What If We All Drove Electric Vehicles?

By the dates of the cars listed, one could easily guess the video is at least ½ decade old. It's almost like a History Channel show, because many of the assumptions are either proved valid or incorrect. For example, there is a presumption that the grid must necessarily be used for recharging cars, as opposed to battery storage of electricity - which is now shown to be invaluable & practical in many places around the world where liquid fossil fuels would otherwise have to be shipped. Also in the vid, there is a presumption that Battery Technology would get better, which has already been happening. One thing kind of peculiar, there was a emphasis on the importance of CO2 emissions, but no emphasis on the eventual finite nature of fossil fuel.
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Half a decade? ... That's 2014. ... My Gen-2 is a 2005.

 

maybe note the words, "at least" ?

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"we all" is pretty big... I just saw this engadget article about the problem of switching 100%

 

If there isn't even a need to switch to 100% ev, how is this a problem? Isn't suggesting the problem of 100% ev's a problem in and of itself?

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My understanding is that the known supply of fossil fuels is now large enough to not be a limiting factor. Absent carbon capture and sequestration, after we clobber ourselves with excessive CO2 emissions, we will still have plenty more fossil fuels available to mine.

Do note that these fossil fuel stashes are not just the cheap easy stuff we used to drill for, but include the dirtier and costlier oil shales and tar sands that have more recently come within technical and economic reach. And lower grade coals too.

 

"at least" 5-years is not very old. Considering that the Prius came out in 1997 ... and the Insight in 1999.


The Toyota Prius (/ˈpriːəs/; Japanese:トヨタ プリウス Toyota Puriusu) is a full hybrid electric automobile developed by Toyota and manufactured by the company since 1997. Initially offered as a 4-door sedan, it has been produced only as a 5-door liftback since 2003.

The Honda Insight is a hybrid electric vehicle that was manufactured and marketed by Honda in its first generation as a three-door, two passenger liftback (1999–2006) and in its second generation as a five-door, five passenger liftback (2009–2014). In its third generation, it became a four-door sedan (2019-present). It was Honda's first model with Integrated Motor Assist system and the most fuel efficient gasoline-powered car available in the U.S. without plug-in capability — for the length of its production run.

Don't mind me ... I've been up ... working ... since Wednesday. ​

 

i couldn't watch it, i don't like being lectured

 

..... & it looked cool. It looked REAL cool.
DOWN sides ;
~ it was only a 3 cylinder
~ it's traction pack, true to Hondas M.O. was programmed to do WAY too much of the work, like the Civic, which led to premature traction pack degradation & a class action.
~ it was only a 2-seater.
~ its body was aluminum, to cut down weight, but that increased its costs.
~ it was sold in less then a handful of states because it was more for show, not profit.
..... & lastly, considering it's 3 cylinder engine, minimal size for passenger /cargo, light body, it should have done MUCH better than a mear 15% higher mpg's then the 4 passenger, heaver, less 'cool' looking Gen 1 prius, which looked more like the Toyota Echo ..... but it didn't. So Toyota actually won round 1 of the auto efficiency fight.

it's true that low grade supplies will take us out more years, and fracking has increased production, but the rosiest pictures are often at odds with the 'experts' on the conservation side. But even if the "lots of consumption isn't-a-big-deal" side is ½ right, there's this;

in short, although slowing, population growth is exponential. Another billion people soon to be on the roster in India & China, & they won't be wanting to live in huts & drive carts with donkeys. We're talking billions more that want to live like high consuming industrial countries do.
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I was just pointing out 2 cool cars that ... I believe ... started the high-mileage launch.
I was also kinda pointing out that it was a lot longer ago than half a decade. It's taken Me this long to get a Prius ... and I got one 14-years old. LOL @ Me.

 

Perhaps my wording could have been better. I'd didn't mean to suggest an endless supply of fossil fuels. Rather, AGW will be a catastrophic issue well before we run short of fossil fuels. Remedying AGW (absent CCS being a major component of the remedies) essentially requires a considerable reduction in fossil fuel burn rate. That reduction will automatically stretch out the fossil fuel situation well into the future.

 

So everything will be fine once most of us have died off?

 

Hand me my glove.

 

Not everything be fine. But at least the fossil fuel supply will remain adequate.

 

Published in "May 27, 2015" it is more than a little dated. But I stopped after he counted the number of hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and EVs. Starting a lecture with a 'show of hands' is a poor approach and then I noticed the date.

