Gold or Platinum?

My Lincoln Mkz hybrid is 9 years old. Near zero maintenance for the entire vehicle and none for the main battery. After 9 years the start up lead acid battery gave up the ghost (it's in the trunk not under the hood so it was not exposed to the environment).
I was looking at replacing it with the new Corsair plug-in hybrid ... maybe if I win the lottery.
But before I bought my Lincoln I was looking at a used Tesla. I was going to have a solar panel array, battery storage as my charging station for it. But back then roaming across the country there weren't many plug in stations. Now they're are and the cars systems can help one go from charging station to charging station (though their reliability has to improve).

But I prefer the hybrids myself. But for local driving I could easily use a full electric vehicle.

I believe Natural Gas is the largest used resource for power generation. One has to determine availability and transport logistics, scrubbers .. the total cost. Coal has long lost the economic value for power generation and many have been converted to natural gas over the years. U.S. Energy Information Administration - EIA - Independent Statistics and Analysis

Texas has been exploding in Solar and Wind as they power requirements have been growing by 20% per year lately. It takes quite a number of years to build a gas or coal power plant. Solar is very quick and simple by comparison and for high solar day states it makes sense. Texas in 2021 used 38% renewable power and it's growing.


Electricity in the U.S. - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)

 

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Coal is going to be here. I would love to run an electric powered train carry 22,000 ton of coal up a two percent grade. not going to happen. When the power company has both stacks smoking, they will be burn a train a day of coal. I am going to have to see it. There is no way an electric train can pull that grade without tons and tons of problem I can for see what happens when the train breaks into on the side of a hill or continuous wheel slip burn a hole in the rail or flattened wheels. you got be careful releasing the brakes on the side of a hill been there done that. Your butt hole puckers to that seat.

 

The free market will decide if EV's will be viable. Today, there's a ton of .gov incentives and meddling into the EV market. It will be the consumers that decide.

edited

 

We don't have a lot of coal-burning trains out there still, do we?

The way I understood it, nearly all diesel locomotives are electric anyhow (diesel engine runs a generator which runs electric motors, electric motors also provide braking power by running them as generators and sending the power to a radiator). "All we need" is a battery system with power to match a diesel engine (a very tall order), and capacity to match a great big tank of diesel fuel (not even on the horizon AFAIK).

I hope there's more research going into biodiesel (very low net carbon emission) than long-haul electric. There's going to be a big window where that saves more emissions than a push for "pure electric".

I also see some talk about hydrogen, but I'm skeptical. Liquid hydrogen takes up four times the volume of diesel for a given energy content. (On the other hand, if you can build fuel cells that work at scale, you get better thermodynamic efficiency than from burning the stuff in an internal-combustion engine, so... maybe?)

In any event, I assume (and hope) trains are here to stay. Even burning dirty stuff, on ton-miles-per-gallon they beat any other land transportation system, and it's not even close. (Barges do better, but if you think building railways over a mountain is expensive, try building a river.)

 

Thanks
I thought current modern trains were diesel-electric
Diesel Locomotives | The Railway Technical Website | PRC Rail Consulting Ltd (railway-technical.com)


I'm not a train expert.
But I've only seen coal burning locomotives as a novelty trip nowadays.

 

Yes, the platinum group metals definitely have a much more robust set of industrial uses compared to gold. I could almost imagine the gold price dropping to very low since it has little industrial use, but that will NEVER happen with the platinum group metals. And if the price does drop, the uses for the PGM will surely grow, as it is such a good catalyst. Cleaning up auto emissions is the #1 use for the catalysts now, but there will be plenty of others. That does not mean that I think it is a good metal to 'stack' though.

 

Buh bye!

 

Thanks to the mod team for being quick on the draw this afternoon. Ugh.

 

I was talking about hauling coal not burning it to run trains with an electric train.. lol