The alternative is go take a bet on the agricultural underpinnings of civilization being viable in a hotter world. That’s an utterly mad uncontrolled geoengineering experiment to try.
The alternative is to allow Prius, so that your political views don’t get laughed out of every discussion over the next decade and utterly ignored.
No one will seriously try to accomplish this goal if yall ban the Prius from the lineup of future cars for being “not environmentally friendly enough”.
You are literally banning the best car for our environment. Literally. There’s a lot of greenhouse-emissions and pollution from mining Lithium, Cobalt, and other rare-earth metals (magnets) needed to make an EV move ya know.
The ACEEE is a long-running pro-environmentalist groups that I’m citing as well. If that’s not “green enough” for you, you seriously won’t get any traction with this.
Filling your future economy with Hummer EVs will cook the earth faster my man.
9000lb EVs are worse for the environment than Prius. We need to have the correct regulations if you actually want to improve the world. All of that Hummer EV electricity is going to come from coal + natural gas, and with 3x the weight and like 4x the drag compared to a Prius, its going to literally burn more carbon and wreck the world faster.
If you can’t see that, then you’re an extremist EV fan who is beginning to literally hurt the environment with insane decisions.
Speak truth to power. And the truth is… some EVs are very, very, very bad for the environment. We need proper rules/regulations that truly improve our environment. Not just EV fanbois running the show.
I’m far from an EV fan. We’re better off with a lot fewer cars in addition to electrification of those which remain.
I’m just more of a fan of a civilization-supporting planet than burning fossil fuels. And that’s a physics-driven choice, not one constructed for ideological reasons
Hummer EV. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Hummer EV is worse for the environment than the typical ICE car, by huge margins.
If you don’t get this right, you’ll end up hurting USA (and the world) more than you think. That’s just physics. Sending 9000lb cars around with huge profiles with Coefficient-of-Drag in the 0.5+ range will eat up our energy and burn more coal/natural gas than any more reasonable car (even traditional ICE cars like Chevy TRAX).
That’s just physics. And organizations like ACEEE + Argonne National Labs are busy calculating / number crunching these statistics. Random assertions aside, pure EV is worse than many other possible regulations we could be doing. (In particular, encouraging the most efficient vehicles regardless of technology).
EVs in particular are going to be natural-gas powered for the near future. Fortunately Nat. Gas is 60% thermal efficiency rather than 30% (of typical ICE), but your margin for efficient vehicles is much smaller than you might expect. And there’s probably Coal-plants (~30%) that’d drag down the efficiency of our energy grid in practice anyway.
You have to look at this problem holistically. Randomly just white-knighting EVs all day every day is going to lead to more environmental problems.
This isn’t even some “theory” I’m trying to show you. Its real. This is a real vehicle that’s causing more pollution right now in our country and world to measurable effects.
If we actually succeed, we end up with a decarbonized electric grid too, and the big EV’s emissions drop to zero.
Lithium is made by pouring acid down mountains and collecting the acid that leaks out. There are incredible environmental effects you need to account for in the creation of EVs, even if we had a 100% decarbonized grid.
In fact, a 100% decarbonized grid would likely favor H2 (Hydrogen) vehicles since those have fewer environmental effects in the production process. And H2 can be made out of just electricity and water.
There are plenty of sensible EV options, both cheaper and better than the $120,000 Hummer EV @ 9000 pounds. Actually, pretty much literally every other non commercial EV is better. That said, even the Hummer EV is still about 50% better than its ICE equivalent.
There are plenty of sensible EV options, both cheaper and better than the $120,000 Hummer EV @ 9000 pounds.
And all of them are less efficient than the 2024 Prius Prime for our environment. (See my ACEEE citation from above). Literally all of them.
You’re underestimating the efficiency of Prius, much like other EV fanbois. Prius is the most environmentally friendly vehicle today, even beyond small / efficient EVs like the Nissan Leaf or the GM Bolt.
The best vehicles for the environment is the Prius Prime PHEV, and #2 is Prius Hybrid. Other cars like Accord Hybrid, Camry Hybrid, and Corolla Hybrid are in the top 10.
EVs can win and seem to have significant advantages. But not enough to make the #1 slot. For EVs to win you need a relatively small battery pack (ex: 40kW-hr Leaf), and relatively lightweight. The Prius has a 800lb+ advantage over most EVs (most EVs, even small ones like Nissan Leaf, are 4000lb behemoths, far above the 3200lb Prius).
Yeah, EV Battery tech sucks today. Its still too heavy. Fortunately, 60% efficiency of large-scale Nat. Gas combination cycle plants magically gathers more energy than small ICE (like 40% Atkinson or 30% Otto Cycle engines), so EVs get some degree of advantage even when the grid remains highly Fossil Fuel based.
