The Cost Of Driving An Electric Vehicle

Bingo. Do you think our friend here will ever get his head out of Biden’s ass? @Patriot96

@Patriot96 Have you any figures to back that statement up?

@Zeusdelight Of course he has. He has many many memes 🤣

@SandWitch prove it.

@calicuz Very good point.

@ArishMell Around here -18 C (0 F) is considered warm. A winter or two ago I drove 4.5 hours through -40 weather. No coat required and the winders were all frost free. I didn't see any electrics on the road that day but the winterized ICE vehicles were having no problem. Yes there were some breakdowns but that was most likely to the lack of winterization. Antifreeze was too weak or oil too heavy or simply not kept in winter running condition. BTW the trip was cross country and not city driving. A stall or other failure could have been life threatening to anyone unprepared. The eletics simply could not take that kind of punishment. Their batteries would be dead in a few minutes and be impossible to recharge.

@hippyjoe1955 Yes - I know the Winter conditions in Canada and other Arctic regions must never be taken lightly. Though not as harsh, those in Scotland can be just as dangerous, and with long distances between towns.

Serious blizzards in the South of England are quite rare but we had an exceptionally bad Winter at the start of 1963. I recall two people were caught in their car in the snow on an exposed hill, kept the engine running for heat, and died from the exhaust fumes. The snow drift must have deflected the gases into the car. They were only four miles from the town, as well.

The drive for everything to be all-electric is well-meant, but I don't think it's properly thought through; and brings many problems of its own.

@ArishMell When I was a kid our neighbor had an interesting experience. One day a chinook was blowing and it was beautiful out for mid January. The snow was melting and the water was running off the eaves. Suddenly the wind shifted and a howling blizzard began. Later that night the wind died down and the temperature dropped drastically. The neighbor's dog started to bark and the neighbor went to find out why. The dog would run off to the south east and run back. The neighbor started to follow the dog but found the snow too deep so he got his tractor started and started to follow the dog. About a 1/4 mile later he saw a young woman lying in the snow. He picked her up and got her into the cab of the tractor and the lady mumbled something about her mother. The neighbor took that as a hint and followed the woman's footprints in the snow until he found the mother almost buried in the snow. She was too stiff to get into the cab so he put her on the front end loader and raced back to the house. His wife stripped the women of their wet and frozen clothes and put them in the bathtub full of hot water. Both women survived with some loss of extremities to frost bite. They had set out on a warm day without proper winter survival gear and then hit the ditch when the blizzard hit and they couldn't see the road. They waited out the blizzard in the warm car but when no one came down the road they decided to walk to the neighbor's house because they could see his yard light. They won't make that mistake again.

@Longleggedlady That suggests poor management, not an engineering problem, by the authorities and the waste-disposal companies. To be fair though, it's possible the batteries are being stored pending the scrap trade installing the necessary equipment, or simply to create economical loads for transporting.

Of course they are out of public sight. These stores are industrial facilities, and industrial facilities are closed to all but authorised personnel, for safety and security; and as necessary enclosed in weather-proof buildings. So don't let that "out of site" worry you. It's right and normal.

Possibly much more serious is the sheer waste of materials by people discarding unwanted but often still serviceable or repairable, electrical and non-electrical equipment in landfill - there is no excuse for that.

While throwing Li-ion and some other types of batteries in the dustbin can, and does, lead to fires in refuse-lorries and waste-disposal facilities.

Do your local supermarkets and other shops have battery-collection pots? They do around where I live: just simple plastic jars. When full the batch is presumably collected by the battery suppliers, or taken to a suitable "recycling" point.

Though voluntary collection by the shops, the disposal of old batteries, and other electrical items generally, is of course covered by the EU's "Waste Electrical & Electronic Equipment" Directive; and although the UK has left the EU we still apply the UK-law transposition of this set of regulations.

@ArishMell
Pollution Due to Lithium-ion Battery Recycling
Material recovery is usually what impacts the environment negatively. For instance, pyrometallurgy is one of the processes that demand a lot of energy resulting in the emission of GHG and other toxic fumes that contaminate the air.

read this
https://www.cenex-lcv.co.uk/news-media/exhibitor/what-is-the-environmental-impact-of-lithium-batteries#:~:text=Pollution%20Due%20to%20Lithium%2Dion,fumes%20that%20contaminate%20the%20air.

@Longleggedlady Interesting - thankyou.

The message though is contained in the conclusion: it's not using these batteries that is the problem but how the materials are mined, and how the old batteries are scrapped. Well, they know the problems so it is up to the manufacturers to solve the problems and do it properly, if necessary by legal compulsion - although no-one can tell a country like China to behave.

