Exxon-Mobil Australia does their best to win a "Tone-Deaf Tweet of the Year" award

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday January 02, 2020 · 2:16 PM PST

2020/01/02 · 14:16

Temperatures approaching 50C (122ºF) are forecast for Australia in the con=ming week following the obstruction of climate progress by Australia's government in the COP25 Climate meeting that just ended this week.

In the middle of unprecedented bushfires, a wave that’s a direct result of global warming, which have been casting blood-red skies over major cities, destroying homes, taking people’s lives, and killed huge numbers of wildlife, including up to 30% of the koala population in New South Wales... Exxon-Mobil decided to tweet this:

Stay safe and have fun this new year, from all of us at ExxonMobil Australia.
— ExxonMobil Australia (@exxonmobil_aus) December 31, 2019

Seriously… the country is on fire a a result of climate change from CO2 emissions, and you, who’ve been aware for half a century that your product would cause this future, yet spent the time up to now funding climate-denialism think tanks, thought now would be a good time to tell people to “have fun this new year”?

The responses have been racking up:

What an amazing tweet. Here's a postcard to help get the word out. pic.twitter.com/cX94hsJwve
— Aspiration (@Aspiration) January 2, 2020

And a happy, tax-free, science-denying, reef-bleaching, forest-burning, drought-causing, democracy-corrupting new year to you too! Ã°ÂÂÂ
— EconoGaraidh (@EconoGarry) January 2, 2020

Are we having fun yet?#AustraliaBurning pic.twitter.com/YkF0o6Xh9v
— AdelH (@AdelH54) January 1, 2020

Happy New Year to you too, Exxon.

We'll be seeing you soon. pic.twitter.com/kTRciuJe5i
— Earth (@UtopicEarth) January 2, 2020

Wow out of touch much?
Credit to original post pic.twitter.com/wq5ilH4pVJ
— Ã°ÂÂÂ¥unprecedented = climate change (@ForgotBeauty) January 1, 2020

You don't have to do this. Seriously, you, yes you the person who wrote this tweet. You don't have to be an accomplice to this shameful company at this important moment in history. You are capable of so much better.
— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) January 2, 2020

$0 tax on $40B revenue, must have been a very good Xmas party.. will you be contributing to the downstream victims from the pollution of your products? pic.twitter.com/JVr9jpxwVa
— Ã°ÂÂÂ Ã°ÂÂÂ¦Ã°ÂÂÂ¦Ã°ÂÂÂºLivinInAPetrostateÃ°ÂÂÂ (@CntrlPimpernel) January 1, 2020

Happy New Year to you too. pic.twitter.com/dv8MFLyej3
— Rick (@chromecastings) January 1, 2020

Safe??... FUN?? You say this as people are dying and fearing for their lives? Half a billion animals died due to the bushfires in Australia. So far! Still a lot more horror to come. Blood is on your hands. #Exxonknew
— Emily Cunningham (@emahlee) January 2, 2020

Who approved this tweet because sweet baby Jesus they need to go back to comms school.
— Cate Owen (@CateOwen) January 2, 2020

Australia is on fire you absolute ghouls! You knew about the dangers of climate change from fossil fuels since the 1970s!
— Ã°ÂÂÂmickeyfoonÃ°ÂÂÂ (@mickeyfoon) January 2, 2020

I'm a fairly old fairly worldly fella. Not too much really stuns me anymore. But WOW!!! If there was an academy award for worst tweet of the year ... well, let's just say there wouldn't be any suspense while they are opening the envelope.
— dan meldrum (@dan_secret_ops) January 2, 2020

Go to Hell.

YouÃ¢ÂÂll know it when you see it, it looks like a lot of Australia right now.
— Alex Hardy (@alexhardy) January 2, 2020

At the time of writing, the post had racked up over 1000 responses like this and hundreds of retweets.

Amazingly tone deaf.

EV Thursday - Electric 2020. Every Electric Car Coming Out Compared In Every Way! (Infographics) 3/3

Rei

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday December 19, 2019 · 12:05 AM PST

2019/12/19 · 00:05

This is part three of our three-part series comparing all major electric vehicles that will be on sale in the US in 2020. For “Part 1: Offerings, Basic Stats, Safety, and Manufacturers”, click here. For “Part 2: Price, Performance, Efficiency, Range and Charging”, click here.

Electric 2020

Every Electric Car Coming Out, Compared In Every Way.

Part 3: Cargo, Internal and External Dimensions, Purchasing

1. Length Comparisons

Here is where we see some of the underperformers in the previous sections shine, and the overperformers suffer.

Vehicles like the i3, 500e, and especially the ForTwo shine in tight spaces, both due to their length and their tight turning circles. While a longer vehicle is good for aerodynamics (efficiency, range, charge times) and allows for a longer wheelbase, for a city car you generally prefer to sacrifice these to ease parking and turning.

Sports and luxury cars generally prefer a longer wheelbase (the distance between the axles). A longer wheelbase improves handling and ride quality, and allows for more efficient use of interior space (in EVs, it also makes more room for a larger battery pack). However, the wheelbase tends to be highly correlated with turning diameter; you generally pay a price for having a longer wheelbase.

The stats for the XC40 Recharge, Mini, and iX3 are based on their ICE equivalents (and should be relatively unchanged).

2. Width Comparisons

Width comparisons are relatively straightforward, with compact cars like the Fiat 500e and Smart ForTwo at the bottom of the list and large / sporty vehicles at the top of the list, particularly the Model X.

Perhaps surprisingly, the Bolt and Leaf edge in narrower than the small BMW i3, and the Polestar 2, designed as a sports sedan, is also fairly narrow. In general, sporty vehicles prefer a wider track for better handling, in contrast to city cars which prefer a narrow track for easier parking.

Parking is indeed the reason that most vehicles top out at the width of the E-Tron or smaller, and why the Model Y — despite being engineered to be overall larger than the Model 3 — is no wider than it. Automated parking systems (particularly in Japan) frequently cannot handle vehicles wider than this.

Data for vehicles is generally provided on a “without mirrors” basis. Most, but not all, vehicles also publish widths for with the mirrors extended; where unavailable, I added in an “average sized” mirror to the vehicle width.

3. Height Comparisons

As a general rule, taller vehicles are preferred by customers for casual usage, while shorter heights are preferred in sporty vehicles for their better handling characteristics. A shorter vehicle also reduces aerodynamic drag, thus improving efficiency.

Ground clearance is a separate issue, and data is not available (even to make estimates) for all vehicles. A low ground clearance generally improves efficiency and handling, but faces more of a risk of bottoming out. The Model X and S have an adjustable air suspension, and thus both the minimum and maximum ground clearance data is provided. Note that while some of these vehicles (particularly the Model X) have excellent clearance, and are good choices for bad roads or deep snow, offroading them is not advisable. Model Y’s ground clearance is estimated based on a side-by-side comparison with the Model 3.

A few vehicles have data for liftover height (the height that you have to lift something up to get it into the trunk / hatch), which is plotted on the right. The standouts in this regard are the Model 3, the e-Golf, and the iX3 (based on the X3’s data).

4. Interior Space

Various interior space measures are plotted above. Head room and leg room are plotted on the right, while hip and shoulder room are plotted on the left. Vehicles are sorted left to right as a weighted average of their front space measurements.

Not all vehicles have interior data available (such as the Taycan), while several others are missing certain elements. Note that the 500e isn’t actually missing rear hip and leg room data — they’re unfortunately off the bottom of the graph! Contrarily, the Model X’s front shoulder room is off the top of the graph.

Unsurprisingly, the vehicles on the right tend to be larger and the ones on the left smaller. The Model 3, despite not being particularly large, scores a respectable position due to efficient use of interior space. Perhaps more surprising, the Clarity ranks third best, beating out the (physically large) Audi E-Tron, thanks to its superb shoulder room.

That said, the sorting is based on averages of front-seat parameters. An individual should choose the specific parameters that matter to them the most.

5. Cargo Comparisons

Cargo measurements are frustrating. There are different measurement standards between the US and the EU. There are different standards between different types of vehicle. A given manufacturer may change standards between model years. And virtually nobody labels what measurement system they’re quoting. While I’ve done my best to decipher the differences between trunk measurements up to the rear seats vs. up to the headliner vs. volume with the seats down, expect there to be significant deviation from these numbers in practice. As the “seats down” measurement systems have the least potential for error, I chose to sort the vehicles by it.

On the budget end, the Leaf and Ioniq are standouts for seats-up space, followed closely by the e-Golf, then the e-Niro and Kona. Model 3 has a relatively poor showing due to having a high-opening trunk rather than a full-height hatch; however, with seats down it slightly edges out the Leaf in space. That said, other budget EVs like the E-Niro and Ioniq beat it solidly in the seats-down category.

I suspect that the trunk volume up to the headliner for the Soul may actually be erroneously low, and might actually be a up-to-seats volume - but I can only graph the numbers as they’re given in various datasets.

A caveat should be added for both the Model Y and Model X. As both of these vehicles are available in various seating configurations, cargo spaces are shown for each of their 5-seat / 2 row configs. The 7-seat Model Y and the 6 and 7 seat Model X configurations will have less cargo space than the above.

In addition to trunks, some EVs also have “frunks” / front trunks (plotted in green). Some, like the i3, E-Tron, and I-Pace have small frunks, sized only for holding cables and the like. Teslas famously have large frunks; joining them in the large-frunk game are the Mustang Mach-E and the Taycan.

6. Purchasing

No vehicle is one-size fits all. Thankfully, the vehicle market has expanded to the point that there’s an EV out there for almost any new car buyer (as for trucks and vans, that’s the topic of an entirely different article!)

Some details cannot be graphed well. I cannot graph how comfortable a seat is for your back, or what you think about a user interface. I could list every single tech feature in each car, but in practice, the best way for you to experience it all is to try the vehicles for yourself. Trust me, dealerships would be more than happy to let you!

A note for buying. Some vehicles are more popular / eagerly awaited than others and often have limited availability. Dealerships are known to gouge for such vehicles at prices over the MSRP. On the other hand, some of the less popular EVs can often be gotten at a discount, sometimes significant. Tesla is a special case, where they operate “stores” rather than dealerships, and even if you order a car at one, the actual order is placed online. Tesla prices are generally non-negotiable — although sometimes at the end of a quarter they might offer incentives (such as free upgrades) to people with orders in place to switch to a configuration that, due to inventory constraints, they can deliver before the end of the quarter.

An additional consideration is tax credits. Tesla’s tax credits expire at the end of this quarter. GMs will only be $1875 until the end of Q1 2020, and then expire. Other manufacturers get $7500 in tax credits. This can significantly distort the overall purchase price picture — assuming that you actually have $7500 in income tax liability!

If you missed the “Addendum for anti-EV readers only”, and you fall under that category, please read it at the end of the article here. :)

Postscript:

A (not very cleaned up) spreadsheet used to generate these graphics can be found here. Note that the EU data was only kept up to date where necessary for the needs of the US data.
Since this series was generated, more data about the BMW iX3 was released (if only it had come out two days earlier! ;) ):
- The range is currently estimated at 10% more than previously believed — 440km WLTP vs. 400 previously. The EPA combined range estimate rises to 228mi and the estimated EPA highway range to 217mi. This will also provide a small boost in charge rates, as it also represents an increase in efficiency and a delay in taper.
- The battery pack size is adjusted trivially from 75kWh to 74kWh.
- Torque and power (not graphed) are provided, at 400Nm and 210kW (286HP). Based on this, I downgrade the estimated 0-60 time (not provided by BMW) to a more modest 5.5s.
- US pricing was not yet unveiled; I continue to estimate in the ballpark of $75k based on previous statements.
- A wide range of other data elements are reported which match previously known data.

EV Wednesday- Electric 2020. Every Electric Car Coming Out Compared In Every Way! (Infographics) 2/3

Rei

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday December 18, 2019 · 12:04 AM PST

2019/12/18 · 00:04

A Mercedes electric drive car is plugged for charging during the second press day of the 66th IAA auto show in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany, on September 15, 2015. .AFP PHOTO / DANIEL ROLAND (Photo credit should read DANIEL ROLAND/AFP/Getty Images)

This is part two of our three-part series comparing all major electric vehicles that will be on sale in the US in 2020. For “Part 1: Offerings, Basic Stats, Safety, and Manufacturers”, click here. For “Part 3: Cargo, Internal and External Dimensions, Purchasing”, click here.

Electric 2020

Every Electric Car Coming Out, Compared In Every Way.

Part 2: Price, Performance, Efficiency, Range, and CHARGING

1. Price vs. Range

Let’s begin by listing and graphing the numbers :) All prices include doc/delivery fees — both base and fully optioned. All ranges are EPA highway, since highway driving is where range matters the most, and generally increases in lower-speed driving. Numbers in italics are calculated / estimated.

