I think Belly said none of the Tesla’s in America come from Communist China so I guess this won’t affect orders.
OT: Electric vehicles
- Thread starter BellyFullOfWhiteDogCrap
- Start date
Not so fast. China controls a big chunk of the EV supply chain. All of the world's LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries are made in China. More than half of the world's lithium refining is done in China.
Tesla will be refining their own lithium in Austin and Berlin by 2023.
The journey these metals take from extraction to finished product is insane. Time to do more domestically.
https://clearpath.org/our-take/time-to-build-a-domestic-critical-minerals-supply-chain/
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I was reading an article in the City Journal on that very thing, but since the CJ published by the Manhattan Institute, I had intended to deep dive into the sourced information.Not so fast. China controls a big chunk of the EV supply chain. All of the world's LFP (lithium iron phosphate) batteries are made in China. More than half of the world's lithium refining is done in China.
Tesla will be refining their own lithium in Austin and Berlin by 2023.
The journey these metals take from extraction to finished product is insane. Time to do more domestically.
https://clearpath.org/our-take/time-to-build-a-domestic-critical-minerals-supply-chain/
"It takes energy—the equivalent of 80 to 300 barrels of oil—to fabricate a battery that can hold energy equal to one barrel. Thus, energy used to make batteries brings a carbon “debt” to EVs which, depending on where the factories are located, greatly diminishes, or even cancels out, emissions saved by not burning oil."
"For example, one review of 50 academic studies found estimates for embodied emissions to fabricate a single EV battery ranged from a low of about eight tons to as high as 20 tons of CO2. Another recent technical analysis put the range at about four to 14 tons. The high end of those ranges is nearly as much CO2 as is produced by the lifetime of fuel burned by an efficient conventional car. Again, that’s before the EV is delivered to a customer and driven its first mile."
"Uncertainties in the embodied energy begin with the ore grade (the share of rock that contains each target mineral). Ore grades can range from a few percent to as little as 0.1% depending on the mineral, the mine and over time. Using today’s averages, the quantity of ore mined — necessarily using energy-intensive heavy equipment — for one single EV battery is about: 10 tons of lithium brines to get to the 30 pounds of lithium; 30 tons of ore to get 60 pounds of cobalt; five tons for the 130 pounds of nickel; six tons for the 90 pounds of copper; and about one ton of ore for the 190 pounds of graphite."
"Embodied energy is also impacted by a mine’s location, something that is in theory knowable today but is a guessing game regarding the future. Remote mining sites typically involve more trucking and depend on more off-grid electricity, the latter commonly supplied by diesel generators. As it stands today, the mineral sector alone accounts for nearly 40% of global industrial energy use. And over one-half of the world’s batteries, or the key battery chemicals, are produced in Asia with its coal-dominated electric grids. Despite hopes for more factories in Europe and North America, every forecast sees Asia utterly dominating that supply chain for a long time."
this is why top line numbers don't always tell a full story. this obviously bears watching. i'd like to think that the EV carbon savings would exceed the cost of production over the life of the vehicle, but who knows. that Hummer seems like it might be excessively costly from a resource perspective, let alone price tag.
I have a ceramic engineering degree, and I have some familiarity with battery technology. I don't have the background, information, and perhaps the desire to try to figure out the net zero carbon question which is fairly complicated when you take into account the variety of minerals/elements used, the mining, the global factor and transportation (which @BellyFullOfWhiteDogCrap alluded to), the government subsidization and other factors.
I was reluctant to source information from a conservative think tank, but the writer has a background in physics and worked for years as a scientist in semiconductors and fiber optics. There has to be a fair amount of play (or slop or fluff) in the calculations.
this is where the use of blockchain in supply chains would be a suitable application of the technology. if the carbon cost of each input was captured at the lowest level, you could even determine the carbon cost of each individual vehicle coming off the line.
This is correct. The Tesla Shanghai plant serves the Asian and European markets. All Teslas sold in the USA & Canada are manufactured in Fremont (and now also in Austin).
In short, yes. It’s why I disappeared from this thread for a while SMDH after seeing multiple links to articles in the past with an agenda, damning EVs entirely for their production footprint, while ignoring how quickly they make up for it during operation. I kinda lost respect for those pumping their fists here, parroting the b.s. in such articles in their posts for a while as the “dirty secret” of EVs. Not only do ICE fans tend to ignore operation footprint calculations but it’s also noticeable how the on-site use of fossil fuels to generate electricity at refineries is also consistently MIA in much operation carbon footprint accounting when they bother to discuss it. It isn’t here…
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These reports are so incredibly short sighted. Humanity needs to transition to sustainable energy. There is no other option.
