GM to be all electric by 2035

The slave owners in china (lithium) and the Congo (cobalt) thank you for your idiocy, gm.

I'm all for working out EV's as second vehicles when the upstream issues are taken care of (cleaner mining and human rights) and you can charge in the time it takes your family to grab a quick bite and hit the restrooms. Lingering around a truck stop in the middle of nowhere for 6 hours isn't happening.

I'm also not looking forward to the daily blackouts which will occur as we stress current capacity and refuse to add new.

 

Yep. Not to get too heavy, but the only thing that changes quickly in this world is us. The world itself, and the things in it, change a lot slower than we believe they do or had hoped they would.

 

It's sounds like GM is setting itself up for yet another tax payer bail-out.

 

I bought some stock back in the late 90s in some companies who were working on the hydrogen distribution infrastructure. That didn’t pan out obviously...

 

I'm not too sure about that. I remember as a kid getting only one tv channel, our phone was on a shared party line, I used a slide rule in math class, most electronics had tubes, the Boy Scouts didn't have girls. Things have changed quite fast actually. Some things do change slower if not realistic for the times.

 

Need to start building more nuclear power plants instead of shutting them down. Lots ‘o electricity available there.

 

I agree... what wars will be waged / governments either supported ($$$$) or dismantled, human slave labor will be exploited in order to harvest all the elements for these batteries? AND... what happens to all the spent batteries? How much of them can truly be “recycled “. AND... how much fossil fuels are used to do all of this? Are we really coming out ahead?

 

this,

its a pipe dream right now, oil isn't going anywhere for a while.

 

The killer is infrastructure. Reliable infrastructure to meet demand. Utilities are highly regulated and take up a large footprint. I expect even more regulations. It can take years to even move from the drawing board and even more years to build up the infrastructure. There also is the "not in my backyard" and "your blocking my view" issues not to mention the harm to the environment folks, and numerous other issues like fighting over right of way, and most importantly.......lawyers in the mix. Hybrids should be the way to go for now. EVs for all is a dream.

 

and what happens when the lithium is all gone? finite resource and all that fun stuff.

$50/month?? i'd love it if my xcel bill was only 50 bucks. or even 200. we're running about $320 through the winter and 220ish in the summer. i don't want to think about how fast that meter would be spinning with a 220 outlet charging a vehicle 8-10 hours a day.

this might be the year for serious consideration to a solar system on the house.

 

The "future" is distant.

 

Trying to phrase this in a way that doesn't get me a ban.

The biggest obstacle to any of the new tech for vehicles is going to be politics. There are agendas on all sides that are pro or anti whatever tech for reasons that have nothing to do with sustainability, but rather political motivations. Humanity isn't all united in one direction, and neither is the nation, so there is no common goal for these things and the motivations vary wildly.


Now, enough of that nonsense. Until the EV tech gets to a point that it can do everything fossil fuel vehicles can do at a cost effective level (meaning that EVERYONE can afford it) it isn't going to happen. The trouble is that everyone is trying to push from one extreme to the other, and it isn't feasible. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles seem like a logical stepping stone along the path, but it's being bypassed for the sake of brownie points and being PC.

I don't think there is a single person who wouldn't be just fine with an EV if it didn't have any negatives to their current arrangement. Get me the same range, fill up time, capabilities under load, and cost. Then we'll talk.

 

I work in Oil and Gas, just ask my biggest customer, Saudi Aramco what they think about EV. They are KILLING right now, we cannot keep up with their orders. The USA alone has roughly 300 years of fuel reserves WHEN they actually start using their own supply. EV is here and will grow slowly, but we wont see the death of ICE in our lifetimes by any stretch. Airplanes will be what saves ICE. To get the power you need to get a 747 off the ground with electrical power will require a battery that the size of the plane itself. As long as planes, aerospace are using gas and we dont have a better way of actually producing electricity, gas is going nowhere.

Also, everybody forgets about the developing world, which is a big percentage of the earth and human population. You think those countries are going to go from 50 person villages and dirt roads straight to EV power in the next 50 years? They cant even keep the light on reliably if they actually manage to have electricity in some of their areas.

 

So will General Motors merge with General Electric? And will GE continue to make engines or are we going to see all electric aircraft too? Maybe they should merge and call the new company General Confusion.

Ha! Funny that aircraft were just mentioned while I typed...

 

We have better ways of producing electricity right now. Nuclear has a small footprint, is very efficient, and could satisfy demand in a cost effective manner. It's just been demonized and made out to be so scary that people get apoplectic at the mention of it.

 

Scale is the problem, as is the small potential for catastrophic issues. Chernobyl wont be hospitable for hundreds of years, whereas cleaning up the emissions from a tailpipe or crap in the air pales in comparison to the small chance, but non reversible nature of nuclear problems.