It is also up to the users, including we public, to dispose of old batteries and other electrical equipment via the proper routes, not by just chucking it in the nearest dustbin. Or on the ground.

The lithium extraction "mining" being started in Cornwall is showing considerable promise, not least because it has no intrinsic environmental problems. Just the opposite if anything, by removing the metal salts from the ground-water flooding the abandoned mines.

@Elessar 😬

@Elessar those don't count, because he just loves fossil fuels.
I will lay odds he measures his dick by the loudness of his truck's muffler and the size of it's engine.

@Elessar he did indeed.

@Carla Here they say there is an inverse correlation between car size (whether it's the frame or engine is not specified) and sexual performances 🙈

And indeed, those who have the biggest cars tend to be the biggest a$$holes on the road, which could be explained with.. frustration? 😬

@CountScrofula @calicuz

Many people in England live without any public-transport services, and not necessarily in remote rural areas, either. It becomes a bit of vicious circle though: the private car is more convenient in such places, so use of any train or bus service that did exist drops to the services dwindle, so more people drive instead.....


I've friends who live in a village some 6 miles from the nearest town, in fact a row of towns up to about 10 miles away. One bus a week: it comes through the village in the morning, makes an afternoon return trip. Next one, next week.

..... Politics and astronomical costs?

Seen News reports about Britain's much-vaunted "High-Speed Two" railway line?

This is / was a brand-new railway to run from London to Birmingham (<200 miles away) then on to major Northern English cities. It was not quite as heavily politicised as a USA scheme might be, but still at the mercy of governments baffled by the spiralling costs, That was due in part to governments insisting on changes that then meant back to the planning-offices, the estimators and quantity-surveyors, the land-purchasing people, and the drawing-boards (well, all right CAD on computers).

So now they've axed the more critical Northern half, making it extremely unlikely it can ever be built!

To be fair the idea is to spend the money instead on improving the existing lines in the North of England, which has a cluster of major cities; but we shall see. The biggest problem governments of all parties seem to have is not lack of financial acumen, or even of will; but lack of even basic science and engineering nous!

.

"High-Speed Two"?

Was there a "One"? Oh yes - and it was very successful! It did not need new lines, for one thing.

Introduced by the State-owned British Rail, its specially-built Diesel trains called HS125s, were rated for cruising at up to 125mph maximum on existing main railways improved to appropriately higher standards.

Most trunk-route trains now in the UK are Diesel or electric descendants of the HS125s; and some sections of line are cleared for up to 140mph. Not fast by French TGV let alone Japanese "Bullet Train" speeds, but those run much longer distances than in Britain. It means the fastest trains from London to Edinburgh, with only two or three intermediate stops, take only about 4 hours for the 400 miles. In steam days the fastest took about 8 hours, and that non-stop: the locomotives had special tenders with corridor connections, for mid-run crew changes without stopping.

(Yes you can fly: about 1 hour in the air; but when you add the long, compulsory airport booking-in time and the cities-to-airports journeys, it might cost less but is not very competitive in time and convenience.)

@Patriot96 That point recently emerged in a BBC Radio Four programme examining our similar HS2 project: of a huge number of ambitious civil-engineering projects in progress around the world, hardly any are on time and budget!

So we with our HS2 in England, and you with yours in California, are not alone!

@Patriot96 Cali is a third world country

@Carissimi https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/26/23934172/ford-12-billion-ev-investment-postpone-q3-earnings

@Carissimi it’s not a fact. They’re scaling back investment because most Americans believe they are still too expensive.

Back from what? It’s not the government’s money. It’s ours whatever they spend it on. @MarineBob

@MarineBob With all the cash uncle Sam put into oil, gasoline should be free. And instead..

@Carissimi prove it.

Do your own research. You want me to prove common sense. Shikes! Go take a nap. I don’t have the patience with Woke nonsense. Go get a brain transplant. @SW-User

@Carissimi 🤣 I've come to the conclusion that being woke means you're not a Trump supporter :)

He lost, by the way. Learn to accept it and move on.

(P.S. Ah, so you can't prove it :) Sorry, granny, the world is changing for the better :) )

@Roundandroundwego Neat idea! I assume the panel charges a battery rather than trying to power the traction-motor.

In fact I have seen something similar on a very small Citroen car, too; but I forget the name of the model.

@SandWitch Thank you for all that work!

I suppose most motorists are aware the range advertised is never real, that public fast-chargers only give 80% charges, and the battery will lose capacity, but it's clearly far more subtle and far-reaching than that.

I don't know how the second-hand trade for these things is the UK. It probably varies from country to country, but I have heard on dealer, on the radio, say they are hard to sell on.

Owning a battery-car will never be likely for me, but what you've explained makes it even less feasible.