[Josh (PA)]

I still question whether battery EVs are the right thing for the future. I am hard pressed to believe that the full life cycle of an EV is cleaner than a comparable ICE vehicle. The mining and refining of precious metals like lithium, cadmium and nickel is incredibly nasty (but hey its done in 3rd world countries, so it doesn't count, right).

You could argue that power generation is cleaner than ICE pollution, but again it depends on the type and what other environmental impacts you want to consider ie: windmills on ridgelines chop up amazing amounts of migrant birds, hydro dams kill salmon, etc. Then you have nuclear, coal and older tech plants that have their own pollution issues.

You then have to take that energy that is relatively efficiently produced and lose x% of it transporting it from the plant to your house. Lose x++% more turning it from AC-> DC and stuffing it in a battery. Lose X% more due to battery loss during sitting, especially if it is cold and x% more when turned from potential to kinetic energy in the motor, heater, etc. The reality is not nearly as efficient as Tesla, or other EV companies would market us to think.

I think if we were to clean sheet an ICE vehicle we could do so much better than where we are today. The big problem with ICE is how inefficiently it operates. For instance, we give up a ton of energy in braking. If we were to develop hydraulic accumulator brakes we could store all that energy for reuse during acceleration. We could capture exhaust heat and use that for electric generation, eliminating the alternator and engine drag. The engine could be hooked to an energy storage system (hydraulic or electric) and run at max efficiency all the time. Then the engine could be significantly smaller, because reality is it is operating at 10% or less of it potential most of the time and the stored engine from braking and engine accumulation could be used during accel, etc when needed. Basically consolidate the energy use systems into one, and optimize them together. I think the biggest issue with ICE today isn't the gas it burns, its the inefficient ways it gives up energy when cruising, braking, cooling, etc.

Just my thoughts.