Electric Super Duty??

**Overtaxed** · 12-01-2020, 06:18 PM

Originally Posted by bertschb

Quote from Elon Musk today. It's nice to finally hear somebody in the industry say this out loud...

"Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Tuesday that electricity consumption will double if the world's car fleets are electrified"

The US consumed about 12,000,000 barrels of oil per day in 2019 (in the transportation sector). If we use 10KW as a rough guide to gallons of fuel to electric ratio, with 42 gallons per barrel, that's (12M * 42 * 10) 5,040,000,000 KW of electric required, or 5,040GW per day. The US electrical grid capacity is a bit over 1,000GW.

I suspect Elon was choosing his words wisely. If the CAR fleet is electrified. Emphasis on CAR; IE, no pickups, no vans, no busses, no semis, no excavators/tractors/etc. I don't have time to do the math, but gasoline has lower KW/g and, of course, most heavy equipment runs diesel, and, there are a LOT of "non car passenger vehicles" on the road.

**Ynot4me2** · 12-01-2020, 07:08 PM

Electric might or might not be the ultimate best answer and its technology has come a long way and still has some ways to go but the days of fossil fuel has to come to an end. Even though gas and diesel technology and their efficiencies has really improved, there has to be a better alternative.
Now imagine the size of our pot holes if we all drove nuclear powered vehicles without collision avoidance?
Just adding fuel to the fire. Lol

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**Overtaxed** · 12-01-2020, 07:31 PM

Originally Posted by Ynot4me2

Electric might or might not be the ultimate best answer and its technology has come a long way and still has some ways to go but the days of fossil fuel has to come to an end. Even though gas and diesel technology and their efficiencies has really improved, there has to be a better alternative.
Now imagine the size of our pot holes if we all drove nuclear powered vehicles without collision avoidance?
Just adding fuel to the fire. Lol

Sent from my SM-P610 using Tapatalk

Has to come to an end? Perhaps, I'm not sure really, can we make it clean enough to not damage the environment? If not, yes, we do need to figure something out. But, primarily, it's an energy density and energy movement problem. Gas/diesel has a shocking amount of energy per KG compared to something like a battery (even lithium). Here's a chart that shows what we're dealing with:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy...gy_density.svg

Diesel fuel, 45MJ/KG
Lithium metal battery, 1.8MJ/KG

Will we get better tech that eventually gets that closer? Yes, I'm sure we will. But it's a long ways out, we're not improving battery tech like we have processors (doubling every 24 months), it's much slower. And even if we do get there, and get a battery that can, for the same weight/size, hold as much energy as a tank of diesel, we still have the "fill'er-up" problem (the small nuclear reactor necessary to fill up a few 100 semis in an hour). Which is a major issue that I can't even come close to providing an answer for. And, of course, the need for a LOT more electric available to all these filling stations.

Fossil fuel is just a wildly dense form of energy that's very easily transportable. We don't need batteries to get a "little better" to get near it, we need them to completely reinvent themselves into something entirely unlike what they are today.

Which is why, I continue to hold, the right answer to fix much of the problem for the foreseeable future is diesel-electric. Perfect? No, it's not, but a much smaller diesel could run a genny right in the efficiency "sweet spot", could charge when sitting to give some range with very low/no emissions, could use regenerative braking to gather more energy; leverage solar.. Lots of ways we can make the situation much better without going "all in" on a tech that's just not suited to purpose based on the current evolution. And something like that COULD really displace many of the light and medium duty trucks out there, where waiting for batteries and charging to "catch up" to what we realistically need to tow an RV or a semi trailer, well.. That's like at least a decade, and probably more away, assuming we find some way to deal with the power demands.

**bertschb** · 12-01-2020, 07:32 PM

Originally Posted by Ynot4me2

...the days of fossil fuel has to come to an end.

If fossil fuel is eliminated, are we going to have electric cargo ships, trains and jets???? Not to mention 62% of our power is generated by fossil fuel. How will that be replaced?

Nuclear is a great way to generate clean energy but most people who don't like fossil fuels also don't like nuclear. Many countries are shutting down all of their nuclear plants. If you get rid of nuclear and fossil fuels, you've eliminated 83% of our electrical generation. Now double the entire nationwide electrical demand with an all electric car fleet and you've got some major problems.

