Silver, Smart Money and Electric Vehicles

[EdNug]

Spurred by a recent Zerohedge article about Erik Prince planning a big investment in the metals used in electric car batteries, I did a quick bit of research on the amount of silver involved.  Its not a central component in the battery itself but it is, obviously, a big part of all the extra circuit boards needed.  Noble Gold see this as a significant long term positive for future silver prices.  They also talk about it being increasingly used as a nano particulate in paint, but hopefully it won't all get reduced to that size and they'll be using enough to make it count.

Also worth noting that Erik Prince owns the world's largest private army and militaries around the world are becoming increasingly electronic, so there's likely going to be a significant demand for this tech in military hardware as well - the US military is the single largest consumer of oil on the planet so transferring to electric power will hold economic as well as operational advantages when the tech reaches a certain level, and it looks like its already there, or very close.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-01/blackwater-founder-erik-prince-launch-fund-electric-car-metals

http://go.noblegoldinvestments.com/blog/blogselectric-cars-silver-demand-model-t-moment-html

[sixgun]

This electric car movement is supported by a lie.

Electric cars take about 7 years to pay back their carbon footprint. The carbon dioxide driven global warming is a lie so the reasoning behind the electric car is a lie. They create lots of carbon dioxide in manufacture and the carbon dioxide is not a problem. Where does the electric come from? - do we not drive on windless days? - sorry not enough electric today you can't charge your car - we know you have been b/c you were foolish enough to have a smart meter and now we are going to fine you or jail you. The electric comes from 'fossil fuel' power stations which are the only reliable way to generate electricity - so we have 'fossil fuel' power stations to charge up electric cars and this is supposed to be 'green'. Well it is -- more carbon dioxide means more green, plants need carbon dioxide.

If people switched over to electric where would they charge up? Where are the charging points? i do not think it is viable and this is part of the reason it is being pushed b/c it is not viable and people will have to abandon their cars. Agenda 2030 aims to get people out of their cars.

Tesla is making out it is making profits now - i think there is fraud and deception in the balance sheets. i don't believe this electric car business so i think the hype around the raw materials may be falsely placed. Perhaps we will have Clif High's flying machines - in which case keep stacking silver.

[EdNug]

4 minutes ago, sixgun said:

This electric car movement is supported by a lie.

Electric cars take about 7 years to pay back their carbon footprint. The carbon dioxide driven global warming is a lie so the reasoning behind the electric car is a lie. They create lots of carbon dioxide in manufacture and the carbon dioxide is not a problem. Where does the electric come from? - do we not drive on windless days? - sorry not enough electric today you can't charge your car - we know you have been b/c you were foolish enough to have a smart meter and now we are going to fine you or jail you.

If people switched over to electric where would they charge up? Where are the charging points? i do not think it is viable and this is part of the reason it is being pushed b/c it is not viable and people will have to abandon their cars. Agenda 2030 aims to get people out of their cars.

Tesla is making out it is making profits now - it think there is fraud and deception in the balance sheets. i don't believe this electric car business so i think the hype around the raw metals may be falsely placed.

All true. And Lithium mining is horrific.

But! BMW and another company, maybe Mercedes, have just produced electric cars that thrash Teslas on the track and cost about 60% of the price. China are planning every new car to be electric by 2025, Norway as well, more will follow and if rich people can make money out of it it will happen.

[sixgun]

There is no issue with carbon dioxide and there is limitless oil. Yeah let's force people to have impractical electric cars. What a good idea.

[daz]

4 hours ago, sixgun said:

 

If people switched over to electric where would they charge up? Where are the charging points? i do not think it is viable and this is part of the reason it is being pushed b/c it is not viable and people will have to abandon their cars. Agenda 2030 aims to get people out of their cars.

It's not get people out of their cars , it's more to get poor people out of their cars. Where I live very few people have a driveway , where are people supposed to charge the fecking things ?

[MickB]

Are there any cars that can be induction charged or do they all still need a lead? It's impractical to expect the whole country to have a power lead coming out of their house which could be vandalised for the sake of charging.

Personally I wouldn't want an electric car as a trip across Europe would take ages and some planning. Getting to a service station only to find all the charging points being occupied and a queue, then once plugged in you'd have to wait for a full charge. 

Progress, my a**e.!

[motorbikez]

8 hours ago, sixgun said:

The electric comes from 'fossil fuel' power stations which are the only reliable way to generate electricity - so we have 'fossil fuel' power stations to charge up electric cars and this is supposed to be 'green'. Well it is -- more carbon dioxide means more green, plants need carbon dioxide.

If people switched over to electric where would they charge up? Where are the charging points? i do not think it is viable and this is part of the reason it is being pushed b/c it is not viable and people will have to abandon their cars. Agenda 2030 aims to get people out of their cars.

