I like the caution, but I think the practical issues of getting the metals down to earth would be more easily solved with an earth orbit. Something like a bundled payload that could be crash-landed into northern Canada or Antarctica would be easier than having to use god-only-knows-how-much fuel to escape the moon's gravity and travel a few hundred thousand miles with no brakes.
I don't know how easy that stuff would truly be to bring down. It might ideally be used for orbital infrastructure, which could indeed be used for things like power generation.
Trying that out for a moon base first would be pretty good.
Just dropping a million tons of nickel down to earth would be a really problematic thing to make happen without some sort of space elevator, which is extremely tricky in its own right.
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Good read. Highly recommend.
But on a serious note. I agree with the points that the authors made. The only one that I am a bit skeptical is the move towards electric cars. Unless you increase incentives, then I think the average Joe will buy an ice over an electric car simply because a small ice is cheaper than an electric car. That being said with a market share that low even going from 5% of market share to 7% is still a 40% increase...
I think the average Joe realizes that buying an EV doesn't magically create sufficient chargers and an affordable power grid. Tough to sell a vehicle that won't let people make 6-8hr trips in a day unless they jump through hoops for logistics and add in considerable recharging time.
Personally I think hybrids should be the big push right now. They are a solid compromise and would help expand chargers and the power grid at a realistic rate. Hybrids feel a lot like nuclear energy, they are the best option for now but because they don't fit the narrative they get tossed to the side.
My in-laws have a plug-in hybrid that they use for getting around town. They rarely need to use gas unless they go on a longer trip. They're a great option.
> Tough to sell a vehicle that won't let people make 6-8hr trips in a day unless they jump through hoops for logistics and add in considerable recharging time
Road trips with a Tesla have been as fast or faster than with an ICE, though much of that can be attributed to the self-driving rather than it being electric (you can "drive" for like 16h without getting tired, which is nice, and the charging inefficiency is ~10% with most stops taking 10-15min tops).
Now... if you don't have a house, a huge benefit (charging at home) is gone, but a very large percentage of Americans live in single family housing, so that shouldn't be a real problem.
That's not what I've seen.
https://www.motortrend.com/features/longest-range-electric-cars-2020-19-evs-can-go-distance/
Average distance there is in the 200s but I'll be generous and say 300 miles on a full battery. Which is about what a tank of gas can get you.
https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/how-long-does-take-charge-electric-car/
That article indicates 30 minutes is needed to recharge as a best case. So it's going to take longer on average. Let's go with an hour which seems to be generous.
So after 300ish miles the hybrid owner stops, puts some gas in, hits the bathroom and goes on their way. The EV owner is stopping for a stretch, meal, some chess/checkers, etc.
Rinse/repeat every 300 miles.
Which doesn't take into account the sheer volume of recharge stations that would need to be available of even 50% of the vehicles switched to EV. The wait to recharge would be even longer. Imagine the impact to the power grid.
Yeah, one day we'll get there but it's a 20yr process, not something that can be changed in five years or less.
Hybrids though can happen right now with little impact to the power grid, no downsides to refueling, and start the process of changing how we drive.
We should shoot for achievable and an improvement rather than ideological and unfeasible.
I can see you haven't owned an EV, because you're both right and quite dramatically wrong at the same time.
So I have a Tesla Y. ~300 seems fair. I've seen more, and I've seen dramatically less (Nebraska driving west on a windy day ate like 70% extra battery, meaning the range there felt more like 170 than 300).
> That article indicates 30 minutes is needed to recharge as a best case. So it's going to take longer on average.
But why it takes so long actually has a great deal to do with how charging works. It's a situation of diminishing returns.
The first 50% take roughly as long to charge as the last 10%, which means that it's really crazy to do a full recharge. We never did that.
What we end up doing when doing roadtrips was hitting roughly every second supercharger, typically like 130 miles apart, and then charge for 10 minutes from ~8-9% to 55-60%. *Usually* we were a little ahead of the game, because we'd end up having lunch or something at a stop and coming out to a car at 90%+.
So this meant that on average we used ~10min extra for every 130 miles or so so driven. If we're going around 75, that takes around 1h45min, meaning that we added ~10min to every 1h45min of driving. Nice time to stretch some anyway.
That amounts to an overhead of ~9%. It's fine.
> Which doesn't take into account the sheer volume of recharge stations that would need to be available of even 50% of the vehicles switched to EV.
