Posted on 01/25/2024 11:18:00 AM PST by Red Badger
The nation’s recent deep freeze stranded many expensive electric vehicles (EVs) with drained batteries, often in front of charging stations equally disabled by the cold. Warmer areas like California, where some 39% of EV car owners reside, do not abuse their batteries with the harsh seasonal winters that threaten many regions of the nation and world. Electric vehicle sales were quite chilly even before the arctic blast, despite price drops and government subsidies. The cold weather troubles reveal why the market for this vaunted technology may continue to cool.
Car Conspiracy
The 2006 documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” explored the possibility that government and industry forces conspired to ensure the failure of the prototype electric vehicle of the mid-1990s: the General Motors EV1. EVs may have been viewed as a threat to oil or automaker profits, but automakers claimed the failure of the vehicles to succeed was primarily attributable to a lack of consumer demand. Current public displays of the sharp drop in efficiency of electric batteries in frigid environments will not boost popularity, instead offering yet one more reason for consumers to prefer the traditional gasoline engine.
EVs are relatively expensive, and many remain skeptical that charging stations and electric grids can support them – even in warmer temps. Growing awareness of the pollution generated in the mining of lithium and other materials in EV battery and vehicle manufacturing (and the eventual disposal of non-recyclable batteries) undermines the environment-sparing messaging used to justify the hefty price tag. And then there is “range anxiety.”
Range Anxiety
Range anxiety refers to the understandable concern of consumers that EVs lack the ability of gas-powered cars to travel long distances reliably. Indeed, concerns about vehicles that could, at that time, travel less than 100 miles per charge were likely part of the lack of consumer appeal for GM’s EV1 in the 1990s. Today’s models approach the three-hundred-mile range – until it gets too cold. Car batteries lose energy much faster when the thermometer plummets and the increased energy requirement to keep the driver and passengers warm certainly doesn’t help. It is estimated that sub-freezing temps can reduce EV range by 40% when the heater is on.
Many consumers will hesitate to buy a vehicle in which turning on the heat could leave them stranded on the roadside in life-threatening weather. In the recent cold snap, many EV owners claimed their cars would not charge at all or that charging stations failed to function. And while EV proponents claim gas stations too are vulnerable when the power goes out (and that future EVs will permit charging other vehicles), it is a familiar rescue to Americans when someone pulls a can of gasoline from the back of their truck to get “old-fashioned” motorcars back on their way.
Hertz Rentals launched an ambitious EV car rental program, purchasing 100,000 EVs and installing charging stations for its users. The plan has been back-pedaled as the company recently shed about a third of its EV fleet. Rental customer experience may have a lot to reveal about the broader long-term salability of EVs.
Americans often rent cars for long journeys, perhaps seeking a more reliable vehicle than their personal auto, or to spare it the extra mileage or risk of a far-from-home breakdown. Road trips are part of the American wilderness experience, a la Jack Kerouac. Such journeys tackle long distances over this grand American geography: Many people drive hundreds of miles a day, or even through the night, to reach their vacation or business destination.
Enter the electric vehicle rental. Depending on the departure location, there may or may not be ample charging stations en route. An app or other electronic access is also required before departure in order to use the electric charging stations, as no cash is allowed. The stop will not be a three-minute fill-up with coffee and donuts as in the gas station era, but likely a one-hour affair (if the charging stations are operational and available, and if it’s not sub-freezing). Some technologies (Tesla Superchargers) can accelerate charging times, but it is still far more time-consuming to juice a battery than to simply pump petrol: EV charging stations cannot recharge cars anywhere near as fast as liquid fuel stations.
A traveler hoping to drive 750 miles or more in one day to a family member’s wedding, graduation, funeral, etc., would thus have to make at least two lengthy stops with an electric vehicle rental, making an already-exhausting journey dangerous, perhaps necessitating a hotel and an extra day (or two, if returning) car rental. Better to take a gasoline-powered rig.
Hertz admits as much on its website:
“But if you’re keen to explore the many benefits of driving an electric car – low emissions, a quieter ride, and lower running costs among them – don’t let range anxiety stop you from giving it a go….