Model	Miles	Base $	Full $
ForTwo ED	58	$25,400	$30,480
500e	77	$34,955	$37,365
Clarity BEV	80	$33,400	$37,410
Mini Iconic	99	$37,750	$37,750
Mini Signature+	101	$34,795	$34,795
Mini Signature	102	$30,750	$30,750
Ioniq 28kWh	111	$31,245	$37,745
e-Golf	115	$32,790	$44,083
Leaf	133	$30,915	$41,794
i3 120Ah	138	$45,445	$56,266
i3s 120Ah	138	$48,645	$58,266
e-tron 50	149	$64,295	$73,870
Ioniq 38kWh	155	$32,745	$39,245
Taycan 4S	177	$105,150	$185,010
XC40 Recharge	190	$56,000	$67,200
Mach-E Pr. SR AWD	194	$54,400	$55,000
iX3	197	$75,995	$91,194
Taycan Turbo S	199	$186,350	$248,500
e-tron 55 Quattro	201	$75,795	$85,370
Leaf E+	203	$37,475	$47,394
Leaf E+ SV/SL	204	$39,435	$49,354
Taycan Turbo	207	$156,210	$218,360
Model 3 SR-	208	$36,200	$47,700
Taycan 4S+	211	$115,670	$191,590
Mach-E Pr. SR RWD	213	$51,700	$52,300
Soul EV 64kWh	215	$41,145	$48,175

Model	Miles	Base $	Full $
E-Niro 64kWh	218	$39,545	$46,575
Kona 64kWh	232	$38,045	$46,685
Model 3 SR+	234	$41,190	$52,690
Bolt	237	$38,370	$45,845
I-Pace	240	$70,525	$91,600
Mach E First Edition	250	$61,000	$61,400
Mach-E Pr. ER AWD	250	$59,400	$60,000
Polestar 2	255	$64,000	$76,800
Model X LR P 22”	265	$106,190	$129,690
Model Y LR	271	$53,200	$67,700
Model Y P	271	$62,200	$75,200
Mach-E Pr. ER RWD	278	$56,700	$57,300
Model 3 LR P 20”	283	$58,190	$68,190
Model Y RWD	288	$49,200	$63,700
Model 3 LR P 19”	294	$58,190	$68,190
Model X LR Plaid	300	$126,190	$149,690
Model X LR P 20”	302	$106,190	$129,690
Model X LR	308	$86,190	$109,190
Model 3 LR AWD	309	$50,190	$61,690
Model 3 LR P 18”	309	$58,190	$68,190
Model S LR P 21”	323	$101,190	$117,190
Model S LR P 19”	348	$101,190	$117,190
Model S LR Plaid	350	$121,190	$137,190
Model S LR	360	$81,190	$96,690

Plotting them, first by brand-only:

At present, Tesla remains the range champions — price-competitive on the low-end, and with no peers at the high end (note: the SR- can only be purchased “off-menu”). Porsche is a standout for its very poor range-to-price ratio — but that is not the market they’re going for, and they try to make up for their low range with Tesla-competitive DC charge rates (more on this later).

Jaguar has announced that an upcoming update will increase their range by improving the I-Pace’s motor efficiency; the updated range is included in the above graph, even though it hasn’t happened yet.

Tesla Model S and X Plaid ranges are a huge wildcard. Tesla has confirmed that they will have a new battery pack, but have offered no clues yet as to its capacity. The range could be as little as 250mi (X) / 300mi (S) if drag increases significantly but pack sizes remain the same… or significantly increase if they significantly increase the pack capacity.

Also of some (but lesser) uncertainty are unreleased upcoming vehicles like the BMW iX3. Only one Taycan version (Taycan Turbo) has an official EPA range, but it allows the other variants to be pinpointed reasonably accurately.

The Clarity Electric is not available for purchase; instead, I’ve roughly back-converted the lease price into a purchase price for the purpose of comparison.

The 2020 Ford Mach-E vehicles currently seem a bit expensive relative to their range; however, in early 2021 lower-cost variants will be unveiled, with a non-premium interior and somewhat slower charging.

To reiterate, the range figures are for EPA highway range (derived by taking the combined-cycle range, dividing by the combined-cycle MPGe, and multiplying by the highway MPGe). As a general reminder, do not compare European (WLTP or NEDC) ranges with EPA ranges without a significant adjustment factor; European range estimates are significantly inflated (usually 10-25% for WLTP vs. EPA combined, worse for NEDC).

While labels were left off the previous graph to make it easier to see, here they’re included to be able to identify specific vehicles.

2. Efficiency / Energy Consumption

A key factor to explaining range variation can be seen when we plot out efficiency — both EPA wall-to-wheels efficiency (stacked bars), alongside pack-to-wheels efficiency (coloured lines; roughly estimated from usable pack size relative to range)

With a focus on low drag coefficients and a highly efficient powertrain, Tesla dominates the left side of the efficiency chart, with the Model 3 facing competition only from the Hyundai Ioniq — another highly streamlined sedan.

A wide range of vehicles with similar interior sizes follow, generally of CUV or hatchback format, which typically costs about 15% increased energy consumption on the highway.

Note that a number of vehicles do not have official EPA wall-to-wheels efficiency figures yet, and are ranked by their (less reliably-calculated) pack-to-wheels figures. I personally expect that the Mach E won’t come in as poor as it appears — but I can only plot the numbers as they stand today.

Model S and X formerly would have been fairly far to the right of the chart, but have since had their (relatively inefficient) pure induction powertrain switched to a hybrid induction / PMSRM similar to that of the Model 3’s. This approach to AWD offloads most of the work to the highly efficient PMSRM when cruising, using the induction motor only for bursts of power or traction; unlike the dual-PM powertrains used by other manufacturers of AWD vehicles, an induction motor can be idled without magnetic drag, causing less of an efficiency penalty for going with an AWD powertrain.

Toward the right of the chart tends to be sportier vehicles. The I-Pace used to be at the top of the list, and its EPA figures still rank it there, but the upcoming powertrain efficiency update should move it down a number of (pardon the pun) “paces”. The top of the charts are now dominated by the Porsche Taycan (whose city and combined ranges are actually lower than its highway range — unusual for an EV),

The rightmost Teslas — the Model S and X Plaid — involve guesswork, as their specifics have not been released yet. However, they're track-optimized versions of the S and X performance, and as a general rule, optimizing for the track involves an increase in drag.

The wall-to-wheels consumption figures — as directly measured by the EPA - should be considered more accurate than pack-to-wheels figures. This comes with two caveats: they’re A) are only available on EPA-tested vehicles, and B) are not the most useful figure to owners. The more useful Pack-to-Wheels figures have to be estimated by publicly-available estimates of actually-usable pack capacity relative to EPA ranges, and thus have more margin for error.

3. Price vs. Performance

As in the previous section, we’ll plot out price vs. performance (0-60 time), then discuss the caveats below.

Model	Time	Base $	Full $
Model S LR Plaid	2.1	$121190	$137190
Model S LR P	2.4	$101190	$117190
Model X LR Plaid	2.4	$126190	$149690
Model X LR P	2.7	$106190	$129690
Taycan Turbo S	2.7	$186350	$248500
Model 3 LR P	3	$58190	$68190
Taycan Turbo	3.1	$156210	$218360
Model Y P	3.5	$62200	$75200
Model S LR	3.7	$81190	$96690
Taycan 4S	3.8	$105150	$185010
Taycan 4S+	3.8	$115670	$191590
Model 3 LR AWD	4.16	$50190	$61690
Model X LR	4.4	$86190	$109190
Polestar 2	4.5	$64000	$76800
I-Pace	4.5	$70525	$91600
XC40 Recharge	4.7	$56000	$67200
Model Y LR	4.8	$53200	$67700
iX3	4.8	$75995	$91194
Model 3 SR+	4.9	$41190	$52690
Model 3 SR-	5.4	$36200	$47700
Model Y RWD	5.5	$49200	$63700
Mach-E 1st Edition	5.5	$61000	$61400
Mach-E Pr. SR AWD	5.5	$54400	$55000

Model	Time	Base $	Full $
Mach-E Pr. ER AWD	5.5	$59400	$60000
E-tron 55 Quattro	5.5	$75795	$85370
Mach-E Pr. SR RWD	6.2	$51700	$52300
Bolt	6.5	$38370	$45845
Mach-E Pr. ER RWD	6.5	$56700	$57300
i3s 120Ah	6.7	$48645	$58266
E-Tron 50 Quattro	6.7	$64295	$73870
Mini Iconic	6.9	$37750	$37750
Leaf E+	7	$37475	$47394
Mini Signature+	7.05	$34795	$34795
i3 120Ah	7.1	$45445	$56266
Mini Signature	7.2	$30750	$30750
Soul EV 64kWh	7.2	$41145	$48175
Kona 64kWh	7.4	$38045	$46685
E-Niro 64kWh	7.6	$39545	$46575
Clarity BEV	8	$33400	$37410
Ioniq 38kWh	8.1	$32745	$39245
Leaf	8.3	$30915	$41794
500e	8.4	$34955	$37365
e-Golf	9.4	$32790	$44083
Ioniq 28kWh	9.7	$31245	$37745
ForTwo ED Coupe	11.4	$25400	$30480

Even more than in the price vs. range comparison, Tesla also dominates the price-vs-performance comparison. Note that the above figures reflect the recent Model 3 software update that improved motor power, but whose numbers have not yet been updated on the Tesla website. An equivalent S/X update is also expected soon; I have made no attempt to estimate how much that will improve performance, so these figures should be considered conservative for 2020. Model Y numbers may also improve thanks to the software update, but their numbers are, likewise, unadjusted on the above graph. Model S and X Plaid numbers are estimated, and are likely on the conservative side.

As with the price-vs. range graphs, here’s a version of the above graph which adds individual vehicle labels to the previous graph, at the cost of adding clutter.

4. Top Speed

Once again, when it comes to top speeds, Tesla again dominates — although top speeds probably matter little to your average person. Only the ForTwo ED and perhaps the 500e might be too slow for your average driver on the highway.

Top speeds for the Model S and X Plaid are estimated. Some calculations from watching the Model S Plaid prototype on a straightaway at the Nürburgring suggested a speed of around 180mph, and faster speeds might be possible.

5. Charge Rates

Before we can discuss charge rates we should discuss charger types. There are three primary standards for Fast/DC charging in the US.

Tesla Supercharger: While Tesla offers partnership agreements for other manufacturers to use their standard, at present only Teslas support it (and only in the US; European Teslas use CCS).
CCS: While the officially-endorsed standard in Europe (CCS Type-2), in the US (CCS Type-1) is not the “official standard”, but nonetheless remains the most popular non-Tesla charging standard. US Teslas cannot charge on CCS connectors, but the vast majority of CCS stations also have CHAdeMO connectors, which Teslas can use.
CHAdeMO: A standard popular in Japan and found on the Nissan Leaf, it seems to be falling out of favour in the rest of the world, and some new CCS stations — particularly in Europe — seem to be dropping support for it. That said, most CCS stations also have CHAdeMO connectors. Teslas can charge on CHAdeMO with an optional adapter.

We should also discuss networks and distributions. Particularly in the US, the Supercharger network is generally considered to be the best for road tripping, offering high powers, good geographic distribution, high reliability, and low cost. Billing is automatic. Supercharger stations employ numerous chargers (each paired to two charging pedestals), so that if one goes down, capacity degradation is minimal. Upgraded this year (from 120kW max to 145kW), Tesla is in the process of switching to the new 250kW “V3” standard.

Historically, the state of non-Tesla DC chargers was rather poor. The vast majority were, and remain, 50kW, of which only around ~40kW was normal for most EVs. There are many different networks, each with their own payment methods and membership requirements. Maintenance levels have been inconsistent, depending on how much the charger’s owner actually cared about it. Prices have usually been high compared to Tesla, but inconsistent. Locations have historically been mostly in cities, numerous, but with only one or two chargers per location, making it easy to arrive at a station and discover that it was taken or down.

The state of non-Tesla chargers is however finally improving, particularly due to the Electrify America network. Established as part of Volkswagen’s Dieselgate settlement with the state of California, Electrify America is building a geographically-distributed network of high-power CCS/CHAdeMO chargers. They take a sort of middleground between the Supercharger approach and the traditional CCS station approach, with an average of around 3 chargers/stalls per station — somewhat increasing vulnerability to overcrowding or downtimes, but allowing them to reach a broad geographic coverage more quickly.