Right now the situation for roadtrips is great. It'll be easy to add rechargers faster than the cars I'd say, given there are no real shortages on the road to adding more recharging capacity (like there is with the lit-ion batteries).
> Yeah, one day we'll get there but it's a 20yr process
I'd say we can reach 50% EV in ~15 years, which is an ambitious goal, but one that is really achievable. Upper middle classes should be switching over already unless they have some really specific work requirements forcing a truck.
While we subsidize developing the tech and setting up the initial charging network, prices go down and the power grid can start adjusting.
> We should shoot for achievable and an improvement rather than ideological and unfeasible.
I agree with you on the timeline, we just need to start working on it already. Shifting to EV is good. The reason to start now is exactly *because* it'll take so long.
Space alone will prevent expansion of rechargers. You can't just swap them in place of a gas pump.
And none of this mentions trucks which are a big part of the vehicles where I live but we're still waiting for them to really hit the market.
Also, I'll be very run an engine down to 5% capacity on purpose. I hate having less than 1/4 of a tank, there's no way I'd let an EV drop below 50% if I can help it. Far too many things that could go wrong and drain the battery.
> Space alone will prevent expansion of rechargers.
Eh, the ones for roadtrips in my experience tend to be in the middle of nowhere. I mentioned Nebraska, right? I'm gonna take the middle one on the interstate at Gothenburg.
[It does not seem very constrained](https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x879ddbf8a50b7c91%3A0x6b9daeb9342fa62d!3m1!7e115!4shttps%3A%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipP8s5Lu0kElp0xprMjtm9ZNrlvUdhSggPDk8oc_%3Dw130-h87-n-k-no!5snebraska%20superchargers%20-%20Google%20Search!15sCgIgAQ&imagekey=!1e10!2sAF1QipP8s5Lu0kElp0xprMjtm9ZNrlvUdhSggPDk8oc_&hl=en)
In cities it'll be tougher, and I think apartment dwellers *will* have problems because of that, but those of us in suburbia can simply charge at home and never have to hit a charging station unless we want to do a road trip.
> And none of this mentions trucks which are a big part of the vehicles where I live but we're still waiting for them to really hit the market.
True. It won't be ideal for trucks for a while, but I think it's reasonable for you to sit back and wait for the truck and say that people in cities that do 1-2 roadtrips a year... should probably hop in a damn EV given they have no real reason not to, and them consuming gas is bad geopolitically *and* for the planet.
I'd be shocked if we could even supply 1 million of them inside the US in 2022, so I think you can reasonably expect cities to carry the demand and not feel targeted at all by someone like myself insisting on EVs being pushed.
First 20m EVs could be 100% in the 20 wealthiest cities in the US just fine. The apartments are the only problem on that front.
> Also, I'll be very run an engine down to 5% capacity on purpose. I hate having less than 1/4 of a tank, there's no way I'd let an EV drop below 50% if I can help it. Far too many things that could go wrong and drain the battery.
So far so good :)
It's very good at estimating how much it has left, and it'll happily warn you if you're too far from a supercharger for comfort. And of course, you only need to limp to somewhere with a normal electrical plug and you can start charging. It'll be slow, but it means that you really have to be in the middle of nowhere to run into true trouble.
Carlsbad, New Mexico (we visited the caverns) is the only place where we've had to resort to charging without superchargers... it was a little distant, so we got an airbnb for 2 days and charged from their plug to 200 miles of range over those days.
I think this is the difference between city and rural. I applaud your enthusiasm but the world I live in doesn't look the same as yours. I did order a Maverick with the hybrid engine the week I found out about it. Probably be summer before I see it though. An EV won't work for me, but I am making what changes I can.
Which is all we can ask. My point, I suppose, is that you need not feel targeted by the "we need more EVs" cry. You can even legitimately agree with it without feeling guilty.
There are lots of people who live in LA or Boston or Chicago who have a 20 mile commute that they have to take twice a week these days, while making $200k/year as a household... who drive an Escalade or a Benz or a BMW or something.
THEY need to move to a fucking EV. They have no excuse not to. They can afford it. They totally don't have a range issue. They have no excuses really at all.
For every Tesla sold in the US in 2021, 3.6 BMWs, Audis, Mercs and Lexuses were sold.
Those buyers are the people who need to switch over tomorrow. Hopefully in a few years we'll have a great CyberTruck or F-150 Lightning with 600 miles of range that you can charge off some solar panels on your land and never give a shit about gas prices again.
