Damning new report finds nearly all major car companies are actively sabotaging world’s efforts to avoid catastrophic global warming, and Japan companies are the worst.
I’m only buying Toyota because it didn’t get sucked into the stupid EV craze. They have common sense.
The U.S. doesn’t even have the electrical grid to currently manage many parts of the U.S., especially California. How tf are we going to introduce a product that will require electricity, straining the electrical grid further beyond its capacity? It’s fkin nonsense.
Not to mention… the number of EVs (Teslas) that were having battery failures during the Winter in the midwest. And this last Winter was mild.
I think the OP has a point here: most of North America is distinctly not urban, distinctly not pedestrianized, and really spread apart. EVs take a substantial range hit in the cold, which might not be a problem in the Montreal area but is a bit more of an issue when living in bumfuck, Wisconsin.
I have relatives up in Saguenay where temperatures reached -50 last year. They have EVs and it’s not an issue. Sure the range and efficiency drops, but I wouldn’t say they break or become unuseable
Thanks. I find that quite fascinating, honestly. How is it that in the Americas, EVs - or at least Teslas and their charging stations were failing but in Norway apparently this is not an issue they face.
In the U.S. extreme heat and extreme cold is bad for the electrical grid. He have blackouts / brownouts and rolling blackouts during these extreme weather/temperature conditions.
First of all, you need to check your attitude. I don’t know why you’re being so aggressive.
Second, I’m not a liar. I fucking live here and my cousin who has TWO Teslas for his family has never encountered any problems. I have other relatives who have other EVs from different makes who never had problems. The vast majority of people with EVs here, even in the northern regions where it gets fucking cold, don’t have problems.
And third, Tesla’s get stranded everywhere, regardless of temperature or weather, more than any other EVs, mainly because they’re poorly built PoS cars.
It was common in the Midwest. And I just literally gave you the keywords to google search… there’s all the sources you need for the limited information I provided in my initial comment. Don’t like it? Kick rocks. You can’t re-invent reality.
Gasoline is a finite resource, so at some point all gas stations will sell out of gas. Imagine how hilarious it will be when gas cars are stranded at gas stations because there’s nothing to fill them with.
I agree, if the resource is out… there’s nothing you can do but to go to another gas station. However, gasoline in winter weather, even if it’s -30 degrees Fahrenheit, is still usable. You’re still able to pump the fuel into your vehicle. Where as with these charging stations cold temperatures is a nemesis.
I have no beef with EVs, I just think we’re putting the cart before the horse. Like building a house with no foundation, it’s ludicrous.
I’m trying to say that eventually there won’t BE another gas station, and we have to prepare for that. Progress isn’t always a straight line, but I’d still rather be moving forward than digging our heels in with something we know we can’t use forever.
No it isn’t. Crude oil is finite, but gasoline could be synthesized from other carbon and hydrogen sources (up to and including CO2 + H2O + solar power) if you really wanted to.
The process of synthesizing it is inefficient and expensive. Companies have gone bankrupt trying to make it profitable, so it really doesn’t seem like that’s an answer here, especially when we have cars that don’t require any such fuel already on the roads.
Right. At the moment, hydrogen production is too costly, energy wise. If we could find an easier, better way to make it, that would change the game entirely.
Right now there is a hydrogen refueling station in Quebec city that produces it’s own hydrogen on the spot. It takes electricity and uses water electrolysis to create hydrogen.
It’s inefficient, but it works. No need for transportation.
A highly exaggerated claim. Once you factor in all of the challenges of grid energy storage and battery manufacturing, there’s likely to be little to no difference.
I know that right now hydrogen production is really not efficient compared to simply recharging a battery. Producing hydrogen takes more electricity to produce from water electrolysis to fuel a car for the same range as it would take to simply charge a battery. This I am aware of. And that’s what I was implying in my previous comment.
However, a small hydrogen cell powered car has at least twice the range of a similar sized EV. And also, it doesn’t take hours to recharge. Only a few minutes to refill the hydrogen tank.
