Re: Maybe Porsche should build an EV version of one of these . . .

i was going to pop this onto the end of mike focke's post about boxster/cayman sales numbers since people started talking about the transition to electric porsches.

this video is eye-opening. it is not political. it is simply the presentation of facts about today's state of mining the metals we need for producing all those batteries we'll need to meet the mandates of states and countries to require a certain percentage of new cars sold to be electric. watch it and draw your own conclusions.

[www.youtube.com]

--
MY 2000 S, Ocean Blue, Metropol Blue, Savanah Beige.
Bought June 2000 - Sold May 2010

[www.bing.com]

[www.toyota.com]

so if i understood correctly, the guy in the video was saying that the hydrogen was produced right there at the station. the electrical energy required to produce H is greater than the energy it holds.

from wikipedia: "Considering the industrial production of hydrogen, and using current best processes for water electrolysis (PEM or alkaline electrolysis) which have an effective electrical efficiency of 70–82%,[54][55][56] producing 1 kg of hydrogen (which has a specific energy of 143 MJ/kg or about 40 kWh/kg) requires 50–55 kWh of electricity."

considering the sources of electricity generation in california, it doesn't seem all that environmentally friendly to me.

source: [www.energy.ca.gov]

i am not pro-hydrocarbons nor a climate change denier. i am apolitical. i just look at the facts, not the hype.

--
MY 2000 S, Ocean Blue, Metropol Blue, Savanah Beige.
Bought June 2000 - Sold May 2010

only gone so far as noticing that huge (relatively) building where the hydrogen was being produced. Also noted the guy referred to the loud noises, etc. It also struck me that the cost of the facility would have had to be substantial & I wondered how long it would take to pay the investment down before profitability. Likely the whole operation receives both federal & state subsidies. I was also surprised @ the cost of filling the Toyota - thought it might have been less. 4.5 minutes for the fill-up I thought was reasonable.

Until you brought it up, it didn't occur to me that you might be a climate change denier or that you were being political. Wouldn't bother me if you were or if you weren't.

Presently the cost of producing Hydrogen makes it uneconomical for use in autos and normal solar power isn't cost effective producing hydrogen. One solar powered plant is in production and it utilizes computerized concentrated mirrors and solar energy to produce hydrogen which they say is cost effective. The plant is a full size plant, not just a demonstration labratory and building many more is not a question of technilogy but money.
Assuming that this is all correct, hydrogen fuel cell technology today offers well proven capability to power electric autos (many fork lift trucks of Walmart, etc. are fuel cell electric right now). One can imagine that the petrochemical companies have the ability to build plants to produce hydrogen which they should be able to store and transport to their "gas" stations that we use today to refuel our cars. Let's hope they keep offering some old petro for our antique cars.

I have always been all-in when it comes to hydrogen for transportation, but it has limitations just like most other forms of "fuel" whether liquid, gas or electric.
Right now, there are roughly 50 hydrogen dispensing "gas" stations in Southern CA which are self contained.
A 40' container is placed at a standard gas station and it contains the on-site hydrogen extraction and dispensing equipment necessary.
The problem with hydrogen is the same as electric cars: Range on a "tankful".
Compressed hydrogen gas, even at 10,000 psi still requires a lot of 'tank" space and holding it as a liquid requires extreme cold temps in the tanks which is unfeasible.
Right now, short-term (for the next 10-20 years) I believe that Porsche's e-Fuel will be the answer to keeping our older ICE cars on the roads.
The e-fuel which is powering the Porsche Motorsport Programs this year will slowly be expanded to be used as an alternative fuel at gas stations just like Flex-Fuel is today.
It won't be cheap (Porsche estimates around $7/gallon) but it'll be clean!
Any water-cooled Porsche running on e-Fuel produces as the same NET CARBON FOOTPRINT as an electric car today.

Here's an article I wrote on Porsche's plans for the future: [www.pedrosgarage.com]

Happy eFueling,
Pedro

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 312,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

---

Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2023 09:54AM by Pedro (Odessa, FL). (view changes)

Very interesting article & well written by you.

A question I have: The thing I don't understand about killing off ICE (thank you Porsche) in favor of EV is the many often overlooked costs of doing so. Mining for the minerals needed for batteries being just one, but there are many, many other processes that produce CO2 in the process of developing a car that produces no CO2. I think the net net is often overlooked, perhaps intentionally.