600 miles on a single charge!
I don't think the links I posted do what you say. Thought they raised fair points.
And that cute little cartoon you linked is filled with all sorts of wishful caveats, one of them being based on an 84 mile range electric car.
Not looking to get into a snit, as I agree with a lot of what you post, but asking questions and raising counterpoints is not fist-pumping, parroting b.s. It's an attempt to have a discussion.
Which reports? You were the one who raised the issue of the great distances the minerals/elements need to be transported to make batteries. It's not clear to some of us that such a huge mining operation located across the continent is "sustainable energy." I was reading in another article/paper that I cannot find at the moment that larger percentages of battery materials used to be mined in the US, but no longer.
If all of this is too inflammatory for you guys, we can shut down the discussion like they do on Twitter. But I'm guessing your hero Elon Musk would not approve of that.
BTW, I ordered my F150 Lightning today. But I still like to ask questions.
For us, it made sense. We looked at a comparably equipped F150 with an Ecoboost V6 Engine, and after considering the sales tax break in NJ and the $7,500 credit, the F150 Lightning cost almost exactly $1,000 more. We did a quick calculation of the cost of home charging (assuming 4 cents/mile is accurate vs. gasoline at $4.00/gallon, and we figured that driving only 12,000 miles per year, we would save $1800/year in "fuel" costs over the F150 with the Ecoboost. I'm aware of the other savings on maintenance too.
We should get the Lightning this summer. See in you the tailgate lots, and maybe we can hang eat from my Frunk, as shown in the Mach E.
Congrats on ordering the F150. I think this is a well thought-out vehicle in many areas, though I wouldn't be jumping to load the frunk with chicken wings.
Pleasantly surprised to learn the EV/ICE cost differential is so low. When do you get expect the vehicle to be delivered?
Pleasantly surprised to learn the EV/ICE cost differential is so low. When do you get expect the vehicle to be delivered?
Let us know how the installation goes for the Ford charge station Pro. Would also like to see how the home integration system works.I don't think the links I posted do what you say. Thought they raised fair points.
And that cute little cartoon you linked is filled with all sorts of wishful caveats, one of them being based on an 84 mile range electric car.
Not looking to get into a snit, as I agree with a lot of what you post, but asking questions and raising counterpoints is not fist-pumping, parroting b.s. It's an attempt to have a discussion.
Which reports? You were the one who raised the issue of the great distances the minerals/elements need to be transported to make batteries. It's not clear to some of us that such a huge mining operation located across the continent is "sustainable energy." I was reading in another article/paper that I cannot find at the moment that larger percentages of battery materials used to be mined in the US, but no longer.
If all of this is too inflammatory for you guys, we can shut down the discussion like they do on Twitter. But I'm guessing your hero Elon Musk would not approve of that.
BTW, I ordered my F150 Lightning today. But I still like to ask questions.
For us, it made sense. We looked at a comparably equipped F150 with an Ecoboost V6 Engine, and after considering the sales tax break in NJ and the $7,500 credit, the F150 Lightning cost almost exactly $1,000 more. We did a quick calculation of the cost of home charging (assuming 4 cents/mile is accurate vs. gasoline at $4.00/gallon, and we figured that driving only 12,000 miles per year, we would save $1800/year in "fuel" costs over the F150 with the Ecoboost. I'm aware of the other savings on maintenance too.
We should get the Lightning this summer. See in you the tailgate lots, and maybe we can hang eat from my Frunk, as shown in the Mach E.
The delivery date says "summer," and hopefully will get better clarity in the near future. Would not surprise me if this gets pushed to Fall. Will do no the installation of the charge station Pro. We are excited, particularly after doing the math on the gasoline vs. electric. We will use the Lightning for our daily approx 75 mile round trip commute and plug in at night in the garage. Our office also has 4 charging stations, but IIRC, the rates appeared to be highway robbery. No need to use those with the one way trip being about 36-37 miles.
We otherwise probably would not have purchased a pickup truck because of the fuel efficiency and cost of of gasoline. But we have an SUV type vehicle that we want to get rid over for a new vehicle, and this works for us, as we no longer really need an SUV.
The reports that one off, or 2 off invariably lead back to a fossil fuel company. I didn't bother to research your source, but it's the same argument. I understand there's no such thing as a free lunch. The approximate 300 terawatts of battery materials we need for a sustainable future will impact the environment. Over 90% of those materials are recyclable, so the extraction does have a finish line.I don't think the links I posted do what you say. Thought they raised fair points.
And that cute little cartoon you linked is filled with all sorts of wishful caveats, one of them being based on an 84 mile range electric car.
