Last week the Chinese announced what could be a great leap forward in electric car technology when the Chinese firm BYD announced a five-minute charger. They claim their new technology, it is not just a charger but a battery system as well, will allow a driver to get a 250-mile charge in just five minutes. No one knows if this is true, as Chinese companies are almost as dishonest as American media. Even if it is an exaggeration, it could still be a big deal.
The reason this is viewed as a potential game changer is that it is assumed that the main obstacle to widespread adoption of EV’s is the long recharge. It is unreasonable to expect people to take an hour to recharge when on a road trip. Even a thirty-minute recharge time is unappealing. Decades of needing just a few minutes to fill the tank have conditioned people to expect it. Getting EV technology to this point, therefore, is assumed to be the final boss in the game.
That is not true, but the faithful believe it. The main problem with EV’s is that they do not solve a problem. They are a solution in search of problem and so far, the problems they claim to solve have proven to be either nonsense or grotesque boondoggles executed by the worst people in society. Making the weather potato happy is not motivating anyone to buy an electric car, especially when the total cost of ownership remains significantly higher than conventional vehicles.
The electric car is a lot like the electric book in that the engineering challenges somehow blind the proponents to the central problem. Technology is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Electronic messaging has displaced written letters because the former is better, cheaper, and faster than the latter. If email came with a small risk of electrocution, we would still be writing letters. If every email cost a dollar to send, there would be no such thing as email.
That was the problem with eBooks. They were not better in any way that mattered to people, and they were not cheaper. There were some advantages, like speed of acquisition and the availability of obscure texts. You could also load up on out of copyright material at a pittance. The trouble is not many people need ready access to Summa Theologica, so these advantages made little difference. It is why the old-fashioned book remains dominant.
The same problem plagues the electric car. For ninety percent of drivers, the car is a practical way to move humans from one place to another. Current technology does that as well as anyone could need. Therefore, the new technology is simply trying to match what the old technology does. Outside of enthusiast and technologists, the electric car will always be pointless. Add in the expense and it becomes an expensive solution to a cheaply solved problem.
There are other reasons why the electric car will remain a niche item. The biggest is the cost, which can never be overcome. The cost of powering an electric car is about three times that of powering a normal car. This is despite the fact that we subsidize electricity in America, and we artificially increase the price of gas and diesel. Strip away the policy choices and electric cars have no market. Natural gas-powered cars would have far more promise as an alternative.
Then there is the cost of production and disposal. For generations old cars have been sent to the scrap yard to be stripped for parts and recycled. We have become amazingly good at recycling our cars. Electric vehicles require special handling due to the batteries. Of course, the cost of production is much higher, even with government subsidies all along the way. Then there is the added cost to the power grid that comes in once adoption reaches a certain point.
Enthusiasts insist that all of this is wrong or can be addressed, but the point here is that the charge time is the least of their worries. If the EV was better, faster, and cheaper than regular cars, the charge time would be ignored. The truth is they are not better in any important ways, they are certainly not cheaper. The electric car is certainly faster, but outside the enthusiast niche, this does not matter and what we see is that it does not matter to the sports car enthusiast either.
Now, of course, there is a new problem. The electric car is not cool. It was never really a cool car, but the beautiful people embraced the idea, so that provided the necessary social proof for upper-middle-class white people. The trend setters are now vandalizing Tesla’s, so the cool factor is gone. In fairness, the novelty was wearing off before the kooks took aim at Elon Musk, but now the coolness is gone. The ridiculous looking cyber truck did not help either.
The bigger issue may be a social one. Cars in general, but electric cars, in particular, make the “owner” into a serf. Fixing your own car is now an expensive proposition, meaning you need to depend on the repair system. This is deliberate. Car dealerships make more profit from the repair of cars than the sale of them, so the game is to make the owner dependent on the dealer. Electric cars are the worst for this as they are terrifyingly dangerous to repair.
The most terrifying part is you may not even own the car. You pay for it and have the title, but features are increasingly dependent on the manufacture agreeing with your lifestyle and political choices. Tesla can disable your car remotely. Other car makers are going down this same path. Soon, features like heated seats will be software as a service, meaning you must get permission to use them. The electric car is the face of this dystopian future of man and machine.
None of this means the electric car is dead. There is a place for the technology, just as there is a niche for eBooks. The developers churning out corporate housing projects could install fast charging stations for the soulless automatons who move into these God-forsaken eyesores. Urban areas could be a good use for electric microcars that only go short distances. Young people could also benefit from cars that can be speed limited and tracked at all times.
In the end, the electric car is going to follow the path of other clever engineering projects in that its primary benefit is secondary. The quest for the electric car has made batteries much better. The hunt for new features to justify the cost premium has led to better electronics, information displays and safety features. The dangers of disposal have been a good lesson in reality. The cars themselves may be niche items, but the industry will have benefitted from the exercise.
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Have you all noticed that the more we rely on technology and computers, the more the quality and overall experience goes down? I think we’ve been conditioned to accept bugs and tolerate glitches because of technology and this has forced us to accept mediocrity. Have you noticed how nothing works anymore? I remember when AT&T used to advertise the dependability of their networks. They used to run commercials about how you could rely on old Ma Bell in the event of an emergency. Nowadays, how many drops before you get through the 911? We’ve really become very third world-ish in… Read more »
i cannot tell you the horrible thoughts i have, when i have to reboot my fukkin’ TV?! having all the apps run in the tv is convenient (one remote to rule them all) but it comes with attendant costs.
Roku’s don’t work, phones freeze up, I have to reboot three times and sometimes have to reinstall software to get a reasonably expensive Fujitsu scanner I own to work … Nothing freaking works anymore. Then we have all the Chinese crap we buy at Walmart you have to pitch once the switch on it breaks.
People used to complain about the big three automakers back in the 1970s and 1980s. Compared to what we have today, that was leading edge quality.
a good chunk of those incredibly crappy cars are still on the road (esp the 70’s woo bad) way more than most of the crap being produced today will still be working in 40 years.
And if you read Bob Lutz’s book, his take on it was that the government forced all kinds of emissions technology on the automakers that was unproven and that the automakers didn’t have time to test. Without government intervention, American car quality would have been adequate. Just another business important to the economy that the US government has wrecked.
That’s much less of a scandal than the early mandates for air bags in cars. Estimated that in the early 90’s something like 60-100 deaths attributable to air bags in cars.
This of course is not the case today. But nonetheless was known to the Fed’s who basically made the call to trade lives via their mandates.
