I know I’ve discussed this before, but here are words from an expert from Toyota…
Toyota’s head of energy and environmental research Robert Wimmer testified before the Senate this week, and said: “If we are to make dramatic progress in electrification, it will require overcoming tremendous challenges, including refueling infrastructure, battery availability, consumer acceptance, and affordability.”
Full article, HERE.
The 2017 study I’ve reference before says-
Now the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) released a new study to try to better understand the needed charging infrastructure to support a larger fleet of electric cars.
They estimate that “approximately 8,500 strategically located fast-charge stations, with an average of three plugs each, are needed to provide a minimum level of national coverage for 7 million electric vehicles”.
But there is a ‘small’ problem here…
Combined number of vehicles in the USA including trucks, cars, semis, other is estimated to be around 250 MILLION vehicles. That would require over 300,000 charging stations!
Sigh…
And perhaps we should create the generation capacity to power all the new electric vehicles while we’re at it? There’s a whole bunch of laid off coal miners in WV these days.
And where exactly are the raw materials going to come from to create 250 million carsized batteries? And the metal to make 250 million electric motors of 80-XXX horsepower? And what exactly is going to be used in plastics and other products instead of oil? Hope you like living in the dark. I suggest re-watching Soylent Green and watch Edward G. Robinson on his “power grid” charging up the batteries.
The only logical conclusion we can draw at this point is that our overlords want us driving less, with fewer vehicles on the road.
I’m also still trying to figure out how I am going to drive 1,000 miles a day. Which I sometimes do when I don’t want to spend my vacation days driving instead of relaxing. This little chart suggests 13 to 25 miles per hour of charging, so that’s 40 hours of charging (minimum) to make the above trip. That just became a 2 1/2 day trip instead of a 17 hour trip.
https://clippercreek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Range-per-Hour-of-Charging_Poster_20201015_FINAL.jpg
Math is hard….
Particularly for government “scientists”.
Will people go to Hitch-World, weld on trailer hitches to these stupid commuter-pods, and haul diesel generators around (running) so they sort-of end up with the EMD locomotive?
They’ll just put wind turbines on top of every electric car to charge the batteries – just like the little turbines I see on a lot of sailboats… problem solved!! /s
How dare you point out the flaws in their thinking?!? (And =1 to PawPaw.
Can you imagine the strain on our ancient weak electrical grid here in Texas how that would work out?
The problem with the Texas grid is not the ancient bits–it’s the new parts. Wind turbines, solar, automatic shutdowns that accidentally shut down gas pipeline pumping stations, etc…
Hey Old NFO;
“But But But Climate Change and Virtue Signaling trumps Logic”….And +1 to Paw Paw, he hit the nail on the head, can’t have the serfs moving outside a certain radius without the permission from our betters now can we….
The people supporting this are either mentally incompetent, or evil. I would say entirely evil, except for personally knowing someone whose belief I have to attribute to incompetence.
In general, they don’t care. They aren’t really numerate, and do not understand changes in technology.
They see a government program, and conclude that it is the only reason for a technical advance, or a change in use of technology.
So, having pushed support for the government programs, the failure to build a castle in the clouds just enrages them. Why doesn’t it work, who do they have to hurt to fix it?
Then there are the outright purely evil ones, who really are out to kill us humans, because we are not the ‘nature’ that they worship.
Trying to reason the opposition out of their positions is pointless.
The evil ones should be killed.
The ones who are merely mentally incompetent should be prevented from harming others.
Remember that the people pushing this not only don’t think you should have a car, they don’t even think you should exist.
On some machinists’ forum, this very discussion has come up. Some Euroweenie who designs electric cars for other Euroweenies is crowing about how wonderful electric vehicles are over internal combustion engines.
So, of course, being obtuse Americans, people from Texas, Wisconsin, Alaska, Florida and other places have just stomped him politely, talking about the distances we Americans drive, the severe weather calamities we experience and why ‘green’ energy isn’t working for us here, by pointing at California and their wildfires, Texas and Michigan and Alaska and well, all those other northern states and the feet of snow those places normally get, and the damage from hurricanes in the South.
