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The Future is Electric

Grand Mal said:
That's the beauty of the free market. If there's a demand someone will find a way to supply it. Petro-Canada is advertising that It's possible now to drive an electric car across the country (a biggish country, too) from charging station to charging station in their gas stations.
My best guess to answer your question is nuclear. Tidal power generation is already working in some places, too, and battery technology has lots of room to grow.
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Charging stations are a method of distribution, not a source. Nuclear plants are not being planned or built, they are being shut down.

Tidal power is very limited, and like solar power, not quite a quality source for the quantity of power which will be displaced.
 
OldFatGuy said:
Curiously, with nuclear plants being shutdown and no new ones either planned or under construction, the aversion to burning fossil fuels, the minimal impact of solar farms, and an already strained electric grid, where will the needed electricity come from?
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calamity said:
Same issue: lack of infrastructure.
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As currently structured, your electrical grid cannot handle Electric-Car America.

Your electrical grid consists of a mish-mash of 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1990s and 2000s technology from analog to digital.

The cost to make it current is estimated at $3.7 TRILLION over 5 years.

Solar and wind will not get it.

You need to go nuclear, but not nuclear fission. You need breeder (fusion) reactors like the Integral Fast Reactor. It's unfortunate the environmentally-challenged dynamic duo of Clinton-Gore cancelled all research funding for the IFR.

There is no waste from a breeder reactor. Well, actually, there is waste, but waste from a breeder reactor is fuel for another breeder reactor, so there's no need to store it.

All you need is an initial quantity of fuel and a breeder reactor will fuel itself for eternity.
 
Mircea said:
As currently structured, your electrical grid cannot handle Electric-Car America.

Your electrical grid consists of a mish-mash of 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1990s and 2000s technology from analog to digital.

The cost to make it current is estimated at $3.7 TRILLION over 5 years.

Solar and wind will not get it.

You need to go nuclear, but not nuclear fission. You need breeder (fusion) reactors like the Integral Fast Reactor. It's unfortunate the environmentally-challenged dynamic duo of Clinton-Gore cancelled all research funding for the IFR.

There is no waste from a breeder reactor. Well, actually, there is waste, but waste from a breeder reactor is fuel for another breeder reactor, so there's no need to store it.

All you need is an initial quantity of fuel and a breeder reactor will fuel itself for eternity.
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As far as I know, no one has been able to create a fusion reactor.
 
Mircea said:
As currently structured, your electrical grid cannot handle Electric-Car America.

Your electrical grid consists of a mish-mash of 1910s, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1990s and 2000s technology from analog to digital.

The cost to make it current is estimated at $3.7 TRILLION over 5 years.

Solar and wind will not get it.

You need to go nuclear, but not nuclear fission. You need breeder (fusion) reactors like the Integral Fast Reactor. It's unfortunate the environmentally-challenged dynamic duo of Clinton-Gore cancelled all research funding for the IFR.

There is no waste from a breeder reactor. Well, actually, there is waste, but waste from a breeder reactor is fuel for another breeder reactor, so there's no need to store it.

All you need is an initial quantity of fuel and a breeder reactor will fuel itself for eternity.
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When we need to cut power to a million people because it might get windy, you know there's a problem.
 
Drawdown said:
No I saw robots and said "Not Jobs"
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And, what, you think robots are not going to become a larger and larger part of every industry?
 
Deuce said:
And, what, you think robots are not going to become a larger and larger part of every industry?
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They won't be if we go to 100% renewables.
 
Drawdown said:
They won't be if we go to 100% renewables.
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Your claim is... if we go to 100% more renewables this will affect the number of robots in, say, road construction?

Um. Can you elaborate?
 
Deuce said:
Your claim is... if we go to 100% more renewables this will affect the number of robots in, say, road construction?

Um. Can you elaborate?
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I didn't say if we went to 100% more I said if we went to 100% period. It is the law of diminishing returns with most of this green energy. There is a point at which they are no more gains.
 
Drawdown said:
I didn't say if we went to 100% more I said if we went to 100% period. It is the law of diminishing returns with most of this green energy. There is a point at which they are no more gains.
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Yes, there is a hypothetical upper limit of the amount of energy you can generate with solar power. It's called a Dyson sphere. I'm not sure what makes this relevant to robots. (other than you'd need a crapton of robots to build a dyson sphere, anyway) Elaborate.
 
Deuce said:
Yes, there is a hypothetical upper limit of the amount of energy you can generate with solar power. It's called a Dyson sphere. I'm not sure what makes this relevant to robots. (other than you'd need a crapton of robots to build a dyson sphere, anyway) Elaborate.
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I did not say solar, I said renewables. There is no model that gets us to 100% global alternative energy. 60% is about the best the models can come up with without nuclear. 80% without nuclear if you believe that carbon sequestration works as effectively in reality as it does in theory. Sure there are polls where people say we can get to 100% but there is no actual path for it.
 