“So, while you won’t be able to drive from dawn till dusk, EVs are great for day-to-day driving and multi-stop road trips. Electric cars also offer better efficiency in city settings, thanks to regenerative braking: the ability to build up power reserves when stopping repeatedly.”
Many Americans want to drive from dawn till dusk, or even from dusk till dawn. Hertz also experienced higher repair and tire costs with its EV fleet. Repair costs for bodywork on EVs (especially Teslas) are generally substantially higher than for gas-powered vehicles; EVs go through tires 30% faster. All of these are negative factors not just for car rental companies, but individual American car buyers increasingly concerned about a wobbly economy in an even wobblier election year.
A subconscious instinct against dependency infuses pictures of EVs parked in darkness due to harsh, frigid elements. If there is a time consumers want dependability for their loved ones, it is in times of emergency such as a winter storm. Then there are the many consumers accustomed to the self-reliance of a woodstove or generator, who are also reluctant to relinquish that independence for the techno-enslavement of heat pumps. Like EVs, heat pumps decline in efficiency as temperatures drop. Even with improvements to this problem, there remains a complete dependence upon the electric grid for life-saving warmth. The Boy Scout motto of “Be Prepared” is pretty useless if all one can do is wait for the power to come back on to stave off hypothermia in a home or car.
Like a load of heavy, wet snow on a cheap tin shack, the numerous problems that accompany EVs promise to break the unfulfilled technological promises and dubious climate justifications concocted to prop them up. Winter storms reveal EVs stalled in squalls with dead batteries; summer EV driving threatens California with blackouts. Lithium mining and battery disposal eclipse the claimed environmental benefits of carbon dioxide reduction, and EV subsidies are “inequitably” regressive.
With such a fast-growing list of insurmountable problems, the EV appears to be killing itself.
They don’t tell you these things when you buy one.
EVs eat tires like crazy.
And they are more expensive than regular car tires.
So, all the money you supposedly ‘save’ on gasoline, you spend on tires, and I would think brakes as well........................
I drive with an egg under my right foot. There were “high-mileage” techniques taught when the first oil embargo hit and that was one of them. I’m a leisurely driver and got more so as I aged.
We have electric-assisted pedicabs here. They are awesome and get a lot of done. Or they did until they had a battery fire in their storage garage and lost 5 of them and the garage (detached, luckily). 2 were outside and survived. Insurance is covering the loss, but I doubt the lost income/employee pay is covered.
If it weren’t for those pesky Laws Of Thermodynamics, they’d get away with it, too!...................
I wonder how much of those tires come from petroleum?
I think you are correct but add that the computer won’t let the battery charge if the battery is too cold because that will ruin the battery. So, the battery is the actual problem, the computer is just the safety control switch.
We are not alone - listen to these Chinese and their EV woes:
Driving Covered with a Blanket, No AC, Even Pushing Cars! China’s EVs Only 30% Range in Winter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf9Ax4Crcy8
Huawei EV Crashes Into BYD, AEB Out of Control? China’s EVs Are Just Rubbish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzNONy3Q6Rg
I respectfully disagree. Sure EV's tend to be more popular in urban areas, but I think that's more of a political culture thing (big city folks tend to lean left, as you correctly point out). But that's usually not a practical application of EV's. From a free market non-political perspective on who the best fit for EV's are, IMHO that's the people who live away from the city.
My wife and I have an EV as our main driving car (26K miles per year) because we drive enough miles for the gas and oil change savings to more than offset the other costs. Why do we drive that many miles? In part because we live away from the city. Where we live we have to drive far to get somewhere. LOL
Plus, in our rural/suburban area the homes have lots of space between our neighbors -- plenty of space for a garage we can charge the EV out in. Many urbanites can't charge at home because they either live in apartments or they live in houses that are so tightly built next to each other that everybody has to park in the street. (I'm sure there are exceptions, but I'm talking about the norm.) Thus, they have to use the road-side chargers for local driving and that's when there's a lot of waiting in lines (even before cold weather makes charging take longer). Contrast that with here in the rural southeast, the few people who own EV's almost always charge at home for local driving, leaving the road-side chargers to be used by only the out of town drivers. Thus I've never had to wait for a charger except for one time, and that's when we took a long road trip up north (it wasn't winter LOL).
