Automakers Wake Up to Reality on Electric Vehicles

Yeah limited range. You don't just pedal?

 

Why would I? But I have to pedal to ride that bike. It's a hybrid - you have to pedal (more or less, it's regulated via a controller) to move forward.
If I want to just pedal, I ride my traditional bike.

 

I don't mind the push towards EVs. The problem with it are those who think they can replace gasoline engines across the board. In cities, EVs make great sense. Out in the country or for larger loads, they simply don't. Push the EVs for city drivers, and let the country drivers and truck drivers use the vehicles that make the most sense for them to use.

 

I agree. And we need to crawl before we walk.

 

You do a lot of Miami to Seattle trips do you?

 

What do you think Biden when and his allies mean when they say zero emissions by 2035?

 

Almost everything NASA has was built by the private sector

 

Government is always convinced that it can manage an economy and a culture. It will never learn. I haven't seen any Americans hurried about EV's, just a hurried government.

 

Yes, many aspects of modern life reveal poor choices and planning. Making society dependent on one means of transportation, for example, does not reflect the highest human intelligence. The "one solution for all and everything" approach is always a vulnerability.
Small, light two passenger enclosed vehicles with two hundred kilometer ranges would be easy to produce, inexpensive and vastly useful. Electrically assisted bicycles also have a huge contribution to make.

 

Idk, may they know something that we don't? That humanity will die off till 2035, for example?

Hoover dam?

 

While I cannot speak to the totality of every person that opposes electric vehicles, I am a person who is skeptical of what we have been told, and do not believe we are anywhere near the point where electric vehicles are going to be the primary mode of transport in this country. I feel as if we are being sold a bill of goods both economically and from a practicality standpoint.

You own an EV and love it. That is great. Many of them are super fast and have great technology. The concept works very well as long as you are not driving a long distance on that particular day. I get it. I can completely understand how and why a person would enjoy owning one, especially now that ownership is down near 1 or 2%. It is a fabulous novelty.

My problem is with the notion that we are anywhere near 60% of vehicles being sold by 2030 being electric, with the mindset that gas engines will be mostly eliminated in the decade that follows, which is essentially what we are being told. I do not believe this for one second, for a myriad of reasons...

-While you have pointed out that you love your electric vehicle as a daily driver, that does not speak to when you need to take a long trip. Clearly you would take one of your gas vehicles. For there to be 60% sold by 2030 and more going forward, that speaks to a world where gasoline engines are no longer in existence. For that world, this mindset does not work. I could understand having one electric vehicle and one for long trips. That is not what those projections are telling us.

-In regards to long trips. It currently takes a few minutes to fill up your gas tank. Charging takes far longer. This means that stopping at a highway charging stations would have enormously long lines while each vehicle is there for 45 minutes or an hour. Even if technology shortens that time down to 20 or 30 minutes and that this powerful charge does not destroy battery life, this creates s scenario that the current set up is not anywhere close to being able to handle that sort of volume. If we say currently it takes 5 minutes, and lets project significant improvement and say they get chargin times down to a half hour (which is a big if), that means that the stations would need to be 6 times larger than they currently are to handle the same volume. We are nowhere near that being the case. On top of that, having refueling stops take over a half hour would be a nightmare on a long trip.

-In regards to electrical capacity, many parts of the country currently experience brownouts when it is hot and everyone is running their air conditioners. Just how much more of a drain on the system do you suppose it would be if every house is charging 2 vehicles every night which is an activity that draws far more electricity than an air conditioner? Our entire infrastructure would need to be rebuilt for this to happen. This infrastructure includes all of the current wiring, and it would require enromous increases in capacity via power plants. This is not taking place, yet we are supposed to believe we are on the precipice of our entire auto industry going electric.