The federal government was heavy-handed. But deaths per million miles driven has dropped drastically. The new safety technology works. I had an Old wrecker driver tell me he sees people walk away from crashes that used to routinely kill people.
the real complaints about the cars in the 70s and 80s were poor fabrication (one of these fenders is 27″ long, one is 28″ and LEARN TO WELD), crummy metalurgy (rustbuckets, all of em), poor quality paint and application, and poor compatibility of borrowed components to avoid re-engineering and retooling costs. all of which are very true. why does a 6500 pound k2500 have the same saginaw power steering pump as a 2500 pound monte carlo? The Boomer complaints about Carter Corvettes etc on power and handling (carriage springs!) arent that salient any more; if you want a 1000 hp… Read more »
My dad was in the car business during the ’70s yellow peril era. I remember him complaining that he couldn’t buy cars he actually wanted, foreign ones that weren’t garbage, because union steel guys were burning them in parking lots. What I know from that period is guitars. American ones were so bad (on average) that they aren’t even overpriced now. Instead the Japanese ones are, because they’re physically useable. When new they were great deals, so cheap they were easy to lie about. The stigma on them lasted into this century. Likewise, a Datsun is 40k now. The pointy… Read more »
Wut?
I had a ’69 Chevelle Malibu. I could sit on the firewall inside the engine compartment and wrench on it.
Nowdays I couldn’t even find the firewall.
Well, I get all this but as someone that is still a shade tree mechanic for much of what others won’t touch in modern cars I have a few things to say. 1. Underneath all the crap sensors, lady-like plastic ‘beauty cover’ there still resides Henry Ford’s internal combustion engine. Head, block, spark plugs, valves, etc. That leaves whether it is: a) Turbocharged or normally aspirated. b) Interference or not. Whomever the IDIOT that invented the “interference” engine is should be tarred and feathered. The term relates to the fac that the valves AND the pistons use the same space… Read more »
I partly agree, the old cars that you still see on the road were the very few survivors of millions of just a few models. Computerized vehicle controls ie engine/transmission along with some newer overall designs are overall, in my opinion better in many ways. As far as dependability & maintainance. Also in my opinion however, like most things a lot.of tech was and continues to be way overdone wich has led to less dependability, durability and simplicity of maintainance. Consider that you just do not see nearly as many broken down on the side of the road as you… Read more »
I know a lot of people with modern Hondas that have over 200,000 miles. Even Chevy and Ford trucks. They’ve had a few maintenance issues but not many. Back in the 70s, an Oldsmobile would be rusted out and in need of a new engine by 80,000 miles. Odometers didn’t even go to 100,000 miles. That was true until the 1990s.
I’m an old Boomer who was a young Boomer in the 1970’s and the memory of all the brand-new Detroit-built “Lemons” me and my family got stuck with is still a sore spot with me! The stories I could tell!
90s cars are loaded with failing ECMs with caps leaking and damaging the boards. Replacement ECMs for them haven’t been made in decades. The old ones in junkyards have the same problem.
The proliferation of electronics will severely limit the viability of classic cars from the ’80s forward. I suppose it might be possible for someone to design bespoke circuit boards and subsystem to try and duplicate the functionality of the original electronics with modern components. Even so, it’s hard to imagine how those electronics could be tested and integrated to a level that approaches the original factory reliability. Anyone that could make that work could charge wealthy enthusiasts and arm and a leg. I’ve looked into some of the aftermarket stuff that’s out there, and it doesn’t really seem close to… Read more »
mega squirt, the holley standalone efi, or any other number of retrofit efi systems are available.
Frankly ive never had a problem with bosch ecms frpm the 80s and 90s.
Yeah? This will only work in California with pre-1975 cars, which are smog exempt. Only standard equipment is allowed to pass biennial smog checks. And the equipment is checked against the VIN.
Yep. With my EV, sometimes the screen doesn’t even turn on—but the car drives without instrumentation being visible. Some days the settings reset and the car has a different look and feel. I suspect a reload on the OS for a “car”—not a PC—no less. Then there are all perturbations of the above imaginable. Like the radio works, but won’t play inserted media, just am/fm.
The solution always is to pull over. Turn off the vehicle, count to 15 and restart it. But really folks, who needs this….
And I wonder how many accidents have been caused by this glitching where somebody is trying to fix something on the fly.
I had an experience at IAH that is an example of technology going too far. The terminal that I was at no longer has rows of reasonably comfortable seats. Instead they have tables, many with high stools, set up more for work than relaxing. On the table there is a QR code for each seat which you scan so you can order food at the restaurant by the gate and maybe others nearby and have your food delivered by an actual human being. Well I tried it and had to sign up for an app, which would not accept my… Read more »
People used to complain about the big three automakers back in the 1970s and 1980s. Compared to what we have today, that was leading edge quality. TempoNick, from my experience, today’s cars are NOTHING like the lemons 🍋 🍋 🍋 that poured forth from GM, Ford, Chrysler, or AMC factories in the 1970s – 1990s. I had a 2003 Chevrolet pickup I owned for almost a dozen years through the salt and snow of Chicagoland winters and at the end only small sections of the cab and bed got a little rusty. A 1973 Chevrolet pickup would be a pile… Read more »
In addition they want us completely dependent on handheld electronic devices that are designed to degrade sharply in performance in 12-18 months. In order to access any electronic communication or financial account you now need to authenticate your ID from a phone. There seems to no pressure on these companies to improve reliability.
“designed to degrade sharply in performance in 12-18 months.”
Technically, their performance doesn’t actually degrade. It’s that the environment they operate in, due to Moore’s law, is a moving target, with new apps and features being developed for newer, higher performing devices, all the time, requiring a continuous upgrade in performance. Your VCR player didn’t become useless because its performance degraded. It became useless because technology moved on. Typically, Moore’s law is a doubling in performance every 18 months.
I called into Obamacare yesterday and got an African (descendent of slave African that is, doesn’t it suck that I have to make that distinction?) who was so incompetent that he could barely read the script.
i had to abandon that one so I called back and got a she-African, again a heritage one, who was more on the ball.
it’s funny how Obamacare only seems to hire these Africans
“funny how…” Meet LaTarsha Brown of Allentown, Pennsylvania. LaTarsha is employed and overpaid at the city’s [ahem] community and economic development department where, one day, she claimed to have found a noose at her desk. Such departments, sometimes by that very name, had became common in D controlled cities by the 1970’s. It was typical then for whitecucks to find employment in them but under the management and supervision of obsolete farm equipment. Of course, no one in those departments did anything productive. My own impression of the cucks, a few of whom I met, is that they were mamas’… Read more »
“LaTarsha” You can’t make this shit up. My local news has an anchor named “Shiba” pronounced sheebah.
What happened? When I was in school, black kids had names like Georgy and Ronald or Wendy with the occasional Troy or Tyrone. Where do they get these names from?
