Nonsense! Electricity is FREE! It comes from Solar Panels, Windmills, and Unicorn Farts!..................and that socket on my wall...............
Posted on 11/27/2023 9:31:07 AM PST by Red Badger
This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm gave Americans an unintended glimpse of the future during her road trip this summer touting the wonders of electric vehicles. Her public relations misadventure in Georgia involved one of her staff in a gasoline-powered vehicle blocking off a coveted charger in advance of her arrival, leading to frayed tempers and a local EV owner calling the cops. It was an illustration of the challenges drivers could face as governments push the public to embrace plug-in vehicles.
Hyped as technological marvels, EVs are boobytrapped with a host of inconveniences and tradeoffs. By now many people have heard about range anxiety, exploding lithium-ion batteries, and the environmental destruction caused by global mining for battery minerals.
But more challenges are in the offing as the federal government and the states pump in billions of dollars to build a massive national infrastructure of charging stations to power the EVs.
EV sales are creeping up, but nowhere near the ambitious targets set by the policy experts, accounting for under 8% of new car sales in the third quarter, and rising to nearly 10% in September. California stands at the vanguard of the nation’s EV transition, with more than 1 million electric vehicles among the state’s 31-million-plus registered vehicles, and EVs accounting for about 25% of new car sales in the second quarter.
At some point, EV experts promise, the kinks will get worked out, and EVs will become as convenient as smartphones. But at present, the EV industry has a classic chicken-and-egg problem on its hands. The current demand for EV charging does not economically justify rapidly expanding the nation’s charging infrastructure, but without an expanded charging infrastructure in place, most people won’t buy EVs for fear of being stranded.
Despite California’s massive infrastructure investment, now totaling nearly 94,000 public chargers, the state has fallen behind its goal of 250,000 public chargers by 2025 – and potentially 10 times that number by 2035, when the ban on new gasoline-powered cars takes effect.
There’s no consensus on the amount of public chargers that will be needed. According to a California Energy Commission assessment, California will need more than 2.4 million public chargers to accommodate about 15.5 million electric cars, trucks, and buses by 2035. That breaks down to 2.11 million chargers (including 83,000 fast chargers) to support 15.2 million electric cars, as well as 256,000 depot chargers and 8,500 public chargers for 377,000 trucks and buses.
The 2.4 million chargers would serve only half the registered vehicles in the state. Many more will be necessary to complete the second half of the transition, from 15.5 million EVs to more than 31 million EVs by mid-century. Those chargers will have to be installed at curbsides, parking lots, parking decks, grocery stores, restaurants, convenience stores, big box stores, office buildings, strip malls, shopping centers, movie theaters, and other locations so that drivers always have ready access to plug-in.
By comparison, California now has about 11,000 gas stations, convenience stores, and other businesses that sell gasoline, which translates to about 110,000 individual gas nozzles, according to an estimate by Jeff Lenard, vice president of Strategic Industry Initiatives at the National Association of Convenience Stores. That means the transition from fossil fuels to electrons will require California to install at least 20 EV charging ports for every gas nozzle by 2035.
Not all chargers are equal, so the new EV infrastructure will require significant changes in driving habits. While so-called fast chargers can bring a battery to 80% of capacity in under an hour, most of the new public chargers will be cheaper, Level 2 technology, which provides between 5 miles and 60 miles of range for each hour of charging and isn’t practical for charging up quickly on a road trip.
Chargers are expected to lose money until there are enough EVs on the road to justify the investment. The cost of building a fast-charging station with four or more charging ports can range from several hundred thousand dollars to more than $1 million. Reliability remains a persistent problem, one that will shadow the industry as chargers are built out in remote areas, low-income areas, and other out-of-the-way places.
In the meantime, Analytics firm J.D. Power says that 20% of all EV drivers reported visiting a charger that did not or could not charge because it wasn’t working or there were long lines. The dissatisfaction rates ranged from 12% in the Cleveland-Akron-Canton area to 35% in South Florida. The firm said the trend is moving in the wrong direction: as more people buy EVs, “overall satisfaction continues to decline.”
This year, a Los Angeles Times columnist declared she’s ready to trade in her EV because charging is such a hassle. She wrote that chargers are sometimes blocked by cars that aren’t charging, exposed to blistering sunlight, charging at lower levels than advertised, or “it may shut off mid-charge with no warning or reason.”
The frustration seems to have no expiration date. And it includes a problem not caused to technology or economics but by human nature: vandalism. As Jonathan Levy, EVgo chief commercial officer, told the New York Times last year: “Where there’s a screen, there’s a baseball bat.”
This article was adapted from a RealClearInvestigations article published October 24.
This article was originally published by RealClearPolicy and made available via RealClearWire.