Not looking to get into a snit, as I agree with a lot of what you post, but asking questions and raising counterpoints is not fist-pumping, parroting b.s. It's an attempt to have a discussion.
Which reports? You were the one who raised the issue of the great distances the minerals/elements need to be transported to make batteries. It's not clear to some of us that such a huge mining operation located across the continent is "sustainable energy." I was reading in another article/paper that I cannot find at the moment that larger percentages of battery materials used to be mined in the US, but no longer.
If all of this is too inflammatory for you guys, we can shut down the discussion like they do on Twitter. But I'm guessing your hero Elon Musk would not approve of that.
BTW, I ordered my F150 Lightning today. But I still like to ask questions.
For us, it made sense. We looked at a comparably equipped F150 with an Ecoboost V6 Engine, and after considering the sales tax break in NJ and the $7,500 credit, the F150 Lightning cost almost exactly $1,000 more. We did a quick calculation of the cost of home charging (assuming 4 cents/mile is accurate vs. gasoline at $4.00/gallon, and we figured that driving only 12,000 miles per year, we would save $1800/year in "fuel" costs over the F150 with the Ecoboost. I'm aware of the other savings on maintenance too.
We should get the Lightning this summer. See in you the tailgate lots, and maybe we can hang eat from my Frunk, as shown in the Mach E.
And even if a person doesn't give a **** about the environment, fossil fuels are finite. We either transition or civilization collapses. It's that simple. We can accelerate that transition right now with our current technology. No need to kick the can down the road any longer.
Congratulations on your Lightning order. Can't wait to hear about it. And Ford does a damn fine frunk. The Mach E has a drain plug so it doubles as a cooler. I assume the Lightning has too. Hope you get it on time.
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The Biden administration met with auto makers last week to discuss that. As part of the EV infrastructure bill, the administration has requested universal charging. In the US, most EVs use CCS1 and Tesla has their own unique charger. This also varies by region. Europe for example has a CCS2 charger, Asia something different again.
Thanks, I forgot about that. I don't know about "easy", but yes, there are some adapters. I'm not familiar with the specifics though. Tesla includes a J1772 adapter to use at public level 2 chargers.
Here's a new one to discuss. Fresh out of VietNam. And check out the part about leasing the batteries.
The posting of the articles wasn’t the issue (and I don’t think they were yours but it was a long way back). It was the absolute exclusion of post production energy and emissions accounting by them that wasn’t discussed out of hand here either and how many here (not you) thought that made sense and was a definitive nail in the coffin for EVs.
It’s never been a secret creating batteries is very energy intensive but I have also never seen proper accounting of the increasing use of solar and wind at the Gigafactory sites chosen as the ideal locations to exploit each as the world’s largest combined battery assembling operations. I also have never seen proper complete accounting of the emissions from refineries generating their own electricity (that of course doesn’t show in what they pull from the public grid), drilling sites and platforms, oil tankers, and since 2005, the tens of thousands of fracking sites in the US alone (that recently got the ok from the last administration to no longer track the methane they don’t harvest, a super greenhouse gas).
In our region alone, carbon free nuclear still provides in the neighborhood of 40% of what the utilities send to us directly. Here’s my case in southern NJ: Solar provides 91% of what my house and car need and wind-generated juice from a 3rd party supplier provides the other 9% to make the typical operation of both emissions free. I don’t know an EV owner that doesn’t also have solar or at least a contract with a 3rd party for renewable energy dumped into the grid on their behalf. Add the fact new wind and solar generation continue to outpace new coal and nat gas generation each year, do you really think what EVs save in emissions during an average car lifetime shouldn’t be included? The articles posted here said no and many found that logical. That’s when I gave up.
By slamming the use of an 84 mile range EV, you are making a mistake for your argument. That video was made when the Nissan Leaf was still hanging on as the most commonly owned EV. Now that Model 3 sales since 2017 have made it #1, a car with a range of around 300 miles that GETS MORE MILES PER kWh USED than in the Leaf’s battery pack makes the latest EVs an even stronger argument for the operation energy accounting to be included.
Bottom line: The emissions from extracting, transporting and burning oil will not go down. The emissions on the other hand from making batteries, assembling EVs and (especially) operating them will decrease over time.
To be honest, I’m a little disappointed in your flippant dismissal of of the UCS’s use of computer graphics to reveal the results of their study as cartoonish. This teacher can tell you that (maybe unfortunately) is how you reach the young nowadays (the future car owners, not us).
Speaking of the Union of Concerned Scientists, feel free to read more about who they are and the methods they use with some simple Google searches.
