You forgot School Buses. That will be an especially egregious (and ruinously expensive) iteration. Maybe that’s the point.
“Leftists believe in replacing what works, with what sounds good”
Thomas Sowell
I think this is a profoundly tragic example of his axiom in action. I recall hearing about some idiot bantering back and forth about this. Facts, logic, and reason aren’t enough. Keep in mind illiteracy is bad enough - but the inability to perform simple Arithmetic is also a huge problem (never mind Math).
After being patiently informed about the utter unworkability of the schemes envisioned, he just said something like “Well, fossil fuel is 100 year old technology. Isn’t it time to move on?”
This is the mentality we’re dealing with. Get rid of something before there is a viable replacement. That icky old stuff, it just ain’t stylish enough you know. They have no idea of the actual technical aspects, they don’t understand energy density, and they don’t have to pay for anything.
That’s how modern America gets a “transportation secretary” who declares that buying an electric car means “you won’t have to worry about gasoline prices ever again”. That is Weapons Grade Stupidity right there. He might not be that stupid himself, but his intended audience, and the newsreaders, and supposed academics most certainly are.
My thermo class in college was taught by a legitimate scientist. He had us work through the total cost and output of every possible “energy saving” scheme. None of them made sense even with the most generous assumptions.
My personal pet peeve is electric cars. The material for the battery is mined in dirt poor countries using child labor and water cannons. After the land is mined out it looks like the lunar surface and can barely support bacteria. The people went from poor to probably dead. When you figure the cost to the environment for the mining, transportation, the energy and environmental cost of refining and production, and disposal, the few nickels you save while driving the car are inconsequential. Then, there’s the fact that at the end of three, four, or even ten years, the cost of a replacement battery far out paces the value of the car and it gets junked years or decades before it would otherwise be junked if it was a “polluting” gas car. Then there’s the inconvenience of waiting for it to charge, finding a charge station and the possible rolling blackouts as the other unicorn poop planet saving technologies take long and unpredictable naps.
> “Leftists believe in replacing what works, with what sounds good” Thomas Sowell <
Great quote!
And unfortunately, those “sounds good” projects mean misery for everyone involved (except for the elites, of course).
Actually, school buses that have runs under 2 hours or so are one of the few things running on electricity that makes sense.
Proven technology from the early 1900s, using Edison batteries, that get better with age, so never have to be replaced and don't use rare earth materials.
In the early 1900s a lot of local transport vehicles were electric.
That moves the pollution out of cities, and saves fuel for the rest of us who travel longer distances.
By the same logic, we've been breathing oxygen for millions of years. Isn't it time to 'move on?' Move on to what? Simply for the empty-headed sake of 'moving on', apparently...