But you still have weight + mining + other dirty issues (rare-earth metals for significant magnets on those motors…) that add up to bad environmental effects.
Corn Ethanol is solar-powered, as all the CO2 was absorbed from the air as the corn grew thanks to photosynthesis, and is largely compatible with ICE engines actually. Ideally we use Switchgrass Ethanol in the long term, when we need bio-fuels to replace fossil fuels. But there’s a lot of practical advantages to Carbon + Hydrogen bonds at the molecular level.
Switchgrass Ethanol is possible but not commercially viable yet though. And Corn Ethanol has downsides (farmland is worse for our environment than natural prairies).
There’s also Hydrogen -> Syngas -> Kerosene, a process of electrification to Hydrogen + CO2 -> Fuel.
So you gotta keep your mind open to all the possibilities that science can provide, including chemistry.
In the U.S. alone, we’d need about 200 million acres of farm land to go from 10% ethanol to 100% ethanol. That’s using corn and accounts for about 25% of the total farmland the U.S. has. And that’s just the U.S. and only counts retail gas with the 10% mandate, - not industrial fuel use of diesel fuel use, which would increase it dramatically. It’s not feasible to run the country on biomass , especially as climate change is going to make farm land less viable overall. Given that agriculture is already roughly a third of all carbon emissions, massively ramping up agriculture to replace fossil fuels doesn’t really help overall.
On top of that, we need to start sequestering CO2. Moving it from the biomass into the air, even temporarily, keeps it in the air where we do not want it! The only viable long term solution is to move net amounts of carbon out of the air by all means possible, as well as minimizing all the other greenhouse gas produced (like methane). ICE engines cannot be a significant part of this future without ramping up clean energy use elsewhere to sequester more carbon than those fuels are contributing - which leads right back to solar and fission. (and wind, waves, geothermal etc of course).
Corn Ethanol is solar-powered, as all the CO2 was absorbed from the air as the corn grew thanks to photosynthesis
Nope, that’s bullshit. Biomass is only co2-neutral if it grows on its own and is used up on the spot.
There’s also Hydrogen -> Syngas -> Kerosene, a process of electrification to Hydrogen + CO2 -> Fuel.
So while I pay an amount X for electricity to load a battery you are wiliing to pay 5 times as much for eFuels just to support your strange political views? That’s in some way commendable…
So you gotta keep your mind open to all the possibilities that science can provide, including chemistry.
The alternative is go take a bet on the agricultural underpinnings of civilization being viable in a hotter world. That’s an utterly mad uncontrolled geoengineering experiment to try.
The alternative is to allow Prius, so that your political views don’t get laughed out of every discussion over the next decade and utterly ignored.
No one will seriously try to accomplish this goal if yall ban the Prius from the lineup of future cars for being “not environmentally friendly enough”.
Note: Prius is #1 vehicle on ACEEE’s most green cars of 2024. https://www.aceee.org/greener-cars
You are literally banning the best car for our environment. Literally. There’s a lot of greenhouse-emissions and pollution from mining Lithium, Cobalt, and other rare-earth metals (magnets) needed to make an EV move ya know.
The ACEEE is a long-running pro-environmentalist groups that I’m citing as well. If that’s not “green enough” for you, you seriously won’t get any traction with this.
The alternatives to 100% EVs is no cars or a real chance of killing a few billion people.
Physics makes the final call.
Filling your future economy with Hummer EVs will cook the earth faster my man.
9000lb EVs are worse for the environment than Prius. We need to have the correct regulations if you actually want to improve the world. All of that Hummer EV electricity is going to come from coal + natural gas, and with 3x the weight and like 4x the drag compared to a Prius, its going to literally burn more carbon and wreck the world faster.
If you can’t see that, then you’re an extremist EV fan who is beginning to literally hurt the environment with insane decisions.
Speak truth to power. And the truth is… some EVs are very, very, very bad for the environment. We need proper rules/regulations that truly improve our environment. Not just EV fanbois running the show.
I’m far from an EV fan. We’re better off with a lot fewer cars in addition to electrification of those which remain.
I’m just more of a fan of a civilization-supporting planet than burning fossil fuels. And that’s a physics-driven choice, not one constructed for ideological reasons
Hummer EV. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Hummer EV is worse for the environment than the typical ICE car, by huge margins.
If you don’t get this right, you’ll end up hurting USA (and the world) more than you think. That’s just physics. Sending 9000lb cars around with huge profiles with Coefficient-of-Drag in the 0.5+ range will eat up our energy and burn more coal/natural gas than any more reasonable car (even traditional ICE cars like Chevy TRAX).
That’s just physics. And organizations like ACEEE + Argonne National Labs are busy calculating / number crunching these statistics. Random assertions aside, pure EV is worse than many other possible regulations we could be doing. (In particular, encouraging the most efficient vehicles regardless of technology).
