Elephanthead posted:

If I were a young mechanic I would suggest a different profession.

Elephanthead posted:

If I were a young mechanic I would suggest a different profession.

Ola posted:

Hopefully the trade schools over here are picking up on it and including EV stuff in the car mechanic syllabus. In the big picture EV repair and maintenance will be pretty similar to ICE. Bodywork, accessories, AC, brakes, final drive, suspension, alignment, interior, glass and more. And of course, the basics: Read error code, consult manufacturer manual, replace part as instructed.

Ola posted:

Pretty sad for a country that loves cars so much, to dismiss a whole profession as an unviable career path.

Ripoff posted:

I agree: the profession will always be here because we haven’t yet found a way to make cars solid-state flying machines. Also (at least in the US), Americans’ knowledge of their cars and how they work is staggeringly, hilariously bad, so you’re always going to need the person who says “Sir, it was a bad idea to strap a tow hook to your bumper fascia”.

I’m not a mechanic, but I thought the lovely part of the job is generally because most dealerships are paying them their mechanics standard rates per job that are unrealistically low. You gotta love a system where good mechanics who take their time and make things right get terrible pay while the guy who hangs a transmission flusher on the lower control arms and makes wooshing noises with his mouth gets the money.

quote:

If you live in Texas and listen to our radio show, there's a good chance you or someone you know is a career employee of the energy industry. If you've made a career out of working in the oil and gas field, we don't blame you. Even at times when the industry has been at a low (which it recently was) it's still a highly profitable field filled with promising job opportunities. Plus, you get to play with cool machines and stuff!

According to most reports, almost a half a million Texans have jobs specifically in the oil and gas industry and even more work in the general energy industry or related fields. Since Houston, the biggest city in Texas, is considered the energy capitol of the world, that's a heck of a lotta employees who own at least one pair of cowboy boots! And considering how much money this state generates from petroleum, you'd think we'd want to do anything we can to help allow that industry to flourish.

But if you thought that, you'd be wrong.

From the news bin of information that doesn't make any sense, we've just learned Texas is currently taking applications for a $2,500 incentive to buy electric and hybrid vehicles. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality has a new program (approved last year) which is intended to promote the use of cars that aren't gasoline fueled. If you own an electric or hybrid vehicle, the state will cut you a check up to $5000 for eligible candidates.

In 2001, the Texas Legislature created the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan, or TERP. The purpose of TERP was to reduce smog and other air pollution to improve health conditions for Texans. Under TERP, the State granted the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) the ability to set speed limits on Texas highways, and toss out money to people to buy electric cars. This is why people in Houston can’t drive 75 between Mont Belvieu and Beaumont—it’s an area that needs to reduce emissions. And this is why, periodically, the TECQ will hand out $5000 to people to purchase that cool new Volt or Tesla.

Remember folks, these are electric cars that are already subsidized by federal tax dollars.

Since 2001, the State of Texas has disbursed over a billion (maybe closer to $2 billion) of your tax dollars to “encourage owners of construction equipment, marine vessels and locomotives, to replace their dirty, older heavy-duty diesel engines with new ones to cut down smog-creating pollution in 40-odd counties whose air quality is in danger of running afoul of federal standards.” This is the main reason the TERP program was created in the first place—Texas didn’t want the EPA mandating air quality standards, which would hurt the oil and gas business.

So now the state of Texas gives out incentives to not support our state's biggest industry? Smart.

In addition to replacing all the old diesel engines, other people are encouraged through incentives to give up their gasoline powered vehicles and explore the fun and excitement found in electric vehicles.

By fun and excitement, I mean higher electric bills, cars that don’t have a terribly long driving range, and the problems with disposing of those batteries. The fines for improper disposal would shock you. But don’t worry, even if you put the batteries in an approved disposal location, they’ll get shipped to places like China and the Philippines where kids will be employed to take them apart and get exposed to all the heavy metals.

Oh, and don’t forget the kids in the Congo who are the ones mining the lithium and cobalt to make all those fancy batteries.

Gosh, this sounds like a great plan! Even though it’s probably un-American, right?

Even still, some environmentalists will argue that cleaning the air is more important than helping the Texas economy (or not helping child labor advocates in China). They will tell you this policy is going to save the Earth and keep the oceans from rising and make unicorns fart out magical fairy dust that helps fix the hole in the ozone-layer. But are they right?

Short answer: no.

Longer answer: it's actually very possible that electric vehicles are worse for the environment than your gas-guzzling Ford F150. The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s recent long-term forecasts for the number of electric vehicles through 2050 estimates how much electricity they use when placed out on the roads. They also studied how much pollution the electricity from those vehicles would generate. If you look at three of the main pollutants regulated under the U.S. Clean Air Act (sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, and particulates including CO2 emissions), you get some pretty alarming news from your so-called green-vehicle. The widespread purchasing of new electric vehicles nationwide will more than likely increase air pollution when compared side-by-side with new gas-fueled vehicles. Folks, argue with me if you want, but the overwhelming amount of evidence suggests more electric cars and trucks will actually mean more pollution when compared with the emissions of internal-combustion vehicles (which means they're powered by gas). If you want to help the environment, the new gas-fueled cars are probably a better purchasing choice than the new hybrid and electric cars that are currently on the market.

Similarly, if you want to help the Texas economy, buying a gas-fueled vehicle is clearly a better choice.

So, we know that the air’s not going to get any cleaner with this program. But, it’s not a bad program, is it?

TERP has a couple of huge glaring problems. The first is fraud. One of the conditions of a TERP grant is that the owner of the old vehicle has to ensure that this vehicle is destroyed (sent to the crusher). Except, it seems that a lot of TERP grantees are taking the money, buying a new vehicle AND re-registering the old vehicle. Great. They used your tax dollars to buy a new car. This is better than Oprah!

