Why gas-powered cars aren't going away

[Professor Emeritus]

For reference, I just got this letter from Southern California Edison today:

Your energy conservation is still needed to help maintain power for everyone. The current heatwave is expected to continue this week, and your support is needed, especially today through Thursday, Sept. 8 from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. Energy conservation helps reduce strain on the electrical grid. Easy ways to conserve power include adjusting your air conditioner to at least 78°F and turning off appliances when they’re not being used. Here are additional ways you can prepare: Pre-cool your home by lowering your air conditioning thermostats before 4 p.m. Charge electric vehicles before 4 p.m. or after 9 p.m. Charge mobile devices and laptops before 4 p.m. Run your dishwasher, washing machine, and other major appliances before 4 p.m. or after 9 p.m. Set your pool pump to run in the early morning or late at night.

Notice that even on these peak worst days, they're not worried about pre-4pm or post-9pm at all. They're even encouraging you to run MORE electricity in the mornings and nights, by pre-cooling your house and shyt. So overall demand on the system is not a problem, ONLY peak demand is a problem.

Considering that 99.9% of electrical vehicle users have zero need to charge their vehicles between 4pm and 9pm on peak demand days, you can see why electric vehicle charging is not an unsolvable problem at all. All you have to do is incentivize people to charge their vehicles some other time of day so they're not stupid with it and putting unnecessary stress at the wrong time.

Literally every other kind of electricity use is more of a problem than electric car use is because electric cars are the easiest ones to charge on off-demand hours. In fact, some cars can power your home, so electric car battery storage can be used in the future to save up power for high-demand periods and give an alternative to using the grid.

​

​ ​ ​ ​

 

[shonuff]

But all of that is about peak demand, which is barely impacted by electric vehicles because electric vehicles don't need to charge at peak demand times the same way AC systems, entertainment units, commercial businesses, most factories, and the rest of our infrastructure has to. Middle-of-the-night demand is not a problem, regular day-to-day demand is not a problem, therefore claiming that electric vehicles are going to create a problem due to peak demand days is deflecting from the actual issue.

In fact, failure to shift away from gas-powered cars is one of the main issues that CREATES those hot spells and peak demand days. So if the increase in peak demand days are what you're worried about, then getting the world away from gas and oil should be your primary concern.






I agree with both of those issues, which is why I think it's obvious that we need to reduce consumption regardless of what kinds of vehicles we use. We need to vastly increase the ease of public transport. We need to make it easier for people to live close to their work. We need to get away from the standard that every family should have 2-3 cars, and start thinking about 1-car families and even no-car families where it makes sense. Sadly, the same folk who post articles concerned about battery pollution or unsustainable rare metals harvesting don't want to have those conversations.





Again, that's why we need to reduce consumption. But I never see that conversation being had by people who complain about electric cars. We need to get away from fossil fuels AND reduce consumption overall. The status quo is complete untenable.

Well right now there IS no off peak hours

CA has peak usages even over night and had to goto emergency to keep from blacking out

Thats not gonna change in the next decade - Temps and long days (weeks) of heat waves are occurring now . Again in a state that you HAVE to have a car its a huge overreach that im sure is going to massively backfire

People can't afford cities that are dense NY SF/LA Boston hell even DC are places where if people have to have an affordable place to live they have to do so far away- that's not changing

And there's no kind of push or plan for increasing transportation budgets to extend into those areas simply becuase of lack of money

The trend for companies in cities is to get workers in the office - so again that means more traffic and car commuting not less

The price pont for EVs isn't going to come down becuase the materials cost will increase as demand to build these vehicles increases in market that already supplies those same materials for all the other electronics that need the same materials to construct batteries

Increased demand on a rare resource means higher prices not lower and of course since its rare what exactly is the plan for when there just isn't anymore ? Its a finite resource thats found in only 3 places on the planet .it can't be reclaimed or reused from the old batteries which still have to be disposed of and that process is intensive and also creates massive pollution of the water and environment

None of these issues are going to be solved in the next 10 yrs - not sprawl not lack of money for infrastructure and definitely not the issues with batteries and their very limited function in extreme climates which cannot be changed presently - and the climate in this country is swinging towards being extreme ( either very hot long summers or very cold bitter winters ) not temperate.