The Answer To Our Problems, EV's

Actually Austin is one of the model cities for EVs in the United States.

https://www.austinmonitor.com/stori...in-energy-embraces-the-transportation-sector/

Austin has become a hotbed for the booming industry, exceeding both the national and state averages for electric vehicle registrations. In 2022, EVs constituted 11 percent of the city’s vehicle registrations, compared to 5 percent in Texas and 9 percent nationwide.
...
Austin Energy is also exploring new grid integration technology, with plans to launch a smart-home charging program that leverages real-time data to strategically time vehicle charging to manage overall grid load. Staff said the move toward more flexible grid-to-vehicle and even vehicle-to-grid exchanges can provide cost-saving efficiencies and greater reliability during peak demand, both for customers and for the utility.
...
Lastly, Austin Energy is continuing to support electrification of the city’s fleet, which currently boasts 275 battery-powered vehicles projected to provide $3.5 million in savings over the next decade.

 

April 2023. What are Austin's plans today?

 

These are Texas grid problems of today.

 

Lucky for Texas that the had their renewable base to get them through the 2023 heat wave.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/energy...ixed-its-underlying-problems/?sh=6af3ff475a6d

Renewables And Storage Got Texas’ Grid Through This Heat Wave. But The State Legislature Still Hasn’t Fixed Its Underlying Problems

Last month, parts of Texas were hotter than 99% of the Earth and electricity demand reached new heights. But the lights stayed on, even though nearly 10 gigawatts (GW) of power were offline due to failures at coal and nuclear plants, with solar and energy storage picking up the slack.

 

The real issue is that wind and solar are intermittent. Fossil fuel back up capacity must be provided whether it is used at a high percentage of time or not. If the fossil fuel power plants are not being utilized they lose money and shut down reducing the 24/7 back up. If wind and solar are not producing power Texas is in trouble as they were in 2021. If wind and solar had not been available last month the same thing would have happened. Texas lucked out last month but Texas suffered a one week without power in the winter of 2021. Seven hundred people died. BTW many more people die from cold than heat. The ratio is approximately 10 : 1.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-...s-ae6d2367#:~:text=What a mess,done it better.

 

Having backup power doesn't equate to less overall efficiency and higher costs. As a retired Utility Engineer, I could explain from a technical standpoint, but I'll leave those details out. Suffice to say, that the real world examples are evidence. Here's one such example.

The state of Iowa gets more than 55% of their power from wind. They do this with a wind-first philosophy, with backup natural gas fired plants. Their electrical costs are 20% below the national average, and these savings have been increasing as the percentage of wind has increased.

 

It certainly equates to higher costs. Much more capacity is built than necessary because wind and solar are intermittent. Also cycling the utilization of natural gas and coal power plants is inefficient and costly. And the depreciation of all the capital equipment adds to the yearly expense.

The costs in Iowa are subsidized.

 

The beginning of the end for EV mandates?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/s...S&cvid=0592155b302844b6a4c81ec97ae16c7a&ei=22

 

Simply not true. A natural gas plant can stage on turbines as needed. They can operate at 10% capacity or they can operate at 90% capacity. Same with hydroelectric. Why don't you leave those decisions to the operators that run these plants. They know what they're doing.

 

Sheer bribery.

Disgusting.

https://www.thestreet.com/electric-vehicles/taxpayer-money-paying-peoples-evs

 

Many of our cities are out of EPA compliance for pollutants. It is the responsibility of government to achieve compliance. ICEs are problematic to that end. Even with catalytic convertors, ICEs have problems. The convertors don't really work until a threshold temperature is reached. This is even more problematic with trucks. Think about it. Over-the-road truckers usually stay overnight in population centers. So they start their trucks up there, belching out those morning fumes.

 

That's a very inefficient way to run a power plant and they cannot simply go from low to high power in a short time. The natural gas power plants were shutting down completely because they were losing money. The legislature had to act to make up for the losses. Read the article. That is the big problem in TX.

 

EV's are a waste of money which taxpayers are on the hook for. This entire mess is ridiculous. Patches on patches on patches. Paid for by taxpayers who want nothing to do with the virtue signaling climate alarmist left.

 

My post said nothing about climate change. I only mentioned Air Pollution. And it is really bad in many of our cities.

 

How far above the human threshold is the pollution?

 

Do your own research. American Lung Association.

 

There are no data there. I have asked you this before.

 

Just as I thought. The American Lung Association is manipulating data.

https://www.lung.org/getmedia/338b0c3c-6bf8-480f-9e6e-b93868c6c476/SOTA-2023.pdf

 

EV sales are down across Europe.
Electric car demand plunges across Europe
By Paul Homewood
Sales of electric cars have stalled despite Europe’s plans to ban the sale of new internal combustion engine cars by 2035. . . .


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/busines...kets-latest-news-oil-interest-rates-inflation

 

Name one city that is out of compliance with actual EPA regulations. Then please tell us where we can find those regulations that cities have to meet.

Then maybe you can tell me exactly how long it takes a catalyst to light off (it's in the range of a couple seconds. It has to be that fast in order to be certified by the EPA and allowed to be sold).