“Where do they get…” Don’t know, but it’s obviously motivated by rebellion against us. Sometimes this attitude leads to extemely funny outcomes. For example, once upon a time I heard a story about a college girl named Vagina, Latin for sheath or scabbard, I believe. Acc. to the story as I remember it, the first a and the i of her name are pronounced as in ‘mad’ and in ‘in’, repectively. In the story, she makes this clear by correctlng a teacher or someone else in the school who had pronounced Vagina publicly in the way we expect to hear… Read more »
I was told of a certain Urine Martindale. YOU-reen was the proper pronunciation.
I still marvel at those names and apostrophes.
i mean, they have an average 85 IQ but somehow have the creativity to create these insane names.
i too ask: “where does this come from?”
I notice that actual African (immigrants) more often have normal first names.
You haven’t noticed our caste system? Low-level bureaucracy is assigned to the blacks. Jews get the money, the media, and the law. Women and fags get the children. Trannies are Stasi (public and private). Indians are assigned a formerly white gas station or workstation. You’re supposed to obey Mike Rowe and dive in a septic tank.
Technology was promised as away to economize and streamline my work and daily life. More often than not, it has become a hindrance.
But when it works, it’s great. Much better than 1986. We just got to get rid of all the Indian coders and back to autistic white guys.
Well said. It all boils down to trust (in people and systems and tech) and we just don’t trust or rely on much of anything any more.
The Weather Potato FINALLY went through puberty, and To Be Quite Honest, she’s kinda cute now [if you’re into 4’11” chicks with B-Cups].
But the poor girl is almost certainly v@xxed to the gills [unless she was so important to the cause that they slipped her a vial of inert normal saline, rather than the clot shot which the plebians received].
For The Record, I hope they did indeed give her the inert normal saline, and that one day she meets her Pureblooded Prince Charming, and that they have lots & lots & lots of beautiful WHITE Scandinavian babies.
AI has made customer service a frustrating nightmare!
It’s hard for me to decide which customer service agents are worse, Pajeets or AI. I suppose they could combine the two and make an AI Pajeet to optimally torture us.
I haven’t really noticed this. I guess I’m in a minority around here. My cell phone works all the time. And I use it to listen to YouTube and music a lot in addition to regular phone calls. Being able to text people has been very helpful. Being able to get immediate directions anywhere is great. The computers I use now are more reliable than the ones from 20 years ago. The internet we have now is much better than the DSL from over 20 years ago and unbelievably better than dial-up. And most people are getting far more miles… Read more »
I agree with all of this. The only thing you left out is that the high cost of ownership is a feature not a bug to elites pushing EVs. They hate sitting in traffic as much as the rest of us and would like fewer cars on the road. One idea on the best way to implement that is to make it prohibitively expense for proles to own cars and force us into public transportation. That most places don’t have sufficient public transportation for the majority of their population is of little to no concern of theirs. They won’t personally… Read more »
In 15-20 years, most places in the US will look like Old Havana, with people driving restored/repaired jalopies and pickups. The most valuable cars will be 6-cylinderd Honda or Toyota with minimal electronics and old F-150s. Somebody just like Castro will be in charge…..
I’d take Castro over Jasmine Crockett or any of the retards the Democrats are trying to push on us.
I’ll take a ‘strong man’ over muh democracy any day. At least they are usually more honest about being in it to enrich themselves. Yes, my husband is doing our taxes. The amount the government has taken this year (not counting sales tax and gas tax etc.) is staggering. Add in over $9k for ‘health insurance’ which we haven’t used, and it’s no wonder the ‘middle class’ is shrinking rapidly.
Che Guevera never called me a racist.
One question I always have: How is the government $37 trillion in debt and still needs to steal 30% of my family’s income?
Some of thaat $37 trillion is in Chuckie Schumer’s pockets. And Mitch McConell’s. They’re all crooks and grifters. Most of them have always been. Muh equality and voting at its finest.
Careful, there; Ford was on the cutting edge of electronics in the 1980s, and most all of their engines had ECMs by circa 1986ish.
Ford’s diesel trucks [F250/F350] still had mechanical fuel pumps through the first half of 1994 [the second half of 1994 saw the introduction of the electronic “Powerstroke”].
Somehow Dodge got a waiver [???] from the EPA, and continued purchasing mechanically-fuel-pumped diesel engines from Cummins, through the first half of 1998.
I know next to nothing about Chevys [other than that they had an YUGE contract with the DOD for military pickup trucks.]
I saw weather potato and thought of the weather rock. I guess you could swap them with the same results…
I continue to believe that the market for a low-cost ($10k to $12k), no frills car with as minimum of electronics as possible is huge. With modern factories and parts, a basic ICE which basic maintenance could run for 100s of thousands of miles easy. By keeping down the electronics, you reduce the main things that go wrong in new cars.
China absolutely could and does produce these cars, but they’re not allowed in the US.
There are trucks under 20k available that are not allowed in the US because of efficiency and safety standards.
It’s a racket. There’s no reason a basic new vehicle should cost more than 10k.
Yep. Regulations in the US require so much shit that it pushes up the cost for zero reason. It’s such a scam.
It’s not a scam. Thank the lawyers and the people who vote for safety at all cost.
You want to see cars get safe. Have a spike that comes out of the steering column if you run into anything. People will suddenly learn to drive again.
The safety vote is an excellent point.
The Big 3 have done tons of focus group research. One result that kept popping up is that there is a significant part of the population who’s most fervent desire is to literally crawl back into the room.
“crawl back into the room”
“[W]omb”, no?
Monte-
Yes, thanks for the assist!
This proves my post about autocorrect further down the board!
Tire Pressure Sensors. Now there is a POS system. For every valid low pressure alarm there is a sensor failure setting you back $120 if you don’t want to see the light and pass the state inspection.
In the way-back times folks looked at their tires.
Tire pressure sensors… A perfect example of the nanny State enacting regulations which have no evidence of effectiveness. Here is the summary of a quick GhatGPT inquiry: ”… In summary, while TPMS has played a significant role in preventing conditions that could lead to blowouts, precise statistics on the number of blowouts prevented are not readily available. The safety enhancements provided by TPMS are instead reflected in broader improvements in tire performance and a reduction in tire-related incidents overall. “ In other words another good (?) idea implemented with not precise measurement of benefit by our regulatory state that will… Read more »
Followup: Concerning ChatGPT, I’ve managed to beat it into submission to basically accept the premise—reluctantly—wrt to lack of (deductive vs inductive) evidence on TPMS effectiveness. My TPMS inquiry a good example of “garbage in-garbage out” in AI use it would seem.
If they sold one of these, the Toyota Hilux Champ, for $13K a pop, I’d be at my Toyota dealer tomorrow begging them to take my money.
But we can’t have it because it doesn’t meet our Byzantine mess of safety and “fuel economy” regulations built over years by our evil regulatory state. If Trump really wanted to do some good, junk all of those regulations.