EVs in particular are going to be natural-gas powered for the near future. Fortunately Nat. Gas is 60% thermal efficiency rather than 30% (of typical ICE), but your margin for efficient vehicles is much smaller than you might expect. And there’s probably Coal-plants (~30%) that’d drag down the efficiency of our energy grid in practice anyway.
You have to look at this problem holistically. Randomly just white-knighting EVs all day every day is going to lead to more environmental problems.
If we actually succeed, we end up with a decarbonized electric grid too, and the big EV’s emissions drop to zero.
I do agree that huge vehicles should be discouraged for personal transport, but that’s for livable-cities reasons, not climate.
Hummer EV is literally worse for the climate.
This isn’t even some “theory” I’m trying to show you. Its real. This is a real vehicle that’s causing more pollution right now in our country and world to measurable effects.
Lithium is made by pouring acid down mountains and collecting the acid that leaks out. There are incredible environmental effects you need to account for in the creation of EVs, even if we had a 100% decarbonized grid.
In fact, a 100% decarbonized grid would likely favor H2 (Hydrogen) vehicles since those have fewer environmental effects in the production process. And H2 can be made out of just electricity and water.
The number of hummer EVs being built is tiny.
You’re concern trolling at this point.
There are plenty of sensible EV options, both cheaper and better than the $120,000 Hummer EV @ 9000 pounds. Actually, pretty much literally every other non commercial EV is better. That said, even the Hummer EV is still about 50% better than its ICE equivalent.
And all of them are less efficient than the 2024 Prius Prime for our environment. (See my ACEEE citation from above). Literally all of them.
You’re underestimating the efficiency of Prius, much like other EV fanbois. Prius is the most environmentally friendly vehicle today, even beyond small / efficient EVs like the Nissan Leaf or the GM Bolt.
The best vehicles for the environment is the Prius Prime PHEV, and #2 is Prius Hybrid. Other cars like Accord Hybrid, Camry Hybrid, and Corolla Hybrid are in the top 10.
EVs can win and seem to have significant advantages. But not enough to make the #1 slot. For EVs to win you need a relatively small battery pack (ex: 40kW-hr Leaf), and relatively lightweight. The Prius has a 800lb+ advantage over most EVs (most EVs, even small ones like Nissan Leaf, are 4000lb behemoths, far above the 3200lb Prius).
Yeah, EV Battery tech sucks today. Its still too heavy. Fortunately, 60% efficiency of large-scale Nat. Gas combination cycle plants magically gathers more energy than small ICE (like 40% Atkinson or 30% Otto Cycle engines), so EVs get some degree of advantage even when the grid remains highly Fossil Fuel based.
But you still have weight + mining + other dirty issues (rare-earth metals for significant magnets on those motors…) that add up to bad environmental effects.
It can’t run on sunlight or fission, so that’s a long term no-go.
Corn Ethanol is solar-powered, as all the CO2 was absorbed from the air as the corn grew thanks to photosynthesis, and is largely compatible with ICE engines actually. Ideally we use Switchgrass Ethanol in the long term, when we need bio-fuels to replace fossil fuels. But there’s a lot of practical advantages to Carbon + Hydrogen bonds at the molecular level.
Switchgrass Ethanol is possible but not commercially viable yet though. And Corn Ethanol has downsides (farmland is worse for our environment than natural prairies).
There’s also Hydrogen -> Syngas -> Kerosene, a process of electrification to Hydrogen + CO2 -> Fuel.
So you gotta keep your mind open to all the possibilities that science can provide, including chemistry.
In the U.S. alone, we’d need about 200 million acres of farm land to go from 10% ethanol to 100% ethanol. That’s using corn and accounts for about 25% of the total farmland the U.S. has. And that’s just the U.S. and only counts retail gas with the 10% mandate, - not industrial fuel use of diesel fuel use, which would increase it dramatically. It’s not feasible to run the country on biomass , especially as climate change is going to make farm land less viable overall. Given that agriculture is already roughly a third of all carbon emissions, massively ramping up agriculture to replace fossil fuels doesn’t really help overall.
On top of that, we need to start sequestering CO2. Moving it from the biomass into the air, even temporarily, keeps it in the air where we do not want it! The only viable long term solution is to move net amounts of carbon out of the air by all means possible, as well as minimizing all the other greenhouse gas produced (like methane). ICE engines cannot be a significant part of this future without ramping up clean energy use elsewhere to sequester more carbon than those fuels are contributing - which leads right back to solar and fission. (and wind, waves, geothermal etc of course).
Nope, that’s bullshit. Biomass is only co2-neutral if it grows on its own and is used up on the spot.
So while I pay an amount X for electricity to load a battery you are wiliing to pay 5 times as much for eFuels just to support your strange political views? That’s in some way commendable…
Even an open mind can’t cheat thermodynamics