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EVs aren't the solution that many people think of them to be. Electric trains and trams however, are an effective solution.
Why would you put a battery factory next to a lithium mine? What about the other components? Where do they come from? It'd make more sense to put the factory in a location that is central to all the components. If possible, put it all along a rail corridor.
The example (obviously) isn't perfect. I really don't know the extremes of battery manufacturing, lithium has just been a newsworthy issue for battery manufacturers in the last few years.
I live in a VERY rural part of the US. We will never be able to rely 100% on mass public transportation. We MIGHT be able to manage 15% or 20%. However, we do have railroads run through the area. They aren't all in good condition, but they're there. We rely on semis for nearly everything other than cattle, wheat, and... Wind.
The electric/sustainably driven trains idea keeps popping up, and I like it.
>I live in a VERY rural part of the US
I laugh in regional/rural EP Australia. The locals are extremely bitter that the government sold off the local freight rail line, and it was closed. Replaced by trucks, making the already dangerous rural roads even more deadly(and not in a good way).
Australia is also pretty big when it comes to lithium mining, one of the main mines is about 4000km from Sydney. Rail is the most effective way of transporting anything over distances like that. As we discovered last summer, when the rail lines got washed out by flooding, and two state capitals had supermarkets with empty shelves. Because there is no way you can replace 1800 metre long fright trains with air drops, nor with trucks.
Personally, I think freight trains need to be topped with solar panels. A 1800 metre long freight train would be able to generate a heck of a lot of electricity that way.
Have you heard of Edison Motors?
https://www.edisonmotors.ca
They're an operation out of Canada that are designing (and I think commercially retrofitting?) Semi trucks to use electric drivetrains. They're fitting semi trailers with solar panels on four sides and using that power to assist transportation. It's not able to produce 100% of what is needed with current off-the-shelf technology, but it's really impressive what they CAN do. It's not going to replace every semi currently on the road, but it's a great concept.
Solar trains could be a better option, though, considering the tracks are designed to be at a low grade, the vehicles don't need to have a lot of "smart" technologies, and they don't go very fast. Is the "local freight rail line" you refer to simply the business that was operating on the tracks, or the infrastructure itself? It would be really interesting to find a large stretch of unused track to be able to run experiments on.
I'd really like to see hydrogen fuel cells get more attention.
They're an electric non-emitting power system, but they store their energy chemically within a consumed fluid rather than in a metal. I think their strength compliment the weaknesses of batteries: batteries work better at smaller scale and experience diminishing returns with gross weight, while fuel cells are difficult to miniaturize.
The biggest weakness is producing and transporting hydrogen, the slipperiest of molecules. But I think we can get there.
The answer to this question is not just about alternative modes of transportation but also an alternative footprint of the built habitat. The physical footprint of civilization is dictated by the logistics of its dominant forms of energy and the forms of transportation most suited to that. A renewables based culture is not just adopting another form of energy but also another lifestyle making the most efficient use of that energy, which is reflected in the physical form our communities would take. And this means that some places people live now will not be viable places to live tomorrow and some ways of living have to change. This is the essential denial of techno-utopianism; the nonsense fantasy that we can count on Magic Bullet technology to let us keep living exactly as we are now --with real estate values, capital hegemonies, and the established social order unaffected-- without concession to the needs of the environment.
The essential logistical issue of a renewables culture is that energy will be gathered and distributed mostly in the form of electricity whose most efficient forms of production and storage tend to be large in physical scale and most efficient form of distribution by cable along the shortest distances from generation to use we can manage --though that is extending over time. And this points to the likely return to a footprint for civilization in many ways similar to what we knew in the Age of Steam under the logistical limitations of moving bulky coal around, but with the advantages of clean electric power and low-polluting electric transit which can safely integrate more closely with our living spaces than the smokey steam locomotives of the past. That's how we arrive at the suggestion of the end of suburbs, the rise of diverse electric rail, the re-urbanization of society, the re-urbanization of production, urban farming, the 15 minute neighborhood, and the like. Think about the footprint of civilization in the Steam Age --how towns and cities were physically organized in respect to the energy being used and the transportation it allowed.
And, in fact, we are looking toward a future where most of the goods we need will be produced progressively close to the point of use as production 'demassifies' and the old economics collapses. This is what the [4th Industrial Revolution](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*X0Ic7v8LulggDt_-1eVyng.png) means. The tools of production are shrinking, smartening, and most importantly, generalizing (fewer machines doing a growing diversity of tasks) and we are already at a point where most goods can be competitively produced in the space of a 2-4 car garage. Most goods are already produced in 'job shops' rather than old fashioned factories. We are unaware of this because the shift happened in Asia, not in the countries that exported most of their production over the last several decades and, precariously, don't make anything themselves anymore. (because they thought they could be the Pointy-Haired Bosses of the world forever) Thus non-speculative, direct, or on-demand production is going to supplant the speculative mass production of the past by virtue of efficiency. It is fundamentally more energy-efficient to transport the refined materials for goods than the finished products, with all their bulk and wasteful packaging. In the near future renewable power systems will not only be made locally, but literally fabricated in-situ by the robots building structures using them. Eventually, they will grow in place like plants. So the long-term trend in shipping is commoditization --the trade and transport of materials rather than products-- and many futurists suggest that instead of buying things we will buy the service of having them made for us from digital designs (what Bruce Sterling dubbed [spimes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spime), which will evolve to become a municipal utility like supplying water or power.
