I just can’t see how these countries can ban fossil fuels in short order. As stated a few times, they are lacking the infrastructure to go electric at least short term.
With the recent fluctuations of the stock market and dropping of oil prices the political influence becomes much stronger in terms of controlling the economic impact to the world by reduced oil use. Many on this site have experienced recession and inflation as it relates to the price of a barrel of oil and to some extent our economy could be impacted by the reduction of fossil fuel use.

Something to think about is that many 3rd world countries need oil byproducts to sustain life ie., heat their homes. As such the use of fossil fuels will be around a long time.

Yes... the world wide war on the internal combustion engine. Many in the hobby are concerned, some are in denial- some are too old to care.

Fortunately markets in the free world are built around the consumer. If electric vehicles are made more convenient, more reliable, safer than an ICE vehicle, then the free market will kill ICE all by its self.

So if GM has a winner then why is Mary Barra is on the record in mid 2019 asking the US Government to change the "200,000 vehicle rule"? This is the the so called "tax credit cliff" which is a subsidy quota that mandates relief to the US taxpayer to stop subsidizing EV sales in the future.

US Government said no.

If GM goes into Chapter again GM could be finished. I suspect the Next 12 months are critical for Mary. as I said back on page 1 She looks to be "all in" at this time. I wish her luck.

So who gets hurt the most here? The poor who do not have the means to adapt to these changes. Meanwhile politicians spew rhetoric about how they "care" for the poor. The saddest part of all is that too many believe the rhetoric.

What price range do the batteries cost? I have solar on my house, but it feeds the grid and I get credit for what goes out and then use the grid when the solar isn't producing. I'm sure I would need more panels to charge a vehicle in addition power the house.

Socialism and its policies has little impact on the wealthy
and the poor.

The middle of the society always carries the cost because they work, and pay the majority of the taxes.

I think you can get Tesla batteries for cheap but would check into it since you already have solar.

Yep, and more fun?

Won't mean wooden rollercoasters aren't still a blast, though!

Like watching a drag race between 2 cars,in silence.

Tenney,

It is not exactly about fun or roller coasters. Please tell me what am I missing here?

Without knowing the safety of the newer upcoming Battery technology from GM what we have today is Knowledge based upon experience. What we know:

These EV's can experience multiple classes of fires:

Class A (tires, fabrics, plastics).
Class B (fuel).
Class C (lithium-ion batteries in hybrid and electric cars).
Class D (magnesium, titanium, aluminum and lithium).
Electric vehicle fires can exceed 5,000 F. Applying water or foam may cause a violent flare-up as the water molecules separate into explosive hydrogen and oxygen gases.

There are several common risks for first responders associated with electric vehicle fires:

Electrical shock (up to 400 volts).
Extremely high temperatures and thermal runaway.
Toxic fumes.
Lithium burns (respiratory and skin reactions).
Toxic runoff.
Reignition up to 24 hours after initial extinguishment.

To be fair here there are still more fires with ICE cars simply because the majority of vehicles are ICE.

Perhaps GM's new batteries are fire resistant? As of now however EV's catch fire all by themselves and that is another teething pain associated with the technology.

So you got to ask yourself? Do I put my EV in the garage at night and roll the dice?

Choices aplenty.

Don't think you're missing anything, Phil, per your take on the free market sorting things out. Spot on.

7:57 (the whole clip's kinda cool, too) ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhh3JPGEEK8

9:15 ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4C6...ature=emb_logo

seems like the electric stuff is gaining popularity fast

electric motorcycles, bicycles, lawn mowers, power washers, weed whackers, etc

even electric aircraft

https://www.theatlantic.com/sponsore...ic-flight/208/

Wayne,

For the sake of the discussion let's dig a bit further shall we? This is within the context of the burgeoning "right to repair" movement

Quote from GM: “Proponents incorrectly conflate ownership of a vehicle with ownership of the underlying computer software in a vehicle.”

GM has been able to mostly avoid the negativity here to date by simply implementing a lax enforcement stance and building a high quality product that requires on average few repairs. Kudos to GM!

John Deere... has decided to take on the farmers. Like Harley Davidson John Deere has made a calculated decision to show the people who buy, use and depend on its products "who is the boss"

Quick Background on what this issue is:

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...repair-illegal

Now a farmer is taking Deer to the mat:

“The spirit of the right-to-repair is the birthright we all share as a hot-rodding nation,” he says, channeling his inner Thomas Jefferson and Big Daddy Don Garlits".

"Big Tractor says farmers have no right to access the copyrighted software that controls every facet of today’s equipment, even to repair their own machines".