What I hope it that we one day find a way to efficiently produce hydrogen. Because I’d rather have to wait a couple of minutes to refuel on a long trip than having to stop for an hour every time I need to recharge.
We have a more efficient way to produce hydrogen, which is using nagural gas. That’s obviously a bad idea. You can’t change the laws of physics, producing hydrogen from water and electricity just takes that much energy.
Yeah I know that. That’s why initially I was saying it would be great if we found a better more efficient way to produce it. Obviously hinting at the fact that it wasn’t the case right now.
People don’t seem to get it. Electricity to hydrogen to electricity to motion is really, really lossy, and hydrogen leaks. It is worse than electricity to hydrogen to methane to power.
Exactly: it makes sense only if you have an excess of clean electricity to electrolyze it from water, and even then the best thing to do would be to immediately (at the point of production) use it to synthesize a liquid hydrocarbon fuel for easier transport and storage (which also has the benefit of letting it be burned in existing ICE cars).
Carbon is what matters, but not in the way the hydrogen-pushers want you to think:
It doesn’t matter if the fuel has carbon in it, if the carbon is part of the short-term carbon cycle. Biodiesel, for example, releases no net greenhouse gases even though it has lots of carbon in it.
The dirty secret of hydrogen is that the vast majority of it is made by cracking fossil methane. (My previous comment about combining hydrogen with carbon to make synthetic liquid fuel charitably presupposed it was made the right way, by electrolyzing water with solar power, but most hydrogen production is not like that)
In other words, anybody telling you that hydrogen is better for preventing climate change than biofuels – despite them containing carbon – is trying to hoodwink you.
Ok. Because over here we’ve had a hydrogen station that’s been producing hydrogen at the station itself via electrolysis using electricity from the grid. It’s been working fine so far.
I’m gonna have to look into your claim about cracking methane being the way the majority of the hydrogen is created.
Ah ok yeah I see what you mean. Thanks for providing that info.
Yeah for sure if it’s just as dirty, or worst, there’s no point. But, I feel like people forgot what my original comment was. I basically said that if we could find a better way of producing hydrogen, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles could potentially be better than EVs for many reasons. The main advantages being that you get better range and you can refuel in a couple of minutes instead of an hour.
Other than that, if we can’t find a way to produce hydrogen in a clean efficient way, of course there’s no point in continuing down that road.
This wasn’t even a debate about which vehicle type is better, or what fuel is better or any of that. It was just a discussion about the pros and cons of EVs and HFCs.
I don’t know why people got so riled up over it. Like you gotta pick a camp and defend it. Are EVs and hydrogen cars that polarising??
If that was the case, Toyota would never have created the Toyota Mirai.
And have you ever seen what happens when an EV battery is damaged? Many residential buildings with underground parkings don’t allow EVs to park underground due to the fear of the intense fires and how it can cause severe damage.
You ever wondered why traditional carmakers are pushing so hard for hydrogen? That’s because they can still reuse those super inefficient combustion engines, which they perfected in the last 50-100 years, and which is serving as a big gatekeeper to newcomers.
And with EV, they need to start from scratch like everyone else and they hate it.
Nobody is going to upgrade the grid, if there is no prospect of increased demand.
I’ve noticed that media tend to bitch equally about both surplus and shortage of certain commodities. Expensive power? Horrible! Cheap power? Catastrophe! That way the world seems even more depressing than it really is.
They should be upgrading the grid as the population and demand for electricity increases ahead of time. This is how it works in the tech world. We set the base for the upgrade and then commit to the upgrade with fall back / disaster recovery plan.
Check when the last time an installed utility performed maintenance. Now you want them to turn things off while they put in new hardware? The only thing that will drive a business to make that kind of change is if the money is behind it, which will happen when EVs are much more prevalent.
Not from all the profits made by all the people using electricity and paying for electricity? And electrical grid has redundancy. You can take down primary and secondary takes over temporarily.
