Seems that some of the media are now starting to question the whole EV thing…
They drove one from Barstow, CA to SFO.
Whether you want to go green or not, most of us are going to be driving an EV in the next two decades. Automakers are spending billions retooling factories and revamping their fleets to go most or all-electric in the next 10 to 15 years, plans fully endorsed by President Joe Biden who wants half of all U.S. auto sales to be electric vehicles by 2030. That’s a massive goal considering the market, including plug-in hybrids, currently stands at about 3%.
Full article HERE from CNBC.
Note the ‘mileage’ the EV got? Not nearly the range quoted. And what happens if all the charging stations are full when you get there? Take a number and wait your turn?
Now I’ve made that drive more than once over the years, and always made TWO stops for gas/bathroom. And usually made it in around 7 hours, NEVER two days.
But let me ask one ‘other’ question… What happens when PG&E shuts off power? Those charging stations are going to be dead. What then???
As I’ve said before, if you run the calculations, the power grid in the USA is NOT capable of providing enough power to actually charge all those ‘vaporware’ EVs that the left is promising/requiring soon…
There are two possibilities.
1. The Left, as usual, employs cognitive dissonance to mandate both a massive increase in power draw, while also reducing the amount of power available.
2. The Left, as usual, is deliberately planning to tie us peasants to our villages by limiting the range and availability of transportation.
Which do I believe it is? Wrong question. I embrace the healing power of AND.
I was pa-shawed when I mentioned the possibility of using EV’s to limit peoples’ travels. I also mentioned that if Tesla does OTA software updates and was able to extend the range of its cars during a recent hurricane evac in Florida, what’s to stop it from “complying” and preventing the cars from being used at all?
NEWSFLASH, Bernie Babies; The power grid in the US isn’t CAPABLE of carrying the Left’s fever dream of “an EV in every garage and a chicken in every basement bedroom.” Hell; in California, Edison can’t even keep the lights on during hot weather!
Well, there’s also the ‘magic unicorn farts’ mentality, McChuck. ‘If there’s a problem, well, we’ll solve it then!’.
Which… isn’t really optimal. I work in the electrical industry; our grid and power generation isn’t ready for EVs. As I’ve said before, I think we’ll get there eventually, but just to start, the EVs need to fill the TCS (task/conditions/standards) currently held by ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles. And THEN you get into the tendency of the left to keep trying to limit power generation (waaah NIMBY etc).
I swear these idiots watched too much Star Trek.
Unfortunately, those who think they’re better than us smelly Walmart shoppers, studied Political Science (an oxymoron if ever there was one) Gender Studies, etc, not Physics or Engineering. Somehow wind power and solar power with a few megawatts of unicorn farts, and trillions of dollars will be able to meet our energy needs. When that fails, we proles will be blamed for “sabotaging” the “great leap forward.” Meanwhile, our betters will get all the coal, oil and natural gas that’s left.
Tar, Feathers, pitchforks, some assembly required.
45 minutes every 200 miles or so won’t cut it for any family
They don’t want people to have freedom of the open road like they do now. With their given time frame to implement this, the level of cluster f**k will be significant. Small example : Afghan.
Yeah, the personalities really pushing for this at high levels are not innocent, they are malicious.
Okay, they are innumerates who can only understand this stuff magically, but Gavin and Joe were specifically selected for being /vicious/ morons.
That was 45 minutes for every 100-140 miles. So at 75mph/ that’s just a little over an hour to an hour and a half per driving segment, followed by 45 minutes of charging.
As Chuck Laraby would say, “Not Cool, not cool.”
The constituency for mandating EVs in the first world consists /only/ of ChiComs, their agents, and people literally too mentally impaired to literally care for themselves.
EVs, solar, and wind designs use rare earths. These specific elements have so little other demand that there are not first world suppliers at the required volumes who have figured out a way to deliver and comply with first world ‘environmental’ regulations.
So, the problems go away if you have to, in self defense, hang the ChiCom agents /before/ the mandates kick in.
It’s impossible to predict what the situation will be like if all the cars are electric.
I don’t THINK we get any economies of scale on the price of electricity, if we bump demand up. If I had to guess, I’d say that the cost of adding the necessary power generation and charging stations is going to affect our personal budgets in SOME way. I think user fees make more sense, but to make the medicine go down easier, those costs could be covered with federal dollars, which means higher taxes.