The computer sees a problem and the entire tractor is bricked right then and there - often in the field until an authorized Deere Rep can arrive to fix it or haul it back to the dealer.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...00-000-tractor

SO...What do you want to bet that with the newest electric car technology - GM will likely go full tilt in the near future with the kinds of intellectual control (“an implied license") the enforcement tactic of choice that Deer has in place today BTW all conveniently wrapped in the need for "safety" of course.goggles

So for you future electric Hot Rodding guys, here is your likely future as an "outlaw" hot rod hacker

Tractors today....cars tomorrow just saying:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/x...inian-firmware

The new electric cars can go so fast already I'm not sure how much hotrodding will be needed anyway. :-)

Interesting!

https://jalopnik.com/chevy-is-puttin...1842213938/amp

Ha, my cousin is near you (Gabriola) and drives a gas powered car... no big deal except he worked at Ballard in the 80's and always drove electric cars and motorcycles since back then. If he hasn't embraced the technology i'm sure not going to be a guinea pig for it.

The mighty 6.6 L8T Note the successor (NONE)

Everybody will be looking for this engine in the yards soon for swaps.

At least the van is going out in style because the 6.0 was uninspiring.

Croatian hot-rodder - worth sticking around for the chat circa 12:07 ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QI0b...ature=youtu.be

I happen to live within ten miles of the Deere engine plant, Product Engineering Center where Deere tractor development happens, and the factory that builds the largest Deere tractors that are shipped world-wide.
I am also connected to the farming community. There is a push-back of sorts going on from the smaller farming operations (under 3,000 acres) against this technology, it's cost and related inconvenience. There is a surge in values and sales of older pre-computerized tractors and equipment. 40 year old tractors, Deere 4440 and such, are in high demand because of their dependability, relatively low cost and ease of maintenance. On the other hand, the new several hundred thousand dollar tractors continue to sell also.

Bill W

Wayne,

Spot on well thought out analysis.

I remember my Dad saying that about my Camaro.:grin:

Mate's a hot-rodder who's found satisfaction and enjoyment working on electric motors for a while - dropping his first one into a small BMW, he said. So it's doable (if you want).

Kinda cool three-banger ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsXRIEZ1qGE

Tesla Is Now The Most Valuable Industrial Company In America

And THAT is why GM MUST go after the electric cars/trucks market with a vengeance.

“We continue to believe TSLA is fundamentally overvalued,” noted the analyst, who’s price forecast calls for a 65% plunge in the stock".

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/05/anal...ok-boomer.html


And: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/b...ock-price.html

And: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ho...pop-2020-02-04

Yes what follows is an opinion editorial, however, the conclusions are boilerplate.

Now Lets lump on Cheap Oil into the equation shall we? Keystone Pipeline, and Sustained shale oil production. Right now and for the foreseeable future there will be cheap oil, except in states of course where gasoline is taxed for political purposes that is.

Gasoline at 1.86 a gallon here yesterday. Even adjusted for inflation that is bottom of the bucket post WW2 valuation levels for gas.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"An electric automobile will convert 5-10 percent of the energy in natural gas into motion. A normal vehicle will convert 20-30 percent of the energy in gasoline into motion. That's 3 or 4 times more energy recovered with an internal combustion vehicle than an electric vehicle.

Electricity is a specialty product. It's not appropriate for transportation. It looks cheap at this time, but that's because it was designed for toasters, not transportation. Increase the amount of wiring and infrastructure by a factor of a thousand, and it's expensive.

Electricity does not scale up properly to the transportation industry due to its miniscule nature. Sure, a whole lot can be used for something, but at extraordinary expense.

Using electricity as an energy source requires two energy transformation steps, while using petroleum requires only one. With electricity, the original energy, usually chemical energy, must be transformed into electrical energy; and then the electrical energy is transformed into the kinetic energy of motion. With an internal combustion engine, the only transformation step is the conversion of chemical energy to kinetic energy in the combustion chamber.

The difference matters, because there is a lot of energy lost every time it is transformed or used. Electrical energy is harder to handle and loses more in its handling.

The use of electrical energy requires it to move into and out of the space medium (aether) through induction. Induction through the aether medium should be referred to as another form of energy, but physicists sandwich it into the category of electrical energy. Going into and out of the aether through induction loses a lot of energy.


Another problem with electricity is that it loses energy to heat production due to resistance in the wires. A short transmission line will have 20 percent loss built in, and a long line will have 50 percent loss built in. These losses are integrated because reducing the loss by half would require twice as much metal in the wires. Wires have to be optimized for diameter and strength, which means doubling the metal would be doubling the number of transmission lines.

High voltage transformers can achieve 90 percent efficiency with expensive designs, but household level voltages achieve only 50 percent efficiency. Electric motors can get up to 60 percent efficiency, but only at optimum rpms and load. For autos, they average 25 percent efficiency. Gasoline engines get 25 percent efficiency with old-style carburetors and 30 percent with fuel injection, though additional loses can occur.

Applying this brilliant engineering to the problem yields this result: A natural gas electric generating turbine gets 40 percent efficiency. A high voltage transformer gets 90 percent efficiency. A household level transformer gets 50 percent efficiency. A short transmission line gets 20 percent loss, which is 80 percent efficiency. The total is 40 percent x 90 percent x 50 percent x 80 percent = 14.4 percent of the energy recovered before the electrical system does something similar to the gasoline engine in the vehicle. Some say the electricity performs a little better in the vehicle, but it's not much.