To which he replies basically that we all need to move into cities and use more mass transit.
To which we reply that we live in suburban or rural areas where mass transit doesn’t exist, and if it does, does not service all our needs.
To which he re-replies that we Americans need to use more mass transit and that electric vehicles work fine where he lives in some podunk Euroweenie place.
To which several of the commenters point out the extreme failings of EVs to handle high heat and air conditioners, deep cold and heaters, carrying wheelchairs and other heavy loads, travelling long distances in a continuous journey (one commenter drives a medical delivery vehicle and does 250-300 miles daily in all sorts of weather) and that EVs can’t handle the stop-start traffic found in major evacuations over hundreds of miles.
Still he insists on the ‘superiority’ of EVs.
We’ve brought up infrastructure, the need for more power storage or generation, the expense of everything EV from batteries to computers, and the extreme loss of taxes represented by EVs on the market.
Apparently we Americans just can’t grasp the awesomeness of the Euroweenie outlook on life.
Bah.
My wife has an EV. Works great for her. But there are definite limitations like hot or cold weather, inability to handle rough terrain, and the need to load it in the back of something like the gas van I drive to get her and her EV to various appointments and fun stuff.
Batteries, even lithium batteries, suck in so many ways.
Long live the ICE!
My first job out of engineering school was at a truck plant in Ogden Utah, for specialty vehicles mostly carrying the venerable AutoCar badge. The plant also manufactured for Western Star and White, but it got the odd-jobs and weird, wild one-offs, such as a turf crawler for transporting 120,000lb transformers over permafrost to a hyrdo dam way-T-F up in Canada.
They had just gotten bought by Volvo, and the Swedes came in to lay down the new law, clamping down on all that cowboy-trim like 13′-6″ chrome stacks. Then they said that the standard ‘city’ truck will have a 35gal tank, and the ‘highway’ standard will be capped at 55gal max. No more pairs of 150gal tanks, or the 220/150/150 combo. That was all superfluous ‘cowboy’ stuff.
Sweden is about the size of California.
We engineers pooled in some cash, and when this guy drove up from SLC airport to Ogden we had a Ford Thunderbird* topped off, and a Rand-McNally road atlas. We invited him to drive to Las Vegas and back, and asked him how long he thought it’d take. “A few hours.”
We said ‘you go do that, and then come back here and tell us with a straight face that you want 55gal to be the max tank size on a truck.
This was 1985, and there was plenty of unbuilt space between Ogden, SLC, and Provo back then, nowadays it’s almost all grown together.
*That melted gumdrop-shaped 80s style, not the classic 60s style.
He took off like a shot. He was back in a little less than 4 hours. He’d probably not made it to St. George before turning around. His eyes were open like quarters and we said ‘Well, what did you see?’
“There was … sand…’
We all nodded and grinned.
“And more sand …”
Nod nod nod nod grin grin.
“And NO GAS STATIONS…!”
Bingo.
One of the managers took him out to a huge steak, probably at the Prairie Schooner (which is still operating today, btw) and got him on his plane back to Sweden. No more talk about fuel tank capacity reductions.
The plant ended up closing around 1993, and is now home to Autoliv, an airbag manufacturer. I bet there’s no one there now who knows of the day there was a stock truck wreck on the I-15, and a remnant herd of long horn cattle gathered up, browsed up the berm and then strolled on into the assembly floor. They caused quite a ruckus.
Stimulus we could believe in: Lets build 250 1,000 MWe power plants, 50 nuclear recycling and fast reactors, and have the US Navy set up a Nuclear Power School for training the people to operate. We can spread the plants all over the country based on congressional districts, i.e. ~ 1 per every 2 districts. And, of course, the infrastructure to tie them all together.
Cheap electricity, robust grid, lots of construction, little radioactive waste. $500B should cover it. We’ve had a lot more stimulus than that over the last 20 years and have nothing to show for it.
Of course, I would do the same with other things. Fund 1 school per district this year. One bridge. 536 schools and bridges would put a LOT of people back to work and every district has to have at least one that needs to be replaced.