The question is, why didn't we just continue w/ICE vehicles & just start using this new Porsche E-Fuel to cut CO2 emissions? Seems like doing so might have resulted in equal or perhaps even better CO2 reduction benefits than converting to ICE.

JB/SE SoDak
1997 986 - Wolfi
Yankton, SD

"Wisdom is the most perfect knowledge of the most important truths in the right order of emphasis, accompanied by a total, permanent disposition to live accordingly.

-- Br. Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.

"(School is to be a factory) in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products . . .(m)anufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

-- Elwood P. Cubberley, Dean of School of Education, Stanford University, 1905

"The creatures that want to live a life of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harmless, we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who are 'specially well brought up shoot them for fun."

-- Clarence Day, This Simian World

... political.
The "Global" Green New Deal.
Happy Boxstering,
Pedro

Pedro Bonilla
1998 Boxster 986 - 312,000+ miles: [www.PedrosGarage.com]
PCA National Club Racing Scrutineer - PCA National HPDE Instructor - PCA Technical Committee (Boxster/Cayman)

---

Racecar spelled backwards is Racecar

"Racing is life. Anything before or after is just waiting" ... Steve McQueen as Michael Delaney in "LeMans"

"If you wait, all that happens is that you get older"... Mario Andretti

"Being second is to be the first of the ones who lose" ... Ayrton Senna

its absolute necessity.

JB/SE SoDak
1997 986 - Wolfi
Yankton, SD

"Wisdom is the most perfect knowledge of the most important truths in the right order of emphasis, accompanied by a total, permanent disposition to live accordingly.

-- Br. Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.

"(School is to be a factory) in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products . . .(m)anufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

-- Elwood P. Cubberley, Dean of School of Education, Stanford University, 1905

"The creatures that want to live a life of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harmless, we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who are 'specially well brought up shoot them for fun."

-- Clarence Day, This Simian World

Is it "clean"? As I understand it, the cleanliness is acheived by taking CO2 out of the air for fuel, which is later replaced after combustion. (I may be incorrect on the exact science - please correct me if I state something incorrectly.) So the plant to vehicle portion of the cycle is a net neutral. The issue is getting the energy to manufacture the e-fuel. They are theoretically using 100% renewable. If that becomes viable. Then great. But at the moment - leaving cost aside - the energy cost is unsustainable en masse. Correct?

EV conversion & elimination of ICE vehicles. And make no mistake these same people do intend to eliminate ICE vehicles as soon as they can. They simply intend for only the rich & entitled (as they determine to be entitled) to have any vehicle @ all. For the rest of those who used to frequently own more than one vehicle, the intent is to force them into public transportation, e.g. buses, taxis, rail, etc. They believe we have been too selfish & extravagant & to them, we have demonstrated we don't deserve to own & operate any privately owned vehicle.

JB/SE SoDak
1997 986 - Wolfi
Yankton, SD

"Wisdom is the most perfect knowledge of the most important truths in the right order of emphasis, accompanied by a total, permanent disposition to live accordingly.

-- Br. Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.

"(School is to be a factory) in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products . . .(m)anufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

-- Elwood P. Cubberley, Dean of School of Education, Stanford University, 1905

"The creatures that want to live a life of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harmless, we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who are 'specially well brought up shoot them for fun."

-- Clarence Day, This Simian World



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2023 03:30PM by John Brown of SE SoDak. (view changes)

Electric vehicles can be cheap! But of course the manufacturers want to get as much money out of the rich and famous as they can, so they only offer expensive versions of electric vehicles. This is simple piracy economics: build new products for the rich, then "trickle down". I can't say that this is anything other than sound business practice..

But when the East Antarctic Ice Sheet starts to move, (some evidence says that it is already) then we are looking at 250' of sea level rise. That's a whole hell of a lot of current population centers drowned. But Hey! don't worry, we'll all be dead by then. At least someone will have those great mountain drives in N.C.

[www.bing.com]

Great idea!!!

Only a fool denies science. Something needs to be done. We can all argue about what and how, but the underlying fact remains.

It is equally obvious that the world needs an "a-ha!" moment on energy. We invented the light bulb, the airplane and the space shuttle - we can do this. Necessity has always been the mother of invention. Energy will be no different.

