I can understand the way of thinking that @emosun does, from an economical standpoint.
But of course it also depends on which particular segements those cars fall into.
I suppose that the Tesla model3 is a C-segement car, on which the Fiesta is basicly only a B-segment car.
So in terms of that you cannot realy compair those.
I would have to disagree. EV are more efficient because a gasoline car is so much inefficient. It's better to have the electricity produce by example in an coal plant, as it's already more efficient than a motor, an having this energy use for an EV, even when you take into account for the loss on the grid and in the battery. So, in average, an EV in a state with the dirtiest electricity than the average of gasoline cars (but it would be in that case by a small margin) (sweet info graphics below)
(when you take into account the efficiency of a coal power plant, the efficiency of the EV will hover between 30 and 20% (if I recall correctly))
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I think I'd prefer an electric car so long as it doesn't use computers for accel or brakes etc etc
having computers monitor efficiency is fine but controlling anything isn't my style
No it isn't. Efficiency is the ratio between the amount of energy "created" by the amount of energy supplied to the system. Example if you provide a generator 100 J of one type of energy and it outputs 90 J of another type of energy the efficiency of that generator at that point is 90%.
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it isnt worth it unless you live in the city, close to the actual charging station, or rich enough to have a charging station at home. while i would love to have one it just isnt practical. plus maintenance would be horrible.
if you live in the city the best method of trans is a motorcycle. in cali anyways.
"A ratio is a statement of how two numbers compare. It is a comparison of the size of one number to the size of another number."
I do see the point you are making though. However since there is not, and never will be, any system that is 100% efficient, we use efficiency to compare one system to another.
They're a hair better at certain things. Take a look at the other numbers: 82% for electric drivetrains (source), multiplied by 35% (energy conversion ratio from coal (source) is 28.7% efficiency. In reality, it's lower because electricity is also lost in distribution (~5%.) So best case scenario, you're lucky to approach 25% drivetrain efficiency for electric vehicles. Which ultimately ends up in the same range as internal combustion vehicles - 18%-25% (source).
Now there's the other issue. Coal is one of the worst, if not the single worst energy pollutant (other than maybe nuclear waste.) Not only is it worse than oil, because of all the sulfur it contains which affects almost the entire globe in terms of acid rain and acidification, it's worse in terms of CO2 emissions (and if you start to control those emissions, the average energy transfer efficiency drops to ~28%), and it's getting more and more difficult to extract, and will continue to, severely damaging landscapes wherever it is mined, for generations.
Electric vehicles may be the way forwards, and electric drivetrains are very efficiency, but converting energy to electricity is still incredibly inefficient and really makes the whole process more or less the same as IC cars, with different, but arguably worse tradeoffs.
EDIT: One more thing I wanted to bring up. EV batteries use lots of rare metals. Everyone talks about Lithium, but they use lanthanides as well, which are far rarer and more difficult to extract. And the more we use, the more difficult it gets to reach the remaining (scarce) resources. Eventually, and barring massive discoveries of unknown reserves, probably soon, we will run out of these metals. Hydrogen fuel cells can convert at 80% efficiency, and would solve lots of problems of electricity generation, and the battery issue, but another problem is getting the hydrogen fuel cells to not be a net energy loss. So far, it hasn't really been done in a way that could ever be implemented.
I really don't think electric cars will hit it big until after the used market becomes a thing.
I also really don't like the idea of subsidizing a car that is still going to be over 20k. people in the market for something like that don't need financial assistance. (if you paid more that $10k for a car your doing it wrong)
edit: To be fully clear i don't think any industry should be subsidized. Your business should succeed because you are good a business not because you got taxpayers money.
What is your experience with electric cars and reason behind your opinion? I just bought a used 2009 prius and it is amazing. Although it is a hybrid I don't think I will ever go back to full combustion. The fuel savings are great and it drives great. Gas currently is about $2 gallon and I average 14
i have driven a Honda insight hybrid once.
And i didnt realy like it.
THe fuell consumption was indeed a nice thing.