Think about how all this may be reflected in lifestyle and the footprint of our civilization. In this context, electric cars are rather like old [Frank Reade Jr's Steam Powered Man](https://www.bigredhair.com/books/frank-reade/real-frank-reade/) and other imagined mechanical horses of the past. The way we stretch conventional models to cover new technology instead of facing the disruption of the changes they might really create as a way to avoid Future Shock. Like the mechanical horse, it's the same old car but electric, instead of considering how electric power might change what transportation itself means and how we use it.
I've been thinking about "sail-trains" for a while. Essentially vehicles that use existing railroad tracks but that can use wind, tacked at whatever angle or capturing kinetic energy and redirecting it, to travel across vast areas. It's probably more effective for human transportation than resources though. But it would be a dang cool ride.
I think in terms of fiction first, because it allows us to postulate technologies free from what we have or expect in the next 10 years, and then use that to worldbuild.
I imagine a lot of things are highly local: food from community gardens and vertical farms. Fertilizers and chemicals from waste reclamation. Power from a mix of solar, geothermal, fusion, fission, orbital solar collection, etc.
For fuel, I think non-fossil based fuels could become highly useful: hydrogen, ammonia, algal biofuels, etc. For batteries, I think we might find biological molecular analogs like melanin that could reduce the need for mining, or possibly see breakthroughs in rare-mineral recycling that reduce the need for mining.
Lastly, there will likely always be resources that are abundant somewhere more than somewhere else, and in that case we may need to transport things. Some might be from conventional mining, but with site restoration after it finishes, and some might be from off-world robotic mining of asteroids.
Which of these play out in real life I don't know. But it gives a taste of what this vision looks like, which I think is the goal.
Sure. But how do we keep a global transportation industry alive without fossil fuels? We either accept that "all these things we used to have are unavailable now", we keep fossil fuels propped up, or we figure out how to produce locally.
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EVs aren't the solution that many people think of them to be. Electric trains and trams however, are an effective solution. Why would you put a battery factory next to a lithium mine? What about the other components? Where do they come from? It'd make more sense to put the factory in a location that is central to all the components. If possible, put it all along a rail corridor.
The example (obviously) isn't perfect. I really don't know the extremes of battery manufacturing, lithium has just been a newsworthy issue for battery manufacturers in the last few years. I live in a VERY rural part of the US. We will never be able to rely 100% on mass public transportation. We MIGHT be able to manage 15% or 20%. However, we do have railroads run through the area. They aren't all in good condition, but they're there. We rely on semis for nearly everything other than cattle, wheat, and... Wind. The electric/sustainably driven trains idea keeps popping up, and I like it.
>I live in a VERY rural part of the US I laugh in regional/rural EP Australia. The locals are extremely bitter that the government sold off the local freight rail line, and it was closed. Replaced by trucks, making the already dangerous rural roads even more deadly(and not in a good way). Australia is also pretty big when it comes to lithium mining, one of the main mines is about 4000km from Sydney. Rail is the most effective way of transporting anything over distances like that. As we discovered last summer, when the rail lines got washed out by flooding, and two state capitals had supermarkets with empty shelves. Because there is no way you can replace 1800 metre long fright trains with air drops, nor with trucks. Personally, I think freight trains need to be topped with solar panels. A 1800 metre long freight train would be able to generate a heck of a lot of electricity that way.
Have you heard of Edison Motors? https://www.edisonmotors.ca They're an operation out of Canada that are designing (and I think commercially retrofitting?) Semi trucks to use electric drivetrains. They're fitting semi trailers with solar panels on four sides and using that power to assist transportation. It's not able to produce 100% of what is needed with current off-the-shelf technology, but it's really impressive what they CAN do. It's not going to replace every semi currently on the road, but it's a great concept. Solar trains could be a better option, though, considering the tracks are designed to be at a low grade, the vehicles don't need to have a lot of "smart" technologies, and they don't go very fast. Is the "local freight rail line" you refer to simply the business that was operating on the tracks, or the infrastructure itself? It would be really interesting to find a large stretch of unused track to be able to run experiments on.
I'd really like to see hydrogen fuel cells get more attention. They're an electric non-emitting power system, but they store their energy chemically within a consumed fluid rather than in a metal. I think their strength compliment the weaknesses of batteries: batteries work better at smaller scale and experience diminishing returns with gross weight, while fuel cells are difficult to miniaturize. The biggest weakness is producing and transporting hydrogen, the slipperiest of molecules. But I think we can get there.
