Have Electric Cars finally killed muscle cars???

[olds307 and 403]

We actually have 4 different types of power generation, Coal, Natural Gas, Hydroelectric and Wind Power. Our infrastructure sucks, it would not even support 50% EV's. Outside of infrastructure, range is the biggest issue. For example, to go to my Wife's Specialist appointments, it is 300 km one way, so 600 km minimum. Also what would the range of the current EV's be in -40, a lot less.

 

[motorheadmike]

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I don't care if it is an April Fools joke... it is still more based in reality than total electrification.

 

[Hurricane77]

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I don't care if it is an April Fools joke... it is still more based in reality than total electrification.

For some reason the hydrogen fuel cell idea really lost steam some time ago. It was supposed to be the next big thing back in 2000 or so. I know there were (and perhaps still is) several places running things like buses and larger vehicles using hydrogen electric.

Certainly the recharge time and thus the range anxiety gets solved. A hydrogen fueling station costs way more than an electric charging station. But once you take into account the massive investment in power generating capability in order to power those electric charging stations, that equation becomes much more balanced. Plus one has to consider the peak to average demand on the grid. That's really challenging for power generating companies. You need enough capacity to supply power for peak demand - unless you want rolling brown/blackouts like California had. But you either need to reduce the output of your generator or take certain generating capacity offline. That's something that the current Candu reactors here in Canada are not good at. It's not like a gas or coal plant where you can just feed less fuel, or a hydroelectric damn where you can shut the gates or divert the water. There is some possibility to adjust power output, but the range isn't that great. I worked at the Bruce plant for a while back after university and it takes days to restart a reactor. Just syncing it with the grid takes a long time. Not sure if that's still a short coming with these SMDs though. I've heard a lot of good things about them though. Given the Candu design dates back to the 60-70s, I'd hope we've come a long way in nuclear tech. Nuclear was starting to have a bit of a resurgence globally before Fukushima happened.

 

[Hurricane77]

We actually have 4 different types of power generation, Coal, Natural Gas, Hydroelectric and Wind Power. Our infrastructure sucks, it would not even support 50% EV's. Outside of infrastructure, range is the biggest issue. For example, to go to my Wife's Specialist appointments, it is 300 km one way, so 600 km minimum. Also what would the range of the current EV's be in -40, a lot less.

I'm surprised there's not more solar in Sask. You guys get more hours of sunlight than the rest of Canada. I guess most of the farmers are willing to give up several hectares of land for a solar farm.

 

[Hurricane77]

The lay of the land may be different in Canada than the States. Oh, sure, both have varying subsidies and such. But at least down here utility companies are seeking to add base charges to houses on solar to cover their infrastructure and make up for lost revenue, and lessening how and when homes get credits for energy released back into the grid.

As far as on-site consumption goes, it's gets complicated depending on who you are and when you use power. If you store it for non-daylight hours in the fall/winter/spring you need battery packs that degrade over time as well. But unless you're retired and then just go to sleep at night, running a wood stove/furnace for heat, most of your consumption will be at times you don't generate....

I've looked at it quite a bit, mainly because I'd love to get into a family compound situation. I want a driveway at least 1500ft long and no neighbor visible day or night. Found an Addams family style house but major inspection issues had us not go through. Since then we've been checking in on a couple 100-250 acre properties but I'm not impressed by the lack of maple/beech/cherry on the properties.... it's heavy pine/hemlock with some oaks mostly. So some minimal grid connectivity would be nice, but like I said.... issues.. .

Not sure how it is in most regions in the states. Are the power companies fully public utilities, private companies? Level of regulation? I've sure it varies from state to state and even within states.

Here in Ontario, It's fair heavily regulated. It's private (mostly), but regulated. I've not heard of any surcharge or levy being applied to solar producers. In fact it was quite the opposite, they were heavily encouraging solar installations. At one point, they were offering 20 years contracts for small solar installation up to 10 kW and paying ~5x times the current retail rate. But that was quite a while and the program is gone and when it was in effect solar installs were substantially more expensive than they are today. Today it's really just a Net Metering program. You use from the grid when necessary and put back into the grid when you have excess, you pay (or get paid) for the net amount used. But there is a limit on your generating capability before they start treating you like a commercial generator with a lot more regulation and cost to build. It gets a bit more complicated since we have time of use pricing in effect for much of the province. Solar is advantageous for that since you'll be feeding the grid with it's at mid or high peak demand but consuming more at night and in the evening when the prices are low.

 

[69hurstolds]

With everyone plugging their car in at night, I'm thinking there will be a shift in peak demand times at some point. Regardless, if anyone thinks electricity will get any cheaper, I can't see that happening.

Southern and PPL aren't terrible stocks to own. And they pay decent dividends. Chargepoint is another to consider. No dividends but I'm up 40% since buying it.

Hydrogen MIGHT be making a comeback, but not sure how serious that would be. Maybe in Europe, perhaps. If anyone wants to check out investing in that, Plug Power has been around about 20 years now (and still not making a profit lately). Stocks shot up out of the gate way back when to nearly 1500 per share soon after the IPO then dropped to virtually nothing. Now it's around 30. But just had a bit of a jump recently, so is there any more upside? I'm not sure. But it's one that's out there. Could it be the hidden "Tesla" type stock? I think the market has sort of cooled on it though so if you got it, I'd probably hold it, but not sold on buying any at the moment. Just my thoughts.