 

This supposed rush towards electric vehicles is just another ill thought out or more likely not thought out at all by western politicians to get people off the road altogether. What will happen if critical mass is ever reached for electric vehicles, the government will suddenly announce that due to severe stress on the electricity infrastructure & problems with recycling millions of huge toxic batteries we are going to increase the taxes year on year for electric vehicles.

If you think that won't happen I remember John Prescott when he was minister of transport in the 80s I think, encouraged people to switch their cars over to gas because it was better for the environment & cheaper to run, being the cynic where politicians are concerned I thought to myself what is the scam here, surprise surprise  after about a year when hundreds of thousands of people had wasted £1000+ getting their cars converted to run on gas, the labour government increased the tax on gas.

The same will happen to electric vehicles taxing them off the road. The difference is unlike gas you can't switch back to petrol.

[Pete]

In major towns and cities ( more of them and more densely populated as the population increases out of control ) the issue with cars and vans is not so much their carbon footprint in manufacture but their emissions. Toxic gases and particulates ( diesel ) with backed up roads, more shorter journeys ( i.e. colder engines ) taking snowflake children to school in the 4 x 4 Chelsea tractor etc. is much more serious to health. Add a bit of weather inversion and the population is breathing the contents of a chemistry set.
All-electric vehicles are clean so air quality will greatly improve in built-up areas.
As for charging electric vehicles at home, developers of new densely built town houses in most new estates are not providing a driveway or parking bay near property to facilitate charging.
This is scandalous but driven by profit and greed  and extremely short-sighted.
 

[PansPurse]

1 hour ago, MickB said:

Are there any cars that can be induction charged or do they all still need a lead? It's impractical to expect the whole country to have a power lead coming out of their house which could be vandalised for the sake of charging.

Personally I wouldn't want an electric car as a trip across Europe would take ages and some planning. Getting to a service station only to find all the charging points being occupied and a queue, then once plugged in you'd have to wait for a full charge. 

Progress, my a**e.!

Problem with induction charging is that it's horribly inefficient. Fine when it's a low power device like a phone or toothbrush, but the energy needed for charging a car would mean that the losses really mount up.

What's really interesting to look at is the battery technologies. Lithium-ion is basically at its limit in terms of energy density, but there's been so much R&D and manufacturing investment in it that big companies don't have much appetite for switching over to a next-gen battery technology. There's a least a dozen viable battery technology contenders, but R&D funding is limited and spread amongst a bunch of competing technologies meaning none of them are anywhere close to commercialisation.

Realistically, what we need in terms of infrastructure is things like service stations that have charging as part of the car parking facilities rather than a separate bit of the petrol station.

[KDave]

I was toying with a theory that the move towards electric is primarily to do with economics regarding the cost of portable energy (oil), but it depends how many nations get involved if that is what is really going on. We are told we are finding much less oil, the world continues to grow in population and demands more of everything that is traded and transported. Oil production will not keep up with the growing requirement to transport goods via ship, air and road, plus internal movement of people in oil driven vehicles. The only way to avoid massive inflation on the cost of everything, is to effectively ration what oil we have and what new oil we find, for the purpose of trade alone, by removing the majority of oil driven private vehicles from the picture (introduce electric vehicles). 

Oil based fuel will be used for the transportation of goods as it is now. People will have to use more expensive electric vehicles to drive around. This would result in the majority of people paying more to drive, in return for keeping other factors in cost of living at roughly the same standard (there will still be some increase in real terms). The concerns about current over crowed infrastructure, health concerns, environmental concerns, these are a distant second to the coming real drop in standard of living that would result from continued use of oil as our primary fuel source while the price goes to the moon at some point in the future on our current supply/demand curve, probably around 2040.

[MickB]

@PansPurse they use induction charging on electric buses in Milton Keynes so the technology is being used but nothing yet available for cars. I did read somewhere that people with pacemakers should avoid walking around induction charging areas but surely they could only be activated once a vehicle is over the top of the loop.

[Pete]

I had a new induction cooking hob installed in my kitchen and had to get a new consumer unit, new fuse box and heavier duty power cables from the electricity meter.
I am sure when we cook using all the "rings" the lighting in the street dims.
😀

[MickB]

13 minutes ago, Pete said:

I had a new induction cooking hob installed in my kitchen and had to get a new consumer unit, new fuse box and heavier duty power cables from the electricity meter.
I am sure when we cook using all the "rings" the lighting in the street dims.
😀

Are you tapping off your supply from your nearest lamp post? 

[Pete]

2 minutes ago, MickB said:

Are you tapping off your supply from your nearest lamp post? 

Not a chance - all LED converted street lights now.
Induction hob would take all the juice from the whole estate running on LEDs nowadays.
Would need to hook up some copper wires to the nearest overhead conductors between the grid pylons.

