Death to new gasoline powered cars has begun

Interesting.

I didn't know the facts, so I looked them up.

I did learn that Texas appears to get about 30% of it power from wind and solar.

This article seems to explain it quite well. Seems the grid managers screwed up and accidentally shut off power to the natural gas generators.

How Texas’ power grid failed in 2021 and who’s responsible for fixing it | The Texas Tribune

What went wrong during the February 2021 winter freeze
During the power grid crisis, all sources of electricity struggled during the frigid temperatures. The inability of power plants to perform in the extreme cold was the No. 1 cause of the outages last year.

During the February 2021 winter storm, transmission companies inadvertently cut power to parts of the natural gas supply chain when ERCOT ordered the utilities to reduce power demand or risk further damage to the grid. That decision aggravated the problem as natural gas producers were unable to deliver enough fuel to power plants. At the same time, some wells were unable to produce as much natural gas due to the freezing conditions.

 

35% of 20% is only 7%. So if electric was only 35% more efficient than gas it would 27% efficient.

 

Im fine with having many more nuclear reactors, issue on that seems to be that if we phase in nuclear and phase out coal nationwide, then lots of coal mining/refining/production jobs going away scares enough people that its not going to happen on a federal level because representatives dont want to tell constituents to bad your jobs going away and you will need to learn another trade. Also all the representative who get "contributions" (opps did I mean brides) from the coal/fossil fuel industry are roadblocks.
Im gonna duck out since I also try not to get to political here.

 

Just get a job building the nuclear plants, they are huge and could use a lot of man power for construction. Plus we can keep exporting coal, I'm sure china would by all we can sell.

 

Why are people not riding bikes to power theirs house?

 

I bought my wife a '22 Corolla SE Nightshade in April and myself a '22 Corolla SE Hatchback last week. All joking aside.....I fully expect these 2 vehicles to be the last ICE powered cars we will buy......assuming that things continue to move in that direction. Manufacturers are committed.....so that puts some credence to it all

 

Use hamster wheels personally.

 

The fundamental problem is that there are more of us each day and each of wants at least a certain amount of power to go about whatever it is we do. At some point we will exceed the ability of this world to produce that power. Electric vehicles aren't the answer. The only thing they do is shift the power problem from the vehicle to the power plant. And the fact is, the power plants don't have the capacity, and even if they grew to have the capacity, the distribution system can't deliver the power.

All the arguments for electric vehicles see only the local problem (my tesla is zero emissions) and ignore the bigger picture. From that, one can see only a few choices: 1) Vastly reduce energy demand (perhaps we limit ICEs to 20 HP and Teslas to 60 mph in 60 seconds) r 2) find honest to God energy sources that allow us to increase consumption without harming the environment. None of the proposals, wind, solar, hydro, produce energy without harm.

No, I'm not proposing a solution. I merely see a problem that were trying to sidestep.

 

Power outages led to a decrease in natural gas production
Because electricity relies on natural gas production and natural gas production relies on electricity, any failure in the loop breaks the entire system. At one point during February’s storm, more than half of the state’s natural gas supply was shut down due to power outages, frozen equipment and weather conditions.



The Texas Legislature in 2021 ordered electricity regulators to require power plants to better prepare for extreme weather. The Public Utility Commission has imposed some early requirements, such as requiring plants to winterize based on previous federal guidance, but lawmakers did not require the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the gas industry, to quickly impose weatherization standards.

 

And 50 people get banned for the no politics rule.

 

My school put in solar panels and lets employees charge their EV’s for free, I do the same there with my eBike I ride to work. My Tacoma is being used much less frequently but I make up for it with our weekend camping trips.

 

Nope, someone somewhere is paying for it.

 

I'll bet Guinea Pigs running on hamster wheels would produce more power than hamsters. Personally, I have no interest in electric vehicles at this time. I will continue to drive gas combustion vehicles until they're not available or gas or parts aren't available to keep them operational.

Now, if someone figures out how to convert cow farts into car fuel they might be onto something.

 

The problem is threefold:

1. Baseload power to get the energy for all these new cars (and Tacomas!). The American electrical grid is a patched together mess. The politicians have avoided the problem for decades and there's no way to wish additional electricity into existence. It needs truly huge (largely public) investments. Even if you had the hundreds of billions (probably trillions) of dollars to build new powerplants, you still will need a reliable source of energy beyond solar, wind, and hydro. We've already dammed something like 97% of all the rivers in the US available for electricity, so you're looking at nuclear. Nobody wants to touch that politically.

2. How is anyone going to charge these vehicles? Ever see folks in Teslas at rest stops? They are there charging for a while. New charging infrastructure just won't be as quick as gas pumps. Sure, you can have a 240v line your house, but still it's a big shift.

3. Also keep in mind the US uses something like 20 million barrels of gasoline per day. That's an incredible amount of energy. No one ever considers just how much energy that truly is.

I'm all for greener transport, but this all seems impractical as it stands.

 

We don’t!

 

Have had small rodents, I can tell you that guinea pigs cannot use a wheel, there spines don't bend that way, they would need to use some kind of treadmill.

 

You pay taxes yes?

 

If they went up I’d be paying for it maybe, but there hasn’t been a increase. I’m sure when power costs go up we’ll be paying for it.

 

Smog was at it worst in LA in the 1940s and 50s

https://waterandpower.org/museum/Smog_in_Early_Los_Angeles.html

 

This post brought to you by Texas. Their energy policy and strategy ain't too sharp down there...