Electric Cars

[Oubaas]

I don't think electric cars are going to make it. They're expensive. And if everybody gets one, it will probably collapse our rickety old grid here in the US.

We should go back to steam. With modern technology, bringing one up to pressure would be a matter of seconds instead of minutes. And they'd be much lighter than they used to be.

I wonder why the automakers don't offer a model powered by something like the Cyclone Engine from Cyclone Technologies? It would be better than electric or hydrogen or any of that other stuff.

There's some company trying to get started selling mini-reactors to power homes and remote sites and things. I was reading about them the other day.

Why not pair a mini-reactor with the Cyclone Engine in automoobiles? Zero carbon cars.

[Skybird]

No, we need horses, but a special breed of horses with anti-burp systems and fart filters.

Ah, damn, animal wellbeing. No horses then. Bicycles. Thats the German way. China builds 240 new airports until 2032 or 2033. Germany puts its money on bicycles. Or as EVP-head Manfred Weber (CDU) of the EU said: "We must convince the world that our way is the only right one."

[Oubaas]

Convincing me to believe that anything "they" say is valid became impossible quite a few years ago. Manfred must still be wet behind the ears if he truly believes that anyone with more than four functioning brain cells still believes anything promulgated by the people who labor under the delusion that they run things. Sorry Manfred, automatically rejected as untrue. You'll have to sell that idea to the folks of whom P. T. Barnum spoke.

The name of the mini reactor is the NuScale Modular Reactor. It was just recently approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Meanwhile, they're assembling ITER in France, a fusion reactor that I think uses molten salt.

Now, if NuScale could shrink their reactor down to automobile size, with consumer pricing, and the automakers paired it with the Cyclone Engine, we'd have zero carbon cars that don't need gas stations! So much the better if NuScale could shrink and modularize the ITER technology and use fusion.

As for electric cars, think of poor Texas with their grid.

"What happened? Why did the power go off?"

"The people in Austin just got home from work and plugged in their cars."

[Shadowblade]

unluckily EU plans to ban classic cars,
so we can enjoy overexpensive electrocars,
stupid EU

[mapuc]

What's the correct information regarding banning combustion engine from 2030 ?

'Cause here it is said it is the Production and import of these type of cars who will be forbidden after Jan. 1st 2030. It will not be forbidden to drive these cars after this day.

Markus

[Skybird]

There is move ment behind the curtain of th eoffiocial stage. They want to ban ownership of combustion engine cars some years after the ban of selling them, because they fear - propably correctly - that else we see the phenomenon that you have inCuba. In Cuba, people do not get their hands on new cars,a nd sop they stick to the old, antioque ones, which are decades old, they polsih them as best as they cna and keep them gopong, so to slow down their rotting. And so you have cars from the 50s and 60s still rolling in Cuba. This is the nightmare scenario of the EU bosses.



If the sales ban really gets realsied - and I dohbt it can be sustained - then the ban of owenerhsip will coem much earlier afterwardfs, too. Of this I am sure. But I am not sure that the sales ban can indeed be enforced according to the current timetable. Practical reality more and more mercilessly points against it.

[mapuc]

Found this wiki page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-...European_Union

Markus

[Oubaas]

Maybe I'll keep an eye out for an old Volkswagen Beetle with the 1600cc Dual Port, do a ground up restoration on it, buy some spares, and keep it around just in case.

Which brings to mind the question, how will these bans affect availability of spares for old ICE powered vehicles? If manufacture of spare parts for them is banned, you'll need your own machine shop to keep them going.

I think when the towering geniuses who make up the rules see what it does to work force mobility, supply chains, and the electrical grid, they'll repent. Once the S & P 500 tanks, they'll see the light.

As for horses, I already have horses. I just came in from the barn. If we went to horses, I could look forward to years of hilarious entertainment as people whose ancestors last rode horses in colonial days tried to come to grips with riding a horse. The poor horses!

Modular reactors and steam engines, that's the ticket. Eventually we could make them self-driving with AI. Imagine thousands of AI-controlled vehicles on the road, each with a fission reactor onboard. What could go wrong?

[Otto Harkaman]

We need biologically altered insects with cybernetic parts to be used as vehicles

[Oubaas]

Originally Posted by Otto Harkaman

We need biologically altered insects with cybernetic parts to be used as vehicles

Oh yeah! I'd drive one of those! I want mine with yellow and black stripes like a bee!

[ET2SN]

Originally Posted by Oubaas

If manufacture of spare parts for them is banned, you'll need your own machine shop to keep them going.

Spare parts don't get banned, they just become unprofitable to produce.
Imagine keeping an assembly line for parts going when there's only 100 models running on the continent. Then, you're stuck hitting Flea Markets and Estate Sales while keeping your fingers crossed.

Beetles are cool, but they are almost impossible,-now- to maintain.

[Ostfriese]

Originally Posted by Oubaas

I don't think electric cars are going to make it. They're expensive.

If you follow the thought "electric car = Tesla" then you are right. They are unreasonable expensive, and with Musk at the helm Tesla is never going to make it.

Still here? Right, so you might want to read my experiences of driving a relatively small electric car for eight years now (and still going). My Renault ZOE with a 41 kWh accumulator (usually called battery) gives me a summer range of about 300 km (that's about 185 miles, for our friends with imperial measurements). In winter the range drops considerably, to about 220km (about 140 miles).
At a typical charging station charging from 0% to 80% takes a little more an hour, after that the charge is gradually reduced to protect the accumulator, just like in your mobile phone.

The range more than enough for my every day driving, by quite a margin. Longer trips are not much of a problem if there's just one charging stop necessary, in which case I have a break after two hours of driving, and going for a half hour walk is quite relaxing. It'll be worse with trips that require more than one charging stop - but I have yet to do one of those.

Of course I have to admit: even though I live in the least densely populated area of (former) West Germany driving distances here are much shorter than in the US, and I know that the ranges I mentioned are too short to cover the typical distances in the US, especially in the rural areas.

The limiting factors of the electric grids usually are not the local grids. It's either on the larger scale (the national grid, which the Bavarians stubbornly refuse to modernize) or on the smaller scale (the grid at your home, which might be too old to carry the loads).

Why not pair a mini-reactor with the Cyclone Engine in automoobiles? Zero carbon cars.

Well, Ford actually developed the concept of a nuclear powered car:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

Didn't go far in the crazy 1950s

[JU_88]

We are told that supposedly by 2030 everyone must have an electric car and will be using AI in everything for everything - all while running on a power grid that relies only on Russian natural gas or wind and solar.
So Energy demand will be x10, while energy supply will be-90%

Yeah...
I think One half of the above 2030 prediction is simply not to happen.

[Platapus]

We already have a thread on this

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Platapus

We already have a thread on this

I expect Jim will merge this thread into the other when he return from Mexico.

Markus