Talk-Polywell.org

People who read my posts know that I am PRO electric vehicles, now. But I wonder what the employment impact might be during the conversion from ICE to EV.

Does anyone have a good basis to estimate the labor content of the automobile internal combustion engine manufacture, compared to the electric motor that replaces it? And does anyone care to speculate about the labor saved (jobs lost) in oil changes and engine/transmission repair bills when cars are all electric?

Since the Electric vs ICE only covers the power train, all the labor associated with the frame and interior environment will stay the same.


I doubt there will be a huge decrease in labor costs for vehicles.

Aero, are you considering that maybe we should pass on electric cars, or any new technology, if building and supporting them ends up taking less labor, and thus supports fewer jobs?

hanelyp - Not at all - I see the potential to save $400 million per day in oil import costs. I'm just trying to get an idea of what the cost to the U.S. will be to make that savings. Of course, if all of our electric cars are imported, there could result in a very small savings if at all. And if our conversion to electric cars costs the permanent loss of 2 or 3 million jobs in the U.S., then perhaps those jobs need to be replaced in order that the savings be fruitful.

But, by eliminating the oil import costs, we still achieve energy security to a large degree. Others will say, "At what cost energy security?," and that answer is what I'm driving at. It is a technical question, I leave the moral and ethical questions to others more attune to those issues.

The hybrid is probably the only viable transition vehicle for now. Esp. the plug in hybrid.

All electrics are probably only for local transport (fleets, individual owners) until high speed charging stations are more widespread.

MSimon wrote: until high speed charging stations are more widespread.

Right, when Polywells are making giga watts in.... say the year, 2050.

And we have new batteries, new grids, new residential electrical services.

But not next year.

or if EESTOR works

Jeff Peachman wrote:or if EESTOR works

Very soon now.

There is still the charging station problem. The best near term possibility is for the EESTOR to be used in a plug in hybrid or possibly in industrial forklifts.

The all electric vehicle even with long range is limited by charging station availability and the price of electricity.

Aero wrote:hanelyp - Not at all - I see the potential to save $400 million per day in oil import costs. I'm just trying to get an idea of what the cost to the U.S. will be to make that savings.

I don't see a reduction in labor to produce a product as a loss to the economy. I see it as freeing of labor resources to produce more goods and services, thus raising the overall objective standard of living.

hanelyp wrote:I don't see a reduction in labor to produce a product as a loss to the economy. I see it as freeing of labor resources to produce more goods and services, thus raising the overall objective standard of living.

It's very hard to convince people of this.

The economy of Wales was for years built on work in the Coal Mines. Generations of Welshmen worked in the pits, with very strong communities around them.

When cheaper coal from elsewhere in the world undermined the economic viability of the pits, Miners fought tooth and nail for twenty years to keep them open.

Now the mines have closed and, paradoxically, the Welsh are economically better off than before. It turns out that they're much better at attracting inward investment than the rest of the UK. The pit communities are smaller but still there - they've become a tourist attraction.

The jobs they clung to so grimly were actually holding them back...

MSimon wrote:

Jeff Peachman wrote:or if EESTOR works

Very soon now.

Missing their deadlines (again) makes me think EEStor is done.

scareduck wrote:

MSimon wrote:

Jeff Peachman wrote:or if EESTOR works

Very soon now.

Missing their deadlines (again) makes me think EEStor is done.

I haven't heard any recent news. Care to elaborate? A link maybe?

http://earth2tech.com/2008/12/26/eestor ... s-in-2008/