[greendragon]

2 hours ago, Pete said:

Not a chance - all LED converted street lights now.
Induction hob would take all the juice from the whole estate running on LEDs nowadays.
Would need to hook up some copper wires to the nearest overhead conductors between the grid pylons.

surely you could just beam the power to your cooker from the nearest tesla tower?

[CadmiumGreen]

2 hours ago, MickB said:

Are you tapping off your supply from your nearest lamp post? 

Now we know who was keeping @StackemHigh awake back in July...it was @Pete putting in his induction cooking hub!!

On 07/09/2018 at 17:50, StackemHigh said:

Grrrrr.

Someone somewhere is cutting steel with a grinder or other noisey cutting thingy!!!

Can't sleep!!!

Grrrrrrrrrrrr.

 

On 07/09/2018 at 18:26, StackemHigh said:

It's the council cutting down some street lighting. 

Hahahahahaha hahahahahaha hahahahahaha hahahahahaha hahahahahaha hahahahahaha hahahahahaha hahahahahaha 

Makes me wonder. 

 

[Martlet]

8 hours ago, KDave said:

I was toying with a theory that the move towards electric is primarily to do with economics regarding the cost of portable energy (oil), but it depends how many nations get involved if that is what is really going on. We are told we are finding much less oil, the world continues to grow in population and demands more of everything that is traded and transported. Oil production will not keep up with the growing requirement to transport goods via ship, air and road, plus internal movement of people in oil driven vehicles. The only way to avoid massive inflation on the cost of everything, is to effectively ration what oil we have and what new oil we find, for the purpose of trade alone, by removing the majority of oil driven private vehicles from the picture (introduce electric vehicles). 

Oil based fuel will be used for the transportation of goods as it is now. People will have to use more expensive electric vehicles to drive around. This would result in the majority of people paying more to drive, in return for keeping other factors in cost of living at roughly the same standard (there will still be some increase in real terms). The concerns about current over crowed infrastructure, health concerns, environmental concerns, these are a distant second to the coming real drop in standard of living that would result from continued use of oil as our primary fuel source while the price goes to the moon at some point in the future on our current supply/demand curve, probably around 2040.

Before the drive on carbon reduction this was the drive for electric vehicles, because oil was not going available or at least not cheap forever, due to diminishing reserves and geopolitical location.  Fracking has change that story, but the general plot still rolls on, we cannot realistically expect growth across developing nations and keep burning fuels as we have down. 

Electric is really good alternative for new markets, where the infrastructure can be built as they grow. Its also good for some existing markets, public transport and delivery services for example, where again suitable infrastructure can be built in bus depots and distribution centres.  Its not good for personal transportation because the charge cycle requires either long trickle charge period or fast charging which existing electrical networks couldn't cope with.  And nationally, we will have to build a few nuclear power plants to supply if we can over come that issue, as we transfer the entire energy consumption of travel from oil to alternatives (though it is more efficient having gas fired turbines than ICE). 

Battery technology is the interesting area because it not changed substantially in decades, not through want of trying, the basic chemistry I understand restricts what is possible and wont deliver the exponential increases needed.  A detailed explanation I read told the issue is not density but the getting energy in and out. As well as the current draw there a problem with how stable the electrodes remain, which breakdown, fracture and experience micro sparks as current rises.  

[KDave]

What interested me about the announcement of going all electric in the UK by 2040 was the date. Its long term planning which means likely there is something quite serious seen on the horizon that is driving the political action. There was nothing to be gained politically in terms of votes from that announcement. It is practical and ambitious. As you rightly say we have not the infrastructure and the projects we do have are costing us a fortune, I think the latest French power station is costing us 3 times the amount per unit of electricity that we pay now. We will need coal power stations to cheaply replace the units of energy being provided today by oil in everyone cars, so this is not to do with the environment, or at least not the climate change narrative part of it, imo. 

Agreed fracking has made a big difference to the picture and while the US is an energy supplier now thanks to it, I do not think the resource lasts very long as wells only produce for a handful of years, how much difference will fracking supply make by 2030? We will have to see. Conventional oil (being the most efficient unit of energy to extract) is what has driven the economy and our standards of living for decades. If we can harness other cheap forms of energy such as coal as a replacement then it makes sense. Nuclear is fine but its expensive due to the safety requirements and the economy will suffer from it, standard of living will fall for all. 

Battery technology is very interesting I don't know much about it, but generally there are many areas we are still using decades old technology so it is not unusual the lack of advancement. I remember reading that nissans electric car was expected to get 8 years out of the battery doing 100k miles, other parts of the car will be wearing out by that point so it is viable at least for commuting. The problems you mention regarding higher power draw are very interesting, does that make them useless for industrial vehicles, mining and that kind of thing? I suspect we will continue to need oil if not for the practicality of it then the economics of it. If it costs more to get out of the ground it costs more to buy at the shop.