Comments by "Digital Nomad" (@digitalnomad9985) on "Why Electric Motors Are Just... Better | Random Thursday" video.

  1. Much of what you say is true, but the motor is not the Achilles' heal of an electric car, the battery is. This problem is being overcome, but this is still a work in progress. The most efficient batteries are still expensive, so we are with electric cars (at least the best performing ones) where we were with ICE cars before the Model T: that is, they are a plaything and a status symbol for the rich, not something working class people can buy. This will probably continue till used electric cars start appearing on the market in quantity, which may happen in due course. Also, an internal combustion engine is a prime mover, it generates its own power from a "mined" resource. When you compare an ICE to an electric motor, or even a motor/battery combo, you are really comparing apples to oranges, because the power in the latter case is generated (or collected) elsewhere (unless you have solar panels on the car, and even then a practical car would be drawing grid power most of the time). On top of the inefficiencies of the prime movers (which have efficiencies only slightly better than the automotive ICE), one has inefficiencies of grid transmission, conversion, and the charge/recharge cycle. Despite herculean efforts and massive investment, government revenue, and research outlays, the "renewable" solar and wind inputs struggle to provide single digit percentages of the worlds grid power, and putting many times the load on the grid, which is what transferring a significant percentage of the automotive transportation load to electric would do, will only make these numbers worse. (This does not apply to some Scandinavian countries which are richly endowed with sites for their abundant and cheap hydroelectric power.) It is beginning to look like electric cars may be the wave of the future, but the cost/benefit analysis is more complicated than what you have presented. Thomas Edison said some thing like "We have the motors, all we need is the battery". We have had very efficient electric motors for a long time, essentially since Ediison's time. Gradual improvements have been made in motors, but the real breakthroughs made and being made are in the battery side.
    1
  2.  @joescott  If your comment was a call for government action, then it is ill advised. When ICE is practically obsolete for a purpose, it will be superseded for that purpose by market action. For the government to try to pick winners among technologies in this manner is simultaneously an extension beyond govenment's inherent sphere of competence and a dangerous and corrupting expansion of the power of an institution already bloated beyond reasonable limits.
    1
  3.  @PinataOblongata  Balderdash! The alternative to objective meanings for words in general use is the Humpty Dumpty's approach:  “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”  “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”  “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – – that’s all.” This approach is fraught with ambiguity and prone to equivocation. Vague and sloppy speaking and writing flow from and propagate indistinct and inaccurate thinking. Dictionaries are the repository for general (though not always technical [that is, particular to a specific discipline]) meaning. Dictionaries can be wrong, but the other explanation is far more often true. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engine https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/motor +Rod K's critique of the general course of this thread is true, valid, and well taken by the wise.
    1