Not really. Its trees from a time before micro organisms evolved the ability to eat dead trees. These days, the solar energy collected by trees will get used to power the metabolisms of fungi before those trees can get buried and eventually become new coal & petroleum.
I suppose an impact from a sufficiently large asteroid could turn the entire crust of the planet into magma, sterilizing it and therefore opening the possibility that new oil might be created some day.
I think I read somewhere that oil will not be produced anymore because now bacteria can break down that biomass that it previously didn't. Hence, non-renewable even on long timescales.
If you're making your diesel from CO2 pulled from the air, pollution aspects don't really apply (at least, CO2 emission issues don't, there's still NOx, but that's what cat piss is for).
Problem is, converting atmospheric CO2 back into fuel makes the efficiency issue drastically worse. Maybe with enough solar panels and windmills, and use the Fischer–Tropsch process with the excess energy that the grid isn't consuming.
Of course, that would be for mobile fuel, if solar plants were going to do anything like that for later use generating electricity during peaks, making diesel is dumb; you'd want to use hydrogen or ammonia for in-place energy storage.
Ah. I'm generally skeptical of any plant-based 'green fuel' because they generally take up agricultural capacity that would otherwise be producing food
Energy density is a huge advantage which most people find hard to give up especially when the biggest problem that we face is invisible to most people. We can't fix a problem if we ignore the cause.
oops you posted irrelevant pedantics that verge on misinformation 😧
sure it’s distilled solar energy that cannot be renewed. relevant language highligted. no one “forgets,” this. literally no one. it’s just not relevant to a timespan less than millions of years. cheers! ☀️
Biofuels are carbon-neutral. They release CO2 when burned, but it doesn't matter because that same CO2 had recently been sucked out of the atmosphere by the plant they came from.
While U.S. biofuel use rose from 0.37 to 1.34 EJ/yr over this period, additional carbon uptake on cropland was enough to offset only 37 % of the biofuel-related biogenic CO2emissions. This result falsifies the assumption of a full offset made by LCA and other GHG accounting methods that assume biofuel carbon neutrality. Once estimates from the literature for process emissions and displacement effects including land-use change are considered, the conclusion is that U.S. biofuel use to date is associated with a net increase rather than a net decrease in CO2emissions. study
Not passing judgement on anything, just putting the facts out there that I happen to know :) Biofuel may or may not be a good tool to move toward more sustainability, and it’s certainly better than petrol.
My biofuel of choice is biodiesel produced from byproducts of chicken rendering that would otherwise become waste/pollution anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The way I see it, we should electrify all the things that can be (urban driving, both freight and passenger trains, etc.), maximize the use of those things (e.g. by shifting long-haul freight away from trucking and back towards rail, and shifting airline travel to high-speed rail), and then use biofuels for the relatively-niche stuff that's left instead of spending excessive effort trying to get electric to cover 100% of cases.
Um piss off. It is not irrelevant or misinformation. That is exactly what petroleum is.
You clearly can't understand a factual statement from an opinion I never said it was good I never said it was bad I just said it was. If you'd bother to take a moment to think about it. You would realize that I was referring to the fact that petroleum is extremely energy dense. For the very reason I stated. That is fundamentally why petroleum has become a successful energy source and why it's been so difficult to replace.
You're welcome to point out where I said it was renewable. I think you're going to have a difficult time finding that statement.
As for being a pedantic ass that's clearly your territory. A pedantic ass that it likes to put words in other people's mouths.
Your post was bordering on irrelevant to the original comment. In light of that the information you provided can really only be interpreted is as pro-fossil fuel.
Exactly this. Imagine if gas powered motor could recharge in mere 12 hours and run for up to half the distance. Ah, that would be the dream.
And if you and 5 of your neighbors decide to refuel at the same time during peak hours you have a real chance of overloading your neighborhood grid. And your fuel tank is dead in 5 years, replacing which is more than half of your used cars cost.
Everything non-portable uses electric motors from the time the first wire was invented.
I can. Electric car batteries last 10+ years, often longer than the body work of the car. Lookup Lithium Iron Phosphate, this has around 5-10x the cycle life of conventional lithium batteries. Combine this with the complex heating and cooling systems, battery and charging management in modern EVs and you have something that lasts as long or longer than even a diesel engine.
Cell phone batteries die quickly because both their construction and the way they are managed favour capacity, cost, and charging speed over longevity. Car battery design is much more focused on longevity by comparison. They are also cycled more often and more completely than most EVs.
Grid issues are a real problem. Cars can be used to make this worse or better depending on how they are deployed. If they are charged during peak energy production from solar they can actually help rather than hurt the grid.
You can also rapid charge a car in like 30 minutes. You don't need 12 hours.
I suspect people just assumed you were the same person who wrote the sarcastic comment before the one you replied to and that you were just being combative
My up! can get about 260 miles out of its 30ish liter tank. That is about 1/3rd more than a new leaf. Hardly half the distance.
The electric grid will be fine. This is not the first time it's expanded because of new technological demand. And I've never heard of 5 EVs overloading the grid.
And if the person above could read they'd see that all of these are battery problems, something the original comment said we should have put our focus improving on long ago.
Edit: I'll just add that I love my ICE cars as much as the next petrol head, but the future is electric cars for at least daily driving. We've pretty much perfected combustion engines at this point. F1 engines sit around 50% thermal efficiency, and we're not gonna get any meaningful amount above that (but I will be happy if it turns out I'll have to eat my hat in the future). I just hope petrol engines don't become banned in the future for the enthusiasts.
No, you see, that's not how it works. The battery needs to be filled to 100%, just like a gas tank. And you should only ever charge once you're under 10-20%, just like a gas tank (it's silly to top up every day, that's just a waste of time). We must be able to exactly replicate the current paradigm for people to be able to adjust.
I drive about 150 miles a week and get gas every couple of weeks. It takes 5 minutes. If I have to go to a charger I'll be there for hours. It's absurd.