This is a good start beyond their cartoon…
Interesting tweet reply by an engineering professor. Others noted that unless driving on a long trip, most people will "fill up" at home, where electric rates are about 1/4 the cost shown here. The charging station at this place is 150 kW. An F150 Lightning could get 30 miles of charge in 5 minutes.
Disclaimer—anything invented after 1980 is brand new . Maybe this is already around, but could a cushioned portable solar panel be placed on the roof to recharge electric trucks/cars for Free?
April 26 televised live at 1:30–
I know some of you have been into the electric vehicle scene for years, but is April 26 the biggest day for electric vehicles in America since Tesla?
Your troll-fu is improving over time.If all of this is too inflammatory for you guys, we can shut down the discussion like they do on Twitter. But I'm guessing your hero Elon Musk would not approve of that.
I agree that it makes far more sense to remain skeptical of oversimplified claims from all sides about energy technologies. Like most stuff, the reality won't match-up well with either the "it's perfect" crowd or the "it sucks" crowd. It'll be somewhere in the middle with pros and cons. Although I agree with Belly that we need to continue moving towards more sustainable and renewable forms of energy (I think pretty much everybody everywhere agrees with that statement).
Congrats on the F-150 Lightning order. Exciting stuff and I look forward to reading about your experiences with the order and delivery process and the vehicle ownership.
Incidentally, for those folks who think Elon is going to take over twitter and eliminate all of twitter's content rules, I gotta bridge to sell them. He might buy twitter. But it doesn't matter. The content rules ain't going away and the problems of social media content rule enforcement aren't going away. It's a massively complex problem, technologically, ethically, and legally. Changing ownership won't change anything. Anybody who tried would find out quickly how impossible the problem really is and that will be the end of the that. Which is why all the social media giants out there have effectively the same content rules and similar approaches to enforcement.
Musk's a very smart guy and will have had his people do the due diligence. So he obviously knows all this. But he recognizes a populist leverage issue when he sees one and isn't afraid to be disingenuous about using it for his own purposes. Good on him.
People think of twitter like they think of stuff like moderation in this forum. Sorry folks, but that's so wrong as to be laughable. The difference in scale is immense. Read and weep...
Tesla owners- have you checked out the “Charge Stats” section in the app? Not sure when that was added, but it’s a pretty cool feature. It’s estimating that I saved $216 on gas in the last month. That’s with 15% supercharging which I’ll no longer need to do after this week.
Wasn't really trolling. I don't want to derail this thread, and I was scolded once already on that.Your troll-fu is improving over time.
I agree that it makes far more sense to remain skeptical of oversimplified claims from all sides about energy technologies. Like most stuff, the reality won't match-up well with either the "it's perfect" crowd or the "it sucks" crowd. It'll be somewhere in the middle with pros and cons. Although I agree with Belly that we need to continue moving towards more sustainable and renewable forms of energy (I think pretty much everybody everywhere agrees with that statement).
Congrats on the F-150 Lightning order. Exciting stuff and I look forward to reading about your experiences with the order and delivery process and the vehicle ownership.
Incidentally, for those folks who think Elon is going to take over twitter and eliminate all of twitter's content rules, I gotta bridge to sell them. He might buy twitter. But it doesn't matter. The content rules ain't going away and the problems of social media content rule enforcement aren't going away. It's a massively complex problem, technologically, ethically, and legally. Changing ownership won't change anything. Anybody who tried would find out quickly how impossible the problem really is and that will be the end of the that. Which is why all the social media giants out there have effectively the same content rules and similar approaches to enforcement.
Musk's a very smart guy and will have had his people do the due diligence. So he obviously knows all this. But he recognizes a populist leverage issue when he sees one and isn't afraid to be disingenuous about using it for his own purposes. Good on him.
People think of twitter like they think of stuff like moderation in this forum. Sorry folks, but that's so wrong as to be laughable. The difference in scale is immense. Read and weep...
Back to the F150 Lightning, will be interesting to see if I get it this summer or early fall. I'm apparently in "Wave 6," also called the "cleanup wave" of orders for 2022. In before the 2023 price increase too. I hemmed and hawed for 2-3 days before we did the math, and it made sense for us in fuel savings, and we know have tree hugger cred! If I get the Lightning before the end of tailgate season, will try to connect--I think you and RU#s tailgate in the Yellow Lot.
The problem is surface area. I don't recall the source, but I believe, under optimal conditions, you'd get ~30 mi/ day with a solar cover on a pickup bed. Of course, there's clouds and shade where you park too. Not sure it's worth it at this point.
Solar-powered carport EV charging stations are coming online. Dodger Dreamfield at Gonzales Park.
A company in Vermont, ISun, just sold $29 Million solar-powered carport charging stations.