Yes. So does Japan, Mexico and Brazil. Every time we go south of the Border or to South America, we drool over the Toyota Hilux. It’s basically become a dissident meme on social media. On a recent hunting trip before the election, we were all figuring out how to go down and buy one, disassemble it, send it home in pieces and reassemble it for our hunting place. But we were fearful of what Sec. Buttplug would do to us if he caught us……..
The Hilux is, I believe, the most popular vehicle in Argentina, certainly in the rural area in which I live. We have one and they’re ubiquitous in the village.
Basically, bring back the VW Bug. That they were at one time the cheapest car you could buy and absolutely everywhere should be its own market indicator.
I also wonder why we don’t just make a cheap pickup or economy car…does the “American consumer” really prefer mid- to high-trim SUVs and pickups? How can they afford a $50K vehicle? Would they not flock to a sub-$20K modest small pickup like the Ford Maverick? (They did, but now the Mav is almost $30K.) There is apparently a $15K Toyota pickup that can’t be sold here either, but Ford and Chevy won’t allow anything to interfere with their precious F-150 and Silverado sales.
Hilux! see my comment above
Aren’t all the EPA and NHSTA regulations massive blockers preventing a return to simple and reliable cars?
For sure, we could have a good basic car for about half what they cost now. No frills but safe. With AC. And I suspect the electronics will just keep getting cheaper. It’s just a matter of getting rid of the corruption that keeps prices artificially inflated. One good thing about the Chinese producing cheap cars is that it will force the hand of our automakers.
This article overlooks the climate benefit of relocating carbon emissions from the car itself to coal burning electrical plants in rural areas where liberals cannot see it. Therefore it ceases to exist.
Yes, and, it puts the CO2 out here where it can be used by plants, which do not exist in the hives to any degree.
Who’s the green ones, again?
Battery driven power tools have seemingly taken over corded versions. At some point I realized they were the clear choice for me when price, power and liberation from looking for available sockets came to be. Cars are no where near that in any category. if they were, more would simply buy them.
Amen. The fact that I no longer have to run a 100′ extension cord off my house to trim my hedges makes cordless tools a no-brainer. Cordless tools are liberating, while the opposite is true of electric vehicles.
Battery powered tools are great, but they cost a LOT more and sooner or later they stop making the batteries and your entire investment in that battery ecosystem is lost.
Meanwhile Grandpa’s corded 1955 drill still works.
Battery for things you use all the time and are going to wear out anyway. Corded for things you use rarely and only need every few years. Corded is also significantly cheaper so that tool is worth getting now.
I still have all corded tools, didn’t throw them out. Rarely used but definitely a backup. Go to a job site for more real world data on this.
can use a small jackery for corded tools.
Still mad at my kid for losing my old aluminum-bodied Skil saw.
I lost my father’s 1950s Skil saw when i moved the last time and I really hated that.
Until you cannot find a good 100 foot extension cord.
I made the journey to battery for lawn and garden stuff. I have an electric mower, chainsaw, leaf blower and trimmer. The mower takes three batteries to finish the work, but I know have a half dozen batteries and chargers, so no worries.
I got EGO for the outside tools; Ryobi for the inside
Some of these batteries are poorly made, and can burst into flames while being charged. Lithium Ion batteries burn at around 4,000 degrees (f). I have a leaf blower that has one of these batteries. I charge it outdoors due to the fire hazard.
Rural normie’s are getting fed up with super-expensive high-tech luxury pickup trucks that are too fancy for farm work. As a result, an entrepreneur is now initiating a startup to build 1970s era standard work-truck pickups again. It will be stripped of fancy doodads and all the spy and remote control electronics, and be priced at about $30k. I predict it will sell like hotcakes and help bring back common sense.
If any such native industry should arise, laws will be changed to allow the big car corporations to sell their stripped-down international vehicles here, to destroy it.
The form of “the market” is not accidental (nor emergent).
Check out the new Toyota Hilux Champ- $10K basic truck. $13K if you want diesel. EXCELLENT
but not sold in US 🙁
I always thought this would be a good business model for a lot of things. The technology for items like automobiles or household appliances is in many cases over a century old (no patent protection, ect) and who the hell needs wifi capabilities on a refrigerator? Just build simple, high-quality products with domestically produced parts by American workers. The elimination of superfluous doodads and reduced R&D can help mitigate the increased costs of doing business in America. A company like this could be the poster child for Trump’s re-industrialization policies. You could also have a lot of fun marketing these… Read more »
An amazing amount of real wealth (not based on financial ponzi schemes) could be created by doing this. Why don’t the aspiring John Galts of the world do it? Well, I think the basic answer is that the US economy’s tightly interlocking network of government regulations and giant corporations has grown so large and all-encompassing that making any kind of straightforward product is basically illegal. I think we’re really close to the point of being as inflexible and inefficient as any Communist bloc nation was except that we still allow price signals to (sort of) exist. Then again they tried… Read more »
And lightbulbs.
INCANDESCENT lightbulbs. The 60-watt kind with at least 870 lumens.
Man I wish that would happen but I don’t understand why it didn’t happen long ago. Regs etc I imagine.
Electric cars are merely a virtue-signaling device by the elites to signify that they are morally superior to the lowly proles. Electric cars were actually produced in the late 1890s and early 1900s, but they were superseded by the Model T (a flex-fuel vehicle that could burn gas, kerosine or moonshine) because it was cheaper and more reliable and more useful to the masses. The thing about electric cars that makes me scream is the Law of Conservation of Energy. “The Science” says energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transferred. The juice has got to come from somewhere… Read more »
Well of course the grid can’t handle the extra load from electric cars. The ultimate goal, I’m sure, is for electric cars to remain expensive, electricity rates to skyrocket, and both cars and electricity to become luxury items. The egalitarian, gynocentric, anti-racist utopia cannot be achieved until everyone outside the government/corporate hives is freezing in the dark and walking to whatever jobs we allow to exist for them. We must not anger the Weather Potato!
I live in the Imperial Capital region. (For now.)
and I have seen quite a few bumper stickers on Teslas to the effect of “I bought this car bc I’m cool, but I don’t like Elon”
I’m sure they have very little clue that the antifers have just gone crazy at Tesla dealerships (Sat Mar 29).
But it amuses me that the virtue signaling continues apace.
This is one of these traps that can wreck a company. VW committed to an electric cars only future only to see the company go down. They had the emissions cheat scandal on top, but falling for the electric boogaloo car did not help. I think Ford made the same mistake. Another thing that will prove to be a mistake is the elimination of cheap sedans and the proliferation of expensive SUVs and pick up trucks. There’s a perpetual market for a Corolla and Toyota knows it. Ford elimination of the Focus was a crime. They’ll push hybrids as a… Read more »
Toyota sat the whole EV craze out, focused on hybrids and thrived. They are smart.
