Electric RV

[dougm]

Personally i think the entire electric vehicle thing is a mute point. If you take everyone out of fossil fuel burning vehicles and put them in electric vehicles so that they arent polluting the environment, where do you get the electricity to charge 4 billion electric automobiles that didnt previously exist?? You have to build more fossil fuel driven power plants. You still have to build the vehicles which requires massive amounts of energy that only fossil fuels can provide. Solar will never replace fossil fuels. Then you have the environmental concerns, the claim is that the burning of fossil fuels is damaging the environment. What about batteries? Do you know how caustic and toxic battery acid is? What about the emmisions from all of the new factories that are going to build these caustic plastic boxes we call batteries? Not to mention that every battery requires the use of oil to create the plastics used in making the batteries. Solar and wind will never produce enough energy to create tires, batteries, sheetmetal, wires, ect.... Watch a video or two on youtube about a steel refinery. Solar and wind will never reduce or replace the use of fossil fuels. What about solar panels? It requires fossil fuels for the production of the plastics and metal frames and wires. You may feel like your doing your part with an electric car, but in reality its doing nothing more than shifting where the fossil fuel pollution originates. Someone is going to pipe up and say we can all put up a charging station at home with solar power. So now eveyrone that owns a car wants a soalr charging station at home, thats going to require massive amounts of batteries, aluminum frames for solar panels, plastics, ect, ect... that were not previously being produced contributing to the pollution of the environment and the burning of fossil fuels. Solar power isnt an on demand power source, if the sun isnt shining there is no power being produced, wind turbines are the same way, if the wind isnt blowing ther is no power. Solar and wind will never replace or reduce the burning of fossil fuels. It requires huge amounts of energy just to build those items required for wind turbines and solar.

[chin_k]

Those are good points, dougm. I think the most significant point of EV is that it is more efficient when compare to ICE even if you have to generate the electricity with coal/NG/oil. The flexibility of having the power plant out in the country away from urban environment can make a significant difference to health of millions of people (at the detriment of wild life, etc., but we don't see it so it is fine). Another thing is that you have the option of generating the electricity from hydro/solar/etc., when before, you are relied on the petroleum. Electrification is the perfect solution, and someone has to be pretty narrow minded and myopic to think otherwise, but at least it give us options and flexibility.

Now, when it come to the exact number for "cost," everyone (both sides) have such a different and complicated methods that I will need to get a degree in accounting and may still not get how they got the number.

[dougm]

Well, i dont know that i subscribe to the statement "if we dont see it then its fine". Thats like saying the Fukishima nuclear disaster had no real effect on the environment or people because we didnt see it, or because you cant see radiation. Anyway i think you missed the point which is that nothing will ever replace fossil fuels. Merely taking the fuel out of all of the vehicles and dumping it into something else to burn it, does nothing to solve the problem. Again, you crush all of the fuel burning vehicles, everyone now drives an electric vehicle. The demand for plastics of all kinds skyrockets, the demand for toxic batteries skyrockets, the demand for more electricity to charge those vehicles skyrockets. You still have to produce tires for those vehicles, you still have to produce batteries, but now those batteries are massive instead of being a small 12x8 inch starting battery. Now you have people wanting more solar systems, ect.... You can say well build more nuclear power plants, hogwash, it requires a huge amount of resources, energy, fossil fuels, and time to build even one nuclear power plant. The western United States cant even keep up with the current demand for electricity on the west coast. Imagine if everyone went out and purchased electric vehicles. Its not gonna happen man. Electricity is not a resource, it has to be created and captured which requires energy to do so. People like to claim energy from the sun is free, i say no it isnt, it has to be captured and stored to be of any value which requires energy and resources to accomplish. Youre not going to run an oil refinery with a gynormous hair dryer any more than your going to melt steel and aluminum on your electric cooktop. Some things simply can not be accomplished using electricity, the amount of energy required to accomplish those tasks using electricity would exceed our ability to produce that amount of energy with the technology we have today. Thats why we continue to burn fossil fuels. I watched a video once, there are 7 gallons of oil in your average car tire not counting the oil required to actually manufacture the tire. The guys name was Mike Ruppert... heres a link, have a watch, its quite enlightening....https://documentaryheaven.com/collapse/

[chin_k]

I did got your points, dougm. There will always a demand for petroleum, but it will be mostly as a raw material instead of as a fuel. There is only a small fraction of petro that can be used as gasoline, maybe not even 10% or so, but due to the demand for gasoline, the chemists/engineers used catalysis to crack the petro so that they can use ~70% of it for gasoline. If we can save the petro for raw material, the flexibility of how we use it and the geo-political implication is significant. We have refinery nearby here, and some of the neighbors have to deal with possible hydrofluoric acid gas leak. My neighbor two door over works in one of the refineries, and he did not come home for two weeks in a recent leak (fortunately not HF) incidences due to the amount of tasks he has to deal with. Many people do not realize that gasoline is not something that you pump out of the ground. It is a very resource intensive (both technology, energy, and bureaucratic) product, and it is way too cheap for what it is. It is in a way, a heavily subsidized commodity. Now, no matter what I sound like, I am one of the people who have no problem driving 500 miles in a RV and spend hundreds of dollars on gas just to walk a trail or see some wild life. Call me hypocrite.