Fossil fuels will be around for a very, VERY long time.

**Ynot4me2** · 12-01-2020, 07:42 PM

Like I said, just adding fuel to the fire. I love Elon and what he stands for and what he's accomplished. Who knows what the future holds.

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**Overtaxed** · 12-01-2020, 07:52 PM

Originally Posted by bertschb

If fossil fuel is eliminated, are we going to have electric cargo ships, trains and jets???? Not to mention 62% of our power is generated by fossil fuel. How will that be replaced?

Nuclear is a great way to generate clean energy but most people who don't like fossil fuels also don't like nuclear. Many countries are shutting down all of their nuclear plants. If you get rid of nuclear and fossil fuels, you've eliminated 83% of our electrical generation. Now double the entire nationwide electrical demand with an all electric car fleet and you've got some major problems.

Fossil fuels will be around for a very, VERY long time.

It's not "double" the electric generation if you want to get rid of all fossil fuels. It's MUCH higher than that. IDK how much higher, because, frankly, I'm not sure anyone has done the math, but it's a shocking number. Eliminate all nat gas, propane, diesel, gasoline, coal and, OH NO, even wood to get to entirely nuclear, solar, hydro generated electric? Again, I don't know the number, but it wouldn't shock me if it's 100X the power we consume now. As discussed above, just the transportation sector takes many multiples of our country wide power capacity to replace with electric. We use fossil fuel for a LOT more than just transportation.

Who knows what the future holds.

None of us, but we can know what it would take to build a hypothetical future because of math. And that's where I get at odds with many on this topic, sure, we can all say "No more ICE engines in 10 years" but the math simply does not support that. Even if you assume perfect distribution, and unlimited power available anywhere you want it (so you can charge quickly), there's just not enough juice. Where there's one power plant, build 5-6 more right next to it; now we're talking about a plan to fully electrify the transportation sector. And these things happen SLOWLY, a new nuke plant takes 15 years to bring online (estimated). And we haven't broken ground yet!

It's a long, long way out there. I do believe "eventually" it will happen, but that could be 50-100 years from now, so far out that almost anything falls into the realm of "it could happen". The thing that annoys me, there ARE ways to fix a LOT of this problem, right now, without mind bending figures or selecting sites for nuke plants all over the country. Those ideas are overlooked in search of the "perfect", a "perfect" that's so far out on the scale of "doable" that we might as well just jump straight to flying cars and teleporters.

**bertschb** · 12-01-2020, 08:14 PM

Originally Posted by Overtaxed

It's not "double" the electric generation if you want to get rid of all fossil fuels. It's MUCH higher than that....We use fossil fuel for a LOT more than just transportation

Oh, I agree. I was just using Elon's quote (double) for reference.

And I also know we use fossil fuels for way, way, way more things than transportation. I'll bet I could list 100 items within my line of site right now sitting in my chair that are made from petroleum.

The people who want to ban fossil fuels either:
- Have no idea whatsoever how dependent our transportation, energy production and military are on petroleum nor how many products are made from it.
OR
- They want us all to go back to the 1700's

I'll have to admit living in the 1700's is pretty attractive to me right now :-)

**WhittleBurner** · 12-02-2020, 08:04 AM

Isn't petroleum used in making plastic. Thar would mean almost everything you use has petroleum in it. After a search I found out that either natural gas or petroleum is used in making plastic.

**Overtaxed** · 12-02-2020, 06:30 PM

Originally Posted by WhittleBurner

Isn't petroleum used in making plastic. Thar would mean almost everything you use has petroleum in it. After a search I found out that either natural gas or petroleum is used in making plastic.

It's used in all kinds of stuff, including, yes, lots of plastics. It's really amazing how much stuff, including things you'd never think, have "oil" in them.

**Airrace** · 12-10-2020, 04:45 PM

Some recent news from the EAA Sport Aviation magazine (Dec 2020). A new startup company called Turbotech in France is building small turbine engines for small aircraft along with turbine powered generators for hybrid aircraft. The generator spins at the same speed as the turbine so no gear reduction with the total package weighing 254 lbs. (less than my 5.5kw Onan, 290 lbs.) and produces 55kw. NOT 5.5 but 55 kw. It runs on Jet fuel, diesel or biofuel. Of course this unit still uses fossil fuel but a different possibility for a large electric vehicle.