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.
What the left wants is for the little people to own anything personally. A single-family home for instance. Why can’t everyone live in apartments that they control? We should be happy with the dregs they provide for us.
You’ll own nothing and like it!
We had quite a few of them running around Silicon Valley, just like we have as many Teslas today as a tenement has roaches.
California, where some 39% of EV car owners reside, do not abuse their batteries.
It’s true in the summer months they are on restricted charging time last year it was no charging until after 9:00pm.
A/C use causes some black outs transformers go off like pop corn.
Poor electrical grid can’t meet demands
My town is about 5x the size of yours, and I’m pretty sure there’s nary a charger here, at least publicly offered.
True that. Chicago had the added element of being in an urban area. Meaning, a larger portion of EV owners can't charge at home because they live in apartments or live in houses stacked so close to each other that they have to park in the street. Thus, unlike charging stations in rural areas, the charging stations in urban areas have a high portion of users who need them more frequently just for local charging. (Much like gas car drivers spend most of their refill times for local driving.)
Because I live in rural Alabama, of the 26K miles we've put on our EV in the past 19 months, with 10K of those miles charged away from home, I've had to wait in line at a charger only 1 time and that was on a long road trip up north. All of the other road trips I've taken had no waiting times at chargers, most charging bays were empty. Because the few people who own EV's in the rural southeast almost always charge at home for local driving (and for that matter, even with long road trips the first X miles of the trip are charged at home too).
No matter which car we drive, my wife wants to stop every 200 miles anyway and walk around for 10-15 minutes to stretch her legs. LOL So at least for our driving habits in our warm and mostly rural region, with as many miles as we drive every year, and with doing most of our charging at home, an EV makes sense. Ironically, I've never voted Dim nor do I believe in their warmageddon hoax. I'm talking about practical usage.
Ironically, an EV makes no sense for most of the leftist Dim cult worshippers, I mean voters, who think EV's are saving the world from our carbon sins. Many of them can't charge at home and many of them live up north where it's cold (and where there's a greater tendency to lean left). And because many of them live in urban areas, they probably don't drive nearly as many miles as us rural/suburban dwellers who have to drive tons of miles just to get somewhere for our "local" driving. LOL Thus they usually don't get enough gas savings anyway to pay for the extra costs an EV brings, especially if they have to do most of their charging at the road-side chargers (which cost a lot more per kWh than charging at home, at least after the free charging trial for a year or two expires, even if at least for now it costs less per mile to charge an EV at a road-side charger than to fill-up an ICE car...for now).
Not to mention “brake anxiety.” If you expensive tires are going to wear out that much faster, how about the braking system?
It’s not that the chargers quit working, it’s that the battery circuits refused to let the chargers initiate the charge to the cold battery as this may damage the battery and possible cause a fire. Heads full of mush report this as the chargers are at fault when it’s really a battery issue.
I’ve been saying ever since they came out the fourth time (first time 1890 died 1910, second time late 1980s died early 90s, third time EV1 1996-1999 RIP) that they’re considerably inferior ICE powered vehicles. Other than putting lipstick on a very smelly pig the current crop of EVs have all of the drawbacks of the former generation and nothing new to add except hype. (Note tagline)
It will be interesting to see future EV sales figures for the upper midwest after the widely reported EV charging meltdown in Chicago...
Diesel electric cars just like locomotives. What a great idea. Crank up the diesel generators to power the electric motors that drive the wheels. Of course trains do this as a way of transmitting the diesel power to the wheels. And it would eliminate the intermediate steps of getting electricity through the grid and charging and discharging the battery. With a turbocharged 2 cycle diesel you could get almost 50% thermodynamic efficiency.
Irrespective of the cause of the problem the batteries won’t charge. I never had a gas pump not work because it was too cold and that includes a couple of -40F days when I lived in upstate Ny. Then charge it in your garage you say? 30% of the US population lives in multi family dwellings - no garage. Plus does anyone really want to store a potential incendiary bomb in their garage? EVs are inferior technology and if the government would stop ramming them down everyone’s throats and let the market decide they would settle into a small niche of users whose requirements fit the EV envelope.