A main downside to Electrify America vs the Supercharger network is pricing, as can be seen in the below comparison for a sample road trip from Houston to DC. First, the optimized-Supercharger trip (courtesy of A Better Route Planner)

The total cost of the trip is $63. Now, optimized for Electrify America, in the same vehicle and conditions:

Only a slightly longer drive, but over three times the cost. This said: Electrify America does offer a membership program which cuts a third off the cost to charge, in exchange for a (relatively modest) monthly fee.

But back to the vehicles. We’ll plot minutes to charge on the vertical axis and range achieved in that timeframe on the horizontal axis — thus, you ideally want a curve that’s low down and extends far to the right. A 1-minute rampup delay is assumed at the left side of each graph.

It helps if we zoom in; this will show only range achieved in the first 30 minutes.

Teslas (red) are famously good road trippers, and this shows in the above chart. That said, some of the new contenders which support ~150kW, such as the Mach E ER variants (green; SR variants are only 115kW) and the Polestar 2 (dark blue), also put up a respectable performance — with the caveat that I have to make assumptions about when and how they start tapering their charge rates, since they’re not available on the market yet. The slowpokes remain vehicles like the Leaf (yellow), Bolt (brown), e-Golf (pale green), i3 (cyan), Mini (very dark brown), etc, which can only take ~50kW fast charging.

One may wonder why the new Leaf e+, with its nominally 100kW charge rate, still remains in the slowpoke category. In theory, it could indeed charge faster — but I’ve yet to find anyone who’s actually managed to find a 100kW CHAdeMO connector and film a charge session on it! 100kW-capable CHAdeMO connectors do exist, but they’re sort of the unicorn of the charging world. In particular, while Electrify America CCS stations support 150kW or more, the CHAdeMO connectors on the same stations are only 50kW max. The same applies to the major European networks.

A cluster of vehicles such as the Kona (purple) and E-Niro (hot pink) maintain a relatively steady charge rate up to the lower 70s kW, limited by the current limits of their charge cables. In theory, with the new higher-current CCS connectors, they should be able to handle rates up to 100kW, yet don’t seem to, even when hooked up to 350kW Ionity chargers. This may be improved by a later update, and if so, would push them closer to the charge curve of the Taycan (gold).

What was advertised as a charge-rate giant — the Porsche Taycan — actually puts in a surprisingly poor, middle-of-the-pack showing. This is due to the vehicle’s inefficiency; the less efficient you are, the more kWh you have to charge to go a given distance. The same problem affects the Audi E-Tron (pale yellow) — capable of 150kW charge rates, its inefficiency relegates it to charge rates similar to the Taycan (although it partially compensates for this by maintaining 150kW to nearly 80% full, coming out slightly ahead).

The situation changes somewhat when we switch to scenarios where the charger is not the limiting factor (V3 Superchargers / 350kW CCS), which are few today but will increasingly dominate the landscape over the coming years:

As with before, we zoom in to the first 30 minutes:

The Model 3 and Model Y variants now post blazingly fast charge rates, due to their 250kW peak (170kW for SR-/SR+). Model S and X, however, remain unimproved at 145kW, due to their different battery architecture (whether this may change with the Plaid update (not plotted) is yet to be seen). Taycan — formerly advertised at 350kW charge rates, now nominal 275kW, and in typical charging sessions topping out around ~258kW — now performs much better than it used to, and overtakes Model S for the first hundred miles or so. However, Taycan begins to taper early, jumping down to ~200kW at around 37% (e.g. ~74 EPA-combined miles), and then increasingly large jumps down starting around 71% (~143mi). The reduced rates, combined with the Taycan’s inefficiency, allow the Model S to re-overtake it at around 100mi, even when charge powers are unlimited.

Most other vehicles — being unable to capitalize on such high charge powers — remain relatively unchanged.

Note that the Smart ForTwo ED and the Fiat 500e do not appear on any of the graphs, as they cannot take DC fast charging; the smallest vehicle supporting fast charging is the Mini (only 50kW). As they’re designed primarily for use as city cars, this is not as much of a sacrifice for them as it would be for longer-range vehicles.

If you missed the “Addendum for anti-EV readers only”, and you fall under that category, please read it at the end of the article here. :)

EV Tuesday - Electric 2020. Every Electric Car Coming Out, Compared In Every Way! (Infographics) 1/3

Rei

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday December 17, 2019 · 12:03 AM PST

2019/12/17 · 00:03

2020 is almost upon us, and there’s many people out there who will be making a New Year’s resolution to buy a new electric car during the course of the year. The number of offerings on the market keeps expanding every year, so what will this year look like? Join us for a very deep dive into all mass-market electric cars (e.g. excl. trucks, vans, etc) that will be on the market in the US (this information took a long time to collect and turn into all of these graphics!)

This is part one of a three-part series. “Part 2: Price, Performance, Efficiency, Range and Charging” is now posted here, and “Part 3: Cargo, Internal and External Dimensions, Purchasing” is posted here.

Electric 2020

Every Electric Car Coming Out, Compared In Every Way.

Part 1: Offerings, Basic Stats, Safety, and Manufacturers

Click the names to see them, skip if you know them, but let’s start by introducing...

1. The Cast

Vehicle…………..	Description
Tesla Model 3	By far the most widely sold electric vehicle in the United States, this sports sedan outsells the competition by nearly an order of magnitude due to a combination of range, performance, efficiency, features, and rapid charge rates. Lacking a hatch, it compensates with a cavernous high-opening trunk.
Tesla Model Y	An upcoming large CUV variant of the Model 3 — built on the same platform and sharing most of the hardware with the Model 3, it offers up to three rows of seating (a property shared only with the Model X).
Tesla Model S	The first mass-market electric sports sedan, it is Tesla’s fastest high-end offering (indeed, one of the fastest-accelerating vehicles in the world), and offers more cargo space than the Model 3. A new version (expected out this summer) known as “Plaid” is optimized for the track; prototypes have been demonstrating mind-boggling performance.
Tesla Model X	Powered by the same powertrain as the Model S, this “robot SUV” with self-opening doors and “falcon wings” offers the most interior space of all 2020 passenger EVs. A “Plaid” version is expected out at some point after the Model S Plaid, most likely (but not confirmed) in 2020.
Chevrolet Bolt	The first mass-market EV to challenge the low-end Teslas in range, the hatchback offers significant “local road tripping” ability (longer trips limited only by its low peak charge rate). Its already significant range got a further update earlier this year.
Nissan Leaf	The first mass-market low-end modern EV (prices kept low in part due to a simple air-cooled battery pack), this hatchback dominated US EV sales until the rise of the Model 3. It recently got an update in the form of the “e+” variant, which significantly improved its modest range and charge rates; the lower-cost 40kWh leaf remains on sale for the more budget-constrained.
Hyundai Kona Electric	Much anticipated a year ago, the small-to-midsize CUV entered the scene with a nice balance of size, range, performance, and charge rates relative to its price point.
Hyundai Ioniq Electric	The only EV to rival the Model 3 for the top of the efficiency charts, demand for this sedan has long been outstripped by its limited availability (despite its small 28kWh battery size). This year sees the pack upgraded to 38kWh at only a modest price premium (at the cost of a slower charge rate)
Kia E-Niro	Sharing a drivetrain and battery pack with the Kona, the E-Niro CUV offers only slightly worse performance and efficiency; in exchange it offers one of the roomiest back seats in its size class.
Kia Soul EV	Famous for its boxy looks, the Soul EV now gets an update to a 64kWh battery, bringing it solidly into the modern age.
Smart ForTwo ED	With limited range, performance, charging and top speed, the two-seat ForTwo ED certainly qualifies as a “city car”; however, it compensates for its shortcomings with a tiny physical footprint and tight turning circle. Availability is usually quite limited.
Fiat 500e	The second-smallest of the EVs on the list, Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne famously once told people not to buy it, because they sell it for so much less than it costs them to make it. Like the Smart (but to a lesser degree), one gives up range, performance, charge rate and top speed for a small footprint and tight maneuvering.
BMW i3	The fourth-smallest EV on the list, while range and top speed are limited (as one expects for its size class), the i3 has quite reasonable performance — as one would expect from BMW, as well as a quality interior. But also as one might expect from BMW, the price tag is rather high compared to the vehicle’s specs. The “i3s” variant is slightly sportier than the base “i3”.
BMW iX3	A midsize CUV based around the BMW X3, this new-in-2020 EV will be BMW’s first venture into “non-niche” electric vehicles. Many details are yet to be disclosed.
Volkswagen e-Golf	Long one of the most popular budget EVs in Europe, this small-to-midsize modest-performance electric conversion of the highly popular Golf hatchback continues to achieve modest sales in the US.
Mini Cooper Hardtop Electric	Bringing reasonable performance to an iconic brand, the coupé is only limited by its limited range.
Honda Clarity Electric	Only with limited availability as a lease, the Clarity BEV offers only modest range and charge rates, but its subsidized lease rates and general good reception has rendered it popular among owners.
Ford Mustang Mach-E	Ford’s first serious EV venture (after limited-production “conversion EVs” like the Focus Electric), the Mach-E series mimics many of the design elements of the Model 3 / Y, and is built like a taller Model 3 / shorter Model Y. Only the more expensive premium versions will be available in 2020, but more modest-priced variants will become available in 2021.
Polestar 2	Also very much in the Model 3-influenced vehicle space, this sporty Chinese-built sedan is the first mass-market vehicle by Polestar, a new brand launched by Volvo (which is in turn now a subsidy of Chinese automaker Geely)
Volvo XC40 Recharge	Being sold under the Volvo brand itself, relatively little remains known about this electric version of the midsize XC40 CUV.
Jaguar I-Pace	One of the first “high-end luxury sports competitors” to Tesla, US sales of the sporty Magna-built I-Pace have been relatively modest due to limited range and modest 100kW charge rates relative to its prodigious consumption. However, an upcoming software update promises to significantly improve both of these via sizeable efficiency improvements.
Audi E-Tron	Audi’s first mass-market EV offering (and also in the high-end luxury space), it has sold better than the I-Pace despite also suffering from high consumption and limited range. Where high-power CCS chargers are available, its ability to maintain a ~150kW charge rate up to nearly 80% SoC helps compensate. A new, more modestly priced “e-tron 50” variant comes available this year.
Porsche Taycan	The much heralded Taycan has proven to be the first EV from an established automaker to be able to challenge Tesla in the performance and charge power arena. Aggressively optimized for the track (including, uniquely, a two-speed gearbox), its huge energy consumption rates unfortunately significantly limit range and partially neutralize the charge speed, and the car bears a mind-boggling price tag.

2. Seating and Powertrain

Let’s begin with a straightforward plot of vehicle seating configurations and powertrains.

The caveats for the ones that aren’t simple circles include:

Porsche lists the Taycan as either a 4 or 5-seater, but the middle seat on the latter is tiny; I thus represent it as “4+1”.
Model S used to have a 5+2 config, but it’s not currently available; consequently, it’s “+2” bar is greyed out.
Model Y comes in a 5-seat config and a 7-seat config. However, the rear row of seats doesn’t have much leg room (akin to the rear seats of the 500e), so I gave the 7-seat config a small upper circle.
Likewise, due to the small size of the Fiat 500e and Mini’s rear seating row, I list them as 2+2 instead of the nominal 4-seat configuration.
Model X comes in full-size 5, 6 and 7-seat configs.

2. Roof and Tow Capacity

Towing and roof racks don’t matter to everyone, but they do matter to some people! Almost all vehicles can technically have roof racks or towing added aftermarket, but these are not included in the above, save for the Model 3 (see below). Note that the best tower — the Tesla Model X — has no roof rack capacity at all, because its falcon-wing doors would interfere with one.

I wavered on whether to list the Model 3 in the above graph. The Model 3 is an exceptional case in that the vehicle is designed for towing, and in Europe offers an official tow hitch. However, Tesla has not made this hitch available in the US. An aftermarket supplier, EcoHitch, makes their own hitch which slots onto the vehicle’s hitch mounts for use in the US, and offers the same towing capacity. Since the vehicle actually is designed for towing, I decided to include it above (with caveats)

It has not been announced as to whether there will be a towing option for the Model Y, but spy shots have shown a Model Y towing. Capacity is guessed at the same as for the Model 3, of which it shares a platform, but it could be increased.

Several vehicles have announced roof racks, but not listed capacities. As 165lbs is a common capacity, it is assumed for vehicles that haven’t stated a specific value.

3. Safety Ratings

Safety ratings agencies — IIHS, NCAP, and the NHTSA — can be frustrating. For example, 40% of all vehicles (and most EVs) get 5-star ratings from the NHTSA, which makes it difficult to distinguish between them, when in reality there can be significant differences in the raw safety data. To help compensate for this, I add an additional column, the NHTSA VSS (Vehicle Safety Score), from which the star ratings are derived; the VSS is inverted and scaled so that the highest VSS (the Model 3) is ranked “5”. This allows for a more nuanced view of the actual ratings. Note that the VSS data is not always available, even when NHTSA star ratings are available.

