Outstanding TED Talk on Electric Cars

[EdBike]

Shai Agassi's bold plan for electric cars | Video on TED.com

Every once in a while you come across a TED Talk that's so jaw-droppingly good, you just have to share it with everyone you know. Here Shai Agassi, an incredibly bright young entrepreneur explains how to make electric cars economically viable and compelling with todays technology and market conditions. And how he's actually doing it...

 

[flecc]

I'm afraid I can't share your enthusiasm. This battery swap scheme of his for Israel has been around for a while, Renault have been making the prototypes and there's no doubt that viewed in isolation it's viable.

But like all the e-car schemes it misses the fundamental impossibility of countries trying switching largely or entirely to e-cars.

That's the supply infrastructure. The vast quantities of electricity needed to power e-vehicles instead of fossil fuel ones will necessitate vast numbers of new power stations which would have to be nuclear if we are not to continue to threaten this world with excessive CO2 production as ic engines are doing at present.

But that's the smaller problem, delivery to the customer is far bigger one. The electric battery charge equivalent of a current fair size petrol station will need to have it's own large electricity substation fed with very high voltage from overhead cables via pylons to enable delivery of the power equivalent. The fundamental problem is of course that petrol and diesel have such high energy densities, electricity supplied via batteries has no hope of ever getting remotely close to them for efficiency or space utilisation.

Such a vast infrastructure of power stations, pylons, distribution lines and electricity substations with every "fuel" station and the space they all need is frankly impossible in many, if not most countries currently using ic cars in large numbers.

The long term answer to our conundrum is likely to be a combination of two things. First is that we travel less since it simply isn't necessary with good planning for the human race to be in it's present state of near perpetual fast motion. Second, much of such transport as we do need will have to be publicly provided for the masses, rather than individual and wasteful as at present.
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[tonio]

The reason governments wont promote electric cars is because i (and a lot of you im sure} put diesel in my car tonight at £1.39.9 per litre and the majority of that is tax. I applaud the guys vision, the infrastructure does not need to be so expensive according to this report.Electric Cars--How Much Does It Cost per Charge?: Scientific American
As to making smaller journeys that would be nice, but impractical unless you change the entire infrastructure of the developed world which would be a lot more expensive than creating a netwiork of charging points or developing an overnight house-plugin car.
The car like the ebike is suited to individual expression;i.e freedom. Improve public transport but dont make it compulsory. Imagine a world of cities with nothing but underground tubetrains like it was last time i was in London and nobody looks at, much less talks to eachother.
Go for it Israel or wherever, the Wright brothers flew a powered kite just over a century ago and now man can go into space. Ecars are the future!
Didnt y'all watch Logans Run?

 

[HarryB]

He is interviewed here for the World Service and I recorded the interview. He is very charasmatic but like Flecc I cannot agree with many of his ideas - particularily the intrastructure but also the poor battery technology (I accept it can be less of an issue with cars than with bikes). When I left work I strolled past with my crummy battery (barely hold 80% of its charge after less than a year) - I resisted the temptation to make a comment though - we need more people like him even if they do make mistakes along the way. Good luck to him.

 

[flecc]

Ecars are the future!

To very gradually switch to e-cars over the next half century means more than doubling our present electricity generation, over 100 new large power stations. Renewables are out, we can't even get remotely near to present targets, let alone increase by such a vast factor. Fossil fuels on such a scale are out if we are not to destroy our world.

That leaves nuclear, which isn't exactly flavour of the month currently. In addition to the increase of well over 100 large power stations, we'd need to replace all the present nuclear stations and most of our fossil fuel stations over the same 50 years since all will be well beyond end of life in that period. Indeed those about to be renewed would be nearing the point of next renewal in that period since 60 years is about the normal life now.

So we need to build approaching 200 large power stations over the 50 years, mostly nuclear. The record for building a small station is two years in South Korea, but even they struggled to achieve four years usually. But we need large stations and our only modern second generation nuclear station, Sizewell B, took 14 years from the go-ahead to producing electricity, so what's the chance of us building four every year continuously for 50 years? Not a cat-in-hells chance of course.

All this is without even considering the impossibility of getting the power to the batteries for charging as I've shown above, so e-cars are not the future, they are a pipe dream, hence my realism about the likely future of less personal travel in future and increased use of public transport. Yes Tonio, it's a horrible prospect in an increasingly over-populated world, I couldn't agree more, but 2 and 2 just don't make 5, let alone 40 or more.