Electricity appears to be easy to handle sending it through wires. But it is the small scale that makes it look cheap. Scaling it up takes a pound of metal for so many electron-miles. Twice as much distance means twice as much metal. Twice as many amps means twice as much metal. Converting the transportation system into an electrical based system would require scaling up the amount of metal and electrical infrastructure by factors of hundreds or thousands. Where are all those lines going to go? They destroy environments. Where is that much natural gas going to come from for the electrical generators? There is very little natural gas in existence when using it for a large-scale purpose. Natural gas must be used with solar and wind energy, because only it can be turned on and off easily for backup.


One of the overwhelming facts about electric transportation is the chicken and egg phenomenon. Supposedly, a lot of electric vehicles will create an incentive to create a lot of expensive infrastructure. There are a lot of reasons why none of the goals can be met for such an infrastructure. The basic problem is that electricity will never be appropriate for such demanding use as general transportation, which means there will never be enough chickens or eggs to balance the demand. It's like trying to improve a backpack to such an extent that it will replace a pickup truck. The limitations of muscle metabolism are like the limitations of electrical energy.

Electrons are not a space-saving form of energy. Electrons have to be surrounded by large amounts of metal. It means electric motors get heavy and large. When cruising around town, the problems are not so noticeable. But the challenges of ruggedness are met far easier with internal combustion engines. Engineers say it is nice to get rid of the drive train with electric vehicles. But in doing so, they add clutter elsewhere, which adds weight, takes up space and messes up the suspension system. Out on the highway, the suspension system is the most critical factor.

These problems will prevent electric vehicles from replacing petroleum vehicles for all but specialty purposes. The infrastructure needed for electric vehicles will never exist when limited to specialty purposes. This would be true even with the perfect battery which takes up no space and holds infinite charge"



https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-G...-Vehicles.html

One more thing. The article got the attention of the pro EV community which tried to fuzzy up the math contained in the opinion in the comments section. There is some validity however.

Lets explore There is cost and energy placed in the drilling refining and transportation of oil to make gasoline. True.

However, do not forget that the scale up for implementation and mainstreaming of EV's does not exist.

All of the infrastructure, logistics, and current economy for oil exists now and functions quite well.

So once you build in the scale up cost and the economic chaos that will be created by a sudden shift to EV infrastructure the price to implement takes on orbital level cost implications.

The conclusion is that when you apply the argument evenly to both sides oil wins again and wins conclusively.

COPO, completely agree with your analysis.

And last I heard, Tesla hasn't made a profit without government subsidies, so unless that has changed in recent months/year, then how is that the most valuable tech company if they truly aren't making a profit? There always seemed to be fuzzy math around Tesla and if GM is using them as a target/role model, they're barking up the wrong tree.

Why not do a gentle transition from ICE vehicles to EVs? A much safer and reasonable approach in my opinion. Think about it, if you're doing almost anything and you abruptly change direction, 80-90% of the time you're going to mess up and things aren't going to end well. But if you do a gentle transition, most of the time there will be a successful ending.

Why bet an entire billion dollar company on a technology that needs so much more development on both the battery side and the infrastructure side when you could continue with the ICE vehicles while heavily investing in EVs as they will most likely be the future, but ease into it. There's, IMHO, a 10-20% chance of this working out well for GM really well.

Reuters interviewed executives for both Ford and GM for the article below.

Development: Ford stock was just downgraded to Junk status and GM is now being threatened with the same potential downgrade.

So Ford is now saying this to its investors:

Executives at GM and Ford told Reuters in interviews they are serious about launching more electric vehicles in the United States in the coming years, but they are concerned about getting too far ahead of mass-market demand.

“We’re trying to time this with the natural demand of consumers (so) we’re not forced to do artificial things and we don’t violate the laws of economics,” Hau Thai-Tang, Ford’s chief product development and purchasing officer," told Reuters

I like it. Laws of economics -- Translation: We cannot build things the market will not buy.


https://www.reuters.com/article/us-a...-idUSKBN21D1KW

the automotive press is watching the sales of the Renault ZOE EV

https://insideevs.com/news/399451/re...-january-2020/

Considering that gas is priced at $1.65/gal at our local Sam's Club, not sure the demand for EV's is there. I know this may be temporary, but anything close to $2/gal will diminish the desire for EV's a great deal, IMHO.

$4 to $5 per gallon was the tipping point when I was on the Volt program (now ten years ago).

That was when we would see sales shift from large SUVs and pickups to small cars.

K

Solar Charging May Be The Key To Shoring Up America's Rural EV Infrastructure

https://jalopnik.com/solar-charging-...-ru-1842476405

Plan B:

https://www.foxnews.com/auto/general...ctric-vehicles