914 Electric Conversion, 914 electric conversion Options

[AmblerEV]

Ambler EV is going to officially unveil our full 914 electric conversion at our grand opening June 5, 207 & 211 South Main Street, Ambler PA. For those of you in the Philadelphia area, stop by and see the future. For those of you outside the Philadelphia area, follow our page on Facebook to see more teasers as the day get closer www.facebook.com/Amblerev. For those of you attempting this yourself, I am happy to talk end specs but questions about components used or design will not be answered (EV West is your source for that). If you are interested in buying a full electric 914 (or converting your 914 roller) so that it can handle level 2 charging, has a range over 200 miles, and will no longer contain any vacuum or 40 year old EFI electronics, stop by or email me at sam@amblerev.com.

[Rand]

It's all arguments.
I have no doubt electric will become more of the thing.
But no way you'll take it away from the fuel burners.
Remember, the "clean" fuel still comes from dirty sources.

[wonkipop]

It's all arguments.
I have no doubt electric will become more of the thing.
But no way you'll take it away from the fuel burners.
Remember, the "clean" fuel still comes from dirty sources.

that certainly was the case here with coal power stations.
i did the maths on it 10 years ago and the electric car would result in significantly higher C02 emissions.

but the generating infrastructure is being very rapidly pensioned off, at a rate that surprises me now. and aus has a reputation as having a very dirty electricity production industry. within 10 years that will probably be a had a reputation in the past tense.

there are now so many roof top pv panels installed throughout the country we are generating a surplus of electricity during the daytime that has become problematic.

the next phase already underway is the installation of large scale battery farms.
these are predicted to provide power at night that has been stored from surplus day time electricity. we have to wait and see.

things are moving fast at the big end of things here - much faster than i expected.

aus is lucky though, it has a lot of available sunshine to produce power.
but we have a widely dispersed population over large scale areas.
the travel range of electric cars at present remains a problem.
i guess it will be overcome.

very recently the state govt. here introduced a road mileage tax to be applied to all electric cars as part of registration. traditionally road tax has been levied via sale of petrol as a very fair form of user pays. the road tax pays for new highways and upkeep. i was surprised by the howls from the electric car lobby. there was a lot of sanctimonious guff about being clean meant you should get a break. a sign that the biggest problem will be keeping all the arguments scientific and rational rather than moral. awful lot of do gooder stuff getting in the way of the facts down here sometimes.

[bbrock]

It's all arguments.
I have no doubt electric will become more of the thing.
But no way you'll take it away from the fuel burners.
Remember, the "clean" fuel still comes from dirty sources.

that certainly was the case here with coal power stations.
i did the maths on it 10 years ago and the electric car would result in significantly higher C02 emissions.

In 2015 the Union of Concerned Scientists released a study on cradle to grave emissions and found on average EVs had less than half the carbon emissions compared with comparable ICE vehicles. True that reductions were marginal for coal-based electricity, but they weren't higher. https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/...full-report.pdf
Of course if we'd stop pretending that nuclear is the boogie man that it isn't, we could get out of this mess a lot faster.

[wonkipop]

It's all arguments.
I have no doubt electric will become more of the thing.
But no way you'll take it away from the fuel burners.
Remember, the "clean" fuel still comes from dirty sources.

that certainly was the case here with coal power stations.
i did the maths on it 10 years ago and the electric car would result in significantly higher C02 emissions.

In 2015 the Union of Concerned Scientists released a study on cradle to grave emissions and found on average EVs had less than half the carbon emissions compared with comparable ICE vehicles. True that reductions were marginal for coal-based electricity, but they weren't higher. https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/...full-report.pdf
Of course if we'd stop pretending that nuclear is the boogie man that it isn't, we could get out of this mess a lot faster.

yes, now you are talking my stuff, cradle to grave.
i've been doing it in my line of work for 20 years.
i was quite serious about an electric car 15 years ago and stayed on the problem for about 5 years (i'd still like to pick up an insight if i could find one even though its not full electric).
i do it with my buildings.
run the maths.
inclusive of the imbedded energy costs of manufacture etc.
we have a brown coal electrical generation industry in victoria.
its about as bad as you can get. i was surprised i would be a worse polluter.
so i pulled up on it then.
C02 tonnage per megawatt hours etc.
black coal is a lot cleaner than brown.
i learned something 15 years ago i was a bit shocked by.
aussies are so up themselves about how good they are, but really......?
i stopped bringing it up at dinner parties. upset the natives.

once you move into the electricity coming from somewhere else the whole picture really changes. i'd include nukeleah in that. its doable. without the primitive teapot reactor tech dating back to the 50s.

what i have noted is despite the prospect of electric cars something else is going on in australian cities which is the demonisation of cars per se. by a quadrant of the political spectrum. and its short sighted. as covid has suddenly demonstrated.
the catastrophic thinking is around the blindness that electric cars need car spaces to charge in.
developers are being incentivised to delete car parking spaces in buildings.
that is really poor thinking?
its very clear that we will need quite an infrastructure for parking electric cars in where they can be charged over suitable time periods. that ain't going to happen in curb side car parking spaces. not secure. i know there is talk of induction charging but boy is that expensive to lay down in the streets, so i don't see that happening.

what worries me is not electric cars, but the general demonisation of cars.
don't know if this is happening in the USA, but its happening here.
and then all of a sudden covid comes along and not a single person wants to ride in trams or trains anymore and they are all out in cars.
the price of second hand cars has gone through the roof in aus.

and i'm not even going to go into the idea of demonizing the idea of the car driver,
ie self driving cars. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/barf.gif)

messy times.