How often do you cross the Sahara desert in a hatchback? You don't. You go with specialized, 4 by 4 vehicles. This is a very, very niche application. How many people make this crossing every day? How many people commute to work every day.
It's not even in the same ballpark. Why are you trying to optimize for the very rare use-case?
You can keep using your trucks in the Sahara desert for as long as there is gasoline being made and replacement parts. Not sure what you are worried about.
> How often do you cross the Sahara desert in a hatchback? You don't
That was an extreme example, I agree, not one of the best, just wanted to point out that using gasoline/diesel for vehicle transportation is a lot more failure-resistant compared to a power network.
And you said nothing about my point about the entire continent of Africa and about post-disaster interventions in the rest of the world. The last thing you want to hear after your house has been blown out by an earthquake or a tsunami is that the first responders can't get to you and your family because the power network is down so that they cannot move their vehicles. And such events (I mean, major natural disasters followed by extensive power-cuts) do indeed happen pretty often even in developed countries.
> That was an extreme example, I agree, not one of the best, just wanted to point out that using gasoline/diesel for vehicle transportation is a lot more failure-resistant compared to a power network.
It really isn't. It all depends on which kind of disaster we are talking about. In many cases you can't get a tanker where you need to, you have to rely on whatever fuel stockpiles you have. If you have a fuel stockpile, guess what you do? You run a generator. Generator produces electricity, you charge from that. Not ideal, but it's an emergency anyway. This is disregarding other forms of local generation, such as solar.
> And you said nothing about my point about the entire continent of Africa
The entire continent of africa is bigger than the areas of the United States, India, China and some of Europe combined. I can't meaningfully comment on that large an area. Some places have cities and electricity just fine. Some do not. The places that do not, I have some difficulty accepting that they will also have easy and cheap access to fuel. But assuming it is a problem, then fine. They will take longer to switch.
> last thing you want to hear after your house has been blown out by an earthquake or a tsunami is that the first responders can't get to you and your family because the power network is down so that they cannot move their vehicles
This is such an enormous strawman! Have you EVER seen an electric fire truck? I haven't(let alone made by VW). But assume there are electric first responders only. You know one thing electric vehicles don't care? It's where their electricity come from.
Let's take an example from hospitals. In emergency situations, what do they do? They can't be without power during a surgery. So they have battery banks, backed up by a generator. I guess first responders would do similarly. And guess what, many already have power generators. Even AAA has generator trucks to rescue EVs.
If you have electricity you use that(even with no fuel). If you have fuel, you use that – and you can also use electricity. How convenient.
> Some places have cities and electricity just fine. Some do not.
Last I read stuff on the matter the country of South Africa had huge problems with keeping the power on 24/7, and we're talking about the most developed country on that continent.
> And guess what, many already have power generators. Even AAA has generator trucks to rescue EVs.
Power generators that use diesel/gasoline, you're supporting my point, which is that we'll never get over our reliance on this stuff.
> You know one thing electric vehicles don't care? It's where their electricity come from.
Until your electricity just stops coming from anywhere, at which point they do start to care. You seem to never have been in a situation where electricity is not a constant 24/7 "resource", so to speak. I did live at a time and in a place where that was not the case (meaning constant power cuts even in the middle of winter) and as such I've learned how "brittle" and fragile the power network is.
Anyway, I'll leave this discussion as it is right now, I should have learned my lesson a long time ago never to enter into any discussion about EV on HN.
> Power generators that use diesel/gasoline, you're supporting my point, which is that we'll never get over our reliance on this stuff.
The point is, which you keep missing, is that EVs can run on electricity in whatever form. Have diesel available, but your car runs on gasoline only? Tough luck. Have "coal" electricity? It is as good as solar from the car's point of view. It's not the same for the environment, but neither are ICE cars.
You are trying to argue about a hypothetical situation where there is fuel readily available, but for some reason, somehow, electricity cannot be produced from it. And there is also no electricity. In this hypothetical world, have generators ever been invented? Or solar panels? Also, if resources are so constrained, why are we even worrying about cars? There are more pressing concerns.