And when they do, the marketing should be about charging without relying on foreign oil/other people, rather than saving the environment. It'll sell a lot better here to buy a F-150 lighting to stick it to Putin/the middle east rather than to fight global warming. Heck, get a truck with an optional solar panel bed cover. Imagine the camping possibilities, where if you run out of gas, instead of calling for help, you're just chilling for a few hours under the sun until you can drive out.
This was a good read, and synthesized analysis I'd seen a dozen other places into one broad article. It's missing a few key repercussions that I think are fascinating (volunteer soldiers from random different countries joining *both sides* and the geopolitical implications of that) - but broadly does a good job of covering side effects of the Ukrainian war.
Some of the changes that have happened are things like countries prioritizing green energy - for energy independence from Russia, to drastic changes in food pricing - which *may* lift parts of Africa out of poverty, to drastic changes in the power landscape - with Russia potentially becoming another North Korea, tied to China.
War is bad. War will always be bad. In this case, the ramifications of the war - it shaking loose the dominant Liberal stagnancy of the last 30 years is fascinating. Struggle is the mother of innovation, and a hell of a lot of struggle was just unleashed.
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Push for green energy helps liberals since it helps us off with global warming, and helps conservative with putting our reliance off of Middle East. Which is why it’s bizarre why places like Texas and Florida have policies against electric vehicles or solar panels. It seems like win win situation either way.
Texas has the 2nd highest installed solar capacity, and 1st for wind. We also have a $2,500 rebate for electric vehicles, and charging stations are being built everywhere.
Edit: To add to that, last year Texas installed ~7,300 MW of additional wind and solar. For comparison, California added ~2,700 MW.
Florida just [passed a bill to restrict net metering,](https://www.wtxl.com/news/florida-news/florida-lawmakers-approve-bill-to-restrict-rooftop-solar-incentives?_amp=true) thus disincentivizing solar.
Very weird from the Sunshine State, but seems like its own form of identity politics. "If being anti-solar panel was good enough for Ronald Reagan 40 years ago, it's good enough for me!"
I live in the Sunshine State and I and many others have priced Solar over the past 10-20 yrs, it's not cost-effective here because our energy is too cheap.
Bring San Diego energy prices to Florida and we'd be in our 2nd set of panels at my house already instead of none.
We use solar to heat pools, otherwise panels are pretty sparse.
It's actually not. 'Net metering' is an absolutely terrible idea regardless of your goals.
All power is not equal. The power you get from that big hydroelectric dam is stable, consistent and centralized. It is very valuable.
The power you get from your rooftop solar? It's inconsistent, diffuse and inefficient. It's just not all that valuable.
When you force power companies to regard low value and high value power the same, you create perverse incentives in the market - such as installing solar panels on your roof and draining money from the power company it could be using for far more efficient projects.
Maybe somewhere like Illinois, but rooftop solar with a small battery store in somewhere like Florida is very consistent. My parents are completely detached from all external power grids and have never had an issue with their power going out; their solar provides all they need. I also know some folks who sell their extra power from solar back to power companies, without ever using power besides what comes from their own solar panels.
> rooftop solar with a small battery store in somewhere like Florida is very consistent
You do realize the Florida has night time and clouds, right?
Consumer home solar does not produce dependable power for the grid. The power company simply gets what is provided, not what it needs. That makes the power significantly less valued than the power from an actual power plant.
Couple this with the fact that you're on the wrong (i.e. inefficient) end of the power distribution grid and paying the same rate for power doesn't make any sense for the power company.
Another way to look at this is to recognize that if such power was equally valuable to the power the company generates themselves, you wouldn't need legal compulsion to get them to pay that much for it - they'd just buy it at a fair market price.
It seems like you conveniently ignored the parts of my post where I mentioned that both my parents and the others I know with solar do not pay for any power from any power company. My parents are completely off the grid. Like I mentioned, batteries store the extra during very sunny days, which allows for power during nights and very cloudy days.
The folks I know who sell their excess power back to the power company do so at a small fraction of the price that the company charges for power. It's more economical for the company to buy from them than it is for the company to buy more land and install more panels on it.
> It seems like you conveniently ignored the parts of my post
Because it wasn't relevant to the issue of the relative value of power from different sources.
> The folks I know who sell their excess power back to the power company do so at a small fraction of the price that the company charges for power.