That’s just the media doing its thing. Information content is a byproduct of making money. Actually, educating the public isn’t strictly necessary, because you can also manipulate emotions to attract attention and clicks.
If you’re in a city, bikes and public transportation are the answer. Rural areas are stuck with cars though. America seems to be a bit of an exception to this rule, because lots of things would need to change before any of this could potentially happen.
I’m only buying Toyota because it didn’t get sucked into the stupid EV craze. They have common sense. The U.S. doesn’t even have the electrical grid to currently manage many parts of the U.S., especially California. How tf are we going to introduce a product that will require electricity, straining the electrical grid further beyond its capacity? It’s fkin nonsense.
Not to mention… the number of EVs (Teslas) that were having battery failures during the Winter in the midwest. And this last Winter was mild.
This is the most fear mongering nonsense I’ve read on Lemmy to date
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I live in Canada, Québec more specific.
There are Teslas EVERYWHERE here. There hasn’t been any widespread reports of failing batteries.
So wherever you got your information, you might want to look somewhere else next time
Also, you can keep your insults to yourself. Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn’t mean you can call them an idiot.
Montreal?
I think the OP has a point here: most of North America is distinctly not urban, distinctly not pedestrianized, and really spread apart. EVs take a substantial range hit in the cold, which might not be a problem in the Montreal area but is a bit more of an issue when living in bumfuck, Wisconsin.
I have relatives up in Saguenay where temperatures reached -50 last year. They have EVs and it’s not an issue. Sure the range and efficiency drops, but I wouldn’t say they break or become unuseable
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Google: Norway EVs.
Thanks. I find that quite fascinating, honestly. How is it that in the Americas, EVs - or at least Teslas and their charging stations were failing but in Norway apparently this is not an issue they face.
In the U.S. extreme heat and extreme cold is bad for the electrical grid. He have blackouts / brownouts and rolling blackouts during these extreme weather/temperature conditions.
First of all, you need to check your attitude. I don’t know why you’re being so aggressive.
Second, I’m not a liar. I fucking live here and my cousin who has TWO Teslas for his family has never encountered any problems. I have other relatives who have other EVs from different makes who never had problems. The vast majority of people with EVs here, even in the northern regions where it gets fucking cold, don’t have problems.
And third, Tesla’s get stranded everywhere, regardless of temperature or weather, more than any other EVs, mainly because they’re poorly built PoS cars.
I think Teslas get stranded because they lie about their remaining range
It was common in the Midwest. And I just literally gave you the keywords to google search… there’s all the sources you need for the limited information I provided in my initial comment. Don’t like it? Kick rocks. You can’t re-invent reality.
You know what? I don’t like your attitude one single bit.
I’m not arguing with you.
Take a chill pill. Go outside and touch some grass.
Bruh has never experienced the pain of getting an older carbureted car going in the cold.
That is true… apparently diesel is pretty bad in the winter as well.
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Indeed!
Then we never should have used diesel or carburetors.
Gasoline is a finite resource, so at some point all gas stations will sell out of gas. Imagine how hilarious it will be when gas cars are stranded at gas stations because there’s nothing to fill them with.
Lmao Dead.gfy
I agree, if the resource is out… there’s nothing you can do but to go to another gas station. However, gasoline in winter weather, even if it’s -30 degrees Fahrenheit, is still usable. You’re still able to pump the fuel into your vehicle. Where as with these charging stations cold temperatures is a nemesis.
I have no beef with EVs, I just think we’re putting the cart before the horse. Like building a house with no foundation, it’s ludicrous.
I’m trying to say that eventually there won’t BE another gas station, and we have to prepare for that. Progress isn’t always a straight line, but I’d still rather be moving forward than digging our heels in with something we know we can’t use forever.
Agreed.
You should act like it, then.
No it isn’t. Crude oil is finite, but gasoline could be synthesized from other carbon and hydrogen sources (up to and including CO2 + H2O + solar power) if you really wanted to.
