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An idling gas engine may be annoyingly loud, but that’s the price you pay for having WAY less torque available at a standstill.

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300 points
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The motors have never been the problem, it’s always been the battery. See train engines, they are a diesel generator with electric motors.

This is where history pisses me off. We should have been headlong into battery research after the oil embargoes. Could have been 40 years faster.

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31 points
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I think people forget that petroleum is condensed and distilled solar energy. One gallon of gasoline is the results of years of solar energy.

Spelling

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106 points

Non renewable solar energy unfortunately.

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10 points

Renewable fuels exist and are used today, but the efficiency and pollution aspects still apply.

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5 points

No, it’s renewable. But… not in any practical timeframe.

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2 points

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.

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1 point

Happy cake day!

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24 points

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! ☀️

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-1 points

Petroleum can’t be renewed, but biofuels can be.

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-26 points

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.

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21 points

I hope you are not talking about battery locomotives.

With overhead wires the train has a practically unlimited battery capacity.

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18 points

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.

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5 points

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.

Source - How much of a slave owner am I ?

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2 points

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.

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10 points
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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.

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1 point

Didn’t sodium batteries start getting marketed recently?

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2 points

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.

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0 points

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.

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1 point

Freight trains are diesel electric.

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0 points

Not in America

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-1 points

okay? i’m talking about the world though, so typical for people to just assume america is all that matters lmao

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-40 points

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.

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39 points

Boy it sure is easy to win a debate when you use fictional information

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1 point
Deleted by creator
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-1 points

I am being serious - can you factually counter those points? I’d like to know the truth of the matter.

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-6 points

https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/PowerSearch.do?action=noform&path=1&year1=2023&year2=2025&mclass=Small+Cars&srchtyp=newMarket&pageno=1&rowLimit=50

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

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/01/why-the-ev-boom-could-put-a-major-strain-on-our-power-grid.html You can read cnbcs article on how the grid is already pretty spread thinn with us already increasing our power demand by almost 3,000% in the last decade without even considering ev charging

https://www.motortrend.com/features/how-long-does-it-take-to-charge-an-ev/

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

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a31875141/electric-car-battery-life/

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

https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/electric-car-battery-replacement-costs.html According to Edmunds.com the average cost of ev battery replacement costs anywhere from 5,000$ to 15,000$ So what point was made up

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