When you look at fueleconomy.gov you will see that the furthest a compact ev can go is 149 miles while the furthest a ice compact car can go is 594 miles
According to motor trend DC charging is the fastest way to charge your EV and it still takes just under two hours
Couldn't find a source that studied how long a ice takes to recharge but considering how ices are currently extremely common you can easily test that yourself and probably already know it's so quick you don't even think about it
According to car and driver those lithium ion batteries you mentioned while yes they can last a decade most cars typically stay on the road for give or take 30-35 years and lithium ion batteries are inherently expensive and prone to thermal cascading ie catching fire also full charge and depletion wears the battery down over time
You have all kinds of nonsense in your post. Like you limit it to just compact cars for no reason. When you don't limit it to just compact cars then you get EVs with 516 mile range
There are use cases for battery trains. In remote, mountainous locations where the cost for electrifying a track is very high it is not uncommon to use electric trains with batteries. Here in Germany we have several regions where diesel trains have been replaced by them.
Not really. Battery tech has always been advancing. Even today electric vehicles have barely come up with anything new, battery wise. Everyone wants something better than lithium base. No one can get anything to market.
It advanced at a glacier pace because there was no massive driving force. It only kicked off a bit with cell phones and then in any substantial way with laptops. (Yes, batteries existed before that for different things, but there was no massive driving force.) Now imagine what would have happened if we funded it starting in the 1970s.
Yes, but no one's even glancing at it for use in vehicles. The one that's finally getting into production is 70wh/Kg. Not nearly energy dense enough yet for ev's. Lithium batteries are closer to 300wh/Kg. In other words, they take up 1/4th the space and weight. EV's are already a thousand pounds heavier than non ev's and that's already causing extra tire pollution issues and having to overbuild suspension parts and bearings. Making them another 3,000 pounds heavier than that is just out of the question. Let alone making the space to fit the battery.
Sodium is going to change the world with its power storage capabilities connected to solar.
Anyone on like 75% of the planet could 100% live off the electric grid problem free with enough solar panels and a big sodium storage battery.
Yep. A size of vehicle wise comparison would be that a tesla model s sedan weighs around 4,600 pounds. A toyota Corolla weighs around 1,600 pounds less at around 3,000 pounds.
Even the newest and most powerful mass produced American made car ever, the "C8 Corvette Z06" with its big V8 gas engine with 670 horsepower weighs in at around 3,650 pounds.
Oil is honestly an amazing product, chemistry wise there is so much we can do with it and energy wise it's a extremely concentrated and easily transported form of energy.
Energy wise one liter of oil is equivalent to 10 person working for a day !
I repeat, using one liter of oil is like having 10 "slaves" working for us for a day.
Its easy to see why oil became the base of our modern civilization, and easy to see why we don't manage to stop using it even though it's destroying us.
pretty sure most trains are powered by either overhead wires or third rails? considering that urban rail systems are always electrified and those have A LOT of trains.
The point is about utilization of electric motors, if it happens anywhere on earth it's possible. You're trying to insinuate that it isn't true. And it is. Being American has nothing to do with you dunce
You can be nice, just make sure you think about what you're actually doing before doing it.
Letting a car go in front in the situation above: you're probably causing an accident.
Letting a car go in heavy traffic when there's one lane each way and everyone's stopped already anyway: won't cost you much time and you've allowed that person to move on with their life instead of being permanently stuck at an intersection he's never going to be able to get out of unless someone yields.
I live close to a few intersections where if no one is nice and yields, it's impossible to join unless you barge your way in and hope people stop. But to be fair, these aren't designed like death traps like the one above.
Letting a car go in front in the situation above: you're probably causing an accident.
I disagree. In this situation, you are letting the left turning car move to the middle lane of this five lane road. From there, they can make a better decision of when to go. You aren’t causing an accident by letting them go TO THE MIDDLE LANE. From that point on, it is their ability to merge that may cause an accident. But they are supposed to stop in the middle lane and check that they can merge BEFORE they merge.
Edit: Woof, sorry my phone mangled my comment into a hot mess. Fixed it and re-commented here.
You are supposed to be in the middle near that rounded portion just above the time-traveling assassin.
These…
Turning Left on a Straightaway: Most main roads have median lanes into which you can move your vehicle if you need to turn left off of a straightaway. Move into the median, and yield the right of way to the oncoming traffic. Once there is an opening, you can complete your turn.
Turning Left onto a Straightaway with a vehicle in the median: Every once in a while, you’ll be trying to turn onto a straight away, and you’ll find someone already in the median—right where you need to be! The rule is that the vehicle in the media has the right of way. The idea is that they are in the most vulnerable position because they are literally stopped in the middle of the road. Let them complete their turn before you move to the median.
That is not what that excerpt is talking about, that is talking about a road with a middle turn lane.
The road pictured here has a median which cannot be driven over, generally there's a kerb and it's usually just grass on top. The center part is not for stopping in, it is only for driving through. You should not proceed unless you have a clear view of traffic from where that car is sitting on the left. In some cases there will be a white line to stop there, and in that case that is okay, but that is not what is pictured here.
What are YOU talking about? The median can 100% be driven over (circled in red below), and the center part (again, circled in red) is entirely intended to stop in prior to merging.
The entire middle area is the median, which also contains protected left hand turns, a raised section, and what I assume is a painted median (maybe, maybe not, but again the circled portion). I am talking about stopping here, in the circled portion, prior to merging. You are supposed to stop there, assuming you aren’t towing or driving a longer-than-average vehicle, if you do not have visibility into the lane you are merging into.
The quoted text I have above specifically mentions a left hand turn onto a straightway WITH ANOTHER VEHICLE IN THE MEDIAN, so clearly they mean a median that allows driving through.