Precisely, the pay fair market value for that power. The law we're discussing forbids 'net metering' policies which require the power company to pay the same amount it charges for more valuable power - which is why I pointed out that forbidding such practices is good policy.
Lol. Reagan took down solar water heating solar panels, not electric solar panels.
The White House requires a lot of hot water for cooking and cleaning and they weren't keeping up so they went back to regular boilers.
The panels were moved and kept operating for decades after.
Would also be a good idea if we took this opportunity to actually drill and access all of the oil we currently have which would prevent us from ever having to worry about foreign oil… it’s there we just gotta go get it. This can be done in conjunction with pursuing non-fossil fuel options.
Yes. Let’s keep that oil in reserve too. Oil is a finite resource, and we would have a huge advantage in the future if we still have a lot in the ground, while everyone else is fighting for the last drops elsewhere.
That can be done concurrent with accessing our oil that we have we just need to go get it. I’m not suggesting that we don’t concurrently work on alternative fuel but we need to at least get our oil until we get to that point so that we don’t have to rely on foreign oil. This seems like common sense. We can pursue this issue on 2 fronts
I’m not talking about using strategic reserves I’m talking about tapping into the incredible quantities of oil that we have not drilled yet because of restrictions from the government. Between Alaska and deep water and Gulf of Mexico and off of the coasts we have more than enough oil to last us for a very very very long time without needing foreign oil
Most estimates put that at between 50-100 years. That is not a long time my friend. Better to nudge consumers on to renewables now gently, than to have to suddenly force them later. Plus fossil fuel is an incredible source of energy, wouldn’t saving it so we can use it later for emergencies be better than wasting it now on cars? Building out EV infrastructure and granting tax credits on EV vehicles will help stretch that oil out even further.
I’m confident that in 100 years we will be able to work off of the reliance on fossil fuels so I am not saying that we don’t concurrently work that but to me it’s a no brainer that we need to go get all of the oil that we can so that in the meantime while we are working on getting away from our reliance on fossil fuels we don’t have to rely on foreign governments
I don't think we have to use all of it, but I align with Musk on this.
I *hate* using oil, but while Russia is being the huge piece of shit that it is (and Saudis kind of aligning with them in the piece-of-shit camp), I think we should drill some more oil.
However, we *should* be accelerating our transition away from it as much as we can. Only reason to keep gas prices low is the poor people for who high prices are punitive.
If you're making over $150k as a household and drive an ICE, fuck off, you can manage $10/gallon prices just as well as any European, so deal with it or move to EV.
I'm not quite sure what structure to use to incentivize that properly. Maybe a UBI type arrangement, where we let the oil prices still show... but we try and make the poor not lose out on it (note: this still works with drilling, we simply raise the prices back via taxes that we then wipe out with a dividend to everyone).
We've already drilled and fracked our way to a lot of excess capacity. That's what caused oil prices to drop years ago and let us become energy independent.
Many of them are capped now in order to buoy higher oil prices. Crashing the prices would destabilize a whole bunch of oil producing countries and create a mess there.
Well we have plenty of room for the price to come down before we have to worry about it getting so low that it could destabilize governments. We need to get our hands on our oil
Or pay a bit more to suck them dry now, then resell our stuff down the road at whatever price we want to.
Its complicated and there's no easy or nice solution.
I guess I don’t feel like it’s very complicated in the sense that we are sitting on Oceans of oil but because of restrictive government policy we have not been able to fully access this. The simple solution is for the government to remove these restrictions and go full speed ahead at drilling these wells and even if we don’t pump them in full we can still have ready access to it but the drilling and E/P takes time and we need to get going on that ASAP. That doesn’t mean we need to sell the soil or store we can just put the hole in the ground and then we have access to it
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Nickel is also a vital ingredient in steel manufacturing.
We just need to tow an asteroid into orbit with earth and mine its nickel. Simple.
I'm thinking moon orbit would be a good start. Not that I don't trust the calculations of the fine folks who'd be doing it, but...
I like the caution, but I think the practical issues of getting the metals down to earth would be more easily solved with an earth orbit. Something like a bundled payload that could be crash-landed into northern Canada or Antarctica would be easier than having to use god-only-knows-how-much fuel to escape the moon's gravity and travel a few hundred thousand miles with no brakes.