Not so smart. They moved to turbo engines and destroyed the reliability of their trucks and SUVs. We love Toyota dependability, but only in 2010 – 2019 vehicles. Depending on model, this excludes the absolute worst of the tech excesses but includes reliable v6 and v8 engines.
I have a 10 year old Prius. Apart from mysterious electrical problems that no one can figure out it’s been reliable but when the battery goes bad, it will be junk unless I can make it run as just a gas car. If I bought a car today I would stick with purely ICE vehicles.
Not entirely. There’s the BZ4X, also sold as the Subaru Solterra.
Everything you say about EVs is correct. But I disagree with you about eBooks. I bought my first Kindle a couple days after Christmas of 2013 and it was an immediate personal technological revolution. I could buy everything on-line no matter where I was, particularly in a non-English speaking country. The number of times I have been in bookstores since that time can be counted on my fingers. There is also a lot of self-published novels that are in eBook format that is hard to find in print. Given that there appears to be a leftist jihad in the publishing… Read more »
Agreed, I use Kindle for my new pulp fiction library. You can choose books by unknown authors that are great reads for dirt cheap. If they aren’t good just never finish them and maybe delete them, easy and cheap.
Non-fiction though, I buy hard cover because hopefully I’ll want to keep and reread or refer back to them.
Same. I use Kindle unlimited, because I read very fast, for cheap and quick and crappy reads. Serious books get hard copies. Even the cheap pulp ones are losing their appeal – doesn’t matter what I pick (sci fi/SHTF/time travel/military) – authors who were previously reliable are now sticking in IKAGOs and sexual degeneracy everywhere.
I prefer eBooks because I’m in my 70’s and most print books have font sizes and line spacings that I just can’t comfortably read, even with reading glasses. The eBook lets me adjust the font size and line spacing so that it’s not too small, not too big, but just right.
That’s another benefit. Particularly when you are on a plane and don’t feel like using reading glasses.
“especially when the total cost of ownership remains significantly higher than conventional vehicles.” I was in Mexico four months back. A Chinese BYD can be had for around $20,000. In fact there was a showroom right next to my hotel. One third of the cars sold in Mexico in 2024 were electric and we can safely assume 100% of them were Chinese (as you’d have to be a lunatic to pay three times that much for a Tesla). “Other car makers are going down this same path. Soon, features like heated seats will be software as a service, meaning you… Read more »
Right. The BYD thing just shows that recent US policy was all about creating a price umbrella for US manufacturers to get up the learning curve on low/moderately-priced EVs. Even with this protection, they failed. So now Canada and US tariffed the BYD cars. I understand that Trump is trying to bring jobs back here, but the predicate is that US companies can execute basic technology and so far many are failing. I hope these tariffs work but I’m skeptical.
Couldn’t agree with you more. The tariffs are there to give continuing support to US companies like Tesla. But I don’t think they’ll ever be able to compete with Chinese companies on a level playing field. It’s not entirely the fault of the companies — the cost structure of doing business in the USA is just too high. As with electric cars so also with things like these new large-language models (AI). Of course the American consumer has to foot the bill in terms of high-priced US goods and even higher-priced imports.
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence of foreign passengers asking DiDi (PRC equivalent of Uber) owner drivers about the economics of their EVs. Turns out it’s a no-brainer for any kind of high density urban operation. EVs are far more economical to purchase and run than IC vehicles. One might think that recharge time is an issue but it isn’t with fast chargers (and likely to get better if the current BYD breakthrough isn’t hype). There’s a whole microeconomy around snack stalls and, coffee shops etc. for drivers on charging breaks. There are also some vehicles which have quickly swappable… Read more »
I’m a bitter clinger…to my timing light, point / spark plug gap gauges… just in case.
Actually, eBooks are presently around 35% of the market, and growing by about 3% per year. That is because they solve a problem for the same people who prefer carrying a phone or tablet to using a desktop PC: they can carry their entire library around with them (and can acquire most books at a fraction of the cost of a dead-tree library). This was formerly not practical for average folks (unless they have the storage space and a train of coolies), but is something a lot of people want. [And the various pirate libraries solve the problem of “can… Read more »
That was my wink-wink-nudge-nudge thought when Z said “non-copyrighted works” as the “Swedish Online Library” has quite the selection.
well there is project gutenberg, and internet archive, where there is a shiton of legal titles to download.
In the past the things you bought were “honest” things. They were designed to do a job and that was it. Now with digital technology piece of crap you buy has its own digital will. It can enforce subscriptions, it can enforce a maintenance schedule, it can spy on you and terminate service. It can punish you for certain behaviors. Instead of demand driving supply of electricity, with smart meters the electric company can use reverse market pressure to change your usage behavior. We are entering the times of the digital favela.
Another thing about eBooks which is frequently overlooked is eBooks can and will be edited for content, presumably to not offend the perpetually offended, while your hard copy is the same as it was when it was printed. Of course this assumes one has a fairly old hard copy, i.e. one that was printed before the modern mania of correcting the ‘mistakes’ in the original.
This claim of a 5 minute charge is based on charging at the rate of 1MW. A 10 stall charger would need 12MW service (which ain’t cheap) or, more likely, charging will be throttled when multiple cars are charging at the stall. Having megawatt loads randomly turn on at various hours of the day would drive up the cost considerably. Every thousand chargers in a city, if they were all being used simultaneously would need their own large nuclear reactor. This would certainly go up as more of the population started driving EVs. People living in apartments and row homes… Read more »
China is an extremely oil-poor nation so a lot of this electric madness makes sense to them in a nationalist economic sense
PRC has huge coal reserves, sucks in a lot of offshore gas, and has a bunch of nuclear power stations and is continuing to build them out. They’ve also been building giant solar arrays in the Gobi desert and the HVDC transmission systems to get this output to the high demand seaboard regions. No expert but I reckon the only reason China imports any coal at all is because it’s probably cheaper to have it delivered from (say) East Coat Australia to a power station in Fujian by ship than transport it by rail from Inner Mongolia. You’ll see some… Read more »
ur doin something wrong. 1,000,000 watts (1 megawatt) at 480v is 2100 amps. At 480v w a 10 foot run, that would require 8x 750kcmil conductors, which would be a round cable about 4 inches thick, which would cost like $3,000 just for the wire. No NEC connectors are available for that. You are describing a neighborhood substation load, not even possible in a residence.
are you trying to say its 1 kilowatt/hr load? ppl mix up the greek K with latin M as 1,000. then some tards use M for million, and mess everyone up.