Edit: The predictable thing to do here, turning left with low visibility into the lane you are merging into due to obscuring traffic, is to yield to traffic coming from your left until you have: no traffic coming from the right, or someone from the right waves you through. You then stop in the middle, circled red portion until it is safe to complete your turn. You don’t just Hail Mary blindly drive from where you were initially stopped into the desired lane. That is how you cause an accident.
I think you are entirely missing the point of this comic and misunderstanding the rules of the pictured intersection. There's a reason these were outlawed in my state (michigan). They are a dumb way to direct traffic, the "stopping room" you've circled is not meant for stopping in, or else there would be far more space there, likely an entire lane of room. I'm not suggesting making blind turns. You are not supposed to proceed without visibility or merging room, hence why the stopped line of cars in the middle lane have the right-of-way as they are blocking your view of that and possibly the traffic behind them, which the person at the front of the line has almost no way of knowing. You stop in the middle then you are still blocking them for as long as it takes to merge into traffic now that you've got yourself in this situation.
It just does not make sense to do it that way. If you can't make the turn left then you turn right and find somewhere to turn around, which is how our roads are designed from the jump here in michigan.
Anyways, this is a really stupid argument and I'm really not interested in continuing it.
Alright, bow out if you must. But keep in mind here you chose to pedantically argue there is no middle lane. You picked this fight, when my original argument to the first commenter I responded to was that allowing someone to go when you are in the middle lane of the straightaway (a.k.a the time-traveling assassin) is not "causing an accident". So agreed it is stupid, but it isn’t like I called you out first for something silly.
Cringe, and implies you're trying to win an argument rather than have a conversation.
Also, I'm sorry, but you're totally wrong. I know what kind of intersection you're talking about, this definitely is not it. Maybe it's a regional thing, but XKCD is an American webcomic, these intersections are all over the place and you definitely are not supposed to stop in them.
This is the kind of intersection you're talking about. You'll notice that the center area where the car turns is much longer than the area in the original post, in addition to having clear lane indications.
If someone were to stop in the intersection in the OP, they would have to be stopped at an awkward angle not parallel to either lane, and if someone were to follow them into the intersection, the second person would have nowhere to go.
Long story short, there's two different kinds of intersections being discussed here, regardless of whether or not you acknowledge it or which one you believe is being depicted. One of them makes the comic make sense, while the other does not. Which one do you think the artist intended to draw?
Cringe? Okay, thanks. So this was a discussion until meowMix came in with a "there is no middle lane what the f* are you talking about". Charged language, incorrect statement, and a nitpick nonetheless.
Now you are here arguing for meowMix, but again, you are arguing something counter to most US states. You are generally allowed to turn into an intersection as long as you are not impeding traffic turning left in that same intersection. I am talking about intersections without lights, not controlled intersections. Those are different, and not applicable here.
In this case, there is clearly enough room for a reasonable sized car to be in the intersection assuming they yielded for traffic from the left AND were waved into the intersection by another left turning car on the straightaway (the time traveling assassin), so traffic from the right. Left and right, basically the general rule that applies to all left turning uncontrolled intersection traffic questions. But that waving though only is to the lane of the car waving you through, closest to your side of the street. No time traveling assassin can give you right of way to lanes to their right, a.k.a the lane with the 45 mph car.
That’s the premise of this joke, that people cannot give you right of way to SOMEONE ELSE’S LANE. In case everything above is still unclear, there is a wiki for this exact joke. Because this has been debated countless times before. Because everything from xkcd has. Because this is the internet, where everything is debated to death.
Now I have no idea where this supposed intersection is. Could be Pennsylvania where the artist is from, or Virginia where they went to college. Or even Massachusetts where they currently reside. Or it could be in any number of states that allow this exact behavior I am talking about. Tough to say without knowing directly from the author where this is from.
The example you provided is another intersection type, and different than the joke. The middle section of the joke is what appears to be a double wide (wide as two lanes) section, so there is definitely enough room for a standard sized car. Angle of the intersection plays no part in whether it is a valid turning place, awkward or not. There are countless examples of intersections that aren’t perfectly perpendicular, should ALL of these awkward left turn merges be forbidden because you aren’t in a spot exactly parallel to the lane you are merging into? No.
Who cares about the second person? You shouldn’t be taking them into consideration for this kind of turn. They are supposed to turn when they have enough space. Following you blindly into an intersection is a poor decision on their part, and of course not your responsibility.
Long story not short! You’re talking about a different intersection, not even the one from the joke. You are right there are different kinds of intersections, but any of them with: an intersection, two left turning drivers, a two way straightaway, a middle section with a left turning lane (a.k.a. a middle lane, or a center left lane, or a median with a raised section and left turning lane, …), and enough space for a non-straightaway left turning car to move into the intersection without impeding traffic from either direction of the straightaway would have worked for this joke.
Because the joke wasn’t there isn’t enough space in the intersection. It was that NO DRIVER CAN GIVE YOU RIGHT OF WAY TO SOMEONE ELSE’S LANE.
You’re potentially right that I enjoy a debate, most people on the internet do. That’s why I am here. But I’ll be damned if sit on the sidelines while some cat food user makes an incorrect nitpick, or you yourself argue for driving behavior that is counter to most states’ DMV rules.
I was gonna lose my mind reading some of these comments. Thank you for being sensible.
The majority of cases where one could politely let someone through are not going to be on highways like this.
It's also ridiculous to assume that the driver that you're letting through would just stop checking for oncoming traffic because you waved them through.
Driving is one of those things where we're supposed to be human - make choices, act sensibly, think about what we're doing and adapt to others around us. But often people assume it's something entirely deterministic - "if the light is green I'm going to launch forward even if there's still traffic moving past me and I'm going to get hit or hit someone, because green means I HAVE to go".
Being polite to others, asides from the nicety of it, is often more positive to everyone on the road than going "I have the right of way so I won't let anyone in" and allows traffic as a whole to move with less issues. But some people go way too hard on the mentality that every road user other than them is stupid and stop acting like humans because they assume others won't be able to cope. Which usually complicates traffic for everyone.