On the fuel tax income issue, that's not a problem, we have dual path already with red and plain diesel and the same can exist even more effectively for electricity through using smart meters and "tell-tales" in the cars' sealed charging systems. Rest assured you'd pay through the nose for e-car electricity if it were possible, so no change there.

I agree with Harry that the sort of enthusiasm this chap has is to be welcomed to help stir up debate on the personal transport issue, but we have to be realistic and look at the whole scenario. E-car design is not the start point, where the electricity comes from is, and that design and planning problem needs to be solved first. Nuclear fusion stations might be part of the answer, but that won't be this side of 50 years.
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[flecc]

Further to my last post, London is a pointer. At one time over half a century ago London had 10,000 buses and huge numbers of the workforce cycled, as they did throughout Britain at that time.

Over the years car usage greatly increased, cycling all but vanished, the number of buses more than halved to just 4000 and public transport in general was neglected.

But that's now gone into reverse in recent years. Cycling had doubled in a decade to around half a million, though the other eight million still don't and aren't likely to. The number of buses has increased by 70% to some 6,800, the tube network is subject to a huge upgrade program with new lines added, and suburban mainline trains have been modernised and added to. Crossrail is going ahead. Trams have made a comeback and are so popular that a large new batch have now been ordered to increase frequency on our network.

We already know that the world's population is migrating into cities en-masse and the only way cities will eventually be able to function as the population grows is by using public transport, as London is making clear by example.
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[tonio]

Time will tell.
The tidal generator at the entrance to Strangford lough is a success and was to be adopted on a larger scale in the Bristol channel but became a casualty of the Con-dem government cuts. Funny how investment gets cut when renewables are showing actual economic potential. Ive spoken to N.I. E employees and they told me the amount of electricity produced through hydro is a lot more than the public knows. That was 8 yrs ago at the Spelga dam reservoir.
I dont accept that renewable energy is a non starter,it just doesnt pay enough backhanders at present like oil does. As for Nuclear power, well i find the idea reprehensible even without the present tragic events. Its just way too dangerous. Coal and oil fired power stations could be phased out gradually till renewables replace them. A pipe dream for some im sure, and to our best democracy that money can buy system it may remain so.
I know lets have another oilwar, our kids will really thank us for that.

 

[flecc]

Time will tell.

The tidal generator at the entrance to Strangford lough is a success
I dont accept that renewable energy is a non starter,it just doesnt pay enough backhanders at present like oil does.

I'm afraid it's not time that will tell, it's the arithmetic that will. Why is it that proponents of renewables won't do the arithmetic and accept the truth? Strangford Lough is peanuts and so would that Bristol Channel scheme have been. Whenever the production from renewables is quoted, it's in the number of notional houses it would supply, dishonestly hiding it's poor contribution. Only if it's honestly and factually reported in Watts will it be seen how minor an element it is compared to the output of the average single 1000 megawatt power station.

Britain's target for renewables is 20% but there's no way we are going to reach it as things stand. Even if we did, it includes wind as the largest element so will only be 20% when the wind obliges, bringing the average contribution down nearer to 15%. The other 80 to 85% will have to come from power stations, fossil fuel or nuclear.

I'm not saying this because I'm in love with power stations, nothing could be further from the truth. I would dearly love all power to be resourced from renewables, but being a realist who faces the facts, I know that's totally impossible. There are only two ways that we could make it possible. The first would be for all the world to adopt a quite primitive lifestyle that's far less energy dependent. The second would be for the world to cut it's population from the present nearly 7 billions down to nearer 1 billion, and even then they'd have to be more ecologically minded.
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[tonio]

Coal and oil fired power stations could be phased out gradually till renewables replace them. Where there is a will there is a way. It was realists with vision who gave us our technological advances.

 

[flecc]

It was realists with vision who gave us our technological advances.

Exactly! My response to this thread was precisely showing how those so called visionaries give us the advances that create our mess. It is they who have got us into the present dead-end with their ill thought out supposed progress. Shai Agassi is yet another "visionary" trying to lead us into a dead end trap as I've clearly shown.

Again I say, do the arithmetic, renewables cannot replace our present
fossil fuel usage in the foreseeable future, so we need to do something else meanwhile to see us through the next several decades. It will either be that or we'll have to go without, which with present political inaction is probably what will happen, power cuts and rationing.
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[NRG]

I read somewhere 800 to 1200 wind turbines are needed to equal the average nuclear power station output 24x7, taking up something like 30,000 acres. Clearly we don't have the space for wind power alone and I'm not sure the huge short fall could ever be made up by the use of other renewables....I fear we are stuck with nuclear...