So does stealing the cables for the copper. Chargers in Oakland (and I imagine other like places) cannot work for more than a few days before the cables are stolen.
Nonsense! Electricity is FREE! It comes from Solar Panels, Windmills, and Unicorn Farts!..................and that socket on my wall...............
Yep the rats are going to use impossible to meet CAFE standards to effectively ban ICE vehicles.
Therein lies the #1 problem with EV's. Not the EV itself, but that so much of the EV cult believes government should solve all problems. EV owners and ICE owners (disclosure: I own one of each) are all better off if the government gets out of the way and lets the free market sell us what we want. That includes charging stations.
Imagine how much gas stations would have been hampered if beginning a century ago people demanded the government build new gas stations to transition from horses to ICE cars (and from EV cars, since many early cars were EV's). Any entrepreneur thinking about setting up a gas station would not do it if he was worried that within a year the government would set up a free gas station a block away. Thus, we wouldn't have as many gas stations as we do today. That's exactly what's happening today with the government "solution" for charging EV's. EV owners would be better off by quit talking about government "solutions" so that entrepreneurs would be more apt to go through the cost of setting up chargers.
Yes, all the modern diesels have them. They work under extremely high pressures. The ‘biodiesel’ grease is too thick to pass through the injectors and will destroy them.
The glycerin has to be removed from the used oils first, and filtered down to the micron for cleanliness.
The old mechanical injectors are more ‘tolerant’ but even they will clog from time to time. That’s why there are multiple filters...................
And when the wind stops and the sky clouds over .... or it’s too cold or too hot ...
And that is the real goal.
I wonder what a family with three cars is going to do as far as charging at home? Install two chargers in the garage and one in the driveway?
The Interstate Commerce Clause refers to Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which gives CONGRESS the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among states, and with the Indian tribes.”
Congress then handed over this power to the unelected, permanent Fed.gov bureaucracy, fed by massive debt in printed, fiat money, and waves of leftist SCOTUS rulings have interpreted it very broadly
Which, of course, is the near-term goal of just about every aspect of anti-MAGA agenda.
I know.
Red Badger: Nonsense! Electricity is FREE! It comes from Solar Panels, Windmills, and Unicorn Farts!..................and that socket on my wall...............
For the record, my utility charged 16¢/kWh on the past couple of power bills (after adding the fuel charge per kWh and the 4% state tax). Of that I get about 3.2 miles per kWh in my EV (after some loss converting AC to DC). So if you lived in my area and had an EV like mine it'd cost you about $5 to drive 100 miles.
My wife and I drove our EV about 26,000 miles in the past 12 months, with 16,000 of them charged at home. Without solar it would have added $800 to our power bills to drive those 16,000 miles (monthly that's $67 to drive 1,300 miles). Thus the savings per mile is real if you drive the EV enough each year and do most of your charging at home. With decentralized solar providing 80% of our power for free in the past 12 months (buying only 20% of our power from the grid), those 16,000 miles added only $160 to our power bills ($13 per month to charge the EV for 1,300 miles per month).
But that's not using an EV and solar like the Dims push it where only more government can save us. That's me thinking with a self-reliance mindset and using anything I can think of to make me and my family less dependent on things the Dims over-regulate.
Indeed.
I wish I could get non- bio diesel. Only 2 stations around me in Illinois aell straight #2.
Thanks to the governors decree to sell bio-diesel. When asking several stations. All they can tell you is that bio is 10 to 20%.
My 07 Duramax says in the manual to NOT use more than 3%.
FYI. The 2 stations are about an hour away
Waiting to see the video of when some dumb ass tries to steal the catalytic converter off an EV and penetrates the battery with his reciprocating saw.
Pretty sure I read ford is losing about $36k on each one and there are 94k unsold on dealers lots. Anyone? Bueller?
The truth is coming out thru the one way they can’t block.
Word of mouth.
My brother bought a Korean EV and it was so bad, they had to fly in an engineer from Korea to try and fix it.
A friend of mine w a Nissan told me he was in constant fear of running out of power at the wrong time.
Both of these men were Sr Engineers.
Neither had long commutes.
“copper”
It is possible to use aluminum.
It is also possible to have EV users supply their own cable.
It is also possible to make the cable wires have a cross section that is not standard so it would be harder to sell for metal scrap value.
Scrap metal taxation is also possible.
One YUUUUUUGE problem with EVs is the TIME it takes to recharge it. When I fill up a tank of gas, it is only about a couple of minutes. With EV recharge, expect to waste at least THIRTY MINUTES each time. I got better things to do with my life than just waiting around for the charging to be complete.
I’m glad you wrote typical as an adjective in that sentence.
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