The Future of Electric Vehicles

[EvilRoy]

Given the expressions "working in the salt mines" and "back to the salt mines", I don't think salt mining has a good reputation.

Canada the biggest salt mine in the whole wide world, right underneath Lake Huron. It keeps a lot of people in Ontario working and paid, especially since manufacturing jobs took a major hit over there recently, so its viewed generally positively. They don't do tours but every now and then a youtube video pops up and it looks pretty rad. There's a little village of work camps down there where people live while they work their shift. I actually just snooped on Indeed and they pay pretty decent for basic positions underground, and they even hire people with my job description. I think I'll accept a slightly lower wage in exchange for seeing the Sun at work though.

It really depends on what criteria you're looking at and how any single operation is going about it's business.

Also helps that the general public can kinda-sorta get the idea of salt-as-a-pollutant when it comes to water but not so much when it comes to land.

Its becoming a lot more discussed in my neck of the woods. De-icing salt is used a huge amount around here, but there has been a recent push to incorporate more planters and plantlife into city streets. Salt laden snow gets dumped into the boulevards, shoulders and planters each winter, and the salt kills off the plants. People started to notice and suddenly people care. We have new "salt" that won't kill the plant being trialled in some cities, but it does kill the structures, so, y'know, tradeoffs. Keeps me in business at least.

I'm really curious to see if this becomes a thing in municipalities across Canada - as far as I know its pretty limited right now, but I've heard there are plans for Env Canada to define salted soil as "contaminated" which would mean it has to be mitigated every time it is encountered by law. That's gonna hurt like a buttcheek on a stick if it goes through, but it would be longterm better for our waterways in exchange for needing to basically strip every municipal road shoulder in Canada.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I'm really curious to see if this becomes a thing in municipalities across Canada - as far as I know its pretty limited right now, but I've heard there are plans for Env Canada to define salted soil as "contaminated" which would mean it has to be mitigated every time it is encountered by law. That's gonna hurt like a buttcheek on a stick if it goes through, but it would be longterm better for our waterways in exchange for needing to basically strip every municipal road shoulder in Canada.

You guys should think about doing what we do in Oz when we can be arsed to rehabilitate high salinity soil - plant a fuckton of saltbush. High salt tolerance and, in the process of absorbing groundwater, also absorbs salt in the soil which it then stores in it's leaves. As a bonus many animals fucken love the stuff. Okay, not the most attractive family of plants but they do look better than a bunch of dead plants.

Hell, get a jump on the game, research the most appropriate saltbush variety for your local environment (I'd start with the ones that are wild in western Canada), set up a small saltbush nursery, start a campaign to use saltbush as a soil salinity mitigator and finally, angle your way in to make bank from your saltbush nursery. Oh yeah, I guess help the environment, too... if you're into that sorta thing.

 

[ralfy]

EVs and renewable energy in general have low energy returns and quantity because they and infra are heavily dependent on oil, but they'll be needed due to oil production issues, etc.

 

[Eacaraxe]

EVs and renewable energy in general have low energy returns and quantity because they and infra are heavily dependent on oil, but they'll be needed due to oil production issues, etc.

You're just describing a bootstrapping problem. Because we need fossil fuels to build the infrastructure, transitioning to electric has less inherent value and lower RoI? Yes, it's a problem with a generational fix, but we're already on the clock to climate change and three generations behind (i.e. once again, fuck Reagan).

The piece you're missing is that petroleum is a finite resource with applications far beyond just fuel -- polymers, lubricants, asphalt and tar, feedstocks, et cetera. A lot of those products we can't synthesize or replicate cost-effectively without petroleum, and the more paraffins and naphthenes we crack just to burn it as fuel, the less we have in the long run. Look at what's happening right now in the chemical industry thanks to petrochemical feedstock shortages, as a harbinger of things to come.

The biggest issue by far -- to which you're alluding -- is trying to Frankenstein sustainability into an inherently unsustainable infrastructure. The current generation of EV's are, indeed, a cost-prohibitive stopgap that our current grids can't even support when they proliferate. If we were smart, we'd be pushing back as a society against decades of anti-nuclear propaganda, because the solution for sustainable EV proliferation is small modular reactors. You don't need an integrated smart grid for a charging station if its power plant is onsite, automated, walk-away safe, interchangeable, recyclable off-site, and only needs to be replaced once a decade.

That said, battery-powered EV's aren't going to be the solution for heavy-duty vehicles. That's going to be either hydrogen fuel cell, or hydrogen gas turbines.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

That said, battery-powered EV's aren't going to be the solution for heavy-duty vehicles. That's going to be either hydrogen fuel cell, or hydrogen gas turbines.

Unless someone comes up with a solution to hydrogen fuel cells having issues with variable output demand (and that becomes a huge issue in 18 wheelers empty vs loaded) gas turbines will probably have to be it.

 

[ralfy]

You're just describing a bootstrapping problem. Because we need fossil fuels to build the infrastructure, transitioning to electric has less inherent value and lower RoI? Yes, it's a problem with a generational fix, but we're already on the clock to climate change and three generations behind (i.e. once again, fuck Reagan).

The piece you're missing is that petroleum is a finite resource with applications far beyond just fuel -- polymers, lubricants, asphalt and tar, feedstocks, et cetera. A lot of those products we can't synthesize or replicate cost-effectively without petroleum, and the more paraffins and naphthenes we crack just to burn it as fuel, the less we have in the long run. Look at what's happening right now in the chemical industry thanks to petrochemical feedstock shortages, as a harbinger of things to come.

The biggest issue by far -- to which you're alluding -- is trying to Frankenstein sustainability into an inherently unsustainable infrastructure. The current generation of EV's are, indeed, a cost-prohibitive stopgap that our current grids can't even support when they proliferate. If we were smart, we'd be pushing back as a society against decades of anti-nuclear propaganda, because the solution for sustainable EV proliferation is small modular reactors. You don't need an integrated smart grid for a charging station if its power plant is onsite, automated, walk-away safe, interchangeable, recyclable off-site, and only needs to be replaced once a decade.

That said, battery-powered EV's aren't going to be the solution for heavy-duty vehicles. That's going to be either hydrogen fuel cell, or hydrogen gas turbines.

Actually, I'm referring to diminishing returns. We see that in oil and in mining, i.e., increasing capex for decreasing amounts of new oil and minerals extracted, and with lower quality.

It's what happens when you have a global, competitive economy driven by maximization of profits facing a biosphere with physical limitations.