Does that 500B cover the cost of all the “environmental impact studies” and the lawsuits they will generate?
Guy Letourneau,
That was a great story. I can just picture the chaos those longhorns caused on that factory floor.
I have no particular animosity towards our European brethren, but even though they accuse us Americans of ignorance of the outside world, (true in a lot of cases), their ignorance of America is likewise astounding.
Before I retired, I worked for a German engineering company for many years. (…the name rhymes with those guys that go down to the sea in ships.) I once had a German engineer come in for a job we did in Pikeville, KY. (…up in deepest, darkest Appalachia.) He flew into Louisville and after picking him up at the airport, we drove the 200 miles to Pikeville. Being severely jet-lagged, he slept most of the way. However, about two hours into the four hour drive, he woke up and looked around – nothing to see but hills and “hollers”. He asked – and I kid you not – “Are we there yet?” I said, “No. We’re about half way.” He groaned and then replied: “Oh! In my country, if we drive this far, we are in Italy!” I have been laughing about that ever since.
Fun question: What is the biggest difference between Americans and Europeans? Answer: Americans think 150 years is old. Europeans think 150 miles is a long way.
Their attitudes are colored by the fact that their population density is so high. What may work just fine there won’t necessarily work here. Ironically, you see the same thing in a lot of Americans from up in the Northeast or Southern California, and other very large metropolises, who have no idea just how big a place like Nebraska or Texas really is.(Fun fact: The distance between Beaumont and El Paso Texas, is *greater* than the distance between El Paso Texas and Los Angeles California.)
The thing is, I am not entirely anti-EV. I can see an EV as a possible alternative in some cases – as a city commuter vehicle for example. Now, that’s after making a few assumptions. For example, that our electrical infrastructure gets upgraded to take the increased load, and that the equivalent cost of electricity is cheaper than gasoline, and charging times get down to convenient levels. This, of course, is NOT going to happen overnight. Just look at how long it took for us to transition from horses and wagons to automobiles. And don’t forget that the whole electric car thing has already been tried way back in the day. (…and steam too.) It was rejected because gasoline, with its high energy density, was just too cheap and convenient.
No, I am not against EV’s. If that’s what people want, I say “go for it”. What I *AM* against is having an EV foisted on me by government or eco-busybody fiat.
+10, Roy!
“150 miles is a long way”
Biggest reason they lost WWII: they literally couldn’t conceive of a supply line more than 250 miles long. It warped everything from the ranges of their planes to not really having an “in the field” tank repair capability. Of course you ship your panzer back to the factory for repairs! That’s where the Experten are.
No mention is made of the road tax that is part of the price of every gallon of gas or Diesel fuel. That is supposed to pay for roads. Electric cars pay zero road tax dollars, unless you include tolls on toll roads. How exactly will that income be replaced? With electrics as a novelty now, it is not a problem. But watch the politicians try to exact a tax per mile of driving.
I read that somewhere in Europe, maybe the U.K., they are considering or have passed an additional licensing tax on EVs that is to approximate the loss in fuel taxes that using an EV creates.
Easy! You add a GPS or odometer-based “mileage tax”, like some insurance companies already do for punishing their clustomers for actually driving their cars.
Note that information is already available to manufacturers and ‘selected partners’ via OnStar and other onboard comm systems.
Anyone who knows anything about electricity has been trying to explain this, OldNFO.
The problem is that we’re attempting to convert religious zealots.
All- Thanks for the comments and the stories. And yes, they DO NOT understand rural America (and never will)… Clayton, your idea makes WAY too much sense. Stop that… 😉
Posted from my iPhone.
CA 2011 a customer was bragging on her new electric car. “I’m using only clean energy from now on!” I pointed out that VEPCO … er, Virginia Power had coal, natural gas, and nuclear powered plants. “NUCLEAR?!?” Yup, North and South Anna plants are nukes. A few days later her husband came in and said “Dammit Stretch! My wife called up Va. Power and asked that we only had clean wind power electrons delivered to our home.” Yes, she thought she had “options.” And THAT is the mind set we’re up against.