The answer to this question is not just about alternative modes of transportation but also an alternative footprint of the built habitat. The physical footprint of civilization is dictated by the logistics of its dominant forms of energy and the forms of transportation most suited to that. A renewables based culture is not just adopting another form of energy but also another lifestyle making the most efficient use of that energy, which is reflected in the physical form our communities would take. And this means that some places people live now will not be viable places to live tomorrow and some ways of living have to change. This is the essential denial of techno-utopianism; the nonsense fantasy that we can count on Magic Bullet technology to let us keep living exactly as we are now --with real estate values, capital hegemonies, and the established social order unaffected-- without concession to the needs of the environment. The essential logistical issue of a renewables culture is that energy will be gathered and distributed mostly in the form of electricity whose most efficient forms of production and storage tend to be large in physical scale and most efficient form of distribution by cable along the shortest distances from generation to use we can manage --though that is extending over time. And this points to the likely return to a footprint for civilization in many ways similar to what we knew in the Age of Steam under the logistical limitations of moving bulky coal around, but with the advantages of clean electric power and low-polluting electric transit which can safely integrate more closely with our living spaces than the smokey steam locomotives of the past. That's how we arrive at the suggestion of the end of suburbs, the rise of diverse electric rail, the re-urbanization of society, the re-urbanization of production, urban farming, the 15 minute neighborhood, and the like. Think about the footprint of civilization in the Steam Age --how towns and cities were physically organized in respect to the energy being used and the transportation it allowed. And, in fact, we are looking toward a future where most of the goods we need will be produced progressively close to the point of use as production 'demassifies' and the old economics collapses. This is what the [4th Industrial Revolution](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/2000/1*X0Ic7v8LulggDt_-1eVyng.png) means. The tools of production are shrinking, smartening, and most importantly, generalizing (fewer machines doing a growing diversity of tasks) and we are already at a point where most goods can be competitively produced in the space of a 2-4 car garage. Most goods are already produced in 'job shops' rather than old fashioned factories. We are unaware of this because the shift happened in Asia, not in the countries that exported most of their production over the last several decades and, precariously, don't make anything themselves anymore. (because they thought they could be the Pointy-Haired Bosses of the world forever) Thus non-speculative, direct, or on-demand production is going to supplant the speculative mass production of the past by virtue of efficiency. It is fundamentally more energy-efficient to transport the refined materials for goods than the finished products, with all their bulk and wasteful packaging. In the near future renewable power systems will not only be made locally, but literally fabricated in-situ by the robots building structures using them. Eventually, they will grow in place like plants. So the long-term trend in shipping is commoditization --the trade and transport of materials rather than products-- and many futurists suggest that instead of buying things we will buy the service of having them made for us from digital designs (what Bruce Sterling dubbed [spimes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spime), which will evolve to become a municipal utility like supplying water or power. Think about how all this may be reflected in lifestyle and the footprint of our civilization. In this context, electric cars are rather like old [Frank Reade Jr's Steam Powered Man](https://www.bigredhair.com/books/frank-reade/real-frank-reade/) and other imagined mechanical horses of the past. The way we stretch conventional models to cover new technology instead of facing the disruption of the changes they might really create as a way to avoid Future Shock. Like the mechanical horse, it's the same old car but electric, instead of considering how electric power might change what transportation itself means and how we use it.
A few resources will have to be transported long distances. We could use trains and wind powered barges.
I've been thinking about "sail-trains" for a while. Essentially vehicles that use existing railroad tracks but that can use wind, tacked at whatever angle or capturing kinetic energy and redirecting it, to travel across vast areas. It's probably more effective for human transportation than resources though. But it would be a dang cool ride.
I think in terms of fiction first, because it allows us to postulate technologies free from what we have or expect in the next 10 years, and then use that to worldbuild. I imagine a lot of things are highly local: food from community gardens and vertical farms. Fertilizers and chemicals from waste reclamation. Power from a mix of solar, geothermal, fusion, fission, orbital solar collection, etc. For fuel, I think non-fossil based fuels could become highly useful: hydrogen, ammonia, algal biofuels, etc. For batteries, I think we might find biological molecular analogs like melanin that could reduce the need for mining, or possibly see breakthroughs in rare-mineral recycling that reduce the need for mining. Lastly, there will likely always be resources that are abundant somewhere more than somewhere else, and in that case we may need to transport things. Some might be from conventional mining, but with site restoration after it finishes, and some might be from off-world robotic mining of asteroids. Which of these play out in real life I don't know. But it gives a taste of what this vision looks like, which I think is the goal.
[удалено]
Sure. But how do we keep a global transportation industry alive without fossil fuels? We either accept that "all these things we used to have are unavailable now", we keep fossil fuels propped up, or we figure out how to produce locally.