a drag on Gaia.
If Rand’s fine site gave out “mod points” and I had any, I would definitely give you some.
“Interesting point about battery electric cars on Mars upstream. Compressed gas energy storage would not suffer from the cold, though compressing Mars’ thin atmopshere might be an issue. Somewhere in between, there’s flywheels.”
They will be making liquid methane and LOx for rocket fuel anyway. Just use that in an IC vehicle.
I’ve often thought that, especially in the context of IVF, but there’s still the issue of cold starter batteries, fuel, etc. On the other hand, there’s no reason not to have an external combustion engine running on a liquid methalox burner (non-hypergol rocket engines start cryo cold) and a steam engine would work fine on Mars with a couple of extra valves. A steam Stirling engine maybe? A methalox gas turbine would work fine too, though I’d have to think about exhaust issues.
So there I was thinking about starting my methalox gas turbine buggy when it’s Midnight on Mars and 180 degrees below zero. Light the flame with a spark plug and ignition magneto, initial spinup provided by a pre-wound mainspring. Once started, the turbine would rewind the mainspring for next time. For a bad night, maybe have a winding crank that works from inside the cabin (instead of some guy cranking out front, or pulling a rope!). And an emergency TEA/TEB cartridge of last resort, because I doubt a Zippo or Bic would light at 180 below…
“The Aptera is a motorcycle, or more properly a ‘reverse or hammer head trike’, and has all the highway crashworthiness of a beer can. ”
There is this promo vid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQuLuHzR52M
Looks like there is a substantial chassis in front of the occupants and they are talking about doing the crash testing. Maybe not so bad.
“So there I was thinking about starting my methalox gas turbine buggy when it’s Midnight on Mars and 180 degrees below zero.”
You are going to have to keep the crew warm. Put the starter batteries with them.
That would be the Russian Dump Truck Solution and wouldn’t work for a cold start for the same reason: what keeps the crew warm? The battery? Then you’ve invented a self-warming battery! The only think that keeps the crew and battery warm in a Russian Dump Truck is the running engine and the same would be true on Mars, the gas turbine would have to run all the time, and then you have a fuel issue. I was think more or less of how to restart a gas turbine that was off and cold (as in parked and left overnight). If it’s in the base garage, it’s powered from the base system. So this is some off site storage for unknown to us reasons. And you’re always going to need some way to cold start a frozen vehicle. I don’t know that an ignition magneto would work at minus 180…
Just use a RTG for your power source on Mars for your rover. One good thing about the Martians is they won’t have the irrational fear of radioactive systems that we Earthlings have.
The technical term for an RTG big enough to power a crewed rover at minus 180 is “nuclear reactor.” And if you’ve got a nuclear reactor in the trunk of your car you don’t need no steenking anything else. Let me be clear: I know the difference between a radioisotope thermoelectric generator and a fission reactor. See “rhetorical hyperbole.” RTGs typically generate enough power to run an EasyBake over (my kid sister’s used a 100 watt incandescent bulb) and they don’t scale very far. The point of this discussion (besides laughs) is to talk about small (2-6 man) pressurized crew marscars. That said, I do think an off the shelf dedicated heater RTG that generated 4400 watts of thermal energy (not electricity) might suffice to heat your car battery so your alternator, spark plugs, and starter motor would work. And maybe even a couple of them would get an EV working on Mars. The gas turbine and magneto idea would be much cheaper, if it would actually work on Mars. Once started, the gas turbine is self-sustaining. Diesel might work on Mars, but the common term for Diesel fuel at minus 180 is “pavement.”
You can actually buy the pieces and parts to build a gas turbine Mars rover at home for a few million dollars. The hard part would be the mainspring. I wonder how big of an inertial starter you can get. One of my friends has an antique 48 inch mower with a rope pull starter. I know they still make “wind and whack” inertial starters for smaller mowers. Hmmm…
‘3. EVs driven in regions with a cold winter need to be charged at home. Preferably with a garage. Remember the warnings about batteries charging being extreme fire hazards …What me worry?
When we had a very cold spell around Christmas, TVA implemented rolling blackouts because electricity demand was so high. A high percentage of new homes built in the last 20 years use heat pumps. The problem is that heat pumps don’t work well when the outside temp gets very far below freezing. To make up for the shortfall, they revert to resistance electric heating, which consumes about 3x as much electricity per BTU produced. So, yes, by all means, let’s phase out IC vehicles and demand people can only buy EVs. EVs not only are expensive to buy, they don’t do well in cold weather and increase demand on an electric grid that can’t keep up with demand.
EVs don’t work well in cold weather . . . news at 11!
EV’s can work as an around town car in benign climates like southern California or most of the inhabited parts of Australia. As all round vehicles, not so much.
I do like this, though: https://aptera.us/
Leave it in the sun to charge. There is that nagging feeling though that it could disappear in a puff of smoke and flame at any moment.
The Aptera is a motorcycle, or more properly a ‘reverse or hammer head trike’, and has all the highway crashworthiness of a beer can. I would rather drive a ’67 Volkswagen Bug — even though the Aptera certainly has that Buck Rodgers vibe!
So? Just don’t drive. You shouldn’t be driving so much anyway. Stay in your cube bigots.
On the other hand, anyone living here in Hawaii and not using solar/EV cars is just silly!
This is a big problem for Mars, which is the reason for the existence of Tesla. Electric vehicles are a must there, and if you’re stranded you’re dead. It’s a different pressure but the temperatures are even colder than Canada sometimes.