Cool.
The process of synthesizing it is inefficient and expensive. Companies have gone bankrupt trying to make it profitable, so it really doesn’t seem like that’s an answer here, especially when we have cars that don’t require any such fuel already on the roads.
Sure seems easier.
The only reason Toyota is pushing back against EV is because they are so heavily invested in hydrogen powered vehicles, which isn’t going to happen.
Right. At the moment, hydrogen production is too costly, energy wise. If we could find an easier, better way to make it, that would change the game entirely.
Not just costly. Transportation and distribution is a big problem.
With electrical we already have an entire distribution network, it just needs to be significantly (but gradually) upgraded.
Right now there is a hydrogen refueling station in Quebec city that produces it’s own hydrogen on the spot. It takes electricity and uses water electrolysis to create hydrogen.
It’s inefficient, but it works. No need for transportation.
Ah, the magical technological advancement that is only possible with hydrogen. While ignoring the advancements with EVs.
EVs are already way more efficient. You’re repeating things that have been discussed ages ago as something new.
A fuel cell car is an EV.
But it’s an electric car with a much lower efficiency than one that uses batteries
A highly exaggerated claim. Once you factor in all of the challenges of grid energy storage and battery manufacturing, there’s likely to be little to no difference.
Ok calm down, you don’t need to be condescending.
I know that right now hydrogen production is really not efficient compared to simply recharging a battery. Producing hydrogen takes more electricity to produce from water electrolysis to fuel a car for the same range as it would take to simply charge a battery. This I am aware of. And that’s what I was implying in my previous comment.
However, a small hydrogen cell powered car has at least twice the range of a similar sized EV. And also, it doesn’t take hours to recharge. Only a few minutes to refill the hydrogen tank.
What I hope it that we one day find a way to efficiently produce hydrogen. Because I’d rather have to wait a couple of minutes to refuel on a long trip than having to stop for an hour every time I need to recharge.
We have a more efficient way to produce hydrogen, which is using nagural gas. That’s obviously a bad idea. You can’t change the laws of physics, producing hydrogen from water and electricity just takes that much energy.
Yeah I know that. That’s why initially I was saying it would be great if we found a better more efficient way to produce it. Obviously hinting at the fact that it wasn’t the case right now.
The entire premise of hydrogen is dumb.
We would legitimately be better off combining it with CO2 to make synthetic gasoline and just use it with normal vehicles and infrastructure.
People don’t seem to get it. Electricity to hydrogen to electricity to motion is really, really lossy, and hydrogen leaks. It is worse than electricity to hydrogen to methane to power.
Exactly: it makes sense only if you have an excess of clean electricity to electrolyze it from water, and even then the best thing to do would be to immediately (at the point of production) use it to synthesize a liquid hydrocarbon fuel for easier transport and storage (which also has the benefit of letting it be burned in existing ICE cars).
Dude, that produces methane, I think?. The whole point is to avoid combustion engines to prevent greenhouse gasses.
The way hydrogen is being used is to work with hydrogen fuel cells which is electric.
Carbon is what matters, but not in the way the hydrogen-pushers want you to think:
It doesn’t matter if the fuel has carbon in it, if the carbon is part of the short-term carbon cycle. Biodiesel, for example, releases no net greenhouse gases even though it has lots of carbon in it.
The dirty secret of hydrogen is that the vast majority of it is made by cracking fossil methane. (My previous comment about combining hydrogen with carbon to make synthetic liquid fuel charitably presupposed it was made the right way, by electrolyzing water with solar power, but most hydrogen production is not like that)
In other words, anybody telling you that hydrogen is better for preventing climate change than biofuels – despite them containing carbon – is trying to hoodwink you.
Ok. Because over here we’ve had a hydrogen station that’s been producing hydrogen at the station itself via electrolysis using electricity from the grid. It’s been working fine so far.
I’m gonna have to look into your claim about cracking methane being the way the majority of the hydrogen is created.