Deuce said:
Yes, there is a hypothetical upper limit of the amount of energy you can generate with solar power. It's called a Dyson sphere. I'm not sure what makes this relevant to robots. (other than you'd need a crapton of robots to build a dyson sphere, anyway) Elaborate.
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You would need a lot more than a carp load of robots. There is not enough raw material in our solar system to build one even if it were possible.
 
Drawdown said:
I did not say solar, I said renewables. There is no model that gets us to 100% global alternative energy. 60% is about the best the models can come up with without nuclear. 80% without nuclear if you believe that carbon sequestration works as effectively in reality as it does in theory. Sure there are polls where people say we can get to 100% but there is no actual path for it.
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What "models" are you referring to?

The theoretical solar energy available utterly dwarfs humanity's energy needs.

Sabre said:
You would need a lot more than a carp load of robots. There is not enough raw material in our solar system to build one even if it were possible.
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I've seen estimates at about a Jupiter's worth of mass. It's a sci-fi concept, not actually relevant.
 
I went to a plant yesterday which is just now introducing robots. They still had people using ladles to pour molten aluminum into die cast machines. I felt like I was back in 1933.
 
calamity said:
Yes, the US has to get it's act together. Most of the high-tech manufacturing today is in Asia and Europe. We are probably two decades behind South Korea, for example. Yes 20 years.
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Hey, the whole country is like the UP!

With the up 20 years behind the country and the country twenty years behind the world, I feel just like we're in a double critical mass black hole singularity being crunched down to the next level!

Life is just great!

At least I'm on the inside.

Someone else can lead the next expansion.
 
OldFatGuy said:
Curiously, with nuclear plants being shutdown and no new ones either planned or under construction, the aversion to burning fossil fuels, the minimal impact of solar farms, and an already strained electric grid, where will the needed electricity come from?
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Solar, wind, tidal, geothermal. Sources of free, renewable energy abound.
 
JacksinPA said:
Solar, wind, tidal, geothermal. Sources of free, renewable energy abound.
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Yes they all exist, but none offer sufficient energy to replace fossil fuels, even when combined. On the other hand, hydrogen burning engines make much more sense. Toyota and Kia are choosing that path. Plenty of H2O.
 
Sabre said:
Toyota says all its cars will have an electric or hybrid option by 2025

Dec 18, 2017 · Toyota says all its cars will have an electric or hybrid option by 2025. The company itself said to date it has produced more than 11 million vehicles that use electric technology.
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I believe there are at least 2000 components in an internal combustion engine and probably 1000 more in the transmission. An EV has fewer than 100 moving parts in the entire drive train. Think about that for a moment.

If ever the industry solves the "battery problem" the gas/diesel powered vehicle is history.
 
Deuce said:
And, what, you think robots are not going to become a larger and larger part of every industry?
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For manufacturing, absolutely. And not necessarily in a humanoid form.

Robots are already making an appearance in the fast food industry. No minimum wages, no benefits, no erratic employees having social emergencies, no argumentative insubordinate employees, no spitting in the food, no racist messages on customer receipts. Cleaning robots in hospitals and supermarkets. Essential for precision assembly lines where human vision just doesn't cut it. There's a robotic "Elvis" performing marriage ceremonies in Las Vegas. Application is only limited by human imagination.
 
Deuce said:
Your claim is... if we go to 100% more renewables this will affect the number of robots in, say, road construction?

Um. Can you elaborate?
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calamity said:
I believe there are at least 2000 components in an internal combustion engine and probably 1000 more in the transmission. An EV has fewer than 100 moving parts in the entire drive train. Think about that for a moment.

If ever the industry solves the "battery problem" the gas/diesel powered vehicle is history.
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Which still doesn't address the power source issue. Sounds good on paper.

China, among many other emerging nations, despite harnessing the Yangtze, has far more limited power resources. The electric vehicle may sound good, but again where will the energy come from? 300 million in the Chinese middle class, 1.1 billion interested in owning a radio. When those 1.1 billion, or a significant portion of them enter the middle class (if ever), where will the power come from for their basic needs, let alone electric vehicles?

Tata Motors of India, the owner of Jaguar and Rover, has a small two passenger hydrogen powered vehicle in the prototype stage. Intended for mass sales in India, it is a better alternative.
 
calamity said:
Here's a pretty cool marketing video showing an EV being built by robots.

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We've had electricity for over 100 years.

Sent from Hillary's private email server.
 
American said:
We've had electricity for over 100 years.

Sent from Hillary's private email server.
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No, electricity has been around for over 14 Billion years.

Are you that dumb?
 
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