According to the articles I’ve seen on it, it’s with the charging putting out 1 megawatt (1000 kilowatts). Most public charging areas have many chargers, say 8 to 10. If all of them are 1megawatt chargers, that’s a lot of power. Since they are not going to install such an expensive hookup, it’s gonna throttle people if the station gets busy. I agree with you the whole set up will get expensive with or without throttling. It would likely be the most expensive per kw charger in the city. I certainly was not implying you would see 1MW chargers in… Read more »
Read the Zh article. They appear to use two charging points, 1000v system, and a “peak” 1 megawatt throughput. Which probably means 20 seconds of 800kw, 0.5 seconds of 1000kw, and 4.5 minutes of 400kw. Still huge power, likely minimum 1000 amp service; thats large commercial/light industrial that would be hard to do on the US grid other than in major metro areas, and as Tars says, unlikely in the vast majority of US residences. Jury’s still out about residences in Barsoom, but he would know. ive seen a residence w 800 amp service (for evs), utility connection fee was… Read more »
AFAIK, most residential chargers are around 7.2kW on a 240 line (level 2, it’s called IIRC), less or more depending on service and the circuit. Level 1, I’m pretty sure is like 1500 watts, a 120 at 13amps. Really, if you have a garage, 7.2kW is enough. That’s 72kWh overnight. If you do 95% of your driving like most other people and you have the garage, this is good enough and is the most favorable use case. For now, it’s cheaper than gas. But I expect that to change. Even on slow charge, we’re talking 350 million gallons of gas… Read more »
The electric car is the Climate Change of transportation.
I’m still curious when “we” agreed to the Energy Transition (TM) from hydrocarbons.
It was certainly a slow frog boil from catalytic converters to CAFE to electric to taking the bus.
I don’t miss leaded gasoline, diesel trucks belching black carbon smoke or pervasive smog, but no one under the age of 40 has even experienced that in this country.
Back when electric cars were still cool, the weight issue was mostly ignored. Best as I can tell it still is. Even here, Zman didn’t bring it up. The average electric vehicle weighs 50-100% more than its ICE counterpart. Parking garages weren’t designed for that. You might have heard about the one in Ottawa that collapsed recently. If they really wanted to crush Elon’s company, you’d think they’d hurry up and cite that as the cause. If and as EVs become more ubiquitous you should think more about where you park. Personally I have a problem with the question and… Read more »
Hybrids could soar if manufacturers solve the battery life and recharging problems. They also need to avoid the trap of designing their hybrids for social workers and white librarians. Instead, make hybrids that a healthy man wouldn’t be ashamed to drive. An electric motor can improve acceleration greatly at low speeds without an oversized ICE, one unneeded for urban driving. The ICE can charge the battery on the go, of course, but it needs to recharge quickly for stop & go driving, or performance will suffer. (I’m assuming a small battery, hence low mass and limited charge capacity.) Frequent discharges… Read more »
I rented a V6-hybrid RAM 1500 while my car was in the shop a few months ago. I actually enjoyed it quite a bit, even though the size of the truck was a poor fit for my life long-term.
Vehicle weight in general is a huge and ignored issue. EVs are just ridiculous – these vehicles just destroy roads, especially in cold-weather regions. Crashes are obviously more serious, due to weight and battery fire risk. Tire wear is another issue. Meanwhile, BMW i4 EV curb weight is around 4700 lbs !! No wonder they cannot give them away.
I also noticed the weight issues with EVs were overlooked.
EV weight drives up running costs for a couple reasons. First are the expensive special EV tires that can handle the weight. Of course, those don’t last, so they must be replaced more frequently than is typical on an ICE vehicle.
The same applies to brakes. The extra EV weight chews through pads and rotors, so those also must be replaced more frequently than is typical.
What??? They haven’t incorporated regenerative braking yet? Seems that would be the ideal place to implement them, when you can juice the controllers enough to put the EV into a 4-wheel skid. But have fast enough electronics to hold just short of that.
Steve-
I believe Tesla has regenerative braking.
They still go through pads and rotors quite quickly due to all the extra weight from the battery.
“Do they make a model that can last 20 trouble free years like a Toyota or Honda?” Not for 20 years as the track record is not that long. In any event the question is ill posed. The real question is better put, will the auto last longer than the battery? Then we get into the disposable automobile argument. Not to beg the question, all EV’s come with a mandatory 8 year warranty on the battery. Independent tests of the “charge, discharge recharge” type show—last I looked—good expectation of usable battery life up to 14 years. However, as with ICE… Read more »
They’ve started a MotoGP e-bike class. The bikes are heavy, so tire wear is an issue, even though the races are only around six laps. The real motorcycles run around 25 laps.
An electric car is perfect for things like taking your gay boyfriend to the Whole Foods but feels very out of place when doing manly tasks like drunk driving out on a gravel roads looking at how the corn is growing.
Or jack-lighting deer…
Technology is not an end in itself, but a means to an end…
The “Prometheans” who run tech do not believe such to be the case: they have enshrined “tech-for-tech’s-sake”, and are quite fanatic in their devotion.
My elevator speech on electric vehicles is this: They cost twice as much as an internal combustion engine car. They WEIGH nearly twice as much as an ICE car. My wife has a van and a Tesla 3 (about the size of a Honda Civic) is only an eyelash lighter than her van. They go half as far and the range estimates are exactly that, an estimate. Most of the time, you can count on them getting LESS range than the manufacturer’s estimates. They last half as long. A well-maintained, pre-regulatory stupidity (1990s to 2010s) Toyota will last 400k or… Read more »
I purchased an electric bicycle at Walmart for about $450 a year and a half ago and have basically replaced the use of a car while living in the city. I know someone who has the identical model that I have and has put 12,000 miles on his ebike. If I need to replace the battery it should cost me about $150 and most of the issues that could go wrong are fixable with the help of YouTube video. The electric car may not have a big future but I would be surprised if we don’t see a lot more… Read more »
I wouldn’t mind an electric trike when we have the spare change. Useful to go the half mile to the neighbors or 3 miles to the mailbox. I don’t know that I would try to do the 15 miles to town, especially given the corkscrew curves and no shoulder, but an ebike would be a lot quieter than the side by side. Lots of potential uses, especially if one has a few alternate means of power generation.
One of the car guys I follow on YouTube had a good video on where the automakers are taking this – https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KKEkUs8MTnQ&pp=ygUNdG9ueSdzIGdhcmFnZQ%3D%3D His premise is that they are shutting out the ‘tier three’ buyers. These are the folks buying used vehicles from the people how bought them when the original new car purchasers. For example the third tier is kids getting first car or family buying second vehicle for Mom. These cars will need repairs and replacement parts. However, all new cars with computerization are much too expensive to fix. He talks about cars today that cost $8,000 to replace… Read more »
That’s the guy I mention above, and the video. Thanks for looking it up (I was too lazy).