 

[Clone TIE Pilot]

For some reason the hydrogen fuel cell idea really lost steam some time ago. It was supposed to be the next big thing back in 2000 or so. I know there were (and perhaps still is) several places running things like buses and larger vehicles using hydrogen electric.

Certainly the recharge time and thus the range anxiety gets solved. A hydrogen fueling station costs way more than an electric charging station. But once you take into account the massive investment in power generating capability in order to power those electric charging stations, that equation becomes much more balanced. Plus one has to consider the peak to average demand on the grid. That's really challenging for power generating companies. You need enough capacity to supply power for peak demand - unless you want rolling brown/blackouts like California had. But you either need to reduce the output of your generator or take certain generating capacity offline. That's something that the current Candu reactors here in Canada are not good at. It's not like a gas or coal plant where you can just feed less fuel, or a hydroelectric damn where you can shut the gates or divert the water. There is some possibility to adjust power output, but the range isn't that great. I worked at the Bruce plant for a while back after university and it takes days to restart a reactor. Just syncing it with the grid takes a long time. Not sure if that's still a short coming with these SMDs though. I've heard a lot of good things about them though. Given the Candu design dates back to the 60-70s, I'd hope we've come a long way in nuclear tech. Nuclear was starting to have a bit of a resurgence globally before Fukushima happened.

Hydrogen has a few problems. First you can only safely compress it so much which limits how much you can put in a car powered by it. A hydrogen car would have lesx range than a gasoline car due to the capacity limit. Another issue is that hydrogen burns very fast, so fast it pushes pistons a shorter distance during the firing cycle than gasoline which results in less useful torque.

Sad thing about Fukushima was that plant also used outdated reactor designs combined with mismanagement and poor placement.

 

[Hurricane77]

Hydrogen has a few problems. First you can only safely compress it so much which limits how much you can put in a car powered by it. A hydrogen car would have lesx range than a gasoline car due to the capacity limit. Another issue is that hydrogen burns very fast, so fast it pushes pistons a shorter distance during the firing cycle than gasoline which results in less useful torque.

Sad thing about Fukushima was that plant also used outdated reactor designs combined with mismanagement and poor placement.

Yeah, hydrogen is pretty volatile. But while that Dodge announcement did mention a hydrogen combustion car, the original plan of the hydrogen fuel cell cars was to combine hydrogen with oxygen in a reverse electrolysis reaction creating electricity and the only byproduct being water vapour. But that general idea may have changed, I'm not sure. Also not sure how much of a difference in energy density there is between a tank of gas, a hydrogen fuel cell and an lithium battery pack.

 

[PBGBodyFan]

EV's have and will surely have even more impressive performance as years go on, basically are in a different category than ICE vehicles IMO. I never drove one but understand they can and will perform at a high level. I won't really care too much when the newer/daily driver vehicles are becoming majority EV options, hopefully there is still a choice and that's where the whole free market vs. forced market thing can get messy, much rather see it change organically as well. I think the public also knows it's a relatively new tech so why buy into it now knowing there could be leaps and bounds in coming years.

For our cars and any older stuff there are too many people that do and will continue to prefer the ICE, no matter how much faster basically driving a big battery might be or the handling could improve by strategically placing the batteries for weight distribution. No thanks to converting my cars, the feel/sound can't be replicated, just part of the reason. It will be interesting to see how many swaps start getting done by owners in their own garages as more and more EV's are built and eventually wrecked/scrapped or the OEM's sell swaps similar to crate engines.

I'd also guess the progression to EV in the performance market can get the LS swap snobs off the hook and we can all band together to hate the EV dorks instead 🙂.

 

[scoti]

EV's have and will surely have even more impressive performance as years go on, basically are in a different category than ICE vehicles IMO. I never drove one but understand they can and will perform at a high level. I won't really care too much when the newer/daily driver vehicles are becoming majority EV options, hopefully there is still a choice and that's where the whole free market vs. forced market thing can get messy, much rather see it change organically as well. I think the public also knows it's a relatively new tech so why buy into it now knowing there could be leaps and bounds in coming years.

For our cars and any older stuff there are too many people that do and will continue to prefer the ICE, no matter how much faster basically driving a big battery might be or the handling could improve by strategically placing the batteries for weight distribution. No thanks to converting my cars, the feel/sound can't be replicated, just part of the reason. It will be interesting to see how many swaps start getting done by owners in their own garages as more and more EV's are built and eventually wrecked/scrapped or the OEM's sell swaps similar to crate engines.

I'd also guess the progression to EV in the performance market can get the LS swap snobs off the hook and we can all band together to hate the EV dorks instead 🙂.

It's already happening. The Tesla Plaid is known to put the hammer down. It's crazy how quiet they are yet how violently they can pin you to the seat. They're now tearing up autocross tracks @ 'open' events. I know two different GoodGuys events have had Tesla's win on the Sunday portion of the Autocross event that's open to show participants per my RideTech e-mail updates. I don't recall what category they're putting them in since obviously there isn't one for pre-78 EV's.