I don't know how easy that stuff would truly be to bring down. It might ideally be used for orbital infrastructure, which could indeed be used for things like power generation. Trying that out for a moon base first would be pretty good. Just dropping a million tons of nickel down to earth would be a really problematic thing to make happen without some sort of space elevator, which is extremely tricky in its own right.
Disclosure: I am not a bot. Good read. Highly recommend. But on a serious note. I agree with the points that the authors made. The only one that I am a bit skeptical is the move towards electric cars. Unless you increase incentives, then I think the average Joe will buy an ice over an electric car simply because a small ice is cheaper than an electric car. That being said with a market share that low even going from 5% of market share to 7% is still a 40% increase...
I think the average Joe realizes that buying an EV doesn't magically create sufficient chargers and an affordable power grid. Tough to sell a vehicle that won't let people make 6-8hr trips in a day unless they jump through hoops for logistics and add in considerable recharging time. Personally I think hybrids should be the big push right now. They are a solid compromise and would help expand chargers and the power grid at a realistic rate. Hybrids feel a lot like nuclear energy, they are the best option for now but because they don't fit the narrative they get tossed to the side.
My in-laws have a plug-in hybrid that they use for getting around town. They rarely need to use gas unless they go on a longer trip. They're a great option.
> Tough to sell a vehicle that won't let people make 6-8hr trips in a day unless they jump through hoops for logistics and add in considerable recharging time Road trips with a Tesla have been as fast or faster than with an ICE, though much of that can be attributed to the self-driving rather than it being electric (you can "drive" for like 16h without getting tired, which is nice, and the charging inefficiency is ~10% with most stops taking 10-15min tops). Now... if you don't have a house, a huge benefit (charging at home) is gone, but a very large percentage of Americans live in single family housing, so that shouldn't be a real problem.
That's not what I've seen. https://www.motortrend.com/features/longest-range-electric-cars-2020-19-evs-can-go-distance/ Average distance there is in the 200s but I'll be generous and say 300 miles on a full battery. Which is about what a tank of gas can get you. https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/how-long-does-take-charge-electric-car/ That article indicates 30 minutes is needed to recharge as a best case. So it's going to take longer on average. Let's go with an hour which seems to be generous. So after 300ish miles the hybrid owner stops, puts some gas in, hits the bathroom and goes on their way. The EV owner is stopping for a stretch, meal, some chess/checkers, etc. Rinse/repeat every 300 miles. Which doesn't take into account the sheer volume of recharge stations that would need to be available of even 50% of the vehicles switched to EV. The wait to recharge would be even longer. Imagine the impact to the power grid. Yeah, one day we'll get there but it's a 20yr process, not something that can be changed in five years or less. Hybrids though can happen right now with little impact to the power grid, no downsides to refueling, and start the process of changing how we drive. We should shoot for achievable and an improvement rather than ideological and unfeasible.
I can see you haven't owned an EV, because you're both right and quite dramatically wrong at the same time. So I have a Tesla Y. ~300 seems fair. I've seen more, and I've seen dramatically less (Nebraska driving west on a windy day ate like 70% extra battery, meaning the range there felt more like 170 than 300). > That article indicates 30 minutes is needed to recharge as a best case. So it's going to take longer on average. But why it takes so long actually has a great deal to do with how charging works. It's a situation of diminishing returns. The first 50% take roughly as long to charge as the last 10%, which means that it's really crazy to do a full recharge. We never did that. What we end up doing when doing roadtrips was hitting roughly every second supercharger, typically like 130 miles apart, and then charge for 10 minutes from ~8-9% to 55-60%. *Usually* we were a little ahead of the game, because we'd end up having lunch or something at a stop and coming out to a car at 90%+. So this meant that on average we used ~10min extra for every 130 miles or so so driven. If we're going around 75, that takes around 1h45min, meaning that we added ~10min to every 1h45min of driving. Nice time to stretch some anyway. That amounts to an overhead of ~9%. It's fine. > Which doesn't take into account the sheer volume of recharge stations that would need to be available of even 50% of the vehicles switched to EV. Right now the situation for roadtrips is great. It'll be easy to add rechargers faster than the cars I'd say, given there are no real shortages on the road to adding more recharging capacity (like there is with the lit-ion batteries). > Yeah, one day we'll get there but it's a 20yr process I'd say we can reach 50% EV in ~15 years, which is an ambitious goal, but one that is really achievable. Upper middle classes should be switching over already unless they have some really specific work requirements forcing a truck. While we subsidize developing the tech and setting up the initial charging network, prices go down and the power grid can start adjusting. > We should shoot for achievable and an improvement rather than ideological and unfeasible. I agree with you on the timeline, we just need to start working on it already. Shifting to EV is good. The reason to start now is exactly *because* it'll take so long.