The IIHS has three possible rankings — “Top Safety Pick+” (full-length blue bar), “Top Safety Pick” (half-length blue bar) , and not picked (blue nub). The absence of any sort of blue bar means that the vehicle has not been examined by the IIHS.

Some vehicles are outdated, and thus don’t affect the latest safety improvements — particularly, the Model S and Smart’s IIHS ratings (2017); the Bolt (2017), Kona (2017), and i3’s (2016) NCAP ratings; and the Model S (2016), Leaf (2017), and Smart (2016/2017)’s NHTSA ratings. The Smart, Kona, E-Niro, iX3, Ioniq, Soul, Mini and e-Golf have their IIHS ratings based on their internal combustion variants, due to a lack of testing of their electric versions.

For an extremely nuanced (but hard to read) view, I plot all ratings for all major categories by all ratings agencies. Note that there are significant gaps in available. Note that many types of ratings are unavailable for many vehicles.

As described for the previous graph, some vehicles had to rely on the ratings for their ICE equivalents.

4. Manufacturing Locations and Component Sourcing

Not much nuance is required for discussing the country of origin. However, more nuance is required when discussing component sourcing:

For all vehicles currently in production and on sale in the US, the percentage of US/Canadian and other North American content is public information. For upcoming vehicles, it has to be estimated. For the above, I estimated Mini production to be similar to its ICE variants. Mach-E was estimated to be similar to other vehicles out of its plant in Mexico, although it could vary significantly from this estimate. Other upcoming non-US-made vehicles are expected to have little to no North American content, as is the general rule for such vehicles today.

5. Corporate Responsibility

Brand	Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers	Joined Trump Lawsuit Against CARB
BMW	X
Daimler	X
Fiat-Chrysler	X	X
Ford	X
General Motors	X	X
Honda
Jaguar (Tata)	X
Hyundai		X
Kia		X
Nissan		X
Tesla
Volkswagen	X

Corporate responsibility with respect to environmentalism is often a topic of concern to vehicle buyers. Above are two factors that have been significant players recently. On the left, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, while publicly talking up the benefits of electrification, has been lobbying the Trump administration to loosen mileage limits and to fight against California’s higher standards. On the right is the manufacturers who have joined the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board on behalf of the Trump administration.

tl;dr — An ‘X’ on the left is bad, an ‘X’ on the right is even worse.

Unionization

I initially wanted to have a third corporate responsibility measure in the above graph: “Unionized?”, but as I was investigating it, it proved to be a surprisingly complex topic that would require a whole article of its own. Some examples:

Unionization can vary not only from plant to plant within a company, but also for various phases of a vehicle’s production within a plant. For example, Tesla’s Fremont vehicle factory and their Nevada Gigafactory aren’t unionized, but Tesla-Grohmann - the company’s branch that builds and updates their production lines - is.
Being in a union and being actually represented by a union are two different things, particularly outside of the US / EU. For example, Ford’s plant in Cuautitlan (upcoming home of the Mustang Mach-E) has several times attempted to establish its own union independent of the national union, CTM, who they viewed as being in Ford’s pocket; the conflict peaked in the early 90s, when paramilitaries hired by CTM opened fire on protesting workers, injuring 12 and killing 1.
China (upcoming home to the Polestar 2 and the BMW iX3) is a key example of “nominal unionization” in today’s world. All workers in China belong to branches of a single national union, ACFTU. However, ACFTU is strictly controlled top-down by the Communist Party, and generally serves the interests of businesses rather than workers. Forming a union outside of ACFTU control is strictly prohibited, and attempts in the past have been put down by military force.

If there is interest, however, I could compile a plant-by-plant history of unionization statuses and list any past worker conflicts.

6. Corporate Financial Health

In addition to corporate social responsibility, corporate financial health is a topic frequently discussed. Three measures are plotted. The debt to equity ratio of a company reflects its ability to pay off its obligations by selling stock (low is good). Debt-to-EBITDA reflects the ability of a company to pay off its obligations through its ongoing operations (low is good). And lastly, the Altman-Z score is a more complex measure used to assess the risk of a company going bankrupt (high means a low risk of bankruptcy).

Note that Tata (which owns Jaguar) doesn’t have a visible Debt-to-EBITDA ratio; this is because, in their last quarter, Tata posted a sizeable loss, and thus EBITDA was negative.

Addendum ( for anti-EV readers only :) )

If you’re here to make the “long tailpipe” argument that EVs just move pollution around, you’re incorrect (beyond the fact that the grid gets cleaner every year and that the location of emissions has a profound effect on their health impacts… e.g. you want a long tailpipe)
If you’re here to argue that you save more energy just continuing to operate an old ICE vehicle, you could not be more incorrect.
If you’re here to claim that EVs are too expensive, compare the lease rates to ICE vehicles’ lease rates (e.g. numbers calculated by quants, factoring in depreciation, interest, etc). For example, a 3-year 12k mi Model 3 SR+ lease (with an extensive standard feature suite and excellent performance) only is $124/mo more expensive than a 3-year 12kmi lease on a barebones base-model Honda Accord. A longer-term lease would have an even smaller monthly difference. Now subtract from that 1k mi/mo in gasoline costs and annual maintenance.
If you’re here to claim that new cars in general are too expensive — if you’re not a new car buyer, then this is not about you. People who buy used cars will end up buying whatever new car buyers bought, some years prior. Thus, if new car buyers switch to EVs, used car buyers will as well, with some number of years lag. Hence, the goal needs to be to get new car buyers to buy electric.
If you’re here to be opposed to cars in general, this is also not a conversation for you. City planning decisions and the transportation needs of people in the countryside are a fascinating, unrelated topic. Until if / when cars disappear from the roads, those that are purchased should be electric.
If you’re here to claim that EVs suck because apartment dwellers in cities without curbside charging and whose landlords or employers don’t allow charging (even when asked), and there’s no DC fast chargers near you at places that you frequent (grocery stores, restaurants, etc)…. then don’t buy an EV right now. Leave it to the people who aren’t in your situation :) . The higher the rate of EV penetration in the market, the more that cities and landlords will be forced to adapt. I simply recommend that you A) actually ask your employer and landlord (rather than assuming an answer of “no”), B) actually check Plugshare to ensure that there’s no sufficiently-fast chargers at places you frequent (don’t forget to zoom in; Plugshare truncates their display list from a distance), and C) follow up on the above once or twice per year to see if the situation has changed.

And to all people in the market for an EV out there in the coming year… happy shopping :)

EV Tuesday: Dieselgate Continues - New Suspect VW-Group Defeat Device Leads To Search Warrant

Rei

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday December 10, 2019 · 4:00 AM PST

2019/12/10 · 04:00

As discussed previously, the lawsuits against VW working their way through the German court system have uncovered what appears to be a new emissions defeat device introduced at the time that they were supposedly fixing their previous cheating engine, the EA 189. The new engine introduced in 2012, the EA 288, was supposedly defeat-device free. However, it turns out that the pollution control mechanism only gets turned on within a specific temperature range — a range which happens to include temperatures in which the vehicles are tested for emissions.

And so Dieselgate continues

In the latest news, the German prosecutors office has issued and executed a search warrant on VW facilities in Wolfsburg related to the case. According to the prosecutor’s office, “This measure is in the context of investigations, which are directed against individual accused and refer to diesel vehicles with engines of the type EA 288.”

Many hundreds of thousands of vehicles are considered to be affected. Among them:

Audi: A1 8X, A3 8V, A3 8X, A4 B8, A4 B9, A5 F5, A6 C7, Q2 GA
Seat: Ibiza, Toledo IV, Leon III, Ateca, Arona, Alhambra II, Tarraco
Škoda: Fabia III, Rapid (2012), Octavia III, Superb III, Karoq, Kodiaq, Kodiaq RS
Volkswagen: Golf VII, Golf Sportsvan, Jetta VI, Touran II, T-Roc, Passat B8, Polo VI, Polo V, Beetle, Tiguan, Tiguan II, Sharan II, CC, Scirocco III, Arteon
VW Commercial: T6, Caddy, Crafter, Amarok

Meanwhile in the UK, the civil trial against Volkswagen has begun as as many as 100k plaintiffs are represented in one of the largest class-action suits in the country’s history.

Rei

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday October 20, 2019 · 11:55 AM PDT

2019/10/20 · 11:55

NASA X-57 Maxwell electric airplane concept art

We’ve all seen this annoying line of argument from people opposed to us cleaning up our act with respect to the environment:

Oh, you FLEW over here, now didn’t you? You’re such a hypocrite - that airplane emits tons of CO2. But you did it because there’s NO OTHER REASONABLE OPTION, right? Batteries aren’t even close to the energy density of fuel needed for air travel! That’s the problem with you people, you want us to do things that are TOTALLY IMPRACTICAL, and don’t even live up to your own rhetoric!

While every part of the above will be addressed, the primary response to this can be encapsulated in this graph:

While I would disagree about a number of the things they list as “difficult to eliminate” — long-distance EV road transport can be handled by things like the Tesla Semi, pozzolanic concrete mixes and FRP rebar can significantly lower CO2 footprints while increasing longevity, there’s many “green steel” projects in the works, etc — there’s no question that shipping and in particular aviation are in the “difficult” category. But difficult does not mean impossible. So rather than just throwing up our hands, we need to pick the easy, low-hanging fruit while focusing on building a ladder to the high-hanging fruit.

And that means electric airplanes.

You may or may not have seen in the news recently that NASA has reached a critical milestone with its X-57 electric test aircraft programme, thanks to the arrival of its fuselage for wing-integration:

www.nasa.gov/…

This is, however, neither the beginning nor the end of the story. We’ll come back to it in a bit, but first let’s back up to the fact that… electric airplanes that you can buy already exist today.

Meet, for example, the Pipistrel Alpha Electro:

A 2-seat light trainer made by Pipistrel (a Slovenian aircraft manufacturer), it’s designed for flight schools, where its low fueling cost, minimal maintenance, short takeoff distance, and high reliability make it ideal for the role (the company claims that it can cut the cost of pilot training by up to 70%). The aircraft offers one hour of flight time (plus a 30-minute reserve), and — in true electric fashion — can regenerate up to 13% of its energy on descent / landing.

To see it in action, watch EV enthusiast Bjørn Nyland taking a ride in one:

YouTube Video

Now, a small electric trainer is great — but it’s not going to do anything for actually addressing passenger craft. But companies are already taking the next logical step. This, for example, is the Eviation Alice at the Paris Air Show:

While there’s currently over 170 different electric aircraft programmes in development, the Alice is the furthest along. With certification expected in 2021 and entering service in 2022, the Alice — assuming none of its competitors move their schedules up — will become the first electric passenger aircraft in the world. Massachusetts-based Cape Air has already ordered a “double digits” number of them.

At nine passengers and two crew, it’s small — although larger variants will follow (the physics of an electric aircraft doesn’t get more difficult with size — it actually gets easier; however, nobody is going to fund the development of A380-sized electric aircraft as their first model!). The $4M craft powered by 900kWh of li-ion batteries has a cruising range of 650 miles (about the distance from Chicago to Philadelphia) at a cruising speed of 300mph. The battery pack is designed to recharge during the time the craft spends at the gate, with no additional wait time required. Powertrain maintenance schedules are minimal, and fueling costs are low

Optimizing for electric propulsion led to some unusual design elements, like wingtip props and a flat lifting body — the latter of which can be seen in the background below:

The design offers an amazing 24:1 lift-to-drag ratio — most commercial aircraft are in the 12:1 to 20:1 range. 10% of this boost comes from the wingtip props alone. These props are actually secondary, and primarily for the purpose of reducing drag and increasing stability; primary propulsion comes from the rear tail prop. The Alice also avoids the sort of induced drag from air intakes that all fuel-burning aircraft must include.

This leads us back to the earlier claim that electric vehicles opponents frequently use:

Batteries aren’t even close to the energy density of fuel

Gasoline is 45MJ/kg, while li-ion cells are only 0,9MJ/kg — clearly gasoline cars are 50 times better, right?

Let’s take a look at that. The Tesla Model 3 LR Performance is generally considered to be the same vehicle class as the BMW 3-series. Its closest performance match is the BMW 340i xDrive — although it’s still a long ways off:

Tesla Model 3 Performance:

Curb weight: 1847 kg
0-60: 3.1s
EPA combined-cycle range: 310mi

BMW 340i xDrive:

Curb weight: 1750 kg (car) + (15.8 * 2.83 ≈ 45kg fuel) = 1795kg
0-60: 4.4s (4.1s with a 1-foot rollout)
EPA combined-cycle range: (15.8 * 24) = 379mi

Wait a minute… the Model 3 is only marginally heavier, and goes a good fraction as far, but vastly blows out the BMW on performance. Indeed, if you wanted to add that extra performance to the BMW, it’s mileage would fall further and its weight would rise further. How can it be that batteries can have 1/50th the energy density, yet cars powered by them be on the same mass/performance/range spectrum as gasoline cars?

