MSF <foster...@protonmail.com> wrote:
> I'm all for electric cars, except those aspects of them that are > controlled by entities other than the driver. > I believe you mean self-driving cars, or partially self-driving cars such as the Tesla. The self-driving feature has nothing to do with the car being electric. A Leaf is 100% human driven, with no self-driving features. For that matter, you could add self-driving features to a gasoline car, but I don't think anyone would do it. As has been demonstrated more than once, even gasoline powered cars of > recent manufacture are connected to the internet and can be disabled or > modified remotely. > I doubt this is a problem. It would be easy to prevent this from ever happening. It would be as easy as ensuring that the remote key cannot be duplicated. > We just don't have enough generating capacity or enough copper wire to > have a 100% electric fleet. > Oh yes we do. As long as the cars are charged overnight, they would not need any more generating capacity than we now have. In every country, electricity consumption is 20% to 30% lower at night. ( https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915) In parts of Texas, there is so much excess capacity from wind turbines, they make electricity free, to encourage shifting to night use. Furthermore, it would not take much electricity to power every car and truck in the U.S. The amount is surprisingly low. You might not think so, looking at the primary energy of gasoline. The thing is, electric cars use 4 to 5 times less energy than gasoline cars. So imagine using 80% less gasoline. Look at these primary energy sources to get a feel for it. Converting to electric cars would eliminate 28% of primary energy consumption, while it shifts 7% from petroleum to natural gas, wind and solar, and maybe a tad more coal for a few years: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/ For example, the average current draw of the average American house is > about 1.3 kW. The overnight full charge draw of a Tesla Model 3 is 7kW. > The average draw of a house is not relevant. When you turn on a washing machine, dryer or an air conditioner you use far more than 1.3 kW. Any modern house has the capacity to supply 7 kW. I have a 6 kW electric car charger in my house which operates with no problem when the air conditioner and everything else is on. Furthermore, the Tesla does not need to be charged all night, every night. Given the average commute distance, it charges about an hour per night (32 miles of capacity). That could be one hour in the dead of night every night, or 7 hours on Sunday night. The chargers can be programmed to run from 2 am to 3 am. No other machinery in your house will be on at that time, except perhaps an air conditioner. If every house in the U.S. used 7 kW for an hour in the dead of night, it would not strain the capacity of the distribution network at all. It *would* use more natural gas to fuel the generators. In Atlanta, houses must have 100 A of capacity these days. I learned that when I recently had my wiring completely redone, after I discovered the house nearly burned down with 60-year-old wiring. There are several 240 V connections, for the air conditioner, furnace, clothes dryer, and now the car charger. So that comes to a lot more than 12 kW of capacity. The car charger is about the same as an electric water heater: https://insideevs.com/news/335300/ev-home-charging-typically-draws-less-than-half-the-power-of-an-electric-furnace/ Obviously, anyone with an electric water heater can run the air conditioner, dryer, fridge and other appliances at the same time as the water heats. > When you consider that here in California, there have been major blackouts > and brown-outs during hot recent hot weather, a sudden mandated change is > not even close to being practical. > Do not charge your car in hot weather. That's not recommended. Charge it overnight, when things are cool. This would be a gradual change, not sudden. It would not need any increase in capacity. If people did start charging during the day, the power company could lower the rates overnight. They can do that with modern power meters. That would shift car charging, clothes drying and other applications to overnight hours.
