I do

Can's should definitely be recycled, it is just insane not to based on the "cost" difference between new and recycled and how easily it can be reused. ~ 4 tons of Bauxite needs to be mined (usually) in a tropical location, shipped to be treated and dried (needs tons of electricity) to get ~2 tons of alumina that then needs electrolysis (tons of electricity) and burning at a higher temperature to get 1 ton of molten aluminum, compare that to 1 ton of recycled aluminum which will give you roughly 1 ton of aluminum)

As for glass I still think it worth it (at worst it ends up in the land fill) but it is a bit of a mixed bag. The issue is that glass is seldom "pure". For example take a Bud in a brown bottle, Heineken in a green one and Corona in a transparent bottle. The transparent bottle would be pure glass, the green glass contains Chrome oxide and the brown one Iron, sulfur and carbon. Now you can take a corona bottle, melt it and add Chrome oxide to get a green bottle but you can't remove the Chrome oxide from a green bottle to make a transparent bottle. So if it is properly segregated based on tint then it is extremely recyclable, but if it is jumbled together mixed glass is completely useless as glass which is why they tend to find other uses of mixed crush glass such as adding it as aggregate to asphalt, plastic or concrete

A consideration with respect to home charging of the the car is power draw in the neighborhood. If everyone in the neighborhood attempts to simultaneously fast charge their car, the local grid will probably be overloaded. Not to mention the possibility that the electric service to the house might need to be upgraded. To some extent the grid overload could be minimized by scheduled charging times for each house, but this would not be a popular option for customers.

I have to ask myself why do we need any of that? electric trams that use power from overhead power lines have existed for ages, electric trains that get power from tracks have existed for ages, I can charge my phone with a plug less phone charger just by resting it on a pad. I think the best solution would be something similar to that, a "powered" road where the car syphons energy for a price while you drive with battery autonomy for 20-30 miles (in case of power failures, looong driveways....)

Because trying to put such an infrastructure in place across the millions and millions of miles of highways we have is far from feasible. And that's just highways. How about side streets, rural roads, or even dirt roads. And that's not even discussing the safety issue of putting high voltage contacts in a road where someone could touch them. And when it rains and water puddles to make contact with both "rails", what happens? Also, what happens during the winter with ice? Our roads here in the mountains are destroyed in the winter from the brine and the plows pushing snow.


Fuel cells are really the logical solution when looking for an all around fit everything answer.

There are ongoing powered road experiments.

Switching over to powered roads would imply digging up almost every mile of road and starting over. One could ague that small side streets could remain as they are. Another approach might be "powered mile" followed by "non powered mile" this would not require quite as much digging, but long lasting traffic jams could become an issue for those stalled on the "non powered mile".

Road maintenance becomes much more difficult because the road crew must also be electricians and roads always have been almost living breathing creatures. If a road heaves, develops a pothole, or becomes flooded, we can currently drive around or throw a quick patch on the problem. Do potholes now become electric shock hazards?

One proposal replaces the road surface with a solar array. Previously, we pondered the pollution associated with creating solar arrays. Repaving the the roads with solar arrays requires a pollution investment up front that hopefully will payback over the years.

You are right, but lets face it, that is a red herring.

1) most people don't have electric cars and in a best/quickest scenario it will be decades before everyone (or even a good majority) drives an electric car, there is definitely enough time for things to change

2) that scenario works for anything.

in the end the question would be "why?". If it takes 1/2 a day at full fast charger power to charge a car, what you said would make sense because there would be a high probability of a lot of people charging at the same time. On the other hand chargers don't work at full power as can be seen below
[Link: tesla.com]

so if it runs at full power for 1/2 an hour there is no reason to assume that everyone will need it at the same time in the neighbourhood.

it all depends how it is done. Technically it would also not need to be done instantaneously.


agree, but then again you appear to have missed where I said

|battery autonomy for 20-30 miles (in case of power failures, looong driveways....)
I did not say that it will use the "powered roads" the whole time, the 20-30 miles was an example and what I believe to be sufficient with no extra research, if 50 miles makes more sense then it can be 50 miles, there can even be different distances for different car models. The idea behind a powered road is
1) most roads do have power around them so the issue becomes making it available in a safe way to vehicles
2) there ate two issues with electric vehicles as they are today
-- a) batteries - the main theme of this thread - and this will reduce it
-- b) fill-ups - let's face3 it, it is nice to say there are many supercharger stations, but if you are going far do you want to drive for 3-4 hours (or even less) and then be forced to stop for a fill up that takes an hour (or even more). With a powered road you could drive from one corner of the country to the opposite corner with out being forced to stop (let alone for long periods).


agree, but that is why I gave the example of tramways/streetcars as well as my phones charger.

