Our Electric Future - Andy Grove

http://www.american.com/archive/2008/july-august-magazine-contents/our-electric-future

by harshavr • 18 years ago

29 13 18 years ago

cmos• 18 years ago

Wow. Read this. Completely. This is exactly the kind of news I hope to pick up in this group... (the dot dot dot is indeed a reference to the watered down crap that has been posted here recently)

How refreshing is to to get a perspective from a former CEO of an enormous corporation. He writes for a large audience, beyond the easy geeks and enthusiasts.

He brought 'global warming', an issue that not everyone agrees with, out of the picture, and more into the 'free benfit' category, a necessary move for a national (i.e. midwestern) debate. He challenged the current and previous leaders of our free world as to why they have not even come close to upholding the degree of nixon. Brilliant.

We have a problem people should want to solve. This is a good step in letting people know exactly what will help their kids to be truly free.

(I'm sorry for saying the word 'crap' up above but seriously, only 1/4 of the posts here have to do with innovation, hacking, and making something from nothing. I really don't care about twitter's issue of the day. Let's do a weekly summary.)

ok. out of my system.

geekworld ignite!!

ligniteman• 18 years ago

A really excellent analysis of our current dilemna.

We gotta get off the fossil fuel bandwagon and start using things that can be produced at home. Andy explains how to do that.

Great post.

comatose_kid• 18 years ago

If HN had a 'best submission of the year' award, this article would be a contender.

What an impressive, thoughtful analysis of a huge problem.

ps - I recommend reading his bio (Swimming Across: A Memoir.).

kingkongrevenge2• 18 years ago

Electrification is critical, but this article fails to adequately explore the issue of where all this electricity will come from. North American natural gas will be in rapid depletion within 15 years, probably sooner. The high quality anthracite coal is pretty much gone. Claims of the US being the "Saudi Arabia of Coal" are unfounded and net energy from coal mining will probably start to decline within 20 years. Never mind that coal mining is extremely oil intensive. Talk of more electricity starting right now basically means nuclear, and some say the uranium situation isn't as simple as you might assume. You could also begin highly uncertain bets on solar and tidal technologies. He kind of understates the challenge.

This talk of electric cars is also a bit silly. Electrifying transport means RAIL. Don't open the issue with electric cars. Electric cars will probably only ever be good as short commuters due to the physics of battery energy storage density. That's just a small piece of the transportation challenge. Might as well just get people to drive much smaller, more efficient cars, and more mopeds and motorcycles; that's just as good a solution. There will probably never be electric trucks. There will never be electric passenger planes. As indicated above, our capability to substitute electricity watts for our current gasoline watts is not nearly as certain as he seems to assume. Rail is far more efficient and lessens this risk. The proposition of sinking massive amounts of capital into new experimental infrastructure for mass use of electric cars just as we're taking trillion dollar write-downs on gasoline and car related infrastructure is a also bit far fetched. There are no ifs or buts about rail. It's a simple, known quantity.

Anyone talking about electric cars and not rail deserves to be hit in the face with toy train.

coryrc4• 18 years ago

Electric rail is completely orthogonal to electric cars. Gasoline, used almost only in personal vehicles and light trucks, was responsible for 9 million barrels per day in 2004:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/analysis_public...

Electric cars are suitable to replace at least two-thirds of those vehicles, yielding a savings of 6 million barrels/day. I say this because the commute for 68% of people is under 30 miles round trip:

http://www.bts.gov/publications/omnistats/volume_03_issue_04...

Even if trains were the only use for diesel fuel and you converted every single one to pure-electric, that is less than 3 million barrels per day (the transportation section of the "distillates" column).

YOU can convert your car today. See http://www.evdl.org and http://www.evalbum.com for help and examples.

However, I would love to have high-speed electric trains for cross-country travel instead of flight.

EDIT-I've heard it alleged rails are not electrified because the property tax increases, see

http://www.lightrailnow.org/features/f_lrt_2006-05a.htm

kingkongrevenge2• 18 years ago

I'm questioning your premise that it's possible to substitute electricity for gasoline on the scale you're indicating. The generation isn't there. Much smaller, much slower cars used a lot less are far more plausible than huge numbers of electric cars.

binglo2• 18 years ago

Converting cars to electric is ... not optimal. Cars are built very heavy these days due to "safety concerns". They're also heavy because they're loaded with features. It's very unlikely that you can find a nice light minimalist car that you can successfully convert, but if you know of any, I'd love to hear about them.

ericb• 18 years ago

Agreed in general. 2 points about electric one pro, one con.

1 - There is always a conversion cost in energy so whatever you had, if it was oil or natural gas, had more energy you could have used before you converted it. Transmission costs are lower, so maybe that partially counters this.

2 - Electrication, if we relate it to a software design principle, is like loose coupling. You can change the underlying code as long as the output (interface) is electricity, the implementation details are hidden from the rest of the system.

binglo2• 18 years ago

Regarding battery technology, if I'm not mistaken, that's already a solved problem: Lithium-Ion batteries have great capacity and are quite light. Their only problem is "venting with flame" if you don't charge/discharge them within their limits, but electronic control can mostly eliminate that.

Now we just need a battery company to start making car-battery-sized Li-Ion's and sell them for a reasonable price. When that happens, I think you'll see some serious action.

Our Electric Future - Andy Grove

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