But that was basicly the only positivie thing i found about it.
It was an automatic transmission so that could somewhat being a part of it, since i totaly dont like automatics.
But yeah, its not my type of car, it did not realy feel natural to me.
I´m personaly a bit skeptical about elektric cars.
But yeah Hybrid cars will probably be the future, since more and more cars are starting to become hybride.
i personaly love Italian cars, and then Alfa Romeo´s in particular.
And thats of course still something pure.
This basically sums up all electric cars and earlier hybrids. In fact, the same logic could be applied to any new technology, even the VR headsets, you aren't getting th em because it's practical but it shows your friends how much you love gaming. Lol
Well, Personally, I love the idea of a Tesla as you get incentives, so that drops you down to $28500 for the car(as of right now).
Here's some reasons to go Tesla:
- Incentives bring down the Price
- Somewhat more eco Friendly
- A full charge(assuming electric is 10 cents/Kw like it is here, and that the battery is 90Kw) is $9. Half the cost of the ford.
- I live in a city and drive extensively for work. This car makes a hell of a lot more sense if you factor in the fact that I get 50 cents a mile to drive, I break even on driving twice as fast as the ford, plus due to the vast amount less in terms of repairs, I earn one hell of a lot of cash.
- We don't even know the full spec list of the car besides the abstracts that have been in the news. While they both may be base cars with minimal features per that company, You'll most likely see a much higher build quality from Tesla.
- $14k also assumes you're willing to drive a manual on the FIesta end. Tesla's are automatic, thus you'd have to move the Fiesta up to at least $15k and some change.
Why does everyone say coal is THE source of electricity? It's only 33% in the US (source). I live in the US and my electricity comes from a hydro plant (though ik most don't have that luxury). Everyone's argument against electricity usage and its inefficiencies is only due to the fact that you are using coal as the source. If you were to calculate the inefficiencies based on source then you could identify the markets in which electric vehicles are best suited in terms of efficiency. I don't disagree that using coal as a source of electricity is highly inefficient, I just want people to be aware that there are other, more efficient sources whose utilization is increasing while coal is slowly declining.
For my part I was using coal in my argument to show that even in the worst case scenario, an EV is better than the average of gasoline cars. And in my case, I live in Qc where 99% of our electricity comes from renewable (primarly hydro with some wind, the 1% left being remote communities with gasoline).
Also, completely unrelated to my reply, in the future, we will see an important improvement in battery technology as Tesla is the compagny that made the momentum around electric car, it's just a question of time that even the battery problem will be solve.
Coal will go back up. Natural gas went up, but reserves are limited and low oil prices will push natural gas back down. Coal is continuing to get cheaper, and current estimates are that we have ~400+ years supply left. So NG will trend down and coal up, especially in the long term, as NG supply goes down. Natural gas is just a detour, and it's more convenient than coal, which means it will be used as a heat source, leading to further non-electrical use and more likely dominance by coal.
Another thing to consider is that natural gas is neither clean, or eco friendly. It's loaded with methane, which is worse than CO2 when it comes to emissions/global warming. While it's cleaner burning, leaks are a serious issue and can cause (and have caused) massive emissions increase. Not to mention fracking, which while I'm holding back judgement on that (lots of what we're seeing conjecture or skewed by the media), it could still end up being a real concern, and more importantly, is very costly and relies on high oil prices to succeed.
Essentially, natural gas is just another oil. It's very limited in resources, and the more we use the more expensive it will become to obtain. Coal is much better in terms of price to performance for electricity generation, and that's why barring huge legislative policy changes, it will always be the daddy in terms of electricity generation, at least when compared to natural gas. The trends that we're seeing right now are just going to be a little blip in the scatterplot in 10 years, unless somehow oil prices go way back up, or we develop much more cost effective fracking techniques.