There's a roundabout in my daily commute in which at the end of the afternoon 80% of drivers are coming from and going to the same direction and there's usually heavy traffic in that specific direction that blocks the roundabout. Often, drivers who are approaching the roundabout to go to a different direction will signal their intention, and users already inside the roundabout will give way - even if they technically have the right of way and don't have to - because those users aren't going their direction and will only increase the number of cars stuck if they're not allowed through. Roundabout users being polite effectively makes traffic as a whole go more smoothly and everyone benefits. Sometimes someone inside the roundabout will be an ass and not let people through - and the result is always that everyone is stuck for more time because there are now cars inside the roundabout which could've already vacated it which are stuck behind someone who could easily let them through.
you dont have two lane roads in your town? i sure do and this is a real issue. the driver pulling into traffic cannot see the car coming along at higher speed.
you dont have two lane roads in your town? i sure do and this is a real issue. the driver pulling into traffic cannot see the car coming along at higher speed.
No the comic is pointing out that the sun and the earth are both orbiting the milky way galactic center.
Edit: While also true, I was wrong, they orbit the center of mass of the two body problem (earth and sun). I still think that’s too simple of a way to look at it. It’s not a two body problem and the other planets and the whole galaxy are also in play.
this doesn’t give a very good explanation but I’m sure there’s some good YouTube video that breaks it down. essentially maps out everywhere in space and time that could possibly interact with you in any way. this maximum is represented by how fast light can move away from you.
for example if you stole my car and ran away from me, I can draw a circle on the map every hour for how far you could have gone (assuming I knew my car’s maximum speed). if I put those circles on top of each other it’ll make a cone.
Yes, but it’s mostly shifting because of Jupiter. It’s just so dang heavy. Like, a couple times heavier than every other planet put together. I don’t have the brain wattage to do the cool math right now, but a quick google search says that while the barycenter of the solar system does depend on all the planets, more often than not, it is outside the sun
But I think the math of the argument is only about the common center between Earth and the sun, taking away all other planets out of the equation, especially Jupiter.
Wait I’m sorry, are we saying that the earth’s orbit isn’t almost entirely dictated by the gravitational pull of the massive star at the center of our solar system? I am a simple man, I apologize if that is a stupid question.
When dealing with gravitational systems the gravity of each object has to be taken into account. So even though the sun is 99.999% (hyperbole) of the gravity in the equation, the earth’s gravity contributes that small 0.001% and thus the “center” of where they orbit isn’t truly the center of the sun. Tack on Jupiter, which is much more than a fraction of a percent and that “center” moves even farther away from the middle of the sun.
To look at it further, if you had two objects of perfectly equal mass and no other gravitational interference, they would orbit around a point in the middle of each other since their pull is equal. So it’s basically a sliding scale of sorts.
That did help, thanks for taking the time. I think I was thinking about mass and gravity not orbits. Again, I’m an idiot, so that’s probably why I missed the central point of the cartoon. 😁
5 seconds of summer, nine inch nails, one direction, and 30 seconds to Mars.
That are loads that fit this category but I just don’t know all of them. For example I’ve heard of 99 red balloons but I didn’t know that was the name of the band, I thought it was the name of the song.
So the joke is they added up a list of bands with numbers in their names to get 176? I dunno if it’s just me but that seems profoundly, purposely unfunny. But I’m also not smart enough to get most of xkcds jokes so it really is probably just me
I am entirely fine and on board with sensible chuckle. I would go as so far as to say that sensible chuckle has now taken the place of edgy snicker in my life.
Electric motors are a lot more efficient, and battery technology is quickly approaching the place where you can get the same range with an electric motor as with an ICE.
As for refuel rate, I spend no time waiting for my car to charge because it charges at home while I'm sleeping, so the refuel rate doesn't matter.
Plus the technology to battery swap is well in use for electric vehicles (see Nio, who have thousands of battery swap stations in China and some in Europe too). 3 mins and you have a full battery.
It matters to people who drive more during the day than their range allows. They don't want to wait 20 minutes for the car to charge every time they venture 300km out and back /s
Quick Google says a great majority of Americans take road trips. Even though it's a tiny fraction of their driving, it's still a deciding factor for many when choosing a car. Not all people have the luxury of affording a second car just for road trips.
Public transportation would be good, but there's less flexibility to it. For example, just yesterday, on a return from a roadtrip, I got stomach sick and had to request frequent stops. That wouldn't fly on a train.
I'd love it if we had affordable and flexible public transport for getting all across the country, though.
Yeah, but road trips can be expensive. Suppose you want to go from Harrisburg PA to Rockford IL with 2 adults and 1 teenager from November 15 to 22.
By car that's about 1500 miles. An average car gets 21 mpg, so that's about 71 gallons. Gas is around $3.5 per gallon, so the trip costs about $250 in gas. You'll need a hotel. I picked a random one in Ohio. $110 for the way up, $185 for the way back. I guess that's a Thanksgiving price hike. $545 total.
By train, let's say Amtrak because that came up first. $438 up, and that includes boarding a train at midnight and sleeping on the train, and then riding a bus from Chicago to Rockford for 2 hours. $483 back down, and this time when you sleep on the train you have to wake up by 5 AM to get off. Also this is coach class, and those seats aren't great for sleeping. At least you don't need a hotel. $921 total.
By plane, it's $650 round trip, simple as, but you have to leave at 6 AM on the way up and 5 AM on the way back. It can cost $200 more to get a more convenient time, but let's assume you're going for economy alone. $650 total.
That's not accounting for food prices along the way. That could bring the car ride up to the same price as the plane if you don't pack food, but if you're spending extra on convenience there, you're probably willing to spend extra for convenience on the plane too.
So it's probably safe to say that, for this group, the car saves about $100 per year, but helping to protect the environment is worth that price. On the other hand, there's something to be said for the flexibility and ease of planning on a car. For a bigger family, cars would be a way better option, and for a family without kids or a lone traveler, planes are the way better option. Trains are right out.