Part of it is of course efficiency; EV motors average in the low to mid 90s % efficiency. Gasoline engines peak at about 35-40% efficiency, but average 20-25% efficiency (hybrids shift the average closer to the peak).

Part of it is energy recovering from braking and a lack of idling (like hybrids) — although these are lesser issues.

None of these however are the real issue; the real issue is that you’re not driving around a puddle of gasoline, and you’re not driving around a pile of battery cells. A whole transportation device is vastly more than just its energy source. These design impacts are heavily influenced by the choice of energy source. And it just so happens that most of the changes are highly advantageous to electric vehicles. Some examples:

The battery is not just dead mass; it’s a stiffening element which also replaces the loadbearing elements in the floor pan.
Electric motors are far smaller and lighter per unit mass than their ICE equivalents
Electric drive units can be inlined between the wheels, simplifying the drivetrain
Electric vehicles require far less air intake, which reduces aero drag
The space freed up by the physically smaller drive units allows for better streamlining and more mass-efficient crash structures.

… and many more things.

The exact same synergies apply to electric aircraft — which make simple “energy density comparisons” with piston or jet aircraft naive at best, and useless at worst. Indeed, the benefits for aircraft electrification (primarily from drag reduction) appear to be even greater than for cars.

Enter the X-57.

Notice how… well, unusual that wing design is — even compared to that of the Alice. The small props increase the airspeed over the wing, allowing for shorter takeoff distances from a given wing area, and increasing the L/D ratio in flight. You cannot practically implement a design like this with a non-electric aircraft. NASA expects this design to have only 60% of the drag of a conventional wing/prop approach.

Note also how short the chord of the wing is. Normally this would be a problem for stall or even dealing with gusts — however, the instant, individualized electric throttle response on the mid-wing props can immediately compensate for any loss in lift. The higher-drag props closer to the fuselage are designed to fold-back out of the airstream when not needed, leaving the more efficient outward props to provide thrust. The overall design is also expected to produce significantly less noise on takeoff.

Early in its history, NASA — back then known as NACA — did much of the research that helped make fuel-driven aircraft practical for commercial aviation. Now they’re working on the exact same thing for electric aircraft. Continued iteration on such designs should continue to lead to new efficiency improvements — improvements which simply aren’t possible with fuel-driven aircraft. Meanwhile, electric aircraft will also benefit from the generalized aerodynamics improvements made by non-electric aircraft.

Let’s piece the whole picture together now.

The Eviation Alice — using batteries that no longer are even top of the line — offers a range of 650 miles, about the distance from Chicago to Philadelphia. To be explicit, current tech is already sufficient to displace regional air transport.
Batteries of course advance incrementally every year, even without there being any “big leaps”. Combined with drag improvements from innovative work such as NASA’s, ranges of 1250-1500 miles within 5-8 years seem entirely plausible. With such ranges, you could travel between any two points in the continental US with only one stopover. The same applies to similarly large spans elsewhere in the world. Since airlines already like stopovers (for passenger routing efficiency), and since electric aircraft allow for lower operating costs, this would be expected to displace the lion’s share of global aircraft emissions. Only long-haul air travel would remain impractical.

Long-haul air travel, thus, remains the hard-to-pick fruit at the very top of the tree. Let’s take a moment to look at the two remaining pieces of this picture:

Energy densities sufficient for long-haul travel
Aircraft speeds sufficient for long-haul travel (and to speed up long-distance domestic travel).

Energy density:

Let us examine the achieved and theoretical energy densities of some various battery chemistries.

Chemistry	MJ/kg
N[M,A]C? / Graphite + Si (present)	0.9
N[M,A]C? / Graphite + Si (theoretical, w/electrolyte)	1.4
LiS / Li (present, limited cycle life)	1.4
Air / Zn (achieved, lab-scale)	1.7
S/ Ca	2.0
N[M,A]C? / Graphite + Si (theoretical, solid state)	2.1
LiS / Li (mid-term)	2.1
Air / Li (mid-term)	2.2
N[M,A]C? / Li (achieved, lab-scale, 1k cycles)	2.7
AlS / Al (achieved, lab scale)	2.9
Air / Li (achieved, lab-scale)	2.9
FeF3 / Li (achieved, lab-scale, 1k cathode cycles)	3.6
N[M,A]C? / Al (theoretical, w/electrolyte)	3.8
S / Na (theoretical)	4.6
AlS / Al (theoretical)	4.8
Air / Zn (theoretical)	4.9
FIB (theoretical)	5.4
Air / Na (theoretical)	5.8
FeF3 / Li (theoretical)	6.9
S / Li (theoretical)	9.4
Air / Mg (theoretical)	10.0
Air / Li (theoretical, Li2O2)	12.4
Air / Li (theoretical, LiO2)	18.8
Air / Li (theoretical, at takeoff)**	42.0

** Note: Air-cathode cells increase in mass as the cell is discharged. This is a mixed bag — obviously increasing lift (and thus drag) requirements, but also increasing gravitational potential energy. Except where otherwise indicated(**), energy density figures above account for the oxygen (e.g. landing mass rather than takeoff mass).

*** The above table does not represent the upper limit of potential battery energy densities by any stretch. The lithium-oxygen bond is hardly the strongest chemical bond known to science (lithium fluoride, various boron compounds, etc all have greater energy density).

It should be obvious that batteries are not even remotely close to their theoretical limits. And while the push for electric vehicles has focused more on cost than energy density, the focus will heavily switch to energy density for electric aircraft as they begin — pardon the pun — to take off. And while all of these numbers are less than the energy density of aviation fuel (43,5MJ/kg), remember that they don’t need to be anywhere close; electric propulsion is more efficient, leads to craft mass savings (e.g. further energy savings), and significantly improved L/D ratios (e.g. even further energy savings). And even if one never achieves equivalent range, and only ever gets, say, half the range of the best fuel-burning aircraft… what’s the worst case for your next flight from San Francisco to Melbourne? A brief stopover in Hawaii? Yes, I think people will somehow survive. ;) So long as an option is A) viable, and B) offers reduced operations costs, airlines will adopt it widely.

Speed

The Eviation Alice’s cruising speed is 300mph (with a never-exceed speed of 390mph). Does this mean that all electric aircraft will have a cruising speed like that?

No. And let’s go into why.

An aircraft — assuming that it’s mass does not change — has a constant lift requirement. While drag rises in proportion to the square of the velocity, so does lift. To maintain a constant level of lift at a higher velocity, an aircraft climbs to a higher altitude, until the reduced air density lowers the lift force (and correspondingly, drag force) down to the desired level. Net result: drag force remains the same but the aircraft moves faster.

(This is somewhat of an oversimplification, as L/D coefficients can change with velocity, but it’s a rough idea).

So what limits the Alice’s cruising speed? Well, a couple things.

Climbing energy: There can be practical speed limits for props (more on that in a second), but there’s something more fundamental at play. The Alice has a service ceiling of 9100m. At its maximum takeoff weight of 6350kg, the bare minimum energy that the laws of physics will allow for in climbing to that height is 157,5kWh — 17.5% of the airplane’s entire energy capacity. In practice, significantly more of its energy than this will be used in the climb, limiting the amount left for cruising.

However, for future aircraft with increasingly energy-dense batteries, climbing will represent an increasingly small percentage of the total energy requirements, and higher altitudes can be climbed to for a fixed fraction of the total energy available.
Prop tip speed: For efficiency, prop tip speeds are generally kept at under around 0,85 mach, in order to limit transsonic drag. How much thrust this means depends on the prop design (and how fast a plane goes depends on the overall aircraft design), but this keeps speeds down on prop aircraft.

The fastest prop-driven aircraft record in level flight is that of the Tu-114 at 541,45 mph (0,71 mach). While in theory, the advantages of electric aircraft aerodynamics might allow for faster speeds with subsonic props, that’s nearing the limits of what is reasonably possible — especially for a passenger aircraft. To get greater speeds, one has to take any of several different paths.

Supersonic props: These have been used, and are rather peculiar looking:

That’s the XF-84H Thunderscreech — and its name right there points out one of the main drawbacks to supersonic props: they’re extremely loud. While properly located supersonic props do not impose excessive noise to the passengers of the aircraft, the whirling trail of sonic booms they leave behind them can be deafening. It would only be acceptable to fly such an aircraft at high altitudes over the ocean. Thankfully — as noted with the X-57 — electric aircraft can use as many props as they want, due to how effectively the motors scale down — and thus rely on subsonic propulsion while near land.

Another disadvantage to supersonic props is that they’re less efficient than subsonic ones — although the difference declines with increasing speed.
Jet propulsion: Yes, electric-powered aircraft can be jet-propelled as well — and indeed, Russia has been periodically testing a particularly disturbing relative of one right now. There’s several ways this can be done:
- Arcjets: These are sometimes used on satellites, with canisters of compressed gas or liquid propellant rather than air. The fuel enters a nozzle through which an electric arc passes, greatly heating it before it expands, providing thrust. The primary downsides are ozone generation and electrode wear.
- Induction heating: An initial arc creates a plasma, which is heated by alternating currents in a surrounding coil. There is minimal wear and ozone generation, but a large amount of heat builds up in the coils that needs to be eliminated; such designs also tend to be heavier.
- Conductive heating: This one’s actually been done before, and they’re still doing it — not with electric heat from batteries, but bloody nuclear reactors! Back in the 1950s, as part of “Project Pluto” the US created a nuclear engine designed for a nuclear-armed ramjet missile that could fly around for months at a time.
  
  The engine involves thermally-conductive channels within the nuclear reactor that would heat the air passing through it, which would then expand out the back. Eventually common sense got the better of them — and not just for the great danger that such a device would pose to your own country, or how provocative the weapon was. The realization slowly dawned that there was no way to even test such a missile without deliberately and repeatedly crashing nuclear reactors into the ocean.
  
  Enter the Putin era, and Project Pluto has returned — this time in Russia, under the NATO codename Skyfall. Their attempts to develop it have already been unintentionally killing some of their engineers and causing minor nuclear disasters.
  
  Thankfully, in the case of an electric aircraft, no nuclear material is under discussion. Air passes through channels with resistive heating elements, not nuclear ones :). Like induction heating, there is no ozone generation or electrode wear, but masses are higher (induction heating can also achieve greater peak temperatures).

All of these options are less efficient than subsonic props, but not impractically so, where speed is of importance. Indeed, there’s several reasons why electric aircraft have — in the long term — better potential for supersonic passenger service than fuel-propelled aircraft:

In summary…

The notion that the choice is between “reducing all types of CO2 emissions at the same time with today’s technology” and “doing nothing at all”, is an obvious red herring made by people who want to do nothing at all.
Emissions need to be fought by simultaneously pursing the low-hanging fruit with vigour (elimination of coal, electrification of passenger vehicles and trucks, etc etc) while simultaneously (and with equal vigour) building a ladder to the higher-hanging fruit — ultimately even including electrified long-haul air travel.
Today’s tech already supports the electrification of regional air service.
The electrification of broader domestic travel should be expected to follow reasonably closely behind. The two of these combined represents the majority of air travel emissions (which are in turn only 2% of global CO2 emissions)
How soon long-haul air travel — that last little bit - can be electrified is uncertain, but battery chemistry certainly lays down no fundamental barriers.
Electric aircraft have the potential to travel fast — potentially even much faster than today’s fuel-burning aircraft — but it increases the energy requirements to do so.

Dieselgate 2.0 Continues: New Engine, New Cheat?

Rei

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday September 12, 2019 · 4:16 AM PDT

2019/09/12 · 04:16

Earlier I wrote about a newly emerging scandal in the German courts over Volkswagen’s EA189 engine. According to the court, the Dieselgate “fix” used in the engine was itself a cheat; it was only enabled within a certain temperature range, and thus was disabled for half the year (one might wonder whether recent research that diesel emissions rise dramatically when the weather gets over 30° might be related)

Well, today comes a new scandal with a new engine, the EA288 (english coverage), which was designed to replace the EA189. Internal VW documents acquired and reviewed by SWR over the course of a Dieselgate lawsuit relate to the vehicles’ new AdBlue (urea) injection system, which is used to reduce emissions. According to the documents, the software for the engine was designed to detect the NEDC emissions testing, and if so, increase the amount of AdBlue it would inject, but otherwise reduce it in order to reduce AdBlue consumption to levels acceptable to consumers.