That said, electric as we know it is not the ultimate solution without a new way to store energy. hydrogen - might be, but it is not yet. E-fuel might be, but again, it is not yet.

I submit the issue is not the raw amount of energy it takes to fuel vehicles, but the balance between the ability to store (and re-store) energy for transportable use and the cost to make it.

If we have 100% renewable sources - for instance - we can use more raw energy the create transportable energy.
So to my mind the limiting factors are: the cost and availability of 100% renewable energy, the storage vessels, and the ability to re-fuel.

All of those things are yet to be resolved. When they are - I suspect the changeover will be relatively rapid. But until then....

Nevertheless, I am not happy with the demise of cars as we knew them.

Electric as we know it is a pretty good solution. We simply can not dump more CO2 into the atmosphere. But you are right that "electricity" is not an end-all. There are coal-fired electric plants, as well as natural gas and oil fired plants. But electric seems the best option for car energy at the moment. Solar is great: a coal fired electricity plant -- not so good. The point about cars is to ask "which of the types give us the most ways to avoid catastrophe"?

BTW, the East Greenland Ice sheet is showing signs of instability. Are you ready for 250' of sea-level rise???

Meh.

1) where do we get the electric from? Currently not from renewables for the most part. Until we do that, we are only substituting one fossil fuel consumer for another.
2) where do we get the lithium from with which to make batteries? Currently China is the primary source. Problem 1. They are initiating multiple environmental catastrophes mining the suff. Problem 2. What is the political future there? Who knows/ Problem 3.
3) how do we recharge effectively? It is getting better for sure, but the infrastructure does not exist to charge the cars that will need to be charged.
4) how do we get electric cars to work effectively in cold climates? Unsure at this point, but range remains a problem.
5) where do we dispose spent batteries? No idea yet.

From your description, bet I would run into the same problems w/that conversion as w/going the other way.

Certainly wished either I lived closer to you, or you lived closer to me. I drive appx 185 miles one way to Omaha to have Wolfi serviced. I found an excellent shop in Papillion, an Omaha suburb, called Star Class Motors. Family business & have good mechanics on staff. Driving Wolfi down there this coming Monday to have front wheel bearings replaced, oil & filter change, & alignment. I think the wheel bearings went bad @ 124,000 miles because I tracked the car for 3 years when I lived in NOVA - very hard cornering, etc. My symptoms of bad bearings are grinding/groaning noises when cornering hard & a bit of very slight brake judder when braking hard. I replaced front rotors & brake pads myself last fall as well as flushed & refilled brake fluid.

JB/SE SoDak
1997 986 - Wolfi
Yankton, SD

"Wisdom is the most perfect knowledge of the most important truths in the right order of emphasis, accompanied by a total, permanent disposition to live accordingly.

-- Br. Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.

"(School is to be a factory) in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products . . .(m)anufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

-- Elwood P. Cubberley, Dean of School of Education, Stanford University, 1905

"The creatures that want to live a life of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harmless, we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who are 'specially well brought up shoot them for fun."

-- Clarence Day, This Simian World



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2023 10:15AM by John Brown of SE SoDak. (view changes)

I did end up getting new front wheel bearings. They needed replacing but turns out they were not the source of the noise problem. Now that it's warm here allowing windows to be down, it became clear groaning/crunching noise was coming from the rear of the car. First thing & most obvious were the two rear engine/transmission mounts, which were very bad. Once those were replaced, we test drove it, but noise was still there. Mechanic told me it must be the front engine mount. I replied I didn't think so because I had one of Pedro's urethane units up there & I didn't think that would go ever go bad. In preparation to go ahead & replace the mount, I asked them to contact Pedro's Garage to get me another one of Pedro's mounts, but parts guy @ Star Class told me he talked w/Pedro Jr. & nothing in stock for my '97 986. Parts guy searched & found a urethane mount on-line & ordered it w/the provision to return it if not needed (I was still saying there was no way Pedro's mount would be bad after only 60,000 miles). So new mount arrives & it's a yellow urethane insert, not the whole strut so needs to be pressed in. So, let's remove Pedro's mount to see how it looks. Guess what? It was a Porsche mount & it was totally black in pieces!