I'd also add time to the comparison. Time isn't free, and if you spend 2 solid days driving, you might reconsider flying and renting a car at the destination even if it's more expensive. If you use an ev and have to take a few stops extra that might tip the scale.
Unless you're taking road trips literally every other week you could just rent a gas vehicle when it's time for a road trip. Rather than make the decision of the car you're going to drive every single day based on something you only do maybe once a year.
It's why I don't own a pickup truck, I actually do haul cars, help people move and all that shit that people say is why they need a pickup truck but I just go to fucking U-Haul and rent either the Sprinter van or the pickup truck for 30 bucks plus mileage when I need one. And I do actually keep track of my financial records with a double Ledger Finance app I just went and looked and I'm still nowhere near the cost of a used pickup truck from all of that renting
The people providing the charging infrastructure here haven't figured out this important point yet. Gas stations are a terrible place to put chargers, no one wants to stop at a gas station for fifteen minutes to an hour at a time. Charging stations need to be in places people will be stopping anyway, or at the very least places that provide something to do while waiting. Restaurants, shopping centres, tourist traps, whatever.
Here it's exacerbated by the fact that the fastest chargers we have only deliver about 60kW. Not even close to the 200+ some EVs need to get the fast charging times they advertise. But that 60kW would be perfectly fine if I could spend the time in a restaurant instead of standing around at a gas bar in the middle of nowhere.
Hell, even cheap (or free) "level 2" chargers outside restaurants and shopping malls would be a huge help.
As it should be, and I agree that those crazy fast 200+ kW chargers are rarely necessary.
It's kind of a weird reaction to consumer hesitation and people complaining that they don't want to wait for charge times as compared to the time it takes to fill a tank. Making charging as fast as possible to address the complaint (while still being one or two orders of magnitude slower at best), because that's easier than getting people to change their driving habits, or making them realise that they're always going to start the day with a full charge at home.
Even if all you have is relatively paltry north american 110V at home you need to drive way more than average per day for that not to keep up.
I’m so glad here in Germany they do that more often now. We have a quite a few large charging parks next to restaurants and bakeries. I just made a 9 hour trip to Denmark and it was a pretty nice experience overall. Only downside is you have to plan ahead if you want this convenience because the majority is still spots with 1-2 occupied chargers at some ugly, smelly Autobahn rest area.
Although own an electric car, I believe range is still an issue. I was specifically addressing fuel density and charging time. EVs have their issues, but I believe they will be solved over time even though they are unlikely to beat an ICE in fuel density or charge rate for a long time. But I don't think those things are actually important, because the problem is solved in a different way.
Because it's currently easier to find a gas station than a charger that will do that performance. Now I'm willing to wait 8 hrs for 10%, but others certainly aren't.
I don't have enough charge for my trip. I'm also thirsty.
I go to a grocery store with a fast charger.
I buy a drink.
I have enough charge.
If it's a long trip where I need more charge, I choose a car snack, and I'll have enough.
If I'm on an actual long car trip and I want to charge all the way from the warning light to 100%, I will need to eat a meal anyway. I just find a McDonald's/cafe,/restaurant/whatever with a fast charger, and it'll be full before I'm done.
But finding a store/eating place with a fast charger is still waaaay less convenient than just finding a place where I can get diesel in seconds, and find a different place to get drinks/food/snacks.
yes, they are. they make difference between actually usable technology and engineer's dream.
Electric motors are a lot more efficient, and battery technology is quickly approaching the place where you can get the same range with an electric motor as with an ICE.
i doubt we even have enough rare metals for 8 or 16 billion batteries. most of them are being mined in politically unstable or to western civilization unfriendly countries, with terrible effect on the environment.
efficiency matters, it is not a question of how good single battery is.
As for refuel rate, I spend no time waiting for my car to charge because it charges at home while I’m sleeping, so the refuel rate doesn’t matter.
oh good. YOU have it solved, so the rest of the world does not matter, i assume...? fuck all these people, right?
Hey mate I'm just here for some friendly discussion, I'm not here to argue until I'm blue in the face.
There is a difference between your above points and the original claim.
Fuel density doesn't matter, what matters is how far you can drive on a charge.
Charge time doesn't matter if you can swap a battery in 3 minutes instead of waiting to charge.
For your new point of rare earth materials, this isn't related to the original energy density or charge time points, but high density batteries that don't use rare earth metals already exist, the problem is cost. That will change over time.
Also you're ignoring that fossil fuels are also dug out of the ground.
Yes, for people who can't charge at home. I'd love to swap to electric, but 1 hour trip to go charge the car at the nearest charging station is not realistic - especially since I'd need to do it twice as often as 10min trip to refuel.
Also there's the EV prices, starting at 2-3 times more than my current whip lol
My point is that we should be focused on the outcomes we want. It isn't really important that fossil fuels are a lot more energy dense if the electric cars can travel twice as far. They can't, but I'd be willing to bet we will get to that point with fossil fuels still being more energy dense.
But also as I mentioned in the comment you relied to, Nio have a vast network of battery swap stations where you can get a full charge in a couple of minutes, the same as filling up at a gas station.
The price of EVs are a problem, and not the only problem, but my point was that the specific things mentioned don't stop us having better EVs than ICEs, because we will get the same outcome in a different way.
I absolutely agree that we should work on improving EVs, charging network and whatever technologies makes it better and more suitable for more people. But every person in need of a car has unique hard requirements for the car that can't be ignored as "inconvenience" - and many of those people have to drive with fossil fuels still.
Also, battery swap stations being available in X location doesn't matter to people living in Y location, nor should people in Y location buy EV in hopes that it will be better in Z years
I agree completely. I am not trying to argue that everyone can or should go out and buy an EV.
I was specifically addressing the points that seemed to be claiming EVs are not the right direction for cars or engines to be advancing towarda, by pointing out that the barriers aren't blocking all paths.