Volkswagen denies that its new engine contains any defeat software. “We investigated this topic since 2015 and the results of all investigations and measurements confirm to our current knowledge, the realization that the use of driving curves in the EA288 engine have no impact on compliance with emission limits.” Yet the internal documents lay out a detailed cheat plan, from how to detect the cycle to the exact dosings of AdBlue if detected vs. if not detected.

The EA288 engine is found in hundreds of thousands of cars, including the Golf, Tiguan and Passat.

The current case related to the EA288 is still active, vs. the previous EA189 scandal which was confirmed in the judgement of the court, and which Volkswagen is appealing. These revelations come at a bad time for Volkswagen, who since Dieselgate has pursued a strategy of focusing on statutes of limitations to avoid liability to customers who sued the company over its former defeat devices. Since the recent incidents would comprise new cheats, their presence has the ability to reset the clock on the statute of limitations.

Planning to get some amazing future car? Beware the 'European Drivecycle Game'

Rei

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday September 10, 2019 · 7:58 AM PDT

2019/09/10 · 07:58

In the olden days, we often heard a refrain along the lines of:

“Man, look at the MPGs on these cars in Europe! It’s ridiculous that we can’t get them over here.”

Nowadays, it’s often of the form:

“Man, look at the range of this upcoming European EV! I totally want that when it comes here!”

While a particular European car might actually be good in this regard, all too often this is a symptom of the “European Drivecycle Game” — one that’s increasingly deliberately exploited by manufacturers to hype up their products. When the reality sets in, it often leads to disappointment, followed by moving on to the next hype machine.

Every driver should learn to recognize this “game”, and how to avoid it!

In a nutshell…

Vehicle MPGs and ranges are based on what are known as “drivecycles” — a scientifically-controlled testing regime which yields figures by which different vehicles can be compared, without having to rely on the randomness of, “Well, my buddy John drove it, and he got X mpg / Y miles range”. A drivecycle may not represent any specific individual’s real-world figures, but it provides a nice comparative baseline.

The US “5-cycle” system gives MPG (and for EVs, MPGe) figures for city, combined, and highway driving, as well as range for combined driving.

City driving is based primarily on the UDDS drivecycle, a specific variant called FTP-75. The vehicle is made to drive the following pattern:

Highway driving is based on the HWFET drivecycle and the more aggressive US06 cycle:

Combined driving is a 55% mix of city and 45% highway driving.

It was discovered that combined EV ranges based on these figures were grossly inflated; people tend to care about range most when traveling long distances at high speed, while EVs are more affected by speed than ICEs. Additionally, adverse weather can have more of an impact on EV ranges than ICEs. Consequently, listed EPA ranges are 30% lower than the calculated ranges — yielding a relatively realistic value (your experience will vary).

In Europe, the standard drivecycle used to be the NEDC (New European Drive Cycle). This is a much slower drivecycle, and yields mpg figures that are inflated over US figures, and EV ranges that are vastly longer.

Note that these speeds are in kph; 100 kph is ~62mph, while 50kph is ~31mph. Not only is this cycle exceedingly slow, but no range-discounting is conducted for EVs; the range figures given are highly inflated.

Recognizing that NEDC was terrible for both ICE vehicles and EVs, Europe switched to a new cycle called WLTP (World-harmonized Light-vehicle Test Procedure). WLTP consists of four segments — sometimes dubbed “city”, “town”, “rural”, and “motorway”.

These are measured both individually and combined to yield a net value. While much better than NEDC, it still yields somewhat high MPG and range figures.

How does this play out in practice? Let’s look at some examples.

Example 1: Internal combustion vehicle MPGs

Here’s some popular vehicles in the US which also have an equivalent in Europe. WLTP l/100km figures will be converted to MPGs. Note that these can be somewhat rough, as ICE vehicles often have significant engine differences between the US and Europe (unlike EVs)

Vehicle	US	EU (WLTP)	Difference
Ford Escape / Kuga 2L FWD	25	33.1	+33%
Toyota RAV4 Hybrid	40	53.5	+34%
Honda Civic 4dr manual turbo	32	39.2	+23%
Jeep Wrangler 8-gear 2L	24	24.2	+1%
Volkswagen Golf GTI manual	27	31.3	+16%
BMW 330i sport auto	30	34.1	+14%
Porsche Cayenne	21	25	+19%

Comparisons get worse when one compares UK “mpg” figures rather than general EU l/100km figures. This combines the already inflated WLTP figures with the fact that the UK’s imperial gallon is 20% larger than the US gallon.

Example 2: Electric vehicle ranges

Electric vehicles tend to have fewer changes when transitioning between markets. Here are some common electric vehicle ranges in miles.

Vehicle	US	NEDC	WLTP	US-WLTP Difference
Chevy Bolt / Opel Ampera-e	238	320	240	+1%
Tesla Model 3 LR AWD	310		348	+12%
Nissan Leaf 40kWh	151	217	168	+11%
Hyundai Kona 64kWh	258		279	+8%
Volkswagen e-Golf	125	186	143	+14%
BMW i3 120Ah	153	223	193	+26%
Jaguar i-Pace	234	337	292	+25%
Audi E-Tron	204		259	+27%

Many more examples could follow. Apart from the Chevy Bolt (which appears to have undergone some changes when making a European version), normally WLTP ranges come in at ~10-25% greater than their EPA equivalents. Less efficient EVs in particular seem to be the most boosted by the WLTP. As for NEDC ranges… well, just look at them; they’re a joke.

Why it matters: a recent case

We keep seeing a cycle play out where people tease development ranges (sometimes even NEDC ranges) — causing a surge in people putting off an EV purchase to wait for their “dream car”. Then the WLTP range is finally unveiled — a much lower figure. Reservation holders are disappointed. Then the EPA figures get unveiled, and they’re slashed again. The disappointed reservation holders then focus on some other upcoming car and its “great” range figures — and the cycle repeats.

As a recent case, a lot of hype was paid to the Porsche Taycan. Generally the media quoted figures of “at least 310 miles range”. You really had to dig to discover that these were NEDC estimates from the development process. Then it got its WLTP range: “237 to 280 miles”. We’ll get into the “range” game later; the actual combined WLTP range is 256 miles. Given that this is a relatively inefficient vehile (akin to the E-Tron and i-Pace), the EPA range may come in around 205mi or so. A far cry from the earlier “at least 310 miles figures”.

The “up to X miles” range game

The newest trick is to report that a vehicle has “up to X miles range”. For example, with the upcoming VW ID.3, lots of coverage has reported the ranges of the three variants as:

45kWh: “up to 205 miles”
58kWh: “up to 260 miles”
77kWh: “up to 342 miles”

Unlike EPA figures, for which only combined cycle ranges are generally given out, European manufacturers are increasingly giving out the ranges for the low (city) and extra high (motorway) portions of the WLTP cycle — for example, the “237 to 280 miles”. They can then say, in the case of the Taycan, “Up to 280 miles”. In this case, “Up to” means “city driving”. And not EPA city driving, but the even slower WLTP city driving.

In the case of the ID. 3, the 45kWh has a WLTP range of “143 to 205 miles”. E.g. a combined range of around 171 WLTP miles. Going with a favourable 12% WLTP-EPA conversion factor, this yields an estimated EPA range of 153 miles.

Looking at the 77kWh version, its WLTP is “242 to 342 miles”. E.g. a combined range of around 287 miles. E.g. an EPA range (12% conversion factor, as above) of around 256 miles.

One can imagine how disappointed a person would be if they had sat around waiting for a year or more for a vehicle that they thought was going to have 342 miles range, only to discover that it actually had 256 miles range.

Remember that these figures apply to charging as well. If a manufacturer boasted that their vehicle charges at “200 miles in 15 minutes”, but they were playing both the WLTP and “up to” games, the actual charge rate might be, say, 150 miles in 15 minutes.

In summary…

When it comes to cars, be an educated consumer! This means understanding that…

A “mpg” is not a mpg.
A “mile” is not a mile.
Be dubious of any manufacturer that gives you a stat who doesn’t clarify exactly what drivecycle it’s measured against.
Outright ignore anyone who claims a range or MPG based on “our driver went out and drove it around for a bit” ;)
Be wary of the “up to” game on European (WLTP) figures. Also be wary of the fact that news outlets might leave out the initial “up to” wording when covering the story.

Remember the emissions-cheating diesel scandal at VW? Turns out that the fix is itself a cheat.

Rei

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday August 24, 2019 · 8:16 PM PDT

2019/08/24 · 20:16

Uh oh.

Let’s start off by pointing out that not everything Volkswagen does is bad. Namely, while their EV production targets are still significantly lower than Tesla’s, of the “traditional automakers”, they have the most ambitious electrification programme. And that’s something to be commended.

Indeed, when the other day VW’s head of diesel development claimed that diesel is “absolutely clean” now (leading to a lot of hilarious and angry responses), I was willing to just give that a pass as a lazy marketing effort, thanks to their big electrification push.

But the news recently is very much a bad thing.

To sum up:

Numerous automakers had previously been caught using a cheat device to detect when its vehicles were being tested for emissions. This would engage a “clean” mode for the tests, which it would otherwise disable so that the engines had more power and longevity. This is the core of #Dieselgate.
After being caught (and heavily fined), automakers were required to come up for fixes to their software to make the cars actually be cleaner… at the cost of worse-performing cars.
A case in Düsseldorf district court has recently returned a verdict concerning the fix, as present in the VW Tiguan diesel with the engine EA 189. They discovered that the “fix” VW provided for this vehicle — and presumably, many others as well (including at Audi, Seat and Skoda) — is only operational between 10-32°C (50-90°F).
Half the days in Germany are outside this temperature range. As a consequence, the fix is shut off half the time.
Emissions testing, however, is done within this range, so the vehicles will pass their emissions tests.
The court found that this constitutes an illegal defeat device and VW is legally liable for it.

This is a whole new can of worms for VW that has just been opened. Even worse, it undercuts VW’s #Dieselgate legal strategy. They’ve been trying to argue that most potential plaintiffs have passed their statute of limitations, and thus cannot sue. But since this constitutes a new violation, plaintiffs would be able to sue over it.

#Dieselgate is turning out to be the gift that just keeps on taking.

View from Tlanepantla of Mexico City blanketed by smog on March 18, 2016. Mexican officials lifted a four-day air pollution alert in the nation's densely-populated capital after ozone levels dropped, according to them, to acceptable levels. Mexico City authorities issued the first air pollution alert in 14 years due to high ozone levels, restricting traffic, encouraging children to stay indoors and ordering factories to cut emissions. AFP PHOTO / RONALDO SCHEMIDT / AFP / RONALDO SCHEMIDT (Photo credit should read RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)

Premier of Greenland: Greenland considering buying America

Rei

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday August 21, 2019 · 6:29 AM PDT

2019/08/21 · 06:29

According to the Danish newspaper Politiken, the Premier of Greenland (Kim Kielsen) is considering buying the US back.

In a (clearly snarky) statement, Kielsen pointed out that Leifr “The Lucky” Eiríksson was the first European to settle America, and as a consequence Greenland has a prior claim on the country. “So it’s only natural for the Greenlandic nation to get USA back.”

Asked about the price, the premier said that they haven’t decided on a specific price yet, but that the vast debt of the US would be taken into consideration. And if Trump is included in the deal, then the price would be even lower.

I should make a point of note here that while everyone seems to want to claim Leifr for themselves (the US even celebrates his birthday as a means to celebrate its ties with Norway), Leifr was an Icelander. Although part of his childhood was spent in Greenland (and as an adult he spent a period working for the Norwegian court), he - like his father - was born in Iceland, at Haukadalrin in Breiðafjörður. Other contenders for the title of first in the sagas include Bjarni Herjólfsson, also an Icelander, and two anonymous men — also likely Icelanders. Iceland was not a part of Norway or any other country.

What I’m saying is, Iceland surely could put a bid on the US too. ;) Hmm….

Nah, Greenland can have it. ;)

Yes, Virginia - EVs Can Take The Backroads

Rei

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday July 13, 2019 · 3:07 AM PDT

2019/07/13 · 03:07

Every so often one encounters a myth about electric vehicles that's so odd it makes you scratch your head. When it happens just once, it's easy to dismiss, but when it keeps popping up, it becomes time to address it.

In recent weeks, I've seen multiple people assert that, "Sure, you can take EVs on road trips on major highways now, but I like to take the backroads, and there are few to no chargers on backroads. EVs can’t do backroads trips!" Now, this obviously confused me - not simply because of the fact that it's not true that chargers exist only on major highways, but also for the obvious reason that even if you choose not to drive on a highway, surely you're going to be frequently crossing highways - quite often, near a charger. Yet simply pointing these facts out is generally met with heavy skepticism.

