Originally Posted by vulnox

I hear ya, Lithium mining is hardly ideal, I have my own concerns with EV production, trust me. The only reason I bring up the points I do is that it's always improving. We find new and cleaner battery manufacturing techniques, there will be different battery chemistries that rely less on harmful mining (like Tesla moving away from batteries that require Cobalt). Everyone wants to compare EVs right now to ICE vehicles right now, and I understand why, but EVs are in their infancy in terms of actual manufacturing and development when ICE vehicles are over 100 years of constant R&D. EVs may even take the form of Hydrogen powered in the long term, which is still an EV, as the core idea is an electric motor driven vehicle and not ICE. Power source will evolve and maybe drastically change, but I don't get the complaints if the only alternative those complaining about EVs can realistically come up with is to just stick with ICE. Fracking and oil drilling is hardly free from issues. The costs and added pollution of transporting raw crude is huge, then you have the refining process, also nasty. Then you have MORE transportation to get it to gas stations. At the gas stations you have fumes and spills and electricity consumption to run the fuel pumps. Then it goes into a vehicle that burns the fuel, more fumes and nastiness, that's before getting into oil changes, fuel filter replacement, the list is a mile long.

EVs have comparable areas of pollution in their construction and ongoing energy supply, but at least in those areas it is improving. More renewable energy is coming online to charge EVs, we are getting better at replacing cells instead of entire packs when a battery pack wears out which cuts down significantly on new resource requirements. It's improving at a breakneck speed, and the complaints about EVs from five years ago rarely apply to the EV you buy today. A lot of info I see about them spoken of negatively is super out of date, but at the same time it was true only a few years ago.

I don't claim EVs solve all problems, I just take the stance that they CAN be a better answer long term than ICE.

Originally Posted by vulnox

There is a lot there which isn't entirely true. Any battery can have lower capacity if the battery gets cold enough. It's not 50% though, not even close. A lot of the loss is actually in keeping the pack warm. We had a C-Max Energi and lost about 6-7 miles of EV only range, but that was mainly due to the heater running off the battery and that is a big draw, the battery was in conditioned space. It being -30 in Canada is only an issue to battery capacity if you have to keep your vehicle outside when it is charging, but even then they are getting better about those issues by conditioning the battery before charging begins. Every main line EV does this now, Tesla, Mach E, etc. So your vehicle will warm the pack before doing full charge, and your range loss due to cold weather would be down to if it requires more energy to run the heater. Tesla is tackling this by moving their vehicles to heat pump setup, and it's been very effective. Your stats around battery range loss in cold weather is largely in older Tesla vehicles. As we continue to advance in battery tech and improve components that draw power, like the heat pump example, those penalties will be lower.

Plus, ICE vehicles have range losses in cold weather. We have to add more to gas so it doesn't freeze, which is added cost and complexity AND it hurts mileage on the vehicle. You can see 15-20+% range loss in cold weather in an ICE vehicle.

The neighborhood thing, I would need to see some actual statistics behind that because I don't buy that for a second. Neighborhoods at least in the US range from late 1800 homes up to homes built this year. Electrical demand back in the 1980s was a fraction of what it is today, since they had slightly fewer computers, 65"+ TVs, and even appliances like air fryers, microwaves, etc, weren't as ubiquitous as they are now. Our energy consumption as a society has blown WAY past 10% if what you said about them being sized that way is true, which I would bet a shiny F-150 Lightning that it isn't, at least as an ongoing rule (the 10% capacity was set at construction and never improved). Even if that is how they were sized at development, which I can maybe buy that, energy companies are constantly improving sizing for local grids. Our local electric company was in our neighborhood about a year ago running new lines to ensure every home could get up to 250 Amp service if needed. Not because we asked, or because of EVs or whatever else, but because it's their job to make sure the electrical grid is always sized to be ready for changes in needs. I am sure part of that calculation is them preparing for more EVs, and that's great!