And from what I see, he’s absolutely right.
Which is it? Electric cars or eclectic cars?
Z needs to disable his spell-check or word-completion function. In numerous places, the piece says “eclectic” where the context clearly calls for “electric”.
Yeah, Word is getting awful. I was thinking about writing a post about it. I may try AI as a spelling and grammar check.
Just don’t compromise. No eclectrics.
Word spellcheck is getting worse every day. If you are not careful, it will change common word spellings into uncommon ones. I find myself fighting the damned thing more than using it as a tool. I might have to invest in something else.
Spellmangler™
GIGO, and too many programmers are hardly literate.
The same thing is happening to spellcheck and predictive typing on my Android phones.
To me, autocorrect peaked on the Sony phones I had in 2015-2016. Helpful, but never intrusive.
I’ve tweaked several options on my current phone with limited improvement.
Word spell check has gone insane over the last few weeks. If you hit ignore, it will keep returning to the spot a few times, as if it saying, “Are you sure you do not want me to replace your word with my word?” The suggestions have become increasingly bizarre. I am going to try ChatGPT starting next week.
If you’re using Apple stuff, the system spellcheck is about as good as they get, though its dictionary is shrinking and nudging in typical ways. Anything less “featureful” than Word will use that rather than install its own. (It rejects featureful, and pretty much all 21st century marketing and management jargon, which is nice.) Nothing’s better for writing than a “minimal text editor.”
GPT has a reputation for resistance similar to Word’s, but versions differ. If I were looking for an “AI solution,” I’d look for something offline and open source, so you can really tell it what to do.
My phone doesn’t like that I’m a misogynistic homophobic neanderthal. It always corrects “bitch” or “slut” into “batch” and “slot”. Fags turn into figs. I’ll need to use more imaginative slurs in the future.
Both. An eclectic choice.
I am eclectic, you a choosy, he’s a junk collector. 😉
I’m pretty sure BMW already charges a subscription fee for heated seats in newer models, and I still see plenty of those hideous machines on the road.
Once upon a time I worked in pricing. It was always stimulating to concoct absurdly convoluted schemes for pricing and discounts with tiers, free months, and whatnot. The stated prices themselves too could look ridiculous. Believe it or not, the telcos would haggle over the price per minute of voice LD down to the ten thousandth of a dollar, though to be fair this was before zirp and Trumpbidenflation.
Was at the Toyota lot last month and they said that their remote start feature was free for two months and a subscription after that. Since several car functions are gate-kept behind their phone-app it gave me a feeling that I was basically renting the car that I would have purchased from them.
I wonder if anyone has done an honest study to learn the amount of mal investment that has has been done in the U.S. I am sure it would be staggering.
If all of the social problems were somehow solved could we survive the mal investment?
“If all of the social problems were somehow solved could we survive the mal investment?”
Probably couldn’t happen. One would not invest more in solving a problem than the problem costs in a sane world.
My boss is a guy in his late 30s. We’ve known each other for many years. He’s a lefty from CA and his wife is a loon. They are all into the “climate change” shit and they believe that Stephen Colbert “does a good job of presenting the facts”. Yeah… So anyway, they are big electric car freaks and they live in central Austin. Anyway, they got rid of their gas powered Audi’s and bought 2 VW electric cars coming in at a cool 77k each. Since he got the car, he has had nothing but problems. He found out… Read more »
Don’t forget, Sobran was a Shakespeare expert too: The real issue is not whether anti-Stratfordian views reveal the reactionary sympathies of the doubter, but whether the Shakespeare plays suggest an author of privileged background-one who not only received the best education available, but who also knew court life, traveled widely, and enjoyed other advantages beyond the reach of a man of rustic origins, however intelligent. In the end, calling the Shakespeare plays works of genius tells us very little about them. “Genius” is not an explanation. Nor is it a motive. We can’t make up the deficit in our knowledge… Read more »
Every smart man is very stupid about at least one thing.
The hypercar 0-60 times on some EVs are not good for a couple reasons.
First, most of the driving public is totally unable to manage that level of performance. Even less so in the case of people who hate cars and driving, which is the case for most EV owners.
Second, is the amount of overengineering required to support a 2.5s 0-60 time. Significant amounts of cost and weight could be saved if the 0-60 times were capped at 5.5 to 6s, which is still good pickup for normal everyday driving.
“Tesla can disable your car remotely. Other car makers are going down this same path. “
I am going to hold on to my old vehicles as long as possible. This modern crap they are stuffing into the cockpit and under the hood comes at a cost, with really no additional value to the driver – Kind of like Z’s point about the electric car. Is there really any benefit to the driver from all these electronic flub-dubs and gew-gaws?
“Is there really any benefit to the driver from all these electronic flub-dubs and gew-gaws?”
1) WRT EV vs ICE there is no difference these days. Both have all the gew-gaws—really, computerization.
2) WRT EV’s, the mechanic aspects of propulsion are minimized or basically, eliminated. Thus producing a car with minimal maintenance a potentially long life.
If I ever manage to get out of this Blue state shithole and buy a house away from the diversity I’m going to get something I can work on myself, maybe an old 280-Z or Porsche 911. If the original specs are too tame, it’ll be fun rebuilding it with new high performance stuff. I really like that you can get 700hp from some of the inline 4 or 5 cylinder engines from Volvo or Honda. Either that or build a kit car.
I rather like e-books for two features: They can be read at night in bed without the need for supplemental lighting, and when one encounters unknown words, expressions, ideas, and places they can be looked up by simply tapping the screen.
I only buy ebooks now because my shelves are completely packed with print books.
I know a lot of people hate electric cars. And no doubt the batteries and all the overkill electronics they put in them is a big problem. But I favor them. Why? Because you don’t have to get oil from from the middle east to run them,. You can charge up a electric car with solar power or any other vast number of electrical sources. You can cobble together some sort of charging system DIY but try to build a oil refinery in your back yard. Do I own one. No I couldn’t afford it ,but my hope is that… Read more »
I can’t speak for other people, but I did not buy my Tesla to save the planet. And I don’t give a shit how many darkies die in the Lithium mines. I bought it to reduce the stress in my life. Except for the tires, it’s virtually maintenance free. No oil to change. No oil to leak on the driveway. No high pressure radiator to rust out and leak on the driveway, or blow the system while driving, or overheat. No water pump to fail. No transmission to break (e.g. “reverse” is just running the motor backwards). Just paid $4Gs… Read more »
There’s a company that shuttles people from LA to Las Vegas for vacation. They bought Tesla’s and kept track all cost and they have saved a great deal of money by doing so.
https://www.jalopnik.com/this-tesla-model-x-has-driven-over-400-000-miles-here-1841761190/
I think it worth noticing that a lot of IC cars would never reach 400,000 miles.