It's exactly this. Convenience. We've become accustomed to how convenient it is and don't want to be put out.
On the other hand, it's super convenient to never go to a gas station again, and to wake up to a full tank. So if you drive less than 60 miles a day, and have acess to another car for long trips, an electric is even more convenient.
It's one of those things where people feel like they're going to take a road trip every weekend, but most people are just using their car to commute to and from work and maybe take one or two longer trips per year. The time saved by not having to stop at a gas station throughout the the year is less than the additional time taken at a fast charging station for the rare road trip.
Unfortunately, people tend to buy vehicles to best accomplish 1% of their driving. I live in the suburbs and almost every house has a giant pickup parked in front. Not because people are in the construction business and need to haul a lot of stuff, but because once a year they might go to Home Depot and it feels good to put their two bags of mulch in the back.
Part of the problem is not having the money or space for an extra vehicle.
I drive an SUV, I don't particularly like driving an SUV, I get a lot of use out of having a larger vehicle, I'm an avid DIYer who makes frequent trips to the hardware store to pick up lumber and such, I have a lot of outdoor hobbies and usually end up being the one who drives so I'm carrying gear for several people, I don't exactly go off roading, but those hobbies sometimes take me on some poorly maintained, deeply rutted, muddy roads and 4wd has gotten me out of some jams, I occasionally drive onto the beach to go fishing, usually find myself towing a small trailer a couple times a year, and I'm an essential employee that lives in an area that gets snow with a weird schedule that usually has me commuting before the snow plows have gotten through everywhere.
But even though I probably get more actual use out of an SUV than most people, most often I'm still only driving about 20 miles or less a day, on paved roads, in weather that doesn't require anything more than working headlights, wipers, and tires that aren't totally bald.
If I had the budget and parking space I'd probably have the cheapest base model EV I could find for most of my commuting and small errands and save the SUV for my days off and when it snows. That's not the case though.
I am so ready to hop on the PHEV or even full electric bandwagon.
I do have 2 major hurdles though.
First is there aren't a lot of vehicles out there, at an affordable price point for me that quite fit my needs. I've pretty much dialed in that a midsized SUV or small pickup truck is just right for me. There's some exciting options coming down the pipeline, but none that are out there have quite hit the sweet spot for me yet. (I am champing at the bit for Ford to release a PHEV AWD maverick with a midgate to make up for that short bed. That's basically my ideal vehicle, I'd also be stoked for Toyota to do a plug in 4runner, my current car is a 4runner and I like it a lot, if either of those happen before I'm ready for my next car theres a good chance that's what I'm getting)
Second is charging, I live in a townhome with no garage or driveway, so if I want to charge at home I'm pretty much stuck running about a 30ft extension cord across my front lawn and sidewalk. That's less than ideal, and my HOA hasn't exactly been friendly to others in my neighborhood who have gone electric who have done that. I can probably work around that though, the way my schedule works, unless I go in for overtime I usually don't work more than 3 days in a row, so if battery-only range gets a little better for PHEVs (which hopefully they will by the time I'm able to budget for a new car in a few years) I can probably do most of my commuting on one charge and find an hour or two on my days off to go somewhere with a fast charger.
In the meantime, I just try to get my wife to do as much of the driving as possible when we're both off since she has a prius, our schedules don't always align, but when they do I only drive if we need my bigger car for something.
It's a long way off, but we also fantasize about the possibilities of self-driving cars someday when all of the problems are worked out. Since we have different schedules (she works a regular 9-5, I work 3pm-3am on a 2-2-3 schedule,) we could have one self driving car for most of our commuting and errands, it could take her to work, come home and take me to work, pick her up and take her home, and pick me up at the end of my shift, and go charge itself in-between.
If they use a camper or heavy trailer even four times per year, fine whatever keep your truck. The other millions of Americans should've just rented a vehicle when they needed it, and it would've been far cheaper and more convenient to have their daily driver as a regular sized sedan.
You don't even need the clothes dryer circuit, the vast majority of people don't drive enough in a day to need anything more than a standard 15a outlet
it’s super convenient to never go to a gas station again, and to wake up to a full tank
But, to make that possible, you basically have to have a "gas station" at home. If you own your own house you can modify it to install a charging spot. If you rent, you might not have that option.
All EVs come with Level 1 chargers that plug in to your standard house outlet.
Sure, but if you use those it takes a very long time to charge. Like, from empty it can take 40+ hours to charge a battery EV from empty to 80%. If you're using your car to commute and your commute is anywhere near the max range of your car, that isn't a viable option.
I wonder if looking at the system as a whole for both systems would reveal a different difference. (infra needed to transport and fill those gas station tanks vs infra needed for level 3 charging stations)
On the one hand the Nokia 3310's battery lasts a week. On the other hand the iPhone 15....
Just plug your car in when you're not using it like you'd charge your phone overnight. It's only a problem if you can't charge at home (due to on street parking and no charging facilities on that street) and you can't charge somewhere you usually take your car (eg a workplace).
If i ride to vacation to a country with no charging infrastucture, if I want to ride to the mountains where it is subzero and my range drops dramatically, if I go to a place where it's 38 deree celsius and I need AC my range is pretty much fucked up... (not to mention that close to remote places like cool beaches there is no charging station)
If I want to have a road trip... i suddenly becomes a planning issue
There are still so many things that are complicated by having a EV, and I don't need the extra complications
And flood loads of valleys to create massive hydro power stations?
Norway's low density gives it plentry of cheap renewable electricity (per person).
In my country we have loads of people living in valleys, so we'd probably not get away with building that much hydro generation capacity.
Although there's a whole area called the "lake district" that is literally asking for it.
Norway is incredibly sparsely populated and has an adoption rate of 80%+. We also have stupid cold winters, loads of fucking mountains and require AC in summer.
I've driven through Europe twice with no more than 2 minutes of planning in an app.
