The "longer tailpipe" myth

[UBUYGAS]

I tell people I don't care where or how they make the electricity, I didn't buy the LEAF because it's Zero emissions, I bought it because it costs me $6.90 to drive 300 miles. That's it.

 

[GetOffYourGas]

While I enjoy your banter, it also breaks my heart. When people realize how wonderful it is to live in such a place, more people move it and destroy it. You simply cannot support our levels of population living like this. Sadly, this story has played itself out where I grew up, and I see it destroying what few open spaces we have left in the northeast.

Part of me hopes that long range EVs don't make these places more accessible, because they will inevitably be destroyed.

While I can't speak for abasile's mountains, given how close to urbanity he is, I will note that in remote places like where I live there isn't enough of an economy to support much of a population. My neighborhood has a lot of retirees, for example, because they don't need jobs — but they have to be pretty tough because this isn't an easy place to live in. And most people simply aren't attracted to rural living. I've often had visitors say that while my area is lovely they couldn't live here. Most of them want more cultural options and don't like the thought of being so far away from everything. Others don't want to deal with real winters (whereas I don't like very hot areas — I've never lived in a place that needed air conditioning and don't plan to start now). And many are tethered to urban areas by jobs and careers.

So, I'm not too worried about my remote area getting overcrowded any time soon. Other attractive areas, such as most coastal zones, have long been priced out of reach for anyone of modest means, so the trend you mention is a problem in many places. But one nice thing about Colorado is just how empty most of the state is. The population is all crammed together along the Front Range, a large metro area stretching from Fort Collins in the north to Pueblo in the south. The rest of the state? Not so much.

I would guess that your upstate New York may have more impacts from development because of the truly gigantic populations in the neighboring metro areas. It is much that way for abasile in Southern California. Even though few are willing to tackle four or five thousand feet of elevation on a regular or daily basis, there are so many people in the megalopolis to draw from that even those few add up.

My impression is that most people find the quality of life they want in urban/suburban areas. Which is fine by me.

I will admit to not knowing much about Colorado. I have been there, but never lived there. It sounds like the only think I would miss there is lakes.

Full disclosure, I am visiting family for the holidays, and every year that I come back, there is more and more development/sprawl, and less open/wooded spaces. That is what breaks my heart, not that you have found a quiet place for yourself. It doesn't help that it is about 60 miles north of Manhattan, and the sprawl from NYC is unstoppable. Where I live now, in Syracuse, NY, it's not as bad, but the city still sprawls. Most of my friends and coworkers long to get out of populated areas, and live more in the woods / mountains, not the other way around. But I am one of those who cannot stand life without all four seasons. I lived in Palo Alto, CA for a few years, but had to leave because I couldn't stand the climate (two seasons - rainy and dry, never snowed).

I see the sprawl story played out all over the northeast, from upstate NY to VT, NH and ME. Areas that have always been rural and wooded are being clear cut for cookie-cutter vinyl-clad McMansions on 1/2 acre lots. There is no attempt to fit the houses to the landscape, or to leave some breathing room for people or nature. Instead we have a culture of building disposable houses that look really nice in the brochure, but then fall apart, and instead of reusing the land, we clear more forest and build more of the same.

 

[abasile]

I see the sprawl story played out all over the northeast, from upstate NY to VT, NH and ME. Areas that have always been rural and wooded are being clear cut for cookie-cutter vinyl-clad McMansions on 1/2 acre lots. There is no attempt to fit the houses to the landscape, or to leave some breathing room for people or nature. Instead we have a culture of building disposable houses that look really nice in the brochure, but then fall apart, and instead of reusing the land, we clear more forest and build more of the same.

There is no need to be alarmed about the place I call home.

We are in a relatively dense little pocket of rustic mountain cabins and homes that's been here since the 1920s, surrounded by National Forest that cannot be developed. The majority of the houses are vacation homes, though there is a slowly growing contingent of full timers like my family. By the way, our house is less than 15 feet from the neighboring cabins on both sides...

Even though we are relatively close to the city, very few Southern California residents are prepared to live in an area where it snows and mountain driving is required. While some real estate markets "down the hill" have been getting hot again, ours has yet to recover, and prices remain low. We do have a very large number of visitors this time of year, though, as this is the primary area that Southern Californians visit for snow and skiing.

 

[donald]

Anyway, the deeper you dive into these things the more you see that they're just assumption piled upon assumption, each of which represents loads of added uncertainty. And all of them were done before a single EV or its battery was ever mass-produced. They certainly could be right that EV production is more costly, but my point is nothing contained within really proves it - it's all a lot of guesswork at this point.

The way I see it, the best way to approach the problem is to look at vehicle cost. The cost of a vehicle more or less predicts the energy cost of its production. EVs are a bit more costly now, but with fully scaled up production I expect that to change.

I agree with this. The $/MJ is really what counts, somewhere way back in the production and mining phases, and you see that in the trade-off between [real] purchase price [before 'incentives'] and overall lifetime costs.

There are so many sources of embedded costs that it is difficult to tell. However, one can gain some comfort that if the 'assumptions' are made in a neutral way, then comparative assumptions may balance out. Most of these studies do seem to reflect that manufacturing effort is matched with retail cost, there seems little to doubt that, and if the plots show a 'financial pay-back' (cf ICEs) after X years, then one can expect the raw material/CO2 payback to be likewise.

It also makes sense to point out that by shifting the energy generation elsewhere, that this may promote more efficiencies and better technologies there, as some countries and regions already do. It may not add up just yet, but ICEs are already near their thermodynamic limits of efficiency, whereas there are plenty more steps that can be taken in electricity generation.