Republican introduces new bill to end the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric cars

[NNadir]

19. Well, I don't get my science from articles in Forbes, nor do I credit the idea of ignoring...

external costs, what people pay in health costs from internal costs, the highly subsidized procedure where people are allowed to dump the waste they create at no expense to themselves. I have no use for "economic analyses" that ignore external costs, and I was very pleased to learn that in my son's requisite curriculum in his (materials science) engineering programs, external costs were calculated. This gives me hope that the younger generation, who are going to have to clean up all this consumer shit we keep generating while crowing mindlessly about how "green" it is, will learn and turn from our grotesque irresponsibility.

So let's start there:

A study a few years back found that in China, which has 100 electric vehicles, the death rate per mile from pollution was higher for electric cars than it was for electric cars in that country. (This is not true for electric scooters, as opposed to cars. Scooters make up the bulk of electric vehicles in China.)

Electric Vehicles in China: Emissions and Health Impacts (Cherry et al Environ. Sci. Technol., 2012, 46 (4), pp 2018–2024.

Now, despite all the horseshit bandied about about wind and solar, the overwhelming source of primary energy generation on this planet is generated by combusting dangerous fossil fuels. These remain, according to the most recent edition of the World Energy Outlook - put out by the IEAE - in 2017. The 2018 edition will come out in November, and the disturbing trends of the 21st century will, I expect not change.

The thermal efficiency of most dirty dangerous fossil fuel power plants typically runs at around 33%-34% in the transformation of chemical energy to electrical energy; there are combined cycle plants that do better, but they do not dominate the world power supply.

The electrical energy is transported, then reconverted into chemical energy - you can feel the entropy in this process by simply placing your hand on a charging lithium batttery and feeling the heat. (If the car requires a cooling fan during this process, so much the worse.) Then the chemical energy is reconverted - under temperature sensitive conditions by the way - to electrical energy, than to mechanical energy via magnetic energy. Let's say, to be generous, that each process, after the power plant operates at 35%, and every other transformation, transmission at 90%, charging at 90%, reconversion to electricity at 90% and conversion to mechanical energy at 90%

Note that these figures are somewhat generous; since we're well on the way to disturbing the climatic stability of this planet, these efficiency figures for the electrical components will be reduced by heat.

Note that despite all of the self-delusion going on about the "death of coal" it was for the entire 21st century the fastest growing source of energy on the planet, growing by 60 exajoules from 2000 to 2016.

If you make more electricity, as things stand, you're going to burn more fossil fuels, and the act of shifting the pollution from the city to rural regions is certainly morally suspect.

In any case, the product of the individual is 21.6%. It's not the impressive even if the fuel to wheel thermal efficiency of cars is what you say it is, unless you're including stopping and accelerating, a practice that electric cars also experience, albeit with some minor recovery of energy during braking.

If your thermal efficiency for gasoline cars comes from the Union of Concerned "Scientists" analysis to me; those assholes almost never know what they're talking about. When I was a dumb shit anti-nuke as a kid, I joined them. No one asked me a science question of any sort before sending me my membership card; I only needed to send a check.

I read real science journals, not UCS (or Greenpeace) trash.

But let's say that there was a slight efficiency gain in some cases with electrical cars as compared to gasoline cars. They would still incur the external costs of copper - and in most cases - cobalt mining (a conflict metal) and lanthanides (a fossil fuel intensive and very dirty mining business) and the building of a robust power source that would require many more power plants Note that electrical systems perform less efficiently when hot, and since the world has bought into the interminable bullship spewed out by the Union of Concerned "Scientists," we have failed miserably at addressing climate change.

I think the car CULTure in any form is unsustainable, but to the extent that we need some self propelled vehicles, notably buses, tractors on farms, delivery vehicles, ambulances, police cars and fire trucks, a thermal to chemical to mechnical transformation is thermodynamically better.

To the extent we'd like to have these vehicles, I propose that carbon dioxide and/or water be subject to thermochemical cycles to split them, with CO being subject to the water gas reaction to give hydrogen, and that the necessary cooling steps involve one Brayton cycle (the hydrogenation of carbon monoxide, and in fact the dioxide are both exothermic). Cooling the high temperature gases could then be used to run a rankine cycle, or even two rankine cycles depending on the working fluids. The product I have in mind would be the easily liquified gas DME, dimethyl ether. The reaction by which it forms (in the CO case is : 8H2 + 2 CO <-> H3C-O-CH3 + 8H2O. It's an exothermic reaction, and thus Brayton avialable.

Since this system can be designed to be carbon negative depending on the source of carbon and the requirement that all thermal energy be produced by nuclear heat at approximately 100C or higher, I believe it would be more efficient, infinitely cleaner, and far more sustainable than all this useless electric car trash we're always hearing about.

DME can replace not just gasoline and diesel fuel; it can also work with minor modifications to infrastructure in all applications of dangerous natural gas, all uses for coal with the possible exception of the reduction of iron to steel (although the actual reducing agent is CO in steel making), and all uses for LPG.

It has, in contrast to dangerous natural gas a very low GWP, with an atmospheric half life of about 5 days. It's critical temperature is 150C.

It's a wonderfuel.

Have a nice day tomorrow.