 

[tonio]

It was realists with vision who gave us our technological advances.

I was referring to the man who invented the wheel for example.
Time for this to wind down methinks. Im off for some individual travel to visit my gran whose just turned 90. Later hopefully some ebiking with no other purpose than to renew my energies. See its already possible.

 

[flecc]

I fear we are stuck with nuclear...

Fortunately second and third generation nuclear is fundamentally safe.

Ironically it's the anti-nuclear lobby who have prevented the replacement of the accident prone first generation stations.

First generation technology is often dangerous. At the first demonstration of Stephenson's railway a man was run over and killed by the inadequately braked train. When one of the first cars was demonstrated at Crystal Palace, a woman stepped in front of it and was killed for the same reason.

The world's first jet airliner, the Comet, crashed out of the sky repeatedly, killing all on board and had to be grounded indefinitely.

Should we have immediately banned trains, cars and jet airliners? Of course not, we just updated to safer later generation designs.

Nuclear power has been no different, we just need to move on and update to the designs we know are much safer.
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[RoadieRoger]

Tidal Power

The Barrage in the Bristol Channel would have cost a lot less than the amount doled out to prop up the Banks .I live only 5 miles from Lavernock at the Welsh end .The Barrage was promoted heavily in the late 1960`s by Industrialists and in particular by the boss of the Steelworks where I worked at the time , Tom Keen of Guest Keen Iron and Steel Co . of East Moors , CARDIFF . Obviously steel would have been required in great quantities ! At the time there was plenty of Industry around to cope with big projects , now it has all but dissappeared .
We would have the situation where all the Contractors were from the Continent as happened when the Millenium Stadium was built , the structural Steel came from Italy .
The Barrage should go ahead as it would also protect the low lying Mid Somerset plain and the city of Cardiff from flooding with rises in sea level predicted .

 

[flecc]

I agree RoadieRoger, the barrage was a good project and far more productive than using the Strangford Lough type generators.

Better still though would be to get really brave and go for a much larger area of the channel with a two barrage scheme. That would provide continuous stable level power under all conditions with two stage generation in the two barrages.

That's the one renewable option that really would make a large dent in what we need, but it would take very many years to build and have an astronomical cost. We would also have to import a large workforce and temporarily house them for a long time, since our resources wouldn't meet such a huge need.

But we don't have the politicians suitable to rise to such a challenge, they died out in the Victorian era.
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[RoadieRoger]

Barrage

Yes flecc such a project would have helped with our future electricity shortages , revitalised the Construction Industry and regenerated the run -down S.Wales economy and of course the Somerset economy too ! It looks like the London Crossrail , the Olympic Games and the HS Rail Link to the North is taking the cash ! With the current Nuclear problems it might be time to have a rethink .
The barrage could carry road and rail and if we don`t generate more electricity how are we to run all the electric cars and Rail Electrification ?

 

[Biged]

Why as it got to either or?
Renewables play there part but are unreliable, wind farms only work when there's wind. We have few Hydroelectric plants, more to control power supply surges than anything and though we are surrounded by water wave power is unlikely to be the answer
In the sixties it was stated that the UK had known coal reserves for 500 years, coal powered stations are not ideal in their present form, but they have improved greatly over the last couple of decades. Invest in cleaning them more!
50% of the U.S. power is supplied by coal and more than that in China. We own/owned our own coal and did not need to import any of it. We could now be held to ransom anytime our gas provider decides!
I think Nuclear power is a monstrosity! It's only storing problems for future generations. The stations are expensive to set up, disastrous problems can arise during their running periods (as we are seeing now, never mind Chernobyl) and decommissioning costs the earth, quite literally.

 

[RoadieRoger]

Power

I would think Tidal power would be more reliable than wind, as a few weeks ago the wind was calm here in S.Wales for 3 or 4 days , not much power was coming from wind turbines then . The tides are reliable and here the rise and fall is the second highest in the World at 40 ft . Coal would be ideal if they can clean it up , but if it was that easy it would have been done by now .We are getting to the stage of having barely a rump of a Mining Industry left and the skills and expertise of deep mining are going . Much longer and who would want to go down the mines and dig coal for a living ? Some unemployed won`t even work in the lovely fields of East Anglia , so the Poles have to do it !

 

[flecc]

I would think Tidal power would be more reliable than wind

Yes it certainly is, and the same wind unreliability goes for wave power. Wave power is a non-starter for the simple reason that it's wind power that's lost much of it's energy in the conversion. Much more sensible to use the wind while it blows if an unreliable source is thought sensible, not a thought I share though.
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