Hydroelectric, again, pick your poison. Devastating to the environment on a small scale, but high energy efficiency, and renewable. However, in the US we've more or less stopped making new hydroelectric dams. They're not being considered as a real answer right now. Nuclear, again, very concentrated waste and if we don't put them near the shores (which is tough because you run into cooling issues) could be relatively safe, but prohibitively expensive due to over-regulation. Solar is more or less just as bad as oil, because it relies so heavily on it. Wind is inefficient, incredibly costly, and causes environmental damage in most situations. Geothermal is expensive and inefficienct, but great for the environment. Tidal energy might be good, but I can imagine it could wreck seabeds and coral reefs depending on how and where it's implemented.
IMO, best 2 energy sources are going to be either fusion (if we achieve it and it's net energy gain) or hydrogen fuel cells, again, if it's net energy gain by the time we actually accomplish it.
The problem with EVs is that no matter how you slice it, once you add up everything, including negative externalities, they're just as expensive and inefficient.
I have to disagree with you. Coal will never do a backup, everyone is going away from it. The UK had closed their last coal mine last November, Poland are stockpilling coal and China had stop the opening of new coal mine and etc.
And wind is efficient, in the same cost range than fossil fuel power cost by kwh (also true for geothermal and hydro) http://www.irena.org/documentdownloads/publications/irena_re_power_costs_2014_report.pdf (page 14). These number, are for 2010 and 2014, so they are even lower now, as with Morocco which announced an offshore wind farm in Frebuary that will produce at 0.03$/kwh, well cheaper than fossil fuel (http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/feb/13/renewable-energy-investment-fossil-fuel-divestment-investor-summit-climate-change). And it doesn't even take into account for the cost of damage and the lost money that fossil fuel creates via climate change, which makes renewable a clear winner. Plus, there is a lot of innovation, especially on the side of solar, that lower the cost and increase the efficiency even more.
It's like early flat screen monitors , they were junk. Would you rather use a flat screen from 1999 or a crt from 1999? The crt has way higher resolution , refresh rate , better color and darker blacks.
Eventually flat screen did eclipse crt's in every single way. Tesla will too , SOMEDAY.
People who are buying these early tesla's that only go 200 miles are the same people that buy a crappy 800x600 lcd in 1999. They are uninformed , and never held a damn wrench in their whole life.
Or they understand that alternative fuel vehicles are the future and want to help support development of them by purchasing the stuff now in the hopes that they will improve in the future.
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You don't buy a Tesla because it is practical. You buy a Tesla because fossil fuels reliance needs to be weakened. Of course, this requires that electricity be produced via renewable sources such as solar or wind or something, but we can only go one step at a time. As consumers, we can't currently pick power companies based on the way they produced electricity. What is available is what you get. In some places, that is renewable, in most places (at least in the US), that is fossil fuels. But what we can do is make it obvious to large corporations that there is a demand for responsible technologies. Renewable power will likely require politicians to get involved as the current power companies don't seem interested in renewable whatsoever. Coal and the like is simply too profitable. Sure, you can make more economical choices, but that isn't why you buy a Tesla. You can also buy a used can for under $3k that is in great shape (I know, I've done it recently), and then how much money do you have left over for gas vs buying a new Fiesta? This whole argument is ridiculous.
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I would compare the Tesla to a similar car, and i agree.. range is still not where you can go all week without "filling up the tank" especially with temperature being a variable making everything worse. If you have 110v (everyone already does) that will give you about 29 miles back every hour its plugged in. So if you're visiting someone you have to account for how long you will be there if its far.
I think you have to take in account that you might forget to plug it in at night, or even a few days in a row. Like if i want to go to a concert in Milwaukee from Chicago I wouldn't be able to do it at a whim unless i stop by a Supercharging station for at least 1/2 hour.
And for long road trips with no stops you probably shouldn't be driving your own car anyway, Rental cars are much better for that. And you won't have to put wear and tear on your engine, trans, tires, and oil change for that matter. Kind of a no brainier and for peace of mind.
Another thing is that people that do own Tesla's haven't complained about range at all in any real seance. Just two bad journalist that looked very dumb after the cars tracking data was released and third party journalist's confirmed the data by recreating the trips and events.
I'm not saying one thing or another or that I'm right at all, just my thoughts.