Mercedes ditching diesels in North America

Yeah,let's all hang onto existing technology, there's nothing new to be invented or improved on.

Perhaps we'd be better off with horses and whale oil.

On a more serious note, I feel badly for people who fear the future. Remember when we were all young and anticipating the next day with eagerness for what new things would come? A lot of that gets lost as we age.

The future just is... it's all neither good nor bad, it's what you make of it. And if I had the perfect foresight that some on here claim ;) , I would invest appropriately and get rich.

But I don't need to be rich to buy solar. I paid for mine with no government assistance. Free power, every day. :B

time2roll wrote:

dougrainer wrote:

garyemunson wrote:
Having driven an electric car for 6 years now and just recently added solar panels to my house to charge it for free, I guarantee you internal combustion engines are dead men walking. Even worse, self driving cars are going to take us right out of the drivers seat!

Adding solar panels for free electricity????? WHO is installing those panels for FREE? There is ALWAYS a COST. The Panels are not cheap. Then you have to maintain the system and replace any panels that get damaged. While solar is neat, it is NOT free. Self driving cars? Yea, right. There is ALWAYS an undetermined factor on all electronics. The self driving systems can never factor in all abberations that can happen. I am glad the odds are I will not live long enough to see the problems when people assume the computers will be able to do all things on the road. Doug

My panels will have paid for themselves in cost saving at the five year mark. (six months to go) Yes the Feds chipped in one year so it would be six years unsubsidized.

Still once you recoup the investment the power is FREE.

And you speak as if humans are perfect such that self driving would be moving backward in safety. Consider if self driving vehicles could reduce vehicle accident deaths by 50% would that be a bad thing even if not perfectly perfect in all conditions?

solar is not free as they age the output drops, so while in use they must pay for their own replacement .
I have a marine solar panel that lost 50% out put after around 20 years .
so not forever
and therefore
not free

Here in Michigan, we rank 47 out of the 48 continental states in available sun shine. Yet companies are coming in and wanting to grab up good farm land and build "Solar Farms".

Dusty

Ooooooooo, that infuriates me...the nerd who must have been one of the first to do a California Central Valley Summer Tour. From Marysville to Merced, loading up at rural roads produce stands. Crates of peaches, almonds, ears of sweet corn so big they would bring guffaws of mockery today. Further south I purchased a ninety pound sack of pistachios for fifteen dollars - eat your heart out.

Solar has become "It It Is Impossible To Do Other Than Miracles" cult. The most radical protagonists foam at the mouth at the suggestion solar is not a see-all do-all energy fix. It reminds me of carious vitamins cults.

hone eagle wrote:
I have a marine solar panel that lost 50% out put after around 20 years.

Most panels have a performance warranty of about 80% after 20 years.

After 20 years most Chinese panel companies would have had three factory leadership assassinations, at least five PLA army raids to arrest those not assassinated on corruption charges, and presently make inflatable Panda dolls.

RE: Warranties
WARRANTIED BY THE MANUFACTURER has legal meaning. I highly suggest not holding your breath.

Ductape wrote:
Yeah,let's all hang onto existing technology, there's nothing new to be invented or improved on.

Perhaps we'd be better off with horses and whale oil.

On a more serious note, I feel badly for people who fear the future. Remember when we were all young and anticipating the next day with eagerness for what new things would come? A lot of that gets lost as we age.

The future just is... it's all neither good nor bad, it's what you make of it. And if I had the perfect foresight that some on here claim ;) , I would invest appropriately and get rich.

But I don't need to be rich to buy solar. I paid for mine with no government assistance. Free power, every day. :B

Not trying to pick a fight here, just debating. If you're off-grid, that's a great use of the technology and you're not affecting others. If you are on-grid, you are being subsidized by the government and/or other ratepayers. The power company has to buy and maintain the infrastructure to provide you with your full power needs at night and on bad weather days. Yet, you're not buying the amount of electricity that corresponds to the infrastructure for your peak and intermittent usage. Somebody else is paying for that. If you have net metering or a feed-in tariff that credits you at least as much for power you feed into the grid compared to what you consume from the grid, the power company is losing money on every watt hour you feed in.

Up till now, every grid tie system is being subsidized in some way. This is changing as the politicians are starting to accept that the infrastructure as we know it cannot handle massive intermittent power sources. What happens if some area is running mostly on solar and a big cloud rolls in? Is there some huge magic alternative supply that can fill in with no notice? There probably will be some day, after a lot of time passes and a lot of money is spent on it. The government policies are redistributing the money, but it's not free.

Yes one panel will be a pitn however if the utility installs 10,000 panels you can bet someone is going to pay if performance is only 50% in 20 years.

But then in 20 years the panels might be so much lower in cost and higher efficiency it will be better to just buy new equipment.

My idea of a "future" vehicle would be a gas/electric hybrid. Perhaps one that the gasoline engine is used as a generator and runs at a specific RPM, which will help with its efficiency, while maybe moving to a Crower six-stroke design, assuming engine makers can deal with water's corrosive effects.

Until batteries store something like 1/10 the energy of gasoline, we may see electric cars as city runabouts or maybe able to run longer if going from charging station to charging station, but it will need to be supplemented by a conventional IC system for now.

It would be nice to see a gas/electric hybrid motorhome chassis. One nice advantage is because of the large batteries, having power for running appliances, the A/C, etc. is already present.

Yeah,let's all hang onto existing technology, there's nothing new to be invented or improved on.

Altogether now "Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm"

There ARE going to be electric cars. There IS going to be revenue collection. There are no good ZAPPER fairies that are going to come along ave their magic presto wand and pronounce

"Presto Zappo. two trillion dollar infrastructure improvement FREE!"

I've lived through twelve and a half US Presidents - and after awhile people as they age, get sort of an X Ray vision. It comes with having been taken for a ride too often. X Ray vision strips off the vernier, the presentation H.S. that "true believers" (salesmen apprentices) demand that all adhere to.

Oh I did invest. Oh I did gather nuts and squirreled them away. Lots and lots of nuts. Then a slimeball HMO came along and denied payment for four months in hospital treatment for AML, six months of outpatient and made all my stashed nuts worth 40% of their actual value. Nuts, the trees they were in are all gone. But I'm not. I paid for it all instead of sliming my way out of a responsibility.

Now what I care about is not having anything more robbed from me in the name of Good Intentions. Electric Cars are the wave of the future -- so are revenue sources that will embarrass those that had claimed FREE anything. Not even bad advice is FREE.

Time will reveal all. I won't be around - but I promise that if I were, I would not gloat about being correct. I would shake my head and say "Another generation has to learn the hard way". Young folks will be doing the same thing in 30 years to a new crop of bright eyed enthusiasts.

Supermarkets call it LOSS LEADERS. They exist to get people into the store. Grand Plan artists get on their hands and knees to make "converts". So please don't be shocked when the Loss Leader inducements are no longer needed and reality arrives. You will end up paying more in ADJUSTED monies per mile with electric than you ever did with petroleum. My argument has zero to do with carbon, and environmental issues and everything to do with what infrastructure is needed and what it REALLY is going to cost.

Pity, reality. It tempers extreme zealousness. You'll handle it I'm sure...