Why do you keep ignoring solar? Wind? Have you seen any projects that bring power to poor communities in Africa? And have you seen how they DON'T rely on fuel tankers? It's all about microgrids! If they don't have sustainable power, they will NOT have refineries, or reliable fuel delivery.
Last, why are we even arguing about places in Africa with no power? They are in no condition of importing the latest generation vehicles anyway! Heck, most people in the developed world are not even driving current generation vehicles (myself included). So even if all manufacturers stopped producing internal combustion engines today, it doesn't matter. There is a sizable fleet that's not going away any time soon.
This is why this discussion is not productive. Can we focus in places where internal combustion engines are so ubiquitous that the are actually causing problems? Like India. Or China. Or the US. Not on some hypothetical gas station in the Sahara.
In 20 years you could go full solar electric for such trips. If your talking serious off roading, add solar panels to the roof, and a trailer with even more.
PS: You convert a model 3 to Solar electric + battery and get ~30 miles of range for free every day. That’s very significant in most disaster situations, and much better than gas in a post apocalyptic world.
The only drawback against EVs in a Mad Max world is that they are very technologically advanced. And require modern manufacturing techniques to keep running, mostly due to batteries. If it is a disaster spanning shorter time scales (years rather than decades), then I would expect EVs to keep driving as fuel shortages cripple the fleet.
> PS: You convert a model 3 to Solar electric + battery and get ~30 miles of range for free every day
Do you have more details? Last time I made a back of the napkin calculation its area wasn't enough for more than a couple of miles a day (assuming 4 miles per KWh).
4 miles per KWh, you could easily get 4m^2 of panels on the thing. Past that is tricky. 4m2 * 0.22 * 8h ~= 7 kWh per day but you can clearly do better, 7 * 4 = 28 miles per day.
This is assuming high end 44% solar panels and optimal parking as ‘possible’. Basicly 185″ L x 73″ W = 8.7 m^2 in high end panels - windshield but covering sun roof. Then gaining back by covering sides and having a little overhang on sides. Then you’re talking closer to 8m2 * .44 * 8 = 28 kWh per day, or half that at a more reasonable 22% efficient.
PS: Redoing my calculations and yea ~30 miles with 22% panels depending on how mad max the setup vs something more legal.
Assuming you are not using this while driving – I imagine the drag would be ridiculous – and it can actually be stored in some way, it's not too terrible. You'd be driving at night, The Martian style.
> In 20 years you could go full solar electric for such trips.
In 20 years major natural disasters (which presumably will get more frequent) will blow away your solar panels together with your house, the same as they do right now. Take Puerto Rico after the last hurricane, for example. Had it not been for diesel gas and its use for power generators a pretty dire situation would have become even more dire. It's pretty easy to transport diesel gas even to a island affected by a major hurricane. In contrast had the buildings been fitted with solar panels they would have very probably get blown away, and it would have been at least an order of magnitude more difficult to install them back (you would need technicians to install them on place, it's more difficult to transport a large quantity of solar panels over sea compared to just diesel or gasoline).
I assume car companies are going to start installing 1+kWh solar panels into the cars within 20 years. At a minimum it’s a significant net win for self driving taxi companies who get more more range for free every day, while looking more ‘Green’.
As to post disaster recovery, solar is actually very energy dense assuming your talking weeks of recovery. A gallon of gasoline is only 33kWh before generator effecency drops you to say 11kWh per pound. That’s great if your talking a 24 hour safty net, but sucks if it takes 3+ weeks to bring the grid back online. (33kWh / 7 / 3 / 6.3 pounds = 1/4kw per per day per pound at say 33% effecency that drops to 1/12kWh per day per pound. Need that for 24 h a day and your talking 1/288 kw per pound of fuel. And at the end of 3 weeks you need even more fuel.
On the other hand a pallet of solar panels in a field or parking lot can be setup with some boards and not much else. You will need an inverter, but with just that you drastically reduce the need for fuel even without batteries.
