Zero carbon emissions for major airline -- Do you think this is achievable? If so, how?

Cap'n Jack said:
You are probably right, how well do you feel a "mileage tax" will go over? My guess is "not very well".
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Each state's legislators will handle it differently. I'd think some will come up with something that's fair and reasonable and others won't.

A flat EV fee, added to the yearly registration fee, would work, too. But I'd prefer it to be based on mileage because I drive significantly fewer miles than average. I'd bet that both methods will be tried. Maybe others, too.

Avoiding the road taxes, currently collected through fuel purchase, is a nice EV perk now but I don't see how anyone could reasonably expect that to continue indefinitely. Roads have to be built and maintained.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
In the big Denver cities, that commute and be 30 miles, or more than 60 because people live out beyond Silverthorne and Frisco and drive to Denver. The vast majority of those commutes can be handled with a modest EV.

...

Here's a question you should be asking- EVs pay little to no gasoline tax, which is supposed to go to roads.
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I know someone who commutes Chryenne to Denver Downtown. No thanks. But people do it.

As far as road/gas taxes go, that’s a hidden cost coming. Politicians won’t ignore that for long when EVs get to ... rough guess... 5%. Probably sooner.

It’ll be lumped on the registration as a fee around here to avoid our law that says all new taxes must be approved by vote. They’re already up to twenty or more of those “fees”.

Easier to pretend it’s not a tax than pass it.

Actually now that I think about it — with a blue supermajority at the moment here — they’ll toss it on the bonfire when enough reach lame duck status or right before a predicted swing of either chamber. It’ll be a rider on something else.

Like always. Shrug. Completely predictable.
 
denverpilot said:
I know someone who commutes Chryenne to Denver Downtown. No thanks. But people do it.

As far as road/gas taxes go, that’s a hidden cost coming. Politicians won’t ignore that for long when EVs get to ... rough guess... 5%. Probably sooner.
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It already here in Colorado -- EV and Plug-in Hybrids pay $50/year extra fee for car registration. I have a Plug-in Hybrid and even though I still buy gas and pay the gas taxes (admittedly not a lot), they still hit me with the $50.
 
ColoPilot said:
EV and Plug-in Hybrids pay $50/year extra fee for car registration.
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That seems reasonable, if not a bit low. I think most EV owners are still coming out ahead as compared to what they'd be paying in gasoline taxes for driving an average number of miles. Seems like the plug-in Hybrids should pay less than BEVs, though. They're still paying gasoline tax on a portion of the miles they drive.
 
Larry in TN said:
That seems reasonable, if not a bit low. I think most EV owners are still coming out ahead as compared to what they'd be paying in gasoline taxes for driving an average number of miles. Seems like the plug-in Hybrids should pay less than BEVs, though. They're still paying gasoline tax on a portion of the miles they drive.
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Absent a direct toll, about the most equitable method of taxing for road funding is via a mileage tax at registration. However, there will be a lot of people who neglect to save that money back, so people will throw a fit when the tax man wants $500+ worth of fees for the 15K miles they drove that year. Fuel taxes just allowed them to piecemeal it out a bit at a time. The problem with fuel taxes is that you pay more for lower fuel mileage vehicles despite not traveling a greater number of miles. I am all for moving to a mileage tax that ONLY funds roads/infrastructure.

The downside of many of the non-toll tax solutions is that many of the miles are driven in other states/locales that may never see the tax revenue if those vehicles (like semi trucks) are registered in a different state.
 
@denverpilot

Like you having been burned by tech sold to executives which fails the requirements and being told to make it work; I tend to be more cynical about a lot of this stuff.
However, when you read what Amazon is doing, they are working out the issues and rolling it out. This is not being done blindly across the fleet. Same for FedEx, in order to get the 25% improvement number for deliver using the electric carrier they had to perform testing. Look further at what is in the press release about the EV600, it is going to limited production to work with FedEx to optimize it toward the end of the year.
When you dig into the PR, all these companies are doing large pilot programs to work out issues, and they have already seen enough savings that they feel comfortable stating they will make the leap eventually. None are saying they switching 100% immediately, they all have adoption programs; implied is the adoption programs are to work out the problems (of which there will be many).

Tim
 
when you drive tons and tons of miles, small improvement in fuel economy makes sense. All the companies looking at EV fleets have the use case (lots and lots of miles). The EV for the guy driving 8000 miles per year... not so much.
 
Bob Noel said:
when you drive tons and tons of miles, small improvement in fuel economy makes sense. All the companies looking at EV fleets have the use case (lots and lots of miles). The EV for the guy driving 8000 miles per year... not so much.
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Precisely why most trailers have aerodynamic skirts and tails on them these days, since the reduction in drag (even if a penny per mile) add up to significant savings over the course of 45K miles/year. I don't think the long haul guys are going to be able to make the switch just yet due to battery tech constraints, but the local routes should be able to make it work pretty easily.
 
Bob Noel said:
when you drive tons and tons of miles, small improvement in fuel economy makes sense. All the companies looking at EV fleets have the use case (lots and lots of miles). The EV for the guy driving 8000 miles per year... not so much.
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I understand that EVs can withstand not being driven very much better than an ICE. Out of pandemic, my car get used less than 4000 miles per year and I so drive extra distance periodically to heat up the oil nicely. As in planes, running an ICE more is better.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
I understand that EVs can withstand not being driven very much better than an ICE. Out of pandemic, my car get used less than 4000 miles per year and I so drive extra distance periodically to heat up the oil nicely. As in planes, running an ICE more is better.
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From a MX perspective, yes EV does better than ICE for infrequent usage.
However the price of entry to EV makes them still cost more. Currently high mileage is where EV pencils out from a cost perspective.