However, if the state catches you doing this, you might get up to 5 years sitting in the pokey.

The second problem is that lack of popularity. Every so often, TCEQ has to remind Texans that they can get money for electric cars. And this is now becoming a welfare program for the affluent.

Do you know what the profile of the average electric/hybrid car buyer looks like? Let’s take a look at the Ford Focus and the Fiat 500 because those cars come in a conventional (gas powered) and electric version. Thanks to TrueCar.com for these figures.

The average gas-powered Ford Focus buyer is 46 years old and has a household income of $77,000. The average electric Ford Focus buyer is 43 years old and has a household income of $199,000. Yep. The average household income for an electric Ford Focus buyer is 2.5 times HIGHER than the gas-powered one.

The same holds true for a Fiat 500. The gas-powered 500 buyer has a household income of $73,000. The electric buyer brings home around $145,000.

Other studies have shown that the electric or hybrid car is generally the third car in peoples’ garages, sitting behind a Mercedes or a Lexus.

Guess what? Giving people incentives to buy electric vehicles does not make them give up their gas & diesel-powered ones!

And the people most likely to buy these things in the first place, are probably the ones who can afford them without incentives.

I guess what I'm saying is: paying people to drive electric vehicles is a crap idea orchestrated by lawmakers and bureaucrats who have no idea what they're saying. It's the sort of thing you'd expect from California or New York, but now Texas has been sucked up into this absurd way of thinking with a self-destructive policy that won't do anything to help our state or the air we breathe. Just say no to liberalism.

Finger Prince posted:

I love how all the critics of EVs come down with this sudden, acute case of pretending to give a poo poo about Congolese minor miners, and think that this is some sort of bulletproof argument instead of the utterly transparent, self serving load of bullshit that it actually is.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

You'd think if they were concerned about the fossil fuel sector, they'd be saying "let's build more power plants to generate power for these EVs". Power is power, whether it's generated on-site or remotely.

Ripoff posted:

The funniest thing about those anti-EV screeds is that they always ignore the same two things: there’s 30.4 kWh of energy in a US gallon of gasoline and it actually takes electricity to make gasoline.

I love explaining to folks that the i3 goes 70-something miles on what works out to be a little over a half-gallon of “gas” and that if you look at the Bolt or Model 3 they’re going 200-300 miles on the same energy as 2-3 US gallons. The Zero gets some wild MPG calculations this way that make 50cc scooters call it a tree-humping hippie.

Three Olives posted:

Agronox posted:

Be careful though. If you’re going off of Musk’s calculation on that, it’s complete bullshit.

Ripoff posted:

most EVs charge at night on the power that would be generated (and emissions created) if we needed it or not.

Ola posted:

That only works when there are few EVs. When most people have them, the load at night will be higher. That said, it's true that EVs are more efficient than fossils, but you can't get more energy out of a gallon of gas by converting it to electricity, because you run into the same efficiency problems before you even convert.

Ripoff posted:

Yeah, if power plants are barely more efficient than a standard Otto- or Atkinson-cycle car engine then it’s six in one, half-dozen in the other at that point.

bull3964 posted:

No one gets to roll coal if they are driving an electric truck and the power plants (under functioning EPA mind you) will have to take on standard emission mitigations.

TooMuchAbstraction posted:

You say that like people won't mod EVs to spew gigantic clouds of black smoke on command. Sure they have to add a completely vestigial engine and exhaust system, but that's sure as hell not going to stop them.

spandexcajun posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZZSmFev0Zk

Most of these highend vap devices already use 18650 cells, so no problem. I guess the smoke will be white and not really smoke, just water vapor.... but heck diesel isn't coal anyway so who cares. Green coal rolling.

Ola posted:

That only works when there are few EVs. When most people have them, the load at night will be higher. That said, it's true that EVs are more efficient than fossils, but you can't get more energy out of a gallon of gas by converting it to electricity, because you run into the same efficiency problems before you even convert.

Finger Prince posted:

a huge loving fruity fog of PG.

DoLittle posted:

I think ~63% efficiency is the record for a combustion power plant (combined cycle gas turbine) in electricity generation. A large diesel generators get up to 51%. F1 engines can also hit this in optimal conditions. Good modern, boiler - steam turbine power plants tend to peak around 48%. Of course if the waste heat can be used for example district heating the overall efficiency can be very high. I think passenger car diesels can reach up to 40% and gas engines 30-35%.

Ripoff posted:

Musk’s “you can power an electric car on the energy needed to create a gallon of gas” is bullshit, you’re absolutely right.

Ripoff posted:

Ok, this falls more in line with what I was told. So there’s a little efficiency to gain there if you were burning like-for-like gasoline. Being that a sizable chunk of those power plants burn coal, there’s a point for ICE motors there from a pollution standpoint (unless the EPA gets off it’s collective dead rear end and enforces emissions for power plants). However, as everyone else mentioned, when we move to solar and wind down the line the pollution thing swings back to EVs again.

Saukkis posted:

When you are comparing engine efficience you must forget about the 30% value, because ICE motors achieve that around 1/3rd of max RPM and 2/3rd of full throttle. You can't use a normal car like that. If you want to run your car at peak efficiency your would have to start around 1500 RPM, do a powerful acceleration until you reach 2500 RPM, turn off your engine and coast until you reach the speed corresponding to 1500RPM. And then repeat until you reach your destination. Or maybe you could get close to the peak efficiency if you drive a Bugatti Veyron at 200 km/h. To drive at 100 km/h with peak efficiency would require a car equipped with a 500 cc bike engine, and not a powerful one.

spandexcajun posted:

I'm not sure what to say that the others owners in this thread have not already covered, it is a pretty sweet ride. I'll hopefully have something more useful after a few weeks of driving around.