In order to further expound on this, I decided to conduct an experiment. I wrote a Python script to create 50 random road trips (images at the bottom of this article) which were then simulated by A Better Route Planner, an excellent tool that takes into account a wide variety of factors to create a simulation of a drive in any of a variety of EVs, as well as to help plan routes and stops. Most critically, ABRP has an "Avoid highways" option, making it a perfect fit for this task.

Some notes about the various test factors follow (+ = beneficial to the EVs, - = adverse to the EVs, * neutral to the EVs):

(+) The vehicle chosen was a Model 3 LR RWD Aero, an excellent road-tripping EV.
(-) Upgrades to 145kW, in progress, were not considered for the (currently 120kW) V2 Superchargers, and the V3 rollout is only scheduled to begin en masse later this summer/fall.
(-) ABRP uses relatively conservative assumptions about energy consumption
(-) ABRP is extremely aggressive about keeping you off of highways when you tell it to avoid them; it'll prefer to let you almost run out of electricity or slow way, way down than spend even a moment driving on a highway.
(*) The routes were picked randomly within a simple bounding box across the continental United States. Some routes had to be discarded due to being impossible (such as being out to sea).
(-) While people frequently visit or pass through remote areas, road trips are most often done in areas where more people live (as can be seen in road traffic figures), which also tend to have a higher density of chargers. The software is however quite likely to pick trips out in the middle of bloody nowhere.
(*) Vehicles were chosen with a variety of ages (degradation modeled on that of the Model S, although it should be if anything lower for the 3), payload weights, road conditions, and winds (both headwinds and tailwinds).
(*) ABRP was instructed to not let the charge level drop below 10%.
(*) Stock ABRP values were used for everything not specified above, including 3 minutes of overhead (similar to gas station overhead) for every stop. This time is subtracted from the length of a stay, since it's not time you actually spend at a given location.
(-) While in the real world, people road trip most during times of year when there's good weather, and often delay trips when there's bad weather, no attempt was made to emulate this; the vehicles are simulated in sometimes extremely hostile conditions.
(-) Tires become more efficient as they wear down. No attempt was made to account for this.
(+) For third-party chargers, the CHAdeMO adapter may not yield as high speeds as native CCS support; a CCS adapter is coming but not yet available (European Model 3s support CCS natively). This may yield higher speeds at US third-party stations than would actually be achieved. Regardless, usage of third-party stations was relatively rare, and omitting or slowing them did not make a significant difference to the results.
(-) Some trips were long enough that they would almost certainly be done with an overnight stay. This was not modeled. An overnight stay with charging equates to the removal of a long charging stop and part of a subsequent stop (as one charges to full overnight, unlike during a midday stop)

A spreadsheet of the data can be found here. Some graphs summing up the results can be seen below. First, the distribution of trip lengths and trip times is as follows:

As can be seen, most are "all-day single-day trips", along with some partial day and two-day trips.

As for the cost per mile of these trips, not including charging before you leave or after you arrive (a 30mpg gasoline car at $3.00/gal is listed in red):

The "exceptionally expensive" cases, while sometimes in part involving driving in particularly bad conditions (such as nearly 50mph headwinds or far-below-freezing temperatures), are most commonly due to the use of third party charging stations - particularly Volkswagen's "Electrify America" network, which costs much more than Tesla's Supercharger network.

The number of stops on the trip and the average time between stops can be seen below:

*Recall that for long "overnight" trips where one charges full at their rest stop, a long charging stop and part of its subsequent stop should be subtracted.*

Notice that the average time between stops is surprisingly long - similar to, if not longer than, most people generally take between stops during trips in gasoline cars (one can of course take more frequent stops if they choose). Stopping is thus not an imposition, but a requirement of your need to refresh your bladder, your legs, your stomach and your mind. Part of the reason for the long time between stops is that backroads generally have lower average speeds than major highways; this not only means that it takes longer to travel a given distance, but additionally, EVs become more efficient at lower speeds.

As for the length of the charging stops during the various trips and the percentage of the trip spent charging:

Figures for unupgraded V2 chargers — the whole network of which will soon be getting 21% more powerful via software update. The new standard (V3) chargers are 108% more powerful than V2 (at low SoCs). The right side of the graph is for the most part higher than the left because of a combination of road trips during horrid weather conditions and/or a strict adherence to a policy of “zero highway driving”, even where this means using slow 3rd party chargers or charging to needlessly high SoCs.

Two gasoline vehicles have been included, on presumed 1200-mile trips. Red (left) is doing a cannonball run and only stops long enough to fill their 15-gallon tank on their 30mpg car (3 minutes overhead + 2 minutes fill time per stop), eating only snacks that they have within the car and peeing into a bottle. Orange (right) alternates between taking a 5-10 minute stretch/bathroom/fillup stop and a 30 minute meal stop every 2 1/2 hours on the road.

To see how much of a difference the upcoming V3 standard makes, here's a 2017 Model 3 charging on a V3 charger:

YouTube Video

2% - 10 miles - 0 mins (126 kW)
5% - 16 miles - 1 min (250 kW)
20% - 62 miles - 4 mins (250 kW)
21% - 65 miles - 4.5 mins (Taper from peak starts - 248 kW)
30% - 92 miles - 6 mins (218 kW)
40% - 123 miles - 8.5 mins (179 kW)
50% - 153 miles - 11 mins (142 kW)
60% - 184 miles - 14.5 mins (108 kW)
70% - 213 miles - 19 mins (87 kW)
80% - 245 miles - 24.5 mins (56 kW)
90% - 275 miles - 34 mins (36 kW)

This would be expected to cut typical charge times in the simulated trips to 50-70% of what’s listed.

Let's examine our results. First, let us look at the two worst cases. Because unfortunately for us, the program decided to do two routes from eastern North Dakota to eastern Montana - which just happens to be the only place in the continental US with a large hole in the Supercharger network. As a result, the software is forced to make awkward detours to the south, increasing trip times. Additionally, ABRP's strict adherence to "no highway" policies becomes far worse here, causing it to require significant slowdowns and/or lower arrival charge levels (red segments). Waypoint hints even had to be given to ABRP to help it find said routes.

Attempting to go from rural North Dakota to middle-of-nowhere Montana, this route fell into the only major Supercharger gap left in the United States (North Dakota to eastern Montana). In its attempts to stay off the interstate (e.g. avoiding the Supercharger in Billings and the one southwest of Pierre), it‘s twice forced to reduce speed to 44mph and to arrive at a lower-than-desired state of charge.

A good-weather trip from eastern North Dakota to eastern Montana. Also falling into the "North Dakota Gap", the path had to be routed on a circuitous route that significantly lengthened the total trip time.

These two cases - applicable only to the "North Dakota Hole" - should indeed be considered failures for the task at hand, and if anybody plans to frequent the backroads of North Dakota and Montana in the present day, this becomes a legitimate argument against doing so in a BEV. That said, charging network growth rates are tremendous - the number of Superchargers has roughly doubled in the past two years, while the Electrify America network didn't even exist two years ago - and this hole will likely be plugged soon enough.

There are a couple cases elsewhere where ABRP's strict adherence to a "no highways, even for a moment" policy led to "red line" slowdown situations:

From the mountains east of Phoenix to east of Monterrey, Mexico in a 7-year-old vehicle. ABRP‘s insistence on keeping on mountainous backroads and away from charger-rich I-10 requires a slowdown from ~55mph to ~44mph on that leg.

A cold winter trip from west of Wichita, KS to east of Bloomington, IL. A slowdown is required in order to avoid interstate driving (e.g. avoiding the multiple chargers in Wichita, Salina, and Topeka); under less frigid conditions, it would not have been required.

A cold winter trip from northwestern Oklahoma deep into the Colorado Rockies. Due to the very low temperatures and avoidance of interstates, a slowdown is needed for one leg. Most of the charging cost is due to one of the charging stops being a VW „Electrify America“ charger.

Additionally, there were two cases where ABRP reported a nominal "slowdown", yet the speed they reported was basically the same speed that Google reports as normal for said route. Consequently, these - while "redlined" - should probably not be considered slowdowns.

A winter drive from north-central Oregon to north of Kings Canyon in California, in an old vehicle. ABRP reports a slowdown, yet the speed that they report is faster than what Google reports as the expected speed for that road.

A mid-summer drive in a moderately-old vehicle from southwest Wyoming to the deserts of northern Mexico. A „slowdown“ is reported from Albuquerque, NM to El Paso, TX, but it‘s only 2mph slower than what Google reports for that route.

In all of these cases, allowing highway travel for just part of the trip (sometimes just a dozen miles or so) makes the red-line go away.

While one may expect that trying to avoid all highways would lead to frequent detours and backtracking to get to charging stations, this turned out not to be the case - indeed, in only three situations did this happen, 6-10 miles each time. One was one of the North Dakota trips, while the other two were:

*A winter drive from the northern California coast to northwest of Denver with a passenger or two and a moderate tailwind. A brief side detour is made at Price, UT.*

A winter drive into a fierce headwind from central Washington to southeastern Oregon. The very high wind-driven consumption combines with two stops at expensive VW „Electrify America“ chargers to yield a very high power bill.

This honestly should not be unfamiliar to people driving gasoline cars in remote areas.

In every single other case - regardless of how awful the driving conditions were or where the trip was - there was neither red-lining slowdowns nor any backtracking detours at all. All remaining valid cases follow (read: prepare to scroll down! Summary follows)

*A spring/fall day in good weather from Lake Michigan to northwest of Denver with a fully-loaded car.*

An early-summer drive from the Mississippi Delta to Cleveland with a significant headwind. Over 70% of the electricity bill is at VW‘s „Electrify America“ stations, for less than 40% of the mileage.

*Southeast Missouri to coastal South Carolina in a heavy spring/fall rainstorm with a passenger or two.*

*A spring drive from inland northern California to near Santa Barbara in a heavy rainstorm.*

*A spring-fall trip from eastern Oklahoma to the Texas panhandle in a 1-year-old vehicle. A strong tailwind makes the trip a breeze without any charging.*

*A summer trip from Morehead City to northeast Richmond with a passenger; no charging needed.*

*A winter trip from Lafayette to north of Abilene.*

*A late-winter trip from Baton Rouge to the Texas Panhandle in a fairly old vehicle.*

*Winter drive from Sudbury, Canada to south of Madison, WI in a 7-year old vehicle with a passenger or two and a moderate tailwind. A short ferry ride is involved (price not included).*

A spring/fall drive from Evansville, IN to Shreveport, LA with a passenger in an old vehicle. Charging would be much cheaper except that a VW „Electrify America“ charger was used in lieu of a Tesla Supercharger in order to stay off the interstate.

*An early spring/late fall drive from northeastern Iowa to northwestern Arkansas with a passenger or two, rainy weather, and light to moderate headwinds.*

*A late winter drive from eastern Washington to Yuma, AZ in a full, old car, through rainy weather, with a moderate to strong tailwind.*

A spring/fall drive with a passenger or two from Toronto to northwest of Grand Forks, in a 10-year-old vehicle. Two ferry rides are involved, incl. one across Lake Michigan (ferry prices not included).

A Groundhog‘s Day drive from Puxatawney, PA to southern Georgia, in an old car with a passenger, in cold but otherwise good weather. Half the charging cost comes from the one VW „Electrify America“ stop.

*A good-weather drive from Chesapeake Bay to Brunswick, GA. Charging is expensive because both stops are at VW‘s „Electrify America“ chargers.*

*A spring/fall drive from east of Lubbock, TX to near Brownsville, with a moderate headwind.*

A winter drive from northwest of Austin, TX to the Mississippi Delta southeast of New Orleans, with a light to moderate tailwind, rain, and a full vehicle. The Mississippi is crossed via ferry at one point (cost not included).

*A spring/fall trip from western Ohio to east of Sudbury, Ontario, on a rainy day and in an old vehicle. A short ferry ride is involved (cost not included).*

A cold midwinter drive from southern Missouri to north of Minneapolis, with a light to moderate headwind in an old vehicle. The temperatures (averaging -10°F) lead to the high consumption and thus more frequent stops.

An early spring/late fall trip from east of Detroit to east of Wichita, KS with a moderate tailwind and a fairly old vehicle. The price does not reflect the low consumption due to two Electrify America stops.