I distinctly remember ordering the mount & dealing w/Pedro personally. Deal @ that time was Pedro was mixing up his own urethane & pouring into the center of the metal mount frame; Pedro asked buyers to send back the old strut core. When I received Pedro's mount, I opened the box & checked it out. Correct me if I'm wrong, Pedro, but the urethane had a whiteish, translucent appearance, & definitely wasn't black. Well, to my surprise, the remaining shredded mount pieces that had been the front mount were soft, black rubber, i.e. the Porsche mount, not Pedro's.

I had Porsche of Arlington, VA install that mount & they told me they did & I paid them to do it. Without saying anything to me, they must have tossed Pedro's mount & either left my old one in or they installed a new Porsche mount. My theory is the parts manager must have told my tech his shop installs only Porsche parts. I will give them the benefit of the doubt that they replaced my front mount, but w/one of theirs, not Pedro's.

Story ends well & the drive home from Omaha on I-29 N was a dream.

Ever hear of this happening before, Pedro?

JB/SE SoDak
1997 986 - Wolfi
Yankton, SD

"Wisdom is the most perfect knowledge of the most important truths in the right order of emphasis, accompanied by a total, permanent disposition to live accordingly.

-- Br. Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.

"(School is to be a factory) in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products . . .(m)anufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

-- Elwood P. Cubberley, Dean of School of Education, Stanford University, 1905

"The creatures that want to live a life of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harmless, we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who are 'specially well brought up shoot them for fun."

-- Clarence Day, This Simian World

smart for him to have done so if he did, but still a dirty deed, right? I totally trust Pedro & his products.

JB/SE SoDak
1997 986 - Wolfi
Yankton, SD

"Wisdom is the most perfect knowledge of the most important truths in the right order of emphasis, accompanied by a total, permanent disposition to live accordingly.

-- Br. Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.

"(School is to be a factory) in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products . . .(m)anufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

-- Elwood P. Cubberley, Dean of School of Education, Stanford University, 1905

"The creatures that want to live a life of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harmless, we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who are 'specially well brought up shoot them for fun."

-- Clarence Day, This Simian World

These are good questions. Here are my responses.

1) where do we get the electric from?

The benefit of having cars run on electricity is that we can change and adapt where we get energy from. If a power plant builds a wind or solar farm, they can supplement (and eventually replace) their fossil fuel burning with that and the cars just get the benefit. I personally think we should use nuclear power to generate electricity but that's a whole other debate.

2) where do we get the lithium from with which to make batteries?

Australia and Chile, primarily

They are initiating multiple environmental catastrophes mining the suff

I'm not sure what you're referring to.

What is the political future there?

Good question. It depends largely on how long it takes the politicians to get their hands in these new pockets.

3) how do we recharge effectively? It is getting better for sure, but the infrastructure does not exist to charge the cars that will need to be charged.

People who don't live in urban areas plug in at home and start every day with a 4-500 mile range. Urban dwellers have much more modest needs. New cars these days can charge very fast and the pubic charging infrastructure is getting bigger and better. It's not a solved problem but there are no major blockers I see here.

4) how do we get electric cars to work effectively in cold climates? Unsure at this point, but range remains a problem.

Agreed, still TBD. I do contend that most people rarely need even half the range of their EV but still...

5) where do we dispose spent batteries?

We already have the tech to recycle 100% of the minerals.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/11/2023 09:14AM by Boxsterra. (view changes)

I have been quite concerned that this thread is not about Boxsters, but about other (i.e. political) issues. My take is that fossil fuels have to go - they are a huge and avoidable part of our problem. The concerns about alternatives should not be dismissed, however. And one of the big issues might be lithium mining. It is not very environmentally friendly, should we say. But the research s finding alternatives to lithium, and there will be lots of opportunity for replacing gas tanks.

The Porsche part of the story is that Porsche seems very committed to environmentally friendly motorsport.

I have a Chevy Volt that gets 95% of our driving done on electricity, (much of it from our rooftop solar) but I also have my '05 987 that is purring along at 125,00 mi. I had to take it today to the feed store to pick up 3 bags of horse feed: 2 in the frunk, 1 in the trunk.

Cheers

but I'm talking about science, not politics

Sorry for the late reply... I did think that your post was well thought out and done.

Not at this time of the evening...

I misread your comment and thought you said you didn't think it was well thought out. My error. Carry on.