Montreal had electric trams from 1892-1959, Toronto old street car system might have newer cars but it is still in use as it has existed for ages.

and I can touch the pad and there is no shock, actually they even make plugless electric car chargers https://www.pluglesspower.com/ but since I have never used one I can only assume it is fast (i.e lots of power) yet safe (I.e I won't get electrocuted if I step on it)

you are also missing the obvious, Volts and amps need to be high if I want to charge an electric car fast, if we have powered roads then both of those could be low since all you need is enough power to maintain power.

I'm not suggesting that scheduled charging is impossible to work out, only that it might make people grumpy and slow adoption.

Not everyone needs to use our present highways at the same time, but there is a rush hour peak in demand that must be accommodated.

So you still need large batteries. And you'd need more like a 100 mile ability for the back up. So, I don't see where the idea of putting power in the road makes any real headway. And, you still didn't address the issue of winter.

There are scheduled charging times already. If someone has an EV, and a deal with the power company. The user can plug their EV in when they arrive home, but it won't charge until their power company's off peak starts.

A company in California has this in place and charges their customers 1/2 price for power being used between the hours of 22:00 and 04:00 or there about. So they set their EV to only charge during those times.

KOT

I've seen very large home electric hot water heaters that operate on discount overnight heating rates.

I believe most power companies have a load control system in place. It gives them the option of shutting down your HVAC if there's too much draw going on.

I have had this on our home for years. Never been used, and it cost Duke power a lot to implement, which is of course reflected in higher overall rates.


Another of those things where some suits thought "Hey, this is a great idea." without thinking it through.

think about it.

1)I don't know how accurate this is [Link: greencarreports.com]

but in the list there are 3 2017 car models that can do over 200 miles (Bolt and the two Teslas), if we go with 100 miles as being the magic number the batteries used in one of these cars could be split and used for two cars so there is both the cost and environmental factor.

there are 5 that do between 100 and 125 and so barely enough for a back up let alone real use (i.e. Joe has a new grid car, bob has a 2017 leaf that can do 107 miles between charges, they both leave together and drive, let's say, 90 miles away where they stop because Bob needs a few hours to charge his car before they continue onto the powered road and the rest of their trip (and possibly other stops).

all the rest are under 100 miles of autonomy so we won't even bother talking about them.

2)for small trips where the battery is enough you are right it won't really make a difference between a grid car and battery car. But most people don't think that way. People don't buy a car just to go to the grocery store 5 miles away and back or work 10 miles away and back so 50 miles is way more than enough 99% of the time, it tends to be, like one of my friends stated, I go to Florida once a year and it is 1,500 miles away and I don't want to drive 2h and stop to charge for an hour making a long trip much longer.


I thought I did, I live in the suburbs of Montreal Canada, there are colder places and snowier places, but that is not all that important since all you need is enough snow to need plowing for your car to be able to move. Now I was not alive at the time but between 1892 and 1959 Montreal had an electric tramway system and even though it got its power from the grid they still managed to function even in winter like this pic from 1905 shows

obviously they needed one of

in the winter to clear the path but any vehicle needs the streets to be clear enough so it can move forward, that is simple inertia and has nothing to do with being able to get power.

Keep in mind that the "miles per charge" spec is similar to the "miles per gallon" spec -- your mileage will vary, and the miles per charge will decrease as the battery ages.

You still don't understand the problem with winter and a highway system with power terminals built in. For one, in a big snow, sometimes they don't scrap all the way to the pavement. Many storms I've had to drive somewhere and the road had a couple inches of packed snow. Nothing is making contact with some power terminal built into the road. But the bigger problem is the amount of damage done to the road from the ground freezing, water seeping into cracks and freezing, and heavy plows scraping the roads. Here in the mountains, when winter is over, potholes are everywhere.