Are EVs the silver bullet?

[cougar]

Came across this article today:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/automotive-announcement-windsor-1.6393463

An announcement that by 2024 a plant in Windsor, Ontario will be producing thousands of EV batteries a year. 

Is this good news, or should we take the whole idea with a grain of salt?

According to unverified data I pulled from the internet, we have approximately 55,000 EVs in Canada, while the number of registered vehicles in 2015 was over 33 million.

This means the percentage of EV's out of the total number of vehicles is less than 0.2%.  In other words it is close to 0%.

Where do we find the energy to power 33 million vehicles, many of them large pickups and trucks, capable of hauling trailers?    

While we are trying to grow the economy by selling more, producing more, extracting more, we will be putting more excavators, loaders, bulldozers and all kinds of other heavy equipment to work.  Are they going to be electric powered?  And what about the airplanes generating pollution over the clouds and dropping it in the most pristine of places?

This doesn't even touch on the issue of old battery disposal or recycling.

How do you see this new "green" initiative unfold?  I do not know if we will even have enough time to see it.

 

[Moonbox]

9 hours ago, cougar said:

Where do we find the energy to power 33 million vehicles, many of them large pickups and trucks, capable of hauling trailers?  

From power plants.  A natural gas or oil-burning power plant is operating on a scale and efficiency well beyond an internal combustion engine, generating heat that would melt a car down to goo.  

If you can do it with nuclear or hydro it's even better.  Maybe one day solar and wind will be worthwhile additions to the mix, but we're definitely not there yet. 

9 hours ago, cougar said:

How do you see this new "green" initiative unfold?  I do not know if we will even have enough time to see it.

I think it's mostly immature, inefficient tech (green initiative) but EV's are getting to the point where they're economically feasible

[500channelsurfer]

We need to define 'silver bullet.'

I agree with the posts above: EVs are a step forward in increasing energy efficiency.

The energy to move a vehicle is reduced by having said energy mass-produced at power plants instead of in individual vehicle-mounted internal combustion engines.

I would like silver bullet to imply transportation at near-zero carbon emissions.

As such, we will need to figure out how to dispose of safely and/or recycle the batteries we will be making at the new Windsor plant. The battery plant also does not offer solutions to the fact that much of our energy is still produced by fossil fuels. So, there are two different issues here.

But at least with the new Windsor plant, Canada will be at the forefront of transportation energy transition.

[Moonbox]

The battery argument is kind of awkward though too...because normal cars have batteries that need to be disposed of as well (obviously smaller ones) and we've been doing that for as long as any of us have been alive.  

They're not exactly spent-uranium fuel rods.  

[500channelsurfer]

1 hour ago, Moonbox said:

The battery argument is kind of awkward though too...because normal cars have batteries that need to be disposed of as well (obviously smaller ones) and we've been doing that for as long as any of us have been alive.  

They're not exactly spent-uranium fuel rods.  

The battery argument involves the physical size of the larger batteries for propulsion being many times over what we currently utilize. And we have been doing a terrible job with the smaller ones for as long as any of us have been alive.

Edited March 24, 2022 by 500channelsurfer

[eyeball]

9 hours ago, Moonbox said:

From power plants.  A natural gas or oil-burning power plant is operating on a scale and efficiency well beyond an internal combustion engine, generating heat that would melt a car down to goo.  

If you can do it with nuclear or hydro it's even better.  Maybe one day solar and wind will be worthwhile additions to the mix, but we're definitely not there yet. 

I think it's mostly immature, inefficient tech (green initiative) but EV's are getting to the point where they're economically feasible

They should put little windmills on the roofs of cars to generate a current when you're driving around. Like beanie caps for cars. You see more boats installing them so...every little bit helps.

[ztalbot2000]

There is no silver bullet. Ever since the green movement started we have robbed Peter to pay Paul. How green is it to transport oil from other countries or via train. Do we actually gain anything from recycling when the majority of the waste is shipped overseas and burned in the open air. The environmental impact of producing and recycling EV batteries does not out weigh their gasoline counterpart. Only if there were a true clean method of producing limitless energy, will it ever be effective. Now if you want to really go off the conspiracy deep end and we have seen this in the past with the EV1 where big Industry crushed the Electric car; Supposedly unlimited energy has been created many, many times, but always been covered up. Imagine what a terrorist could do with a small battery with unlimited power. The amount of power it could release would be reason enough for any government to want to stifle the technology as well. So if you are thinking that there will ever be a silver bullet; I do not think there ever will be until we have world peace.

[Faramir]

Electric vehicles are still in their infancy.  We need to start building a second hand market in EVs.  Still not convinced on their viability.

[cougar]

14 hours ago, ztalbot2000 said:

 Imagine what a terrorist could do with a small battery with unlimited power. 

We already have those "small batteries with unlimited power" - they are called bullets or bombs.

Or you were thinking of a device / battery that is self-rechargeable from the sun?

[cougar]

8 minutes ago, Faramir said:

We need to start building a second hand market in EVs. 

What do you mean by that?

[WestCanMan]

You guys have all of your batteries mixed up.

There's nothing to recycling old car batteries - they're mostly water and lead. They're almost 100% recyclable at low cost and if you have one to get rid of you can get real money for them ($10-20) if you take them to Canadian Tire, etc.

The batteries that we don't do a good job of recycling are the millions of nasty little AA batteries that end up in landfills, eventually leaking out toxins. You can take them to Staples, etc, and dispose of them for free, but it's so much easier for people to just throw them in the trash.

EV batteries are over 1,000 pounds and they're very expensive to partially recycle. https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgxke4/when-tesla-says-it-recycles-100-of-its-batteries-what-does-that-mean