Your comment makes me think you have no experience with EV's at all and are spreding false claims.
There are literally two scenarios where an EV is not better than ICE (if purchased new today).
One is for people frequently traveling far beyond the cars range and the other is for people without access to AC charging at all.
And no, I'm not a EV lover/gasoline hater. I ride a motorcycle powered by dinosaur juice too. I just like having 400+ BHP and 700 Nm of torque in a car priced like a Toyota Avensis, and a full tank every single time I leave my driveway with said full tank costing me <$5.
You should want that too unless you belong to one of the two exeption groups above.
My issue with EVs isn't the EV itself, it's that they're all smart cars. Granted, most new ICE cars are being overladen with bull shit too so I think I'm just stuck with cars from the 2010s.
Both tbh. I also just don't like the usability and looks of everything being a screen. I really hate digital dashboards. The newer cars feel like they were designed to be disposable like a smart phone, where long term use isn't a consideration.
I have seen some services that convert ICE cars to EV, so I may just do that when my engine needs replaced
The reason I single out the 2010s is because that's when I could get a touch screen with car play, but still have HVAC controls as a button and no digital dashboards.
If you don't drive for work--and I mean get paid to drive hundreds of miles every day, not just a long commute--or take a road trip every month, and have a place to charge at night (most people do, at least in North America), then an EV is just better.
Otherwise, a plug-in hybrid or a "gasoline boosted EV" like a Volt is sufficient. ICE cars for regular people shouldn't have even existed once the Volt proof of concept was proven!
Uh, maintenance is one thing where ICE wins (until very recently, thanks fucktards in car industry). Cars have been generally very easy to work on, with anyone with a toolbox being able to do most their repairs in a shed
This isn't a function of the engine though right? Electric engines are inherently simpler and should therefore be easier to maintain (putting aside company fuckery)
High voltage is scary as fuck, but also the fact that absolutely everything from doors to gas pedal and chairs are controlled by a computer you need specialized proprietary equipment to investigate.
This is an issue with new ice cars too to be honest
EVs have a High voltage disconnect. I repaired my EV(inverter) with normal hand tools in my garage. I did have to buy a license and tool for flashing the firmware, but this is a problem in nearly every new vehicle, gas or electric.
That's a user-hostile feature, not a property of electric engines. An electric car has far simpler mechanical parts, and the circuitry isn't very complicated either. It could be made incredibly easy to repair, modify, and upgrade, mostly at home even, if they designed them that way
That is why the explanation continues: "(other than pedantic exceptions due to calendar issues or timezone alterations, or someone dying before their birthday, or being born on a leap day, none of which apply in this case)".
A friend of mine has his birthday on feb 29th. He was turning 49 and me and my gf showed up to his party with balloons with the number 12 on them (since that's how many actual birthdays he'd had).
Because you can see how, after H and He, you do 2 loops of 8 and add the transition metals to the next 2 loops; then you add the lanthanides and actinides to the next 2 loops. And can easily see how the superactinides guy in the extended period table
What about the table of nuclides? IMO that’s the best way to list elements in a logically consistent manner. The trouble is, nature is a messy kraken that just won’t fit neatly into a shoe box. You can try to squeeze it in, but the lid won’t close because there are always a few tentacles sticking out.
I once met a girl in a bar who spoke such absolutely perfect and grammatically correct German she did sound like an alien impersonating a human.
Or someone who very much wants to show that she's better than you.
Turns out she wasn't from Germany at all. She was an immigrant from Slovakia, who had learnt German at such a high level that it sounded weird.
English speakers can really enhance their vocabulary when they know French. English does have a lot of French words that most people don't use anymore but if you use them, your vocabulary becomes off-the-charts intellectual.
Pseudo-intellectual. A clear communicator uses the simplest, precise word that has the precise meaning they intend, reaching most commonly for the Germanic vocabulary unless they need the subtler shades of meaning from the Latinate. A pseudo-intellectual uses Latinate vocabulary to conceal what they're actually saying or to intimidate people who aren't as comfortable on the Latinate side of the fence. It's a form of intellectual bullying that, to my mind, makes the person using it look insecure (not to mention likely dishonest).
A good communicator's motto should be "eschew gratuitous obfuscation (see what I mean?)".
I once did an English language vocabulary test that yielded that I'm amongst the top 0.01% in terms of amount of English-language vocabulary.
English is not my mother tongue and I still and often make mistakes in the use of "in"-vs-"on" or even in certain forms of past tense.
However I read a lot in English, in various areas of knowledge, plus it turns out lots of really obscure words in English are pretty much the same as a the word in some other language I know or even pretty much the Latin word, so when I didn't know that was the English word for that, I can often guess the meaning.
All this to say that I absolutelly agree with you that it's a reading thing, plus at more specialized language level, the "knowledge of foreign languages" also has some impact.
Got called a rich kid for knowing the word "carafe." Pretty sure I learned it from a book, my parents didn't have carafe with mountain spring water or some shit around the house.
I learned that word from my dad when I was a child. we kept a carafe in the refrigerator designated for water. It's a wine carafe but can put anything in it. My dad was an alcoholic so he had a wine carafe and a lot of other alcohol-related accoutrements like beer steins.
The term "carafe" puts me in mind of a crystal glass container of between half a litre and two litres of volume for wine or water. What is it in relation to coffee? The glass bowl the coffee drips into in one of those dripping coffee makers?
I was scolded by a boss for using words that to me were perfectly ordinary everyday words. Words like "cognate" or "cognizant", say, but to him they sounded like I was showing off and making people feel bad.
That's a different issue from sandhi. Vocabulary and dialect are another area of active study (often paired with yet another realm: sociolinguistics: the language you speak changes according to your social environment) that is a real rabbit hole.
I've been learning German too myself, and the thing that the traditional language courses don't teach you is the way natives speak. Listening to actual German speakers was pretty much alien to me even after two years until I bumped into a couple Easy German videos where they touch the very same subject as this xkcd and that actually got me listening to certain parts of speech more carefully and that way also understand it better.
