Thread: VW caught by the Yanks for breaking emission laws

Originally Posted by Eevo

not really.
storage, looks good, but isnt proven yet. and is still expensive

The reason storage still is still expensive is because of lack of economy of scale.

There are plenty of examples of how technology starts off expensive and within a short period of time becomes cheaper then the technology it replaces.
Think back ten plus years ago it cost back then $10k to buy a average sized flat screen TV and only those with much higher than average incomes could afford such luxuries. Now you can buy a giant screen tv that most living rooms struggle to accomodate for a thousand or two and the masses nearly all own at least one big TV.

Originally Posted by Eevo

not really.
storage, looks good, but isnt proven yet. and is still expensive

There are countries now who are providing almost all of their electricity needs from renewables. Costa Rica is about 99% for 5m people most of this comes from hydro, Uraguay is about 95% for 3.5m people and this is mostly from wind and sun. I understand there are other countries in a similar situation.

Originally Posted by TerryO

The reason storage still is still expensive is because of lack of economy of scale.

There are plenty of examples of how technology starts off expensive and within a short period of time becomes cheaper then the technology it replaces.
Think back ten plus years ago it cost back then $10k to buy a average sized flat screen TV and only those with much higher than average incomes could afford such luxuries. Now you can buy a giant screen tv that most living rooms struggle to accomodate for a thousand or two and the masses nearly all own at least one big TV.

Talk is that Tesla's new battery factory coming online will drive down the costs dramatically while pushing efficiency up, and Elon Musk keeps saying the only reason he keeps pushing things along is to encourage others to compete and really drive things forward. (no pun intended )

Originally Posted by TerryO

The reason storage still is still expensive is because of lack of economy of scale.

There are plenty of examples of how technology starts off expensive and within a short period of time becomes cheaper then the technology it replaces.
Think back ten plus years ago it cost back then $10k to buy a average sized flat screen TV and only those with much higher than average incomes could afford such luxuries. Now you can buy a giant screen tv that most living rooms struggle to accomodate for a thousand or two and the masses nearly all own at least one big TV.

i understand that but the proof is in the pudding

Originally Posted by Slunnie

There are countries now who are providing almost all of their electricity needs from renewables. Costa Rica is about 99% for 5m people most of this comes from hydro, Uraguay is about 95% for 3.5m people and this is mostly from wind and sun. I understand there are other countries in a similar situation.

aust isnt in the position of bring able to rely on mass hydro.
Uraguay is 65% hydro

Originally Posted by rick130

Talk is that Tesla's new battery factory coming online will drive down the costs dramatically while pushing efficiency up, and Elon Musk keeps saying the only reason he keeps pushing things along is to encourage others to compete and really drive things forward. (no pun intended )

i hope so but i'm not holding my breath.

Originally Posted by TerryO

It's only a matter of time before cars are electric or powered by some other form of energy.

I am no greenie at all, but I have run a class of racing for electric bikes in my race series for four years now. The first year it was a sad and bad joke, they hardly ever finished a race and they were that slow that my D1 would have passed them down the front straight at EC. The second year they got better but still nothing to write home about. Four years later and the most powerful motorbike racing in the series, which includes factory team Superbikes as tested on our Dyno is a electric bike with over 220 rear wheel horsepower.
... ..... ...

The electric bike achievement that I like to mention to people to indicate how far things have come is the speeds they can now average around the Isle of Man.

I used to say that a couple of years ago a couple of electric bikes averaged over 100mph (about 160km/h), a feat not achieved by petrol powered bikes until some time in the 1950s.

A quick check of last year's results shows that development has not stood still.

2015 SES TT Zero Challenge Results

1 John McGuinness (Team Mugen) - 18:58.743 - 119.279 mph

2 Bruce Anstey (Team Mugen) - 19:02.785 - 118.857 mph

3 Lee Johnston (Victory/Parker Racing) - 20:16.881 - 111.620 mph

4 Guy Martin (Victory/Parker Racing) - 20:37.987 - 109.717 mph

5 Robert Wilson (Team Sarolea Racing) - 21:15.256 - 106.510 mph

6 Michael Sweeney (University of Nottingham) - 30:56.695 - 73.156 mph

McGuinness and Mugen dominate 2015 SES TT Zero Challenge

For those who can only think in metric, the winner averaged 192 km/h.

To get a sense of measure, McGuinness has now officially surpassed Joey Dunlop's 1984 winning performance on the Honda RS500, a proper two-stroke GP bike of the era. His average speed was faster than what the Sidecars have ever done, more than enough to win this year's Lightweight TT and would have easily landed him a top-20 finish in the Supersport class.

I think that eventually we will be mostly driving electric cars. I have long wanted to have one, but they have always been (and still essentially are) impractical, at least for my use.

Will they be standard transport in twenty years? Perhaps, but I am not holding my breath. While technology has advanced quite significantly in some areas, in others it has not.

For example, I have been reading about the batteries that are going to revolutionise transport for at least fifty years - and they are still not here.

We have (sort of) cars that can give reasonable performance, have a range of perhaps 400km, and recharge in a few hours (long lunch). But my thirty year old Landrover has a range of over 1200km, and can refuel in ten minutes or less. Furthermore, unlike the leading electric car brands, it can carry nine people or close to a tonne, tow three and a half tonnes, has enough ground clearance to actually get to my house, and has a reasonable (demonstrated) chance of surviving an impact with a 70kg macropod at 110kph and still be driveable. It is, I suggest, going to be a long time before an electric vehicle can meet these requirements, even without meeting the economic requirement of being cheap enough that I would have a hope of buying it.

As for electric power - I see renewables being increasingly used - but fossil fuels are still a lot cheaper, and getting cheaper as fast if not faster than renewables. Phasing out fossil fuels will be driven, however, by the need to reduce carbon pollution. For Australia, while it is likely that battery backed renewables may make a significant contribution, the only foreseeable practical replacement for base load power is nuclear. I cannot see how changing electricity generation away from fossil fuels can do anything except increase electricity prices dramatically. In part, this will be compensated for by increased efficiencies.

One thing to be borne in mind is that the majority of distributed power is not used in homes, although this is what we first think of.

John