-We are told that EV saves money because you do not have to buy gas, but does it really? It costs 10 or 15k more upfront. That buys a lot of gas. Electricity costs a fair amount as well which I will touch upon in my next stanza. The battery dies and the car is literally useless, which impacts the long term selling price of the used vehicle. At some point when that vehicle is around 150k or so, the battery will die, and with it being normally worth 5 or 6 k at that point, it will be worth zero because nobody is going to put a battery that costs tens of thousands of dollars in a vehicle that is worth 5k. With all of these factors put together, if a person believes that this is a money saving option for them, they have been sold a bill of goods. There is not a snowballs chance in hell the above turns into a money saver.

-Speaking of money, lets tie together costs with the increasing demand put upon the electrical grid. It will need to be rebuilt and expanded which costs a great deal of money. Where is this money going to come from? It will come from increased prices for consumers. You will also be probably doubling the demand for power. What happens when demand doubles?.....the price goes up, by a lot. If people out there honestly believe that EV is a cost saving measure for them I have a bridge I would love to sell you.

-Power companies are essentially monopolies in bed with the government. Giving these monopolies absolute control over our entire transportation grid is risky. They would be able to control travel by controlling pricing and even the out put if they desire. I personally do not want to give that sort of power to a single entity in any given area.

-Batteries use lithium etc which currently mainly comes from China. Even if we find it here, we do not want to mine it because it is very hazardous. Giving this sort of power to China is a bad idea. Additionally, these batteries are very large. We do not have a valid way of disposing of this toxic waste. This is not a big deal when EV accounts for 2% of auto sales. If most or all auto sales are EV, this becomes an ENORMOUS problem in a short amount of time.




Personally, because of the problems above, I fail to see why these so called experts are so convinced that EV is the future. It seems to me that Hybrid would be a much more practical long term option. I realize hybrid uses some gas, but lets be honest EV uses a fair amount of CO2 as well via the power plants. If hybrid is not the answer, then I would expect some other technology such as hydrogen cells to develop into a better option.

While I understand why you might love your current EV vehicle, it only works overall because of your other gas vehicles. I might buy an EV at some point myself. It is not that I oppose the notion of an electric vehicle, it is that I do not believe for one second that EV is on the verge coming anywhere close to replacing gas vehicles, nor do I think it would be a wise idea if we did. It would create huge problems for long trips, ultimately cost us far more per mile traveled, and it would give the power to control our travel to too few of entities.

 

Government is chasing the"new VCR", the "new big screen TV", "transistor radios", etc. all those wonderful US inventions our businesses sold off to Japan, our industries now sell off to China. If China was capitalist it might work. But they are not. China is a mercantilist.
Biden, not doing his due diligence has allowed this mentality to flourish claiming that since we are dying due to climate change they have a right to force change, laws or no laws.
That would be just dandy if the economics favored it, but it is a loser through and through, and has created an industry of subsidy farmers grifting off the taxpayers.
The lack of economic understanding is laughable.

 

Leftists and progressives don't have to deal with reality.

They just have to feel passionately enough about something that the world will obviously change to suit them.

 

NASA didn't exist at the time the hoover dam was built and all the materials were made by the private sector

 

I mean that Hoover dam was a government project. May be the materials were private.

 

If the government started making cement, they would run out of sand.

 

The fact that you had to go all the way back to a 93-year-old project as proof of their competency should tell us everything we need to know.

 

Which doesn't negate the fact that they came up with the stuff and weren't scared to death of innovation.

 

It can, you can't treat a country like a business.

 

I want to go somewhere without having to pedal I just take a car.

 

Sure, why not. I do the same sometimes. Or walk. Or ride my bikes. Or take the bus. Whichever is more convenient.

 

When I ride my bike I do it for exercise. If the bike is doing all the work it kind of defeats the purpose. There is no way I can use it for my commute it has far too limited range

 

Well, you are American. This is how it's done in (parts of) Europe.

 

Yeah I'm familiar that different places are different.

I live in Texas if you rode a bike around like this in the summer you die of heat stroke.

Everywhere can't be Amsterdam.

 

Learning some stuff about Tesla and the Cyber truck and what a boondoggle that was I think this spells the end or at least really really hard times for Tesla.