Now I actually find myself doing the same shortcuts sometimes when I'm progressing with the skill. It's the same with English since I have to use it daily at work even though I'm not a native speaker. Funny how the languages work in real life vs. in theory.
I appreciate the origin story being included in this cliché, cuz it got repeated so often on Reddit that people seemed to forget it was said by a parody of an obnoxious heartless bureaucrat and repeat the phrase without irony.
I had no idea what the name of the sound was so I credit being a native speaker and reading the comic out loud with my understanding.
Do read it out loud - the more you exaggerate it the more fun it is.
Cannot believe how smart this guy is. If 10% of the planet were like Randall we would’ve cured cancer like the second time somebody got diagnosed with it.
If you're into hard sci-fi and you're looking for a good read, they actually dropped a pretty good recommendation with that reference at the end - Larry Niven does a great job of blending real-world theories like Dyson spheres and advanced propulsion drives, with some of the more far-flung standards of the genre like an intra-planetary teleportation grid.
All chemical propulsion is just controlled explosions that we use to push a thing forward. It's not that different, as long as you don't use it in the atmosphere or near humans.
If you can trust the human monkeys with the "shaping" of a rock that got us here, how you gonna distrust the widdle trivial matter of taking little bits of something and splitting them.
It's shaped charges, it's totally fine and sane. I'd happily get on the 1,000th Orion flight*.
I'm not familiar with the books, and the plot summary of their Wikipedia article does not mention nuclear propulsion whereas the article for the series does, so I went with that.
Unless what bothers you is the x followed by the apostrophe and the s, which I never know when to omit the s, so it is what it is.
Ah gotcha. Yeah you should check out the books if you're liking the show! The books go into a ton more detail and the Staircase Project is pretty cool. Seeing it on the screen is cool too, but if you really wanna nerd out I highly recommend the books.
It would probably work just fine, but it needs a huge ship. It could get up to a few percent of the speed of light.
FWIW, nuclear test ban treaties are considered to outlaw it. I think we're more likely to solve the technical difficulties of antimatter propulsion than we are to get over the political difficulties of nuclear bomb propulsion.
Just as an observation, there was a time when everyone on the Internet was gaga over the idea of Project Orion, and you didn't dare speak out against it lest you get a hail of downvotes.
It'd work fine in deep space. It's not a good idea to launch from Earth this way. But again, we'll probably find something better once we're at the stage of needing it.
Implosion-type nukes are all but impossible to make go off that way. They need a whole bunch of small explosives to go off very precisely to squeeze the core in just the right way. A short circuit or a crash won't have the necessary precision. This isn't entirely safe, either--it can still cause a small explosion with a flash of fallout and radiation--but it's a manageable problem.
Gun-types (Little Boy was one) are easier to go off on accident, but the US retired its last gun-type design decades ago. I don't think Russia used them much, either. They're only good for smaller bombs, and their safety issues make them questionable for any use. Smaller nuclear powers aren't bothering with them.
Considering that you need huge shields and dampening and you only have the mass of the bomb itself as propelant, is it still as effective as controlled propulsion?
I think you may be mixing up Project Orion (let's chuck bombs out of the back to make us go zoom) with NERVA (a nuclear thermal rocket engine where the heat from chemical reactions is replaced with heat from a nuclear reactor to generate gas expansion out of a nozzle). Something like NERVA is actually a great idea. Let me tell you why!
It's completely clean (unlike Orion and fission-fragment rockets)
the reactor and fuel never touch, the fuel goes through a heat exchanger and is not radioactive
it provides extremely high efficiency
chemical rockets top out at ~400-500 isp in vacuum
NERVA tests in 1978 gave a vacuum isp of 841
ion thrusters like NEXT has an isp of 4170
it provides lots of thrust
NERVA had 246kN of thrust
NEXT (which was used on the DART mission) is 237 millinewtons
That's 6 orders of magnitude more thrust!
No oxidizer is needed
All you need is reaction mass, just like ion thrusters
For automated probes, the extreme efficiency and low thrust of ion thrusters makes perfect sense. If we ever want to send squishy humans further afield, we need something with more thrust so we can have shorter transit times (radiation is a bastard). Musk is supposedly going to Mars with Starship, and the Raptor engine is a marvel of engineering. I don't like the man and I'm not confident that he'll actually follow through with his plan, but the engineers at SpaceX are doing some crazy shit that might make it happen.
Just think though, if the engine was literally twice as efficient and they didn't need to lug around a tank of oxidizer, how much time could they shave off their transit? How much more could they send to Mars? Plus, they could potentially reduce the number of big-ass rockets they have to launch from Earth to refuel. If you can ISRU methane, then I imagine you could probably get hydrogen.
There are problems that still need to be resolved (the first that comes to mind is how to deal with cryogenic hydrogen boiling off), but like, the US had a nuclear thermal engine in the 70s. It was approved for use in space, but congress cut funding after the space race concluded so it never flew.
I'm happy to see that NASA is once again researching nuclear thermal rockets. Maybe we'll get somewhere this time.
I just noticed this info on the xkcd website for the first time:
xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS at a screen resolution of 1024x1. Please enable your ad blockers, disable high-heat drying, and remove your device from Airplane Mode and set it to Boat Mode. For security reasons, please leave caps lock on while browsing.
It unlocks your screen rotation settings and links screen orientation to the phones gyroscopic sensor to maintain orientation perpendicular to the horizon.
It’s been there for a while, just hard to spot. From doing a binary search with web.archive.org, it seems it was added on October 5th, 2016 web.archive.org/web/20161005090723/…/xkcd.com/
ISO 8601 contains way too many obscure formats. RFC 3339 is pretty much a subset and defines only sensible ones. It also allows 2018-02-05 08:02:43-00:00 (no T and explicitly specifying no timezone)
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