From https://solaredition.com/green-hydrogen-production-paths/ :
Only “green hydrogen” (4%) is actually good. For the other 96%, it would be better to just use the source hydrocarbon as fuel directly.
In other words, for the most part, the entities pushing hydrogen are mostly engaging in greenwashing bullshit.
See also:
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/truth-about-hydrogen-latest-trendiest-low-carbon-solution
https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/pictures/HydrogenProduction_CGEP_FactSheet_052621.pdf
Ah ok yeah I see what you mean. Thanks for providing that info.
Yeah for sure if it’s just as dirty, or worst, there’s no point. But, I feel like people forgot what my original comment was. I basically said that if we could find a better way of producing hydrogen, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles could potentially be better than EVs for many reasons. The main advantages being that you get better range and you can refuel in a couple of minutes instead of an hour.
Other than that, if we can’t find a way to produce hydrogen in a clean efficient way, of course there’s no point in continuing down that road.
This wasn’t even a debate about which vehicle type is better, or what fuel is better or any of that. It was just a discussion about the pros and cons of EVs and HFCs.
I don’t know why people got so riled up over it. Like you gotta pick a camp and defend it. Are EVs and hydrogen cars that polarising??
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If that was the case, Toyota would never have created the Toyota Mirai.
And have you ever seen what happens when an EV battery is damaged? Many residential buildings with underground parkings don’t allow EVs to park underground due to the fear of the intense fires and how it can cause severe damage.
Have you ever seen what happens when a hydrogen tank ruptures? It’s the Ford Pinto all over again.
You ever wondered why traditional carmakers are pushing so hard for hydrogen? That’s because they can still reuse those super inefficient combustion engines, which they perfected in the last 50-100 years, and which is serving as a big gatekeeper to newcomers.
And with EV, they need to start from scratch like everyone else and they hate it.
Uh… No. Sorry my friend but we’re talking about hydrogen fuel cell technology. Not hydrogen combustion.
You should look into what hydrogen fuel cells are. Here’s a video that explains it.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Here’s a video that explains it
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
And still proudly producing gas powered vehicles which I will continue to outfit my family with.
Nobody is going to upgrade the grid, if there is no prospect of increased demand.
I’ve noticed that media tend to bitch equally about both surplus and shortage of certain commodities. Expensive power? Horrible! Cheap power? Catastrophe! That way the world seems even more depressing than it really is.
Let’s be honest: They’re not even going to upgrade the grid if it fails and burns down half the state
They should be upgrading the grid as the population and demand for electricity increases ahead of time. This is how it works in the tech world. We set the base for the upgrade and then commit to the upgrade with fall back / disaster recovery plan.
Check when the last time an installed utility performed maintenance. Now you want them to turn things off while they put in new hardware? The only thing that will drive a business to make that kind of change is if the money is behind it, which will happen when EVs are much more prevalent.
Not from all the profits made by all the people using electricity and paying for electricity? And electrical grid has redundancy. You can take down primary and secondary takes over temporarily.
Why would they need to turn anything off? That’s not how they expand capacity in the Netherlands. Why would it be needed?
That’s just the media doing its thing. Information content is a byproduct of making money. Actually, educating the public isn’t strictly necessary, because you can also manipulate emotions to attract attention and clicks.
Gas stations popped up where they could make money, cars came first and then the gas stations.
Cool… I’ll buy an EV when both EV and electrical grid issues have been resolved. Until then… LOL
Driving my Prius to own the libs
Maybe one day when the libs work towards better public mass transportation, they’ll drive their EVs to own the libs.
Been driving a VW ID4 for 3 years in Ireland. They’re lovely to drive. Zero battery issues, zero charging issues. The future is electric.
Stupid is as stupid does.
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If you’re in a city, bikes and public transportation are the answer. Rural areas are stuck with cars though. America seems to be a bit of an exception to this rule, because lots of things would need to change before any of this could potentially happen.