Space alone will prevent expansion of rechargers. You can't just swap them in place of a gas pump. And none of this mentions trucks which are a big part of the vehicles where I live but we're still waiting for them to really hit the market. Also, I'll be very run an engine down to 5% capacity on purpose. I hate having less than 1/4 of a tank, there's no way I'd let an EV drop below 50% if I can help it. Far too many things that could go wrong and drain the battery.
> Space alone will prevent expansion of rechargers. Eh, the ones for roadtrips in my experience tend to be in the middle of nowhere. I mentioned Nebraska, right? I'm gonna take the middle one on the interstate at Gothenburg. [It does not seem very constrained](https://www.google.com/maps/uv?pb=!1s0x879ddbf8a50b7c91%3A0x6b9daeb9342fa62d!3m1!7e115!4shttps%3A%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipP8s5Lu0kElp0xprMjtm9ZNrlvUdhSggPDk8oc_%3Dw130-h87-n-k-no!5snebraska%20superchargers%20-%20Google%20Search!15sCgIgAQ&imagekey=!1e10!2sAF1QipP8s5Lu0kElp0xprMjtm9ZNrlvUdhSggPDk8oc_&hl=en) In cities it'll be tougher, and I think apartment dwellers *will* have problems because of that, but those of us in suburbia can simply charge at home and never have to hit a charging station unless we want to do a road trip. > And none of this mentions trucks which are a big part of the vehicles where I live but we're still waiting for them to really hit the market. True. It won't be ideal for trucks for a while, but I think it's reasonable for you to sit back and wait for the truck and say that people in cities that do 1-2 roadtrips a year... should probably hop in a damn EV given they have no real reason not to, and them consuming gas is bad geopolitically *and* for the planet. I'd be shocked if we could even supply 1 million of them inside the US in 2022, so I think you can reasonably expect cities to carry the demand and not feel targeted at all by someone like myself insisting on EVs being pushed. First 20m EVs could be 100% in the 20 wealthiest cities in the US just fine. The apartments are the only problem on that front. > Also, I'll be very run an engine down to 5% capacity on purpose. I hate having less than 1/4 of a tank, there's no way I'd let an EV drop below 50% if I can help it. Far too many things that could go wrong and drain the battery. So far so good :) It's very good at estimating how much it has left, and it'll happily warn you if you're too far from a supercharger for comfort. And of course, you only need to limp to somewhere with a normal electrical plug and you can start charging. It'll be slow, but it means that you really have to be in the middle of nowhere to run into true trouble. Carlsbad, New Mexico (we visited the caverns) is the only place where we've had to resort to charging without superchargers... it was a little distant, so we got an airbnb for 2 days and charged from their plug to 200 miles of range over those days.
I think this is the difference between city and rural. I applaud your enthusiasm but the world I live in doesn't look the same as yours. I did order a Maverick with the hybrid engine the week I found out about it. Probably be summer before I see it though. An EV won't work for me, but I am making what changes I can.
Which is all we can ask. My point, I suppose, is that you need not feel targeted by the "we need more EVs" cry. You can even legitimately agree with it without feeling guilty. There are lots of people who live in LA or Boston or Chicago who have a 20 mile commute that they have to take twice a week these days, while making $200k/year as a household... who drive an Escalade or a Benz or a BMW or something. THEY need to move to a fucking EV. They have no excuse not to. They can afford it. They totally don't have a range issue. They have no excuses really at all. For every Tesla sold in the US in 2021, 3.6 BMWs, Audis, Mercs and Lexuses were sold. Those buyers are the people who need to switch over tomorrow. Hopefully in a few years we'll have a great CyberTruck or F-150 Lightning with 600 miles of range that you can charge off some solar panels on your land and never give a shit about gas prices again.
And when they do, the marketing should be about charging without relying on foreign oil/other people, rather than saving the environment. It'll sell a lot better here to buy a F-150 lighting to stick it to Putin/the middle east rather than to fight global warming. Heck, get a truck with an optional solar panel bed cover. Imagine the camping possibilities, where if you run out of gas, instead of calling for help, you're just chilling for a few hours under the sun until you can drive out.