Based on the figures given in the article, the cost of charging the vehicle was between 12 and 17 cents per mile, for the three stations that required payment. They had two charging stations that provided free charging, but that’s an artifact of the novelty of the system, and those freebies will vanish once the system is fully implemented.
At those rates, travel itself (not total cost of operation) is cheaper than by a gas-powered vehicle. My GMC Suburban gets 14 miles per gallon; today, gas is $2.92 locally, so I pay 21 cents per mile of travel.
The BIG hassle is the time to charge. The numbers in the article show a LOT of variance, in terms of the time needed, but three of the stations charged at a rate of .3X minutes per mile traveled; one station took .7 minutes per mile, and the overnight station took 10 hours to give a 72% charge, which works out to four minutes per mile. Using the three .3X figures ( .32, .34, & .38), and assuming traveling at 60 mph (1 mile/1 minute) I get a net velocity of approximately 45 mph for the trip.
My conclusion is that for commuting, when you can plug your car in at work or at home, an EV might work. For long distance, nope.
The big hassles are both the time to charge and the limited range.
Even my old Ford Econoline (serial killer version) got 2.5 hours of driving time per fill-up. (Yes, 2.5 hours. 2.5 hours of city time, country time, pulling way too much time, idling time. It identified as an airplane apparently.)
I had a ’67 Chevy Pickup like that. 12 mpg up hill, down hill, city, freeway, loaded or empty.
What most people do not understand about EVs is that different makers they have different charging plugs so that affects the changing station. Also there is not enough charging stations across this country to allow for travel as VW tried it a few months ago and they could only go the southern route and it took 18 days to go from NY to SF, but a gas vehicle would have done it in 3-4 days.
Also at homes there has to be major change in electrical to allow for faster charging of the EV at night and this can cost a person over $1k to have the garage rewired, but what happens if there is no garage such in an apartment building?
We saw power issues in Texas in late winter and early spring of 2021. This caused major power outages due to weather. The same is happening to California due to hydroelectric failures, and shutting down their Nuclear. The grid cannot handle the extra power that will need to be generated from various forms of power.
Hmm, sounds like a business opportunity. “Rainbow Unicorn Multi-Plug Adapter Kit” (pat. pending) MSRP $5,000.
All- Thanks and yes, there are MANY issues, none of which is solvable today with either the ‘tech’ or the ‘mentality’ of the left. Fix it then ain’t gonna hack it, as they say…
That’s how we ended up with Obamacare…
Several takes from this.
First, for a ‘car guy,’ he sure doesn’t understand that the regenerative braking in San Francisco comes with a huge price to get up the hill. He’ll, just by the physics of the situation (unless he’s only going downhill) will regenerate less than half of the energy needed to go the same distance uphill. Friggin moron. Change my mind.
Second, as people in Fort Myers, Florida, have discovered (and would have known if they’d listen to their more skeptical drivers,) it doesn’t matter if you’re driving a Tesla or another brand of electrified vehicle when you’re stuck in a mandatory hurricane evacuation and the traffic on the major highway north (I-75 for those that don’t know) is moving at 10mph, in the summer, when it’s hot and humid as all get out, and the heat from the road is baking everything and the humidity is steaming everything and you are only going 10-20mph amongst idiots and now you are driving a vehicle that has an un-airconditioned and un-loaded range of 200+ miles but now you’re factoring in air conditioning at parking-lot speeds with a car crammed with people, pets (better be pets or you are an Australian cop,) and basic belongings including that 12 pack of bottled water you just spent 12x$1.95 on at the last charging location because you’re an idiot and haven’t prepped one damned bit even though you live in Florida.
Yeah, how’s that EV working for you. And if your area gets hit, expect the power to be down for 1 week to 3 months, depending on severity, so unless your friends are bringing a Ryder truck loaded with batteries, or a huge genny with lots of fuel, you are now looking at an expensive paperweight, on wheels, that is totally useless, and you can’t use your solar panels because if the wind is strong enough to take down the power distribution system, it’s powerful enough to send your solar panels flying away or send something (like someone else’s solar panels) flying into yours.