Tim

Sent from my HD1907 using Tapatalk
 
SoonerAviator said:
However, there will be a lot of people who neglect to save that money back, so people will throw a fit when the tax man wants $500+ worth of fees for the 15K miles they drove that year.
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That is a problem, and why income tax withholding was added to our paychecks.

I haven't run the numbers to see what a driver currently pays in each state, or an average state, for a typical 14,000mi/yr. Colorado's $50/yr seemed low to me.

tspear said:
However the price of entry to EV makes them still cost more.
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In general, they do. The battery technology that will change that is a couple of years away.

Still, the car I will buy is a mid-range (LR AWD) Model 3 which is $48,990. In late 1999, I bought a new 2000 BMW 323i for $34,000 and some change. Adjusted for inflation, that's $53,510 today. Close, but the more capable Model 3 is a little bit less than what we paid then.
 
Larry in TN said:
That is a problem, and why income tax withholding was added to our paychecks.

I haven't run the numbers to see what a driver currently pays in each state, or an average state, for a typical 14,000mi/yr. Colorado's $50/yr seemed low to me.


In general, they do. The battery technology that will change that is a couple of years away.

Still, the car I will buy is a mid-range (LR AWD) Model 3 which is $48,990. In late 1999, I bought a new 2000 BMW 323i for $34,000 and some change. Adjusted for inflation, that's $53,510 today. Close, but the more capable Model 3 is a little bit less than what we paid then.
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I believe the national average fuel tax is something like 0.52/gallon for gasoline, but that is a bit of a loaded number as who knows what those taxes are paying for in each state. If you lump in non-road infrastructure costs into a "gas tax", it kind of skews the numbers on what it actually takes to pay for continuing road maintenance. I hate it when people manage to toss in local funding with a tax recovery method that doesn't have any relation to it (like supplementing public school budgets with cigarette taxes). I'm sure it would all even out if each state just got their road infrastructure money from vehicle odometer readings annually, and used weigh stations as the buffer to deal with recouping semi-truck traffic which causes the bulk of road wear anyway. Many truckers already bypass gas tax-heavy states by fueling up outside the state to avoid the higher costs. It would be interesting to see what the projected adjustment in tax revenue would be on a mileage basis vs gas tax basis.
 
I don’t buy the maintenance savings that’s always being touted for EVs. My Volt is 9 years old with just regular oil changes. Maybe $1K spent on engine related maintenance over that time. But, if the battery fails, and they do, you’re looking at a $8-10K Bill. No different when a Tesla batt comes for replacement.
 
Archer’s flying taxi makes splashy debut in heated market

https://www.reuters.com/business/au...makes-splashy-debut-heated-market-2021-06-11/

Archer Aviation unveiled its first electric flying taxi “Maker” in a Tesla-style debut on Thursday as an increasing number of investors and aviation companies pile into the hot but yet-to-be-approved urban air mobility space.

Interest in zero-emission aircraft that take off and land like helicopters but fly like planes is growing as aerospace companies look for new markets and face pressure to help decarbonize their industry [through] the battery-operated vehicles...
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I didn't see any mention of how they're going to decarbonize the electricity that they use to charge those batteries.

The article says they're planning to go public, if anyone has a large fortune that they'd like to turn into a small one. ;)
 
It is 100% impossible. Converting energy to motion is NEVER 100% efficient. Therein lies the problem. The inefficiency results in energy wasted which, at least partially, results in emission.

Anyone who believes in zero emissions is wishing for the impossible. We SHOULD, however, strive for it.
 
MBDiagMan said:
It is 100% impossible. Converting energy to motion is NEVER 100% efficient. Therein lies the problem. The inefficiency results in energy wasted which, at least partially, results in emission.

Anyone who believes in zero emissions is wishing for the impossible. We SHOULD, however, strive for it.
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Nothing like striving for the impossible :D

BTW American and Virgin Atlantic are buying into the hoopla over Electric Airplanes.
https://thepointsguy.com/news/american-airlines-evtol-vertical/?hutm_source=TPG%20Curated%20Daily%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2452330&utm_usr=2b3856ec77ac5a35e2cf03fad95ba772629b65a00b36a0e1d323eb2ad1a7b56b&utm_msg=bf8fe55678a749888a254f81d3ebabfb&utm_date=2021-06-11

Cheers
 
Zero emissions for a major airline, won't happen in my lifetime, my kid's lifetime (if I had kids), and my grandkids lifetime (if I had grandkids).
There is no such thing as "zero emissions". There is only "my emissions moved into someone else's backyard."
Perhaps small, compact fusion reactors will approach zero emissions, but those are decades away.
 
Domenick said:
Zero emissions for a major airline, won't happen in my lifetime, my kid's lifetime (if I had kids), and my grandkids lifetime (if I had grandkids).
There is no such thing as "zero emissions". There is only "my emissions moved into someone else's backyard."
Perhaps small, compact fusion reactors will approach zero emissions, but those are decades away.
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Why would the reactors have to be small? Couldn't industrial-scale reactors do the job, in combination with improved energy storage technology, as far as carbon emissions are concerned?
 
Interesting step in the lab-
Aluminum ion batteries that charge very quickly. Aluminum ion batteries can have 3x the power density of Li-ion batteries, but aren't there at this time. Al is more plentiful than Li, and a less reactive metal too.
- Still needs to get out of the lab and show they don't fall apart during real-world use
- Still need the infrastructure to charge them that quickly if they prove to work.
 
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