GRA
Well-known member
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We agree that for anyone who can take advantage of them, BEVs are the best choice in urban areas. But since many people in urban areas simply can't take advantage of them owing to having no where to charge (did you see that 56% of Los Angeles residents live in MUDs, or 67% of San Franciscans, i.e. not some third world cities where MUDs are the norm, and detached single family homes are uncommon), and won't for decades even if we build charging infrastructure in all new housing and business construction from now on, then some other form of ZEV will need to take up the slack. At the moment, only FCEVs using H2 can do that. Whether BEV or FCEV, ZEVs will need to be combined with AVs to reduce the total number of motor vehicles, along with mass transit, walking and biking. We seem to agree that coal is the worst fossil fuel and needs to be got rid of first, but where's the worst air pollution in the world? India and China, both heavily dependent on coal-fired electricity, so BEVs aren't a panacea. If anything, until they can radically clean up their grids it would probably be better for them to use more oil and NG rather than less, if it means they can replace burning coal.
On the contrary, I'm giving examples of about worrying about the real massive but diffuse risks, rather than concentrating on rare but spectacular ones that are essentially in the noise as fa as death tolls, and thus should fall way down the priority list. There've probably been a few thousand people killed by NG or H2 explosions (far more have died of gasoline fires) in the last century world-wide, but for the sake of argument let's round it up to 10,000, and furthermore assume that over the next 50 years we'll shift completely to H2 and that over that time frame the total dead from those accidents will increase to 100k. Put that up against 5,000,000 dying worldwide each year from air pollution, or the ~600k Americans who die every year from heart disease, and you tell me which are the greater risks, and where we should be putting our money and attention.Oils4AsphaultOnly said:You can't mix death tolls in other industries and expect that to fly as an apropos analogy, that's bad logic. On its own merits, H2 does NOTHING to alleviate the auto accident and opiod deaths, nor would it do anything to resolve the pipeline deaths. The air pollution deaths caused by automobiles are in dense urban environments, where they're better solved by BEV's (lower costs and at higher energy efficiencies). Once the superfluous info is removed, you'll see that there's VERY LITTLE benefit that H2 provides (zero emission long-range travel) for its cost.
We agree that for anyone who can take advantage of them, BEVs are the best choice in urban areas. But since many people in urban areas simply can't take advantage of them owing to having no where to charge (did you see that 56% of Los Angeles residents live in MUDs, or 67% of San Franciscans, i.e. not some third world cities where MUDs are the norm, and detached single family homes are uncommon), and won't for decades even if we build charging infrastructure in all new housing and business construction from now on, then some other form of ZEV will need to take up the slack. At the moment, only FCEVs using H2 can do that. Whether BEV or FCEV, ZEVs will need to be combined with AVs to reduce the total number of motor vehicles, along with mass transit, walking and biking. We seem to agree that coal is the worst fossil fuel and needs to be got rid of first, but where's the worst air pollution in the world? India and China, both heavily dependent on coal-fired electricity, so BEVs aren't a panacea. If anything, until they can radically clean up their grids it would probably be better for them to use more oil and NG rather than less, if it means they can replace burning coal.
Seeing as how neither company has yet produced a production vehicle, we can expect Tesla to be late, and the announced capabilities of their semis are poorly suited to long haul trucking, there's a ways to go before either tech can make a significant impact. P&D, port drayage, distribution, shuttle and short haul will be the metier for both of them until the infrastructure's built (and the BEV's capabilities improve).Oils4AsphaultOnly said:And long-haul trucking will soon be knocked over as a kingpin of the fuel cell argument. Nikola Motors has YET to produce their truck in volume. If they don't hurry soon, then Tesla will kill their market in 2019 when the semi is expected to be released - a truck that's both lower-cost to operate, and cleaner than diesel.