I just get... so tired of hearing these excuses and hand wringing from people about why EVs might be an issue, when all of the issues are solvable. We can improve infrastructure and should be. Like I said in an earlier post, at one point we didn't have gas stations everywhere, fuel delivery, an entire industry built around drilling, refining, and delivering gas. The pure logistics around getting the modern fuel delivery systems in place is mind blowing if you step back and look at the supply chain as a whole. EVs at least get to start with an already in place general infrastructure outline, we just need to make upgrades and improvements, and yet all I get to hear about is how that may be difficult. It's sad to see so many people so ready to throw in the towel over the slightest possibility of required effort if it means we may have a cleaner future.

Originally Posted by stubblejumper11

As to the sizing of components for electrucal distribution , My background is in electricity, and I hold a red seal as an electrician. I worked in a plant where we generated power until I retired, and I have been involved in sourcing components. Price is greatly effected by capacity, especially wire, so to save costs, the equipment is sized with a very modest safety factor. What is your occupation?

Originally Posted by stubblejumper11

Repeat info

You might find this interesting

https://www.fleetforward.com/359666/how-extreme-cold-and-heat-affect-ev-range

From that link

"To understand how much outside temperature affects range, Geotab looked at anonymized data from thousands of EVs representing 102 different make/model/year combinations. The analysis showed that the average range peaks at 21.5 C (70 F) and drops above and below that temperature consistently across vehicle models.

At this optimal temperature, EVs are achieving 115% above their rated range, meaning most EV owners are exceeding the rated range of the vehicle in ideal temperature conditions. The farther above or below the temperature to the optimal 21.5 C / 70 F, the more range is lost.

At -15 C (5 F), EVs drop to 54% of their rated range, meaning a car that is rated for 250 miles (402 km) will only get on average 135 miles (217 km)."

Originally Posted by vulnox

Pistachio salesman and breeder. I appreciate your input as an "electrucal" distribution professional, but none of what you said offers evidence or constructive counter to what I wrote. You made a claim of 10% capacity buffer, which I said may be true of original planning for a neighborhood, but is absolutely not a static figure that persists for all time, it can't be. I provided examples of how life has changed in just 40 years to greatly expand electrical draw, you just came back with random job titles that you may well hold, could have just made up, or you may have not been good at. I have worked with countless people that were amazing at their job and many that were awful, but they can all hold the same job title. For a while anyway. Credentials on the internet are largely meaningless for me, but that's neither here nor there.

Our current home was built in 1984, our last was built in 2013. There is a hilarious difference in capability of each home when it comes to electrical supply. The way circuits are wired to outlets, how many are wired on one circuit, and the max amperage at the box are a mile apart, and they only have a 30 year difference in age. Our 2013 home had 200% base electrical capability compared to the 1984 house when we bought it in 2016 (I upgraded nearly everything).

So credentials or whatever aside, your claim seemed to be that neighborhoods were built with a 10% buffer over predicted usage, and I am saying that even if that was true at time of construction, it HAS to have been upgraded since then, as they did in our neighborhood that has homes from the late 70s through the late 90s.

Anyway, this is going off-topic, I am glad for your extensive professional background and hope you had (or maybe still have) a rewarding professional career.

Originally Posted by stubblejumper11

I am not at all surprised that you don't have an electrical background , your post made it very apparent. Yes we use more electronics, but modern devices are more efficient than they used to be, so the overall consumption in the average home hasn't changed as much as you would think. How often does the average home get totally rewired? The truth is that most homes built in the last 50 years have never been totally rewired, and they never will be. As to upgrading the distribution system, many subdivisions have gone decades with zero changes and to upgrade them all to handle electric vehicles will cost a great deal, so it would have to be staged in over a considerable time. And no response to the link that I posted dealing with electric vehicle ranges? The fact is that we will shift to more green energy, but it won't happen in the next decade or two, it will take a long time before the internal combustion engine disappears, especially where aircraft are concerned.

Originally Posted by VectorZ

And it still has that dopey '80s mast antenna??

Originally Posted by VectorZ

And it still has that dopey '80s mast antenna??