mrken30

Entirely true especially at $2 / gallon. But if someone can pay $60,000 for a truck I'm sure they can pay for the fuel. How much auto debt do American have? over $1 trillion I believe.

sir_eccles

You don't want easy low targets but like you say set them too high and people cheat. You want it high enough that there is genuine pressure to make sure innovation takes place.

Pulaski

The reality that might eventually force a semblance of reality in efficiency goals is that approximately 20% of the economy of all industrialized countries is linked to the production and operation of road vehicles. Eventually the restrictions will risk doing real damage to a massively important industrial sector.

Steerpike

That's not a logical conclusion. Toyota could believe completely in EVs but also be realistic that the way to get there is through hybrid designs in the near term until battery technology advances. Their latest 'pluggable' Prius is closer to a pure EV than the original Prius, so they are heading in that direction. That said, I personally think hybrids are the way to go, one way or another (possibly 'a generator in the trunk' approach).

I arrived in California in the early 80s, and the car buying public and auto-makers were screaming blue murder due to emissions controls. Cars had all kinds of crappy 'add on' parts to deal with emissions, catalytic converters were just being installed, and lead was being removed from gasoline. The net result was awful performance, and everyone claimed it was the end of driving as we knew it. Then the manufacturers realized they weren't going to cry their way out of trouble, got their acts together, and ended up producing more powerful cars than ever. If it weren't for aggressive targets, we'd still be using leaded gas and driving gas guzzling monsters.

Boomhauer

Only time I've seen Teslas is when I drive through Chicago. Lots of wealthy folks there and electric cars are more efficient than IC engine cars for stop-n-go traffic .

Tesla is fine for most peoples' daily commute, shopping etc. That 20 mins for a half charge is still rather long.

Boomhauer

Doesn't 120Volt have the advantage of being safer? Isn't that why UK buidling sites prefer power tools to be 110-120volt

Bahtatboy

There's a whole fleet of them at Amsterdam airport, operating as taxis.

The 20 mins is fine if you can just roll up, park and plug, and have a coffee while you wait (and if the journey is well-planned, which apparently Tesla has put a lot of effort into by way of its iPad-sized dedicated satnav, then a break after a couple of hundred miles is a good idea anyway). The main drag I would see is if you're in a queue to use the charging dock. However, with a range of 300 miles it'd still work for most people, with perhaps some inconvenience which, again for most people, would be an acceptable quid pro quo for free energy.

I'm still wondering what the catch it.

RoadWarriorFromLP

Toyota is betting on hydrogen and hybrids while it has minimized its involvement with EVs. The Japanese government is also trying to encourage hydrogen fuel cell development.

Toyota's actions make it clear that any improvements to the battery that may have the potential to make EVs feasible won't be coming from them. Hybrids exist because battery technology by itself is not well suited to mass adoption; Toyota combines gasoline engines and electric motors so that they complement each other.

Automakers have tended to steer clear from EVs because of the power storage problem. The German, US federal and California governments are all pushing the matter, so the automakers are now making mostly gratuitous efforts to comply. But at the end of the day, a battery is a vat of chemicals, so it isn't like a tank of fuel -- those chemicals will degrade and recharging a battery will probably never be as fast as is putting liquid inside of a tank.

RoadWarriorFromLP

The batteries are heavy and expensive, and they lose their ability to hold a charge over time. Imagine having to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a fuel tank that takes awhile to fill and shrinks as the years go by.

Rickyk

The way diesel train locomotives work and the way many of the big (400t) mining trucks work.

Pulaski

What? You think diesel trains run on nuclear power? .... Or on steam running a turbine generator?

Most, the vast majority, of diesel trains use the engine to run a generator, and the electricity generated is used to power electric motors. ..... But we covered that already above. It wouldn't surprise me that big mining trucks use a similar system. It would however surprise me if those trucks ran on nuclear power!

Rickyk

diesel locomotives run on diesel. The reason these large diesel motors use electric generators and electric motors is the complexity and hence cost of the transmission is too high. Cat have developed mechanical drive transmissions for large mining trucks because they are more efficient than electric drives

Pulaski

I know how they run, and that mechanical drive is more efficient, and lighter to boot, and perhaps you do too, but your phrasing is confusing.

Combining your confusing wording with the fact that you quoted a post I made about nuclear powered steam turbines for warships, but then proceeded to talk about diesel electric locomotives and quarry trucks with mechanical transmission, it is inevitable that what you have written is hard to make sense of even IF the reader already knows how these machines are powered.

Owen778

Honestly, it didn't seem confusing to me. He meant they also make steam to power a generator, not that we have nuclear-powered trains.

Pulaski

Except that neither diesel electric trains nor quarry trucks make steam to power a generator!

So you actually proved my point, that what Rickyk wrote was confusing (didn't convey what is actually true).

Nuclear powered vessels need the steam to convert heat energy into rotational energy by means of a turbine generator. Diesel engines have a crank shaft that produces rotational energy, so it can be connected directly to an alternator to generate AC power. As RickyK said himself, quarry trucks use a mechanical transmission.