*A trip from south-central Iowa to western Kansas on a good winter‘s day.*

*A spring/fall trip from Matomoros, Mexico to the Louisiana Delta, with a heavy headwind. A single stop at a VW „Electrify America“ charger makes up most of the trip cost.*

*A winter trip from South Dakota to northeast Minnesota. In order to avoid interstates, a fairly long stop is made at a slower charger at the University of Minnesota – Morris.*

*A spring/fall trip from New Hampshire to the North Carolina coast, with a light to moderate headwind and a moderately old vehicle.*

*A spring/fall trip from northern Mexico to central New Mexico with a fairly heavily loaded, fairly old vehicle.*

A spring/fall trip from the Santa Barabara coast to northwest of San Francisco, with a moderately strong tailwind and an old vehicle. The fact that the trip was actually instructed to travel across the Pacific ocean apparently didn’t bother ABRP ;).

*A winter trip from upstate Maine to west of Ottawa, in a heavy snowstorm.*

*An abnormally cold midwinter trip from Jacksonville, FL to the western Appalachians in a 10-year-old vehicle.*

*A nice-weather drive from west of Portland, OR to northwest of Boise, ID, with a light to moderate tailwind and a fairly heavily loaded vehicle.*

*A spring/fall drive with a mild to moderate tailwind from Cape Canaveral to the Mississippi Delta, in a fairly old vehicle.*

*A rainy summer drive from east of Savannah to north of Little Rock with a fairly heavily loaded vehicle.*

*A cold winter drive from southwest of Albuquerque to northeastern Utah with a mild tailwind.*

*A mild winter drive (from Beaver Island in Lake Michigan, via ferry) to north of Minneapolis.*

What can we take away from this? In summary:

Excepting the "North Dakota Hole", which will surely be closed very early in the lifespan of any EV purchased today, a "good road tripping EV" can easily manage backwoods trips between arbitrary points in the continental United States - regardless of the road and weather conditions, payload, and even accounting for battery degradation in older vehicles. In rare cases one might need to take a leg or two on a highway, but these are edge cases, and far from the general rule.
It's almost impossible to drive for long distances without crossing a major highway unless you're driving in circles.
EVs frequently travel further on backroads than they do on highways, with less frequent stops required.
Electrify America really needs to lower their prices. The stark difference between Supercharger and Electrify America pricing really stood out in this comparison.
Extreme-cold temperatures, and particularly gale-force headwinds, will ruin your energy consumption - but even that had little impact on the overall ability of EVs to make comfortable road trips on backwoods roads with today's infrastructure - let alone tomorrow's.

Nuclear Power: Always More Popular On K-Street Than Wall Street

Rei

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday June 24, 2019 · 6:04 AM PDT

2019/06/24 · 06:04

Two nukes: South Texas Project Unit 1 and Unit 2.

Barring the early period of “too cheap to meter” optimism, nuclear power has consistently been more popular on K-Street than Wall Street.

Curiously among political topics, nuclear power has its staunch ideologues on both the left and the right. Yet the place where it lacks support is perhaps where it needs it the most: investors. While debates about nuclear power tend to focus on side topics such as fuel supply, waste handling, and reactor safety, the industry lives or dies based on economics — and the modern history of the industry has been one of “dying”, despite desperate attempts by governments to prop it up.

In the above graph, one can see the early period of boundless optimism which collapsed amid a mire of ever-growing price estimates. The second wave — the so-called “nuclear renaissance”, pushed by nuclear companies and extensively promoted by nuclear advocates — has involved even more spectacular collapses amid ever-growing schedules and cost overruns, of catastrophic proportions. Just a couple examples:

The Hinkley Point C reactor in the UK is the most expensive structure on the surface of the Earth (only the International Space Station is more expensive). At $26B estimated final construction cost, it’s double the cost of building and running the Large Hadron Collider and paying its veritable army of scientists, from inception up through the finding of the Higgs Boson. Over the course of its construction, the estimated cost of electricity from Hinkley Point C has tripled. The UK National Audit Office estimates that over the lifespan of the plant, ratepayers will have to pay $50B over the market price of electricity due to Hinkley Point C.

Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant_2015-07-21_001_cropped.jpg

The license application for the Olkiluoto Reactor Unit 3 in Finland (an expansion to the existing plant) was made in 2000, with a planned start of service in 2010, for a cost of $3,5B. The current schedule (which still could slip) is for service to start in 2020, and estimated costs have now risen to $9B. Two decades from license application to entering service. As Wikipedia kindly sums up:

The delays have been due to various problems with planning, supervision, and workmanship,[6] and have been the subject of an inquiry by STUK, the Finnish nuclear safety regulator.[51] The first problems that surfaced were irregularities in the foundation concrete, and caused a delay of months. Later, it was found that subcontractors had provided heavy forgings that were not up to project standards and which had to be re-cast. An apparent problem constructing the reactor's unique double-containment structure also caused delays, as the welders had not been given proper instructions.[51]

...

After the construction of the unit started in 2005, Areva began constructing EPRs in Flamanville, France, and in Taishan, China. However, as of July 2012, the construction of the EPR in France is four years behind schedule.[7] Taishan 1 in China became the first EPR to start power generation on 29 June 2018.[1]

...

In 2009, professor Stephen Thomas wrote, "Olkiluoto has become an example of all that can go wrong in economic terms with new reactors," and that Areva and the TVO "are in bitter dispute over who will bear the cost overruns and there is a real risk now that the utility will default."[57]

...

Olkiluoto 3 was supposed to be the first reactor of 3+ generation which would pave the way for a new wave of identical reactors across Europe, safe, affordable, and delivered on time. The delays and cost overruns have had knock-on effects in other countries.[52]

I boldfaced that line for a reason. The history of nuclear reaction construction, and especially modern reactor construction, has been one of extreme cost (passed on to ratepayers), and frequent overruns to even that. To counter this, nuclear advocates generally point to France. “Look,” they say, “France gets most of their power from nuclear energy! It can be done!”

The largest proponent of the “nuclear renaissance” was indeed France — in particular, Areva, a company of which the largest stakeholder was the French government. I write “was” because Areva went bankrupt (despite extensive efforts of the French government to prop them up). It was the French themselves that proved unable to provide nuclear power at economical costs.

When one points at the past — particularly, France’s nuclear over-construction in the 1970s (which has hindered the deployment of renewables in France and encouraged overconsumption ever since), it’s important to realize a few things:

At the time of the Messmer Plan, nuclear power was competing against (highly uneconomical) oil-fired generators, making a much more compelling economic case. The Messmer Plan was a government dictate, pushed through without any parliamentary vote or public involvement.
The capital to build the plants was always guaranteed — a mix of subprime government loans, and direct government investment. Indeed, capital can always be provided, but that does nothing to guarantee long-term economic viability, particularly in an environment of ever-growing costs.
France, like most governments in the world, insures nuclear power plants against catastrophic-event liability (in the US, this is provided under Price-Anderson). If nuclear power plants had to insure themselves against catastrophic liability, the entire industry would die overnight; no insurer would ever touch a plant that could potentially yield a $200B Fukushima-style bill (or worse!).
Nuclear power has undergone something exceedingly rare in the technological world: a “negative learning curve”. That is to say, the more we learn about it, the more expensive it becomes — not cheaper.

The reasons for the negative learning curve are many, but include new discoveries of risks that need to be addressed, ever-growing decommissioning cost estimates, increasing operations costs estimates, and so forth. These issues tend to be fundamental to the design of a given reactor, and require a new reactor generation to solve them. But with the launch of a new generation, the learning curve for that generation starts over again. Since the lead times on nuclear reactors are so great, and there are so few total reactors built, iterating to get rid of problems is an exceedingly slow process.

As of last year, globally, solar, wind, and hydro cost roughly 40% per MWh that which nuclear costs. But the price of wind, and especially solar, have been falling rapidly, while the cost of nuclear has been steady or growing. To put it quite simply, nuclear power is expensive with very long lead times, while solar and wind are cheap with short lead times.

Arguments for the necessity of nuclear often revolve around “argument through incredulity”. You’ll see some nuclear advocate calculate how many solar panels or wind turbines you’d need to produce to generate some given amount of power, and then, “Gee, that sounds like a lot doesn’t it? Surely you can’t actually achieve that. Better stick to nuclear!” The problem with these arguments is that the difficulty of producing and installing said solar and wind power is included in their nominal costs. And you can build new factories for churning out solar and wind farms faster and cheaper than you can nuclear power plants.

The other primary argument is that wind and solar are intermittent, so you need nuclear power as baseload. But the problem is that if there’s anything ill-suited for supplementing solar and wind, it’s nuclear!

The above is a typical graph of the daily power consumption in a grid with no wind or solar power. Note the key aspect of nuclear: it varies little with demand. This is a fundamental requirement of nuclear power generation: its already terrible economics is based on it having a >90% capacity factor (e.g. almost always on at full power). If you want to reduce it to gap-filling at, say, a 30% capacity factor, then you’re tripling its already high costs. This is simply untenable. Furthermore, most nuclear reactors are physically incapable of responding so quickly to changes in generation and demand.

Intermittency is not something that was introduced to our grid by wind and solar. Even beyond power plant outages (both scheduled and unscheduled), we’ve always been saddled with the flipside of the coin: demand intermittency. The greater the degree of intermittency, the more one needs to do to address it, but there is no shortage of ways it can be — and is — addressed.

Intermittent + Peaking = Baseload
Intermittent + Storage = Baseload
Intermittent + Different kind of intermittent = Less intermittent
Intermittent * Geographic distribution = Less intermittent
Intermittent * Overconstruction = Less intermittent

In the first case, peaking is generally done with either hydroelectricity or natural gas.

Hydroelectricity: this largely means uprating existing dams to have higher peak power generation rates, so that instead of generating a relatively constant power flow, they produce power with higher highs and lower lows. This, coincidentally, tends to create more natural river flows, which tend to vary in flow rate based on the weather rather than being roughly constant every day.
Natural gas: the cleanest-burning, highest-efficiency, and lowest-carbon of the fossil fuels (as well as being the easiest to generate synthetically), it’s currently burned mostly in baseload plants. Increasing renewables penetration means eliminating natural gas baseload and switching it over to peaking (e.g. only in utilization when needed as “backup power”).

Peaking can also however be done with other sources, such as biomass, or fuels generated with surplus power during periods of excess.

In the case of storage, there’s a variety of options:

Batteries: Batteries have already proven highly economical (see the case of the Tesla battery in Australia) for buffering short-term intermittency. They are not yet suitable for long-term storage, however (although they’re a rapidly advancing field)
Pumped hydro: Already seeing significant usage, water is simply pumped uphill during periods of excess and allowed to flow downhill during periods of shortage. Pumped hydro systems can be entirely closed-cycle with no river inflows, although usually have some input. Some even use the ocean as the lower reservoir.
Thermal storage: This is frequently done directly with solar thermal, but can be used with any sort of power source (at the cost of some energy loss). There’s a wide variety of thermal storage plants, some already in operation, and many more under construction.
Compressed air: Air is compressed into underground chambers — or even vessels underwater — during periods of excess, and regenerated during periods of shortage. Appears to be currently losing out to thermal storage as an energy storage mechanism

Some plants, such as conventional hydro, automatically contain energy storage.

As for “different kinds of intermittency”, solar peaks around the middle of the day, while wind tends to be strongest at sunrise and sunset. Solar peaks during the summer (corresponding with peak air conditioning needs), while wind peaks vary geographically, but are often lowest in the summer. Combining different types of generation reduces the net intermittency and storage / peaking needs. Additionally, some types of wind / solar generation are inherently less intermittent than others (solar thermal, offshore wind, high altitude wind, etc).

Lastly, geographic distribution greatly decreases intermittency, while simultaneously allowing for timeshifting of consumption (e.g. it may be sunset where you are, but it’s still bright further west; etc). A cloud may move over a solar plant or the wind may stop blowing at a solar farm in a particular location, but not everywhere simultaneously. Likewise, average weather patterns can vary geographically:

Power can be transported for long distances with minimal losses at low incremental cost via HVDC (and to a lesser extent HVAC), a rapidly growing technology. For example, China now extensively uses it to bring power from its energy-rich interior to its densely-populated coasts:

HVDC does not replace local grids. While the lines are quite cheap relative to how much power they carry vs. how far they carry it, HVDC requires large stations that convert between AC and HVDC. However, a side benefit is that HVDC allows power to be shared between disjoint AC grids and helps provide frequency support for them. In short, it — like batteries — tends to stabilize grids and increase their reliability, with or without renewables in the mix.

To sum up some key points:

It’s not “NIMBY”ism to blame for the tepid investments over the years in nuclear power plants; it’s the high cost of the plants, expensive electricity, long lead times, and high likelihood of time and cost overruns.
Nuclear power pairs poorly with renewables
Renewables, which are far cheaper than nuclear, and growing their lead, do not in any way need nuclear.
Renewables can be built out faster and cheaper than nuclear.

Debate among yourselves issues of safety and fuel supply. But without an economic case, nuclear power has no future as a major part of the grid.

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