I think the electric car people are missing out by not adding a small single cylinder diesel engine to them. They have some free piston engines that are very light, energy effecient and powerful.
“None of this means the electric car is dead. There is a place for the technology, just as there is a niche for eBooks.” Certainly. What today’s missive overlooks however Is that the concept and implementation of the EV is at its early stages, whereas the ICE vehicle is at its apex. The engineering of engine and transmission in today’s ICE vehicle is ridiculously complex and expensive. Hundreds of moving parts destined to wear and to fail over time. This complexity of course due in no small part *also* to government EPA regulations. The last ICE vehicle I had used… Read more »
“However, remember that grid use drops by 30-40% at night and that’s when I’m charging. One also saves on off hour rates.”
Sort of. As the greenies shut down baseline generation, it’s going to be a bit of a challenge topping up your EV using solar panels or windmills. That off-hour discount is a dead man walking.
Greenies can screw up a wet dream. All bets are off here.
in a power outage tapping into an EV might be very helpful.
In Rickenbacker autobiography he describes taking an electric car out for a spin in like 1910 or something. It ran out of juice and he had to practically push it back to the garage where he “borrowed” it from.
Electric cars have their benefits. They are super quiet, safe and fast. They are convenient. They require no maintenance. I am not sure where you are getting your cost model from. Cost per mile for electricity is less than half cost per mile for gas. You never have to go to the gas station because your car is full for 250-300 miles every morning. The do go through tires more quickly though. The average cost of a new gas car is $48-49000 while an EV is $55000. Yes there are subsidies and maybe battery disposal fees will be significant but… Read more »
Safe, except for an accident where you got locked in the car because there ain’t a cable actuated door handle in it. For God sake we need a law banning electrically actuated door handles. They require a ton of maintenance. It is likely you will have to replace the battery at least once, maybe twice. The average age of a car on the road today is just shy of 13 years. How many 20 year old lithium batteries do you have that still work? “Cost per mile for electricity is less than half cost per mile for gas” This is… Read more »
Electric doors not opening is not solely an EV thing. We have a Lincoln ICE vehicle that needs a hidden lever in the bottom of the door to open “in case of power failure”. Fat chance finding that when you drive off a bridge. Conversely, my Mach-e fails to mechanical opening when there is a power failure. It feels mechanical as well.
All Teslas have completely mechanical door unlatch handles on the front of the front door arm rests, just like a car from 1940. They recommend it’s use only in an emergency as it pushes thru the weather stripping. The electric unlatch retracts the windows first.
Respectfully disagree on your “quiet, safe and fast” points.
1. Quiet? Be great if they were, but the electric cars on my quiet suburban street have (federally mandated) obnoxious noise makers;
2. Safe? Name a car made in the last 15 years that ISN’T safe; and,
3. Fast? Get in an electric car and drive to the grocery store. Do the same in a normal car. Measure how much time each trip takes. It is like the people who zoom from one red light to the next or constantly change lanes in rush-hour traffic.
‘The ridiculous looking cyber truck did not help either’
Apparently, Klaus Schwab was in charge of Design.
664cc9864cce1664cc9864cce2.jpg (1392×788)
I wonder if Kooky Klaus is related to that giant of automotive scammery, Earl Scheib?
“There is a place for the technology, just as there is a niche for eBooks.”
Hey all. I just finished reading the print-out of Zman’s post today, but the comment option on my paper does not work. Do I have to use the website, or can I mail a letter to Zman through USPS?
I honestly cannot tell if eclectic car and electric car are typos or clever. ‘Cuase it never actually reads incorrectly.
The Tesla is the ultimate Vanity purchase. The colonists building New Asia love them. They signal that they have made it and they understand the future. I suppose that could give them a bigger market. Import even more Chinese. They are coming by the townsfull so, perhaps that will keep the stock goosed and the lease and sale numbers going up. It is certainly keeping the cash purchases of home skyrocketing. And that is the grand plan after all – the fire sale is only just beginning. Anyway, all the talk of the simple drive train was silly. The battery… Read more »
Electric cars don’t address any problem…The energy cost of generation, and huge losses by transmission, distribution by the grid, and storage in a battery, is far higher than the energy cost of running on gasoline…And then there’s the energy wasted in the recharging process, and the fact that electric cars don’t perform in freezing weather or extreme heat…
Electric cars are also heavier than their gas counterparts (the batteries are very heavy) and do more damage in collisions. It would be better to increase the efficiency of gas-powered cars than to coerce the population into buying electrics.
Links addressing the total cost of ownership are appreciated!
the current EVs are limited as you say, but the Tesla auto-drive feature seems to be a real game changer. what is needed is a new energy technology to replace batteries. something that converts fission directly into electricity (no heated water) would be swell. there are such devices now (thermistors); NASA uses them to power deep space probes. but they currently have pretty limited output.
where is Nikolai T when you need him.
we already have auto drive cars
They are called buses.
I have to disagree with you about the e-books. They have a couple of features that elevate them above physical books: Size of the book/device – they are lighter and smaller. I have mobility issues, and that is a big factor in my moving to e-book almost exclusively. Number of books that can be contained in that device. Less clutter in my home, less storage needed. Able to access anywhere. Ability to increase the font significantly. Wonderful for those times I’m reading in bed – I don’t have to keep my glasses on. So, when – no if – I… Read more »
Vehicles going electrical is pretty much going to happen. All technology eventually goes electrical because it more compact, reliable and powerful. It could be batteries (and that technology gets better all the time) fuel cells, etc. an ICE engine is made up of hundreds of parts that have to have complex lubricating, cooling and emissions systems to function. It’s basically a bomb at the edge of blowing up or melting down without all that stuff. All the complaints about electric cars were said about gas ones early on too. They cost too much, they are unreliable, no gas stations, etc.… Read more »
I don’t disagree with my fellow Mark. But recharging time has to come down, and we should be able to buy $20K EVs.
I love the downvotes your comment will generate. Mine as well. Seems people can’t handle a straightforward assessment of EV vs ICE—even when correct and balanced. Mentally these people can’t handle/accept technological change. I wonder if a posting on the benefits of cell/smart phone compared to a (now obsolete) rotary dial phone would produce the same ire? 😉
Ever heard of thermal runaway? Those batteries burn like the fires of hell and can’t be extinguished. One Tesla fire in California took 55,000 gallons of water.
That amount of water would fill a corrugated steel tank 30.11 feet in diameter and 10.8 high and weighing 5,474 lbs.
A gasoline car on fire doesn’t require a third of that amount of water to contain the fire.
now put solar panels on your home’s roof, so you can experience thermal runaway without having to go out!