Suck it, EV owner. EVs suck.
(Had some of this discussion with some lackwit from Norway on another blog/discussion board. He didn’t understand us not using EVs even when I piled on fact after fact. He couldn’t grok that Florida, from tip to tip (Key West to Pensacola) is a 13 hour trip on a good day with a vehicle that gets 300+ miles per fillup. He wasn’t impressed until I changed it to kilometers and he suddenly shut up. And I dropped figures for Texas (one side to another, bottom to top,) Arizona, from Arizona to Texas, and even just touring the Smoky Mountains National Park.
His response was “You need more trains.” Which got the rail mileage bomb dropped on him. He went away.)
Europeans in general seem to have a massive problem with comprehending how damned big CONUS is. You actually see similar problems in some people from New England, especially the tiny states.
Indeed… Our smallest STATE is bigger than some European COUNTRIES!
In fairness, I recall that there are about three absurdly tiny European countries.
May I approach this issue with a different question? Who will pay for all these EVs?
I spent decades in the car business and quickly learned there are two customers, the people driving off the lot with the happy tag in the window, and the lender who holds the title and pays the dealer.
Much of the back and forth is trying to figure out which lender is stupid enough to finance these mutts. An EV is a repo waiting to happen, IMO, and I don’t see lenders jumping at the chance.
Hybrids maybe. I’ve personally driven Prius’ over 100,000 miles. Wretched cars. I can’t find anything about them to like. If I wasn’t being paid to drive one I wouldn’t even if I got one as a gift.
EV are simply not ready for prime time.
1. Range for anything other than intra-city commuting.
1a. Sensitivity to the impact of heat and cold on Range.
2. Recharge time.
3. Availability of recharging infrastructure.
3a. Ability for urban dwellers without their own garage or designated parking space to recharge.
4. Ability of infrastructure to handle millions of cars recharging at once.
Other than that? They’re great, and as a retiree? I consider them to be optimal as a local runabout for a round trip of no more than about 80 miles at freeway speeds.
If you treat them as a glorified long range air-conditioned golf cart you’ll be fine.
I would no more use these for long a trip then I would a piston helicopter over 150 miles.
Beans/WSF/Jet- ALL excellent points! Jet- Hey now, I started out in HH-34s… 😉
Well OldNFO, Barstow to LA, or Barstow to Vegas your HH-34 would have been fine.
In August, LA to Vegas? You have a choice, your trusty old HH-34, or a nice air-conditioned C-131 with in-flight smoke and coke.
Horses for courses.
LOL, point… We were out of GLYNCO, so humidity and rain…
Everyone will need to have a propane generator in their backyard to charge their EV’s when the grid drops…
…And get this; the lunatics in the Sacramento Asylum, along with then-“governor” Brown, passed legislation outlawing the use of natural gas in homes in the VERY near future. I believe the magic year is 2023. That means EVERYTHING in the house that creates light, heat, or motion must run on electricity. Of course, that electricity is being produced by …natural gas… ‘See how strong the Edison lobby is? ‘See how HIGH the typical Left-Wing voter is in CA?…
…Elder for governor of CA… If Elder can pull this off, he’s going to have to order the world’s biggest “VETO” rubber stamp!
I’m trying to start a rumor that Generac is coming out with a line of generator trailers.
Too late; they’ve been on the market for decades.
Hey Old NFO;
I honestly believe that the EV are an excuse to force us to use rail or buses so our “Betters” can control our travel and have us on their schedule and limit our freedom. Remember cars represents “Freedom to go wherever you want”, and the state would love to limit our ability to move around, that makes it easier to control a population when they can’t go far. Our “Betters” will not be constrained as we are, they will have access to gas and other things so they are unfettered.
OH, PA-SHAW!!! They won’t use their cars either. They’ll use them even LESS than we do… They’ll fly private jets…
Now, if you WANT most of the EV bennies with ICE flexibility, go with something like a Chevy Volt. Unfortunately, if you’re into “new-only,” GM ditched the Volt in 2019 in favor of doing an all-electric in its Cadillac line. If all you’re doing is around town driving, you’ll be running electric full time in the Volt. If you DO need to drive from Barstow to SFO, the car will go around 40 miles on battery, at which time a really small one-liter ICE will start, whose function is only as a generator to run the electric motors. At that point you’re getting around 35MPG; not too bad for a REALLY HEAVY midsize car. Pull in, gas up, and go, just like you do now.