Quote
TheFarmer
Electric as we know it is a pretty good solution. We simply can not dump more CO2 into the atmosphere.

too bad the video is blocked for you. can't understand why but it may be worth it to find a way to see it. use a VPN perhas?

the point of the video not about electricity. it's about producing the batteries that we need to meet mandates.

yes, we can't continue dumping CO2 into the atmosphere but do you realize how much CO2 is produced when they manufacture all those batteries for a big BEV??

--
MY 2000 S, Ocean Blue, Metropol Blue, Savanah Beige.
Bought June 2000 - Sold May 2010

the point of the video is not that there is a problem with electric cars per se. the speaker simply presents the problems of producing the batteries needed to meet tomorrow's mandate of zero emission cars. one of the more interesting points that this speaker brought up was the tonnage of CO2 emitted for the production of a large battery pack (100kWh?) compared to a diesel pickup truck. that deficit is so great that the BEV isn't more green until it has driven 100k km. When i see a car with a "zero emissions" sticker, it really gets me because they ignore how much CO2 was emitted to manufacture the car.

when one talks about "e-fuels" like what porsche is developing, one must remember that there are irrefutable and immutable laws of physics. one of those laws is that energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed. Plus any transformation of energy is inherently inefficient so it takes more energy to transform energy from one state to another than the resulting energy will have. e.g. it's takes more energy to make a kilogram of hydrogen than a kilogram of hydrogen contains.

that has been the beauty of petroleum for the last century; just poke a hole in the earth and liquid energy comes oozing out. sure, we have to refine it but gasoline is so energy dense and transportable that it is nearly impossible to reproduce.

we could change lead into gold but it would cost more than gold. same thing with so-called e-fuels. $7/gallon? i can't see it being that cheap.

hydrogen is energy intensive to produce and it is difficult to transport (incl in your car) AND it is not very energy dense even in its densest form, liquid, which requires a heavy structure to hold it. not really suited to mobile applications.

--
MY 2000 S, Ocean Blue, Metropol Blue, Savanah Beige.
Bought June 2000 - Sold May 2010

[www.wind-watch.org]

[stopthesethings.com].

We here on the receiving end do hear about it, so thought I would share a bit of the nasty side of galaxy salvation.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2023 09:10AM by John Brown of SE SoDak. (view changes)

[www.ispot.tv]

I believe about a mile or so after the advert ends, there's a cool unicorn crossing for the kids to enjoy.

JB/SE SoDak
1997 986 - Wolfi
Yankton, SD

"Wisdom is the most perfect knowledge of the most important truths in the right order of emphasis, accompanied by a total, permanent disposition to live accordingly.

-- Br. Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.

"(School is to be a factory) in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products . . .(m)anufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

-- Elwood P. Cubberley, Dean of School of Education, Stanford University, 1905

"The creatures that want to live a life of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harmless, we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who are 'specially well brought up shoot them for fun."

-- Clarence Day, This Simian World

by our world leaders. Take from these what one will (& it is not all bad @ all), but one conclusion I reach is individually owned automobiles, & the freedom to go where we want, when we want, & w/o anyone necessarily knowing exactly where we are @ any time, is intended to be far less than today.

[www.dw.com]

[www.wsj.com]

JB/SE SoDak
1997 986 - Wolfi
Yankton, SD

"Wisdom is the most perfect knowledge of the most important truths in the right order of emphasis, accompanied by a total, permanent disposition to live accordingly.

-- Br. Francis Maluf, M.I.C.M.

"(School is to be a factory) in which raw products, children, are to be shaped and formed into finished products . . .(m)anufactured like nails, and the specifications for manufacturing will come from government and industry."

-- Elwood P. Cubberley, Dean of School of Education, Stanford University, 1905

"The creatures that want to live a life of their own, we call wild. If wild, then no matter how harmless, we treat them as outlaws, and those of us who are 'specially well brought up shoot them for fun."

-- Clarence Day, This Simian World

Many of the numbers cited in the presentation are just plain wrong. The amount of CO₂ required to produce a battery pack is off by a factor of 30x. The amount of mining required is off by a factor of 50x.

All of this is a debate we should be having for sure but the realities aren't as bleak as he makes out to be.

I've seen contradicting evidence on CO2.it convinced and at my age,74, I'm not giving up my has powered
vehicles.nothing against EVs but recycling the batteries is a future nightmare.