Anyone go from a Gen 3 Raptor to EV Lightning ?

[Keith88]

Electric cars suck. The end.

 

[engineer]

Electric cars suck. The end.

Like any other tool, they have a defined purpose that they excel at. Will I replace my Raptor with a Raptor EV or Lightning (aka what this thread is about)? Not a chance. Will I utilize my Model 3 for quick trips around town where I can fit in tiny ass parking spots and not get 8mpg? Yup.

 

[K9 EXPERT]

It’s called weather!

 

[BoostCreep]

Golf carts are useful in urban environments to grab groceries. Aside from that, why is this thread still going?

I don’t think this is the right forum to share enthusiasm about EVs.

 

[smurfslayer]

You would have made all of these same arguments in favor of keeping horses instead of moving to cars. "You are ripping out existing things to drill for oil, build gas stations, etc. My horse's fuel grows on the side of the road!"

You keep falling back to the horse vs. powered car analogy, which is not a very good choice. What we are implementing is a change in power plant technology for the automobile, not going from animal powered transport to mechanical powered transport.

There are a lot of windmills in Texas, and a lot of solar. These technologies, along with battery technology is still relatively immature where the ICE is very mature, much more sophisticated in its implementation and more efficient for its limits. Importantly, we’re not the ones doing the polluting by and large. China, India, and various / sundry third world countries are the ones fúcking the earth. New car/truck emissions are orders of magnitude better than late 70’s to early 80’s. True the EV doesn’t have tailpipe emissions, but there are other factors in EV production and destruction that are often overlooked in this comparison.

I think a more apt analogy would be the transition from carbureted fuel delivery to fuel injection in the mid 80’s. If you’re not old enough to remember this, many of the same arguments were made about serviceability, initial FI efforts were somewhat crude and often did not perform as well as the carb’d vehicles they replaced for a brief period. It wasn’t well sorted until about ’87 - ’89-ish. This pattern repeated for motorcycles about a decade later.

EV from ICE is a more significant change than carb to FI and it’s being facilitated by government subsidy. Those tax credits you get for solar panels, EV purchase that money isn’t virtual, it’s real and the taxpayers are paying it.

So the EV tech is still relatively immature, even if it is leading edge or close to it. As it matures, it should improve and as the maturity gets more sustainable the infrastructure around EVs should also improve.

 

[New recaros]

Read this study, solar farms are not what you think. If they do what this study says, it is doing it everyday on a small scale Adding harm to the environment
https://ideas.ted.com/solar-farm-sahara-desert-climate-impact-effects/

 

[GordoJay]

The thing about tech is that it changes rapidly. On an exponential, of which humans are poor predictors. Some interesting reading:

How Did Solar Power Get Cheap? Part I

Solar photovoltaics (PV) have become one of the cheapest sources of electricity. Lazard’s estimate of unsubsidized levelized cost of energy (LCOE)

constructionphysics.substack.com

How did solar power get cheap part II

(note: all quotes are from Nemet’s How Solar Energy Became Cheap unless otherwise noted.) Welcome to Part II of “How did Solar Power Get Cheap?” To recap Part I, the modern solar photovoltaic (PV) cell was invented at Bell Labs in 1954. Early markets were almost entirely satellites, followed by...

constructionphysics.substack.com

Fossil fuels will not last forever. Given that, the question is what's the best path for moving to sustainable energy. Because the US government is in charge, that path is AFU and laden with graft and corruption. But we're on it and we're not getting off. Ever. So let the first adopters use EVs where they make sense and enjoy your ICE as long as it makes sense. Bítching and whining about things you can't change just makes you and everyone around you miserable.

Edit: bad link

 

[GordoJay]

Read this study, solar farms are not what you think. If they do what this study says, it is doing it everyday on a small scale Adding harm to the environment
https://ideas.ted.com/solar-farm-sahara-desert-climate-impact-effects/

I read it. It's bullshít and speculation. Clickbait. It starts with an unrealistic straw man and goes downhill from there.

 

[New recaros]

I read it. It's bullshít and speculation. Clickbait. It starts with an unrealistic straw man and goes downhill from there.

I can’t comment on if it would make it rain in the desert but they, the panels, are way hotter than the earth around them. They absorb the heat and the ground reflects it. So, without a doubt warm the air around more than the land would of. We need to find something that is not black to cover/pave all the roads and parking lots

 

[GordoJay]

I can’t comment on if it would make it rain in the desert but they, the panels, are way hotter than the earth around them. They absorb the heat and the ground reflects it. So, without a doubt warm the air around more than the land would of.

It will change the distribution of the heat more than it will change the amount absorbed. But the effect is small and the economics of covering the Sahara with panels are ridiculous. Panels will be widely distributed closer to the point of use. Effect on the climate will be unmeasurable.

We need to find something that is not black to cover/pave all the roads and parking lots

Why? Are you assigning a higher probability to global warming being bad for the earth than the probability that it's preventing the next ice age? What's your reasoning? Seriously. I don't know the answer. Is there a climate scientist anywhere who can prove that one probability is higher than the other? I haven't heard of one.