As someone who grew up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, I can testify from personal experience that internal combustion-powered cars don’t work very well in cold temperatures either. Gasoline-powered vehicles are only such once running. To get them running requires – wait for it – a battery. This is typically a lead-acid battery which, like the much more energy-dense lithium-based batteries powering EVs, loses appreciable power when it’s cold outside. Combine this with the thickening of crankcase oil in cold temps and you get dodgy reliability when the mercury falls. TANSTAAFL.
You folks were intimately familiar with block heaters. In Minnesota parking meters came with electrical outlets. So even your gas cars were plug-ins.
I refuse to live anywhere that in the winter time requires SCLABA re-breathers to evaporate and heat the liquefied air before you can breathe it.
When I lived in NH, I used an electric dipstick heater. My grandfather (who lived in MA) used to put a droplight under a blanket under the hood. My dad simply had a heated garage, of course.
Interesting point about battery electric cars on Mars upstream. Compressed gas energy storage would not suffer from the cold, though compressing Mars’ thin atmopshere might be an issue. Somewhere in between, there’s flywheels.
I have two BEVs, like them a lot. (And I got zero tax credits or other government incentives for either of them.). They work great for us here in the very moderate climate of coastal SoCal. But I did my research and knew exactly what I was getting into with them, including issues with cold weather. Were I taking a road trip in significant below-freezing conditions, I’d rent an ICE vehicle.
I think BEVs are great for certain use cases, but I can’t imagine how they will meet the needs of a sizable fraction of the US population in the next 15+ years. But our feckless betters won’t stop until humanity is in irreversible decline, because that’s the real agenda for many of these loons – exterminating humanity because we’re a drag on Gaia.
If Rand’s fine site gave out “mod points” and I had any, I would definitely give you some.
“Interesting point about battery electric cars on Mars upstream. Compressed gas energy storage would not suffer from the cold, though compressing Mars’ thin atmopshere might be an issue. Somewhere in between, there’s flywheels.”
They will be making liquid methane and LOx for rocket fuel anyway. Just use that in an IC vehicle.
I’ve often thought that, especially in the context of IVF, but there’s still the issue of cold starter batteries, fuel, etc. On the other hand, there’s no reason not to have an external combustion engine running on a liquid methalox burner (non-hypergol rocket engines start cryo cold) and a steam engine would work fine on Mars with a couple of extra valves. A steam Stirling engine maybe? A methalox gas turbine would work fine too, though I’d have to think about exhaust issues.
So there I was thinking about starting my methalox gas turbine buggy when it’s Midnight on Mars and 180 degrees below zero. Light the flame with a spark plug and ignition magneto, initial spinup provided by a pre-wound mainspring. Once started, the turbine would rewind the mainspring for next time. For a bad night, maybe have a winding crank that works from inside the cabin (instead of some guy cranking out front, or pulling a rope!). And an emergency TEA/TEB cartridge of last resort, because I doubt a Zippo or Bic would light at 180 below…
“The Aptera is a motorcycle, or more properly a ‘reverse or hammer head trike’, and has all the highway crashworthiness of a beer can. ”
There is this promo vid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQuLuHzR52M
Looks like there is a substantial chassis in front of the occupants and they are talking about doing the crash testing. Maybe not so bad.
“So there I was thinking about starting my methalox gas turbine buggy when it’s Midnight on Mars and 180 degrees below zero.”
You are going to have to keep the crew warm. Put the starter batteries with them.
That would be the Russian Dump Truck Solution and wouldn’t work for a cold start for the same reason: what keeps the crew warm? The battery? Then you’ve invented a self-warming battery! The only think that keeps the crew and battery warm in a Russian Dump Truck is the running engine and the same would be true on Mars, the gas turbine would have to run all the time, and then you have a fuel issue. I was think more or less of how to restart a gas turbine that was off and cold (as in parked and left overnight). If it’s in the base garage, it’s powered from the base system. So this is some off site storage for unknown to us reasons. And you’re always going to need some way to cold start a frozen vehicle. I don’t know that an ignition magneto would work at minus 180…
Just use a RTG for your power source on Mars for your rover. One good thing about the Martians is they won’t have the irrational fear of radioactive systems that we Earthlings have.
The technical term for an RTG big enough to power a crewed rover at minus 180 is “nuclear reactor.” And if you’ve got a nuclear reactor in the trunk of your car you don’t need no steenking anything else. Let me be clear: I know the difference between a radioisotope thermoelectric generator and a fission reactor. See “rhetorical hyperbole.” RTGs typically generate enough power to run an EasyBake over (my kid sister’s used a 100 watt incandescent bulb) and they don’t scale very far. The point of this discussion (besides laughs) is to talk about small (2-6 man) pressurized crew marscars. That said, I do think an off the shelf dedicated heater RTG that generated 4400 watts of thermal energy (not electricity) might suffice to heat your car battery so your alternator, spark plugs, and starter motor would work. And maybe even a couple of them would get an EV working on Mars. The gas turbine and magneto idea would be much cheaper, if it would actually work on Mars. Once started, the gas turbine is self-sustaining. Diesel might work on Mars, but the common term for Diesel fuel at minus 180 is “pavement.”
You can actually buy the pieces and parts to build a gas turbine Mars rover at home for a few million dollars. The hard part would be the mainspring. I wonder how big of an inertial starter you can get. One of my friends has an antique 48 inch mower with a rope pull starter. I know they still make “wind and whack” inertial starters for smaller mowers. Hmmm…