For anyone here sniffing unicorn farts and hearing happy music at the thought of owning an EV, know this; the advertised range for these things is level ground, one occupant, doing around 50 MPH, and not running the A/C or heat. A/C will knock that range down some. HEAT will KILL the range, because, as anyone with an IO higher than room temperature knows, electricity is THE.MOST.INEFFICIANT way to heat ANYTHING. In the Volt, “KILL” translates into 16 miles on battery instead of 40. Adding occupants will ding the range too. Hell; the early versions of the Volt didn’t even have a spare tire; just a dinky little air compressor loaded with some kind of “Slime” sealer to give you hope! The engineers were looking to shave weight. For the record, shaving weight by getting rid of the spare is flat-out RETARDED!
For the record, I do own a Volt. I don’t sniff unicorn farts either. A gallon of regular costs over $4.00 in California. Running engine-only (battery depleted), the car uses a gallon of gas each way on my commute. I can make it to work on a full battery. My company provides charging stations, so I can charge at home and then charge again at work. A charge costs roughly $2.50 at both ends. I bought the car used, and was already looking for a replacement for my previous commuter. The Volt deal came along and the geek in me said “What the hell; go for it.” Buying the car was a strictly economic decision. I’ve used two tenths of a gallon of gas in the last thousand miles.
The Volt is actually really well-built, well appointed, and very comfortable to drive. The batteries and all the other hardware make it a HEAVY car, so the handling takes a little getting used to, especially on mountain roads. You have to anticipate that inertia! The brakes are unbelievably fantastic though, as the friction ABS brakes are coupled with the regen braking. Think TAILHOOK! It’s hard to believe GM badged the car as a Chevy. It’s even harder to believe GM ditched the product. It was a winner for “the rest of us…”
Aren’t those Volts being recalled due to issues with the battery spontaneously combusting?
“We drove about 60 miles from Enterprise to our first stop at Mountain Pass, California, about 15 miles from the Nevada border in the “high desert” at around 5 p.m. on a Tuesday night at 105 degrees.
“We had to remove a metal cover from a power outlet at a mine but then we were able to plug in and get to 100% before setting off.”
In other words, they started off this “test” by stealing electricity. Good predictor of the EV future: Drive electricit prices way up, and people will be voltjacking. Or siphoning kwh or something.
All- Excellent points, and yes Tom, in ‘your’ case it makes sense. I live in a rural area, in north Texas, so heat and distance make it unreasonable. Also, I routinely travel 3-400 miles for various meetings/visits.
As an aside, friend I worked with in DC bought a Prius to use for commuting since he could use 66 both ways. He normally had two riders. His Prius got an average of 19mpg in the summer!
The MASSIVE push by .Gov to get rid of ICE vehicles in favor of “electric” vehicles is NOT to help the environment. The people in charge don’t give two shits and a damn about the environment. The ENTIRE REASON for this is to END the ability of average Americans to travel when and where they wish. The people in power WANT US to be STUCK AT HOME unable to go ANYWHERE without using PUBLIC transportation which allow THEM to control ALL travel.
BTW, .gov wants all of us that live in rural, semi-rural or suburban areas to move to the (yet to be built) high-rises in the big cities to cut down on travel distances and get better control over us. Obama’s Administration had a little known commission to study how to force people to move into the cities. It is also part of the “Great Reset” to get the proles out of the above mentioned areas and into the cities. Once again this is all about the “Elites” being able to rule us better.
Dan/Bill- I can believe it… sigh
Two factors that no one addressed: cost of disposal of a bad/worn out battery, and replacement cost.
That battery is not a landfill okay object.
An EV battery is priced at ~$10k (that data might be a little out of date by now). They were originally expected to last 100k miles, so figure the equivalent of replacing your engine+transmission @ that mileage. Back in the 50’s-70’s most people threw away their car when it got that sort of mileage on it, mostly due to the engine going bad.
btw, I seem to recall that GM gave up on the VOLT due to losing money on each one produced/sold.