 

This is the true tell regarding the lack of viability in the EV market. Look at the Chevy Volt. In 2010 or 2011 Doug Parks, the guy in charge of the Volt, confirmed that the company lost money on every Volt sold. That was with a subsidy.

General rule: If you product isn't profitable it isn't ready for market.

 

but... but...

 

That was also a reactor with subpar containment and an experiment that had unintended consequences that won't be repeated. That's my point, it has been demonized and made into a boogey man. Skim this article. You get more radiation flying in a plane that you do 1km from the dome at Chernobyl. There are hotspots that you want to avoid, but it's not a nuclear wasteland.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47227767

 

Not with the white paint scheme.

 

Awesome documentary.

 

When thinking about our electric grid, it is already insufficient in places like CA, imagine 14 more years of population growth...think of just how much bigger our grid will need to be....

 

Why do you think CA just invaded Colorado, Idaho and Montana? For the futures power grid obviously. Think of them as settlers.

 

And Texas and Wyoming.... Segue to electric vehicles: One of our members saw a Rivian Truck running in Jackson, Wyoming.

 

Pretty much where I'm at..

I'm buying a new 5th gen 4runner before the 6th gen comes out. Then I'm buying a used Tundra as a project (my second Tundra). I'm riding out the electric car thing in some old school Toyotas.

 

Politics can be a barricade, and can prop up lesser technologies for less than scientific reasons (ethanol), but when a technology becomes efficient and cost-effective enough, it doesn't take much marketing to get people on board with it, which eventually changes the politics. It all comes down to the real science and the real costs. All EV cannot happen for many reasons, most of which have been stated already. But other technologies may eventually become developed enough to replace the ICE. I don't think this will happen in my lifetime, but technology is advancing very quickly, so I may be surprised.

And the WEIGHT of the batteries required for EV airplanes will completely offset anything else. UNLESS newer battery technologies that do not use lead, lithium, or other heavy metals is developed.

I agree with you, but there have been amazing advances in nuclear FUSION, which is much safer and infinitely more efficient than even nuclear fission. I think fusion reactors will be made available for use in the next 20-30 years.

Chernobyl was a political screwup that led to a disaster. Even back then, most nuclear powers had regulations in place to prevent that from happening. The Russian people, including their scientists, are terrified of contradicting the political powers in charge. Chernobyl, or some other preventable incident, could easily happen again in Russia because nothing has changed in that regard.

Years ago, the company I worked for got a contract to do some work in Russia. Since I (among others) had the skill set to be used, I went through the Russian equivalent of OSHA training. There were a lot of similarities, but I saw several holes in their safety net that would allow a management (or political) decision to override safety in the implementation of their control systems. Thankfully, I was able to get on another project and make myself "unavailable" for the trip. My main motivation at the time was that I had small kids at home and didn't want to be away from them for months at a time.

 

That just proves you should shouldn't put russians in charge of nukes. Or AAA batteries.

The other case in Japan proves that unaccountable and corrupt government needs proper legal and democratic oversight. That reactor was made in the 50's? and likely shouldn't have been put in an earthquake zone (which means maybe nuclear isn't for them...) Remember that post-war Japan was run by "Japan Inc" which was a cabal of corrupt oligarchs more akin to a mafia than a democracy. They are in a different spot than they were in the 50's.

There is a whole lot of potential new reactor designs that won't melt down if they could get the sort of funding we've pissed away on subsidies to bird chomping, bat shredding eco-crucifixes spoiling the rural landscape. It is so stupid that here in Ontario they cut down a tree with nesting bald eagles to make an access road for a windmill to kill the rest of the wildlife. To save the planet don't you know...

And don't get me started on Germany closing their nuke plans and re-opening coal plants while subsidizing EV's

 

Chernobyl plant as in most of USSR was the piss poor RBMK nuke reactor. An accident waiting to happen. The reactor actually went unstable during a safety test! There were known issues with the RBMK. The Fukushima incident was a perfect storm. The Japanese version of our NRC is quite good. Japan is in a Catch 22 position. They need reliable power for a densely populated 1st world country. Volcanic activity and earthquakes put their nuke plants in a precarious situation. On the other hand, here in the US nukes have been quite safe except for the Three Mile Island incident which was contained fairly quickly and we learned from that. I worked for Southern California Edison at their calibration facility in support of San Onofre nuke plant. Shut down now. Was quite an amazing place. Numerous safe guards in place. The engineering put into that facility was nothing I'd ever seen before. Built in an earthquake zone. There were never any serious issues after a quake hit that I recall. I have no problems with nukes we built here but maybe not build them in earthquake prone areas. Modern better designed nuke plants can take up a much smaller footprint and provide more MW. Makes more sense to me especially with the demand that will be needed with what is coming down the pike.

 

From my understanding, the grid out there is not insufficient for scientific or engineering reasons. I'll let you come to the conclusion on your own.