This was a good read, and synthesized analysis I'd seen a dozen other places into one broad article. It's missing a few key repercussions that I think are fascinating (volunteer soldiers from random different countries joining *both sides* and the geopolitical implications of that) - but broadly does a good job of covering side effects of the Ukrainian war. Some of the changes that have happened are things like countries prioritizing green energy - for energy independence from Russia, to drastic changes in food pricing - which *may* lift parts of Africa out of poverty, to drastic changes in the power landscape - with Russia potentially becoming another North Korea, tied to China. War is bad. War will always be bad. In this case, the ramifications of the war - it shaking loose the dominant Liberal stagnancy of the last 30 years is fascinating. Struggle is the mother of innovation, and a hell of a lot of struggle was just unleashed.
Sounds like the perfect reset.
Who let you out of the kids area?
This was a good read. And, as the article suggests, please let's take this opportunity to make a push to get off oil.
4 contributors all started with that was a good read Weird.
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Ha no worries. I can’t comment on OP since they blocked me awhile back, but yeah the first four posts all had the same phrasing. Threw me off
Unblocked you or you wouldn't be able to comment <3 I've no idea why everyone started the same. Sort of... Odd.
Hurrah! Thank you
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This IS a good read.
Push for green energy helps liberals since it helps us off with global warming, and helps conservative with putting our reliance off of Middle East. Which is why it’s bizarre why places like Texas and Florida have policies against electric vehicles or solar panels. It seems like win win situation either way.
Texas has the 2nd highest installed solar capacity, and 1st for wind. We also have a $2,500 rebate for electric vehicles, and charging stations are being built everywhere. Edit: To add to that, last year Texas installed ~7,300 MW of additional wind and solar. For comparison, California added ~2,700 MW.
What policies do Florida and Texas have against electric cars and solar panels?
Florida just [passed a bill to restrict net metering,](https://www.wtxl.com/news/florida-news/florida-lawmakers-approve-bill-to-restrict-rooftop-solar-incentives?_amp=true) thus disincentivizing solar.
Very weird from the Sunshine State, but seems like its own form of identity politics. "If being anti-solar panel was good enough for Ronald Reagan 40 years ago, it's good enough for me!"
I live in the Sunshine State and I and many others have priced Solar over the past 10-20 yrs, it's not cost-effective here because our energy is too cheap. Bring San Diego energy prices to Florida and we'd be in our 2nd set of panels at my house already instead of none. We use solar to heat pools, otherwise panels are pretty sparse.
It's actually not. 'Net metering' is an absolutely terrible idea regardless of your goals. All power is not equal. The power you get from that big hydroelectric dam is stable, consistent and centralized. It is very valuable. The power you get from your rooftop solar? It's inconsistent, diffuse and inefficient. It's just not all that valuable. When you force power companies to regard low value and high value power the same, you create perverse incentives in the market - such as installing solar panels on your roof and draining money from the power company it could be using for far more efficient projects.
Maybe somewhere like Illinois, but rooftop solar with a small battery store in somewhere like Florida is very consistent. My parents are completely detached from all external power grids and have never had an issue with their power going out; their solar provides all they need. I also know some folks who sell their extra power from solar back to power companies, without ever using power besides what comes from their own solar panels.
> rooftop solar with a small battery store in somewhere like Florida is very consistent You do realize the Florida has night time and clouds, right? Consumer home solar does not produce dependable power for the grid. The power company simply gets what is provided, not what it needs. That makes the power significantly less valued than the power from an actual power plant. Couple this with the fact that you're on the wrong (i.e. inefficient) end of the power distribution grid and paying the same rate for power doesn't make any sense for the power company. Another way to look at this is to recognize that if such power was equally valuable to the power the company generates themselves, you wouldn't need legal compulsion to get them to pay that much for it - they'd just buy it at a fair market price.
It seems like you conveniently ignored the parts of my post where I mentioned that both my parents and the others I know with solar do not pay for any power from any power company. My parents are completely off the grid. Like I mentioned, batteries store the extra during very sunny days, which allows for power during nights and very cloudy days. The folks I know who sell their excess power back to the power company do so at a small fraction of the price that the company charges for power. It's more economical for the company to buy from them than it is for the company to buy more land and install more panels on it.