Then maybe you can explain how trucks can still "belch" out fumes of any sort since the invention and implementation of Diesel Particulate Filters and Selective Catalytic Reduction (you know, the Adblue things. OK, maybe you have no idea) technologies 15-20 years ago.

And then maybe you can stop repeating 30 year old memes.

 

Although the advent of catalytic convertors have improved air quality a lot, they are far from perfect devices. EVs are perfect devices when it comes to emissions!

• Heatup mode issues (times increase with colder ambient temperatures).
• Ineffective if vehicles are not maintained - often misdiagnosed, because catalytic convertor problems can often appear to be engine problems.
• Not all trucks have catalytic convertors.
• Truck catalytic convertors are much more complex and very prone to undiagnosed failure.
• Catalytic convertors often get stolen off vehicles.
• Bottoming out a car can damage the catalytic convertor.
• If fuel isn't burned properly in an ICE, the fuel can get into the convertor and ruin it.
• A clogged muffler can ruin a catalytic convertor.
• Coolant leaking into the convertor can ruin it.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359431118336081

7. Conclusions
IC engine emissions are associated with environmental and health problems, which have led to the promulgation of stricter emission regulations. Significant emission reductions have already been achieved for engines operating in normal conditions. However, the emissions during cold start and warm up are still significant, because of the serious engine-out emissions and weak catalyst performance due to the low cylinder and exhaust temperatures. Based on the available data, in cold start conditions the maximum pipe out concentrations of CO and HC range from ~950 ppm to ~8400 ppm and from ~220 ppm to ~28000 ppm, respectively.

This paper reviewed thermal management methods for fast catalyst light-off, with the purpose of decreasing cold start and warm up emissions. The literature shows that through appropriate methods the catalyst light-off time improvement was in the 20–90% range, while the reduction of the maximum emission concentration exceeded 90%.

Burner devices and engine parameter based methods shorten the catalyst light-off time by improving its thermal management, further decreasing exhaust emissions in cold start and warm up conditions. However, these methods often imply high fuel penalty as significant heat is transferred to the atmosphere though the tailpipe, particularly when the engine is far from its optimal operating conditions. For example, the heat loss through the turbine volute is an important factor causing exhaust temperature decrease, and thus low catalyst temperature. Measures such as wastegate, VGT and VNT can be applied to decrease the expansion ratio during cold start and warm up, but they may cause engine power reduction and additional fuel consumption. From a technical viewpoint, the e-boost has the potential to be a better solution to balance exhaust temperature, engine power output and fuel economy.

Compared with the previous methods, thermal management using heat storage materials resolves the trade-off between energy consumption and emission reduction by preheating the engine coolant, lubricating oil and catalytic converter. However, in general, such techniques bring limited benefits in terms of catalyst performance improvement. Heat storage systems are more practical for vehicles that are frequently used, to prevent the heat storage material from losing its heat.

Thermal insulation material coatings can be applied to the catalyst and exhaust pipe, for reducing the heat loss. Low thermal capacity materials for the catalyst carrier are useful to swiftly increase the catalyst temperature. However, they also increase the risk of thermal sintering.

With the most obvious advantage of flexibility of heat injection in terms of position and flux, EHCs are also characterised by high energy utilisation efficiency and low thermal energy transfer to the atmosphere. EHCs have excellent catalyst light-off time reduction capability and effectively decrease exhaust emissions. A lack of advanced EHC control strategies was identified in the survey, together with a gap in terms of evaluation indices for the objective assessment of the thermal management of the catalyst. Such indicators should consider the trade-off among light-off time improvement, cumulative emission reductions and fuel consumption, e.g., they could include the cumulative emission reduction per unit power (%/kW) and the light-off time reduction per unit power (s/kW). Moreover, multiple thermal management methods should be combined to optimise the thermal behaviour of the catalyst, and integrated model predictive control strategies should be introduced and assessed to further improve performance.

 

The paper is advocacy disguised as research.
"The research described in this paper was funded by the European Commission under grant agreement no. 724095, ADVICE (ADvancing user acceptance of general purpose hybridized Vehicles by Improved Cost and Efficiency) project."

 

Do you disagree with some content in the paper?

 

Normally in an advocacy piece like that the issue is not what is included, but rather what is omitted, and no, I'm not going down that rabbit hole. The sponsorship tells me all I need to know.

 

Ah, a literature review from a couple of guys (or at least I think they're guys, none of them appear to be American so you can't be sure) that comes to the following conclusion:

- Current emissions controls work pretty well unless they're broken.

And EVs work pretty well unless they burst into flames. Big deal.

And no reference at all to On-Board Diagnostics (OBD, the second generation of which have been in US vehicles since 1996) that detects most of the failures noted (particularly misfire which will destroy catalysts) and reacts to power down the engine (otherwise known as "limp home mode") until it can be fixed. Because EPA requires that emissions controls are warrantied by the manufacturer for 120,000 miles (maybe more these days, been a while since I looked).

Yeah, as an automotive powertrain engineer by trade, consider me thoroughly unimpressed.