RE: Distances, US vs. Europe. English friend thought he could use a bus to visit Disney World, LA, and NYC all in 2 weeks. Theoretically possible but …
You would probably get various agents dropping by your house if you did the following in this day and age, but a few decades ago somebody circulated a crank e-mail which like the ‘dihydrogen monoxide’ prank explained that electric companies were recycling ‘used’ electrons in lower-income areas while sending the ‘new’ ones the make at the power plant to the affluent areas. The prank suggested that activists could fling loops of double-ought copper into substations that serve the underclass areas as a form of non-violent protest. (Disclaimer: If you are a humorless liberal idiot reading this DON’T REALLY DO THIS.)
I once heard a joke claim that “The electric utilities have the greatest scam of all. They send you electricity on one wire, and they take it right back on another wire. There is so much re-use of electricity that no new electricity has really been produced since 1933.” or something like that.
That was a Dave Barry column in the Miami Herald, long ago.
Still, most people *don’t* inspect their electricity…
(mine drops down near 100v in the summer, when all the neighborhood air conditioners are maxed out)
1. I’m on Team “Kill the Euros”. Their governments are pushing the crap, and some of those governments should know better.
It isn’t like Germany is a country without universities. In particular, unless they have drastically screwed up in recent years, Germany should have at least decent fluid mechanics faculty. Possibly some members of the EU have university education that is too lacking to do the obvious sanity checking of the AWG models.
But the populations of Germany, etc., are letting their governments pull this crap.
Not loading the Germans into cattle cars after WWII was a short term strategic necessary, but looks an awful lot like a mistake in long term hindsight. French, likewise, should know better. I would need to know more about the universities in the other members to tell you if any of them have a plausible claim to innocence.
2. Clayton is wrong about putting money into the public school being something with any sort of return at all.
First, most valuable return from messing with the school system would be putting all the ‘teachers’ and administrators to death.
Second most valuable alternative is shutting the things down permanently, and enjoining the credentialed teachers from contact with children.
Funding the schools without fixing the negative investment problem first is a complete waste. The Democrats get their kickbacks, the Establishment GOP gets to pretend to normalcy and to opposing the Democrats they collaborate with, and the children are damaged.
How about this: You want to teach? You have to serve first. And no dumbing down of standards in the military.
Or go full “Federal Service” like in Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers,” where everyone is accepted who wants Federal Service, but they’re not going to make it easy on the applicant. Some may serve in the Military, some may end up in dead-end scroat jobs like plucking tin cans out of garbage or something.
Prove you have the huevos to suffer and be abused before you start messing with kids’ minds.
The problem is not the Germans. It is the communists. We should have rearmed the Germans and let Patton lead the drive to take Moscow.
And then there’s the small problem of there not being any such thing as clean energy…
All- Good points and some good ideas! Thanks!
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I’ve seen that spam on half a dozen blogs today, under different names. Usually there’s a link to some outfit in some former-Warsaw-Pact country.
I call the GOP the “GO Along to GET ALONG with the DEMS” Party.
Sam- I think at this point it’s really the ‘Uniparty’… sigh
> school funding
When I was in public school, funding was primarily from county taxes. That was so long ago that kids actually went to school near where they lived, instead of riding the bus every day.
Current technology will NEVER allow for replacement of gas/diesel with full electric. That fact may or may not change. We STILL have to overcome numerous issues with such vehicles. Reasonable range AND a rapid recharge….done in MINUTES. Cold weather can more than halve the range of an electric vehicle. Hot weather and use of AC can also dramatically decrease range. Lifespan of the VERY expensive battery packs. All of these factors PLUS the lack of generation capacity means electric vehicles will probably never be a viable option.
Now here is the ugly truth. The politicians, bureaucrats and power mongers DO NOT WANT us mundane sheep to own ANY cars. Gas OR electric. They want us incapable of the freedom of travel when and where we wish. Thus they plan to MANDATE the end of gas/diesel cars KNOWING that there will be no viable replacement. The push for electric vehicles has NOTHING to do with environmental issues. It’s all about the ONLY issue they care about….control.