So? In that case, we can still transport diesel to the disaster area if necessary and use generators to charge the vehicles. No reason to put the diesel or gas in the vehicles themselves, as long as they can charge reasonably quickly.
I'm going to disagree with you here, at least for the immediate aftermath. Or maybe not disagree but say the reality is much more nuanced, and share a little of my own experience.
I volunteer for a disaster relief organisation and have a background in logistics - I went to the Caribbean in response to Irma. I was on Antigua when Maria came through having just sent a shipment of aid forward to BVI.
I met the Dominican President the day after and had a team on the island within 14 hours (via sail boat believe it or not). Then I moved on to BVI a week or so later.
I saw first had what occurred in the direct aftermath of the disaster and I can say with confidence that shipping in and distributing replacement solid state (and reasonably lightweight) solar cells by air is immensely more simple and can be done much more quickly than getting fuel or oils in by sea. Palletised air freight is almost perfect for bringing in reasonably dense but reasonably lightweight panels like solar cells. And onward movement by underslung load on helicopter/chinnock or carried by aircraft like the C130/A400M with ability to land/take off on unprepared runways can carry in these loads easily. Further movement by hand is also relatively simple. All those things happened/aircraft were used (and many many more smaller ones) in the Caribbean response that I participated in.
We actually had the problem that too much materiel was coming in by air (particularly building supplies and plywood panelling) and had difficulty getting it stored and processed.
Meanwhile sea shipping was in a poor state.
Getting anything in by ship is chaos in the aftermath of hurricanes as ships and cargo are out of position all over the place as they avoid the storm. Ports are also often damaged as waves, storm surges and steep terrain can cause huge flash flooding and remove vast swaths of forest/buildings along the coast that floats out onto the sea and causes hazards to shipping, having trashed the port on its way through. This was particularly problematic in Dominica.
There can also be large lead times in getting bulk loads bought and shipped in which further complicates the disaster response.
Not only that, distribution of fuels in location is most often centralised through fuel stations, so damage to fuelling stations and pipe infrastructure meant that when fuel did arrive it was very difficult to get hold of and time consuming to obtain when it did arrive.
Meanwhile, we struggled through immense heat and bright sun 12 hours or so a day, perfect for solar power. On a small scale, people actually did use solar power to charge small electronics like phones and tablets. Phones, incidentally, which connected to cell towers often powered by diesel generators that struggled for fuel and could have benefited from augmented supply from PV.
And lets not forget, we don't necessarily need to set up multi kW PV systems in all homes, or large scale power plant scale solar farms. We need emergency distributed power generation, shelter and clean water. Next comes food and medicines. What you can get in quickly and is effective in the first 21 days is vital, and power and water often go hand in hand as we need power to run the purification pumps. I look forward to a time where shipping in solar panels are as cheap as shipping in plywood for temporary roof/building repair.
But all the above is not to say PV are the best or only solution. A mix of power generation is best and in any case the effectiveness of one or other method would depend on the disaster, geography and scale or response needed. But, it's important to think creatively and be open minded about technical solutions that are 'good enough' to preserve life and fill the gap between disaster and recovery. Cheap PV certainly has a place in that tool kit.
> gasoline/diesel for vehicle transportation is a lot more failure-resistant compared to a power network.
It depends on the disaster. Some disasters favor electric vehicles. Like charging your car from solar panels.
Also, petrol's only advantages are energy density and quick refueling. Once those issues are surmounted, petrol will be worse on nearly every front.
> The last thing you want to hear after your house has been blown out by an earthquake or a tsunami is that the first responders can't get to you
So keep those emergency vehicles petrol powered. They are a drop in the bucket of fuel consumption vs cars and semi trucks. Progress in the latter needn't be held back by the former.
It's not even in the same ballpark. Why are you trying to optimize for the very rare use-case?
You can keep using your trucks in the Sahara desert for as long as there is gasoline being made and replacement parts. Not sure what you are worried about.