More anti-ev gibberish

[bonnie1194]

Tesla's Troubling Risk-Reward Profile ... by (wait for it...) John Peterson.

[Citizen-T]

He's been busy. Tesla is knocking down his arguments faster and faster, so seems he needs to keep spawning new ones. We should go through his old work and document all his claims for where Tesla would fail, and keep a running score.

[Norbert]

It seems that all those calculations depend on peculiarities of local grids.

If you assume that coal is the first energy source to be ramped down over night, because it is the most expensive, then the question is if night time consumption, at a specific location, can be covered without coal.

- If yes, the adding EVs will in general not change that, as, in general, wind power production is growing faster than EV consumption.

- If not, then adding EVs may consume more coal, but the situation will change as soon as enough coal plants are closed, and/or enough other sources are added, to cover night demand without coal.

If you assume that coal is the second most expensive source, and the second to ramp down, then it gets even more complicated, as you might have certain effects over a certain range of consumption, meaning you might lower or increase CO2 when adding EVs, and then have the opposite effect when adding even more. And additionally, it will depend on the amount of coal plants being closed, and the amount of wind and NG and other sources being added, over the same period of time as EVs are being added.

[Discoducky]

Tesla's Troubling Risk-Reward Profile ... by (wait for it...) John Peterson.

He is finally more truthful about his interests in his disclosure:

Disclosure: I have no direct or indirect interest in Tesla and nothing to gain or lose from its future stock price movements. It should, however, be an entertaining show to watch from the sidelines. I am a former director and current stockholder of Axion Power International (AXPW.OB), which has developed a robust and affordable third-generation lead-carbon battery for micro-hybrid, railroad and stationary energy storage applications.

And I hope it doesn't escape anyone that TM's success will most certainly shift demand away from Axion.

So yeah, I'd say that there is a very real "indirect interest" and he has lot's to gain from writing biased articles.

[strider]

I think you are making it more complicated than it really is in an attempt to somehow negate the full effect of an EV on the grid. Base load capacity is already fully utilized 24/7, any additional supply beyond that has to come from somewhere else, and it's most likely going to be NG or coal. You can't play a shell game saying if I do this and this then it's not really marginal load.

I think what ElS is getting at is that when someone buys a hot tub, no one writes blog posts saying, "That thing is being powered by 100% coal!" So if someone buys an EV and offsets the electricity for their car by decreasing consumption elsewhere (less A/C, line-drying clothes, more insulation, LED or CFL lights, etc) they should be able to say that their car is using baseload and not marginal power since they have not changed their total energy consumption.

[Norbert]

I think what ElS is getting at is that when someone buys a hot tub, no one writes blog posts saying, "That thing is being powered by 100% coal!"

Yeah... if each individual item is attributed 100% coal, then who is using the other sources?

[rolosrevenge]

But since NOTHING in the US is powered by 100% coal no one should even bring it up, EVER! </rage>

[Norbert]

But since NOTHING in the US is powered by 100% coal no one should even bring it up, EVER! </rage>

Except to justify building more wind power (and solar for the day), since that solves the real problem. Instead of assigning blame to the victim, so to speak.

[rolosrevenge]

More like to justify building more nuclear since wind cannot practically replace a coal plant.

[jerry33]

More like to justify building more nuclear since wind cannot practically replace a coal plant.

+1 Agreed.