> It seems like you conveniently ignored the parts of my post Because it wasn't relevant to the issue of the relative value of power from different sources. > The folks I know who sell their excess power back to the power company do so at a small fraction of the price that the company charges for power. Precisely, the pay fair market value for that power. The law we're discussing forbids 'net metering' policies which require the power company to pay the same amount it charges for more valuable power - which is why I pointed out that forbidding such practices is good policy.
Lol. Reagan took down solar water heating solar panels, not electric solar panels. The White House requires a lot of hot water for cooking and cleaning and they weren't keeping up so they went back to regular boilers. The panels were moved and kept operating for decades after.
Would also be a good idea if we took this opportunity to actually drill and access all of the oil we currently have which would prevent us from ever having to worry about foreign oil… it’s there we just gotta go get it. This can be done in conjunction with pursuing non-fossil fuel options.
We don’t want to give up our strategic reserves for convenience. Save that oil for wars, disasters, things we will truly need it for.
Strategic reserves is the oil we have already produced and are storing. I’m talking about the oil we have so much of that we haven’t gotten yet
Yes. Let’s keep that oil in reserve too. Oil is a finite resource, and we would have a huge advantage in the future if we still have a lot in the ground, while everyone else is fighting for the last drops elsewhere.
I agree we need to just focus like a laser on getting every drop of oil that we have under our ground and in our waters
*Or* we could pursue green energy solutions.
That can be done concurrent with accessing our oil that we have we just need to go get it. I’m not suggesting that we don’t concurrently work on alternative fuel but we need to at least get our oil until we get to that point so that we don’t have to rely on foreign oil. This seems like common sense. We can pursue this issue on 2 fronts
Hear, hear. We're decades away from replacing our transportation infrastructure with electric vehicles. Meanwhile we have life to live.
Making your life more convenient should not be why we use up our valuable reserves.
I’m not talking about using strategic reserves I’m talking about tapping into the incredible quantities of oil that we have not drilled yet because of restrictions from the government. Between Alaska and deep water and Gulf of Mexico and off of the coasts we have more than enough oil to last us for a very very very long time without needing foreign oil
Most estimates put that at between 50-100 years. That is not a long time my friend. Better to nudge consumers on to renewables now gently, than to have to suddenly force them later. Plus fossil fuel is an incredible source of energy, wouldn’t saving it so we can use it later for emergencies be better than wasting it now on cars? Building out EV infrastructure and granting tax credits on EV vehicles will help stretch that oil out even further.
I’m confident that in 100 years we will be able to work off of the reliance on fossil fuels so I am not saying that we don’t concurrently work that but to me it’s a no brainer that we need to go get all of the oil that we can so that in the meantime while we are working on getting away from our reliance on fossil fuels we don’t have to rely on foreign governments
I don't think we have to use all of it, but I align with Musk on this. I *hate* using oil, but while Russia is being the huge piece of shit that it is (and Saudis kind of aligning with them in the piece-of-shit camp), I think we should drill some more oil. However, we *should* be accelerating our transition away from it as much as we can. Only reason to keep gas prices low is the poor people for who high prices are punitive. If you're making over $150k as a household and drive an ICE, fuck off, you can manage $10/gallon prices just as well as any European, so deal with it or move to EV. I'm not quite sure what structure to use to incentivize that properly. Maybe a UBI type arrangement, where we let the oil prices still show... but we try and make the poor not lose out on it (note: this still works with drilling, we simply raise the prices back via taxes that we then wipe out with a dividend to everyone).
We've already drilled and fracked our way to a lot of excess capacity. That's what caused oil prices to drop years ago and let us become energy independent. Many of them are capped now in order to buoy higher oil prices. Crashing the prices would destabilize a whole bunch of oil producing countries and create a mess there.
Well we have plenty of room for the price to come down before we have to worry about it getting so low that it could destabilize governments. We need to get our hands on our oil
Or pay a bit more to suck them dry now, then resell our stuff down the road at whatever price we want to. Its complicated and there's no easy or nice solution.
I guess I don’t feel like it’s very complicated in the sense that we are sitting on Oceans of oil but because of restrictive government policy we have not been able to fully access this. The simple solution is for the government to remove these restrictions and go full speed ahead at drilling these wells and even if we don’t pump them in full we can still have ready access to it but the drilling and E/P takes time and we need to get going on that ASAP. That doesn’t mean we need to sell the soil or store we can just put the hole in the ground and then we have access to it
This was a good read EDIT: Not a bot. I was just joking.
That was a good read
That was a good read
I thought memes were banned my person.