Since Oct 2005, I've owned and operated various Prius until Mar 26, 2019 when we traded-in our last Prius. I'm used to driving a 'minority' car and happy to see more Prius on the road. I'm also quite happy with the low operational costs.

If others choose to drive some other vehicle, it really isn't my business. I prefer smooth, quiet, cheap to operate cars while others prefer something else. Let them go with God.

Bob Wilson

 

Please give a link to that claim.

 

I'm sorry, but please read my subsequent posts, then do some of your own homework. "My understanding" is my personal distillation of many other's writings over the past few years, not a specific item I can link.

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If you are too lazy to do your own homework, and must have me post some links, then here some starters I very quickly dug up:

How long before we run out of fossil fuels? - Our World in Data
"However, whilst depleting reserves could become a pressing issue 50-100 years from now, there is another important limit to fossil fuel production: climate change. ... To keep average global temperature increase below two degrees celsius ..., we can thus calculate the cumulative amount of carbon dioxide we can emit while maintaining a probability of remaining below this target temperature. This is what we define as a 'carbon budget'. ... the budget for having a 50 percent chance of keeping average warming below two degrees celsius was estimated to be approximately 275 billion tonnes of carbon ...

Here's the crucial factor: if the world burned all of its currently known reserves (without the use of carbon capture and storage technology), we would emit a total of nearly 750 billion tonnes of carbon. This means that we have to leave around two-thirds of known reserves in the ground if we want to meet our global climate targets. ...

The quantity of fossil fuels which we would have to abandon is often referred to as 'unburnable carbon'. According to a widely-quoted study by Carbon Tracker, there is significant potential for this unburnable carbon to result in major economic losses. ...The study defines this as 'stranded assets'.

So whilst many worry about the possibility of fossil fuels running out, it is instead expected that we will have to leave between 65 to 80 percent of current known reserves untouched if we are to stand a chance of keeping average global temperature rise below our two-degrees global target."

BP: World Reserves of Fossil Fuels - knoema.com
Coal - 1,139 billion tonnes

Fossil fuel reserves would crush climate goals: report
"Developed oil, gas and coal reserves, if exhausted, are enough to push Earth well past the threshold for dangerous climate change, according to a report published Thursday. ...
Scientists calculate that budget to be less than 1,000 billion tonnes of CO2."

Reserves and Resources
"The authors estimate that we have already burned fossil fuels containing about 244 Gt C, from an original 3700 Gt C, leaving 3456 Gt C to be burned."

[NB: don't confuse raw C with emitted CO2. A ton of C produces 3.67 tons of emitted CO2]

How much of the world's fossil fuel can we burn?
"... Limiting global warming to the agreed global target of 2C means staying within a ‘carbon budget’ of 565 GT (gigatonnes or billion tonnes). That is a fifth of the 2,795 GT that would be released if all the world’s proven oil, coal and gas reserves were burned. Therefore four-fifths of the fossil fuel must stay in the ground.

But other estimates differ. For example, a recent paper in Nature stated that although we’ll need to leave most of the coal in the ground, we can burn half the gas and two-thirds of the oil ..."

Burning all fossil fuels would scorch Earth: study
"Using up all known fossil fuel reserves would render Earth even more unliveable than scientists had previously projected, researchers said on Monday.

Average temperatures would climb by up to 9.5 degrees Celsius (17 degrees Fahrenheit)—five times the cap on global warming set at climate talks in Paris in December, they reported.

In the Arctic region—already heating at more than double the global average—the thermometer would rise an unimaginable 15 C to 20 C."

"Older models had projected that depleting fossil fuel reserves entirely would heat the planet by 4.3 C to 8.4 C. The new study revises this to between 6.4 C and 9.5 C."

This article is more than 4 years old:
Leave fossil fuels buried to prevent climate change, study urges

"New research is first to identify which reserves must not be burned to keep global temperature rise under 2C, including over 90% of US and Australian coal and almost all Canadian tar sands ...

It was already known that there is about three times more fossil fuel in reserves that could be exploited today than is compatible with 2C, and over 10 times more fossil fuel resource that could be exploited in future."




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OK, I've shown some of mine. If you don't agree, then please show yours.

 

Got it. Your understanding that reserves are "large enough to not be a limiting factor" is not supported by your links which are mostly from Big Oil or their marketing representatives. Carry on.

 

Got it. Phys.org and The Guardian are merely mouthpieces of Big Oil.

Sorry for suggesting that AGW is a tighter constraint than Peak Fossil. Carry on.



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