Except..... you can get gas from a gas station when the power is out. You can certainly get enough to start a generator to run the rest of the pumps.
Which means that at five minutes per car you could get 12 cars back on the road in an hour even if you only had a tiny generator that ran one pump. Even if you were getting the gas from the tanks by hand you still would be able to get more cars running.
““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.”
I knew a person who had leased an EV1 (there were no sales, only leases). He told me that the battery was lead acid - so no Tesla-type fires, but you also didn’t get very far with it either, not at all. He told me about one time when he was driving it to conference to give a talk on EVs and it very nearly ran out of battery - kind of embarrassing if that had happened. LOL.
Amen. But the analogies go deep. I grew up in a railroading family. My father started out shoveling coal as a fireman on the Moffat Road in Colorado. Worked his way up to Division Engineer, and eventually running a heavy-tonnage railroad in MN. (I was an apprentice diesel-electric loco mechanic before going on to grad school) He loved steam but always said it just couldn’t match the economics...
I remember one of his stories about the Burlington on a route between Chicago and Denver. Had to pull steam engines out of retirement because the Platte River flooding was shorting out the traction motors on the early F3s(?).
The fireboxes were high-enough above the rails there was no problem for the steam engines. Hell, cynically, the cooling of the cylinders probably increased the thermodynamic efficiency.
Yeah, and this county went Trump in 2016 by 65%-35%. The town is full of farms, and Trump signs during campaigns.
Wow, thanks. You sound like an engineer. Glad you like the car, that’s what matters when all is said and done.
Teslas use “regenerative braking”. Probably all EVs do.
In essence the motor becomes a generator and as it creates electricity the resulting resistance brakes the car.
I friend of mine bought a 2014 Tesla, drove it every day, and when he sold it in 2021 (to buy another Tesla) he had never had to replace the brakes. He did have to buy tires more often than for a comparable ICE car.
I’m in farm country for sure. I like to say we are semi-rural, but we are really close to farms, lots of ‘em. Not even a quarter mile from my home.
I like to say that we live in a suburb of a suburb of Indy. Cutest little Midwest town you’ve ever seen. Hoping against hope that we can keep it that way, but half of the planning commission is progressives, so I doubt it will stay this quaint much longer. It was a good run.
No EV charging stations yet, so that’s encouraging.
So in 2021 I used the skills the Lord blessed me with to start an ambitious project to make my wife and me more energy self-reliant with solar. I installed solar at half the size I wanted to study it for a year to make sure it works as well through the seasons as I expected. It did. So I converted my 2 natural gas appliances to electric, replaced one of our ICE cars with an EV; and added onto the solar. IMHO I hit the sweet spot of doing enough to take advantage of the economies of scale, but not go so far I’m fighting the law of diminishing returns. My hybrid water heater has a built-in heat pump that outputs a byproduct of cold air. During the warm 7 months of the year I use duct dampeners to direct that cold air into a receiver of my HVAC. For the 2 to 3 hours my water heater runs every day in the warm months, that means 2 to 3 hours that my variable speed heat pump cooling my house can operate at low speed. And because those 2 main home appliances work with a low power load, and because my EV has the option to charge somewhat slowly, there’s rarely a time when the total power load of my house exceeds the 18 kW AC power that my solar inverters can produce. Thus it’s rare that my inverters have to get help from the grid. These little tweaks that anyone can do with a pencil and paper, make my overall home work better than the sum of the parts. Anybody else could have made it produce about 70% of his power needed, pulling only 30% from the grid. The extra number crunching I do adds just another 10% or so to make us 80% energy self-reliant.
The #1 thing the EV brings to the table for me is it allows us to extend our home energy independence out onto the road, at least for local driving. If I could drill and refine oil on my own I would, and never give EV’s a thought. In many ways ICE cars are better. Except for the one major problem that depending solely on ICE cars for transportation means depending on an overly regulated gas and oil market that the Dims like to screw with. By having one EV and one ICE car, the Dims would have to mess up both power and gasoline access to prevent us from driving. Even if they mess up both, we could still do local driving in the EV charged at home with solar.
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