...it takes about seven gallons of oil to make a standard tire—five gallons as feedstock for chemicals that make up synthetic rubber, plus two for the energy required to power the manufacturing process.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/a5750/bioengineers-turn-trees-into-tires/
Google. No need to wonder about anything these days… except for what the search algorithms and censors hide from us, of course.
Yeah...but a better name would have been Sparks or Burn...
:]
Needless to say, like almost everyone else who was around in the 90’s, I have zero recollection of that… car. Don’t ever remember seeing it (either in ads or on the road), or even hearing about it.
If you can afford a Tesla EV, you're not of below average intelligence. You're just virtue signalling by purchasing one.
We don’t know why the chargers weren’t working. We think the cold made them stop. It is possible that they were not turned on.
Stop it with that nonsense. Do you apply your same logic to an intersection stop light that is malfunctioning? Somebody just forgot to turn it on?
Charging stations are not manually turned on by some schlep whose job is to turn them on in the morning then off at night.......
Electric motors to provide traction for vehicles is a very good idea all around. Such an arrangement would do away with clutches, transmissions with varying ratios, driveshafts and differentials. Either an on-board generator driven by some kind of portable and independent fuel-burning internal (or external) combustion engine, or a hydrogen fuel cell, which can be swapped out, fully charged cell unit for depleted cell unit. The power generator could be driven by something like a closed recycling steam engine, or Stirling cycle hot-air engine, both external-combustion engines, fueled by compressed natural gas or propane. The waste heat from either of these designs could be used to warm the cabin in cold weather, or used to drive a secondary generator for the other electrical systems on the vehicle, like air conditioning, lights, or other on-board systems like control computers or other auxiliary purposes. Teslas and every other design of EV could be adapted to use these on-board power storage or generation systems, no longer relying on exotic batteries alone.
Battery powered electric vehicles are a technological dead end, suitable only for a niche market. And that may already be saturated.
Not to mention all the energy it takes to extract the rare earths required to make the batteries.
Common Sense killed the electric car.
“I wonder how much of those tires come from petroleum?”
I’ll put it this way: Producing one tire requires 5 gallons of oil.
At very cold temperatures they don't take a charge until somewhat warmed up, thus the Chicago charging meltdown earlier this month.
I get an overall average of 3.6 miles/kWh. But call it 3 miles/kWh in reality. The 3.6 is DC power coming from the battery for all purposes (including headlights, AC, heat, etc.) and all speeds (I get less than that when I drive 80mph on trips, more than that for local driving). Assuming a 10.6% loss when converting from AC to DC (charging at home from AC circuit), call it 3 miles/kWh if all of my miles were charged from home. (In reality that's 16K charged at home in 2023 of the 26K total miles we drove it, but I'll assume all of the miles have the 10% conversion loss to have a pessimistic miles/kWh.) Or another way to say it, if I didn't have solar providing 80% of all the power we consume at home, for every 100 miles we drive count it as adding 33.33 kWh to the power bill. At 16¢/kWh in my last few power bills (ignoring the flat monthly fees), adding $5.33 to the power bill gives you 100 general purpose miles (some driving fast mixed with driving slow while running the AC, etc.) Obviously if I was driving 50mph around town I get much better miles per dollar, and the opposite if I'm charging at home tonight to head out on a trip tomorrow morning driving 80mph (some of my local driving is 75mph, but that's part of living out in a somewhat rural area). I'm talking about my real world averages based on my real world telemetry that I pull from the EV's computer and my solar inverters, which I track every month when I get a power bill (like I did yesterday) to see how well my solar/EV/other energy improvements energy project is going to see if I need to tweak some configuration to improve on it. (I'm probably about done with finding new tweaks. It's pretty much minor maintenance mode to switch over from winter mode to warm 7 to 8 months, then set a calendar reminder to do switch some settings and duct dampeners back to winter mode around late November.)
I don’t recall ever seeing one of those either. I thought fender skirts went out in the ‘70s. I had a ‘68 Buick Electra that had fender skirts.
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